Jackson - The Mongols and the West, 1221-1405

THE MONGOLS AND THE WEST, 12211410

The Medieval World

Series editor: Julia Smith, University of St Andrews

Alfred the Great
Richard Abels

The Western Mediterranean Kingdom
David Abulafia

The Cathars
Malcolm Barber

The Godwins
Frank Barlow

Philip Augustus
Jim Bradbury

Medieval Canon Law
J.A. Brundage

Crime in Medieval Europe
Trevor Dean

Charles I of Anjou
Jean Dunbabin

The Age of Charles Martel
Paul Fouracre

Margery Kempe
A.E. Goodman

Bastard Feudalism
M. Hicks

The Formation of English Common Law
John Hudson

Cnut
K. Lawson

The Age of Robert Guiscard
Graham Loud

The English Church, 9401154
H.R. Loyn

Justinian
J. Moorhead

Ambrose
John Moorhead

The Reign of Richard Lionheart
Ralph Turner / Richard Heiser

The Welsh Princes
Roger Turvey

English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages
J. Ward

The Fourth Crusade
Michael Angold

The Mongols and the West
Peter Jackson

THE MONGOLS AND THE WEST, 12211410

PETER JACKSON

First published 2005 by Pearson Education Limited

Published 2014 by Routledge

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Copyright 2005, Taylor & Francis.

The right of Peter Jackson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-36896-5 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Jackson, Peter.

The Mongols and the west, 12211410 / Peter Jackson.

p. cm. (The medieval world)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0582368960

1. MongolsHistory. I. Title. II. Series.

DS19.J32 2005

951.025dc22

2004059429

Set in 10.5/13pt Galliard by 35

For Rebecca

CONTENTS

I n this timely book, Peter Jackson introduces us to the last great pulse of nomads from the inner Asian steppe to encounter the utterly different world of sedentary, urbanized European peoples. The military context of this story is a long front along the eastern fringe of late medieval Christendom, from Poland to the Crusader strongholds on the Syrian coast. Its cultural context is one of prejudice and curiosity stretching from Scotland to Japan, for this narrative of military encounters and diplomatic manoeuvring is set against a backdrop of fears of the unknown, rumours frequently apocalyptic and the details of everyday life which characterize one culture rather than another. In a fascinating exploration of the interactions between the Mongols and the Latin West, Professor Jackson invites the reader to follow Mongol armies west to Germany and to travel east to China with Christian missionaries, diplomats and traders, stopping at courts and camps at all points in between. This latest addition to the Longmans Medieval World series is thus a sustained reflection on what makes one culture, or civilization, different from another, and reminds us that the history of the European Middle Ages has a world historical context.

In the chapters which follow, we meet many famous men, real and imagined, who have excited the European imagination: Chinggis Khan, Temr (Tamerlane), Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus; Prester John, Sir John Mandeville, Gog and Magog. With skilful analysis, sensitive scholarship and wry humour, Jackson locates their actions or stories about their actions in a world characterized by the immense difficulty of long distance travel. It is a world of challenges: those facing nomads as they sought pasturage for their horses in the Syrian desert, the linguistic difficulties to be surmounted by Italian friars trying to preach Christianity to speakers of Turkish and Mongolian, the efforts of scholars in quiet European libraries trying to make sense of the limited information and mass of hearsay about the world beyond their direct experience. This is a story of the adjustments of reality to imagination and of imagination to reality on a vast geographical canvas, a story Peter Jackson tells with immense learning and deep humanity. I welcome it for that very reason.

Julia M.H. Smith

Three fortunate circumstances are responsible for the fact that this book has not taken rather longer to appear in print. The first is the enthusiastic response in 1997 of Andrew MacLennan, at that time History editor for Longman, to the information that I was contemplating a book on the Mongols and the Latin West. Andrews support at an early stage was instrumental in persuading me to undertake to write the book. I am also grateful to his successor, Heather MacCallum, for her sustained interest in the manuscript and for seeing the finished product into the first stages of publication.

Secondly, the Institute for Advanced Study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem offered me a Visiting Fellowship for six months in 2000, when I participated in a workshop on Turco-Mongolian Nomads and their relations with China and Iran, jointly chaired by Dr (now Professor) Reuven Amitai and Dr Michal Biran. The opportunity to work alongside colleagues in my own and closely related fields was invaluable, and my wife and I both still recall with warm appreciation the hospitable welcome we received in a Jerusalem that was then a happier place than it has become in more recent years.