None For All and One For None
Originally, the Mongolian people were divided into nomadic clans, moving from place to place to find the supplies they needed to survive. Later, the Mongols became an enormous stationary empire, lasting from 1206-1368. Most of their men and some women became a part of their military which is known as ferocious and powerful, and their violent ways of conquering people and seizing land are infamous to the world today. In their short time of being an Empire, they captured 4,860,000 square miles of land according to Size of World Conquests chart (Doc 1), which is over one million more square miles then the US owns today. Because the Mongol Empire was so massive, in order to be a successful, they needed to …show more content…
According to Robert Marshall, a historian from the University of California Press, the Mongol Empire split into five khanates (Doc 18). It was much easier to control the area when there were multiple people governing instead of one person controlling the huge piece of land because the rulers could concentrate more on governing the people of the land they helped govern. The Mongols had a massive army, so they had to find a way to organize the soldiers so their army could be efficient. Luckily, Genghis Khan had the perfect way to assemble the …show more content…
The Mongols understood that one single religion would not work for everyone, so they did not care what religion each individual followed. According to William of Rubruck, a Flemish, Christian emissary who travelled from Europe to learn about the Mongols, Mongke Khan declared “But just as God gave different fingers to the hand so has He given different ways to different men” (Doc 9). By proclaiming this, it was obvious that Mongke truly understood that it was okay for citizens of an empire to be divided into different religions because it would not negatively affect himself or the empire. As well as being tolerant of religions “Genghis, the man, was interested in all religions,” according to Historian Heather Wheeler of History on the Web (Doc 12). Genghis Khan didn’t just accept the fact that there were different religions for different people, he was interested in immersing himself in their culture, learning, and meeting people of different religions. Both of his sons married Christian women even though they believed in Tengrism. Also, Genghis appointed rulers of different religions to different parts of the empire. If the Mongols had not been so religiously tolerant it would have been almost impossible to govern their giant area (Doc 12). In other societies such as the Roman Empire and Chinese dynasties there were uproars about which religion