Daily Life in the Mongol Empire

From Genghis Khan’s unification in 1206 to the empire’s division around 1260, daily life joined pastoral households of the Inner Asian steppe to farming villages and cities brought under Mongol rule. In Mongolia and the western grasslands, families moved with herds, dwellings and stores; in conquered regions, people continued to farm, trade and work in settled neighborhoods. The contrast mattered: imperial courts could draw supplies and skilled labor from across Eurasia, while most households depended on the animals, fields and local resources close at hand.

Two Franciscan travelers give dated views of this world. John of Plano Carpini attended the succession gathering for Güyük in 1246; William of Rubruck traveled to the court of Möngke, the Great Khan (the empire’s paramount ruler), in 1253–1255. Their accounts record Güyük’s election gathering and Möngke’s court and encampments.

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Camps and household space

A mobile household needed shelter that could be taken apart, loaded and raised again. Rubruck describes a circular frame made from interlaced wooden sticks that narrowed toward a roof ring; a raised collar around its opening let smoke escape. Felt covered the frame against wind and rain. The dwelling, often called a ger, stood near the family’s loaded carts. In winter and summer, herding groups moved between known grazing areas, traveling south toward warmer land in winter and north toward cooler pasture in summer. Snow could supply water where winter ranges had no open source.

Inside, the arrangement marked both household roles and rank. Rubruck says the doorway faced south, the household head sat on a couch at the north end, women used the east side and men the west. In Batu’s large establishment, separate dwellings for wives stood from west to east by seniority, with smaller felt shelters for sewing workers and lines of carts holding bedding and valuables. Rubruck counted twenty-two oxen pulling one exceptionally large dwelling-cart. That was an elite display of resources, not the ordinary scale of a herding family. Wooden frames and felt coverings made this system both shelter and transport.

Families, marriage and property

Marriage linked households through negotiated transfers. In steppe practice described by Carpini and later historians, a groom’s family paid bridewealth to the bride’s family. A bride from a wealthier household might also bring inje, personal property such as livestock, household goods or jewelry. These transfers had different owners: her inje remained hers and could pass to her children. A groom who could not pay bridewealth might work for his future father-in-law, while a reciprocal marriage between two families could avoid a separate payment.

Rank and wealth shaped household size. A rich man might support several wives and separate dwellings; a poorer herder had fewer resources to maintain such an establishment. A senior wife could manage attendants, stores and herds, and widows could remain within their husband’s family through levirate marriage, a union with a junior male relative of the deceased. That arrangement could keep a widow, her children and property she controlled with the same kin group. In the ruling family, women’s influence could extend much further: after Ögedei died in 1241, his widow Töregene governed as regent until Güyük’s enthronement in 1246; after Güyük died in 1248, Oghul Qaimish served as regent until Möngke’s accession in 1251.

Children learned tasks within working households, while conquest also brought captives into new forms of service. Rubruck met Paquette, a woman from Metz captured in Hungary who lived in a Christian woman’s establishment at Möngke’s court and had married a Rus builder. Her story joins the movement of people by war to the creation of a family under coercive conditions.

Food, cooking and meals

Herds supplied much of the mobile household’s food, but each season brought different work. Mare’s milk was collected with foals held nearby, then churned in a large skin with a wooden dasher until it fermented and butter separated. Rubruck calls the fermented drink cosmos, now commonly called kumis. Cow’s milk was churned for butter; the remaining milk could be soured, boiled into curds and dried for winter. Meat, too, could be preserved: Rubruck describes flesh cut into narrow strips and dried in sun and wind without salt.

At meals, meat was cut into small portions and shared from a platter. Rubruck says the host took a favored cut first, and a special piece given to a guest was meant for that person to eat or carry away. Grain reached pastoral camps through exchange and elite supply: lords drew millet and flour from southern villages for winter, while poorer herders obtained grain by trading sheep and pelts. This linked settled agriculture with mobile food stores. Food preparation and meals connected animal products and grain from settled villages.

Clothing and appearance

Clothing combined local animal products with imported textiles. Rubruck describes long tunics tied on the right, unlike neighboring Turkish garments tied on the left. In winter, people wore at least two fur gowns, one with fur against the body and a second with fur facing outward. Wealthier wearers padded garments with soft silk; poorer people used cotton cloth or fine wool picked from coarser fleece. That coarser wool also became felt for shelters, bedding and rain cloaks, while wool mixed with horsehair made ropes.

Rubruck traced silks and cotton from China and Persia, while furs came from northern forest regions. He singled out a tall, square headpiece worn by wealthy women: a light bark frame covered in silk, topped with feathers and fastened around the head. Such a garment signaled both access to costly materials and the status of its wearer. Making clothes and felt linked household sewing with the wider supply of animals and trade goods. Clothing and appearance show how materials marked status.

Work in camps and settlements

Camp work followed the needs of animals and movement. Rubruck saw women load dwellings on carts, drive them to new pasture, raise the frame again, milk cows, prepare butter and curds, and sew hides and clothing with thread twisted from animal sinew. Men made bows, arrows, saddles and cart parts and tended horses and camels; both men and women worked with sheep and goats. Keeping a camp moving also required drivers to handle linked carts, unload at difficult ground and care for oxen, camels and riding horses. Herding required care of animals, pasture and water through the year.

The empire also depended on settled production. At Karakorum, the imperial capital in present-day Mongolia, Rubruck describes Muslim merchants in one quarter and artisans from northern China in another; markets at the gates sold grain, sheep and goats, oxen and carts, or horses. A court’s secretaries and interpreters handled the written lists and translations needed to receive envoys and their requests. Artisans might move through appointment or capture. The Parisian goldsmith William Boucher, captured in Hungary, was assigned to Möngke’s household and made a silver drink tree for a court feast with a team of workers. The example connects urban craft skill and imperial display with the unequal conditions under which some specialists worked.

Games, music and hunting

The Secret History of the Mongols, a chronicle, remembers Temüjin and his sworn companion Jamukha playing knucklebones together as boys before Temüjin became Genghis Khan. At Möngke’s court, Rubruck describes music and dancing arranged around drinking: an attendant’s shout cued a guitarist to begin when the ruler drank and to stop when he finished. Men danced before the ruler and women before the senior woman of the gathering. Music, clapping and dancing accompanied court gatherings.

Hunting could provide food as well as recreation. Rubruck says a large group surrounded a district known to contain game, then closed the circle gradually until archers could shoot the animals. He also describes falconers controlling a bird’s head and breast with a tether as they released it toward prey. Both methods depended on terrain knowledge and coordination with trained animals.

Everyday worship and ritual

At a household drink, Rubruck saw an attendant sprinkle liquor on felt figures inside the dwelling and then toward the cardinal directions: south for fire, east for air, west for water and north for the dead. The ritual placed offering, household images and a shared drink in the same domestic space. At Möngke’s court, Rubruck also saw the ruler inspect a charred sheep’s shoulder blade as if reading its cracks before addressing a visitor. His account connects such divination, or seeking guidance through signs, with decisions at court. Ritual specialists advised on decisions, birth and illness in Rubruck’s account of household and court settings.

Fire also served in rites of purification. Rubruck describes people and property being passed between fires, and records that Christian priests were expected at a court ceremony consecrating white horses and marking the first drink of new mare’s milk. The court included Christians and other religious communities alongside Mongol ritual specialists.

Travel and transport

Travellers chose between carts and riding according to their loads and the journey. In 1253, Rubruck took covered ox carts for bedding, books and other goods, with horses for the party to ride. He later regretted the choice: the trip from Soldaia to Batu’s camp took two months, he wrote, whereas a party on horseback might have made it in one. Drivers cared for carts and draft animals, while guides and interpreters negotiated passage, presented gifts and explained the visitors’ purpose.

At a court gathering, route and status affected movement too. Carpini’s party traveled quickly toward Güyük’s 1246 election assembly, often riding from dawn to night and using fresh horses supplied along the way. At the assembly, guards controlled access to the ruler’s tent and envoys waited in a separate enclosure. A court could arrange mounts, lodging or an escort for named visitors, but the sources also show how cold, snow, rough tracks and long distances slowed travel. Movement depended on animals and on the labor of people who drove, guided, interpreted and provisioned travelers.

Illness and care

Care meant practical support as well as treatment. When Rubruck’s companion Friar Bartholomew was too ill to return across the desert, Möngke allowed him to remain near the court with food and other necessities until other envoys could travel a safer route. Court households could provide shelter, warmth, clothing and provisions to a visitor, while local families relied on their own people and resources. Household assistance, warmth, food and rest could sustain a sick or exhausted person.

At Möngke’s court, Rubruck also describes Qotai, an elite woman who became seriously ill. A Christian cleric prayed with her and led her in gestures of Christian devotion; the narrative says she recovered after several visits. Elsewhere in the same court account, diviners were summoned when people fell ill to assess whether the cause was natural or attributed to witchcraft.