RBSE Solutions for Class 11 History Chapter 5 Nomadic Empires

Rajasthan Board RBSE Solutions for Class 11 History Chapter 5 Nomadic Empires Textbook Exercise Questions and Answers.

RBSE Class 11 History Solutions Chapter 5 Nomadic Empires

RBSE Class 11 History Nomadic Empires Textbook Questions and Answers

Answer in brief:

Question 1. 
Why was trade so significant to the Mongols ?
Answer:
Trade was so significant to the Mongols because the region they had occupied lacked natural resources. They traded with neighbouring countries and it was beneficiary for both parties.    

Question 2. 
Why did Genghis Khan feel the need to fragment the Mongol tribes into new social and military groupings ?
Answer:
Genghis Khan felt the need of fragmentation of the Mongol tribes into new social and military groupings on account of the following reasons :
(i) Mongols had their own separate identities and were the inhabitants of the Steppe region. So he (Genghis Khan) wanted to bring them in contact with other tribals through social grouping, or ties like marriage with other tribal communities.

(ii) Mongols were very brave. Taking the advantage of their bravery Genghis Khan organised them into military groups and established a formidable empire.

Question 3. 
How do later Mongol reflections on the Yasa bring out the uneasy relationship they had with the memory of Genghis Khan ?
Answer:
Yasa were the rules and regulations. These rules and regulations were approved by Quritali during Genghis Khan’s reign. These rules were concerned with Mongol army, hunting, postage system, social ladder etc. Simply, these rules (Yasa) were the compilation of tradition and customs that prevailed in Mongol tribal society itself. These rules brought out any uneasy relationship with the memory of Genghis Khan.

Question 4.
“If history relies upon written records produced by city-based literati, nomadic society will always receive a hostile representation.” Would you agree with the statement ? Does it explain the reason why Persian chronicles produced such inflated figures of casualties resulting from Mongol campaigns ?
Answer:
Yes, we are agree with the statement. It explain the reason behind the Persian chronicles that produced such as inflated figures of casualties resulting from Mongol campaigns to prove their cruelty or to prove them as cruel assassins.

Answer in a Short Essay :

Question 5. 
Keeping the nomadic element of the Mongol and Bedouin societies in mind, how, in your opinion, did their respective historical experiences differ? What explanations would you suggest account for these differences?
Answer:
The steppe dwellers themselves usually produced no literature, so our knowledge of nomadic societies under Mongols are quite different and the Italian and Latin versions of Marco Polo’s travels to the Mongol court do not match. Since the Mongols produced little literature on their own and were instead ‘written about’ by literati from foreign cultural milieus, historians have to often double, as philologists to pick out the meanings of phrases for their closest approximation to Mongol usage. 

The work of scholars like Igor de Rachewiltz on The Secret History of the Mongols and Gerhard Doerfer on Mongol and Turki terminologies that infiltrated into the Persian language brings out the difficulties involved in studying the history of the Central Asian nomads. As we will notice through the remainder of this chapter, despite their incredible achievement there is much about Genghis Khan and the Mongol world empire still awaiting the diligent scholar’s scrutiny.

Question 6.
How does the following account enlarge upon the character of the Pax Mongolica created by the Mongols by the middle of the thirteenth century?
The Franciscan monk, William for Bruck, was sent by Louis IX of France on an embassy to the great Khan Mongke’s court. He reached Karakorum, the capital of Monge, in 1254 and came upon a woman from Lorraine (in France) called Paquette, who had been brought from Hungary and was in the service of one of the prince’s wives who was a Nestorian Christian. 

At the court he came across a Parisian goldsmith named Guillaume Boucher, ‘whose brother dwelt on the Grand Pont in Paris’. This man was first employed by the Queen Sorghaqtani and then by Mongke’s younger brother. Rubruck found that at the great court festivals the Nestorian priests were admitted first, with their regalia, to bless the Grand Khan’s cup, and were followed by the Muslim clergy and Buddhist and Taoist monks.
Answer:
When we remember Genghis Khan today the only images that appear in our imagination are those of the conqueror, the destroyer of cities, and an individual who was responsible for the death of thousands of people. Many thirteenth-century residents of towns in China, Iran and eastern Europe looked at the hordes from the steppes with fear and distaste. 

And yet, for the Mongols, Genghis Khan was the greatest leader of all time: he united the Mongol people, freed them from interminable tribal wars and Chinese exploitation, brought them prosperity, fashioned a grand transcontinental empire and restored trade routes and markets that attracted distant travellers like the Venetian Marco Polo. The contrasting images are not simply a case of dissimilar perspectives; they should make us pause and reflect on how one (dominant) perspective can completely erase all others.

Beyond the opinions of the defeated sedentary people, consider for a moment the sheer size of the Mongol dominion in the thirteenth century and the diverse body of people and faiths that it embraced. Although the Mongol Khans themselves belonged to a variety of different faiths-Shaman, Buddhist, Christian and eventually Islam - they never let their personal beliefs dictate public policy. 

The Mongol rulers recruited administrators and armed contingents from people of all ethnic groups and religions. There was a multi-ethnic, multilingual, multi-religious regime that did not feel threatened by its pluralistic constitution. This was utterly unusual for the time, and historians are only now studying the ways in which the Mongols provided ideological models for later regimes (like the Mughals of India) to follow.