Music, Feasts and Hunting in the Mongol Empire

William of Rubruck, a Flemish Franciscan friar (a member of the Catholic religious order founded by Francis of Assisi), traveled through Mongol-held lands in 1253–55. His account describes music beside a household entrance, drinking and dancing at feasts, collective hunts, and birds of prey at the mobile court of Möngke, the Mongol ruler from 1251 to 1259. These scenes show how hosts, attendants, guests, hunters and falcon handlers took part in shared entertainment and food gathering.

A remembered game and sworn friendship

The thirteenth-century Mongol narrative Secret History of the Mongols remembers Temüjin, the future Chinggis Khan, and Jamukha as boys. When Temüjin was eleven, Jamukha gave him a roebuck knucklebone; Temüjin returned a copper knucklebone. They declared themselves sworn friends, then played together on the ice of the Onon River in present-day Mongolia. Historian Ágnes Birtalan reads the exchange as the first stage of an alliance that the two later renewed. In this remembered scene, play follows a gift exchange and an oath.

Music and dancing at a dwelling

Rubruck describes a musician standing beside the entrance of a Mongol dwelling, near the mare’s milk set out for visitors. The English translation calls the instrument a guitar, while noting that other instruments Rubruck saw were unfamiliar to him. When the host began to drink, an attendant shouted a cue and the musician began playing. The music stopped when the host finished. At a great feast, people clapped and danced: men before the host and women before the mistress of the dwelling. The attendant’s call synchronized the performance with the host’s drinking, while the dancers’ positions followed the household’s gendered seating arrangement.

Rubruck also describes how a household served an honored guest. The host and his wife sat on a couch, with two attendants ready to bring them drink in cups and platters. When the host gave a guest a choice piece of meat, the guest was to eat it himself; if he could not finish, he carried the remainder away or gave it to his servant. A feast could turn the cup service itself into a performance: three people approached a guest singing and dancing, one carrying a full cup. Each time the guest reached for it, they drew it away and returned several times; they finally handed it over while singing, clapping and stamping. The attendants made the approach a playful challenge shared by the surrounding company.

The drinks changed with the season. Rubruck says households favored fermented mare’s milk in summer. In winter, he names rice or millet drink and honey drink, as well as wine brought from distant regions. At Möngke’s winter court he was offered rice drink, clarified mare’s milk, honey mead or wine; the choice and serving of drink formed part of receiving visitors.

Enclosing game and handling falcons

Rubruck describes a collective hunt in which a large group surrounded a district known to hold game. Hunters gradually moved closer together until the animals were enclosed, then shot them with arrows. The circle converted the landscape into a shared hunting ground and helped supply food. Historian Timothy May identifies the encircling hunt, or nerge, as a technique that honed the Mongols’ use of double envelopment: military lines extended around an enemy’s flanks and closed the ring. May discusses this connection through campaigns of 1237–41, showing how a coordinated hunting pattern could also serve warfare.

Birds of prey appeared in both hunting practice and courtly display. Rubruck says that hawks and peregrine falcons were carried on the right hand. A short thong hung from a hawk’s neck; when the handler released it, he pulled the bird’s head and breast down with his left hand so wind would not lift it away. During an audience in early January 1254, Rubruck saw falcons and other birds brought in for Möngke to handle and inspect before the visitors spoke. This audience took place at Möngke’s mobile court; Rubruck entered Karakorum in present-day Mongolia later, on 5 April. The birds therefore appear both as working equipment for the chase and as animals presented at a ruler’s court.