Culture and Arts in the Early Mongol Empire

From Genghis Khan’s unification of Mongol groups in 1206 to the empire’s division around 1260, cultural production linked mobile households and courts with permanent cities and craftspeople drawn from conquered lands. The Orkhon Valley in central Mongolia became the site of Karakorum, while pastoral families continued making portable shelters, clothing and equipment. Rulers relied on both settings: a moving court could assemble people and supplies across the steppe, while a capital housed workshops, officials, merchants and religious communities.

On this page4 sections

Mobile courts and a permanent capital

Genghis Khan selected a camp site in the Orkhon Valley in 1220. After Ögedei succeeded him in 1229, he established Karakorum on the same site. A palace was added in 1235; construction continued under Möngke, who ruled from 1251 to 1259. The city did not end the court’s movement. Ögedei and Möngke each stayed there for extended periods twice a year, and Ögedei encouraged members of the imperial elite to build houses near the palace. Karakorum was an anchor on the court’s itinerary, connected to the wider network of camps and routes.

A moving court needed more than tents. An imperial camp had dwellings, guards, attendants and controlled entrances, giving a ruler space to receive envoys and hold assemblies. At Güyük’s accession in 1246, John of Pian de Carpine, an envoy and a friar of the Catholic Franciscan order, described large ceremonial tents set on prepared ground. A fence and guarded gate controlled entry; envoys, princes and other visitors waited outside before the ruler’s audience. These arrangements made a temporary camp function as a political centre.

Karakorum brought people and activities into a fixed urban setting. William of Rubruck, a Franciscan friar who visited the city in 1254, describes a quarter of Muslim merchants, a quarter of artisans he called Cathayans, or people from northern China, and separate markets outside the gates for grain, livestock, carts and horses. He also lists mosques, temples and a Christian church. In the city’s southwest, joint Mongolian-German excavations identify the Great Hall as a Buddhist temple used in the 13th and 14th centuries; its first excavator had identified it as Ögedei’s palace. Its floor plan had sixty-four granite column bases in an eight-by-eight grid, surrounding the place where archaeologists infer a central stupa, a Buddhist shrine structure. The plan followed a Tibetan mandala, a sacred diagram used to organize religious space, while the building used Chinese construction techniques. Its temple phase belongs to Karakorum’s later history, not to the palace built in 1235.

Household makers and court artisans

Pastoral households turned animal products into equipment for living and travel. Rubruck says coarse wool became felt coverings for dwellings and baggage chests, while finer wool lined clothing and wool mixed with horsehair made ropes. Hides became large containers for liquids and shoes. Felt forms when animal fibres tangle into a firm sheet; cleaned fleece can be layered, wetted, rolled and pressed before drying. Women also sewed clothing and worked leather, while men shaped wooden cart and dwelling frames and made bows, arrows, bits, stirrups and saddles.

Settled towns and the court supported more specialised work. Rubruck describes Chinese artisans living in a distinct Karakorum quarter. Smiths hammered and joined heated metal or cast molten metal into molds; weavers interlaced lengthwise and crosswise yarns on looms. The objects and methods of these urban workshops served household and court demand. Bemmann and colleagues’ archaeological study describes craftspeople and prisoners of war forcibly relocated to work for Mongol rulers.

Rubruck’s account of Möngke’s 1254 feast gives a named example of court patronage. Guillaume Boucher, a Parisian goldsmith captured in Hungary, made a silver drink tree for the palace entrance. Four silver lions at its base each emitted mare’s milk; separate pipes rose through the tree, where gilded serpents carried wine, clarified fermented mare’s milk, honey drink and rice drink. A hidden worker sounded a trumpet from a vault beneath the tree, while servants in a cellar outside the palace poured each drink into its conduit. The design joined metalwork to an organized service crew, and Boucher remained enslaved while doing the work.

Writing, memory and official work

The Mongol chancery, the ruler’s office for official records and correspondence, adopted the Uyghur script in 1204 and used it to write Mongolian. Genghis Khan also drew on administrative techniques and officials from conquered states. Translators and secretaries made written authority usable across languages. During the 1246 assembly, Carpine saw the secretary Chingay write down the names of envoys and the rulers who sent them, then read the list aloud before Güyük and the assembled chiefs. Earlier, interpreters had translated the visitors’ letters for Mongol authorities.

The 13th-century Secret History of the Mongols begins with legendary clan ancestry, then follows Temüjin, later known as Genghis Khan, from birth and family through growing alliances and conflicts to his rise to rule; its narrative also preserves speeches and passages of verse. Its final part turns to Ögedei’s election and reign. The earliest attested version survives as Mongolian transcribed in Chinese characters, accompanied by a Chinese translation.

Court ceremony and performance

Rubruck describes Möngke’s palace hall as a stage for formal presentation. Möngke sat on a raised seat at the north end; men occupied the west side and women the east. Envoys carrying gifts stood in an open central space, while cupbearers went up one stairway to serve the ruler and came down another. The layout directed attention to the ruler and organized how guests, gifts and attendants moved through the hall.

Music and dance also shaped drinking gatherings. Rubruck describes attendants giving a loud signal as a string player began or stopped playing, with men dancing before the master and women before the mistress. Some nobles travelled as much as a two-month journey to join the larger seasonal gathering; Möngke distributed robes and presents to them.