Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Islam in a plural Asia
- PART I THE IMPACT OF THE STEPPE PEOPLES
- 1 The steppe peoples in the Islamic world
- 2 The early expansion of Islam in India
- 3 Muslim India: the Delhi sultanate
- 4 The rule of the infidels: the Mongols and the Islamic world
- 5 Tamerlane and his descendants: from paladins to patrons
- PART II THE GUNPOWDER EMPIRES
- PART III THE MARITIME OECUMENE
- PART IV THEMES
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
4 - The rule of the infidels: the Mongols and the Islamic world
from PART I - THE IMPACT OF THE STEPPE PEOPLES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2011
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Islam in a plural Asia
- PART I THE IMPACT OF THE STEPPE PEOPLES
- 1 The steppe peoples in the Islamic world
- 2 The early expansion of Islam in India
- 3 Muslim India: the Delhi sultanate
- 4 The rule of the infidels: the Mongols and the Islamic world
- 5 Tamerlane and his descendants: from paladins to patrons
- PART II THE GUNPOWDER EMPIRES
- PART III THE MARITIME OECUMENE
- PART IV THEMES
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
The formation of the Mongol empire
The Mongol period was a watershed for the Islamic world, as it was for most of Eurasia. The ferocity of the conquest and the confusion of early rule exacerbated an agricultural decline already deepened by decades of internal warfare. For artisans and merchants, however, the period brought significant new opportunities. As foreign nomads, the Mongols were not a novelty, and eastern regions had already experienced the rule of the non-Muslim Qara Khitay. However, the Mongols replaced the familiar caliphate with a new imperial ideal and administrative methods conceived and tested in Mongolia and China. While the Chinggisid rulers were quick to adopt the bureaucratic practices of conquered territories, they did so within a framework conceived at the beginning of Chinggis Khan’s rule; thus steppe traditions lay at the base of Mongol administration.
The political and economic connections of the Mongolian plateau reached from northern China to western Turkistān (see Map 2). Its southern sections were closely involved with China and the Silk Road and sometimes in contact with powers to the west. In the northern forest region many tribes lived from hunting and fishing or reindeer herding, while in the steppe pastoral-nomadism prevailed. There were also agricultural settlements. Two related languages, Turkic and Mongolian, predominated, sometimes spoken within one confederation. The most powerful populations were the pastoral nomads, and it is probably not by chance that the Mongols set their myth of origin in the time and place of their transition to pastoralism.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The New Cambridge History of Islam , pp. 128 - 168Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
References
, The geographical part of the Nuzhat al-qulūb composed by Ḥamd-Allāh Mustawfī of Qazwīn in 740 (1340), ed. and trans. , Gibb Memorial Series, London, 1915–18.Google Scholar
, The travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, AD 1325–1354, trans. , 3 vols., Hakluyt Society, 5 vols., Cambridge, 1958–2000.Google Scholar
. Al-ʿUmarīs Darstellung der mongolischen Reiche in seinem Werk Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār, ed. and trans. , Wiesbaden, 1968.Google Scholar
, Le Fārs sous la domination mongole: Politique et fiscalité (XIIIe–XIVe s.), Paris, 2005.Google Scholar
, ‘Le grand jasaq de Gengis-Khan, l’empire, la culture mongole et la sharīʿa’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 47, 1 (2004) –79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Mongol imperialism: The policies of the Grand Qan Möngke in China, Russia and the Islamic lands, 1251–1259, Berkeley, 1987.Google Scholar
, ‘Mongolian princes and their merchant partners, 1200–1260’, Asia Major, 3rd ser., 2 (1989) –126.Google Scholar
, ‘Changing forms of legitimation in Mongol Iran’, in and (eds.), Rulers from the steppe: State formation and the Eurasian periphery, Ethnographics Monograph Series, 2, Los Angeles, 1991 –41.Google Scholar
, ‘The rise of the Mongolian empire and Mongolian rule in north China’, in and (eds.), Cambridge history of China, vol. VI, Cambridge, 1994 –413.Google Scholar
, ‘Spiritual geography and political legitimacy in the eastern steppe’, in and (eds.), Ideology and the formation of early states, Leiden, 1996 –35.Google Scholar
, Commodity and exchange in the Mongol empire: A cultural history of Islamic textiles, Cambridge, 1997.Google Scholar
, ‘Ever closer encounters: The appropriation of culture and the apportionment of peoples in the Mongol empire’, Journal of Early Modern History, 1, 1 (1997) –23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Sharing out the empire: Apportioned lands under the Mongols,’ in and (eds.), Nomads in the sedentary world, Richmond, 2001 –90.Google Scholar
, ‘Ghazan, Islam and Mongol tradition: A view from the Mamlūk sultanate’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 59, 1 (1996) –10.Google Scholar
, ‘Sufis and shamans: Some remarks on the Islamization of the Mongols in the Ilkhanate’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 42 (1999) –46.Google Scholar
and (eds.), Mongols, Turks, and others: Eurasian nomads and the sedentary world, Leiden, 2005.Google Scholar
, ‘Réseau pastoral et réseau caravanier: Les grand’routes du Khurassan à l’époque mongole’, Le Monde Iranien et l’Islam, 1 (1971) –30.Google Scholar
, ‘La propriété foncière en Azerbaydjan sous les Mongols’, Le Monde Iranien et l’Islam, 4 (1976–7) –132.Google Scholar
, Émirs mongols et vizirs persans dans les remous de l’acculturation, Cahiers de Studia Iranica, Paris, 1995.Google Scholar
, ‘The great Yāsa of Chingiz Khān: A reexamination’, A, Studia Islamica, 33 (1971) –140, B, 34 (1971), pp. 151–80, C(1), 36 (1972), pp. –58, C(2), 38 (1973), pp. 107–56.Google Scholar
, , trans. , The chronography of Gregory Abu’l Faraj … commonly known as Bar Hebraeus, 2 vols., Oxford and London, 1932.Google Scholar
, ‘The battle of Herat (1270): A case of inter-Mongol warfare’, in (ed.), Warfare in Inner Asian history (500–1800), Leiden, 2002 –219.Google Scholar
, ‘The Chaghadaids and Islam: The conversion of Tarmashirin Khan (1331–34)’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 122, 4 (2002) –52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Dynastic and political history of the Īl-Khāns’, in Cambridge history of Iran, vol. V, Cambridge, 1968 –421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Sino-Khitan administration in Mongol Bukhara’, Journal of Asian History, 13, 2 (1979) –47.Google Scholar
, ‘Early Mongol expansion in western Siberia and Turkestan (1207–1219): A reconstruction’, Central Asiatic Journal, 36, 1-2 (1992) –32.Google Scholar
, The formation of Turkey: The Seljukid Sultanate of Rūm: Eleventh to fourteenth century, trans. , Harlow 2001.Google Scholar
and (eds.), The legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly art and culture in western Asia, 1256–1353, New York, 2002.Google Scholar
, ‘The keshig in Iran: The survival of the royal Mongol household’, in (ed.), Beyond the legacy of Genghis Khan (Leiden, 2006) –41, 145–50Google Scholar
, , and , (eds.), In the service of the khan: Eminent personalities of the early Mongol-Yuan period (Wiesbaden, 1993) –1.Google Scholar
, Islamization and native religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and conversion to Islam in historical and epic tradition, University Park, PA, 1994.Google Scholar
, ‘Merchant associations in Yüan China: The ortogh’, Asia Major, 3rd ser., 2 (1989) –54.Google Scholar
, ‘The Mongols: Ecological and social perspectives’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 46 (1986) –50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Waqf im mongolischen Iran. Rašīduddīns Sorge um Nachruhm und Seelenheil, Freiburger Islamstudien, 20, Stuttgart, 2000.Google Scholar
, The military establishment of the Yuan dynasty, Harvard East Asian Monographs, 77, Cambridge, MA, 1978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, From Saladin to the Mongols: The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193–1260 (Albany, NY, 1977) –63.Google Scholar
, ‘The Mongols and the Delhi sultanate in the reign of Muḥammad Tughluq (1325–1351)’, Central Asiatic Journal, 19, 1–2 (1975) –57.Google Scholar
, ‘L’invasion mongole comme révélateur de la société iranienne’, in (ed.), L’Iran face à la domination mongole, Bibliotèque Iranienne 45, (Tehran, 1997) –9Google Scholar
, ‘Kebek and Yasawr: The establishment of the Chaghatai-Khanate’, Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, 49 (1991) –118.Google Scholar
, ‘Vaṣṣāf’s Tajziyat al-amṣār wa tazjiyat al-aʿṣār as a source for the history of the Chaghadayid khanate’, Journal of Asian History, 22, 2 (1988) –87.Google Scholar
, Īrān – Das Reich der Īlhāne. Eine topographisch-historische Studie, Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des vorderen Orients, ser. B 17, Wiesbaden, 1978.Google Scholar
, ‘Mongol fiscal administration in Persia’, part I, Studia Islamica, 64 (1986) –99, part II, Studia Islamica, 65 (1987), pp. 97–123.Google Scholar
, Continuity and change in medieval Persia: Aspects of administrative, economic and social history, 11th–14th century, Columbia Lectures on Iranian Studies, 2, Albany, 1988.Google Scholar
, ‘A Mongol–Ismâʿîlî alliance?: Thoughts on the Mongols and Assassins’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, ser. 3, 14, 3 (2004) –9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Pādshāh-i Islām: The conversion of Sultan Mamūd Ghāzān Khān’, Pembroke Papers, 1 (1990) –77.Google Scholar
, ‘“The year of the elephant”: Mamluk–Mongol rivalry in the Hejaz in the reign of Abū Saʿīd (1317–1335)’, Studia Iranica, 21, 2 (1992) –214.Google Scholar
, The fall of Amir Chupan and the decline of the Ilkhanate 1327–1337: A decade of discord in Iran, Bloomington, IN, 1999.Google Scholar
, ‘Mongol or Persian: The government of Īlkhānid Iran’, Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review, 3, 2 (1996) –76.Google Scholar
, ‘Reflections on Mongol communications in the Ilkhanate’, in (ed.), Studies in honour of Clifford Edmund Bosworth, vol. II: The sultan’s turret: Studies in Persian and Turkish culture, Leiden, 2000 –85.Google Scholar
, The decline of Iranshahr: Irrigation and environment in the history of the Middle East 500 BC to AD 1500 (Copenhagen, 1993), p.Google Scholar
, Zemledelie i agrarnye otnosheniia v Irane XIII–XIV vekov, Moscow and Leningrad, 1960.Google Scholar
, ‘The socio-economic condition of Iran under the Īlkhāns’, in The Cambridge history of Iran, vol. V, Cambridge, 1968 –537.Google Scholar
, ‘Pokhod mongol’skikh voĭsk v Sredniuiu Aziiu v 1219–1224 gg. i ego posledstviia’, in (ed.), Tataro-Mongoly v Azii i Evrope, Moscow, 1970 –33.Google Scholar
, ‘… denn sie haben einen unvollkommenen Verstand’. Herrschaftliche Damen im Grossraum Iran in der Mongolen und Timuridenzeit (ca. 1250–1507), Aachen, 2003.Google Scholar
, ‘The title Činggis Qan/Qaan re-examined’, in and (eds.), Gedanke und Wirking. Festschrift zum 90. Geburtstag von Nikolaus Poppe, Asiatische Forschungen, 108, Wiesbaden, 1989, pp. 281–98.Google Scholar
, , and (eds.), In the service of the khan: Eminent personalities of the early Mongol-Yüan period, Wiesbaden, 1993.Google Scholar
, Jāmiʿ al-tawārkh: Compendium of chronicles: A history of the Mongols, trans. , 3 vols., Sources of Oriental Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1998–9.Google Scholar
, ‘New light on economic history from Ilkhanid accounting manuals’, Studia Iranica 14, 2 (1985) –77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The Muslims in the early Yüan dynasty’, in (ed.), China under Mongol rule, Princeton, 1981 –95.Google Scholar
, ‘Power and legitimacy: The coinage of Mubāriz al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn al-Muẓaffar at Yazd and Kirmān’, Le Monde Iranien et l’Islam, 2 (1974) –68.Google Scholar
, Flexibility and limitation in steppe formations: The Kerait khanate and Chinggis Khan, Leiden, 1998.Google Scholar
, ‘Ilkhanid courtly life’, in and (eds.), The legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly art and culture in western Asia, 1256–1353, (New York, 2002) –5Google Scholar
, ‘“History and legend” in Berke Khan’s conversion to Islam’, in Aspects of Altaic civilization III: Proceedings of the thirtieth meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, June 19–25, 1987, Bloomington, IN, 1990 –52.Google Scholar
, Tajziyat al-amṣār wa tazjiyat al-aʿṣār (Tārīkh-i Waṣṣāf), Bombay, 1852–3, repr. Tehran, AH 1338.Google Scholar
, et al., ‘The genetic legacy of the Mongols’, American Journal of Human Genetics, 72 (2003) –21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 4
- Cited by