One day I will come up with a more imaginative titles for my episodes, but today is not that day.
Hello, and welcome to the write up for Episode 20, the episode concluding the Mongol campaigns in Da Xia. We pick up the story directly from where the last episode finished; Chinggis Khan is planning a new attack on the Tangut kingdom and this time it looks like conquest is on the cards.
This episode follows in the same vein as the previous one by asking why the Mongol leader decided that Da Xia was a good place to attack. The motivations identified in episode 19 appear, at first glance, to have less relevance; the Universal Khan claim does not seem applicable and the arid climate conditions which may have provoked the 1207 campaign have improved. This attack seems to be out of character for Mongol campaigns at this point – but was it really?
Also in this episode we use archaeological sources to look at the frontier zone between the Tanguts and Mongolia to flesh out Da Xia’s response to the invasion, and highlight that this campaign is not the clear-cut conquest it is often portrayed to be.
This post is the first of multiple posts linked to the 1209 campaign. A transcript of the key points of the episode can be found across multiple posts – Motivations, The Tangut Northern Border and The Invasion. The Tangut Northern Border includes a map I have created which shows the position of the wall and key infrastructure across the Gobi Desert region. The data for this has come from the Kovalev and Erdenebaatar, Storozum and Golan articles listed below, and also from countless hours of staring at various mapping services trying to spot hints of wall.
There is a post providing examples of the forts, enclosures and watch towers found supporting the wall, and also of Dawulan enclosure, which is just a stunning piece of engineering.
These two episodes have been some of the most fun to produce to date and have really required me to think outside the box to work out what took place.
As noted in the episode, my focus is now going to swing briefly to the imperial family because the focus on the main narrative has largely sidelined the supporting cast; and by 1211 the family of Chinggis Khan has grown considerably.
That’s it from me until episode 21 – so take care, and thanks for reading!
Bibliography for Episode 19 and 20
Primary Sources
Guangcheng, Wu. Xixia Shushi. Reprinted in Sturgeon, D. https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=995503&remap=gb, Xixia Shushi. Chinese Text Project. http://ctext.org.
- Juan 39
- Juan 40
Rashiduddin Fazullah. 1998. Jami’u’t-Tawarikh: Compendium of Chronicles. Translated by W.M. Thackston. Harvard University. 3 vols.
Song, Lian. Yuanshi. Reprinted in Sturgeon, D. https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=862257&remap=gb. Yuanshi. Chinese Text Project. http://ctext.org.
- Juan 1 Taizu
- Juan 149 Yelu Tuhua
- Juan 150 Yelu Ahai
The Secret History of the Mongols: the origin of Chingis Khan. 1998. Translated by Paul Kahn. Cheng & Tsui: Boston.
Secondary Sources
Atwood 2014. The First Mongol Contacts with the Tibetans. In Roberto Vitali (ed.) Trails of the Tibetan Tradition: Papers for Elliot Sperling. Amnye Machen Institute: Dharamshala, India, p21-46.
Buell, Paul. 1993. Yeh-lu Ahai (ca.1151-ca.1223), Yeh-lu T’u-hua (d.1231). In de Rachewiltz, I., Chan, Hok-lam., Hsiao, Ch’i-ch’ing., and Geier, P.W. (eds.) In the Service of the Khan: Eminent Personalities of the Early Mongol-Yuan Period (2 volumes). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, p112-121.
Dunnell, R.W. (1994) 2006. The Hsi Hsia. In Twitchett, D., Franke, H., and Fairbank, J.K. (eds.) The Cambridge History of China: Volume 6, Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368. Cambridge University Press, p154-214.
Dunnell, R.W. 2009. Translating History from Tangut Buddhist Texts. Academia Sinica, 22 (1), 41-78.
Dunnell, Ruth W. 1992. Locating the Tangut Military Establishment: Uraqai (Wulahai) and the Heishui Zhenyan Army. Monumenta Serica, 40:1, 219-234
Galambos Imre. 2011. The northern neighbors of the Tangut [Les voisins du nord des Tanguts]. In: Cahiers de linguistique – Asie orientale, vol. 40 (1), pp. 73-108
Golan, Dan., Gideon Shelach-Lavi, Chunag Amartuvshin, Zhidong Zhang, Ido Wachtel, Jingchao Chen, Gantumur Angaragdulguun, Itay Lubel, Dor Heimberg, Mark Cavanagh, Micka Ullman and William Honeychurch. 2025. Exploring the Gobi Wall: Archaeology of a Large-Scale Medieval Frontier System in the Mongolian Desert. Land 14, 1087.
Hao, Zhixin., Wu, Maowei., Liu, Yang., Zhang, Xuezhen., and Zheng, Jingyun. 2020. Multi-scale temperature variations and their regional differences in China during the Medieval Climate Anomaly. Journal of Geographical Sciences, 30(1): 119-130.
Hu, N.K and Li, X. 2017. Historical ruins of remote sensing archaeology in arid desertified environment, northwestern China. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science 57: 1-6.
Kovalev, A.A. & Erdenebaatar, D. 2010. About Chinggis Khaan’s Wall in Mongolia. Nomadic Studies Bulletin 17: 28-33.
Kovalev, A.A. & Erdenebaatar, D. 2021. The northern border of the Tangut state, XiXia: according to the archaeological evidence and written sources. The Archaeological Journal of Kanazawa University 80: 49–77.
Martin, H. Desmond. 1942. The Mongol Wars with Hsi Hsia (1205–27). Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 74(3-4), 195–228.
Mote, F. W. 1999. Imperial China 900-1800. Harvard University Press.
Pederson, N. Hessl, Amy E., Baatarbileg, Nachin. Anchukaitis, Kevin J., and Nicola Di Cosmo. 2014. Pluvials, droughts, the Mongol Empire, and modern Mongolia. PNAS, 111(12): 4375-4379.
Shi, Jinbo. 2021. The Economy of Western Xia: A Study of 11th to 13th Century Tangut Records. Translated and Edited by Li Hansong. Brill: Leiden.
Storozum, Michael, Dan Golan, Ido Wachtel, Zhidong Zhang, Johannes S. Lotze and Gideon Shelach-Lavi. 2021. Mapping the Medieval Wall System of China and Mongolia: A Multi-Method Approach. Land 10 (997).