Mongolia

MONGOLIA. - I. THE COUNTRY. -
A vast and hard-to-define region of Central Asia, comprised between southern Siberia, Zungaria, Sin Kiang, the Nanshan, China and Manchuria. Politically, a distinction must be made between the so-called Inner M., which proclaimed itself independent in 1933, was organized in 1937 by the Japanese into a federal State (Meng Kiang) controlled by them until 1945 and then returned to China, of which it had formed part since the advent of the Ching (1644), and Outer M., corresponding to the Bagude Nairandacho Mongol Arat Olos, or "Republic of the Mongol People," established in 1911, which passed in 1914 under a Russian protectorate and entered after 1921 into the Soviet orbit, with a state order modeled on that of its powerful neighbor.

The Mongol Republic has a territory of 1.5 million sq. km., on which fewer than 1 million inhabitants live, all Mongols, with the exception of 7 thousand Chinese and about 90 thousand Russians. The country, made up of the northern part of the great Gobi desert and of the mountainous zones (Altai, Khangai) that bound it toward Siberia, lends itself essentially to nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoralism. Its livestock holdings consist above all of sheep (13 million head); there are also 4 million goats, 2 million cattle and 1.7 million horses, which yield wool and hides, exchanged for the few manufactured goods needed for modest local requirements. The Soviets, who in fact control the country and manage its trade, have nevertheless introduced there some industries, concentrated in the capital Ulan Bator (Urga, 50 thousand inhabitants), which a regular air service links to Verkhne Udinsk (Ulan Ude), capital of the Autonomous Republic of the Buryat Mongols belonging to the U.S.S.R.

Giuseppe Caraci

II. HISTORY

The Mongols constitute a branch of the Altaic race, related to the Turks and the Tungus: the three branches were closely related and led the same life, with the same customs, in the steppes north of the Gobi toward the Altai and Khangai Mountains. The Mongols properly so called led a nomadic life in the northeastern zone of present-day Outer M., between the Onon and the Kerulen. Peoples of Mongol language (proto-Mongols) had already appeared earlier in history: thus the Xianbei, the Rouran, the Avars. The name of Mongols appears in Chinese texts of the Tang dynasty (7th century A.D.) in the form Mong-wu. In the 12th century in the aforementioned zone the tribes of the Tatars, the Merkits, the Keraites were stirring; further west, in the regions of the Ili, of Issyk-Kul, of Kashgaria, the Khitans had created an empire called by Muslim sources Qara-Khitai. The Mongol tribes were some pastoral, others hunter. Attempts to reduce these nomadic and anarchic populations to unity are recorded on several occasions in the 12th century, but the true great unifier of the Mongol people was Tāmūjin, son of Jāsūgāi, this chief of a clan of the Qiyat, born, it seems, around 1167, according to Pelliot, in the region of Dulun-Boldag. He lived a hard youth because of the dispersal of the clan after his father's death; in 1196 some Mongol clans proclaimed him Khan (hān), that is, king of the Mongols. Tāmūjin then took the name Genghis Khan (Khan the strong). After a series of fortunate struggles against the tribes of the Tatars and the Keraites, in 1206 Genghis Khan in a Kuriltai (assembly) of all the Mongol tribes was proclaimed Kagkan, that is, supreme Khan; his banner was a white cloth with nine yak tails; an old priest declared that Genghis Khan was consecrated by the eternal blue sky, that is, an emanation of Tangri, the deified sky.

Having united all the Mongols under his authority, he led them in 1209 to the conquest of China, giving the struggle the character of a national war to avenge the ancestors defeated by the Kin. In 1213 they finally succeeded in crossing the Great Wall and in 1215 they occupied Beijing; afterward they occupied northern China as far as the Huang He (1225). But these operations Genghis Khan left to his lieutenants; in 1218 he began the attack on the Empire of the Qara-Khitai and in 1219 he invaded the Empire of the Khwārizmian Turks. Afghanistan and Ḥurāsān were reduced to deserts; the flourishing cities of Balkh, Merv, Nishapur, Herat were destroyed and the populations completely massacred. The Mongols were shepherds and wild hunters at the first stage of civil development; they were ignorant of agricultural life and even more of city life; and their ideal was to destroy the sown fields and to transform the lands into pasture steppes. To this they joined the most vulgar cruelty and held the utmost contempt for human life. Genghis Khan died on 18 Aug. 1227, during a resumption of the struggle in China. He was above the moral level of his people; he was sensible, had a sense of responsibility for government, and was also capable of noble feelings. He had found Mongol society in full anarchy; he left it in order and peace, thanks to his equitable and severe justice. From the Kuriltai of 1206, Genghis Khan had proclaimed his yassaq, a regulation for all his subjects: death penalty for the most serious crimes, such as thefts, lying, adultery, etc.; disobedience, whether in peace or in war, declared a punishable crime. Genghis's yassaq transformed the M. and for centuries influenced all the peoples of the Mongol Empire. To organize his conquests, he therefore resorted to already semi-civilized Mongol elements such as the Keraites, among whom Nestorian Christianity had long since spread, though wrapped in veils of animistic and superstitious origin.

The four sons of Genghis divided among themselves the old lands of Mongolia with the steppes and pastures, leaving instead the conquered lands undivided. In the Kuriltai of 1229 the third son of Genghis, Ögödäi, intelligent and convinced of the necessity of a state organization, was elected Kagkan. Under him the conquest of northern China was completed and that of southern China began (1235); two expeditions were made into Korea. In the west Persia was occupied and they entered decisively into the Russian steppes; in 1240 Kiev was occupied and Poland was invaded and at the same time Hungary, so as to threaten Italy and central Europe. On the death of Ögödäi, the western Mongol foundation withdrew behind the Carpathians in 1242. In 1246 Güyük was elected Kagkan but in 1248 Möngkä, son of the fourth son of Genghis, Tului, already succeeded him. The news that Genghis and his sons held Christianity in great esteem, that various princesses, such as the wife of Tului, were Nestorian Christians as were ministers and court officials, had meanwhile reached the West. In 1265 Pope Innocent IV sent the Franciscan Giovanni da Pian del Carpine to the court of Güyük, in the hope of having him as an ally against the Muslim princes and of resolving the question of the Holy Land. Shortly afterward Louis IX sent from Acre to the court of Möngkä the Franciscan William of Rubruck. The Mongols, however, were induced to respect all religions only by the necessity of securing the divinities, in whatever way they were venerated, placing Christianity alongside Buddhism and Confucianism. The Kagkan Möngkä, however, to organize his Empire had decided to destroy the 'Abbāsid caliphate of Baghdad and the sect of the Assassins. He entrusted this to his brother Hülāgū who in 1257 destroyed Baghdad, massacring its population. The sect of the Ismā'īlites was also exterminated. Hülāgū, however, did not succeed in overcoming the resistance of the Turks of Egypt, who in 1260 defeated one of his lieutenants. In the east Möngkä entrusted the conquest of southern China to another of his brothers, Qubilai.

On the death of Möngkä in 1259, the Genghiskanid Empire shattered through its own immensity. Qubilai had himself proclaimed Kagkan but established himself in China and his Empire underwent Chinese influence: the Venetian travelers Polo were spectators of this phenomenon, and Marco Polo fixed in his Milione the impressions of the Mongol-Chinese. In the old Mongol lands an empire was formed by another Kagkan, Alloughan; thus in Persia the Empire of Abāghā was formed; in the Russian plains the Empire of the Qipcāq or Golden Horde of Bāth. These various khanates underwent different religious influences. While Confucianism predominated in China, Islam predominated in Mongolia and in Russia.

During the second half of the 13th century and in the 14th century the papacy fervently attempted the conquest of the Mongol peoples to Christianity. Thus in 1305 the Franciscan Giovanni di Montecorvino went to the capital of Qubilai (Khanbaliq-Peking) with letters of Nicholas IV; he built churches in Peking, of which he became archbishop, and created a Chinese Christianity. In 1314 Odorico da Pordenone set out from Venice for Khanbaliq and remained there until 1328.

Christianity fell in China when in the second half of the 14th century the Chinese reaction directed by the Ming prevailed over the Mongols. In Mongolia and in Persia Christianity found broad sympathies among the princes, but little by little Islam prevailed. In the 14th century, with the disintegration of the various Mongol empires (China, Mongolia, Persia, Qiptachq) and through internal struggles, principalities of slight importance were formed.

Only in appearance is the new Empire created at the end of the 14th century by a Turk of a Muslim family of Transoxiana, and only outwardly linked with the Genghis Khanid tradition, Tamūr-Lāng, Mongol. Born on 18 April 1336 near Kiš, he took part in the struggles of the princes of Transoxiana; in 1363 he drove out the Mongols, in 1370 he had himself proclaimed king at Balp, and in 1388 he took the title of sultan, asserting himself as the continuator of Genghis Khan and conducting himself as a Muslim. He launched himself into the conquest of all the regions in which the Genghis Khanid principalities had crumbled. Uwārizm, Turkestan, and Irān were successively conquered; in 1391 he invaded the Qipcāq, in 1398 he invaded India as far as Delhi, then attacked Egyptian Syria, then the Ottoman sultanate of Anatolia, and took the sultan Bajazet prisoner at Ankara (1400); however, he died during the expedition against China (1403). The activity of Tamūr Lāng is fragmentary: everywhere he massacres and destroys, but he does not organize, unlike that of Genghis Khan, for whom, alongside the destructions, one cannot forget the opening of so great a part of Asia to commerce, the linking of Mongolia to Europe on one side and to China on the other. At the end of the 15th century the last Timurids were nothing but modest petty princes of Transoxiana and Hurāsān.

Francesco Cognasso

III. EVANGELIZATION

With the collapse of the Mongol dynasty in China in 1368 the Franciscan mission had also come to an end, and Mongolia, having become a vassal state of China, remained closed to Christianity until the 18th century. Jesuit missionaries in the retinue of the emperor Kang-hsi had already reached it toward the end of the 17th century, but true Christian communities were formed only in the 18th century by Chinese Christians who had taken refuge there or been exiled. The ministry among them was exercised, at least temporarily and sporadically, by Jesuits of the court of Peking, by their successors, the Lazarists, and by Chinese priests of the Franciscan mission of Shensi. In 1829 the Chinese Lazarist Mattia Hsue settled in Siwantze; the city subsequently became the center of the Lazarist mission and of the diocese of Peking itself, which transferred its Seminary there. In 1835 the Lazarist Giuseppe Marziale Mouly arrived there, appointed in 1840 first vicar apostolic of the newly erected vicariate of Mongolia. The number was then about 2,000 Chinese Catholics.

In 1865 the first missionaries of the recently founded Belgian Society of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Scheut arrived, to which the vicariate of Mongolia had been entrusted in 1864. In 1874 they began missionary work among the true Mongols, the Ordos of western Mongolia. Since the faithful in 1883 had reached the number of about 15,000, Mongolia was divided into three vicariates: south-western, eastern and central. During the Boxer uprising Msgr. Ferdinand Hamer, 9 Scheut fathers, 2 native priests and about 3,000 Christians were massacred. Subsequently the mission made great progress, above all among the Chinese population, less so among the Mongols. The mission is confined to Inner Mongolia. Outer Mongolia was detached in 1922 as the independent mission of Urga, but since Outer Mongolia had fallen under Soviet influence, the missionaries could not enter it. Inner Mongolia currently comprises 5 dioceses and 1 apostolic prefecture: archdiocese of Suiyūan (in 1883 an apostolic vicariate under the name of south-western Mongolia, subdivided in 1922 into two vicariates: Ninghia and Suiyūan, in 1946 a diocese); diocese of Ninghia (in 1922 an apostolic vicariate, in 1946 a diocese); diocese of Siwantze (in 1840 an apostolic vicariate under the name of Mongolia; in 1883 under the name of central Mongolia; in 1922 under the name of Chagar; in 1924 under the name of Siwantze, a diocese in 1946); diocese of Tsing (an apostolic vicariate in 1929, separated from Siwantze, entrusted to the Chinese secular clergy, a diocese in 1946); diocese of Jehol (in 1883 an apostolic vicariate under the name of eastern Mongolia; in 1924 under the name of Jehol, a diocese in 1946); apostolic prefecture of Chihfeng (erected in 1932, separated from Jehol, entrusted to the Chinese clergy).

Giovanni Rommerskirchen