Ottoman History Podcast - The Mongols and the Medieval Near East

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

with Nicholas Morton hosted by Maryam Patton | The Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous land empire in history, yet its influence on the social and political history of the realms that came under its domain is often minimized due to its short-lived nature. In some ways, the most lasting effects of the Mongol invasions were the unexpected geopolitical shakeups that their arrival brought. Notable examples included the increase in the slave trade which facilitated the rise of the Mamluk sultanate, or the controlled chaos of competing Turkmen tribes who had fled to Anatolia, setting the stage for the eventual rise of the Ottomans. The Mongols were not merely invaders, however, and an overemphasis on military history often conceals the rich cultural history of a nomadic society with its own religious traditions and policies of tolerance towards the diverse societies of the medieval Near East. In this episode, we discuss these topics and more with Nicholas Morton, the author of a new book on the Mongols, entitled The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East. « Click for More »

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Marian Patton, and today I'll be speaking with Professor Nicholas Morton about his brand new book, The Mongol Storm, Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East, I'm Marion Patton, and today I'll be speaking with Professor Nicholas Morton about his brand new book, The Mongol Storm, Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East, which has just come out with Basic Books. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. Nick is Associate Professor at Nottingham Trent University, and his research focuses on the history of the Crusades and the Medieval Near East

between the 10th and the 14th centuries. His book, The Mongol Storm, offers a panoramic account of the Mongol invasions into the Near East during the 13th century and weaves together the many perspectives of the different societies impacted by their conquests, such as the Mamluks, the Fatimids, the Seljuk Turks, and others. So there really is so much we could cover, partly because the scope of your book is so expansive. And I think that's precisely part of your argument, right? The Mongols had such a vast geographical impact across all different societies, that to tell this tale, you really have to step back and view all the Middle East, and much of Central Asia from a kind of bird's eye panoramic perspective.

But before we delve into the long term implications, let's discuss the Mongols on their own terms. At least during my own secondary education, you know, we heard about the Mongols. There was always sort of like in this background sort of figure if you studied sort of the medieval period. But I often feel like the history of the Mongols was reduced to one of, here's this incredible army that committed shocking amounts of violence and destruction, but then almost disappeared as quickly as they arrived. Your book, of course, addresses this violence, but could you expand on how there is more to the story of the Mongols than just these violent invasions that sort of came and went?

Sure. So in the book, what I'm trying to do is explore the Mongols' history in the round. So yes, I do indeed discuss the military dimensions of it and the various acts of violence committed during the Mongols' invasions. But I try to give a much more rounded view of the way the Mongols acted, the way they interacted. And so, for example, I talk about the Mongols' interest in science. And they actually created what's basically a research institution at a place called Maraga, which was incredibly well equipped with all sorts of tools and instruments and a great library and the Mongols brought together intellectuals from across their territories to pursue various

different questions the Mongols wanted answering, some more promising than others. The Mongols wanted them to discover how to carry out alchemy but that didn't really work but there were other significant advances that have persisted until the modern day. Advances in trigonometry, for example. But beyond that, the Mongols had a profound effect on the region. They changed its landscape in a number of different ways. Their actions through diplomacy, through trade, these had a profound effect in all sorts of different ways, not just on the areas they conquered, but also on the areas with which they were in contact, but which they never conquered. And so even as far afield as obscure

and weirdly distant places like Western Christendom, for example, way beyond the boundaries of many people's knowledge, the Mongols still had a major economic effect, as they did in other parts of the world as well, which again, their armies never actually reached. But you're right, I suppose certainly in the popular eye, the Mongols simply as fighters and warriors seems to be the way in which their message and which their identity is projected to popular audiences. But for me at least, the thing that I keep coming back to, the thing that is that long-standing question of if you go back in time where would you go? I'd love to see their wagon cities, these vast landscapes covered in tens of thousands of wagons. We're told by one writer that some of these wagons had axles the thickness of ships,

massive huge great wagons with these enormous tents some of which could haul up to two or three thousand people and this is a landscape that we've lost in the modern day because nomadic societies in so many parts of the world have gone into decline. And you just don't get this incredible sight of just... People said you could cross these cities after several days of walking. And then beyond the tents and the wagons, you've got the herds of millions of animals all in orbit around these huge encampment cities. I think just the sight of that must have been truly amazing. So I think there's so much to be said about Mongol culture that needs to be said, and I think people would find interesting. And these are things I wanted to bring out in the book, because in the popular

arena at least, it's not something that comes out very much. I think joining the dots between the military, the cultural, the religious, these things do bring out a fascinating and multidimensional culture in many respects, and I'm not mitigating the violence of the Mongol invasions, but there is a bigger story to be told as well. Just bringing out the complexity and sophistication of that culture I think really does help to shine a light on a type of society that we just don't get very much or at all in the modern day. And that for me is something that I find deeply interesting about the Mongols and that really drew me to the subject right from

the outset. Could you expand a little bit on the nomadic nature of Mongol culture and society? And I have in mind, you know, the geography of Central Asia, seemingly lends itself better to nobatic armies that can sort of run through unobstructed by mountains or by large structures. Do you think that played a role in how far the Mongols were able to expand their empire? I think that's certainly a factor. And yes, when the Mongols do expand their empires, they normally move en blo on block so where other civilizations might send out an army to bring about a conquest the Mongols will typically move an entire chunk of their civilization complete with wagons and families and animals into that

area and certainly the Mongols do continue their nomadic way of life throughout the period I'm looking at in my book certainly that's not to say that they're wholly nomadic and of life throughout the period I'm looking at in my book, certainly. That's not to say that they're wholly nomadic and that there may be sedentary peoples sort of within their ranks and certainly the Mongols may have recruited people from agricultural societies into their armies, whether those people wanted to or not. But in the Near East, at least, the areas that they focus on, the areas where their rule is centred, places like northern Persia, so northern Iran, Azerbaijan, or the Caucasus region, or eastern Anatolia. These are areas that have traditionally attracted nomadic people because they do offer some of the region's best grazing land, and the

Near East isn't overly gifted with grazing land, so it's interesting they do focus on those areas. So that does play a role in shaping their conquest. There's a long-standing scholarly debate about whether a change in topography could cause an end to Mongol invasions that people talk about. For example, did Christendom's deciduous forests prevent the Mongols from penetrating too far into western Christendom? Or at the other end of the map, you might ask whether the jungles of Southeast Asia again defeated their nomadic way of life. I suspect that's certainly a factor. For the Near East, yes, the Mongols do seem to have had a great deal of trouble pushing south

into the desert margin regions. Is that wholly the reason for them not being able to conquer the Near East? I wouldn't go that far. I think it's a great deal more complicated than that, but I think that would certainly be a factor. One thing I would say about the nomadic way of life, though, is that it changes. Where initially envoys comment on the Mongols living quite a sort of hardy and Spartan way of life, so not a great deal of food. They were obviously making use of the traditional resources of their long-standing traditions, so using their herds and what resources are around them. By the time you get to the mid to late 13th century, that's clearly changed because people are talking about the splendor of the Mongol courts,

where you might have tents capable of holding hundreds of people made from cloth of gold or one person even says the nails they used to make their tents were made from gold and then the fabulous display of the Mongol court and the various courtiers and queens and rulers of the Mongol empire all in jewel-covered robes. So clearly the qualitative nature of their nomadic way of life changes as with the conquest of so much of Eurasia and the liquidisation of so much wealth. The way I put it in the book I think is that they become imperial nomads in that their courts are no longer just their way of life, they're now the centre points of empires that span many civilisations and cultures and which draw ambassadors and tributes from

agricultural and nomadic societies alike. The nature of it changes, though it does still retain its basic nomadic nature. You mentioned already a couple times in this conversation Western Christendom, which we think of being really far away from these activities and what was going on in Central Asia and the Near East. One of the things I loved about your book was the way that it did bring together these seemingly really distant, disparate elements. Could you tell us about the story of the rumors of the Mongol invasions leading to a surplus of herring in England?

And beyond that, do you have a particularly favorite example in the book of a kind of unintended consequence or unexpected way in which the Mongol invasions or the Mongol encroachments had a synchronous effect somewhere else that one wouldn't expect? Going back to your first sort of topic there about thinking about Christendom's perspective in this, something I was very keen to do is to apportion an appropriate place for Western Christendom. to apportion an appropriate place for Western Christendom. I didn't want it to be suggested in any way that Western Christendom's engagement with the Mongols should in any way be preference to other parts of the world. What I really wanted to do is to explore the Mongol invasions from a Near Eastern perspective, which does include Western Christendom in the form of Crusades or the Crusader States or Italian merchants. But that wasn't the centre of the story.

What I wanted to do is to look at it very much from the perspective of the core civilisations in the Near East, looking at their experience of the Mamluks, the Ayyubids, Armenians, Byzantines, placing them at the centre of the story alongside the incoming Mongols and how that all played out. And yes, absolutely, there are all sorts of unintended consequences. So the herring story, the story there goes that I think it was in 1238, the people of Great Yarmouth in England, they had a wonderful haul of herring that they weren't expecting. It's a bigger haul than they'd had before. So naturally there was a cause for great celebration.

And what they were looking forward to was the merchants from northern Germany and the Baltic region to arrive in their ships. And then they could sell the surplus herring to these merchants. And presumably then they'd make a nice profit. But the merchants never arrived. And so naturally they were asking, well, why can't we sell our herring to these merchants? Why haven't they turned up? they turned up and it turns out that because fears of the Mongol invasions were riding so high that the merchants didn't feel able to take ship for the kingdom of England because they just

couldn't afford to be away from home for so long and so as a result the people of Great Yarmouth had a surplus of herring that year and that is one of the more unusual outcomes of the Mongol invasions. To pick another very unusual manifestation of these sorts of, there's thousands of these. It is fascinating to see how the Mongol invasions, it's a bit like sort of chaos theory, really. One event happens and things that have no obvious relation to it. The butterfly flaps its wings. Exactly. Yeah, that's right. So one story goes that when the Mongols initially embarked on their invasions, there had been a problem that had prevented them from embarked on their invasions there had been a problem that had

prevented them from embarking on those invasions previously and that was that because the territories they lived in were so enclosed by mountains, as the legend goes, there's only one route out from their mountain enclosed territory and that route led through a mountain pass but they couldn't go through that mountain pass because in that mountain pass there was a ruined castle and whenever anyone went near that castle a tremendous scream went up and that scream was you know this is a dangerous it's an evil place we can't go near there because it's clearly inhabited by something that's screaming, and that's a terrifying prospect. Until one day, a warrior went out hunting, and so engrossed was this hunter on the chase

that he didn't realise that his chase had suddenly led him up to the walls of this castle. So he suddenly realised where he was and was filled with dread, until he saw an owl perched above the castle gate and he realised then that the call that had so terrified his people was in fact an owl call and from that moment he realised that there's no danger in this castle it's all just an old building perhaps the sound of the wind had helped amplify this sound and And so as a result, the Mongols realised there was no danger and then embarked on their global conquest. Now, the side effect of this is that the Mongols felt

that the owl had been a spiritual messenger sent to indicate it was now okay for them to embark on their global conquests. And so as a result, the owl became a powerful figure in the symbols associated with Mongol rule and governance and so Mongol rulers liked to place owl feathers in their hats and Mongols had very tall hats and the owl feathers would have been part of the display in these hats. As a result the Mongols, the rulers began to buy owl feathers in industrial quantities. So very soon, Eurasia's mercantile population got hold of this idea that suddenly owl feathers are

the thing to acquire because the Mongols will pay a high price for them and buy them in quantity. And so as a result, this led to a Eurasian cull of owls as people went out to go and kill as many owls as they could because they know that those feathers are going to acquire a very high price. the Mongols rather did a bad turn for the owls in the sense that they felt the owls may have led them on their conquests. But the net result of this was a continent-wide cull of owls. So no one could have foreseen this. But nonetheless, the poor old owls didn't do very well from it, I'm afraid. Yeah, no, poor them. On this note of the owls and the spiritual significance they held for the Mongols, I was wondering if we could discuss religion a little bit. Sure. One of the central claims of your book, and which I agree with and was happy to read, was that the history of the Near East shouldn't be reduced to one of religious conflict, especially just the reductive Christian versus Muslim.

give ample examples of the way that the diversity of late medieval Anatolia in particular and Central Asia more broadly reflects this sort of multiculturalism. The Mongols, even though they eventually converted to Islam, for much of their history maintained, as you demonstrate, their shamanistic beliefs and practices. Was there a higher authority that the Mongols used to assert their authority? Did they make any universalizing claims? Yeah, that's a great point. And there's two things I had to pick up on. The first is absolutely. The multiculturalism of the Near East is incredibly diverse. And that's what makes it so fascinating, for me at least, because there's so much going on in a fairly small geographical area. There's innovations, there's ideas, there's trade routes shifting, there's cultures meeting, interacting, sometimes with hostility, sometimes less so. There's new ideas, there's different

concepts from across the world and they're all joining together in this very small space. This is before we mentioned things like military factors or religious factors. It's all taking place and people are swapping recipes and religions expanding and contracting and it's it's it must have been an incredible place to live fairly uncomfortable in many respects but nonetheless fascinating and yes absolutely one of the central points that anyone thinks anyone I've ever spoken to thinks I know about the 13th century Near East is it's defined by the crusades and something I really wanted to bring out in this book, I didn't want to pretend the Crusades didn't happen. Of course they're there,

and of course they play a role, but there is so much of a bigger story to tell, and there's so many other reasons for different peoples to interact, to conduct diplomacy, and yes, to conduct wars as well. And just to stick to the sort of military war-like dimensions wars didn't just take place because of crusading or indeed jihad it took place because of population movements or shifting trade routes it could be about dynastic disputes it could be about the control or arguments over control over pasture land there are so many reasons for relations to turn bad and there's many reasons for relations to people to draw together as well. And my book furnishes several examples of

Christians and Muslims, including the Crusader States, fighting side by side because it's politically expedient for them to do so within the broader matrix of the geopolitics of the region. So yeah, it's the complexity of the region. That for me was one of the number one reasons for writing the book. It's to try and draw out the incredible networks of interaction that took place in so many different planes and in so many different contexts. But yes, with regard to the Mongols themselves, they absolutely had very strong religious beliefs right from the outset and indeed traditionally as well. Temujin, known by his title Chinggis Khan,

part of the reason why he embarked on his conquests is that he felt he had received a mandate from Tengri, the eternal sky, to place human civilization under Mongol control. And very soon, either under him or under his immediate successors, that became perceived as a mandate for global conquest. So a right to rule the entirety of all human civilization. And that is a spiritual mission. And it's not my argument per se, but it's an argument I do reflect in my book, which is that this should be understood as a form of holy war, perhaps, certainly a religious venture. And so when we look at the broader religious complexion of the Near East, yes, indeed, you've got Christianity, Islam, Judaism, other faiths represented in the region but the Mongols

certainly brought their own beliefs into the mix as well and it's interesting to see that the Mongol invasions didn't just involve the advent of their own faiths into the area but other peoples moved into the Near East as well during and within the Mongol invasion so the community of Buddhists in the Near East, for example, expanded considerably under the Mongols during the 13th century, although subsequently it was then destroyed in later years. And so, yeah, bringing to the fore that jigsaw puzzle of different faiths and how that shifted and the nature of religious conflict, which is not just crusading, it's all sorts of different religions,

all of whom have religious agendas or religious ideas. Bringing out that complexity was a key part of the book and certainly something I really wanted to draw attention to. But it doesn't seem like the Mongols were converting people to the faith of Tangri or shamanism, right? Even if that was a sort of motivating factor, it doesn't seem to have been, in the case of Holy War, a driver to convert peoples en masse. various peoples under their rule than many other powers in this era. And the basic situation seems to have been the Mongols accepted that all other religions that they encountered, whether that's Islam or Judaism or Christianity or Buddhism or other faiths, they accepted, they fully endorsed the fact that these religions have spiritual power insofar as they go. It's just that they believed that their mandate from Tengri to rule the entire world placed them in authority over these other religions.

And so they fully endorsed these other religions. That's fine. You can practice your faith. That's not an issue. You can have your own religious buildings. These things aren't problematic, but there is still an expectation that the religious leaders of these various religions under Mongol control should use their spiritual power, as the Mongols perceive it, for the betterment, prosperity, and end goals of the Mongol Empire. And so Mongol leaders, like religious leaders from whatever religion, and so Mongol leaders liked religious leaders from whatever religion to seek to use their spiritual power, as they'd see it, to pray for their prosperity, long life, wealth, success in battle, things like that.

And so in many ways, other religions are seen as resources to be harnessed for the greater good and betterment of the Mongol Empire, which is a form of tolerance. It's not tolerance for tolerance's sake, as it were, but nonetheless, that is still the effect of it. This theme of tolerance reminds me of something that struck me in the book, which is the frequency with which remarkable women were featured, and they were often women of different faiths who were then married into the Mongol families or taken as concubines but then rose rose through the ranks i'm thinking of mahperi in particular as a striking example yeah were you surprised by these remarkable women in the accounts or or after a certain point did that seem just normal for mongol history i don't know it struck me for my history that that

you don't encounter that very often yeah it's it's a fascinating dimension to the Mongol civilisation and culture about the role of women in the big camp cities of wagon cities of the Mongol Empire, where, as various historians have shown, they do seem to have played a very important role in the day-to-day running of these enormous, mobile cities and it must have been an incredible feat of logistics to make that work. The other key dimension that really sort of caught my attention was the role played by these women in managing succession. So when the great Khan dies it's often the women who step in and then act as a regent and facilitator of the next succession process. Now needless to say that requires incredible careful handling,

because the succession is traditionally the moment of greatest vulnerability. And so, yeah, absolutely, that role was fascinating. But to be honest, it didn't surprise me, because before I studied the Mongols, before that, an area of research for me was the Seljuk Turks. And I was aware, having looked at the actions of the Seljuk Turks in the 12th century, that again, there are instances among the Anatolian Seljuks, among the Turkish rulers of Damascus, there are moments where it is a senior female figure in the family who will then again act as the arbitrator of the succession and manage that process so it was interesting really to notice some of the continuities in fact between the

Seljuks and the Mongols this is just one of them there are many other areas too where I began to see synergies they're not there's differences too but there are synergies between the way the Seljuk Turks acted both in their conquests and then the way they acculturated to the region and the Mongols too. And looking at the role of women within that, it's a very important dimension and it's something that is certainly very interesting indeed. And it does draw out another dimension to the nature of Mongol culture really. We'll get to the Seljuk Turks in a minute. I know that's sort of, you know, particularly relevant for this podcast and for much of our listeners. But I do want to ask one more question that's a bit more

sort of Mongol focused. Ironically, because your book is structured with chapters sort of divided between different perspectives, almost synchronously, like, you know, we have the Crusaders or the Fatimids, we have the Mamluks, the Seljuk Turks, all these different perspectives. or the Fatimids, we have the Mamluks, the Seljuk Turks, all these different perspectives. It reminded me of the case for early Ottoman history where the chronicles we have narrating the earliest years of the empire are not written by the Turks. It's perspectives of the invaded or conquered peoples. Could you tell us a little bit more about how you research Mongol history, what the sources of Mongol history are? Do we have chronicles from the perspectives of the Mongols themselves? Yes. And again, this is a factor that links very well with Seljuk history, because

with Seljuk history, you have various accounts. The Byzantines discuss the advent of the Seljuk Empire. Various Islamic authors discuss the advent of the Seljuk Empire, and so do other authors, the Crusaders, Armenians, all the rest of it. But at the same time, it's very, very rare to come across a source, in fact it's hard to think of any really, that give a detailed account, certainly for the 11th or 12th century, where the Seljuks are genuinely speaking for themselves. You have the views of those who they encountered in battle, who have their own perspective. the views of those who they encountered in battle who have their own perspective you have the views of those who are trying to sort of encourage the Seljuks to take on their own cultural identity and religion who have their own perspective you occasionally have travelers passing through the regions and they too will be looking out for certain things too but there are so few sources

really that enable the Seljuks to speak for themselves and the same is very much true for the Mongols. There are some sources in Mongolian that were translated into Uyghur but they don't really concern the Near East. So again we are in the interesting position of reading history, well people talk about history being written by the conquerors but in this case we don't have that, we have history being written by various different groups of people some of whom were being conquered some of whom had been conquered and what surprised me is how many sources were written by people who had been conquered but were trying to write nice things about the mongols because they wanted either to

win their favor or encourage them to convert to their beliefs or they'd realized basically the balance of power means that the Mongol empire is irresistible certainly at this point it's not going to be stopped so there's no point trying to fight it or rebel that's just not going to work so what you have to do is to try and win the Mongols over and actually history writing could be a way of winning the Mongols over. Redact their history into a spiritual history that suits you. Tell them that what they've done has actually been to the benefit of the people that they've conquered. Now, of course, forget the fact they've killed tens,

hundreds of thousands of people, but try and fit their history into your thought world. Try and place their traditions in your traditions and then try and steer them so that ultimately they might accept perhaps then endorse perhaps then take on themselves your own beliefs your own networks your own sense of priorities and so you can read that in the sources but it does mean that when you do read the sources you've got to be very alive to the perspectives and the position of the author and what they're trying to achieve.

Virtually no one is simply disinterested. And it's notable that in some civilizations, they start off with these sort of panicked descriptions of the Mongols as being akin to the armies of the Antichrist, and then later on, perhaps when it's more in their interest to try and win the Mongols' favour, that theological narrative shifts because their priorities have shifted. They're moving away from being terrified and facing imminent invasion to having to work within the Mongol system, and therefore the narrative shifts. And you see that in multiple cultures across the region. That does make the business of reading the sources so interesting. Because again, you have so little written by the Mongols themselves. And even things that do come very much from the Mongol courts,

like the letters they wrote to various civilizations. And the letters are normally fairly similar. And the bottom line is either you can submit to us or you can face a major invasion and we'll overthrow you but notably when the mongols wrote to christian leaders they would typically embroider those letters with passages from the bible and when they wrote to muslim leaders they typically embroidered letters with passages from the quran and what do we make of that is that because the mongols were the Mongols were being very smart about doing this

and presenting their demands of submission in a way that would be received and understood by the people they're writing to in a meaningful way? Or is it that they are issuing the same demands, and then the Mongol courtiers, who understand who they're writing to, do then redact those demands into something? What are we seeing there? And I think... Yeah, these intermediaries maybe, yeah.

That's it. And how you work your way through those intermediaries and through those texts to get to, dare I say it, the real Mongols, well, that's a challenge. Speaking of sort of the challenge of finding the real Mongols and who are the real Mongols, I was struck, especially in the first half of your book, by the sense of fear but also uncertainty and just total ignorance about this force in the east

that was, you know, marching west and the role of rumors in particular in your book and how rumors were often enough to sort of trigger a chain of events or to motivate armies to react in certain ways. As the historian reading these sources and trying to discern, you know, what's real, what's not real, how do we sort of reconcile the two or conflicting perspectives? Were there any truly like ridiculous moments that stood out to you? Like, wow, this is like the myth surrounding the Mongols have gotten to such a crazy stage that really reflects the psyche, the sort of the sense of looming fear and uncertainty about what is lurking on the borders. Sure, there's lots of

fascinating stories. I mean, during the Fifth Crusade, so when the Crusaders were trying to conquer Egypt, they received reports from people who actually claimed to be first-hand recipients of news that the advancing Mongols were in fact the armies of Presta John, so a distant Christian priest-king who one day, so it was foretold by legend, would march to the assistance of Western Christendom and the conquest of Jerusalem and things like that. And so the Fifth Crusade took this very seriously. It may even have affected their military policy, the belief that the Mongols were in fact Prestigian and would march to their aid. And it's interesting that Bar-Hebraeus, a Syriac Christian, actually includes the Prestigian myth in his own accounts. So it's

not just Western Christians. That notion of Prestigian seems to have gone beyond Christendom to affect other cultures too. And it's the transmission of these stories that I find interesting because it's not just Western Christendom that's sharing stories. Another example would be a papal envoy called John of Piena-la-Carpini, who went on a mission to the Mongols, partly to do diplomacy, but I think really just to find out, to sort of spy on them and find out really what the Mongol Empire is all about. And he seems to have picked up stories as well, particularly on the question of how to beat the Mongols in battle. And so one of these stories is that there's a people in the far north where the men look like wolves or dogs. And the way they defeated the

Mongols was that the men in this area, they would roll on the ground until they're covered in dirt and then they'd jump into an icy river and then once they've jumped into the icy river and got covered in water they'd come out and their fur would freeze and then they'd charge the Mongol armies so that when they charged the Mongol armies the Mongols arrows would bounce off the icy fur. So these stories are fascinating in their own right, but I think you're right that whilst they do make for good reading, it's also important to try and think about the emotional matrix behind these stories. John of Pianocarpini is not particularly interested, I'm prepared to bet, in hearing about wolfmen, but I suspect he is interested in, I suspect he is very interested

in ways to beat the Mongols. And of course, what he's also hearing within this is a mixture of hope and fear and speculation, not just in Western Christendom and people across Eurasia, as they just hand to and fro stories and ideas about how the Mongols could be defeated. So it's what you can infer from these stories about how people are reacting and feeling about the Mongols. It's not an easy thing to do, and it's not always possible to gauge what emotions you can read from these stories, because of course mentalities are different. But it's engaging with that question that I find really interesting. Let's turn a bit more towards societies that, you know, weren't just hearing about this impending force, but rather actually engage with them firsthand.

I'm thinking of the Seljuk Turks and Anatolia. The Seljuks were a little bit different, right? They sort of acquiesced or they became a kind of vassal state and then they rebelled and sort of suffered the consequences. But for a long time, it seemed as though the Seljuk Turks were sort of allowed to be Seljuk Turks, so long as they acknowledged the authority of their Mongol rulers to the east. What effects did this sort of Mongolian vassal state have on sort of Seljuk society? Were there any sort of bureaucratic institutions that they then adopted, or political models that then shaped Seljuk society in Anatolia as a result of the Mongol authority. Yeah, I'm going to resort to some crude generalizations here, I'm sorry about that. But very, very roughly, my reading of Seljuq society, and again it's difficult to get to grips with Seljuq society, even Anatolian Seljuq society at this relatively late stage, because there are so few sources from the Seljuks themselves from this era. We have some from a little bit later.

We have more evidence of the 13th century than for the 12th, but it's still sparse. But my reading of Seljuk society is that you've got the Anatolian Seljuk sultan, and he has a fair amount of control on his own lands, but also in particular in some of the major cities. And there's all the fabulous garden palaces and the city and urban urban works and religious buildings created across Anatolia which are sort of the hallmarks of elite Seljuk society but I've always read the Seljuk Sultanate as living in very much in dialogue with the various

Turkmen nomadic communities of Anatolia, which are only ever semi-aligned with the Seljuk Sultanate. Sometimes they work together, sometimes they don't, but it's a relationship where the Seljuk Sultan has to maintain control or these Turkmen groups will start to do their own thing, will start to act unilaterally. And there's indications that even before the mongols arrival that many of these turkmen communities are getting much larger and more powerful and able better able to exert their own influence and so there is an uprising in 1240 1241 near um in southern anatolia led by a sort of spiritual leader who then leads what is effectively treated

as a rebellion against the Seljuk authority and Baba Ilyas that's that's it yes Baba Ilyas and it's put down with crushing force by the Anatolian Seljuk Sultan and I think that what's going on is as the Mongols moved westwards through the Khwarazmian Empire, through the Caucasus and other regions, that there's a huge number of refugees, including many Turkmen communities, seeking to get away from the Mongols. And so they enter Anatolia. And that then bulks up the existing Turkmen groups across the area and gives them far greater resources, given that their numbers are swelling so

much and it becomes much harder for the Seljuk Sultan to cope with that. Now that may have been manageable up to 1243 but when the Mongols start to invade Anatolia in 1242 and then win the famous battle at Khuzid-Dagh in 1243 following which the Seljuk Sultan then becomes a tribute tree to the Mongols, my instinct is that it became a great deal harder for the Seljuk Sultan to exert control and perhaps some Seljuk Sultans may not have wanted necessarily to reign in the Turkmen communities because they'd they're only grudgingly paying tribute to the Mongol state anyway. And over time, the Seljuk Sultanate becomes sort of eroded as it has to pay huge tribute to its Mongol overlords. It loses control in many regions and the Seljuk Sultan's authority goes into decline

and increasingly it's the go-betweens, it's the liaisons between the Seljuk Sultan and the Mongols who begin to have greater power. And my feeling is that as Seljuk Sultan's authority retreated, so those various Turkmen communities became more and more powerful and more and more free from restraint. Now, the Mongols inflicted some crushing campaigns against those Turkmen groups, particularly after 1256 when Baiju, the Mongols overlord of the region, when he was required to give up his grazing lands in the Caucasus and had to move into central and eastern Anatolia. That then led to resistance to his movement into Anatolia, which then led to incredibly brutal suppression of Turkmen groups across Anatolia and then in subsequent years there was rebellion after rebellion, waves of rebellion

until it became a near permanent state of rebellion particularly in western and central Anatolia, less so I've always felt in eastern Anatolia but yes there is this gradual decline of Seljuk authority until by the early years of the 14th century, essentially Seljuk authority is gone. But within that, the Mongols seem to have had a great deal more difficulty trying to maintain control and to suppress these various Turkmen communities. It's a mixed picture. With some, they were more effective than others. others, but on the whole, there does seem to have been a rising tide of Turkmen resistance, which in many ways then lays the foundations for the Beyliks of the late 13th century and early 14th century. Right, setting the stage, so to speak, for Osman to take advantage of the chaos.

Sure, yeah. You make this argument in the book, but it reminds me of your comment earlier about the owls, right? The unintended consequence of the owl being the harbinger of auspiciousness and then culling of the owls. These Beyliks, these nomadic groups fearing West, into Anatolia in particular, trying to escape the Mongol incursions, end up being sort of the source of success later on, right? The fact that they fled into Western Anatolia. I was wondering if we could continue this conversation into how this consolidation of authority in Central Asia, the push of the nomads and the Turkmen into the Beyliks of Western Anatolia,

sets the stage for someone like Osman to take advantage of the lack of central authority in Western Anatolia. Do you have any ideas or theories about why the Mongols didn't encroach further west into Anatolia? And I ask this because my own advisor posits that one of the sort of secrets to the rise of Osman and the Ottoman Beylik was that they just happened to be the furthest west, the furthest northwest part of Anatolia. Thus, they were kind of geographically cushioned or buffered from the encroaching Mongols or the effects of the Mongol incursions. And it reminds me of my question earlier about the topography of Central Asia and the steppe climate and whether, you know, that gave an early advantage to the Mongol invasions. Again, I don't mean to suggest that geography determines everything. advantage to the Mongol invasions. Again, I don't mean to suggest that geography determines everything, but it is curious that the Mongols who do eventually go, you know, could possibly

have gone around the Black Sea and invade the Byzantines from Southeast Europe, don't push further west into Anatolia where the Ottomans eventually set up camp. Yes, I think the history of the Mongol invasions into the Near East is very much a history of unintended results, really. In fact, that's the point at which I leave the book. It's the last sentence, I think. And I think in many ways, the Mongols themselves, as agents of change in the region, are overtaken by the populations they have put into movement as the agents of change i think by the time you get to the mid to late 13th century it's the peoples who have been set into motion whether as refugees or in other contexts to get

away from the mongols they actually become more dynamic and more influential in changing the course of events and the mongols do themselves And you see this in the Crusader States where in the late 13th century when the Crusader States on the mainland are in steep decline, arguably one of the biggest problems they face is encroachment from Turkmen groups who have moved westward to get away from the Mongols and then they start to encroach on the agricultural and grazing lands of the Crusader states and that creates a long-going decades-long problem for the Crusader states from north to south which ultimately plays a major role in their decline. In the same vein in the Mamluk Empire, the Mamluks themselves, part of the reason the Mamluks were able to take power in Egypt in 1250 is because the Ayyubids, so the former rulers of Egypt and Syria, had been able to purchase enslaved people in the Black Sea region in huge quantities, much bigger quantities and a much lower price than previously, which meant the Mamluk regiments became that much larger as these enslaved people were trained to become Mamluk warriors. Their regiments swelled and as a result in

time they were able to take power themselves. And even once the Mamluk Empire has been established, the Mamluk Empire benefits a great deal from swelling its ranks with tens of thousands of Turkmen warriors who are available very cheaply and very willingly, and many of whom are driven by fear of the Mongols and therefore make very natural recruits for the Mamluk Empire. And so across the board, you see the impact of people brought, whether as enslaved people or as refugees, they have a big effect on the region. In Anatolia, this is absolutely true. Because yes, you've got tens of thousands of turkmen families moving into the region which then swells the existing confederations and groups across the area

giving them a great deal more strength and i think there is some truth to the to the idea that the ottomans benefited from being as you say the furthest away from from the mongols yes indeed but one of the origin stories of the Mongols that historians, so it's hard to be sure about it, but it's a story that does get circulated sometimes, is the Ottomans themselves may once have been refugees trying to get away from the Mongols. You could say that the refugees that are in motion from the Mongols are more important than the Mongols themselves. Now, in terms of the topography and why the Mongols aren't able to reach the western end or even the west central end outside of Anatolia, there's many reasons for

that. Of course, the Byzantines benefited a great deal from their inaccessibility to the Mongols. And they were able to sort of, unlike most people, they were able to conduct a diplomacy where they kind of submitted and kind of didn't for many years, which other peoples just didn't have the luxury of, given that the Mongols literally could be on their frontier or crossing the frontier. The topography of Anatolia seems to have caused problems for the Mongols. They seem to have been a lot better able to cement their rule in the big cities of eastern Anatolia, places like Sivas, for example. the big cities of eastern Anatolia, places like Sivas, for example. In central Anatolia, they had limited control,

but they only really had the greatest control when they were doing a surge of troops into the region, normally to try and suppress the Turkmen groups. They rarely seem to have had, certainly in the western end, much permanent control. And I suspect it's probably because you do have the consolidation of people trying to get away from the Mongols who have nowhere further west to go beyond the Byzantine Empire, at least. And so as a result, this consolidation of people is very hard

for the Mongols to conquer, at least on a permanent basis. I suspect also that by the 1250s the Mongols had pushed fairly hard into Anatolia but by the 1260s the Mongols are having to keep a lot of their troops along the line of the Caucasus mountains watching the Golden Horde to the north and I wonder if they were starting to feel by that stage as in the 1260s you do have the outbreak of rebellions and resistance against the Mongol Empire in other areas. I wonder if really they had the troops to be that ambitious and to really try to invade into that part of Anatolia may have just been too far for them. Speaking of the Golden Horde, I was struck by your observation that so many of these

Near Eastern societies that were impacted by the Mongol invasions or shaped in some other way or form, one of the factors in the kind of disjointed nature of these various empires was the fact that there was no rule of succession that gave, you know, a single heir inherited everything. heir inherited everything this is what one factor that sets apart the ottomans is that very early on they make it clear like no only one son inherits it may not be the oldest son right that that's that's a factor that comes into later discussions but they avoid this sort of disjoint to this this fragmentation of authority once the current ruler passes for the mongols there is a similar disjoint right they we break up into the golden horn and the Yuan and the Ilkhanites. I was curious of how, whether you felt that this, despite being disjointed, they were still unified under a broader sort of Mongol right to rule or higher authority if we go back to Tengri from before, or do you think that that sort of fraction after disputes or a secession was significant?

Sure. So there are different forms of unity. The most obvious would be if a single ruler can issue an order and then the people in the various different regions will conduct it. That could be called political authority. But then, as you said, there is the ideological and spiritual and identity-based sense of identity and belonging as well. I think that political authority, in the sense that the great Khan can say that he wants to do something and then it gets done,

that gets lost during the mid-13th century and certainly with the outbreak of violence between the Golden Horde or Horde and the Ilkhanate in the Near East. But you're right, there is a long-term sense of identity and shared authority in some respects, in some dimensions. There is interaction, which can at times look like cooperation, if not quite acting as part of the same empire, as it were. And that sense of belonging and shared values does continue for much, much longer. The point you made about inheritance is a really and succession is a really good one because I mean this book on the Mongols and all

the problems of inheritance disputes and things like that with the Mongols and then before that with the Seljuks and the endless problems that the Seljuk dynasty or the Zangid dynasty or other dynasties like the Ayyubids, the endless problems they had with succession where the ruler dies and then brothers and sons and other sort of senior lieutenants in the family all then start fighting over who's going to get which part of the family inheritance. And that's just the sheer scale of the of the problems this could entail the most obvious example would be for Salah ad-Din he creates this empire and then literally within months of his his death then the Ayyubid empire well it limps on there is a sense of shared

identity but just the fragmentation of it and the speed of that is astonishing and you see that as well with the Anatolian Seljuks or the Danish Mendids. It's a very very sustained problem for so many Turkish and Kurdish dynasties across this era and then the Ottomans change it and it does really throw into relief just how bigger change that must have been and the impact of that is quite astonishing. And, of course, we don't know nearly as much as we'd like to, but it must have been such an upheaval to change centuries of ingrained tradition. This is how it is done.

This is how it is always done. And then to change that, the upheaval that entailed, it's, of course, we know it's important. Of course we know it is a shift. But for me at least, it's just brought the enormity, just how innovative that is, how different it is. It really does throw that into relief for me. As you said, centuries of tradition and ways of doing

things are hard to change, especially during a time of, maybe chaos is the right word, but uncertainty about the constantly shifting focus of power. The chaos may have helped, because it's only when things are obviously chaotic, it's only when your survival is seriously in question, that you may actually have the authority to say to people, well, you know, these things that we've done for the last X number of hundred years, we're not going to do them anymore. Because under normal circumstances, that's just not going to work. But it may have been the chaos that brought that about, or created the opportunity for that to be brought about.

Right, right. Controlled chaos, perhaps, right? That's what you want. Maybe. If you're rising up power, you're like, hmm, control the chaos, there we go. So on that note of introducing chaos or at least sort of creating opportunities for powers like the Ottomans to rise up or for the Mamluks

to take advantage of the great increase in availability of slaves that they could then use for their armies. What would you say were the most enduring effects on the history of the Near East and Central Asia? What would you say, from your perspective, are the marks of their enduring legacy? There are sort of short-term and long-term factors here. One of them has, there's many ways to answer this, of course. In the short term, at least, it has to be the enormous political reconfiguration of the entire region. Ayyubid Empire, gone. Anatolian Seljuks, gone.

Abbasid Caliphate, some extent the Crusader States, the effects on the regions of the Caucasus, all the many smaller emirates and other smaller political entities in the region, the Zangid Empire, the rise of the Mamluk Empire, the rise of the Ottomans, the collateral effects on the Byzantine Empire. The reconfiguration of the region is truly astonishing. And then, of course, you've got some fascinating research that's coming out that's showing the connection of the Mongol Empire to the advent of the Black Death, which swept in directly after the period that I'm looking at. And of course, the death toll from the Black Death was catastrophic. So in these ways, the Near East was profoundly affected in so many ways

by the Mongols. But there's other dimensions to this too, which, again, they have their implications. And for me, at least, it's the connectedness. It's that there are so many societies in the Near East and further afield who had so little knowledge of the wider world. And yet, with the rise of the Mongol Empire, missionaries, diplomats, merchants can travel across the Mongol Empire, not necessarily all the time, there's plenty of internal wars, there's plenty of internal uprisings and problems and dynastic disputes, it's not like it creates a single free trade zone but the opportunity is there from time to time, and suddenly people are able to access and visit and meet with peoples or societies that they have no prior knowledge of. And trade goods come in, trade routes shift, and I think the Mongols, again, not necessarily because they intended to per se, but because this is the effect they had,

it does leave a very much more connected Eurasia to the one before they started. And again, it's this rolling back of the land of legend and mythology, suddenly, where previously people had virtually no idea what was out there. Now they do, or at least they've got some idea. And it's the exchange of technologies as well. It's in the wake of all these events that the events i'm talking about in my book at least that gunpowder hits the mediterranean and suddenly byzantium and various muslim powers and western christendom's countries they begin to acquire gunpowder weapons now there is some talk of there being gunpowder recipes before this, but nonetheless, there seems little doubt that the advent of gunpowder technology from Mongol-controlled China will have dramatically

changed not just the face of warfare, but as has been shown by many historians, that gunpowder doesn't just change battles or armies, it changes the nature of society and the way in which societies interact and do business and trade. And so, yeah, these are seismic alterations. And just the experience of seeing a Mongol emissary or diplomat or hearing the stories of someone coming back from visiting the Mongols or acting as a diplomat to them, whether you're from Mamluk Egypt or from a Be balik or from byzantium or from a western european country the experience of that i think it's it clearly fires many people's imaginations

the fact that there are there is now some idea at least of what lies over the horizon and i'm reminded for example of giovanni boccaccio's decameron which is a series of short stories set in the time of the Black Death. And just the fact he casually refers to things like textiles from China or parrot feathers. These are things that previously people hadn't talked about. Now he's throwing them out there very casually, but clearly there is a familiarity which hadn't been there before. familiarity which hadn't been there before and again with Anatolia. Now as various historians have shown there is whether through population movement or through other factors there are all sorts of ideas that reach Anatolia or increasingly move into Anatolia in this era not least a

population movement from Persia into Anatolia, which as various historians have shown seems to have been very much on the increase during the late 13th century. And that too will bring about a shift in demography, a shift in religious ideas, a shift in culture. And so there is a rise of Persian ideas and expression of that in the 13th century. It was there before. It's not an entirely new development, but it does change things. So there are certainly many patterns that do sort of change in the ebbs and flows of intellectual life. And I think, though, for me, it's the way it changes the imagination and people's imaginations, the things they're thinking about, the things they're dreaming about. So I think it does change both the raw materials and the context

of the intellectual life in so many cultures and that too is fascinating and it's not necessarily the Mongols who bring this about but one thing that's coming to mind is a cookbook produced for an Ayyubid prince and this cookbook contains recipes that many are obviously Turkish by inspiration there's Armenian flatbreads there's some that are obviously Near Eastern by inspiration there's even a Frankish roast so I think diet can be a fascinating way for how things get get changed how people's horizons in this case in food but food's important i've always thought food's important um not just in way how people live but how people conceive of themselves and who they are i think the key thing there whether it's look at the mongols or anything else it's just it's not to focus on one particular voice there are all sorts of there are thousands of

voices coming out of the near east but to focus on one particular cultural tradition i think there's a richness to trying to genuinely listen to as many cultural traditions as you possibly can and think about how they interact now they often interact nicely it's just because just because ideas are being shared doesn't mean it's pleasant sometimes it can be very unpleasant. Sometimes it's much more pleasant. But nonetheless, it's giving ear to those various different cultural voices and thinking about how they interact, what people make of each other, how they're chiming off each other.

That, for me, is the core to this song. That's a really wonderful note on which to conclude this episode. Thank you again, Nick, for coming on. My pleasure. Thank you again, Nick, for coming on. My pleasure. Thank you. you