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What sort of mounts were the Mongol conquerors riding?

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Thrake

Thrake

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I saw a Russian film about Genghis Khan (Mongol) and one of the things that surprised me where that the mounts looked fairly small in reguards to what would be cavalry standard in my mind. So reguardless of how historically accurate the film could be if anyone could tell what kind of breed was used or how tall it actually was I'd greatly appreciate.
 
Does it?

Wikipedia on Mongolian horse said:
They weigh about 600 lbs.[1] and range in size from 12 to 14 hands (48 to 56 inches, 122 to 142 cm) high.
Click to expand...

Modern classification as far as I know registers horse at 150 cm or higher. But I recon the norm could have changed along with race breeding. But it would support my feel of smallish horse when watching the film.
 
Something like this?

SB_-_Kazakh_man_on_horse_with_golden_eagle.jpg


Modern steppe breeds like Kazakh and Mongol are small ones, and AFAIK the assumption is that the same applied in the past.
 
Antediluvian Monster said:
Something like this?

SB_-_Kazakh_man_on_horse_with_golden_eagle.jpg


Modern steppe breeds like Kazakh and Mongol are small ones, and AFAIK the assumption is that the same applied in the past.
Click to expand...

It's been a while since I saw the film but that would be along these lines yes, maybe sometimes even smaller.

Thanks to both of you for your answers. Now I know it was more than just a feel and it's quite surprising to think that it's on such backs that the largest empire was built on :)
 
ConjurerDragon said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_horse

If those light riding horses appeared rather small to europeans one of the reasons might be, that european horses were mostly Kaltblüter/draft horses
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_horse
bred to draw wagons or to bear the weight of an armoured warrior.
Click to expand...
I know nothing about horses but that was really interesting.

It truly does make me wonder how so many villages, towns, cities, regions and nations fell to these riders of the Steppe on such small horses.
 
ConjurerDragon said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_horse

If those light riding horses appeared rather small to europeans one of the reasons might be, that european horses were mostly Kaltblüter/draft horses
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_horse
bred to draw wagons or to bear the weight of an armoured warrior.
Click to expand...

That the destriers used by European knights were draft horse sized seems to be disputed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destrier

The size of surviving armour points to a size comparable to modern riding horses. That said, the mongolian breed would still be significantly smaller.
 
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Sanny said:
It truly does make me wonder how so many villages, towns, cities, regions and nations fell to these riders of the Steppe on such small horses.
Click to expand...

It's not so surprising: little horses deal with temperature extremes better, need less food and were only carrying lightly armed and armoured humans, so would be much better at steppe warfare than big ponderous ones.
 
Sarmatia1871 said:
It's not so surprising: little horses deal with temperature extremes better, need less food and were only carrying lightly armed and armoured humans, so would be much better at steppe warfare than big ponderous ones.
Click to expand...

As a tangent about weight and armour:
Do we know if the Mongol heavy cavalry used bigger horses?
 
For light horse archers the size of the mongolian horse shouldn’t be a problem. I wonder if they adopted other horses for the lancers as the mass of the hotse is important in the charge?
 
Sanny said:
I know nothing about horses but that was really interesting.

It truly does make me wonder how so many villages, towns, cities, regions and nations fell to these riders of the Steppe on such small horses.
Click to expand...

I'm not particularly knowledgeable in horses in that reguards but at least in humans we have 3 different types of muscles components (fibers) that will be able to cope better with different kinds of efforts, from massive efforts but will only be able to sustain it a few seconds (think of a weightlifter) to ability to sustain mild effort over hours (marathon runner). Also the marathon runner will tend to not be very bulky so as to make the run less exhausting while the weightlifter will need the extra bulkiness to lift heavier loads. So obviously here it is just about one specie but it emphasize the fact that being good at one physical task does not make you necessarily good at all the manual tasks, even in the theoretical situation where the strain would be done over the same muscles.

Sarmatia1871 said:
It's not so surprising: little horses deal with temperature extremes better, need less food and were only carrying lightly armed and armoured humans, so would be much better at steppe warfare than big ponderous ones.
Click to expand...

Sure for fighting in the steppes, but getting as far as China or Russia or India I'd expect that there's more than just steppes at some point?

Edit:
By the way this is surprising that you states that small horses better resist to extreme temperatures. I thought that animals tend to grow bigger as the climate gets colder, this is because the surface grows more slowly than the volume, so it ends up being easier for bigger animals to maintain their temperature.
 
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Thrake said:
Sure for fighting in the steppes, but getting as far as China or Russia or India I'd expect that there's more than just steppes at some point?
Click to expand...

Sure there were forests, mountain ranges and deserts. Being a small horse is advantageous over being a big one in the first two and the Gobi desert had taught the Mongolians how to deal with the latter. High humidity such as in the tropics or extremely high temperatures such as in Arabia, may have been a bigger issue for the Mongolian horses though. Combined with the effect humidity has on composite bows it could form part of the answer for why Mongol campaigns into SE Asia tended to be temporary.
 
Geriander said:
Sure there were forests, mountain ranges and deserts. Being a small horse is advantageous over being a big one in the first two and the Gobi desert had taught the Mongolians how to deal with the latter. High humidity such as in the tropics or extremely high temperatures such as in Arabia, may have been a bigger issue for the Mongolian horses though. Combined with the effect humidity has on composite bows it could form part of the answer for why Mongol campaigns into SE Asia tended to be temporary.
Click to expand...
the steppe warriors also brought enormous hordes of extra horses - sometimes 6x as many as the men in the fighting force.

that number of horses can devour entire provinces. smaller horses = less need for feed.
 
Thrake said:
Sure for fighting in the steppes, but getting as far as China or Russia or India I'd expect that there's more than just steppes at some point?
Click to expand...

Thrake said:
Edit:
By the way this is surprising that you states that small horses better resist to extreme temperatures. I thought that animals tend to grow bigger as the climate gets colder, this is because the surface grows more slowly than the volume, so it ends up being easier for bigger animals to maintain their temperature.
Click to expand...

Extreme means hot AND cold. Mongolia and related steppe climates can get extraordinarily hot in the summer time. European sized horses do NOT fare well in warm weather. The Mongolian horses have generally short legs, short necks, and tubby bodies, and grow a thick winter coat which they then shed when the weather warms up. Large size for animals is crippling in hot weather, and horses in particular are extremely bad at ridding their bodies of excess heat compared to many other animals.

China, Russia, and India (Iran too) aren't all steppe, but they all have large important areas that are steppe, or are so close to steppes that they can be overwhelmed by horsemen operating out of the steppe conducting raids yearround, and operating in force in their 'heartlands' only on a seasonal basis.
 
Herbert West said:
As a tangent about weight and armour:
Do we know if the Mongol heavy cavalry used bigger horses?
Click to expand...

Geriander said:
For light horse archers the size of the mongolian horse shouldn’t be a problem. I wonder if they adopted other horses for the lancers as the mass of the hotse is important in the charge?
Click to expand...

They did not. In fact Mongol archers and lancers were the same people on different days, or on different parts of the same day. Just because they functioned as lancers didn't mean they specialized in being lancers only. Part of the extreme ability of the Mongols, and other steppe peoples in battle was flexibility - being able to adapt the same armed force to many different fighting styles and terrains.
 
In that case, the comment about light armour does not hold.

Now, caveats to that are:
- boiled leather with scales is somewhat lighter than full chainmail
- even full chainmail is not that much extra weight. Only once you get to unwieldy tournament armours of late medieval/early renaissance do you get into the 25+ range
 
The armor the mongols used was from 10 to 15 kg (modern shoes, trousers, shirt, sweater and a jacket roughly weight 3kg) and depending on how much metal was in it. I doubt they used another breed for their lancers tho. maybe those picked stronger ones.
Infact crashing with heavy horses and heavy armor into your prepared enemy is a piss poor tactic even knights rarely did (bar French). Mongol lancers would chase retreating enemys or charge weakened and/or disrupted lines. they also surprisingly often fought on foot.
 
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Graf Zeppelin said:
The armor the mongols used was from 10 to 15 kg (modern shoes, trousers, shirt, sweater and a jacket roughly weight 3kg) and depending on how much metal was in it. I doubt they used another breed for their lancers tho. maybe those picked stronger ones.
Infact crashing with heavy horses and heavy armor into your prepared enemy is a piss poor tactic even knights rarely did (bar French). Mongol lancers would chase retreating enemys or charge weakened and/or disrupted lines. they also surprisingly often fought on foot.
Click to expand...

Who implied charge by crashing?
 
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