mongolian Flashcards
Qaraqorum
Karakorum was the capital of the Mongol Empire between 1235 and 1260 and of the Northern Yuan in the 14–15th centuries.
Ögedei erect walls around the place and build a fixed palace.
William of Rubruck, a Flemish Franciscan missionary and papal envoy to the Mongols reached Karakorum in 1254. He has left one of the most detailed, though not always flattering, accounts of the city.
Capital changed and these people were steppe people mostly and oved around, so the fact that they had this grand capital, even for a bit was significant
Ogidei actually raised prices of good so merchants would go there to sell so it could be a big trade capital.
Karakorum was reduced to the administrative center of a provincial backwater of the Yuan dynasty founded in China in 1271.
Ger
Means yurt in turkic – symbol of Mongol people and steppe people
The Mongolians moved around in yurts as they were nomads and part of the steppe
Tradition of passes parts of it down through the family which is significant in places like mongolia and in the song dynasty
Also the shapes, colors and ornaments of the wooden elements—toono, pillars and poles of the Mongolian yurt are in accord with the artistic style found in Buddhist monasteries of Mongolia.
Overall seen as a symbol of east asian and its history
Paper Money
Paper money is an invention of the Song Dynasty in China in the 11th century CE. This was very impressive and somewhat confusing to others visiting. In some of the texts we saw this term it was noted that the travelers were in awe but confused when they saw trade of say a goat and cloth turn into paper. And it was interesting to them as well that they had mints that they could trade old tattered money into for a fresh bill.
The Mongol Yuan Dynasty, founded by Kublai Khan (1215–1294), issued its own form of paper currency called chao; the Mongols brought it to Persia where it was called djaou or djaw. The Mongols also showed it to Marco Polo (1254–1324) during his 17-year-long stay in Kublai Khan’s court, where he was amazed by the idea of government-backed currency. However, the paper money was not backed by gold or silver. The short-lived Yuan Dynasty printed increasing amounts of the currency, leading to runaway inflation. This problem was unresolved when the dynasty collapsed in 1368.
Backed up by the state with a store of value
Used to easily buy and sell
Measured reliability
Could pay tax with it
Had elaborate characters, symbolic representation, and yer and reign of year of the khan as security features
Quriltai/khuriltai
Had to go back to capital after death of khan to wait for the next khan to be selected. During this timex Mongol top generals would choose the next great khan because there was no direct line. Could be a son or brother but no direct line.
All Great Khans of the Mongol Empire, for example Genghis Khan and Ögedei Khan, were formally elected in a Kurultai; khans of subordinate Mongol states,
During the Kurultai, Mongol Chiefs would all convene in order to choose the next Great Khan. The Kurultai, oftentimes but not always held in the capital of the Mongolian empire, were also a time to assign all critical positions of leadership as well as an opportunity to decide the militaristic direction to be implemented under new Khan and the aforementioned new leadership.[1]
The Kurultai, however, required the presence of the senior members of the tribes participating, who were also military leaders. Thus, the deaths of Ögedei and Möngke in 1241 CE and 1259 CE, respectively, necessitated the withdrawal of Mongol leaders (and troops) from the outskirts of Vienna and Venice (in 1241) and from Syria (in 1259), hamstringing military operations against the Austrians and Mamluks that might otherwise have continued.
Comos/koumiss/airag
Fermented mare’s milk
Very popular drink for the steppe people bc they travelled with their horses and mongolia has a lot of horses
Popular drink for many and people drank it a lot!
William of rubrick encountered it many times in his travels
levirate marriage
Levirate marriage is a type of marriage in which the brother of a deceased man is obliged to marry his brother’s widow. The term levirate is a derivative of the Latin word levir, meaning “husband’s brother”.
Common in this time and in this area
Levirate marriage has been practiced by societies with a strong clan structure in which exogamous marriage (i.e. marriage outside the clan) was forbidden. It has been known in many societies around the world.
Semuren
Generally central asian ethnic officials in the court of kubilai
The foreign auxiliaries of the Mongols, natives for the most part of Central Asia, formed the second group, the semuren, persons with special status. That class furnished the higher officialdom. In addition, its members, with their worldwide contacts and their privileged status, formed a new breed of merchants and speculators. Like the Mongols, they were exempt from taxation and enjoyed preferential use of the official post roads and services.
“People of Various Categories”
Ibn Buttutah
24 February 1304 – 1368 or 1369) was a Muslim Berber Moroccan scholar, and explorer who widely travelled the medieval world. Over a period of thirty years, Ibn Battuta visited most of the Islamic world and many non-Muslim lands, including Central Asia, Southeast Asia, India and China. Near the end of his life, he dictated an account of his journeys, titled A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling.
Malacca
Malacca’s relationships with Ming China granted it protection from attacks by Siam and Majapahit. Malacca officially submitted to Ming China as a protectorate. This encouraged the development of Malacca into a major trade settlement on the trade route between China and India, Middle East, Africa and Europe.[23]
In Malacca during the early 15th century, Ming China actively sought to develop a commercial hub and a base of operation for their treasure voyages into the Indian Ocean.
He went to Malaccca and defeated fleet of pirate Chinese
Prester John
The fantasy of Prester john was that there was this secret christian ruler that could ally wth
Prester John (Latin: Presbyter Johannes) was a legendary Christian patriarch, presbyter (elder), and king who was popular in European chronicles and tradition from the 12th through the 17th centuries. He was said to rule over a Nestorian (Church of the East) Christian nation lost amid the Islamic caliphates and pagan lands of the Orient, in which the patriarch of the Saint Thomas Christians resided. The accounts are varied collections of medieval popular fantasy, depicting Prester John as a descendant of the Three Magi, ruling a kingdom full of riches, marvels, and strange creatures.
At first, Prester John was imagined to reside in India; tales of the Nestorian Christians’ evangelistic success there and of Thomas the Apostle’s subcontinental travels as documented in works like the Acts of Thomas probably provided the first seeds of the legend. After the coming of the Mongols to the Western world, accounts placed the king in Central Asia, and eventually Portuguese explorers convinced themselves that they had found him in Ethiopia.
5 relationships
The Five Constant Relationships outline how one should act in society, being the relationships between
parent and child,
husband and wife,
elder sibling and junior sibling,
elder friend and junior friend
ruler and subject.
The power and the right belongs to the superior i.e to the older people over younger and to man over woman. Each people has to respect the superiority. The subject to his ruler, the wife to her husband, the son to his parents, and the younger brother to the older brother. Most of these relationship deals with the family. And if the love between family is perfect, everything will be perfect from home to village to the empire.
Ruler is said to have to keep this relationship with their subject by being virtues
Mandate of Heaven
Divine intervention
Moral behavior backed up from confusion ideas
Gains power bc they are loved by heaven and heaven knows who the people love bc heaven can hear and see what the people see.
Heaven loves that person bc they have popular support and if they don’t have it heaven loves them less so people are justified in their actions against leaders who they don’t really like as much
Protests are justified and the weather can tell us too if they are liked or not
Barlaam and Josaphat
Christian martyrs that are based off the life of buddah bc God forbid a story from the east about religion exist
Their life story is likely to have been based on the life of the Gautama Buddha. It tells how an Indian king persecuted the Christian Church in his realm. When astrologers predicted that his own son would someday become a Christian, the king imprisoned the young prince Josaphat, who nevertheless met the hermit Saint Barlaam and converted to Christianity. After much tribulation the young prince’s father accepted the Christian faith, turned over his throne to Josaphat, and retired to the desert to become a hermit. Josaphat himself later abdicated and went into seclusion with his old teacher Barlaam.
Gold and Silk Brocade
There was a lot in silk in the region and gold from the Altai mountains, so they had gold thread offices. There were also many craftsmen in this region to do so. Gold was also a very important colour in the Mongol court. Chiggisid people described themselves as the golden race.
Heart city – established textile palace
Page 80 in polo
Uighurs in the Mongol empire
In 1209, the Qocho ruler Baurchuk Art Tekin declared his allegiance to Genghis Khan, and the Uyghurs became important civil servants in the later Mongol Empire, which adapted the Old Uyghur alphabet as its official script.
Ultimately, the Uyghurs became civil servants administering the Mongol Empire.
Additionally, until Genghis Khan gained control over the Uyghur people, the Mongolians did not have a writing system. As such many of the records that survive of him were written by foreigners. An important Mongolian record that survives is called the “Secret History of the Mongols,”but was written anonymously (as its name suggests) apparently sometime after Genghis Khan’s death.