Download PDF | Timothy May (editor), Michael Hope (editor) - The Mongol World, Routledgem, 2022.

Download PDF | Timothy May (editor), Michael Hope (editor) - The Mongol World, Routledgem, 2022.

1101 Pages 

THE MONGOL WORLD 

Drawing upon research carried out in several different languages and across a variety of disciplines, The Mongol World documents how Mongol rule shaped the trajectory of Eurasian history from Central Europe to the Korean Peninsula, from the thirteenth century to the ffteenth century. Contributing authors consider how intercontinental environmental, economic, and intellectual trends affected the Empire as a whole and, where appropriate, situate regional political, social, and religious shifts within the context of the broader Mongol Empire. Issues pertaining to the Mongols and their role within the societies that they conquered therefore take precedence over the historical narratives of those societies. Alongside the formation, conquests, administration, and political structure of the Mongol Empire, the second section examines archaeology and art history, family and royal households, science and exploration, and religion, which provides greater insight into the social history of the Empire – an aspect often neglected by traditional dynastic and political histories. With 58 chapters written by both senior and early-career scholars, the volume is an essential resource for all students and scholars who study the Mongol Empire from its origins to its disintegration and legacy. 

Timothy May (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Professor of Central Eurasian History at the University of North Georgia and serves as Associate Dean of Arts & Letters. A scholar of the Mongol Empire, he focuses on Mongol military history and strategy. He is the author of The Mongol Art of War (2007), The Mongol Conquests in World History (2012), The Mongol Empire (2018), The Mongols (2019), and Simply Chinggis (2021). In 2014, he was named the University of North Georgia Alumni Distinguished Professor, and he earned the UNG Distinguished Teaching Award in 2021. 

Michael Hope (Ph.D., Australian National University) is Associate Professor of History at Yonsei University, Korea. He specializes in the political and cultural history of the Mongol Empire with a particular focus on the Ilkhanate. He is the author of Power, Politics, and Tradition in the Mongol Empire and the Ilkhanate of Iran (2016). 

CONTRIBUTORS 

Denise Aigle (Ph.D., University of Aix-en-Provence, 2005) is Emeritus Professor at EPHE and researcher at CNRS (UMR Orient @ Méditerranée). She is the author of monographs, edited volumes, and many articles on the Mongols in Iran, including Le Fars sous la domination mongole. Politique et fscalité (2005). In 2016, she won the Saidi-Sirjani prize from the Association for Iranian Studies on behalf of the Persian Heritage Foundation for her book The Mongol Empire Between Myth and Reality (2014). James A. Anderson (Ph.D., University of Washington) is an Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. An historian of premodern China and Vietnam, Anderson’s frst book is The Rebel Den of Nùng Tri Cao: Loyalty and Identity Along the Sino-Vietnamese Frontier (2007). He is the co-editor, with Nola Cooke and Li Tana, of The Tongking Gulf Through History (2011) and co-editor with John Whitmore of China’s Encounters on the South and Southwest (2015). Dr. Anderson is currently completing a new book on the Southwestern Silk Road during the ninth to thirteenth centuries. Na’ama O. Arom (Ph.D., the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) is a Lecturer at the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology in Bar Ilan University and teaches military history in the Haganah Museum,Tel Aviv. Her M.A. thesis was titled “The People of the Horse and the People of the Book – Medieval Mongol-Jewish Connections”. Her Ph.D. dissertation was titled “Beyond Bow Range – the Formation of Mongol Foreign Relations in the Middle East, 1253–1282”. In 2013 she received the David (Dave) Kimche award from Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Brian Baumann (Ph.D., Indiana University) is Lecturer of Mongolian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of Divine Knowledge (Brill 2008), a study of Buddhist astral science. His area of expertise is the history of science. He teaches courses on the Mongol empire, Mongolian Buddhism, modern Mongolia, Mongolian language, literary Mongolian, Mongolian Buddhist ritual, Buddhist astral science, and the history of heaven. 

Evrim Binbaş (Ph.D., University of Chicago) teaches Islamic history at the University of Bonn. He studies early modern Islamic history with a focus on the Timurid and Turkmen dynasties in the ffteenth century. His award-winning frst book on the Timurid historian Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi (d. 1454), Intellectual Networks in Timurid Iran: Sharaf al-Dīn ‘Alī Yazdī and the Islamicate Republic of Letters, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. Currently he is preparing a monograph on the modalities of sovereignty in the ffteenth and sixteenth centuries. Sheila Blair (Ph.D., Harvard University) is emerita Norma Jean Calderwood University Professor of Islamic and Asian Art at Boston College and Hamad bin Khalifa Endowed Chair in Islamic Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. Author or editor of a score of books and hundreds of articles on all aspects of Islamic art, she has published several monographs on the arts of the Ilkhanids, including Epic Images and Contemporary History: The Illustrations of the Great Mongol Shahnama (co-authored with Oleg Grabar, 1980), The Ilkhanid Shrine Complex at Natanz, Iran (1986), and A Compendium of Chronicles: Rashid al-Din’s Illustrated History of the World (1995). Anne F. Broadbridge (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is a Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a Mamlukist who also works on the Mongols and has published on ideology, diplomacy, dynasties, and women in Mongol society. Her books are Kingship and Ideology in the Islamic and Mongol Worlds (Cambridge, 2008) and Women and the Making of the Mongol Empire (Cambridge, 2018). She has thus far taught approximately 2,500 students and hopes to reach 3,000 one day. Michael C. Brose (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is the Director of the East Asian Studies Center at Indiana University and a historian of Mongol China as well as Islam and Chinese Muslims. He is the author of Subjects and Masters: Uyghur Elites in Mongol China (2007) and numerous articles and chapters. Paul D. Buell (Ph.D., University of Washington) is an adjunct professor at the University of North Georgia and a historian of Chinese medicine and Central Eurasia with special reference to the Mongol Empire, the history of food and foodways, and the Age of Explorations. As a Mongolist, Turkologist, and Sinologist, he has produced many articles as well as A Soup of the Qan (2000) and co-authored Crossroad of Cuisine and Arabic Medicine in China (2020) with Eugene Anderson, as well as the Historical Dictionary of the Mongol World Empire 2nd ed. (2018) with Francesca Fiaschetti. Jargalan Burentogtokh (Ph.D., Yale University) is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the National University of Mongolia. His research interests include the emergence of socio-political complexity among pastoral nomadic groups, the study of monuments and mortuary process, and the preservation of steppe nomadic heritage. He has extensive experience in regional survey methods, landscape spatial analysis, and mortuary archaeology. Burentogtokh is currently co-director of the NSF-funded Tarvagatai Valley Archaeological Project in north-central Mongolia. 

Soyoung Choi (Ph.D., Seoul National University) is a Lecturer in the Department of Asian History at Seoul National University, Korea. She is the author of “Preceptor of the Great Khan: Life and Times of Phagpa (‘Phags pa, Ch. 八思巴, 1235–1280)” (2021), “Bringing Puzzles Together: Research on the Early Career and Family of Bayan (Ch. 伯顔, 1236/7–1295)” (2020), “Annotated Translation and Study of a 15th Century Tibetan Source – ‘Archives from China and Tibet (Rgya bod yig tshang)’” (Doctoral Dissertation, 2019), and “Tibetan Perceptions of the Mongols’ Invasion and Rule during the 13th and 14th Centuries” (2018). Bayarsaikhan Dashdondog (D.Phil., Oxford) is a Professor at the National University of Mongolia. She has co-edited New Approaches to Ilkhanid History (2001) and authored The Essays on the Ilkhans: From Hülegü to Abu Sa’id (2016), The Mongols (from the 12–17th centuries) (2016), The Mongols and the Armenians (2011). She also translated Нум Сумтан Ард Түмний Түүх (The History of the Nation of Archers by Grigor Aknerc’i) from Armenian into Mongolian (2010). In 2016 she won the NUM Distinguished Scholar Award. Ulambayar Erdenebat (Ph.D., University of Bonn) is one of the foremost archaeologists studying the Mongolian Empire with research on mortuary traditions and urban landscapes. He has held research positions at the Institute of Archaeology and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences and is a professor in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the National University of Mongolia. He has authored numerous academic articles and monographs published in Mongolia, Germany, Russia, and America. Erdenebat is co-director of the MongolianGerman Khar Balgas Archaeological Project in the Orkhon Valley and a collaborator on the Delgerkhaan Uul Survey Project in eastern Mongolia. Lee Kang Hahn (Ph.D., Seoul National University, 2007) is a Professor in the Korean History Department at the Academy of Korean Studies (Sŏngnam, Korea). He teaches the history of the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) and its relationship with the Mongols. He is the author of  Koryŏwa Wŏncheguk’ŭi Kyoyŏk’ŭi Yŏksa [Trade Between Koryŏ and Yuan] (2013) and Koryŏ’ŭi Chagi, Yuan Chegukgwa mannada [Koryŏ Porcelain  in Contact with  the Mongol Yuan Empire] (2016). Currently he also serves as the chief editor for The Review of Korean Studies, an English journal published by AKS. Roman Hautala (Ph.D., University of Siena) is Docent in the Department of History at the University of Oulu (Finland), Senior Research Fellow in the Sh. Marjani Institute of History at the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, and editor of the Golden Horde Review. He is the author of In the Lands of “Northern Tartary”: Information from Latin Sources about the Golden Horde during the Reign of Uzbek Khan (2019, Russian), Crusaders, Missionaries and Eurasian Nomads in the 13th – 14th Centuries: A Century of Interactions (2017), and From “David, King of the Indies” to “Detestable Plebs of Satan”: An Anthology of Early Latin Information about the Tatar-Mongols (2015, Russian). Colleen C. Ho (Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara) is Senior Lecturer in the History Department at the University of Maryland, where she teaches courses on the medieval world and the Mongol Empire. She has published on  women’s lay piety, Marco Polo, and European relations with the Mongol Empire. Research interests include the diffusion of artistic practices, trade relations along Via Mongolica, and travelers across medieval Eurasia. Florence Hodous (Ph.D., SOAS) is an independent scholar working on law in the Mongol Empire. Her publications include chapters in several edited volumes such as Designing Voices and Letters: The Mongols as an Empire of Communication (forthcoming) and Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia (2020), as well as The Mongols’ Middle East (2016). She has also published in Asiatische Studien/ Etudes Asiatiques and the Central Asiatic Journal. William Honeychurch (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is an anthropologist at Yale University and specializes in the archaeology of Eurasian steppe nomads, complex societies, and interregional interaction. He has worked in Mongolia since 1991 and focuses on nomadic states and empires. His feld projects in the Mongolian Gobi and northern forest-steppe have emphasized regional survey, seasonal campsite excavation, and mortuary archaeology to better understand the local and regional foundations of steppe political organization. He is author of Inner Asia and the Spatial Politics of Empire (2015) and co-edited Genghis Khan and the Mongolian Empire (2009). Michael Hope (Ph.D., Australian National University) is Associate Professor of History at Yonsei University, Korea. He specializes in the political and cultural history of the Mongol Empire with a particular focus on the Ilkhanate. He is the author of Power, Politics, and Tradition in the Mongol Empire and the Ilkhanate of Iran (Oxford, 2016) as well as articles in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, the Central Asiatic Journal, and the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Judith Kolbas (Ph.D., New York University) is a numismatist and economic historian of Central Asia and the Near East during the Mongol period and Adjunct Professor of History at Miami University (Ohio). She founded and for several years directed the Central Asian Numismatic Institute. She is the author of The Mongols in Iran: Chingiz Khan to Uljaytu: 1220–1309 (2006), as well as several articles. Her current attention focuses on a catalogue of Egyptian Mamluk glass monetary weights. Ishayahu Landa (Ph.D., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) specialized in Islamic, Chinese, and Mongol history during his studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His current research aims to analyze premodern Eurasian history, specifcally during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, from a comparative and global perspective. Currently he teaches and works at the Department of Sinology at the University of Bonn, Germany. George Lane (Ph.D., SOAS) retired from SOAS in 2019 after having been a student, a teacher, a researcher, and an integral part of the academic community and staff of the university since 1991. He enrolled at SOAS as a mature student and as an Academic English teacher after a varied early career travelling and working around the Middle East, Asia, and Europe and gained his doctorate in 2001. He divides his retirement between Palma, Majorca, and Dulwich, South London. 

John Latham-Sprinkle (Ph.D., SOAS) is an FWO Junior Postdoctoral Fellow at Ghent University. He specializes in the history of the North Caucasus, focusing on state formation and the slave trade. He is currently preparing a monograph on the medieval North Caucasian kingdom of Alania, and his articles have been published in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, and Iran and the Caucasus. Xiaolin Ma (Ph.D., Nankai University) is Associate Professor at the Department of History of Nankai University and serves as the vice-secretary of the Yuan History Society of China. He is the author of Marco Polo and Yuan China: Texts, Rituals and Beliefs (2018) and more than ffty articles in Chinese, English, Italian, and Russian, as well as the Chinese translator of academic books and articles in English, French, and Italian. His forthcoming book is The Imperial Ritual of Sacrifces of the Mongol-Yuan Empire. His current research project is “History of the Mongols in Medieval Western Sources”. Alexander V. Maiorov (Ph.D., Historical Sciences, St. Petersburg State University) is Professor and Head of the Department of Museology at St. Petersburg State University. He specializes in the history of Old Rus as well as Rus-Byzantine and Rus-Mongol relations. He is the author of the book Rus, Byzantium and West. From the History of Foreign Policy and Cultural Relations of the 12th and 13th Centuries (2011, in Russian). He is also the co-editor of the book The Routledge Handbook of the Mongols and Central-Eastern Europe (2021, with Roman Hautala). Beatrice Forbes Manz (Ph.D., Harvard University) is Professor of History at Tufts University. She is the author of The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (Cambridge University Press, 1989), Power, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and Nomads in the Middle East, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. She has also written numerous articles on ideology, historiography, and political practice in the Mongol and Timurid periods. The next research project planned is a study of the Mongol conquest of Iran. Timothy May (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Professor of Central Eurasian History at the University of North Georgia and serves as Associate Dean of Arts & Letters. He is the author of The Mongol Art of War (2007), The Mongol Conquests in World History (2012), The Mongol Empire (2018), The Mongols (2019), and Simply Chinggis (2021). In 2014, he was named the University of North Georgia Alumni Distinguished Professor, and he earned the UNG Distinguished Teaching Award in 2021. Shane McCausland (Ph.D., Princeton University) is Percival David Professor of the History of Art in the Department of History of Art & Archaeology and Head of the School of Arts at SOAS, University of London. He is author of The Mongol Century: Visual Cultures of Yuan China, 1271–1368 from Reaktion Books/ University of Hawai’i Press (2015) and Zhao Mengfu: Calligraphy and Painting for Khubilai’s China from Hong Kong University Press (2011). He is lead curator of an exhibition on the arts of the Mongol world being organized at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, for 2024.

Lhamsuren Munkh-Erdene (Ph.D., Hokkaido University) is Professor of History and Anthropology at the National University of Mongolia and a visiting fellow at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. He is the author of The Taiji Government and the Rise of the Warrior State: The Formation of the Qing Imperial Constitution (2021). He has held fellowships at Stanford University (2008–2009), the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2009–2011), and the Institute for Advanced Study (2012–2013). Li Narangoa (Ph.D., University of Bonn, Germany) is Professor of Asian History and Society. She was the founding director of the Mongolia Institute at the Australian National University. She teaches Mongolian and Japanese history as well as thematic courses such as Reconciliation and the Memory of Confict in Asia. She has been the recipient of several prestigious Australian Research Council Discovery grants and is currently Chief Investigator on a project focusing on “Mongolian Medicine: Different Modes of Multispecies Knowledge Transmission” (2019–2022). She is co-author of Historical Atlas of Northeast Asia 1590–2010: Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, Eastern Siberia (2014). Bruno De Nicola (Ph.D., University of Cambridge) is Lecturer in the History of the Middle East at Goldsmiths (University of London) and Research Fellow at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Vienna, Austria). He is the author of Women in Mongol Iran: The Khatuns, 1206–1335 (2017) and The Chobanids of Kastamonu: Politics, Patronage and Religion in 13th-century Anatolia (2022). In 2019, he was awarded the STAR Prize (FWF Research Fund), making him the Principal Investigator of the international research project Nomads’ Manuscripts’ Landscape (NoMansLand). Donald Ostrowski (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University) is a Lecturer in History at the Harvard University Extension School, where he has taught for forty years. His publications include Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Infuences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304–1589 (1998), Europe, Byzantium, and the Intellectual Silence of Rus’ Culture (2018), and Who Wrote That? Authorship Controversies from Moses to Sholokhov (2020), as well as six co-edited collections of articles. His edition of The Povest’ vremennykh let: An Interlinear Collation and Paradosis (2003) received the Early Slavic Studies Association Award for Distinguished Scholarship. Hyunhee Park (Ph.D., Yale University) is Professor of History at the City University of New York, John Jay College and CUNY Graduate Center. She specializes in the history of cross-cultural contacts in East Asia and the Islamic World, in particular Sino-Islamic contacts, the Mongol Empire, and global history, focusing on information/knowledge transfers, including transfers of geographical knowledge, foodways, and distillation technologies. She authored Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds: Cross-Cultural Exchange in Pre-Modern Asia (2012), Soju: A Global History (2021), and thirty articles for academic journals and edited volumes. Stephen Pow (Ph.D., Central European University) has published extensively on Europe’s interactions with the Mongol Empire in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, the Golden Horde Review, and the Journal of Chinese Military History. He recently contributed a chapter to the Routledge Handbook of the Mongols and Central-Eastern Europe edited by Alexander V. Maiorov and Roman Hautala. Morris Rossabi (Ph.D., Columbia University) was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and teaches Chinese and Mongolian history at the City University of New York and Columbia University. He is the author of China and Inner Asia: From 1368 to the Present Day (1975), Khubilai Khan (1986), Voyager from Xanadu (1992), Modern Mongolia (2005), and From Yuan to Modern China and Mongolia: The Writings of Morris Rossabi (2015) and has written or edited twenty other books and dozens of articles. He has also collaborated on catalogs for art exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Antti Ruotsala (Ph.D., Docent, University of Helsinki) is the author of Europeans and Mongols in the Middle of the Thirteenth Century: Encountering the Other (2001). He has translated and co-edited the travel accounts of John of Plano Carpini (2003) and William of Rubruck (2010) in Finnish with MA Sami Jansson. He is also a researcher member of the Finnish Historical Society (2007). Hosung Shim (Ph.D., Indiana University) is a research fellow at the Northeast Asian History Foundation, Korea. He has pursued the history of premodern Central Eurasia by focusing on two prominent empires on the steppe: the Mongol World Empire and the Zhunghar Empire. His research has appeared in the Journal of Song-Yuan Studies, Saksaha: A Journal of Manchu Studies, and Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, among others. Currently, he is preparing a monograph concerning the formation of the Zhunghar Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ippei Shimamura (Ph.D.,The Graduate University of Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI) is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Mongolian Studies at the National Museum of Ethnology, Japan, and the Graduate University of Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI. He is the author of The Roots Seekers: Shamanism and Ethnicity among the Mongol-Buryats (2011, 2014, 2016), Whose Hero is Chinggis Khan?: A Comparative Study of the Representations of Chinggis Khan in Europe, America, Russia, Mongolia, and Japan (2012), and Hip Hop Mongolia: Anthropology of Rhyming Cultures (2021). He won the JSPS Prize from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in 2014 and the Daido Life Encouragement Prize for Area Studies from the Daido Life Foundation. Jesse Sloane (Ph.D., Princeton University) has published a range of studies on the history of East and Northeast Asia. He currently works in the commercial sector in Hong Kong and was previously Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at Yonsei University, where he also served as Program Chair of the Common Curriculum in the Underwood International College. Isenbike Togan (Ph.D., Harvard University) is an honorary member of the Turkish Academy of Sciences. She is also Professor of Inner Asian and Chinese History, Boğaziçi University, Asian Studies Center (part-time) and METU History Department (retired). Her research interests include tribe-state relations, women’s history, and intellectual and aesthetic patterns. Among articles on these subjects,  her publications include Flexibility and Limitation in Steppe Formations (1998) and Eski T’ang Tarihi. 194a. Türkler Bölümü (2006). Josephine van den Bent (Ph.D., University of Amsterdam, 2020) is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the History Department of Radboud University Nijmegen. Her Ph.D. thesis analyzed the representation of the Mongols in the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria, c. 1250–1350 CE. Her research interests include ethnic stereotyping, urban organization, and in general the social and cultural history of the premodern Middle East. István Vásáry (Ph.D., Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest) is Professor Emeritus of Turkic and Central Asian Studies at the Loránd Eötvös University (Budapest), member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and former Ambassador of Hungary to Ankara (1991–1996) and Tehran (1999–2003). He specializes in the medieval history of the Eurasian steppe region and has authored The Golden Horde (1986), Chancellery of the Golden Horde (1987), and History of PreMongol Inner Asia (1993) (all in Hungarian);  Cumans and Tatars. Oriental Military in the Pre-Ottoman Balkans, 1185–1365 (2005); Turks, Tatars and Russians in the 13th – 16th Centuries (2007), and more than 200 articles. Daniel C. Waugh (Ph.D., Harvard University) is Professor Emeritus of History, International Studies and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Washington (Seattle). He has published extensively on the book culture of Muscovite Russia and edited The Silk Road (an annual of the Silkroad Foundation) for over a decade. He has written and translated on Mongol archaeology and participated in excavations of Xiongnu burials in Mongolia. He is currently completing an edition of the Kashgar writings from the early 1920s by the British Consul-General C. P. Skrine. Patrick Wing (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Associate Professor of History at the University of Redlands. His scholarship examines political identity and ideology in the Mongol Empire and its successor states in Iran, as well as in the Mamluk Sultanate. He is the author of The Jalayirids: Dynastic State Formation in the Mongol Middle East (2016). David Curtis Wright (Ph.D., Princeton) is a historian at the University of Calgary. During the 1991–1992 academic year he studied classical Mongolian at Harvard as an Exchange Scholar from Princeton. His undergraduate mentor was Sechin Jagchid, under whose infuence he turned his attention to the history of the pastoral nomadic peoples north of China and China’s interactions with them. He is currently completing a book manuscript on the fnal years of the Mongol conquest of China. He is co-founder and now associate editor of The Journal of Chinese Military History. Qiu Yihao (Ph.D., Fudan University) is currently Associate Professor in the Department of History at Fudan University (Shanghai). He is the author of Studies on the Political History of Yuan Dynasty and Culture Exchanges in Mongol Eurasia (2019). His main research themes are the history of the Yuan Dynasty and the Persian Chinggisid genealogies. 

INTRODUCTION 

 Michael Hope and Timothy 

May Mongolia is intimately tied to its imperial past in the popular historical imagination. It was, after all, the imperial founder, Chinggis Khan (d. 1227), who in 1206 frst unifed the peoples to the north of China to form the Yeke Monggol Ulus (the Great Mongol State). His household provided the foundation for the early Mongol government, his proclamations were adopted as early Mongol law (jasaq), and his many military victories fused together the nomadic peoples of eastern Inner Asia in a new identity and a new ethnonym – Mongol. Today Chinggis Khan is ubiquitous in Mongolia, where his image and name adorn everything from stamps to cigarette packets and hotels, constantly reminding the people of their grand imperial past. Those outside of Mongolia have likewise come to associate it with empire, some might say to the detriment of other aspects of Mongolian history. Yet such was the scale of the Mongol Empire, stretching from the Korean Peninsula in the east to the Danube River and the Mediterranean Sea in the west, that it has played a critical role in shaping modern notions of what empires are. The Mongols, alongside the Romans, the Han, and the British, are immediately summoned to our mind when we invoke the word ‘empire’. Mapping out the contours of the Mongol Empire – its formation, administration, culture, and legacy – is, therefore, a fruitful endeavour for historians of global history and world systems, as much as it is for those more keenly focused upon the history of the steppe and Mongolia itself. The present volume will look to provide an expansive overview of the Mongol Empire’s history, from the rise of the Mongol state to its imperial expansion and its legacy, in addition to opening new lines of inquiry into the social, cultural, and economic dynamics of the Mongol imperium. This volume appears at a critical juncture in the historiography of the Mongol Empire, which is enjoying unprecedented attention from the international academic community. The growing popularity of world history, combined with the emergence of an independent democratic Mongolian republic in 1991, has coincided with the maturation of this research feld. Meanwhile, the limitations placed on earlier researchers, whether conceptual or practical, are gradually being surmounted to produce new and innovative studies. This development is exemplifed by the growing tendency of historians to branch out of their regional studies clusters and embrace broader educational and analytical paradigms. The biggest hurdle to studying the Mongol Empire has traditionally been linguistic, as it would require a polyglot of rare talent to master all of the languages and scripts in which Mongol history was written. Nevertheless, it is possible to study some of the key languages – chief among them Persian and Chinese – in order to write a more comprehensive history of the empire. The insight provided by such a multilingual approach was perhaps best practiced by the great Thomas Allsen but has become far more popular amongst other contemporary scholars, not least of all Paul D. Buell, Michal Biran, Kim Hodong, and their students. Their expertise has helped to advance studies into the social, economic, and cultural history of the Mongols, which David Morgan identifed as the next frontier of research on the Mongol Empire, complementing more traditional research on political and military history.1 There has likewise been a proliferation in the number of histories on women in the Mongol Empire, which scholars have long been cognisant of but have only recently started to discuss expansively, with notable monographs by the likes of Anne F. Broadbridge, Bruno De Nicola, and Bettine Birge among them. Their research has contributed to a fundamental recalibration of our understanding of how the empire functioned. We are, therefore, standing on the cusp of a dramatic reconceptualization of the mechanics and composition of the Mongol Empire. Exciting work is also being done to expand the available source material that historians have at their disposal. New sources are few but signifcant, and the last two decades have seen the publication of the anonymous thirteenth-century Akhbar-i Mughulan, the near contemporaneous Nizam al-Tavarikh of Qadi Baydawi, and the fourteenth-century compendium, known as the Safna-yi Tabriz. We might also add to this list the recent scholarship by Yoni Brack, Dorothea Krawulsky, and Stefan Kamola (among others) into the production of Rashid al-Din’s Jami’ al-Tavarikh, which has seen a greater use of the Persian scholarbureaucrat’s religious texts, as well as his history of the world, to develop a clearer picture of how this central fgure shaped Mongol historiography in his own time.2 This work into the written historical sources has been complemented by equally exciting developments in the material history of the Mongol Empire, which includes research into art and architectural history as well as archaeological research. These studies have the potential to reveal a great deal about people who might otherwise have gone unmentioned or unnoticed in the literary sources, including female patrons and benefciaries, as well as commoners. Chroniclers in this period, with few exceptions, viewed history as the story of great warriors and kings, only mentioning others in exceptional circumstances – al-Dhahabi’s reporting of the birth of quintuplets in Baghdad is one example that leaps to mind.3 But an analysis of the material culture has the potential to inform us of the daily lives of common people. The chapters produced in this volume draw upon and expand these lines of inquiry to produce original research that will advance our knowledge of the broader Mongol Empire. The Routledge Mongol World is, however, also intended to provide an accessible overview of the topic that intersects with other felds – both geographic and thematic. With that in mind, this volume addresses some of the core debates and questions that are currently occupying experts: How are nomadic states formed and constituted? Why did the Mongol Empire disintegrate? To what extent did the Mongols interact with their subject populations, and what did such interactions produce? And who ruled the Mongol Empire? None of these questions permits easy or concise answers, yet by engaging with these topics we hope to spur students and academics alike to probe the similarities and differences between the Mongols and other historical empires, both on the steppe and beyond. For an empire as vast as the Mongols, the best way to achieve this objective is to invite collaboration from experts across the discipline. We are confdent that this volume has assembled an appropriate balance between seasoned leaders in the feld and up-and-coming academics to advance the conversation about one of history’s most important empires. Over the coming chapters they will demonstrate that the Mongols did more than just sack and burn; they enhanced transcontinental connections, facilitating the exchange of ideas, technologies, and goods on a scale not seen again until the nineteenth century. By testing old systems and ideologies, the Mongol Empire reshaped the map of Eurasia to give birth to the early modern age. 

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW 

Mongolia was by many standards an odd place for the largest contiguous empire in world history to emerge. It lacks many ingredients that we might associate with other historical empires. Situated between the Altai Mountains in the west, the Khinggan Mountains to the east, the Sayan Mountains to the north, and the Gobi Desert to the south, the Mongolian plateau lacks many of the advantages that other historical empires possessed. Far from any coastline, the region has low precipitation rates and harsh winters, with arctic winds blowing south out of Siberia causing the temperature to drop below 40 degrees centigrade. The lack of a coastline also renders Mongolia less accessible to maritime trade and settlement, and although the region is watered by a number of river systems, most snaking northward in the direction of Lake Baikal, none of them is particularly large. These conditions have meant that, although farming is certainly possible in many parts of Mongolia, mobile herding (nomadic pastoralism) has been practiced by the region’s inhabitants, alongside hunting, fshing, and trading, since the late Neolithic Period. Extended families migrated between seasonal pastures, with competition for water and grazing land increasing during the Bronze Age, when the process of rudimentary state formation is documented across Asia.4 Although Mongolia shared in many of the broader transcontinental economic and social trends of its neighbours, most notably China, the steppe remained relatively sparsely populated. Indeed, the lack of a strong agrarian economic base or a large population made Mongolia an unlikely place for empire building, but the nomads did possess a number of natural advantages. Mongolia’s climate and isolation provided it with natural protection against its neighbours, and the nomads’ reliance on animals, especially horses, provided the Mongols with a mobility that was unmatched by many sedentary civilizations.5 Drawing upon these factors, Mongolia has played host to a string of regional empires dating from the second century BCE, including the Hunnu (Xiongnu, 209BCE-216CE) Empire, the Sarbi (Xianbei, third-fourth century CE), the Göktürk Empire (552–657 and 682– 744CE), the Uyghur Empire (744–840CE), and the Khitan Liao (916–1125CE), many of which projected their power across the steppe into Central Inner Asia and south towards China. 

Like many earlier empires on the steppe, the Mongol Empire was forged through conquest. Historically, the steppe has passed through periods of greater and lesser integration in which the nomadic population formed large empires before they broke apart into smaller, competing political formations. The extent to which this cycle was the inevitable product of the mobile herders’ lifeway is debatable, but it is clear that the periods of lesser integration tended to coincide with an increased militarization of the nomadic population.6 This was certainly the case after the collapse of the Khitan-Liao Empire (916–1125), which ruled over northern China, Manchuria, and Mongolia and against which the Inner Asian nomads began to form larger political and military groupings. The fall of the Khitan-Liao created a power vacuum, resulting in the movement of people and a competition for precedence on the steppe. The Mongols were just one of the groups who contested control of the Mongolian Plateau during this period, emerging under the leadership of Qabul Khan and his successors sometime in the early twelfth century between the Onan and Kerulen rivers in the northeast of Mongolia. This was a time of great peril as the lack of a central power enabled the rise of a feuding culture in which blood debts, temporary alliances, and oaths regulated social and political life. Yet it was also a time of great dynamism and opportunity in which new reputations could be forged and in which new leaders emerged. Modern historians have tended to downplay the role of individual genius in explaining historical change, yet in a society where personal relations, honour, and reputation played such a big part, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Chinggis Khan was a central component in the unifcation of his people. Shaped by a turbulent and at times tragic upbringing, Chinggis Khan drew upon his experiences to initiate a new political union, built around unfinching loyalty to him. Between 1184 and 1206 he not only defeated his rivals on the steppe, but integrated the conquered people into his union, discarding their earlier tribal identities and replacing them with a sense of shared Mongol unity. Having brought together the people to the north of the Gobi Desert, Chinggis Khan embarked upon one of the most remarkable military expansions in world history. His armies passed into eastern Siberia and northern China before shifting westward and entering East Turkistan, the Ferghana Valley, Mawarannahr, Khwarazm, and the Qipchaq Steppe. Advanced divisions penetrated even further, raiding across Iran and the Pontic Steppe before returning to Mongolia in 1224. Chinggis Khan’s immediate successors added to these achievements, nearly doubling the territory and population under Mongol control. At its height, the Mongol Empire incorporated over 22,000,000 sq. km of territory, spanning most of the known world.7 The Mongols therefore exceeded the earlier nomadic empires by combining the rule of the steppe with the rule of the sown, imposing direct control over the agrarian civilizations of Iran, China, Mawarannahr, and Russia. The question of why the Mongols needed to conquer so much territory has plagued historians since its inception. Most of the contemporary sources attributed the Mongol conquests, like most other important historical changes, to an act of God. Whether Chinese, Islamic, or European, those who survived the Mongol invasions believed that God/Heaven had decided to impose a new world order to address the sinfulness or decadence of the earlier rulers. Modern historians have come up with a number of alternative explanations, which include but are not limited to the desire to achieve control of trans-continental trade routes, an imperial ideology of world domination, climatic shifts, and the need to compensate for socio-economic defciencies within the nomadic political economy.8 Yet many of these explanations continue to perpetuate the same kind of determinism inherent in the earlier primary sources. More recently, one of the present volume’s editors has pointed out that it is extremely unlikely that either Chinggis Khan or his contemporaries ever conceived of amassing such a large empire from the beginning. Rather, the Mongols started a series of wars with neighbouring states to protect their new union. The success of these campaigns caused the Mongols to pivot, during the rule of Chinggis Khan’s successors, toward an ideology of world domination.9 It is, however, certain that by the middle of the thirteenth century the Mongols had embraced the idea of world empire, and they aggressively pushed their claims to new territory in the Mediterranean, Central Europe, and even South and Southeast Asia. Whilst conquest and the control of other people may be the most familiar characteristic of empires, it is not what distinguishes them from other political formations. Empires are typically defned by their uniqueness, most often characterised by their superlative claims to power (whether military, political, spiritual, or cultural). Empires recognise no natural limits to their power, nor do they willingly acknowledge the presence of peers or equals. This kind of exceptionalism was present in the inscriptions of Darius I at his palace in Susa, it was present in the imperial rituals of the Han Dynasty, and it may be glimpsed in contemporary American claims to cultural and political uniqueness. Yet the Mongols were the exemplars of this type of ideology, viewing themselves as the bringers of a new universal order, decreed by Eternal Heaven, in which the entire world would recognise Chinggisid rule. These claims manifested most commonly in the threatening and seemingly maniacal messages contained in the Mongol correspondence with foreign powers, such as the Mamluks of Egypt, the Papacy, and the Sultanate of Delhi, among others. The message of Chinggis Khan’s grandson, Hülegü, to the Ayyubid ruler of Damascus, al-Nasir Yusuf, in 1259 is a prime example: We are the army of God, through us He punishes the despots and tyrants[. . . .] and we have bled the land, orphaned the children, destroyed the worshippers, and made them taste torment, we have made their great [ones] small, and their commanders prisoners. Do you think that you will be safe from us? In a short time you will know what there is to be known, you have been warned.10 This text, though undoubtedly modifed by the Syrian writer al-Suyuti for dramatic effect, does nevertheless convey the same belligerent and uncompromising tone that we fnd in most other Mongol letters calling for submission.11 The Mongols believed that Heaven had made them the supreme rulers of the world, and those who failed to recognise this fact needed to be punished, not just subdued. Yet this same universalism produced a number of other interesting results, most especially in the creation of an imperial culture. From its inception, the Mongol Empire drew upon the resources, manpower, and expertise of their conquered territories in order to preserve and grow their state. The Mongols themselves were a diverse group, including semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers from the ecotone border with the Siberian forests, Turkic-speaking traders based close to the Silk Road, and the former allies and confederates of the Jin Empire in northern China. The Mongols also encouraged a diverse array of people to enter service, even as their  lands were conquered. It needs to be remembered that the Mongols probably had a population no greater than one million people at the beginning of the thirteenth century, many of whom were too old or too young to enter military service.12 It was, therefore, impossible for the Mongols to conquer and then govern such a vast population, let alone territory, without the cooperation of local magnates, offcials, and religious leaders. Indeed, the ability of the Mongols to include and incorporate new people into their empires is one of the most important yet least appreciated aspects of their imperial expansion. Provided that a person submitted to the khan and paid regular tribute, they could expect to retain their property, status, and most importantly, their lives. This inclusiveness made the Mongol court (ordu) a highly cosmopolitan and vibrant environment, where envoys, missionaries, and merchants encountered people and ideas from all over the world. European messengers sent to the qa’an (supreme ruler) in the frst half of the thirteenth century report seeing Korean princes, Nizari Isma‘ilis, and French craftsmen, among others.13 The Mongols took the best of what their subjects had to offer by way of tribute and technical knowledge and projected it outwards in an affrmation of Mongol universalism. Perhaps some of the best examples of this imperial culture were the debates organised by Möngke Qa’an (r. 1251–9) and several of his successors between the various religious leaders of their empire. The Flemish friar William of Rubruck claimed to have participated in one such debate, in which he, along with some less-than-helpful Nestorian Christians, allied with the Muslims to defeat Buddhist monks in a debate about the transmigration of souls.14 By refereeing these debates, the qa’an situated himself as the supreme arbiter of divine knowledge and, therefore, universal power across his vast empire. The movement of people, goods, and ideas that stemmed from this Mongol universalism reshaped the economic map of Eurasia. For a very brief period, most of this vast expanse was ruled by a single government that was favourably disposed towards international commerce, with Mongol princes and princesses often providing the fnance for merchants to bring them exotica and luxury items from the farthest reaches of the empire. This trade initially passed overland via the famous Silk Roads, which connected the producers and market towns of East Asia, Inner Asia, the Near East, North Africa, South Asia, and Europe. Though few merchants would have ever traversed the entire length of the journey from east to west (or for that matter from south to north), some did, accelerating the transcontinental exchange which had already been under way for over a millennium prior to Mongol rule. This trade was damaged by the breakup of the Mongol Empire into a number of autonomous regions between 1260 and 1264, but much overland trade continued via the Qipchaq steppe. Moreover, the maritime Silk Roads were revived after the Mongol conquest of the Southern Song dynasty in 1279, which saw trade across the Indian Ocean increase in volume and value. Scholars are only now beginning to appreciate the contribution of the Mongol Empire to this process, which saw the spread of distillation technology, pulse medicine, and cartographic information throughout the empire.15 There was also an exchange of goods, like materia medica, especially plants and food; experimentation with new strains of rice and even new fbres was carried out. Whilst silk was shipped west to the Near East with porcelain from China and ramie from Korea, cotton was sent east from central Inner Asia, and gold brocade (known as nasij) was sent to Europe.16 New patterns of consumption  and style were pioneered by the Mongols, who were always among the frst to faunt new trends. The combination of the Mongol conquests and the enhanced trade carried out through ‘the Chinggis Exchange’ transformed the demographic map of Eurasia. Many old centres of population, government, and trade, such as Baghdad, Quanzhou, and Constantinople, were complemented by emergent centres, such as Moscow, Tabriz, and Andijan, which beneftted from the patronage of Mongol rulers as well as their proximity to the new networks of exchange. Likewise, the migration of different populations, either voluntary or forced, saw the rise of new ethnonyms and identity groups, such as the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, and Hazaras. The spread of ideas and culture was no less profound as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were characterised by the growing Islamization of much of Inner, Southeast, and South Asia, as well as the spread of Neo-Confucianism throughout China, Vietnam, and the Korean Peninsula. Indeed, the potential for the Mongol Empire to serve as a conduit for ideas was identifed earliest by the Persian bureaucrat,‘Ala al-Din ‘Ata Malik Juvayni, who argued that the empire had reinvigorated Islam: And as for the children of the polytheists, some have fallen into the hands of the Moslems in the baseness of servitude and have attained the dignity of Islam. . . . And because of the auspiciousness of the blessings of the people of the faith, wherever the eye roameth, it seeth from the multitude of believers in the One God a vast city and in the midst of the darkness a bright light.17 These changes were no less profound for those living outside of the Mongol Empire, who had to re-evaluate their place in the world in relation to the Mongols. This was most true of Europe, which, shortly after the crusades, was introduced to new worlds and potential new converts to Christianity. European merchants, especially the Genoese and Venetians, were given unprecedented access to Mongol ports in the Black Sea and further inland to the Volga River and Iran, which improved European knowledge about the more distant recesses of Asia and allowed men like Marco Polo and Francesco Balducci Pegolotti to write detailed guidebooks for fellow traders on how to make their way east, what to buy and where, and all the different weights, measures, and currencies employed over the route. These books contained fantastic accounts of the wealth to be found in the Mongol court: To this city also are brought articles of greater cost and rarity, and in greater abundance of all kinds, than to any other city in the world. For people of every description, and from every region, bring things (including all the costly wares of India, as well as the fne and precious goods of Cathay itself with its provinces), some for the sovereign, some for the court, some for the city which is so great, some for the crowds of Barons and Knights, some for the great hosts of the Emperor which are quartered round about; and thus between court and city the quantity brought in is endless.18 The stories of the wealth and power of the qa’ans fred the European imagination and pushed for new exploratory excursions, which played no small part in the European discovery of the Americas. Marco Polo’s travelogue was read widely among the  navigators and conquistadors of the ffteenth century, with Christopher Columbus and Hernan Cortes both deriving inspiration from his work. Nevertheless, the Mongol Empire only remained a unifed entity for a short period of time. The steppe empires of eastern Inner Asia were often regarded as the shared property of the imperial family and their vassals, a practice which saw the earlier Hunnu and Gök Türk empires divided between eastern and western branches. The Mongol qa’ans also apportioned shares (qubi) to imperial relatives, in addition to ordus (camps) and, in some cases, entire dominions (uluses). The qa’ans were, therefore, expected to consult with their relatives on matters of imperial policy, as much as they were expected to oversee and manage the business of state. One of the great strengths of Chinggis Khan and his successors had been their ability to win support from a diverse constellation of actors, both Mongol and foreign, for their imperial enterprise, yet this same independence of action also fed centrifugal tendencies that emerged in the mid-thirteenth century. With individual princes building power bases far from the imperial centre and no clear system of succession, divisions emerged and resulted in bloody purges in 1251 before a civil war in 1260 saw the empire fracture into four divisions, each ruled by a descendant of Chinggis Khan: the Jochid Ulus (Golden Horde) ruled the territory between the Danube and the Irtysh River; the Ilkhanate controlled the area between the Amu Darya and Euphrates rivers; the Yuan, which was notionally the superior branch, included Mongolia, Tibet, Korea, and China; whilst the Middle Empire incorporated the Tarim Basin, Mawarannahr, and everything between.19 Though these separate states each continued to pay lipservice to the idea of a unifed Mongol Empire and occasionally agreed to temporary alliances, they were de facto autonomous states, which spent more time fghting one another than their neighbours. The division of the empire halted imperial expansion across most of the empire, with the notable exception of the Yuan in southern China. These successor states continued to fourish for the better part of a century, during which time they developed along separate political, cultural, and economic trajectories. In each case, there was a cross-cultural fertilization and assimilation of the Mongols and their subject population. In Iran, the Qipchaq Steppe, and Mawarannahr, this meant the conversion of the Mongols to Islam, whereas the Yuan embraced Tantric Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism. There was also a greater willingness to learn the languages of the conquered people, albeit these were not always spoken at court. The Jochids quickly began to speak a strain of Qipchaq Turkic, while the Ilkhan Ghazan (r. 1295–1304) not only spoke Persian, but also assumed the Perso-Islamic title of ‘Padshah-i Islam’ (Emperor of Islam). In some cases, the perceived identifcation of the court with a region created further tensions and internal divisions, as was the case between Qubilai and his relatives in Mongolia, who came to believe that he had neglected them after moving the capital to Daidu (modern Beijing). Yet the Mongol successor states continued to correspond with one another, and all retained their former reverence for the laws and principles (jasaq and yosun) of Chinggis Khan. Imperial rituals and culture therefore continued to maintain the illusion of unity, even if political interests divided them in actuality. The Mongolian successor states began to disintegrate at different points throughout the fourteenth century, and although they had long been ruled separately, their decline can be traced to a number of shared causes. The fourteenth century was a turbulent time across Eurasia, with the plague spreading west from China  to Europe and North Africa, decimating anywhere between a third to a half of the total population, with marked severity between 1346 and 1354.20 The plague was followed by what climate historians have termed a Little Ice Age, which only reached its nadir in the 1370s.21 These factors, combined with other regional catastrophes, decimated the Mongols’ revenues, making it diffcult to maintain a functioning government. With the imperial centres weakened, growing regionalism took hold as princes and non-Chinggisid commanders (qarachu) began to carve out small islands of infuence with which to challenge their former leaders. The Ilkhanate disintegrated in 1335 and was followed soon after by the Chaghadaid rulers of the Middle Empire in 1346. The Yuan were pushed back to Mongolia by the Ming, who formed a new dynasty in China beginning in 1368. Meanwhile, the Jochid Ulus was wracked by a period of division and civil war, known as the War of Five Contenders, beginning in 1359. Hence, with the exception of the Yuan, none of the Mongol successor states was conquered by a new empire or people. This allowed the Mongols to reconstitute themselves in many parts of the former empire, most notably the Jochids under the leadership of Toqtamish, the Chaghadaids in East Turkistan, and the Northern Yuan in Mongolia. Yet it also allowed the formation of new hybrid dynasties, such as the Noqais and the Jalayirids, which were founded by the descendants of Mongol commanders, though infused with a devotion to Islam. The most signifcant of these hybrid dynasties was the one founded by Timur, who, in a military career spanning more than four decades, managed to conquer most of the former Ilkhanate, Middle Empire, and the Qipchaq Steppe, sounding the death knell for what was left of the Jochid Ulus. It should not, however, be forgotten that Timur was himself of Mongol descent, and his rise to power was premised upon Mongol rituals, symbols, and principles of legitimate authority. Indeed, it seems that the most important and enduring Mongol legacy was to shape the political confguration of Eurasia at the beginning of the ffteenth century. There is, therefore, a great deal that research of the Mongol Empire has to tell us about the birth of the early modern age. This is as true of the European experience as it is of states and civilizations further east. Until very recently, historians were prone to dismiss the Mongols as barbaric invaders and interlopers who disrupted the natural historical evolution of the peoples with whom they came into contact. More recently, however, historians of the Islamic core territories have probed the infuence that the Mongols exerted on the formation of the later Gunpowder Empires, namely the Ottoman Empire, the Mughal Empire, and the Safavid Empire. These studies have provided a greater recognition of the role that Mongol universalism played, albeit with Timurid mediation, in the development of new millenarian claims to divine-right monarchy among these dynasties. Their rulers could claim a direct connection with the Chinggisids, whether through blood descent, as was the case for the Mughals, or through the intellectual genealogy that tied them back to thinkers at the Mongol court, who portrayed the khans as divinely inspired revivers of Islamic law and belief (mujadids), as lords of the auspicious conjunction (sahib qiran), or as messianic guides and protectors (mahdi).22 A similar infuence was exercised on most other early modern successors to the Mongol Empire, including the Russian Empire, where historians have documented the institutional debt that the tsars owed to the Mongols, inheriting titles, offces, and even much of their army and aristocracy from the Mongols.23 Likewise, in Ming China, an early rejection of the foreign rulers was quickly replaced by a more nuanced assessment of Mongol rule in the hopes of incorporating the former territories of the exiled Yuan dynasty.24 Yet the clearest claim to an enduring Mongol legacy can be found in Inner Asia, much of which continued to be ruled by descendants of Chinggis Khan into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Only European colonialism and the Industrial Revolution forced a shift towards a new governing paradigm, this time dictated by the empires of northwestern Europe. 

OVERVIEW OF THE CHAPTERS 

The themes introduced above will be expanded upon throughout the forthcoming chapters in three sections dedicated to the topics of Conquest and State Formation, the Social History of the Mongol Empire, and the Mongols in World History. The frst section begins by addressing the life and career of Chinggis Khan and the Mongol conquests (Isenbike Togan and Timothy May). These subjects have been the topic of much revision over past years with a number of excellent biographies produced on the imperial founder by Ruth Dunnell, Michal Biran, and Timothy May, among others.25 The history of the Mongol conquests has also seen a great deal of debate, with historians traditionally treating the campaigns against the Near East, East Asia, and the Qipchaq Steppe/Europe as separate fronts. More recently, however, Alexander V. Maiorov and Stephen Pow have suggested that the initial Mongol foray into the Caucasus and the Pontic Steppe, as well as the later campaigns against the Caucasus, the Qipchaq, and Rus’ in 1236, may have been part of a much larger ‘Western Campaign.’26 Their arguments are given credence by the fact that all campaigns were planned centrally by the qa’an and his advisors until the dissolution of the empire following the death of Möngke Qa’an in 1259. Their chapters on the invasion of Europe and the invasion of the Rus’ will be partnered with chapters on the Mongol conquests of the Qara Khitai, the Qipchaqs, the Jazira, Rum, and Syria by Timothy May, whose ‘tsunami strategy’ still prevails in most scholarship on Mongol campaign strategy.27 The campaigns against the Qara Khitai, the Qipchaqs, and the Jazira have been under-researched by historians who have traditionally focused upon the so-called ‘core territories’ of Asia. There is, however, a growing appreciation that the conquest of central Inner Asia held no less signifcance for the Mongols and played a decisive role in the formation of the early Mongol state.28

 These campaigns will therefore be brought into focus in this study alongside the Mongol conquest of Transcaucasia, which will be detailed by John Latham-Sprinkle, whose recent discovery of the former Alan capital of Magas helps to orient the later Mongol invasions of the region in 1220–3 and 1238–40. New light will also be shed on the Mongol conquests of Iran (Beatrice Forbes Manz) and China (David Curtis Wright). The Mongol conquest was rapid, both during the lifetime of Chinggis Khan and then under his successors, who gradually built an administrative structure to incorporate these new people and territories over the course of the thirteenth century. The foundation was laid by Chinggis Khan, whose household guard, or keshig (Michael Hope), served as the most important component of government and whose proclamations came to form the basis of early common law (jasaq, Denise Aigle). Chinggis Khan also set up the framework for other logistical infrastructure, such as the postal system (jam, Hosung Shim), courts and judges (jarqu and jarquchin, Florence Hodous), and marriage alliances with confederate families (quda, Anne F. Broadbridge), who retained some authority in the empire. These institutions were all expanded and developed further by Chinggis’s descendants as part of the four Chinggisid successor states: the Jochid Ulus (Roman Hautala), the Yuan (Xiaolin Ma), the Ilkhanate (George Lane), and the Middle Empire (Michael Hope). Indeed, Lhamsuren Munkh-Erdene’s chapter on the terms ulus (state) and irgen (people) will elucidate how the growth of at least two of these successor states was initiated by Chinggis Khan himself, when he appointed his eldest sons Jochi and Chaghadai as ‘princes in charge of ulus,’ thereby giving them armies and pastures separate from, though still nominally subject to, the qa’an. What life was like inside the Mongol Empire will be discussed under the heading of the Social History in the Mongol Empire. This topic incorporates a number of different discussions about the relationship between the Mongols and their subjects, gender relations within the Mongol Empire, and daily life in the Mongol Empire. These topics naturally intersect and overlap. It would, for example, be diffcult to discuss gender relations within the Mongol Empire without querying how these processes played out in Islamic Iran, where the Turks and Mongols pushed women into more prominent positions of authority.29 On the other hand, recent analysis of Yuan-period juridical manuals by Bettine Birge shows that Mongol policies to maintain the integrity of military households played a role in diminishing the rights of wives and widows in China.30 Chapters on elite women and consort families (Anne F. Broadbridge and Bruno De Nicola) will explore the intersection of gender, imperialism, and cultural exchange in the Mongol Empire. Religion was also a key area of dialogue between the conquered population and the Mongols, who were eager to avoid offending local deities, whilst at the same time using religion and religious offcials as a device to consolidate control. Chapters on Nestorian Christianity (Bayarsaikhan Dashdondog), Islamization (Ishayahu Landa), Buddhism (Brian Baumann), Judaism (Na’ama O. Arom), Daoism, and Confucianism (Jesse Sloane) will highlight the often complex relationship between the Mongols and the religious leaders and intellectuals whose power grew as a result of close ties to the imperial court. 

These ties often resulted in direct patronage of religious offcials but also of the institutions that they oversaw. In the Islamic world (Sheila Blair), these took the form of mosques, madrasas, and khanaqas, whilst in China (Shane McCausland) we see favour shown towards a constellation of Confucian and Buddhist temples, academies, and shrines, in addition to the production of portraits, carpets, and hangings, which were intended to glorify both deities and the patron. Such patronage appears to have been a long-standing tradition among the nomads, with archaeological research in Mongolia uncovering sites of temporary shrines and even palaces dating to the period of Chinggis Khan’s rise (Ulambayar Erdenebat, Jargalan Burentogtokh, and William Honeychurch). These ruins testify to the complexity of life on the steppe, even after the Mongol conquest, with the nomads moving between temporary summer and winter capitals in the Jochid Ulus (Daniel C. Waugh) and indeed throughout the rest of the empire as well. Where the Mongols derived their wealth and how it was apportioned are also critical to understanding relationships of patronage and production. Initially, the Mongols ruled their conquered territories according to their own principles, dividing  the population into decimal units through a census and assigning Mongol divisions the revenue of a population centre. This military government was highly exploitative in many regions, especially those where the Mongols continued to engage in hostilities with the local rulers. Yet even during the reign of Chinggis Khan there was a shift towards a more centralised and bureaucratic style of government, which was expanded by his successors, Ögödei (r. 1229–1241) and Möngke (r. 1251–9).31 Under this system, Mongol governors (daruqachin) were appointed to population centres to administer a census and oversee tax collection, usually in coordination with native offcials. These daruqachin would also ensure that the existing offce holders in a submitted territory remained loyal to the state. The taxes often went by a number of different names and could vary between different regions of the empire, hinting at the sometimes pragmatic, sometimes rushed process through which they were imposed (István Vásáry). The reign of Möngke saw increased coherence and centralization and in many instances local offcials and princes, such as the Rurikids of Russia, amassed great power as they were deputised by the khans. Merchants were also appointed to oversee this process, in addition to supplementing the wealth of royal treasuries through trade partnerships (ortoq) (Colleen C. Ho and Paul D. Buell). There was not, however, a unitary fnancial system, as illustrated by the inconsistent minting of Mongol coins (Judith Kolbas), which may have been intended to mitigate any further destabilization following the initial conquests. Nevertheless, the Mongols did employ their coinage to disperse political messaging to their newfound subjects and, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, moves were made to standardise currency, weights, and measures in order to facilitate greater trade across the empire. With this trade came a number of new innovations in the feld of medical science (Paul D. Buell), astral science, and cartography (Hyunhee Park), which further entwined wealthy Mongol patrons with intellectual and artisanal leaders throughout the empire. The nature of these interactions and their lasting effects will be covered in the third section of the book under parts dedicated to The Mongols in the Eyes of the Conquered, Beyond the Borders of the Mongol Empire, and The Mongol Legacy. For the most part these topics can only be probed from the perspective of the conquered people, since little survives from the Mongols themselves, especially in the later years of the empire when the Mongols began to patronise the production of manuscripts in the vernacular or sacred languages of the subject people. Nevertheless, we are able to glean some of the authentic Mongol viewpoints from correspondence, such as those between the Chinggisids and the Papacy, which have been preserved in the Vatican archives (Antti Ruotsala). These letters show an evolving attitude towards the Pope and the other European potentates as the empire evolved from a unifed and expansionary entity to a series of competing polities seeking for allies outside their borders. Although the traditional Mongol claims to universal sovereignty are preserved in the Mongol correspondence with Rome, they were nuanced by the desire of the Ilkhans in particular to fnd partners against the Mamluks. In other sources we can see how the Mongols infuenced the writing of history, with the Persian (Michael Hope) and Tibetan monastic chronicles (Soyoung Choi) clearly drawing upon now-lost Mongol sources to advance a new trend of world history, necessitated by the universal ambitions of the Mongol rulers. Elsewhere, in Korea (Lee Kang Hahn), Russia (Donald Ostrowski), China (Morris Rossabi and Michael C. Brose), and even the Caucasus (Bayarsaikhan Dashdondog), views of the Mongols and Mongol rule altered violently over time based upon fuctuations in relations between the Mongols and those writing the histories. The reach of the Mongol Empire was not, however, confned to the territories under its control. Indeed, merchants, scholars, missionaries, and refugees passed freely back and forth between the Mongol Empire and its neighbours, resulting in a rich cultural exchange with the wider world. 

These interactions included tribute missions from Southeast Asia, the incorporation of Mongol troops into the Lithuanian aristocracy, and the production of polyglot phrasebooks in Yemen.32 In some cases, substantial Mongol populations settled in the periphery of the Mongol Empire, acting as vessels of cultural transmission beyond the empire. Large diaspora communities settled in the Delhi Sultanate (Michael Hope) and in the Mamluk Empire (Josephine van den Bent), most being political refugees or captives enslaved after battles. In both cases, the Mongols appear to have retained their ethnic identity long after they had converted to Islam, as it marked them out as belonging to the martial elite of those communities. In other parts of Eurasia, the Mongols were either reluctant or unable to settle, as was the case with Japan (Li Narangoa), Vietnam, Indonesia, and Burma (James A. Anderson), which were repeatedly invaded by the Mongols but never fully integrated into the empire. Nevertheless, later generations would build national founding myths upon the heroism displayed in resisting the Mongol armies. Indeed new identities were often formed as much in response to the threat of Mongol invasion as they were by assimilation into the Mongol Empire. Precisely when or if this Mongol infuence ever abated is the topic of the fnal section of the book, which charts the continuation of Chinggisid rule in Mongolia (Ippei Shimamura), while the Mongol legacy is also traced under the Ming (Qiu Yihao), the Timurids (Evrim Binbaş), and across the Near East (Patrick Wing). 

 

  

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