Maiorov, Alexander Viacheslavovich; Pow, Stephen Lindsley. To «Conquer Rome and beyond Rome»: The Mongol ideology of world domination in Medieval reality and imagination

Maiorov, Alexander Viacheslavovich – Doctor in History, Professor, Head of the department of Museology, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia. Orc ID 0000-0001-8212-7467; Scopus ID 55092108400, SPIN-code 4584-2571, Author ID 251050, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.;

Pow, Stephen Lindsley – PhD in History, Research Associate, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada. Orc ID 0000-0001-8804-0397; Scopus ID 55792249100, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The study is supported by the Russian Scientific foundation grant No 24-18-00407 «The world’s conquest and the collapse of the global empire: the Mongol invasion in the fate of the Russian lands of the 13th century»

The argument advanced here is that the global conquest strategy of the Mongols had taken shape already before the planning of the Great Western Campaign in 1235. Evidence from geographically, linguistically, and chronologically diverging sources all re-echo the claim that a goal of world conquest had been formulated, expressed, and – most importantly – pursued in practical terms already during the reign of Genghis Khan (r. 1206–1227). The Mongols’ claims to world domination had a solid basis in the religious worldview of the Mongol elite and were supported by their faith in the divine chosen-ness of their supreme leader, and his legitimate successors, who had been granted the Mandate of Heaven to rule the world. We suggest that a range of evidence points to the religious ideal of a universal empire being conceived in its full sense and put into practice by Genghis Khan during the brilliant First Western Campaign of 1219–1221 which resulted in the subjugation of the Khwārazmian Empire. Since, we find evidence of this from matching descriptions and implications laid out in Eastern and Western Eurasian sources (including contemporary diplomatic reports) that likely could have not mutually informed each other, it is difficult to explain it away as something based on a widespread, identical misunderstanding among the Mongols’ adversary states and peoples. Moreover, the claims often can be traced to Genghis Khan, his successors, and military and diplomatic representatives, implying that the goal of world conquest was one sanctioned at the highest decision-making levels of the Mongol imperial court.

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