The Mongols and the Medieval Near East

with Nicholas Morton

hosted by Maryam Patton

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

Click for RSS Feed

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

Contributor Bios

Nicholas Morton is an Associate Professor at Nottingham Trent University in the UK where he specializes in the history of the Mongol Empire and the Crusades. The author or editor of many books and articles, he also co-edits three book series with Routledge: “Rulers of the Latin East”, “Global Histories before Globalisation” and “Medieval Religious Orders: History, Sources, Memory.” You can find more of his research and public outreach on YouTube and Twitter.

Maryam Patton is a PhD candidate at Harvard University in the joint History and Middle Eastern Studies program. She is interested in early modern cultural exchanges, and her dissertation studies cultures of time and temporal consciousness in the Eastern Mediterranean during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Credits

Episode No. 546

Release Date: 26 May 2023
Recording location: Cambridge, MA and Nottingham, England

Sound production by Maryam Patton

Music: Old Vessel (ID 1948) by Lobo Loco

Bibliography and images courtesy of Nicholas Morton

Further Listening

	Ayşe Zarakol	545 5/19/23	The Ottoman Empire and Eastern World Orders
	Joshua White, Zoe Griffith, Sara Nur Yıldız, Neelam Khoja	486 12/28/20	The Mongols and Muslim Societies The Making of the Islamic World
	Sara Nur Yıldız	186 3/13/15	New Perspectives on Medieval Anatolia
	Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim	336 11/4/17	Medicine Along the Musk Route
	Monica Green	512 8/26/21	Rewriting the Black Death

Images

Battle between Mongols & Chinese (1211), Sayf al-Vâhidî. Hérât. Afghanistan, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons


Mongolian yurt in steppe. P.Lechien, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons


Mongol soldiers, Rashid al-Din, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Select Bibliography

Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the Islamic World: From conquest to conversion (Yale University Press: New Haven, 2017).

Marie Favereau, The Horde: How the Mongols changed the World (Belknap Press: Cambridge, MA, 2021).

Timothy May, The Mongol Empire, The Edinburgh History of Islamic Empires (Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, 2018).

Nicholas Morton, The Crusader States and their Neighbours: A Military History (Oxford University Press, 2020).

 

Nicholas Morton, The Field of Blood: The Battle for Aleppo and the Remaking of the Medieval Middle East (Basic Books, 2018). 

Nicholas Morton, Encountering Islam on the First Crusade (Cambridge University Press, 2016).