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Who Were the Mongols? My new site: www.idiocentrism.com At gmail dot com I am known as emersonj "Instead of ethnic designations we shall have
to deal with terms of nomenclature reflecting essentially the
form of the constitutional organization of nomadic groups. We
believe that the dark mists obscuring the history of the steppe
would be dispelled sooner if emphasis were laid on the study of
the migration of political symbols rather than that of
hypothetical migrations of ethnic units, on the 'alarums and
excursions' of political groupings, rather than on the mythical
meanderings of self-conscious ethnoses, each bent on proagating
its particular linguistic or ethnic self." (Boodberg, p.
305). What is a Mongol? In this section I will briefly
discuss different ways of answering this question, as put forth
respectively by modern scholars, by traditional civilized
historians, and by the Mongols themselves as seen in the Secret
History and Rashid ad-din. In modern scholarship the names by which barbarian
peoples are designated are usually thought to refer to racially,
linguistically, and culturally defined ethnic groups (with
"culture" often being just a label for the way of life
of a linguistically-defined group -- e.g. "Polynesian
culture"). For a variety of reasons I think that this
practice is unhelpful when discussing the steppe peoples. The
large steppe confederations such as the Huns or the Mongols were
never mono-lingual or racially uniform, but were coalitions of
diverse origin. Even the component tribes were mixed: practices
such as kidnapping, slave-trading, exogamy, fostering, alliance,
adoption and coerced military recruitment meant that bilingualism
and intermarriage were highly prevalent. Furthermore, the
mobility of the steppe contrasted sharply with the rootedness of
peasant families who lived generation after generation in a
single village. The steppe world was fluid and
frequently-stirred, and by and large the steppe peoples shared a
common steppe culture defined by pastoralism and war rather than
by ethnicity, and the peoples spoken of in the civilized
histories are normally armies: the steppe enemies of the
civilized world. For the record, the earliest steppe barbarians were,
by and large, Caucasians speaking Iranian languages (the
Scythians, et al); but later on East Asian peoples, speaking
first Turkish and later Mongol languages, replaced them. But for
the reasons given above, to speak of separate Scythian, Turkish,
and Mongol cultures is misleading. At any given time there might
be difference between the eastern steppe and the western steppe,
and over time there were historical changes, but there was no
significant systematic contrast between Mongol-ness,
Turkish-ness, and Scythian-ness. (To spare the reader, further
discussion of this point has been relegated to Appendix One). In the light of this, the famous sloppiness of
Chinese, Persians, and Europeans in their use of ethnonyms
seems much less problematic. European writers of the later period
used "Scythian", "Turk", "Hun",
"Tatar", and "Mongol"almost interchangeably
based on the literary effect desired. The Chinese used
"Hu", and sometimes "Ti" as generic terms,
and often identified other peoples as "Hsiung-nu" even
though they were clearly a different people. The Chinese called
the Mongols (and some of the Turks) of Chinggis' time
"Tatars", which was the name of just one of the Mongol
tribes. The word "Hun", which was used both near
China and in Europe, may have been a generic Persian or Turkish
word. All this makes sense if you understand that these words
were functionally and politically, rather than linguistically or
racially defined. The Scythians/Huns/Turks were "whichever
cavalry people north of the Black Sea it is that keeps raiding
us" -- and similiarly for China and Persia. In fact,
I believe that for a historian this functional definition is the
best one; modern ethnographic definitions add relatively little
of value and can cause more trouble than they're worth. A careful examination of the sources can help us
understand how Mongol groups were defined and how the Mongols
themselves named human groups. Below I will discuss Rashid ad-Din
first, and then The Secret History. Mongols in Rashid ad-din Rashid ad-Din's "Book of the Tribes"
(written more than a half century after Chinggis Qan's death by
the Persian chief minister of Persia's Mongol rulers) treats
Mongols as a subclassification of Turks. (This is not really a
bold stroke, since the Mongol and Turkish languages are closely
related and the ways of life of many of the Mongols and Turks
were almost identical. The majority of Chinggis Qan's horde were
Turks). Rashid divides the tribes into four groups (with some
overlap): first, six Turkish tribes from west of Mongolia
descended from the legendary Oguz, all of whom joined the Mongol
confederation rather late. Second, a group of fourteen Mongol
tribes which had members among the Mongol hordes, but which did
not exist as political units and were commoners or unfree. Third,
nine important peoples who had their own leaders, including among
them Turkish and Mongol groups together with the Tanguts. And
finally, twenty-four Mongol tribes more independent than the
tribes in the second group, of whom the first eight (the
Terligen), were less honored than the next sixteen, the Nilun,
who were the most closely related to Chinggis Qan. Rashid's lists
begin with the tribes furthest from the Qan and ascend to those
closest (without, however, mentioning the royal clan itself.) By and large these tribes are treated consistently
with what we see in the earlier Secret History. One exception is
the Dorben, which should not be treated as Nilun because they
were descended from Alan Qo'a's brother-in-law Dobun rather than
from Alan-qo'a herself. The fact that Bolad, one of Rashid's most
important informants, was a Dorben almost certainly had something
to do with this upgrade. Not only in Rashid's work but also in
the Secret History, the chroniclers' reports on the past can be
presumed to have been distorted by their awareness of the
relative contemporary statusses of the descendants of historical
figures described, and particular the chroniclers' own claims
based on descent from historical figures. Mary Douglas has shown
how even in literate China geneologies were mostly fictitious
further back than the sixth generation; the levels older than
that really existed only to ground politically-useful kinship
relationships. This is only the more true among the Mongols,
whose culture was almost entirely oral before about 1206 A.D. In sum, the tribes in Rashid are defined two
different ways: by kinship, and politically. Politically the
groups ranged from dispersed commoner Mongol groups, through
dispersed commoner Turkish groups, through miscellaneous
semi-autonomous groups, and finally to honored Mongol groups with
varying degrees of claims to kinship to Chinggis Qan. As a rule
of thumb it is safest to assume that the political definitions
are dominant and that the kinship claims are secondary or
fictitious. Tribal Identification in The Secret History The Secret History, the Mongol version of which was
compiled as early as 1228 AD (immediately following the death of
Chinggis Qan) is the most authentically-Mongol source for the
life of Chinggis Qan. In this work we see three forms of group
designation. First, a present- and future- oriented clan defined
by kinship; second, a past-oriented clan, also defined by
kinship; and finally, group membership based, not on kinship, but
on allegiance to a war chief. As a complicating factor, the
kinship-defined groups could be variously defined depending on
which ancestor was chosen as the cut-off, giving each individual
potential membership in several different groups of varying
sizes, with the smaller groups nested in descending order of size
within the larger groups. For example, Temujin was simultaneously a Mongol, a
Kiyan, and a Borjigin. The Borjigin were limited to Temujin, his
brothers, and their descendants; this group was defined by
descent from Temujin's father Yesugei. The Kiyan were defined by
descent from Temujin's grandfather Bartan-ba'atur, and consisted
of the Borjigin plus Temujin's uncle Daritai, his cousins Quchar
and Onggur, and their descendants. (The Mongols did not limit
inheritance to sons, but left it open to other male kin not
directly descended from the departed Qan). The Mongols were most
probably defined by descent from the legendary Qaidu, Temujin's
great-great-great-great grandfather, but drew its prestige from
Temujin's great-grandfather Qabul Qan, who had been a important
figure during the first part of the twelfth century (which was
really the last time that the Mongols had had much success until
Temujin came along). This narrow definition of clan defined eligibility
for inheritance -- thus, if Temujin had been defined as a
Borjigin, only his brothers and his uncle Daritai and their
descendants could have inherited Chinggis Qan's position, whereas
if he had been defined as a Kiyan several more distant uncles and
cousins would have been eligible. However, there is also a second
definition of clan which defined the scope of a leader's claims.
Once Temujin had defined himself as a Kiyan, he could claim
leadership for his core Kiyat group he led over all descendants
of any male ancestor, back past Qabul and Qaidu all the way to
the legendary Bodonchar and even further. Furthermore, he could
claim for himself all the prestige and magical power of any of
his male ancestors, which in this case especially meant Qabul and
Qaidu. This is the backward definition of clan, which mostly lays
claims in the present on the basis of kinship relationships with
the dead, including legendary and mythical figures. The names
Kiyan, Borjigin, and Mongol all identify clans with only two or
three generations of living members with ancestors ten or more
generations in the past (Mongqolin-qo'a, Borjidai-mergen -- both
of whom are mentioned in the Secret History -- and Qiyan the
brother of Neguz. This rather resembles the Chinese practice of
naming usurper dynasties after great past dynasties, or the
American practice of naming new towns after major European
cities.) This does not mean that all descendants of Bodonchar,
for example, could claim to be the Borjigin leader, but that the
Borjigin here on earth, defined as Yesugei's descendants, were
laying claim to the allegiance of (and making an offer of
leadership to) all the descendants of Bodonchar. The third form of group membership is simply
military allegiance to a war chief, without any regard to kinship
relations. In context, anyone following a Kereit, Mongol, or
Tatar leader into battle might be called a Kereit, a Mongol, or a
Tatar. In practice, folowers could be of many types, including
sworn brothers, volunteers, subject tribes, tribes and
individuals which had recently been pressed into service, and
even actual kin. The steppe armies of any size were always
defined primarily in this manner, and within them kinship really
defined only the inheritance of leadership, including the
leadership of a few trusted and privileged subgroups. Most
members of Temujin's horde had joined, voluntarily or
involuntarily, as individuals, without regard for kinship bonds,
and if they had joined as part of a kin group in most cases their
group was dispersed. (This is one of the senses in which it might
be said that the Mongols were a "modern" rather than a
"traditional" society.) Temujin was a direct descendant of Qabul Qan, Qaidu
Qan, and the legendary founder Bodanchar. He inherited some of
their nobility and prestige, and was able to make special claims
on any of the other descendants of these men. He also was the son
of Yisugei, who it seems clear had been ready to make a claim,
based on his successes against the Tatar enemy, to be the Mongol
Qan against his distant Tayyichi'ut cousins who had had little
success in that position. But all the claims Temujin was able to
make made him enemies. Besides the Tayyichi'ut, his Jurgin and
Kiyat cousins also had their claims, and when he was defeated in
his first try at leadership, most of them separated from him.
Ultimately he was to kill all of the Kiyat and Jurgin kin of his
generation except for most of his brothers and one of his Kiyat
cousins (Onggur). When he defined himself as a Borjigin through
Yesugei, in theory all of his father's descendants were in line
to succeed him, but in fact only his own sons were considered.
The definition of the Borjigin as the descendants of Bodonchar
was merely an ambitious claim. Conclusion The primary organizing principle of Mongol society
was a functional one -- military leadership. Military groups were
united by an absolute allegiance to a leader. Noble descent was a
major resource for leaders putting together a following, as were
a reputation for generosity and fairness, as well as omens and
prophecies of various sorts. Kinship was also one of the
resources a leader had in gathering his following, though it was
a treacherous one since near kin were also competitors for power.
A leader could also gain followers from his tribe's hereditary
dependents and his mother's and his wife's peoples, but many of
his followers were unrelated "nokor" who came as
volunteers on an individual basis. Once recruited, in any case,
followers were part of the leader's military machine and
functioned according to its rules. Purer forms of clan organization probably did exist
at times, especially during the periods of disunity. But these
groups were not the ones known to history as "The
Mongols", and even if defined by kinship, their primary
function was still military. It's interesting to ask what the
function of clan membership, and genealogy, was for dispersed,
leaderless, powerless tribes such as the Jalair. It would seem to
be limited to incest rules about intermarriage, and the faint,
distant hope of someday reclaiming past glory. This squares with most of what we know about the
barbarian peoples of history. Whether on the borders of China or
Rome, these defined themselves as political and military units
organized in obedience to a war chief, rather than racially,
linguistically or culturally (except insofar as they shared a
common military culture). The language of the group and its
nominal ethnicity was normally that of the war chief. When the
Huns disappeared, this does not mean that all the Huns were
killed. It means that the political unit ruled by Attila
disintegrated, and its members dispersed into various smaller
groups, most of which were not led by Huns. Barbarian
"nations" existed for the military purpose of gaining
concessions of various sorts from the civilized world, and the
groups were defined by their military forms of organization. Boodberg , Peter, “The Altaic Word for
‘Horn’ in the Political Nomenclature of the
Steppe”, Selected Works, California, 1979, pp.
296—305. Dunnell: Xi-Xia. Wittfogel: Qara-qitai Shu Ching: Wen/ Wu Wang.
APPENDIX: RACE,
LANGUAGE, AND CULTURE During the nineteenth century and before, many
attempts (which we would call reductionist) were made to put the
study of mankind on a scientific basis. Enormous effort went into
classifying the peoples of the world according to race, language,
and (toward the end of this period) "culture" -- the
last of which often seemed simply to mean the way of life of the
speakers of a given language or language group (e.g.
"Malayo-Polynesian culture".) Without going too far in
a postmodernist direction, I think that it is fair to say that
these attempts, especially when they attempted to find a
describable "nature" in racial, linguistic, and
cultural groups, were guilty of "essentialism" in their
tendency to posit essentially-fictional "pure" races,
languages and cultures at some indefinite point in the past. The
mere fact of sexual reproduction tends to ensure, given the
vicssitudes of history, that racial groups will all be mixed, and
cultural and linguistic borrowing are also powerful influences
toward impurity. European political events during the 1940's tended
to put an end to attempts describe humanity according to racial
categories, but there still exist strong tendencies to describe
peoples according to their language and culture. Thus, Mongols
are of Mongol language and culture (and also, as it happens, also
"Mongoloid" in race). Turks and Manchus are of Turkish
and Manchu language and culture respectively, and so on for
Scythians, Tokharians, Yeniseians, Hungarians, and so on. It is one of the definitions of science that it
finds unexpected, relatively simple ideas which succeed in
explaining a large amount of confusing data. These simple ideas
are often called "causes". Thus, diabetes is caused by
the failure to produce insulin, smallpox is caused by the
smallpox virus, and so one. The nineteenth-century thinking about
race, language, and culture tended to regard them as causes. My
argument here is that race and language are not causes at all,
but only markers. Peoples who live pretty much the same way
really are are pretty much the same, even though their languages
and races (e.g. Scythian, Turkish, Hungarian, and Mongol) are
widely different. Likewise, peoples whose languages are more or
less closely related to each other but not to most other
languages (e.g., the Hungarians, the Finns, the Mordvins, and the
Vogul) are not necessarily similiar at all. (For the idea to that
language is causal to have any power, the Hungarians should
differ from the Austrians in a way analogous to the way that the
Finns differ from the Swedes -- I case I find hard to make). And
finally, peoples whose languages are unique and unrelated to any
other (e.g. the Basques, the Burushaski, and the the Nivkh) are
not themselves unique. I have taken the long way around to getting to my
main point. When you are talking about the Mongols who founded
the Mongol empire, rather than analyzing "Mongol
culture", you should analyze the whole history of the
steppe/sedentary confrontation. The political and military
relationships that anthropologists tend to bracket out are the
most important things to look at. On the steppe, at least, race,
language, and "culture" are useful in the
reconstruction of the past history of a people, but they don't
tell you what you need to know about what that people is really
like. The Mongols were most like Turks and Scythians, and the
early Hungarians were like all three of them -- regardless of
language or race. They all were defined by the steppe way of life
and its military relationship to civilization. The Mongols, Tangut, Toba, Khitai, Karakhitai,
Jurchen, Ottomans, Hsiung-nu, Huns, Kushans, and so on which you
read of in history were all large, complex, politico-military
groups of mixed origin. Their tribal names were derived from the
tribal designations (some of them rather nominal) of the clans
from which their leaders were chosen. But the Khitai who founded
and ruled the Liao dynasty, for example, were not really the same
as the "tribal" Khitai who existed before the Liao
dynasty and who also survived it. The pre-Liao tribal Khitai were
merely one of the steppe peoples. The founding Khitai were most
the peoples of the steppe -- as organized and led by the Khitai.
The Khitai Liao were the rulers of North China and their civil
and military supporters of Khitai origin (including some
"tribal" Khitai). The post-Liao tribal Khitai were once
again just one of the many steppe peoples. (This analysis can be
repeated, with variations, for the fugitive Khitai founders of
the Karakhitai state). So back to the original question: Most broadly, the
Mongols were the steppe army, constituted of troops of widely
varying ethnicities, which conquered much of the world in the
thirteenth century. This army united almost all the forces of the
steppe and represented the steppe barbarians versus civilization.
Most narrowly, the Mongols were the members of the
kin group, descended from Chinggis Qan, which led the Mongol army
and governed the Mongol Empire. In between, the Mongols were
those who could establish a patrilineal kinship link with this
ruling kin group through Yisugei, Qabul Qan, Qaidu Qan,
Bodonchar. Probably those with a link through the female line
(e.g. the Onggirat) were also Mongols, simply because they were
often closer to the leadership group than many patrilineal kin.
Finally, all Mongol-speakers were also Mongols, regardless of how
distant the relationahip to the ruling clan was. But this
anthropological definition of the term was not the one the
Mongols used, nor is it a useful definition for historians.
FRAGMENTS
Buell on Mongol kinship Also oboq etc. Gather Buell / Rachewiltz Collar, smokehole, head -- Golden lion -- a "people" was a led unit united by someone. Two contrasting lists from SH. Composite political entity. Class, kinship are options. Like language, culture, race, exaggerated. Dissect kinship (intermarriage; solidarity; leadership; inheritance). Otchigin and mother (Bekter). Matrilineal aspect.
The idea that the specifics of languages have a
causal effect on culture and behavior is identified with Whorf,
but the following example from Levi-Strauss, (Structural
Anthropology, Basic Books, 1963: "Language and the Analysis
of Social Laws", especially pp. 63-5) conjectures that
various language groups are each correlated to a specific kinship
system, and thus to a specific kind of society. For example:
"Sino-Tibetan kinship systems exhibit quite a different type
of complexity.... Translated into more general terms applicable
to language that would conform to the following linguistic
patterns, we may say that the structure is complex, while the
elements are few, a feature which may be related to the tonal
structure of these languages.....The widely recognized feature of
the Oceanic kinship system seem to lead to the following
formulation of the basic characteristics of the linguistic
pattern: simple structure and few elements.....The linguistic
patter to correlation of this situation [American Indian kinship]
is that certain of the American Indian languages offer a
relatively high number of element which succeed in becoming
organized into relatively simple structure by the structures'
asymmetrical forms." It has even been proposed (Eberhart, Wolfram,
Conquerors and Rulers, Brill, 1952, pp. 69-72) that the Mongol,
Turkic, Tibetan, and Tungusic peoples each had their own distinct
political forms, ways of life, and even their own types of
pastoralism varying according to the combined effects of language
group and the type of livestock raised (Tibetans raising yaks and
nomadizing over a rather small area, for example). Since groups
speaking languages belonging to each of these language groups
lived in various physical environments suitable for various sorts
of livestock, it's hard to imagine how this idea could be more
than a very rough rule of thumb. Jackson tr. Rubruck, p. 120: 1253 Mongol self-reference as "Mo'ol" rather than Christian. In Yuri Tambovtsev's study of the phonological
relationships between the various Turkic languages, Mongol seems
to be closer to Uzbek and Anatolian Turkish, the most central
Turkic languages, than many languages which are classified as
Turkic (Mongolian Studies, XXIV, 2001, pp.41-84.) Mary Douglas, "Passive Voice Theories in
religious sociology," In an Active Voice, Routledge
Kegan Paul, 1982, argues against the idea that languages have
causal effects.. There has been a tremendous amount of speculation
about the languages of the Huns and the Hsiung-nu ("Were
they Turks or something else?"), and also about the possible
identity of these two peoples (since a Sogdian letter exists
calling the Hsiung-nu "Huns".) As I have said, I think
that the former question is of relatively little importance. The
problem with the second is that the Hsiung-nu disappeared in the
east about two centuries before the Huns appeared in the west,
and no one can say what happened in between. It seems likely to
me that "Hun" was a generic Iranian or Turkish word,
and that the West learned it from a Iranian- or Turkish-speaking
people. And even if the "Hun" name in the West was
meant as a reference back to the Hsiung-nu in the east, it was a
semi-fictitious attempt to appropriate the past glory of an
rather distantly related ancient nation, the way Tamerlane
claimed the heritage of Chinggis Qan, the Tangut claimed the
mantle of the Toba, and various ephemeral Chinese dynasties took
on the names of such ancient Chinese states as the Ch'in, Chin,
Wei, Yen, etc. A look at Dutch, Low German, Catalan, Gallego,
Provencal, Scots, Sardinian, Romansch, Danish, Norwegian, and
Swedish will illustrate one of my points. Some of these are very
distinct languages which have always been called dialects, some
once were languages but now are dialects, and some are
independent languages which are only very weakly distinguishable
from other independent languages. The reasons are to be found not
in linguistics but in politics. Very roughly speaking, the first steppe peoples were
probably Caucasians speaking a Northern Iranian language: the
Scythians who raided Persia and Greece, and who seem later to
have spread far to the east. As time went on, Turkish and then
closely-related Mongol peoples (both probably originally forest
peoples) of East Asian race occupied Mongolia and began to drift
south. The Hsiung-nu who fought China and the much later Khirgiz
were probably Turkish speaking and of East Asian race, but some
believe that they spoke paleo-Siberian or Yeniseean languages
belonging to a pre-Turkish group which is now almost extinct (and
very little known); these peoples were also of East Asian race.
In Europe, the Hungarians (ca 800-1000) were Caucasians speaking
a Finno-Ugric language, and presumably had earlier been northern
forest peoples. However none of these groups was ethnically
uniform. The ascription of causal effects to language or race
was a widespread nineteenth- century error, and this error still
has not entirely disappeared in the case of language. (I have
mercifully put my arguments for this point in an appendix at the
end). The value of language and race for steppe historians is
purely as markers. Genetic studies have confirmed that the Hazara
in Afghanistan are indeed closely related to the Mongols (even
though they are now Muslims speaking an Iranian language). The
atypical language of the Chuvash Turks lends support to the idea
that they are the descendants of the first wave of Turkish
migration to the west, and perhaps the descendants of the Volga
Bulgars. The Indo-European -- but not Iranian -- language of the
Tokharians does lend some credence to the theory that this
Caucasian people came from the west at a very early date. And so
on.
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