In Mongolian Conquests, how did they screen the population for engineers?

score:5

Accepted answer

First, as explained earlier, the language and customs of enemies are not totally new to Mongols. Second, if you referring to engineers specifically, then it was the Jin (Chinese) dynasty that they learnt siege-craft from. The battles with Jin dynasty had many, many defections (Chinese to Mongol) of senior officials. So, it would have been straightforward after that for Mongols to identify these Chinese engineers. In fact, in the very first battle against the Jin dynasty, at Yehuling, the Chinese emissary defected! Clearly, their reputation preceded them.

Finally, and this is only for context, they did not always kill off everyone in the bigger towns/cities because they needed the population for trade and taxes. As you read in the Mongolian military tactics, their army was in fact extremely disciplined (their reputation notwithstanding). Hence, the Chinese engineers could still volunteer or join up with the Mongols after the dust has settled.

On sources, for Yehuling, the defection is stated in the Wikipedia article. On not killing off everyone, the sources are in almost all recent historical research. For instance, this is from chapter 4 - 'The rule of the infidels: the Mongols and the Islamic world', 'New Cambridge History of Islam' (Cambridge University Press, 2010), first paragraph:

"The Mongol period was a watershed for the Islamic world, as it was for most of Eurasia. The ferocity of the conquest and the confusion of early rule exacerbated an agricultural decline already deepened by decades of internal warfare. For artisans and merchants, however, the period brought significant new opportunities." (emphasis mine)

Upvote:-3

Very simple. They just commanded: "engineers, please come out of the crowd". Those who did not move were either killed or used on low qualification jobs, like human shields in the sieges of fortified places. Those who did come out but then turned out to be poor engineers were also killed, perhaps with more pain (Mongols especially did not like those who lied).

Upvote:2

The most likely way, assuming a language barrier, was by observation. That is, they captured people in the process of operating the enemy's anti-siege machines (which would be similar, though not identical to siege machines). Or people at workshops manufacturing articles of glass, wood or metal. In the case of doubt, they would test the candidates, see how they worked, and if the end product "stood up."

Put another way, the Mongols wouldn't necessarily "screen" the whole population for candidates. They would pick out the obvious ones, that is people who were clearly doing work in engineering, or whatever they wanted done. Or, as another poster pointed out, they would select someone they already knew by reputation. The idea of making "direct contact" with the population is a fairly recent one, going back perhaps to the 19th century. Ditto for "Yellow Pages" listing people by occupation.

Upvote:6

The obvious answer would be that the Mongols, like all states, could easily persuade or coerce their conquered subjects into becoming collaborators. These collaborators can then provide essential services like translation or screening.

As an example, in an early conquest, Genghis captured the Naiman Tata-tonga, who was originally a scribe within the Naiman Khan's court. He was not only well-versed in languages, but invented the Mongolian script, adapting it from the Uyghur alphabet. This script was highly successful and is used by many ethnic Mongolians to this day. So it's quite easy to infer that the Mongols acquired other translators and experts in a similar fashion.

Another example is Guo Kan, a Han Chinese general who (or more accurately, whose master) defected to the Mongols when they invaded Jin, commanded artillery units which were involved in many famous Mongol sieges, including Baghdad and Xiangyang.

The Mongols were not aliens who materialised out of thin air; their tribes had been in contact with neighbours speaking different languages for centuries. This contact means there will have always been a need for translators.

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