Episode 105: The Postclassical Era in the East, or “Yes We KHAN!”

(upbeat music) Welcome to the Anti-Satial Studies Podcast, a place for people who wish they'd stay to wake in high school. Last time we explored medieval Europe and the chaos that ensued when Roman civilization broke down. There were German exombies, battles between Orcs and Elves and a fair share of torture devices. It was great. So a lot of people like to refer to the era we're in now as the medieval era. That's totally appropriate when you're talking about European history, but now that we're moving out of Europe and looking at Asia and Africa, it's not really an accurate label. Medieval brings to mind the dark ages, backwardness and decline. But what we're gonna see today is that actually the rest of the world was doing great. It was just Europe who was digging in the dirt for more dirt, as I like to say. Before we get started, just remember that if you like what I'm doing, please subscribe to my podcast so you'll know in the next episodes or up. And if you really like what I'm doing, then go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts and give me a review. Thanks. Okay, enough business. Let's get to history. Today we're going back to the post-classical era in the East. Or as I like to call it, yes we can. We'll look at the rise of Islam, four great Chinese inventions and figure out why no one ever learns about African history. And then we'll get to one of my favorite figures in all of our history and the only person to successfully invade Russia in the winter. Until now, challenge accepted. This is anti-social studies, I'm Emily Glangler, settle in and let's go back in time. Act one, the rise of Islam. So you might be asking yourself, why does Islam get its own section when we didn't really talk about the other religions at all? And first I say, how dare you question me? This is my podcast. But also, there are two big reasons. First, Islam rose in a power vacuum. It was after the fall of the classical empires and it came to be both a political and military force as well as a religion. So to understand all of Middle Eastern civilization and government, since the year 600, we really need to understand the origins of Islam. But second, I just honestly believe that of all the religions out there, Islam is the most important for us to know about in the 21st century. Sorry, Scientology, maybe next century. It's the most misunderstood religion and also soon to be the largest religion in the world. So let's figure out where it came from. Muhammad was born in Mecca in modern-day Saudi Arabia. At this time, Mecca was an important religious and trading center with many temple and worship sites for the various polytheistic religions in the region. The most famous site was called the Qaba or the Qub, which was supposedly built by Abraham or Ibrahim, if you're a Muslim. Muhammad worked as a trader and a camel caravan from a young age. And he eventually worked for a woman named Qadija. They married and had many children, one of whom Fatima is going to marry Muhammad's cousin Ali, more on that in a second. Muhammad was a devout man. And one day, he was meditating in a cave when, according to Muslims, the angel Gabriel spoke to him. Side note, Gabriel is considered the messenger of God for all the Abrahamic religions. He also spoke to the prophet Daniel and the Hebrew scriptures. And he visited Zechariah and Mary to tell them of the birth of John the Baptist and Jesus respectively. So there is debate over whether Muhammad immediately shared his revelations as sheides believe or if he was disturbed by them and kept them secret for years, like the Sunnis claim. But either way, he eventually shared these messages from God first, just to his wife and his close friend, Abu Bakr. He gathered a small following, but was seen as a threat to the clans who ruled Mecca and benefited from the religious pilgrimages to the many temples. In 622, he and his followers were forced to leave Mecca for the city of Medina, an event known as the Hijra, and also the date that marks the year zero in the Islamic calendar. Up until this point, it's important to note that Muhammad's experience sounds relatively similar to that of Jesus Christ. Coming from humble beginnings, leading a small group of devout followers, seen as a threat by the political power of the time. But the big difference is that Muhammad and his followers also became a small militia who fought for survival. Eventually, he amassed an army of Muslim followers and conquered Mecca, destroying the pagan statues on the Ka'ba and leaving only the black stone as a representation of the one true God, Allah. So the Ka'ba is the place where when you take the Hajj or the pilgrimage to Mecca, that's where you go when you pray. So if you've ever seen those pictures of Mecca and they have thousands of people surrounding this massive black cube, that's the Ka'ba. Another note, Allah is the exact same God that Jews and Christians worship. It's just the ancient Aramaic translation of God. It's kind of like Yahweh, which is a form of the Hebrew name for God. Anyway, okay, but does this matter for us today? It really, really does. Islam from the beginning has been a different type of religion than all the others we've seen because it formed as both a religion and a political force. From the start, Muhammad was the leader of the faith, the military, and also the government. So the separation of religion and state is essentially non-existent in Islamic history and this is really important to understand. In the Judeo-Christian West, we take for granted that religion and politics are usually separate. In the Bible, it says, "Give unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and give unto God the things that are God's." So basically, political leaders should come first and matters of governance and religious leaders first and matters of faith. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but the history of each religion really informs a lot of the conflict it's going on right now. If you look at the Middle East, you can understand it as a tension between Western style, secular or non-religious democracy, like we sort of see in Turkey and Islamic theocracy, like in Iran or Saudi Arabia. They're being pulled between the dominant ideology in the 21st century world, that of non-religious democracy against thousands of years of history of basically a theocratic dictatorship. Anyway, back to the post-Closcal era. Fairly soon after he conquered Mecca and most of Arabia, Muhammad Falls Hill and he dies in Medina at the age of 62 and now Muslims have an issue. There is debate over who should succeed Muhammad. The majority of Muslims believe it should be Abu Bakr, his closest friend and one of his first followers. He's sort of like his Peter, if you're more familiar with Christianity. But there is a small but vocal minority who believes that the only person who can succeed Muhammad is one of his blood relatives and the perfect candidate is Ali. Remember Muhammad's daughter Fatima? She married Ali, who's also Muhammad's cousin, making him double qualified as far as lineage goes, according to the minority. The majority and Abu Bakr end up taking over and they expand the Islamic empire significantly, eventually covering most of the Middle East and two more caliphs or Islamic rulers come after him. But eventually Ali does rule, but he's assassinated and it's this event that formally leads to the split between the two groups in Islam. The majority who supported Abu Bakr become the Sunni Muslims. They are okay with anyone taking over the caliphate or Islamic kingdom as long as they are good and righteous Muslims. But the minority or Shiite Muslims believe it has to be a descendant of Ali because he was the only true successor to Muhammad. Today, Sunni Muslims make up about 90% of the Islamic population, but Shiites or Shia, it's the same, are the majority in a few key countries like Iran and Iraq. So if you're wondering why, for example, Iran is kind of a big enemy of countries like Saudi Arabia, it's because Iran is majority Shiite and Saudi Arabia is majority Sunni. That's oversimplifying it, but it's a start. So the era of Muhammad's immediate successors ends with Ali and we have the establishment of dynastic empires that rule as a caliphate or an Islamic empire. The first is called the Umayyad dynasty and they expand the empire further. They're the ones who get all the way up into Spain and are called the Moors by the Europeans. But they're stopped by Charles Martel. Remember Charlemagne's grandpa in 732. The Umayyads moved their capital to Damascus in Syria to be more central to their newly conquered lands. But the Umayyads had trouble maintaining their empire because even though they conquered a ton of people, they refused to let a lot of those people join the religion of Islam. They believe that Islam should be an ethnic religion, reserved only for the Arab ethnic group. This is where I'm gonna pause and just make a note. Arab and Muslim are not the same thing. Arab is an ethnic group. Muslim is a religious person. This exclusion angered a lot of people in the empire who wanted to join the faith but just were not Arabs. And they wanted to join the faith for a variety of reasons. For one, a lot of them believed in Muhammad and wanted to practice their new beliefs openly. But also you got tax benefits if you're a Muslim. Note, you also got tax benefits if you were a quote, person of the book, meaning a Christian or a Jew in these early caliphates. Muslims do not discount all of the teachings of the earlier Abrahamic religions. Like they believe that Jesus was a prophet, just not the son of God. Muslims basically believe that they just have the final draft of these earlier two religions. So there were rebellions from non-Arab's who wanted to be treated equally. They overthrew the Umayyads and set up the Abbasid caliphate, which is considered the golden age of Islam. The Abbasids ruled from 750 until 1258 and they opened Islam to everyone, making it a universalizing religion like Christianity or Buddhism. The Abbasids emphasized art, culture, literature and scholarly works. They built their capital and named it Baghdad and it became incredibly cosmopolitan. Baghdad was like the New York City of the post-Coscal era. They built a thing called the House of Wisdom where they invited scholars of all faiths from all over the world to study and preserve ancient texts. Thanks Muslims for saving all that Greek and Roman knowledge. The Abbasids invented the first camera. They wrote a canon of medicine that helped doctors diagnosed diseases like cancer and they invented algebra. The word comes from the Arabic algebra, which means "reunion of broken parts." Scholars in the Odyssey dynasty also compiled a lot of old Arabian folktales into a book called the "1,001 Nights." This is where we get stories like Ali Baba and the 40 thieves, open sesame, and also Aladdin and his wonderful lamp. And you all know how I feel about Aladdin, haba haba. But we also find the most famous Muslim poet, Ibn Al-Rumi, during the Odyssey dynasty. In Arabic, Ibn, Ibn just means son of. So that's why you'll see a lot of common Muslim names start with Ibn. Rumi is still the best-selling poet in the United States today. He wrote a lot of poems about love and seeking change from within. For example, quote, "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." Whoa. The Ophesians also send out trade emissaries around Africa and Asia, which helps spread Islam. In Africa, this conversion process happens quite peacefully through trade, but in India, a group of Afghan Muslims are going to conquer the subcontinent and proclaim the Delhi Sultanate. This is the first introduction of Muslims into India and they are going to be conflicts there ever since. But over time, the Ophesians grow weak as they struggle to maintain power of their massive empire. And nomadic Turkish groups are going to enter the empire and get hired as mercenary soldiers to fight for them. Ah, didn't you learn anything from the Romans? By the mid-tool hundreds, they will meet the same fate as almost every other Asian civilization. But we'll come back to them in a minute. Act 2. Cue up Toto because we're talking about Africa. Okay. Buckle in and hold on because I'm about to tell you something that is going to blow your mind. Africa had civilizations before white people showed up. I'll give you a second to process. So unfortunately, if you had the typical high school history experience, then you honestly might not have known that. Based on the way it's taught around the country, we are given the impression that Africa was made up of a bunch of small tribes that didn't have any technology or sophisticated institutions. That's why white people were able to conquer them so easily, right? Nope. And to be clear, if you're listening to this and your history teacher and you're offended because you don't teach Africa this way, well, congratulations. You're one of the good ones, but you'd be surprised at how rare you are. It is so common for teachers to spend way more time talking about Europe, the Americas, and Asia, and forget all about Africa. One of the biggest reasons for this is that they didn't learn about Africa in school. And teachers really don't like getting up in front of a bunch of judgmental teenagers to teach something that they don't know anything about. So since teachers are a product of our own education system, we've set up this cycle that perpetuates the overemphasis on Europe and the United States, and skims pass a lot of the rest of the world. This may not seem important, but it is. The way that we teach and learn history impacts our entire outlook of the world today. When we look at the Middle East and the news, for example, we only see radicalism and fighting and chaos without also seeing that this is one small part of a long history of sophisticated empires that showed tolerance and promoted art and culture. At the same time that Europe was torturing non-Christians, I might add. Similarly, when we look at Africa today, we only see disease and poverty and sadness because it fits our narrative that Africa without white people in charge is incompetent. Yeah, Africa does have a lot of issues today, but like don't we? The United States has 42 million people in our own country who are food insecure. But Africa is also growing incredibly fast. Remember, a lot of these African countries just got free from European imperialism like 50 years ago. Anyway, we'll come back to that later in the season. But the point is that if we keep skipping African history, then we are doing ourselves a disservice by not learning about the incredible things that Africans have done without the help or aid of outsiders. And knowing about these impressive civilizations might give us a better idea of exactly what the African people are capable of if other people would just stop colonizing them for a second. All right, rant over. So a lot of Africa, and by this I mean sub-Saharan Africa below the Sahara desert because I mean like Egypt is in Africa too, right? But we already talked about them. A lot of Africa was made up of stateless societies. This just means that they were set up in smaller units without an overarching state. And this is where we get this stereotype of just like it being overrun by tribes. But there were also a lot of incredibly impressive kingdoms and empires. Remember Africa is huge. Africa's landmass is bigger than the US, Europe, China, and India combined. Screw you Mercator map projection for making us think otherwise. So even though Africa is huge and diverse and had a ton of different things going on, I'm going to focus in on one key civilization in each region. In the ancient and classical era, there was a kingdom in East Africa called Nubia that lived further south along the Nile and traded luxury goods with Egypt and the rest of the Mediterranean. This kingdom is also known as Kush with a K. And it was very similar to ancient Egypt and they produced a ton of fantastic art that is found across the region. At one point, they were even ruled by a powerful queen named Amani Shaketo who defeated an invading army sent by Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Nubia collapsed along with the other classical empires in the 300s and that region of East Africa gave rise to Christian kingdoms, the greatest of which was an Ethiopia. It was called the Kingdom of Axum and they ruled East Africa from around 100 to 900 CE. It was notable as an early adopter of Christianity right around the time the Romans did too. This created a beneficial link between the Kingdom of Axum and the Romans until Rome fell. Axum is going to rule East African trade for centuries until they are pushed back by the conquering Muslims. They will eventually retreat inwards, choosing to retain their Christianity and internal unity and exchange for giving up power and control over trade routes. Even today, Ethiopia is a mostly Christian nation. Like when European colonizers showed up in Africa, the Ethiopian church already had 40 to 50 million members. There are also going to be the only nation in Africa that doesn't get colonized, partly because they were already Christian so it was hard for Europeans to justify that they needed to be "civilized" but also because they were so unified. Italy tried to conquer them but were defeated in the Italo Ethiopian War. We'll come back to that near the end of the season. But the post-glossical era, again the medieval era in Europe, was dominated by three large trading kingdoms in sub-Saharan Africa. Further south was a place called Great Zimbabwe. We don't know much about this kingdom, like I mentioned in a previous episode, many African civilizations valued oral history which can get lost more easily. But we do know that Great Zimbabwe was great. So great in fact that when Europeans discovered the remains of this civilization, they were so impressed and also so convinced of the inferiority of black people that they couldn't believe that African people had built it on their own. Really. So when colonizers arrived in Africa, they had heard myths of a great city in the interior of southern Africa that sounded to them a lot like the minds of King Solomon mentioned in the Bible. In this version of the story Semitic people, or a group of people from the Middle East, traveled down to southern Africa and founded a city of gold called Ophir. When Great Zimbabwe was found, archaeologists and historians told this general version of the story for years that they had found a great city that had been created by non-Africans deep in the jungle. A few decades later in the early 20th century, archaeologists re-evaluated the evidence and realized that none of the art and architecture from these ruins looked anything like something from Eurasia. In fact, it matched pretty dang close with other African art and they finally had to admit that Great Zimbabwe was a purely African creation and it seriously blew people's minds. The guy who first proposed this new version of the story was kicked out of the National Geographic Society because it was so controversial to claim that black Africans could have built it. Remember, this is during the age of imperialism. So this civilization did not have much contact with the outside world, but Great Zimbabwe did trade their precious materials, especially gold, with some of the other key trading cities along the east coast. These trading cities were mostly independent, but we generally refer to them as the Swahili coast states. These are basically located in modern-day Somalia and they are really important centers of trade between Africa, the Middle East, and India. The Swahili coast cities become these huge melting pots of language and culture. Swahili, for example, is a new language that develops as a result of the mixture of Native African Bantu and Arabic. But the most famous trading empire during this time is Mali. It's located in West Africa and is the largest of the Sudanic states. In the post-classical era, the Sudan referred to the region just below the Sahara Desert and it comes from the Arabic phrase for land of the blacks. Mali was situated perfectly to take advantage of the gold salt trade. And now for a quick shout out to the camel. Y'all, camels are crucial to world history. They were really important to African trading because they could cross the formerly uncrossable Sahara Desert. So it's not a coincidence that these trading kingdoms grow very quickly after the camel got introduced to the African continent via Middle East traders in or around 300 CE. Did you know that camels originated in Canada? Yeah, that Canada. Prehistoric camels were 30% bigger than they are today and they roamed the Arctic Desert of North America. They eventually crossed the Bering Land Bridge and made their way into Asia and the Middle East finally ending up in Africa. But also some of the North American camels migrated down into South America where they became llamas and al-pacas. You guys, I just learned this and it's now what are my favorite facts of all time? So Molly, heroes incredibly wealthy and no one epitomizes that better than their most famous leader, Monsemusa. He was a Muslim king of Mali that lived at the turn of the 14th century around the same time that the Mongols are controlling most of Asia and the Black Death is hitting Europe. Monsemusa took the traditional Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca and along the way he showered the communities he visited with gold. He spent so much gold in Egypt that he caused rampant inflation in sort of destroyed their economy. There is a history teacher who has a YouTube channel where she makes the most amazing music videos for historical parodies of pop songs. I have a link to her page on my blog. You should check her out. My favorite song that she does is called "I'm Monsemusa" and it's a parody of culture clubs all tumble for you. You should go watch it. No joke. At the end of every year, when I ask my AP world history students, what's the one thing that they're going to remember 10 years from now for my class? I would say about 75% of the students say the Monsemusa music video. I'm Monsemusa. He's gold for you. Oh, you should go watch it. It's incredible. So historically, when adjusting for inflation and relative wealth at the time, Monsemusa is still the richest man in all of history, easily. But his hatch had an unintended effect that may have proved disastrous for the continent of Africa. Monsemusa travels across North Africa and through the Middle East spreading seemingly infinite supplies of gold just at the same time that European merchants are on the rise and setting up shop in these same trading cities. So the newly powerful European monarchs back home are hearing that this mythical land of wealth just below the desert. And I don't think it's fair to say that this was the reason that Europeans eventually want to colonize Africa for its natural resources, but it definitely didn't help. If Monsemusa just watched Black Panther, he would have known that you shouldn't flaunt your wealth to the outside world. Like if T'Challa had gone around bragging about all of his stories of Ibrainium, they totally would have been taken over. We could all learn a thing or two from the Wakandans. Africa makes up the westernmost end of this Eurasian trading, so let's head east to the place that instead of trading natural resources, trades inventions. And three, thanks China for all of the useful things. The two main Chinese dynasties during the post-glosical era are the Tong and the Song Dynasties. We could talk with them individually, but honestly for our purposes, we really just need to focus on four inventions that were developed over these two dynasties that were really great. They're called, wait for it, the four great inventions. 1. The Compass. This innovation is going to be critical for ocean navigation. Before this, sailors typically use the stars for navigation, which was fine for general directions, but we're reaching a point in history we're just knowing you're heading west isn't going to cut it anymore. I'm looking at you Columbus. 2. Gunpowder. This one is obvious, but let's talk about it anyway. Gunpowder was actually discovered by alchemists searching for an elixir of immortality. Again with the immortality China, didn't you see what happened to Shepong-D? The early forms of handguns were really just hollow cast iron cylinders, but the Europeans are going to perfect these weapons later. And there's a con-misconception that the Chinese didn't really use gunpowder technology and warfare, which is untrue. This myth will get perpetuated later by the last Chinese dynasty because they see guns as a threat to their power, but the Chinese have been using early versions of bombs and cannons since the Han Dynasty. 3. Paper making. Paper has typically been attributed to a unique in the Han Dynasty named Kailun, who used mulberry, fishnet, old rags, and hemp waste. He was a real maghiver, that Kailun. The Chinese had also invented the all-important toilet paper by the 6th century, but what the tongue do that sets off a chain of events that leads to US independence essentially is they use small pieces of paper in tea bags to preserve its flavor. This allows Chinese tea to travel longer distances and eventually make it to Europe in the 16th century. The Europeans love this stuff and are going to build entire empires around it, but we'll get there. The Song Dynasty also becomes the first civilization to use paper currency, which is infinitely easier to travel with and it facilitates increasing exchange across long trade routes. The 4th grade invention is printing. The Chinese invented woodblock printing, which will eventually be taken and adapted into movable type by the Europeans. We can have a debate over which of these inventions is the most important, but my money is on printing. The ability to transmit ideas faster and more uniformly has an enormous impact on life at the end of the post-Coscal era, and I would argue it ushers in the early modern era, especially in Europe. People throughout history have had incredible ideas about art, science, and government, but it's not until there's a fast way to reliably share these ideas that civilization advances exponentially, and we'll come back to this when we talk about early modern Europe. So China is inventing all of the things, which makes them a highly desirable trade destination. It also reinforces this idea in Chinese history that we haven't really talked about yet, called the Middle Kingdom. Essentially, the Chinese, like most of my teenagers, have always seen themselves as the center of the world. Because they have all these highly sought after inventions and ideas, everyone has come to them, which makes them think that they are the center of civilization, and the further way you go in any direction, the more barbaric you become. There are actually world maps at the time that just look like concentric circles radiating out from China. So from their perspective, Europe, the furthest away and the least Chinese, is totally barbaric and unworthy of their attention. This is really important because it's going to set China up for a massively rude awakening in a few hundred years. Stay tuned. For now, they have another more immediate rude awakening coming from the North. Act 4. Here, come, the Mongols! You guys have no idea how long I took me worth it. The year is 1162. Europe and the Middle East are in a lull between the second and third crusade. China has just transitioned into its southern Song Dynasty after another military conquered the northern part of China. And in Mongolia, a boy named Timigen is born. At this time, there really was no such thing as the Mongols. They were a variety of separate tribes and clans that ward with each other constantly. For example, when Timigen was only ten, his father was poisoned by a rival tribe. His mother and her six children, seen as a burden, were abandoned by the tribe. Tendulter half-brother was now the head of the household, but he was not providing for the family. And one day, Timigen caught him stealing food, and so he did what any pre-teen boy would do. He shot him with a bow and arrow and killed him. Timigen eventually married a woman and had four sons and an unknown amount of daughters. And this fact is so crazy to me. Like, daughters were so insignificant that they didn't even keep track of them. Anyway, he slowly gained a reputation as a great warrior, once rescuing his wife after she was kidnapped by an enemy tribe, and he also began creating alliances between the various tribes. Timigen was able to unite the Mongols by doing a few things differently. First, he promoted within his military based on merit, instead of family or elite status. So this was really attractive for a lot of the lower members of the different Mongol tribe societies who felt like they could work their way up in Timigen's army. He also organized his troops into units of ten, so ten, one hundred, one thousand, which made them a lot easier to organize, and he also intentionally mixed up people from various tribes to try to break down barriers between the different groups. And he still let his army loot, I mean like looters got a loot, right? But he made them wait until a complete victory was won so they wouldn't get distracted. All of this made Timigen's warriors highly effective, and by twelve of five he had vanquished all of his rivals and united Mongolia under his rule, and it's at this point that it becomes known as the great or universal ruler, or gangus con. Note, it's actually supposed to be Chingus con, but that sounds weird, so I'm just going to stick with gangus. Okay, I also think it's a time for a quick conversation about just how heavily George R.R. Martin plagiarized history when he wrote Game of Thrones. We could go on this forever, but just two quick things. The Citadel, where Samuel Tarley geeks out, and it's also the janitor, I think? Yeah, that's the house of wisdom that I mentioned earlier in Baghdad during the Abbasid dynasty. And the Dothraki are obviously one hundred percent the Mongols. The Mongols revolutionized warfare. They brought no supply trains with them, just what they could carry on their backs and their horses, which made them incredibly fast and mobile. Leaders would send spies and scouts to assess their enemy in advance. For example, the Mongols sent spies into Europe for ten years before they attempted to conquer it. Gangus con developed new tactics like the false retreat. He would have his troops turn and run as if they were fleeing, and then when the enemy pursued them, they would lure them into an area where a larger army was waiting. And they also obviously used psychological warfare. This is one of my favorites. Gangus con would have each warrior light five extra campfires at night so that the opposing side would leave that they were way larger than they really were. They were skilled at siege tactics, especially when they would encounter a fortress or a castle. They would divert rivers away from the cities and encircle them and wait until they starved or surrendered. They would pillage the surrounding villages, killing many, taking Samas prisoners to fill their front lines, and allowing a few to survive to tell the story to other cities who might decide to just surrender up front to avoid this fate. The Mongols were skilled at archery and they could shoot with accuracy while riding on horseback, which really no one could do at this time. Gangus con would have his soldiers tie tree branches or leaves behind his horses so that they would drag as they rode, kicking up a cloud of dust behind the Mongol army as they advanced, making it look way bigger and more terrifying. And obviously they used biological warfare. dead bodies would be catapulted into cities. and many diseases were spread this way. And it's not fair to blame the Black Death entirely on the Mongols, but I think we can blame it 99% on the Mongols. Between them flinging, plague-ridden bodies into towns across Eurasia, and then later reuniting and encouraging intercontinental trade and exchange, they basically caused the Black Death. So, Genghis Khan Unites Mongolia does a bunch of conquering, and ends up controlling the largest contiguous empire in human history. That means the largest empire where his land was all connected. And it's the largest imprint in human history ever. When he was 65, he died in combat, but his remains have never been found. Supposedly when he died, a guard of soldiers buried him in the Eurasian step, and they killed anyone they encountered along the way. Also, according to the story, after they buried Genghis Khan, they killed themselves so that his tomb would always be a secret. According to Marco Polo, the Mongols didn't know where he was buried even just a few decades after he died, so this version of the story kind of holds up. Either way, Genghis Khan was clearly a humble man. He didn't allow anyone to build statues of him or paint his picture when he was alive, but today in Mongolia, he is still revered as the founder of their nation. Just in 2006, the Mongolian parliament revised their national anthem to include his name. Genghis Khan's empire included North Korea, Northern China, all the way to the Caspian Sea, and his children are going to expand the empire to include Russia, the Middle East, Tibet, and all of China. And they make it into Eastern Europe and almost conquered Vienna, Austria, but they somewhat suddenly stopped and turned back. Why? The typical story is that the Great Khan Ogadai, Genghis's son, had died while binge drinking on a hunting trip. King Robert Baratheon much? The princes of the blood, everyone related to the Great Khan, would have to return to the homeland to elect a new leader. Now, Ogadai definitely died, but there's a lot of evidence that they had already turned back from Europe at this point. The most probable reason why they turned back and never conquered Europe is actually climate change. According to weather data preserved in tree rings, the local weather turned cold and rainy, making the land into a damp marsh. These conditions were not ideal for the Mongol army that relied on their speed and horses, so they might have turned back to avoid a loss. Either way, this is where the Mongol advance stops. Thanks, cold front. Also, the Mongols had a really bad luck when it came to weather. They also tried to conquer Japan twice, and were stopped by typhoon twice. I like to imagine a bunch of Mongol warriors sitting around the horse milk water cooler, saying things like "crazy weather we're having, right?" The Mongol Empire slowly falls apart, a few generations after Genghis Khan. After it gets divided up amongst his sons, they begin to fight with each other for land. The most famous of these future rulers is Genghis Khan's grandson Kubla Khan. We know a lot about him in his court because he was visited for years by Marco Polo, a young Italian traveler who wandered Eurasia, writing about his experiences. He's like this people on Instagram who somehow make a living traveling and taking pictures of themselves in cool places. Like, where's that job posting on indeed? Kubla Khan conquered China and established the Yuan dynasty. He maintained a lot of Chinese cultural practices like Confucianism. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But he just put the Mongols on top. Kubla Khan loved Chinese culture, and he invited religious representatives from all over the world to come visit him. And this made another Khan, the one who inherited Mongolia, angry, believing that Kubla Khan was not honoring Genghis Khan's culture. They fought a war during which the daughter of the Mongolian Khan distinguished herself as a fierce warrior. Her name was Kudalun, and she supposedly refused to marry anyone who couldn't beat her in a wrestling match. She was also her father's most trusted advisor, and he tried to name her as his successor, but it was refused by her male relatives. And I totally picture Kudalun as Kaleesi from Game of Thrones, which is highly inaccurate, like she would not have been blonde. But now that I made the connection of my head, I just can't stop it. So, I feel very passionately about this. The Mongols get a bad rep. Sure, they were terrifying and use brutal tactics. Like, yeah, Genghis Khan executed a governor in modern-day Iran by having molten silver poured into his eyes and thought. Kind of like how Viserys was executed in, you guessed it, Game of Thrones. Alright, that's the last one I promise. But that guy had his trade care of Anne, and eventually Ambassador murdered. And yeah, they conquered nearly a quarter of the Earth's surface and led to the death of almost 40 million people. But by eliminating vegetation and human influence on so much of that land, it said that he scrubbed 700 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which lead some historians to call him the greatest eco-warrior of all time, which I think is hilarious. So, I mean, some of those are a stretch. But there are other legacies of the Mongols that are entirely positive. After Genghis Khan conquered the land, he instituted a Pax Mongolica, or Mongol Peace. He reunited the Silk Road and encouraged trade and exchange across Eurasia, collecting taxes and tributes to fund his new empire. It was said that the Silk Road, under the Mongols, was so safe that travelers could walk the entire length of it, unprotected, and not be robbed. I mean, being known for your brutality has its upside, I guess. There's a book by Jack Weatherford called Genghis Khan in the Making of the Modern World that I highly recommend. He contends that the Mongol conquest jump-started the modern age, especially in Europe. And it's true that the Mongol conquest, to some extent, wiped the medieval slate clean. They fostered trade and exchange, so all those cool inventions from China could make it to Europe. And then also provided a common enemy that united previously scattered societies into new civilizations. In Russia, for example, before the Mongol conquest, there was just a collection of various princes. But over the 100-year Mongol occupation, they unite together to force them out. The first Tsar, Ivan III, he's Ivan the Great, not Ivan the Terrible. He was proclaimed after he refuses to pay tribute to the Mongols anymore. The last reason why the Mongols get a bad rap is because almost all of what we know about them is written by outsiders. The Mongols did not have their own written language, which automatically makes them uncivilized in most historians' book. I mean, thanks, Eiffel. They were too busy conquering to sit down and write their own histories, so most of the primary source accounts from the time period are written by people who were either subjugated, conquered, or at least just generally terrified of the Mongols. There is a book called The Secret History of the Mongols that was written by the Mongols after they adopted the Chinese script after Genghis Khan's death. It went missing for a long time and was thought to be a myth until it's rediscovering the early 20th century. And this has allowed us to gain a better perspective on their rule, but the stereotype of the brutal barbarian still remains. So, Islam has firmly established itself in the Middle East. India and China are trekking along, shifting between centralized rule and a variety of competing states, and the Mongols have given most of Eurasia a fresh start. Meanwhile, the reunited Silk Road trade has allowed Asian innovations to reach Europe, who have also recently had their eyes open to the outside world again and are really eager to find out what else is out there. Who knows? Maybe that compass and gunpowder will come in handy after all. To be continued. For notes, pictures about some of the things I mentioned, links to sources and other fun stuff, check out the podcast appendix page at www.anti-socialstudies.org. Join me next time on anti-social studies as we explore the early modern era in the West, or we miss two whole continents. And don't forget that if you like what I'm doing, please subscribe to my podcast so you'll know when the next episodes are up. And if you really like what I'm doing, then go to iTunes, wherever you do your podcast, and give me a review. Thanks!