Revival of the Silk Road Under Kublai Khan

Episode 30: Pax Mongolica and Cultural Exchange

Barbarian Empires of the Steppes (2014)

Dr Kenneth Harl

Film Review

Following Kublai Khan’s conquest of China, the Mongols imposed a Pax Mongolica* across the steppes, which ended centuries-long warring between nomad tribes. The resulting peace led to a revival of the Silk Road and renewed prosperity of both states and nomads involved in the Silk Road trade. It also resulted in unprecedented cultural exchange. Exchanges between Persia and China about geography and map-making enabled both kingdoms to produce maps that were far better than those Columbus used to explore the New World. The Persians also shared their knowledge of medicine (from Hindu sources) with China, as well as citrus and grape cultivation. While the Chinese shared their knowledge of tea, black pepper and cinnamon with the Muslim world.

Under Kublai Khan, the Mongols built great cities and set up lavish courts in many of the regions they conquered. He used captive Muslims and Christians to administer cities in northern China and captive Chinese to administer the Ilkhanate Empire (comprising modern-day Iran and parts of Azerbaijan and Turkey).

Most of the Golden Horde (northwestern sector of Mongol Empire – see Mongol Invasion of China) converted to Islam in the 13th century. Although the Ilkhanate abandoned Sunni Islam for Shi’a Sufism, Buddhism was also an important religion there until the empire collapsed in 1335.

Kublai Khan’s conversion to Buddhism (although he was equally tolerant of Daoism and Islam) resulted in its spread across the eastern steppes. The Uighurs, however, abandoned Buddhism for Islam. Most of Transoxiana also became Muslim.

Thanks to improvements in Silk Road security, it now became possible for European Christians to send envoys to Muslim courts for the first time, while Chinese porcelain became widely traded across the Muslim world. There was a simultaneous expansion in sea routes connecting Europe.

China shared their knowledge of block printing (invented under the Song Dynasty) with the Ilkhans, who used it to produce paper money. Under Kublai Khan’s Yuan Dynasty, gunpowder technology (discovered under the Han Dynasty) also spread across the steppes and into Europe.

This would be the first major eastern technology to take hold in Europe, leading the English to invent the cannon in the mid-14th century and hand held small arms in the 17th century. It was thanks to these technologies that they conquered the world over the next two centuries.

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*Russian historians refer to the Pax Mongolica as the Mongol Yoke, owing to the massive slaughter of civilians during their conquest of the Russian principalities. 500,000 total were either killed or died of exposure and starvation (after the Mongols destroyed their homes and crops).

**Harl briefly discusses the Venetian explorer Marco Polo who traveled to China via the Silk Road in 1271 and served 23 years in Kublai Khan’s court. Because there are no references to the explorer in Chinese sources, Harl believes he likely served as a minor civil servant and exaggerated his role in his writings. His book The Travels of Marco Polo inspired Columbus’s voyage to the new world.

The film can be viewed with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5694984/5695051

Airbrushed From History: The Founding of Russia, the Islamic Role in the European Renaissance, Mali, and Genghis Khan’s Pax Mongolica

History of the World Part 4 – The Middle Ages

BBC (2018)

Film Review

Episode 4 is my favorite as covers numerous topics airbrushed out of mainstream history textbooks.

It begins with the founding of the city-state of Kiev by Oleg of the Viking Russ tribe in 882 AD and his domination of the Dnieper River and the Black Sea and East-West trade out of Constantinople. Sixty years later, the King of Kiev Vladimir the Great would adopt the orthodox Christianity practiced in the Byzantine Empire.

The film goes on to describe the flourishing classical (Greek and Roman) learning in the Islamic Empires urban centers, particularly Cordova (in modern day Spain) and Bukhara (in modern day Uzbekistan).

A substantial portion of this episode focuses on the conquest of the largest land empire ever in the 12th and 13th century AD by the Mongol Genghis Khan. His main legacy was Pax Mongolica, which led to the reopening of the Silk Road, restoring land-based trade between Europe and Asia. This would lead to Venetian Marco Polo’s famous visit to China in 1275 AD, where he served 12 years as special advisor to the Mongol Chinese Emperor Kubla Khan.

The last empire discussed is the vast African empire of Mali, which was unknown to the western world until the emperor Mansa Musa (a devout Muslim) arrived in Cairo in 1324 with 60,000 followers. They were on a 2,000 mile pilgrimage to Mecca.

The film finishes by exploring the role of Muslim scholarship in the revival of ancient Greek and Roman knowledge in the Italian city states – and ultimately the European Renaissance. It uses as an example of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous fresco The Last Supper. The latter incorporates the laws of perspective, largely based on Muslim innovations in math and geometry, and the knowledge of human anatomy the Muslims inherited from the ancient Greeks.