Tümen: The social revolution
The Tümen system of Genghiz Khan has revolutionized the Mongol society, by purposefully breaking up old tribal groups and mixing them in a new group - a Tümen of 10,000, which can be decimally broken down into groups of 10, 100, 1,000 as needed. There are no longer Merkits, Naymans or any of the other quarreling and divided tribes and families of the steppe - for the first time ever the steppe nomads are united in a shared pan-Mongolian identity, sharing a culture and language, living together, pasturing together and fighting together.A militarized society
Mongolian society is highly militarized - everyone contributes to the war effort, either martially or materially. Tümens are not just 10,000 soldiers - they are 10,000 households, and those in turn support their household warrior with with food, materials and takes care of his herds, women and children as the warrior serves at the front line.(As the Mongol Empire swallows more and more sedentary population, this equal pairing breaks up more and more, as the taxes of the settlers play the role of the support for the warrior assigned to them, leading to a higher proportion of Mongol men serving in combat, but the basic idea remains.)
War and Peace
Of course, not every tümen is constantly at war. Tümens will regularly switch between war mode and peace mode.War mode is stressful, with strict hierarchies and chains of command, frictional losses through the necessary logistics to bring food and materials to the front lines, increased stress on the supporters as they have to feed the same number of people with a smaller workforce, and increased stress on the warrior wives as they have to do the men's jobs in addition to their own.
This isn't sustainable on the long term, so after a while tümen will be de-activated and sent into Peace Mode to be replaced a different tümen. The warriors will return to their civilian life, sustaining themselves and returning to their pastoral duties, while the supporters only have to sustain themselves. While the hierarchy remains in place even in peace time, procedures are much more relaxed without the stress and necessity of fast decison-making of warfare.
Tengri's Chosen People: Ocean-like rulers of the world
In the Mongolian self-conception, they are not conquering and adding land to the Mongol Empire. The eternal blue sky is their main deity, Tengri, and all land beneath it is the land of the Mongols. There are simply people who don't know of this yet. If they acknowledge this fact, submit without resistance and begin paying tribute to the Great Khan, they ought to be left in peace and free to keep practising their customs and religion.*Those who deny this fact and refuse to submit are to be dealt with harshly, their bodies broken, their cities razed and burned down and their heads paraded on long poles as a warning to others to choose more wisely.
*: The Mongolian religious tolerance policy is related to this thinking. All other deities are subject to the eternal blue sky of Tengri above them, but as long as their followers submit to the worldly order and leave followers of other religions in peace, they are not a threat to the order and stability. As polytheists, Mongolians don't have a need to enforce an exclusionist orthodoxy like the Abrahamic faiths - there is space for lesser deities, worshipped by less important peoples, in their world view. Neither does Tengrism know the concept of mission - there is no need to bring more believers into the fold.
Nomad life
The Ger (yurt) is the mobile home of the Mongols, to be pitched where they are making their camp until the area is fully grazed, then de-installed, put on a cart and taken to the next campground.Gers are divided into a female side and a male side. It is forbidden to step on the treshold of a ger - a grave insult, and punishable by death in case of a ger of Mongol nobility.
Rubruck has left a much more exhaustive account on contemporary gers, their furnishings and the customs surrounding them.
The economic foundation is the herding of the "five snouts": Cattle (including yaks), sheep, goats, camels, and horses. The products obtained from these animals satisfy nearly all of the Mongolian family's basic needs: Beef, mutton, and goat meat, supplemented by a wide variety of dairy products, constitute the Mongolian diet. Sheep wool, processed into felt, is used to make clothing, bedding, and insulation for the Ger. Horses, camels, and yaks provide transportation and animal hair, their bones used to produce musical instruments and children's toys.
In the warm months from spring to early autumn, Mongols seek out the valleys and other lower altitudes, regularly moving and wandering from camp to camp. These nomad migrations are not random drifting impulsively engaging in wanderlust - those movements are purposeful, following a set pattern, and it takes careful consideration to decide how long to stay in place and when to leave it towards where, as every migration means time spent travelling instead of producing, and the risk of livestock getting lost.
By late autumn, Mongols seek out their winter camps high up in the hills and mountains. These are more durable and secured, as travel is more difficult. A zhud, snowfall in winter, is rare and a catastrophe, as the herd animals are unable to break the snow cover and reach the grass. This leads inevitably to famine, decimation of the herd and subsequently hardship for the human nomads.
Role of Women
Work is compartmentalized along gender lines in the Mongolian society. Women are expected to take care of the ger and its transportation, but also of take care of and milk sheep, shear wool, manufacture dairy products, and tan hides. Men are expected to care of horses, to hunt and to go to war.For those women who were widowed or left because of husbands in the military, taking over the men's jobs is the common practice.
While Mongol women are expected to play a more domestic, nurturing and peaceful role than their brothers, history is full of examples of female Mongols who made more of their life than to ferment milk and submissively serve it to their husbands:
Around age 17, shortly after getting married, she got abducted by Merkits, raped and forced to bear a son of her captors (Jochi). But this tragedy didn't keep her down.
She continued to be an important pillar of Genghiz Khan during his entire rise, advising him on staff selection, diplomacy and strategy, managing the homeland in his absence as he was at the front lines, and laying the economic foundation for the new Mongol Empire by encouraging and protecting traders and their caravans.
Her favourite Fatima also deserves mention - a Khwarazmian Muslim woman, who would probably never have been able to gain an influential role in her home culture, became an important advisor and cabinet member of Töregene's adminstration.
Superstitions and other minor noteworthy cultural bits
Water plays a special role in Mongol culture. As streams and lakes are so important in the dry steppe, extreme measures are taken to prevent pollution. Entering, swimming, washing and doing laundry in ponds, rivers and other common water bodies is punishable by death under Mongol law, and said to cause the wrath of dragons.In fact, Mongols do neither wash, nor are they doing laundry. At best, they roughly beat any dirt from their clothes and keep wearing them until they fall apart and need to be replaced. This causes a very obnoxious smell (and might create problems for Mongol cainites, as they don't sweat and cause their clothes to smell as strongly as expected from Mongol kine).
A strong characteristic smell is viewed as positive, and it is a great honour if a Mongol leader gifts someone with a discarded piece of cloth carrying their smell, essentially rubbing their smell off on the lower Mongol. Refusing to accept the smelly gift is a grave insult.
Blood also has a special role in Mongolian culture, as it is believed that it contains the soul and lifeforce of a person. Someone whose blood is spilled and dies from it is said to become a ghost, unable to pass on into the afterlife.
Especially noble blood must never be spilled. For this reason, nobles who are to be executed get wrapped into a carpet or similar cloth item and beaten to death with blunt weapons.
Thunderstorms are especially feared in Mongolian culture. They are a very bad omen, the wrath of skyfather Tengri. Everyone flees to their ger and waits the storm out. Entire battles have suddenly ended and dispersed, out of fear that Tengri is showing his displeasure about it this way.
Places, animals, herds and people struck by lightning are considered to be cursed by Tengri. The Mongols refuse to take taxes from anyone whose property has been struck by lightning for a year, fearing that the curse rubs off on them as the goods of the unlucky household enter their treasury.