Gone Medieval - Mongol Empire

Episode Date: November 26, 2022

The Crusades are well-known but only part of the complex history of the medieval Near East. During the same era, the region was completely remade by the Mongol invasions.  In a single generation, the Mongols upended the region’s geopolitics.  In this edition of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis talks to Dr. Nicholas Morton, author of The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East, about the conquests that forever transformed the region, while forging closer ties among societies spread across Eurasia.  This episode was edited and produced by Rob Weinberg. For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here >If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android > or Apple store > Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. The Mongol Empire that was sparked into life by Chingus Khan would become the largest contiguous land empire in history. It outlived its founder and continued to grow after his death. They seemed at many points unstoppable and they filled those in their path with terror. But how did they do it? And how did it all come to an end. I'm delighted to be joined by Nicholas Morton, who's an associate professor at Nottingham

Trent University, and whose new book, The Mongol Storm, seeks to answer these questions and many more. Thank you for joining us, Nick. Great to be here, thank you. Why does a united Mongol nation arise, and then why does it decide to look outward for conquest? It's a historic phenomenon that across Central Asia, there are various nomadic communities, and from time to time, those nomadic communities form a confederation, which then often assaults one of the major agricultural civilizations around its periphery, whether that's China or the Muslim world or Western Europe, somewhere like that. Chinggis Khan put together an enormous confederation of Mongol tribes in and around the area of his birth, and the thing that really galvanised his wars of conquest and made them

so much greater in their impact than other wars of conquest was he. His belief that he had been given a mandate from the eternal heaven, the spiritual force, to have dominion over the entire planet. And that's the message that he shared with his followers and which then drove his conquests across so much of Eurasia. So is it reasonable to equate what the early Mongol Empire was doing to a crusade? We think of the crusades being Christians versus Muslims in the Holy Land, but it sounds a lot like Chingis Khan felt like he was on a holy crusade. Certainly there is a sense of spiritual mission to what he's doing. He is trying to carry out a spiritual

plan for the world in which the Mongols have the crucial role as he sees it to have control over all human civilisation. And do you think to some extent that sense of having a religious mandate to do these things kind of allows them to rationalise their conquest of other people, but also some of the cruelties that they're accused of as well? Yeah, according to this worldview, what good societies will. do is to recognise the truth of the Mongols' rights to rule and therefore submit. Societies that don't submit to the Mongol rule, it's not just that they're resisting the Mongols. They are failing to see the truth, which is that the Mongols have a right to rule the planet,

and therefore they are in rebellion against the correct world order, at least as far as the Mongols see it. And what was so unique and effective about the Mongol military? You know, they do seem to roll across these regions appearing utterly unstoppable. What differentiates them from everybody else? Why are they so hard to resist? Sure. The expansion of the Mongol Empire is incredibly quick and very effective. So in the area I'm most concerned with, which is the Near East, in 1218, they begin their conquests in the Khorasmian Empire, which controlled much of Persia in many surrounding areas. 1218, 3 to about 1223, and then a later one in the 1230s, and another one in the 1st,

1250s, wave after wave breaks over the Near East, expanding the Mongol Empire, and really there's very little that people seem to be able to do to stop them. They are incredibly effective. Now, there's all sorts of routes to that effectiveness. One is the simple nomadic way of life, because if you have a predominantly nomadic civilization where children are raised to ride and shoot and hunt from a very early age, they're likely to be much more effective in battle than that agricultural civilization where people are typically not given those military skills from birth and the warrior contingent is much smaller. But the Mongols go so far beyond the traditional strengths of nomadic civilizations, this sense of purpose, in sense that they have a right

to conquer the planet. But there's more than that. They've got some very able commanders who use some very effective tactics to secure military victories. But the Mongols are also learning. So as they conquer one society, they think about what that society's got to offer them, which they can then take on board to enhance their military tactics even further. And so from a purely military perspective, when the Mongols begin their wars of conquest in China, they begin to seek out Chinese engineers who can create and operate catapults and other siege weapons that the Mongols tend to lack and so they bring those into their military machine and make it all the more stronger going forward. Another thing that's again very effective which the Mongols typically do is when they conquer

one city. If they don't massacre the inhabitants what they'll often do is to herd together the able-bodied people from that city and then drive them in the first wave of the assault at the next city. The idea being that those forces that have been compelled to stage the first assault they will then absorb much of the defenders' ammunition and energies paving the way for the Mongols' main assault soon afterwards. So there's a lot of things the Mongols do, often very brutal, but very effective at the same time. Maybe not that last thing that you were talking about, but it sounds like they were a lot more thoughtful than maybe we give them credit for, that I think we have this view that they kind of relentlessly pushed forward and forward and forward, but it sounds like they

conquered somewhere, worked out what they could take from that civilization and how they could improve what they were doing before they then move forward again. And perhaps that's a bit of the secret, that they were willing to learn from the people that they conquered. They didn't just view them as somehow inferior and not worth thinking about. Sure. The Mongols are deeply interested in the people and the cultures that they're conquering. And they do indeed draw all sorts of ideas and draw upon technologies and ideas and products that they think would be of value to their empires. In terms of conquest, the initial phase is the military overthrow itself, and for a period, normally it's the Mongol commanders who will rule the area that's been conquered, but it's not long

before the infrastructure of the Mongol Empire begins to arrive, and that includes civilian administrators, forms of taxation, the Mongols take a lot of censuses, they want to make sure that the regions they've conquered are going to work for them, not just in terms of producing products, but in terms of taxation as well. They want to make sure that the regions they've conquered. They want to make sure that. that they have fully enforced their rule over those areas. And as a rule in all of the areas that they push forward into, do we see any nations that they're pressing into adapting what they're doing to try to counter the threat from the Mongols,

or can nobody find a way to fight them and resist them? There are different ways that people in the Near East try and handle the threat of Mongol invasion. The Near East itself is extraordinarily diverse in this era. You've got some different kingdoms, empires, sultanates, to name but a few. There's so many different powers, and they all respond differently. That's why I find so interesting about the Mongol invasions in the Middle East. It's almost like a sort of encyclopedia for different approaches

for what you do when you're faced with existential invasion. Some people choose to march against the Mongols, and here some fall immediately in just a single battle, after which the Mongol cavalry just spreads out across the countryside and resistance stops. Some are initially successful against the Mongols but are then submerged by the deluge of attacks that follow immediately afterwards, so military resistance doesn't tend to last for long, at least up until the late 1250s. It's in 1260 that there's the first really successful military resistance. But there are other ways of handling the threat of Mongol invasion as well. Some civilizations choose to submit to the Mongols early. So before the Mongol armies even crossed the horizon, and there's a very good good,

reason for that, which is that if you submit to the Mongols, and particularly if you do it when you haven't yet been threatened, the Mongols are likely to view you very favourably. And so rather than you having to pay in enormous tribute and have to support a large Mongol garrison and all the infrastructure of the Mongol Empire, if you submit early, the Mongols will more or less let you carry on as before with a relatively light tribute. And so there is a strong incentive for submitting quickly. And of course the Mongols know this. That's why they've done it. They want people to submit without a fight. So there is a sort of graded series of penalties. If you resist to the last minute, things are not going to be easy for you at all. If you submit early, things are going to be

a lot lighter. The Byzantine Empire try something completely different, which is they try to negotiate their way to safety, keep the Mongols talking and hope they go away, which for a time seems to work, although they too do seem to have come to some kind of accommodation with the Mongols by about 1260. Here's an unfair question then. If the Mongol horde was about to descend on Nottingham, what would your advice be? What should the city do?

Okay, that's a question I've never been asked before. So I think the first question to my mind would be, does the population want to resist? The population's not sure, or the population is simply terrified by the prospect of a Mongol invasion. As many populations in the Near East were, I may reach the view that actually there's just no point trying to resist.

Will's not there. And so in that scenario, it would probably be best to submit to the Mongols as early as possible and then try and negotiate as lenient a settlement as I possibly could. But if the population is determined and the population really wants to fight, then perhaps resistance is possible, but it would need to be made very clear to the population what the consequences of that are, because going all in against the Mongols is very much a desperate gamble, because if you lose, then the death toll could be very steep indeed.

So a lot depends on how much people want to resist. But the latter strategy, whilst you hold up the hope of victory in the long term, perhaps it's dangerous stuff. And when the Mongols arrive particularly in the Near East, where your book is focused, do we have any records of what those in their path thought of them? What did they think of the Mongols that were arriving in terms? terms of their culture, their civilization, their religion. Did the people understand what was

coming out of the East to attack them? Many people didn't. For many people, the Mongols were a largely or entirely new force. They had virtually no idea who they were. Take, for example, the Crusader state, so the states along the coastline of the East Mediterranean, which were set up by the First Crusade. In those areas, there's a belief, at least when the first reports of the Mongol conquests begin to arrive. What they think they're hearing is the advance of Presta John. And Presta John is a mythical king who was believed to live somewhere out in the East, by people in Western Europe at this time, and it was thought that one day Presta John would leave a marvellous army of monsters

to help Christendom to defend its enemies. Now, needless to say, the Mongols were not the armies of Presta John, but there is a sense of confusion among many people's, who exactly are these people, and perhaps most critically, what do they want? and so whilst there is a great deal of fear towards the Mongols terror in many cases there's also a great deal of curiosity who are they what do they want what's their weak spot

how do you tackle these people how do you engage them how do you conduct diplomacy with them but alongside that there's also plenty of fear there's also commentators from many societies both Christian and Muslim who think that what we're looking at here is people who are in some way linked to end times prophecy There is a belief that in the end times the armies of Gog and Magog will open the gates of the north and pour forth upon the wider world. And many commentators, they didn't think the Mongols were Gog and Magog,

they thought they were in some way connected or linked or near to them. But there is that sense of apocalypticism around the Mongols' invasions into the Near East. And initially, how successful were the Mongols when they arrived in the Near East? But then also, why is that the place where their expansion stops. Okay, so initially they were very successful. A first army moved through the Near East in the 1220s, or early 1220s, not so much to conquer the region, but in pursuit of the Sultan of the Khorasmian Empire, which was the first really big empire in the region the Mongols attacked. And that army destroyed every army that came against it. And I think partly it was the sheer speed and surprise of the attack, but also the commanders are using some various stratagems that helped them. So when, for example,

this army advances into the Caucasus, which in this period is Greater Armenia and Georgia, both Christian territories. The Mongols are actually said when they approach Georgia to have lifted Christian crosses, or at least crosses, above their army. So the Georgians thought this is some kind of allied army that has arrived. It was only later, and just as the Mongols approached within Booshop, down came the crosses and in goes the attack. So the Mongol commanders are using various strategies to help them in battle. But perhaps the most important invasion came about 10 years later in 1230 when a new Mongol army arrives very much as a consolidate control over the Near East. And the reason that army is so successful, aside from some Mongol standard advantages in war,

is there is a ruler in the Near East called Jalal al-Din. And Jalal al-Din is the ruler of what's left of the western tip of the Qarazmian Empire. And he knew the Mongols were coming for years. and so he used the intervening time while he's preparing for the Mongol approach to conquer as much surrounding territory as he possibly could. So that when the Mongols arrive, he's ready for them. But the problem is during those sort of preparatory years, he makes a lot of enemies, because people don't want to have their lands conquered from them,

just so Jalal al-Din can build up a power block against the Mongols. And so only months before the Mongols arrive, all the other powers in the region form an alliance against Jalal Dian, defeat him in battle and then the Mongols arrive and pick up the pieces in the aftermath. So the Mongols are, to some extent, helped by circumstances. And it's really only in 1260 that you really have the first example of a Mongol army being stopped in its tracks. And the background to this is that in 1252, I think it was, a new Khan sent an army under his brother called Hulagu into Persia. And it's this army that

began by attacking various fortresses in Persia before moving on in 1258 to conduct a very brutal sack of Baghdad. Enormous loss of life. And then the following year, it then pushed north into northern Syria, aiming towards Western Syria, the East Mediterranean coastline. And this army is thought to have been in excess of a hundred thousand soldiers strong. And just to give you a sort of an idea of the scale of this, at the height of the crusading wars of the two, 12th century. Saladin could put an army in the field of about 30,000 troops, the largest of the Crusader states could put an army of about 20,000 troops in the field, and these are among the biggest armies of their day. So even if all the powers in the Near East had pooled their forces, which they didn't, there's virtually no chance of them meeting the Mongols on equal terms.

So this army comes in 1259, 1260, it takes the major city of Aleppo in the north of Syria very quickly, Damascus further south falls without a fight. It seems as though the entire region is going to fall to the Mongols and fall very quickly. And by this stage there's very few independent powers in the region. But one of the few independent powers that is still around is the Mamluk Empire of Egypt. And when the Mongols send emissaries to the Mamluk's demanding their submission, which is standard Mongol practice, the Mamluks respond by executing one of those emissaries. and shaving the beards from the others, which is obviously a colossal insult, and there's no question now, this is going to be war, there is no diplomatic solution left, and it's, of course, by treating

the emissaries in that way, the Mamnoks are making it clear, we are going to fight. There can be no more discussion now at whether we're going to fight because we have treated the Mongol's emissaries in this way, so you've got to fight with the Wallach it or not. So the Mamuk's advanced with their army, probably know more than up 12,000 troops out of Egypt and into Syria against this enormous Mongol force. And circumstances play out well for them because much of the Mongol army moves east just before the Mamluk arrive. We're not quite sure entirely why they moved east, but a quite possible reason is that because the great Khan in Mongolia died, they're moving east so they can play a stronger role in the succession. And they leave a garrison in Syria,

which is then met by this Mamluk army. And the Mamluk army then meet the Mongols in battle at the Battle of Aynjalut and famously the Mamluk defeat the Mongols and this is a very significant defeat for the Mongols because not only is their army defeated but the Mamluks then take Damascus and Aleppo off the Mongols almost immediately afterwards so it's a significant defeat but of course as soon as that defeat has taken place the Mongols learn of what has happened and they swear retribution very quickly and this is then the beginning of quite a long and drawn-out war between the Mamlux in Egypt and Syria on one side, the Mongols on the other and the River Euphrates, basically acting as the border between the two.

Fascinating. This is almost the first time the Mongols have found someone who is not only willing to fight them, but able and has a bit of luck on their side as well to get an early victory and sort of push the Mongols back. Perhaps something they're not used to, a new experience for the Mongols? It's not common. The Mongol armies are not infallible. suffered defeat in previous years but the Mongols make very sure that if they are defeated once that does not happen again and whoever defeated them is themselves defeated very quickly afterwards. But on this occasion that doesn't happen and it takes actually 20 years for the Mongols to come back and that 20 year period is crucial but the reason the Mongols take so long to strike back

against the Mamluks and to stage a renewed invasion is that during this period the Mongol empire begins to break up. The Mongol Empire is absolutely vast, but a key consideration within that empire is which leading Mongol family should have jurisdiction over any given area. And the Near East is contested between two Mongol dynasties. And when Hulagu comes in the 1250s and conquers much of the region and augments the Mongol Empire, he takes control across the entire area, which angers another Mongol dynasty to the north called the Jokid dynasty. And from about to the early 1260s onwards, the Mongol Empire in the south, which becomes known as the Ilkhanate, and the Mongol Empire to the north in Western Eurasia, which becomes known as the Connets of the Golden Horde,

they go to war with each other, and it's a ruinous war, huge casualties, big armies, and that draws their attention away from their other opponents, away from their wars of conquest, into this civil war against each other, and suddenly the Mamukes aren't facing near the kind of resistance they thought. But this is ruinous, not just. to the Mongols' wars of expansion, because all their other enemies think, hang on, actually, the Mongols can be resisted. This is achievable, and that's not a method to Mongols want them to internalise. I guess the vision of being unstoppable, or the view that everybody had that they couldn't be resisted, had really worked in their favour to some extent. So as soon as that's broken,

it becomes a serious threat to Mongol expansion. It sounds like their worst enemy was themselves, turning on themselves was probably that stopped them. How much of a tyrant really was Julius Caesar? And it's very interesting to think about why it's Caesar in particular when there have been many political assassinations in the past millennia, why Caesar's has been the one that is brought up again and again. Would we have ever stood a chance against the first dinosaurs? In the Jurassic, you see dinosaurs get bigger and you see meat-eating dinosaurs grow into things like the size of buses. And did Helen of Troy really have the power to launch a thousand ships? She is always derided as this sort of terrible adulterish, but at least as old as Homer, at least the 8th century BC, is a counter tradition in which Helen doesn't go to Troy.

She's never Helen of Troy, she's Helen of Egypt. Well, you can expect all of this and more from the ancients on History Hit. Join us twice a week, every week, as we explore some of the greatest moments of our ancient past. Subscribe to the ancients wherever you get your podcasts. Why do you think that Mongols who did arrive in the Near East and settled their empire there, why did they begin to convert to Islam, given that their worldview revolved around this idea that they had this sort of divinely appointed right to conquer the world? Why do they begin to convert to Islam in that region?

One of the fascinating phenomenons around the Mongol Empire, and the best way to visualize this is central points of the Mongol Empire, where these are vast wagon cities. Thousands and thousands of wagons surrounded by hundreds of thousands of herding animals and these are the centre points of the Mongol Empire and on these wagons are the Mongols' great tents where they either live or hold their audiences

or receive diplomats. But as soon as the Mongol Empire begins to establish itself in the Near East, it finds itself besieged almost by advocates from across the region, people who come to the Mongol Empire from within the area that's been conquered. And what these advocates want is they want preferment, they want to gain advantages. So if you've just been conquered and you are fully aware of the fact that you're not going to be able to resist this enemy, they are in charge and that is the end of it.

It's in your interest to try and win that new conqueror's favour. And so these ambassadors from various communities and from different faith groups and cultures begin to arrive in the Mongols' encampments, and they're trying to win the Mongols' favour because they want the protection for their community or they want to ensure that their interests are looked after. And so suddenly, despite having conquered the region often quite brutally,

the Mongols themselves find that all these advocates arrive trying to win their goodwill. But of course, what these advocates are really after is to try and convert the Mongols to their own faith, because that would not only protect their own interests, it could drive their interests as well. And people from all sorts of different religions arrive at the Mongol courts seeking justice

to try and convert the Mongol leaders, Mongol Khan's, Mongol elite men and women. And they're not particularly successful because the Mongols have got their own spiritual beliefs and those beliefs, as far as they're concerned, are playing out very clearly because they are conquering vast areas of territory. But that doesn't stop them from trying.

And so you do hear examples of individual Khan's having say Christian advisors or Muslim advisors or Buddhist advisors or all sorts of other advisors who are therefore advancing the interests of their own faith community. And in time the Mongols do convert to various different religions across the various regions of their empire. In the Near East, the Mongols convert in large parts to Islam. Why exactly? It's not entirely clear. There's various schools of thought on this, but it's these advocates that are the main sort of conduit or one of the main conduits. Another possible explanation for why the Mongols converted to Islam in the Near East is that about a century and a half before the Mongols arrived, there's another big conquest of the region,

also out of the Central Asian steppe region, by the Seljuk Turks. And the Seljuk Turks in culture and society were originally not so very different from the Mongols, but they converted to Islam about a century before the Mongols did. And so that may create a fairly natural template for the Mongols to follow. So just as the Mongols absorb various Turkish warriors and leaders in the lands that they conquer, it may then be very natural for them to take on the beliefs of those warriors as well. We also hear about various Mongol Khans being inspired by Sufi Islam, which seems to have been a major source of influence for them as well. So there are various different explanations, but somewhere between that mix are some of the reasons at least why

many of the Mongols may have converted. Beyond that, so we know Europeans, had a strong interest in the Near East during this period. It's a period of crusading all through the 12th century and into the 13th century when the Mongols are arriving there. Does the Mongol threat impact Europe, Western Europe in particular? So the crusading states are populated largely by Frankish, French-descended knights. Is there a fear of the Mongols heading even further west? Yes, very much. A story that I find quite indicative of this. It's a funny peculiar story, is that somewhere around the late 1230s, the fishing communities of Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, they land a bumper catch of herring. And they're very pleased about this because they want

to be able to sell that bumper catch to various merchants who typically come and collect it from the Baltic region, North Germany and what's over the Baltic states. But these merchants don't arrive, and so left with all these herring that they can't sell. And so naturally, they want to know, why can't we sell the herring? Why haven't you arrived to buy it from? us. And it turns out that the reason that these merchants haven't been prepared to leave mainland Europe is because they're worried full-scale Mongol invasion is about to take place. And so this is just an example of the outer permutations of the threat felt by many people towards the Mongols. But the Mongols do reach Eastern Europe and they invade in 1241, conquering Hungary while other armies

go into Poland and they defeat every single field army sent against them. And they do it very quickly. And naturally this sends enormous shockwaves across the entire region. A crusade is declared, armies are formed, but by the time the armies move into Hungary and Poland, the Mongols have gone. All of which then sets up the next question, which is, okay, when will they come back again? And in fact, this just links into something I mentioned previously because it seems that in 1259, the Mongols are planning a new full-scale invasion, not stopping just at Poland and Hungary, but to go all the way across Western Christendom. But the outbreak of civil war in the Mongol Empire

between the Golden Horde, or the area that would become known as the Golden Horde, and the Ilkanit further south, not only does that prevent them from, or the Ilkans, from fighting the Mamlux, it also means that this invasion into Western Christendom also doesn't happen, because they turn their armies on each other,

and so there is not another full-scale invasion of Western Christendom, but that shouldn't deflect from the fact, that there is a great deal of fear might happen. I can imagine a lot of people in Western Christendom wiping their brow and thinking, few, we didn't have to deal with what could have been a terrifying invasion because they managed to turn on each other.

And I presume as well, in the Crusader States and in Western Europe, there would have been some fear of the Mongols converting to Islam and adding to the threat that Christianity felt it was under from Islam. There's a great deal of interest in whether the Mongols will convert and to which religion they will convert

in the Crusader States. Crusader State sends out its own missionaries and advocates hoping to convert the Mongols to Catholic Christianity, although that's not in the event what happens. What's interesting, though, is that initially the Mongols are seen as a tremendous threat, once it's been worked out that they are not, in fact, the armies have pressed to John. And in fact, when the Mongols invade northern Syria in 2016, the northernmost Crusader state, which is the Principality of Antioch Tripoli, submits to the Mongols and becomes a tributary state to the Mongols. But in later years, when it becomes clear that the Mamluks are successfully resisting the Mongols.

And in fact, during the 1260s, 1270s, once the Mamluk Empire grows in power, it's the Mamluks who are seen to be the bigger threat to the Crusader states or what's left of them. And it's the Mamlux who will eventually destroy the Crusader States, the last outpost being conquered in 1291. And so actually, although the Mongols are seen to be this enormous threat, the Mamluks are seen as being more dangerous. And so both the Mongols and Western Christians, Christian Christenom sent emissaries to each other towards the end of the 13th century, looking to create a cooperative alliance against the Mamluk, who they see as a common enemy

in that particular area. So there are very different reactions, depending on time period and geographical zone, about how the Mongols are viewed, depending on how the danger of Mongol invasion might play out on that particular border. Some fascinating shifts in the political thinking that's going on there, the enemy of my enemy, consistently being my enemy and all of that kind of thing. Quite so. So what do you think is the legacy of the Mongol Empire, I guess particularly from the point of view of your book in the Near East. It sounds like they were an empire that absorbed an awful lot of what was going on. Were they interested in developing ideas and technology and things like that that that lingered behind them or did much of what they'd done disappear with them?

The Mongol's legacy is vast. For so many reasons, some intentional, some less so, the Mongols' were interested in scientific and intellectual ideas. In the Near East, there's an astonishing scientific research institute, which would be the modern phrase for it, at somewhere called Maraga. And basically, when the Mongols conquered a region, they would spare the intellectuals and scientists and thinkers of that area, and then send them to Maraga. And so suddenly you've got this settlement in this research community

where people are being sent from all the way across Eurasia to study science in the name of the Mongol. empire. Some significant advances are made in science by this community, not least in trigonometry, which is famous of their discoveries. But it is an incredible thought that you have this community which literally has people from all the way across Asia being brought together in order to study what the Mongols deemed to be significant and important. And I think it sounds like almost the opposite of what we expect from conquering empires, where you often get the stories of the intellectuals and the elites being rounded up and killed. What the Mongols were actually doing was

rounding up the intellectuals and putting them to work, you know, getting them all together and getting them to come up with even better ideas than they might have done on their own. That's quite counter to what we might have thought the Mongols did, I think. The Mongols are very alert to the people or the resources or the assets of any region they conquer, which can ultimately benefit their own interests. So when they conquer a city, often the artisans of that city are separated from the rest of the population. And the artisans are then sent, wherever in the Mongol Empire, they are deemed to be important.

and the rest of the population, sometimes they're massacred, sometimes they're allowed to remain, but the artisans are very much ring-fenced and then used intentionally for the interests of the Mongol Empire. And it sounds like China probably equates itself most closely with the Mongol Empire today, but it sounds like that legacy is felt very much in the Near East as well, that there are things even today that we can look back on and say that's the legacy of the Mongol Empire. Yeah, two of the things that seem to be linked to the Mongol Empire is the spread of technologies across their empire because suddenly where you had civilizations that had very little contact with each other in previous years. Now, they're part of the greater Mongol Empire and ideas and technologies and merchants can move much more freely.

And so it's notable that it's during the later 13th century that gunpowder reaches many civilizations. We're not quite sure if it had been present in previous years in the Muslim world, but certainly its proliferation in the later 13th century and early 14th century is substantial. or Western Christendom acquires gunpowder seemingly in mid to late 13th century. And from that point on, that's the trigger that sees the rise of all sorts of gunpowder technologies across the Mediterranean Bells Basin and elsewhere. And this is just one technology among a whole range of others and products, textiles take off in all sorts of different ways.

And the Mongols, because they have such enormous wealth gathered from their various conquests, they change the entire economy of the continent because suddenly Merk, are flocking to them because they've got the money to spend and they want to spend it and they know what they want. And so all the trade routes, we orientate themselves around the Mongols' great camp cities because they're the ones who are spending. So they're the ones who get to say how the trade routes are going to play out. That's absolutely fascinating. Thank you very much for joining us and sharing that with us, Nick. And your book, The Mongol Storm, is out now and focuses on the Mongols' arrival and interaction with the Near East. Absolutely. Yes. It works through the

history of the Mongol conquests into the Near East, there's a sort of underlying thread of the military political history of those events. But that's very much built out with a more holistic view that takes in changes in culture and religion and diet and fashion and all sorts of other things showing how that builds a bigger picture of the evolutions of this era. It's a fascinating read and something that everyone should get hold of a copy of and try and understand this part of history and this part of the world an awful lot better. So thank you very much for joining us to share that with us, Nick. Thanks so much. You can join Dr Kat Jarman on Tuesday for another brand new episode. Don't forget to also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from and to tell all of your friends

and family that you've gone medieval. If you get a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to your podcasts. And if you're enjoying this and you'd like a bit more medieval goodness in your life, you can subscribe to our Medieval Monday's newsletter by following the links in the show notes below. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just Gone Medieval with history hit.