Mongolia Stamps

Vintage Mongolian stamps come in a great variety of interesting motifs.

Chinggis Khan's Grandparents Portrait

Chinggis Khan's Grandparents Portrait. Miniature Illustration from Rashid-al-Din's Chronicles.
depicting Bartan-Bahadur and Sunigil-Fudjin

Mongolian Archers Images

A Mongolian archer demonstrating the technique of shooting birds overhead with a compound bow. Photo by Arthaud and Hebert-Stevens, Mongolie

Mongolian Woman Archer in Naadam Competition, Mongolia, 2000


Mongolian Archer, Inner Mongolia, 1940's

Mongolian Archer netsuke attributed to Toshimura Shuzan, Japan, 18th century

Zanabazar

Sculpture Portrait of Zanabazar, 18th century.

Mongolian Sumo Wrestler Asashoryu Finishes Perfect At Kyushu Sumo Championship

Yokozuna Asashoryu shoves Ozeki Chiyotaikai from the dohyo at the Fukuoka Kokusai Center Sunday, the final day of the November Grand Sumo Tournament. (Mainichi Photo)

News Source: Mainichi Daily News, November 26th, 2006
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/sports/sumo/news/20061126p2a00m0sp010000c.html

FUKUOKA -- Yokozuna Asashoryu overpowered ozeki Chiyotaikai on Sunday to finish the Kyushu Grand Sumo Tournament with a perfect 15-0 record.

Asashoryu, who wrapped up his 19th Emperor's Cup with a win on Saturday, got both hands on the belt of Chiyotaikai and lifted the ozeki up and over the straw ridge in the day's final bout at Fukuoka Kokusai Center.

Chiyotaikai dropped to 9-6.

"It's always nice to win every bout," said Asashoryu, who won the Kyushu meet for a third straight year. "From the 10th day I started to feel I had a good chance to win the title and fought with the pride of a yokozuna."

Mongolian Asashoryu, the only grand champion competing in sumo, defeated Kotooshu on Saturday to secure the title in the year's final tournament.

Sunday's win capped an impressive run in the 15-day Kyushu tourney and was the fifth time Asashoryu has won a meet with an undefeated record.

Sympathy For The Mongols & How The Rise Of The West Was Sheer Dumb Luck by Daniel Foss

Battle of Liegnitz, 1241

Website Source:Historical Text Archive http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=241

Sympathy For The Mongols & How The Rise Of The West Was Sheer Dumb Luck

Note: I can't find Daniel Foss. If he or someone who knows him reads this, contact me. This essay is provocative and deserves wide circulation. It appeared on the History@finhutc list (now defunct). I didn't save the first essay he mentions. Regardless, the second essay gives pause for thought.

Date: Mon, 29 Apr 91 14:57:18 EDT
From: "Daniel A. Foss"
Subject: Historical Objectivity (2)

Sympathy For The Mongols & How The Rise Of The West Was Sheer Dumb Luck

Although the reader is presumed to have dismissed the previous essay as a pastiche of commonplaces and preposterousnesses, let me first of all assure you that the letter in question represented no more than a capsule summary of what those disposed to high-nebulosity locutions characterize as "orientations" or "where I'm coming from." Herewith I get down to some cases.

In the April 26 communication from G.L. Penrose of Hope College there is an example given of an indubitable historical fact, "say the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258." Why this "event" in particular? Well, It's a fact or "event" whereof one supposes only a person literate in history to know. Also, it has come down to us as a story of such frightfulness as to epitomize or eo ipso mark a caesura in medieval Islamic civilization; and is as a rule stressed as such by Islamicists: Islam was struck a blow in its heartland, an exogenous catastrophe, wherefrom it was not to meaningfully recover and wherefor Islam itself can hardly therefore be blamed. As a direct consequence Islam/Islamic/"Islamicate" civilization rigidified, stagnated, ossified by contrast to its earlier creativity and dynamism, and thereafter was "deep-frozen" in the guise of the "gunpowder empires" after 1450. Small wonder given what we "know" to have Objectively happened: In 1258 Hulagu led an expeditionary force, presumed overwhelmingly large, to Persia and Iraq having subdued the remaining powers of Turkish Central Asia including assorted trading city-state khanates and the realm of the Khwarizm Shah. [None of these entities represented much capacity to resist.] The ruler of Iraq, the last as it turned out of the Abbasid Caliphs al-Nasir, refused to surrender [self-evidently without prospect of success] and for his heroism died horribly at Mongol hands. For resisting the city was relegated to massacre and pillage. Death toll estimates begin at 200,000 inhabitants; they go as high as 800,000: The waters of the Tigris ran red with human blood for days, weeks, on end. Irreplaceable cultural treasures were lost: So many libraries perished that the waters of the Tigris ran black with ink from destroyed books. (See NY Times Magazine Section, Sunday 28 April 1991.)

All that stood between Islam and total perdition was the still-shaky regime (since taking power from the last of the Ayyubids in 1250 in an ill-planned coup lacking a non-slave candidate for the throne) of the Mamluks in Egypt, whose first Sultan, Qutuz, defeated Hulagu at Ayn Jalut, Syria, in that same year, 1258.

For some reason we draw conclusions as to the mighty feat of arms achieved by the heroic Qutuz, not the weakness of Hulagu's expeditionary force. [Crusader Acre held out against him, Bybars, and Qalawun till after the latter's death. Then again, we should but do not bear in mind Batu's having turned the mailed chivalry of Hungary, led by Bela IV, into a pile of rusty scrap in 1242; the Egyptian cavalry was lighter, less formidable, easy prey to deadly Mongol archers one would think.]

We might, but never do, sit up with a start, suddenly aware of the anomaly of the Abbasid Caliph holding power. There had after all been Abbasid Caliphs since 750; Baghdad was founded in 764. But didn't we learn in the third grade, or third year of graduate school, whatever, that the Arab Empire's political eminence and territorial integrity did not long survive the supreme effort expended in suppressing the grave Revolt of the Zanj (imported African slaves) in southern Iraq (868-883); and that even before this the Caliphs had become playthings of their Turkish soldiers' commanding officers like 5th century West Roman Emperors of German counterparts. Persia and Iran were at this time given over to the peregrinations of nomadic turkish tribes and their flocks, nomadic anarchy suspended for two or three generations by the power - after 1313 the Islamic power - of the Mongol Ilkhan mini-empire. More conscious, deliberate anarchists abounded, too, in the form of the terrorists of the Order of Hashishin, an offshoot of Ismaili ("Sevener") Shi'a Islam.

What had happened was the disappearance of "serious" government, i.e., of orderly dominion over respectably sized territorial units, had disappeared even before the Mongol arrival, leaving a power vacuum such that the only imaginable last-gasp possibility of rulership over the former Empire's core territory, Iraq, reverted perforce to of all people the legitimate monarch! Al-Nasir, "a nice man who meant well," dutifully if bemusedly assumed his responsibility to govern Iraq faute de mieux; although he at times strangely continued to act as if he were still a figurehead e.g. hoarding his personal Caliphal treasure, not urgently expending it on the exigencies of defense as the situation urgently warranted. Heir to centuries of political impotence, the last Caliph made a poor showing, preserving his dignity as opposed to governing a state. A ruler of, say, mediocre competence might have deflected Hulagu, who was in a hurry, with lesser disaster. [His dignity prevailed: When the Mongols rolled him up in a rug and stomped him to death, this was a tribute to royalty; it spared a victim dismemberment of the body.]

How much of a disaster was it, actually? Baghdad lost the caliphate which was normally a cipher anyway which Sunnis long ago learned to live without and Shi'ites always despised. Yet business was good, in large measure due to the immense stimulus to trade imparted by the vastness of the Mongol Empire itself. Baghdad and Iraq recovered their prosperity. The Hashishin were wiped out; the Ismaili activist wing of Shi'ism gave way to Jaafari ("Twelver") which encouraged a clean nose kept to the grindstone. Turkish tribal wars abated until the Ilkhanate fell whereafter Black Steep Turks fought White Sheep Turks.

The fall of Baghdad was memorable for reasons which were largely or wholly false. Islamic civilization had hit a rough patch some decades before the Mongols appeared. Thereafter the Mongols even if acting in their own interest, not that of Islam, greatly promoted trade, peace, and order. Muslims greatly exaggerated the massacre in Baghdad of more people than the city's total population; and it recovered in numbers and prosperity thereafter: The importance of the Fall of Baghdad was psychological, like that of Constantinople in 1453; and unlike the latter was due more to political stupidity, less to overwhelming odds (had that is sensible precautions been taken).

To this day in English, the words "Mongol" and "horde" have strongly negative connotations. But this is as nothing to the perduring horror Mongols evoke in countries they actually conquered, like Russia and China; and here the tendency is for foreign historians to have taken and to still take to this very day the word of the locals as to what evils were attributable to Mongol malign essence.

Mongols can have done no right. As barbarians all their acts were barbarous performed barbarously. The ethnic stereotype of Fanatical Asiatic Hordes has been wedged like foreign matter into the history o[f] widely separated countries in the place of facts whereof some of which we would like to know, others we are more comfortable not knowing as these facts might well be found discrepant with our Reality, whose "tradition" - in the sense I have used the word in the first essay, is a tale of the inevitable, inexorable comint-to-the-fore of the innate, intrinsic, immanent Superiority of the West which made it certain that the West and the West alone could have given rise to Modern Society and then only in the form whereby it is familiar to us.

Though "Tradition," every society's folk-tales of its alleged past, changes repeatedly as dictated by the spurious - i.e., ideologically represented - present. Every "Reality" - in the sense I used in the first essay - imparts "a sense of time-immemoriality" to the inception of the present. Crudely put, since Time Immemorial the West has been Rising; and Western Civilization is the Booster of the launch vehicle whereof the Second Stage is the "Bourgeoisie." It is not true that we typically say something not far different in meaning from, "Since Earliest Times the Bourgeoisie has been Rising"? [Observe that to establish ourselves teleologically we have forcibly stolen - where necessary by military might - the civilization of Classical Greece from what once was called the East and stuck it in the West, or at least the imaginary past of the West. Down indeed to the detail of having The White Man, a recent invention of the West, perforce exist then-there, if then-there is to precur the West.]

Historians of China have to this very day represented the Mongol period as a time of oppressive cruelty and incessant terror. During the Mongol Yuan Dynasty however, Chinese scholar-intellectuals berated the Mongol regime for laxity, permissiveness, and undisciplined administration. (Who knows if this might also prove true of the "Mongol yoke" in Russia?) The Chinese have for five centuries attributed huge reductions in their population, from 125 million by official count in 1317, to 65 million (inflated by modern estimates to 80 million) in 1393, to Mongol genocidal inclinations whose victims were supplemented by the death toll incurred in the national effort to throw the hated barbarian rulers out of the country back into the northern deserts whence they came. Western historians by and large believe them.

Right now I have lying on my lap a slim book of readings for an undergraduate history course. The title is, The Black Death: A Turning Point In History? It was known or believed in Europe in the years just before 1350 that the Bubonic Plague had originated somewhere in the East, China possibly, and had been brought to the shore of the Black Sea by a Mongol army. If the Bubonic Plague was largely responsible for demographic collapse in China as it was in Europe, the misattribution of population losses to Mongol genocide and struggle against Mongol rule may represent one of the greatest unhappenings cum rehappenings of the past of this kind in history (where "history" here is used in the sense of objective history in the ultimate sense). 57 Varieties of social theory are invoked by social scientists of every stripe to identify some Disease of Chinese Civilization such that China could not and could never have developed Modern Capitalism. Where China was Diseased the West was hale and healthy; hence The Rise of the West culminating in the Rise of the Bourgeoisie which endureth forever: As of 1989 any projected possibility that there might exist some point beyond which the bourgeoisie might Rise no more has been banished, dead-and-buried, we-told-you-so. Quite plausibly some of the things we do not wish to be told - yet which have been established beyond question by contemporary China scholarship - include that up through the first third of the fourteenth century the Chinese were a couple of centuries closer to the dubious paradise of Capitalism than were the Western Europeans of the same period. And the lead furthermore was widening.

Then Chinese Civilization ran into bad luck: Something happened such that its advantages turned into drawbacks; some Disease of Western Civilization was in a critical situation turned into a stimulus for cancerous growth, here borrowing the imagery of Philip Slater to the effect that what cancer is to the organism, Capitalism - as a system of production of material goods without limit - is to the Planet Earth.

Suppose it can be shown that something like this was Objectively True in history, that is, in the Ultimate sense. Is there anyone around with sufficient Historical Objectivity - do you see what I'm getting at yet? - to take it with good-natured scholarly equanimity?

And, mark my words, I do not even claim Historical Objectivity in making my case. I am going to suggest that the Rise of the West Was Sheer Dumb Luck out of sheer Sour Grapes: (1) The game of life is crooked, whether for the single human organism or for human aggregates like classes (which once existed a very great deal but do not exist quite so much any more), genders (which have always existed and still exist), races (which barely exist at all though their importance exists enormously more than the things themselves), nations (which started existing a quite short time ago and should exist for a while yet since the worst-put-together nations posit vested interests in the continued existence of nations merely because they haven't got in their licks as of yet), or the homo sapiens sapiens species as a whole (which having spent 45 years on the very edge of nonexistence may yet prove to have been better off that way, as in the statistical sense its well-being seems to have peaked out sometime around the year 1400, says Braudel, and is not going to get any better). (2) Nobody is any better than anybody else, though a few may be worse (which is not what Tom Jefferson meant by "all citizens of the male gender are created equal"). (3) I suspect that there are situations wherein historical objectivity is at best superfluous for the purpose of arrival at objective history (Do you get what I mean?).

Daniel A. Foss
State University of New York at Stony Brook
DFOSS@SBCCVM

Rubin Museum of Art Growing its Collection

Rubin Museum of Art (RMA) Displays the Strength of its Growing Collection through Concurrent Exhibitions

RMA celebrates the increasing strength and depth of its quickly growing collection through the presentation of two new exhibitions, Mongolia: Beyond Chinggis Khan (November 3, 2006 – April 16, 2007) and Building the Collection: Acquisitions 2005 – 2006 (October 13, 2006 – February 9, 2007). Two years since joining the cultural landscape of New York, RMA continues to expand upon its mission by collecting works across the broad expanse of geography and time, religions and cultures, which compose the story of the Himalayas and surrounding regions. The works of art on view have been selected because they enrich the story of Himalayan art in unique and meaningful ways.

Mongolia: Beyond Chinggis Khan draws specifically upon RMA’s strong collection of Mongolian art to present a view into the stunning variety of ritual masks, paintings, sculptures, and other objects created over its 800 year history. Artistic influence was absorbed into the country, particularly from Tibet and China, and radiated outwards in a continual exchange of ideas and styles. Generously interspersed throughout the exhibition are contemporary photographs of Mongolian landscape, life, and people by artists Builder Levy and Elaine Ling. The photographs add present-day nuance and a vivid sense of place to the works of art on view. They weave an additional layer into the exhibition by couching the works of art in the perspective of outside observers.

Mongolian Nature & Environment Website

Website: http://www.mnec.org.mn/sgp/eintro.htm

Great Mongolia website with information about Mongolian environment.

The total amount of water resources of Mongolia is estimated at 34.6 km3, of which 6.69 km3 is in Khentii, 1.51 km3 in Dornod, 0.14 km3 in Sukhbaatar. These three aimags of Eastern Mongolia accounts for 24.1 % of the total amount of all river water resources in Mongolia.As of 1999, Khentii, Dornod and Sukhbaatar aimags exploited 0.72%, 4.7% and 13.6% of their water resources respectively.

In Eastern Mongolia, there are 885 lakes and ponds of different sizes. 155 of them are in Khentii, 545 in Dornod (Eastern), 185 in Sukhbaatar. Most of them are closed and have no outflow.

There are over 1000 wetlands in Eastern Mongolia including Buir lake, Khalkh, Yakhi, Dorgon, Ganga nuur, Mongol Daguur, Kherlen, Onon, Ulz, Balj, Nomrog, Degee, Khalkh rivers.

Hydrologically, the territories of Khentii, Dornod and Sukhbaatar aimags belong to Pacific basin and Central Asian closed basin. Of the total territory, 64% belongs to the Pacific basin and 36% to the Central Asian closed basin.

Onon, Ulz, Kherlen, Khalkh gol, the biggest rivers in Eastern Mongolia are within Pacific basin. These rivers take their origins at upper parts of Khentii and Khyangan mountain ranges. They form about 11 % of the total surface water run-off in Mongolia. Network density within watersheds of the rivers is 0.1-0.15 km/km2.There are only small rivers with temporary flow in the Central Asian closed basin. Here, river network density is lower.

Asashoryu, Mongolian Sumo Champion

The Associated Press Published: November 21, 2006

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/11/21/sports/AS_SPT_SUM_Japan_Roundup.php

FUKUOKA, Japan: Grand champion Asashoryu hurled Kotomitsuki to the dirt Tuesday to widen his lead at the Kyushu Grand Sumo Tournament.

In the day's final bout at Fukuoka Kokusai Center, Asashoryu of Mongolia initially gave Kotomitsuki a firm grip of his belt but quickly pulled the sekiwake forward and down at the ring's edge, improving to 10-0. Kotomitsuki fell to 7-3.

Asashoryu, the only grand champion competing in sumo, is aiming for his 19th Emperor's Cup in the 15-day tourney.

Mongolian Sumo Wrestler Kyokushuzen Retires

Mongolian sumo wrestler Kyokushuzan retires
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20061113p2a00m0sp009000c.html



Mongolian wrestler Kyokushuzan retired Tuesday from professional sumo because of heart disease.
The 33-year-old wrestler has been suffering from heart disease for about a year and decided to retire after losing the first match of a tournament that kicked off Sunday, Kyokushuzan said in a televised news conference.
"For all of Japanese fans, thank you for supporting me over the past 15 years," Kyokushuzan said in Fukuoka, southwestern Japan, where the 15-day Kyushu Grand Sumo Tournament is being held.
"First of all, I really want to express my gratitude to my stable master Oshima for coming as far as Mongolia 15 years ago and taking me to Japan, and bringing me up like this," said Kyokushuzan, whose real name is Daver Batobayal.
"After my bout yesterday, my heart felt constricted and I realized that I can't go on wrestling," said Kyukushuzan. "This was an important decision because I want to live a long life after sumo."
In his sumo career, Kyokushuzan won special prizes for outstanding performance, fighting spirit and technique five times.
Kyokushuzan, currently the 10th-ranked maegashira, made his sumo debut along with compatriot Kyokutenho at the spring meet in 1992, and was promoted to the elite makuuchi division in 1996.
He was promoted to komusubi, the third-highest rank below grand champion, at the 1997 spring tourney.
The current yokozuna, or grand champion, Asashoryu is also from Mongolia. (AP)
November 13, 2006

Lecture - "Art Under the Mongols, Yuan Dynasty"

On November 16th, 2006, James C.Y. Watt, the Brooke Russel Astor Chairman, Department of Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented a lecture titled, "Art Under the Mongols, Yuan Dynasty.

Mr. Watt illuminated the Mongol Khan's patronage for the arts during the Mongol period in China. Mr. Watt's displayed striking images of the renowned 'cloth of gold' textiles which to this day are considered the most expensive textiles ever created. Yuan dynasty ceramics with their distinct motifs and themes of wildlife conveyed the the Mongol rulers love of nature. The lecture also addressed the powerful impact of the Mongols in promoting a cultural exchange of artistic influences through the Mongol Empire's revival of the trade routes of the ancient Silk Road.

Khubiliai Khan's wife Chabi

http://mongolianculture.com/

http://mongolianculture.com/

Mongol Culture Information Collection

The Mongol Culture Information Collection pages contain a range of informative items both historical, cultural and contemporary that are of interest for those seeking to learn about the Mongol peoples history and culture.