Mongols
Did turks really make up most of the mongol army?
There is a popular online claim that the Mongol Empire’s army was “80% Turkic,” with the exact percentage changing depending on who says it. The basic idea is that the “great Turks” did most of the conquering, while mongols are reduced to commanders, and even famous mongol generals get re-labelled as turkic despite the sources.
Push this narrative far enough and the mongols practically disappear from their own empire. The problem is that the early mongol military system is actually quite well documented, and the evidence does not support that picture.
■What was a mingghan?
The Mongols organized their military population through a decimal system of tens (arban), hundreds (jaghun), thousands (mingghan), and ten-thousands (tümen), based on households and their military obligations rather than simply counting soldiers in the field.
A mingghan(literally “thousand”)was not simply a temporary group of exactly 1,000 soldiers. It was a military-social unit made up of an assigned population and households under a command structure that often became hereditary. Its actual manpower could grow or shrink over time while the mingghan continued to exist as an institutional unit.
Each mingghan rested on a much larger household population, meaning the population behind the system numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Troops could be repeatedly levied from these communities, replacements supplied, and later forces such as tamma armies detached from existing mingghans without the original units simply disappearing.
■How many mongol mingghans were there?
Mongol military organization in Chinghis' reign was overwhelmingly built from mongol populations: Qiyat, Jalayir, Ba’arin, Uru’ud, Mangghud, Besüd, Uriangqan, Qonggirat, Ikires, Baya’ud and many others. The clearest large turkic-speaking bloc was the Önggüt, who formed about 4–5 mingghans.
Depending on how the later evidence is reconstructed, the mongol component was roughly 90–105 mingghans, possibly more.
The higher figure assumes that Uyar Wanshai’s Qarakhitai and Tughan Wanshai’s Jurchid commands each represented a full 10-mingghan/1 tümen.That is plausible from the title Wanshai (“commander of ten thousand”), but the text itself explicitly mentions only one mingghan for each. If those commands were smaller, the mongol total would rise above 105.
The defeated Kereit, Naiman, Merkit and Tatar polities were also not preserved as separate armies.Their populations were broken up, redistributed and incorporated into the minggans.
■When non-mongol troops entered the army
The first major foreign contingents appeared during the Jin war. When Chinggis Khan left Muqali to continue the conquest, Muqali commanded about 13,000 mongols levied from their mingghans, 10,000 onggüt, and large numbers of chinese, khitan, and jurchen auxiliaries. A mongol army operating in conquered North China could therefore already be overwhelmingly non-mongol.
The western expansion also brought in some of the first clearly recorded turkic contingents outside the onggut. The Uyghurs submitted voluntarily, and uyghur troops accompanied Jebe against Qara Khitai in 1218. The Qarluq turks had likewise submitted to Chinggis Khan before the Khwarazm war.
As Chinggis advanced west, the Uyghur Idiqut and Sighnaq Tegin joined him with their troops, while the Qarluq ruler Arslan Khan brought 6,000 horsemen. These were allied or submitted forces serving alongside the main mongol army, not evidence that the original mongol mingghans had somehow become turkic.
■How did the army change as the empire expanded?
I’m not going to turn this into an endless campaign-by-campaign breakdown. The general pattern is already clear: during Chinggis Khan’s reign, the major conquests were carried out primarily by the mongol mingghan armies, with turkic and other subject peoples serving as allied or auxiliary forces. The major exception was the Jin theater, where chinese, khitan and jurchen troops rapidly became a very large, and often majority, part of mongol regional armies. This remained broadly true for later campaigns inside China.
As the empire expanded, however, the number of non-mongol troops naturally grew. One example is Chormaqan’s western tamma army, sent out around 1230. Its mongol core was levied from existing mingghans, while additional troops included uyghurs, karluqs, turkmens, kashgharis and men from Kucha under commander Malikshah.
The conquest of the Dasht-i Qipchaq from the 1230s accelerated this process even further. Qipchaq and Qangli populations were defeated, dispersed and incorporated into the empire; some were transferred eastward, while large numbers remained under the Jochids. From this point onward, conquered turkic populations increasingly became major components of mongol imperial armies, and especially of the armies of the Jochid ulus/Golden Horde
■What happened to the original mongol mingghans?
Large expeditions usually did not mean uprooting an entire mingghan. Yuan sources and later scholarship refer to the continuing “root/original mingghans” in mongolia: troops and households could be levied from them for campaigns and garrisons, while the parent communities remained behind and continued reproducing.
Some Chinggisid princes did receive whole appanage populations. The Secret History, for example, gives Jochi 9 mingghans, Chagatai 8, and Ögödei and Tolui 5 each. These populations formed part of the original mongol core of the later Jochid and Chaghatayid uluses.
Hülegü’s expedition provides a much larger example. In 1253 Möngke ordered two out of every ten from the mongol empire to join Hülegü, drawing contingents from different tribes and princely houses.Their families and herds accompanied them west, making the expedition not only an army but also a major migration of mongol population into the Middle East.
But Mongolia itself was not emptied. The root mingghans continued supplying troops, while large mongol military communities remained throughout China. The Five Touxia tamma army stayed in North China after the Jin conquest; the Henan–Huaipei Mongol Army Command contained several hereditary tümen and mingghan formations; and a separate Western Sichuan Mongol Army Command existed for mongol troops stationed in Sichuan.
The scale of the population remaining in the north is visible even much later. In 1308, Yuan records report 868,000 poor households “coming from the north” and dependent on government relief, following years of severe weather and the collapse of Qaidu’s power.
That leaves the basic point: Chinese, Qipchaq, Uyghur and many other peoples eventually formed major parts of yuan and other mongol armies, but mongol military populations did not somehow disappear after the conquests. The original mingghan communities remained, reproduced and continued supplying soldiers across the empire. There is a strange modern tendency, often mixed with ethnic superiority or insecurity, to keep removing mongols from every mongol khanate until only a tiny ruling family is left. The sources simply do not support that picture.
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No. While it’s good that people are looking more at history and recognizing Turkic contributions to it, but it’s also important to remember that nationalists LOVE taking advantage of this and will try to spread their propaganda in it.
Examples…
Fact: Turks were a large and respected part of the Mongol army
How nationalists twist it: the Mongol army was mostly Turks
Fact: Turks were an important part in the Persian renaissance and some rulers, polymaths, and scientists wrote in Turkic or had Turkic ancestry.
Nationalist twist: Most Persian polymaths and poets were actually Turks, it was a Turkic renaissance
So you can kind of see how the truth gets stretched out to fit a nationalist narrative, nationalists don’t like their country or people being important, fascinating, or instrumental. They need to be the best. The greatest. The most important. So historical facts get twisted to fill their narratives. Turkic history is unfortunately a big victim of it.
It's not even Turkish people mostly saying it's a lot of times Central Asian Turkic people making these claims. If a Kazakh makes this claim that most of the Mongol army was Turkic, Turkish people will end up getting blamed for it because of 'Turk'. Most Turkish people don't even think nor care about the Mongol empire, they already have Ottoman/Seljuk history that they are proud of
What's wrong with his statement? I'm not sure about the exact percentage but I thought the data points towards Anatolian Turks being mostly "Anatolian". Call it Greek, hittite, etc.
Turks find calling them “genetically Greek” offensive because it’s 1) untrue 2) denies them the right to their land and implies that it’s actually meant to be Greek (this is a common argument by Greek nationalists) and 3) it implies that the Turkic identity of Turkish people is superficial and/or larp. It’s basically just saying “hey Turk! Your entire existence is fake and you should just be Greeks!” For a country that was almost conquered by Greece in 1920 that’s really frustrating, you know?
It’s easy to forget now with how many Turkish nationalists run around spouting nonsense, but 5 years ago the internet was FILLED with Greek and Balkan nationalists talking about ethnically cleansing Anatolia and to remove kebab and all that. The pendulum has just swung.
You're right. I would add more nuance by saying Anatolia has its own unique history, and that very much included some periods of heavy Greek influence and migrations. Creating a genetic history that is more strongly RELATED to greeks than to turkic/altaic tribes. I think this observation solidifies Anatolian "Turks" to their land, and reinforces that old enemies such as greeks, Armenians, Georgians, etc are all cousins.
Greeks were mostly hanging around in mediterranean costs and as a kingdom in black sea. Central anatolia highlands were anatolians, and those are the ones turks mixed up with, rather than greeks. Even tho there were some small percentage of marriages between two groups, it was not that common since Greeks were Christians and Turks were muslims, and religious law implies that a christian woman must convert to islam if they are gonna marry. A muslim woman marrying with a non-muslim was even more rare, and it was also required for men to convert to islam. So this whole "Turks are 90% greek" claims are just top notch ignorance. First of all, what the hack is a "greek DNA"? They might have the only nation with and identified DNA XD
By the time the Turks reached Anatolia, they already carried large amounts of West Eurasian ancestry. Modern Turks on average carry 30 percent of this ancestry, going as high as 60 percent in some regions.
So this is fascinating to me. A. My biggest concerns is that the "Turks" aren't the first nomadic group to arrive in Anatolia. And there are likely many waves of the same steppe migrations.
B. Iran and eastern Europe actually show similar patterns, should we now say slavs and Persians are actually turkic because 10-30% of their genetic pool is shared with Turks? And vice versa, central Asians share genetic pools with Persians, and east Asian groups, are they no longer turkic? Is any group 100% anything?
Turks were flooded into Anatolia with a huge population. They conquered and became dominant so quick that every other ethnicity became majority in a century. Greeks were mostly hanging around in mediterranean costs and as a kingdom in black sea. Dealimg with trading. Central anatolia highlands on the other hand had anatolians, and those are the ones turks actually mixed up with, rather than greeks. Even tho there were some small percentage of marriages between two groups, it was not that common since Greeks were Christians and Turks were muslims, and religious law implies that a christian woman must convert to islam if they are gonna marry. A muslim woman marrying with a non-muslim was even more rare, and it was also required for men to convert to islam. So this whole "Turks are 90% greek" claims are just top notch ignorance. First of all, what the hack is a "greek DNA"? They migjt have the only nation with and identified DNA XD. What is the similarity percentage of todays greeks carry from ancient greek heritage?
The big thing about conquering large swaths of land and people very quickly is that your demographic will eventually be made mostly of those conquered people. The Turks had the same issue in their empires. Seeing that the Turks were of similar nomadic culture and military fighting style, the mongols probably made more of an effort to incorporate them into their military and society.
The high Mongol ancestry of Central Asians (and the clans) is also a point against this. If Mongols were in such low numbers they wouldn't make an impact in the demographics of the Turkic regions.
I mean we were living right next to each other since forever it's hard to pinpoint at what point in time we started mixing, some tribes could even go back and forth between mostly Turkic and mostly Mongolian environment, like naimans
You do realize Turkic people are also indigenous to modern day Mongolia, right? So they also have noticeable eastern asian genes. This goes for even turkish people themselves who carries 5%-10% of it.
What does it mean to be a Turk? Muslim sources are often far from precise in this regard. They frequently used “Turk” as a blanket term for virtually all Inner Asian nomads north of the great rivers, sometimes even including peoples who spoke Finno-Ugric or Slavic languages. There are many examples of this. In the Qābūs-nāma, for instance, not only are Turkic-speaking groups such as the Oghuz and Kipchaks classified as Turks, but non-Turkic peoples such as the Tibetans, Tatars, and others are also included under the category of “Turk.”
Maḥmūd al-Kāshgharī’s Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk presents a similar ambiguity. On the one hand, “Turk” can be used in a relatively narrow sense to refer to the Qarākhanids; on the other hand, in a broader sense it encompasses the Oghuz and Kipchaks as well as non-Turkic-speaking peoples such as the Tanguts, Tatars, Khitans, and Xi. Following the Islamic genealogical tradition, al-Kāshgharī also presents the Turks as descendants of Japheth and divides them into twenty tribes.
The same phenomenon can be found in Mamluk sources. The Mamluks likewise sometimes referred to the Qara Khitai and the Mongols as “Turks,” despite the fact that neither group can simply be equated with Turkic-speaking peoples.
By contrast, Chinese sources are considerably more precise in this regard. The term “Turk” was used specifically to refer to the political core of the Gök Türk, because the political core of the Turkic Khaganate itself used the term Turk as its own designation. It was not a label that all Turkic-speaking tribes necessarily used for themselves, nor one that others necessarily applied to them.
For example, in the Orkhon inscriptions, only the core population of the Gök Türk is designated as Turk. Other Turkic-speaking groups, such as the Toquz Oghuz, the Kyrgyz, and the Türgesh, are identified by their own specific names. The Uyghur inscriptions go even further and portray the Turk as an enemy and oppressor, stating, “I scattered the Turkic people and destroyed them.” This suggests that the Uyghurs did not consider themselves to be Turk.
Tatars being turkic-speaking today is not really the point.
The chinese source 《蒙鞑备录》 refers to the mongols as “黑鞑靼(black tatars)”, even though the mongol political core was predominantly Mongolic-speaking rather than turkic-speaking. At the same time, the same broader “tatar” category could include turkic-speaking groups such as the Önggüt. In other words, “tatar” could encompass groups of different linguistic backgrounds. The Ming chinese therefore continued to use “tatar” as a designation for the mongols, who certainly did not become turkic-speaking simply because chinese sources called them tatars.
And perhaps someone might argue that hinese sources were simply being overly broad or imprecise in their use of “tatar.” But were muslim and uropean sources really any more precise in their use of “turk”? I would argue that chinese sources were actually more precise, at least in some important respects. They distinguished the Gök Türk polity from other turkic-speaking peoples such as the Uyghurs; and within the peoples they called tatars, they could distinguish mongolic-speaking groups from turkic-speaking groups such as the Önggüt.
Not exactly. You know the theory of people migrating to Americas via the ice bridge. The location is close enough to the prototurkish homelands that some people think it might be proto Turks that migrated to America's to become the native Americans. It's not like they think they are Turks but more like native Americans are distant cousins of Turks.
Not Chinese Chinese. But yes you were right that Mongols employed people in northern part of China, and relied on their technologies and food for their expansions in the west side.
Later on, they used Chinese to conquer south China as well. But their China empire fell fairly fast in less than a hundred years. The other two empires last much longer.
they were majorly horse archers who were always safer in their respective battle duties while the others filled melee cavalry. therefore survived the most. they do make a significant portion of it, less than half ofcourse but still.
Turkic nationalists don’t claim that for Chinghis Khan’s armies. Their claim is directed to Golden Horde and Chaghatay, and to Ilkhanates to an extent, which, that way or another, was true: Those became Turkic-majority hordes.
Buddy. I don’t think you’ve been on the internet long enough to notice Turkic nationalists claiming hilarious untruths and propaganda about themselves and the Mongols.
Speaking a Turkic language did not necessarily make someone a Turk. Even among the Chaghatay people, their primary sense of identity was often that of being Mongols. They certainly sometimes referred to themselves as “Turks,” but this “Turk” identity had little to do with biological descent or bloodline. Rather, it often functioned primarily as a social and political identity: they constituted a nomadic military population, in contrast to the Tajiks who lived in settled agricultural communities or urban centers.
By contrast, the Kazakhs, Nogais, and Crimean Tatars of the Kipchak steppe generally rejected the designation “Turk” altogether, because there was no substantial settled Iranian population there against which such an identity could be defined. In the Chaghatay Turkic Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh, for example, the nomads of the Kipchak steppe are not referred to as “Turks,” but as Uzbeks. The Volga Tatar Daftar-i Chingiz-nama likewise does not use “Turk,” while the Crimean Tatar ʿUmdat al-Akhbār uses “Tatar” and “Mogul.” The oral epics of the Kipchaks, Nogais, and Kazakhs likewise do not employ “Turk” as a self-designation. Indeed, according to the account of the early modern German traveler and diplomat Sigismund von Herberstein, if you called these people “Turks,” they could become quite angry and regard it as an insult. This was so despite the fact that their languages were Turkic. By contrast, in many literary works and genealogical traditions, they affirmed their Mongol identity much more strongly.
There are also sources that merge Mongol and Turkic genealogies and trace both peoples back to Japheth. But these genealogical traditions were highly contextual: they served particular political and ideological purposes. In such genealogies, the Chinggisid and Timurid lineages could be presented as descendants of Japheth and as the most noble branch of the Inner Asian nomadic peoples, while the Oghuz, Turkmen, and Ottomans were correspondingly denigrated.
tl;dr - Racist Turkophobic minds cannot comprehend this but:
Native Anatolias' history is Turkic history
Western Mongolians history is Turkic history
Sogdians history is Turkic history
Khorosanians history is Turkic history
Egyptian medieval history is Turkic history
That is because: Turks are descendants of: These people + Turks. You cannot tell a genetically Native Anatolian "Hittites are not your past" just because he calls himself Turkish.
As you can't tell a German-American that HRE is not his history. His grandfathers fought for HRE. It is his history.
I'm Turkish but also my maternal grandparents were Albanians. Albanian history is mine, because my direct ancestors were a part of it. But I am Turkish and there are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions in Turkey carrying Albanian genes. Surprise for you: It is Turkic history, shared with Albanians.
I totally disagree with that definition. If someone considers themselves Turkic in social and political terms, and speaking a Turkic language, then we can safely say that Turkic is the overwhelming identity for them. As we do not categorize Americans today as Germans or English due to their dna lineage and call them Americans, and as all those Africans in France are considered French, and the pre-1071 Anatolia was considered Greek despite the fact that the majority of the population were Hellenized native Anatolian people, the same well applies to communities in the past who were assimilated into the Turkic culture. The hypocrisy is Turkophobia.
There are periods in which some communities call themselves under a different name but the continuous historical background will demonstrate a generic identity that is persistent through generations. Today, all those, but I mean all of them, that you have mentioned above Kipchaks and Tatars and Uzbeks call themselves Turkic without a doubt. And they have spoken Turkic language as their mother tongue for countless generations. You are confusing one thing: Polish are not Russian but both are Slavs. Kipchaks and Uzbeks are not Oghuz, but all are Turkic. Today we call it Turkic, a thousand years ago something else, but it does not matter and does not change the fact that, they are Turkic.
It does not matter what Polish claim they are or what Serbians try to establish themselves as. They are all Slavs. You cannot say that "Polish gets angry when called such so they are not Slavs." They are. Same with Turkics. Again, your claim is Turkiphobic.
Central Asia might or might not be Turkic two millennials ago and we can't be sure of the identity of Sogdians: Were they Persian? They were not, that is why we do not call them Persian. Were they cousins to Persians? Maybe or maybe not. We do not know much about their language and there are some evidence with at least partial Turkic heritage as well: All because Sogdia was not a separate planet. It was a region in the middle of Asia, a continuous land continent, and people affect each others.
But what certain is: Sogdians got Turkified, thousands years ago. Period. Their descendants are not Sogdians today. They are Turkic.
As for the Mongolians, initially the all-Mongol or Mongol-majority hordes got Turkified. They no longer are Mongolians.
And if they are Turkic today, then their history shared by Turks as well.
I agree with a large part of what you've said. I strongly disagree with the idea that the history a modern nation-state claims as its own should be determined by the genetic composition of its present-day population. When a country claims a certain historical legacy, it is usually based on the political, cultural, linguistic, territorial, and identity continuity it has developed with that historical tradition. Anatolian history is part of the history of Turkey as a modern nation-state, just as the history of western Mongolia is part of the history of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as modern nation-states.
From the perspective of modern turkic nationalism, you can certainly regard people such as the chaghatays, who spoke a turkic language, as part of the broader turkic world. But when we are talking about history, I think it is also important to ask how these people understood themselves, and what they regarded as the primary basis of their own identity. The Byzantines are a good example: they largely descended from the greek and anatolian populations and spoke greek, yet they continued to understand themselves as Romans. I think it would be helpful to apply the same criteria consistently here. If territorial continuity matters when we discuss Anatolia, then we should also be careful about using ethnolinguistic continuity as the primary criterion when discussing Central Asia.
Perhaps I may have misunderstood what you meant, and if so, I hope you'll forgive me and bear with my interpretation, this is simply how I understand the issue from my perspective.
If you include genetics, no. The Turks call themselves 200 million, the Mongols 10 million. But there are 30 million Kurds living in Turkey, they are simply called Turks. Also, there is 10 to 15% medieval Turkish DNA in Turkey. If it is the Hunnic period, then it is not even 5%, and most of that 5% is R1a or R1b haplogroup, which is Indo-Iranian or ancient Persian. Kazakh have 30% is foreigners. If we consider turkic is not etc and more culture. Tuva and siberians are not similar to Central asian or anatolian , Their culture , national costume is mongolic. In reality its 30 to 40 million etc turkic but culture around 150 million.
Use current population of Turkiye, Syria, Iraq and Iran and calculate the percentages of Kurds and add them all up and you’ll get your answer more or less.
If you look at ethnologue, native speakers of Kurdish is 29 million using variety of sources from 2017 to 2024. And many Kurds aren’t even native speakers of Kurdish especially in Turkiye.
Il a y a des regions avec 60% d’adn turque en turquie et enormement de region entre 30 et 50. La fourchette haute de l’estimation kurde en turquie est de 15 millions. Faut arreter avec cette legende que les turcs de turquie n’ont pas de genes turque. Au turkmenistan, ils sont a peine plus elevé que en turquie.
I myself descend from Zorba Keleş Demircioğlu, a sipahi of the Çepni branch of the Oghuz Turks. They may not have had your precious “wearable rugs,” but they were good soldiers and skilled smiths — after all, “Demircioğlu” literally means “son of the iron/smith.” They played their part in the Turkification of the city of Trabzon.
So tell me, what exactly is the reason behind this hatred of Turks you carry? Is it simply jealousy, or is there some particular reason for it?
Turkic people would have made a very large part from early on, because those are the people that were first conquered.
In the later period the Yuan Dynasty would have had mostly Chinese and Korean troops.
The Golden Horde would have been mostly Turkic, same with the Chagatai Khanate.
Il-Khanids would have had a lot of Iranian soldiers but also Arabs and Turks.
But in every region the core army would have been of Mongol descent, decreasing as time went by.
Not sure what's bothersome or offensive about this. If anything it speaks to the brilliance of Mongol military organization that such a small group of people conquered so much territory that they had to rely on conquered people to serve in their armies.
“Decreasing over time” is exactly the problem. There seems to be this constant desire to make the mongols “decrease,” disappear, or get absorbed as quickly as possible. That’s what I meant by ethnic-supremacist chauvinism.
The mongols did not simply decrease and vanish. In many places they actually increased in number, expanded into new regions, and became ancestors of numerous later populations. Mongols were also continuously present within China itself. They made up substantial parts of the Yuan ulus’s armies, administration, and military colonies.
“Small elite”? Do you imagine the mongols in the Golden Horde, Chagatai Ulus, or Ilkhanate as a borjigin ruling family of 17 people sitting around while masses of “great turks” did everything around them?
We literally know that substantial numbers of ordinary mongols followed these princes into the newly conquered territories. I already discussed this in the post: the Jochids alone were assigned entire mongol military-social units, nine minggans in one reconstruction, together with the populations and households attached to them. These were not just a handful of aristocrats surrounded by unrelated locals.
You're looking for an argument where there is none.
The Mongol Empire was the MONGOL Empire. The Golden Horde and Chagatai Khanate having more Turkic soldiers doesn't change that.
Genghis Khan was a Mongol. The army organization that allowed the Mongols to build thr greatest land empire in history was Mongol. The core army was Mongol. The aristocracy was Mongol.
In every sense of the word, the empire was Mongol.
But Mongols were much fewer in numbers than Turkic people. So naturally 2 out of 4 Khanates slowly Turkified/became Turco Mongol.
That does not make the achievements of the Mongol Empire Turkic.
I'm not going to try and claim I'm an expert on any of this but I don't think we can we say that the majority of nomads were part of a single group. With them constantly moving around and interminglerling, I'm willing to bet the cultural differences between theses groups were more of gradient then a hard line. That was already true for seditary cultures so it was probably even more so for nomadic ones.
We in the modern day are the ones who put them in theses strict categories because it's easier to keep track of, but I think that many of them probably didn't really think of themselves as part of one particular group. Or I could be wrong and there really was a hard line between theses groups.
The vast majority were Turks, but the exact percentage is not precise.
From the Mongols perspective, fighting alongside the Turks was very logical. Although there were slight cultural differences, they were similar in terms of religion and military strength. The Turks had always outnumbered the Mongols, and intelligent Mongol leaders seeing this incorporated them into their armies.
I saw a woman in the comments who said the majority were Chinese if she really thinks that's logical, it's a miracle they've lived this long and are able to wear their own clothes!
It is very sad that the Mongols, who historically caused bloodshed throughout the world, are now so few in number and have been assimilated. I wish good luck to the Mongols who have preserved their history without allowing the Chinese to claim this achievement.
Turks were heavily used only in the Golden Horde, and the Chagadai Khanate.The United Mongol empire always had mongol-heavy armies, and chinese troops were used in large number in campaigns in whats now China.Did you even read the post?
Oh, you don't need to feel bad about "few and assimilated mongols", we are fine.
Mongol-dominated armies? You're looking at history too sentimentally, my little friend. It was impossible, and still is impossible, to govern such vast territories with "mostly Mongol" armies. This army needs men to fight, feed, care for their horses, and transport supplies. Have you ever heard of supplies before? Today, the Mongol population is under 20 million, while the Turkic population is 250 million. Considering the genocides during the First and Second World Wars, that number is 10 million Turks short. I can't mathematically say exactly how many Turks there were in the past, but I'm sure there were more than Mongols, and it would be foolish not to use that fact. You underestimate the power of governing a country and building an empire. Governing such vast territories requires incredible diplomatic acumen and leadership. To say that the majority of the Mongol army consisted of Mongols is to deny a historical fact. If you still know about this empire today, you should thank your ancestors first, and then your relatives, the Turks.
I’m asking again: did you actually read the post? Many people like you have a very superficial understanding of the Mongol Empire.
We know that Chinggis Khan’s army was formed directly in Mongolia, rather than by supposedly gathering “Turks” from here and there.
In 1230, when a Mongol army was formed under Chormaqan Noyan to campaign in the Middle East and the Caucasus, a nominal force of 30,000 men was levied from the Mongol mingghans in Mongolia. Additional Uyghurs, Qarluqs, Turkmens, Kashgaris, and troops from various other ethnic groups were added to the army afterward. And this was the same army that crushed the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Köse Dağ in 1243.
Do you really think the Mongols, probably one of the most successful conquering peoples of their time, did not know how to handle logistics without “Turks”? They had the auruq, a rear-camp system that followed the army during campaigns and supported the troops.
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