10. Chingis Khan decided
that no taxes or duties should be imposed upon fakirs,
religious devotees, lawyers, physicians, scholars,
people who devote themselves to prayer and asceticism,
muezzins and those who wash the bodies of the dead.
The Great Yasa of Genghis Khan
Muezzin, by the way, is the chosen person at a mosque who leads the call to prayer (adhan) at Friday services and the five daily times for prayer. These tax cuts were not suppose to stimulate the economy or create jobs. We, mongols just don't like taxing doctors and lawyers. It's just a Mongol way of getting things done our way. I just surprised that usual "to be put to death" ending is missing from number 10
.
So lets welcome the 14th century! Some strangely dressed dude came along at AD 1300:
Srivijaya was a powerful ancient thalassocratic Malay empire based on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, which influenced much of Southeast Asia. Men Shi, one of the ministers of our Great Khan, was sent there to ask for tribute, but was not well received there. Thalassocratic nudist king, was offended by his proposal and branded Men Shi in the face with a hot iron as was done to common thieves, cut his ears, and scornfully sent him on his way. Perhaps, our envoy did not know thalassocratic customs and did not appeared naked in front of the king. This misunderstanding led to yet another war! Too bad we cannot build any ships in Qara Qorum,
otherwise we would dress that king in the suit that never goes out of fashion -- wooden coffin
!
The century was starting with some fireworks, that's for sure! The very next turn (3 years in Mongol) two more losers joined Mongol bashing club:
I think they declared on us for the sake of completeness: now every single Religion is at war with us. Muslims joined Christians, Hindus joined Buddhists and Confucians to wipe us out and send us back to Tartar(Hell). Those silly civilized people cannot keep their cool, can they. On the contrary we always have to keep our cool given the number of cities we set ablaze all around the world. Speaking about fires -- the last surviving son of great Genghis -- Tolui -- always played with matches when he was young. He used his skills to burn down Sana'a -- his next stop in the quest to pillage Independent states on Arabian peninsula:
Sana'a
was one of the oldest populated places in the world. According to popular legend it was founded by Shem, the son of Noah. Its name likely derived from the South Arabian word for "well-fortified." -- well it wasn't well enough in our case. Rasulids were a Muslim dynasty that ruled Yemen and Hadhramaut from 1229, after the Egyptian Ayyubid left the southern provinces of the Arabian Peninsula. 76 gold is all that was salvaged from this size-4 city -- obviously no Keshiks. We really need those size-5 cities and up!
But no such luck. The next city that had to be burned was size-1 Saihut:
I have no interesting stories about the history of that place. I was looking all over the net, I mean historical archives, but could not find anything informative. I am not even sure who was ruling that place in AD 1315. It is sufficient to say that we are just happy with 42 gold we could fish out from such an unremarkable location!
While Tolui was all sweating in the hot environment of Arabian deserts Batu Khan was shivering in freezing Russian lands, fighting both Russians and General Winter. This UP is probably the
coolest (pun intended) masterpiece of the Eternal Blue Skye, also known as Rhye in some circles. I mean to conceive it and implement it -- what a great and beautiful way to give us so much headache! Batu Khan and his Horde were carefully avoiding all the cities with Pikeman, focusing on the cities with Swordsmen, Axemen and Scouts, such as size-5 (finally!) Sarapul:
Sarapul is one of the oldest cities of the Kama region, it was founded by Novgorodians 7 years before they founded Vyatka. It is believed that the name of this city comes from the word "Sarapul" that in Chuvash language means "yellow fish” or sturgeon which was in abundance here. However the majority of the population here were not Slavs or Chuvash, but rather Udmurt. The Udmurts have often been described as an extremely red-haired and light-eyed people, and there have been claims that they are the "most red-headed" people in the world. During the Mongol invasion of Volga Bulgaria of 1237, the Mongols also conquered the land where most of the Udmurts lived. They had to pay annual taxes to the Khan of Kazan, who did not otherwise intervene in Udmurt tribal society. The Udmurts fought with the Tatars against the Muscovite Princes up to 1552. By this time, some Udmurt tribes mixed with Tatars, and these people, still using the Udmurt language, were called Besermaans, in Udmurt Busurmans:
The Udmurt language belongs to the Uralic (Finno-Ugric) family. Countries that are home to a significant number of speakers of Uralic languages include Estonia, Finland, and Hungary. One day we will visit all those countries on the horseback.
Finally in China, things looked very interesting. Chinese cities were formidable, they got walls, city guard promoted Longbowmen and it was hard for us to fight on 3 fronts and attack those defenses with the horses. We badly needed some siege train -- and that's what we were doing all these years -- scouting Chinese countryside and training some Trebuchets. This was painstakingly slow process. To our astonishment Chinese conducted one and only sortie against our capital! The troops attacking Qara Qorum had a very curious composition: one Elephant and 3 Catapults
. This was the first test for our Great Khan Mongke, who was promoted against Pikes,
not against those Helliphants
:
But everything turned out rather nice
You can see me there on that last drawing of mine! Too secret to show my face