In the 13th century, the century of the stirrup, A Mongol warlord embarks on a campaign of conquest. After the massacres, the conquerors bring peace and a revolution in travel. Marco Polo discovers the pleasure dome of the emperor Kublai Khan. In Egypt, the Mamluks halt the Mongol advance. As the treasures of the East are revealed, Venice grows rich, and Europe takes a leap forward in science and technology.
A thousand years of history. Millennium. Until the 13th century, these grassy plains were full of dangers.
Few dared to undertake a journey through the Central Asian steppes. Only the finest horsemen could hope to survive. Fear of the tribes that lived here created a barrier between the peoples of East and West.
Then, in the 13th century, from Mongolia, a conqueror emerged. The creator of an empire that shattered this barrier between Europe and Asia. Genghis Khan. My supreme purpose is to unite all my people.
My greatest joy, to put my enemy beneath my knee. Genghis Khan gave us an identity. He united Mongolia as a nation. We still idolize, respect and worship him.
Every day, we Mongols make food offerings to Genghis Khan, in the same way we do to our god Tengri, the all-embracing blue sky. The first mare's milk of the day is offered up to Genghis Khan, who brought the scattered Mongol tribes together and gave them a vision. A vision of a world united under Mongol rule.
Khukhtangirt. Narangans. As the...
There is one sole sun in the sky. So shall there be one sole sovereign on earth. Genghis Khan turned a nomadic people, numbering barely a million, into a fighting force.
He mobilized the whole nation for war. He led his army out of Mongolia against the peoples of Asia. It was the start of a campaign of conquest which in barely 50 years would win the Mongols an empire twice the size of the United States. Stretching east-west from the Pacific to the Danube, the Mongol Empire of the 13th century became the largest continuous land empire the world has ever known.
Genghis Khan plotted his conquest along the plains of Central Asia. The steppe grasses fed his horses. Unburdened by supplies, his troops could cover 50 miles in a day and catch enemies off guard.
A nation of nomads, the Mongol army was well adapted to life on the move. Today, Mongols eat the same rations as their forefathers. Curdled mare's milk is dried in the sun to be carried on horseback.
For extra strength before battle, warriors sucked blood from their horses'veins. Herdsmen here still live an exceptionally long life on their traditional diet of milk, meat and blood. We Mongols, over the centuries, have never eaten fruit or vegetables because we have never grown things.
Everything we need we take from our animals. It is not in our nature to be tied to the land. The Mongol army was highly disciplined.
They could outride any opponent changing horses mid-battle. A favorite tactic was a mock retreat, firing backwards on the enemy while leading them into an ambush. But Genghis Khan's genius as a general lay in his use of psychological warfare. Spies were sent ahead to gather intelligence and spread fear.
They spread word that the Khan's army was invincible. Genghis Khan matched actions to words. If the enemy didn't surrender, he ordered them to be massacred.
In 1215, a Chinese writer recorded that the streets of Beijing were greasy with the fat of human corpses. Later, Persian chroniclers claimed that 90% of their people had been wiped out. The news reached Matthew Parris, a monk in England.
Swarming like locusts over the face of the earth, they have brought... terrible devastation to Eastern Europe, laying it waste with fire and carnage. For they are inhuman and beastly, rather monsters than men, thirsting for and drinking blood. But there was more to the Mongols than a thirst to destroy.
As his conquests grew, Genghis Khan became a lawgiver and an architect of empire. I have not myself distinguished qualities and I fear that in my ruling there may be something wanting. Therefore, I invite sagemen to help me keep the empire in good order.
A Chinese wise man, Chang Chung, answered the great Khan's summons. At the age of 71, he made the three-year journey, complete with military escort, to the Mongol camp. An attendant kept a diary of their travels across western China.
We reached the lands where the Uyghur people live. Some relatives of the Uyghur king brought us great wine, marvellous flowers, all kinds of fruit and choice perfumes. Of all the steppe peoples, the Uyghurs were the most learned.
They supplied Genghis Khan with bureaucrats and scribes. They wrote his new laws and developed the first written Mongol language. When he finally arrived at Genghis Khan's camp, Changchun found an emperor determined to live forever. Master, what medicine of eternal life have you brought me?
There is so much I have yet to do. I have ways of protecting life, but no means that will prolong it. I am grateful for your honesty.
In 1227, Genghis Khan, at the age of 65, died of a hunting accident. In his life he had conquered four times as much land as Alexander the Great. Such was the power of his leadership that the army and the empire he founded continued to grow even after his death.
His greatest legacy was reported by a writer of the day. Under Genghis Khan, a man might have journeyed from the land of sunrise to the land of sunset with a golden platter upon his head, without suffering the least violence from anyone. After the Mongol conquest came the Mongol peace. Genghis Khan and his heirs enforced law and order across Central Asia. They policed a network of routes connecting East and West.
Merchants were able to travel freely between Asia and Europe, and with them, ideas. The Mongol highways revolutionized 13th century travel. Mongol soldiers established military stations along a fast new steppe land route.
They revived and patrolled the old silk roads, linking oases and market towns. A European guide for travelers gave these handy hints. It is better for the merchant to let his beard grow long and not shave. If he likes to take a woman with him, he can do so. He should furnish himself with flour and salt fish.
Other things he will find in sufficiency, and especially meat. Whatever silver the man ...the merchants may carry, the great Khan will take from them and give them that paper money of theirs in exchange. These roads were information highways by which the Mongols administered their empire and furthered their conquests.
At intervals of a day's journey, they built post stations, as the Pony Express did in America 600 years later. The imperial post riders, who carried messages of state, were the pride of the system. Each of the Khan's messengers carries a token to show he is bound on an urgent express.
If his horse breaks down, he can command a passing traveller to dismount and give up his horse. This way, in an extreme emergency, he may travel 300 miles in a day. The post stations provided food and shelter for travelers along the Mongol roads. Until the 13th century, visitors from the West believed that Asia was populated by demons and headless monsters.
One European traveller was a Franciscan friar, William of Rubruck. His diary chronicles his journey through the Mongol lands. We made our way through a terrible pass, where demons were known to snatch a horse from under a man. At other times, they would tear out a man's entrails.
We prayed in a loud voice, singing, Credo in unum Deum. A missionary, William was also gathering information for the King of France. His destination, the new capital of Mongolia, Karakorum. The town is surrounded by a mud wall and has four gates.
At the east gate are sold grains, at the west, sheep and goats, at the south, oxen, and at the north, horses. He found a city teeming with foreign artisans. Karakorum was a magnet for traders who supplied the Mongols with the luxuries they now wanted. The inhabitants are very fine craftsmen in every art and their physicians know a great deal about the power of herbs and diagnose very cleverly from the pulse.
William of Rubruck was surprised by the city's cosmopolitan culture. Here, all were free to follow their own beliefs. Shaitanum maruchai, kalchai, shayasam, vayatam, vadai, shaktan, tingai, shetra, jayata, satam, varnan, vashan, jayat, sushri, shayasam, vayatam, Genghis Khan's successor, Mongke Khan, told him, We Mongols believe in one God, by whom we live and by whom we die. But just as God has given different fingers to the hand, so has he given different religions to men.
Religious toleration on this scale was unknown in William's Europe. The long distance routes made safe by the Mongol peace gave western travellers their best opportunity for centuries to learn about the civilisations of the East. Eastern goods and know-how opened European minds.
Conquerors have often been seduced by the soft life of the people they conquer, and this was true for the Mongols. Genghis Khan lived and died in the saddle, but his grandson, Kublai, rejected the harsh life of the steppes. He built a luxurious pleasure dome in China, immortalized in Coleridge's poem.
In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree. Where Alf the sacred river ran, through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea. The Xanadu of Coleridge's poem was inspired by the travel book of a 17-year-old Venetian, Marco Polo.
He arrived with his merchant father to explore prospects for trade. He was overcome by what he saw. It is a huge building of marble and other ornamental stones, and its halls and chambers are all gilded, marvelously embellished and richly adorned. MUSIC PLAYS Under Kublai Khan, for the first time in history, the mysteries of China were unveiled to the outside world.
Marco Polo stayed at court for 17 years. The Khan's armies moved south and conquered all of China. On the site of modern-day Beijing, he created his capital. Three million laborers dug its grand canal, linking the city to the sea. Its visiting merchants were serviced by 20,000 prostitutes.
At its heart was Kublai's imperial palace. The hall held 6,000 visitors. The walls are of gold and silver. It glitters like crystal, and the sparkle of it can be seen from far away.
The Chinese hated the government of the great Khan. Because he set foreigners over them and made them feel like slaves. Kublai's remedies against rebellion were magic and propaganda. But his regime was still seen as oppressive. The Chinese resisted through literature.
They kept their culture alive through their plays, the 13th century equivalent of soap operas. Zhenxing! Ha!
You! Come in, little master! This is how it is! The dramas of the new Chinese theatre were nothing to the domestic dramas of Kublai Khan's court. Marco Polo noted, The Khan has four consorts, who are all his lawful wives.
Each holds her own court with no less than 3,000 ladies in waiting, and 7,000 other court attendants. By his wives, he has 22 male children. By his mistresses, he has a further 25 sons.
Khan also has many concubines. They are divided into groups of six, who serve him for three days and three nights at a time in his chamber and his bed, and he uses them for his pleasure. But when he wishes to lie with his wife... he goes to his wife's chamber. By far the most influential figures in Kublai's court were women, like his mother, Sorghatani.
If there was another woman like her, it would make the race of women superior to that of men. There was Kublai's senior wife, Chabi. She shared her husband's ambition to lead a dynasty that would rank with the greatest in Chinese history.
Together, they planned a new empire. In 1281, An army 140,000 strong sailed to conquer Japan. Kublai's hopes were dashed.
A typhoon destroyed the navy. With this catastrophe, the myth of Mongol invincibility vanished from Eastern Asia. That same year Chaby died. Kublai lost the will to rule.
He retreated into a life of leisure. Fat and increasingly drunk, he abandoned ambition. The affairs of state slipped into the hands of self-serving Chinese officials.
He had conquered China, now China conquered him. This is all that remains of Xanadu today. The glittering palace is dust.
But Kublai Khan would live on, in Marco Polo's words. The most powerful master there was ever seen in the world, from the time of Adam until today. On the edge of the Mongol lands were people strong enough to resist domination. In Cairo, the Mamluks were forging an empire. Mamluk soldiers were the first to halt the Mongol advance west.
Safe from Mongol devastation, Egypt became the dynamic center of the Islamic world. Mamluk means slave. The Mamluk Empire was founded upon young slave boys bought in the marketplace, instructed in Islamic doctrine and trained in Cairo's academy of war.
When a slave approached adulthood, he learned the profession of arms, that is to say how to manage bow, lance and other weapons. A severe discipline was imposed and UNICO overseers watched over all their deeds and gestures. The founder of the military academy was Baybars, bought for a Sultan's household at 14. The name means lion. Baybars excelled on the battlefield.
Part of an elite mounted corps, his training ground was the polo field. Through intrigue and assassination, he quickly rose through the ranks, from royal bodyguard to sultan, and won an empire encompassing Palestine and Syria. Baybars boasted he could play polo in both Cairo and Damascus within a single week. Today, Beba's legacy to Egypt lives on in an epic song that takes a week to sing.
Egypt needed her lion. In 1258, the Mongols were still striking west. They devastated the holy Islamic city of Baghdad, trampled the last heir of Muhammad to death, and rode on to threaten the Mamluk Empire. The Mongols taunted Baybars and his army of slaves.
You are a slave, sold in a marketplace. So how can you dispute the authority of the kings of the earth? But Babar's turned back the Mongol advance.
At the battle of Ain Jalut in Palestine, the Mamluk cavalry delivered the knockout blow. And the sword in his hand, he will strike from it and what is left The sword in his hand, he will strike from it and what is left Allah will give him the power and the power Baybars victory secured his position as Sultan and defender of the faith. He saved Islam from further Mongol expansion.
When the throne is won by might and armies, the victor becomes ruler. For the well-being and the unity of the Muslims. For the next 250 years, Mamluk sultans would continue to rule Egypt. Grown rich from the exotic trade that flowed through their capital, they adorned Cairo with monuments that still stand.
today. The mosques, hospitals and schools they built underlined their pious ambition and their claim to sovereignty over all Muslims. At the end of the 13th century, Cairo had become the cultural and intellectual centre of the Islamic world.
In the 13th century, the great trade routes of East and West met in Venice. Its annual regatta still commemorates the city's marriage to the sea. It celebrates an empire bought with the rich profits of trade.
Along with oriental luxuries reaching Venice came new technology and new ideas. Europeans who traveled the Mongol roads brought back reports of exotic lands and advanced civilizations. Among the Venetian merchants returning home was Marco Polo. He'd spent 20 years in China acquiring new ideas. The use of coal for power, paper for money.
And it was said he had a cloak full of gems. He told the stories of his travels in a book. The chance to write it came when he was taken prisoner in a local trade war.
At a time when all books had to be copied by hand, Marco Polo's travels became the bestseller of the age. Emperors and kings, and all people who wish to know the various races of men and the peculiarities of the various regions of the world, take my book and have it read to you. For here you will find all the great wonders and curiosities of China, greater Armenia and Persia, of the Tatars and India, and many other territories.
Ideas from the East sparked a scientific revolution across Europe. For centuries, Chinese philosophers had classified the laws of nature. Now, European scholars began to observe and experiment in the same way. At the forefront of this revolution was Frederick II of Sicily. He invited leading thinkers, Christian, Jew or Muslim, to his court.
Curiosity was his creed. Frederick had men disemboweled to see how their digestion worked. He had children imprisoned at birth and brought up in silence to see which language they would speak first. He never did find out.
All the children died. But Frederick and men like him were learning. Across Europe, scientists were recording what the world was really like. At the University of Paris, all this new learning was compiled into encyclopedias.
Here, Roger Bacon, an English friar, brought together the writings of the new scientists. One man I know who can be praised for his achievements in this science is Peter of Maricourt. Peter was a master of experiment. He sought knowledge through the patient observation of nature.
He studied everyday activities like agriculture and farm work. And he recorded the wisdom of old women, of wizards and magicians. A pioneer in magnetism, Peter explored the properties of what he called The Magic Stone Vision is the channel of experimental knowledge. Therefore, the sense of vision becomes the object of a special science which cannot be understood without a knowledge of the structure of the eye. Bacon experimented with lenses and dissected the human eye.
His findings helped lead to the invention of spectacles. For Bacon, science did not end with optics. It gave him a vision of the future.
In 1268, he wrote with breathtaking foresight. Now, machines of navigation can be constructed without rowers, which are born under the guidance of one man at a greater speed than if they were full of men. Also, a chariot which will move within count... killable speed without any draft animal and flying machines.
But a man may sit in the midst of it, turning a certain instrument by the means of which wings artificially constructed would beat the air after the manner of a bird flying. This was the age when God himself was portrayed as a scientist, measuring nature. This was also the age when nature inspired a new religious movement, a new Christian view of the world.
Saint Francis of Assisi taught his followers to look at the natural world as a place to be loved and enjoyed. The spirit of this new vision. was captured in his canticle to Brother Sun. May thou be praised, my lord, with all thy creatures, especially Mr. Brother Sun.
May thou be praised, my lord, for Sister Water, who is very useful, and humble, and precious, and chaste. May thou be praised, my lord, for Brother Fire. Through whom thou illumines the night. May thou be praised, my lord, for our sister, bodily death, who no man living can escape. The welcome St. Francis gave death was timely.
In the next century, cold and plague would destroy lives on a scale never recorded before. The scientific advances of the 13th century would be forgotten as humankind struggled to stay alive.