— R —

RABBAN ṢAUMĀ (C. 1225–1294). Nestorian (see Nestorianism) traveller. Rabban Ṣaumā was a member of one of the Önggüd (q.v.) communities of the northwest China (q.v.) borderlands. Sent to Mongol Iran (q.v.) by Qubilai (q.v.) as an envoy, and to further Mongol imperial integration through patronizing Nestorianism, he is most famous for the journey, reversing the track of Marco Polo (q.v.), that he made to the West, including Europe. He was there between 1275 and 1280, before returning to Ilqanate (q.v.) domains where his traveling companion, Marcos, henceforth known as Yaballāhā III (q.v.), was appointed patriarch of the Nestorian Church in 1281. It was Marcos who wrote the life of Rabban Ṣaumā that is our principal source of information about him, and his journeys in which he met some of the most important European figures of his day, including the kings of France and England. Rabban Ṣaumā died in Baghdad (q.v.), caught up in church business. See also Religion.

RAIDS. Method for weakening enemies and generating booty. Mongol raids were often small scale, but could also involve massive mobilizations organized in the manner similar of the great hunts (see Nerge). Much of early Mongol military activity outside the steppe, even the invasion of Khwarazm (q.v.), were little more than glorified raids, except that the intent in the latter case was to even the score and take vengeance (q.v.), as well as generate booty (q.v.). Only gradually did the Mongols attempt to seize and control territory and govern it. The encouragement for this generally came from interested parties in the sedentary areas rather than from among the Mongols themselves, although by the time of qan Ögödei (q.v.) at latest, the Mongols too had begun to understand the values of taxation as opposed to expropriation.

Raids, like most Mongolian military campaigns, took place during the winter as a rule. At that time of the year most herding tasks were completed, and there was a surplus of manpower, a relative abundance of stored food due to a late autumn culling of the herds, and river barriers were usually frozen. This permitted easy passage without the need to build even temporary bridges. Winter campaigning also allowed the Mongols to avoid unpleasant hot weather in places like China. They were used to the cool, highland steppe and found hot weather intolerable. It also made them sick. Their herds and horses were also more resistant to livestock plague during cold weather.

RASHĪD AL-DĪN FAḌL ALLĀH (1247–1318). Persian historian and Ilqanate (q.v.) minister. He was the first to write a truly universal history of the world focusing on events in both the West and the East. Rashīd Al-Dīn, although a later convert to Islam, was born a Jew, and first came to the attentions of the Mongol rulers of Iran as a physician. Later rising to the rank of vizier, he served Ghazan (q.v.), Öljeitu (q.v.), and Abū Sa’īd (q.v.). He was finally executed during the reign of the latter, supposedly for poisoning Abū Sa’īd’s father, Öljeitu.

Rashīd al-Dīn’s scholarly works, which he found time to work on, with a large staff, despite his active political career, include his general history, the “Collection of Histories” (Jāmi’ al-tawārīkh) with its unique sections on China and the Western world. The first part, on the history of the Mongol Empire and the Ilqanate, down to the death of Ghazan in 1304, is known as the “History of Ghazan” (Ta’rīkh-i Ghāzānī), pointing up the role of ilqan (q.v.) Ghazan as patron of the entire work. In compiling it, and the rest of his history, Rashīd al-Dīn was able to consult one or more Mongolian chronicles in Ilqanate secret archives, including a text that is very similar to the existing Secret History of the Mongols (q.v.). He also was able to draw upon the knowledge of Qubilai’s official representative in the Ilqanate, a well-informed Mongol named Pulad (q.v.) Ching-sang (chengxiang ), “minister Pulad,” and what was apparently an extensive output of a translation agency under his control. Its products included a summary of a Buddhist popular history that Rashīd al-Dīn used as one basis of his China history, and even a translation of a Chinese acupuncture manual.

Other works of Rashīd al-Dīn, some of them still existing only in manuscript, include a highly interesting text on agronomy, the “Vestiges and Living Things“ (Āthār wa Aḥyā’). This has considerable information on Mongol Iran (q.v.), and on the China of Qubilai (q.v.) as well, a fact indicative of active technological and scientific exchanges.

RATIONS. See Campaign rations.

“RECORD OF A JOURNEY TO THE WEST.” See Xi yuji .

“RECORD OF THE MONGOLS AND TATARS.” See Mengda Beilu .

“RECORD OF THE PERSONAL CAMPAIGNS OF THE SAGELY MILITANT.” See Shengwu qinzheng lu

RELIGION. Native Mongolian religion focused on the spiritual powers of heaven and earth, principally the cult of tenggiri, the blue sky, and a number of earth spirits that are a great deal less well described than the sky god, but were, nonetheless, still important in Mongolian religion. Associated with these beliefs were numerous rituals designed to propitiate this or that force, and an elaborate system of avoidances and tabus.

Ancient Mongolian religion lacked anything resembling a priesthood, or even full-time practitioners. Certain individuals were involved with various forms of prognostication (as tölgeci), including divinization through the cracks appearing in sheep scapula, and other bones. This was an important activity among the early Mongols, and one conferring great prestige on those able to do it well. Others were associated with magic. This included weather magic, principally rainmaking, performed by jadaci, “those involved with jada,” i.e., with bezoars. This was an important function in generally dry Mongolia. The bezoars used in this rainmaking were believed to have special magical potency.

In addition to such individuals, also widely found among the early Mongols were shaman, bö’e, male shaman, and iduqan, female shaman (see Shaman). These shaman availed of tutelary spirits, usually animals, to gain spiritual powers allowing them to traverse the various divisions of a layered universe and, when treating illness, reclaim the lost, stolen, or errant soul of a patient. Shaman could also divine the intentions of the hidden spiritual powers of the universe, including their approval or disapproval of human acts. For this reason they, and other prognosticators, played an important part in Mongolian political ritual, including the election of qan. Cinggis-qan (q.v.), for example, was first elected qan only after a shaman, Üsün-ebügen, Üsün the “old,” an epithet associated with shaman among the Mongols, had announced the intentions of “Heaven and Earth.”

Also present among the early Mongols was Nestorianism (q.v.), although in a very primitive form and cut through with Mongolian religious as well as Christian concepts. There was possibly some Buddhism (q.v.) as well, promoted by the Kitan (q.v.) everywhere they ruled, including in Mongolia, but most Mongolian exposure to Buddhism and the other world religions, with the exception of Nestorianism, came only with the era of conquest.

Although some Mongols, eventually, did become converts to Buddhism and other religions of the sedentary world, they still continued to conceptualize them in terms of their own religious experiences. Early missionaries, for example, from China and Tibet (q.v.), were valued not so much for their own religious values, as for their ability to fill the standard roles of religious practitioners in Mongolian society. Thus some of the first Tibetans to proselytize (the Tibetan mTshal-Pa) gained a reputation for weather magic, others for their purely magical skills, and even divinational abilities. It is also clear that the Mongols easily identified tantric practices focusing on the control of a tutelary spirit with their own native shamanism. This is, in fact, one reason why Tibetan Lamaism (q.v.) so easily replaced Mongolian native tradition as the official state religion in Mongol China. Also important was the ability of the bLa-ma (q.v.) to provide political sanctification in much the same way that the shaman of old did at the time of imperial elections, although the latter never vanished from Mongolian political life.

Islam (q.v.), less tolerant and more exclusive than Buddhism, was less accommodating to native Mongolian religious values, but the latter persisted alongside an official Islam almost to the end of the Ilqanate (q.v.), for example. Islam never had a total hold over the Mongol elite. On the other hand, after the official conversion of the Ilqanate, efforts were made to suppress Buddhism, Nestorianism, Judaism, and Western Christianity in Iran, usually for immediate political reasons. Buddhism, which was mostly Tibetan, disappeared there as a result.

ROGER OF HUNGARY. See Carmen Miserable.

ROGER OF VARADIN. See Carmen Miserable.

RUBRUC. See William of Rubruck.

RUBRUCK. See William of Rubruck.

RUSSIA. Russia was comprised of territory of the city-states and principalities associating out of recognition of a common cultural tradition reaching back to the Varangians (Ruses) who founded most of them. At the center was the great city of Kiev (q.v.), all but destroyed, like many Russian centers, during the Mongolian major invasions of the 1230s. Also linking the Russian communities with each other were a common orthodox religion, including a standard church language, Old Church Slavonic, actually a Bulgarian dialect, and a material culture containing many Byzantine as well as common Slavic elements. The Byzantine elements included the icons that were an important part of the Greek religion of the era, as well as Russian.

After Mongol conquest there was no Russia to the degree that one had existed in Kievan times. Kiev and many other major centers had been crushed or destroyed. The balance of power shifted to states allied with the conquerors, for example, Moscow (q.v.). Other Russian states, e.g., Novgorod, choose to look west, although it was endangered by one Western power, the Teutonic Knights (q.v.)

The new Russia that took shape under the Mongols came to be centered upon Moscow and borrowed a great many political and administrative practices from the conquerors. It also emerged as a unitary territorial state, not unlike the Golden Horde (q.v.), and not as a loose association of small states linked only by culture and a feeling of commonality. Like the Mongols, Moscow conquered its rivals. It did not seek to dominate them by culture or religion.

RUSSIAN STEPPE. The southern part of what is now the Ukraine and the Russian Federation, suitable for use by pastoral nomadic peoples. The Russian steppe abuts a larger area of Central Asia steppe via the Volga region.

RUTHENIA. Word for Russia (q.v.) in some sources.

RUYSBROECK. See William of Rubruck.

RYAZAN. Russian city and principality (see Russia). Among the first to fall to the Mongols, on December 21, 1237, it declined rapidly under their rule.