CENTRAL ASIA IS allegedly the cradle of so much – Neanderthal Man, nomadic pastoralism, warfare itself, even UFO sightings – but it is all but useless as an explanatory concept in history. We do better with the notion of the steppe, but even this is an umbrella term embracing a wide variety of terrains, differing in vegetation, altitude and climate. Some writers rather crudely envisage the steppe as a continuum, stretching from Hungary to Manchuria, the core or heartland of what the geographer Halford Mackinder termed the ‘world island’ comprising Europe, Asia and Africa.1 On this model a mountain range blocks off the steppe at either end. In Europe the Carpathians divide the Russian steppe from the Hungarian plain, while in east Asia the Khingan Mountains separate the Mongolian steppe from its Manchurian epigone. Others prefer a dualistic model, with the ‘low steppe’ comprising western Turkestan, the north Caspian and the south Russian plains, and the ‘high steppe’ consisting of eastern Turkestan and Outer and Inner Mongolia. As the names suggest, the high steppe covers the lands at an altitude between 4,500 and 15,000 feet while the low steppe terrain is at sea level.2 Yet others prefer a triad, with the steppe arranged in three rows or layers. The first contains all the lands from Hungary to southern Ukraine, the north of the Black Sea and the gap between the Caspian Sea and the Ural Mountains. The second or ‘central steppe’ runs from northern Kazakhstan to south-central Asia, where it merges with desert regions. The third is the great steppe-land of Mongolia and northern Sinkiang, running along the northern fringes of the Gobi Desert to the Khingan Mountains in Manchuria. The entrance to this is through the Dzungar gap between the Altai and T’ien Shan Mountains.3 Still other geographers are unhappy with the whole idea of the steppe as the central organising concept and speak instead of a distinction between ‘Outer Eurasia’ (Turkey, Iraq, Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, China and Japan) and ‘Inner Eurasia’ (Ukraine, Russia, Mongolia and the modern ‘stans’ (Kazakhstan, etc).4 It should be stated also that even those who cleave to a ‘horizontal’ explanation of Asia sometimes opt for the desert or for river systems as the important physical feature of the continent, rather than the steppe. On this view, attention should be directed to the continuous belt of desert south of the steppe, embracing the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts, the Kizil-Kum south-east of the Aral Sea, the Kara-Kum east of the Caspian and the Great Salt Desert of Iran. Significantly, at these latitudes the spread of continuous desert extends through the deserts of the Middle East and Arabia to the Sahara, and is halted only by the Atlantic itself.5 Similarly, a horizontal view of Asian river systems would reveal continuity running across from the Yellow River and the Yangtse, via the Indus and Ganges and finally to the Tigris and Euphrates.
The emphasis on the steppe provides in Mongolia’s case a ‘horizontal’ west–east model. Some, however, say that the key to Mongolia is the ‘vertical’ north–south axis running from the tundra of northern Siberia and the Arctic Ocean through the forest or taiga directly north of Mongolia past the steppe proper to the Gobi Desert, through the mountainous regions of northern China down to the fertile valleys of the south. Accordingly, some experts prefer to differentiate the ‘steppe-forest’ of northern Mongolia from the ‘steppe-desert’ of the south.6 This view stresses the importance of mountains rather than steppe-lands: the Alashan, Beishan and Kunlun ranges, the Pamirs with peaks up to 25,000 feet and canyon-like valleys, the T’ien Shan or Mountains of Heaven (with peaks up to 24,000 feet), the Khenti of northern Mongolia, the Altai of Western Mongolia (with peaks up to 14,000 feet) and their westerly handmaiden the Tarbaghatai range.7 The Altai Mountains have always particularly attracted writers about Mongolia, possibly because the Sayan–Altai plateau correlates with the forest-steppe. The largely pine-wooded taiga is important in Mongolian history, as it is drained by four mighty rivers:the Ob–Irtysh, Lena, Yenisey and Amur.8 The sub-Alpine valleys of the Altai provide exceptionally good grazing grounds, with rich grass overriding the gravel, salt and loam of the soil. Although there is no magical dividing line between the taiga and the steppes – nothing as clear as the abrupt transition from the Ituri forest to the open savannah in the old Belgian Congo (modern Zaire) or the Amazonian jungle and llanos of Colombia – some travellers claimed to discern a kind of no-man’s land of black earth dividing the two. Between the forest and the Gobi Desert lies the Mongolian steppe proper – some even define it as the area between the northern edge of the T’ien Shan and the southern edge of the Altai. Much of it is a treeless pasture, with many areas below sea level, but there are high hills, often forested, such as Mount Burqan Qaldun, sacred to the Mongols, in the north-central part of the region.9 These hills would have been very important, providing as they did both rich grazing in summer and abundant hunting resources. Crucially important to Mongolia are its rivers, though many are impermanent and evanescent. Water was always the most precious resource for the inhabitants. There are many wadis, some springs, in the south-west some salt lakes and marshes, but it is no exaggeration to say that the area’s great reservoir is Lake Baikal in the north, surrounded by high hills – and noted for its plethora of seabirds, especially gulls.10
Mongolia is essentially a plateau occupying approximately a million square miles, set at a much higher altitude than the steppes in Turkestan and the west, ranging from 3,500 to 5,000 feet. Its central and ineluctable feature is the Gobi Desert which comprises one-third of the area of Mongolia (with steppe and meadow about fifty per cent, and forest fifteen per cent). The Gobi is not a desert in the same sense that the Sahara is, as its surface can be grassy, sandy, pitted with scree or boulders or striated with salt marshes. Some purists object to the very term ‘desert’ on the ground that the Gobi is primarily a dry steppe.11 On the outer fringes a transparent veil of grass is apparent, and grassland is widespread and abundant, but as one penetrates deep into the interior vegetation tends to be limited to scrub and grassy reeds. Thereafter one confronts a melange of moving dunes, stable dunes, clayey plains, salt flats, isolated wells and desert trees such as the white saxaul (which can be used for firewood) and the ephedra. The Gobi stretches west–east for twelve hundred miles.12 The south–north journey from the modern Chinese border to the Russian frontier is about eight hundred miles long and takes about a month of solid camel-riding. For about half the time the trek is over undulating grassy plains. Then comes a four days’ march of about fifty miles through deep, sandy desert, punctuated by two high ridges of rock, colourfully described by one traveller: ‘Adrift in the hot expanses were small rounded hills riding like whales in silver mirages of water.’13 This sandy desert breaks up the monotony of the undulating plain but slows down progress. It is followed by a further week of gravelly plains, with the soil a deep red colour, distinguished by brightly coloured translucent stones and crystals. Nomadic peoples found the Gobi an eerie, unsettling, spirit-ridden place and even later European travellers were disconcerted by the mirages: ‘The prevailing colour was a kind of misty, half-transparent white, exactly like arrowroot or cornflour prepared with water only.’14 The desert was uncannily quiet at night, when, as one writer mused, ‘the bright, unwavering lights of the Great Bear, and the soft glimmer of Cassiopeia and the Pleiades stood out with a distinctness rarely seen in other latitudes.’15 Clearly for the traveller across the Gobi the primary problem was water. In normal circumstances wells ten feet deep had to be dug every thirty miles or so; only with heavy rainstorms in summer was aridity mitigated.16 Dust storms were another hazard but travellers failed to agree on their frequency and severity in the Gobi. Some claimed that there were choking sandstorms in summer and icy ones in winter, yet others, even with direct experience of the phenomenon, claimed it as a rarity.17
Mongolia suffers from both a harsh climate and lack of water. With a lack of adequate rainfall (on average only 10–20 inches annually), the land is too dry to support agriculture without expensive irrigation schemes, and this fact alone restricted the population of the land (estimates range from a low of 700,000 to a high of two million, and the contrast with the population density of neighbouring China was especially marked).18 The northerly latitude and remoteness from the sea mean colder average temperatures, less sunlight and greater extremes of temperature than elsewhere in Asia. The winters are especially harsh, with temperatures below freezing for as much as six months in the year. Even within a single month the entire gamut of weather conditions can be experienced. One meteorological study done in June 1942 testified to the wild variations. A calm and sunny early evening was interrupted by a 60 m.p.h. gale, bringing dust, fog and ninety per cent cloud cover. This storm lasted an hour, blew itself out and was succeeded by a clear sky, with the night stars especially brilliant. Then between 1 and 2 a.m. there were heavy showers of rain, and by dawn the sky was again clouded over. By 9 o’clock the next morning there was fog, driving snow and a temperature of 33 degrees Fahrenheit.19 Mongolia’s great distance from the sea does, however, bring some compensations. Even though the country is in general very cold, there is little air humidity and hence relatively little snow, with falls rarely exceeding three feet in depth. With so little air humidity to produce clouds, Mongolia enjoys five hundred hours more sunshine in summer than Switzerland or the Midwestern states of the U.S.A. at the same altitude. When the break in this weather pattern occurs, it tends to be violent; the Franciscan envoy Friar Carpini who wrote about the Mongols in the 1240s reported severe thunderstorms and snowstorms in midsummer (his diary for 29 June 1246 records heavy snow that day), together with hurricane-strength winds, hailstorms and duststorms.20 And the summer which could be so violently disturbed lasts just three months, from June to August. September is already very cold, and in October the first snowstorms can be expected. By November the rivers are frozen, and then comes the six-month Niflheim lasting until May. Throughout the year the weather is both extreme and unpredictable, with temperatures ranging from 100 degrees F in summer to –43 in winter. Since there are no natural barriers to the wind, gales are always violent. One can be hit simultaneously by winds from the Siberian tundra and desert storms from the Gobi.21
Not surprisingly, the steppes look very different at different times of the year. Probably the most glorious month is May, for then the plains are covered with an immense green carpet, pullulating with flowers, especially red poppies, gentians, geraniums, eyelets, delphiniums, asters, rhododendrons, edelweiss, white convolvulus and forget-me-nots, that last until late summer. There is a huge diversity of plants in Central Asia, including 8,094 species of flora, of which some 1,600 species are desert flowers.22 Naturally, some regions of Mongolia are more favoured than others. Some geographers distinguish two climatic zones, one in the west as far as the Altai and T’ien Shan Mountains, and another in eastern Mongolia. In the western zone there is little summer rain but the winter is affected by Atlantic cyclones, with deeper snowfalls than in the east. In compensation the mountain ranges of western Mongolia and the many rivers, mountain streams and springs created alpine meadows and ideal conditions for winter pasture. In the eastern zone monsoons bring moisture in summer and a prevailing anticyclone, lowering over the steppes, in winter. The winters often see clear, sunny days and quiet windless weather, with very little snow, so that livestock can pasture all year round.23
The eastern part of Mongolia is thus especially favoured, and within this favoured area most privileged of all is the area around the Onon and Kerulen Rivers – exactly where Genghis Khan was born. The Onon, about 500 miles long, rises in the eastern slopes of the Khenti Mountains (the highest peak of which is over 9,000 feet high), the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic Ocean basins, and which perhaps contained the sacred mountain of Burqan Qaldun. The Onon is a tributary of the Shilka which in turn feeds the Amur. (If the combination Onon–Shilka–Amur is treated as one river, at around 2,744 miles in length it counts as the world’s ninth longest river.)24 The Kerulen, which rises on the south slopes of the Khenti Mountains, flows through the eastern Mongolian steppes, enters China and empties into Lake Hulun. In years of high rainfall the normally exitless Hulun may overflow at its northern shore and, after another twenty miles, flow into the Ergune River, the traditional border between Russia and China. Six hundred miles along the Ergune will again take one to the mighty Amur. (If, in contrast to the Onon–Shilka–Amur above, one computes the ‘Amur’ as the Kerulen–Ergune–Amur system and regards it as a continuous river, the resultant stream becomes the world’s sixth-longest river, with a length of more than 3,000 miles.)25 The Onon forest, four hundred square miles in extent, between the Rivers Onon and Kerulen, and in time the Mongols’ heartland, is thus a kind of oasis in the midst of the steppes, and as such a sort of wonderland. Here can be found a plethora of trees unknown elsewhere in Mongolia: wild cherry, dogrose, currant, hawthorn, poplar, birch, elm, wild apple, Siberian apricot, willow, ash, buckthorn, Russian ash, juniper, walnut, acer, pistachio.26
The climate of Mongolia has always ruled out significant agriculture. The inadequate water supply, and the rapid disappearance of moisture because of evaporation and solar radiation are only the worst of the problems, to which should be added a short growing season, extensive swamps and marshes, cold and dry conditions and a salty, waterlogged or frozen soil. The people of Mongolia were (and are) mainly nomadic pastoralists. This simple phrase masks complexities, for there are pastoralists who are not nomadic and nomads who are not pastoralists. For example, the forest people of Siberia owned horses and were nomads, though not pastoral ones, while the gauchos and cowboys of the Americas were pastoralists but not nomads. Moreover, there is not even a necessary distinction between pastoralism and agriculture. Some peripheral peoples of Mongolia – the Ongud just to the north of the Great Wall of China and the tribes of the Yenisey – were partly pastoral and partly agricultural.27 Even more nuances and fine distinctions can be introduced if we bring in the notion of transhumance and non-transhumance. The usual distinction is that transhumance involves journeys between winter and summer pastures but the pastoralists have a fixed abode, in a village, say. In nomadic pastoralism the drovers have no fixed abode, live in tents, and move with the animals from season to season.28 Although animals were private property, pasture was held in common by extended kinship groups, where the strongest tribes and clans claimed the best pasturage at the optimum time of year. Water was always a paramount consideration on the steppe, so that different nomad groups exercised proprietary rights to the key wells, with the ‘outsiders’ having to pay for access.29 Typically, winter camps and pastures would be in protected areas with reduced snow cover, in low-lying mountain valleys, river flood plains, the southern side of hills, or even depressions in the steppe. This was the grimmest time, with the animals very weak by spring. Once the drying of grass and the evaporation of water heralded the coming of spring, in late May or early June, the nomads moved to a higher altitude for the summer pasture and their animals rapidly gained weight. Moving swiftly out from winter camp, they made at once for large pools of melted snow to water the stock. The distances between winter and summer pasture could be as little as twenty miles, but were usually about fifty miles, up to a maximum of sixty in favoured locations such as the Onon–Kerulen valleys; for those having to eke out their existence on the fringes of the Gobi the journey might be seventy-five miles or even more. These journeys would be accomplished in leisurely tranches of between five and twenty miles a day, with the pace not pressed daily; rather, the nomads would travel on alternate days or have longer rest periods.30
The summer camps were pitched on high ground with cool breezes. This was the season when yoghurt, cheese and the alcoholic drink koumiss, from fermented mares’ milk, were produced. Wool from sheep and hair from goats and camels was used to make thread and thence rope, rugs, carpets and saddlebags. The Mongols were adept at making felt for tents. First they beat the wool, then poured boiling water on it and rolled it back and forth until the fibres locked to produce the fabric. Felt was a key aspect of the Mongol’s tent, the ger (the more familiar word ‘yurt’ was a later Russian coinage), as it provided insulation and protection against high winds. Autumn was the time to breed sheep for a spring lambing but was otherwise a golden moment with the animals at their strongest.31 When the cold weather began, the nomads started the trek back to winter quarters. They liked to graze the animals on the periphery of the winter pasture until the weather became too severe, only transferring them to the ‘heartland’ of the pasture when the temperature plummeted. The Mongols next made an educated estimate of how many animals would survive on the winter pasture and slaughtered the weakest and least hardy specimens. The meat would then be smoked as a winter food supply. The Mongols’ diet was therefore also seasonal: dairy products in summer, meat in winter.32 Naturally the nomads tried to retain as many live animals as possible, subject to the constraints of water and forage. Winter was always a worrying time, as its severity could never be accurately predicted; a small-scale drover could find his wealth wiped out overnight from a combination of frost, drought and disease. Since the animals were weak from the ‘iron rations’ of winter and spring was lambing time, seasonal regularity was crucial. If there were freak snowstorms in spring, much of the stock, especially the newborn young, would die; fortunately this did not happen on average more than once in a generation. The big battalions as always did best, as the herdowner with the most beasts would recover more quickly than one with a handful.33
The Mongolian pastoralist had a plethora of problems to solve and was never far from a knife-edge. Erosion – plant cover destroyed and dust storms blowing away the topsoil – and mineralisation due to the action of the wind and the workings of salt springs were serious problems. If these phenomena coincided with overgrazing, the result would be desert. In any case, salinity, alkaline soil and general aridity limited the amount of water and grass available. This meant that there could never be any real increase in herd numbers and, by the same token, in human numbers. This is another way of saying that pastoralism unaided is bound to produce a steady and constant population.34 Moreover, even in such a steady state nomads had to make precise calculations about water supply and the distance between wells and waterholes, as the different animals they herded moved at different speeds and had different water needs.
In this context snow was a mixed blessing for the Mongols. On the one hand, it increased pasture resources, without which there would be overgrazing and, ultimately, desert. On the other hand, snow could be a deadly danger, as it covered up pasture grass and other plants, preventing livestock from grazing at all.35 Particularly fearful was (and is) the phenomenon known as zud. This involved repeated and alternating thaws and freezes, creating thick, impenetrable sheets of ice under the snow. Zud was particularly feared since it could affect the whole of Mongolia, unlike drought, which never had such a universal impact.36 The Mongol herdsmen had to balance all these climatic variables while maintaining five different types of domestic animal: sheep, goats, cattle, horses and camels – all with different needs and requiring different management techniques. Unlike the Bedouin of Arabia with the dromedary or the forest peoples of the taiga with their reindeer, the Mongols were not single-animal specialists. Their herding needed rotation of pastures just as much as agriculturalists needed rotation of crops.37 Horses and cattle need wetter pasture than sheep and goats, so require streams and fertile land. In Mongolia this meant pasturing them separately from the other stock. Sheep and goats notoriously crop grass very closely, which means that larger livestock cannot graze the same land immediately after them. Overgrazing by sheep and goats was particularly serious, as their hooves cut the surface of the ground and exposed the soil, leading to wind erosion.38 Proper husbandry of pasture meant that the grazing lands had at times to be rested altogether and then grazed by different stock – cattle and horses – to give it a rest from the remorseless sheep and goats. It was axiomatic that no pasture should ever be grazed by the same stock year in and year out. The technical reason, apart from erosion, is that a steady accumulation of dung and urine from the same kind of animal after a time ceases to have a fertilisng effect and instead becomes poisonous, not only providing less nourishment but also enhancing the danger of disease and epidemics.39 All this meant either that special feeding grounds had to be set apart for cattle and horses, or that they had to be pastured before and ahead of sheep and goats.
A closer look at the five domestic animal types can help to point up the complex problems the herdsmen and drovers faced. There was a problem right at the heart of Mongol culture, what one might term a difference between the objective and the subjective. Objectively, the most economically valuable asset they possessed were their massive flocks of sheep, but subjectively it was the horse that was most prized. In their value system the Mongols rated their stock in descending order of importance as follows: horses, camels, cattle, sheep and goats.40 Yet 50–60% of the animals they raised were sheep, which were the mainstay of their primitive economy. Since early twentieth-century Mongolia scarcely differed from its thirteenth-century counterpart, we can put flesh on the bones, as it were, by adducing some statistics. In 1918 Mongolia had a grazing area of some 300 million acres, supporting 1,150,000 horses, 1,080,000 cattle, 7,200,000 sheep and 230,000 camels. For 1924 the figures were 1,350,000 horses, 1,500,000 cattle, 10,650,000 sheep and goats and 275,000 camels. By 1935 these numbers were, respectively, 1,800,000, 2,350,000, 17,700,000 and 560,000.41 Although there was a rapid increase in overall numbers because of special economic plans in the twentieth century, the basic ratios held good: and the centrality of sheep is obvious.
The Mongolian sheep is small, producing less meat than its European counterpart. Its wool was of little commercial value but was used to make felt and clothing. The most important sheep product was milk, used to make either butter and cheese or koumiss.42 The sheep proved its value during the spring move from winter to summer pasture as it did not have to be watered, instead deriving the moisture it needed from dew and the grass wet from melted snowfalls. Spring was of course a risky time – both lambing and shearing took place before the move to mountain pastures. The pastoralist always had to be careful. Sheep numbers could decline alarmingly whenever pasture was poor – as it was at high altitudes, in deserts and on the margin of forests.43 Most of the surplus animals slaughtered at the beginning of the winter season were sheep, but it seems that the Mongols were frugal in their consumption of mutton and lamb. The Franciscan Carpini reported that a single sheep could feed fifty men.44 The traveller Simon of St Quentin, in the course of a tirade on poor Mongol table manners, remarked: ‘They eat so little meat that other peoples could scarcely live from it.’45 An average family travelling in convoy with the seasonal migration would typically possess one hundred sheep, just a handful of oxen, five horses that could be used to ride into battle and three other ponies; it was conventional wisdom that the optimum size of an ovine herd was around one thousand. Sheep were herded together with goats, another important nomad resource, both for milk and wool. Their advantage was that they could survive on pasture other than grass, but their demerit was that they destroyed small bulbs as well as the trees the Mongols counted on for firewood or building materials.46 Pigs were entirely absent from the nomad animal inventory, though not because of any religious taboo; the Mongols were happy to eat pork or ‘black cattle.’ The reason was simple. Pigs were not bred because they needed acorns, unavailable on the steppe, and because they could not migrate long distances.47
About nine per cent of the Mongols’ livestock was cattle. The typical long-horned Mongolian cattle were used mainly as beasts of burden, drawing the carts on which the Mongols carried their mobile gers, though sometimes also for meat or hides; they were rarely used as herd animals. The ox was the most typical bovine among the Mongols; they saw the advantage of allowing bulls to develop their full musculature before castrating them. Possibly the most prized of all Mongolian cattle was the yak. It used to be thought that the yak was used only in high mountain regions, but this view seems to have been discarded. Weighing up to 2,200 pounds and standing 5–7 feet at the shoulder, the yak was prized both as a beast of burden and for its milk, meat and fibre; its dung was also thought to make the best fuel.48 The well-known writer Vikram Seth has described the yak as a veritable machine for converting grass into butter, fuel, tent hide and clothing.49 The most versatile variety is the hainag, a cross between a bull yak and a cow; this hybrid is particularly valuable as it can operate at both high and low altitudes, is docile and yields better milk. The Franciscan Rubruck and Marco Polo were also enthusiasts for the yak. This is Rubruck:
[They have] extremely strong cattle, with tails which are abundantly hairy like a horse’s and with shaggy bellies and backs: they are shorter in the leg than other cattle, but stronger by far. They haul along the large dwellings of the Mo’als [Mongols], and have long, slender, twisted horns which are extremely sharp so that the points constantly require to be sawn off. The cow will not let itself be milked unless one sings to her. They have a bull’s temper, moreover, in that if they see a person dressed in red they charge at him with a desire to kill him.50
However, yaks and cattle in general could not compare in utility with the camel, the Mongols’ second most prized animal. The camel came close to the definition of an all-purpose beast, as it could work in almost all conditions and travel on any surface but was particularly valuable in areas where the Mongols’ beloved horse would struggle, as in the Gobi, Ordos, Alashan and Taklamakan Deserts. Camels have always had a bad press, particularly from the Victorian explorers and adventurers like Sir Richard Burton and Fred Burnaby, who remarked scathingly that a camel galloped like a pig with its forelegs and a cow with its hind legs.51 Yet those who know them well say that they are affectionate and drawn to humans; like dogs and horses, they instinctively ensured their survival by attaching themselves to Man, the protector against predators.52 The Central Asian camel is the two-humped variety or Bactrian. Naturally, among the Mongols, a horse-loving people, it did not have the kudos or importance the dromedary possessed for the Bedouin, even though Mongolia was probably its aboriginal homeland, but it was better-tempered than its one-humped counterpart. Since in Central Asia it co-existed with the wheel, it could not aspire to the position of indispensable ‘ship of the desert’, but against this is the fact that the only study of the camel in literature is Mongolian.53 The role of the Bactrian in Asian history is indisputable. In medieval times it was common in Anatolia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, India, Mongolia and China and made the Silk Road possible.54
The Bactrian’s advantages were manifold. It has a lifespan of 20–40 years. It can carry loads of between 320 and 370 pounds. It can go thirty days without water if there is decent grazing and can drink water with a higher salt content than seawater, though when water is available it will gulp down up to fifty-seven litres in one go. It is also a good swimmer. Its milk could be turned into camel koumiss and its hair was used as a staple in Mongol textiles. The Bactrian can travel at 4 m.p.h. unladen and 2½–3½ m.p.h. laden and can carry its 300-pound-plus load for thirty miles a day.55 Yet it had several drawbacks as a would-be ‘wonder animal’. It is a diurnal animal, and on military campaigns it was sometimes urgently necessary to travel at night. Bactrians tend to stray while grazing, which makes them much more labour-intensive than sheep or goats. They need eight hours grazing time each day. They hate to be left alone in the desert and, if they find themselves in such a predicament, are likely to trek on until they drop dead. If they slip on ice in winter, that spells death, for they cannot get up again. Even the very useful dung or ‘chips’ used as fuel produced a dense, pungent smoke, making their Mongol drivers bleary-eyed as they sat around the camp fire.56
The animal that allowed the Mongols ultimately to conquer the steppes was the horse, that indispensable adjunct of those centaurs of the plains; as has been well said, a Mongol without a horse is like a bird without a wing. The steppe horse as a species was similar to the wild or Przewalski’s horse.57 Horses were domesticated on the steppe as early as 3,200 BC, but early civilisations used them for chariot warfare rather than as cavalry. Probably first tamed as a ridden warhorse by the Mongol tribes between the fifth and third centuries BC (but on the western steppes not until the first century BC, by the Scythians), the horse became an even more formidable weapon of war with the invention of the stirrup in the fifth century AD.58 Around 12–14 hands high, coarse, with a large head, straight neck, heavy coat, thick legs, heavy-boned, shorter, stockier and sturdier than the destriers of medieval Western Europe, the Mongol horse was an animal of incredible stamina, capable of galloping six miles without a break. Although in the West its height would classify the animal as a pony rather than a horse, zoologists concur in granting the Mongol steed the status of a true horse. It can survive in temperatures ranging from 30 degrees C in summer to –40 C in winter. Mongolian horses find a walk too slow for their short legs and a canter too exhausting, so their natural pace is a fast trot.59 Their gait is ungainly and they provide an uncomfortable ride for the uninitiated. Their supreme talent is being able to use their hooves to scrape away snow from the steppe surface to reach grass or lichen below and to survive on leaves from trees; they do not need to be fed beans, grain or other fodder. In common with many other Asian equine breeds they can subsist wholly on grazing, unlike ‘proper’ horses which would quickly weaken if left outside in all weathers and given no supplementary feeding. It was this all-weather capability that so often allowed the Mongols to defeat their enemies, since they could campaign in winter.60 When campaigning, each Mongol had three remounts and on forced marches rotated these every two hours to prevent exhaustion. Coupled with mobility – the Mongols could ride 600 miles in nine days, though obviously not on the same horse – this made the armed nomads almost unbeatable. Yet even the magnificently tough Mongol horse was vulnerable to freak weather. The real fear for the pastoralists was that a late blizzard in spring with thick snowfall would hit their horses at their weakest after months of semi-starvation.61 Barring such acts of God, the Mongols could be confident that their horses would serve them well in every context. Such was the importance of the horse that the Mongols operated a kind of informal utilitarian calculus to estimate wealth and the value of their herds vis-à-vis other stock. They reckoned that each person needed five horses to live well, which meant that a family of five would need twenty-five riding horses and four to six pack horses. A ger containing five people that had more than ten horses was considered rich. A horse was valued as being equal to five head of cattle or six sheep or goats. A two-year-old counted as half a horse and a yearling as one-quarter.62 The Mongols used mainly mares, as these were more docile and yielded the vital milk for making koumiss. If short of food, they had a technique for making an incision in the animal’s vein, drinking the blood, and then sealing up the wound. The very strongest horses were kept as breeding stallions and each of these had 50–60 mares in his harem. The stallion, though troublesome, was very useful to a man on night watch, as he would not let his mares escape and was as alert in this regard as a herdsman against wolves.63
Men, women and children were all expected to be expert with horses. Children were mounted on horses at the age of 3 and strapped in even earlier so that they could get used to the motion of their mount; there are examples of infant horsemen who could ride before they could walk.64 Mongols trained their horses to respond to calls and whistles, like dogs, to obviate the need for any special corps of wranglers. They broke their mounts early to inculcate obedience but did not push them to the limit until they were five-year-olds; one of the reasons for the early breaking was to train the horses not to kick or bite.65 After breaking, the next stage was accustoming the animals to saddles and tack. Mongolian horses’ tack comprised a simple bridle and a short-tread, deep-seated saddle with short stirrups. These saddles had a very thick felt pad; the bridle was an ordinary jointed ring snaffle. The noseband was linked to the cheek pieces, so that when the reins were pulled, the horse felt pressure over the nose as well as via the mouth, lips and tongue.66 Mongols did not groom their horses but let the mane and tail grow so long that it almost trailed on the ground. They claimed that this kept the horses warm in winter and warded off flies in summer; moreover, if a bridle or stirrup broke, there was always a ready supply of horse-hair with which to do the mending.67 Training then started with the horse at a standstill to get the animal used to noise, particularly the simulated din of battle. Next they set the steed in motion while shooting arrows from the saddle, so that it could get used to the different movements as the rider drew arrows from his quiver, moved the drawn bow from one flank to the other and shot from different angles. The horse had to learn to keep straight while receiving leg signals only, as the reins were not held but knotted. The rider had to keep the legs rigid so as not to confuse the horse; turning in the saddle was done with waist and hips. Other techniques involved getting the charger used to ropes and lassos being thrown, lances hurled and swords wielded, sometimes very close to the animal’s head.68 Strangely, the Mongols found that accurate shooting was easier at the gallop than at a canter; this was because when galloping on a free rein the horse lowered its whole topline, stretching and lowering its head and neck, giving the archer a free field of fire. To ensure that their horses could veer and turn rapidly the Mongols first turned them in a large circle, then gradually narrowed the range in ever diminishing circles until rapid turns became second nature. Marco Polo in the late twelfth century noted that Mongol horses were so well trained that they could turn as quickly as a dog.69
Then came the training in verbal commands. Noting the peculiarities of different kinds of horses, the Mongols preferred to use geldings if they were setting an ambush, as they did not neigh as much as stallions and mares.70 The Mongols were fond of their horses, and those that survived the arduous campaigns were allowed to retire and graze into their dotage; only in extreme circumstances would they be killed for food. Since the horse was a precious resource, the Mongols were very solicitous for their welfare. They did not ride them in spring or summer but turned them out to grass, allowing complete rest and relaxation. When taken away from the grass, they were tethered around tents and their grazing rationed until all fat fell away and they were ready to go on campaign.71 Always after riding their mounts, the Mongols unsaddled them and then held their heads up high to prevent their eating until their breathing was normal and they were cold; this controlled the eating process and prevented colic and laminitis.72 Generally they left their horses unshod, since the hooves of animals raised in a dry climate like Mongolia were harder and resisted abrasions better than horses raised in a wet climate; but once they ventured outside Mongolia, the Mongols often found that their steeds needed to be shod.
The nomads’ herds were of course not the only animal life in Mongolia. It has always been a paradise for wildlife, and in the thirteenth century not even the massive Mongol hunts put a dent in their numbers. Even today Central Asia as a whole contains over eight hundred species of vertebrates.73 Most of these animal species are represented in Mongolia, and in the thirteenth century there were even more. Some of these were in competition with the Mongols’ herds, and in two different ways. The nomads’ livestock displaced many wild ungulates – red deer, fallow deer, gazelle, antelope, wild goats, the Siberian ibex, the wild boar – and it was notable that as soon as the Mongols drove their herds from winter pasture, the gazelle and antelope would congregate in thousands to graze there.74 Naturally, as nomadic pastoralists, it was the carnivorous predators the Mongols most targeted, especially wolves, which they controlled with their own breed of ferocious dogs and specially trained eagles. There were also bears, leopards, lynxes and cheetahs to contend with. And when the Mongols later expanded into other parts of central Asia, they encountered still more big cats. In those days the Asian lion was plentiful and, like their imperial predecessors the Romans, the Mongols were fascinated by the inaptly named king of beasts, to the point where they sometimes accepted lions as part of a total package of tribute from conquered nations.75 In the Mongol era, too, the even more formidable tiger was plentiful in Asia, especially along the River Oxus.76 Yet the Mongols’ most interesting feline relationship was with the snow leopard or ounce. Nowadays only found at altitudes between 11,000 and 22,000 feet, in the thirteenth century they were plentiful, could be tamed, and were used by the Mongols in their great dragnet hunts, sometimes amazingly being conveyed to the killing ground on horseback. They made very convenient pets for the Mongols, as they will eat large amounts of vegetation, grass and twigs as well as meat.77
There was also a plethora of small game that swam into the nomads’ ken: wild camels, foxes, rabbits, squirrels, badgers, martens, wild cats, hares, the extremely fleet-of-foot onager or wild ass, and the Mongolian rat, described by one traveller as ‘a soft, pretty little animal, with a feathery tail and … none of the disgusting attributes of the common Norwegian or English rat.’78 Of the many rodents, including mice, gerbils, hamsters and lemmings, the Mongols had a special fascination for the marmot, which they ate as a rare delicacy. Extremely hard to hunt and catch, marmots taxed the ingenuity of nomadic hunters but, apart from their role in the pastoralists’ diet, they were valued because of a peculiar superstition – though not so very different from that entertained in the contemporary U.S.A. about the groundhog (often classified in the marmot family) – that one could tell from examining marmots what the weather and the seasons would be like.79
The Mongols often came upon snakes, particularly the Mongolian viper but, though venomous, its bite is rarely fatal to humans. It was a different story when the Mongols later expanded in imperial form, for then truly dangerous serpents like cobras were encountered, especially in Iran and the Aral–Caspian basin. However, the Mongols always seemed to have an ambivalent relationship with snakes. Although they would kill vipers and ‘milk’ them for their venom – which they used to tip poisoned arrows – in general they had a superstitious regard for what the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder called ‘this detestable creature’, on the grounds that they were related to dragons and had power over water.80 In general it can safely be said that the more new frontiers the Mongols explored, the more exotic or previously unknown creatures they discovered, whether the striped hyena of Afghanistan, the seals of the Caspian, the ostrich of western Asia or the venomous spiders of Turkestan.81
The one surprising thing is that, their falcons and hunting eagles apart, they showed no interest whatever in Mongolia’s teeming bird life. Although travellers’ tales are full of descriptions of avian predators such as wild eagles, vultures, hawks, owls – as well as the innocuous partridges, grouse, swans, geese, cranes, spoonbills, egrets, pelicans and storks82 – Mongol sources are silent. The same applies to Mongolia’s seventy-six varieties of fish, which include trout, grayling, perch, roach, pike, sturgeon and the huge freshwater salmon or taimen – though here one can cite a deep cultural prejudice against fishing, which persists to this day. The consequence was that Mongolia’s lakes were undisturbed by Mongol incursions into their fauna, and a great body of water like Lake Baikal could glisten undisturbed like a sea of sapphire picked out with white waves and snow-capped mountains round the coast.
The physical appearance of the Mongols always intrigued, and often shocked, Europeans and western Asians who met them. A Franciscan monk who accompanied Friar Carpini on his famous journey to the Mongol court in the mid-1240s described them as usually short of stature and slim, which he attributed both to their strenuous lifestyle and their diet of mare’s milk. He described them as broad of face with prominent cheekbones and pointed up a hairstyle which seemed to be a melange of the Christian and the Saracen: on the one hand they had a tonsure on their heads like the Franciscans and other friars, and from this they shaved a strip three fingers wide from ear to ear; on the other hand, on their forehead they wore their hair in a crescent-shaped fringe reaching to the eyebrows and then gathered up the remaining hair and braided it like the Muslims.83 A later Christian visitor, William of Rubruck, said that Mongol men had long hair behind the head, which they braided up in two plaits right up to the ears. While agreeing with Carpini that Mongol males tended to be short and slim, he found the women usually very fat. Females shaved their heads from the middle towards the forehead and had a particular fetish about noses. The smaller the nose, the more beautiful the woman was considered, to the point where they would even amputate the bridge of the nose, making the nose itself almost disappear.84 Both these accounts were confirmed in a famous description by Carpini himself (he referred to the Mongols as ‘Tartars’):
In appearance the Tartars are quite different from other men, for they are broader than other people between the eyes and across the cheekbones. Their cheeks are also rather prominent above their jaws; they have a flat and small nose, their eyes are little and their eyelids raised up to the eyebrows. For the most part, but with a few exceptions, they are slender about the waist; almost all are of medium height … On the top of the head they have a tonsure like clerics, and as a general rule all shaved from one ear to the other to the breadth of three fingers, and this shaving joins on to the aforesaid tonsure. Above the forehead also they all likewise shave to two fingers’ breadth, but the hair between this shaving and the tonsure they allow to grow until it reaches their eyebrows, and, cutting more from each side of the forehead than in the middle, they make the hair in the middle long; the rest of it they allow to grow like women, and they make it into two braids which they bind, one behind each ear.85
Such descriptions from the Franciscans were calm and dispassionate, possibly because bitter experience had not soured them on the Mongols. Western Asian descriptions of the Mongols’ appearance were vitiated by the perception of them as the scourge of God, so inevitably they were described in Persian and Arab sources as hideous or frightful to look at. Emphasis was placed on the lack of facial hair, the quick, glancing eyes, the shrill and piercing voices, the hardy bodies. Two witnesses may suffice. Here is a Christian Armenian of the thirteenth century:
They were terrible to look at and indescribable, with large heads like a buffalo’s, narrow eyes like a fledgling’s, a snub nose like a cat, projecting snouts like a dog’s, narrow loins like an ant’s, short legs like a hog’s, and by nature no beards at all. With a lion’s strength, they have voices more shrill than an eagle’s.86
And this is a Persian poet:
Their eyes were so narrow and piercing that they might have bored a hole in a brazen vessel, and their stench was more horrible than their colour. Their heads were set on their bodies as if they had no necks, and their cheeks resembled leather bottles full of wrinkles and knots. Their noses extended from cheekbone to cheekbone. Their nostrils resembled rotting graves, and from them the hair descended as far as the lips. Their moustaches were of extravagant length, but the beards about their chins were very scanty. Their chests, in colour half white, half black, were covered with lice which looked like sesame growing on a bad soil. Their bodies indeed were covered with these insects, and their skins were as rough-grained as shagreen leather, fit only to be converted into shoes.87
Mongol women were a particular source of fascination to foreign observers. The accounts given of them ranged from arm’s-length distaste – they were fat, they were ugly, they were indistinguishable from men – to grudging admiration – they endured great hardship uncomplainingly, they could ride horses as well as the men, they were expert drivers of carts, talented archers, and so on. Particular dislike was evinced for the garish colours in which they painted themselves, and particular admiration for the way they could give birth standing up and then carry on with their work as if nothing had happened. It was noted also that the Mongols respected women, as they were connected with the moon, and the moon was of great importance in Mongol religion.8889boghtaqboghtaq90