Mongol Empire and Indian Ocean Trade Vocabulary

A comprehensive vocabulary review covering key figures, administrations, regions, dynasties, technologies, and trade systems of the Mongol Empire and Indian Ocean commerce.

Cultural Diffusion

The spreading of cultural items—such as ideas, styles, art, religions, technologies, languages—individuals, whether within a single culture or from one culture to another.

Chinggis Khan

The founder and first khan of the Mongol Empire who spent his life uniting the Mongols then launching a large series of military campaigns, conquering China, Central Asia, Russia, the Islamic Middle East, and Eastern Europe.

Mongol World War

A half-century long series of military campaigns and empire building led by Chinggis Khan and his successors.

Mongol Military Administration

Military units of 10, 100, 1,000, and 10,000 warriors that allowed for effective command and control, internal unity and discipline, and ruthless brutality towards resistors.

Mongol Bureaucratic Administration

A centralized bureaucracy with various specialized offices that developed in the Mongol capital of Karakorum, where Chinese and Muslim officials were able to hold advisory and low-level positions in their respective regions.

Mongol Communication Administration

An effective system of relay stations about a day’s ride apart that allowed for rapid communications, as well as translations of official decrees into the various languages of the empire, such as Persian, Uighur, Chinese, and Tibetan.

Mongol Commerce Administration

Elaborate census-taking that enabled taxation of conquered peoples, paying 10 percent or more above merchants’ asking price, and allowing usage of relay stations in order to foster commerce and positive trade relations despite not having many key goods.

Russia

A region dominated and exploited by the Mongols, yet not necessarily occupied due to its newer and less developed status as a civilization.

Golden Horde

The Khanate that formed the western part of the Mongol Empire, including Russia, Hungary, and Poland, with key cities within the Khanate including Sarai, Ryazan, Moscow, and Kiev.

Yuan Dynasty

The Mongol dynasty that brought a new age of unification in China, exciting educated Chinese, as well as ruling brutally and harshly towards ordinary Chinese, rejecting Chinese traditions like foot binding and prohibiting intermarriage.

Kublai Khan

The grandson of Chinggis Khan and ruler of Mongol China from 1271 to 1294, who sought to rule as a benevolent Confucian-inspired Chinese emperor.

Persia

A region conquered by the Mongols whose irrigation systems and agricultural land was devastated by the Mongols’ pastoral lifestyle, yet featured large numbers of Mongol assimilation to Islam and Persian culture.

Eurasian Network

The regions of Europe and Asia that was connected largely by the Mongols to allow for the circulation of goods, information, disease, and tactics of warfare in order to tax and extract wealth from developed civilizations, as well as fostering diplomatic relations amongst the area through promises of security, religious tolerance, and sometimes potential threats of attacks.

Marco Polo

The most famous of the European and mostly Italian merchants who traveled along the Silk Roads to Mongol China, returning with potential riches and commercial opportunities and at times tales of the brutality of the Mongol Chinese rule.

Karakorum

The capital of the Mongols and a cosmopolitan city with places of worship for Buddhists, Daoists, Muslims, and Christians and connections between people of many faiths and religions.

Black Death

The bacteria yersinia pestis that originated in China and spread across the Mongol trade routes in the 14th century, reaching China, the Middle East, Western Europe, and sub-Saharan Arica, killing one third of the Middle East population and one half of the European population.

Indian Ocean Trade

A cheaper alternative to the Silk Roads due to ships that carried bulk goods like textiles, pepper, timber, rice, sugar, and wheat, found in the Indian Ocean reaching China, Southeast Asia, India, East Africa, and Arabia.

Monsoons

Predictable, alternating wind currents that blew northeast during the summer and southwest during the winter and enabled the rise of Indian Ocean commerce.

Junks

Chinese ships whose technological innovations facilitated Indian Ocean trade.

Dhows

Indian and Arab ships whose technological innovations facilitated Indian Ocean trade.

Astrolabe

A new technology that made calculating latitude easier and enabled Indian Ocean trade.

Islam and Trade

The phenomenon in which the widespread conversion to Islam, a generally trade friendly religion, including the Islamic Arab Empire from the Atlantic through the Mediterranean to India, created trust amongst culturally unique merchants and a vast arena for Muslim traders.

Great Zimbabwe

A powerful state that grew largely due the growing demand and subsequent trading of the large supplies of gold found inland between the Zambezi and Limpop rivers, eventually peaking between 1250 and 1350.

Banana

A fruit that reached Africa due to the Indian Ocean Trade, where it spread inland from Madagascar and the East African coast, growing African agriculture, population, and economics.

Indianization

The large voluntary adaptation of Indian cultural traditions such as the Sanskrit and Pallava alphabets, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Indian artistic forms, by independent societies approving of Indian culture.

Melaka

A city located on the southeastern edge of the Malay Peninsula that, despite being largely Muslim along with the regions surrounding it, allowed for other diaspora and religious freedom in order to transform from a small fishing village to a major commercial port and capital of a Malay Muslim sultanate.

Ming Dynasty

The Chinese dynasty that, under emperor Yongle, launches in 1405 the expeditions of Zheng He over 28 years, only to abruptly end the expeditions after Yongle’s death due to worries that the expeditions were a waste of self-sufficient China’s resources.

Zheng He

The leader of 7 expeditions, with some 27,000 people on the first voyage alone, that sought to enroll distant peoples and states into diplomatic relations with China through the tribute system rather than outrightly conquering new territories.