Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-669899f699-7xsfk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-29T08:46:12.211Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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

By
Beatrice Manz
Edited by
David O. Morgan  and
Anthony Reid
David O. Morgan
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Anthony Reid
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore
Get access

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 - 168
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Juwaynī, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Aṭā Malik, Tārīkh-i jahān-gushā, ed. Qazwīnī, Mīrzā Muḥammad, 3 vols., Gibb Memorial Series XVI, Leiden, 1912–37.Google Scholar
Mustawfī Qazwīnī, Ḥamd Allāh, The geographical part of the Nuzhat al-qulūb composed by Ḥamd-Allāh Mustawfī of Qazwīn in 740 (1340), ed. and trans. Strange, G., Gibb Memorial Series, London, 1915–18.Google Scholar
Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Shams al-Dīn, The travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, AD 1325–1354, trans. Gibb, H. A. R., 3 vols., Hakluyt Society, 5 vols., Cambridge, 1958–2000.Google Scholar
al-ʿUmarī, Das mongolische Weltreich. Al-ʿUmarīs Darstellung der mongolischen Reiche in seinem Werk Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār, ed. and trans. Lech, K., Wiesbaden, 1968.Google Scholar
Hamadānī, Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, ed. Ali-zade, A. A., 3 vols., Moscow, 1968–80.Google Scholar
Qāshānī, Abū’l Qāsim, Tārīkh-i Ūljaȳtū, ed. Hambly, Mahin, Tehran, 1969.Google Scholar
Abrū, Ḥāfiẓ-i, Dhayl-i jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, ed. Bayani, K., Tehran, 1971.Google Scholar
Aigle, Denise, Le Fārs sous la domination mongole: Politique et fiscalité (XIIIe–XIVe s.), Paris, 2005.Google Scholar
Aigle, Denise, (ed.), L’Iran face à la domination mongole, Bibliotèque Iranienne 45, Tehran, 1997.Google Scholar
Aigle, Denise, ‘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
al-Harawī, Sayf b. Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb (Sayfī), Tārīkh-nāma-i Harāt, ed. Zubayr al-Ṣiddiqī, Muḥammad, Calcutta, 1944.Google Scholar
Allsen, Thomas, Culture and conquest in Mongol Eurasia, Cambridge, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allsen, Thomas, Mongol imperialism: The policies of the Grand Qan Möngke in China, Russia and the Islamic lands, 1251–1259, Berkeley, 1987.Google Scholar
Allsen, Thomas T., ‘Mongolian princes and their merchant partners, 1200–1260’, Asia Major, 3rd ser., 2 (1989) –126.Google Scholar
Allsen, Thomas T., ‘Changing forms of legitimation in Mongol Iran’, in Gary, Seaman and Daniel, Marks (eds.), Rulers from the steppe: State formation and the Eurasian periphery, Ethnographics Monograph Series, 2, Los Angeles, 1991 –41.Google Scholar
Allsen, Thomas T., ‘Notes on Chinese titles in Mongol Iran’, Mongolian Studies, 14 (1991) –39.Google Scholar
Allsen, Thomas T., ‘The rise of the Mongolian empire and Mongolian rule in north China’, in Herbert, Franke and Denis, Twitchett (eds.), Cambridge history of China, vol. VI, Cambridge, 1994 –413.Google Scholar
Allsen, Thomas T., ‘Spiritual geography and political legitimacy in the eastern steppe’, in Henri, J. M. Claessen and Jarich, G. Oosten (eds.), Ideology and the formation of early states, Leiden, 1996 –35.Google Scholar
Allsen, Thomas T., Commodity and exchange in the Mongol empire: A cultural history of Islamic textiles, Cambridge, 1997.Google Scholar
Allsen, Thomas T., ‘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
Allsen, Thomas T., ‘Sharing out the empire: Apportioned lands under the Mongols,’ in Wink, A. and Khazanov, A. (eds.), Nomads in the sedentary world, Richmond, 2001 –90.Google Scholar
Amitai, Reuven, ‘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
Amitai, Reuven, ‘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
Amitai, Reuven and Michal, Biran (eds.), Mongols, Turks, and others: Eurasian nomads and the sedentary world, Leiden, 2005.Google Scholar
Amitai-Preiss, Reuven and David O, Morgan. (eds.), The Mongol empire and its legacy, Leiden, 1999.Google Scholar
Amitai-Preiss, Reuven, Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk–Īlkhānid war, 1260–1281Cambridge, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aubin, Jean, ‘Les princes d’Ormuz du XIIIe au XVe siècle’, Journal Asiatique, 241 (1953) –137.Google Scholar
Aubin, Jean, ‘L’éthnogénèse des Qaraunas’, Turcica, 1 (1969) –94.Google Scholar
Aubin, Jean, ‘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
Aubin, Jean, ‘Le khanat de Čaġatai et le Khorassan (1334–1380)’, Turcica, 8, 2 (1976) –60.Google Scholar
Aubin, Jean, ‘La propriété foncière en Azerbaydjan sous les Mongols’, Le Monde Iranien et l’Islam, 4 (1976–7) –132.Google Scholar
Aubin, Jean, ‘Le quriltai de Sultân-Maydân (1336)’, Journal Asiatique, 279 (1991) –97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aubin, Jean, Émirs mongols et vizirs persans dans les remous de l’acculturation, Cahiers de Studia Iranica, Paris, 1995.Google Scholar
Ayalon, David, ‘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
Hebraeus, Bar, Abū’l-Faraj, Gregorius, trans. Wallis Budge, E. A., The chronography of Gregory Abu’l Faraj … commonly known as Bar Hebraeus, 2 vols., Oxford and London, 1932.Google Scholar
Barthold, W., Turkestan down to the Mongol invasion, London, 1968.Google Scholar
Biran, Michal, Qaidu and the rise of the independent Mongol state in Central Asia, Richmond, 1997.Google Scholar
Biran, Michal, ‘The battle of Herat (1270): A case of inter-Mongol warfare’, in Nicola, Di Cosmo (ed.), Warfare in Inner Asian history (500–1800), Leiden, 2002 –219.Google Scholar
Biran, Michal, ‘The Chaghadaids and Islam: The conversion of Tarmashirin Khan (1331–34)’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 122, 4 (2002) –52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyle, John A., ‘Dynastic and political history of the Īl-Khāns’, in Cambridge history of Iran, vol. V, Cambridge, 1968 –421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buell, Paul D., ‘Sino-Khitan administration in Mongol Bukhara’, Journal of Asian History, 13, 2 (1979) –47.Google Scholar
Buell, Paul D., ‘Early Mongol expansion in western Siberia and Turkestan (1207–1219): A reconstruction’, Central Asiatic Journal, 36, 1-2 (1992) –32.Google Scholar
Cahen, Claude, The formation of Turkey: The Seljukid Sultanate of Rūm: Eleventh to fourteenth century, trans. Holt, P. M., Harlow 2001.Google Scholar
Carboni, Stefano and Linda, Komaroff (eds.), The legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly art and culture in western Asia, 1256–1353, New York, 2002.Google Scholar
Charles, Melville, ‘The keshig in Iran: The survival of the royal Mongol household’, in Komaroff, Linda (ed.), Beyond the legacy of Genghis Khan (Leiden, 2006) –41, 145–50Google Scholar
de Rachewiltz, Igor, Chan, Hok-lam, Ch’i-ch’ing, Hsiao and Geier, Peter W., (eds.), In the service of the khan: Eminent personalities of the early Mongol-Yuan period (Wiesbaden, 1993) –1.Google Scholar
DeWeese, Devin, 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
Dillon, Michael, China’s Muslim Hui community: Migration, settlement and sects, Richmond, 1999.Google Scholar
Endicott-West, Elizabeth, ‘Merchant associations in Yüan China: The ortogh’, Asia Major, 3rd ser., 2 (1989) –54.Google Scholar
Faṣīḥ Khwāfī, Aḥmad b. Jalāl al-Dīn, Mujmal-i faṣīḥī, ed. Farrukh, Muḥammad, 3 vols., Mashhad, AH solar 1339.Google Scholar
Fedorov-Davydov, G. A., Obshchestvennyĭ stroĭ Zolotoĭ Ordy, Moscow, 1973.Google Scholar
Fletcher, Joseph, ‘The Mongols: Ecological and social perspectives’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 46 (1986) –50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffmann, Birgitt, Waqf im mongolischen Iran. Rašīduddīns Sorge um Nachruhm und Seelenheil, Freiburger Islamstudien, 20, Stuttgart, 2000.Google Scholar
Hsiao, Ch’i-ch’ing, The military establishment of the Yuan dynasty, Harvard East Asian Monographs, 77, Cambridge, MA, 1978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphreys, R. Stephen, From Saladin to the Mongols: The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193–1260 (Albany, NY, 1977) –63.Google Scholar
Jackson, Peter, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410, Harlow, 2005.Google Scholar
Jackson, Peter, ‘The Mongols and the Delhi sultanate in the reign of Muḥammad Tughluq (1325–1351)’, Central Asiatic Journal, 19, 1–2 (1975) –57.Google Scholar
Jackson, Peter, ‘The dissolution of the Mongol empire’, Central Asiatic Journal, 22 (1978) –243.Google Scholar
Jürgen, Paul, ‘L’invasion mongole comme révélateur de la société iranienne’, in Aigle, D. (ed.), L’Iran face à la domination mongole, Bibliotèque Iranienne 45, (Tehran, 1997) –9Google Scholar
Juwaynī, ʿAṭāʾ-Malik, The history of the world-conqueror, trans. Boyle, John A., 2 vols., Manchester, 1958.Google Scholar
Katō, Kazuhide, ‘Kebek and Yasawr: The establishment of the Chaghatai-Khanate’, Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, 49 (1991) –118.Google Scholar
Kempiners, Russell G., ‘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
Komaroff, Linda (ed.), Beyond the legacy of Genghis Khan, Leiden, 2006.Google Scholar
Krawulsky, Dorothea, Īrān – Das Reich der Īlhāne. Eine topographisch-historische Studie, Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des vorderen Orients, ser. B 17, Wiesbaden, 1978.Google Scholar
Krawulsky, Dorothea, Mongolen und Ilkhâne -- Ideologie und Geschichte: 5 Studien, Beirut, 1989.Google Scholar
Lambton, Ann K. S., ‘Mongol fiscal administration in Persia’, part I, Studia Islamica, 64 (1986) –99, part II, Studia Islamica, 65 (1987), pp. 97–123.Google Scholar
Lambton, Ann K. S., 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
Lane, George, Early Mongol rule in thirteenth-century Iran, London, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lane, George, ‘Arghun Aqa: Mongol bureaucrat’, Iranian Studies, 32, 4 (1999) –82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leslie, Donald D., Islam in traditional China: A short history to 1800, Belconnen, 1986.Google Scholar
May, Timothy, ‘A Mongol–Ismâʿîlî alliance?: Thoughts on the Mongols and Assassins’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, ser. 3, 14, 3 (2004) –9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melville, Charles, ‘Pādshāh-i Islām: The conversion of Sultan Mamūd Ghāzān Khān’, Pembroke Papers, 1 (1990) –77.Google Scholar
Melville, Charles, ‘“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
Melville, Charles, The fall of Amir Chupan and the decline of the Ilkhanate 1327–1337: A decade of discord in Iran, Bloomington, IN, 1999.Google Scholar
Men-da Beĭ-lu (‘Polnoe opisanie Mongolo-Tatar’), ed. and trans. Munkuev, N. Ts., Moscow, 1975.Google Scholar
Morgan, David, The Mongols, Oxford, 1986; 2nd edn 2007.Google Scholar
Morgan, David O., ‘Mongol or Persian: The government of Īlkhānid Iran’, Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review, 3, 2 (1996) –76.Google Scholar
Morgan, David O., ‘Reflections on Mongol communications in the Ilkhanate’, in Carole, Hillenbrand (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
Peter, Christensen, The decline of Iranshahr: Irrigation and environment in the history of the Middle East 500 BC to AD 1500 (Copenhagen, 1993), p.Google Scholar
Petrushevskiĭ, I. P., Zemledelie i agrarnye otnosheniia v Irane XIII–XIV vekov, Moscow and Leningrad, 1960.Google Scholar
Petrushevskiĭ, I. P., ‘The socio-economic condition of Iran under the Īlkhāns’, in The Cambridge history of Iran, vol. V, Cambridge, 1968 –537.Google Scholar
Petrushevskiĭ, I. P., ‘Pokhod mongol’skikh voĭsk v Sredniuiu Aziiu v 1219–1224 gg. i ego posledstviia’, in Tikhvinskiĭ, S. L. (ed.), Tataro-Mongoly v Azii i Evrope, Moscow, 1970 –33.Google Scholar
Quade-Reutter, Karin, ‘… denn sie haben einen unvollkommenen Verstand’. Herrschaftliche Damen im Grossraum Iran in der Mongolen und Timuridenzeit (ca. 1250–1507), Aachen, 2003.Google Scholar
Raby, Julian and Teresa, Fitzherbert, eds., The court of the Il-khans 1290–1340, Oxford, 1996.Google Scholar
Rachewiltz, Igor, ‘The title Činggis Qan/Qaan re-examined’, in Heissig, W. and Klaus, Sagaster (eds.), Gedanke und Wirking. Festschrift zum 90. Geburtstag von Nikolaus Poppe, Asiatische Forschungen, 108, Wiesbaden, 1989, pp. 281–98.Google Scholar
Rachewiltz, Igor, Chan, Hok-lam, Ch’i-ch’ing, Hsiao and Geier, Peter W. (eds.), In the service of the khan: Eminent personalities of the early Mongol-Yüan period, Wiesbaden, 1993.Google Scholar
Hamadānī, Rashīd al-Dīn, trans. Boyle, J. A., The successors of Genghis Khan, New York, 1971.Google Scholar
Hamadānī, Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-tawārkh: Compendium of chronicles: A history of the Mongols, trans. Thackston, Wheeler, 3 vols., Sources of Oriental Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1998–9.Google Scholar
Ratchnevsky, Paul, Genghis Khan, his life and legacy, trans. and ed. Thomas, N.Haining, Oxford, 1992.Google Scholar
Remler, Philip, ‘New light on economic history from Ilkhanid accounting manuals’, Studia Iranica 14, 2 (1985) –77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rossabi, Morris, ‘The Muslims in the early Yüan dynasty’, in John, D. Langlois (ed.), China under Mongol rule, Princeton, 1981 –95.Google Scholar
Rossabi, Morris, Khubilai Khan: His life and times, London, 1988.Google Scholar
Steven, Album, ‘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
Togan, Isenbike, Flexibility and limitation in steppe formations: The Kerait khanate and Chinggis Khan, Leiden, 1998.Google Scholar
Tomoko, Masuya, ‘Ilkhanid courtly life’, in Carboni, Stefano and Komaroff, Linda (eds.), The legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly art and culture in western Asia, 1256–1353, (New York, 2002) –5Google Scholar
Vasáry, István, ‘“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
Waṣṣāf, ʿAbd Allāh b. Faḍl Allāh, Tajziyat al-amṣār wa tazjiyat al-aʿṣār (Tārīkh-i Waṣṣāf), Bombay, 1852–3, repr. Tehran, AH 1338.Google Scholar
Zerjal, Tatiana, Xue, Yali et al., ‘The genetic legacy of the Mongols’, American Journal of Human Genetics, 72 (2003) –21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×