Hashar

One of the least glorious episodes in the history of the peoples conquered by the Mongols was their participation in the hashar, a peculiar kind of Mongol unit. The Mongols did not invent the hashar, the practice has been known since the most ancient times, but it was they who managed to put it into an incredibly mechanistic form, terrible in the degree of its exploitation and efficiency!

Originally, hashar is an Arabic term meaning «charitable work», for example the voluntary help of Muslims in building mosques or city walls. Although the first military uses of the hashar are known among the Chinese, the Tanguts and the Jurchen. The Mongols, having become acquainted with the phenomenon, understood it in their own way, using the hashar as a living shield and free labour, and brought it to perfection.

…When the army approached, the fortress could not be taken at once, because the arrows and stones did not reach it. Young men from Khojand and from the villages that had already been conquered were driven into the hashar there, until fifty thousand people of the hashar [the local population] and twenty thousand Mongols had gathered. They were all divided into tens and hundreds. At the head of each ten, consisting of Tajiks, a Mongol was appointed, they carried stones on foot from the mountain, which was three farsangs away, and dumped them. — Rashid al-Din on the struggle of the Mongols with Timur-Melik

The practice became so widespread that the hashar could make up up to a third of the Mongol army, which was formed from prisoners.

That whole huge army of the unfortunate was driven to the slaughter ahead of the army in order to exhaust the enemy\'s supply of arrows, was used in the sieges of fortresses, for the same purposes, dug tunnels and performed all sorts of service functions. Needless to say, when the defenders saw their own people in the enemy camp, driven ahead of the enemy, indecision took hold of them, and the Mongols took advantage of this, often forming the hashar from children and women.

It is superfluous to speak of the attitude of the Mongols to the hashar, but the example is telling: When Russian prisoners had spent a whole day building siege towers for the Mongols and digging frozen ground for the camp, and then asked for food, the Mongols flew into a rage. They told the Russians that their horses served them but did not ask to eat, and found their own food!

The hashar copied the Mongol army: it was divided into tens, under the command of Mongols, who kept order and saw to the work, not infrequently killing a whole ten for poor quality.

Article author: Andrei Olegovich