Everyday Worship and Ritual in the Early Mongol Empire

William of Rubruck, a Flemish Franciscan friar (a member of a Catholic religious order), travelled through the western Mongol domains ruled by Batu in 1253. He reached Möngke’s mobile court on 27 December 1253 and the capital, Karakorum in present-day Mongolia, on 5 April 1254. His account records household offerings, court divination, purification rites, and Christian observances.

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Images and offerings in dwellings

Rubruck’s description of Mongol dwellings places felt figures at important points in the household. He saw one above the master’s couch, another above the mistress’s, and a smaller guardian figure higher between them. He associated figures by the entrance with milking: women milked cows and men milked mares.

For Batu, household ceremony also organized a larger court. Rubruck counted twenty-six wives, each with her own dwelling; on a given day the wife who had slept with Batu sat beside him, while the others gathered at her house to drink and court was held there. Gifts received that day went into her treasury.

Before drinking, an attendant sprinkled liquor on the figures inside the dwelling. Outside, the attendant knelt to sprinkle three times toward the south, then toward the east, west and north, directions Rubruck associated respectively with fire, air, water and the dead. The master poured a portion onto the ground before drinking, or onto a horse’s mane when he drank in the saddle. Two attendants then brought cups and platters to the master and his wife.

Divination in Möngke’s court

In February 1254, as Rubruck and his companions entered Möngke’s dwelling, a servant came out carrying sheep shoulder-blades burned black. Rubruck later learned the procedure from people at court. When Möngke considered an action, he held one of three unburned blades while thinking about the question, then gave it to a servant to burn in one of two small buildings beside the dwelling. Diviners searched the camp for bones and returned them for inspection. One cleanly split bone among the three was enough to permit action: a lengthwise crack opened the way, while a crosswise crack or a chipped circle forbade it.

Rubruck calls the diviners the ruler’s priests and says their chief lived near Möngke’s principal dwelling. The chief and other specialists named auspicious and inauspicious days. Rubruck reports that the court would not assemble an army or begin a war without their assent.

Fire purification and the movement of property

In 1246, the Franciscan envoy John of Pian de Carpine was told to pass between two fires before entering Batu’s camp. His hosts said the flames would remove any harm or poison he might intend for their lord. Rubruck says gifts sent to Möngke’s court were also carried between fires, and the diviners retained a due portion for this service. If an animal or another object fell during the passage, it belonged to them as well.

Rubruck also saw bedding and other belongings of a deceased woman set aside until they had passed between fires. Other members of the encampment could use them only after this purification.

Illness, birth and accusations

Rubruck says diviners were summoned when a child was born to foretell its future and when someone fell ill to identify a natural ailment or witchcraft. A woman from Metz told him of a lady who suffered shooting pains in her limbs. Diviners instructed a maid to touch the painful spot and pull out what she found; the object wriggled on the ground and then looked like a leech in water; they accused a servant who had earlier complained that they took too much of a fur delivery.

The servant was taken outside camp, beaten and tortured for seven days to make her confess. When she continued to deny wrongdoing, Möngke ordered that she be allowed to live. In another case, a maid said a Christian nurse had sent her to ask a horse for an answer; the nurse was executed. After Möngke’s infant son died, diviners blamed the dead nurse. The first wife ordered the nurse’s grown son and daughter killed, and Möngke punished those who carried out the killings and left his wife’s encampment for a month.

Rubruck first visited Cota, the second lady he saw at Möngke’s camp, while she was ill. A Christian monk in his party helped her rise and led her in prostrations before a cross. Later, when her illness became severe and the court diviners could not relieve it, Möngke sent for the monk. He gave her rhubarb mixed with holy water, and Rubruck read the Gospel over her; he reports that Cota recovered over the next several days. This episode shows Christian religious personnel working in the same court household as diviners.

A seasonal rite for new mare’s milk

Rubruck dates a customary rite to 9 May: white horses from the herds were gathered and consecrated, and Christian priests had to attend with a censer, an incense burner. Participants sprinkled new cosmos, or fermented mare’s milk, on the ground and held a feast. Rubruck says they treated this as the first drinking of the new season’s cosmos.

Church observances and a mixed court

At an audience, Church of the East priests brought incense in a censer. Möngke placed the incense in it himself; the priests then incensed him, chanted and blessed his drink. The Church of the East was a Syriac Christian tradition that Rubruck called Nestorian.

Rubruck celebrated Easter at Karakorum on 12 April 1254. Captive Christians from several regions had not received communion, the Christian sacrament of sharing consecrated bread and wine, since their capture because Nestorian clergy would not admit them without rebaptism. A fellow captive, William, had made an iron for baking Latin wafers and owned vestments, which Rubruck used. Rubruck celebrated Mass with a Nestorian silver chalice and paten and at their altar on Holy Thursday, 9 April, and Easter Sunday. The two groups used distinct rites and breads even as the Nestorian clergy lent him the vessels and altar.

Rubruck also records a religious debate arranged at Möngke’s court in 1254. Church of the East Christians, Muslims, Buddhist monks whom he calls Tuins, and an Uyghur priest took part, with three court secretaries serving as umpires. After the discussion, Christians and Muslims sang while the Buddhist monks remained silent; then everyone drank.