This update comes a couple of days after the release of Episode 18, due to a rather hectic weekend where I decided to prioritise the actual podcast content rather than the supplementary material. Anyhoo, here we are and with the maps I have been promising since Episode 16. These are not the beautifully crafted GIS maps, which I would love to produce, but they are from two extremely reputable secondary sources and provide an outline of the political landscape of Mongolia, China and Central Asia during the 12th century – something just to help visualise where we are in the world with these three episodes.
The first map is taken from The Cambridge History of China: Vol 6 Alien Regimes and Border States 907 – 1368, edited by Herbert Franke and Denis Twitchett.
Fig. 1 The Steppe World, 1190. The Cambridge History of China: Vol 6 Alien Regimes and Border States 907 – 1368, edited by Herbert Franke and Denis Twitchett, p322.
The second is a map of Central Asia naming all of the key players in the region and the rough area of land they are believed to control. This has been taken from Yuri Bregel’s An Historical Atlas of Central Asia.
Fig. 2. Map 16 The Second half of the 12th Century. An Historical Atlas of Central Asia by Yuri Bregel, p35.
As noted at the end of the episode, we are finished with the Qirghiz, Oyirat, Uyghur and Qarluq for the time being and next time move on to Mongol relations with their southern neighbours, Xi Xia, also known to us as the Tangut. There are three campaigns that we will need to analyse, as well as the history of Xi Xia, and then the podcast will move on to the Mongol invasion of northern China.
I realised that I had not provided a list of sources used for Episodes 16-18, so this can be found below.
The only route to contact me now is via email, so if you want to get in touch this is the address you will need:
Until next time, take care and thanks for listening.
Bibliography for Episodes 16, 17 and 18
Asimov, M.S. and Bosworth, C. E. 1998. History of Central Asia, Vol. 4. UNESCO Publishing
Attwood, C. 2013. The Uyghur Stone: Archaeological revelations. In Curta, Florin and Maleon, Bogdan-Petru, The Steppe Land and the world beyond them: Studies in honor of Victor Spinei on his 70th birthday. Universitatii Alexandru Ioan Cuza, p315-344.
Atwood, C. 2017. Jochi and the Early Western Campaigns. In Morris Rossabi (ed.) How Mongolia Matters: War, Law, and Society. Brill: Leiden, p35-56.
Beckwith, Christopher I. 1987. The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia: A History of the Struggle for Great Power among Tibetans, Turks, Arabs, and Chinese during the Early Middle Ages. Princeton University Press.
Biran, M. 2005. The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History: between China and the Islamic World. Cambridge University Press.
Bregel, Yuri. 2003. An Historical Atlas of Central Asia. Brill: Leiden.
Bretschneider, Emil. [1888] 1967. Medieval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources. Routledge: London. 2 volumes.
Brose, Michael C. 2017. The Yenisei Kyrgyz from Early Times to the Mongol Conquest. In Hasan Celâl Güzel, C. Cem Oğuz and Osman Karatay (eds.), The Turks: 1 Early Ages, p480-488.
Buell, P D. 1992. Early Mongol expansion in Western Siberia and Turkestan (1207 – 1219): a reconstruction. Central Asiatic Journal 36 (1/2): 1-32.
Buell, Paul D. 2003. Historical Dictionary of the Mongol World Empire. Scarecrow Press: Oxford.
Drompp, Michael R. 1999. Breaking the Orkhon Tradition: Kirghiz Adherence to the Yenisei Region after A.D. 840. Journal of the American Oriental Society 119: 390-403.
Drompp, Michael R. 2005. Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History. Brill: Leiden.
Duturaeva, Dilnoze. 2022. Qarakhanid Roads to China: A History of Sino-Turkic Relations. Brill: Leiden.
Franke, Herbert and Twitchett, Denis (eds.). 1994. The Cambridge History of China: Volume 6 Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368. Cambridge University Press.
Golden, Peter B. 1992. An Introduction to History of the Turkic Peoples: Ethnogenesis and State-Formation in Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia and the Middle East. Otto Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden.
Juvaini, Ata-Malik. 1997. Genghis Khan: The History of the World-Conqueror. Translated by J.A. Boyle. Manchester University Press.
Kahn, Paul. 1998. The Secret History of the Mongols: the origin of Chingis Khan. Cheng & Tsui: Boston.
Mackerras, Colin. 1972. The Uighur Empire According to the T’ang Dynastic Histories: A Study in Sino-Uighur Relations 744-840. Australian National University Press: Canberra.
Moriyasu, Takao. 1999. The West Uighur Kingdom and Tun-huang around the 10th -11th Centuries. Lecture at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (BBAW) on the 10 May 1999.
Mote, F. W. 1999. Imperial China 900-1800. Harvard University Press.
Rashiduddin Fazullah. 1998. Jami’u’t-Tawarikh: Compendium of Chronicles. Translated by W.M. Thackston. Harvard University. 3 vols.