![]() ![]() Some, in Iran and China, can be said to have dismounted, although even here they felt themselves contiguous to the steppe. Government from horseback? Yes, it was entirely possible for Mongols. But Yelu Chucai’s dictum was wrong, and he had no eye for the unwritten rules of an alternative, nomadic tradition. A scholar-official astray in nomad lands, his exertions to civilize them by his own lights easily win the sympathy of historians-a champion of written culture, of a classical tradition. Yelu Chucai certainly tried to instill in the Mongols a conformity to Chinese-style administration. ![]() ![]() It is accepted as a truism that steppe nomads had to get down off their horses in order to learn from settled states how to run an empire. The line’s wisdom is rarely questioned: historians, after all, tend to be sedentary themselves, and invested in a written culture that presumes paperwork must be the basis of office. There is an aphorism, reported to have been spoken by minister Yelu Chucai to Ogodei Khan, Chinggis Khan’s first successor: “You can conquer an empire on horseback, but you cannot govern it on horseback.” Writers on the Mongols are fond of this line, usually inserted when Mongols begin to set up administrations in the settled lands they have acquired control over. ![]()
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