High Middle Ages · Central Asia · Politics

1219

Genghis Khan's Yasa code promulgated across the empire

1219

As his armies rode west, the Great Khan imposed his legal code on conquered peoples from the Altai to the Oxus. The Yasa regulated everything from adultery to water pollution, mandated religious tolerance, and prescribed death for spying, desertion, and urinating in running water with an even hand. Its enforcement created a startling uniformity of law across the largest land empire the world had ever seen.