Question
How do later Mongol reflections on the yasa bring out the uneasy relationship they had with the memory of Genghis Khan?
Solution
By the middle of the thirteenth century the Mongols had emerged as a unified people and just created the largest empire the world had ever seen. They ruled over very sophisticated urban socities, with their respective histories, cultures and laws.
Although the Mongols dominated the region politically, they were a numerical minority. The one way in which they could protect their identity and distinctiveness was through a claim to a sacred law given to them by their ancestors.
The yasa was in all probability a compilation of the customary traditions of the Mongol tribes but in referring to it as Genghis Khan’s code of law, the Mongol people also laid claim to a ‘lawgiver’ like Moses and Solomon, whose authoritative code could be imposed on their subjects.
The yasa served to cohere the Mongol people around a body of shared beliefs, it acknowledged their affinity to Genghis Khan and his descendants and, even as they absorbed different aspects of a sedentary lifestyle , them the confidence to retain their ethnic identity and impose their ‘law’ upon their defeated subject.
It was an extremely empowering ideology and although Genghis Khan may not have planned such a legal code, it was certainly inspired by his vision and was vital in the construction of a Mongol universal dominion.
