MONGOLS AS CULTURAL BROKERS IN THE EAST WEST EXCHANGE

Mongols conquered Persia in two waves, first by Chinggis Khan between 1219 and 1221 and by Möngke Khan in 1253. The first was to avenge the Kharazmshahs that slaughtered the Mongolian convoy that was sent to him by Chinggis and thus was very destructive in order to show how brutal Mongols can get if angered. The second wave came in reply to a request from the Qadi of Qazwin. He

“complained about the lack of centralized authority, the absence of any real law and order, and the arbitrary taxation and imposition of law exercised by the Mongols’ military governor, Baiju Noyan. The dangers and terror emanating from the mountain hideaways of the Assassins, as the Isma’ilis were often known , were also invoked and grossly exaggerated, with the suggestion that the court of the Qa’an himself was not safe from their machinations and murderous daggers.”[1]

Möngke was well-received in Persia: “...when his [Chinggis’] grandson Hülegü began his leisurely march westward into the Islamic lands, the prince came not as a conqueror but as a welcomed king.”[2] Because of the devastating effects of Chinggis’ conquest, the fact that Mongols have been “cultural brokers”[3] between East and West, Persia and China specifically, has been neglected or overlooked. Gregory Guzman writes in his article wherein he discusses whether the barbarians were a negative or a positive factor in ancient and medieval history:

“All written records covering barbarian-civilized interaction came from the civilized peoples at war with the barbarians - often the sedentary peoples recently defeated and overwhelmed by those same barbarians. Irritated and angered coastal historians tended to record and emphasize only the negative aspects of their recent interaction with the barbarians.”[4]

The barbarians, however, were mostly illiterate and did not leave a written record of their side of the story. The result is a perspective that evaluates the effect of barbarians –a word used interchangeably with the word nomads both in Guzman’s article and in this essay- as disruptive and negative, in general. Yet new scholar work on the culture of steppe peoples, i.e. nomads/barbarians, reveal that the role of the Mongols in the communication between the two ends of Eurasia, an incident in existence since 1000 B.C.E., has been significant, unique and positive. It is this essay’s purpose to put forward this new academic perspective by elaborating three different texts pertaining to the matter and making comparisons among the three: The first is an article titled “Biography of a Cultural Broker. Bolad Ch’eng-Hsian in China and Iran” by Thomas Allsen.[5] The second is an introductory book by George Lane: Genghis Khan and Mongol Rule and especially the Chapter 7 headed “The Legacy: China and Iran”[6]. The last is Ann K.S. Lambton’s “The Athar Wa Ahya of Rashid al-Din Fadl Allah Hamadani and His Contribution as an Agronomist, Arboriculturist and Horticulturalist”[7]
After a brief summary of the three texts, the reason for selection thereof for the purposes of this essay will be stated, followed by a discussion on the main points derived from comparisons between the three.
Allsen’s article, after a brief summary of Bolad’s career, underlines the colossal effect of Bolad’s person and works on the East-West cultural exchange and how as a party in the Bolad – Rashid al-Din friendship found a counterpart in Rashid al-Din on the Iranian side to the exchange. Lane’s book is an introductory work on the Mongol Empire, concentrating on the foundations of the Mongol state and Chinggis’s works and in chapter 7 specifically, on the relationship between the Ilkhans and the Yuan dynasty. In addition, the book includes English translations of some significant primary documents related with this subject and lastly, biographies of some of the significant contemporaries. Within the confines of this article, mainly the chapter pertaining to the exchange between China and Iran will be focused on. Ann K.S. Lambton summarizes in her article the contents of the agricultural manual by Rashid al-Din, which has partly survived to this day. She states the headings of each chapter of the book and gives examples to Rashid al-Din’s experimental and innovative approach to agriculture and how he used this know-how to help recover Persian agriculture. These three texts do not necessarily overlap in their subject. Yet they do convey the idea that the Mongols were not destructors of civilisation, but rather contributors thereto as brokers, constructors and/or sponsors.
All three texts take Mongols as a “positive factor in medieval history”. Lambton states that “it was because of the relations between the Ilkhanate on the one hand and Central Asia and the Far East on the other that Rashid al-Din was able to benefit from the experience of learned men, merchants and travellers from those areas, to import seeds and plants from beyond the confines of Persia,..”[8] She proposes that it was due to the Pax Mongolica that provided the atmosphere in which men, goods and ideas travelled safely back and forth between China and Iran. This is not to say that the Mongols left it at that; they partook in the transfer and in the constructive works that the exchange brought about. George Lane points to this agency of Mongols by saying: “The Mongols were more than just the catalyst for this cultural and commercial exchange to happen. They themselves were cultural brokers, and it was their decisions and policies that launched these exchanges.”[9] Lane recognizes the active role of the Mongolians in the exchange. In fact, there are other scholars who agree and go further by saying that it was through their selection and filtering that exchange happened. If, for example, the Mongols did not need luxury textiles to provide the retention of their followers, they would not have acquired thousands of West Asian (mostly Persian) artisans transferred on or against their will to China for provision of luxury textiles for the Yuan court[10]. Allsen proposes at the end of his aforementioned article that “...Mongols were not, as is sometimes assumed, disinterested conveyors of cultural wares between civilizations, a kind of medieval United Parcel Service; on the contrary, they were active participants in and, in many cases, the principal initiators of, such exchange, and to a remarkable degree it was the nomads’ cultural priorities and political interests that determined what travelled between East and West in the pre-modern era.”[11] Though within a differing scale, Lambton, Lane and Allsen, all acknowledge the positive contribution of Mongols to the East-West cultural exchange.
The three texts may be compared in their approach in distinguishing the positive contribution of the Mongols to history: it is a personal level. Lambton and Allsen’s articles emphasize the substantial effect of Bolad and Rashid al-Din respectively and jointly on the East-West cultural exchange as influential contemporaries of their time. Allsen explains how Bolad was Po’lo in Chinese sources and the name was mentioned so frequently in the sources that he was identified mistakenly as Marco Polo till 1928 and that in fact Bolad was no less important figure in the East-West exchange than Marco Polo.[12] Marco Polo is a well-known figure that presented most of the information on China in medieval Europe. In that respect Bolad should be an important cultural broker. As far as Lambton’s article is concerned, Rashid al-Din had a very experimental and innovative approach in reviving and improving Persian agriculture. Lambton writes:

“It is clear from the Athar wa ahya that he hoped by his knowledge to contribute to a revival of agriculture in the Ilkhanate and to stimulate others to follow his example in the cultivation of the land: and perhaps he hoped and planned for a time when Persian agriculture might be reconstructed after the recession brought about by the Mongol invasions.”[13]

His personal influence is highly perceived in the resulting revival of agriculture in Persia as he poured his accumulated knowledge on the Persian reconstruction.
Lane points to the difference between Chinggis and his sons: “If the Mongols are to be remembered, it should not be solely for the military genius of their founder Chinggis Khan, but equally for the splendor of the courts of his grandchildren Qubilai and Hülegü and their offsprings and protégés.”[14] Of course, the concentration of all three writers on a personal level may have a practical reason: that most evidence from or about Mongols names these famous persona as initiators or agents of this exchange. Given the existence of the multichannel exchange between East and West (trade, religion, science and arts, etc) exchange, it would not be wrong to predict that this exchange could not have stayed at a personal level. There was certainly some key figures and leaders or important bureaucrats must have played a crucial role.
Lambton, Lane and Allsen stand on similar grounds in proposing that Mongols were not solely disastrous, disruptive peoples. In Lane’s words:

“Two dominant aspects of the Mongol years are becoming clear. First, in China and Iran the Mongols oversaw a period of extraordinary cultural, economic, and spiritual regeneration, and second, both countries were politically, economically, and culturally far closer than had previously been recognized. The wealth and vibrancy of this period have been transmitted to history through the media of art, literature, and trade.”[15]

The Mongols had an unseen contribution to the East-West exchange. This contribution has not been in the form of as mere couriers, but Mongols have actively selected and transferred commodities, ideas and people from east to west and from west to east. This is why they are hailed as brokers of cultural exchange in the world and today, the global world owes much to this agency.
[1] George Lane, Genghis Khan and Mongol Rule (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004), p. 57
[2] ibid, p. 56
[3] Thomas Allsen, “Biography of a Cultural Broker. Bolad Ch’eng-Hsiang in China and Iran”, in The Court of the Ilkhans 1290-1340, ed. By Julian Raby and Teresa Fitzherbert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
[4] Gregory G. Guzman, “Were the Barbarians a Negative or a positive Factor in Ancient and Medieval History?”, Historian (August 1988), 558-9
[5] Allsen
[6] Lane
[7] Ann K. S. Lambton, “The Athar Wa Ahya of Rashid Al-Din Fadl Allah Hamadani and His Contribution As an Agronomist, Arboriculturist and Horticulturist” in The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy ed. By Reuven Amitai-Preiss and David O. Morgan (Leiden: Brill, 1999).
[8] Lambton, 126
[9] Lane, p. 97
[10] Thomas Allsen, Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p.101
[11] Allsen, 19
[12] ibid, 7
[13] Lambton, 153-4
[14] Lane, p.98
[15] ibid, p.83