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From Ulus to Khanate: The making of the Mongol States c. 1220-c. 1290
Abstract
This is the first work in English to bring together significant articles in Mongolian studies in one place, which will be widely welcomed by scholars and researchers in this field.A significant aspect of this work is the emphasis on source materials, including some translated from Mongolian and other languages for the first time.
... de R.) to Shigi-Qutuqu for meritorious service. 27 Although the original Jasaq laws have not survived to our time, their absence is not a critical loss. Analyzing the social and political systems of the medieval Mongols, we see that the basis of Jasaq norms, in addition to the reforms of Činggis Khan, were derived from traditional ways of life, customs, and elements of faith of all Turkic-Mongol nomads, and taken from the Bilig as well [ 29 "The Area of Seven Rivers". ...
Research objectives: This article discusses Joči’s military-political role and status in the Mongol Empire (Yeke Mongol Ulus), beginning in the early thirteenth century and within the intra-dynastic relations of Činggis Khan’s chief sons. In particular, the article seeks to answer questions about Joči’s birth. Discrepancies between the Secret History of the Mongols and other written sources cast doubt on whether Joči was even a legitimate son of Činggis Khan, let alone his eldest one. In addition, this article includes an analysis of Joči’s place within the family and the traditional legal system of the medieval Mongols based on the principles of majorat succession outlined in the Mongol Empire. It establishes evidence of his legitimacy within the Činggisid dynasty’s imperial lineage (altan uruġ) – a point of view supported by his military-political career, his pivotal role in the western campaigns, his leadership at the siege of Khwārazm, and the process of division of the ulus of Činggis Khan.
Research materials: This article makes use of Russian, English, and Turkic (Kazakh, Tatar, etc.) translations of key primary sources including the Secret History of the Mongols and works of authors from the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries, including Al-Nasawī, Shіhāb al-Dīn al-Nuwayrī, ‘Alā’ al-Dīn ’Aṭā-Malik Juvāynī, Minhāj al-Dīn Jūzjānī, Zhao Hong, Peng Daya, John of Plano Carpini, William of Rubruck, Jamāl al-Qarshī, Rashīd al-Dīn, Ibn Faḍl Allāh al-ʿUmarī, Uluġbeg, Ötämiš Hājī, Lubsan Danzan, Abu’l-Ghāzī, and Saγang Sečen. New secondary works regarding Joči published by modern Kazakh, Russian, Tatar, American, French, Chinese, Korean and other scholars were also consulted.
Results and novelty of the research: Taking into consideration certain economic and legal traits of the medieval Mongols, their traditional practices, military-political events, and longterm developments in the Mongol Empire’s history, descriptions of Joči being no more than a “Merkit bastard” are clearly not consistent. The persisting claims can be traced to doubts about Joči’s birth included in the Secret History of the Mongols, the first extensive written record of the medieval Mongols which had a great impact on the work of later historians, including modern scholars. Some researchers suspect this allegation may have been an indirect result of Möngke Khan inserting it into the Secret History. This article argues that the main motivation was Batu’s high military-political position and prestige in the Yeke Mongol Ulus. After Ögödei Khan’s death, sons and grandsons of Ögödei and Ča’adai made various attempts to erode Batu’s significant position in the altan uruġ by raising questions regarding his genealogical origin. This explains why doubts about Joči’s status in the imperial lineage appeared so widely following his death in an intra-dynastic propaganda struggle waged between the houses of Joči and Тolui and the opposing houses of Ča’adai and Ögödei’s sons. This conflict over the narrative was engendered by the struggle for supreme power in the Mongol Empire and the distribution of conquered lands and property.
... These lands corresponded to the different regions where appanages or fiefs were allocated to a son after each successive conquest in the territories of today's Mongolia, northern China and Central Asia. 33 Among them, the territories of Central Asia became known as the ulus of Chinggis Khan's second son Chaghatai (d. 1242/44) and his descendants. ...
When Chinggis Khan died in 1227, his sons inherited different parts of the empire that had been built by their father. Chinggis Khan's second son, Chaghatai (d. c. 1241), became the ruler of the lands of present-day Central Asia, conforming the origin of what became to be known as the Chaghataid Khanate. After the death of its founder, this political entity experienced a long succession crisis that lasted for a decade until a woman, Orghīna Khātūn, took control of the khanate in the name of her son. Although a ruling woman is not an exceptional case in the Mongol empire, she was the first and only woman that ruled over the Chaghataid Khanate, and that did so peacefully and without major upheavals for nine years. Additionally, she did not adopt a passive role but was involved in the running of the khanate, playing her cards in the always-unstable political arena of the Mongol empire. This article looks at the ascension to the throne, the reign and the legacy of this Mongol woman in Mongol Central Asia by contextualising her rule within the history of the region in general and in that of the Mongol empire in particular.
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Chinggis Khan and his progeny ruled over two-thirds of Eurasia. Connecting East, West, North and South, the Mongols integrated most of the Old World, promoting unprecedented cross-cultural contacts and triggering the reshuffle of religious, ethnic, and geopolitical identities. The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire studies the Empire holistically in its full Eurasian context, putting the Mongols and their nomadic culture at the center. Written by an international team of more than forty leading scholars, this two-volume set provides an authoritative and multifaceted history of 'the Mongol Moment' (1206–1368) in world history and includes an unprecedented survey of the various sources for its study, textual (written in sisteen languages), archaeological, and visual. This groundbreaking Cambridge History sets a new standard for future study of the Empire. It will serve as the fundamental reference work for those interested in Mongol, Eurasian, and world history.
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Chinggis Khan and his progeny ruled over two-thirds of Eurasia. Connecting East, West, North and South, the Mongols integrated most of the Old World, promoting unprecedented cross-cultural contacts and triggering the reshuffle of religious, ethnic, and geopolitical identities. The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire studies the Empire holistically in its full Eurasian context, putting the Mongols and their nomadic culture at the center. Written by an international team of more than forty leading scholars, this two-volume set provides an authoritative and multifaceted history of 'the Mongol Moment' (1206–1368) in world history and includes an unprecedented survey of the various sources for its study, textual (written in sisteen languages), archaeological, and visual. This groundbreaking Cambridge History sets a new standard for future study of the Empire. It will serve as the fundamental reference work for those interested in Mongol, Eurasian, and world history.
The paper begins with praise of Watson’s historical work and goes on to criticize it for downplaying the agency of agents other than European great powers and the USA. The key point here is that entrants from Europe’s periphery and beyond were not only ‘expanded upon’ by a growing international system but came to it with their own experiences of having been part of other systems. The historic memories of life before entry were kept alive by mnemonic techniques that also changed as a result of interaction with other members of the system. What ensued was not an effortless expansion of the international system, but a meeting of cultures that may be conceptualized as the intertwining of different narrative sociabilities emanating from different memories. This matters today, for entrants like China and Russia preserve memories of previous experiences, and these memories inform how these states read ongoing political developments.
The imperial project of the Mongols was based not only on conquering technologies, the most effective for their time, but also on new technologies for mobilizing, centralizing and managing the resources necessary for further conquests. The most important tool for mobilizing resources, both human and material, was the population census, which had a general imperial character and covered a significant part of the inhabited world – from China to the Rus’ principalities. Each newly conquered people or state, recognizing the power of the great khan, had to put at his disposal all the resources of their country, which was the main condition for the implementation of the imperial project of the Mongols, which had the goal of conquering the whole world and creating a global empire. Throughout the territory controlled by the Mongols, a unified tax and financial system was established, centralization and monetization of tax revenues were carried out, a centralized system was created for using labor resources and replenishing the armed forces through regular recruitment sets. By providing a higher level of integration and interaction between many peoples and creating a new multicultural imperial elite, the Mongols promoted an intensive exchange of knowledge and new technologies, including managerial ones, assimilating and developing them in the interests of the empire. As a result, accounting and resource mobilization tools borrowed from China found a new application at the other end of the empire – in the Caucasus and in the Rus’ lands.
The chapter does not use the “decline” metaphor. It focuses on fission processes instead. Fission in the Mongol case proceeded in two or more steps: from the unified empire to the successor states (the four Mongol uluses) and regional states. Fission could not be prevented—although the Mongol rulers were aware of this danger and tried to avoid it—because of the succession rules, but also because of the transformation of the imperial guard (keshig) from a household institution into an instrument in the hands of the military aristocracy. Heredity was also a factor in the transformation of the regular army. Besides, the rulers were increasingly unable to live up to their obligation to satisfy the legitimate claims of their retainers through a redistribution process.
This section looks at the medieval Mongolian ideas of people, state, and empire. In particular, by analyzing the medieval Mongolian terms of ulus, irgen, and yeke ulus in relation to sovereignty and rulership (ulus-un ejen or ulus medekü or ulus bariqu), the distribution of princely shares (qubi), the establishment of princely appanages or khanate-principalities (ulus), as well as the creation of “the princes who rule ulus” (ulus medekün kö’üt) and subsequent developments, the section aims to provide insights into the process of Mongol state formation and imperial transformation.
The Ilkhanate of Iran emerged in the course of the disintegration of the Great Mongol Empire. In scholarly literature, the Ilkhanate likewise is quite often termed an empire. But, what are the essential characteristics that allow for this label? The editors of this volume, Michael Gehler and Robert Rollinger, in this and previous publications, developed and discussed a catalogue of imperial qualities that facilitate a comparative and global history approach. This chapter follows their guideline and takes up some of their key concepts by comparing the Great Mongol Empire with the Ilkhanate. Legitimacy, self-perception, the exercise of political power, the dynamics of expansion, and the relations with other Mongol polities are among the topics to be examined.
The present book addresses a wide range of problems concerning the history of Eastern Slavic culture in its interaction with cultural models of Western Europe. This collective work is the final result of the French-Italian conference “Fratture e integrazioni tra Russia, mondo slavo orientale e Occidente. Storia e civiltà letteraria dal Medioevo all’epoca contemporanea” (University of Florence, April 16-17, 2015): the complexity of cultural relations between Russia, the Slavic East and the European West is analysed by enhancing the variety of points of view and by using different methodological approaches and perspectives provided by different fields of study. Here, new materials and new analytical methods are presented, useful for studying the complex interactions between the Western cultural tradition and the Eastern Slavic one from the Middle Ages to the present day. The “fractures” and “integrations” are identified through critical reading or rereading of texts, works and authors who have taken part in the construction and development of cultural relations between the different European areas.
Moğollar, Horasan coğrafyasını ele geçirdikten sonra, bölgede idarî bürokrasiyi askerî ve sivil idareciler üzerinden kurmuştu. Moğolların Horasan’da kurduğu bu sistem Möngke Han’a kadar devam etmişti. Möngke’nin hükümdar olması, Horasan coğrafyasında yeni bir idarî düzeni ortaya çıkartmıştı. O, kardeşi Hülegü’yü İran coğrafyasına göndermesiyle Horasan, bir İlhanlı toprağı haline gelmişti. Ancak bu durum Horasan coğrafyasında İlhanlı-Çağatay çekişmesini beraberinde getirmişti. Bu yüzden İlhanlı Devleti, Hülegü’den itibaren Horasan’da yönetimi hükümdarların vekili olan şehzâdeler üzerinden oluşturmuştu. Böylece İlhanlılar, hem bölgede istediği idarî düzen kurmayı hem de devletin doğu sınırını Çağatay saldırılarına karşı korumayı amaçlamışlardı. Bu makale, İlhanlı Devleti döneminde Horasan coğrafyasında görev alan şehzâdeleri dönemin çağdaş kaynakları üzerinden incelemekte; ayrıca şehzâdelerle bölgede görev alan idarî görevliler hakkında bilgi vermektedir.
El gran trayecto terrestre y marítimo, identificado de manera general como La Ruta de la seda, constituye una compleja red de vías comerciales basadas en el negocio de la seda china y otros muchos productos, hace ya XXII siglos, expandido por toda Asia, parte de Europa y África. Vinculaba China con Mongolia, India, Persia, Arabia, Siria, Turquía, Europa y África. Las diversas rutas se inician en la ciudad de Chang'an (hoy Xi'an) en China. En su recorrido transitan por Karakórum (Mongolia), el Paso de Khunjerab (China y Pakistán), Susa (Persia), el Valle de Fergana (Tayikistán), Samarcanda (Uzbekistán), Taxila (Pakistán), Antioquía (Siria), Alejandría (Egipto), Kazán (Rusia) y Constantinopla (hoy Estambul en Turquía) a las puertas de Europa, llegan hasta los reinos hispánicos en el siglo XV, en los confines de Europa y a las actuales Somalia y Etiopía en África nororiental.
Un testimonio especial de este proceso en las postrimerías del siglo XIII es el veneciano Marco Polo (1254-1324), quien tiene la oportunidad de convivir y recordar muy diversos contactos culturales, independientemente de los enfoques de las diversas versiones que se han realizado de su memoria de viajes. El hecho que Marco Polo haya recorrido de muy variada manera las rutas marítimas y terrestres de la seda hasta los confines de China le otorga plena actualidad en el contexto internacional cuando la iniciativa china de La Franja y la Ruta adquiere un alcance mundial y un enfoque mucho más amplio en esta nueva era.
This book is the attempt to bring - through the study of the written sources - one of the many faces of the complex Mongol history to its historical dimension. It concentrates on the Mongol dominion in Caucasia, considered as the area that goes from the Azov Sea down to modern Georgia. The period of the Mongol dominion was not the unique occasion during which sedentaries cultures and nomad civilizations came to interact; but it was only after this event that Caucasia underwent a coherent power of a united political system which enclosed in itself the character of both the social models. The genesis of this process and its results are the main object of this book.
Questo saggio viene ripubblicato a distanza di dieci anni perché da un lato la situazione geopolitica attuale è radicalmente cambiata rispetto ad allora. Il Caucaso, oggi ancor più di dieci anni fa, rappresenta uno snodo politico e sociale decisivo fra l'Occidente e l'Asia oltreché il legame storico fra la cristianità e l'islam. Dall'altro lato si registra, negli ultimi due decenni, e nell'ultimo in particolare, una crescente attenzione da parte degli studiosi alla storia dei Mongoli. Le ricerche e le pubblicazioni si sono moltiplicate in Europa, negli Stati Uniti, in Russia e in tutti quei paesi che ebbero a che fare direttamente o indirettamente con l'impero creato da Gengis Khan. Molti lavori, pubblicati negli anni passati, erano rimasti relegati alla dimensione locale poiché scritti in lingue difficilmente accessibili, dall'ungherese al persiano, dal russo al cinese. Tuttavia, dall'inizio degli anni Dieci di questo secolo, si sta assistendo a un poderoso lavoro di traduzione in lingua inglese delle fonti e a un'intensa attività di ricerca i cui risultati sono sempre più spesso pubblicati in inglese e quindi accessibili alla comunità scientifica internazionale.
En 1206 Chinggis Khan comenzaba la construcción del mayor continuo político, económico y cultural del que ha quedado constancia en la historia de la humanidad. Ningún otro estado había conseguido jamás penetrar tantos pueblos y lenguas distintas. A su influencia no escapó nada del Viejo Mundo y a su influencia se deben también las condiciones que hicieron posible el descubrimiento del Nuevo. Todo esto bastaría para reservar a los Chinggis, Ogodei y Qubilai Khan un puesto de honor en la memoria. Pero los mongoles son un pueblo extraño, sin duda en la última frontera de la alteridad para nosotros los sedentarios. Afortunadamente, este postrero asalto del mundo nómada coincidió con el gran desarrollo de la cultura escrita en China, Persia y el Occidente latino. El Imperio mongol constituye por eso una de las experiencias históricas más remotas y singulares a las que el método historiográfico garantiza un nivel de acceso aceptable.
La presente obra, la primera en su género escrita en castellano, aborda la historia del Imperio mongol en toda su extensión espacial y temporal, si bien privilegiando una perspectiva narrativa y situando en su centro a los personajes, con el anhelo de facilitar al lector moderno su tránsito por una experiencia histórica radicalmente distinta pero, a la vez, fundacional como pocas del mundo contemporáneo.
Analyzing the messages and the responses that Chinggis Khan sent to and received from Ong Khan and his allies after his defeat at the hands of the latter at the battle of Qalaqaljit Elet in the spring of 1203, and explicating the terms of cimar (chimar) and törü that appear in the messages, this article looks at the political order and culture where the Chinggisid state rose. The article argues that pre-modern Mongolian and Inner Asian politics was guided by the idea of törü, which resembles the Indo-Buddhist idea of dharma, the Chinese idea of dao, and the European idea of natural law. It also argues that the hereditary divisional system that the Inner Asian state builders regularly employed to govern their nomadic populations, the institutions of dynastic succession, and the hereditary rights of princes and the nobility for inheritance fundamentally structured Inner Asian politics. Hence, it questions the conventional wisdom that depicts pre-modern Inner Asian politics not only as pragmatic, fluid, and fractious but also dependent on the personal charisma of leadership, and the personal bond and loyalty between leaders and followers, as if it were lacking enduring social, political institutions and order.
This chapter focuses on the mobilizational strategies and methods used by pastoral nomadic polities like the Mongol Empire. Demographic information for Inner Eurasia is even less reliable than for Outer Eurasia. The different population histories of different parts of Inner Eurasia mark the beginnings of a belated agricultural invasion of Inner Eurasia that would eventually transform the entire region. The Mongols mobilized vast numbers of captives, most of them artisans, from all parts of the empire, and, despite its remote location, Karakorum became remarkably cosmopolitan. The mobilization systems that emerged in Inner Eurasia can seem puzzling because so many of our ideas about mobilization and state formation are derived from the study of agrarian polities in Outer Eurasia. Mobilizing resources from pastoralists was harder than mobilizing from peasants. The metaphor of a smychka highlights the importance of the constantly shifting balance of power between pastoral and agrarian regions.
Recent research on the use of the notion of Europe during the Middle Ages has confirmed that the name of the continent only rarely acquired a political meaning, if at all, in this period. What is particularly surprising is the observation that several authors in the Latin world used expressions such as regnum Europae or regna Europae, especially in the Carolingian period, without elaboration. Hence, although Charlemagne has been praised as ‘father of Europe’ by one contemporary author, the idea of an ‘Emperor of Europe’ was never developed, with the exception of two brief notices in early medieval Irish annalistic compilations. Even during the High Middle Ages, when the name of the continent came to be more widely used in different contexts, only a small set of figures, historical as well as fictitious, were ascribed with the aspiration or quality of ruling all of Europe.
Towards the end of the Middle Ages, however, the notion of an ‘Emperor of Europe’ became more common in a particular context: Christian authors accused non-Christian rulers of Asian origin (Mongols, Turks) of seeking to subdue the entire continent. Latin authors, in turn, started to perceive Europe as being the home of Christendom.
This article demonstrates how those Christian authors accept a pluralistic order for their own continent (on a political level), and contrasts this with the quest for hegemonic rule that becomes a motive of polemic, which they ascribe to non-Christian rulers. Although their arguments do not lead to the explicit presentation of Europe as the ‘continent of freedom’, they do recognise and value the existence of a multitude of political entities which they contrast with a hegemonic and homogenous political role of ‘Asian tyrants’. In a broader perspective, these findings open insights into late medieval political thought that go beyond what we can learn from contemporary ‘political discussion’ in a more limited sense.
This book presents a case for a basic reorientation of International Relations away from the state and towards the study of social institutions in the sense of patterned practices, ideas and norms/rules. IR has always suffered from a parochial occupation with the state and the Western system of state. Its main theories revolve around these phenomena, and have resulted in the reification of the state: it has been turned into an essential actor, with certain immutable and fundamental properties that remain constant throughout time. A list of these properties usually includes territorial limits, centralisation, monopolisation of violence and exclusive loyalties. International Institutions in World History shows how the state is an inherently modern phenomenon, a modern social institution, and that foundational concepts in IR should be based on a full appreciation of the wider record of human existence on earth, trans-historically and cross-culturally. Schouenborg argues that these social institutions may be captured via a universal functional typology consisting of four categories: legitimacy and membership; regulating conflicts; trade; and governance. The book will be of interest to scholars and students within IR (particularly IR theory), anthropology, archaeology and sociology, and those interested in general social theory.
This dissertation considers the role that court dress played in the formation of Mongol cultural and political identity in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. By defining and analyzing the fashion system of the Mongol court principally in Yuan China, but also in Ilkhanid Iran, it demonstrates how the Mongols were able to manipulate symbols and ceremonies effectively via costume in the formation of their empire. Most art historical studies of the Yuan dynasty have focused on painting by Han Chinese “exiled” painters, ignoring Mongol contributions to the art and material culture of the dynasty. This dissertation initiates an understanding of the particular aesthetics of the Yuan dynasty, which incorporated diverse cultural traditions through textiles and dress. In addition, as no systematic study of Mongol dress has been written, this is the first such study that brings together analysis of the decorative motifs, weave structures, and tailoring of excavated costumes and textiles, alongside pictorial representations and contemporary textual descriptions. To understand the genesis and development of the Mongol courtly vestimentary system, which evolved in such a short period of time, antecedents from the Steppe, Central Asia, China, and the Islamic world are considered. Concordances and discrepancies among this evidence allow for hypotheses about what the Mongol court actually wore, how it wished to be portrayed, and how others saw it. These hypotheses reveal much about the aspirations of the Mongol empire on one hand, and the anxieties they elicited, on the other.
The Medieval Mongol ulus was a category of government that was turned into a 'community of the realm' and as such it was assumed to be 'a natural, inherited community of tradition, custom, law and descent', a 'people' or irgen. According to Mongolian language sources of the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, 'Mongol' was the only contemporary ulus and irgen while all the other contemporary categories such as Kitat, Tang'ut and so on were described only as irgen. Analysing this usage convention, this paper reconstructs medieval Mongol concepts of ulus, irgen and yeke ulus. The idea of ulus congruent with the Chinggisid state of 1206 was well established in pre-Chinggisid Mongolia. Indeed, the Mongol ulus of 1206 was a realisation and an embodiment of that idea, and was built upon the Kereyid state and her sphere of hegemony. As such, the Mongol ulus of 1206 was different and distinct from the Yeke Mongqol Ulus, the Mongol Empire. This finding not only renders the idea of the tribal origin of the Chinggisid state untenable, but also suggests that we must look at the legacies of previous state formations for the origin of the Chinggisid state.
This article is a call for making the Eurasian steppe an object of study within International Relations. The first section argues that the neglect of the steppe is due to 19th-century prejudice against non-sedentary polities as being barbarian. This is hardly a scholarly reason to neglect them. The second section is a nutshell overview of literature on the steppe from other fields. On the strength of these literatures, we postulate the existence of what we call an almost three thousand year long steppe tradition of ordering politics. The third section of the article suggests that the steppe tradition has hybridised sundry polity-building projects, from early polity-building in the European the Middle Ages via the Ottoman and Russian empires to contemporary Central Asian state-building. We conclude this exploratory piece by speculating whether a focus on the steppe tradition may have the potential to change our accounts of the emergence of European international relations at large.
The paper focuses on medieval Central Asian nomadic (in a wide sense) states and their interaction with the sedentary world, audit offers an analysis of the interdependencies of the state and the military. One central question is whether nomadic states and armies are an extension of the primary forms of social organization in most nomadic contexts, that is, of tribalism. Since it seems that nomadic statehood in all but very exceptional cases emerges in close interaction with settled economic structures, another central question is the redistribution of extracted resources. It is argued that the forms of redistribution are instrumental in shaping nomadic statehood. In the military sector, two essential forms seem to be extant: whereas the tribal host is a result of the diffusion of military skills within society, the warband is typically a non-tribal fighting force. The paper then argues that nomadic statehood is more closely linked to the warband type of military organization than with the tribal host.
The appearance of a new translation of the Itinerarium of William of Rubruck (1253–55) furnishes an opportunity to review the work done on this, possibly the most valuable of Western sources on the Mongols. By comparison with the mission of his fellow-Franciscan John of Plano Carpini some eight years before, that of Rubruck to the court of the Great Khan Möngke has been singularly unfortunate. An account of the earlier mission (the so-called “Tartar Relation”) was being drawn up in Poland even before Carpini had rejoined Innocent IV at Lyons, and at least two other variant recensions are known to exist, over and above the numerous manuscripts of the standard version. Rubruck's report, on the other hand, couched in the form of a long letter to St. Louis, languished for three and a half centuries before it was rescued around 1600 by Hakluyt; and there are only five manuscripts.