Authors: Christopher I. Beckwith
Tags: #History, #General, #Asia, #Europe, #Eastern, #Central Asia
Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (44 page)
The Mongols established, or at least patronized, the first known large-scale international trade and taxation system, the
ortaq.
54
It was essentially a merchant association or cartel, run mainly by Muslims, which lent money for caravans and other enterprises and included tax-farming services for the rulers. Partly due to a government interest subsidy, it was incredibly lucrative.
55
Depending on the administration in power, government policy toward the
ortaq
varied from eager participation and overindulgence (as under Ögedei) to strict control (as under Möngke).
56
The openness of the empire to commerce, and the unprecedented safety merchants and craftsmen could expect, drew businessmen from the four corners of Eurasia. Italian merchants such as the Polo family traveled to and from the Mongol capitals conducting their very profitable business.
57
They were impressed by the high level of culture and wealth they encountered in eastern Eurasia. Marco Polo (1254–1324) left for the Great Khanate in 1271 and remained there for two decades, only returning home to Venice in 1295. He eventually told his story to a romance writer, Rustichello of Pisa, who wrote it up and published it.
58
Rustichello’s embroidered version of Marco Polo’s account
59
fascinated the Europeans of his day and was ultimately responsible for stimulating European sailors to try and find a direct route to the Orient.
As “pagans,” the Mongols were also the target of every organized religion with which they came into contact. Missionaries were sent to convert them, and though the Mongols were uninterested in all religions and sects—except, eventually, Tibetan Buddhism—the missionaries kept trying. The most notable result of this effort was the production of first-person accounts of the Mongols and other peoples who were encountered by the missionaries.
60
The Mongol conquest was a significant event in world history. However, the widely held view that it was a fundamental, formative event, a watershed dividing Eurasia before and afterward,
61
does not really accord with the historical evidence. Most significantly, the major ethnolinguistic divisions of Eurasia in post–Mongol Empire times and those in pre–Mongol Empire times were all in place and remained virtually unchanged down to the twentieth century. One of the undoubted side effects of the Mongol conquest was the transmission of some practical elements of Chinese culture and technology to Western Europe, most important of which were gunpowder and firearms.
62
Another was the stimulus to Western Europeans to find out more about the fabulous lands described by Marco Polo.
The Il-Khans were great patrons of the arts and sciences. They constructed numerous splendid mosques and other building projects, most of which have since fallen into ruin. Their most notable accomplishment was the creation of “Persian” miniature painting. It developed as a result of the Mongols having brought with them numerous Chinese scholar officials to help them run the Il-Khanate. The Chinese wrote with a brush, and painted with it too, and began painting pictures for the Mongols and each other. The Muslims learned from them how to paint in the Chinese style and, by imitating them, developed a new, hybrid style that mixed elements of Byzantine art, Arabic calligraphy, and traditional Near Eastern styles with the Chinese style, thus producing one of the great traditions of world art, Islamic miniature painting. The Yüan court, in turn, brought astronomers, physicians, materia medica, and other people and things from the Islamic world.
63
Tamerlane made Samarkand his capital. He rebuilt its walls, which had been torn down by the Mongols, and beautified the city with palaces, gardens, and religious buildings. He continued to improve Samarkand, making it a model city and an unusually beautiful one, partly by furnishing it with trophies taken from conquered cities during his campaigns and partly by patronizing the best artists and architects of his day. Many of the innovations that characterize the Timurid architectural style—the Central Asian ancestor of the Persian-Mughal style—appeared in buildings erected in his own day, most famously in what became his own mausoleum in Samarkand. To his reign and those of his immediate successors belong not only some of the world’s greatest architecture and city plans but also the greatest Persian poet, Hafiz (Ḥâfiẓ, ca. 1320–1389/1390), who met Tamerlane and was honored by him.
1
Biran (2005: 58).
2
See the prologue for this and other “historical” accounts of Central Eurasian nation founders. However, the murder of Temüjin’s father and other ancestors by the Tatars or their patrons the Jurchen—to whom the Tatars delivered their enemies to be killed, cruelly (Atwood 2004: 529)—appears to be historical.
3
Ong
is the Mongol pronunciation of Chinese
Wang
‘prince’. Ong Khan had taken refuge in the Kara Khitai Empire in the early 1190s, but the latter realm was already unable to help him. He then returned to Mongolia and allied himself with Temüjin. According to the
Secret History,
Ong Khan also had, or took, the title Gür Khan (Biran 2005: 64–65).
4
Although, like other empire builders everywhere (not only in the steppe), he destroyed his most implacable enemies, normally he accepted defeated peoples’ submission to him as subjects within his realm and incorporated their warriors into his army.
5
Allsen (1994: 331–343). The timing and title are certainly not accidents. The proclamation took place after the defeat of the Tatars had been completed, and specifically upon the capture and execution of Temüjin’s chief rival Jamuqa. The latter’s title
Gür Khan
(or
Gür Qa)
‘universal ruler’, is defined by Juwayni and Juzjani as
khân-i khânân
‘khan of khans’ (Bosworth 2007); it was the same title as that held by the Kara Khitai ruler. On Temüjin’s new title Chinggis Khan, see endnote 83.
6
They were probably Turks ethnically, not Mongols, despite their Mongol name
Naiman
‘the Eight (clans or lineages)’; see Atwood (2004: 397).
7
Biran (2005: 75–78).
8
Their ruling house was forced to retreat eastward into Yüan territory in Kansu in ca. 1283 due to pressure from the Chaghatai Khanate (Allsen 1997: 41).
9
Allsen (1994: 350).
10
The Khitan also understood the Chinese administrative system and helped the Mongols to govern the conquered territories of North China, as well as the rapidly growing Mongol Empire as a whole. One of the most important councillors of Chinggis Khan and his son Ögedei was Yeh-lü Ch’u-tsai (1189–1243), a descendant of the Khitan imperial family (Biran 2005: 6).
11
Franke (1994: 254).
12
He reigned until December 1220 or January 1221 (Boyle 1968: 310).
13
Boyle (1968:305). The name Küčlüg (or Güčülüg) is Turkic,
kü
č
lüg
‘strong’, a name or epithet “borne by members of the Naiman royal family” (de Rachewiltz 2004: 699). See the preceding note. The story of Jebe’s success over Küčlüg sounds a little too simplistic to take at face value.
14
Biran (2005: 74 et seq.). Most of the Kara Khitai, after fighting in vain to hold on to their former territory in Transoxiana, joined the Mongols (Biran 2005: 87).
15
He was killed by Kurdish bandits in 1231 (Allsen 1994: 357, 370).
16
See the epilogue on the normal fate of rebellious cities from Antiquity through the Middle Ages in most of Eurasia.
17
Allsen (1994: 359).
18
Jochi was not actually fathered by Temüjin. This seems to have been the main reason for the enmity between him and his (half) brothers.
19
King Béla IV (r. 1235–1270) fled the country, but returned after the Mongols left and continued ruling until his death.
20
Allsen (1994).
21
Like much of the account of the Mongols given here, this depends largely on Allsen (1994); cf. his excellent account (1987) of the reign of Möngke.
22
Allsen (1994: 404). There are several accounts of the caliph’s death, all interesting. The most appealing one is that told by Marco Polo, to the effect that the Mongols locked the caliph up in his treasury and told him he could eat his treasure. However, the most likely one is that they followed traditional Mongol practice—they wrapped him inside a carpet and suffocated him to avoid violating the Mongol taboo about shedding a ruler’s blood on the earth.
23
Rossabi (1988: 54–55).
24
Atwood (2004: 320). Cf. Petech (1983: 181), who adds “five hundred men were butchered” at the Bkágdamspa monastery of Rgyal Lhakhang. However, this classic number of 500 individuals occurs time and again in Tibetan Buddhist accounts, many of which are pious fabrications. It is certainly not a historical number. Accordingly, the entire story is doubtful.
25
The Tibetan epithet by which he is generally known is
‘Phagspa blama
‘Exalted lama’.
26
Atwood (2004: 539).
27
Atwood (2004: 321, 539).
28
Rossabi (1988: 14–17).
29
Its location is thirty-six miles west of Dolon Nor in what is now Inner Mongolia (Rossabi 1994: 418–419).
30
Atwood (2004: 364).
31
Arik Böke died in captivity a few years later (Rossabi 1994: 424).
32
In Turkic the city was called
Khanbalik
‘royal capital’. It is the same as Marco Polo’s
Cambaluc.
Khubilai kept his summer capital north of the Great Wall of China at Shang-tu (’Upper Capital’), the
Xanadu
of Coleridge’s famous poem.
33
Mote (1994: 616), Langlois (1981: 3–4), q.v. for a full translation of the imperial edict proclaiming the establishment of the dynasty.
34
See Beckwith (1987b).
35
He was later appointed imperial preceptor—head of all the Buddhists in the entire empire. He learned the Mongol language and Mongol habits and had picked up some Tangut ideas at Köden’s court, becoming much less “Tibetan” than his countrymen liked.
36
See Coblin’s (2006) dictionary of Chinese in ‘Phagspa script.
37
Atwood (2004: 41, 610) has Honan; according to him, it spread to the coastal provinces (1345–1346). “Finally, in 1351 massive epidemics began to strike throughout China yearly up to 1362, causing catastrophic population decline” (Atwood 2004: 41). Cf. McNeill (1977: 143, 263).
38
Boyle (1968: 412).
39
Based on an actual modern archaeological and epidemiological examination (McNeill 1977: 145–146).
40
McNeill (1977: 147 et seq.).
41
McNeill (1977).
42
Atwood (2004: 609).
43
Manz (1989: 13) remarks, “In the Eurasian politics of Temür’s time the Ulus Chaghatay held not a powerful but a central position. Both settled and nomadic populations were strongly entrenched within it, and its borders touched on both steppe and settled powers. There was almost no important Eurasian region with which the Ulus Chaghatay did not have some contact; on its eastern border it adjoined the eastern Chaghadayids and the cities of the Silk Route, on the North it bordered the Jochid powers and to the south the Iranian principalities.”
44
The idea that Tamerlane and the others with or against whom he fought during his rise to power were nomads, which is repeated by many, including Manz (1989), is incorrect. They did not nomadize with herds but lived in and around the agricultural-urban areas of Central Asia. Manz herself notes that “the Chaghatay nomads frequently took refuge within fortified cities. One should note moreover that when Temur gained control over the Ulus a year or two after this, he immediately built fortifications at Samarkand” (Manz 1989: 55).
45
These were the “nontribal” men Manz (1989) usually refers to as his “personal following” or “companions"; she does not otherwise refer to the Islamicized comitatus, or
ghulâm
system.
46
The Islamic histories—most of which are full of nothing but vitriol when it comes to Tamerlane—consider him to have been a common brigand. He is said to have begun his path to fame as leader of a band of warlike young men, one among many such bands in Central Asia at the time, whose exploits are mostly unknown. It is thus widely claimed that he acquired the lameness which gave him his sobriquet Tamerlane—
Timur-i leng
‘Timur the Lame’—from arrows shot at him while stealing sheep, a story related also by Clavijo. However, this story is fiction. Tamerlane is known to have received the wound in question on a campaign in Sîstân in 1364 (Manz 1989: 48). Perhaps the story ultimately reflects a lost mythological national origin story (as in those presented in the prologue) that was already circulating in Tamerlane’s own time. Little is actually known about his youth.
47
Manz (1989: 58–62, 67).
48
Manz (2000: 511).
49
Manz (2000: 511). Bâyazîd actually was well treated by Tamerlane but died a few months after his capture.
50
This was undoubtedly not because he did not want to annex them
(pace
Manz 1989), but because both regimes were strong and relatively distant from his home base.
51
Manz (1989: 13). The above summary of Tamerlane’s campaigns is based on Manz (1989: 70–73).
52
Manz (1989: 16).
53
Manz (1989: 12–13).
54
Mongol
ortoy.
The Turkic word
ortaq
means ‘partner’; the Mongols borrowed the word along with the institution (Allsen 1989: 112, 117; cf. Endicott-West 1989: 129 et seq.).
55
Rossabi (1981: 275, 282–283; 1988: 122–123) Cf. Endicott-West (1989). This important, powerful institution deserves much further study.
56
Allsen (1989) gives an overview of the Mongol rulers’ changing policies vis-à-vis the
ortaq
merchants and discusses taxation of merchants.
57
See also the western Silk Road merchant’s guide by Pegolotti (fl. ca. 1340),
La pratica della mercatura
(Pegolotti 1936).
58
There are several good translations, the most accurate being that by Moule and Pelliot (1938), the most readable and accessible Latham’s (1958). The book is brilliantly annotated in great depth by Pelliot (1959–1963).
59
On the historicity of Marco Polo’s travels, see endnote
84
.
60
For readable translations of the major European accounts, see Dawson (1955).
61
This is the dominant view (q.v. Di Cosmo 1999: 5). For a brief criticism of it, see endnote
85
.
62
The earliest known cannon, found in China’s Heilongjiang Province, which was formerly Mongol territory, is dated 1282 (Atwood 2004: 354).
63
See Allsen (1997: 9) for a brief discussion and further references.
