Almost years ago, warriors on horseback galloped out of northern Mongolia, conquering much of Asia. Study of a long-gone culture is usually based on historical and physical records.
The Mongols did keep records and the neighbors wrote quite a lot about them. In fact the Mongols did have cities, sort of. The central Asian steppe has not a few Mongol-era monuments, forts and more.
It arose from nothing, an artificial implant. The great army known to posterity as the Golden Horde for the color of their yurts took shape after the unification of Mongol and Turkic tribes on the Mongolian plateau. Indeed, Bemmann confirms, they led a nomadic life.
But the emperor needed a place to centralize his rule over their growing empire. Thus in the year , the founder of the great empire Genghis Khan chose a nice site for a capital, where the Orkhon River Valley transitions into pasture. Everything the warriors could extract from the territories they did, from talent to goods, and brought back to Karakorum. This is not pure conjecture or even deduction. William of Rubruck, a Franciscan friar and French envoy, visited in the year and described it as a walled city with four gates that was peopled by foreigners: Chinese artisans, Muslim merchants and captives from all over the empire.
The mud was local. Twice a year, the team writes, the Khan would come to the city and stay in his palace — which was only built in , about 15 years after the city first began to rise on the Mongolian plain. The city became not only the focus of power and administration but of long-distance trade, which rather changes the image of the archaeologically invisible Mongol Empire.
Mapping the implanted city using a SQUID Superconducting Quantum Interference Device and aerial imaging, rather than shovels and sweat, led the archaeologists to realize that Karakorum was much bigger than had been thought. They also discovered that about 40 percent of the land enclosed by defensive walls remained empty. That was one of the things captives were for. At this time Mongolia ceased to be the center of world trade and culture, but the Mongols retained their home territory.
During the 14th and 15th centuries, the Mongols lost their previous unity and were divided into Eastern Mongols and Western Mongols Oirat Mongols. The Mongols waged war on each other, and dominance went first to Oirat Mongolia and then to East Mongolia. East Mongolia was the more powerful. At the beginning of the 17th century, the Zurchid tribe of Manchurians became powerful and established the State of Chin.
The 17thth century period was the most tragic for the Mongols. In fact, the Manchurians cut off the Mongolian State from world civilization for many centuries, and the Mongols remained as if on the inside of an inverted copper pot. At the beginning of the 20th century, the movement for the renascence of the Mongolian State led by Bogdo Khan spread widely like a fire, but was suppressed in by the Manchurian colonial domination. The Mongolian people led by Khalh Mongolian Javzandamba Khutagt Bogdo Khan established the Khanate uniting religion and state, and intended to unite all Mongolian-speaking people.
But this aim remained unfulfilled because of the expansionist policy of the Tsarist Russia and China. In the Chinese government grossly violated the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian tripartite treaty of , and with the aid of armed forces conquered the Mongolian State. This precipitated again the upsurge of the national liberation movement in the country, and so in Khalh Mongols under the direction of S.
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