Talk:Military of the Mongol Empire

Stirrups

"All horses were equipped with stirrups. Those had been invented by the Huns quite some time before, but remained largely unknown to the rest of the world. This technical advantage allowed the Mongol archers to turn their upper body, and shoot in all directions, including backwards."

When I first read this I thought it was saying that most of the Mongols' rivals had no knowledge of stirrups, which I believe is incorrect (stirrups being the prime component of medieval mountien warfare). If the sentence is just saying that the Huns invented stirrups first, and others were unaware of them until some time later (including the Mongols), then that part of the sentence may be unnecessary. It may not be accurate, either; the stirrups article here seems to depict stirrups as being a more gradual invention, with the Huns not mentioned. -BaronGrackle 01:33, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

But the stirrups was invented by the Chinese, not the Huns. - Tak —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.80.188.27 (talk) 05:26, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

The horsemen of the steppe invented the stirrup, sorry.50.111.4.123 (talk) 20:09, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

The core of the statement is that the Mongols used them to their advantage, because the Parthian shot wouldn't have been possible without. The invention by the huns may be a myth, as obviously the Parthians and Scythians must have used them before that. Unfortunately the article Stirrups doesn't mention mounted archery at all. But even if the Mongol's opponents may have known and had stirrups, apparently they didn't use them in the same way. --Latebird (talk) 01:01, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

So say "the rest of the world didn't use them the same way" rather than "nobody else knew about stirrups". These two statements differ by quite a lot. 70.53.120.231 (talk) 11:21, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Organization

Can anybody explain to me how "the Mongol military...can be regarded as the first modern military system."? What about the Romans and their Legion organization? Were they not a "modern" military system? Or does this have to do with the tactics used with the different units? Ace blazer (talk) 19:09, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

It's a rather subjective issue, and needs to be explained better. What makes it "modern" is the amount of autonomy each unit - big or small - was given, and the practical approach to warfare. They maintained a "use what works" attitude in place of the honor based rule systems most other forces of the time adhered to. The roman legions may come close in terms of organisation, but most of them probably would have frowned upon tactical retreats as dishonorable. --Latebird (talk) 16:39, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Smart Roman commanders such as Sulla, Pompey, Marius, Scipio and Caesar used 'tactical retreats' in their careers. Updated: The Macedonians probably developed what we would call the first professional 'modern' army.50.111.4.123 (talk) 20:29, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

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Subjective opinion on the training.

The section on Training and Discipline has the following sentence "This training was maintained by a hard, but not overly harsh or unreasonable, discipline." This seems to be a subjective opinion on how severe the training was and it also lacks any citation? JamesF0790 (talk) 06:40, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

extremely poorly sourced

whoever wrote the majority of this article did not cite sources - needs much work 50.111.1.232 (talk) 01:28, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree, and it has been two years since tags were added asking for more citations. I've removed large sections of the article which failed to cite any references, as per WP:BURDEN: "The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution", and "Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source". Unfortunately this has resulted in a lot of potentially good information being lost as it's unclear how much of it is accurate. I am pinging major contributors to the page, according to this XTools search, in the hope they can help: @Qiushufang: @Richard Keatinge: @71.237.70.49: @Enerelt: @Oldwindybear:. Thanks Meticulo (talk) 06:12, 11 June 2023 (UTC).

. . . and I've also posted on the talk pages of the WikiProjects on Mongols and Military history in the hope their members can help. Meticulo (talk) 08:58, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Meticulo, the gunpowder section is near-completely closely paraphrased from Andrade 2016 (and quite a lot of it isn't relevant to the Mongols themselves). At the moment, I'm trying to get Genghis Khan to FA status, but I'll put this on my to-do list for the future. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:23, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

AirshipJungleman29, thanks for that. Meticulo (talk) 02:34, 25 June 2023 (UTC)