Episode 19 – The Tangut Wars (Part 1)
Hello and welcome to the notes for Episode 19: The Tangut Wars – part 1.
Let’s start by saying that this has been one hell of a ride.
I was planning on having the episode ready for the start of August but made an error with the master copy and had to re-record. Whilst incredibly frustrating at the time, this ended up being beneficial because I was dissatisfied with the way the episode presented so was able to tweak and rewrite parts of it; I am much more pleased with the final result.
The other big delay to the publication of the episode was the amount of additional data I ended up looking at during the research process. I had assumed that the historical context I had written up years ago only needed the addition of material relating to the campaigns themselves; I did not expect to end up looking at climate or topographic data, nor spend a literal month using GIS to trace medieval walls systems across north-western China. I’ve genuinely had a blast!
Apart from having too much fun looking into it, one reason I persisted with my investigations into this additional data was that I felt that its omission would remove a good deal of important context from the campaigns.
As noted in the episode, the only secondary source I had/have found which considered the reasons behind the Mongol invasion of Da Xia was H Desmond Martin’s article which was written in 1942. The problem with this article, and many accounts about the Mongol conquests, is that they are written from a position which sees the Mongol conquests as an inevitability because they have already happened rather looking for the reasons which explains why they happened. One of the aims of the Mongol Empire Podcast has always been to ask the question ‘why?’, and my research raised a number of questions which I had been unable to find a satisfactory answer to in the sources:
- Why did the attacks happen? What motivated Temujin/Chinggis Khan to launch multiple campaigns against a state with which there is no evidence he had any direct interaction with.
- What was the frontier zone between the steppe and Tangut state like? Was there a physical barrier or was it a fuzzy ephemeral region where Tangut control gradually faded away.
- How do these campaigns relate to the other campaigns going on during this period?
With the additional data I’ve brought into these episodes I feel that I’ve been able to make a good go at answering these questions – and I don’t believe my answers are too implausible, but please send corrections to the usual email address (corey@mongolempirepodcast.com)!
As noted in the episode, this is a two parter purely because the running time would have been well over two hours; I tried it as a single episode but lost the will to live after recording it and then needing to edit it. So Episode 19 contains a history of Da Xia and the raids of 1205 and 1207; Episode 20 will look at the invasion of 1209 and all the archaeological bits.
This episode write up is the first of multiple posts about the Tangut wars and it includes the bibliography of works (including Dr Donald Sturgeon’s Chinese Text Project at http://ctext.org) used to make both episodes. Other posts will show the geography of the region, provide a brief history of Da Xia and a transcript and map of the two campaigns discussed in this episode.
If you are looking to fill the gap between episode 19 and episode 20 why not check out Ferenc’s excellent History of the Hungarians podcast. He is following the history of his people from steppe origins to influential eastern European power. Ferenc recently covered the 1241 Battle of Muhi where the Mongols defeated King Bela and I particularly enjoyed the Hungarian perspective he provided on that event. It’s an extremely enjoyable podcast about another fascinating group of people so why not check it out!
That’s all from me this month, so until next time, thanks for listening!
Contact me: corey@mongolempirepodcast.com
Bibliography for Episodes 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. 2006 (1994). 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).