text: The Mongols and their rise in world history as well as conflicts with both the Jin and Song played a key role in the evolution of gunpowder technology. Mongol aptitude in incorporating foreign experts extended to the Chinese, who provided artisans that followed Mongol armies willingly and unwillingly far into the west and even east, to Japan. Unfortunately textual evidence for this is scant as the Mongols left few documents. This lack of primary source documents has caused some historians and scholars such as Kate Raphael to doubt the Mongol's role in disseminating gunpowder throughout Eurasia. On the opposite side stand historians such as Tonio Andrade and Stephen Haw, who believe that the Mongol Empire not only used gunpowder weapons but deserves the moniker "the first gunpowder empire."