U368 Mongol Conquest Lecture
Week 2, Monday :  Eurasian Cultures

 

  1. Languages and Scripts
    1. Language "pre-historic," scripts borrowed at start of history
    2. Script borrowed together with gov't institution and scriptural religion
    3. Scripts, written texts, scriptures define cultural circles/"ecumenes"
  2. Eurasian Cultural Circles/Ecumenes of the 13th Century
    1. East Asian world:  land of silk (no cotton, no linen, no wool)
      1. Chinese official administrative language (with or without a 2nd)
        1. All classics--Confucian, Taoist/Daoist, Buddhist--in Chinese
      2. Southern Sung dynasty--native Chinese dynasty
      3. Kitan, Tangut, Jurchen peoples found northern dynasties
        1. Majority is Chinese, ruling nationality forms elite
        2. Kitan (Liao) in Mongolic language family, semi-nomads
        3. Jurchen (Jin/Chin/Kin) in Tungusic language family, famers
        4. Tanguts (Tibeto-Burman) people form Xia (Hsi-Hsia) in the NW
        5. Jurchen's Chin dynasty crush Kitan's Liao dynasty, 1125
        6. Most Kitans under Chin rule, some flee, found Qara-Khïtai
    2. Uighur world
      1. Uighurs:  Turkic in language, culturally also close to China
      2. Adopted Middle Eastern (Sogdian/Syriac) script, turned it vertical
      3. Uighur kingdom at first Manichean, then adopted Buddhism
      4. Christian minority community (Syriac rite/"Nestorians")
        1. Never national religion, network of mobile priests
    3. Islamic world:  land of cotton (C. Asia & India) and baldachin (two Iraqs)
      1. Islam, Arabic script, Koran & commentaries only in Arabic
      2. International Arabic-speaking legal elite (Morocco to India)
      3. Multi-ethnic:  "Religion to Arabs, poetry to Persians, rule to Turks"
      4. Christian minority community
        1. Armenian church, national religion, Armenian language
        2. Syriac/"Nestorians"
    4. Greco-Slavonic Christianity
      1. Byzantium (Greek; silk and linen), Ruthenia (Slavonic; furs, leather)
    5. Latin Christianity (Roman Catholic):  the land of wool
      1. Scriptures, government in Latin
    6. Steppe Zone (land of leather and furs--and when rich:  silk, baldachin)
      1. Mongols in east, Turkic peoples in west
      2. Mongols, Naimans touched by Khitans, Uighurs, Nestorian church
      3. Turks moving into Middle East, converting>>Turkmen/Turcomans
      4. Qïpchaq/Coman Turks in NW, a little Greco-Slavonic influence