Religion and Religious Communities in the Early Mongol Empire

At a quriltay, a formal assembly of princes and notables, Mongols recognized Temüjin as Genghis Khan, ruler of their united polity, in 1206. His successors Ögedei (1229–1241), Güyük (1246–1248) and Möngke (1251–1259) extended Mongol authority across the Inner Asian steppe and into regions with established Buddhist, Daoist, Christian and Muslim institutions. Their relationships with religion took practical forms: rulers consulted ritual specialists, received religious teachers, appointed clergy to oversee institutions and used their services in court life.

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Steppe rites and ritual specialists

Eternal Heaven, called Tengri in Mongolian, gave the ruling house a sacred language for authority. In his account of a journey to Möngke’s court in 1253–1255, William of Rubruck, a Flemish Franciscan friar, describes felt figures placed inside Mongol households. He says an attendant sprinkled drink on the figures and toward the four directions for fire, air, water and the dead. Rubruck’s description records a specific household ritual as he understood it; he uses the term “idols” for the images.

Rubruck also describes diviners serving as priests. When a person became ill, a household marked the dwelling so others would not enter, and the great camps posted guards to keep visitors away. The family called diviners to consult about the illness. These specialists also stayed near the ruling household, where their advice could affect decisions. A ritual specialist might therefore serve both a household in distress and a ruler seeking guidance.

Christian worship in a royal camp

The Church of the East was an eastern Christian church with communities across Mesopotamia, Iran and Central Asia. Rubruck calls its clergy “Nestorians,” a name Latin Christians commonly used for them. In January 1254, he watched Möngke’s first wife and several children attend a Church of the East service in a chapel near the imperial camp. They bowed, touched images and kissed their hands. Priests sang and burned incense; Möngke later entered the chapel, sat beside his wife near the altar and asked questions about Rubruck’s Bible and service books. His wife gave gifts to the priests and other Christians, and the household shared a meal there.

The court’s ties to Christianity also involved envoys. John of Pian de Carpine, a Franciscan sent by Pope Innocent IV, reached Güyük’s court in 1246 with a message that urged the Mongols to accept Christianity and stop attacking Christian lands. Mongol secretaries and interpreters questioned the friars, rendered their message into other languages and checked the written reply before it was sent back. Latin missions were thus both religious appeals and diplomatic exchanges, handled through the empire’s multilingual court.

At Möngke’s court in May 1254, the khan ordered Christians, Muslims and Buddhist religious teachers whom Rubruck calls “Tuins” to meet and compare their teachings. Interpreters carried the arguments to the participants, and secretaries recorded them. Rubruck reports that Möngke described God as giving people different paths, like the fingers of a hand. The debate brought religious specialists before the ruler to explain their traditions; Rubruck records no resulting conversion.

Buddhist appointments and Daoist communities

In northern China, Mongol rulers dealt with established Buddhist monastic institutions through appointments. Haiyun, a monk of Chan, a Chinese Buddhist tradition centered on meditation, became a senior adviser on Buddhist affairs. In 1247, after Güyük’s accession, he appointed Haiyun to lead Buddhist monks across the empire. In 1251, Möngke confirmed the appointment and gave Haiyun an official seal of authority. A Buddhist chronicle also records Möngke’s renewal of tax exemptions for Buddhist institutions. The seal authorized Haiyun to administer Buddhist affairs, connecting monasteries to the court through a representative who could speak for them.

Daoism is a Chinese religious tradition with practices of self-cultivation and ritual. Quanzhen was a monastic Daoist order whose masters paired meditative self-cultivation with compassionate action. Qiu Chuji belonged to this order. In 1222, Qiu travelled from northern China to meet Genghis Khan in the Hindu Kush, in present-day Afghanistan. He urged the khan to moderate his conquest and taught him principles of health and longevity. In 1228, the year after Qiu’s death, his successor Yin Zhiping organized a large assembly-funeral in Yanjing, present-day Beijing. Hundreds of Quanzhen followers travelled from Shanxi and donated money and building materials for a memorial hall that held Qiu’s coffin. Local governor Wang Juchuan presided over the ceremony and sent troops to guard the gathering within and outside the city. Over three days, the funeral combined Daoist rites with mourning clothes that marked the master-disciple bond as a family relationship. The event joined religious leadership, a city’s lay community and regional officials in public commemoration.

Muslim institutions under conquest and rule

Mongol campaigns also brought Muslim-majority cities and institutions under Mongol authority. In 1258, Hülegü’s army captured Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid caliphate, a Muslim dynasty centered in Mesopotamia (roughly modern Iraq). The city suffered heavy loss of life and damage to buildings, including mosques, shrines and schools. In 1258–1259, Hülegü appointed his Persian secretary, the historian ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAṭā-Malek Juvayni, as deputy governor of Mesopotamia and Khuzistan in southwestern Iran. Persian officials handled civil and financial administration under Mongol military command.

Muslim teachers also formed ties with Mongol rulers. Sayf al-Din Bāḵarzī, a Sufi teacher in Bukhara, in modern Uzbekistan, administered religious endowments for a madrasa, a school of Islamic learning, and a Sufi lodge. An endowment assigned property and its income to support a public religious purpose. The lodge gave disciples a place to reside, study and pray together under a Sufi master who provided religious instruction and spiritual guidance, helping them pursue self-control and personal development. Encyclopaedia Iranica dates Berke’s adoption of Islam, in the western branch of the Chinggisid family, to before 1253. Accounts differ over his relationship with Sayf: one credits the sheikh with Berke’s conversion, while another says Berke was already Muslim when he visited Bukhara for the sheikh’s blessing. The early date places a Mongol prince’s conversion within the united empire, before its division around 1260.