19. The Mongols - Terror of the Steppe (Part 2)

Interactive Transcript

spk_0 Part 2

spk_0 After the death of Chingis Khan, the Mongol Empire went into a state of some shock, and

spk_0 its wars of conquest were largely put on hold. But the immense respect he had won during

spk_0 his life, carried over into his death, and the plan he had put in place for his succession

spk_0 was carried out. For the next two years, the Empire was held in a kind of regency by

spk_0 his youngest son, Tolui, and at the end of that period, once the time of mourning had

spk_0 passed, Ogaday took his position as Great Khan on the 13th of September 1229, as the

spk_0 secret history records.

spk_0 In accordance with the decree of Chingis Khan, they installed Ogaday as Khan, the night

spk_0 guards, the Quiverbeiris, and the 8,000 day guards who had been protecting the precious

spk_0 life of their father, Chingis Khan. The personal slaves and the 10,000 guards who had been in

spk_0 close attendance on the person of his father, the Khan, were all handed over.

spk_0 In fitting with his character, one of Ogaday's first acts as Khan was to hold a grand celebration.

spk_0 At this festival, feasts were held, songs were sung and games played, wrestling and hunting,

spk_0 archery and riding, and of course, enormous quantities of alcohol would have been consumed.

spk_0 The Iraq and Black Kumas, the Chinese rice wines and fine Persian grape wines, would have

spk_0 flowed from silver goblets, and the revelry would have lasted for days.

spk_0 Ogaday loved to be liked, and he had always had a generous streak. To celebrate his coming

spk_0 to power, he opened his father's treasuries and distributed gifts and wealth to all the

spk_0 influential families of the Mongol Step. This generosity gained him many friends, but

spk_0 the Persian scholar Atomalik Chuvaini recounts his profligate behavior with a note of disapproval.

spk_0 He was ever spreading the carpet of merry-making and treading the path of excess,

spk_0 in constant application to wine and the company of angelic women. Being by nature extravagantly

spk_0 bountiful, he gave away everything that came in from the farthest and nearest parts of the Empire

spk_0 without its being registered by accountant or inspector. No mortal returned from his presence

spk_0 without his lot or share, and no petitioner heard from his tongue the word, no.

spk_0 Ogaday was for the most part a successful ruler, but he also had a quite different

spk_0 vision for the Mongol Empire to that of his father. Chingus Khan had always maintained his dislike

spk_0 and distrust of settled peoples and city dwellers. He had envisioned his empire as the people of

spk_0 the felt walls, a pure confederation of nomadic peoples that would stand up for the pastoralist

spk_0 lifestyle against the corruptions of the settled world. But Ogaday had seen the great cities of

spk_0 China and Persia. He had looked with envious eyes upon the great walls of Beijing and

spk_0 Samakand and had brought advisors from northern China to help him rule. One of these, a

spk_0 Kitan man named Yelou Chukai, is said to have given Ogaday the following piece of advice.

spk_0 An Empire won on horseback. Cannot be ruled on horseback.

spk_0 For this reason, Ogaday now dreamed of departing from his father's policy and building a proper

spk_0 capital for the Empire he had inherited. This capital would be complete with all the things a great

spk_0 city needed. Buildings, streets, temples, workshops and palaces. He ordered that this new city

spk_0 be built out in the middle of the step. At the same spot where his father had set up his main camp,

spk_0 a site where the canyon like Orkon River Valley spills out into the pastures below,

spk_0 right in the heart of Mongolia. Construction of this city happened quickly,

spk_0 with architects and craftsmen being brought primarily from the conquered regions of China.

spk_0 But Ogaday also brought some Persian builders to Mongolia to work on his palaces.

spk_0 Atomalak Juvaini gives an account of the new Mongol city.

spk_0 There had previously been no town or village in that place except for the remains of a wall.

spk_0 The Khan caused a town to be built on it, which they called Ordubalik,

spk_0 though it is better known as Karakorum.

spk_0 Karakorum in Mongolia means black castle or black stones.

spk_0 The city rose out of the bare step grasslands with earthwork walls and four gates,

spk_0 and buildings lined with wooden pillars built in the Chinese style with swooping pagoda roofs.

spk_0 At the four corners of the city, he had four stone tortoises carved,

spk_0 facing out in each direction. The tortoise was a symbol of stability and protection,

spk_0 and with their incredibly long lives had become representations of eternity.

spk_0 These stone guardians watched over the city and formed a statement in stone that Karakorum was built to last.

spk_0 With the help of his foreign craftsmen, Ogaday built Karakorum into what he hoped would be a fitting capital for the world's largest empire,

spk_0 and a fitting venue for the world's most impressive parties.

spk_0 Above the town a garden was built for the Khan with four gates, and in the midst of that garden,

spk_0 Artazans reared up a castle, and inside it a throne having three flights of steps for the Khan alone.

spk_0 The utensils were of golden silver and studied with jewels. Twice in the year would the Khan

spk_0 a light in this pleasant boat. Whenever the sun entered the sign of aries, and the world was glad,

spk_0 he would feast for a month in this residence, and as the bounty of the rain reaches both herbs

spk_0 and trees, so both great and small took part in the feasting.

spk_0 Ogaday encouraged the empires elites to build houses near his palace,

spk_0 but for the most part Karakorum remained something of a halfway point between a Mongol camp and a true city.

spk_0 Much of the Mongol nobility continued to live in their gear tents, often pitching them outside the walls,

spk_0 and treated the city as something of an eccentric novelty. At its heart was the central secretariat,

spk_0 the main civilian governing body of the empire. This contained a large body of scribes,

spk_0 who assessed tax registries and tribute, and translated orders to be sent to the various provinces

spk_0 of the empire. Other than this administrative hub and the palaces of the Khan, the city contained

spk_0 mostly warehouses for the vast treasures looted from all over Asia, and workshops where captured

spk_0 craftsmen toiled, as well as various houses of worship for all the different religions of the

spk_0 empire. The Flemish monk William of Rubruk, who passed through in the middle of the 13th century,

spk_0 was less than impressed with this imperial capital, and compared it unfavorably to the small town

spk_0 of Sandene just north of Paris. Regarding the city of Karakorum, you should know that

spk_0 discounting the Khan's palace, it is not even as fine as the town of Sandene, and the monastery

spk_0 of Sandene is worth ten of the palace. It contains two quarters, one for the Saracens, where there are

spk_0 zars and where many traders gather. The other is the quarter of the Chinese, who are all craftsmen.

spk_0 Set apart from these quarters lie large palaces belonging to the court secretaries. There are

spk_0 twelve idol temples belonging to different peoples, two mosques where the religion of Muhammad is

spk_0 proclaimed, and one Christian church at the far end of the town. The town is enclosed by a mud wall

spk_0 and has four gates. But despite its somewhat humble appearance, Karakorum was an expensive city to

spk_0 maintain. Sitting out in the middle of the step, its land was not fertile, and its people could grow

spk_0 few crops. For this reason it was never self-sufficient, and its population had to be sustained

spk_0 by food brought over long distances, from crop growing regions in northern China.

spk_0 Ogaday had hoped that Karakorum would become a trading hub in its own right, and that its economy

spk_0 would become self-sustaining. To encourage this, he had trees planted along the roads that were

spk_0 used by trade caravans, to help shelter them from the sun and rain, and to show where the roads were

spk_0 when the step was covered in winter snows. Ogaday also expanded one of the Mongols' most

spk_0 impressive achievements, their extensive postal system. This system, which became known as the

spk_0 Jarm in Mongolian, and Jarm in Turkic, connected every corner of the empire with a system of postal

spk_0 stations where fresh horses and supplies were always kept. The Venetian explorer Marco Polo

spk_0 describes the remarkable functioning of this enormous piece of public infrastructure.

spk_0 From each city, preceded many roads and highways, leading to a variety of provinces, one to one

spk_0 province, another to another, and each road receives the name of the province to which it leads.

spk_0 The messengers of the emperor find, at every 25 miles of the journey, a station which they call

spk_0 Yam, in which they find all the rooms, furnished with fine beds and all other necessary articles

spk_0 in Ritsilk. If even a king were to arrive at one of these, he would find himself well launched.

spk_0 At each of these stations, a full complement of fresh horses would be kept. When a messenger

spk_0 approached one of these stations, he would bang a drum so that the people working there would

spk_0 know to get his horse ready, and he could continue his journey with the minimum amount of delay.

spk_0 At some of these stations, moreover, there shall be posted some 400 horses standing ready for the

spk_0 use of the messengers. At others, there shall be 200. On all these posts taken together,

spk_0 there are more than 300,000 horses kept up, especially for the use of the messengers.

spk_0 The thing is on a scale so wonderful and costly that it is hard to bring oneself to describe it.

spk_0 The Mongols issued passports to travellers in the form of tablets called Pazar,

spk_0 made of wood, bronze, silver or gold, depending on the rank of the person carrying it.

spk_0 These conferred status on the traveller and allowed them to access the services of the jam

spk_0 postal stations. But despite these measures to bring the vast empire closer together,

spk_0 the capital of Karakorum was some way off the main arteries of the Silk Road,

spk_0 and traders saw little reason to make the long journey out into the step,

spk_0 unless it could be made worth their while. To encourage them to keep coming to his new city,

spk_0 augur day, to creed that they would be paid above the usual price for their goods,

spk_0 sometimes even twice as much as they were worth elsewhere. For a time, this strategy worked,

spk_0 and the merchants kept coming. But this system was obviously unsustainable,

spk_0 and soon the money began to run dry.

spk_0 By the year 1235, six years into augur day's rule, much of the vast wealth that had been

spk_0 amassed by Chingis Khan had already been frittered away by his son.

spk_0 The dream of turning the nomadic empire of conquest into a settled empire of trade and commerce

spk_0 was looking ever more unlikely, and facing a potential bankruptcy in his future,

spk_0 augur day knew that the Mongol Empire would have to find new sources of gold.

spk_0 The Mongols would once more go to war.

spk_0 It's during augur day's reign that the Mongol Empire's ambitions grew. From the conquest of its

spk_0 neighbours and subjugation of other step peoples to a much more expansive vision, a belief that the

spk_0 whole world had been destined to live under Mongol rule, and that there was nowhere on earth

spk_0 that would escape their conquests. To decide where the Mongol armies should next descend,

spk_0 augur day summoned another cruel tie, a gathering of the clans, bringing together the entire

spk_0 family of Chingis Khan, their wives and vassals and key commanders, and here are a number of

spk_0 different options were raised. Some argued that the Mongols should march south to the lands of India,

spk_0 others that it was the turn of southern China and the Song Dynasty, who had watched with such glee

spk_0 as the northern Jin were destroyed. Others wanted to march into the Muslim lands and seized the great

spk_0 cities of Baghdad, Aleppo and Damascus. But there was one final option that was raised by the general

spk_0 named Subaday. He had been one of Chingis Khan's closest generals, and was now the last surviving member

spk_0 of that old guard, something that gave him immense respect. He suggested that the Horde ride west,

spk_0 and towards a previously unexplored land that sat on the periphery of the world. A great peninsula

spk_0 jutting out of the Asian landmass about which the Mongols knew little. These were the lands of Europe.

spk_0 Europe around the year 1200 was something of a backwater. It was home to about 70 million people,

spk_0 but although it produced textiles and fine metals, compared to other areas of the world,

spk_0 much of medieval Europe had low levels of urbanism. Other than the huge Byzantine capital of

spk_0 Constantinople, Europe had only a handful of cities that had even 50,000 inhabitants,

spk_0 and even fewer outside of Italy. Its position somewhat removed from the Silk Road trading routes

spk_0 meant that it was not a great beneficiary of the vast wealth that flowed along them.

spk_0 For this reason, Europeans also had a somewhat confused idea of what the world beyond their borders

spk_0 looked like. It was widely believed in Europe at the time that a great Christian king ruled far

spk_0 in the east, a man that they called Prestor John. It was supposed that this Christian emperor would

spk_0 one day ride west to help the Christians retake Jerusalem from the Saracens. When Mongol armies first

spk_0 arrived in Europe, there was at first some excitement. This was perhaps the coming of the great

spk_0 Prestor John, but the reality would be quite different. The late 13th century,

spk_0 Chronicle of Novgorod, one of the oldest Russian histories, describes the first arrival of these

spk_0 nomadic horsemen about 14 years earlier in the year 1223. The same year for us in's unknown tribes

spk_0 came. No one exactly knows who they are, no one's they came, no what their language is,

spk_0 no of what race they are, no what their faith is, but they call them the Tartars.

spk_0 We have heard that they have captured many countries slaughtered a quantity of the godless

spk_0 peoples and scattered others. These perplexing foreigners were in fact a pair of

spk_0 Mongol armies led by the generals of Chingis Khan, Subaday and Jebe. They had been sent to destroy

spk_0 any remains of the Kipchak people, a large confederation of Step nomads who occupied the area of

spk_0 Volga River and who had fought on the side of the Choresmian Empire just a couple of years earlier.

spk_0 These were some of the last holdouts among the peoples of the Step who had not yet bent the

spk_0 knee to the Mongols. Now a large force of Kipchak Turks fled west to Russia and begged the help of

spk_0 the major power in that region, the settled kingdom of Kieven-Rus.

spk_0 The

spk_0 Centered around the city of Kieven in modern Ukraine, Kieven-Rus was less of a kingdom and more

spk_0 of fractious collection of princely city-states that formed a belt across the European peninsula,

spk_0 from the Arctic white sea in the north to the shores of the Black Sea in the south.

spk_0 And like the Choresmians, its people heard often employed Kipchak nomads as mercenary cavalry

spk_0 in its armies. When the Kipchaks fled into Russia, they warned the Russians in no uncertain terms

spk_0 about what was coming, as the Novgorod Chronicle records.

spk_0 To all the Russians, they brought many gifts, horses and camels, buffaloes and girls,

spk_0 and they came saying this,

spk_0 All land they have taken away today, and yours will be taken tomorrow.

spk_0 Frightened into action by this warning, the princes of Kieven-Rus put together a grand

spk_0 coalition and master force of 80,000 men under the command of Grand Prince Mustislav III of Kieven.

spk_0 Together they marched out to meet these barbarians.

spk_0 On the way they encountered some Mongol envoys who told the Grand Prince that they meant him no harm,

spk_0 that they were only there to destroy the last remnants of the Kipchaks, who they contemptuously

spk_0 referred to as their slaves and horse-herders. But the Kieven ruler would make exactly the same

spk_0 mistake as the Shah of Choresm, as the Chronicle of Novgorod recalls.

spk_0 The Tatars sent envoys to the Russians, saying,

spk_0 Behold, we hear that you are coming against us, but we have not occupied your land,

spk_0 nor your towns, nor your villages, nor is it against you we have come.

spk_0 But we have come sent by God against our rebellious horse-herders.

spk_0 But the Russians did not listen to this, but killed all the envoys.

spk_0 Still confident of victory, the Russians advanced to crush the Mongol invaders.

spk_0 At the site of the European army, with its mass of peasant infantry,

spk_0 supported by colorful columns of heavily armed knights, their penance flying and helmets gleaming,

spk_0 the Mongols appeared to retreat in panic. The Russians were encouraged, and so they gave chase.

spk_0 They pursued the Mongols for a whole day, and then another, and then another.

spk_0 But whenever they thought they were getting close, their quarry just managed to pull away.

spk_0 They became perturbed by the almost supernatural speed and endurance of these foreigners,

spk_0 how they never seemed to stop or slow down, never seemed to need supplies, never slept or lit campfires.

spk_0 Gradually, the Europeans ran out of steam. Their horses grew tired, and their foot soldiers too.

spk_0 It was at this point that the Mongol trap swung shut.

spk_0 On the 1st of April, 1223, without warning, a second Mongol army swept out of the forests,

spk_0 and began a massacre on the banks of the Calca River, as the Novgorod Chronicle

spk_0 calls.

spk_0 There was a terrible and savage slaughter, and in Stislav, Duke of Kiev, seeing this evil,

spk_0 set up a staccade of posts about him and fought with them for three days,

spk_0 and of the rest of the troops, only every 10th returned to his home.

spk_0 A countless number of people perished, and there was lamentation and weeping and grief throughout towns and villages.

spk_0 As the infantry was slaughtered, the princes of Kiev tried to flee the battlefield,

spk_0 but they were easily hunted down by the Mongols.

spk_0 A great part of the kingdom's aristocracy was wiped out in that single day of battle.

spk_0 It's recorded that several Kievan nobles were captured, and as a punishment for killing

spk_0 the Mongol ambassadors, they were stuffed under the floorboards of one of the Mongol tents.

spk_0 All night, the Mongol warriors feasted and celebrated their victory.

spk_0 Their weight steadily crushing to death the nobles beneath the floor.

spk_0 Then, with their mission complete, the Mongols vanished.

spk_0 They had appeared, wiped out an entire army with ease, and then disappeared without a trace.

spk_0 The Novgorod Chronicle records the confusion that the event soared.

spk_0 The Tatar's turned back from the River Nipa, and we know not where they came from,

spk_0 nor where they hid themselves again. Only God knows where he fetched them against us for our sins.

spk_0 To the medieval European mind, the meaning of this event was clear. It was a punishment from God,

spk_0 but little did they know that worse was on its way.

spk_0 It was the winter of 1237 on the frozen expanse of the Russian step,

spk_0 when the first Mongol horsemen once more appeared on the edge of Europe.

spk_0 But this time they came to stay.

spk_0 In his chronic or major or great Chronicle, the English writer Matthew Paris

spk_0 wrote about these newcomers in terms of utter condemnation.

spk_0 An immense horde of that detestable race of Satan, the Tartars, rushed forth like demons

spk_0 loosed from hell. They are inhuman and of the nature of beasts,

spk_0 rather to be called monsters than man, thirsting after and drinking blood and tearing and

spk_0 vowing the flesh of dogs and human beings. They are invincible in battle.

spk_0 They have no human laws, no mercy and are crueler than lions or bears.

spk_0 The Mongols had waited until the winter set in for their invasion,

spk_0 so that the great rivers Volga and Tnipa would freeze over,

spk_0 turning them into a highway for their horses.

spk_0 Moving fast over the frozen ground, they once more easily encircled the Russian armies

spk_0 and utterly destroyed them.

spk_0 It wasn't just the speed of the invasion that took the Europeans by surprise.

spk_0 For people in Europe, the technologies that the Mongols brought with them

spk_0 were so advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic.

spk_0 In the city of Ryazan, the citizens were so terrified by the Mongols' incendiary weaponry,

spk_0 the Chinese firelances and pots of flaming napthas that they hold from their catapults,

spk_0 that in the confusion they believed that the Mongols had brought with them trained dragons from the East.

spk_0 By 1240, virtually all the major cities of Russia had fallen to the Mongols.

spk_0 In December, they rounded on what was then the cultural, religious and economic heart of the region,

spk_0 the great city on the Tnipa, the city of Kiev.

spk_0 Kiev held out for nine days, during which the Mongol catapults bombarded it with stones and flaming projectiles.

spk_0 In terror, its population flooded towards the great stone church of the tithes that stood on the

spk_0 rocks of the Tnipa river. They were desperate to get close to the shrine of the Virgin Mary,

spk_0 which they hoped would protect them and climbed up onto the church's roof.

spk_0 But the weight of the crowd on the roof timbers caused them to collapse, and many of those

spk_0 sheltering within the church were crushed. The Mongol army soon flooded into the city and put

spk_0 its people to the sword. Of Kiev's 50,000 inhabitants, it's reported that only 2000 or so survived.

spk_0 After the invasion, many Russian cities fell into ruin and stone buildings stopped for many decades.

spk_0 Economic links between cities and nearby villages were broken and famine spread,

spk_0 as the Novgorod Chronicle recounts.

spk_0 For what is there to say, or what to speak of, the punishment that came to us from God,

spk_0 how some of the common people killed the living and ate them,

spk_0 others ate horseflash, dogs and cats. Some fed on moss, snails,

spk_0 pine bark, lime bark, lime and alm tree leaves, and whatever each could think of.

spk_0 And again, other wicked men began to burn the good people's houses where they suspected that there was grain.

spk_0 Giovanni Dupján del Carpino, the popes envoy to the Mongol Great Khan,

spk_0 traveled through Kiev a few years later in February 1246 and wrote the following description of the

spk_0 destruction. When we were journeying through the land we came across countless skulls and bones

spk_0 of dead men lying about on the ground. Kiev had been a very large and thickly populated town.

spk_0 But now it has been reduced almost to nothing. For there are at the present time scarce 200 houses

spk_0 there and the inhabitants are kept in complete slavery.

spk_0 In some places it took more than 100 years for Russian cities to rebuild.

spk_0 But after devastating Russia, augur days forces were just getting started.

spk_0 One Mongol army, perhaps 50,000 strong, headed west through the duchies of Poland,

spk_0 riding in the direction of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, and from there all of Western Europe

spk_0 was in their path. In all the cities of Europe rumours ran rampant and all anyone had to work with

spk_0 was a name, the Tatar's. Some believe that the name must mean that the Mongols had actually

spk_0 come from hell itself since it reminded them of the name for the deepest region of the underworld

spk_0 in Greek mythology, Tatarus. Others thought that the name reminded them of the biblical king of Tarsish

spk_0 mentioned in the Bible. Others still thought that the Mongols may have been one of the lost tribes

spk_0 of Israel, now returned to Rikhavuk on Christendom, perhaps enraged by the theft of relics from the Holy

spk_0 Land during the Crusades. The English monk Matthew of Paris was especially responsible for spreading

spk_0 this idea and tried to work his way around the inconvenient fact that the Mongols didn't appear

spk_0 to speak Hebrew or seem to be Jewish as he wrote in his great chronicle.

spk_0 In the time of the government of Moses, their rebellious hearts were perverted to an evil way of

spk_0 thinking, so that they followed after strange gods and unknown customs. Their heart and language

spk_0 was confused, and their life changed to that of the cruel and irrational wild beast.

spk_0 Unable to beat the Mongols on the battlefield, people instead began to lash out against the

spk_0 defenseless Jewish communities in countless European cities and a wave of deadly pogroms began.

spk_0 In 1239, a fiery comet passed by the earth, seeming to some to be a sign of God's judgment,

spk_0 and in 1241, the panic only increased as an eclipse blotted out the sun.

spk_0 People began to believe that the end of days might finally have arrived.

spk_0 But the northern Mongol force headed towards Germany was in fact just a distraction,

spk_0 a typical Mongol tactic to attack in multiple places at once, and in fact their true goal was a land

spk_0 that was much more amenable to their lifestyle, that is the rolling grasslands and river plains of

spk_0 Hungary, which sat on the edge of the great step, behind the wall of the Carpathian mountains.

spk_0 Hungry 2 had given shelter to Kipchak Turks fleeing from the Mongols who had begged for shelter

spk_0 from the Hungarian king Bella IV. The Mongols sent King Bella the following message.

spk_0 I have learned that you keep the Kipchaks my slaves under your protection.

spk_0 I charge you that you do not make me your enemy on their account.

spk_0 For it is easier for them to escape than for you.

spk_0 Since they, having no house and continually on the move with their tents,

spk_0 may possibly escape, but you, living in houses and possessing fortresses and cities,

spk_0 how can you flee from my grasp?

spk_0 For a time the Hungarian troops managed to hold off the Mongols on a narrow bridge

spk_0 on a crossing of the Shayo River, but their resistance did not last long.

spk_0 One priest and writer Thomas of Spalato wrote an eyewitness account of the aftermath of the battle.

spk_0 The dead fell to the right and to the left, like leaves in winter.

spk_0 The slain bodies of these miserable men were strewn across the whole route.

spk_0 Blood poured forth like torrents of rain. The miserable country,

spk_0 stained by the blood of its sons, was dyed red throughout its length and breadth.

spk_0 From there the Mongols poured into the great Hungarian plain.

spk_0 They wiped out the royal army and sacked towns and villages,

spk_0 rounding up huge numbers of skilled people who they took away with them,

spk_0 drafting others to take part in their human wave assaults of fortresses,

spk_0 just as they had in China and Persia, and killing countless others.

spk_0 The Hungarian king Bella fled south to the coastal regions of his kingdom,

spk_0 in what is now Croatia, and like the Choiresum Shah, he took a boat out into the Adriatic

spk_0 and took refuge on an island there.

spk_0 Archaeology paints a clear picture of the desperation of this time.

spk_0 The remains of many medieval Hungarian churches can be found with concentric rings of

spk_0 earthwork defenses, hurriedly constructed, and the earth around them is littered with arrowheads

spk_0 and the bones of the unfortunate defenders.

spk_0 A great number of buried coin-hords have also been uncovered from around this time,

spk_0 as the kingdoms wealthy rushed to hide their riches from the advancing Mongol tide.

spk_0 When the Mongols finally withdrew from Hungary in 1242, a year after they had arrived,

spk_0 they left behind a devastated land.

spk_0 One Italian bishop living in Hungary named Roger of Tore Maggiore wrote the following

spk_0 description of the desolation.

spk_0 We climbed a tall tree and surveyed the land destroyed by the Tartus.

spk_0 What pain! We began to walk across the waste and abandoned land that they had destroyed while

spk_0 retreating. Church towers were our way signs, and the road they marked for us was rough.

spk_0 The roads and paths had vanished. Gras and Thornbushes had taken over.

spk_0 The Mongols were now on the borders of both the Holy Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire,

spk_0 Europe's two major powers. It looked as though all of Europe would now fall just like Northern China

spk_0 and the Choresmian Empire before it. If it had, it's likely that the entire history of the world

spk_0 would have gone down another path. If the Mongols had devastated Florence, Venice and Milan,

spk_0 the way they had devastated Beijing and Samarkand, the Renaissance would likely never have taken place,

spk_0 and the modern world as we know it would have struggled to be born.

spk_0 But history again had other plans. One event would transpire that would save Europe from this fate.

spk_0 That was the death of the great Khan Ogaday.

spk_0 Ogaday had always been a great drinker, but in recent years his alcoholism had truly got out of

spk_0 control, partly due to tragedy in his personal life. His beloved brother Tolui had died a few years

spk_0 earlier, with some even whispering that Ogaday had had him poisoned, and his favourite son and

spk_0 heir Kuchu had also died fighting in China, a mission that Ogaday himself had sent him on.

spk_0 From that point, with grief and guilt seemingly warring inside him, Ogaday seems to have sunk into

spk_0 a depression. He withdrew from government, increasingly losing his appetite for ruling,

spk_0 and all the while he drank and drank.

spk_0 On the 11th of December 1241, the great Khan Ogaday, the son of Chinggis Khan, died as he had lived,

spk_0 in a drunken stupa, after 13 years of rule, and at the age of 55.

spk_0 The secret history contains a note supposedly written by Ogaday himself,

spk_0 but almost certainly penned by one of his successes, in which he notes his failures.

spk_0 I have sat on the great throne of my Khan father. I made the nation live with their souls on the soil,

spk_0 and they gripped on the ground. Yet, although I carried forward on my back the teaming kingdom,

spk_0 it was an era of mine to be vanquished by grape wine. This was one of my errors.

spk_0 With Jochi and Tollui by now all dead, and Chagatai dead soon after, the last surviving son of

spk_0 Chinggis Khan had passed away. But as a man who had lived every day in the moment and thought

spk_0 there was now no certainty at all over who would rule the empire.

spk_0 After his death, all of Ogaday's successes raised their claims to the throne of the great Khan,

spk_0 and even Chinggis Khan surviving brother Temugay, now in his 70s, suggested that he should rule.

spk_0 Suddenly, all plans of advancing further west into Europe were forgotten.

spk_0 This power struggle would last for ten years, and for five of these the empire was ruled by a woman,

spk_0 the widow of Ogaday, named Toreganak Khan. She performed all the duties of a Mongol Khan,

spk_0 minting coins, holding curlties, and ensured the succession of her son, Guyuk.

spk_0 He ruled for a further three years, and during this time declared his intention to launch a full

spk_0 scale invasion of Europe, even sending a letter demanding submission from the Pope.

spk_0 But his health would deteriorate, and he died while traveling on the 20th of April 1248.

spk_0 Europe, once again, was spared, and during this time of upheaval in the Mongol Empire,

spk_0 the rest of the world could breathe something of a sign of relief.

spk_0 The struggle over who would become Khan would eventually come to an end with the rise of a man named Monkha.

spk_0 The previous great Khan Ogaday had seven sons, but Monkha was not one of them.

spk_0 He was the oldest son of Tolui, the one brother who had never been considered for the position of Khan.

spk_0 We can tell that this was an awkward fact for Monkha, since one of his first official acts was to

spk_0 crown his father Tolui as great Khan posthumously, thus strengthening his own legitimacy.

spk_0 And when Monkha came to the throne in 1251, he is said to have given a statement

spk_0 that acted as a rebuke of the ways of his profligate predecessor Ogaday.

spk_0 I follow the laws of my ancestors. I do not imitate other countries' ways.

spk_0 This question of what kind of society the Mongol Empire would be is one that would resurface again

spk_0 and again over the coming century. Like his father before him, Monkha was an accomplished warrior

spk_0 and had fought as one of the most prominent generals in the invasion of Russia.

spk_0 He also had Tolui's somewhat bloodthirsty and ruthless streak.

spk_0 To quail any resistance when he came to power, Monkha purged all members of the

spk_0 nobility who had supported other claimants to the throne of the great Khan, many of whom were his cousins.

spk_0 More than 300 members of the Mongol aristocracy were slaughtered.

spk_0 While the Mongols were hardly shy about spilling blood, this amount of killing in the upper echelons

spk_0 of Mongol society was unprecedented. After that he turned his attention to further conquests.

spk_0 He gave command of his troops in Persia to one of his brothers named Hulagu,

spk_0 and his troops in northern China to another brother named Kublai,

spk_0 ordering him to prepare for an invasion of southern Song China. Meanwhile, the Khan

spk_0 Monkha remained back in the imperial heartland in his capital of Karakorum.

spk_0 It was during the reign of Monkha Khan that the king of France, Louis IX,

spk_0 sent an ambassador to Mongolia, a Flemish friar named William of Rubruk.

spk_0 He would write one of the most fascinating accounts of life in the Mongol court of Karakorum at this time.

spk_0 After many months of travel across the step of Central Asia, William of Rubruk arrived at the

spk_0 Mongol capital late in the year 1253. He was taken to see the Khan and gives a rare description

spk_0 of the appearance of Monkha. The Khan was sitting on a couch, dressed in a fur which was spotted

spk_0 and very glossy, like a seal skin. He is snub-nosed, a man of medium-build and aged about 45.

spk_0 William was frustrated because his interpreter was drinking continually throughout his meeting with

spk_0 the Khan, and by the end was thoroughly drunk. By this point, he could hardly understand what the

spk_0 Mongol ruler was saying. Nevertheless, the Khan gave them permission to stay in the city, and William

spk_0 of Rubruk began exploring the Mongol capital. In this melting pot in the heart of the empire,

spk_0 he encountered people from all over Eurasia, including one monk from China who seems to have had

spk_0 some fun at his expense. On one occasion, a priest from China was sitting with me, dressed in

spk_0 cloth of the finest red, and I asked him where he came by such a color. He told me how in the east

spk_0 of China there are soaring crags inhabited by creatures built like human beings in every respect,

spk_0 except that their knees do not bend, and they move along in a kind of hopping, and that they are

spk_0 one cubit tall and covered in hair. They live in inaccessible caves, and when men go hunting them,

spk_0 they take the most intoxicating ale they can brew and make cup-shaped hollows in the rocks,

spk_0 which they fill with the ale. So the hunters lie hidden, and these creatures emerge from their caves,

spk_0 and sample the drink, crying, chin-chin, and it is from this cry that their name is derived,

spk_0 for they are known as chin-chin. Then they gather round in very great numbers,

spk_0 become drunken to fall asleep on the spot. At this point, the hunters come forward and tie their

spk_0 hands and feet while they are asleep, and next they open up a vein in their necks, and extract from

spk_0 each one three or four drops of blood before letting them go free. The blood the priest told me

spk_0 is of the greatest value for making purple dye.

spk_0 But despite his slightly gullible nature, William explored the city diligently,

spk_0 and there he was astonished to find a number of other Europeans living and working in this foreign

spk_0 land, thousands of kilometers from home. We were discovered by a woman from Metz in France,

spk_0 named Pasha, who had been captured in Hungary, and she made us as substantial a meal as she could.

spk_0 She told us about the unheard of destitution she had suffered, but now she was well enough off.

spk_0 She had a young Russian husband by whom she had three very fine little boys.

spk_0 She told us that there was also a master goldsmith at Karakorum called William,

spk_0 originally from Paris, whose surname is Boucher.

spk_0 This William Boucher had been working in Hungary when the Mongols swept in from the step,

spk_0 and like many others before him, he had been rounded up for his skill in metal working.

spk_0 When he arrived in Karakorum, the Khan Monker had soon recognized his potential,

spk_0 and set him to work building a remarkable mechanical contraption out of silver.

spk_0 At the entrance to this great palace, master William of Paris has constructed for him a large

spk_0 tree made of silver, with four silver lions at its roots, each one containing a conduit pipe,

spk_0 and spewing forth white mares milk. The branches, leaves and fruit of the tree are of silver.

spk_0 There are four conduits leading into the tree, and over each one of them lies a gilded serpent

spk_0 with its tail twined around the trunk. One of the pipes discharges wine, a second fermented

spk_0 mares milk, a third a kind of mead, and a fourth a rich ale. Each beverage has its own silver

spk_0 vessel at the foot of the tree, ready to receive it. The fountain even had a method of announcing

spk_0 to guests that the drinking had begun, the perfect centerpiece for a Mongol feast.

spk_0 Between the four pipes at the top, he made an angel holding a trumpet, so when drink is required,

spk_0 a man concealed in its cavity then blows strongly on the pipe that leads to the angel.

spk_0 The angel puts the trumpet to its mouth, and the trumpet gives out a very loud blast.

spk_0 When the stewards in the chamber hear this, each pauses drink into the appropriate pipe,

spk_0 and the pipes spurt it out.

spk_0 By this time, Christianity had made great inroads at the Mongol court, and many of the

spk_0 Khan's wives were Christians, but though also Muslim, Buddhist, and even Jewish holy men,

spk_0 living in Karakorum, all enjoying the freedom of religion that made the Mongol realm virtually

spk_0 unique around the world. The Khan Monkha was curious about religion, but seems to have courted

spk_0 each faith without ever converting to one of them. In order to perhaps settle the matter once

spk_0 and for all, the great Khan organized a series of debates, and invited the friar William of Rubruk

spk_0 to take part. The following day he sent to me his secretaries, who said,

spk_0 our master is sending us to you with this message. Here you are, Christians,

spk_0 Sarasans, and Buddhists, and each one of you claims that his religion is superior and that his

spk_0 writings or books contain more truth. So, he would like you all to assemble together and hold a

spk_0 conference and each one to put his claims in writing to enable the Khan to learn the truth.

spk_0 William accepted, but he soon found out that the Mongols arranged their intellectual debates

spk_0 much like their wrestling matches. This would be a rowdy, boisterous affair,

spk_0 and like Mongol wrestlers, the debaters were expected to drink a large cup of alcoholic

spk_0 kumas between each round. Quickly, the holy men became drunk.

spk_0 To their surprise, and despite their bitter differences back home, the Muslims and Christians

spk_0 found themselves largely in agreement on the broad points, that there was one God that he was

spk_0 all powerful and that heaven awaited them after death. Together, they argued against the Buddhists,

spk_0 who believed in many gods with limited powers and in reincarnation after death.

spk_0 They argued over the nature of good and evil, whether everything in creation is good,

spk_0 and why God allows bad things to happen. According to William's own account,

spk_0 he effortlessly outsmarted his opponents. But to his disappointment, no one agreed to convert

spk_0 to Christianity then and there. Everybody listened without challenging a single word,

spk_0 but for all that, no one said, I believe and wish to become a Christian.

spk_0 What it was over, the Christians and Sarasans alike sang in loud voices while the Buddhists

spk_0 remained silent, and after that, everyone drank heavily.

spk_0 But if William had hoped to convince the great Khan, he would be frustrated.

spk_0 For his part, Monkha Khan remained unconvinced.

spk_0 The debates came to an inconclusive end.

spk_0 And the question over which was the true religion would go unsettled for another day.

spk_0 William would leave the Khan's court soon after. But during his time in Karakorum,

spk_0 he had noticed some extraordinary measures of personal security surrounding Monkha and his household.

spk_0 William himself was even grilled by the Khan's security services.

spk_0 They searched our legs, chests and arms to see whether we had knives on us.

spk_0 They made the interpreter take off his belt. We were summoned by the Grand Secretary and judge,

spk_0 and they inquired most minutely once we came from. Why we had come, what was our business,

spk_0 and this inquiry was made because it had been reported to Monkha Khan that 40 assassins had

spk_0 entered the city under various disguises to kill him.

spk_0 Monkha Khan had good reason to be worried. That's because he had become a target for a

spk_0 controversial Islamic sect known as the Hashashin, a group who have given us the English word,

spk_0 assassin.

spk_0 The Hashashin occupied perhaps as many as a hundred remote mountain fortresses

spk_0 across an area stretching from the Mediterranean coast to Afghanistan.

spk_0 But they coordinated their operations from their headquarters, the Lofti al-Ahmut Castle

spk_0 in the Al-Bawr's mountain range of northern Iran. Al-Ahmut means eagle's nest,

spk_0 and it was perched high up on the mountain crags. The Hashashin had no armies to speak of,

spk_0 no infantry and no cavalry, but they exercised a formidable strategic power. That is,

spk_0 they assassinated any noble, general or king who stood in their way. One writer named Benjamin of

spk_0 Tudela wrote an account of these mysterious killers and their enigmatic ruler.

spk_0 They call him Sheikh Al-Hashashin. He is their elder, and upon his command, all of the men of the

spk_0 believers of the word of their elder and everyone, everywhere, fears them, because they even kill kings.

spk_0 Although it's difficult to unpick the legends from the truth when it comes to this secretive sect,

spk_0 according to Arab Persian and Chinese sources, the name Hashashin comes from the group's predilection

spk_0 for the drug Hashish, a concentrated resin of the cannabis plant. According to legends,

spk_0 young men would be initiated into the group by smoking Hashish, and under its intoxicating effects,

spk_0 they were shown the beautiful gardens that the Hashashin kept in their castles. Marco Polo

spk_0 recounted one version of these tales. Upon awakening from this state of lethargy,

spk_0 their senses were struck with all the delightful objects that have been described,

spk_0 and each perceived himself surrounded by lovely damsels. He believed himself assuredly in paradise,

spk_0 and felt an unwillingness to relinquish its delights. When four or five days had zasp in past,

spk_0 they were carried out of the garden.

spk_0 The young initiates were told that they had visited the gardens of paradise,

spk_0 and would be allowed to return if they were willing to give their life for the cause.

spk_0 So long as the supply of Hashish was kept flowing, the group had an endless reserve of

spk_0 brainwashed young men willing to do their bidding, as Marco Polo describes.

spk_0 Animated to enthusiasm by words of this nature all went forward to die in its service.

spk_0 The consequence of this system was that when any of the neighboring princes or others

spk_0 gave insult to this chief, they were put to death by these his disciples assassins,

spk_0 none of whom felt terror at the risk of losing their own lives, provided they could execute their

spk_0 must as well. We don't know if these rumours were true, or just stories made up by the group's

spk_0 enemies. The word Hashishi can often mean simply rabble or outlaws, and their name may have

spk_0 actually been the Arabic word, a sasi yun, meaning something like the principled ones.

spk_0 Regardless of the truth, what is certain is that the assassins were a thorn in the side

spk_0 of the mighty Middle Eastern powers, like the Fatamid, Abbasid and Seljuk empires.

spk_0 Over the course of nearly two centuries, they killed hundreds of notable people,

spk_0 including three Caliphs and one Crusader king of Jerusalem.

spk_0 And now they had set their sights on the Khan of the Mongols.

spk_0 They had clearly enjoyed the respite that the ten years of Mongol infighting had brought the world,

spk_0 and hoped that by killing Monkha they might bring about another, and perhaps even that the entire

spk_0 Mongol entity would simply unravel. In the 1240s, one Mongol general was even assassinated by this group,

spk_0 and for Monkha this was the final straw. In 1253 he ordered his younger brother Hulagu to march into

spk_0 the west and crush the assassins for good. Hulagu advanced into Afghanistan, and from there seized

spk_0 their fortresses one by one. Finally he rounded on the eagle's nest castle of Al-Ahmut,

spk_0 high in the snowy mountains of northern Iran. Atomalik Tuvine describes the site that the defenders

spk_0 of Al-Ahmut saw approaching through the jagged peaks. And from the direction of Hulstandar,

spk_0 they came armies all fire and fury, along steep roads as crooked as the covenant of the wicked,

spk_0 and from Al-Ahmut which lay to the left came the princes Balagai and Tautar, with a great body of men,

spk_0 all clamoring for vengeance with a host like a mountain of iron. The mountains and valleys

spk_0 billowed with the great masses of men. The approach to Al-Ahmut was steep and virtually

spk_0 impregnable, but by now the Mongol armies were experts at siege warfare.

spk_0 With their morning draft, the Mongol army struck the harp of war and prepared to do battle with

spk_0 manganelles and stones. They cut down and trimmed for these manganelles the trees which these people

spk_0 had watered for many years past, not realizing what purpose they would serve, or what fruit they

spk_0 would ultimately bear. The castle of Al-Ahmut soon surrendered and the assassins were crushed as an

spk_0 independent force. With this inconvenience safely out of the way, the Mongols now rounded on the

spk_0 Muslim Middle East and its great capital of Baghdad.

spk_0 Baghdad at this time was a grand city. It was the centre of the Abbasid caliphate

spk_0 throughout the Islamic golden age of the 9th and 10th centuries, growing to be the largest city

spk_0 worldwide by the beginning of the 10th century. And though at this point it had suffered some

spk_0 centuries of decline, it was still the beating heart of the Muslim world. It was a city of

spk_0 cabarels and taverns, places where backgammon and chess were played. On street corners,

spk_0 acrobats performed, and storytellers spun tales for their audiences like those later found in

spk_0 the Arabian Knights. The city also had formidable defences, with a high and thick wall.

spk_0 Each of its four gates had double doors that were made of iron, so heavy that it took several men

spk_0 to open and close them. The caliphate was ruled by the Caliph, who was the supreme religious figure

spk_0 across the Muslim world, somewhere between an emperor and a pope.

spk_0 Until that point, relations with the caliph in Baghdad, a man named Al-Mustasim had been

spk_0 relatively friendly, but the Mongols had asked him for soldiers to help them fight the assassins,

spk_0 and perhaps fearing that their daggers might be turned against him, he ignored the Mongol request.

spk_0 This disrespect was enough for the Khan Monkha to order his younger brother Hulagu to march down

spk_0 into the lowlands of Mesopotamia and destroy the caliphate entirely.

spk_0 The Mongols gathered a huge force, including a thousand Chinese siege engineers,

spk_0 and swept into the plains of Mesopotamia in the year 1257. Hulagu sent a letter to the caliph

spk_0 Al-Mustasim, urging him to surrender in ferocious terms.

spk_0 I will bring you crashing down from the summit of the sky, like a lion I will throw you down

spk_0 to the lowest depths. I will not leave a single person alive in your country.

spk_0 I will turn your city, lands, and empire into flames.

spk_0 If you have the heart to save your head and your ancient family, listen carefully to my advice.

spk_0 If you refuse to accept it, I will show you the meaning of the will of God.

spk_0 But the caliph Al-Mustasim did not listen.

spk_0 The Mongols arrived at the capital of Baghdad in January of 1258.

spk_0 The 9th century writer Al-Jahiz wrote the following description of the site that the

spk_0 Mongol soldiers would have seen as they approached across the broad floodplain of the rushing river Tigris.

spk_0 I have seen such cities in the District of Syria in Byzantine territory and in other provinces,

spk_0 but I have never seen a city of greater height,

spk_0 opposessing more spacious gates or more perfect defenses than Baghdad.

spk_0 The Mongols settled in for a siege and built a rampart completely surrounding the city.

spk_0 They constructed their vast manganelles and other siege engines and began to bombard the city

spk_0 with their terrifying gunpowder weapons and incendiary pots of naphtha brought all the way from China.

spk_0 But once these ran out, the Mongols realized that they had a problem.

spk_0 The valley of the Tigris and Euphrates is essentially a vast salt flat and contains virtually no

spk_0 stone. So they had no projectiles for their catapults.

spk_0 The Mongols faced with this problem they would have to be creative.

spk_0 The Mongols began to cut down the heavy date palms that grew everywhere along the riverbank

spk_0 and loaded pieces of their heavy trunks into their catapults.

spk_0 The citizens of Baghdad would soon face the sight of their own date trees being hurled over

spk_0 enormous distances into the city.

spk_0 The Mongols' siege engines broke through Baghdad's defenses within just a few days and the assault on the walls began in late January.

spk_0 By February the 4th, Hulagu's elite forces had seized control of the Eastern Wall.

spk_0 In a growing state of desperation, the Caliph Al-Mustasim made frantic attempts to negotiate.

spk_0 But Hulagu refused, even executing the Caliph's soldiers who tried to surrender.

spk_0 The Caliph ultimately capitulated on February the 10th and the Mongols captured him and began to sack the city.

spk_0 The Hawadit Al-Gharmia, written by an anonymous eyewitness, records the scenes of carnage.

spk_0 The inhabitants of Baghdad were put under the sword on Monday and were subjected to 40 days of continuous killing, pillaging and enslavement.

spk_0 A great part of the city, including the Caliph's mosque and its surrounding, were burnt and the city was laid in ruins.

spk_0 The dead lay as mounds in the streets and the markets, rain fell on them, horses trampled down upon them.

spk_0 Their faces were disfigured and they became an example to anyone who saw them.

spk_0 Some among the city's populations were spared. The Shia Muslims in the city, as well as

spk_0 Baghdad's Jewish population, avoided the worst of the massacre.

spk_0 The city's Christian community was also spared since the Mongol general Hulagu's wife was a Christian

spk_0 and asked her husband to show them mercy. Many of the glorious libraries of Baghdad were destroyed

spk_0 and the books within them likely burned up in the fires that engulfed the city.

spk_0 Some later sources like Qutub Adin An-Nahrawali, writing around 300 years later,

spk_0 embellished the story with the poetic flourish that the river Tigris had turned black, with the ink of the books thrown into it.

spk_0 After the slaughter was done, Hulagu held a victory feast where he had the Caliph brought to him in chains.

spk_0 The chronicler Nazir Adin At-Tousi, who may have been present as an eyewitness, recorded the words of the Mongol general.

spk_0 Hulagu set a golden tray before the Caliph and said,

spk_0 Eat! It is not edible. Said the Caliph. Then why did you keep it? Ask the Khan.

spk_0 And not give it to your soldiers. And why did you not make these iron doors into arrowheads?

spk_0 And come to the bank of the river so that I might not have been able to cross it?

spk_0 Such replied the Caliph, was God's will.

spk_0 What will befall you said the Khan, is also God's will.

spk_0 The Caliph was rolled up in a carpet and trampled to death by horses in accordance with the

spk_0 Mongol requirements that royal blood not be spilled. The sack of Baghdad tore the heart out of the Muslim world

spk_0 and ended the 500 year rule of the Abbasid Caliphate. But the Mongol armies were just getting started.

spk_0 Hulagu arrived at the Syrian city of Aleppo in December 1259 and after a siege of seven days

spk_0 stormed it and massacred its population. The Sultan of Syria and Nazir Yusuf was still at large

spk_0 and when the news of the sack of Aleppo reached him, he and his army fled south.

spk_0 The Mongols followed hot on his heels and captured Damascus 16 days after they had taken Aleppo.

spk_0 The Mongols followed the Sultan down the shores of the Mediterranean and forged through Palestine

spk_0 up to the border of Egypt. They finally tracked down the Syrian Sultan and Nazir Yusuf at the port

spk_0 town of Gaza and later had him killed. Now on the border of Egypt Hulagu sent ambassadors to

spk_0 the Sultan there, a man named Kutuz demanding that he swear loyalty to the Mongol Empire.

spk_0 The Egyptian Sultan responded by having the men beheaded and displaying their heads on Kairos

spk_0 Bab Suwala Gate. It was an act virtually guaranteed to lead to a Mongol invasion and soon

spk_0 perhaps the land of the pyramids might have also been added to the vast stretch of the Mongol Empire.

spk_0 But that was not to be the case. That's because news soon came down the silk road of another

spk_0 seismic shock that would send tremors throughout the Mongol world. That was the death on the 11th

spk_0 August 1259 of the Great Khan Monkha.

spk_0 For years now, the Khan Monkha had been concerned with how poorly the war in China was going.

spk_0 News of his brother Hulagu's glorious victories in Persia and Mesopotamia trickled back to him

spk_0 in Mongolia, the destruction of the assassins, the seizing of Alamut, the sack of Baghdad.

spk_0 But meanwhile the news from China was one of slow grinding progress.

spk_0 The Khan's other brother Kublai, who had been left in charge of the final conquest of

spk_0 Song China, could give him only excuses.

spk_0 The Song Chinese had by now spent decades hardening their border on the Yangtze River

spk_0 against the Mongol invasion that they knew would come. And their fortifications were formidable.

spk_0 Kublai was not a seasoned warrior like his other brothers. He had a much better head for

spk_0 administration and finance. In fact he had spent much of his life feasting in a luxurious

spk_0 estate in northern China, a kind of quasi-capital that would be called Shangdu, and has been rendered

spk_0 into English as Xanadu. Eventually the Khan Monkha announced that he would leave Mongolia and

spk_0 travel to China to take charge of the war himself. In the step capital of Karakorum he left his

spk_0 youngest brother in charge, a man named Arik Bukha. Monkha took charge of an army and marched south.

spk_0 His final documented presence was during the siege of Diyau Yul Castle near present day Chongqing

spk_0 in southwestern China. Later Chinese sources claimed that he was killed during an assault on the

spk_0 fortress, either by a crossbow bolt or a flying stone from a cannon or catapult. But more reliable

spk_0 sources such as Rashid Adin, record that he simply died of a disease.

spk_0 Due to the climate there an epidemic of dysentery broke out, cholera spread among the Mongol

spk_0 soldiers and many of them died. The monarch of the world drank wine toward off the cholera

spk_0 and he continued so to do. Suddenly he developed an indisposition and his illness came to a crisis.

spk_0 He soon passed away at the foot of the unlucky fortress. He was 52 years old and this was the seventh

spk_0 year of his reign. However he died, the death of Monkha in 1259 would mark a watershed in the

spk_0 history of the Mongols. This was the maximum extent of their territory and the last time that the

spk_0 entire Mongol Empire would ever fight as one force. After the deaths of previous karnes, members of

spk_0 the royal family had mostly rushed back to Mongolia to help elect a new overlord in a grand

spk_0 cruel tie. But this time none of them moved. They decided to stay where they were and claim their

spk_0 own territory. Now the vast swath of Asia that the Mongols had conquered fractured into what were

spk_0 essentially four distinct empires. Firstly in Persia and the Middle East,

spk_0 Monkha's brother Hulagu declared himself the ruler or Ilkarn of the territory he had spent years

spk_0 conquering which now stretched from Afghanistan to Turkey. It would become known as the Ilkarnate.

spk_0 Second was in the northwest, in the step bordering Europe in Ukraine and Russia, and stretching across

spk_0 the Volga region to the Ural and Caucasus mountains. These lands were held by karnes descended from Chingus

spk_0 Han's oldest son Jochi, the guest, who had fought all his life to prove himself to his father. They

spk_0 would call themselves the Ulus of Jochi, but later historians would give them the name, the Golden Horde.

spk_0 Their rulers would be among the first of the Mongols to convert to Islam.

spk_0 Third was in the centre of the empire, in the conquered Silk Road regions that had once been the

spk_0 Choresmian Empire and the vast step of Kazakhstan and Siberia. Here the descendants of Chagatai

spk_0 ruled what became known as the Chagatai Karnate, presiding over the cities of Samakand and Bukhara,

spk_0 which had by now recovered somewhat from the destruction of Chingus Han, and once more brought

spk_0 income to their rulers. But it was in the east that the air to the throne of the great Karn rose.

spk_0 He was the second son of Tolui and the late Monkakarn's brother, the somewhat unlikely new emperor,

spk_0 Kublai.

spk_0 Kublai was born on September 23rd, 1215, the same year that Chingus Han had sacked Beijing.

spk_0 And for his entire life, the Mongol Empire had been at war in China.

spk_0 As an adult, he had been awarded a Chinese estate with 10,000 households and since then had

spk_0 divided his time between China and the Mongolian step. Kublai had a liking for the trappings of

spk_0 settled society, the silks and the finery. He was advised by Chinese advisors and even a Buddhist

spk_0 monk who converted him to Tibetan Buddhism and taught him to speak Chinese in a rudimentary way.

spk_0 Already the people back in Mongolia may have begun to whisper that Kublai was more Chinese

spk_0 than Mongolian. When his brother, Monkakarn came to the throne as great Khan, Kublai was made

spk_0 viceroy over part of northern China and set about building an opulent palace at Shangdu.

spk_0 And he was made one of the commanders of the final assault on the last bastion of Chinese culture,

spk_0 the southern Song Dynasty.

spk_0 But much to the frustration of his older brother, Monkakarn, the conquest of the Song was a long

spk_0 and difficult campaign. In the Song, the Mongols faced without doubt the most technologically

spk_0 advanced army on earth. The Song upheld Mongol armies with repeating crossbows, launched huge

spk_0 gunpowder bombs from their catapults and even filled their explosives with pieces of broken

spk_0 pottery to create perhaps the first shrapnel bombs in history. Rashi'd Adin paints a picture of this

spk_0 grinding campaign. The roads were difficult and the places and castles hard to capture.

spk_0 They had repeatedly given battle and entry and exit had been made difficult for them.

spk_0 More over on account of the unhealthy climate, many of that army had fallen sick and died.

spk_0 Still, the momentum of Mongol advance was by this point unstoppable. Despite heavy losses,

spk_0 they pushed steadily into the hotlands of the Song. That was until Kublai heard news that his

spk_0 brother Monkakarn died and the throne of the Great Khan was up for grabs. Kublai had long dreamed

spk_0 of taking that throne for himself and as Monkakarn's brother he was a prime candidate.

spk_0 But he was at a distinct disadvantage. Having spent so many years in China, he had become distant

spk_0 from the life of the Imperial Court. Meanwhile, his main rival was the man that Monkakarn had left in

spk_0 charge back in Karakorum, their youngest brother, the fourth son of Tolui, Arik Boker.

spk_0 While his brothers who lagu and Kublai were away fighting in distant corners of the empire,

spk_0 Arik Boker had been back in the capital, living the life of a true step Mongol,

spk_0 hunting and riding, and supervising the administration of Monkakarn's empire,

spk_0 and he had been making friends. He was a skilled politician and over his years in Karakorum

spk_0 had come to gain the support of the majority of Mongol nobility, including most of Monkakarn's own

spk_0 family. It's possible that people may have hoped that under his rule, the empire would remain

spk_0 an empire of the step for all the people of the felt walls, and would not like Kublai be seduced

spk_0 by the ways of the settled societies it had conquered. When the Great Khan Monkakarn died,

spk_0 Arik Boker knew that his time was short. The chronicler Rashid Adin recalls how he plotted to seize

spk_0 the throne. No sooner had Arik Boker heard the news of his brother's death than his eyes fell

spk_0 upon the imperial throne, and his courtiers and retainers also urged him to seize it.

spk_0 But, it's worth remembering that Rashid Adin was writing on behalf of the Mongol court in

spk_0 Persia, who were Kublai's allies, and in fact all evidence points to the fact that Arik Boker

spk_0 was Monkak's preferred successor, and that it was Kublai and not him who was attempting to seize

spk_0 the throne in a coup. Two Arik Boker's anger, he soon got news that Kublai, still in China,

spk_0 had held a cruel tie of his own in 1260, in his summer palace at Shangdu, and announced his

spk_0 counterclaim to the throne of the Great Khan. This action was by all Mongol standards illegal.

spk_0 It was not held in Mongolia, as was proper. None of the royal family was in attendance,

spk_0 and to make matters worse, it was done with some of the trappings of Chinese ceremony. In virtually

spk_0 every way, it was an affront. Blindsided, Arik Boker rushed to announce a cruel tie in Mongolia,

spk_0 and at that gathering, he declared himself the new Great Khan.

spk_0 In response, Kublai gathered his armies and march north. The Mongol Empire was now at war with

spk_0 itself. In the west, who laguze ill Khanate, backed his brother Kublai's claim, and went to war

spk_0 with the Golden Horde and the Chagatai Khanate, who backed Arik Boker. And meanwhile Kublai gathered

spk_0 all his forces and marched into Mongolia. With him, he brought all the might of northern China.

spk_0 Unfortunately for Arik Boker, his skill as a politician did not translate into strategic thinking.

spk_0 Although he sat at the political heart of the Empire, his military position was vulnerable.

spk_0 Karakorum had no natural defences other than the Mongolian step around it, and no one who built it

spk_0 ever imagined it having to withstand a siege. The city had little agriculture of its own,

spk_0 and for the last 30 years had needed to be supplied with food and other necessities,

spk_0 along sprawling supply routes, as Rashid at Din recounts.

spk_0 It was customary for food and drink to be brought to Karakorum from China by cart. Kublai cut off

spk_0 the supply, and this resulted in shortages and severe inflation. Arik Boker was helpless.

spk_0 Arik Boker recognized the precarity of his position, and at his brother's advance, in 1261,

spk_0 he fled the capital for the northern step. Kublai swept into Karakorum and looted the city that

spk_0 his uncle Ogode had built, as though it were any other conquest. He stripped it of much of its

spk_0 wealth and sent this back to his palace at Shangdu in China. It's likely that the silver tree of

spk_0 Karakorum, built by the French silversmith William Boucher, was also seized, and possibly melted

spk_0 down for transport. Treasure carts rolled back over the goby desert, laden with precious things,

spk_0 now heading in the opposite direction. Only 50 years after Chinggis Khan's conquest of the

spk_0 Jin dynasty, China's wealth was coming home.

spk_0 Arik Boker

spk_0 Arik Boker spent the next few years being chased from place to place, trying to gather support

spk_0 on the step. But his weakness in the face of his brother's advance had destroyed any respect

spk_0 that anyone held for him. At times, it seemed like even the weather had turned against him,

spk_0 as Rashid at Dind records.

spk_0 One day, Arik Boker was busy reveling and cruising, when suddenly a fierce wind came and tore

spk_0 out the stakes and broke the poles of his court tent, resulting in the injury of several people.

spk_0 The court ministers and commanders took this as an omen of his demise and totally abandoned him.

spk_0 Arik Boker was left there with only a few soldiers, and he was dumbfounded.

spk_0 The outcome was soon clear. In 1264, four years into the civil war,

spk_0 Arik Boker travelled to Kublai's palace at Shangdu to formally surrender in tears to his brother.

spk_0 Kublai is recorded to have also wept as he receives his surrender.

spk_0 Arik Boker was imprisoned and died a year later while still in captivity, possibly from poison.

spk_0 Kublai now ascended the throne and was confirmed as great Khan in another grand cruel tie.

spk_0 But there were some notable absences at this event. None of the calms of the other sides of the

spk_0 Empire attended. Now the Mongol Empire was officially divided and turned its strength not against its

spk_0 enemies but against itself. The late 13th century Syrian historian Ibn Waseel recounts the solemn

spk_0 words of one Mongol general. Mongols are now killed by Mongol swords. If we were united,

spk_0 then we would have conquered all of the world.

spk_0 If Chingis Khan had been alive, doubtless he would have reminded his grandsons of the story

spk_0 his mother Oalun had told him of Alun the fair and her sons and the arrows that united could not

spk_0 be broken but divided each would snap one by one. In the coming decades and centuries,

spk_0 this is exactly what would happen.

spk_0 Despite ruling over a now much reduced empire, Kublai Khan still commanded a vast territory.

spk_0 At as much as 14 million square kilometers, it was 50% larger than modern China,

spk_0 encompassing the fertile central plains and a large stretch of the step of Mongolia and

spk_0 eastern Russia and he was determined to build a power base there that would last and that would

spk_0 perhaps allow him to reconquer the other quadrants of his grandfather's domain.

spk_0 But to do that he would have to adopt the trappings of power that his Chinese subjects understood

spk_0 according to their traditions. To this end in 1271, Kublai Khan formally claimed the mandate of

spk_0 heaven and crowned himself Emperor of China. The following year of 1272 would be the first year of

spk_0 a new dynasty which he would call the Great Yuan, a word which means either beginning or center.

spk_0 In accordance with Chinese tradition, his courtiers begged him to take the title of Emperor

spk_0 and he modestly refused twice, only accepting the third time they asked.

spk_0 A Chinese emperor needed an imperial capital and Kublai decided to move his from the site of Shangdu

spk_0 and build a new one near the ruined city of Beijing that his grandfather had destroyed.

spk_0 There he would build the new city of Dardu, meaning great capital, but his Mongolian and Turkic

spk_0 subjects would often refer to it as Khan Barlek, which in Mongolian means the city of the Khan.

spk_0 Rashid Addin recalls his decision.

spk_0 He designated as his winter residence the city of Khan Barlek, which had been an imperial capital.

spk_0 It had been chosen as a site in ancient times by astrologers and philosophers and it was considered

spk_0 to be very auspicious and lucky. Since Genghis Khan had destroyed it, Kublai Khan wanted to rebuild it,

spk_0 so for his own fame and reputation he built another city next to it. Inside the city he built a

spk_0 truly magnificent palace for his order. It's pillars and paving are all marble.

spk_0 It was to this capital of Khan Barlek that a weary traveler arrived from the other side of the

spk_0 world, probably sometime around the year 1271. He had left his home at the age of 16 or 17,

spk_0 and set out on a journey of exploration with his brother that had taken him across Central Asia,

spk_0 and through many of the lands that now belonged to the Mongol Carnates. His name was Marco Polo.

spk_0 It was likely the unification of much of Asia under the Mongols that allowed Polo to conduct

spk_0 his journey. Since the strict enforcement of the Mongol Yasar Law Code had kept banditry and

spk_0 robbery to a minimum. This was the period that has been called the Pax Mongolica or the Mongol Peace.

spk_0 When it was said with some exaggeration that even a maiden carrying a nugget of gold on her head

spk_0 could wander safely across the realm without being robbed. When Polo arrived in Khan Barlek,

spk_0 he was given an audience with the Great Khan, which he describes in his later work.

spk_0 I shall tell you of the great and wonderful magnificence of the Great Khan now reigning.

spk_0 By name Kublai Khan, he is the most powerful man as regards forces and lands and treasure that

spk_0 exists in the world, or ever had existed from the time of our first father Adam until this day.

spk_0 He is of a good stature, neither tall nor short, but of a middle height. He has a becoming

spk_0 amount of flesh and is very shapely in all his limbs. His complexion is white and red,

spk_0 the eyes black and fine, the nose well formed.

spk_0 He also describes the opulence of the Khan's palace.

spk_0 The hall of the palace is so large that it could easily dine 6,000 people,

spk_0 and it is quite a marvel to see how many rooms there are besides.

spk_0 The outside of the roof also is all coloured with vermillion and yellow and green and blue

spk_0 and other hues which are fixed with a varnish so fine and exquisite that they shine like crystal

spk_0 and lend a resplendent luster to the palace, as seen for a great way round.

spk_0 Marco Polo was also astonished to see the Chinese invention of paper money being circulated by

spk_0 the imperial mint, a concept that he struggled to understand.

spk_0 He makes them take of the bark of the mulberry tree, and this, they make it to something resembling

spk_0 sheets of paper. When these sheets have been prepared, they are cut up into pieces of different

spk_0 sizes. The smallest of these is worth a half silver coin. The next, a little larger,

spk_0 a whole silver coin. One, a little larger still, is worth half a silver

spk_0 grout of venez. All these pieces of paper are issued with as much solemnity and authority,

spk_0 as if they were of pure gold or silver, and on every piece a variety of officials,

spk_0 whose duty it is, have to write their names and put their seals.

spk_0 Anyone forging it would be punished with death, and the Khan causes every year to be made

spk_0 such a vast quantity of this money which costs him nothing, that it must equal in amount all the

spk_0 treasures in the world. According to Marco Polo, Kublai Khan was so impressed with his

spk_0 adventurous spirit and command of four different languages that he appointed him an ambassador.

spk_0 Over the next 17 years, Polo claims to have conducted a large number of ambassadorial journeys

spk_0 for Kublai, visiting the far south of China, Burma and other lands around Southeast Asia,

spk_0 before finally being allowed to return home through Mesopotamia.

spk_0 Back home, the Venetian Marco Polo was taken as a prisoner of war by the rival Genoese,

spk_0 and imprisoned for a year in Genoa. During his imprisonment, Polo shared a cell with a writer

spk_0 named Rusticelo Dapiza. Throughout their time in prison together, Polo recounted his extensive

spk_0 travels through Asia to Rusticelo, who transcribed them into a work that they called the description

spk_0 of the world. But it would become known as the Travels of Marco Polo, one of the most famous and

spk_0 influential travel books in history. Polo's work, published in a dialect of Italian,

spk_0 caused a sensation back home, and after being translated into Latin, it was published around all

spk_0 of Europe continuously for the next centuries. But one detail from Marco Polo's journey does stand out.

spk_0 When he finally got permission to leave China and return home in 1292, nearly 20 years after

spk_0 leaving home, he returned not overland, but by boat. That's because the Pax Mongolica,

spk_0 the Mongol piece that had brought stability to Asia and allowed his journey in the first place,

spk_0 was already beginning to fracture.

spk_0 Despite the glowing impression that the Empire left on Marco Polo, China under Kublai Khan's

spk_0 Yuan dynasty was a troubled place. For one thing, it was still at war with the remnants of the Southern

spk_0 Song, who held out in several strongholds for many years. But by the 19th of March 1279,

spk_0 the Mongols had cornered the last child Emperor of the Song in a coastal fortress called Yaman,

spk_0 at the mouth of the Pearl River. The boy was only six or seven years of age, but he was the

spk_0 final hope for the continuation of the Song line. When Mongol forces finally closed in and it

spk_0 became clear that all was lost, one of the young Emperor's attendants took the boy in his arms

spk_0 and gave the following cry. The affairs of the nation line ruined and our country is destroyed.

spk_0 There is no hope now. His majesty has no alternative but to die for the country.

spk_0 With the boy in his arms, he leapt from the cliffs into the ocean.

spk_0 It said that hundreds of the royal family and attendants followed the young Emperor to his watery grave,

spk_0 rather than face the Mongols.

spk_0 The sorrow of the collapse of the Song dynasty would haunt the Chinese people for generations.

spk_0 The poet, C.A.O, captured the sense of melancholy when he visited the ruins of the former Imperial

spk_0 Palace at Hang Chao and memorialized it in a poem.

spk_0 An southward.

spk_0 Like an ancient ruin, the grass grows high,

spk_0 gone are the guards and the gatekeepers, fallen towers and crumbling palaces desolate my soul.

spk_0 Under the eaves of the long ago hall fly in and out the swallows, but within silence.

spk_0 The destruction of the Song was something that many of the Chinese citizens of the Yuan dynasty

spk_0 would never forget, and for some it was a wound that they would never forgive.

spk_0 With the south of China finally crushed, Kublai Khan was the first foreign invader to ever conquer

spk_0 the whole of the central plains of China. This was also the first time that the land had been

spk_0 united since the Tang dynasty 400 years earlier, but Kublai had won an empire now devastated by

spk_0 decades of war. The north of China had been suffering from famine ever since it was first occupied

spk_0 by the Mongols. Its agriculture had always been weaker than the south, where the humid weather meant

spk_0 that rice could be grown, but in the north the major crops were wheat, sorghum and millet.

spk_0 Since the destruction of Chinggis Khan's initial invasion, the northern economy had recovered

spk_0 somewhat, but famine was an ever-present threat. To remedy this, Kublai Khan ordered the lengthening

spk_0 of the so-called Grand Canal so that it now connected his new capital of Khan Balak with the old

spk_0 Song capital of Hang Chao, a symbol of national reunification that also allowed the transport of

spk_0 rice from the south to the famine struck north. This measure improved matters, and for a time a

spk_0 level of stability came to the once divided land, but already the Mongols were finding that

spk_0 conquering a vast and complex kingdom like China was much easier than actually ruling it.

spk_0 The new hybrid empire of Mongolian China was also going through a crisis of identity.

spk_0 Kublai's government was a tiny Mongol minority, ruling over a vast population of tens of

spk_0 millions of Khan Chinese, and they were steadily losing their military advantage. Most of his soldiers

spk_0 were now no longer Mongolian horsemen, but Chinese foot soldiers. The old capital of Karakorum far

spk_0 out in the steppe had become an irrelevance. Its palaces stripped of their treasures, and what wealth

spk_0 it once had taken back to China. People back in Mongolia must have begun to wonder who it was

spk_0 that had actually been conquered. To ensure that the empire maintained its Mongol identity,

spk_0 Kublai was keen to keep all the higher echelons of power reserved for Mongols.

spk_0 To this end, southern Chinese people of the former Tsung were relegated to fourth class citizens

spk_0 in their own country. With the northern Chinese above them, the central Asians and tanguts

spk_0 above them both, and of course Mongols as the empire's elite class.

spk_0 Khan Chinese were forbidden from holding many of the most powerful positions, or holding key roles

spk_0 in the civil service. That meant that many of the people who were most familiar with the land,

spk_0 and the workings of its administration, were kept away from any positions where they might do some good.

spk_0 Increasingly, Kublai feared that he might lose a grip on this slippery empire,

spk_0 and so he decided to do what Mongols had always done when they wanted to unite people around them.

spk_0 They went to war.

spk_0 First he was determined to conquer the kingdom of Daivyet in the south,

spk_0 the northern kingdom of what is Vietnam today, but these plans would be frustrated.

spk_0 Although he swept south in three major invasions and managed to capture the Vietnamese capital

spk_0 of Tang Long, near modern Hanhaui, the Mongol forces found the humid tropical weather and thick jungle

spk_0 landscape impossible to contend with. The Vietnamese soldiers melted away into the matted vegetation

spk_0 and raided Mongol armies with hit and run tactics that slowly whittled away their strength,

spk_0 as the history of Uaam describes.

spk_0 Although the Daivyet were defeated many times, they gathered more and more troops.

spk_0 Without sufficient supplies both our generals and troops suffered hardships and many of them were killed.

spk_0 In that land the troops and horses of the Mongols could not manifest their talent too.

spk_0 Eventually they had to abandon the capital, crossing the river toward the north side to discuss

spk_0 the plan of retreat.

spk_0 While they were never actually defeated in battle, the Mongols eventually withdrew after taking

spk_0 heavy losses, leaving the kingdom of Daivyet still independent if somewhat devastated.

spk_0 These tactics of guerrilla warfare were so successful for the medieval Vietnamese that the

spk_0 generals who had masterminded them became national heroes and the books on strategy that they

spk_0 wrote would be read for centuries to come. As a result the same tactics would be used again in

spk_0 the 20th century when they would inspire the North Vietnamese army and the irregular forces of

spk_0 the Viet Cong when they once again faced a more powerful invader in the form of the United States.

spk_0 For his part Kublai Khan was angered by these failed invasions and even had one of his own sons

spk_0 named Takan banished for his part in the disaster. With this embarrassment no doubt stinging,

spk_0 Kublai planned an invasion of one of the last holdouts against Mongol rule in the east,

spk_0 the island nation of Japan.

spk_0 The first Mongol attempt to capture Japan had ended in failure, although they had briefly occupied

spk_0 the islands of Tsushima and Iki. Although they had inherited a large navy from the Jin and

spk_0 Tsung and the Koreans who they had recently subjugated, the Mongols were not used to naval warfare

spk_0 and struggled to seize a credible hold on any land in Japan. This time in the second invasion

spk_0 of 1280 Kublai sent a larger force of perhaps 30,000 soldiers and ordered the construction of a grand

spk_0 fleet that was probably at that time the largest in the world. He was determined to seize a bridgehead

spk_0 from which a larger force could spread out over the whole of Japan. The Armada of as many as

spk_0 4,000 ships sailed from the port of Masan in Korea and from China leaving from Ningbo at the mouth

spk_0 of the Yangtze River. They chose the landing site of Hakata Bay near the modern city of Fukuoka,

spk_0 which sits on the large Japanese island of Kyushu, just 200 kilometers off the coast of Korea.

spk_0 But Japanese resistance would be fierce. They had learned the lessons of the first invasion and

spk_0 spent the intervening years preparing, even building a strong defensive wall surrounding Hakata Bay.

spk_0 When the Mongols landed, they brought all the technological might of China with them.

spk_0 The Japanese source, the Hachiman-Gudo-kun, describes the challenge of dealing with these

spk_0 terrifying weapons and notes with scorn the Mongols lack of adherence to the traditional

spk_0 conventions of warfare. They sent iron bomb shells flying against us, which made our side dizzy and

spk_0 confused. Our soldiers were frightened out of their wits by the thundering explosions. Their eyes

spk_0 were blinded. There is death in, so that they could hardly distinguish east from west.

spk_0 According to our manner of fighting, we must first call out by name someone from the enemy ranks

spk_0 and then attack in single combat. But they took no notice at all of such conventions.

spk_0 They rushed forward altogether in a mass, grappling with any individuals they could catch and killing them.

spk_0 Many of the invading soldiers were Chinese, not Mongol, and they had little stake in this conflict.

spk_0 Many deserted or surrendered when the fighting got tough. The Mongols fought for two months at

spk_0 Hakata Bay in a kind of bitter stalemate. They were unable to make any headway against the Japanese

spk_0 defenses, while the Japanese too struggled to dislodge them entirely. Then on the 15th of August,

spk_0 fate intervened. A powerful typhoon swept in from the west, a common occurrence in late

spk_0 summer in southeast Asia. The storm struck the Mongol fleet anchored off the coast, causing

spk_0 severe destruction. The Venetian Marco Polo describes the outcome.

spk_0 Now it happened one day, that such a gale was blowing from the north, that the troops declared that

spk_0 if they did not get away, all their ships would be wrecked. So they all embarked and left the

spk_0 island and put out to sea. And let me tell you that when they had sailed about four miles,

spk_0 the gale began to freshen, and there was such a crowd of ships that many of them were smashed

spk_0 by colliding with one another. Thousands of soldiers were left clinging to debris or swept

spk_0 ashore by the force of the storm. Japanese warriors walked up and down the beaches,

spk_0 killing all Mongols they could find, only sparing that Chinese, who they believed, had been forced

spk_0 into participating in the invasion. To the Japanese, this typhoon was no accident. It was the

spk_0 kamikaze or divine wind that had been sent by the gods to smash the Mongol invaders and protect

spk_0 the lands of Japan. To Kublaikan, this further crushing loss was a disaster from which his

spk_0 morale would never fully recover. In Burma II, the Mongols succeeded in toppling the empire of

spk_0 Bagan, but the humid tropical environment in the south of the country soon defeated them,

spk_0 along with its host of tropical diseases. The Mongols had now found the geographic bounds of their

spk_0 expansion. There was no more treasure left to plunder, no more lands left to seize,

spk_0 all that was left to do was turn against one another and collapse from within.

spk_0 The Great Khan Kublai died on the 18th of February 1294, and his death would begin the

spk_0 slow decline of Mongol power in Asia. In China, nine further karns followed the reign of Kublai,

spk_0 but their reigns were largely short, unstable, and characterized by widespread incompetence, corruption,

spk_0 and famine. Kublai's successor, his grandson Temur al-J2, died without an air, and a period of struggle

spk_0 followed that led to growing resentment among China's people. Meanwhile, the Mongols who remained

spk_0 back in the Mongolian steppe increasingly viewed these emperors as foreigners who had forgotten

spk_0 their old way of life and began to ignore the rule of the Great Khan in China.

spk_0 The last emperor of the Yuan dynasty ascended the throne in the year 1333. His name was Togan Temur,

spk_0 and it's in his hands that the Yuan dynasty would truly disintegrate.

spk_0 Togan Temur came to the throne at the age of 13 and ruled for 33 years, but as a young boy emperor,

spk_0 he mostly left the business of governing to his corrupt officials, and when he came of age,

spk_0 he saw little reason to change that. During his reign, he presided over a China

spk_0 rife with discord and instability. Banditry became rampant, with the weakened Yuan armies

spk_0 unable to restore order. On top of this increasing discord, it was during these decades that the

spk_0 Black Death arrived in earnest and moved with shocking speed and lethality through the population

spk_0 of China and the rest of the Mongol world. The very trade routes that had made the Mongols rich

spk_0 over the last century now became conduits through which the disease flowed unchecked.

spk_0 During the 14th century, it's estimated that China would lose between a half and two-thirds of

spk_0 its population to this plague. One later Chinese source describes the effect of this disease.

spk_0 In the autumn, there was a great epidemic. The victim first developed a hard lump below the armpits,

spk_0 or between the thighs, or else coughed thin blood and died before they had time to take medicine.

spk_0 There were whole families wiped out, with none to bury them.

spk_0 From the late 1290s onward, the countryside endured a truly baffling intensity of natural disasters,

spk_0 including droughts, floods of the Yellow River, plagues of locusts, snowstorms,

spk_0 torrential rains, typhoons, landslides, earthquakes, and even the reported appearance of

spk_0 dragons over the skies of China. These extreme weather events were partly driven by global weather

spk_0 conditions and the medieval climate shift known as the Little Ice Age. But throughout this period

spk_0 of hardship, the Yuan governments in effective policies made everything worse. And before

spk_0 long, its people became convinced that the Yuan Mongols had lost the mandate of heaven.

spk_0 The later Chinese source, the History of Ming, or Ming Shi, describes the collapse of central order.

spk_0 At this time, the Yuan government was no longer in control and bandits rose up on all sides.

spk_0 They amassed armies of several Miriads each, and they all appointed generals and commanders

spk_0 who slaughtered the officials and invaded the prefectures and districts. Still other bandits

spk_0 collected their swarms of soldiers and took possession of various places on the sea coast.

spk_0 The world was in chaos.

spk_0 By 1351, popular hatred of China's Mongol rulers erupted in a major peasant uprising that

spk_0 would become known by the Scarlet Headgear that its fighters wore. It was called the Red

spk_0 Turban Rebellions. The Red Turbons were a large coalition of different groups,

spk_0 many motivated by a religious conviction that the end of the world was coming, that the

spk_0 prophesied final Buddha named Maitreia would soon arrive and bring an end to all suffering.

spk_0 These rebels met at night in clandestine meetings and recruited followers from among the workers

spk_0 conscripted to dig the Grand Canal. It was soon a nationwide uprising.

spk_0 By 1351, the rebels had seized several cities, and even the old Song Capital of Kaifang fell into

spk_0 the hands of one Red Turban Group. In the midst of all this chaos, the famine and plague passed

spk_0 through the village of one young man, living in the valley of the river Huai, right in the centre of China.

spk_0 He was barely more than a boy, born into the depths of the poverty-stricken peasantry.

spk_0 His name was Zhu Yuanjiang. The history of Ming describes this tragedy.

spk_0 Drought, locusts, and pestilence came. At that time he was 17 years of age. His father,

spk_0 mother, and eldest brother all died in succession. The survivors were too poor to be able to provide

spk_0 a proper burial for the dead. He was now alone, with no one on whom he could lean.

spk_0 This orphaned boy would join a Buddhist monastery, but from there was swept up in the rising

spk_0 ground swell of rebellion. And when he was old enough, he joined the Red Turban Rebellion.

spk_0 Eventually he would rise through the ranks of this rebel insurgency, and then break away to form

spk_0 his own army. To the astonishment of the Mongols, this peasant general even captured the large and

spk_0 important city of Nanjing. After this victory, he announced a war of national liberation

spk_0 in the following terms. It used to be said that the Yuan or Mongols, who came from the regions of

spk_0 the North, conquered our empire, not so much by their courage and skill, as by the aid of heaven.

spk_0 And now it is sufficiently plain that heaven itself wishes to deprive them of that empire.

spk_0 The time has come to drive these foreigners out of China!

spk_0 Such was the weakened state of the Yuan dynasty that much of Zhu Yuan Zhang's energy was spent fighting

spk_0 not the Mongols, but other Chinese rivals among the Red Turbans.

spk_0 But after years of war, he finally won supremacy over all other rebel groups.

spk_0 On the 20th of January 1368, Zhu Yuan Zhang formally claimed the mandate of heaven and declared

spk_0 himself the Emperor of China. He announced the beginning of a new dynasty that he called the Ming,

spk_0 meaning bright or brilliant. And this orphaned peasant would go down in history with the name

spk_0 of the Hong Wu Emperor. With his rule now secure, he declared his intentions to march north and

spk_0 against the Mongol capital of Khan Barlek, as the history of Ming recounts.

spk_0 On the 9th of November, the Emperor summoned his generals to discuss an expedition to the north.

spk_0 He said, the Yuan reign will soon be over, and North China is already in ruins.

spk_0 Now we shall strike northward and rescue the living from flood and flame.

spk_0 Let us take our veterans of a hundred battles, pit them against their long, untried soldiers,

spk_0 and strike directly at the Yuan capital. So great is our force that this can be done as easily

spk_0 as splitting bamboo. In August of 1368, the Ming forces arrived in the region of Beijing,

spk_0 and at the site of the army, the Khan's capital of Khan Barlek surrendered without a fight.

spk_0 Beijing was now in the hands of the Chinese, little more than 150 years since Chinggis Khan had sacked it.

spk_0 The later Mongol Chronicle, the Altan Topchi, attributes the following lament to the last

spk_0 Khan of China, Togan Temur, using the Chinese name Daidu for the capital.

spk_0 My Daidu, straight and wonderfully made of various jewels, the summer residents of ancient Khan's.

spk_0 My dear Daidu, that I've lost on the year of the bald red rabbit.

spk_0 Nobles born foolish cared not for their state. I was left alone, weeping. I became like a calf left behind on its native pastures.

spk_0 Kuveli the wise Khan spent his summers there. They besieged and took precious Daidu. I have lost the whole of it to China.

spk_0 Next, the Hongwu Emperor turned his sights on the heartland of the Mongols. The great step itself,

spk_0 and the city that the Chinese called Holin, the Mongol capital of Karakorum. With vengeance in their hearts,

spk_0 the Ming marched out into the step and arrived at the walls of Karakorum in 1372.

spk_0 After a period of bitter resistance, they occupied the city, as the Ming Shi recalls.

spk_0 On the 1st of March, the Duke of Wei was appointed commander in chief of the expedition against

spk_0 the enemy slaves. They were to campaign northward into the sandy desert. He was too depart from the

spk_0 Yanmen Pass and race on to Holin. On the 29th, Li Wencheng defeated the Wan forces at the Ork Hon River.

spk_0 On the 18th of May, Lan Yu attacked and smashed the Wanha Redisry ruler. He captured his younger son

spk_0 and concubines, princesses, princes, jukes and others of lower rank, totaling several tens of thousands of people.

spk_0 He then returned to the capital.

spk_0 The timeline of the destruction of Karakorum is uncertain, but it was likely burned and sacked

spk_0 again in 1380, although by this point there would have been few people left living there.

spk_0 The city had always been a figment of one great Khan's imagination, and when it lost its status as

spk_0 capital, it had been in a state of decline for years. Now the final death blow was delivered,

spk_0 and though it would research a number of times, its ruins would eventually crumble back into the

spk_0 grasses of the steppe. In the centuries that followed, its stones were taken and reused to create the

spk_0 Buddhist monastery of Erdene Zoo, which now sits over its ruin. The destruction was so total

spk_0 that for centuries the location of the city of the Khans was lost, until in the 19th century

spk_0 Russian archaeologists uncovered certain inscriptions in the area of the monastery that identified the site.

spk_0 Today, the only sign that the city ever stood there at all is the mounds of earth covered in the

spk_0 grasses of the steppe, stretching out to the north of the Erdene Zoo monastery, and among them

spk_0 a single stone tortoise, one of the four that once stood at the four corners of the city,

spk_0 symbols of everlasting eternity. Now it stands alone in the grasslands of Mongolia,

spk_0 an ironic statement about an empire that rose so far and fell so fast.

spk_0 The

spk_0 Across the rest of the Mongol world, the dissolution of their rule was sometimes gradual, but just as total.

spk_0 In Persia and the Middle East, the rulers of the Ilkhanate, descended from the Ilkhan Hulagu,

spk_0 Saka of Baghdad, would suffer a similar fate. They would convert to Islam and adopt many of the

spk_0 ways of life of their Persian and Arab subjects. During their reign, Persia would experience something

spk_0 of a golden age, creating hybrid styles of architecture that would be repeated around the world,

spk_0 especially in the India of the Mughals. They resurrected the language of Persian,

spk_0 which had until then been supplanted by Arabic as a language of administration and literature,

spk_0 and commissioned a gloriously illustrated copy of the epic work known as the Shah Nama,

spk_0 or the Book of Kings. And they commissioned the historian Rashid at Din to write his work,

spk_0 the Compendium of Chronicles, the first attempted history of the world ever written,

spk_0 and which we have heard much from in this episode. But their time too would pass.

spk_0 The ninth and final ruler of the Ilkhanate was named Abu Sayid Bahadur Khan.

spk_0 He died in 1335, either a victim of the Black Death, or poisoned by one of his wives.

spk_0 After that, the Ilkhanate disintegrated rapidly into several states, which were soon swallowed

spk_0 up by the Timurid and Safavid empires. The Chagatai Khanate in the former lands of the

spk_0 Khwarizmian Empire and Kazakhstan also followed a similar fate, and was snatched up by the warlord

spk_0 named Timur. When his empire collapsed in turn, the region was given over to local powers.

spk_0 During this time, many of the cities damaged by the Mongols, like Samar Khan and Bukhada,

spk_0 enjoyed a kind of revival, and became once again wealthy trading stops along the Silk Road.

spk_0 But in the 15th and 16th centuries, as Europeans opened up trading routes by sea and bypassed

spk_0 the Silk Road entirely, these cities slowly began to lose their relevance.

spk_0 Eventually, merchants stopped coming. The booming markets grew quiet, and many of these cities

spk_0 were abandoned. The destructive power of the economy eventually left these cities in ruins more

spk_0 effectively than the Mongols ever had. In the western step of Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia,

spk_0 the Golden Horde, founded by the descendants of Tsinghis Khan's oldest son, Jochi,

spk_0 was the dominant power for three centuries. But it eventually weakened under the ravages of

spk_0 the Black Death and the competing rivalries of the descendants of Jochi. Eventually, it split into

spk_0 more than half a dozen smaller carnates during the 15th century. The lands were divided between the

spk_0 Kazakh Karnate, the Karnate of Kazan, the Astrakhan Karnate, the Crimean Karnate, the Karnate of

spk_0 Sibir, the Great Horde, the Nogey Horde and the White Horde. And the step once more looked much

spk_0 as it had in the time before Tsinghis Khan had united it, a warring mess of competing nomadic states.

spk_0 Throughout this time, the Mongols had favoured one Russian city above all others and had allowed it

spk_0 to gather taxes from the whole region on their behalf. This city was Muskovi, which we know today as

spk_0 Musko. Eventually Muskovi would break out from under Mongol control and bring the other city

spk_0 states in the region under its banner. Until in 1547, it founded its own kingdom, the Zadum of Russia.

spk_0 The Russian Zads would advance into the step, now armed with muskets.

spk_0 For the first time in nearly 5,000 years, the step horse archer was no longer the deadliest

spk_0 entity on the planet, and with the rise of powerful centralised nations and the crack of powder

spk_0 and shot, the retreat of the nomads quietly began. The industrial revolution sealed their fate.

spk_0 Soon railways would carve through the wilderness, and the sound of repeating rifles echoed across

spk_0 the step. These technological innovations finally allowed settled peoples to push into the most

spk_0 remote and untamed territories where once only nomads had roamed. Even the fiercest of nomadic warrior

spk_0 peoples were subdued by this new age. The ancient rhythm of nomadic incursions, which had

spk_0 ebbed and flowed for millennia, finally came to an end, and the wild heart of the step grew still.

spk_0 In the 170 years or so, between Chinggis Khan's first conquests, and the collapse of the

spk_0 Yuan dynasty, the Mongols had reshaped the structure of the world. Old power centres had been swept

spk_0 away, and in their place new nations would begin to rise. Russia, Iran, Mughal India and the newly

spk_0 United China. The Mongols have left their mark everywhere, from a vast genetic legacy to the names

spk_0 that many of us have today. At this time, the Tercome Mongolian word for ruler, Khan, is one of the world's

spk_0 most popular surnames, belonging to more than 23 million people worldwide, and it is the 12th most

spk_0 common surname in the United Kingdom. It's in China that they left perhaps their greatest

spk_0 legacy. In some ways, the Mongols invented the modern concept of China, uniting its two halves,

spk_0 along with Tibet and Manchuria, making up the borders of the modern nation today.

spk_0 But on the Chinese people, the psychological effect of the Mongol conquest and occupation was immense,

spk_0 and the centuries that followed would be characterized by a great turning inwards.

spk_0 The China of the Song Dynasty had been inventive and outward looking, seeking new technologies

spk_0 and foreign influences. But the Ming Dynasty that took its place was paranoid and suspicious of change.

spk_0 While the Song had experimented with innovative and modern economic systems, the Ming went backwards,

spk_0 reverting to a more feudal society to deal with the damage left by the Mongols.

spk_0 This inward looking mentality is perhaps nowhere better demonstrated than in the project

spk_0 that would take up much of the 15th and 16th centuries, that is the building of the Great Wall.

spk_0 While China had built defensive walls for more than a thousand years at this point,

spk_0 it was in the Ming period that the true Great Wall as we know it today took its shape.

spk_0 This snaking line of elegant fortifications runs for nearly 9,000 kilometers across the northern

spk_0 border of China, turning the entire land into a fortress.

spk_0 Using an estimated 100 million tons of building material, the Ming Great Wall is the

spk_0 equivalent of building the Great Pyramid of Giza nearly 50 times. For much of this era,

spk_0 the construction of the Great Wall occupied an enormous part of the labor, economy and political

spk_0 will of successive Chinese governments. The cost was so great that the Ming

spk_0 diverted funds from other parts of their budget, especially from their fleets of ships.

spk_0 The Ming had inherited one of the largest fleets in the world with thousands of large vessels,

spk_0 many larger than any ship being built in Europe at the time. These had been used on voyages of

spk_0 exploration to India, Arabia and Africa. But in the 15th century, the Ming dismantled much

spk_0 of this naval power and even burned some of the ships in Harba to save costs.

spk_0 The historian James Waterson describes this inward turn.

spk_0 After China's painful experience with the foreign invaders,

spk_0 it is no coincidence that the Ming worked hard to seal off the world beyond their Great Wall

spk_0 and to build it ever stronger in the post-Mongol period. The Ming suffered a self-inflicted wound

spk_0 by their efforts to seclude their states from the rest of the world and in doing so effectively

spk_0 missed out on modernity.

spk_0 But while China looked inwards and built their Great Wall,

spk_0 on the other side of the continent, another people looked outwards.

spk_0 While China burned its ships, another people were building them.

spk_0 These were the people who were undoubtedly the biggest winners of the Mongol invasions

spk_0 and who were now positioned to embark on a wave of conquests of their own. Those were the people of Europe.

spk_0 While Eastern European lands in the areas of modern Poland, Hungary and Russia had all suffered

spk_0 from Mongol incursions, the kingdoms of Western Europe, in France, England, Spain and Portugal

spk_0 had escaped unscathed. And on top of that, they had reaped a huge number of benefits.

spk_0 The anthropologist Jack Weatherford makes the following argument.

spk_0 Although never ruled by the Mongols, in many ways Europe gained the most from their world system.

spk_0 The Europeans received all the benefits of trade, technology transfer and the global awakening

spk_0 without paying the cost of Mongol conquest. The Europeans, who had been cut off from the mainstream

spk_0 of civilization since the fall of Rome eagerly drank in the new knowledge, put on the new clothes,

spk_0 listened to the new music, ate the new foods and enjoyed a rapidly escalating standard of living,

spk_0 in almost a temporary regard.

spk_0 Europe was fascinated by the Mongols and their vast world spanning empire.

spk_0 In Italy, people even started giving their children Mongol names.

spk_0 With one, Grande Khan, meaning Great Khan, being especially popular.

spk_0 The Mongols had caused Europeans to come into contact with Chinese technologies that might

spk_0 have otherwise taken them centuries more to encounter, among them Chinese paper, the Compass and Gunpowder.

spk_0 The Elizabethan English writer Francis Bacon, commented on the transformative effect

spk_0 that these Chinese technologies had on European society.

spk_0 We should notice the force, effect and consequences of inventions, which are nowhere more

spk_0 conspicuous than in those three which were unknown to the ancients, namely printing, gunpowder

spk_0 and the Compass. For these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world.

spk_0 First in literature, then in warfare and lastly in navigation, and innumerable changes have

spk_0 been thence derived so that no empire, sect or star appears to have exercised a greater power

spk_0 and influence on human affairs than these mechanical discoveries.

spk_0 The Mongols' conquests helped Europe in another way too, that is in broadening its horizons.

spk_0 The text of the travels of Marco Polo was still being printed in the 15th century when an Italian

spk_0 navigator bought a copy in a Genoese bookshop. The text had a transformative effect on him.

spk_0 This copy he would read over and over with an obsessive attention to detail, even leaving

spk_0 handwritten annotations in its margins. This navigator dreamed of one day visiting the lands of

spk_0 the Far East himself and the court of the great Khan that he had read about. His name was Christopher

spk_0 Columbus and he too would change the course of history. In the journal that he kept on his voyage

spk_0 westwards, he wrote to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain that he wanted to reach this far

spk_0 off place. In this present month, in consequence of the information which I had given your

spk_0 highnesses respecting the countries of India and of a prince called Great Khan, which in our language

spk_0 signifies King of kings. Your highnesses determined to send me Christopher Columbus to the above

spk_0 mentioned countries of India to see the said princes, people and territories and learn their disposition.

spk_0 With the Chinese invention of gunpowder, by this point Europeans had already developed or adopted

spk_0 cannons, muskets and archbuses and with these in the coming century they would conquer vast

spk_0 swathes of land in the Americas and all around the world. The age of European colonialism

spk_0 and the following 500 years of European power around the globe all found their roots in the

spk_0 fertile soil left behind after the inferno of the Mongol conquests.

spk_0 In his work The Canterbury Tales, the first book published in the English language

spk_0 written around the year 1390, the author Jeffrey Chaucer relates one legend associated with Chingis Khan

spk_0 and writes in the following glowing terms about his legacy.

spk_0 This noble king was called Genghis Khan, who in his time was of so great renown that there was

spk_0 nowhere in no region so excellent to lord at all things. He lacked nothing that belonged to a king.

spk_0 As of the sect of which he was born, he kept his law to which he was sworn and there too he was

spk_0 hardy, wise and rich and kept always so well royal estate that there was nowhere such another man.

spk_0 This noble king, this tata, Genghis Khan.

spk_0 In 1876, the Russian traveler Nikolai Mikhailovich Prezhavalsky traveled to Mongolia, hoping to find

spk_0 their traces of the great Khan's of old and perhaps even find the lost burial place of Chingis Khan

spk_0 himself. But he found himself disappointed at what he saw. All he found was the vast

spk_0 empty grasslands and deserts, broken by rocky mounds of stone and the only evidence of past

spk_0 greatness he could find was in the people's stories.

spk_0 The effect of these bare yellow hillocks is most dreary in depressing when you are among them

spk_0 and can see nothing but the sky and the sand. No sounds are heard, not even the chirping of the

spk_0 grasshopper, the silence of the tombs surrounds you. No wonder that the local Mongols relate some

spk_0 marvelous stories about these frightful deserts. They tell you that this was the scene of the principal

spk_0 exploits of Chingis Khan and here warriors fought against the Chinese and slew countless numbers

spk_0 of people whose bodies God caused the winds to cover with the sand from the desert.

spk_0 To this day the Mongols relate with superstitious awe how groans and cries may be heard in the

spk_0 sands of Kuzupchi from the spirits of the departed and that every now and then the winds which stir

spk_0 up the sands exposed to view different treasures such as silver dishes which may not be taken away

spk_0 because death immediately overtakes the bold man who adventure to touch them.

spk_0 Wherever a Prejavalsky travelled he found legends about Chingis Khan still circulating on the

spk_0 Great Khan would one day return and once again lead his people to greatness.

spk_0 Chingis Khan's memory is better preserved than orders than in any part of Mongolia.

spk_0 We heard more tales here about the conqueror than anywhere else. The Mongols reckoned that 650

spk_0 years have elapsed since his death leaving 150 to 350 years more before his coming resurrection.

spk_0 The same people assert that on the very day of the accomplishments of this miracle some hero

spk_0 will be born in China with whom Chingis Khan will do battle, subdue him and lead his people from

spk_0 orders to what is now called the land of the Kalkas, the native country of the Mongols.

spk_0 And if Prejavalsky hoped to find the grave of Chingis Khan he would also be disappointed.

spk_0 If anyone did know where his body was to be found, Prejavalsky found that even after so many centuries

spk_0 the Mongolian people still weren't telling.

spk_0 We could not discover the name of the temple where Chingis Khan is said to be buried.

spk_0 The Mongols for some reason or other would not divulge it.

spk_0 In the 20th century a communist government seized power in Mongolia and in close cooperation with

spk_0 the Soviet Union engaged in purges of some 30,000 Mongolians including thousands of Buddhist monks.

spk_0 Many of the victims were from one clan who still traced their descent back to Chingis Khan.

spk_0 The Soviets were haunted by the ghost of the Great Khan, fearing that he might become a rallying point

spk_0 for Mongolian nationalists. For this reason they worked hard to destroy any relics associated with him,

spk_0 closing Buddhist monasteries and trying to erase all memory of the Great Khan.

spk_0 But the Soviet-aligned government did maintain one aspect of Mongolian tradition.

spk_0 For 800 years successive Mongolian rulers had maintained the law against anyone entering the region

spk_0 of the Sacred Mountain Burkan Khaldun, the site where Chingis Khan is most likely buried.

spk_0 For centuries this land would be known as the Yakke Korig or Great Tabu.

spk_0 When the communist seized power they feared that this region would become a pilgrimage site and a

spk_0 focus of Mongolian nationalism. For this reason the Soviet-aligned government maintained the ancient

spk_0 prohibition on entering it. The region of the Great Tabu was renamed and called simply the highly

spk_0 restricted area. They built a top secret airbase there for the use of Soviet planes and most

spk_0 likely a stockpile of nuclear weapons so that even in the modern era the land cannot be entered

spk_0 without special permissions. And the grave of Chingis Khan remains unfound to this day.

spk_0 I want to end the episode with a reading from a piece of Chinese poetry written during this time.

spk_0 By a poet from the southern Song dynasty. His name was Wen Tianxiang.

spk_0 Wen had been a government minister in Song China and after witnessing the destruction of his land

spk_0 he led the resistance against the Mongol invaders. He was eventually captured and held in a Mongol prison.

spk_0 Despite all the tortures and deprivations that he suffered he never wavered in his resistance.

spk_0 It was during this time of imprisonment that he wrote one of his masterpieces titled

spk_0 Crossing the Sea of Solitude. As you listen consider the contradictions and paradoxes of this time.

spk_0 A time of discovery and exploration. A time of new ideas and unforeseen encounters.

spk_0 But also a time of inculcurable sorrow. As the great powers of the world crumbled.

spk_0 And a new world order took shape. Imagine the hollowed halls and shattered walls. The empty markets

spk_0 of Samakand, Nishapur and Bukhada. Imagine the gutted palaces and empty temples of

spk_0 Beijing and Hang Chao. Imagine the emptied streets and burned out houses. The crumbling libraries

spk_0 of Baghdad and Aleppo. And the fallen churches of Novgorod and Kiev.

spk_0 And finally at the end of it all. The wind swept grasses growing through the stones of Karakorum.

spk_0 Imagine the world as you know it coming to an end. And a new one rising from the ashes.

spk_0 Painstaking mastery of the classics I have risen high. But four years of raging war have well-knight.

spk_0 Brought all-around destitution and ruin. My shattered country does remind me of willow

spk_0 catkins swept by wind. In my life I sink or swim. Like duckweed beaten by rain.

spk_0 Through the frightful shallows we fought our way. They tell us now of the frightful battle never

spk_0 won. But on the lonely ocean I could but sigh for being captured and all alone.

spk_0 Down through the ages, who that ever lived has not met with death.

spk_0 I wish only to leave my loyal heart shining red in history's great book.

spk_0 캴!

spk_0 Zhao Hanqing

spk_0 Thank you once again for listening to the fall of Civilization's podcast. I'd like to thank my voice actors for this episode, Michael Hagen-Tonus,

spk_0 Lachlan Lucas, Alexandra Bolton, Tom Marshall Lee, Chris Harvey, Nick Denton, Henry Stenhouse,

spk_0 Amrit Sandu, Peter Walters, Matthew Biddle, Garrett Cava, Sebastian Balsarolo, and Paul Kassel.

spk_0 Readings in Arabic were performed by Osama Tahair, readings in Chinese by Richard Tang.

spk_0 Readings from the secret history of the Mongols in Mongolian were performed by Wilez Effinhala.

spk_0 The title theme is Home at Last by John Bartman. I'd also like to thank my historical advisers for this episode,

spk_0 Toby Jones of the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and Jack Wilson of the Central European University Vienna.

spk_0 You can find Toby on Twitter at Tobias Bajador, and if you're interested in more information about the Mongols,

spk_0 Jack runs a YouTube channel called Jack Meister, Mongol History, where he explores many of the myths and misconceptions surrounding the Mongols.

spk_0 My book, Fall of Civilizations, Stories of Greatness and Decline, is now out in the United States,

spk_0 and American readers can get it from all good bookstores.

spk_0 I love to hear your thoughts and responses on Blue Sky, so please come and tell me what you thought.

spk_0 You can follow me at PaulMM Cooper, and if you'd like updates about the podcast, announcements about new episodes,

spk_0 as well as images, maps, and reading suggestions, you can follow the podcast at Fall of CivilPod,

spk_0 with underscores separating the words.

spk_0 This podcast can only keep going with the support of our generous subscribers on Patreon.

spk_0 You keep me running, you help me cover my costs, and help keep the podcast at free.

spk_0 You also let me dedicate more time to researching, writing, recording, and editing, to get the episodes out to you faster,

spk_0 and bring as much life and detail to them as possible.

spk_0 I want to thank all my subscribers for making this happen.

spk_0 If you enjoyed this episode, please consider heading on to patreon.com, forward slash, Fall of Civilizations, underscore podcast,

spk_0 or just google Fall of Civilizations Patreon, that's PATRON.

spk_0 For now, all the best, and thanks for listening.

19. The Mongols - Terror of the Steppe (Part 2)

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