Early Mongol Settlements, Buildings and Construction

From 1206 to about 1260, Mongol rulers used both moving camps and permanent settlements to govern a rapidly expanding empire. Chinggis Khan, also known as Genghis Khan, chose the Orkhon Valley for a camp in 1220. His successor Ögedei turned that site into Karakorum, a walled city with a palace, markets, religious buildings and workshops. In conquered North China, officials also relied on local administrators and existing urban centers. These different settings served the same court in different ways.

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Camps and court access

John of Pian de Carpine, a Franciscan envoy who attended Güyük Khan’s accession assembly in 1246 (Güyük ruled from 1246 to 1248), described a large ceremonial tent surrounded by a decorated wooden fence. Two gates controlled movement: one was reserved for the ruler, while guards with swords, bows and arrows watched the entrance used by admitted visitors. Horses stood at a distance, and leaders met in counsel outside the tent before the assembly began. The tent was a temporary court building, and the fencing, guards and separate horse ground organized who could approach it.

Carpine also followed the court to another plain, where a second ceremonial tent stood on columns plated with gold. On the day Güyük was enthroned, chiefs and other attendees assembled before him and then joined the feast. Scribes recorded envoys’ names and origins before they entered the ruler’s presence. The court could therefore carry its meeting spaces with it: prepared grounds, guarded thresholds, records and a sequence of audiences made a camp a working seat of government.

From an Orkhon camp to Karakorum

The Orkhon Valley lies in central Mongolia, where the upper river valley opens toward broad pastureland. Chinggis Khan selected a camp site there in 1220. Ögedei established Karakorum on the same site after becoming khan in 1229; a palace was added in 1235, and the building programme was completed under Möngke, who ruled from 1251 to 1259. The court still moved through its wider territory, staying in Karakorum for extended periods twice a year. Ögedei encouraged members of the imperial elite to build houses near the palace, bringing permanent residences around the court’s seasonal base.

This was new construction on a place already used by the Mongol court. North China offers a different example. Chinggis Khan’s forces sacked and burned Zhongdu, the Jin capital near modern Beijing, in 1215; by 1217, the Mongol commander Muqali had his headquarters there. Mongol regional government also adapted an earlier Jin military office when it created regional branch offices in newly conquered territories. Under Ögedei, former Jin officials staffed tax offices across ten North China regions. Mongol rule reworked the former Jin capital and its administrative practices while the court built a new capital at Karakorum.

Streets, quarters and supplies

William of Rubruck, a Franciscan visitor who entered Karakorum in 1254, described a mud wall with four gates. Outside them, traders sold grain at the eastern gate, sheep and goats at the western gate, oxen and carts at the southern gate, and horses at the northern gate. This arrangement put bulky goods and livestock at distinct approaches to the city. The gates connected the urban market to the routes and herds that supplied it.

Rubruck also described a market quarter where Muslim merchants traded and Mongols gathered when the court was nearby, a quarter whose residents he called Chinese artisans, and large houses for court secretaries. He noted temples of different religions, two mosques and a Christian church. His 1254 account shows a city shaped by the court’s presence and by people drawn from across the empire. The ruler’s palace stood beside the city wall inside its own high enclosure. Rubruck describes long storage buildings for provisions and treasure, and a hall arranged with raised seats, steps and a clear central space for cupbearers and envoys presenting gifts.

Modern surveys have found that settlement extended well beyond the enclosed center. Researchers traced the eastern road for about three kilometres, with buildings along long stretches. Magnetic surveys also reveal roads and building remains; strong readings in some places suggest fired brick, while collapsed walls along a western road are interpreted as sun-dried mud brick. The survey maps were made by taking magnetic and topographic measurements across the ground, allowing buried structures and routes to be detected without excavating every feature.

Residents, animals and visitors all needed water, but no city-wide supply works have been found at Karakorum. Archaeologists therefore infer that water from the Orkhon River was probably brought in carts, vessels or leather bags. The gates and roads show where people entered and traded; carrying water was another daily task needed to keep the settlement operating.

Workers, materials and a changed identification

Karakorum’s construction depended on skilled workers as well as local supplies. Archaeological and historical research indicates that craftspeople and prisoners of war were forcibly moved to work for the court and military inside the walled city. The new capital gathered permanent residents, artisans, officials and seasonal visitors around a court that continued to travel.

The large building in the city’s southwest was once identified as a khan’s palace. Research by the German Archaeological Institute and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences instead identifies it as a three-storey Buddhist temple. Its plan was divided by eight rows of columns in each direction, with a large stupa, a Buddhist shrine monument, at the center and oversized Buddha figures around it. Thousands of small Buddhist offerings were placed inside the stupa. The building stood on a high platform reached by stairs; its construction techniques were Chinese, while its ground plan followed a Tibetan mandala, a sacred diagram used to organize space. These remains show how the empire’s new capital brought together workers and building traditions from different regions.

A later monastery, Erdene Zuu, was founded in 1586 on part of the earlier palace area. Its surviving walls and buildings belong to that later religious site, while the thirteenth-century city is reconstructed from older accounts, buried walls, roads, platforms and survey evidence.

For more on the moving court’s residential settings, see mobile camps.