Many European food staples are said to be practically nonexistent among the Mongols. Carpini states they lack bread, herbs, and vegetables, and though they eat meat they have “so little that other people would scarcely be able to exist on it.” Their summer staple is mare’s milk “in very great quantities”; in winter they (except the wealthy) lack even this and instead drink water in which millet has been boiled, along with a little broth and meat in the evenings.20 Rubruck agrees, saying that in summer “as long as their comos [fermented mare’s milk, ayiragh in Mongol or kumis in Turkic] holds out, they care for no other food,” and “[w]ith the meat of a single sheep they feed fifty or a hundred men.”21 Carpini’s account of the journey to the camp near Karakorum shows the friars shared in their hosts’ hunger en route, eating little but millet with water and salt: “[W]e could scarcely keep alive, for the food provided for four was barely sufficient for one.”22 Rubruck also complains about the starvation rations: “Were it not for the biscuit we had, and God’s grace, we might well have perished”; his companion wails, “I feel as if I have never eaten.”23 Rubruck laments that during their long journey their guides gave them nothing to eat before evening but a little millet, though they had meat and plenty of broth in the evenings.24 In contrast, Pegolotti advises prospective merchants traveling from Tana to Cathay that although they should take enough flour and saltfish to last the journey, they would be able to procure sufficient other provisions, especially meat, along the way.25 Perhaps merchants would have taken a more southerly path through present-day Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and would have been spared the worst of the steppe conditions. What the Mongols lack in gluttony they allegedly make up in drunkenness, as Carpini, Rubruck, and Ricold all attest, imbibing extraordinary quantities of kumis when they could get it, drinking till they vomit then drinking again.26 Andrew of Longjumeau also comments that their favorite drink is horse’s milk brewed with herbs.27
Food scarcity is portrayed as such a potent presence in Mongolian life that wasteful habits meet with draconian punishments. To pour out any milk, food, or other drink on the ground is a serious evil, and, says Carpini, “if anyone takes a morsel and, unable to swallow it, spits it out of his mouth, a hole is made under the dwelling and he is dragged out by that hole and without any mercy put to death.” They avoid washing dishes, pots, or spoons, except to swill them with some meat broth then add this back to the meat pot, and even extract the marrow from bones before giving them to the dogs. Rubruck comments that they put meat bones away in their carry bags for gnawing on later.28 Carpini’s secondhand account of Chinggis Khân’s rise to power offers an historic explanation of waste prohibition. Returning from campaign the Mongol army
ran short of food and suffered great hunger. Then they happened to come across the fresh entrails of an animal; they took them and, putting aside only the dung, they cooked them and brought them before Chingis Chan, who ate them with his men. As a result of this Chingis decreed that neither the blood nor the entrails nor any part of an animal that can be eaten, with the exception of the dung, is to be thrown away.29
Hunger was also a recurrent theme of Chinggis’s life in Mongolian legend. The Secret History of the Mongols tells of his mother Hö’elün’s widowhood and tribal abandonment when he was a child and her attempts to nourish her children with whatever she could forage.30 The tremendous value of food is also apparent in Mongol religious practice. Carpini says they always offer the first milk from mares and cows and the first portion of each meal to their idols. They give the idol the heart of a slaughtered animal in a cup—though the next morning they thriftily take it back to cook and eat. Their veneration of the sun, the moon, fire, water, and the earth is marked by first offerings of food and drink. Dead men are buried in one of their tents, seated at the table with meat and milk before them.31
European accounts of Mongolian food and foodways are thus dominated by infertility of the land, lack of recognizable staple foods, willingness to eat unclean meats, habitual drunkenness, and subsistence on blood or even human flesh when necessary. With the exception of anthropophagy (which will be considered in more detail later in the chapter) and perhaps drunkenness, this seems a largely fair representation of Mongolian conditions but also has rhetorical value. No doubt Mongols acquired the ability to endure hunger interspersed with periods of gorging on high protein and calcium foods, given the severe continental conditions of much of their homeland and predominantly nomadic habits. Dependence on meat and milk is still a mark of Mongolian cuisine today and doubtless was even stronger 750 years ago. Yet if an army marches on its stomach, it is hard to see how even the staunch Tartars could have maintained their ferocity for long on a diet of horses’ blood, fermented mares’ milk, and the occasional small rodent.32 Remember Carpini’s remark that the land is “extremely rich” in horses, camels, oxen, sheep, and goats. Mongols were herders who moved over wide areas to gain pasture for their beasts; they were also keen hunters.33 Medieval travel writers emphasize scarcity and willingness to eat foods beyond perceived margins of edibility not only to represent reality but also to define and construct Mongol characteristics.
One rhetorical purpose is to heighten the impression of Tartars as the most hardy, ferocious, and belligerent of men. Despite Carpini’s measured tones in the ethnographic chapters of his book (chapters 2–4), his later warnings about the dangers they pose as untrustworthy and ruthless enemies are explicit: “It is the intention of the Tartars to bring the whole world into subjection if they can” (in this, Carpini was correct); on no account should Christian countries enter peace treaties with them because of the “intolerable” servitude to which they reduce conquered nations. They are “full of deceit,” speaking fair words at first but afterward stinging like a scorpion, though he also feels they can be defeated because of their small population and their weak bodies compared to those of Christians.34 His message is, therefore, somewhat mixed: the Mongols are a terrible foe, yet ultimately defeatable. The emphasis that he and other travelers place on capacity for hunger endurance and willingness to eat even vermin and carrion helps convey this dual message: the scarcity that signifies their toughness also indicates potential military weakness.
Connected to this characterization is the ancient image of the barbarian, though this is more often implicit than stated outright in our travelers’ books. The belligerence, cruelty, and deceit Carpini attributes to Mongols were also conventional traits of barbarians, as were their filthy eating habits.35 The Mongols’ lack of bread and dependence on flesh and milk are especially revealing. Bread is among the most venerable signifiers of civilization in western traditions. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the wild man Enkidu is tamed and civilized when brought in from the steppes where he has roamed with the beasts and lived by suckling their milk and taught to sit at a table, drink beer, and eat bread.36 In Homer’s Odyssey, danger befalls “men, eaters of bread” when they sail into the land of the lotus-eaters whose intoxicating food has the power to make them forget their families and the way home.37 In Mandeville’s and Witte’s descriptions of some eastern monstrous peoples (discussed in Chapter 8), failure to eat bread while instead living off meat, milk,