Timothy May, The Mongol Art of War (Samuel Claussen)

Timothy May

The Mongol Art of War

(Pen & Sword, 2007), 214 pp. $24.95

The establishment and military expansion of the Mongol Empire in the 12th and 13th centuries is undoubtedly one of the most consequential events in medieval military history. Yet many medieval historians find themselves only casually familiar with the broad strokes of medieval Mongol military organization, strategy, history, and ideology. Timothy May’s The Mongol Art of War serves as an ideal means for non-specialists to access the profound and complex military history of the Mongols.

The first chapter of May’s book begins with a relatively brief but thorough and accessible account of the history of Chinggis Khan (sometimes called Genghis Khan) and the unified Mongol Empire ruled by his descendants. The next five chapters serve as thematic examinations of Mongol military history, touching on subjects including unit organization, recruitment, and cohesion (Chapter 2); tactics, training, and equipment (Chapter 3); logistics, communication, supply, and medicine (Chapter 4); espionage, tactics, and strategy (Chapter 5); and generalship and command structures (Chapter 6). In Chapter 7, May considers several of the Mongols’ enemies, their strategies, successes, and failures, and the ways in which the Mongols adapted techniques from their opponents. Chapter 8 rounds out the main content of the book with case studies of a Mongol campaign, two battles, and two sieges. Chapter 9, which is titled “Legacy of the Mongols” serves as a short epilogue, considering some modern military history with the Mongols in mind.

May is at his best in this work when examining the Mongols from their main primary source, The Secret History of the Mongols or the historians, bureaucrats, or visitors who travelled to or served in the court of the Mongol khagans. When examining Mongol training, logistics, and organization, for example, May relies heavily on The Secret History, one of the few Mongolian accounts of early Mongol history. Picking through the larger narrative, May effectively draws out the details of military organization and logistics and presents them in a neat and organized fashion to his reader. Details such as the decimalization of the Mongol army, the discipline imposed by Chinggis Khan, and the arrangement of the elite keshik unit – a sort of mega-bodyguard and officers corps – are brought into sharp focus. While other historians have described such details, May’s account of them is both clearer and more tied to the primary source material. The attention to historical detail here is unrivaled.

Beyond The Secret History, May also does an excellent job of illustrating themes in Mongol history with reference to specific events. When discussing the Mongol affection for double envelopment, for example, May provides specific diagrams and descriptions of the Battle of Mohi in 1241 or the assault on the Rus’ in 1237. One of the most compelling chapters is Chapter 8, when the case studies of the campaign against Khwarazmia is examined in detail, bringing together the previous analyses of tactics, generalship, and logistics. The reader will find themselves feeling as though they have mastered this key moment in Mongol history when, as May says, “the Mongols’ use and integration of [steppe tactics] into their more complex military system demonstrates their success in transforming traditional steppe warfare into the more sophisticated operational concepts characteristic of a permanent army.” (69). His account of the Siege of Baghdad of 1258 also gives great insight to the Mongol ability to use local resources to their advantage and to leverage internal political dissensions as well. The case studies give a very clear sense of the themes that May identifies, the significance of Mongol military affairs, and the nature of the varied primary sources drawn from across Eurasia.

Occasionally, the reader may be a bit frustrated when the author draws larger conclusions without a clear reliance on primary source evidence. Such is the case in Chapter 7, where May examines the opponents of the Mongols. There are excellent ideas and large conclusions drawn throughout the chapter, but very few references to medieval sources. In such cases, of course, the secondary literature is doing extra work to make up for the lack of primary sources. Given the incredibly broad reach of the Mongol Empire across Eurasia, this is perhaps a function of May’s expertise in Mongol history rather than in Rus’, Hungarian, Polish, Song, Jin, ‘Abbasid, and Armenian history. As such, this is simply a minor setback, and May offers further reading suggestions for each of these areas.

Ultimately, May argues that the accomplishment of Chinggis Khan and his successors was in bringing together multiple different military traditions, tactics, technologies, and techniques to produce the most powerful military in the world. He emphasizes that Mongols were not necessarily more capable soldiers than their counterparts in places like Syria, Egypt, or Japan, but that the organization and discipline pioneered by the khans obviated the need for them to be so.

The Mongol Art of War offers a comprehensive and detailed analysis of Mongol military affairs that will be useful for historians at almost every level. Its accessibility and clarity means that it could easily be read by undergraduates in an advanced course on medieval military history or a history of the Mongols. Its engagement with the source material and its wide-ranging analysis of Mongol terminology and narrative recommends it to graduate students in medieval military history. And its comprehensive approach to the Mongol military makes it an excellent text for instructors preparing lectures or discussions on the Mongols. Moreover, the bibliography will be most warmly welcomed by anyone wishing to find sources on the Mongols – many in English translation, though some remain only in original languages.

I strongly recommend this book for anyone who wishes to understand or access the military history of the Mongols.

Samuel A. Claussen
California Lutheran University
[email protected]

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