Nicholas Weaver

Mrs. Duralek
AP World History
December 10, 2014
Trial of the Mongols - Reflection:

After hearing both sides of the argument, whether Genghis Khan was a Culture Broker
or a Fiend from Hell I will still have to stick with what my character thought, a Fiend from
Hell. If you think about it, Genghis Khan along with his people killed roughly forty million
innocent people. That sure does not exemplify a Culture Broker. Genghis Khan not only killed
millions of people but also ruined the lives of many by taking over empires and forcing the
civilians to do things they did not always want to do. For example, representing the Indian Ruler,
Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu, I can say through my research that Khan negatively impacted many of
Mingburnus people such as making them change their ways of life. Moreover, from the
observations that I made from both the defense and prosecutions witnesses I have concluded that
the Mongols where beastly and inhuman, rather monsters then men. They used horrific acts of
violence and extreme measures just to achieve success. So supporting the verdict of this case, the
Mongols were Fiends from Hell.
Furthermore, this activity was interesting in that we got to see what it is like to stand
before a jury and answer questions from the defense/prosecution. However, I do have one
objection to this assignment in that every character did not have as much research on them, For
example, I had Jalal ad-Din Minburnu and I had a very difficult time finding info on him. I spent
four days looking my character up and I ended up having very limited and generalized

information. This meant it was hard for me to accurately answer question presented to me in
court. If I was to change one thing about this assignment it would be the characters such that
each one had a good chunk of information. Other than that I found it fun to be able to debate
something so important in world history. I would be up to doing this again rather then doing a
boring old Socratic seminar.