8. Horses

For the Mongols, religion was not distinct within everyday life, and so Mongol religion was viewed as an inextricable part of Mongol culture. DeWeese states that "life and health are the chief values" (p. 36). Further, the "Inner Asian focus on what makes life possible is communal and ancestral" (p. 36). Thus, religion is practiced as a communal life-sustaining effort; "'religious life' consists of ways of understanding and manipulating the world in order to maintain the central sacred value of (communal) life and (communal) well-being" (p. 37). To put it simply, community was extremely important. DeWeese explains that "their absence of indigenous [religious] terminology is...a sign that these "religious" conceptions and practices are so intimately linked with all aspects of life--that is, with all aspects of what being human is considered by those peoples to mean--that life is inconceivable without them" (p. 28). Mongols viewed the world through their communal values and through their identity as a community. And their religious identity was so intertwined with their communal identity that it is practically impossible to define the two separately.

When it comes to conversion, then, that simple act of self-designation as a Muslim, even if it is just a self-designation without any other religious action attached, is significant. DeWeese expounds on the weight of a name:

"The name and its utterance have a sacred character; utterance has power, and the correspondence of a thing's name and its essence or reality is assumed, not in some abstract or metaphysical sense as argued in Chinese or Indian philosophy, but in terms of a virtually physical and magical link between the name and the named. To call oneself "Muslim" or by a name whose mention evokes recollection of an Islamizer, or of an entire "sacred history" or genealogy linked to Islamization, is no trivial matter. To adopt a name is to change one's reality, and in this sense there is hardly a deeper "conversion" than a nominal one; in any case such a nominal conversion, reflecting a change of status, is particularly well-suited for expression through the discursive patterns of conversion narratives modeled upon legends of communal origin" (p. 55).

In Jackson's article, he writes of how Muslims believed that the Ilkhan Teguder "only 'claimed to be a Muslim'" (p. 274). According to what DeWeese writes above, the mere fact of Teguder's declaration of faith and the label of Muslim he attached to himself was a significant act; the label connotes a community association, and therefore the rejection of the previous label is a community disassociation as well.

This goes back to Mongol ideas of religion; religion was a communal activity that was performed for the purpose of promoting life, and so "to find that a particular individual or ruler or community has decided that the value system and complex of rites which the society in question has long recognized as efficacious for upholding life...is after all no more useful or effective than "the way of the Muslims," or is even less powerful, is to admit a transformation of enormous import" (p. 59). For one to say that one is becoming a Muslim, one is also saying, on the flip side, that one's previous system of beliefs is lesser than Muslim beliefs. This view of religion was shared by Islamic definitions; DeWeese notes that "the Islamic ummah defines itself, and other communities, on religious grounds...this often means that distinctive communal groups are expected to be marked by a particular religious orientation; to change one's religion is to change one's communal identity" (p. 23).

After the rejection of the old belief system, it is necessary to define what conversion to Islam means. DeWeese posits that, at least in Turkic connotations, to "make him a Muslim" means "not a change of heart...or of mind...but a change of status" (p. 23). Conversion is not judged on internal faith; that is believed to come later: "the formal and external manifestations of Muslim religious obligations, as ordained by G-d and exemplified by the Prophet, may themselves transmit the divine grace which alone can "turn" the soul toward G-d and lead to a "change of heart"" (DeWeese p. 26). Thus, it is the external actions which constitute the true signs of conversion and not any judgments on the internal faith of the convert.

So, for an early Mongol ruler to declare his conversion to Islam was, in effect, to state his intention to change communal identity, to no longer identify as a Mongol but as a Muslim, a member of the ummah. And any judgments on their sincerity are irrelevant to their status as a true, new member of the faith. However, conversion in Inner Asian societies was rarely an individual matter; rather, the "standard assumption [is] that "conversion" and the establishment of a "new" religion are first and foremost matters of state concern" (DeWeese p. 169).

An interesting example of the intersection between old communal attachments and new(er) Muslim identity is in ancestral hearth idols. "Ancestral offerings...involving the use of such jarringly un-Islamic "idols" are repeatedly mentioned by outside observers as a continuing presence in the homes of nomadic Muslim people of Inner Asia in the post-Mongol period" (DeWeese p. 41). DeWeese posits that these (originally) un-Islamic practices were "integrated...into the sacralized daily lives of people now considered as Muslims" and that the practices were themselves "Islamized" (p. 41). Perhaps, alternatively, they merely came to be seen as cultural practices, disassociated from religion. If the lines between religious and non-religious practice were unclear in pre-Islamic Inner Asian societies, where and how did they decide to draw the line between what was simply cultural and therefore acceptable to keep after conversion to Islam, and what constituted their old religious practices, which could no longer be acceptable?

Another example of a supposed clash between Islamic and Mongol values can be found in fermented drinks. Mongols drank both fermented milk (kymys) and fermented honey; fermentation renders those drinks alcoholic, which would make them forbidden to Muslims, who legally cannot drink alcohol. DeWeese relates through Ibn Battuta, who heard from Ozbek khan, that the practice of drinking fermented honey can be explained "through the adherence of Ozbek's people to the Hanafi madhhab, supposedly allowing them to consider fermented liquor to be licit" (p. 206). Instead of simply asserting Mongol cultural identity to allow the continued practice, these communities sought to substantiate the practice within their Muslim identity. Indeed, a theme throughout DeWeese's exploration of these communities' new identity is the "remarkable integration of the holy people and holy customs of the two traditions, Mongol and Muslim, still in the process of being assimilated one to another" (p. 223).