Nomadic Empires, Turkish Migrations and Eurasian Integration

1. 1000-1500Mongol Eurasia and its AftermathBy Tracy Rosselle, M.A.T.Newsome High School, Lithia, FL Nomadic Empires, Turkish Migrations and Eurasian Integration

2. Mongol madness: a quick overview • Who were the Mongols? • When were they a big deal? • What did they do? • Where did they do what they did?  • Why are they so important to the second period of World History, 600 – 1450 C.E.?

3. Who were the Mongols? • They were nomadic tribes living on the grasslands of the Eastern Steppe. • Constantly on the move, always looking for food to feed their horses (as well as their sheep, goats, camels and yaks), they were the quintessential pastoralists. • They lived in yurts and fed on bits of meat and curdled mare’s milk. A yurt was a round tent made with sticks and felt, easily transportable to fit the Mongol pastoralist lifestyle.

4. Who were the Mongols? • Males spent much of their time on horseback – and were quite adept with bow and arrow. • The stirrup was invented on the steppe in the second century B.C.E., and the Mongols perfected its use as a military technology (a mounted warrior could stand, turn and shoot arrows behind him).

5. Who were the Mongols? • A Mongol army was like a moving city. • A cavalry of perhaps 10,000 was accompanied by an even larger number of family members, horses and livestock. • When attacking, the warriors would leave the caravan, separate into different groups, and attack on multiple fronts (this “lightning strike” on horseback can be seen as the precursor to the 20th century’s blitzkrieg). • Because they held that water was divine and must not be polluted, they never washed  their filthy leather jackets shone with grease, and their southern neighbors, the Chinese, said the Mongols smelled so awful that no one could come near them.

6. Who were the Mongols? • Women were responsible for the needs of the camp, milked the livestock and treated the wounded. • Some women, allowed to ride horses and shoot bows and arrows, also fought as warriors. • The status on Mongol women, in fact, was unusually high by 13th century standards. They were not forced to wear veils or bind their feet. And one of Genghis Khan’s first acts as ruler was to outlaw the kidnapping of women – one of the main reasons for feuding on the steppes.

7. When were the Mongols a big deal? • If you’ve been paying attention, we’ve already alluded to this. The Mongols became a big deal after Genghis Khan came onto the scene. • Genghis Khan (sometimes spelled Chinggis Khan) was born in 1162, and around 1200 he united the Mongol people and established (with the help of his descendents) the largest empire the world had ever seen. • The Mongols played a key role in world history during much of the 1200s and 1300s.

8. What did the Mongols do? They ultimately conquered an area that stretched from Eastern Europe to the Pacific Ocean … and it started with this man. Temujin was acknowledged by the Mongols and their allies as Genghis Khan (“supreme leader”), named by The Economist magazine in 1999 as the “man of the millennium.”

9. What did the Mongols do? • Genghis Khan’s legend isn’t exactly squeaky clean … but some historians are now suggesting he was fairly progressive for his time. • At any rate, he and his armies terrorized much of Eurasia. The ultimatum? “Submit and live. Resist and die.” • The Mongols destroyed city after city, slaughtering all who opposed them. In just a quarter century, all of Central Asia was under their control.

10. What did the Mongols do? “Man’s highest joy is in victory: to conquer one’s enemies, to pursue them, to take what is theirs, to make their loved ones weep, to ride their horses, and to embrace their wives and daughters.” “I have committed many acts of cruelty and had an incalculable number of men killed, never knowing what I did was right. But I am indifferent to what people may think of me.” – Genghis Khan

11. What did the Mongols do? • Genghis Khan – who was a gifted organizer and strategist – wanted to rule the world … but climate change may also have played a role in the sudden Mongol ascendancy: A sharp decline in the mean annual temperature may have caused less and shorter grass to grow on the steppe, leading the Mongols to raid settled societies. • When Genghis Khan died in 1227, the empire was split into four khanates, or hordes, ruled by each of his sons. • The Golden Horde included modern-day Russia, and Mongol rule here in part explains why Russia lagged the rest of Europe as it modernized in later centuries.

12. What did the Mongols do? • Genghis Khan’s grandson Kublai Khan later ruled all of China, conquering the Song in the South and founding the Yuan Dynasty. • Kublai Khan wasn’t true to his Mongol roots, finding the luxurious life of Chinese emperor to his liking. • He encouraged trade by inviting foreign merchants to visit China, even as the minority Mongols and majority Chinese kept their separate cultural identities.

13. What did the Mongols do? • The Mongols adopted different tactics in the different lands they ruled. • In Russia, they occupied the prime pastureland of the steppes north of the Black Sea, mounting raids and exacting tribute from Russian cities rather than occupying the heavily forested land. • In Persia, they allowed Persians to continue administering the ilkhanate as long as they delivered tax receipts and maintained order, and they even assimilated to Persian cultural traditions. • In China, they stood aloof from their subjects and brought in foreign administrators, neglecting the native administrative talent.

14. What did the Mongols do? • One foreign visitor to Mongol China was the Venetian trader Marco Polo, who arrived at Kublai Khan’s court around 1275 and journeyed throughout China for 17 years. • Although some doubt he ever visited China (he failed to mention tea, acupuncture and foot binding), Marco Polo related his extensive journeys to China’s cities and called it the greatest civilization in the world.

15. What did the Mongols do? • Kublai Khan failed in his bid to conquer Japan, and his armies suffered humiliating defeats in Southeast Asia. • His successors were faced with disgruntled and overtaxed Chinese subjects, and the Mongols were finally kicked out in 1368. • Khanates elsewhere fell apart too … largely because the Mongols had learned the customs of the conquered, losing their taste for war and slaughter in the process.

16. Where did they do what they did? • We’ve already mentioned the Mongol Empire touched much of the Eurasian continent, but this map might help to visualize it.

17. Why are the Mongols so important? • This empire touched nearly all the major civilizations of the day. • Despite the ruthless nature of their initial conquering, the empire was relatively peaceful thereafter. • The mid-1200s to the mid-1300s is sometimes called the Pax Mongolica.

18. Why are the Mongols so important? • Cultural diffusion, greater traffic along the Silk Roads and a keener interest elsewhere for all things Chinese truly made the world a smaller place. • The Mongols – largely illiterate and “uncivilized” themselves – facilitated an unprecedented cultural diffusion.

19. Why are the Mongols so important? They also helped make possible the transmission in the mid-1300s of the Bubonic Plague (a.k.a. Black Death or Great Mortality), which began in China and ultimately killed one-quarter to one-third of the population of Western Europe and the Middle East.

20. The Mongol legacy • The Mongol period rebalanced the major societies of Europe and Asia. • The safe passage of merchants, missionaries, artists and entertainers points to a key fact: Thanks to the Mongol openness and their facilitation of knowledge exchange, the technology gap between East Asia and Western Europe began to close.

21. The Mongol legacy Impact on China: Hostility toward outsiders deepened, and defensive barriers were refortified to prevent future invasions. Impact on Russia: Russians turned from a regional people to a more expansionist and aggressive people.

22. The Mongol legacy Impact on Japan: By facing down two Mongol invasions (one thanks to a “divine wind,” a typhoon that destroyed the Mongol fleet), the Japanese began to think of themselves as superior to the Chinese … and this sense of superiority and isolation would figure greatly later in world history.

23. The Mongol legacy Impact on Western Europe: The Europeans were lucky not to have been invaded by the Mongols, and they were clearly the leading beneficiaries of the Mongol era. They were good at imitating, at seeing the possibilities of new technologies and exploiting them to the fullest. And the two they exploited the most were gunpowder and printing.

24. Meanwhile, prior to the Mongols … • Other nomadic peoples had existed and exerted great influence throughout Eurasia as early as classical times. • The Xiongnu confederation dominated central Asia and was a threat to Han China from the third to the first century BCE. • The Huns were among the nomads whose migrations helped topple the western Roman Empire. • The White Huns destroyed the Gupta state in India. • Turkish peoples ruled a large central Asian empire from sixth through the ninth centuries, with the Uighur Turks even seizing the Tang capital for a time in the mid-seventh century.

25. Nomadic society • Consisted of two classes: nobles and commoners. • Nobles did little governing, since clans and tribes were self-sufficient and generally not amenable to outside interference … but would exert absolute authority over their forces when at war. • Nobility was fluid: passed to heirs but could be lost if leadership skills weren’t adequate (and commoners, likewise, could rise to noble status with courageous conduct in war).

26. Nomadic life • The aridity of the climate and the nomadic lifestyle of following seasonal migratory cycles limited the development of human societies in central Asia. • They lived mostly off the meat, milk and hides of their animals. • Only at oases could agriculture of any kind take place, which meant that only small-scale cultivation of millet or vegetables took place. • Migratory habits and the lack of intensive agriculture thus meant large-scale craft production (i.e., pottery, leather goods, iron weapons and tools) was impossible.

27. Nomadic religion • Earliest religion of the Turkish peoples revolved around shamans, who were religious specialists said to have the supernatural power of communicating with the gods and nature spirits. • But by the sixth century CE many Turks had converted to Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity or Manichaeism … a fact that, coupled with their prominence in Eurasian trade networks – they often led caravans across central Asia – led to the development of a Turkish written script.

28. Turkish conversion to Islam • In the 10th century, Turks living near the Abbasid empire converted to Islam, which had a profound influence once Turkish peoples began moving into settled societies in large numbers – especially in Anatolia and northern India. • The boundaries of the Islamic world expanded along with the political and military influence of Turkish peoples.

29. Turkish empires:Persia, Anatolia and India • Turkish peoples living around the borders of Abbasid Persia slowly became integrated into that settled society so that by the mid-11th century large numbers of Saljuq Turks served in the Abbasid armies and eventually came to overshadow the caliph. • The last two centuries of the Abbasid state: the caliphs mere figureheads as real authority held by the Turkish sultans (“chieftains”).

30. Turkish empires:Persia, Anatolia and India (cont.) • Saljuq Turks also moved into Byzantine Anatolia in large numbers by the 11 century. • Many peasants there, embittered by their Byzantine overlords, saw the Saljuqs as liberators rather than conquerors. • The Turks set up their own political and social institutions, taxed the Byzantine church and welcomed converts to Islam, giving them new political, social and economic opportunities. • By the time the Ottoman Turks finally seized Constantinople in 1453, Anatolia was a Turkish and Islamic land.

31. Turkish empires:Persia, Anatolia and India (cont.) • Meanwhile, the Turkish Ghaznavids of Afghanistan, led by Mahmud of Ghazni, began plundering northern India. • When they decided to settle into a permanent rule there by the 13th century, the Ghaznavid Turks established the Delhi Sultanate. • They were harsh foes of Buddhism and Hinduism, encouraging conversion to Islam as they destroyed shrines, temples and monasteries.

32. Tamerlane the Whirlwind • After the Mongols, a central Asian Turk named Timur – modeling himself after his hero Genghis Khan – put together a short-lived empire that deeply influenced surviving Turkish Muslim states in India, Persian and Anatolia. • Because he walked with a limp, contemporaries referred to him as Timur-i lang – “Timur the Lame,” which, in English, became Tamerlane.

33. Conquerors, not governors • Tamerlane was much like Genghis Khan in that he was a great military leader and strategist … a conqueror, ill-suited to administer a polity for the long term. • He did not create an imperial administration; instead, he ruled through tribal leaders who were allies, relied on existing bureaucratic structures and simply received taxes and tribute.

34. Sources • The Human Story (James C. Davis) • Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (Jack Weatherford) • Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past (Bentley & Ziegler) • World History (Duiker & Spielvogel) • A Brief History of the World, Lecture 16 – The Mongol Years (Peter N. Stearns)