What was the religious setup within the Mongol 'state' before, during and after Ghengis Khan?

The Mongols practice Tengrism which consists of elements of shamanism, animism, totemism, polytheism, and ancestor worship. Tengrism is a folk religion practiced in Mongolia. What historical record we have of the Mongols from the pre-Genghis era denotes that the Mongol tribes worshiped something like the 'great sky god' for a very long time. I'd say that Tengrism or some sort of animism was the basis of religion in the loosely confederated tribes of Mongolia. I'm going to discuss shamanism, anamism, totemism, and polytheism in the following paragraphs.

Shamanism

I just wrote a research paper about Mongolian Shamanism and Tengrism! So, here is an excerpt from that paper about Shamanism!

John Andrew Boyle wrote an article called, "Turkish and Mongol Shamanism in the Middle Ages." In the article he argues that most of the contemporary scholarship on Mongolian Shamanism does not draw upon all of the available sources (i.e. Persian, Chinese). He also argues that shamanism is not solely a Mongol construct. Boyle uses a theory from Kroeber to define shamanism in the Mongol sense. He quotes Kroeber as saying:

His [a shaman's] communion with the spirits enables the shaman to foretell the future, change the weather, blast the crops, or multiply game, avert catastrophes or precipitate them on foes; above all, to inflict or cure disease.

Essentially, a shaman is someone who has a gift and can probably do all of the things listed above. Boyle also commented on a primary source, the Tabqat-i Nasiri written by Minhaj al-Din Juzjani. In that document there is a passage which describes Genghis Khan as having shamanistic powers. It is described that sometimes Genghis Khan would fall into a trance and predict all manner of things. What he predicted was written down and he supposedly acted on those things once he was out of the trance state. Whatever clothes he was wearing during the trance were taken off of him and placed in a special trunk. Those clothes were not worn again. It isn't entirely clear why his clothes were removed and kept, but not destroyed.

In the end, Boyle asserts that 'shamanism' and 'shaman' are terms that anthropologists and historians of religion use. I think that is true and there are several anthropologists and historians on religions on this sub. I'm sure one of them will step in if I've got something completely off base written here.

Key Elements of Shamanism

Some of the key elements of shamanism in the Mongol sense were cleansing by fire, weather manipulation, and trances.

In the same article cited above, Boyle gives an example of cleansing by fire. The western T;u-chüeh tribe was sent an envoy from the Byzantines (I don't have a date for this and I don't have the article anymore). The leader of the tribe sent 'conjurers' to the envoy. They inspected the luggage and commanded the emissaries to pass through some sort of fire. The fire represented the cleansing ceremony. He asserts that the Mongols practiced the same sort of cleansing by fire.

Also, the Mongols did practice weather manipulation. It is called yat or yad and is practiced with special stones and water. Rashad al-Din recorded that:

[Weather manipulation] a kind of sorcery carried out with various stones, the property of which is that when they are taken out, placed in water, and washed, wind, cold, snow, rain and blizzards at once appear even though it is the middle of the summer.

There are two Turkish legends about weather manipulation. One comes from the Ghuzz:

A Ghuzz prince told Abu'l Abbas' information how one of his ancestors, having quarreled with his father, journeyed eastward until he came to a land of which he was told by its inhabitants that it was impossible to pass beyond it, the way being barred by a mountain.

The legend continues with the inhabitants telling the Ghuzz ancestor that the sun is close to the earth behind the mountain and burns everything it touches with sunlight. The inhabitants then say that they have tunnels under the ground which they hid in until the sun goes down. The animals of the land take stones in their mouths that have inspired knowledge and these stones form a magical screen between the animals and the sun. The Ghuzz ancestor and his followers raided the land and killed the animals for their magical stones. These stones are said to have had magic powers which produce rain, snow and other weather events when called upon.

The other legend is of the Samanids. Weather stones were used as a tactic against the Samanids, but they backfired and brought a giant hailstorm upon the user of the stones. The Khitans also have a legend about the stones and used them in founding the Liao dynasty in the 10th century.

Finally, the Mongols encountered the weather stones at the Battle of Köiten in 1202. Genghis Khan's army faced off against the Naiman, who had weather manipulation stones. This one is mostly legend, but it is said that the Naiman's tactic turned against them and they lost the battle. Another legend says that Tolui used the stones against the Jurchen in 1232 and Toghon-Temür used them against the Ming, supposedly.

There are several historiographical and anthropological arguments about how shamanism translates between language. There is also a very interesting article about Mongol shamanism specifically. The author asserted that Mongolian shamanism was a concept constructed by the state to define the religious practices of the people. Essentially, he states that historians of Mongolia have made up the concept of shamanism as a religious idea because they found references to shamans in historical sources. I haven't read any counter arguments yet, but I think it will be interesting to find out what others think of that!

Animism

The Merriam-Webster definition of Animism is:

1: a doctrine that the vital principle of organic development is immaterial spirit 2 : attribution of conscious life to objects in and phenomena of nature or to inanimate objects 3 : belief in the existence of spirits separable from bodies

I would argue that the Mongols did practice Animism. The Secret History of the Mongols and other works tell the story of Genghis Khan returning to Burkan-Kaldun. This mountain is said to be the home of Tengri or Kökö-tengri, the great sky god. He returned to the mountain after his wife had been taken and he was distraught. It is said that he begged for help from Tengri.

In addition, the Mongols also practiced anthropomorphism in their creation stories. The first creation story says that the Mongols are descended from the mating of a doe and a he-wolf. They mated on Burkan-Kaldun, again the home of the sky god, Tengri. The first human ancestor recorded in the Secret History is Dobun the Wise. He had two sons by a forest-dwelling woman near the banks of Lake Baikal. Somehow, he perished and she had three more sons. The legend goes that the three younger sons were produced from a union of the woman and Tengri. This is from a book published by J. J. Saunders on the Mongols:

The god entered her tent on a moonbeam, caressed her belly, and a ray of light penetrated her womb. The Mongol bards celebrate this divine bastardy, which may be said to have established an intimate connection between the god and his people, whose conquests were later undertaken at the behest and accomplished to the honour of the Eternal Heaven.

Another creation story comes from an article by Nassen-Bayer and Kevin Stuart. The myth relates that God created people out of clay. God sent his dog and cat to protect the clay people from the devil. The devil outsmarted the dog and cat by giving the dog a piece of meat and the cat a bowl of milk. The legend says that the devil urinated on the people and defiled them. God was angry with the cat and dog. He commanded the cat to lick the ruined hair off of the people and put that hair on the dog. Several areas were not cleansed of hair and those are the places humans have hair. In addition, the authors of this article contend that within the myth, God was supposed to let the people be immortal, but because they were defiled he left them mortal. Nassen-Bayer and Stuart contend that:

there is duality in all that is created: beauty is tempered by ugliness, joy with suffering.

The creating God in this creation story is Burqan Tenger. I believe that is another iteration of Tengri. I'm not sure who the devil is in this creation story, but it might be a translation thing. The citation given by Nassen-Bayer and Stuart is:

GADAMBA S. and D. CERENSODNOM, compilers. 1984 Mongrol arad-yin aman Joqijal-yin degeji bicik [Cream of Mongolian folk litera- ture]. Hohhot: Ob6r Mongrol-yin Arad-yin Keblel-yin Qoro.

Pt. 2 to follow.