Captivity, Slavery and Forced Migration in the Early Mongol Empire

Mongol conquests between the empire’s founding in 1206 and its division around 1260 moved captives across Eurasia and into imperial households. Captivity meant being seized in war; enslavement meant that another person controlled an individual’s labor and movement. Tribute was value demanded from a subject community, and communities could also owe service. These obligations were coercive but did not make every resident an individually owned slave.

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Conquest and the redistribution of people

Historian Michal Biran notes that slavery had played a smaller role among Mongols before imperial expansion. Campaigns under Chinggis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire, and his successors created a large supply of captives. Mongol rulers treated people as resources to distribute among members of the ruling family and to use for imperial needs. The resulting conditions ranged from forms of dependency to full slavery; the word “captive” alone does not describe what happened to each person afterward.

The Armenian historian Kirakos Gandzaketsi recorded how the 1236 invasion affected towns and their inhabitants in the Armenian highlands. At Ani, his account says, the Mongols killed residents, took possessions, and carried some artisans into captivity. After the campaigns, surviving residents were ordered back to their villages or city to rebuild and serve the conquerors. The order moved people from flight or captivity back to damaged homes and tied reconstruction to an obligation of service. Another episode in Kirakos’s account shows a different arrangement: after Mongol commanders restored Armenian prince Awag’s lands, they demanded taxes, horses, clothing and military service from his principality. Those levies burdened a subject ruler and his territory; they are not evidence that each resident had been captured as an individual slave.

Guillaume Boucher: skill under ownership

In 1254, the Flemish Franciscan William of Rubruck met Guillaume Boucher, a Parisian goldsmith, at Karakorum, the Mongol capital in present-day Mongolia. Rubruck states that Boucher had been captured at Belgrade in Hungary. Möngke’s mother insisted on taking Boucher into her household establishment. When she died, Boucher passed with its other property to her younger son, Ariq Böke; Möngke was the Great Khan, the empire’s supreme ruler. Rubruck explicitly calls Boucher Ariq Böke’s slave.

Möngke nevertheless drew on Boucher’s metalworking skill for a major court commission. Boucher designed a silver tree that served drinks in the palace: four silver lions at its base poured mare’s milk, while pipes inside the tree carried wine and other drinks into bowls. A hidden blower made an angel trumpet; servants in a cellar poured each drink into the right conduit, and butlers carried the cups to the guests. Möngke supplied Boucher with money and fifty workmen for the project. When the tree was installed, the ruler rewarded him.

At a later feast, Boucher served as chief butler because he knew how the silver tree worked; Rubruck still identifies him as Ariq Böke’s slave.

Paquette and a household formed after capture

Rubruck also met Paquette, a woman from Metz in Lorraine who said she had been captured in Hungary. She was living in the encampment of a Christian woman from Möngke’s household. Paquette told Rubruck that she had endured severe hardship before reaching the camp and was now fairly well off. She had married a young Rus husband, a man from the medieval East Slavic lands, and they had three sons. He knew how to build houses, a valuable skill in the camp.

Kirakos: secretary, ransom and escape

Kirakos was captured with his teacher Vanakan and other companions during the 1236 campaign of Molar, a Mongol commander. Mongol soldiers took Kirakos away from his companions and made him read and write letters for the army. The work relied on his literacy, and it kept him with the mobile force as it travelled through the region.

When the captors sent Vanakan to the fortress of Gag, Vanakan requested that both he and Kirakos be released for ransom. The Mongols refused, explaining that they needed Kirakos to handle correspondence. Local Christians paid for Vanakan’s release, while Kirakos remained behind. Molar gave Kirakos a tent and two attendants, promising him a horse the next day if he stayed loyal. Kirakos escaped secretly that same night and returned to his ruined monastery at Getik.