well well well I haven't seen you guys in a long time I'm not seeing you now or vice versa anyway today we're going to talk about nomadic empires and Eurasian integration they've been furiously editing and re-recording the last units to scale them down in size so we're getting a truncated version of this and what's left so this is mainly about the Mongol empires which you can see there the Mongol Empire turns into four empires eventually but there are some other items of business as well so let's start with a quote shall we Bentley and Ziegler are two favorite historians between the 11th and 15th centuries nomadic peoples became more prominent than ever before in Eurasian affairs Eurasia being a combination of course of the continents of Europe and Asia how about that Eurasia historians oftentimes combine them and talk to them together especially on subjects like today's by the early 14th century the Mongols have built the largest empire the world had ever seen the military campaigns of nomadic peoples were sometimes exceedingly destructive particularly the Mongols nomadic warriors often demolished cities slaughtered urban populations and ravaged surrounding agricultural lands yet those same forces also encouraged systematic and peaceful interaction between peoples of different societies by fostering cross-cultural communication and exchange on an unprecedented scale the nomadic empires integrated the lives of people peoples and the experiences of societies throughout much of the eastern hemisphere so we should already know that professors Bentley and Ziegler in their book our book traditions and encounters love cross-cultural exchange that's kind of like the main theme of the book and it's certainly true that the Mongols probably more than anybody else we've studied and will study in their last moments here were the their whole empire was structured not intentionally but to do exactly that in many ways the Mongols are sort of like the key middlemen in exchange of ideas and goods and diseases from Europe to China and back again so partly because of their geographic place kind of in the middle also because of their the importance of the horse to their societies and cultures which at the time was the way to get from here to there in the quickest most efficient way possible so they could take ideas and did and sometimes at gunpoint or sword point to other far-reaching parts of Eurasia so the the Mongol Empire they didn't set out to be the conduit of ideas and goods and services you know from one end of Eurasia to the other but as one of the unintended consequences of history that's one of the most significant things that was accomplished even they didn't want to or if he didn't mean to Turkish migrations and expansion so the Turks are another at least the early Turks are other nomadic people the horse very important here as well on the steppes also of Central Asia so we look at first at nomadic society on the Asian steppes the the climate of the steps steps sort of means large plains overall not completely flat land but large expanses of grass of grassland perfect for herding animals such as horses sheep cattle camels goats and on and on and on which is exactly what such nomadic peoples did for a living they were pastoralists we've talked about a few pastoral groups ready but only a bit here and there we've looked at hundred gas early in the class and then farmers it's pastoralists are kind of a third option these are nomadic peoples who follow around or lead around their cattle or whatever it is that they're hurting from the ant the animals that they use in this case that the Turks eventually the Mongols they produce everything they can from the animals clothing shoes tents even alcohol our textbook tells us not sure they pulled it off exactly but they may not call from one of their animals I'm not sure which one it was actually sounds kind of nasty but anyway they produced some pottery as well the peoples on the Asian steppes leather iron weapons and tools but they engage in vigorous trade with settled peoples this is also a true of course of the of what the the group of the Chinese called the barbarians were also a little bit further to the east but still automatic people in much the same way with many of the same cultural traits as the groups were looking at here and now though we didn't focus too much on the the barbarians again from the Chinese perspective we focused on kind of how they were a nuisance to the Chinese but here we're talking about very similar cultures and going into more detail their mobility because of the horse their location kind of in between Europe and East Asia made them as already noted crucial trade links in Eurasia elites and commoners our textbook tells us this that the society was made up really of two classes sort of noble types and commoners most decisions were generally made at least early on in these groups history histories at the tribal level except for warfare and that the reason should be obvious if you don't unite and have larger numbers of people fighting you know relative to other peoples who have large numbers coming at you you're probably going to lose so but this is the first step towards Empire in nomadic you know among style people's because there's no Empire if you have 50 people 100 people even a thousand people travel around together you have to have for more than that so we'll get welcome back to that women were subordinated to men but had much higher status than women in urban agricultural societies so that that's that is saying that yes it's still a male-dominated society and still a misogynistic society so paternalistic society however you'd like to phrase it but nonetheless women in nomadic groups even outside of the Asian steppes other nomadic groups around the world so we haven't talked about women tend to have higher status in those societies than urban agricultural ones like in China or Europe etc on the plains they're on the steps women often were trained as skilled archers and horse riders so that's one example of their higher status then you know you know societies around the same time in other parts of the world the nomads here held religious views and religious ceremonies revolving around shamans Native Americans had similar religions as well something in the realm of what's known as animistic religion the shaman is a medicine man a priest who is seem to have kind of supernatural special powers to understand you know kind of predict the future and kind of know what the gods or the spirits want or demand of you know any group of human beings many of the peoples in the on the Asian steppes that were there are nomads eventually converted to other religions from sort of the animistic origins they came from to Islam Christian Christianity Buddhism and other religions as well one such group the Seljuk Turks we'll meet momentarily not only converted to Islam but moved to Iran wasn't very far away from the Central Asian steppes where they came from and from there the seljuq turks spread islam further even outside of persia in multiple directions because if their tendency to conquer other people's militarily they were good at it so they spread Islam by the sword that's not say that people though they conquered didn't sometimes want to convert because the religion was attractive to them it was we've already seen that in other places where Islam spread nonetheless the seljuq turks were bringing it with swords and military you know conquests eventually the they organized the peoples of the steppes huge Confederations of tribes led by a con or a ruler we're gonna get two Ganga's Khan some of the others so the this is how they were able to form or carve out empires by conquest in a sense it's fusing lots of tribes together under kind of the leadership you know a pyramid of power ultimately under the leadership of the guy that becomes the Khan so they're the tribes can still kind of peel off and go their own way under certain conditions but they can also sort of be sort of added like pieces again to kind of a a pyramid type sort of block puzzle or something so that the the tribal elements the tribal traditions of the cultural culture still remain but there's a lot of them now added together in a hierarchical fashion and with one person a ruler at the top so some of the nomads in other parts of the world eventually conquer empires that are and cultural and sort of give up the nomadic origins you know over time but we don't see that as much here with these groups the Turks the Seljuk Turks the Mongols and eventually aught the Ottomans steppe nomads no doubt about it made formidable military adversaries due to mounted warfare meaning on horseback and its mobility and firepower and so because they were masters of riding horses and you know knowing how to deal with horses it made them very difficult to fight against in ways that we'll see a little bit more of as we go along the nomadic religions of Turkish people's we've already really talked about a little of this so shamans worshipping multiple gods or multiple spirits eventually many of them converted to other religions they didn't say this before they did develop a Turkish script written language partially it seems initially anyway to record religious teachings in the 10th century due to the Abbasid Empire influence an already existing Empire is Lama Q Empire they this rubbed off on the Turkish people's again partly through their own conquests of such empires so the Turkish Empire as a whole write a number of the Abbasid Empire and the Sultanate of Delhi which we'll get to we won't talk about the Sultanate of Rome and the Byzantine Empire right that's the the Eastern Roman Empire the one that remained after the Western Roman Empire fell which is getting through our period here which is roughly consistent with the European Middle Ages the Byzantine Empire is getting smaller and smaller and weaker and weaker and it'll be killed off by one of our steppe nomads for warrior groups here toward the end of this time period 1453 to be specific so these empires certainly deserve a great deal of attention because they stand out as being unlikely to cart to be able to do what they did it's amazing actually so Bentley and Ziegler tell us that few armies were able to resist the mobility and discipline of well organized nomadic warriors when they found themselves at a disadvantage they often were able to beat a hasty retreat and escape from their last speedy adversaries with that military background self row groups of Turkish nomads began in the 10th century to seize the wealth of settled societies and build Imperial states in the region's surrounding Central Asia so I don't want to mislead will see that the various Turkish groups the Mongols the Ottomans all coming from roughly the same step area they conquer so many people's that they do take over urban agricultural of you know societies and empires themselves like China goes down to the Mongols as we'll see and they do rule then the urban areas and urban based societies but they're not very good at it because they sought to and often did maintain their nomadic culture a nomadic ways so they were good at conquering such places not as good holding on to them they were better at holding on to places they conquered that had a lifestyle like their own values and cultures like their own or closer to it which makes of course sense so the Seljuk Turks and to grill beg sort of the first major first leader amongst this group of steppe nomads of importance the Turkish people's as a whole not all of them but no began to migrate closer and closer to the Persian Empire eventually moving inside the Persian Empire this is quite similar to what the Germanic barbarian tribes did to Rome before the tip Rome down they move right next to it and sometimes we're allowed to live sort of within Roman borders why because the Romans had lots of stuff to trade for and they're you know standard of living was pretty high and way of life was pretty good so that attracted lots of people's that want to get it on the action this is what brings the Seljuk Turks right to the doorstep of the Persian and Abbasid Empire so they've sometimes outside eventually inside some of the Turkish groups the Seljuks included served in the Abbasid Empire the Islamic empire of the day served in its military by the 11th century the Seljuks had gone so far as to not only kind of integrate you know people citizens into opposite you know empire society military and otherwise but they've gone so far as to have their leaders overshadow the Abbasid caliphs meaning the the you know emperor the leader and in 1055 1055 that Calif I were to push together here recognized good old to grill beg as a sultan and beg and his Seljuk Turks horses took control of Baghdad in the Middle East it's now Iraq and then his successors took by force bloody for Syria and Palestine as well for the last 200 years of the apposite dynasty's existence the Caliph or caliph was a mere figurehead the real power was in the hands of the Seljuk Sultan after a Seljuk Turks very and a famous battle called massacres in 1071 the Seljuk Turks basically moved around did what they wanted to will within the Byzantine Empire and so is partially the Seljuk Turks that weekend and continue to weaken the visiting Empire and it's a good sign or it shows how weakened the visiting the Byzantine Empire was that they were powerless to stop this sort of group from outside foreigners in their minds coming in and sort of occupying and taking take taking more of their land and doing whatever they wanted within the borders of the Byzantine Empire but they couldn't stop it they also the Seljuks soldier Turks couldn't take fit the empire out completely mainly because Constantinople was for a long time an impregnable fortress the city was surrounded by walls on both sides one side by water was extremely difficult to get inside so that as long as the capital of Byzantium remained alive and well there was at least some semblance of an empire that eventually will change at the hands of another step nomads group from Eurasia I'll be at the very end another group of Turks led by Mahmud of Ghazni ghaznavids named after their leader established the Sultanate of Delhi which means they went from their Central Asian homeland East instead of West and moved into northern India and carved out a fairly large empire which you can see in the upper right of the screen here so this group had come from roughly Afghanistan which is sure of the kind of the Turkish middle ground and eventually got as far away as northern India first to plunder and then to rule so first they were just sort of rating in order to take you know wealth and stuff but eventually decided to stay and to try to control territory and people in what became an empire the Punjab fell to the ghaznavids then Gujarat's and bengal which are big chunks of territory in what's now India in the 13th century they claimed authority as the Sultanate of Delhi and basically cleaned all of northern India as their own part of their own empire the sultans of the Sultanate a Sultanate has Sultan's price price were intent on spreading Islam and regularly staged raised on Hindu and Buddhist temples in India and throughout the Empire their shrines monasteries temples took their wealth destroyed their buildings slaughtered residents of cities so it was a pretty brutal Empire particularly if you are of another religious belief outside of their own so the Hindus and Buddhists really or persecuted and in danger during this period and now we get to the mighty Mongol Empire and this is an absolutely fascinating Empire to study in my opinion it's the most interesting in world history with the possible exception of the British Empire later in history that this one is incredible partly because it's so improbable or appears improbable anyway this could have happened on such a fast scale if you look at the rather crude map there and on the right that is the at the height anyway of the Mongol conquests that's how much land that they actually ruled over which makes it the biggest empire at least in terms of land in world history which it says our screen Paul straighten in a book called Empire in the history of the world a really good book on a number of the empires with either studied or are studying in this class says no great Empire is fundamentally unique but the Mongol Empire would contain sufficient anomalies to set it apart from most all other empires this would be the largest contain u.s. Empire the world had ever seen contiguous is just a fancy word for all throw together the British Empire was spread out all over the world this one is sort of all together and it's the biggest contiguous empire ever stretching from the Pacific to the eastern borders of Germany all the way across the Eurasian landmass yet it would prove the most short-lived great empire in history as well so and those two things might be related there's the possibility which has always talked about enlarged empires like the Roman we've already covered in this class of what historians scholars sometimes refer to as Imperial overreach or overstretch sometimes Imperial overreach and if you take too much land more than you can actually administer control organize it can backfire and you know you might not be able to rule the land for very long or very well Mongol military prowess there's absolutely no doubt that the Mongols were a military of force or military groups military forces that were you know a danger to anyone who got in their way their military prowess was legendary then and has been ever since this is a group that caused a terror in enemies and potential any means enemies anybody thinking about the Mongols sort of coming near them with their fearsome reputation there and they deserve the reputation and the first great leader who united the Mongols sort of in that kind of system I mentioned before we're still tribal affiliations but the tribes are now kind of all stuck together with one charismatic leader atop the Khan and this becomes Genghis Khan and from the same book Empire Strayer and says how did or asks and then says how did Genghis Khan and his army of primitive horsemen achieve all of this and with such speed there was no doubting the efficiency and ferocity of his fighting men organized in units of ten thousand men galloping behind their black horsehair banner he knew Genghis Khan the speed endurance and ruthlessness of his horsemen and employed his lightning tactics accordingly a typical move was for him to use heavy firepower to blast the passage to the enemy lines for his heavy cavalry units and then fanning out behind their rear cutting their supply lines and selling panic which caused the enemy to flee in all directions communication between separate units was maintained but the use of flags indeed it is to the Mongols that we owe the art of semaphore you need you probably don't know what semaphore is not use really anymore you might have seen it in old movies it was a system of communicating by raising and lowering and sort of moving flags and certain you know rather kind of rote repetitious motions like an alphabet through Flags go up and down and sort of this direction in that direction and sort of be seen by the next flag stationed over however many miles away and they would relay from there it's him before code was sometimes called it was the Mongols that invented this but it came to I went to Europe and other places beyond that eventually the passage here talking about Genghis Khan's military leadership and the overall military ability of the Mongol groups it's their militaries that made the whole Empire happen in the first place in the center central institution of all the Mongol Empire was the military so it was military palace prowess through cavalry right soldiers archers you see in the bull right mounted on horses primarily that and they get extremely well that explains their military victories but the quote reminds me this might sound like a stretch but it reminds me of the the German army in World War two and there are blitzkrieg tactics they didn't go right through the center of enemy lines but they go around them and then after that the goal was to get behind supply lines cut them off instill panic and cause the enemy to be just totally discombobulated because they're so far behind the lines so quickly that with tanks but they're doing it here with horses that it just completely brings chaos and confusion to the enemy and that's and that's the goal Genghis Khan also as we'll see I think in later slides but I think it it behooves us to sort of know this now as well he the the the system that was established required ultimate a complete obedience by everyone else to leader this case Genghis Khan himself and from that type of system then he was able to sort of organize you know not just skilled horseman but Horseman who sort of fought efficiently and in you know ranks and kind of organized in a very organized fashion [ __ ] political organization certainly was far less impressive than their military organization but there are some features of it that are interesting to look at Bentley says because of his personal experience jingis Khan mistrusted the Mongols tribal organization he broke up the tribes and forced men of fighting age to join new military units with no tribal affiliations he chose high military and political officials not on the basis of kinship or tribal status but rather because of their talents or their loyalty to him which to us sounds like a no-brainer but things had been done for thousands of years in such societies based on it being passed down within the family then the kin group and he's now coming along that's not going to work because things when things are done through kin through family right - then we get the possibility that we have bad leaders if one person that's descended from a former leader now inherits his father's position but he doesn't have the ability of his father and the aura Kingdom our group are you know military effort or war suffers for it our Empire suffers for it the most important institution of the Mongol state was of course the army military and this magnified power of small population it was probably only about a million or so people as a whole that carved out that entire empire that we've just looked at in a previous slide at least on a map gigantic so just that the numbers are staggering how do you do that with a million people well partly you have you know anybody who can tote a weapon and write a horse do so but the other aspects to it as well that we'll get into some of which we'll get into Barry Cunliffe in a really really interesting book called by-step desert notion the birth of Eurasia fairly recent publication says tribal allegiances had become weakened by long drawn-out conflicts and new power groups were emerging Confederations based on personal loyalties to those who could and would lead total obedience was expected at all levels in the chain of command in such a system charismatic leaders could acquire large followings and wield absolute power I said that in my own words on the previous slide it never hurts to reiterate something Mongol trade and the significance of the Mongol Empire this one is important in its own right but it's the main way I think we can see Bentley and Ziegler's overall points and how they fit the Mongols into their pet theme their favorite subject cross-cultural exchange in ways that I already talked about somewhat as well but I'll read Bentley's own words here again as a nomadic people dependent on commerce with settled agricultural societies the Mongols ropes to secure trade routes ensure the safety of merchants passing through their territories the Mongol cons frequently fought amongst themselves but they maintained reasonably good order within their realms and allowed merchants to travel unmolested through their empires as a result long distance travel and trade became much less risky than an earlier times merchants increased their commercial investments and the volume of long-distance trade across Central Asia Dwarfs that of earlier eras lands is distant and China as China and Western Europe became directly linked for the first time because of the ability of individuals to travel across the entire Eurasian landmass in the sense again unintentionally and without being capitalist themselves but in the sense with the Mongols did was create this gigantic free trade zone in your in Eurasia and more or less allowed merchants from you know far and wide this land and that distant land to freely kind of move back and forth through their empire you know and beyond Chinggis Khaan Temujin a little more specifically he said in a famous quote this great you know leader in world history certainly one of the greatest military leaders in all of world history i'm from the barbaric north i wear the same clothing and eat the same food as the cow herds and horse herders we make the same sacrifice and share the same riches I look upon the nation as a newborn child and I care for my son for my soldiers as if they were my sons so this is actually something new that's why the quote is you see it often when the subject is Genghis Khan and the early conquests of the Mongol Empire he is saying here that I used to just sort of see it you know in our traditional cultural fashion military campaigns it is as basically raiding looting and pillaging but now I'm starting to sort of feel it bility to my own people my own soldiers and looking and looking after their well-being so the idea of a ruler his job being to look after his people believe it or not that's something fairly recent in history not just on the Eurasian steps but sort of all over the world with a few standout exceptions straighter and impotent the book Empire says prior to this he being Genghis Khan had merely been interested in plunder but now he'd ridden south and succeeded in something that no one else had ever achieved in history he had defeated the Chinese which is certainly saying something to put it mildly and from them his army had learned how to use siege engines catapults even gunpowder Genghis Khan now turned his eyes to the West and prepared to launch an attack upon kingdoms and empires with long histories and fabled cities the like of which neither he nor his men had ever even dreamt existed from now on he vowed he would unite the whole world in one Empire so good old Genghis Khan you know not the first and certain that the last to have the dream of sort of uniting the world under his own leadership or much of the world under his own leadership so he was a pretty ambitious guy from this point forward and so the Mongols started to fan out further and further using their military advantages their you know propensity to be able to dominate on the battlefield for multiple reasons in multiple ways again and again and again conquests in one direction all the way into China and we'll see tick can take control of China and all the way west to Persia and a lot of places in between eventually North to Russia so this is the process of carving out this largest contiguous Empire in world history so our text talks about Genghis Khan after having United the Mongols under his leadership turns his army and attention to other parts of Central Asia he attacked Turkish people's ruling in Tibet northern China Persia the Central Asian steppes which basically means the first efforts to move this in the direction of Russia his conquest in Central Asia were important because they protected him against the possibility that other nomadic leaders might challenge his rule but the Mongol campaigns in China and Persia had the most far-reaching consequences so it's kind of the middle area that was the potential soft underbelly in between China and Persia and by securing control of the that area or those areas Genghis Khan rather shrewdly made it much less likely that he could beat sort of taken down made his empire much less vulnerable at least during his own lifetime while part of his army consolidated the Mongol ho hold on northern China jingis conlon another Force to Afghanistan and then to Persia beyond that and won one victory after another and you might not want to piss Genghis Khan off there's a famous story then when he got to Persia he was trying to handle things somewhat peacefully and sent out some negotiators some diplomats to come to some peaceful agreements about trade and other things with the Persian leader and the Persian leader had the his envoys murdered and killed and so when Genghis Khan found out that his know his guys that come under kind of a flag of truce and peace you don't kill diplomats you just don't do it so he apparently you know wanted vengeance from there and as Bentley and Ziegler say he wreaked havoc and destruction on the conquered the land mean Persians will and cities ravaged one city after another demolishing buildings and massacring hundreds of thousands of people hundreds of thousands of people some cities never recovered from this so once again I'll repeat you might want to refrain from angering genghis khan the era of the four khanates this came about when Genghis Khan died in 1227 the quote on the right from one of our books one of the ones we've been using here the death of Genghis Khan in 1227 posed a potential crisis but by following nomads tradition which entailed leaving discrete blocks of territory to his sons he propagated the Empire transplanting the Hmong transplanting the Mongol system into distant parts of the world so he divided the empire into four pieces and gave a trunk - you know descendants and the most famous of the four khanates write the word con means ruler khanates means sort of the rulers territory kind of work for Empire but the most famous is the one the red one of me see red and red on the map ruled by Kublai Khan another famous Mongol leader and conquer and he established complete control for the time or absolute control I should say anyway over China and brought into existence the Yuan Yuan Dynasty which is somewhat misleading when you see the history of China and one dynasty after other with the Ming Dynasty and it looked at the Qin Dynasty and you know many others the song Han but the yuan was created by a Kublai Khan and quite effectively at least the creation of it not necessarily the long-term administration of it so on the left back to Paul straighteners book Kublai Khan became the fifth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire so Genghis was sort of the first overall leader this guy is the fifth during his reign the Empire definitively split into four separate khanates I already know that instead of attempting to reunite the Empire Kublai Khan turned his attentions South China moving his capital to what's now Beijing with the intention of forming an entirely new empire there which he basically did the three khanates to the west would convert to Islam while Kublai Khan's realm in China adopted Buddhism so Kublai Khan who became the Grand Khan meaning again the overall leader of the whole thing but this is probably wise in some ways because it's such a vast sprawling Empire that it would be hard to administer the entire right Empire from one capital so by dividing it into four separate empires it's a little more governor bull in each in each one that's not I think the only reason that it was done but it's part of it the reason so the Great Khan eight was one of the four and this was the again the most important one in China yuan dynasty calling a dynasty with a Chinese name was intentional and part of Kublai Khan's sort of overall you know clever plan he'd already proclaimed himself to be emperor of United China in 1272 and as the first ruler of the Wong dynasty in choosing the name which means the origin he was playing to ideological beliefs deeply rooted in the Chinese psyche he was also claiming the Mandate of Heaven which all Chinese would understand so he found a way to connect himself to the Mandate of Heaven which we talked about earlier in Chinese history but it's the idea that heaven right the the universe essentially has chosen this or that leader to rule divine sanction something similar to the European theory of defiant right god sanctions rule so he knew that the Chinese would understand this and so he tried to connect himself and he did so successfully by connect I mean you know get people to accept in China that he is uh you know does have the mandate though his Theriault territorial ambitions were not satisfied but the acquisition is a collision of China the conquest marked the maximum extent of the mongol empire china united under its Mongol rulers after 300 years of division enjoyed half a century or so of peace during which its culture flourished this is in the Yuan Dynasty under the Mongols riders had a far greater freedom to express themselves than before and landscape painters reached new heights of achievement the traditions of North and South China were reunited creating a reinvigorated excitement symbolic of this was the creation of a new Grand Canal joining Beijing with Hangzhou in the south and making the transport of surplus rice from the south both rapid and inexpensive so in some ways it's kind of a golden age in China China had a number of golden ages it's been around for so long but it's somewhat surprising that an outsider group comes in takes control effectively takes I mean the government wasn't that effective but they took control and kept it for quite some time so they were effective in that sense and actually Pratap preside over a time of all kinds of achievements cultural technological economic etc Cunliffe goes on however to say that said the mongol system of government was heavy-handed and relied on a rigorous class system so though they appear to have been relatively open about you know things like we call freedom of speech freedom of the press today they didn't have those terms and think of it quite that way in the modern sense but they were open culturally intellectually but certainly not politically this heavy-handed means that it was absolute authoritarian top-down power and you know done carried out brutally much of the time most of the time the Golden Horde another one of the khanates you see on the right and the map there that's a big chunk of territory and that really overlaps overall with modern-day Russia so this is the move into Russia by brothers and cousins of Kublai Khan who moved on and took Russia between 1237 and 1242 they maintained a huge army on the Russian steppes basically in the Ukraine Crimea Belarus and a perfect place for them to kind of be very kind of saying where the where they're nomadic their I spelled wrong they're nomadic way of life and their social systems could continue uncorrupted indigenous tribes already shared a similar lifestyle so here's one of those places I mentioned earlier that the Mongols were better ruling over after they conquered it why because they didn't have to they didn't have they weren't going into a place that was totally culturally and technologically different than what they were used to the the peoples they ruled over in much of Russia live a similar lifestyle because they lived on similar kind of step you know wide open steppe land so they put their horses there put an army there a large one but it was easier to rule because the indigenous people already had many of the same cultural traits they never occupied Russia interestingly which wasn't true in most of their imperial conquests but they did exact tribute and this is partly because the Russians for a long time knew that if they didn't pay the tribute which is a form of Taxation that they'd have the Mongol armies to deal with and I didn't want that but in time Russia starting with the princes of Moscow the nobility major nobility in and around the city of Moscow started the process of uniting Russia which required them to oust the Mongols and by the mid 16th century they more or less done so by that by the mid 16th century they taken pushed the Mongols out of the last part of Russia which was basically the Ukraine the sort of step areas although our text makes it clear that the Mongols held on in Crimea right the Crimean Peninsula Black Sea which is still part of well part of Ukraine used to be part of Russia and the Soviet Union before that but they held on to that into the late 18th century which is quite amazing so some remnants of Mongol power did live on for a long time even though the larger Empire Golden Horde other parts of it were relatively short-lived remember it's the biggest contiguous Empire in world history but the shortest lived one didn't last Islam Hulagu Khan another one of the family brother of Kublai Khan carved out the ill connects of Persia and he pulled off one of the most famous and dramatic feat in all of the history of the Mongol Empire when he conquered the Abbasid Empire and in 1256 annihilating the nazaries or the assassins as their own this group of trained military force but kind of a secret launched a force that actually carried out lots of assassinations it's not the only thing we did but they fought using kind of guerrilla tactics on a sort of covert operations and yet the the Mongol armies under Hulagu just wiped them out uh and two years after that they took Baghdad after a brief siege Hulagu x' army sacks the city executed the caliph executed him the head of the whole empire and massacred about 200,000 people in the process so when the mongols came after you to take you down they didn't pull any punches it was brutal brutal stuff the the people in that part of the world Middle East many of them still remember I don't mean you know from personal experience but it's they're still sort of taught about the you know the horse from the you know Middle Easterners perspective of the you know the period in the Middle Ages when the Mongols conquered them but the Mongols conquered just about everybody so right you're in good company he conquered by the Mongols as straighter and says the Mongols had no experience administering complex societies were successful governance required talents beyond military prowess at a difficult time adjusting to the role as administrators so they're great at conquering you they weren't nearly as good at ruling over you and putting you know organizing you know administrating carrying out policy passing laws effective ones they weren't nearly as good at doing that in Persia in the ilkhanate there they used the strategy of basically letting a regional elites govern as long as they pay taxes all the way back near the beginning of our class when we saw the very first Empire in Mesopotamia we saw the Sargon the great right was the first one that sort of had to make the choice between okay do i govern the empire by sending out my own governors and guys i can't be in all those places that far away from my capital who carry out you know laws and policy you know that I send out or do I co-opt already you know leading figures indigenous to that area you can do it either way and there are positives and negatives on doing it either way but the Mongols did it the differently than Sargon had done before so I'm not sure exactly why but instead of putting out their own sending out their own governors from their own family or trusted advisors they co-opted elites from you know the conquered areas as long as especially people were loyal and paid their taxes they gave them kind of privileged status and kind of prompt help to prop them up one of the advantages of doing it that way is that people are much more likely in that part of your empire to go along with your policies if they're being carried out by one of their own they might even think that the policy is coming from him and not from the foreigner who rules them from outside in this case the the Mongols the rulers eventually were influenced by Persian culture itself especially in including religion and the Mongols in the Auckland of Persia eventually converted to Islam as they did also in the Golden Horde and stragety when we're not going to talk about well all empires that we know of eventually decline and fall and crash crash and burn like the Roman Empire did so this happened to the Mongols as well as usual they had difficulty governing in China and everywhere else especially after again they suffered the problem of Imperial overreach gigantic Empire in Persia Persia our textbook tells us exorbitant spending over exploitation of the peasantry may attacks that people are already poor you know way too much to death led to a sharp drop in revenue factional struggle and government all kinds of different sort of strongmen where your types for jostling for position which isn't good for stability and a disastrous attempt at a paper currency which failed nobody had confidence in the paper money and that part of the world so it's a good example of the the bumbling that the Mongols did in trying to govern empires again critic conquering other people's great at the military part of the operation not so good at the you know winning the piece after the war in China they use paper money again this time the Great Khan ate China had used people money for a long time so it's easier to do but they did fail to back it up with bullion cool whatever other metallic you know valued metal kind of like a gold standard and because of that partly because of that the public lost confidence in the currency prices shut up and so there's economic problems in this part of the Mongol Empire swell factions within governments men were a constant problem lots of ambitious warriors were attracted particularly to the Great Canadian chinax it was the wealthiest of the four and these ambitious warriors would often you know worry more about taking on the rivals that were you know Mongol leaders themselves then about other problems outside of the Empire so the Chinese population will eventually rose up against the Mongols I mean time and time again eventually successfully as but Cunliffe says the sudden rise of the Mongol Empire was any standards a remarkable phenomenon how was it that a step nomad tribe could in the space of a mere 80 years conquer the greater part of Eurasia it is rather extraordinary that this group of kind of simple horsemen and nomads from the steppes were able to take you know so much territory and people from different backgrounds of cultures you know under the thumb and doing so through incredible violence but unless nothing it's impressive morally but it's certainly impressive in many other ways once the mongols weakened and basically you know crashed there were that power vacuums and all these khanates a power vacuum means that there's sort of nobody in power there's no government there's you know chaos reigning anarchy so a good example of what could happen in situations is the life and career of one of the most to me incredible figures in all of world history timur or tamerlane as he became known this guy was a self-made conqueror in a sense sort of a mercenary who carved out his own empire he did come from a Turkic / Mongol background but not from he wasn't a descendents of the you know big-name Khan's that we've just talked about so this isn't actually technically part of the Mongol Empire it's after it fell but there's a power vacuum and he's one of many in you know all four of the khanates Chinese okay there's nobody in power there's anarchy there now I'm gonna become the next ruler he walked with a limp I forget why and he became known as Timur the lame hence the anglicisation of the word Tamerlane I bet many people didn't not many people teased him for having a limp however at least not once he became a leader Genghis Khan was his model kind of his hero as he sort of came to the fore was a young sort of you know go get her ambitious he also like Genghis come for him appears to have been charismatic with great personal courage which helped to attract more and more loyal dedicated followers willing to follow him to the ends of the earth and risk their lives in the battle he eliminated rivals like Genghis Khan had and tribe after tribe after making himself leader of his own tribe by 1370 he'd conquered the Khanate of saga tie the one of the four that we hadn't we didn't talk about built us a splendid Capitol imperial capital city at Samarkand and spent from there the rest of his life on military conquests one after another after another most of which were successful he got as far as Persia and Afghanistan took down the Golden Horde in Russia sacked Delhi in India and was even planning an invasion of China himself when he died in 1405 so the whole thing was cut short and he didn't quite have the same system set up to pass it down through the family in the way that Genghis Khan had before him but it's an incredible life in an incredible career one might argue in certainly scholars have that it you know just did harm by spreading power or a crewing power for powers own sake putting unless what he achieved was incredible because it was so unlikely and in some ways it's almost like he was this kind of free blur freelance you know steppe nomads conquer and he was had grand success like the Mongols before him lastly we get to the rise and we're going to do this in one slide I'm not doing them justice rise of the Ottoman Empire its founder was Osman Bey another turk who came from amongst one Turkish tribe but another ambitious you know guy ruthless enough to you know wrestle power from neighboring tribes and forced them under his thumb eventually controlling a chunk of territory in Turkey itself and fanning out from their strip all straighter and says the Ottoman Empire may be viewed as the last of the old-style empires initially the ruled screen Empire said you had been initiated by the urge to conquest indeed in the case of the Mongol Empire arguably this appears different in the beginning and the end of the entire project meaning conquest was all they thought of after that they didn't know exactly what to do we're seeing that that's somewhat true other more civilizing or more exploitative aspects came in the wake of conquest meaning it doesn't appear to have been the goal but nonetheless since they're not kind of stuck with the territory they've fought so hard to acquire they have to do something with it he goes on to say that Osmonds founding dream was not only the founding myth of Ottoman Nationals or national identity but also played a leading role in the psychology of his descendants descendent Mamet sorry ii who became famous in his own right because despite being deposed amendment ii much later on centuries later by the Janissaries our textbook talks about the Janissaries elite military force in the ottoman empire he was able to return or had the guts to return to rule and get away with it the Janissaries were the military force in the ottoman empire and what this is telling us is that when MANET sort of acceded to the throne that the Janissaries were against it and basically forced him out to post him you know toppled him you know toppled his rule the military force you know had the muscle to do that but he actually manufactured a return and actually got eventually the Janissaries to support him loyally and within two years of his comeback he had laid siege to Constantinople the great city of the Byzantine Empire an impregnable fortress city and he breached its walls partly with the use of artillery in the hands of his soldiers officers and his army took Constantinople in 1453 a famous date because it's a major turning point in world history and the Ottoman Empire was really really on the map so from the Seljuk Turks to the Mongols to the Ottomans we've seen that these steppe nomads from Eurasia were really good at carving out an empire or empires