This past Sunday, while in Munich, I had the luck to visit a massive exhibition on the Mongol Empire comprised of over 500 pieces from all over the former empire. The exhibition began with various archeological finds and information on Central Asia before the rise of the Mongols and continued through the empire’s split into four mini-empires. To my disappointment, it did concentrate heavily on China under the reign of Kublai Khan. Not that it wasn’t interesting, but I felt it was a very unequal presentation of the empire though that was of course the case because they had the most pieces from that period and area. Overall it was fabulous, I only wish I could head off to Mongolia sometime soon =)
The Mongols, famous for adopting the best conquered cultures had to offer, learned to use gunpowder from the Chinese and used grenades in battle. They also made 4 spiked nails to lay on the ground in front of their lines for the horses or soldiers to step on.
One of the many important contributions to history from the Mongols was the passport. Here are two original ones used to travel across the empire.
Persian pottery from its time under Mongol rule.
Historical texts in Chinese about the empire.
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Comments to this entry
Curzon
December 6, 2005
2:57 pm
East Asia Watch » Chirol visits Mongol Empire
December 6, 2005
2:59 pm
J.Kende
December 6, 2005
8:59 pm
Chirol
December 6, 2005
9:23 pm
Kirk H. Sowell
December 7, 2005
1:54 am
They also had a good sense of who to kill and who not to. If you didn't surrender on terms they would massacre you, but save the artisans. When they approached Baghdad in 1258, the Abbasids, long past their prime at that point, refused to surrender and tried to make a fight of it. They lost, of course, and the Mongols were careful to try and extirpate the entire lineage. A few Abbasids did get away and flee to Egypt, but they were sufficiently extirpated that they never meant anything anymore.
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Bigger than Genghis!
December 7, 2005
4:01 am