Initially, many foreigners' understanding of the Orient may have come from the Travels of Marco Polo, but many people believe that the things recorded by Marco Polo in his travels are exaggerated.
Before Mark Polo, there were two other travelogues recorded by Europeans traveling to the Orient, namely the Burran Guest Mongol Chronicle and the Rubrooke Eastbound Chronicle, which are considered to be more reliable records of the eastward journey, and which show a Mongol Empire that may not even be familiar to Chinese.
Marco polo
"Very tough" Mongols
In the 13th century, the Mongols invaded Eastern Europe, And Europe was shaken, and both the king and the church were anxious to understand the intentions and situation of the Mongols, and they sent many emissaries and missionaries to Mongolia to check on the situation in Mongolia, and even persuaded the Mongol Khan to convert to Christianity.
Among them, The guests of Blanc and Rubrooke are the more famous two, who have arrived in Hala and Rin through Central Asia, and recorded the situation of the Mongols they saw, but these situations seem to be different from the Mongolia that Chinese is familiar with.
According to the records of The Brown guests, the Mongols are very tenacious, and their vitality is very tenacious. Why? The Guest of Honor said that mongolians can not only endure severe cold and heat, but also continue to sing and dance without occupying water and rice for a day or two.
Brown guest
The Mongols themselves rarely ate pasta and vegetables, and there was very little meat that could be distributed to everyone, and the Guest of Brun even thought that other peoples could not survive on such a small amount of food.
In addition, the guests of The Brown also mentioned that if the Mongols were cut off from food and grass during the war, they would also perform various even cruel acts to maintain their own survival, for example, they would choose 1 out of 10 people to "serve as food"; For example, they would eat bodily fluids from when the mare was born with a pony to serve as food.
Rubrooke said the Mongols were "short and strong," indomitable, and liked to drink the blood of their livestock. And perhaps it was precisely because the Mongols were so "tenacious" that they treated foreign envoys who came on the Hajj with similar treatment.
Mongol Empire
The Guest of Honor claimed that in Mongolia, food for foreign envoys was scarce, and the Mongols provided 10 people with supplies for only 2 people, and each person was given only one meal. According to this, The Brown guest believed that the Mongols would regard their subjects as their own "slaves" and did not give them the respect they deserved.
In terms of living habits, the Mongols are very different from what we think.
The Guest of Bruns once wrote that the Mongols never washed clothes, nor did they allow others to wash their clothes, they did not wash dishes, and when cooking broth, the Mongols would use the broth to rinse the dishes and then pour the broth back into the pot.
Hygiene practices such as these may seem unacceptable to us, but in Mongolia they seem to have become commonplace. Some of the laws and burial customs of the Mongols are also different from what we think.
Mongol
According to the laws of Mongolia, burrang guests urinated in tents, trampled on the threshold of the prince's tent, ate food handed over by others without swallowing or spitting it out, which seemed to us to be inconceivable.
There is also a peculiar burial custom in Mongolia, that is, when a nobleman dies, the Mongols will push his favorite attendant into the tomb to be "buried", but after the attendant faints, they will drag him out, repeat it three times, and if the attendant is dead and not dead, then he will be free.
This funeral custom looks as cruel as a funeral, but it seems to give people a "glimmer of life".
Of course, although the living conditions of the Mongols seemed to be relatively difficult and their living habits were very backward, at that time, the Mongol Empire was still a large empire with all countries coming to the dynasty, and the living conditions of the princes and nobles were still very superior.
Funeral customs
The Mongol Empire of "All Nations Coming to The Dynasty"
As envoys, The guests of Blang attended the enthronement ceremony of the Great Khan of Guiyu, and the guests of Blang wrote that the ceremony was held in a huge golden tent, decorated with ornate silks, which were all khitan tributes.
It is worth mentioning that the Khitan in the mouth of The Brown guest is not the northern nomads we perceive, but a large area of land north of Mongolia and northern China, including the land of the Jin Dynasty and the Song Dynasty, so it is obvious that these silks should be paid tribute to mongolia by the Jin State.
At the enthronement ceremony, more than 4,000 envoys from Russia, Arabia, Khitan and North Korea and other countries came to pay tribute to the pilgrimage, bringing a large number of gold and silver jewelry, handicrafts and other gifts.
On just one high ground, Brown wrote, he saw 500 carriages full of gifts.
Enthronement ceremony by the Great Khan
However, one thing is similar to the records of mainland history, that is, among the envoys, the guests of Braun or the Grand Duke of Russia can always get "seated", which means that in the Mongol Empire, the rank of the Semites would indeed be higher.
Rubrooke also specifically recorded the Korean envoys and "Great Khitans" he met with Möngke Khan. According to his account, korean envoys in the Mongol Empire wore Song dynasty crowns, wore black hats, held wat boards, and behaved in the same manners as Chinese.
The so-called "Great Khitans" in Rubuk's writing are likely to be Southern Song People, not real Khitans.
For he writes that the "great Khitan state" had many provinces, most of which had not yet surrendered to the Mongols, and that they were separated from India by the sea.
Möngke Khan
In addition, Rubrooke recorded that he had been told that the "state of the Great Khitans" had a city whose walls were made of gold and whose towers were made of silver. This description is quite similar to the description of Hangzhou in Marco Polo's Travels, and it is likely to describe Lin'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty.
For the "Great Khitans", Rubrooke described it this way: they were short in stature, had small eyes, were skilled craftsmen, and doctors diagnosed the condition according to their pulse without checking the urine, and used different herbs to treat the disease, but did not use diuretics.
Rubrooke also wrote that they were to pay taxes of 1,500 Isots a day, and they also had to pay silk, grain, and labor on a regular basis. It can be seen that the oppression of the Han chinese by the Mongols at that time was very serious.
Marco Polo's Travels
The guest of Honor also wrote that after the Mongol invasion of Europe, the Mongols were stunned by the Crafts of Europe, so they recruited many European craftsmen to serve the Mongol nobles in Hala and Lin, and one of the most respected was the goldsmith "Master William" from Paris.
The guest of honor braun said that Master William had created the exquisite ivory throne used in the enthronement ceremony for the Great Khan of Guiyu. Coincidentally, Rubrooke also recorded the master William's brilliant craftsmanship, which he described as an "automatic drink machine."
This automatic drink machine is shaped like a large tree made of silver, with 4 lions crouching on the edge of the root, each with a tube in its mouth that can flow out different drinks, and 4 large silver basins responsible for taking different drinks.
Paris
Of course, it is said to be "automatic", in fact, there is a crypt under this big tree, and people hide in this crypt, and different drinks are poured into pipes, and the drinks flow through the tree into the silver basin, and the cooks draw drinks from the silver basins and take them to the Khans and nobles to drink.
It is said that it was because Möngke Khan liked the table fountains popular in European courts that he tried his best to create such a huge and complex fountain in his court.
Horse machete to fight? Not necessarily
Perhaps the greatest difference in the accounts of Brown and Rubrooke is the way the Mongols fought. In film and television dramas, we always see the image of Mongolian horses and machetes charging, "machetes" are the standard of Mongolians, it seems that without machetes, it is not Mongolian.
However, according to the records of The Brown guests, only a few of the Mongols, rich and noble, possessed sharp machetes, and the average soldier was armed with a large axe, carried two or three good bows, and carried three quivers filled with arrows when fighting.
Similarly, the Mongol armor is elaborately made, although some people use leather armor, some people use iron armor, but these armor are carefully made, they fit the human body, and when the human body bends down, the moving leather connected by a thin rope at the joints will be stacked into several layers to strengthen the protection of the human joints.
Rubrooke
Mongol helmets were generally made of iron mesh to protect the head, but there was also a ring on the helmet to protect the neck and face, which was made of leather and could strengthen the protection of the entire head.
The guest of Honor gave a detailed description of the Weapons and Armor of the Mongols, which shows that he was very interested in these and may have wanted to be able to better report back to Europe.
In battle, each soldier would fire three or four arrows first, and if the Mongols found that they could not gain the upper hand, they would immediately retreat, lead the enemy into the traps they had already set, and then surround and annihilate the enemy.
Moreover, the Mongols would also make a large number of dummies to put on the saddle, showing that they were numerous and made the enemy timid before the battle.
According to this, The Brown guest believed that the Mongols were very resourceful and did not rely on brute force to win. But sometimes, the Mongols were also very cruel, because if the Mongols could not attack the city for a long time, they would cruelly boil the dead and prisoners of war into the city into oil, throw fire into the city, and light a fire.
Not to mention setting fire to the slaughter of the city, it is already cruel to boil prisoners of war into oil. But although the Mongols treated people cruelly, they were very kind to horses.
For example, the Mongols had a rule that a horse that had been ridden for a day must be rested for three or four days before it could be ridden again, so the Mongol army's war horses were always full of energy, and the mobility of the Mongol cavalry was unbeatable.
Mongol cavalry
At the same time, the Mongols also elaborately made armor for war horses, and the sides and heads and tails of the horses were covered with leather armor, which was at least up to the root of the horse's thighs, and the Mongols would also place an iron piece in front of the horse's forehead to avoid injury to the horse's head.
In short, seeing the Mongols and the Mongol Empire in the eyes of Europeans seems to be completely different from what we see, but perhaps by combining the perspectives of the East and the West, we can see a real Mongol Empire through history.
Resources
Upstream News, "Missionary on a mission to Mongolia on the orders of the Pope, meets a Mongol Empire that Chinese unfamiliar with."
"Brown Guest Mongolian Journey Chronicles Rubrook Eastbound Chronicles"