CENTRAL ASIA - Summary

The Mongols enforced law and order across Central Asia, policing a network of routes connecting East and West. They built post stations throughout the empire from which messages were carried at high speed across vast distances. The hostile impressions some foreign visitors formed changed as they spent more time with the Mongols. William of Rubruck found that in Karakorum, the main Mongol city, there were "very fine craftsmen in every art, and physicians [who knew] a great deal about the power of herbs and diagnose[d] very cleverly from the pulse." The religious tolerance Rubruck discovered would have been unimaginable in Europe at that time.