DECIPHERING THE CODE OF SELF-REPRESENTATION, AND ITS LIMITATIONS

THE “STRUCTURE”

The Mongols themselves did not leave a clear self-description of their polity. The question of the “Yeke Mongol Ulus” has always been a subject around which much of the research in Mongolian studies related to ethno- and political-genesis and the search for national identity has crossed. Both in the historical literature and, as a result, in the public consciousness, the notion of “the great Mongolian state” has been fixed so firmly that ambiguity about its meaning is nearly absent. This translation or interpretation has been generated by the historiography of the late tradition. There is no explicit presentation of this issue – the Yeke Mongol Ulus – in the original text of Secret History. We suppose that the meaning of the expression Yeke Mongol ulus is archetypical and has a rather different, strictly geographical (territorial) meaning. It is well-known that the medieval Mongols settled two distinct territories. The first lived on the Argun and Amur rivers and were designated as Usutu Monggol (the water Mongols), the second (Onon – Kerulen – Tola) as da menggu guo, that is Great Mongolia (the Yeke Mongol Ulus), which, in our view, marked the territory of the secondary colonization and was connected with the necessity of identifying a separate population of Mongols from the North-East. This population had a distinct hierarchical structure and a common ritual system (we must not forget that the ritual constructs the borders of the commonality and confirms them).^[1]
In the identification practices of Great Mongolia, in addition to the designation Great (yeke) in the naming of their country, the differentiation of the Mongols of this territory from the prima motherland utilized another identification marker – meng-da. Moreover, we should emphasize that the term meng-da was a symbol not only of external identification but also of self-identification, as it was a necessary instrument of foreign policy in the region. The occurrence of the new term was not only an instrument of political activity, it also established an internal state of heterogeneity in the population of the territory. It testified to the appearance of a new reality – a commonality that was in the state of simultaneous existence with ambivalent relations: union (anda-kuda, bogol) and hostility (blood vengeance). Relations often had a hostile character, caused by the fight for predominant supremacy in this territory. During the period of serious political competition, the name of the group that also represented the territory was accepted and increasingly acknowledged as being the manifest character and meaning of Mongol.
In the study of the problems of identification, and ethnic identification in particular, a common name, a common myth of origin, and an association with a definite territory are of particular significance. Various foundations of (self-)identification generate various, most often hierarchic, identification levels that are in complex interrelations and sometimes intertwine, creating a tangled labyrinth of connections that scholars need to decipher. Research into different levels of identification can be based on the analysis of an accepted and generally used self-designation, in this case – the Mongols.
This analysis of eponyms and ethnonyms allows us to speak about the dual organization of Mongolian society (and the ruling elite) and the coexistence of two exogamic mutual nuptial kins (Borte-Chino and Ghoa-Maral), which through further growth generated two branch kinship groups. As mentioned above, the simultaneous functioning of both maternal and paternal lineage was a characteristic feature of medieval Mongolian society for a rather long period during the empire’s formation. We also find that translation of the Mongol name was carried out according to the female lineage. As the patrilinear system of kinship became predominant, there was a need to bind the genealogical tree of Borto-Chinoe to the descendants of the male lineage. Reconstructing the relationship of Chinggis-Khan to the clan of the wolf was carried out through the mythology of a yellow dog in whose image a “celestial” man was living and with whom Alan-Ghoa had her three youngest sons.
The names of the forefathers Borto-Chine and Ghoa-Maral could be manifestations of dualism in forming Mongolian ulus expressed by a different code: the Tayichi’uds and the Mongols before the final Mongolization of the former. The analysis is not only explicit but also implicit, as the evidence suggests that these basic ethnonyms were designations of military alliances between the bears (Mongols) and the wolves (Tayichi’uds). Constant military clashes over riches (livestock primarily) and territorial control caused an increase in the role of military alliances in the lives of the nomads. Constant reconstruction and subsequent changes to the names of communities resulted from short-term military alliances that arose on a volunteer basis (the joining of successful fighting men) and not only through conquest of neighbors. This was a rather traditional way of polity formation – which came to be seen as “imperial” when it was reproduced on a much larger scale.
The text Jami’ al-Tawarikh is a wonderful example of medieval identification practices:

“Chapter One is about those who are called Mongol-Darlekin. They are branches and tribes that originated from the remnants of Mongolian tribes, the Nukuz and Kiyats, that once moved to Ergune-kun, (where) they increased in numbers. They were (even) before the times of Dobun-Bayan and Alan-Ghoa.
Chapter Two is about those who are called Mongol-Nirun. They are those tribes that originated from the kin of Alan-Ghoa after the death of her husband, Dobun-Bayan.
Alan-Ghoa belonged to the tribe of Kuralas, one of the branches of the Mongol-darlekins. (Alan-Ghoa), according to the opinion and assertion of the Mongols, after the death of (her) husband, became pregnant from a beam of light and gave birth to three sons; and those who belong to the kin of these sons are called Nirun. The meaning of (the word) nirun is loins. The indication of these pure loins is that they (the sons) originated from (supernatural) light.
Those tribes that belong to the kin of Alan Ghoa and her sons are divided into three parts in the following division:
The first part includes those who originated from the kin of Alan Ghoa till the sixth generation that included Kabul Khan. All these people from (the number) of sons, nephews and their kin (urug), are independently called Niruns. In the same way brothers of Kabul Khan and their kin are called Niruns.
Those who are called Kiyats, though they are Niruns also, belong to the second part. They are the generation (taife) whose kin originated from the sixth generation of Alan Ghoa, from Kabul Khan’s generation.
The third part is those who are called Kiyat-Borjigin, though they originated from the tribe of Nirun-Kiyat, and as a pure kin of Alan-Ghoa were born from her direct descendant in (the sixth) generation, Kabul Khan. Their origin is as follows: they were born from the grandson of Kabul Khan, Yesugei-Bakhadur, father of Chinggis Khan.”^[2]

This text reflects the issue of both types of kinship: matrilineal, where the significance of belonging to the descendants of Alan-Ghoa is emphasized once again (Niruns are the most pure Mongols), and patrilineal, through the singling out of Kabul Khan, whose genealogical kinship is formed by the right of the eldest sons to inherit power, beginning with Bodonchar (the youngest son of Alan-Ghoa).
A second fact is worthy of our attention. On the one hand, all the descendants of Alan-Ghoa are called Niruns, and, on the other hand, Kabul Khan and his first line of descendants are also called in this way. The third important fact from this extract is the fixing of the ethnonym Kiyats after the descendants of Kabul Khan. And the final fact worthy of mention is actualization of the double ethnonym, Kiyat-Borjigin, which can be considered a signal of alliance between two sides, indicating the significance of the first, and based on a different identification code, that of Mongols-Tayichi’uds.
Thus we can single out basic elements of this identification practice. The first element was the underlining of ethnic boundaries of the Mongols in general, but indicating they were also Darlekins. The second element is the singling out a different ruling elite (not the descendants of Borto-Chino in the male lineage) through matrilineal kinship (Nirun). In turn, the marker of the ruling kinship, Kiyat, fixed after Chinggis Khan and his descendants, was retranslated through the eldest sons. If Kabul Khan is called the forefather of the Kiyat tribe, then his sons and grandsons become the forefathers of its subdivisions, and the second part appears in addition to the primary Kiyat as Kiyat-Yurki, Kiyat-Kuralas, Kiyat-Borjigin, etc. We can probably say that the significance of the union formed under the rule of Kabul Khan was the singling out, by special marking, of its important kinship group through the use of a glorious name from the past, Kiyan.
On the whole, the ethno-political self-consciousness of the Mongols was under constant pressure due to changing circumstances, and revisions of group borders of communities, and, accordingly, those who were members in them. During those periods of unstable public life that lead toward the formation of hierarchical identities, ethnocentric ideas assume primary significance. Everything is based on genealogy and if there is none to rely on, it must be constructed. The marking of borders (cultural, geographical, political) was carried out within the limits of traditional power and political culture, and the specific political situation promoted revitalization of the genealogy and its establishment as a real political force. This plasticity and conditional inclusiveness of the external boundaries of the group ensured its rapid expansion under favorable circumstances, at the expense of tribes and peoples admitted into the initial Mongol communality.
Limiting access to power was one of the main objectives in the formation of a hierarchy of identities. Reconstruction of ethnic configurations as an agent of political practice in the Mongol Ulus allowed the expression of duality through different codes: Tayichi’ud – Nukuz – Chino – Borjigin – Borte-Chino, and Mongol – Kiyat – Ghoa-Maral. Chinggis Khan’s establishment of the Mongolian Empire and his designation of the ruling elite by the double ethnonym “Kiyat-Borjigin” signified an important stage of interrelationships within the region. In this regard, it is worth noting that Temujin’s election, and its necessary repetition, becomes clear in the context of opposition between the Mongols and Tayichi’uds.
If the first enthronement represented the election of a khan (a leader in war), then the second one (1206) was related to the need to extend the structure of authority over a considerably broader community. It is remarkable, and it is important to underline, that repetitive enthronement is connected not only with the victory over the Naimans and Merkits, but also with the defeat of the coalition ruled by the Tayichi’uds and led by Jamukha: “When Naimans and Merkits were defeated, Jamukha was deprived of his people for being with them”^[3] (ulus-iyan abda’asu^[4]). The completion of the subjugation of all “peoples living in yurts” is marked by the defeat of the Tayichi’uds. The Tayichi’uds represented an irgen community (synonymous to the above mentioned ulus), as can be seen from the following passage:

“148. Chinggis Khan defeated the Tayichi’uds, the people of Tayichi’ud bone – Auchu-Batur, Khoton-Orchen and Khuduudar – he scattered (their remains) in the wind as ashes, destroying the descendants of their descendants, and took their people [ulus irgen] and wintered in the Khubakha territory.”^[5]

Following the defeat of the ruling elite of the Tayichi’uds and the tribe of Tayichi’uds (tayici’utai yasutu, who were also tayici’ud-i uruq-un uruq-a), the ethnic group Tayichi’uds, indicated by the terms yasu and uruq, and its identity were completely destroyed. The contents of this paragraph allow us to suppose that the tribe of Tayichi’uds, consisting of kinships groups that were ethnically heterogeneous, represented a super-ethnic commonality or polity. It represents the final page in the history of the independent existence of the Tayichi’uds and their struggle for power with the Mongols.
After the execution of Jamukha in 1206 on the upper Onon River, a Mongol congress was held and Chinggis was proclaimed khan and carried out the restructuring of the Mongolian Ulus. It is worth paying attention to the fact that all peoples assembled under the aegis of Chinggis Khan, including newly conquered peoples who lived in yurts, in the Mongolian source are called Mongoljin Ulus instead of Mongol Ulus, meaning not only Mongols but also nomadic peoples who entered the Mongolian Ulus and were included in the process of Mongolization. It appears that the need to repeat the act of enthronement was conditioned by the need to legitimize authority through the appropriation (Mongolization) of a sacral center – Khorkhonakh Jubur in Onon – where Khutulu was once elected khan.
Though the possibility of creating an accurate historical picture is difficult, we can identify some of the main tendencies of ethno- and political genesis among the early Mongols, taking into account that the same name often serves as a gens (urug, obog, yasun) ethnic (obog, irgen, ulus) marker, or a marker of power and polity. While the former terms differ in degrees of homogeneity, the latter are not only heterogeneous by themselves but are also used in similar contexts, which, undoubtedly makes interpretation difficult. It is possible that alongside the common meaning of the name Mongol (as well as Borjigin), another meaning arose, a social one, when used to describe a fighting group under the leadership of a military leader (the first, possibly reconstructed, was Khabul Khan), which lead to the broadening of boundaries of commonality, and accordingly, to a new use of the term. It started to be used as a marker of ethnic identification that designated alliances between ethnic groups (inclusion of warriors/nukers/bogols in the commonality and re-use of the term bogol, from marking subordinate associates to marking a structure of connected social public groups).
Strengthening the heterogeneity of an alliance and enlarging it generated the formation of a new ethnic consciousness when groups that entered the alliance took its name and simultaneously preserved their own. Broadening the borders of commonality and strengthening the power of an alliance through marking by the ethnonym Mongol established a new level, that of power, and designated a polity, a confederation of groups at different levels (kins/clans, tribes, alliances). Broadening the use of the term “Mongol” began to alter not only the meaning of ethnophore (ethnophania) and to designate larger dynastic political units and the territories they occupied, but led to the terminological separation from the polity of the ruling elite, which possessed its own ethnical coloring. This, accordingly, actualized the terms that designated the elite (Kiyat-Borjigin),^[6] in opposition to the groups that did not belong to the Golden clan. The ethnic meaning of the terms Kiyat (Mongol) and Borjigin (Tayichi’ud) were combined with a social meaning, suggesting that they formed a stratum of military aristocracy that came to power in a military alliance. Social and political structures also changed (institutional elements, social and cultural environments) the imperial ideology and created new value orientations; polyethnicity was deepened and assimilation processes strengthened. Mythological constructs become phenomenological reality, which impacted the social, cultural, and political processes of the Mongol Empire.
The social structure of society defined the character of the political organization as it consisted of taxis, which were hierarchically differentiated as roles for each social unit were determined. Blood-kin relations were the basic criteria of dynastic and political organization – both vertical and horizontal – which determined relations between different ethno-social unions at each level. The power and authority in traditional societies, including Mongolian, did not manifest themselves in the pure form in which they exist in developed, modern societies. Social stratification, based on the uneven distribution of rights and privileges, power, prestige, influence, duties, and property, and characterized by systematic interaction of various elements and levels, is one of the mechanisms through which the organization of society is structured. We undertook the identification of mechanisms of social stratification in Mongolian society through an analysis of the terms.
These are first of all well-known terms of blood relationships: father-son, elder brother-younger brother. Relations of supremacy and subjection were marked through the leaders of groups by these terms in cases where they were not regulated by genealogy; that is, they belonged to various blood-relation groups.
If the terms father-son, elder brother-younger brother emphasize the subordination of one community to another (elder-younger), then the term anda marks equal relations as underlined in the Secret History, where this term means relations of pairs: Kereit Van Khan with Yesugei-bagatur or Chinggis Khan with Jamukha. This term is also used for marking another kind of relation, anda kuda, of matrimonial character, in which as a rule partners are equal.
Chinggis Khan’s conquest of neighboring groups and his access to power changed their political status and required that the mechanisms of power legitimization be replaced. A new term bogol^[7] was applied similarly to the terms father-son, elder brother-younger brother, and anda-kuda, and served as a mechanism of social and political integration, fixing changes that took place in the process of conquest and that required including new structures and recoding old ones. Bogol participates in modeling new structures that ensure the preservation and integration of public organizations, the formation of a new level of public relationships such as super tribal and super local social and political structures that strive for universal adaptation.
The constant flexibility of communalities that are marked by the terms ulus, irgen, and obog is one way of fixing borders and organizing relationships: one (elder-ruler) pledges to execute his duties before the subordinate, ensuring his happiness, the other (younger-bogol) serves his master during peace time and maintains his territory in the battlefield during war time. The term bogol marked both members of a different tribe and tribal kinship groups genealogically related to Chinggis Khan, who entered the confederation of tribes under his rule and it marked their subordination only to Chinggis Khan and his kin, rather than their personal or group bondage.
The term kharachu^[8] was another that marked all those who did not belong to Chinggis Khan’s kinship in traditional Mongolian political culture. In the epoch of the Mongol Empire, it outlined the borders of the social group that was comprised of the elite of conquered peoples that served the “Golden kin” of Chinggis Khan. Hierarchically, they were situated between khagan and members of the community and were not common people. The Kharachu were represented by the ruling elite of the Mongol Empire. They could serve as heads of military subdivisions (tumens, thousands, hundreds, tens) and have high titles (bokho, emir, taishi), but they were characterized as non-Chinggisids. It is possible that in the traditional political culture of the Mongols, this division of Chinggisid/non-Chinggisid, was preeminent and the most significant to be determined by origin (celestial/common). It is worth noting that during the period of the Mongol Empire, the marking of Mongols of even the lowest status with the term kharachu was not usual. It is obvious that the use of the term kharachu for marking the common people of Mongolian origin was a phenomenon of a much later period.
Social stratification in Mongol society did not suggest a strict hierarchical structure. Belonging to an ethno-social group that occupied a subordinate position did not prevent a person from rising up the hierarchical ladder and achieving high individual status (emir, ruler of the province, etc.) through individual social mobility. But in a traditional society, individual mobility was limited. Even officials who reached high positions within the hierarchy were marked by special terms that demonstrated their membership in groups that were not included in the supreme ruling elite of Chinggisids. The hierarchy supported the integrity of the system by defining place and roles for its separate parts, and the terms of supremacy or subordination were one part of the power mechanisms in the political institution through which the power was executed.
Analysis of the use of such terms of social organization as bogol and kharachu, traditionally translated as slaves and common people, allows us to reconsider the mechanisms that structured the core of the Mongol Empire. In the largest sense, they show the designation of relationships of domination and subordination within the empire and demonstrate the priority of access to the power of Chinggis Khan’s kin, rather than indicating social strata within Mongolian society. A study of these terms in their historical context (on the basis of original historical sources) shows that they were used in the Secret History not only for marking socially economic-dependent strata, but for recoding interrelationship of kin, tribes and leaders with the ruling kin of Chinggis Khan.
The mechanisms expressed by the terms anda, father-son, and elder brother-younger brother, and the position of the leader of the conic clan, were characteristic of the social and political organization of the Mongols of this period and testify to the fact that these were powers institutions first of all and not political organizations. Relations between ethno-social organisms were regulated by the terms of blood kinship that marked social organization. Even bogol is equated with the category of a young brother in the Secret History. The overlapping and sometimes interchangeable hierarchies of kin, ethnic/tribal descent, and social status constituted the social structure of the expanding Mongol Ulus, thus preserving its complex heterogeneous “imperial” character.

“CULTURE”

The question of the principles of Mongolian social regulation during the period of Chinggis Khan’s empire and the character of the orders that determined them is an important issue that requires attention. Most often the answer to this question is the assertion that the Mongols since the time of Chinggis Khan were guided according to the statute-book called Yasa. We can suppose that the elders in conic clans were keepers of knowledge concerning norms of behavior. Chinggis Khan, for example, said before his death that “those who want to know yasa, rules, law and biliks should best go to Chagatai.”^[9] Thus it is still an open question if everything that Chinggis Khan reformed was written into the statute-book during his lifetime or if we have to thank his Near East descendants. In China the text of the Yasa was unknown. We would like to note the most important facts.

1. The rights issued from the will of the ruler and in this case we can speak about the archetype of traditional consciousness in which Chinggis Khan as a cultural hero is the creator of everything including the laws.
2. This is not a statute-book elaborated by professionals on the basis of the state practice that existed at that time. It is worth noting that designation of some statute-book by the term yasa was inherent not only to Mongols. Tatars also have this term.
3. We cannot speak about fixed court practice in the person of Shigi-Khutukhu. We think that scholars will still have to decide what the position of dzargu dzargulugsan, which was determined by Chinggis Khan for Shigi-Khutukhu, may mean. Moreover we see him in the head of the detachment in the war, and court cases were judged by khan himself. For example, Ugedei made the decision about Dokholkhu execution.
4. All the quoted remained abstracts from Yasa deal with personal issues (killing, military discipline, religious taboo, robbery, and family and property affairs including cases dealing with the management of the household by women in the absence of a man-warrior) and have a character of customary law as they were written down as uttered by Chinggis Khan on certain occasions. In essence, these famous abstracts do not contain the laws that determined the basic principles for social life. The number of texts that could serve as legal norms to guide the Mongols in their activity was much wider and had a relation to the common law: bilik (bilig), jasak (= yasa), jarlik, yosun, toru. Only the last term can also mean sacred law. One of the most important problems in the formation of the Mongolian Empire was that of legal proceedings where three forms are singled out: the Khagan court, the khuriltai court, and the court of specially appointed persons – judges (the latter are characteristic for the conquered agricultural territories), this penitentiary system had not only the character of a well-balanced court organization but, as Ryazanovsky wrote, more so of “administrative reprisals.” All these factors allow us to declare Mongolian society a potestary (pre-state) one.^[10]

The corporative owning of the power that was connected with the formation of a privileged ruling elite of Kiyat-Borjigin (to which Chinggis Khan belonged and which subsequently became known as the Golden lineage) was a characteristic feature of Mongolian society. In connection with Chinggis Khan’s distribution of duties among his relatives and nukers in 1206, the Mongolian Ulus was for the first time divided into two wings (ji’ur) or hands (gar) – right/left. We should note that power was divided into secular and military (the latter was connected with the singling out of military units – tumens consisting of the population of the right and left hand in each of the wing). Chinggis Khan relates himself with the center, which is expressed in the Mongolian word qol (Secret History, § 226). This division of the Mongolian Ulus corresponded to the secular (civil) and military structure. But, as we have already mentioned, the kin territory was of great significance (sacred center) and situated in the left wing and its owner (otchigin). Therefore the Secret History indicated the existence of one more center, expressed by Mongolian term tub and related with Tolui and “throne” (§ 213).
The distribution of power in the wings was determined by the sacred essence of power, according to which the ruler was able to ensure order (Mongol Ulus or the ruling Golden lineage). Traditional consciousness allowed for the combination of ritual, power, and military functions in one person. The right to power became legitimate if the candidates for the throne had the ability to practice rituals and in this way they could act as guarantors of the integrity and well-being of the collective body. Chinggis Khan carried out both sacred and profane power functions (charismatic type of power). After his death when traditional mechanisms should be restored the problem of power re-distribution always appeared – further division of provinces into wings. As two principles were actual – ultima (the youngest) and primogeniture (the eldest) – then the Mongolian society of the 13th century was characterized by the overproduction of the elite, which made the fight for power even harsher. In the same way, two tendencies were always confronting each other: the power of the eldest or the power of khagan, which was connected as a rule with the left wing – the sacred center of the Mongolian world. But inside the left wing, as it has already been mentioned above, there could be competition between khagan (the eldest in the left wing) and otchigin. The study of the system of wings allows us to determine the complicated structure of nomadic power relations, though the kin principle remained the main one. A constant redistribution of power functions is connected with the changes in the structure of power between lineages even in the limits of one kin – the ruling kin of Kiyat-Borjigin.^[11] There were also other power institutions: the decimal system, groups of fighting men, khuriltai, and the court and legal practice of the Mongolian empire.
How can we estimate the character of a society of this kind? Can we even use the word “state” when speaking about the Mongols? We should note that there is no unanimity in this question among different scholars, and it is a controversial issue not only for Mongolian studies, but for nomad studies as a whole. While some scholars in the field of nomad studies would classify medieval Mongolian society as pre-state, and others treat only the Mongolian uluses of the 11-13th centuries as pre-state societies, for most scholars, the statehood of the early Mongolian uluses and Chinggis Khan’s empire is beyond any doubt.^[12]
We assume that this problem should be approached from two angles: first, the possibility of existence or absence of political system of the Mongols themselves, that is, the Mongolian political system itself, and second, the political system of the Mongol Empire. The second suggests the presence of features of the state (administrative and territorial divisions, a tax system, a bureaucratic system for the execution of state and government functions), that have xenocratic forms as they should be directed on the exploitation of the population of more complicated societies compared to the nomads.
In their relations with conquered urban societies in Inner Asia, the nomads could use two various models: 1) destroying towns and crop growers and turning arable land into pastures for cattle; 2) complicating their own governing bodies, placing the ruling elite in the cities, creating a bureaucratic system, and introducting written language and office-work according to the Chinese model. As it was impossible to govern conquered territories with the traditional institutions of nomadic society, the governing bodies needed radical modernization. In an aphoristic way, this idea is expressed in the famous phrase of Yeh-lu Ch’u-ts’ai, when he told to Ugedei that the nomads could conquer the Chinese Empire but could never govern it from horseback.^[13]The Khitans were the first to understand this and in the middle of the 10th century they set up a so-called double system of government, one for the nomads and another for the conquered Chinese. This principle was borrowed from them by the Jurchens, but as the latter were not nomads they were predisposed to acculturation and were quickly assimilated by Chinese population.
From our point of view, it would be more correct to label the societies of nomads of this kind as “supercomplex chiefdoms.”^[14] These were characterized by a high rate of centralization, social stratification, inchoate forms of urban and monumental construction, and sometimes even written language. These chiefdoms had a complicated system of titles for the chiefs and officials; they had diplomatic correspondence with neighboring countries, and concluded dynasty marriages with the rulers of agricultural states and other nomadic empires. From the point of view of neighboring settled urban civilizations, the nomadic societies were perceived as independent subjects of international political relations.
Could supercomplex chiefdoms be set up by settled agricultural societies? The populations of complex chiefdoms measured in the tens of thousands of people, and ethnically they were typically homogeneous. But the populations of multiethnic supercomplex chiefdoms included hundreds of thousands of people (the nomadic empires of Inner Asia had up to 1-1.5 million). The territory of supercomplex nomad chiefdoms was several times larger than the area necessary for simple and complex chiefdoms of crop-growers (the nomads were characterized by a population density agriculturalists have in pre-hierarchical societies and chiefdoms). At the same time the activity of the population on the territory that can be compared to any nomadic empire by its size could hardly be regulated by pre-state modes.
Governing a large territory of this kind of nomadic society was facilitated by the specifics of the steppe landscape and the presence of saddle animals. On the other hand, the overall armament of nomads was partially conditioned by their disperse settlement, mobility, economic autarchy, and military way of life during a rather long historical period. A number of other factors prevented establishing a steady supervision over pastoral tribes and certain nomads by the highest levels of power. All this allows us to suppose that supercomplex chiefdoms, while not a characteristic form of political organization only for nomads, were the most popular among them.
For the sake of convenience and due to established historiographic tradition, we may call these polities “empires.” However, as we attempted to demonstrate in this article, the genesis, social structure, and political system of the Mongol Ulus had little to do with those of other historical empires, and the label itself cannot tell us much about the specificity of the Mongol empire. A good deal of its “empireness” resulted from the peculiar tribal past of the Ulus, and also from the logic of the situation in which any expansionist polity finds itself trying to stabilize its borders and manage the conquered population.

EPILOGUE

In conclusion, a few words about the reasons for the downfall of the Mongol empire are in order. Scholars have provided several explanations for the collapse and disintegration of nomadic empires, including the Mongolian one: 1) natural phenomena (drying out of the steppe, short-term climatic stresses and epidemics); 2) external political factors (invasions of enemies, protracted wars, cessation of external incomes, crises of neighboring agricultural civilizations); 3) inner reasons (demographical explosion, loss of inner unity and separatism, gigantic sizes and weakness of administrative structure, class fight, internecine between the khans and civil wars, mediocre political rulers).
Contemporary data do not support all of these explanations. As mentioned above, the paleogeographic data of the last decade testifies to the absence of a direct connection between global climatic cycles with the decline and rise of steppe empires. The thesis about class struggle among nomads has been proven wrong, as they did not have classes as such. But most of the above reasons influenced the fate of this or that steppe politity. Frankly speaking, comparative analysis shows that it was not rare that several circumstances rather one impacted the downfall of nomadic empires. As a rule, misfortunes never come singly. Internecine conflict could be accompanied by both local ecological disasters (Hsiung-nu, Uighurs) and enemy invasions (Jou-jan, Uighurs).
At the same time, several factors potentially promoted the structural instability of nomadic empires:

1) external sources of income that combined economically independent tribes into a united imperial confederation;
2) the mobility and armament of the nomads, which made the supreme power of empires balance in search of consensus among different political groups;
3) the specific province and tanistrial^[15] (in Ancient Russian: lestvitsa – top/crown of a tree) system of power inheritance, according to which each of the representatives of the ruling (Golden) lineage from the main wives had the right for promotion of administrative status including the right for the throne according the age line;
4) polygamy among the elite (Chinggis Khan, for example, had about 500 wives and concubines, Jochi had 114 sons, Khubilai – about 50 sons; one member of the Golden lineage had 100 sons and the nickname “commander of a hundred soldiers”). Even if we can theoretically admit that “the average” khan had, for example, five sons, then even by the same rates of birth he should have no less than 25 grandsons and 125 great-grandsons. According to this progression, in 60-70 years the competition for inheritance, as a rule, should have led to bloody internecine quarrels, and, finally, to civil war, which ended in the massacre of the greater part of the rivals or disintegration of ulus. This law-governed nature, noticed as early as in the epoch of the Mongol uluses blossoming by Ibn Khaldun, in recent years has acquired solid mathematical grounds.^[16] But even without referring to science, if we thoroughly study the facts from the history of medieval Mongols, we can be easily convinced that it was a history of a fight for power among various groups of Chinggis Khan’s descendants.

In the end, the fate of steppe empires often depended on how the ruler solved these problems, and on how he directed the energy of his numerous relatives and associates outside their own society. But such polities could not last forever. Most nomadic empires existed no more than 100-150 years. However, all empires have fallen at some point; retrospectively then, the Mongol empire was no different, if only in this respect.