Social and cultural structure in 13th century Central Asian Mongolians

Genghis Khan, thanks to his superior leadership trait, achieved to unify the Mongols under a single flag. This achievement led the Mongols establish an unforgettable empire in world history and engrave an impression in European and Islamic geography particularly. The history of the Mongols, which dominated 1/3 of the world, has been wondered as a matter of course and has been carried out many researches on that field and today those studies continue. It is the thirteenth century when the Mongols ended their own battles and came out of their steppes and subdued the nearby nations. As for considering the social and the cultural natures of the Central Asian Mongolians of the thirteenth century, they were in a heterogeneous structure rather than a homogeneous one. Their centuries of cohabitation with the Turks as from the Proto-Mongols, paved the way for forming several common grounds for the two nations and that resulted in emerging Turkish Mongols and Mongolian Turks. In the thirteenth century, there was a constant interaction between Christian, Islamic and Chinese cultures. That interaction brought a significant change in social and cultural terms in its wake. Especially the change in the social and cultural structures, which had been continuing since the Proto-Mongols and had shown itself in the Genghis Khan's Code of Law, which was a repercussion of that, is clearly observed. The most important reason for this change is the tolerance of the Mongols towards the nations they have subdued. The changes in the social and cultural structures of the khanates which emerged in the Mongolian Empire, which quartered later on, got changed in favor of the dominant element of their subjects. That change became more pronounced as it moved away from Central Asia.