Karakorum, the Capital of the Mongol World Empire

Beginnings

Bonn University’s engagement in Karakorum started with works in the middle of the city between 1999 and 2005 directed by Prof. Helmut Roth and Dr. Ernst Pohl: Archaeological excavations uncovered parts of the Chinese craftsmen's quarter known from a 13th century travelogue (Fig. 2). Institutionally, the work has since then been embedded in the "Mongolian-German Karakorum Expedition", a research cooperation, to which belong the Archaeological Institute of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, the Commission for Archaeology of Non-European Cultures (KAAK) of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), and the University of Bonn. The agreement on which this cooperation is based was signed in 1998 on the historic ground of the ancient Mongolian capital in the presence of the then Federal President Prof. Roman Herzog and has since been regularly renewed.

The research in Karakorum at that time was triggered by the Mongolian Academy's wish to be able to present new results on the history and structure of the city on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of Genghis Khan's election as Great Khan of all Mongols in 1206. In view of the importance of this project for the national identity of modern Mongolia, it was agreed that the parties carried out two parallel excavation projects, one in the so-called "palace area", since then proven as a Buddhist temple, in the southwest of the city by the KAAK and another in the city center by the University of Bonn (Fig. 2).

Historical tradition attributes the founding of the city to Genghis Khan, who in 1220 determined the Orkhon Valley as site for his residence. However, concrete construction measures are only mentioned for the time of his son and successor Ögedei Khan, who had a rampart built around the nascent city in 1235 and began building a palace in the same year. When the Franciscan monk William of Rubruck stayed in Karakorum for several months in the spring of 1254, he saw the city as a multicultural community in which members of almost all parts of the empire lived within the city walls occupied with a wide variety of activities and positions. Europeans of various nationalities, Muslims from West and Central Asia and above all Chinese lived and worked here. Not all of them voluntarily, as the example of the renowned goldsmith Guillaume Boucher shows, who completed the famous drinking fountain in form of a silver tree for the palace hall during Rubruck's presence. Boucher had come to Karakorum as a prisoner of war from the European campaigns and had to perform his services for the Great Khans of the Mongols.

Some of the excavation areas laid out during these years reach down to a depth of five meters before the river gravel of the Orkhon was reached. One of the most significant discoveries of the excavations in the city center was evidence of a large, north–south oriented street (Fig. 4). At a depth of about 2.5 meters underneath the topsoil, parts of a pavement made of irregularly hewn slate slabs were uncovered in several places. The pavement can be broken down into individual fields of about 3 × 2 meters, which were separated by a wooden framework. This street belongs to the capital period of Karakorum. During this period, life in the city was characterized, among other things, by international trade traffic, which required appropriate road conditions even within the city. At the same time, regular cleaning was also required to keep the road passable. When this was no longer ensured, the road silted up relatively quickly and all subsequent reconstruction measures proved to be technically less demanding, until in the 14th century only a simple, more or less poorly paved road surface constituted one of the major streets through the city.

Already around the first half of the 13th century the area along the street is marked as an artisans’ quarter. The best example is the workshop of a fine smith east of the street. The workshop was located at the front of the house facing the street. Several still completely preserved round wooden bases with a diameter of 30–40 cm and a height of about 80 cm were uncovered inside the workshop in 2004, which were placed next to each other parallel to the course of the street (Fig. 6). They were heavily covered with bronze dust and have square recesses on their tops in which metal anvils were embedded. The find spectrum of this workshop includes large quantities of small-cut bronze fragments that served as raw materials for reworking, textile and leather remains might have served as cushioned base for repoussé works.

On the occupation level of this workshop a silver coin with the stamp of a mint in Karakorum was found. This coin, dated to 1237/38, represents the oldest contemporary evidence to date for the mention of the ancient Mongol capital.

Demise of the city

The late 14th century was a troubled time for Karakorum. After losing its function as the capital of the Mongol Empire under Qubilai Khan in 1260, who established his capital first in Shang-du and then later in Beijing, the city regained its previously held rank as capital after 1368. In that year, the Mongols had been driven out of China after more than a hundred years of rule. Ayuširidara, the son of the last Yuan emperor in Beijing, returned to the place of his ancestors in 1370. One of the most important finds of the excavations, a seal of the Ministry of Finance, stems from this period. The seal had been produced in Karakorum in 1371/72 (Fig. 8). Members of the former court had probably returned with Ayuširidara, as the quality of the finds within the most recent occupation layers is extremely high. Several bronze mirrors, a porcelain lion, but also the finds from the mentioned workshop with the gold bracelet are probably to be interpreted in this way. We are only insufficiently informed about the end of Karakorum. What is certain, however, is that the archaeological traces of the city center faded away in the first decades of the 15th century, and in 1586 the Buddhist monastery Erdene Zuu was built with the help of building materials from the area of Karakorum. However, the old capital has remained just as present in the collective memory of the Mongols over the centuries as the founder of the empire Chinggis Khan, whose face is still embossed on the Mongolian banknotes today.