by Mark Cartwright The Mongols conquered vast swathes of Asia in the 13th and 14th century CE thanks to their fast light cavalry and excellent bowmen, but another significant contribution to their success was the adoption of their enemies’ tactics and technology that allowed them to defeat established military powers in China, Persia, and Eastern Europe. Adapting to different challenges and… Read More Mongol Warfare
Siut Wai Hung Clarence Manicheanism: An Overview A map of the spread of Manichaeism (300–500). World History Atlas, Dorling Kindersly. At first glance, the sculpture residing in the Cao’an temple in Jinjiang of the Fujian province seems to be just another statue of Buddha. The stone inscription outside the shrine calls the figure Moniguangfo, or Mani, the… Read More The Forgotten Buddha: Manichaeism and Buddhist Elements in Imperial China
How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire. By Jack Weatherford The Mongol queens of the thirteenth century ruled the largest empire the world has ever known. Yet sometime near the end of the century, censors cut a section from The Secret History of the Mongols, leaving a single tantalizing quote from Genghis Khan: “Let us… Read More The Secret History of the Mongol Queens
Reviewed by Nile Green THEIR ARRIVAL WAS described in the deceptively mellifluous Persian of medieval historian Juvaini: “Amadand o kandand o sokhtand o koshtand o bardand o raftand”—“They came, they uprooted, they burned, they killed, they looted, and they left.” It is one of the tersest lines in world history-writing, summarizing in a single sentence the… Read More A Medieval Age of Disruption: On Nicholas Morton’s “The Mongol Storm”
Two millennia ago, in his Records of the Grand Historian, the Chinese scholar Sima Qian concluded that no empire could be ruled from horseback, and later histories seemed to confirm the view that imperial authority must be vested in cities. The great fourteenth-century scholar Ibn Khaldun developed a now familiar theory that “the rulers of a… Read More Book review: Pleasure Domes and Postal Routes – How the Mongols Changed the World
After the truth-shower 