Main Body
12
Patrick Patterson and Brian Parkinson
INTRODUCTION
DISCOVERY
In 522 BCE, Achaemenid King Cambyses II (r.520-522 BCE) fatally stabbed himself while leaping onto his horse. To us this may seem unlikely, but Cambyses had to place his hands on the high back of the horse and jump hard to mount. His dagger, hanging from a belt or cuirass, likely got tangled in the process between his body or leg and stuck him deeply enough to kill. The reason for this messy and dangerous way of mounting a horse was the lack of stirrups, which would not be invented for another 600 years after Cambyses II’s unfortunate accident.
The stirrup, particularly those made of metal and shaped in a kind of loop that encompassed the entire width of the foot, was a vital invention. Stirrups are a safe way to get into the saddle and provide riders with tremendous stability and power while riding. Having a pair of stirrups connected to the saddle of a horse allows the rider to stand while mounted, which makes everything from swinging a sword to shooting a bow to shouting orders more effective. Stirrups provide the stability to put force behind a lance or a spear, to work with the horse while jumping, and to turn and otherwise maneuver sharply in small spaces.
All these things create clear advantages in war, and that was probably the first use for stirrups. They also make hunting more effective. But stirrups are not just for riding with violent purposes. They provide advantages for any kind of riding, and today, few people ride without them.
The stirrup may have changed the world. Historian Lynn White has shown convincingly that the adoption of the stirrup in Europe between 732 and 755 CE was far more than just a technological change. By making mounted warriors stable and effective, stirrups opened the door to the development of heavy cavalry – armored, mounted fighters wielding braced long lances. These were so effective against foot soldiers that they became a crucial part of Europe’s armies in the Middle Ages. White argues that their importance and high cost created the possibility of the development of Europe’s social classes and feudal landholding system. In this sense, the stirrup helped reorganize social relationships.
Stirrups are thought to have been invented within the horse cultures of Central Asia. Although we commonly associate the successes of Central Asian steppe peoples in warfare (the Xiongnu, the Turks and the Mongols) with a special level of brutality, in fact, they were no more brutal than fighters from societies based on cities and towns supported by agriculture. What set Central Asian societies apart was their knack for innovation. The stirrup is likely one of those innovations.
Although the earliest extant metal stirrups found so far have been dated to the 320s CE and were found in China, artistic representations of stirrups have been found in Central Asia as early as 100 C.E. It is still not clear, though, how well-developed the stirrups may have been. Some are stone relief images in which the stirrup has worn away so badly that scholars cannot see details well enough to confirm them. Most depictions are two-dimensional, so it may be that the stirrup represented was only a single one on one side of the horse, made only for the purpose of mounting, and perhaps only a toe stirrup at that, conveying none of the advantages of two full-foot stirrups as they are used today. Thus, the evolution of the technology and the beginning of its use in hunting, maneuvering, and warfare are still unclear.
Central Asian nomads have long been famous for their horse-riding skills. Even today, children who live in rural Mongolia often learn to ride almost before they can walk. Most learn to keep their seat without stirrups, and even when riding bareback they can control the horse with the light touch of their hands, knees, and feet. However, riding to hunt or herd can require much more stability than riding for transportation. According to historian David Morgan, it was these skills that made Central Asians into formidable military forces. When hunting, the Mongols would alternately ride silently, then make noise, show themselves, and use the hills and landforms to hide, in order to move all of the animals in the area toward the final enclosure. When that was reached, they circled the animals at a distance and killed them using their powerful bows.
According to Morgan and other scholars, these were the same techniques used by Central Asians when they fought wars. Mongols were able to ride in formation for days at a time without stopping, making them the fastest armies in history before the 20th century. They used their speed and maneuverability to draw out, then encircle enemies, and their mounted archery skills to devastate their opponents at a distance, without having to engage the long lances and spears that other armies carried. They operated in large groups and coordinated over great distances. Mongol mounted armies were mass affairs that led to the pacification of the Silk Road. None of these things would have been possible without the stirrup.
With their ability to ride horses long distances and their skills in close combat and archery, once they had control of the territories along the Silk Routes, the Mongols could use mounted patrols stabilized by their stirrups to police the trade routes, making sure thieves and killers were punished, and that all traders paid their taxes and the bills. This enforcement led eventually to a Pax Mongolica, or general peace, enforced by the Mongols, which encouraged trade across the continent of Eurasia. The Mongol reputation for cruelty exists, but the Mongol Empire was not built entirely based on brutality or terror. It was likely also built on the stirrup, and like the stirrup, this empire provided stability and power in the first era of global conquest and trade.
OVERVIEW
Central Asia’s largest geographical feature is the great steppe. This is a wide flat unforested area of grassland that crosses the entire Eurasian continent from West to East. The people who inhabited this area have had a large impact on human history. Its geography, characterized by long winters, short growing seasons, and relatively low rainfall, with consequently low levels of agricultural productivity, means those living in Central Asia have long been supported by herding and hunting more than growing plant-based food sources. This meant that cities were less likely to grow up here than in other parts of the world producing agricultural surpluses. Yet Central Asian societies have been both innovators and caretakers of historical transformations. We often think of Central Asia as dominated by the Turkish and Mongol Empires, associating brutality with the Mongol conquest of Eurasia. That brutality was real though no worse than the savagery practiced by “civilizations” in Eurasia. Europeans, Chinese, and Indians may have developed towns and cities, but they also developed ghastly forms of violence and torture. The Mongols did not have a monopoly on atrocities.
As is frequently the case, history is often oversimplified when addressing the subject of Central Asia. Until recently, historians tended to categorize Central Asian societies as “horse-riding nomads,” or “barbarians.” They did so in contrast to the “civilizations” or complex urban societies of Eurasia. New studies are challenging this view. Many now question the idea that there is a qualitative divide between societies that organize themselves with cities at the center and those that follow seasonal migratory patterns in dispersed population groups. A number of human societies only lived in their cities for part of the year, if they even had such centers at all. Yet this does not seem to suggest any lack of societal complexity.
Central Asian societies adopted a dispersed way of living. This was in part due to the low capacity for agriculture in the steppe area they inhabited. It was also a cultural and political choice. They carried their belongings and their dwellings with them. They developed sophisticated horse-riding, hunting, herding, and trading skills. They were organizationally flexible. They often unified into large groups when threatened from the outside. They also frequently dispersed into small groups to cope with the necessities of survival on the steppe. They lived in territories between other societies in Eurasia. Their location gave easy access to rich population centers. Eventually, they conquered the largest land empire in history.
In this chapter, we look at three key historical forces that together transformed Central Asian history: the Turkic migrations, the expansion of Islam, and the Mongol conquest of Eurasia. These interlinked stories involve a much longer period of historical activity than most of the chapters in this book, as there were large spans of time between Chinese historical records of the Xiongnu people and the formation of the tribal confederacy that came to be known as the Mongols. For that reason, it is best to think of the content of this chapter in terms of change and continuity. The changes over time must also be understood within the continuities of Central Asian history and geography. Central Asia displayed a remarkable ability to embrace foreign influences, such as the Turkic migrations, expansion of Islam, and Mongol conquest, internalizing them and making them its own, much like an interesting stew. Situated at the crossroads of many empires, Central Asia was tucked in between the Chinese, Europeans, Arabs, and Indians. There, in the middle of these grand civilizations, just along the Silk Road, this region connected the East to the West and linked it to major patterns in world history. It was from there that these external forces saturated the area and shaped the course of its history.
We begin with a question. Who were the people of Central Asia? Limited research, the quite literal sands of time, the nomadic nature of many Central Asian societies, and modern romantic notions of brutal horse-mounted warrior tribes terrorizing peaceful villages, all contribute to a lack of availability of good information, and the burying of facts under mounds of myth and storytelling. Beginning around 706 CE, Islam spread into Central Asia. This new faith caused permanent political and cultural changes. Transoxiana, the area on either side of the Oxus, or Amu Darya River in what is now Turkmenistan East of the Caspian Sea, was similar to most other parts of Central Asia where Islam took hold. The existing Turkic and Persian cultures persisted despite the conversion of their populations from earlier religions to Islam. As Islam changed them, they also changed Islam. Islam integrated local traditions surprisingly readily. Some traditions remained because they were useful in promoting conversion to the faith. Thus a process of both borrowing new values and preserving older local traditions occurred. Once again we see both change and continuity in the history of Central Asia.
The Mongol conquest of Central Asia between the early 13th and the early 14th centuries is the most well-known story of the steppe peoples. The Mongols conquered the largest land empire in history in a surprisingly short time. Their speed of conquest was only superseded in World War II, during the mid-20th century. Mongol governance of the Silk Road increased world trade, leading to a period of early globalization. Mongol monetary and banking policies and methods created the framework for world trade and finance. In many ways, the Mongols under Chinggis (Genghis) Khan can be credited with modernizing our world.
Chapter Objectives:
- Describe some key elements in the historical debate over whether the term “civilization” should include nomadic societies.
- Explain the development of the “warrior” reputation of Central Asian nomads.
- Describe the events that led to the formation of the Silk Road.
- Analyze the spread of Islam in Central Asia as a social and economic as well as a religious phenomenon.
- Describe the social and organizational realities of Mongol society that led to the conquest of such a large territory by such a small population.
- Define the term “Pax Mongolica” and explain why it had more historical impact than the famous Mongol methods of warfare.
Chapter Terms:
Transoxiana, Xiongnu, Mongol Horse, Wang Zhaojun, Silk Routes, Islamization, Sufism, Temujin (Chinggis Khan), Turkification, Golden Horde, Chagatai Khanate, Khanate of the Ilkhans, Tax Farming, Timur
GEOGRAPHY OF CENTRAL ASIA
Think About It…
- How did the geography of Central Asia have an impact on its history?
Unlike many other regions of the world, Central Asia lacks the distinct topographical features necessary to delineate boundaries. Nonetheless, there are several broad geographical zones in Central Asia. Perhaps the most well-known topographic area in Central Asia is the great Eurasian Steppe, a latitudinal belt of grassland that stretches from Eastern Europe through Mongolia. That grassland is interrupted by the Tarim Basin, the greatest rain shadow in the world, bordered to the north by the Tianshan Mountains and a great forested plateau that stretches all the way to the frozen north, and in the south by the Kunlun Shan mountain range, the Tibetan Plateau, and the Himalayas. In this region so little rain falls that some modern-day local movie theaters are built without roofs to allow cooling air to flow through the structure.
In the Tarim Basin, the Taklamakan Desert (in Uighur, Taklamakan means “the place from which nothing living ever emerges”) is the most arid desert in the world, though its temperature varies drastically between day and night, and between summer and winter. The Taklamakan Desert is a growing desert, its sands adding roughly one meter of new desert territory on all sides every year. To the south of the Taklamakan Desert within the shadow of the Kunlun Shan mountains is the lowest point in the Tarim Basin, where snow runoff from the mountains gathers in small lakes and rivers that allow for small oasis towns and cities to exist. Beyond the Tarim Basin to the West and the East is the great steppe where nomadic horse cultures flourished. To get to the south and west of the steppe involved crossing the Hindu Kush and the Pamir mountains, where the highest mountain passes in the world are located – some are so high that humans frequently pass out from lack of oxygen. In short, the Tarim Basin and the mountains surrounding it provided one of the largest geographical barriers to human migration in history. Still, nomadic cultures made the journey.
Located to the south of the steppe was the core of Central Asia, an area known as Transoxiana. This is a dry region that lies beyond the Oxus River, known today as the Amu Darya. In Transoxiana, trade settlements and irrigated agriculture developed along the Amu Darya and Syr Darya watersheds. Here, many societies that started out as either nomadic or sedentary eventually settled down to agriculture and trade. The products that came from this region included much more than wool, though that has always been a primary export. There was also trade in frankincense and myrrh, two ancient and very expensive perfumed oils as well as lapis lazuli, one of the most prized semi-precious stones in history, and the growing of grain. Located to the far south lies the mountainous area of Khorasan, the cultural capital of Persia. This was one of the most active regions of the ancient world, a crossroads where trade, language and religious exchange, pitched battles and political and scientific innovations thrived prior to the appearance of the Mongols.
Environment in History – Central Asian Grasslands
Question to answer:
- How did those living on the steppes support themselves without cultivated agriculture?
The Central Asian steppes, home to several tribes and center of one of the greatest world empires, were a challenging grasslands environment. The term ‘grasslands’ refers to regions that are relatively arid, receive only 10 to 30 inches of rain per year, and have less than one tree per acre. These nature zones (biomes) are the transition regions between completely arid regions, and the more irrigated, vegetated and forested areas that can be productively farmed and readily settled. Different regional names are given to grasslands; they are called prairies in North America, the veld in South Africa, the pampas in South America, savannas in Africa and steppes in Central Asia. It is estimated almost 25% to 30% of land on the planet is made up of grasslands.
The Central Asian steppes are the largest contiguous grasslands, extending almost 1/5 of the way around the globe. These steppes are more arid than other grasslands, given to severe cold and extreme weather, constant strong winds, and they experience little humidity due to their location far from seas and behind mountains that block moisture. Though there are rivers, these are erratic and can shift course, even dry up and disappear. Rainfall is limited and inconsistent, which means few trees. For the animals and tribal communities in the steppes, drought was a constant and deadly threat. Agriculture was not possible due to lack of adequate precipitation or ground water for irrigation, and no large cities grew, as they could not be supported.
Survival in these conditions required not just mobility but stoicism. Several different tribal peoples eked out a marginal existence in this environment, reliant on a semi-nomadic lifestyle of moving with herds of domestic animals, dependent on the horses and camels that provided an essential movement. Though there was no cultivated agriculture, soil erosion still occurred from strong winds and over-grazing if adequate movement was not maintained. This pastoral lifestyle was based on maximizing nutrients derived from the grasslands environment, transforming limited water and scrub grasses into food and economic resources in the form of animal products: meat, milk, bones, skins, and furs. Animals highly valued were those enabling greater mobility and transport of goods e.g. horses, camels, donkeys, goats and yaks.
Pastoralists living in Central Asian grasslands played a critical role in regional and even world economic developments as ‘middlemen’ between settled cities. Having cultivated an agile mobility based on their horse culture, they traversed these ‘seas of grass’, moving goods and fostering interchange along Asian trade routes. Steppe tribes were valued as the primary suppliers of highly desired horses and sheep, as well as for supplying neighboring societies with hazelnuts, swords, beeswax, honey and even falcons. Amber was a highly desired product supplied from the steppes, as were animal pelts.
Yet relations between settled agriculturalists and pastoralists were chronically tense. Threats, invasions and raids from pastoralists increased as they mastered the arts of war, in particular fighting on horseback and the application of hunting skills to war such as archery. Tribal peoples raided cities for needed supplies or to intimidate, and did so with relative impunity as forces from the cities did not have the requisite mobility nor knowledge of the vast steppes to effectively retaliate. Geography and the sparse resources available on these steppes played a part in fostering these complex relations, as “(t)he limits of the Steppe environment also compelled pastoral nomads to draw on resources outside the grasslands, either through commerce or conquest” (Isenberg 2014, 140).
The vast grassy plains known as the Eurasian Steppe traverse the northern part of the continent, from the borders of Poland to the Pacific Ocean. These grasslands lent themselves to a nomadic life of animal herding and hunting from very early in history. The Xiongnu in the northeast and the Tatars in the west both rode and herded horses, goats and cattle and were mostly nomadic. They did not build settlements or cities. They tended to live in individual family groups for much of the year, coming together in tribal groups for certain seasons and festivals, and in times of war. For the most part, they lived in one place for a season, then moved on with their herds.
Young Central Asian children who lived on the steppe learned to ride horses early in their lives, and by the time they were adults were extremely skilled. Most were able to guide their horses by shifting body weight or moving their knees. This allowed them to free both hands for use in handling bows and spears, which they used for hunting. Hunting techniques involved riders working together as a group to lure, surround, and drive their prey into carefully laid traps where they could then surround them and shoot at close range, maximizing their kill and minimizing damage to other species. They tended to use every portion of the animals they killed – meat for food, sinew and bone for making weapons and tools, skin and fur for their tents, clothing, carpets and blankets. Their domestic herds provided them with meat, milk, skins, and transportation.
What the steppe tribes could not easily do, however, was large scale agriculture, because of their nomadic lifestyle, as well as lack of reliable water, the difficulty of breaking ground in the grass-covered and hard soil of the steppe, and the short growing season. For vegetables, grains, and fruit, they normally traded with sedentary farming societies to the south of the steppe. When that trade did not provide enough to feed them, or when winters became particularly difficult and fodder for their herds and horses was threatened, they would also raid those settled territories.
The geography of the steppe gave them mobility – with their horses, they could cover much more distance in a day than any other society. With this speed and their hunting lifestyle, geography taught them to work cooperatively in mounted groups, and to track and trap their prey, skills that could easily be applied to military maneuvers. The geography of the steppe gave the nomads both a reason to become militarily active, and the skills with which to be effective. The nature of the steppe also made it impossible for the largely sedentary communities that they raided to predict from which direction they would come.
Not all of Central Asia is steppe, however, and not all Central Asians were nomads. Many began farming early in their history, and others, such as the Yuezhi, turned to farming after being forced westward by more successful nomadic groups. In this, too, the geography of Central Asia made a difference. The territory known as Khorasan, between the Pamir Mountains and the Persian plateau, is well-watered by the Amu Darya (Oxus) and the Syr Darya rivers. This territory was used for farming, and saw the development of large cities as well as farming towns.
TURKIC MIGRATIONS
Think about it…
- Who were the first Central Asians?
- How did people move into Central Asia, Persia, and the Anatolian Peninsula?
The first Central Asians were members of early migratory groups that appear to have traveled north when most others traveled south along the coastal routes of ancient India. Some of the oldest evidence available is in archaeological digs that show cultural connections through burial patterns, pottery fragments, and the remains of food those pots were used to cook as well as the drinks they were used to brew. Much is still undiscovered. Linguistic similarities between different groups can give us some idea of their migration patterns over time.
Those linguistic and archaeological finds have clarified one thing for certain, a surprise for many who have not spent time studying Central Asia: Turks, it turns out, are not actually from Turkey! Beginning in the 2nd century BCE, waves of Turkic migrations settled on the great steppe, where they met with other, older groups. Among these was the so-called Slab Grave Culture of northeast Asia. Grave remains of the Slab Grave Culture tell us the culture disappeared around the 3rd century BCE, about the time that Turkic groups arrived.
These new Turkic arrivals were nomadic hunting culture groups who began to ride horses about 200 BCE; they were the first in the world to do so. An example of these horse-riding nomadic groups was those the Chinese would call the Yuezhi. Groups like the Yuezhi took control of entire regions of Central Asia and enslaved the earlier people such as the Slab Grave Culture. The Yuezhi and other Turkic societies set about “Turkifying” the region and endowing it with a nomadic character. They also inhabited the agricultural basin of Transoxiana where they displaced the original Iranian inhabitants. In all of these regions, earlier people like the Slab Grave Culture people eventually mixed their languages and their DNA with those of their conquerors, leading to many of the Central Asian languages that are spoken today.
Genetic evidence tells researchers that the group the Chinese came to call the Xiongnu, though ethnically a combination of many Central Asian cultures, were direct descendants of the Slab Grave Culture. The name for them is not one of their own choosing; the Chinese characters for the word Xiongnu meant “enslaved ones” and may refer to their early status as a culture enslaved to the Yuezhi. This group appears to have eventually risen up against their Yuezhi masters, forcing them to retreat from the northeast Asian steppe toward the West near Bactria sometime around 200 B.C.E. Central Asia has always been a rich mixing bowl for various cultures of the world where people, as well as languages, goods, and ideas, interacted and changed.
Nomadic steppe peoples imparted a lasting impression on all the peoples of Central Asia. Beginning with the Xiongnu (209 BCE-93 CE), a long-term exodus of steppe peoples spread out of Mongolia and into Central Asia. For millennia prior to the rise of Chinggis Khan, the winners of tribal battles for predominance on the Orkhon Steppe, prime pasture land located in western Mongolia, forced the vanquished off to the west. These periodic mass departures of Turkic tribes out of the area led to a migration conquest that progressed southwest into Central Asia. The new arrivals forever altered the ethnic makeup of Central Asia. Previously, the region had been predominantly Persian and Indo-European; when the waves of Turkic tribes penetrated into the area, they occupied the great steppe and agricultural basin of Central Asia and pushed Persian groups to the fringes. Over time, they slowly Turkified the area, endowing it with a more nomadic character.
Turkic People and Central Asia
These Turkic tribesmen divided their society into five strata. Members of the royal tribal clan presided over the social order. This dominant group bestowed its name on the tribal confederation which consisted of a collection of tribes. Positioned below them were their allies and associated tribes. Next were the common herders who did not participate in struggles for power. Lower still were the artisans, such as blacksmiths and leatherworkers. And finally, we find slaves at the bottom of the hierarchy. They usually acquired their lowly position in society through capture in times of war.
Reading the Past – Ibn Battuta on Central Asian Horse Riding
Read: “Ibn Battuta (1304-1368/69): Central Asian Turks in the 14th Century, from Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325-1354”, Internet Medieval Sourcebook
Link: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/ibnbattuta-centralasianturks14C.asp
Questions to answer:
- What kind of food did the Turks eat according to Ibn Battuta?
- Describe the importance of horses to this culture based on his reporting.
- What surprised Ibn Battuta about the treatment of the Turkish women he saw?
These Turkic wanderers belonged to a shifting confederation of clans and tribes roaming the steppe, loosely bound under a khagan – what in modern English is called a khan (‘supreme ruler’) – a charismatic monarch who laid claim to some sort of divine providence. Khagan made use of their personal charisma as well as their political and military acuity to maintain group cohesion and ward off challenges to their authority. Under strong khagans, tribal confederations were capable of wielding significant power, but they were often notoriously volatile, sometimes imploding upon the death of their leader and collapsing into a brutal struggle for power. The winners in these struggles forced the losers out of the area, and while many went to the north or south, most migrated to the west. Victorious tribes remained in Mongolia on the highly-prized Orkhon Steppe, located near Lake Baikal.
The khaganate was a diarchy, or system of dual rule, with the oldest son controlling half of the land, but it lacked a system of clear transition of power such as hereditary succession. Because the khagan theoretically ruled over a series of tribal confederations, any member of the tribal confederation could ascend to the position of monarch by demonstrating their personal charisma and martial skills on the battlefield. This often resulted in a fight to prove oneself that could erupt into broader inter-tribal strife.
Periodic Turkic migrations into Central Asia caused the sedentary culture of the region to change to nomadism. These steppe peoples lived by practicing pastoral nomadism, a way of life centered around herding that most likely predated the Turks but was eventually adopted by them. Their culture was utilitarian in nature and they derived all the necessities for life from the resources found on the great plains of Central Asia, including food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. In order to maintain pasture lands, these horsemen followed a fixed, seasonal pattern of migration to avoid overgrazing by their flocks. During the winter they camped in foothills and mountain valleys, where it was warmer at lower altitudes. There they built fixed shelters with one main objective: survival. Their oral traditions, which included songs, epic narratives, and parables, flourished during the inhospitable winter months.
Enhanced mobility was the key to the survival of pastoral nomads. They spent a good portion of their lives on horseback and were accustomed to moving over long distances, taking all of life’s necessities with them. This allowed them to retreat quickly from rival attacks or areas afflicted by natural disasters. Though their way of life appeared innocuous, it enhanced the later abilities of these horsemen to expand rapidly and conquer neighboring groups, thus pastoral nomadism accorded its practitioners certain martial advantages. The annual Great Hunt served as a military proving ground that helped them hone their fighting skills. In preparation for winter, tribes deployed groups of mounted men who dispersed in different directions to drive every animal within a set perimeter inwards to converge at a preestablished central point. With great coordination taking place over vast distances, these migrants learned how to coordinate their movements based on a color scheme of arrows and whistling patterns. Their herding tactics easily translated to military tactics and proved devastating in combat.
Nomadic societies were certainly capable of waging war. Their ability to shoot from horseback provided them with a mobile and lethal means to overcome slower, infantry-based armies. These horsemen carried portable, three-foot-long recurve bows capable of piercing enemy armor from over 450 meters. Metal thumb rings enabled a rapid rate of fire without damaging the archer’s fingers. Raised hunting and herding from horseback, nomads even learned how to sleep in the saddle of the Mongolian Horse, their indigenous breed of horse. Though not tall in stature, these sturdy mounts displayed impressive endurance and allowed groups to traverse great distances, often up to 160 kilometers per day. The speed with which they could cover territory on their steeds often confused sedentary forces and multiplied the terror factor. Native to the region, these horses were able to forage for themselves and survive on their own. Nomads did not require supply lines and could therefore remain on a campaign for an average of three years. The combination of skills acquired from herding, the power of the double-compound bow, and the mobility made possible by the Mongol Horse, translated to a formula for political domination of Central Asia. Later in the 13th century, Mongol tribes enjoyed these same advantages in mobility, military skills, and ferocity, enabling the later creation of the vast Mongol empire.
Turkic domination of the region began on the battlefield, where the strategies of steppe warfare proved devastating to infantry-based armies. The first stage of the nomad battle strategy often commenced with a feigned retreat, in which a group of their cavalry engaged the adversary, retreated, and encouraged their opponents to follow them. This technique lengthened the lines of their challengers, as they pursued the “retreating” Turkic cavalrymen, who were busy shooting backward from horseback. The next stage of battle involved outflanking the enemy and enveloping them. They then showered their foes with arrows, the objective being to pin the opponent in place. This alone was often enough to break a sedentary power. When fighting against another steppe power, their reserves charged the opponent’s lines to fragment their forces and finish them off piecemeal. Because of their limited numbers, Turkic horsemen were reluctant to risk fighting an enemy they did not believe they could defeat, instead, they would poison water wells, scorch the earth, and retreat.
Throughout most of Central Asian history, political relationships were mediated through warfare, diplomacy, and imperial marriages. Chinese policymakers saw the marriage of an imperial princess to a Central Asian leader as a pathway to peace. In the Chinese understanding of the world, the Chinese princess would become a translator for her husband the Khan, and teach him about Chinese culture, making him more disposed to peace with the Chinese. Chinese diplomats also believed that as a mother, a princess would teach her children Chinese, and respect China as their mother culture, leading to generations of peace following her marriage. For a princess, however, this kind of marriage diplomacy was often little more than exile to a culture she saw as barbarian; she would have to learn a new language and give up most of the creature comforts she was used to in the imperial court. For some this meant freedom, for others it was sacrifice. Wang Zhaojun is seen in China as a great patriot for the way she willingly served China in exile, despite her longing to stay home.
Learning in Action – The Story of Wang Zhaojun
Read: “Ancient Beuty Wang Zhaojun’s Shifting Significance”, Alex Colville 2021
Questions to answer:
- What do we really know about Wang Zhaojun?
- What is her reputation today?
- How did Wang Zhaojun become a hero of Chinese history?
Sometime during the reign of Han Emperor Yuan (49-33 B.C.E), a young woman arrived at the imperial court, assigned to be one of the ladies in waiting in his outer circle of concubines. By all accounts, she was recognized as a great beauty, and also was blessed with a quick mind and musical and literary talent. These things all made her a perfect candidate for imperial concubine. The one drawback was her youth.
Arriving at the imperial court in the early summer of 36 BCE, Wang Qiang (her real name) was already well-known for her beauty and apparently so confident in her appearance that she refused to play court games. Rather than bribing the official portrait painter to represent her in a positive light, she chose to let her beauty speak for itself. Court politics being what they were, the legend of Wang says that the portrait painter, miffed at losing a bit of profit, portrayed her with some unfortunate facial features.
It is not clear if Emperor Yuan actually looked at her portrait. However, she was never visited by the emperor and never met him. Her beauty and intelligence were left to wither in the back-stabbing court politics of the outer harem. She probably resented this greatly, and no doubt having no prospects of meeting the emperor, felt rather pointless; the infighting with other concubines must also have taken its toll.
At this same time, the politics of the empire were heating up. Emperor Yuan was dealing with increasing tensions with the Xiongnu, central Asian nomads whose territory was to the north of the Great Wall. Early in the Han Dynasty (208 BCE to 221 CE), the Han Emperors were still consolidating power and were not wealthy enough to field large armies to face the Xiongnu. They tried to maintain peace by marrying imperial princesses to Xiongnu chieftains, with the hope of influencing them by bringing them into the family. In Yuan’s time, that practice had ended. However, to cement the peace and perhaps forward the relationship, Emperor Yuan, when asked, decided to marry a Han princess to one of the most powerful Xiongnu chiefs – a man named Huhanye, who was on a visit to pay tribute to the Emperor and reaffirm his friendship.
Emperor Yuan, not wanting to give up too much, promised Huhanye a beautiful princess, but instructed his administrators to go to the outer harem and find a plain-featured concubine whom he would pass off as his own daughter and marry to the Xiongnu Chief (shanyu) Huhanye. Apparently tired of dealing with harem politics, Wang Qiang volunteered to marry him and live the difficult life of the wife of a Xiongnu nomad. Upon seeing her for the first time, it is said that Emperor Yuan regretted never having met her, and nearly changed his mind. However, having already promised, he went ahead with the wedding and sent her to live in the steppe.
The legend says that Wang Qiang, riding northward in early autumn, heard her horse nicker, and felt a sudden sadness come upon her. She took up her lute (a Chinese pipa) and played and sang a sad song of loneliness. Her playing was so beautiful and her voice so arresting that a group of geese flying overhead looked down and, stunned by her beauty, forgot to flap their wings and fell from the sky. This is how she received her nickname, Wang Zhangjun (which means she who makes birds fall from the sky). From that time on, she has been known as one of the Four Great Beauties of China.
Zhangjun lived a long life on the steppe. She had two sons and two daughters with her husband Huhanye, and when he died, though she begged to go home, she was married to his son from his first wife, with whom she had three more children before finally passing away herself. To what degree she influenced the politics of the Xiongnu is unclear, but it is apparent that she and her children helped cement a peace between the Xiongnu and the Han empire that lasted her lifetime. In China even today her route north is full of statues and likenesses of her, and in thousands of stories she is held up as a paragon of loyalty to China.
Wang Zhaojun’s story gives historians a better idea of the politics of steppe and the empire in the first half of the Han Dynasty. Despite its size, power, and wealth, the Han government always had to take into account the activities of the nomadic tribes to the north and west. While some of the nomads in the west were willing to be allies and trading partners with China, the Xiongnu remained a thorn in China’s side. During cold winters, they raided through the Great Wall which had been built to keep them out, allowing their cows, goats, and horses to feed on the gardens and fields of the farmers of northern China. Their raids were violent and very destructive. To keep them from attacking, the emperors of the Han Dynasty resorted to sending them payments of silk, grain, vegetables, precious metals, and marrying imperial princesses to their leaders. For the women involved, this was a great hardship and they rarely came home during their lifetimes. Their sacrifice was portrayed in China not just as a duty to the Emperor and to Heaven but as a patriotic act of courage – a sacrifice of self for the good of all in China. Among these brides, Wang Zhaojun is most famous for her beauty, her music, her poetry, and her sacrifice.
ISLAM
Think about it…
- What led to the successful spread of Islam in Central Asia?
Islam was not the first foreign religion to arrive in Central Asia. In fact, the region had already been exposed to many foreign systems of belief prior to the coming of Islam in the 7th century CE. Local merchants conducting long-distance trade along the Silk Routes came into contact with many different religious doctrines as the trade route served as a conveyor of not only goods but also concepts. Generally, intellectual diffusion is not a one-way street, and Western ideas traveled eastward and Eastern concepts filtered into the West. In this manner, the Silk Routes carried Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism (an Iranian religion with both monotheistic and dualist elements), Siberian Shamanism, and even Nestorian Christianity to Central Asia. The great number of religions found in this region at the time Islam was introduced is a testament to the religious tolerance characterizing this region. By the 10th century, however, all of the non-monotheistic faiths had faded from Central Asia in the aftermath of the Islamic conquest.
It was Qutayba ibn Muslim (669–716 CE) who expanded the presence of Islam in Central Asia during the 8th century. The general’s forces swept into the area, defeated the Persians, and by 715 CE completed their conquest of Transoxiana. A decisive Arab Muslim victory over the Chinese at the Battle of Talas River in 751 CE secured control over parts of Central Asia and repulsed the only major challenge to Islamic rule. The triumph over the Chinese made it possible for Islam to become entrenched in the region. The Persian Samanids (819–999 CE) made Islam the official state religion and established a school of theology in Bukhara.
Islamization did not take place overnight, it took centuries. Transoxiana slowly Islamicized. The peoples in the area remained culturally Turkic and Persian as Central Asia retained its Turkic and Persian languages, albeit with a heavy Arabic influence in religious vocabulary. It took generations for Islam to become fully ingrained in the culture of Central Asia. Unlike other places, where Islam filtered into society from the bottom up, as in Southeast Asia, Islamization in the region occurred from the top down. Local leaders submitted to the faith in order to maintain their social status and elite position in society. The conquerors offered the Central Asian nobility important positions in the administration so long as they professed belief in Islam, providing the opportunity for the native elite to rule in their own right.
Islam displayed a remarkable ability to assimilate indigenous Central Asian frontier customs as it advanced through the area, allowing some traditional practices to remain so long as this accelerated conversion. By accepting certain practices in order to Islamicize Central Asia, these Muslims mirrored Christian efforts and strategies in Christianizing Eastern Europe.
Learning in Action – Spread of Religion Along the Silk Routes
Watch the video: “How Did Religion Spread Along the Silk Road?” Crash Course Geography #31 2022
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SWe3bFYcOA
Question to answer:
- What made the Silk Road a route for the spread of religions as well as for the spread of trade?
Sufism
Central Asia historically experienced influences from Buddhism through India and China, Islam from the Arabian Peninsula, and Christianity from the Middle East and Europe. Those influences spread and mixed because of the extensive trade along the Silk Routes. For example, in the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang in what is now Gansu Province in China, it is possible to see Buddhist images and statues that have Indian and Persian ethnic features. In other parts of the Silk Routes, images of Christ with East Asian facial features and clothing, and Buddhas that appear to be European or Middle Eastern, stand alongside each other. Similarly, the Islam of Central Asia differed greatly from that which originated in the Arabian Peninsula. Many Central Asians embraced the ideas of Islam through Sufism, remaking it into a syncretic faith that was culturally its own. Essentially a sort of mysticism or folk Islam, Sufism in the area emerged from the fusion of Islamic sedentary civilization and Buddhist nomadic culture. Central Asians were generally receptive and tolerant of foreign beliefs, but for the faith to take root in the area, missionaries had to make some concessions to the native, specifically pastoral nomadic culture.
The urban-dwelling and agricultural populations of the region generally accepted Sunni Islam and the law of the Sharia; however, the culture and lifestyle of the pastoral peoples of the steppe did not readily conform to the rigors of Islamic law. Sufism helped convert these tribes to Islam, in part due to its doctrinal flexibility. What arose from the mix of orthodox Islam and Turkic pastoral nomadism was a uniquely Central Asian brand of Sufism. Sufis evangelized to groups on the frontier of Central Asia, with Sufi merchants largely responsible for bringing Islam to the region. Central Asian Sufi orders such as the Yasaviyah established themselves along trade routes in order to reach out to travelers. These missionaries also proselytized to the Turkic communities on the steppe. Meanwhile, the Naqshbandi Order, operating in travel lodges, spread Sufism by ministering to the Iranian and Tajik peoples. The followers of these Sufi orders believed that they could better disseminate a form of the faith that was more loving and caring.
The importance of the shift towards Islam in Central Asia is critical to understanding the increasing ability to unify the region. While Islam never became the sole unifying force of Central Asia, and Central Asia was only temporarily unified under the Mongols, the spread of Islam nevertheless created some common cultural traditions that facilitated trade and banking, contributing to increasingly peaceful relations from Arabia through Central Asia all the way to China. This trade stimulated economies, protected cultural and religious transfer, supplied ideals for political legitimacy, and fostered cultural expectations regarding the distribution of justice, wealth, and security throughout the region, making it a dynamic site of change at the beginning of the global Middle Ages. That period of growth began with the Mongol conquests of much of the Eurasian continent.
THE MONGOL ERA
Think about it…
- How did Chinggis Khan unify such a large number of Central Asian tribes under his personal leadership?
A New System for Unity
Mongol tribes became the dominant influence in Central Asia beginning in the 13th century. There they reunited with the Turkic groups who had been expelled from the Orkhon Steppe over the course of a millennium. The Mongols created the largest empire in history, as Central Asia externalized the violence of the steppe, yet it was with enormous difficulty that they even united as a people. Perhaps the greatest obstacle for them to overcome was their own divisiveness, as inter-tribal strife was commonplace. But once united, the Mongols expanded deep into Russia, China, India, and the Middle East.
It was Temujin (r. 1206–1227 CE), later known as Chinggis (Genghis) Khan, who brought this fractured people together, as well as developing a method of governance and expansion that lasted long after his death. Born into the aristocratic Borjigin Clan, most likely in 1167 CE, Temujin was inspired by oral tales of past glory; his personal charisma and sense of fate enabled him to survive a youth of life-threatening privation. With a keen awareness of his own destiny, Temujin was inspired to achieve greatness and eventually brought the various Mongol tribes together.
Through a series of fights, he subjugated local clans in eastern Mongolia. He then expanded his political control of the region through a marriage alliance to Börte Üjin, a member of the Olkhonut Tribe which maintained friendly relations with Temujin’s Khiyad Tribe. The Merkit Tribe kidnapped his wife not long thereafter. Temujin heroically rescued her from this rival tribe, but she had been held in captivity for eight months and soon gave birth to their first son Juchi, who suffered from an uncertain parentage. Some historians believe that Temujin acquired the notion of conquering all of the Mongols from his liberation of Börte.
When discussing the Mongols, we should recognize that the word Mongol is not an ethnic indicator. The Mongols are a collection of East Asian ethnic groups who share the same language. The Mongols originated as a single tribe among a diverse group of Central Asian peoples living in the steppe and speaking Altaic languages. In the late 1100s C.E. that small tribe came under the control of a leader known as Chinggis. “Mongols” was the name of his tribe. Like the other nomads in the region, the Mongols engaged in local warfare with competing tribes. One of Chinggis’ many innovations was that after defeating another tribe, rather than slaughtering or exiling them, he would incorporate its members into his own group with an oath of obedience. In this way, the Mongols grew in size and had more victories, leading to increasing growth. They were able to control an increasing territory within the steppe, and Chingiss eventually became the leader of a confederation of Central Asian tribes, taking the title of the Great Khan, a term derived from the ancient word for the Xiongnu leader, Khagan. In this way, all Mongols, regardless of ethnicity, became Mongols by becoming a part of Chingiss’ extended tribe. Chingiss organized this extended group of people as he would organize an army. He made the leaders of tribes who were loyal to him commanders at various levels and created a sophisticated command and control hierarchy.
Despite his early successes, Temujin remained greatly outnumbered by his opponents and was forced to retreat to the Heights of Baljuna, located in modern-day Manchuria. There he convinced his followers to swear an oath of total allegiance to him, calling on them to fight to the death for him. For their unwavering loyalty, he promised his supporters a share in his glory upon their victory. Some Mongol tribes yielded to Temujin by 1204 CE and agreed to recognize him as their leader, paving the way for the final unification of the Mongols. Temujin demanded a high level of commitment from his people, endowing his forces with coherence and unity of purpose. He also promoted allies based on merit, rather than by the traditional Mongol method of advancement based on position within the tribal hierarchy. His tribal opponents, on the other hand, lacked his force of will and indulged in squabbling. Temujin took advantage of their internal fights, emerging victorious by 1206 CE. The culmination of his ascendency took place that year at a Mongol assembly, or khuriltai, which appointed him as the first undisputed ruler of the Mongols, uniting them under the authority of his position. Temujin adopted the name of Chinggis Khan or universal ruler.
Chinggis Khan presided over people who had experienced near-constant warfare. Previously, tribal confederations were loose alliances held together under charismatic khagans and punctuated by tribal warfare. He consolidated all of these diverse tribes and reshaped them into a single “nation,” endowing Mongol society with more cohesiveness, a key element to future expansion.
Restructuring Mongol society into new administrative military units that provided the necessary impetus for expansion, Chinggis Khan charged each of his commanders with a tribal unit responsible for controlling a particular pasture and fielding soldiers when needed. His system had the added effect of assuaging previous conflicts by assigning the members of one tribe to military detail with other rival tribes, emphasizing collective responsibility. By forcing the men from one tribe to stand guard over the pastures of other tribes, he weakened loyalty to ancestral lines and homelands, thereby reinforcing his own leadership.
By embodying autocracy in the position of the khan, he made the title of khan institutional, not personal, building a new foundation for legitimacy whereas previously, tribal leadership rested solely on charisma. Furthermore, the Great Khan could not be self-proclaimed but had to be recognized at a khuriltai. His law, known as Yassa, originated as decrees delivered during war. Yassa remained secret, which allowed Chinggis Khan to adapt it to changing circumstances. He based his code on shamanist principles, and it served as the social and political formula binding all Mongols together. These innovations also strengthened Mongol, rather than clan or tribal, identification.
Expansion
Chinggis Khan launched an era of Mongol expansion and initiated the conquest of Central Asia. After subduing inter-tribal warfare, he exported the violence of the steppe. He offered incentives to his soldiers; the spoils of victory went to those who followed him into battle. Chinggis Khan received 10% of the loot and divided the remaining 90% between his commanders, who, in turn, distributed their portion amongst their retinue. This plunder also included the inhabitants of all subjugated lands, which resulted in the dramatic depopulation of conquered territories as the Khan received his share of artisans and craftsmen to be sent back to the itinerant Mongol capital.
In 1208 CE, Chinggis Khan targeted northern China for pillaging, but he quickly encountered considerable difficulties overcoming well-fortified Chinese municipalities. The Chinese had ringed their principal metropolises with moats and connected these major urban centers to several smaller satellite towns via underground tunnels. The Mongols attempted to starve these cities into submission, but lacked the military technology necessary to overcome walls 40 feet high and 50 feet wide. To counter these challenges, the Mongols imported the technology necessary to defeat Chinese cities and Chinggis Khan compensated for a lack of native talent by incorporating foreign engineers into their army. He utilized Arab, Persian, and Chinese experts to solve the problem of defeating Chinese municipalities. Their knowledge of siege warfare enabled them to construct the siege engines capable of subjugating cities.
Adding these new sedentary peoples to the Khan’s army inevitably caused problems, for these men hailed from distinctly different cultures and did not interact well with the Mongols. Chinggis Khan had to combine the mobility of his forces with the slow, bulky siege engines of the sedentary armies. While he kept his cavalry independent from the foreign engineers, mostly comprised of mercenaries, he blended these two disparate groups on the battlefield to his strategic advantage.
For the Mongols, building an empire proved much easier than maintaining one. The nomads possessed an inherent need to loot and plunder cities, and Chinggis Khan took advantage of this innate desire by remaining on campaign. But the Mongols had difficulty understanding settled civilization and did not know how to maintain order in that new and different cultural milieu. Although they were able to instill fear in their enemies and easily forced many cities to capitulate, the Mongols had to rely on co-opted local officials to ensure that taxes and tribute flowed freely back to their capital.
With his newly-constructed army, Chinggis Khan returned to northern China in 1210 CE and began a continuous campaign of destruction, primarily directed against the Jin Dynasty (1115–1234 CE). This empire was ruled by a Jurchen minority, a Tungusic people from Manchuria who would later call themselves the Manchu. In an early battle, the Jin put their Turkic cavalry up front to confront the Mongol horsemen. The Mongols managed to convince the Jin Dynasty’s cavalry to defect to their side. Chinggis Khan subsequently advanced on the Jin capital of Zhongdu and entered into a prolonged siege. In November of 1211 CE, the khan withdrew his troops to their winter pastures, only to return again in 1212 CE. Chinggis Khan attempted a rash assault of the city. He failed and was wounded in the process. The Mongols had to retreat once again.
Chinggis Khan returned a fourth time in March of 1213 CE, this time with the goal of conquering Korea, Manchuria, and all of northern China. Early difficulties campaigning against the Jin Dynasty prompted him to adjust his strategy. By laying waste to all of northern China, he aimed to annihilate their way of life, turning the region into vast pastureland for his herds. The Mongol leader surrounded Zhongdu and starved the city’s inhabitants into submission. He systematically obliterated everything to send a message to the inhabitants that it was futile to resist him. He even considered taking the city, brick by brick, and dumping it into the Yellow River. Fortunately for the residents of Zhongdu, a captured Chinese bureaucrat intervened and convinced Chinggis Khan that it would be better to “sack” them every year through the collection of tribute. Mongol interest in rebuilding the city began soon thereafter, as Chinggis Khan incorporated northern China into his state and opened the region to trade. This campaign represented the first significant addition of territory to the Mongol Empire.
Mongol advances aroused the opposition of the local ruler in the area around Otrar, Khwarazmshah (local chief) Ala al-Din Muhammad II. Ruling over a loose confederation of disparate peoples, Ala al-Din Muhammad lacked security in his position as the Khwarazmshah. Even his own mother was in intrigue against him. It was he who provoked the wrath of the Mongols. It all began when Chinggis Khan sent a trade caravan, which probably included some spies dressed incognito as merchants, to the frontier post of Otrar, located along the Syr Darya. The Shah believed that the trade mission was a mere deception meant to obscure an imminent invasion. Inalchuq, the uncle of Ala al-Din Muhammad and governor of Otrar, improvidently convinced the Khwarazmshah to have the entire party executed. An enraged Chinggis Khan quickly dispatched another envoy and demanded that the governor of the city be put to death and have his head sent back to Mongolia as proof that Chinggis Khan’s wishes were fulfilled. The shah executed this emissary too, a rash decision that precipitated the Mongol onslaught deeper into Central Asia, which resulted in brutal massacres and a drastic depopulation of the region.
A total of five Mongol armies approached the Khwarazm capital of Samarkand from different directions, converging in 1220 CE. The Mongols slayed the inhabitants of the city and constructed pyramid-like edifices out of their severed skulls. In 1221 CE, they seized the city of Urgench and dumped it into the Amu Darya, piece by piece, diverting the course of the waterway. And yet, Khwarazmshah Ala al-Din Muhammad still inexplicably escaped capture and absconded south. Chinggis Khan deployed another force of some 30,000 troops under the generals Jebe and Sübedei to track him down and put him to death. The shah eventually sought refuge on an island in Caspian, where he died of pleurisy.
Meanwhile, Jalal al-Din Manguburti, the son of the Khwarazmshah, assembled an army of resistance. Chinggis Khan sent his stepbrother Shihihutug to apprehend Jalal, but he escaped to the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan. Jalal’s forces managed to defeat the Shihihutug led Mongols on the field of battle at Parwan in the spring of 1221, a rare loss. The Mongols actually respected Jalal for his display of valor and willingness to resist them. Jalal fled to India via the Khyber Pass with his pride intact. The khan headed south himself and defeated Jalal al-Din along the banks of the Indus River. Following their defeat of Jalal, the Mongols descended into India but quickly found the hot and humid climate inhospitable; they decided to return to Mongolia, arriving home by 1225 CE. The Central Asia campaign had started as a punitive expedition but in the process wiped out any type of resistance in the region.
Continued Mongol successes resulted from their honed steppe riding, shooting skills and their reputation for savagery and slaughter. Some towns and cities surrendered immediately, begging for mercy if they surrendered without a fight. Evoking terror was a key strategy used by the Mongols to achieve rapid conquest, and then used to maintain order in their empire.
In addition, there was the military brilliance of Chinggis Khan who was ahead of his time in understanding the psychological aspects and subtleties of warfare. For example, prior to battle, spies found information on supplies and internal divisions, knowledge that could help defeat besieged cities. Chinggis also adeptly deployed the classic steppe trick of attacking, pretending to retreat – then ambushing pursuing troops.
The final gains under Chinggis Khan’s leadership took place under the leadership of talented generals Jebe and Sübedei who travelled towards Russia between 1221 and 1223 CE. In the course of their journey, they defeated the Georgians, Armenians, princes of Rus, and the Kipchak Turkic tribes. Then they abruptly returned home. The purpose was not to annex the territory but to gather intelligence, which proved to be important to their campaign against the princes of Rus between 1236 and 1240 CE. Meanwhile, Chinggis Khan had died on expedition in southern China in 1227 CE. Upon his death, the Mongols participated in a year of mourning, halting expansion.
Reading the Past – Communication across the Mongol Empire
Read: “Book Second. Part I. Chapter XXVI. How the Kaans Posts and Runners are Sped Through Many Lands and Provinces”, Excerpt from The Book of Ser Marco Polo: The Venetian Concerning Kingdoms and Marvels of the East. Volume 1, translated and edited by Colonel Sir Henry Yule, London: John Murray, 1903. Source: Asia for Educators, Columbia University
Link: http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/mongols/figures/ser_xxvi.pdf
Questions to answer:
- How did this messenger system work in terms of mounted messengers: how many horses, how many stations, how far apart?
- How did the system of foot runner messengers work?
- What role did falcons play?
- Do you think these numbers sound realistic or exaggerated? Why?
Turko-Mongol Fusion
The Mongols were the first to unify the Eurasian steppe, and their occupation of the region corresponded to a wholesale takeover. As they migrated southwest down the steppe, they chose not to displace other Turkic peoples already established in Central Asia. Early on, the dominant Mongols offered these Turkic groups a deal to either merge with them or suffer harsh reprisal. So as the Mongols progressed westward, their armies gained strength, as more and more of the Turkic tribesmen joined them, resulting in armies that were mostly comprised of other Turkic peoples, not Mongols. In this manner, the Turkic groups absorbed and assimilated the invading Mongols, a process known as Turkification; the conflict between the two cultures faded over time and eventually led to a fusion of Turkic and Mongolian societies. Over time, these Mongol pastoralists presiding over a sedentary Islamic culture slowly Turkified. They quickly became a Mongol minority governing a non-Mongol majority.
There were numerous points of contention between the two groups but also many commonalities. Both societies had originated on the steppe in modern-day Mongolia, and, while the Turkic groups had settled down over the years and adopted more of a sedentary existence, many of the principles of pastoral nomadism still lingered in their culture. Both adhered to a patrimonial distribution of inheritance. Also, both the Turkic groups and the Mongols organized along tribal lines, and each followed a pattern of co-opting one tribe into another, thus facilitating a fusion of the Mongols with their Turkic hosts. For this system to work, however, the Mongols had to speak the idiom of the people they ruled. So instead of the Mongols imposing their language on the majority of the population, the Mongol elite learned Chagatai, a Turkic tongue.
For many years, religion remained the only major distinction between the two societies, but once the Chagatai Mongols converted to Islam in 1333 CE, this conspicuous difference disappeared. This was the Mongol group ruled by Chagatai, a descendant of Chingiss Khan, who controlled the area we now call Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Khazakstan. While the Mongols adopted the creed and language of the Turkic Chagatai, these Turkic peoples incorporated the Mongol political concept of Chinggis-Khanid legitimacy.
SUCCESSION AND THE FOUR KHANATES
Think about it…
- What may have been the key reasons for the breakup of Chingiss Khan’s great empire into four smaller empires after his death?
- How did the relations of Mongols with the non-Mongol people in their various empires give each of the Four Khanates a different character?
The Mongols were the only steppe tribes whose empire actually expanded upon the death of its founder. In fact, most of the Mongol conquests transpired after the passing of Chinggis Khan. Unlike previous tribal confederations, it did not implode because Chinggis Khan had invented a safe and reliable means of transferring power. He also stabilized Mongol society and made it less fractious, constructing a framework for subsequent generations to follow. To maintain political legitimacy and inherit the throne under this new system, one had to trace their ancestry back to Chinggis Khan through his wife Börte and her four sons, Juchi, Chagatai, Ögedei, and Tolui. This concept dramatically limited contenders for the khanate, mitigating future competition for succession. Only these descendants possessed the required Chinggis-Khanid legitimacy.
The khan’s plan to transfer power upon his death also fused older steppe traditions with his new vision. He bequeathed to his sons parts of the world yet unconquered, so that they had to win these new areas. This stipulation produced an incentive for his sons to cooperate in order to collect their patrimony. Chinggis Khan had divided the four patrimonial ulus, or states, amongst his sons. The four subsequent empires that grew out of these ulus included: the territories of the Golden Horde, the descendants of Juchi and controlled Russia; the Chagatai Khanate, which traced its lineage to Chagatai and governed Central Asia; the Mongol-founded Yuan Dynasty in China, the progeny of Tolui; and the Ilkhanate of Persia, inheritors of the House of Hülegü and also the successors of Tolui. These four regions were still linked and ruled by the Great Khan role initiated by Chinggis Khan. Prior to his death in 1227 CE, Chinggis Khan expressed a desire that his son Ögedei succeed him, a decision that affronted Juchi, his eldest, whose lineage was questioned. Fortunately for the Mongols, Juchi’s death preceded that of his father’s, narrowly averting a potential civil war. A khuriltai in 1229 CE complied with the khan’s wishes, and it was under Ögedei that the Mongols realized their destiny of world domination.
The Golden Horde
Between 1230 and 1233 CE, Ögedei’s troops defeated the remnants of the Jin dynasty in central China. Then the Mongols directed their expansionary efforts towards Russia. In 1236 CE, Ögedei launched his campaign in the dead of winter and used rivers as frozen ice highways. By the end of 1237 CE, they had taken the Black Steppe, Vladimir, and Riazan. It was only some fortuitous flooding that prevented the complete destruction of Novgorod. The Prince of Novgorod was, however, sufficiently impressed by the Mongol onslaught and so voluntarily agreed to pay their tribute. The Mongols commenced a devastating attack on the city of Kiev in December of 1240 CE, culminating in a nine-day siege. They ultimately destroyed the city as retribution for its resistance.
The Mongols steamrolled the Hungarians soon thereafter and left the region in ruins en route to Vienna. By December of 1241 CE, their forces were approaching the outskirts of the city. No military power in Europe was capable of withstanding a Mongol attack. Fortunately for the Viennese, Ögedei died that very same month, and a one year period of mourning ensued. The Mongols were summoned home in order to choose the next great khan. What was supposed to be a quick election turned into a five-year ordeal because Batu, son of Juchi and grandson of Chinggis Khan, refused to return to Mongolia for the khuriltai. This founder of the Golden Horde believed that he would not be chosen and knew that his relatives could not officially convene a khuriltai without him, thus he delayed the body from proclaiming the next great khan. It was Ögedei’s death and Batu’s ambition that saved Europe from Mongol conquest.
Other regions avoided Mongol conquest due to fortunate geographic barriers. Jungles prevented Mongol intrusion deep into Southeast Asia, mountains protected much of Northern India from steppe cavalries. Japan continued to enjoy the benefits of its protective moat, the Sea of Japan. Two Mongol attacks on the Japanese islands in 1274 and 1281 CE were unsuccessful due to storms that sank or turned back invading troops. These protective natural forces came to be called kamikaze, the divine wind, by the Japanese, an important cultural historical memory.
Batu died in 1256 CE, and his younger brother Berke became the first khan of the Golden Horde to accept Islam. This sudden conversion to Islam caused systemic problems in the Mongol Empire; because different parts of the four lines of Chinggis Khan adopted different faiths, political divisions were aligned with religious divisions. As a Muslim, Berke spurned his Buddhist cousins and established firm links with the Turkic Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt, thus making an alliance based on faith with a power outside of the Mongol Empire.
The Khanate of Chagatai
Chagatai (1226–1241 CE), the second son of Chinggis and his wife Börte, had participated in his father’s campaigns, and in 1227 CE he claimed his patrimonial territory, designated as between the Caspian Sea and the Tarim Basin. The origins of the Chagatai Khanate shaped its political and demographic character. Chagatai claimed the core of Central Asia, a personal pastureland located along the Kazakh steppe. He also received the settled lands to the south in modern-day Uzbekistan. Chagatai never demonstrated ambition for the position of great Khan; rather, he played an important role helping his brother Ögedei exercise authority and uphold Yassa. In doing so, Chagatai served as the glue that helped hold the Mongol Empire together.
In agricultural and urban areas, a bureaucratic tradition relying on a Muslim administration persisted. So long as these Muslims did not openly resist Mongol control, they could go about their daily business, free from Mongol interference in their life. It was in this way that the steppe continued to abide by customary Mongol law, while in the south the people of the cities lived according to the Sharia, or Quranic law.
Inju was an economic arrangement granting the Mongols a share of the resources produced in sedentary lands. The Mongols rewarded those who cooperated in governance with a portion of the profits; those who participated in Inju were entitled to their allotment of the common imperial settled possessions. At first, all of the conquered towns remained the property of the khan, but over time access to the wealth of the urban areas extended to the nomads who took part in Inju.
Although Inju was a practical solution to the difficulty of governing the two separate societies, it ultimately did not resolve the problem of uniting the sedentary Turkic population and the nomadic Mongols since it failed to accommodate the needs of either society. Actually, it encouraged friction between the two civilizations because it placed hardships on both peoples. While the horsemen benefited handsomely from Inju, they considered it incompatible with their traditional practices because it forced them to climb down from their steeds and settle down in the cities. Those living in the settled lands to the south chafed under Inju as well. Though they recognized that government remained an essential part of life, Inju encumbered urban-dwelling and farming peoples. Ultimately, Inju did not mesh well with either lifestyle. The practice rested on force, not utility. The Mongol state sustained two different societies that often remained in conflict, so it stayed in a state of permanent instability.
The Khanate of the Ilkhans (1265-1335)
Hülegü Khan (1256–1265 CE), grandson of Chinggis Khan and son of Tolui, served his brother Möngke (1251– 259 CE), the great khan, and campaigned through the Middle East, where he wiped out the Assassins, a secret order of schismatic Shia entrenched in the mountains of Gilan province in 1256 CE. He also destroyed the Abbasid capital of Baghdad in 1258 CE, putting an end to the Caliphate. By 1260 CE Hülegü controlled parts of Armenia, Iraq, Anatolia, all of Azerbaijan, and all of Iran. Kublai Khan (1250– 294 CE) had awarded his brother Hülegü the title of Ilkhan, a secondary khan who remained subordinate only to the great khan in Mongolia. This portion of the empire became known as the Khanate of the Ilkhans.
The Ilkhans were a Mongol minority ruling over a Muslim majority; religious problems plagued the Ilkhanate for much of its existence. To begin with, Hülegü, a Nestorian Christian, who later converted to Buddhism on his deathbed, had sacked Baghdad, one of the most politically important cities in the Islamic world, an act that alienated him from his Muslim cousin Berke Khan, ruler of the Golden Horde. The conversion of the Golden Horde to Islam had presented a real problem, for the Ilkhans had initially championed Buddhism in Iraq and Iran. As animosity continued to mount between the two parts of the Mongol Empire over religious differences, there were growing ties of alliance between the Muslim Golden Horde and their coreligionists, the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, against the Ilkhans. Belief transcended blood, as one part of Mongol Empire allied against another with an outside source. Faith-based civil wars consumed much of the reign of Abaga Khan (1265–1282 CE). These wars were rooted in the Ilkhanate’s inappropriate treatment of their Muslim population. The Golden Horde’s alliance with the Mamluks threatened the Ilkhanate. Abaga could not rely on the full might of centralized Mongol power and was forced to appeal to Kublai Khan to assuage the hostilities between the Ilkhans and the Golden Horde.
While spiritual troubles remained a persistent problem for the Ilkhans, the economic situation also deteriorated. Gaykhatu Khan (1291–1295 CE) practically emptied the royal treasury with profligate spending. He experimented with paper money recently adopted from China to compensate for his wasteful expenditures, but overprinting resulted in massive inflation. The Ilkhans also tried to extract the maximum amount of tribute from the countryside to offset declining revenues. This led to an abuse in tax gathering, known as tax farming, in which rulers sold contracts for the collection of revenues to the highest bidder. This method of tax collection provided a strong incentive to despoil peasants.
It was Mahmud Ghazan (1295–1304) who solved the Ilkhanate’s continued religious and economic problems. He was the first Ilkhan to convert to Islam, rehabilitating their image in the eyes of their Muslim subjects and making their rule much more acceptable. Their new public stance towards Islam moderated persistent conflict and paved the way for cultural flourishing. Ghazan patronized Ilkhanid art, scholarship, and science. Ilkhanid art reflected Chinese influence and helped contribute to Persian artistic development.
In terms of scholarship, the first true history of the world was completed under the sponsorship of Mahmud Ghazan. Written by Rashid al-Din Hamadani (1247–1318), the book was richly illustrated with watercolors and portraiture in the Chinese style. Through his travels in the service of the Mongols, Rashid al-Din became perceptively aware of Ilkhanid Persia’s cosmopolitan culture. It was Rashid al-Din, a Jewish convert to Islam, who convinced Mahmud Ghazan to adopt the faith, to be more attuned to the beliefs of his peoples. Regarding science, the Ilkhands attempted to amass large amounts of astronomical data from China to Europe. With unprecedented accuracy, they became very good at predicting lunar eclipses. Their data was used throughout Eurasia. Much like the Mongols in Chaghatai Central Asia, eventually the Ilkhans went native too, creating a Persian-Mongol fusion as they began to identify with Persian culture and speak the Persian language. As they bonded with Persia, they adopted Islam and promoted Persian as the written language of their land.
Learning in Action – A Timeline Map of The Mongol Empire
Watch the video: “A Timeline Map Of The Mongol Empire – Charting History”, History Hit 2022
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pijn7Zu_weo
Questions to answer:
- What changes did Temujin/Chinggis Khan implement upon taking power?
- Why was the conquest of Western Xia a critical first step?
- What were some of the major cities that were conquered?
- What year is considered the peak of the empire, and how far did the borders extend?
Pax Mongolica
Despite the early looting and plundering indicative of a Mongol conquest, the Ilkhans eventually reactivated the Silk Routes and promoted transcontinental trade. The Mongols sent security patrols along the Silk Routes and these patrols dealt quickly and severely with criminals, payment cheats, and tax dodgers. The newfound safety for trade and greater stability that accompanied Mongol conquest of the states of Eurasia stimulated trade and encouraged many different cultures to come together. Mongol control of Central Asian trade links created a period of more intensive exchange of goods, ideas, and peoples across the Silk Routes, a period of exchange and safer movement often referred to as the Pax Mongolica. Not only was this territory under the control of one authority, with resulting standardization, but Mongol leaders also enforced policies that made movement safer and facilitated communication and exchange.
This goal included instituting a system of safe passage for approved travelers using the paiza. A person bearing this symbol was to be given unfettered passage across this vast empire. The Mongols also guaranteed peace and safe passage along Silk Road trade routes. These policies had significant and impactful ripple effects. The average round-trip travel time was reduced from roughly 16 years to a little over 6. Round-trip travelers on trade routes became increasingly common as the safety and border issues of the past faded from importance. Merchants, encouraged by the easier trade, established new systems for passing wealth from hand to hand through international banking techniques such as letters of credit, and carrying paper money, the value of which was guaranteed by the Mongol government of China. This made goods ever more readily available throughout the route, and that led to an eventual boom in interest in Asian products among Europeans. Along with the products came the ideas, both of a philosophical and technical nature.
It was during the Mongol empire, from 1203 to around 1370 CE, that Europeans learned to make paper, and gained knowledge of the magnetic compass, gunpowder, cannon, and movable type printing presses, all inventions that came from China. These adopted innovations changed forever the way Europeans traveled, thought, and communicated. The wheelbarrow, the spinning wheel, fireworks, porcelain, silk, and spices came from the east, and during the Mongol empire were transported out of Asia in greater quantities and at lower prices. This was not a connection to the rest of Eurasia that the Europeans would willingly sever, despite facing continued Mongol threats to their borders. Dynamic trade of goods across Asia also meant more intensive cultural exchanges between regions ruled by the Mongols, facilitating the spread of religious ideas, languages, technologies, and – ominously – diseases. In addition to more diversity, profits and shared ideas, Pax Mongolica helped fuel the global outbreak of Black Death.
Learning in Action – Historians Evaluate Mongol Expansion
Read: “The Pax Mongolica”, Prof. Daniel C. Waugh, 2000
Link: http://www.silkroadfoundation.org/artl/paxmongolica.shtml
Questions to answer:
- What was the “Pax Mongolica”?
- Does Prof. Daniel C. Waugh agree that the impact of the Pax Mongolica was largely negative?
- What arguments does Waugh use to contradict the negative assessments of the Pax Mongolica?
- What evidence do you think would support his case? What evidence would contradict it?
Timur
It was under Timur (1370 – 1405 CE) that Central Asia moved to the fore of world events. He attempted to soothe the persistent differences that existed between the steppe and sedentary societies and developed a political arrangement that could harness the best attributes of each society, without the dangerous side effects of communal violence associated with combining the two civilizations. Born in 1336 CE near Kesh in modern-day Uzbekistan, Timur came out of Central Asia and was a product of the Turko-Mongol fusion. He descended from an aristocratic Mongol clan, but he was raised as a Muslim and spoke a Turkic language. Although Timur himself was a native of Transoxiana, he could not assert Chinggis-Khanid legitimacy. Unable to trace his ancestry to Chinggis Khan, he could not take the title of khan in his own right. Timur understood that because he did not have the correct pedigree, he would have to earn it. His solution was to take the title of emir, meaning commander, and rule through a Chagatayid puppet Khan acting as a figurehead. He also married into the family of Chinggis Khan. While the law of descent was not intended to work this way, Timur changed it to accommodate his children, who would be able to claim Chinggis-Khanid’s legitimacy.
Like many transitional figures in history, such as Suleiman the Magnificent, Timur bridged the medieval and modern worlds. He attempted to imitate Chinggis Khan’s success in the field and designed a novel military machine that was well-adapted to the environment in which he lived. His military was the product of a Turko-Mongol fusion, employing Turkic siege techniques and the Mongol cavalry. Unlike Chinggis Khan, however, Timur increasingly combined his cavalry, siege, and infantry units, placing his heavy cavalry at the center of formations. His army also utilized an early form of artillery. He ventured to monopolize the market on gunpowder technology so that other powers could not benefit from it.
Timur was determined to keep his volatile army occupied so they would not be a burden to the sedentary population in his realm. It was in this context that he developed a formula for success that promoted peace at home and war abroad, a policy that best served the interests of the merchants and townspeople. He embodied the violence of the steppe and destroyed all of the other trade routes that bypassed his territory. Timur attempted to reactivate and dominate the Silk Routes and diverted trade to his lands in order to help rebuild the cities damaged from years of Mongol and nomadic rule. He did not aim at permanent occupation or the creation of new states; he campaigned against the Golden Horde, Delhi Sultanate, and the Ottoman Empire in an effort to redirect trade in his direction.
Timur began his military campaigns by attempting to secure the back door of the steppe. During this period, which lasted from 1370 to 1385 CE, he conquered and subdued Mogholistan to the northeast, with the aim of securing the core central land route of the Silk Routes. Then he engaged the Golden Horde between 1385 and 1395 CE. The Golden Horde had been the master of the northern trade route that bypassed Timur’s territory. In order to eliminate this option, he went to war against them to divert trade toward his lands. Timur showed his strategic genius in these expeditions. He defeated a steppe power on the steppe. He put the pieces of his army together in such a way that he could take his enemies on in their arena and on their terms. In this manner, Timur crushed Tokhtamysh, leader of the Golden Horde, in 1395 CE. During the course of this campaign, Timur destroyed their principal trade cities of Astrakhan and Sarai. An interesting byproduct of Timur’s campaign against the Golden Horde was that it precipitated the rise of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. He had weakened the Golden Horde to such an extent that it made it possible for Moscow to throw off the Mongol yoke.
Timur raided India from 1398 to 1399 CE and dealt a blow to the southern sea route to the West. These forays into the terrain of the Delhi Sultanate were primarily raiding for resources, not territorial conquest. During this campaign, Timur’s tactical brilliance was on full display; he had an uncanny ability to adapt to any martial environment that he confronted. For instance, when threatened with a cavalry of war elephants, Timur responded by unleashing a pack of camels laden with incendiary material to charge the enemy lines. Shrieking dromedaries with their backs ablaze incited utter pandemonium among Nasir-ud-Din’s cavalry of elephants, who rampaged through the sultan’s own lines. Timur easily routed the sultan’s forces. When faced with the townspeople of Delhi rising up against their aggressors, Timur brutally sacked the capital of the sultanate and justified the violence in religious terms.
In Timur’s final period of conquest, which lasted from 1400 to 1404 CE, he campaigned against the Islamic far West, directing his army against the Ottomans. Timur had initially attempted to avoid conflict with the Ottomans, whose forces had earned an impressive reputation on the battlefield. Timur had even tried to negotiate with Bayezid I, the Ottoman Sultan, offering him part of the Golden Horde’s territory west of the Dnieper River. But these two expansionist realms inevitably came into conflict in eastern Anatolia. The conflict between the two empires began as the Ottomans expanded to the east and took control of some Turkmen tribes in eastern Anatolia already under the protection of Timur. The emir responded by taking some other Turkmen tribes under Ottoman suzerainty. Offensive missives replete with insulting incriminations ensued. Timur bided his time, waiting for the perfect moment to attack the Ottomans. In 1402 CE, he launched a devastating attack into the heart of Anatolia, as the Ottomans were preoccupied with campaigning against the Hungarians. During the Battle of Ankara in 1402 CE, Timur managed to convince many of the Ottoman forces to defect to his side. He captured the Ottoman sultan, who died in captivity three months later. Timur had not attempted to conquer the Ottomans; he just wanted to punish them for their unwillingness to cooperate. His Levantine expedition also seems to have been designed to weaken the western terminus of the Silk Road in Aleppo, Syria.
Learning in Action – Timur the Lame
Watch the video: “History vs. Tamerlane the Conqueror”, Stephanie Honchell Smith, TED-Ed
Link: https://www.ted.com/talks/stephanie_honchell_smith_history_vs_tamerlane_the_conqueror?language=en
Questions to answer:
- What was the scope of Tamerlane’s empire?
- What were 3 specific examples of positive reports of his actions and effects?
- What were 3 specific examples of negative reports of his actions and effects?
- What were examples of important long term legacies and/or achievements of his descendants?
Timur died in 1405 CE while on a campaign against the Ming Dynasty. He had built an empire that spanned the breadth of Central Asia. Unlike Chinggis Khan, whose empire continued to expand after his death, the sons of Timur and their followers squabbled over succession, leading to a series of internecine battles. Members of the Timurid Dynasty competed among themselves, with commanders switching loyalties. The empire consequently fragmented. The successors of Timur could not manage the difficulties of governing an empire, and it withered away quickly. A number of Timurid rulers followed; a weak state emerged from all this strife.
Under Timur, we see growing political and cultural distinctions between Iran, Central Asia proper, and India begin to cement. In this context, a split took place on the steppe that led to a differentiation of the Uzbeks and Kazaks. By the late 14th century, the tribes on the steppe to the north became known to Muslim writers as Kazaks, whereas the tribes to the south were increasingly referred to as Uzbeks, a differentiation that has continued to persist and helped to delimit modern borders.
Both the Mongol empire builders and Timur’s armies employed brutality and terror to intimidate enemy troops and maintain control after conquest. Timur certainly committed what we would describe today as war crimes and there was an element of terrorism to his campaigns. In fact, as an admirer of architecture, he is known to have constructed pyramids of human skulls. Extant accounts describe him slaughtering 100,000 Indian prisoners following the Delhi uprising. But not all destruction was the same and there was a difference between that of Chinggis Khan and Timur. The emir’s destruction of the region was not meant to serve a utilitarian purpose so much as to inflict suffering. Chinggis Khan used terror as a method to protect his troops, whereas Timur engaged in terror and destruction for pleasure.
Modern Connections – Asian Dreams
Question to Answer
- How has the Silk Route inspired stories of adventure and discovery?
Romanticizing the past is a common form of entertainment in most cultures. Americans are fond of imagining and re-imagining Europe in the Middle Ages, as became very clear with the high levels of popularity of the TV show Game of Thrones, and the widely read book series that inspired it. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth is based on Viking mythology, from even earlier in Europe’s history. Just as Western cultures look back at these and other historical places and times for inspiring tales and imagery, the vast spaces of Central Asia have always been a source of interest and romantic stories for people from Asia.
One of the earliest examples of this is the story known as Journey to the West, or Monkey. In this Chinese series of tales, a monkey born from a stone at the beginning of time lives various lives as a Taoist Immortal and a Buddhist Saint as well as a warrior. He accompanies a monk, drawn from a famous real person, on a journey through Central Asia along the Silk Route to India to collect copies of Buddhist scrolls and return them to China. Along the way, Monkey gets into trouble constantly and helps get his Buddhist monk and friend out of trouble an equal number of times, all while frustrating the gods in Heaven in numerous ways. This story includes allegories of the beginnings of civilization, and the intellectual and spiritual origins of various Chinese religions and martial arts traditions. It is clearly a romanticization of Central Asia as a place of adventure and discovery. It is also told and retold in ancient and modern versions in nearly every East Asian culture. China has remade Journey to The West TV series nearly every decade since the 1970s. The book is republished regularly. A Japanese version, called Saiyuki, is a famous story, and new screen versions include some of Japan’s most famous pop stars. Even Jackie Chan has gotten in on the trend, filming The Forbidden Kingdom with costars Jet Li, Chrystal Liu, and Li Bingbing as a U.S. box office release in 2008. This is just one example of the importance of the Silk Routes as the source of some of humanity’s greatest stories.
Later, as Buddhism traveled along the developing Silk Routes to China, Korea and eventually Japan, Buddhist monasteries became places where monks, traders, and adventurers could stay, store their goods, and eventually donate their worldly goods and retire. At various points along roads across Central Asia, Buddhist Monasteries left records – many in the form of sculptures and paintings of Bodhisatvas (Buddhist saints), Buddhas, priests and monks. Letters and accounts survive showing the monasteries often acted as banks, warehouses, and inns to support the trade and travel across the continent. These caves became pilgrimage sites, and the difficulties of getting from one place to another generated numerous stories of danger, adventure, and profit that continue to inspire people throughout Asia today.
The Tang Dynasty extended control along the Silk Routes to the great Jiyayuguan (Jade Gate) which was the farthest Western outpost of the Tang Army. Soldiers from garrisons between the Jade Gate and the Chinese terminus of the Silk Road at the great imperial city of Chang’an wrote letters home, complaining of their hardships, asking their fathers for money, and lamenting the fact that they were so far away they might never be able to return. Chang’an itself was known for its ethnic diversity, for the quality and culinary variety of its restaurants which sold everything from Chinese delicacies to Central Asian and even Arab dishes. Stories persist today of the cosmopolitan mix of cultures, including dancing girls from Scandinavia and Persia, glass from Arabia, and even Jewish refugees from Europe who settled and became native Chinese speakers while retaining their faith and ritual life. Poets such as Li Bai (701-762), lived in Chang’an and made its literary scene one of the most vibrant in the world. Li Bai was born in Central Asia. His friend and fellow poet Du Fu was born in China, evidence of social as well as ethnic mixing in the capital. The cosmopolitanism of the Tang capital city is further evidence of the cultural importance of the Silk Routes, and of the cultures of Central Asia that it connected.
Of course, legends of the military prowess of the Mongols, their famous leader Chingiss Khan, and stories of Mongol soldiers’ adventures along the Silk Routes, are also the basis for many tales that both romanticize and vilify the Mongols, their methods, and their conquests. Their popularization of paper money, and innovation in methods of international banking and trade added to the mystique and sense of adventure that related to the Silk Routes. Stories of heroes and fortune seekers who traveled it and survived disease, hardship, deserts, and bandits are many, and tragedies about those who met their fate there are nearly as numerous. Paper currency, Letters of Credit and new banking methods may have had a great impact on world trade, but they also led to stories of untold wealth from finding and trading precious gems, the lapis lazuli, diamonds, jade, pearls, sapphires and rubies that were a part of the Silk Routes trade. Some, such as the world-famous Hope Diamond, have been lost and found throughout history, tracing dramatic paths through the lives of famous people and the histories of wealthy cities. The stories related to the Hope Diamond, many true, often read like popular adventure movies, and movies and plays have been written telling its long and twisted history. Since the Mongols started providing security for travelers along the routes, secure trade with remote locations led to contact with exotic locations like Russia, Europe, and Africa, and the stories and cultural artifacts that such contact brought have also become a part of the cultural legacy of Asia.
Of course, the Pax Mongolica also provided a basis for thinking about international security and cooperation in the 20th century. After the death of Chingiss Khan, his children and later successors continued to split the empire into smaller and smaller pieces, leading to its decline. Nevertheless, Mongol led states continued to cooperate with one another in terms of trade and finance, and to police the Silk Routes for generations. Even as their political and military situations devolved into chaos, the system for international trade cooperation became institutionalized, and over time normalized as part of the world system of global trade. We can say with some confidence that our ability to buy athletic shoes from Vietnam, cars and televisions from South Korea, clothing from SE Asia, and Anime from Japan is a direct and very real legacy of the links created by the often romanticized Mongol Empire. The next time you sit down in your Japanese car, wearing Vietnamese-made jeans, and plugging in your Chinese-made phone, remember the Mongols. But remember them also for the stories and cultural legacy they have left us all. The Silk Routes stand alongside the other great sources of adventure stories: the Amazon and Nile Rivers, the Congo, the “Wine Dark” Mediterranean Sea, the Pacific Islands, and the sands of Arabia. These dramatic and romantic places did and still do provide inspiration for human stories and human endeavors, as places where, perhaps, people have over time found ways to think about what it means to be human and the struggle for a better future.
SUMMARY
Three forces combined to shape the course of Central Asian history: the Turkic migrations, the expansion of Islam, and the Mongol conquest. Beginning in the 2nd century BCE, waves of Turkic migrations entered the region. Turkic tribes occupied the great steppe, Turkifying the region and endowing it with a more nomadic character. They also populated the agricultural basin of Transoxiana, displacing the original Iranian inhabitants of the area. Many of these Turks slowly settled down over time. These Turkic peoples displayed a unique ability to absorb the Islamic faith and internalize the Mongol conquest. Islam transformed the religious adherence of Central Asia and left a lasting mark on the region as well. Transoxiana gradually Islamicized, but Turkic and Persian cultures persisted.
Islamization incorporated native peoples in the process of conversion. As Islam spread through the area, the faith demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to incorporate local traditions, permitting some customs to linger so long as doing so accelerated conversion. Sufi missionaries made some compromises with the Turkic nomadic culture in order to establish the religion in the area. Sufism’s inherent flexibility helped to promote conversion, and the blend of orthodox Islam and Turkic pastoral nomadism created a uniquely Central Asian brand of faith.
The Mongol conquest of Central Asia had the most dramatic impact on the history of the region. Although the Mongols eventually Turkified over time, the legacy of the Chinggis-Khanid legitimacy remained. Perhaps most important here are the results of the unification, rather than its process. As Gregory Guzman pointed out in his essay about barbarians, historians from among those conquered by the Mongols and other Central Asian groups have always been the source of discussions of brutality and terror. There is no question that the Mongols employed such terror, but Guzman’s point is that if we rely only on the accounts of the conquered, we get only a narrow view of Central Asian history. In fact, after the conquest of his empire, Chinggis Khan became an effective administrator and employed others from around the empire to help him do that effectively. The Mongols perfected a system of paper money, which made trade more efficient simply because it is easier to carry in large quantities than coins. Under his reign, the Mongols developed a trade network and banking and finance systems. Their success led to a global trade system in which Europe became an eager market for Asian goods, and through which the interchange between cultures of Eurasia increased to a significant degree. Warfare declined and religions and philosophies found more adherents. Pax Mongolica was a period of global economic and social growth that followed the brutality of the period of conquest, an era that led to later innovations in trade, war, politics, and peace that impacted the rest of human history.
WORKS CITED AND FURTHER READING
Allsen Thomas T., Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Christian, David. Inner Eurasia from Prehistory to the Mongol Empire. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
Findley, Carter Vaughn, The Turks in World History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Guzman, Gregory G., “Were the Barbarians a Negative or Positive Factor in Ancient and Medieval History?,” The Historian 50, no. 4 (August 1988): 558–72.
Halperin, Charles J., Russia and the Golden Horde: The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Herlihy, David, Reviewed: Medieval Technology and Social Change by Lynn White, Jr. in Agricultural History, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Jan., 1963), pp. 43-45
Isenberg, Andrew C., ed. 2014. The Oxford Handbook of Environmental History. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
Khan, Paul. ed., The Secret History of the Mongols: The Origin of Chingis Khan. Boston: Cheng and Tsui, 1985.
Morgan, David, The Mongols. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1996
Soucek, Svat, A History of Inner Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Weatherford, Jack, 1946-. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. New York :Crown, 2004.
White, Jr., Lynn, Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962).
https://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780253013590
Medieval Sourcebook:
Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa 1325 – 1354
http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1354-ibnbattuta.asp
Sacred Texts
http://www.sacred-texts.com/asia/index.htm
William of Rubruck’s Account of the Mongols
http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/rubruck.html
Description of Mongol warfare from Friar John of Plano Carpini
http://www.deremilitari.org/RESOURCES/SOURCES/carpini.htm
The Book of Dede Korkut
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Book_of_Dede_Korkut
Ibn al-Athir: On The Tatars, 1220 – 1221CE
https://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1220al-Athir-mongols.asp
Marco Polo: On the Tartars
http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/mpolo44-46.asp
Jalal ad-Din Rumi (1207 – 1273 CE): from The Masnavi, c. 1250 CE
https://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1250rumi-masnavi.asp
Jalal-ad-Din Rumi (1207 – 1273 CE): The Fairest Land, c. 1250 CE
https://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1250rumi-poems2.asp
Jalal ad-Din Rumi (1207 – 1273): Poems from the Divan-I Shams-I Tabriz, c. 1270 CE
https://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1270rumi-poems1.asp
Hafiz (1325 – 1389 CE): Verses in Praise of God, c. 1370 CE
https://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1370hafiz.asp
Media Attributions
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- Cambyses II in battle.
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- Depiction_of_Timur_granting_audience_on_the_occasion_of_his_accession,_in_the_near_contemporary_Zafarnama_(1424-1428),_1467_edition
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