Research On The Defense Facilities Of The City Site In The Mongolian And Yuan Dynasties In Inner Mongolia

In the 13 th and 14 th centuries,the Mongolian tribes rose to the Mobei Plateau,and the nomadic lifestyle made Mongolian soldiers very good at using cavalry to raid.However,after a half-century-long war of external expansion and unification,the Mongol rulers gradually realized the importance of using city defenses.During the period of Kublai Khan,on the basis of accepting the Han culture,Mongolian residents began to learn the way of life of the Han people who built cities and lived there,thus changing the state of the early Mongolian tribes without fortifications.As a bridge connecting the north and south of the desert,Inner Mongolia plays an important role in controlling the north of the desert.The special geographical environment,military strategic position and ethnic composition make the defense facilities of the local city site have obvious regional characteristics,era characteristics and ethnic imprints.According to the existing archaeological investigations and excavations,cities in the Mongolian and Yuan Dynasties in Inner Mongolia can be divided into four levels: capital city,cast-down king city,Lufu city site,and prefecture and county sites.The city defense facilities in local cities mainly include moats,city walls,horse faces,There are six kinds of turrets,city gates,and urn cities.After comparison,it can be found that the urban defense facilities in Inner Mongolia during the Mongolian and Yuan Dynasties not only absorbed and learned from the previous fortification defense experience,but also further developed on this basis,thus forming a unique regional urban defense feature.The differences in the city defense facilities of cities of different levels in this area reflect that the construction of city defense facilities in this area has been greatly influenced by the hierarchy.In addition to the hierarchical system,the military factors in the early stage of Mongolia’s rise,and the political,economic,cultural and demographic factors after the arrival of the Great Unification era have all affected the construction of local urban defense facilities to varying degrees.In general,the construction of the city site defense facilities in the Mongolian and Yuan Dynasties in Inner Mongolia not only learned from the characteristics of the Song,Liao and Jin city defense facilities,but also formed some of its own characteristics.At the same time,the construction of city defense facilities in this area was influenced to varying degrees by the political,economic,military and cultural development at that time,so the development of its city defense facilities has a unique position in the history of Chinese city development.