My notes

Summary by AI

• The Mongols were a chaotic and bloodthirsty tribe living on the northern fringe of China's boundary with the steppe world in the late eleventh century.

• Genghis Khan, a blacksmith, was the inspiration behind the Mongol transformation and built his position and power slowly by striking deals with fellow tribal leaders and choosing allies astutely

• He established himself as the undisputed master of the Mongolian steppes by 1206 and conquered several tribes by force or threat

• Attention then turned to the Kyrgyz, Oirat, and Uighurs in Central Asia, who submitted and swore formal oaths of allegiance

• In a series of attacks starting in 1211, the Mongols forced their way into China under the rule of the Jin dynasty, sacking the capital, Zhongdu, and forcing the rulers to evacuate and relocate their capital southwards

• The Uighur language, alphabet, and literature were becoming increasingly important in Mongolia

• Recruitment into service en masse of their scribes and bureaucrats was one reason for their elevated cultural status

• Despite the success of their expansion, the Mongol expansion was even more impressive elsewhere, the timing could have been better for stability and stability emerged in the region.

Causes of the Rise of the Mongols and Their Successes

The Mongol Empire, established by Genghis Khan in the 13th century, was one of the largest empires in history. Several factors contributed to their rise and subsequent successes:

1. Leadership and Military Tactics: Genghis Khan was a skilled military strategist who united the Mongol tribes and created a disciplined and efficient army. He implemented innovative tactics like the use of horse archers, mobility, and psych

3. ological warfare, which gave the Mongols a significant advantage in battles.

4. Nomadic Lifestyle: The Mongols' nomadic lifestyle made them exceptional horsemen and skilled warriors. They were accustomed to harsh environments, which made them resilient and adaptable on the battlefield.

5. Political Organization: Genghis Khan established a centralized government, creating a system of administration and governance. He appointed capable individuals based on merit rather than hereditary status, ensuring efficient rule and loyalty.

6. Trade and Communication Networks: The Mongols established an extensive network of trade routes, known as the Silk Road, connecting Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This facilitated the exchange of goods, ideas, and technologies, contributing to economic growth and cultural exchange.

7. Technological Advancements: The Mongols adopted and improved upon military technologies from conquered civilizations, such as siege warfare techniques and the use of gunpowder. They also utilized a sophisticated messenger system, known as the Yam, which allowed for efficient communication across vast territories.

8. Divisions and Weaknesses of Opponents: The Mongols exploited divisions among their enemies, often forming alliances with local groups who were dissatisfied with their rulers. They took advantage of political instability and weak defenses, allowing them to conquer vast territories with relative ease.

9. Tolerance and Adaptability: Unlike many conquerors of the time, the Mongols were relatively tolerant of different cultures and religions. They often incorporated local customs and practices into their administration, which helped maintain stability and gain support from conquered peoples.

In conclusion, the rise and success of the Mongols can be attributed to their exceptional leadership, military tactics, nomadic lifestyle, political organization, trade networks, technological advancements, exploitation of divisions among opponents, and their tolerance and adaptability. These factors allowed them to build and sustain a vast empire that shaped the course of history.

other stuff

• Mongol leadership was chosen through a system called "kurultai," where Mongol nobles and leaders gathered to select a new Khan. This process involved discussions, debates, and consensus-building. The Mongol leadership was unique because it emphasized meritocracy, allowing individuals to rise to power based on their abilities rather than hereditary succession. This approach enabled the Mongols to recruit talented individuals from diverse backgrounds, contributing to their military success and efficient administration.

• Choosing Ogodei's successor "saved" Europe in the sense that it diverted the Mongol forces away from further conquests in Europe. After Ogodei's death, the Mongols held a kurultai to select his successor. This process took several years, during which the Mongol armies halted their westward expansion. This delay allowed Europe to recover and prepare for potential Mongol invasions. Ultimately, the chosen successor, Guyuk Khan, died before launching any major campaigns in Europe, further ensuring the continent's safety.

• Two important effects of the Mongols on global history are:

  1. Expansion of Trade and Cultural Exchange: The Mongols established the largest land empire in history, connecting Europe and Asia through the Silk Road. This facilitated the exchange of goods, ideas, and technologies between different regions, leading to cultural diffusion and economic growth.

  2. Spread of the Black Death: The Mongol Empire played a significant role in the spread of the Black Death (bubonic plague) during the 14th century. The movement of Mongol armies and trade routes allowed the disease to spread rapidly across Eurasia, resulting in one of the deadliest pandemics in human history.

Timeline

• 1206: Genghis Khan is proclaimed as the Great Khan, unifying the Mongol tribes.

• 1211-1234: Mongol invasions of China, known as the Jin-Song Wars.

• 1227: Genghis Khan dies, and his empire is divided among his sons.

• 1235-1241: Mongol invasions of Europe, including the Battle of Legnica and the Battle of Mohi.

• 1251-1259: Mongol campaigns against the Western Xia and the Khwarazmian Empire.

• 1260: The Mongol Empire splits into four khanates: the Yuan Dynasty in China, the Ilkhanate in Persia, the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia, and the Golden Horde in Russia.

• 1271-1368: The Yuan Dynasty rules over China under Kublai Khan.

• 1295-1304: The Ilkhanate conquers the remaining territories of the Abbasid Caliphate.

• 1333-1368: The Red Turban Rebellion weakens the Yuan Dynasty, leading to its collapse.

• 1368-1392: The Ming Dynasty replaces the Yuan Dynasty in China.

• 1380: The Golden Horde suffers a major defeat against the Grand Duchy of Moscow at the Battle of Kulikovo.

• 1405-1433: The voyages of Zheng He, a Chinese admiral, expand Chinese influence in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.

• 1453: The Ottoman Empire captures Constantinople, marking the end of the Byzantine Empire.

• 1480: The Golden Horde disintegrates, and its remnants are absorbed by the Crimean Khanate and the Kazan Khanate.

• 1526: The Mughal Empire is founded in India by Babur, a descendant of Genghis Khan.

• 1691: The Dzungar Khanate is conquered by the Qing Dynasty, marking the end of Mongol independence.

• 1911: The Qing Dynasty collapses, ending Mongol rule in China.

Garner Timeline

• 1155-1167: Temujin is born (Genghis Khan)

• 1190’s-1206: Genghis Khan makes alliances, kills people, and gets ellected

• 1206: appointed the Great Khan of the united Mongol Tribes

• 1206-1227: Captured 2/3 of the Asian continent

• 1227: Genghis Khan dies in central asia on his way to his last campain (mysterious demise)

• 1227-1350’s: Expansion and Division of Empire “Pax Mongolica” (mongol peace)

  • 1227-1294: more conquests

    • 1229-1241: Ogedi elected

  • 1258: Baghdad by Hulagu Khan

  • 1294: 4 Khanates divide empire (sons of Genghis Khan)

    • Great Khan still centered in China in the Yuan Dynasty (Bejing w/ wealthiest and most stable location of the empire)

• 1271: Kublai Khan takes over all of China Yuan Dynasty

  • Yuan Dynasty (“origin of the Universe” very humble)

  • 1271-1368: Yuan Dynasty rules in the Chinese style form Bejing

  • Elevated Buddhist Lamas over Confucian scholars in Gov

  • China’s economy flourishes during this time period

  • 1368: collapses when an Orphan Buddhist Peasant leads a revolt and founds the Ming Dynasty after the plague weakens China

  • Ming Dynasty leads to backlash of Confucian conservatism

• 1400: Mongols states are weakened or fall apart by 1400 after the plague in 1340-1400

other notes from Garner

• Around the year of 1350 is the end of the Mongols and the technical turning point of the world - AP curriculum divides it at 1450

• end of 1300s is end of unit 2

• the Black death ends the old world

WWII vs the Mongols

• Both were turning points going from stability to a fragile world yet with immense innovation and prosperity

The Road to Hell

The tremors that were felt in Egypt came from the other side of the world. In the late eleventh century, the Mongols were one of many tribes living on the northern fringe of China's boundary with the steppe world, with one contemporary describing them as "living like animals, guided neither by faith nor by law, simply wandering from one place to another, like wild animals grazing." According to another author, "they regarded robbery and violence, immorality and debauchery as deeds of manliness and excellence." Their appearance was similarly regarded with disgust: like the Huns of the fourth century, they wore "skins of dogs and mice." These were familiar descriptions of the behavior and manners of nomads as viewed by outside Observers.

Although the Mongols seemed to be chaotic, bloodthirsty and unreliable, their rise was not the result of a lack of order, but precisely the opposite: ruthless planning, streamlined organization and a clear set of strategic objectives were the key to establishing the largest land empire in history. The inspiration behind the Mongol transformation was a leader named Temüjin, or blacksmith. We know him by his title and nickname of "universal ruler," or perhaps, "fierce ruler": Činggis, or Genghis Khan.3

Genghis Khan came from a leading family within the tribal union, and his destiny had been foretold from the moment he was born "clutching in his right hand a clot of blood the size of a knucklebone"; this was interpreted as a propitious sign of glories that lay ahead. Despite the fearsome reputation he acquired in the Middle Ages and which still endures, Genghis Khan built his position and power slowly, striking deals with fellow tribal leaders and choosing his allies astutely. He also chose his enemies well, and, above all, he picked the right moment to take them on. He arranged his most devoted followers around him both as a personal bodyguard and as an iron inner circle made up of warriors (nökürs) upon whom he could rely unquestioningly. This was a meritocratic system where ability and loyalty were more important than tribal background or shared kinship with the leader. In return for unstinting support, the leader provided goods, booty and status. Genghis Khan's genius was to be able to supply these benefits prodigiously enough to guarantee loyalty--and to do so with metronomic regularity.

This was made possible by an almost constant programme of conquest. One tribe after another was brought under his sway by force or by threat, until he had established himself as the undisputed master of the Mongolian steppes by 1206. Attention then turned to the next ring of peoples, such as the Kyrgyz, the Oirat and the Uighurs situated to the west of China in Central Asia, who submitted and swore formal oaths of allegiance. The incorporation of the latter in 1211 was particularly important, as is clear from the gift to the Uighur ruler, Barchuq, of a Činggisid bride after he had declared that he was ready to become Genghis Khan's "fifth son." This was partly a reflection of the importance of lands occupied by the Uighurs in the Tarim basin, but was also because the Uighur language, alphabet and what one modern historian calls the "literat?" had been becoming increasingly important in Mongolia. The Uighurs' elevated cultural status was one reason for the recruitment into service en masse of their scribes and bureaucrats-including a certain "Tatar Tonga," who became tutor to Genghis Khan's sons."

Attention turned to more ambitious targets. In a series of attacks starting in 1211, the Mongols forced their way into China under the rule of the Jin dynasty, sacking the capital, Zhongdu, and forcing the rulers to evacuate and relocate their capital southwards on multiple occasions, with the invaders securing substantial plunder. Expansion was even more impressive elsewhere. The timing could not have been better. Central authority in the Muslim world weakened in the course of the twelfth century as a patchwork of states of varying size, capability and stability emerged to challenge the primacy of Baghdad. As it happened, the ruler of Khwarazm had been busy picking off local rivals, with one eye on expanding eastwards into China himself. The consolidation that came as a result now simply meant that when the Mongols defeated him, as they duly did, chasing him to an island in the Caspian where he died not long afterwards, the door to Central Asia was wide open: the path had been cleared before them.

Sources paint vivid pictures of the vile savagery that accompanied the attack that began on Khwärazm in 1219. The invaders, wrote one historian, "came, they sapped, they burned, they slew, they plundered and they departed." I wish I had never been born, wrote another, so I would not have had to live through such traumas. At least the Muslim Antichrist will only destroy his enemies, he went on; the Mongols, on the other hand, "spared none. They killed women, men, children, ripped open the bodies of the pregnant and slaughtered the unborn."10

The Mongols cultivated such fears carefully, for the reality was that Genghis Khan used violence selectively and deliberately. The sack of one city was calculated to encourage others to submit peacefully and quickly; theatrically gruesome deaths were used to persuade other rulers that it was better to negotiate than to offer resistance. Nishāpur was one of the locations that suffered total devastation. Every living being-from women, children and the elderly to livestock and domestic animals-was butchered as the order was given that not even dogs or cats should be left alive. All the corpses were piled up in a series of enormous pyramids as gruesome warnings of the consequences of standing up to the Mongols. It was enough to convince other towns to lay down arms and negotiate: the choice was one of life or death."

News traveled fast of the brutality that faced those who took the time to weigh up their options. Stories such as that of a high-ranking official who was ordered into the presence of a newly arrived Mongol warlord and had molten gold poured into his eyes and ears became widely known-as was the fact that this murder was accompanied by the announcement that this was fitting punishment for a man "whose disgraceful behavior, barbarous acts and previous cruelties deserved the condemnation of all."12 It was a warning to those who considered standing in the way of the Mongols. Peaceful submission was rewarded; resistance was punished brutally.

Genghis Khan's use of force was technically advanced, as well as strategically astute. To mount a lengthy siege on fortified targets was challenging and expensive because of the demands of sustaining a large mounted army whose need for pasture could quickly exhaust the surrounding region. For this reason, military technicians who could expedite a swift victory were highly valued. At Nishapur in 1221, we learn of 3,000 giant crossbows being used, as well as 3,000 stone-hurling machines and 700 projectors of incendiary material. Later, the Mongols became intensely interested in the techniques that had been pioneered by western Europeans, copying designs for catapults and siege engines created for the Crusaders in the Holy Land and using them against targets in East Asia in the late thirteenth century. Control of the Silk Roads gave their masters access to information and ideas that could be replicated and deployed thousands of miles away."3

Curiously, given their reputation, one explanation for the astounding successes of the Mongols in early thirteenth-century China, Central Asia and beyond was that they were not always seen as oppressors. And with good reason: in the case of Khwärazm, for example, the local population had been ordered to pay a year's taxes up front to fund the construction of new fortifications around Samarkand and to pay for squadrons of archers against an imminent Mongol attack. Putting such strain on households hardly retained goodwill. In contrast, the Mongols invested lavishly in the infrastructure of some of the cities they captured. One Chinese monk who visited Samarkand soon after its capture was amazed to see how many craftsmen there were from China and how many people were being drawn in from the surrounding region and further afield to help manage the fields and orchards that had previously been neglected.14

It was a pattern repeated time and again: money poured into towns that were rebuilt and re-energised, with particular attention paid to championing the arts, crafts and production. Blanket images of the Mongols as barbaric destroyers are wide of the mark, and represent the misleading legacies of the histories written later which emphasized ruin and devastation above all else. This slanted view of the past provides a notable lesson in how useful it is for leaders who have a view to posterity to patronize historians who write sympathetically of their age of empire-something the Mongols conspicuously failed to do.'5

But there could also be no mistaking how the Mongols' use of force chilled the blood of those who heard of an impending assault. As they swarmed west, hunting down those who had resisted them or fled in the hope of escape, the Mongols struck terror into hearts and minds. In 1221, armies under the command of two of Genghis Khan's sons advanced like lightning through Afghanistan and Persia, ravaging all before them. Nishapur, Herat and Balkh were taken, while Merv was razed to the ground and its entire population murdered, according to one Persian historian, save for a group of 400 artisans who were brought back to the east to work at the Mongol court. The ground was stained red with the blood of the dead: a small group of survivors apparently counted the corpses and put the number of the dead at more than 1.3 million.16 Breathless reports of similar death tolls elsewhere have convinced modern commentators to talk in terms of genocide, mass murder and the slaughter of 90 per cent of the population."

While it is difficult to be precise about the scale of death inflicted in the attacks, it is worth noting that many (though not all) of the towns apparently ravaged by waves of attackers recovered quickly-suggesting that the later Persian historians whom we have to rely on may have been keen to over-emphasise the devastating effects of the Mongol attacks. But even if they magnified the suffering, there could be no doubt that the winds that blew violence from the east did so with tremendous force.

They were relentless too. No sooner had the principal cities of Central Asia been reduced than the Caucasus was plundered, before the raiders then appeared in southern Russia. They were hunting tribal rivals, the Qipchaqs or Cumans, to teach them a lesson for daring not to submit. Genghis Khan may have died in 1227; but his heirs proved to be equally resourceful-and spectacularly successful.

In the late 1230s, after extraordinary successes in Central Asia masterminded by Ögödei, who became the Great Khan, or supreme leader, soon after his father's death, the Mongols launched one of the most stunning attacks in the history of warfare, mounting a campaign that surpassed even that of Alexander the Great in terms of speed and scale. Forces had already once before advanced from the steppes into Russian territory, appearing in "countless numbers, like locusts," according to one monk of Novgorod. "We do not know where they came from or where they disappeared to," he wrote; "only God knows because he sent them to punish us for our sins."18 In textbook fashion, when the Mongols returned, they demanded tribute, threatening destruction to those who refused. One after another, towns were attacked, with Ryazan, Tver' and eventually Kiev comprehensively sacked. In Vladimir, the prince and his family, together with the town's bishop and other dignitaries, took sanctuary in the church of the Holy Mother of God. The Mongols set fire to the church, burning its occupants alive." Churches were destroyed, wrote one of the bishop's successors, "holy vessels defiled, sacred objects trampled on the ground, and clergy were fodder for the sword." It was as though wild beasts had been released to devour the flesh of the strong and to drink the blood of the nobles. It was not Prester John and salvation coming from the east, but Mongols bringing the apocalypse.

The terror the Mongols aroused was reflected in the name by which they were soon being referred to: Tatars, a reference to Tartarus-the abyss of torment in classical mythology." Reports of their advance reached as far as Scotland while, according to one source, herring went unsold in ports on the east coast of Britain as merchants who normally came from the Baltic to buy it did not dare to leave home.22 In 1241, the Mongols struck into the heart of Europe, splitting their forces into two, with one spur attacking Poland and the other heading for the plains of Hungary. Panic spread through the entire continent, especially after a large army led by the King of Poland and the Duke of Silesia was destroyed, and the head of the latter paraded on the end of a lance, together with nine sacks filled with "the ears of the dead." Mongol forces now moved west. When King Béla IV of Hungary fled to Dalmatia, taking refuge in Trogir, it was time for priests to say masses, praying for protection from evil, and to lead processions to implore the support of God. The Pope, Gregory IX, took the step of announcing that any who helped defend Hungary would receive the same indulgence as that granted to Crusaders. His offer met with little enthusiasm: the German Emperor and the Doge of Venice were more than aware of what the consequences would be if they tried to help and ended up on the losing side. If the Mongols had now chosen to continue westward, as one modern scholar puts it, "it is unlikely that they would have encountered any coordinated opposition."23 Europe's moment of reckoning had arrived.

With a gall that is almost admirable, some contemporary historians now began to claim that the Mongols had been halted by brave resistance, or even defeated in imaginary battles that seemed to become more real as time went on. In fact, the Mongols were simply uninterested in what western Europe had to offer-at least for the time being. The priority was to admonish Béla for granting sanctuary to the Cumans and, perhaps worse, for ignoring repeated demands to hand them over: such resistance had to be punished at all costs.24

"I am aware that you are a rich and powerful monarch," read one letter to King Béla from the Mongol leadership, "that you have many soldiers under your command, and that you alone rule a great kingdom." In words that would be familiar to any professional racketeer, things were spelled out, bluntly. "It is difficult for you to submit to me of your own free will," it went on; "and yet it would be much better for your future prospects if you were to do so."25 In the world of the steppes, slighting a powerful rival was almost as bad as confronting them head-on. Béla needed to be taught a lesson. He was therefore chased single-mindedly through Dalmatia, even though there were other, gaping opportunities elsewhere. The Mongols ravaged everything as they went, sacking one town so spectacularly that a local chronicler noted that nobody was left even "to piss against a wall."26

At that point, Béla-and Europe-were saved by a stroke of great fortune: Ögödei, the Great Khan, suddenly died. To the devout, it was obvious that their prayers had been answered. To high-ranking Mongols, it was vital to be present at and participate in the selection of the man who should take the mantle of leadership. There was no such thing as primogeniture. Rather the choice of who should succeed to the position of highest authority rested on who made their case best and loudest in person to a conclave of senior figures. The decision of whom to back could make or break commanders' lives and careers: if a patron rose to the top, the share of the rewards could be disproportionately high. This was not the moment to be chasing troublesome monarchs through the Balkans. It was time to be at home, watching the situation unfurl. And with that, the Mongols took their foot off the throat of Christian Europe.

Although it is the name of Genghis Khan that is synonymous with the great conquests of Asia and the attacks on lands far beyond, the Mongol leader died in 1227 after the initial phase of empire building in China and Central Asia had been carried out, but before the dramatic attacks on Russia and the Middle East and the invasion that brought Europe to its knees. It was his son Ögödei who oversaw the expansion that massively increased the extent of Mongol lordship, masterminding campaigns that extended into the Korean peninsula, Tibet, Pakistan and northern India--as well as in the west. It was Ögödei who deserved much of the credit for the Mongol achievement, and equally some of the responsibility for its temporary halt: for his death in 1241 provided crucial breathing space.

As the world paused to see who would take charge, streams of envoys were sent from Europe and the Caucasus across Asia to find out who these marauders were, where they had come from, what their customs were-and to come to an understanding with them. Two groups of ambassadors took letters with them demanding in the name of God that the Mongols not attack Christians, and that they consider adopting the true faith." Between 1243 and 1253, four separate embassies were sent by Pope Innocent IV, while King Louis IX of France also dispatched a mission led by William of Rubruck, a monk from Flanders.28

The reports they produced of their travels were as graphic and alien as those produced by Muslim travelers to the steppes in the ninth and tenth centuries. The European visitors were fascinated and appalled in equal measure. Although immeasurably powerful, wrote William of Rubruck, the new masters of Asia did not live in cities, except at the capital Karakorum, where he met the Great Khan in an enormous tent that was "completely covered inside with cloth of gold."29 These were people whose behavior and habits were exotic and unrecognizable. They did not eat vegetables, drank fermented mare's milk and emptied their bowels without a thought for those they were talking to-and in public, no further away from where one was standing than "one could toss a bean."30

The account of another envoy, John of Plano Carpini, became widely known throughout Europe in this period; it painted a similar picture of squalor, decadence and unfamiliarity, a world where dogs, wolves, foxes and lice were treated as food. He also reported on rumors he had heard about creatures that lay beyond the Mongol lands-where some people had hooves and others heads of dogs." John brought back ominous information about the scenes that accompanied the enthronement of the next Great Khan, Güyüg. The list of dignitaries from regions, tribes and realms that recognised Mongol overlordship conveyed something of the astonishing scale of the empire: leaders from Russia, Georgia, Armenia, the steppes, China and Korea were in attendance, as were no fewer than ten sultans and thousands of envoys from the Caliph.32

John was given a letter to take back to Rome by the Great Khan. All the lands in the world have been conquered by the Mongols, it said. "You should come in person," it demanded of the Pope, "with all the princes, and serve us." If you do not do so, the Great Khan warned, "I shall make you my enemy." There was an uncompromising answer meanwhile for the Pope's entreaties that the Mongol ruler become Christian: how do you know whom God absolves, and to whom he shows mercy?, the Khan wrote angrily. All the lands from the rising to the setting sun are subject to me, he went on, which did little to recommend the Pope's God. The letter was stamped with a seal that united the power of the Great Khan with that of "the eternal Tengri"--the supreme deity of traditional steppe-nomad beliefs. This was not promising at all." Nor was it reassuring that plans were being made for new attacks on central Europe, with an assault actively being considered against the north of the continent too.34 The Mongols had a worldview that stopped nothing short of global domination: conquering Europe was simply the next logical step in the plan for the heirs of Genghis Khan to bring yet more territory under their sway.35

Fear of the Mongols now provoked a game of religious dominoes in Europe. The Armenian church entered into discussions with the Greek Orthodox patriarchate in order to build an alliance and gain protection in the event of a future attack. The Armenians also opened negotiations with Rome, signaling their willingness to declare that they were in agreement with the papacy's interpretation of the procession of the Holy Spirit-a topic that had caused much friction in the past.36 The Byzantines did the same, sending a mission to Rome and proposing ending the schism which had cleaved the Christian church in two since the eleventh century, and which had deepened rather than healed as a result of the Crusades.37 Where priests and princes in Europe had failed to reunite popes and patriarchs, the Mongols had succeeded: attacks from the east, and the very real threat that they would be repeated, had brought the church to the point of full reunion.

Just when religious harmony seemed a certainty, the sands shifted. After the Great Khan Güyüg died unexpectedly in 1248, there was a succession struggle within the Mongol leadership that took time to resolve. As this played out, the rulers of Armenia and Byzantium received assurances that no attack was imminent. According to William of Rubruck, in the case of the latter this was because the Mongol envoy who had been sent to the Byzantines was heavily bribed and as a result intervened to prevent an assault. 38 It was certainly true that the Byzantines were desperate to deflect the attention of the Mongols and did all they could to avoid attack. In the 1250s, for example, another delegation sent from Karakorum was led through difficult terrain in Asia Minor on purpose by Byzantine guides and made to watch the imperial army parade when they arrived to meet with the Emperor. These were desperate attempts to convince the Mongols that the empire was not worth attacking-or, if it was, that troops would be waiting for them.39

In fact the Mongols decided not to attack for different reasons: neither Anatolia nor Europe was the focus of their attention simply because there were fatter and better targets elsewhere. Expeditions were sent to what remained of China until it capitulated completely in the late thirteenth century, at which point the ruling Mongol dynasty adopted the imperial title of Yuan and founded a new city on the site of the old city of Zhongdu. This now became the Mongol capital, designed to crown the achievements of taking control of the entire region between the Pacific and the Mediterranean. The new metropolis has retained its importance ever since: Beijing.

Other major cities also received considerable attention. The new Khan, Möngke, focused the Mongol armies on the pearls of the Islamic world. One city after another fell as the attacking army surged westwards. In 1258, they reached the walls of Baghdad and, after a brief siege, wreaked devastation. They swept through the city "like hungry falcons attacking a flight of doves, or like raging wolves attacking sheep," wrote one writer not long afterwards. The city's inhabitants were dragged through the streets and alleys, like toys, "each of them becoming a plaything." The Caliph al-Musta'şim was captured, rolled up in fabric and trampled to death by horses.4° It was a highly symbolic moment that showed who held real power in the world.

Immense booty and riches were seized during these conquests. According to an account produced in the Caucasus by allies of the Mongols, the victors "sank under the weight of the gold, silver, gems and pearls, the textiles and precious garments, the plates and vases of gold and silver, for they only took these two metals, the gems, the pearls, the textiles and the garments." The seizure of fabrics was particularly significant: as with the Xiongnu at the height of their power, silk and luxury materials played a crucial role in demarcating elites within the tribal system and were highly prized as a result. The Mongols often specifically required tributes in the form of gold cloth, purple gauze, precious garments or silks; on occasion, it was stipulated that such payments should be made in the form of livestock which should be adorned with damask, gold fabric and precious jewels. "Cloths of silk and gold and cotton" were requested in such specific quantities and qualities that the leading scholar in this field has likened it to a detailed shopping list-one that was "both demanding and remarkably well informed."41

There was barely time to digest news of the sack of Baghdad before the Mongols appeared once again in Europe. In 1259, they advanced into Poland, sacking Kraków, before sending a delegation to Paris to demand the submission of France.42 At the same time, a separate army swung west from Baghdad against Syria and into Palestine. This caused blind panic among the Latins living in the east, where the Christian position in the Holy Land had been reinforced by a fresh burst of Crusade energy in the middle of the thirteenth century. Although large-scale expeditions by the Holy Roman Frederick II and then by Louis IX of France restored Jerusalem, briefly, to Christian hands, few had any illusions about how precarious the hold was over Antioch, Acre, and other remaining towns.

Until the appearance of the Mongols, the threat had seemed to come from Egypt and from a highly aggressive new regime that had seized power there. With remarkable irony, the new Egyptian overlords were men from similar stock to the Mongols themselves-nomads from the steppes. Just as the 'Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad had been taken over by its slave soldiers recruited from the Turkic tribes on the steppes, so the same thing happened in the caliphate of Cairo in 1250. In the case of Egypt, the new masters were known as Mamluk, as a result of being largely descendants of slaves (mamalik) who had been taken from the tribal constellations north of the Black Sea and traded through the ports of the Crimea and the Caucasus to serve in the Egyptian military. Their number included Mongol tribesmen who had either been caught up in the slave traffic or as wāfidiyah--literally newcomers-had fled from the oppressive dominant factions in the sort of internal scuffles that were commonplace on the steppes, and sought sanctuary and service in Cairo.43

The Middle Ages in Europe are traditionally seen as the time of Crusades, chivalry and the growing power of the papacy, but all this was little more than a sideshow to the titanic struggles taking place further east. The tribal system had led the Mongols to the brink of global domination, having conquered almost the whole continent of Asia. Europe and North Africa yawned open; it was striking then that the Mongol leadership focused not on the former but on the latter. Put simply, Europe was not the best prize on offer. All that stood in the way of Mongol control of the Nile, of Egypt's rich agricultural output and its crucial position as a junction on the trade routes in all directions was an army commanded by men who were drawn from the very same steppes: this was not just a struggle for supremacy, it was the triumph of a political, cultural and social system. The battle for the medieval world was being fought between nomads from Central and eastern Asia.

The Christians in the Holy Land reacted to the Mongol advance with blind. panic. First Antioch, one of the crown jewels under Crusader control, was surrendered, while another, Acre, reached an accommodation with the Mongols, judging them to be the lesser of two evils. Desperate appeals were dispatched to the rulers of England and France begging for military assistance. The westerners were saved by the intervention of their sworn enemy the Mamluks of Egypt-who moved northwards to confront the army that was ripping through Palestine."4

Having swept all before them for the best part of six decades, the Mongols now suffered their first serious setback, defeated at 'Ayn Jalut in northern Palestine in September 1260. Despite the assassination of the victorious general, Sultan Quțuz, in an internal power struggle, the Mamluks pressed forward gleefully. As they did so, they found much of their work had been done for them: the Mongols, in breaking the resistance of the local population, had forged towns and regions into a single entity. Just as Genghis Khan had benefited from the consolidation of Central Asia before his invasion early in the thirteenth century, so did the Mongols inadvertently gift Syria and the important cities of Aleppo and Damascus to their rivals. The Mamluks were able to walk in almost unopposed."5

The Christians in the Holy Land and in Europe looked on in horror, unsure what would happen next or what lay in store for them as a result. But it did not take long for attitudes to the Mongols to be entirely reshaped. It began to dawn on Christian Europe that despite the traumatic encounters they had experienced from the terrifying hordes of horsemen galloping over the northern lip of the Black Sea into the plains of Hungary, the Mongols just might be the saviors they had once been mistaken for when they had first burst into view.

In the decades after 1260, repeated missions were dispatched from Europe and the Holy Land to try to form an alliance with the Mongols against the Mamlūks. Frequent embassies traveled in the other direction too, sent by Hülegü, the dominant Mongol warlord in Asia, and his son Aqaba, whose readiness to negotiate was dictated primarily by their interest in using western seapower against Egypt and against its newly conquered territories in Palestine and Syria. Matters were complicated, however, by the first signs of proper friction among the Mongols themselves.

By the later thirteenth century, the Mongol world had become so vast stretching from the Pacific to the Black Sea, from the steppes into northern India to the Persian Gulf, that strains and cracks began to appear. The empire divided into four main branches, which became increasingly hostile to each other. The senior line was centered in China; in Central Asia, it was the heirs of Chaghatay (a man described by one Persian writer as "a butcher and a tyrant," an accursed man who was "cruel and blood loving"-pure evil) who held sway.46 In the west, the Mongols who dominated the steppes of Russia and beyond into central Europe came to be known as the Golden Horde, while in Greater Iran the rulers were known as the Ilkhanids-a reference to the title of Il-Khan that marked them as subordinate to the main branch of the Mongol leadership.

The Mamluks now skillfully manipulated the tribal politics of their enemy, coming to terms with Berke, the leader of the Golden Horde, whose rivalry with the Ilkhanids had already spilled into open conflict. This served to increase the chances of an agreement being reached between Christian Europe and the Ilkhanids. The closest such plans came to fruition was in the late 1280s when an embassy led by Rabban Sauma, the bishop of Uighuria in western China, was sent by the Ilkhanid leader to visit the major leaders in western Europe to finalize the terms of a military alliance. Rabban Sauma was a good choice-urbane, intelligent and a Christian to boot. For all their reputation for savagery, the Mongols were shrewd in their reading of foreigners.

No one was more excited to hear about plans for joint action than Edward I, King of England. A highly enthusiastic Crusader, Edward had visited the Holy Land in 1271 and had been horrified by what he had seen. It was bad enough, he concluded, that the Christians appeared to spend more time arguing with each other than fighting the Muslims. But what truly appalled him was the Venetians: not only were they trading with the infidel, they were supplying them with materials for making siege engines that were then used against Christian towns and forts.""

The king was delighted, then, to receive the bishop from the east, and made clear that his priority was to see the recovery of Jerusalem. "We have no subject of thought except upon this matter," the English monarch told the bishop, before asking him to celebrate the Eucharist for the king himself and his retinue. He treated the bishop with honor and respect, lavishing gifts and money on him after throwing a feast in celebration of the great things to come.48 Plans were formed to collaborate, with the aim of securing the Holy Land for Christendom once and for all. Such were the expectations of the imminent triumph of Christianity that processions even took place in Rome to celebrate the imminent defeat of Islam. In the space of a few decades, in the European mind the Mongols had gone from being saviors to demons and back again. Thoughts that the end of the world was nigh had given way to the belief that a new beginning was at hand.

The grandiose plans came to nothing. Just as Crusade after Crusade had delivered less than promised, all the fine talk of an alliance that spanned thousands of miles and involved the fate of global religions did not produce any meaningful results. For Edward I, it turned out that there were problems closer to home that were more important. Rather than forming a grand alliance with the Mongols against Muslim Egypt, the English king was forced to head to Scotland to put down the rebellion of William Wallace. With other European monarchs similarly preoccupied, the Christian presence in the Holy Land finally came to an end: two centuries after the knights of the First Crusade had captured Jerusalem, the last footholds gave way. Sidon, Tyre, Beirut and Acre surrendered to the Mamluks in 1291. It turned out that goodwill and enthusiasm alone were not enough to support, save or hold on to the locations that lay at the heart of the Christian faith.

For a while, there were false dawns. In the winter of 1299, the Mongols finally achieved what they had sought to do for more than a generation: a crushing defeat of the Mamlūk army. Their victory was so emphatic that rumors circulated round Europe that Jerusalem had been recovered by Christians in the east who had fought alongside their Mongol allies. Rumors spread that the Ilkhänid ruler had converted to Christianity and was serving as a new protector of the Holy Land. Some reports excitedly announced even better news: not content with expelling the Mamluks from Syria and Palestine, the Mongols had apparently burst through defenses and taken Egypt as well.49 It all sounded too good to be true. A major victory had indeed been won by the Mongols on the battlefield, but the enthusiastic tales were nothing more than misunderstandings, rumors and wishful thinking. The Christian Holy Land was gone for good.50

The Crusades had played a vital role in shaping the medieval west. The power of the papacy had been transformed, with the Pope becoming not just an authoritative cleric but a figure with military and political capabilities of his own; the qualities and behavior of the elite had been framed by ideas about service, devotion and knightly piety; and the idea of Christianity as the common denominator of the continent of Europe had taken root. But in the final analysis it had become clear from experience that while capturing and holding Jerusalem was wonderful in theory, in practice it was difficult, expensive and dangerous. And so, after being placed at the center of European consciousness for two centuries, the Holy Land quietly slipped out of view. As the poet William Blake put it in the early nineteenth century, it would be infinitely preferable to build Jerusalem in an easier and more convenient location-such as "in England's green and pleasant land.""1

The Crusades ultimately failed: attempts to colonize the most important locations in Christendom had not worked. The same could not be said, however, for the Italian city-states that succeeded where Christian knights had faltered. While devout knights had been forced out, the maritime states simply readjusted and burrowed ever deeper into Asia. There was no way they would relinquish their position. On the contrary, after the loss of the Holy Land, the issue for them was not about reducing their reach. It was about extending it.

10

The Road of Death and Destruction

Even before the fall of the cities and ports in the Levant, both Genoa and Venice had taken steps to find new routes to trade along, new points to buy and sell goods, new ways to make sure they did not lose out. With trade passing through the Holy Land increasingly strangled in the thirteenth century by the rise in military tensions, both communes established new colonies on the north coast of the Black Sea in the Crimea, in the mouth of the Sea of Azov and in Armenian Cilicia, where the town of Ayas became a new gateway for commodities and luxuries coming from the east.

There was a lot of money to be made. Differentials between the price of grain on the north and south coasts of the Black Sea provided a perfect opportunity for the city-states to exploit with their huge transport vessels that were able to transport foodstuffs in considerable volumes.' These ships also proved useful in moving other goods--such as people. Both the Genoese and the Venetians resumed large-scale slave trading, buying captives to sell on to Mamluk Egypt, in defiance of attempts by the papacy to ban the trafficking of men, women and children to Muslim buyers.2

Old rivalries were hard to set to one side. Genoa had already shown how far it was willing to go to crush rivals, destroying the Pisan fleet almost in its entirety in 1282 and then refusing to ransom those taken prisoner. Pisa never recovered fully from the blow inflicted by its rival. Among those captured was a certain Rustichello, who spent more than a decade in prison

before being joined by a fellow inmate also taken hostage during a Genoese naval victory-this time over the Venetians in the Adriatic. Striking up a friendship with him, Rustichello took to writing down his fellow prisoner's memories of his remarkable life and journeys: we have Genoa's brutality and relentless focus on the medieval struggle for power to thank for the recording of Marco Polo's travels.

The ruthless duels for commercial supremacy raged wherever Venice and Genoa came into contact: there were violent clashes in Constantinople, confrontations in the Aegean and in Cyprus, and full-blooded battles in the Adriatic. By the time Pope Boniface VIII brokered a truce in 1299, the two had fought each other to a standstill. But the energy, effort and expense devoted to reaching this position in the first place showed just how much rested on trying to make connections with Asia.

Nevertheless, it had been worth it. By 1301, the Hall of the Great Council in Venice was enlarged after it had been unanimously agreed that it was no longer big enough to hold all its powerful members, whose number had grown along with the rising wealth of the city. In the case of Genoa, on the other hand, a poem written around the end of the thirteenth century extols the beauty of the city, which was "filled from head to toe with palazzi," and whose skyline was adorned with large numbers of towers. The source of the city's riches was the abundant supply of goods from the east-including ermine, squirrel and other furs traded on the steppes, as well as pepper, ginger, musk, spices, brocades, velvet, cloth of gold, pearls, jewels and precious stones. Genoa was rich, the author goes on, because of the network it had created, serviced by its galleys and ships: the Genoese are scattered all over the world, he boasted, creating new Genoas wherever they go. Truly, wrote the anonymous author, God had blessed the city and wanted it to flourish.*

One important reason for the boom in Venice and Genoa was the skill and foresight they showed in feeding their customers' desires-and those of the traders who came from other cities in Europe to buy the goods that had been brought there. With Egypt and the Holy Land proving too volatile and economically risky, the Black Sea quickly became a trading zone of the greatest importance.

But behind the rise of the Italian city-states was the fiscal sophistication and restraint of the Mongols when it came to taxing commerce. A range of sources indicate that duties on exports passing through the Black Sea ports never exceeded 3-5 per cent of the total value of the goods; this was highly competitive when compared with tolls and levies extracted on products passing through Alexandria, where sources talk of taxes of 10, 20 and even 30 per cent. As any trader knows, margins count for everything. There was a strong incentive, therefore, to ship through the Black Sea-which only served to make this an even more important route to the east.

Sensitive pricing and a deliberate policy of keeping taxes low were symptomatic of the bureaucratic nous of the Mongol Empire, which gets too easily lost beneath the images of violence and wanton destruction. In fact, the Mongols' success lay not in indiscriminate brutality but in their willingness to compromise and co-operate, thanks to the relentless effort to sustain a system that renewed central control. Although later Persian historians were highly vocal in asserting that the Mongols were disengaged from the process of administering their empire, preferring to leave such mundane tasks to others, recent research has revealed just how involved they were in the detail of everyday life." The great achievement of Genghis Khan and his successors was not the ransacking of popular imagination but the meticulous checks put in place that enabled one of the greatest empires in history to flourish for centuries to come. It was no coincidence, then, that Russian came to include a broad range of loan words, drawn directly from the vocabulary relating to Mongol administration-and particularly those to do with trade and communication: words for profit (barysh), money (dengi) and the treasury (kazna) all originated from contact with the new masters from the east. So too did the postal system in Russia, based on the Mongol method of delivering messages quickly and efficiently from one side of the empire to another through a network of relay stations."

Such was the genius of the Mongols, in fact, that the platform for longterm success was established right from the very beginning. As Genghis Khan and his successors expanded their reach, they had to incorporate new peoples within a coherent system. Tribes were deliberately broken down, with loyalties refocused on attachments to military units and above all allegiance to the Mongol leadership itself. Distinguishing tribal features, such as how different peoples wore their hair, were stamped out, with standardized fashions enforced instead. As a matter of course, those who submitted or were conquered were dispersed across Mongol-controlled territory to weaken bonds of language, kinship and identity and to aid the assimilation process. New names were introduced in place of ethnic labels to underline the new way of doing things. All this in turn was reinforced by a centralized system of rewards where booty and tribute were shared out: proximity to the ruling dynasty counted for everything, in turn encouraging a broad if brutal meritocracy, where successful generals reaped rich rewards and those who failed were quickly rooted out.

While tribal identities were extinguished, there was consistent and remarkable broad-mindedness when it came to the question of faith. The Mongols were relaxed and tolerant on religious matters. Ever since the time of Genghis Khan, the leader's retinue had been allowed to practice whatever beliefs they wanted. Genghis himself "viewed the Muslims with the eye of respect, so also did he hold the Christians and 'idolaters' (that is, Buddhists] in high esteem," according to one later Persian writer. As far as his descendants were concerned, each was left to their own devices and their own conscience in deciding which faith to follow. Some chose to adopt Islam, others Christianity, with "others again cleaving to the ancient canon of their fathers and forefathers and inclining to no direction.""

There was some truth in this, as missionaries who flocked east looking for people to convert soon found." William of Rubruck was surprised to come across priests all over Asia on his journey to the Mongol court, but even more surprised to find them agreeing to bless white horses each spring as herds were gathered near Karakorum; moreover, such blessings were performed in a manner more in keeping with pagan rituals than with Christian doctrine." But taking a few short cuts was evidently seen as worthwhile-a small detail in the bigger picture of winning converts. As contacts between Europe and Central Asia increased, dioceses began to spring up once again in the east, including deep in the steppes, while monasteries were founded in northern Persia, such as in Tabriz, which became home to a flourishing community of Franciscan monks." That they were allowed to flourish spoke volumes about the protection they were given and the Mongols' relaxed approach to religion.

In fact, things went considerably further. At the end of the thirteenth century, John of Montecorvino was sent to the Great Khan by the Pope with a letter "inviting him to receive the Catholic faith of our Lord Jesus Christ." Although John's mission did not meet with success, he nevertheless set about converting as many people as he could, paying ransoms to free captive children whom he then schooled in Latin and Greek, writing out psalters for them by hand. In time, even the Great Khan himself would come to hear them chanting during service, enthralled by the beautiful singing and the mystery of the Eucharist. Such was John's success that a mission was sent by Pope Clement V in the early 1300s to appoint him, not to the rank of bishop but to a greater position to reflect his achievements and to spur the creation of a church hierarchy across the Mongol Empire: the archbishop of Beijing. The failure of the Crusades did not mean the failure of Christianity in Asia.13

Some of this religious tolerance was clever politicking. The Ilkhanids seem to have been particularly adept at telling religious figures what they wanted to hear. Hülegü, for example, told one Armenian priest that he had been baptized when a child; the church in the west was so eager to believe this that illustrations were circulated in Europe depicting Hülegü as a Christian saint. Others, however, were told a different story. The Buddhists, for example, were assured that Hülegü followed the teachings leading to enlightenment. There were many instances of high-ranking figures in the Mongol world becoming Christian and then converting to Islam or vice versa, switching their religion as convenient. The phlegmatically faithful were masters at being all things to all people.14

Winning hearts and minds was crucial to the smooth expansion of the empire. This harked directly back to the approach taken by Alexander the Great when he had defeated the Persians-and would have been approved of by commentators like Tacitus, who was deeply critical of the shortsightedness of a policy of plunder and indiscriminate devastation. Instinctively, the Mongols knew how to be great empire-builders: tolerance and careful administration had to follow up on military might.

Shrewd decisions taken when it came to dealing with important potential allies paid off handsomely. In Russia, the blanket exemption of the church from all taxes and from military service was met with jubilation, just one example showing that sensitive handling could generate goodwill even after brutal conquest." Likewise, devolving responsibilities was a highly effective way of reducing animosities and tensions. The case of Russia is again instructive, with one local ruler who was singled out to collect taxes and payments being given a generous cut of the proceeds. Not for nothing did Ivan I, Grand Prince of Moscow, become known as "Ivan Kalita"-or Ivan the moneybags: he was in charge of gathering levies and taxes to fill the Mongol treasuries, evidently doing well for himself in the process. The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of trusted figures like Ivan resulted in the emergence of a pre-eminent dynasty which could be relied on and which prospered at the expense of rival families. The effects were deep and long lasting: some scholars have argued that it was the Mongols' system of government that laid the ground for Russia's transformation into a fully fledged autocracy by empowering a small handful of individuals to lord it over the population, as well as over their peers.16

Militarily dominant, politically astute and theologically tolerant, the Mongols' template for success was far removed from our common perceptions of them. But, for all their efficiency, they were also lucky in their timing. In China, they came across a world that had seen population growth, economic expansion and technological developments following a sharp rise in agricultural productivity." In Central Asia, they found fractured statelets riven by rivalries and ripe for consolidation. In the Middle East and Europe, they came into contact with societies that were both monetised and increasingly stratified that is to say, able to pay tribute in cash, and whose populations had spending power and prodigious appetites for luxury products. Across the continents of Asia and Europe, Genghis Khan and his successors were not just stumbling into a world that offered rich pickings; they found themselves stepping into a golden age.18

Just as the Islamic conquests of the seventh century had a profound impact on the global economy as taxes, payments and cash flowed towards the center from all corners of the world, so too did the Mongol successes of the thirteenth century reshape the monetary systems of Eurasia. In India, new rituals and pastimes were introduced from the steppe world, such as formal processions where the ruler's ornate saddle was carried ostentatiously before him." In China, meanwhile, culinary habits changed to adopt flavors, ingredients and cooking styles favored by the new overlords from the steppes. Texts like the Yinshan zhengyao, a dietary guidebook listing "Proper and Essential Things for the Emperor's Food and Drink," include many dishes influenced by nomad cuisine and tastes, heavily emphasizing the boiling of food as the preferred means of cooking.20 Using every piece of an animal carcass-second nature to those dealing with livestock for their living-became part of the mainstream. Kublai Khan was one who wa devoted to the foods of his ancestors, reportedly serving fermented milk horse meat, camel hump and mutton soup thickened with grain as delicacies to his court." At least these sound more palatable than sheep's lung o a paste based on the fat of sheep's tail or head that appear in a fourteenth century cooking manual.22

Europe also felt the cultural impact of the Mongol conquests. Striking new fashions were imported from and influenced by the emergence of the new empire. Mongol styles became modish after the first waves of pani died down. In England, 250 bands of dark-blue "Tatar" cloth were used to make the insignia for the country's oldest and grandest order of chivalry the Knights of the Garter. At the Cheapside Tournament in 1331, the opening ceremony saw men parade dressed in fine Tatar clothing, wearing masks to look like Mongol warriors. Influences from the east even lay behind the hennin, the most distinctive fashion accessory of the Renaissance across Europe. The conical headgear favored by ladies and so visible in the portraiture of the fourteenth century onwards appears to have been directly inspired by the distinctive hats worn at the Mongol court in this period."3

But the Mongol conquests had other, more substantial effects, for they served to transform the economies of Europe. The never-ending stream of envoys being dispatched to the court of the khans was soon accompanied by missionaries and merchants following in their footsteps. Suddenly, not only the Mongols but Asia as a whole entered into Europe's field of vision. Tales brought back by travelers were devoured by those eager to find out more about the exotic world that was suddenly coming into focus in the east.

The stories were greeted with wonder. There was an island beyond China, according to Marco Polo, where the ruler's palace had golden roofs and golden walls several inches thick. In India, the same author revealed, animal flesh was thrown into steep ravines that were filled with diamonds but also infested with snakes-in order to attract eagles who would then fly down to retrieve the meat bringing the gems that were impressed into it up with them, to be collected later and more easily. Pepper, noted another traveler from this period, came from swamps filled with crocodiles that had to be frightened away by fire. In the accounts of contemporary travelers, the wealth of the east was legendary-and stood in sharp contrast to that of Europe.24

This conclusion should have been neither surprising nor new. The themes were familiar from the classical texts that were starting to be read again as society and economy developed in continental Europe, and intellectual curiosity began to return. The reports brought back by Marco Polo and others struck an obvious chord with accounts by Herodotus, Tacitus, Pliny and even the Song of Solomon of bats using their claws to guard marshes where cassia grew, of venomous flying serpents protecting aromatic trees in Arabia, or of phoenixes building nests of cinnamon and frankincense which they then filled with other spices.25

Naturally, the mystique of the east-and tales of the dangers involved in gathering goods that were rare and highly prized-was closely linked to expectations of the prices the goods would fetch when brought back to Europe. Goods, produce and spices that were dangerous to make or harvest would naturally be very costly.26 In order to be better informed, handbooks and compendia started to appear around 1300 on how to travel and trade in Asia-and, above all, how to get a fair price. "In the first place, you must let your beard grow long and not shave," wrote Francesco Pegolotti, the author of the most famous guide of this period; and be sure to take a guide along for the journey-you will more than make up in savings whatever you pay extra for a good one, he advised. But the most important information he set out was what taxes were due in what locations, what the difference in weights, measures and coinage were, and what different spices looked like and how much they were worth. In the medieval world as in the modern, the point of these guidebooks was to avoid disappointment and to reduce the chances of being taken advantage of by unscrupulous merchants."

That Pegolotti himself was not from Venice or Genoa, the two powerhouses of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe, but from Florence was itself revealing. There were new upstarts eager to get a piece of the action in the east-such as Lucca and Siena, whose traders could be found in Tabriz, Ayas and other trading points in the east-buying spices, silks and fabrics from China, India and Persia as well as elsewhere. The sense of new horizons opening up was nowhere better expressed than on the map that hung in the Great Council Hall of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena: designed to be rotated by hand, the chart showed the world centered on the Tuscan town, setting out distances, transport networks and Siena's very own network of agents, contacts and intermediaries stretching deep into Asia. Even obscure towns in the center of Italy were starting to look to the east for inspiration and profits and thinking in terms of establishing their own connections to the Silk Roads, 28

Fundamental to European expansion was the stability that the Mongols provided across the whole of Asia. Despite the tensions and rivalries between the different branches of the tribal leadership, the rule of law was fiercely protected when it came to commercial matters. The road system in China, for example, was the envy of visitors who marveled at the administrative measures in place to provide security for traveling merchants. "China is the safest country and best country for the traveler," wrote the fourteenth-century explorer Ibn Battuta; this was a place where a reporting system that apparently accounted for each outsider on a daily basis meant that "a man travels for nine months alone with great wealth and has nothing to fear."29

It was a view echoed by Pegolotti, who noted that the route from the Black Sea as far as China "is perfectly safe, whether by day or by night." This was partly the result of traditional nomad beliefs about the hospitality that should be shown to strangers, but it was also a function of a wider view that commerce should be encouraged. In this sense, the competitive taxes levied on goods passing through the Black Sea found obvious echoes on the other side of Asia, where maritime trade passing through ports on China's Pacific coast also grew thanks to deliberate efforts to increase customs revenues.30

One area where this proved highly effective was in the export of fabrics, the production of which received a major boost in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The textile industries in Nishäpür, Herat and Baghdad were deliberately built up, while the city of Tabriz alone expanded in size by a factor of four over the course of just over a hundred years, to accommodate traders as well as the craftsmen and artisans who were conspicuously well treated in the aftermath of the Mongol conquests. Although there was a near-insatiable demand for fine cloth and fabric in markets to the east, increasing quantities were exported to Europe from the late thirteenth century onwards.31

Horizons expanded everywhere. In China, ports like Guangzhou had long served as windows on to the world of southern Asia. Such major commercial hubs were well known to Persian traders, Arab geographers and Muslim travelers who left accounts of bustling street life in towns on the coast as well as in the interior and provided reports of a churning, cosmopolitan population. Such was the level of interaction and exchange that Persian and Arabic provided many loan words and idioms still common in modern Chinese.32

China's knowledge of the outside world, on the other hand, had been distinctly sketchy and limited, as a text shows that was written in the early 1200s by an imperial official in charge of foreign trade in Guangzhou in southern China, a site blessed with an outstanding natural harbor in the delta of the Pearl River. The account, designed for merchants, sailors and travelers, makes a valiant attempt to explain business practices in the Arabic-speaking world and beyond, listing goods that could be bought, and describing what Chinese traders might expect. But, like many travelers' accounts of this period, it is riddled with inaccuracies and semi-mystical beliefs. Mecca, for example, was not home to the house of the Buddha, nor a location where Buddhists came once a year on pilgrimage; there was no land where women reproduced by "exposing themselves naked to the full force of the south wind." Melons in Spain did not measure six foot in diameter, and could not feed more than twenty men; nor did sheep in Europe grow to the height of a full-grown man, to be cut open each spring in order to allow a dozen pounds of fat to be taken out before being stitched up again with no after-effects.33

When much of Asia became united under the Mongols, however, there was a sharp improvement in maritime trade links, particularly in places of strategic and economic significance-such as in the Persian Gulf-that were subject to extensive oversight by the new authorities, keen to encourage long-distance commercial exchange and boost revenues.34 As a result, the cultural climate of Guangzhou during the thirteenth century became far more knowing and less provincial.

By the 1270s, the city had become the central point for China's maritime imports and exports. For every ship that set sail for Alexandria with supplies of pepper for Christian lands, reported Marco Polo in the late thirteenth century, more than a hundred put in to the Chinese port-a comment that finds a neat echo in Ibn Battuta's comments, written soon afterwards, that on his arrival in the city he saw a hundred ships sailing into the gulf of Guangzhou, as well as innumerable smaller vessels." Commerce in the Mediterranean was large; trade in the Pacific was huge.

We do not have to rely solely on ambiguous or unreliable written sources to establish how important the city became as a commercial center. A shipwreck from the bay of Guangzhou dating to precisely this period reveals that goods were being imported from all over southern Asia and in all likelihood from the Persian Gulf and East Africa too. Pepper, frankincense, ambergris, glass and cotton made up just a part of a valuable cargo that went down off the coast of China in or soon after 1271.37 Merchants could be found crossing the South China Sea in ever greater numbers, establishing trading posts in Sumatra, on the Malay peninsula and above all on the Malabar coast of southern India, home to the world's great supply of pepper-long established as a favored commodity in China as well as in Europe and elsewhere in Asia.38 By the middle of the fourteenth century, so many ships were sailing to towns like Calicut that some observers commented that all maritime transport and travel in this part of the Indian subcontinent was being undertaken in Chinese boats. An example of their typical flat-bottomed design has been recently identified wrecked off the coast of Kerala.39

The lubricant in this long-distance trade was silver, which took on the form of a single currency across Eurasia. One reason for this was the innovation in financial credit in China that had been introduced before Genghis Khan's time, including the introduction of bills of exchange and the use of paper money. Adopted and improved by the Mongols, the effect was the liberation of enormous amounts of silver into the monetary system as new forms of credit caught on. The availability of the precious metal suddenly soared-causing a major correction in its value against gold. In parts of Europe, the value of silver plunged, losing more than half its value between 1250 and 1338.4 In London alone, the surge in silver supply allowed the royal mint to more than quadruple output between 1278 and 1279 alone. Production rose sharply across Asia too. In the steppes as well, coin production took off as rulers of the Golden Horde began to strike coins in large quantities.42 New regions were stimulated too. Japan, which had relied heavily on barter or on payments in products such as rice as an exchange mechanism, shifted to a monetary economy and became increasingly active in longdistance trade.43