Mongolia is Awesome: Medieval Freedom of Religion (Wait, What?)

The Mongol Empire doesn't exactly have a great reputation for mercy or compassion or pretty much anything that’s not, you know, conquering the known world and then conquering the unknown bits and then finding another known world to conquer. I can’t say they didn’t have a great PR department, though, because actually their reputation for brutality and total war was deliberately cultivated; as a result of it, some cities would raise a white flag just because they heard the word “Mongol” in order to avoid suffering the same fate as Baghdad. But centuries later, in an era with different values, people tend to remember the cruelty of the Mongols and the destruction they wreaked. One word that probably doesn’t spring to mind when we hear “Mongols”: Tolerance.

Yet the Mongol Empire was a member of a rare  breed of medieval society, the religiously tolerant one. The khans, because they conquered such vast expanses of land, governed peoples of many different religions, and they pretty much had no preference as to what religion their subjects practiced. All major religions were allowed to practice freely in lands the Mongols governed, with the result that many towns had populations and of several different religions, mostly sects of Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Nestorian Christianity, and (in certain areas) Judaism. There were no forced conversions, no purges, and the khans, to ensure stability in their realms, even had to ensure that they did not offend any particular religious community. Some khans did practice their own religion--Chinggis Khaan relied heavily on shamans, and many khans  (including the originally Nestorian Teguder turned Ahmad) converted to Islam. But most khans were decidedly unreligious, and they catered to multiple religions to gain favor with different religious communities. Kublai Khan, for example, sent messengers to Jerusalem with instructions to worship there on his behalf, and many wives and mothers of Khans were Nestorians, as I’ve pointed out. According to the European diplomat William of Rubrick, who visited Karakorum in the 1250s, the Great Khan actually asked him to participate in a religious debate at the court with a Nestorian, a Muslim, and a Buddhist. The Ilkhan Arghun is a near picture-perfect example of Mongol religious diversity, and the necessary flexibility of the Khans: He was a devout Buddhist married to a Byzantine Christian, and he had his son (who later converted to Islam) baptized into Nestorianism.

Of course, reading about the Mongol Empire of tolerance, my mind can’t help but draw comparisons between it and another tolerant realm—medieval Spain. There are plenty of differences between the nature of tolerance in the two kingdoms. The Mongol khans, as I pointed out, generally had no strong religious affiliations, and even if one did, a new khan would eventually replace him, and probably one of a different religion. In Spain, however, minority religions were usually ruled by the majority, with Christian kings allowing Muslims (and Jews) in their domains, or vice versa. This meant that although religions were tolerated, one was preferred. Furthermore, certain rulers or certain political climates would often have tragic results for minority religious communities, as eventually the reign of Ferdinand and Isabel did for tolerance itself in Spain. In the Mongol Empire, however, religiously motivated violence was not tolerated, keeping people mostly in line. Yet in both realms, the atmosphere could be tense, and outbreaks of religious violence did occur, though more frequently in Spain than in Mongol-ruled lands. Yet it was in the khans’ best interest to keep all religious communities happy, so the communities were, in a sense, forced to get along (or at least accept the existence of the others).

This is another similarity with Spanish tolerance—it was very much practically motivated. Simply put, the khans could not have held onto so much land if they insisted on a single religion. Their policy of tolerance was one meant to keep them in power, and their attempts to appease all religious groups (to gain their favor) demonstrates this. Khans who overstepped this boundary could be quickly ousted and replaced, while khans like Kublai who were careful not to step on any toes were more likely to last. The sparsely populated nature of both the Mongol realm and the Spanish meseta also necessitated this policy; there weren’t enough people to make any sort of religious demands, as everyone who could be spared was needed to work and protect the land. Furthermore, when people of certain minority religions had valuable skills or resources, it was in rulers’ best interest to accept these religions and keep these people around. This was the case with Jews in Medieval Spain; since they spoke Hebrew and often Arabic, and because of their vital position as money lenders (and their even more vital tax revenue), they were key figures in both Christian and Muslim Spanish courts. Similarly, educated Nestorian monks were valuable to Mongol khans, when neither literacy nor governance were strong suits of the Mongols. (This was likely behind Kublai’s request that Marco Polo send 100 Nestorian monks back to his capital so that they could “help convert people.”) And in both these cases, favoring minority religions could lead to unrest with the majority religions. In both Christian and Muslim-ruled Spain, courtiers often resented the presence and influence of Jews; this sometimes erupted in violence, as in the 1066 pogrom in Granada and the multiple pogroms of the fourteenth century. In the thirteenth-century Ilkhanate (the Mongol khanate governing Persia and sometimes, its surrounding lands), Islam was the majority religion, and Muslims often felt that the Mongols favored foreign religions, partially because courts were filled with educated members of the Nestorian clergy, and partially because most Ilkhans at that time were not Muslims.

So although the Mongol version of tolerance and the Spanish version of tolerance were different in significant ways, religiously diverse communities in the Middle Ages fell victim to the same sorts of woes: tension, outbreaks of violence, and a tolerance that was practical rather than ideological. I wonder if/how we have managed, in a modern world, to leave all of these woes behind.

But this isn’t a meditation; I just wanted to let everyone know that, though the Mongols may not have won Miss Congeniality at the pageant, while people (myself included) are looking to the “community of tolerance” in Spain for lessons, they may be missing out on something even more Awesome: an Empire of Tolerance.

Meditations: Syncretism

All over Mongolia, at the tops of almost every hill or mountain, you might be able to discern an irregularity in the silhouette. If you’re close enough, you can make out clearly a big pile of rocks, sometimes with something sticking out of the top of the pile. These are ovoos, sacred cairns. Usually they are covered in blue scarves, with maybe some yellow ones as well. If you’re enterprising enough to walk up to one, you’ll find more thrown onto the pile. Single cigarettes, cakes, apples, small bills, and once I even saw a steering wheel cover (although I’m not sure that was an offering, exactly.) They are not always at the tops of mountains; often they are just sitting by the side of the road. They range from huge and imposing to piles so small that I’m not even sure they are meant to be ovoos, and not just where someone dumped out some gravel for whatever reason.

At the shaman ritual a couple weeks ago, I noticed a bunch of scarves tied to some rocks, and though I’d read that ovoos existed, I wanted to get more insight, so I asked Prof. C about it. “Oh, that is a place sacred to the shamans.” The blue of the scarves represents the blue of the sky, because the sky gods are the most important gods in Mongolian shamanism. While we were there, a few women did go up to this boulder-ovoo and pray. 

While we were driving back after the ceremony, I noticed an ovoo on the way and tried to take a picture of it. Prof. C stopped the car, and we got out to see it. He collected three stones from the road, instructed me to do the same, and we walked up to the ovoo. “Go always in this direction, like the sun,” he explained, motioning with his finger. (Oh, I realized, that’s why the clock goes in that direction… I guess?) As we walked around, we threw each of our three stones onto the cairn. “You walk around three times,” he explained. We walked around three (more) times, and then headed back to the car. “They are near passes on the road, so you get good luck. Sometimes, if I do not want to stop the car, I just honk three times. One, two three!” He laughed, and I did, too. Once we were back on the road, I asked him what was the significance of three. “It is for the Buddha. One is for the Buddha, one is for his teachings, and one is for his monks.” …Wait. I thought it was a space sacred to shamans? I asked, “So it is shamanistic, but also Buddhist?” Prof. C didn’t seem too concerned by the question. “Yes. It is for both."

The next day, when I went to the Zanabazar Fine Arts Museum with R and Prof. O, we saw a lot of Mongolian Buddhist art, much of it by Zanabazar, the founder of an important style of Monoglian Buddhist art, and the leader of the Mongolian Renaissance. Zanabazar had studied in Tibet, so his sculptures were very heavily influenced by Tibetan art. The paintings of the Zanabazar schools, likewise, strongly resembled Tibetan/Indian art. While looking at all the sculptures, I noticed one of Ganesha, and one of another Hindu god. I stopped and asked Prof. O about it: “Aren’t those Hindu gods?” Her nonchalance was similar to Prof. C’s when I asked about Buddhism and shamanism. “Yes, they are from Hinduism.” So what were they doing being sculpted by Buddhists? “Oh, Buddhism uses many things from Hinduism; some of the art, some of the gods, lots of things.” Apparently, as R continued to explain, there was no way, really, to separate Buddhist philosophy from Hindu philosophy, or to separate their cultures or even philosophies. “It is all syncretism,” she said.

Ah, syncretism. In Christianity, syncretism is most obvious with pagan-Christian syncretism. The combination of Easter (a goddess) and pagan fertility rituals with the springtime resurrection of Christ, or images of Christ as Apollo, or the merging of the Christ-figure with Dionysus. But in these cases, there are clear lines to be drawn. Easter, the bunnies and the eggs = pagan, Apollo = pagan, Dionsus = pagan. Christ = Christian. Even in Christianity, however, things aren’t always so simple. Irish mythology is especially complex, because it was all recorded by Christian scribes, and set in a Christian framework. Thus, though it features gods with strange powers who seem to live forever, they may live in a world that is untouched by the Fall of Man, a Paradise near Ireland. Their powers are witchcraft, but it’s not evil witchcraft, exactly. There’s no way to explain the case clearly, because it’s just not clear. Somewhere along the way gods became remnants of an Unfallen world became fairies became something that wasn’t exactly Christian, but wasn’t exactly pagan either.

This is what it looks like in Mongolian Buddhism and shamanism, as well. There is no way to separate one from the other, because each intrudes on the other so that they become one entity, waters flowing from tributaries into a single river. You might be able to trace from where the water came originally, but there is no way to separate the two streams now that they’ve joined. Blue scarves, sacred to the sky gods, are tied around the doors to Buddhist monasteries and the lions guarding their stairs. Yet Buddhist ideas of reincarnation (and Hindu ideas of reincarnation?) are also, in some ways, shamanist ideas of reincarnation. To be honest, I’m not sure which came from where first, and that’s sort of the point.

I wonder, why did the two fuse so completely here? Only 5% of the population identifies as shamanist, but many shamanist traditions live on. There are no longer any true pagans, (neopagans, sure, but that’s as different from paganism as “neo-shamanism” is from the old kind), but do any other pagan rituals live on in Western religions today? Do any significant pagan rituals live on, or any significant pagan philosophies? (Bunnies and sweets don’t quite make the cut.) Buddhism and shamanism did come into conflict in the past, but now there doesn’t seem to be much tension between them, perhaps because they share so much in common. So if things had gone differently in Europe and the Middle East, would it have been possible for religions that sprung out of each other (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) to syncretize in a significant way? Have they? Are Islam and Christianity reconcilable in the way that shamanism and Buddhism are? Why or why not? And if they had become one flowing river, how might that have looked, not only for the religions, but for the world?

Meditations: Shaman Ceremony

So yesterday, I got up at 4:30AM (only doable because my internal clock is fried, anyway) to attend a shaman sun-worship ceremony in the countryside. (Note: In Mongolia, “the countryside” is the word for pretty much anything outside Ulaanbaatar. I’m not sure if the Gobi would count, but it might.) The ceremony happens every year, and those participating must get to their site at around 2AM to prepare to begin it at dawn.

To get to the ceremony, we drove through the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, past some coal towns right outside, and then into a little valley with a few tourist camps. While we were driving in an even littler valley between two steep hills, Prof. C slowed down and started looking through the windows. I figured he was trying to find the ceremony, but I wasn’t sure what exactly he was looking for. I sat, perfectly content to watch a few horses grazing, and a car painstakingly making its way down the slope. After a few moments of driving very slowly, Prof. C pointed out the window and said, “Look at that.” I wasn’t entirely sure what I was quite looking at—the horses weren’t noteworthy, so maybe it was the rock formations? There were a few white cars parked at the top of the hill, right beneath the ridge. Could that be the ceremony? Do shamans drive cars? I wondered.

Apparently they do, because Prof. C found a spot to drive off the road and proceeded up the hill. I thought, at one point, “It’s a good thing we’re in an SUV, because I don’t think a normal car could make this,” but then the car I’d seen driving down the slope earlier passed us, and it was a pretty ordinary sedan. Well, I guess if you’re in a sedan and you need to drive up a hill in Mongolia, you do it.

So we drove up —bumpity, bumpity— and parked next to the other cars. The views were beautiful. We walked up the remainder of the slope, and any ideas I’d had about hiking for miles up mountains in the Mongolian wilderness were quickly dispelled as I arrived breathless at the top. There were a few people gathered around the shaman, who was sitting on the ground and lamenting (this is not the technical term, but it’s the only one I can think of for the high-pitched half-singing, half-chanting). The top of his face was covered by the blue fringe on his shaman mask, and there were a couple people attending to him wearing bright dark blue with orange sashes. (Their outfits were cool, but I think my favorite was the ten-year-old boy in a Hello Kitty robe.) The people there generally ignored us, and so I just stood and watched and tried to look respectful. A baby started crying, and the other people said something to his mother, who took her away to quiet her down. Prof. C walked down the ridge for a minute and talked to someone on his cell phone, while I continued to observe and tried to absorb everything into my memory as best as I could. After a few minutes, Prof. C returned, pointed over the valley, and said, “This is the wrong ceremony—we’re on that mountain.”

After, all, who hasn’t gone to the wrong mountain for his shaman ceremony? So we loaded back into the car and drove down the hill to find the right Sun worshippers. The moral of this story: What did we do before cell phones?

We drove for a few more minutes, around a mountain and then up a ridge to where there were a lot of cars gathered, and Prof. C found the people he knew. The ceremony was very interesting… There were a few shamans, about 10-15 in full garb, and a few “helpers” in the blue-and-orange, whom Prof. C said were also training to be shamans; one young girl was also a psychology student at the NUM. We spoke to a friend of Prof. C’s, who runs a shaman center, and he pointed out which shamans belonged to which tribes. Apparently there were shamans from all different tribes across Mongolia for this event; the best I could figure was that these shamans all live in Ulaanbaatar, but their ties are to regional tribes.

The shaman outfits were incredible—they had lots of colored cloth snakes sewn all over their clothes, plus the hats and masks. (Check out my first post for a more detailed picture of a shaman.) There were differences between the shamans of the different tribes, but I couldn’t quite figure them out. Tons of people (70-100?) were sitting and standing in a large sort-of circle, and many sat next to little tables covered in cookies and tiny pots of milk/yogurt/airag. A few of these tables also had shamans who were dealing with people individually, while in the center maybe 15-25 people and a few shamans sat around a fire for the main, official part of the ceremony.

Around the fire, people were singing a song; they had their hands held out, palms up, in front of them, and they were swaying a bit. A few people who were not by the fire, but instead were sitting by their tables and maybe talking to friends or doing their own thing, also held out their hands and swayed and sang. I asked Prof. C what they were singing, and he said they were giving thanks for their lives, and worshipping the sky gods, and asking them to help them with their troubles. Note: Shamanism is also called Tengriism, after the word for “sky,” because a lot of it revolves around worshipping the sky spirits. Later on, everyone around the fire sang a new song, and began to bow down repeatedly in the direction of the fire, (including one toddler in front of her mother, who did not look particularly happy about it.) Prof. C said that they were worshipping the fire, because fire is very important in their lives, too. When the ceremonies had concluded, a woman started a song, and most people joined in, at least for a bit; this was a song to the “Mother Land,” as Prof. C explained. Looking around at the views of their Motherland, I could certainly see where they were coming from.

Around the edges of the group, people would periodically go and throw milk (airag?) into the air, as an offering to the sky spirits. It was a constant aspect of the whole ceremony, that on the fringes people would throw milk, and then frequently they would bow and pray a bit, then return to the throng of people. At one point, some milk was thrown on us, and although I figured this was a common occurrence, the Mongolian woman we were talking to seemed peeved about it. There was even a little boy who was trying his hand at it, with a carton of milk and his own little spoon.

I got to meet a few shamans, including one who blessed me. I handed her a 10,000 MNT note, and I had to be careful to make sure it was faceup, with the picture of Genghis Khan looking at her. (The shaman’s helper next to me corrected me, for which I was thankful.) I knelt down in front of her, and she sniffed at both my ears (or maybe it was both sides of my neck?), said something to me in Mongolian, and then beat at my back with a… a… a thing. I’ll learn the real name for it eventually, but it was like a heavy piece of cloth that with ropes attached, and they may have been cloth snakes. Prof. C explained that the process beat the bad spirits out of the person, so that there should be no evil left in him/her. (Hear that? No more evil for me!)

When I inquired further about this woman and the people who came to her to be blessed, Prof. C said that sometimes people come to the shamans when they are having trouble, in order to ask for help with a specific problem in their lives. Maybe someone is sick, or there is a family issue, and the shaman will bless them and possibly give them advice.

Which brings me to my next meditation… In this ceremony, people sang praise for their lives and the things in their lives, they sought divine support, and they asked holy people for help with their problems. Of course, these are all aspects of Church services and pretty much most religious services/practices/prayers: Praise and requests, etc. So what is it about life that makes people need to praise a higher power for it? What is it about our problems that make us seek holy support? Why, across a million societies and in a million different ways, do we look to the heavens instead of to the world around us? Also, why is it that people continue to ask their God(s) for help when historically, He does not always oblige? And for people who don’t believe in a higher power (or for people who do, I guess): Whom do you thank when life is just too gorgeous to be believed? And to whom do you “pray” when it is just too awful?

So, lastly: Regardless of what you believe, next time life is wonderful, maybe try also thanking the people who are making it wonderful. And next time there is something awful happening, maybe think about what you can do, concretely, to make it better, or if not better, at least a little easier. Even so, the best answer might be the same as it has been for billions of people over thousands of years: Pray.