Aim, Materials, Methods, and Audience

Practice Examples

The following few paragraphs are from “The Mongol Hordes: They’re Just Like Us” by Manvir Singh. Using the notes above, try and pick out some materials and methods. The aim is given!

In September, Pope Francis became the first leader of the Catholic Church ever to visit Mongolia. It must have been a humbling stopover. The country has fewer than fifteen hundred Catholics. The welcoming ceremony, in Ulaanbaatar’s main square, attracted a few hundred spectators—a crowd less than a thousandth the size of one that had gathered to see him in Lisbon a month earlier. One of the attendees had come out to do his morning Tai Chi and unknowingly ended up at the event. Not everyone understood why the Pontiff was there. A caterer at a banquet for the Vatican entourage asked a Times reporter, “What are Catholics again?" But the Pope came prepared. Speaking to diplomats, cultural leaders, and the Mongolian President, he celebrated the religious freedom protected under the Mongol Empire during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—“the remarkable ability of your ancestors to acknowledge the outstanding qualities of the peoples present in its immense territory and to put those qualities at the service of a common development.” He also celebrated “the Pax Mongolica,” the period of Mongol-enforced stability across Eurasia, citing its “absence of conflicts” and respect “of international laws.” Many earlier Christians would have been staggered by Francis’s words.

The first recorded mention of the Mongols in Western Europe is from a Benedictine monk who, in 1240, recorded testimony that the Mongols were “an immense horde of that detestable race of Satan . . . thirsting after and drinking blood, and tearing and devouring the flesh of dogs and human beings.” Five years later, Pope Innocent IV sent Güyük Khan, the third leader of the Mongol Empire, a letter expressing “our amazement” that the Mongols “have invaded many countries belonging to both Christians and to others and are laying them waste in a horrible desolation.” Muslims, too, saw the Mongols as bloodthirsty savages. When Hulagu Khan stormed Baghdad, in 1258, bodies were heaped on the streets; drains reportedly ran red in the heart of Muslim civilization, while Baghdad’s great library, the House of Wisdom, burned. For many historians, the sacking marked the end of five centuries of cultural and scientific flourishing—the Islamic Golden Age. In November, 2002, Osama bin Laden claimed that George H.W. Bush’s Administration had been more destructive than “Hulagu of the Mongols.”Months later, in the run-up to the Iraq War, Saddam Hussein referred to the United States and its allies as “the Mongols of this age.”

This video is from a popular youtuber who does critique of video games, among other things. While you are watching, try to pick out his Aim, some Materials, and Methods.