Which of the following statements is true of the Mongols who ruled over Persia as compared to those who ruled over China?

Until about 20 years ago, most scholars of Mongol-era China emphasized the destructive influence of Mongol rule.

One major scholar of Chinese history even wrote: "The Mongols brought violence and destruction to all aspects of China's civilization. [They were] insensitive to Chinese cultural values, distrustful of Chinese influences, and inept heads of Chinese government." This assessment fits in with the traditional evaluation of the Mongols as barbarians interested primarily in maiming, plundering, destroying, and killing.

As a 13th-century Persian historian wrote of the Mongol campaigns: "With one stroke a world which billowed with fertility was laid desolate, and the regions thereof became a desert, and the greater part of the living, dead, and their skin and bones crumbling dust, and the mighty were humbled and immersed in the calamities of perdition."

It is true that the Mongols, in their conquest of both North and South China, did considerable damage to these territories, and that great loss of life certainly ensued. The population of North China did decline somewhat, though earlier estimates that there was a catastrophic decline in population have subsequently been revised.

It is also true that the Mongols eliminated one of the most basic of Chinese institutions — the civil service examinations. The examinations remained banned until 1315, and even after the ban was lifted, they were no longer the only means to officialdom for the Yuan Dynasty, the dynasty that the Mongols founded in 1271 C.E., as they had been in the past.

The Mongols perceived China as just one section of their vast empire. And they classified the population of their domain in China into a hierarchy of four groups — with the native Chinese at the bottom. The Mongols, of course, were at the top; then came the non-Han, mostly Islamic population that was brought to China by the Mongols to help them rule; third were the northern Chinese; and at the very bottom of the rung were the southern Chinese.

The Mongol rulers were somewhat distrustful of the Confucian scholar-officials of China because they represented a different path for China than that which they themselves had conceived. These scholars, and other native Chinese, thus were not eligible for some of the top positions in the ruling government.

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Notwithstanding the aspects of their rule that were certainly negative for China, the Mongols did initiate many policies — especially under the rule of Khubilai Khan — that supported and helped the Chinese economy, as well as social and political life in China.

In order to ingratiate himself with Confucian China, for example, Khubilai restored the rituals at court — the music and dance rituals that were such an integral part of the Confucian ideology. He also founded ancestral temples for his predecessors — his father and Chinggis (Genghis) Khan (his grandfather) — in order to carry out the practices of ancestor worship that were so critical for the Chinese.

And in an even greater effort to ingratiate himself personally to the Chinese, Khubilai insisted on giving his second son, Jin Chin, a Chinese-style education. Confucian scholars tutored the young boy, and he was introduced to the tenets of both Confucianism and Buddhism.

Khubilai also set up institutions to rule China that were very familiar to the Chinese, adapting or borrowing wholesale many of the traditional governmental institutions of China. For example, the Six Ministries that had been responsible for carrying out policy were retained by Khubilai's government, as was the Secretariat, a decision-making body. And the provincial administrative structure that organized China into provinces, further divided into districts and counties and so on, was not changed. The Chinese, therefore, found much of the Yuan Dynasty's political structures to be familiar.

And finally, Khubilai's economic policies in China, at least initially, promoted the interests of China and were quite successful.

→ NEXT: Peasant Life Under Mongol Rule

Autumn Colors on the Ch'iao and Hua Mountains by Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), National Palace Museum, Taipei

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Mongol empire, empire founded by Genghis Khan in 1206. Originating from the Mongol heartland in the Steppe of central Asia, by the late 13th century it spanned from the Pacific Ocean in the east to the Danube River and the shores of the Persian Gulf in the west. At its peak, it covered some 9 million square miles (23 million square km) of territory, making it the largest contiguous land empire in world history.

Genghis Khan

The year 1206, when Temüjin, son of Yesügei, was elected Genghis Khan of a federation of tribes on the banks of the Onon River, must be regarded as the beginning of the Mongol empire. This federation not only consisted of Mongols in the proper sense—that is, Mongol-speaking tribes—but also other Turkic tribes. Before 1206 Genghis Khan was but one of the tribal leaders fighting for supremacy in the steppe regions south and southeast of Lake Baikal; his victories over the Kereit and then the Naiman Turks, however, gave him undisputed authority over the whole of what is now Mongolia. A series of campaigns, some of them carried out simultaneously, followed.

Jiaohe

The first attack (1205–09) was directed against the Tangut kingdom of Hsi Hsia (Xi Xia), a northwestern border-state of China, and ended in a declaration of allegiance by the Xi Xia king. A subsequent campaign was aimed at north China, which at that time was ruled by the Tungusic Jin dynasty. The fall of Beijing in 1215 marked the loss of all the territory north of the Huang He (Yellow River) to the Mongols; during the following years the Jin empire was reduced to the role of a buffer state between the Mongols in the north and the Chinese Song empire in the south. Other campaigns were launched against central Asia. In 1218 the Khara-Khitai state in east Turkistan was absorbed into the empire.

The assassination of Muslim subjects of Genghis Khan by the Khwārezmians in Otrar led to a war with the sultanate of Khwārezm (Khiva) in west Turkistan (1219–25). Bukhara, Samarkand, and the capital Urgench were taken and sacked by Mongol armies (1220–21). Advance troops (after crossing the Caucasus) even penetrated into southern Russia and raided cities in Crimea (1223). The once prosperous region of Khwārezm suffered for centuries from the effects of the Mongol invasion which brought about not only the destruction of the prosperous towns but also the disintegration of the irrigation system on which agriculture in those parts depended. A similarly destructive campaign was launched against Xi Xia in 1226–27 because the Xi Xia king had refused to assist the Mongols in their expedition against Khwārezm. The death of Genghis Khan during that campaign (1227) increased the vindictiveness of the Mongols. The Xi Xia culture, a mixture of Chinese and Tibetan elements, with Buddhism as the state religion, was virtually annihilated.

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Cai Wenji

In 1227 the Mongol dominions stretched over the vast regions between the Caspian and China seas, bordering in the north on the sparsely populated forest belt of Siberia and in the south on the Pamirs, Tibet, and the central plains of China. This empire contained a multitude of different peoples, religions, and civilizations, and it is only natural to seek the motivating force behind this unparalleled expansion. Certainly the traditional antagonism between pastoral, nomadic steppe-dwellers and settled agricultural civilizations has to be taken into account. Raids by nomads from the steppe had always occurred from time to time wherever powerful nomadic tribes lived in the proximity of settled populations, but they had not usually taken on the dimensions of a bid for world hegemony or domination as in the case of Genghis Khan’s invasions.

Silk Road

The idea of a heavenly mission to rule the world was certainly present in Genghis Khan’s own mind and in the minds of many of his successors, but this ideological imperialism had no foundation in nomadic society as such. It was most probably due to influences from China where the “one world, one ruler” ideology had a long tradition. The creation of nomad empires in the steppes and the attempts to extend their rule over the more settled parts of central Asia and finally over the whole known world may also have been influenced by the desire to control the routes of intercontinental land trade. The desire for plunder also cannot be ignored, and it was certainly not by accident that the first attacks by nomad federations were usually directed against those states which benefited from the control of trade routes in central Asia such as the famous Silk Road.

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Rashīd al-Dīn: Mongol warriors from History of the World

The amazing military achievements of the Mongols under Genghis Khan and his successors were due to superior strategy and tactics rather than to numerical strength. Mongol armies were chiefly composed of cavalry which afforded them a high degree of mobility and speed. Their movements and maneuvers were directed by signals and a well-organized messenger service. In battle they relied mainly on bows and arrows and resorted to man-to-man fighting only after having disorganized the enemy’s ranks. Mongol armaments and tactics were more suited to open plains and flat countries than to mountainous and wooded regions. For the siege of walled cities they frequently secured assistance from artisans and engineers of technically advanced conquered peoples such as Chinese, Persians, and Arabs.

Another factor contributing to the overwhelming success of their expeditions was the skilful use of spies and propaganda. Before attacking they usually asked for voluntary surrender and offered peace. If this was accepted, the population was spared. If, however, resistance had to be overcome, wholesale slaughter or at least enslavement invariably resulted, sparing only those whose special skills or abilities were considered useful. In the case of voluntary surrender, tribesmen or soldiers were often incorporated into the Mongol forces and treated as federates. Personal loyalty of federate rulers to the Mongol khan played a great role, as normally no formal treaties were concluded. The “Mongol” armies, therefore, often consisted of only a minority of ethnic Mongols.