Women’s Role within the Mongol Empire
The Mongols were nomadic people that lived in tribes in Asia during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The joining of numerous tribes would eventually form one of the biggest empires in history. With the lack of rain though the region, the Mongols did not have wide spread agriculture, instead they would herd sheep, cattle, goats, horses, and camels that thrived on the grasses and shrubs of the steppe lands where they lived. The Mongol tribes would travel with their herds to lands with copious amounts of grasses so their animals could graze. When their herds exhausted the vegetation, they would migrate to a new area. The tribes were self-sufficient, they not only lived off the meat, milk, and hides provided by their animals, but also used them for trade purposes.
Despite the fact that the Mongols were nomadic people, they still utilized a caste system, of chieftains and khans that controlled the various tribes. The Mongols did not permit intermarrying within the clans, so abduction of women from other clans was not an unusual occurrence (Hartog 4). The stealing of woman however caused many conflicts between the different tribes. Although leaders of the tribes could have many wives, it was only the chief wife and her offspring that would inherit the tribe and continue the lineage after his death (Lane, Genghis Khan 4).
The role that women played in the Mongol society was often a complex one. Mongol woman were often bought or stolen by their husbands. The women were often treated like property and used just like any other type of bartering tool. However during the rule of Genghis Khan, the women were not merely mothers and tent wives, they also enjoyed considerable power within the family ...
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...e or in the time since the Mongol empire, have women enjoyed so much power or influence over so many people (Weatherford, The Secret History) (Kindle Location 97).
Works Cited
Hartog, Leo de. Genghis Khan: Conqueror Of The World. London: Taurisparke Paperbacks, 2004. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 22 Feb. 2014.
Lane, George. Daily life in the Mongol empire. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2006. Print.
Lane, George. Genghis Khan and Mongol rule. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004. Print.
Stearns, Peter N. Gender In World History. New York: Routledge, 2000. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 22 Feb. 2014.
Weatherford, Jack. The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire. New York: Broadway, 2011. Kindle Edition.
Weatherford, Jack. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. New York: Crown, 2004. Print.
Rossabi, Morris. "Life in China Under Mongol Rule: Religion." The Mongols in World History | Asia
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Henrik Ibsen once said, “A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.”(Notable Quotes) Ibsen’s statement exemplifies what life was like for women during ancient times. In many of the organized ancient civilizations, it was very common to find a primarily patriarchal civilization in government as well as in society. The causing factors can be attributed to different reasons, the main being the Neolithic Revolution and the new found dependence on manpower it caused. As a result of this, a woman found herself to be placed into an entirely different view in the eye of society. In comparison to the early Paleolithic matriarchal societies, the kinds of changes that came about for women due to the introduction of agriculture are shocking. Since the beginnings of the Neolithic era, the role and rights of women in many ancient civilizations began to become limited and discriminatory as a result of their gender.
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