The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 7, Issue 1, Winter 2018 | Page 45

law at the hands of a Nishapuran. The sack lasted over ten days, far longer than
one hour, and Khan was not even present. Furthermore, while a massacre did
occur at Nishapur, the death count remains questionable. 2 There is no reliable
information to support the claim that this siege was any more severe than
countless others throughout the thirteenth century.
Also unwarranted is a myth that suggests Khan was religiously
prejudiced and disregarded other cultures’ beliefs—particularly Christians and
Muslims. An example of this myth occurred with an alleged eyewitness account of
Khan reacting to a mosque in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, a common stop on the silk
trading route. Genghis Khan approached the mosque inquiring as to whether it
was the home of the Sultan; the mosque was the largest building in the city.
However, when he discovered that it was, in fact, a house of worship, he turned
away and said nothing. 3 The religious belief of the Mongols, especially Khan, was
that one God existed within the Eternal Blue Sky that stretched from horizon to
horizon in all four directions. This was primarily a form of Shamanism. Clarifying
this, Jack Weatherford, Professor of Anthropology at Macalester College and
author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, stated, “[The
Mongols] believed that God presided over the whole earth, and could not be
cooped up in a house like a prisoner, nor, as the city people claimed, could his
words be captured and confined inside the covers of a book.” 4 For this reason,
Khan disregarded religious structures and texts. He entered said mosque with the
sole purpose of collecting money and lecturing the Bukhara elite.
Despite the Mongols’ beliefs, they enforced religious tolerance, and in no
way discriminated against others. The Bukhara mosque demonstrated a common
practice of the Mongols entering a city and beginning to plunder. This is why
Khan sought the Sultan and did not respect the mosque. Furthermore, he did not
destroy or prohibit the city from practicing what it chose. The society’s elites
provided the source of treasures that would sustain the Mongolian army, thus
showing submission to Mongolian rule. This was Khan’s intention, not religious
degradation. However, despite Khan’s religious flexibility, he disrespected many
“houses of God” and unintentionally promoted the myth of religious degradation.
To believe that any one of these myths have merit is to assume that there
was little to no formal governing authority, political administrations, codes of law,
empathy, honorable principles or motives. If the Mongols were simply crude and
godless barbarians, they could not be capable of any of these relatively
sophisticated developments when in fact they had them all. This fact directly
conflicts with how the Mongols were portrayed, at least through the mid-twentieth
century.
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