After seeing a Gengis Khan movie in my home, I realized that certain things in Ashlander tribes are based in ancient Mongol tribes. Depsite the Ashlanders having assyrian names, they aren't as the Assyrian, they are as the ancient Mongol tribes. In several respects:

Architecture;

How the Ashlander are dressed;

The fact that the Ashlanders have an ashkhan as leader; in the Ancient Mongol tribes, the leader were Khan.

And other aspects.

I think that Bethesda made the Ashlanders based in Mongol with Assyrian names. Do they have made the other TES civilizations the same way (TES civilization X based in real civilization Y, but with real civilization Z names).

Do not you think it strange?

Based on the terms you mentioned I searched for architecture and dresses and I don't find them to be all that similar. Going by a single word an other aspects you didn't elaborate upon seems to be a slim basis to say that Ashlanders are based of Mogols.

However -and this is often forgotten- one might certainly assume they've at-least provided some inspiration. But perhaps you could elaborate to make a stronger claim.

I used to have a theory that the Ashlanders were based, perhaps not intentionally, on the Gaels. Mostly the politics and geography, and some aspects of their culture, seemed to be Gaelic. There are also many events in their history that seem similar to events here, although that depends on your interpretation of history.

However, I found out that the Gaels are only a part of the Ashlander's character, and that part may be a small one. They also include Assyrian, Mongol, Arabic, Phoenician, and Native American ideas, and it would be wrong to say that any one of them is more important than the other. If anything, the Orcish armour looks more Mongolian, and the Ashland camps could be based on anything from the Saami to the Ainu.

The Mongolians were horse warriors; the Ashlanders are not. The Mongolians are nomads, who follow the herds. The Ashlanders tell their herds where to go. The Mongolian economy is based on the raid, the Ashland economy is based on the export of expensive products. There are a few differences, but, as with the other nationalities, the Mongolian ideas are still there.



It's simply a Turkish title that was used by the leaders of tribes of Turkish origin, which then became the practice of many Islamic kingdoms, from the Phillipines to south Africa. It also doesn't have to be a tribal leader; it means 'ruler,' and could be anything from an emperor to the advisor of a chief of a small tribal branch that owns three farms near the border with Georgia.

Like a lot of things Elder Scrolls the Ashlanders are a hodgepodge of real world characters shot through with the developers own imaginations. I think a lot of people think of them being like Mongols because they live in yurts, and sometimes they're compared to Native Americans because of reminiscences in their dress and the importance dreams have in their religion.

So you can point to a few things (yurts, ashkhans) but they're not necessarily based of the Mongols, or based off of anyone for that matter.

Back when I was taking Anthro 101 I noticed quite a few similarities between the Ashlanders and relatively modern Afghani culture (the tribal khans tracing their lineage to the Mongols, so there's your connection there). I'd have to dig out my notes to post more examples other than the khans thing, but it's not that far of a stretch to think that at least some of the devs took anthropology courses in college and threw in a bit of this and that from other cultures, including Afghanistan.

The Ashlanders always seemed like they should have been a riding culture, but Morrowind is entirely lacking in horses or any other beasts of burden except for pack guards, so it's hard to judge whether they would have been if game mechanics had been developed for riding.

I don't know why they never made riding guars.....

That was my spin on the Ashlanders. You can imagine what my private fanfic consists of especially with the Nerevarine leading these warlike tribes!

In the Redguard comic, we see Redoran wasp riders, with lances. I also imagine there are probably Ashlanders and other Dunmer who ride giant insects and shoot bows from them, like the Samurai of old. In fact this would be an impressive sight if it were Buoyant Armigers dressed in full glass.

The Ashlanders are guar hunters, the Scots are not.

Ah, but the Redoran do wear skirts.

I've always wanted to make a mod called Guarzashi. As the Nerevarine, you convince the Ashkhans to revive their ancient and nearly lost tradition, where they hold a game called Guarzashi (based on Buzkashi of course). They mount riding guars and have to pick up a guar carcass from the fray and take it around a set of posts on the perimeter of the field. The real challenge however, is in the politics of holding the game. All the Ashkhans must be invited, and provided with suitable "gifts" (more like bribes) in order to convince them to partake in the games and send their best riders.

I've yet to work out the mechanics of all of this. :unsure:

Heck, you could even have the Imperials or the Temple start team based versions of Guarzashi in the Vivec Arena, in an attempt to co-opt the Ashlander culture much the way the Russians did during their occupation of Afghanistan.

The Assyrians lived in the Middle East, the Ashlanders do not.



But kilts are English

In many respects, indeed; not exactly Mongols, but generic mongoloid nomands, including - in this case - even American Indians.

Cossacks elected a leader called a Hetman i think. And while i don't know what racial makeup they were (i think a little of everything) , they (Cossacks) roamed the same areas the mongols did in Russia.

That's because they're not a race. That's the word used by the Russians for every single steppe culture, mostly Turkic and Mongol, and the tribes who they found in Alaska.

Or tribal cultures in North/South Africa. Some are herders, not unlike the Ashlanders. :shrug: I won't profess to any knowledge aside from what I see on nature documentaries about animals (lions, leopards, etc) in Africa.

Indeed, cossacks often regard themself as a race, though it is not correct.
The word Qazakh is Turkic (not Turkish!) origin, and meens "Free Man". Many Turkic tribes in the Great Steppe called themself Qazakhs; however, in Russian this word is used only for cossacks - Christian military communities of borderlands, mostly Slavic. For Turkic nomands, even if they called "Qazakh" themself, commonly used "Kyrgyz". And I never heard about Alaska tribes regarded as cossacks.

I knew that Cossacks weren't a race, but the original question was about ashlanders and mongols. I didn't know how much (if any) mongol blood was in the Cossack mix.