WI: Mongols Converted to Christianity

In the OT some Mongols were converted to Nestorianism a type of Eastern Orthodox. In the 1200's the Latin Church sent several missions to the Mongols with low result.

WI: The Catholic missionaries in the 1200's had a better result and picked up on the existing trend of Nestorianism. How would the history of Asia be different if the Mongols converted in large numbers. This could have been percipitated by the conversion of a high ranking Mongol and so forth.
 
RadishPumpkinsForever

Depending on what you want but a stronger Christian Mongol empire might be achieved by changes in the east. The westernmost of the Mongol tribes was lead by a Nestorian Christian and was an early patron of Genghis. They fell out when he asked for the daughter of one of the leaders as a wife and the leader insisted Genghis convert to Christianity. He rejected this and took her anyway. Despite this there were a lot of Nestorian and other eastern Christians in some of the early Mongol armies, most famously in those of Huglau who conquered Iran, Iraq and Syria. Both his favourite wife and the commander of the force he left behind in Syria when he headed east for the election of a new Great Khan were Nestorians.

All it needs is a slight degree more flexibility in either Genghis or his prospective father in law and you could see vastly greater eastern Christian presence in the early Mongol empire at least. Of course this would make relations with both the Muslims they conquered and the western Christians, who would view them as heretics, somewhat more heated than OTL, which was pretty rocky anyway so it would make for even more chaos and destruction I suspect.

Steve
 
I've now got an image of Richard II joining with Mongol crusaders to capture Jerusalem... Awesome...

Simon ;)
 
You would probably get someone like Kuchlug in charge, which could get ugly very quickly. I could see the converted khan forcibly mass-converting conquered cities, as Kuchlug tried to do. But without Mongol tolerance, I do not think he would get very far.

BTW, there was a timeline about this on SHWI. A very enjoyable read, it is one of my favorites.
 
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