Work in Mongol Camps and Early Imperial Settlements

Between Genghis Khan’s unification of the Mongols in 1206 and the empire’s division around 1260, work connected mobile herding camps with farming villages, towns and the imperial court. Herders processed milk and wool for household use; settled communities supplied grain; markets brought animals and manufactured goods together; and rulers drew on transport, clerical and craft skills. In 1253–1255 the Franciscan friar William of Rubruck travelled from the Mongols’ western domains to Karakorum, the imperial capital in present-day Mongolia, and described work in both camps and the city.

On this page5 sections

Herding and seasonal household work

Herding required access to pasture and water, care for young animals and movement between seasonal grazing grounds. Rubruck says Mongol groups knew where to go in winter, spring, summer and autumn: they moved toward warmer southern areas in winter and cooler northern pasture in summer. Snow could water a winter range where no surface water was available, so grazing depended on knowledge of the route as well as the animals.

Milking and food preparation continued within the travelling camp. Rubruck describes milking mares after tethering their foals nearby; if a mare resisted, her foal was brought close to suckle before the milker began. People collected the milk in a skin and churned it with a wooden dasher until it fermented and butter separated. Cow’s milk was also processed: butter was boiled down for storage, while the remaining milk was soured, boiled into curds and dried for winter. These tasks turned seasonal milk into food that could be carried and kept.

Making and repairing camp equipment

Rubruck’s account connects household production to the materials people obtained from herds. He says women drove carts, set up felt-covered dwellings, made butter and curds, and sewed hides, boots, socks and clothing. To make sewing thread, they split animal tendons into fine strands and twisted them together. Men made bows, arrows, bits, stirrups and saddles, and built the wooden frames of carts and dwellings; they also cared for horses, milked mares and made the skins used to store fermented milk. Rubruck says both women and men tended sheep and goats.

Coarse wool became felt for roofs, bedding and baggage chests; finer wool could line clothing, and wool mixed with horsehair made ropes. Felt forms as animal fibers tangle into a sheet. In the documented making process, cleaned wool is laid in layers, wetted with hot water, rolled tightly, pressed or trodden until the fibers bind, then dried. Hides became large liquid containers and footwear. The same material could therefore move through several kinds of work, from preparing fibres or hides to sewing, fitting a household for travel and repairing it after use.

Loading camps and moving supplies

Rubruck describes the large dwellings of wealthy households travelling on ox carts, while bedding and valuables went in lighter wicker chests tied to high carts drawn by camels. A driver could lead a chain of twenty or thirty carts across open country. When the road became difficult, Rubruck says, the carts were detached and taken across one at a time. Loading, driving and caring for draught animals were part of the work that made a camp mobile.

Official journeys also required people to move animals and cargo. When Rubruck left Soldaia in 1253, his hosts supplied five riding horses and two drivers to care for his carts, oxen and horses. On long routes, fresh mounts could speed travel, but a gap between supply stations meant tired horses and loads had to be shifted to pack animals. The journey therefore depended on the labour of drivers, guides and animal handlers as well as the animals themselves.

Settled villages, markets and town crafts

Pastoral households also relied on grain from settled communities. Rubruck reports that great lords received millet and flour for winter from villages in the south, while poorer herders obtained these staples by trading sheep and pelts. The exchange joined livestock products to field-grown food and gave villages a role in provisioning mobile courts.

At Karakorum, Rubruck describes a quarter of Muslim merchants and another occupied by artisans whom he calls Cathayans, people from northern China. The city’s four gates had different markets: grain was sold at the eastern gate, sheep and goats at the western, oxen and carts at the southern, and horses at the northern gate. He notes that grain was rarely brought there, while traders and Mongol visitors gathered near the court and its many foreign envoys. The arrangement brought livestock, transport equipment, food and craft production into a single urban setting.

Court service, interpreters and captured specialists

Secretaries and interpreters made court business possible across languages and distance. At Güyük’s 1246 enthronement, the Franciscan envoy John of Plano Carpini records that the secretary Chingay wrote down the names of envoys and their rulers, then read the list aloud before the Khan and assembled chiefs. Earlier on the journey, interpreters translated the envoys’ letters into languages used at the Mongol court. These clerks and translators handled the information that allowed rulers to identify visitors, hear requests and issue decisions.

Specialist skill could be mobilized through capture as well as appointment. William Boucher, a Parisian goldsmith captured by Mongol forces in Hungary, was held as a slave and passed into the household of Möngke’s mother, then to Möngke’s brother Arigh Böke after her death. For a 1254 court feast at Karakorum, Möngke commissioned Boucher to make a silver drink tree. Four silver lions at the tree’s roots each served white mare’s milk. Separate pipes rose to its top, where gilded serpents carried wine, clarified mare’s milk, honey drink and rice drink. A worker hidden in a vault beneath the tree sounded a trumpet through the device, while servants in the cellar outside the palace poured each drink into its pipe; attendants then carried bowls to the guests. Rubruck says Möngke assigned Boucher fifty workers and later rewarded him when the work was complete. The commission used an expert’s design and a large team, while Boucher’s enslaved status continued to shape the conditions under which he worked.