Destruction under the Mongol Empire

Drawing of Mongol siege of Baghdad in 1258.

Destruction under the Mongol Empire is considered very significant in many historical sources, ranging to around 40 million or more deaths caused by the Mongol invasion as a result of direct casualty and disruption of farming resulting in famine, flooding and diseases. This casualty amount is considered to be from early 1200s to mid 1400s.

Mongols' raids and invasions are generally regarded as one of the deadliest to human life and ranking in third after the deaths from World War II and the An Shi Rebellion. Because of the old sources of these numbers and the fact that they came from sources that suffered under Mongol invasions, which might accompany a corresponding point of view, it should be taken with the appropriate judgment.

Background

It has been suggested that Genghis Khan and the Mongols practiced the military doctrine known as "surrender or die" against their enemies. There are many sources about the amount of destruction Genghis Khan and his armies caused. These originate primarily from the people who suffered Mongol conquests such as the Persians, Russians and Chinese. They usually stress the negative aspects of the Mongol conquests and some modern scholars argue that their historians exaggerate the numbers of deaths and the extent of material destruction. However, such historians produce virtually all the documents available to modern scholars, making it difficult to establish a firm basis for any alternative view. Still, most sources contemporary and modern tend to the view that the overall destruction brought by the Mongols is large.

Strategy

Generally in military strategy, Genghis Khan, successors and generals preferred to offer their enemies the chance to surrender under their rule without a resistance and become vassals by sending tribute, accepting residents, contributing troops under a threat of large war.

Genghis Khan and his successors guaranteed the populace protection only if they abided by their rules that are set forth and the populace to be obedient, but their policy was widely written in historical documents as causing massive destruction, terror and deaths if there was to be a resistance. For example as one writer David Nicole notes in The Mongol Warlords, "terror and mass extermination of anyone opposing them was a well tested Mongol tactic." If the offer was refused, the Mongol leaders would not give an alternative choice but would order massive collective slaughter of the population of resisting cities and destruction of their property such as happened during the invasion of Khwarezmid Empire, Kievan Rus', Baghdad, China, Armenia, Georgia, Poland, Hungary, northern Iran, etc.

Invasion of Japan against samurai Suenaga using arrows and bombs, circa 1293.

Human toll

Only the skilled engineers and artists were spared from death and maintained as slaves if they agreed to surrender. Documents written during or just after Genghis Khan's reign say that after a conquest, the Mongol soldiers looted, pillaged and raped while the Khan got the first pick of the beautiful women. Some troops who submitted were incorporated into the Mongol system in order to expand their manpower; this also allowed the Mongols to absorb new technology, manpower, knowledge and skill for use in military campaigns against other potential opponents. These techniques were sometimes used to spread terror and warning to others (see above). He also passed a decree exempting all followers of the Taoist religion from paying any taxes. Genghis Khan was by and large tolerant of the multiple religions and there are no cases of him or the Mongols engaging in religious war against people he encountered during the conquests as long as they were obedient. However, all of his campaigns caused wanton and deliberate destruction of places of worship if they resisted.

There were also instances of mass slaughter even when there was no resistance, especially in Northern China where the vast majority of the population had a long history of accepting nomadic rulers. Many ancient sources described Genghis Khan's conquests as wholesale destruction on an unprecedented scale in their certain geographical regions, and therefore probably causing great changes in the demographics of Asia. For example, over much of Central Asia speakers of Iranian languages were replaced by speakers of Turkic languages. According to the works of the Iranian historian Rashid al-Din, the Mongols killed more than 70,000 people in Merv and more than a million in Nishapur. China reportedly suffered a drastic decline in population during the 13th and 14th centuries. Before the Mongol invasion, Chinese dynasties reportedly had approximately 120 million inhabitants; after the conquest was completed in 1279, the 1300 census reported roughly 60 million people. Genghis was known to have killed millions of people in northern China, but precisely how many of these deaths are directly attributable to Genghis Khan and his forces is unclear and speculative. About half of the Russian population may have died during the Mongol invasion of Rus. Colin McEvedy (Atlas of World Population History, 1978) estimates the population of Russia-in-Europe dropped from 7.5 million prior to the invasion to 7 million afterwards. The total population of Persia may have dropped from 2,500,000 to 250,000 as a result of mass extermination and famine. Historians estimate that up to half of Hungary's two million population at that time were victims of the Mongol invasion.

Property and culture

His campaigns in Northern China, Central Asia and the Middle East caused massive property destruction for those who resisted the Mongols according to the regions' historians; however, there are no exact factual numbers available at this time. For example, the cities of Herat, Nishapur, Vladimir and Samarkand suffered serious devastation by the Mongol armies. There is a noticeable lack of Chinese literature that has survived from the Jin Dynasty, due to the Mongol conquests.

Historical accounts

Iraq

A messenger of Hulagu Khan (grandson of Genghis Khan) delivered a message from him to the Baghdad governor before its invasion that

When I lead my army against Baghdad in anger, whether you hide in heaven or in earth, I will bring you down from the spinning spheres. I will toss you in the air like a lion. I will leave no one alive in your realm. I will burn your city, your land and yourself. If you wish to spare yourself and your venerable family, give heed to my advice with the ear of intelligence. If you do not, you will see what God has willed.

Accounts about the same battle, the battle of Baghdad:

Iraq in 1258 was very different from present day Iraq. Its agriculture was supported by canal networks thousands of years old. Baghdad was one of the most brilliant intellectual centers in the world. The Mongol destruction of Baghdad was a psychological blow from which Islam never recovered. Already Islam was turning inward, becoming more suspicious of conflicts between faith and reason and more conservative. With the sack of Baghdad, the intellectual flowering of Islam was snuffed out. Imagining the Athens of Pericles and Aristotle obliterated by a nuclear weapon begins to suggest the enormity of the blow. The Mongols filled in the irrigation canals and left Iraq too depopulated to restore them. - Steven Dutch

They swept through the city like hungry falcons attacking a flight of doves, or like raging wolves attacking sheep, with loose reins and shameless faces, murdering and spreading terror...beds and cushions made of gold and encrusted with jewels were cut to pieces with knives and torn to shreds. Those hiding behind the veils of the great Harem were dragged...through the streets and alleys, each of them becoming a plaything...as the population died at the hands of the invaders. - Abdullah Wassaf as cited by David Morgan

Rus'

An account of the Mongol invasion of Rus states that

For our sins, unknown nations arrived. No one knew their origin or whence they came, or what religion they practiced. That is known only to God, and perhaps to wise men learned in books. These terrible strangers have taken our country, and tomorrow they will take yours if you do not come and help us

Kiev

Another account of a Mongol invasion: Giovanni de Plano Carpini, the Pope's envoy to the Mongol Khan, who passed through Kiev in February 1246, wrote:

They [the Mongols] attacked Russia, where they made great havoc, destroying cities and fortresses and slaughtering men; and they laid siege to Kiev, the capital of Russia; after they had besieged the city for a long time, they took it and put the inhabitants to death. When we were journeying through that land we came across countless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on the ground. Kiev had been a very large and thickly populated town, but now it has been reduced almost to nothing, for there are at the present time scarce two hundred houses there and the inhabitants are kept in complete slavery."