98. Karen ArmstrongTheir law code, the Yasa, which was attributed to Genghis
Khan himself, was a narrowly military system, which did not
affect civilians. It was Mongol policy to build on local traditions
once they had subjugated an area, and so by the end of the thir-
teenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries all four of
the Mongol empires had converted to Islam.
The Mongols therefore became the chief Muslim power
in the central Islamic heartlands. But whatever their official
allegiance to Islam, the main ideology of their states was
"Mongolism," which glorified the imperial and military
might of the Mongols and dreamed of world conquest. The
whole state was run on military lines. The monarch was the
commander-in-chief, and was expected to lead his men him-
self and not leave campaigns to his deputies. Hence there was,
in the early days, no capital city. The capital was wherever the
khan and his army happened to be encamped. The whole ap-
paratus of the state was conducted like an army, and the ad-
ministration accompanied the soldiers on the march. The
whole intricate camp-culture was conducted with remarkable
efficiency. There were two chief political objectives: world
hegemony and the perpetuation of the ruling dynasty, which
justified any cruelty. It was an ideology similar to the old ab-
solutist polity, which had believed that the greater the ruler's
power, the better the peace and security of the state. The de-
crees of all the monarchs of a dynasty remained in force as
long as the family was in power, marginalizing all other legal
systems. All the top jobs in government were given to mem-
bers of the family and their local clients and proteges, who
were all drawn into the entourage of the great nomadic army
at the core of the state.
There could hardly be a greater contrast with the egalitar-
ianism of Islam, but it was, in a sense, a continuation of the
militarization of society that had occurred in the final years
of the Abbasid caliphate, where the amirshad ruled from the