Ghengis Khan (Military History)

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Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan) was one of the greatest conquerors and empire builders in world history. During his lifetime, he unified pastoral nomadic peoples under his rule and then launched devastating attacks against sedentary civilizations in northern China, Inner Asia, Islamic Central Asia, the Middle East, and Russia. His successors continued attacking these regions and eventually conquered them, establishing the Golden Horde over Russia, the Il Khanate over Persia, the Chagadai Khanate over Central Asia, and the Yuan Dynasty over China. Chinggis Khan unified the Mongol people, brought peace to the steppes, founded the most extensive land empire the world has ever known (even larger than the former Soviet Union), and reopened overland trade and traffic from the Levant to the Yellow Sea. His grandson and third successor, Khubilai Khan, defined much of China’s current territorial extent and provincial boundaries. Chinggis Khan used terror as a weapon and had a ruthlessly ferocious vindictive streak; even in the early 21st century, he still deserves his general historical reputation for spectacular brutality and wanton destructiveness toward any person or polity that resisted or betrayed him. (He loved loyalty and detested betrayal with equal parts passion, whether toward himself or others.) Chinggis Khan’s place in history will probably always be controversial and debatable. Like many complex figures in history, he continues to be viewed with a combination of horror, awe, and ambivalence. For Mongols everywhere, he is their nonpareil national hero and unifier. The Chinese generally abhor him and his successors for their brutal conquest of China, even while crediting them for reunifying all of historically Chinese territory for the first time in over 350 years. Russia’s view of him and his successors in the Golden Horde is mostly negative, and the Russians will likely never cease remembering their period of the “Tartar [Mongol] yoke” with bitterness. As Timothy May writes, “The Mongol Empire is world history” (May 2012, cited under Mongol Military, p. 7) To study adequately the life of Chinggis Khan and the Mongol World Empire he founded, one must know several primary source languages (mainly Chinese, Persian, Russian, Latin, and to some extent Mongolian) and several more (English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and Turkish) to read secondary studies. There can be no stronger testament to the power, extent, and multi-ethnic character of the empire of Chinggis Khan and his successors than the languages required to study it.

The Life and Conquests of Chinggis Khan

Chinggis Khan (originally named Temüjin) was born in the steppes region north of China sometime during the mid-12th century. During his childhood, his father, a tribal chieftain, was poisoned to death by his enemies, and thereafter Temüjin’s tribe abandoned him along with his mother and brothers. A lesser man and mother might have perished alone on the steppes, but the family survived by dint of his mother’s wisdom, an element of destiny or luck, and Temüjin’s own charisma, political acumen, and innate leadership qualities. Temüjin’s basic approach was to ally with the enemies of his tribal enemies, starting on a small scale at first and then allying in succession with larger tribes until, in 1206, he emerged as Chinggis Khan, the grand khan of all pastoral nomads north of China. After 1206 he began attacking and securing the submissions of surrounding sedentary civilizations, starting with the Tangut state of Xia in 1206 and then the Jurchen state of Jin in northern China in 1211. His armies then moved deep into Central Asia and by 1220 had destroyed and conquered the cities in Islamic Khwarezmia (modern Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan). After this he had Mongol lieutenants and their forces cross the Caucasus and into Russia on reconnaissance raids, where they killed six Russian princes. In 1227, now old and on his way back to Mongolia, he attacked and destroyed Xia and its royal family. He died later that year and was buried in a location that was deliberately and carefully kept secret and is still unknown today, despite fairly concerted efforts to locate it during the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Biran, Michal. Chinggis Khan. Oxford: Oneworld, 2007.
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A brief and readable biography of the great khan for general readers interested primarily in Chinggis Khan’s importance in the Islamic world. Biran is a prominent and highly gifted polyglot who reads original historical documents in Chinese, Persian, and Russian. This is a brief but very solid work.
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Dunnell, Ruth W. Chinggis Khan: World Conqueror. Boston: Longman, 2010.
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Brief but serious and useful look at Chinggis Khan’s life and legacy by a noted Sinologist and Tangut specialist.
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Fitzhugh, William W., Morris Rossabi, and William Honeychurch, eds. Genghis Khan and the Mongolian Empire. Washington, DC: Mongolian Preservation Foundation, 2009.
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An edited volume of brief articles on many disparate subjects, many of them archaeological. Among the many topics covered are the search for Chinggis Khan’s tomb, his religion and genetic legacy, and the Mongol invasion of Japan. Its articles contain useful biographical information.
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Martin, H. Desmond. The Rise of Chingis Khan and His Conquest of North China. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1950.
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This distinguished study of Chinggis Khan draws the story of the Great Khan’s life from Chinese-language primary sources. There are separate chapters on Chinggis’s army; his youth; his attacks on western Xia and the Jurchen Jin; his conquest of Manchuria; Mukhali, his general; and his legacy and greatness. This work is mainly a detailed account of the khan’s campaigns and conquests in northern China.
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Ratchnevsky, Paul. Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy. Translated and edited by T. N. Haining. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
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This is probably the granddaddy of all serious biographies of Chinggis Khan in English. Ratchnevsky uses primary sources in Chinese, Persian, and Russian and, of course, reads all of the relevant European languages.
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Rogers, Leland Liu, trans. The Golden Summary of Činggis Qaγan. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 2009.
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A 17th-century literary biography, the Činggis Qaγan-u Altan Tobči is widely regarded among the Mongols as the second great work on Chinggis Khan, after The Secret History (indeed, it contains considerable overlap with that source). It contains a mythical genealogy of the ancestors of Chinggis Khan, a brief chronicle of Yuan history in China, and several patently fanciful passages.
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Ssanang Ssetsen, Chungtaidschi. The Bejewelled Summary of the Origin of Khans: A History of the Eastern Mongols to 1662. Translated by John Krueger. Occasional Papers (Mongolia Society) 2. Bloomington, IN: Mongolia Society, 1967.
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This 17th-century literary chronicle by Ssanang Ssetsen is a more mythical and fanciful history of Chinggis Khan than either The Secret History or the Altan Tobči. Several editions and translations of it exist, including a later one by Krueger with Igor de Rachewiltz.
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Primary Sources and Source Studies

Most of what we know about Chinggis Khan and his successors was written by others: the sedentary and agriculturalist peoples to the south and west of Mongolia. There are abundant materials on the Mongols in the languages of the three great peoples they conquered: medieval Persian, Chinese, and Russian (resources are available in other languages as well, including Latin, Japanese, Armenian, and Arabic, among others). Most of these materials have not been translated into Western European languages, but enough have been to afford curious readers and researchers with a significant amount of information. Especially valuable among these materials are the 13th-century Persian works by Juvainī and Rashīd al-Dīn, available in fine English translations in Boyle 1971 and Boyle 1958. The one major biography of Chinggis Khan actually written in the Mongolian language is Mongγol-un Niγuca Tobčiyan (The Secret History of the Mongols), the first written work of Mongolian literature and fortunately available in at least four different English translations: the scholarly and literal by Cleaves 1982, the adaptation of Cleaves 1982 by Kahn 1984, the readable Onon 1990, and the definitive and authoritative three-volume translation and annotation by Rachewiltz in 2004 and 2013 (Rachewiltz 2004). Originally intended for the Mongol royal family, The Secret History drew on oral tradition and was first written down, probably in Uighur script, sometime after the death of Chinggis Khan. The original Mongolian text is no longer extant, but it has been reconstructed from transcriptions or transliterations of Chinese characters (given for their phonetic values, not their semantic meanings) dating to the early Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Its historicity and textual history (variants, interpolations, and so on) will probably always be debated. These three major primary sources provide much information about the life and exploits of Chinggis Khan, but they often contain discrepancies of fine detail and chronology, especially between The Secret History on the one hand and the Persian histories on the other.

Boyle, John Andrew, trans. The History of World Conqueror. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1958.
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Alā al-Dīn ʾAṭāʾ-Malik is a history of Chinggis Khan by Juvainī, a Persian historian who accompanied the Mongol conqueror (and founder of the Il Khanate) Hülegü on the Mongol conquest of Alamut in 1256 and Baghdad in 1258. This is one of the indispensable resources for the life of the Great Khan.
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Boyle, John Andrew, trans. The Successors of Genghis Khan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971.
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This is an all-important source by Rashīd al-Dīn on the Mongol khans after Chinggis, especially Khubilai. Rashīd al-Dīn (1247–1318) was a Jewish scholar who wrote on Islamic history as well as the Mongol Empire.
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Cleaves, Francis Woodman, trans. The Secret History of the Mongols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University Press, 1982.
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This very literal and scholarly translation was the first rendition into English of The Secret History (Yuan Ch’on Pi Shih). Because Cleaves thought the Mongolian language of The Secret History to be archaic (and indeed it is in comparison with modern Mongolian), he translated it into archaic King James English. Cleaves’s translation can thus be difficult to read at times.
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Kahn, Paul, ed. The Secret History of the Mongols: The Origin of Chingis Khan; An Adaptation of the Yuan Ch’ao Pi Shih, Based Primarily on the English Translation of Francis Woodman Cleaves. San Francisco: North Point, 1984.
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In the early 1980s, Kahn obtained a copy of Cleaves’s scholarly unpublished translation of The Secret History and rendered it into modern English. Kahn worked from Cleaves’s translation alone and did not use any Mongolian. For several years, this was the only easily readable English version.
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Onon, Urgunge, trans. The History and the Life of Chinggis Khan: The Secret History of the Mongols. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1990.
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This English translation of The Secret History by a native Mongolian speaker replaced Kahn’s rendition as the best available English translation. However, even after its appearance, scholars eagerly awaited the publication of Rachewiltz’s translation, one with extensive commentary and annotation.
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Rachewiltz, Igor de, trans. The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2004.
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This is the premier and magnificently annotated translation, which took many years to complete. In the meantime, scholars had to rely on installments of this translation as they appeared in an Australian periodical. The three volumes of this work (a third supplementary volume was published in 2013) are extremely expensive.
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Rossabi, Morris. The Mongols and Global History: A Norton Documents Reader. New York: Norton, 2011.
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Rossabi’s compilation of translated original historical documents on the Mongols contains material on the rise of the empire, the life and conquests of Chinggis Khan, the expansion of the empire, Mongol rule, and the collapse of the empire. This collection of primary historical documents, including excerpts on Chinggis Khan from The Secret History, the Persian historians, and Changchun on Chinggis Khan, is useful and enjoyable.
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Waley, Arthur, trans. The Travels of an Alchemist: The Journey of the Taoist, Ch’ang-ch’un, from China to the Hindukush at the Summons of Chingiz Khan; Recorded by His Disciple, Li Chih-ch’ang. London: Routledge, 1931.
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This is an enthralling account of Ch’ang-ch’un, a Taoist priest, who traveled all the way from China to the Hindukush at the bidding of Chinggis Khan himself, who was on campaign there at the time. Chinggis Khan had respect for all religious leaders and scholars. This remains the classic account of Ch’ang-ch’un’s travels to Chinggis Khan’s encampment in Afghanistan around 1220.
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General Histories and Studies of the Mongols

Chinggis Khan looms largely and dominantly in Mongolian history, and he lives on in the hearts and minds of Mongols today. No work on the Mongols, popular or scholarly, whether on the empire alone or over all of Mongolian history, can avoid or overlook him. Among the Mongols, he and his name are everywhere: literature, drama, television, newspapers, and the commercial names of hotels, campgrounds, and even brands of alcoholic beverages. Indeed, one of his major and enduring legacies to the world is his unification of the Mongols and their appreciation of him for it; any serious introductory work on the Mongols will discuss him at considerable length. Much useful information about Chinggis Khan is therefore contained in the pages of general works or surveys. Those in the West have long been fascinated with the Mongol World Empire, one that dates at least to the end of the 18th century. A quick search on Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan) through the Library of Congress online catalogue yields over 650 results, with around 70 percent in Western languages.

d’Ohsson, Constantine. Histoire des Mongols depuis Tchinguiz-Khan jusqu’à Timour Bey ou Tamerlane. 4 vols. Amsterdam: Van Cleef, 1834.
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This is the first extensive history of the Mongol World Empire in a European language and is a testament to the enduring interest in the Mongols in the West. It has been said that this is the general history that all serious Mongolists own but very few have actually read. Its copyright having expired long ago, d’Ohsson’s magnum opus is available on the Internet.
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Howorth, Henry H. History of the Mongols from the 9th to the 19th Century. 2 parts. London: Burt Franklin, 1880.
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An old workhorse of a survey of the Mongols. Howorth was an amateur historian who did not make extensive use of primary materials.
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Jagchid, Sechin, and Paul Hyer. Mongolia’s Culture and Society. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1979.
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This is a fine single-volume introduction to Mongolia in general. Its main author, Sechin Jagchid, was a native of Inner Mongolia and wrote extensively all his life on the Inner Mongolia as he knew it. It remains the single most useful and informative general introduction to Mongol culture, past and present.
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May, Timothy. Culture and Customs of Mongolia. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2009.
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This volume includes chapters on history, pastoral nomadism, religion, literature, cuisine, dress, gender, courtship, marriage, festivals, leisure, social customs, lifestyle, and the legacy of Chinggis Khan. As a general introduction to Mongol culture, this work complements, but does not replace, Jagchid and Hyer 1979.
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Morgan, David O. The Mongols. 2d ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.
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This is currently the preeminent general introduction to the Mongols and their history and culture. The author is a distinguished Persianist. This remains the best single-volume survey history of the Mongols currently available.
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Rossabi, Morris. The Mongols: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
DOI: 10.1093/actrade/9780199840892.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This introductory text on the Mongols is brief indeed (176 pages) and is part of a series of books all subtitled “A Very Short Introduction” published by Oxford University Press. It contains chapters on life on the steppes, the emergence of Chinggis Khan, the Mongol conquests, the Mongols in world history, and Mongol arts and culture. This useful little volume is, as its title indicates, a very short history, perhaps a little too short.
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Roux, Jean-Paul. Histoire de l’empire mongol. Paris: Fayard, 1993.
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A decent survey history of the empire from Temüjin’s childhood through the end of the Golden Horde. Roux makes good use of primary source materials, but all are translations of the original language.
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Reference Works

Atwood 2004 and Buell 2003 are useful general reference works for the Mongol World Empire in general and contain informative entries on the life and times of Chinggis Khan.

Atwood, Christopher P. Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire. New York: Facts on File, 2004.
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This large work of almost 700 pages will be invaluable to students and others searching for a topic on the Mongol World Empire. Larger entries have very useful lists of relevant published scholarship on their topics.
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Buell, Paul D. Historical Dictionary of the Mongol Empire. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2003.
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The first hundred pages of this dictionary constitute a highly valuable overview of the empire’s history and are followed by the dictionary itself, which contains entries from one paragraph to several pages in length.
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Journals

No single journal is the academic home of the history of Chinggis Khan and the Mongol World Empire he founded (such a journal is sorely needed). The main flagship journal for Mongolian studies in general is Mongolian Studies: Journal of the Mongolia Society Several other academic journals occasionally include articles relating to Chinggis Khan, the Mongol World Empire, or both.

Journal of Asian History. 1967–.
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This is a broad and general journal for all Asian studies. Its book review section is particularly valuable, especially the “Inner Asia” section. Scanning reviews in this section will help readers keep abreast of the latest developments in studies of Chinggis Khan and the Mongols.
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Journal of Chinese Military History. 2012–.
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This new academic journal (founded in 2012) is very broad in scope. Its book review section is very helpful and has had reviews relating to Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Empire.
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Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 1834–.
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This old-school Oriental studies journal covers all of Asia and sometimes contains interesting and useful articles on the Mongol Empire, including one on the Mongol siege on the banks of the Euphrates in the July 2009 issue and another on the Mongols and the Assassins in the November 2004 issue.
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Journal of Song-Yuan Studies. 1992–.
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This fine journal concentrates on the Song and Yuan periods in China, although certainly more heavily on the former than the latter. One important article directly relevant to the Mongols and the origins of Chinggis Khan is Christopher P. Atwood’s article on the date of The Secret History of the Mongols in volume 37 (2007).
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The Silk Road Journal. 2003–.
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This relatively new and very important journal contains articles on many aspects of relations between China and the pastoral nomadic peoples on its northern borders.
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T’oung Pao. 1890–.
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A very old and established journal that carries scholarly articles and translations on many topics, including China’s historical relations with the pastoral nomads.
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Mongolia: The Land and the History

The steppes lands or grasslands north of China were not always called Mongolia, and long before the rise of the Mongols under Chinggis Khan, other groups of pastoral nomads had arisen as confederations and menaced China. Starting during the Han Dynasty in China (202 BCE–220 CE), the Xiongnu (sometimes identified as the ancestors or predecessors of the Huns who invaded Europe in the 4th century) were a near-constant threat to China. In post-Han times, several other powerful pastoral nomadic confederations or polities arose under the leadership of the Xianbei, Rouran, Türks, Uighurs, Khitans, and Jurchens to menace and even conquer parts of China from the 3rd through 12th centuries. Barfield 1989, Grousset 1970, and Jagchid and Symons 1989 are good general histories of the pastoral nomadic peoples north of China, whereas Yü 1967 is a classic study of relations between the Han Dynasty and the Xiongnu. Who were these people? They were not simply hunter-gatherers but pastoralists, because they domesticated animals, and nomadic, because they were mobile and had no fixed abode. Khazanov 1984 is a very solid and informative anthropological introduction to many pastoral nomadic peoples, not just those north of China. Amitai and Biran 2005 is a more recent historical volume on pastoral nomads with individual chapters by several scholars. Di Cosmo 2002 is an authoritative volume on the origins of the pastoral nomads north of China, whereas Di Cosmo, et al. 2009 is a history of Inner Asia during the Mongol World Empire and on through the 19th century. Why did pastoral nomadic societies fight so much, and for so long, with China and other sedentary civilizations? This question is still being discussed and debated. According to Jagchid and Symons 1989, China was usually to blame for conflict with the nomads because it refused to trade with them for the subsistence commodities (grains, cloth, and metals) they needed for survival. Barfield 1989 argues that warfare between China and the nomads usually arose from the nomadic leaders’ needs for Chinese luxury items to finance their confederations and keep local chieftains happy. Yü 1967 views the nomads as the main aggressors, whereas Khazanov 1984 describes the nomads as rational economic beings who raided when it was possible and traded when it was not.

Amitai, Reuven, and Michal Biran, eds. Mongols, Turks, and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the Sedentary World. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005.
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An edited volume of essays on various topics such as the “Sino-barbarian” dichotomy, what nomads wanted, war between the various khanates and sedentary states, and even a solid piece by Elizabeth Endicott on changing Mongol pastoralism in the context of 20th-century China.
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Barfield, Thomas Jefferson. The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1989.
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Barfield sees pastoral nomadic confederations as being dependent on China for luxury items, as opposed to subsistence commodities. Luxury items were used to pay off local and regional chieftains and thereby keep the confederations together. Barfield’s is essentially a political argument.
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Di Cosmo, Nicola. Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
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Di Cosmo looks at Sino-barbarian interrelations from c. 900 to 100 BCE and covers the first emergence of pastoral nomadic peoples on China’s northern frontiers. He uses more recently discovered archaeological evidence as well as traditional historical materials. He views the Chinese more often than not as the aggressors against, and provokers of, pastoral nomads.
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Di Cosmo, Nicola, Allen J. Frank, and Peter B. Golden, eds. The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
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This volume, with chapters by individual scholars, is both a history of the Mongol World Empire and a history of Inner Asia through the 19th century. Among the topics covered over twenty chapters are Inner Asia in general and the various nomadic and sedentary peoples in Inner Asia after the Timurids.
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Grousset, René. The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia. Translated by Naomi Walford. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970.
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Grousset’s masterwork is an old and still useful workhorse for all of Central Asian history, from the Scythians and Huns through Mongolian history into the 18th century.
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Jagchid, Sechin, and Van Jay Symons. Peace, War, and Trade along the Great Wall: Nomadic-Chinese Interaction through Two Millennia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
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This book contends that China usually provoked war because it refused to trade peaceably with the pastoral nomads, who were dependent on Chinese textiles, foods, and metals products for their very survival. If the Chinese would trade at border markets for these items, peace prevailed; if not, the nomads attacked. Jagchid’s argument, the “trade-or-raid” thesis, is essentially an economic one.
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Khazanov, Anatoly M. Nomads and the Outside World. Translated by Julia Crookenden. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
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Khazanov argues that pastoral nomads everywhere needed to have economic ties with sedentary civilizations—there was no such thing as nomadic “autarky,” or economic independence and isolation. Pastoral nomads satisfied their material needs and dependence on agrarian societies by carefully weighing power relationships; if the agricultural state was strong, they would trade, whereas if it was weak, they would be tempted to raid.
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Yü Ying-shih. Trade and Expansion in Han China: A Study in the Structure of Sino-Barbarian Economic Relations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.
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Yü’s book is an important iteration of the more traditional Chinese view of the pastoral nomads—that they are not fully human and are uncouth, unruly, innately aggressive, and mostly unpredictable and insatiable. Thus, China had to be leery of them at all times and find various military and political means for keeping them from attacking China.
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The Mongol Military

The Mongol military machine of Chinggis Khan and beyond has not received all of the attention it deserves. Information on it can be gleaned from biographies of Chinggis Khan, general histories of the Mongol World Empire, and translated primary materials. Chinggis Khan and his successors were able to conquer major civilizations for a number of complex and interrelating reasons. First and foremost, there was the swift and deadly mobility of the Mongol cavalry. May 2007 is the most comprehensive study of the Mongol military currently available and contains solid coverage of the Mongol military’s recruitment, organization, training, weaponry, logistics, intelligence, strategy, and tactics. It is worthwhile even though it does not make extensive use of Chinese sources. Hsiao 1978 is a detailed and meticulous study of the Mongol Yuan armies in China based on the military section of the Yuan shi, the official history of the Mongol Yuan. However, there were only a few hundred thousand Mongol cavalry in total, and they alone could not possibly have conquered much of the known Eurasian world. The Mongols relied on the assistance of millions of people from sedentary societies to help and collaborate with them in these conquests, and those people did so -because their own countries were falling apart and incompetently ruled. May 2012 is a history of the Mongol domains post-conquest and is the best treatment of the Mongols in world history available as of the early 21st century. Di Cosmo 2002 puts Mongol military history in the larger context of Inner Asian warfare from 500 through 1800, and Thomas Allsen’s contribution (chapter) is the best treatment of the technological aspects of the Mongol military as of the early 21st century.

Di Cosmo, Nicola, ed. Warfare in Inner Asian History: 500–1800. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2002.
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This ambitious and sprawling volume covers a lot of territory chronologically. One relevant important article is Thomas T. Allsen’s “The Circulation of Military Technology in the Mongolian Empire” (pp. 265–294).
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Hsiao, Ch’i-ch’ing. The Military Establishment of the Yuan Dynasty. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University Press, 1978.
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This is a careful, scholarly annotated, translation of the military sections of the bingzhi (military monographs) of the Yuanshi (Yuan history). A substantial introduction to the translation covers much of the Mongolian military system, including the imperial guard and the garrisoning system.
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May, Timothy. The Mongol Art of War: Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Military System. Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2007.
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In this very useful and informative work, May includes chapters on the organization of the Mongol armies, their training and equipment, their logistics and medical care, and their espionage, tactics, and strategy. He also gives several epitomes or brief histories of key battles the Mongols waged.
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May, Timothy. The Mongol Conquests in World History. London: Reaktion, 2012.
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May correctly observes that “. . . the Mongol Empire is the very definition of world history” (p. 7). In this book, which is mostly a history of the post-conquest Mongol World Empire, May covers the formation of the empire, the Mongol Peace or “Pax Mongolica,” warfare, religion, the plague, and cultural exchange. In this volume, May draws mostly on secondary studies.
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Smith, John Masson. “Mongol Manpower and Persian Population.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 18 (1975): 271–299.
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The exact size of the Mongol armies is difficult to assess. This is a classic attempt by Smith to quantify the numbers in the Mongol armies based on estimated population sizes.