In the thirteenth century, Europe knew nothing of the rise of a new imperial power in Asia. The Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Kings of Europe knew nothing about the Muslim political and commercial activities in Asia. The news of the Mongol conquests in Russia and the invasion of Hungary and Poland caused a reaction in Europe. They needed to know the intentions of the new invaders.
By contrast, Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan) and General Subudei considered intelligence a priority. Before a campaign, Chinggis Khan and Subudei acquired maps and paid for informants and spies recruited in the region. The Arabs were known as superb mapmakers. Before the campaigns in the lands of Islam and Europe, the Mongol Empire was well-informed about the personalities of the rulers and the conditions for the army.
Editor’s Introduction: Diane Wolff in the introduction below provides historical context for her latest work Fish Shoes: A Palace Drama appropriate for middle school age readers and published on the Wattpad online platform. To read Fish Shoes: A Palace Drama in its entirety, visit the Wattpad website at https://tinyurl.com/2p87bpv5. The story is told in twenty-five episodes and is available at no charge. The author encourages readers to leave comments. The complete first chapter from the book, “The Princess and the Horse Race,” is provided after the introduction.
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“The Kingdome of China”, one of the first English-language maps of China, by the English cartographer John Speed in 1626. It is a generally correct outline of Ming China, with many provinces labeled. “Xuntien alias Quinzay” corresponds to Beijing. Even though it had already been proven that Cathay was simply another name for China, Speed continued the tradition of showing “Cathaya, the Chief Kingdome of Great Cam” to the northeast of China. On his map, he placed Xandu (Xanadu) east of the “Cathayan metropolis” of Cambalu. Source: Wikimedia Commons at https://tinyurl.com/26mjhwyu.
In the thirteenth century, Europe knew nothing of the rise of a new imperial power in Asia. The Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Kings of Europe knew nothing about the Muslim political and commercial activities in Asia. The news of the Mongol conquests in Russia and the invasion of Hungary and Poland caused a reaction in Europe. They needed to know the intentions of the new invaders.
By contrast, Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan) and General Subudei considered intelligence a priority. Before a campaign, Chinggis Khan and Subudei acquired maps and paid for informants and spies recruited in the region. The Arabs were known as superb mapmakers. Before the campaigns in the lands of Islam and Europe, the Mongol Empire was well-informed about the personalities of the rulers and the conditions for the army.
One cannot ignore the dark side of Mongol rule.1 The Mongol conquests caused slaughter of civilian populations and the devastation of the countryside. It was a standard practice of Mongol warfare to drive civilian populations before the army when riding on a walled city, as a means of inducing the garrison to surrender the
city without a war. It was a brutal but effective tactic.
The complaint of Muslim chroniclers was that “He made of a fertile valley a desert.” While it is true that some areas took centuries to recover, Samarkand, the capital of the Shah of Khwarezm, was functioning well enough to generate revenues and farm products within a short period of time after the conquest of 1221–1222.
Marco Polo spent three years in Bukhara thirty years after the conquests. In The Travels, Marco bears witness to the fact that this center of Islamic learning trade and civilization, was a functioning
market town whose trade was not interrupted by the conquests, but by a dispute at the top of the Mongol world. This was something new, civil war between rival Mongol Khans.2
As Robert D. Kaplan says, “[The Mongols Empire’s] most compelling weapon was—despite the Mongols’ bloody reputation—not the sword, but trade: gems, fabrics, spices, metal and so on. It was
the trade routes, not the projection of military power that emblemized the ‘Pax Mongolica.’ Mongol grand strategy was built on commerce much more than on war.”3
A painting of Kublai Khan, as he would have appeared in the 1260s. Painted after his death in February of 1294, by the Nepalese artist and astronomer Anige. The painting is done in the Chinese portrait style. Source: Wikimedia Commons at https://tinyurl.com/3anhy24h.
As the Mongols subjugated and sought to administer more territory, they required the assistance of foreigners. The Mongol court began to use the Muslims to rule the conquered populations,
a growing need for Muslim expertise in trade, finance and crafts. They were entrusted with vast responsibilities and controlled by periodic purges.
To paraphrase Morris Rossabi, Muslims from Central Asia and the Middle East played an influential role in the national economy. They directed the financial administration of the empire
and served as trade commissioners in the coastal cities of southeastern China. They also staffed the Bureau of Astronomy at the imperial court.4
As a buffer people, Muslims drew the hostility of their Chinese underlings and their Mongol overlords. Trade was the main motivation of the Muslims who settled in southeastern China—maritime trade. Khubilai Khan’s (Kublai Khan) maritime expedition against Japan in 1274 had ended disastrously.5 The Muslim defector Pu Shou-keng, Superintendent of Maritime Trade at Chuan-chou,
shifted his allegiance to the Yuan in 1276. He offered a naval force to the Mongols who had no true navy of their own. It was the beginning of a new era.
Khubilai Khan came to the throne in a contested election but wished to rule as a true Chinese emperor. He wished to embody the ideal relationship, that of benevolent ruler and sage minister, with
loyalty as their bond and moral rule as their method. He had this relationship with Minister Liu, head of the Central Secretariat. He made a career of using Chinese methods to govern China.
Khubilai delivered Orders of Submission to the Southern Song Emperor several times. They were ignored. The Southern Song Emperor was a Han Chinese and presided over a brilliant culture and a new modern mercantile society. The South had not been ruled by foreign dynasties, as had the North. The idea was that the Mongol invaders were barbarians who had stolen the country.
Mongol cavalry pursuing their enemy. Fourteenth-century illumination from Jami’ al-Tasanif al-Rashidi (The Collected Works of Rashid). Source: Wikimedia Commons at https://tinyurl.com/mwt8xk8v.
By 1265, Khubilai had grown tired of being rebuffed by the Southern Song. His spies informed him that the Southern Song was in terrible condition. Khubilai decided that the time had come to go to war. General Bayan had been waiting for the conquest of the south to begin. He lost no time in developing a plan for the campaign. Bayan left court in command of the Yuan Army. He took troops and rode to Hunnan, a frontier area inhabited by tribes and wild beasts. He had initial success. In 1265, Bayan had his first major battle with the Song and captured 146 ships.
The city of Xiang-yang was the gateway to the Southern Song. The most important city in the South, Xiang-yang was a center of crafts, manufacture and trade, and had twelve smaller cities and villages incorporated into its outlying regions. Located at the confluence of two rivers, the Han and the Yangzi, it was was the entrance to the heart of Song territory. Once Xiang-yang was taken, the South could be laid open in two directions.
The occupants of the city rejected the Orders of Submission and in 1268, a siege began. No one could have predicted how valiantly the citizens would resist. The city could only be besieged from the North because mountains lay on that side. On the other three sides was a deep lake fed by rivers. This meant naval, not cavalry, battles. Song naval units continually attacked Bayan’s troops from the rivers. Two years passed and still the invading troops were unable to breach the city walls.
Xiang-yang did not fall. Instead, the city became celebrated as the major symbol of Song resistance. It became a thorn in Bayan’s side. It also began a new era in Mongol warfare and naval battles.
A city under Mongol siege. From the illuminated manuscript of Rashid ad-Din’s Jami al-Tawarikh. Edinburgh University Library. Source: Wikimedia Commons at https://tinyurl.com/2fdanvs9.
Bayan cut off the city from the rest of the Song state. He had warships and transport ships on the river but was unable to stop the Song Navy. Mongol ships were smaller in number and of lesser
quality. On many occasions, the Song Navy—because of its skillful navigation of the rivers—ran the Mongol blockade and resupplied the city. Xiang-yang would have been starved out without these timely replenishments of men, arms and food.
By 1270, after years of supplying rice, boats, men and material in an effort which had so far proved fruitless, after the loss of 1,000 men, the escape of Song troops on 1,000 paddle wheel boats, repeated dispatches of troops from the north, and the reinforcements of Song Army regulars arriving from east of the city by river, a defector came over to the Mongol side.
The defector went to the Mongol commanders in the south, turned over his weapons, and demanded to speak to Khubilai Khan. General Bayan sent him north to Xanadu.
By the late-thirteenth century, the Mongol Empire covered some nine million square miles of territory. The largest contiguous land empire in world history. Source: Britannica.com at https://tinyurl.com/3c99zp6z.
Previously, the Mongols had never thought of competing for the seagoing trade. Khubilai ordered the defector to design vessels for his navy. Once the war was over, Khubilai Khan would have a merchant fleet. The trade in the local seas was all in the hands of Muslims—Arabs, Persians, and also Indian Muslims. On the maritime Silk Road, the Muslims were coastal rather than open ocean sailors. They traded with Java, Burma, Sumatra, Arabia, India and Africa. It was a profitable trade. No Chinese ships sailed the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. Yuan China could compete for the
trade if it had ships and a merchant fleet. The Supreme Khan embarked upon a massive program of shipbuilding.
The Koreans had a lively trade in Southeast Asia and were known as excellent sailors, pilots and shipbuilders. A man born to the horse, Khubilai decided to build a navy on Korean soil and in the
process gave orders to cut down much of the forested areas of Korea, big timber forests.
The Korean Campaign is the least well known of the Mongol campaigns, probably because Korea is a small country and conventional maps of the Silk Road do not include Japan and Korea. The Mongol Empire waged nine campaigns against Korea, beginning in the 1230s. The focus of most scholars has been on the west; particularly, China’s overland connection with the Eastern Mediterranean.
Mongke was Khubilai’s older brother and was Supreme Khan before him. As emperor in the 1250s, Mongke invaded Korea seven times.
Ultimately, after a great deal of death and destruction, the Mongol Army occupied the country. The old King surrendered but took refuge on an island. Mongol troops were unable to capture him.
Mongke demanded that the King send Crown Prince Chongyeol, then a young man, to Khubilai’s court as a hostage: This was Mongol statecraft. Chongyeol would guarantee the king’s good behavior, meaning the king would not rebel and he would pay his tribute. Khubilai received the young man into his household and the two developed a bond over time, waged in the opening campaign against the Southern Song in southwest China.
Why did the most powerful army of the Middle Ages attack Korea? The answer is simple: revenue. Korea was rich from trade in timber, luxury items and manufactured goods. Renowned as builders of ships, Korea engaged in a lively maritime trade with Japan and the nations of Southeast Asia. They had a presence in the trading towns of Southern China. Korean merchants connected to the Indian Ocean and Afro-Eurasian trade networks. The goods ranged from ordinary to luxury items: Japanese perfumes, medicines such as ginseng, ceramics, silver, silk, brassware, ink-sticks, musical instruments, scissors, spoons, candle snuffers and more. Korea was strategic. It ruled two provinces of Manchuria, whose nomad horsemen represented a potential threat as adversaries to the Yuan.
Khubilai Khan’s second daughter, The Princess Supreme, offers an example of marriage as Mongol statecraft. The story of a sixteen-year-old girl becoming the Queen of Korea, caught between her
father’s commands and her husband’s protection of his people, with divided loyalties between her father and her husband, takes place against the backdrop of the important events of the thirteenth century. The young characters in her story are about the same age as middle schoolers. The young adult reader has a basis of comparison with the lives of the characters such as Marco Polo and the Heir Apparent, Khubilai’s son Jinggim. Historical fiction has the ability to bring the human drama to life and draw the student into the human dimensions of a sweeping epic. It brings the past alive and shows its relevance to contemporary times. The story provides many topics for lively classroom discussion.
Detail from Kublai Khan on a Hunting Expedition. Painted in the year 1280 by the Chinese court artist Liu Guandao. The scroll is located at the National Palace Museum, Taipei. Source: Wikimedia Commons at https://tinyurl.com/3ewe3jk4.
