Genghis Khan’s Great Yasa – legal code or ideal “law and order”?
The law of the Mongol Empire is quite insufficiently explored aspect of history of this state because of absence of legal sources which could allow to have an authentic view of Mongol imperial legal system, analyze system of legal sources, principles and rules. Nevertheless during the ages researches attempt to study different aspects and problems of law of the Mongol Empire and one of the most attractive subject for studying is Great Yasa(Их Засаг) of Genghis Khan.
It’s no secret that text of the Great Yasa (in general of partially) didn’t survive to our days and there are not numerous mentioning of it in foreign historical works (of Arab, Persian, Armenian, Near Eastern and Western European authors – contemporaries and chronicles of 13th-15th cc.) as well as in very small in number official acts (Chinese legal codes of Yuan epoch and Russian translations of yarliks of the Golden Horde Khans. These sources contain some separate notes about Great Yasa and several rules which, as informers (and later researchers) believe, are parts of the Yasa.
However since the beginning of the 18th c. scientists try to study the Great Yasa as global legal codification, to reconstruct its structure and specific rules. In 1710 French orientalist F. Petis de la Croix was the first who in his work about Genghis Khan fixed some rules which, to his opinion, were a part of the Great Yasa. Since his time a lot of scientists dealt with above mentioned sources to study the Great Yasa. It’s enough to mention the authors of the most important works: I. Berezin, V. Ryazanovsky, A. Polyak, G. Vernadsky, E. Kychanov, T. Skrynnikova, I. de Rachewiltz, D. Aigle, S. Tserenbaltav and Ts. Minjin, etc.
It’s interesting to note that the less information about the Yasa used by authors, the more original hypothesis made by researchers. For instance, E. Khara-Davan supposed that Great Yasa included also biliks of Genghis Khan; G. Vernadsky supposed the presence in the Great Yasa of some chapters, including state and administrative law, criminal law, privat law and supplement law;B. Sumyabaatar considers that military rules mentioned in letter of Khubilay to Korean van (his vassal) also are a part of Yasa; St. Petersburg author A. Yurchenko refers some everyday customs and prohibitions of Mongols to special “chapter” of Yasa; at last, N. Nyam-Osor “reconstructed” the structure of the Great Yasa as global code with two parts, about 15 chapters and 118 rules!
There are two different views on the Great Yasa from the scientists. Some of them consider the Yasa as codification of the ancient Turkic and Mongol legal customs (E. Kychanov, T. Skrynnikova, I. de Rachewiltz), their opponents suppose it was quite new imperial legislation (G. Vernadsky, L. Gumilev and others). Nevertheless all of them consider Yasa as codified legal act.
Only two researchers took the risk to call in question the existence of the Great Yasa as legal code. D. Ayalon in 1970s paid attention to secondary character of the most part of sources about Yasa used by scientists and found that the only primary source was “History of the World Conqueror” by Ata-Malik Juvaini; he also noted the polysemy of the term “yasa” (not only as “law”, “regulation”, but also as “power”, “rule”, “order”, etc.). However he remained within the traditional paradigm and considered the Yasa as legal act or set of acts. More radical opinion was stated by D. Morgan in 1986: he found that mentions of Yasa in the Mongol and Persian sources
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of 13th-14th cc. didn’t give a reason to see in the Yasa the lagal code and, in fact, we could talk about law and order. His version caused the discussion among researchers but as both sides based only on different interpretations of the same sources discussion reached a deadlock.
In this paper we are intended to analyze the arguments of D. Ayalon and D. Morgan using the historical and legal approach and to examine the using of the term “Yasa” in sources of different states (from Mongolia and China to Mamluke Egypt and Bukhara Khanate and different epochs (from 13th to 18th– beginning of 20th cc.) with taking into account information about Genghis Khan’s and his successors’ legislative activity (including such of it which was not correlated with the Great Yasa).
On the base of research we found that if sources’ information about Yasa doesn’t give a reason to see the Yasa just as codified legal act (as D. Morgan stated), at the same time we shouldn’t consider it only as “law and order”: of course, in the most part of sources’ accounts there were references to certain acts and regulations of Genghis Khan’s legislation. So, the Yasa, in our mind could be treated in two meaning: in narrow sense it was a set of Genghis Khan’s and his successors’ laws and official acts and in wide sense – law and order existed due to realization and observance of these regulations. In the last sense Yasa to a certain extent could be considered as analogue of legal institution of the Mongol Empire – törü which is also was a kind of law and order but only on a base of norms stated by Tengri (as Yasa was stated by Genghis Khan and other khans).
As for conception about the Great Yasa as legal code (in sense of unified legal act), to our mind, it presents only in works of scientists who represented the “written culture”: as Muslim or Armenian, so Chinese and Western European authors were familiar with their states’ tradition of legal codification. They couldn’t imagine that the greatest empire in the world didn’t have own global legal codification. That’s why a set of Genghis Khan laws and edicts in their interpretation transformed into unified legal code regulating all field of legal relation in the Empire.
In fact, Mongols of Genghis Khan’s epoch didn’t need a global codification, at the same time it was not possible to create the universal legal code which could regulate all field of relation among a lot of imperial subjectsof different nations, languages, cultures, social and economic structures. Genghis Khan excellently understood such situationthat’s why he limited his legislative activity by issuing of acts of imperial level (organizing of power structure, soldering, relations with vassal states, tax policy, etc.) and didn’t attempt to regulate the private life of his numerous subjects.
So, we should to appreciate a legislativeactivity of Genghis Khan at its true value but not to arrogate to him the creation of legal code which really didn’t exist. This assumption is confirmed by the fact that Mongol legal codifications of the 16th – 18th cc. (Code of Altan Khan, Eighteen laws of Khalkha, Ik Tsaaz, Khalkha Jirum) didn’t contain a mentioning of the Great Yasa, so they were created not by the example of any codified act of Genghis Khan and his successors.
// Chinggis Khaan and Globalization. International Academic Conference: Program and Abstracts. November 14-15, 2012, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Ulaanbaatar, 2012. P. 87-88.