The Caucasus came into orbit of Mongol conquests in 1220. The first expedition to the West fell on the kingdom of Georgia and Armenia in the autumn of that year after troops led by generals Jebe and Sübeʾetei had passed Tabriz and the Mughan plain. The final conquest of Caucasia occurred more than a decade later when the successors of Chinggis Khan carried on the vast plan of “universal” submission. In a few years, the Mongols subdued the entire region, from south to north, then turned against Rus’ and its efficient commercial system. By 1240 and within a few years, Eastern and Central Europe also experienced the military effectiveness of these unknown people. Within the next two decades, Chinggis Khan’s successors established the largest empire that has ever existed in human history, an expanse of land that from the borders of Western Latinity covered the whole of continental Asia without interruption.
For decades the Mongols have represented in Western historiography a fascinating but distant event, interesting but marginal.1 The violent birth of the empire carried out by the successors of Chinggis Khan has been confined in an exotic space told by travelers whose reliability has often been questioned. The thorough study of that event brings to light a much more complex and close reality. The formation of the Mongol empire had enormous consequences on the history of the Middle Ages; direct and immediate implications in the lands where it physically fell, and mediated and dilated consequences in time where the armies of Genghis Khan and his successors did not arrive. The Caucasus, in particular, has always represented a frontier, a point of contact between peoples, a hinge between cultures.2 In order to conquer Eastern Europe, the Mongols passed through the Caucasus and penetrated Asia Minor. Sweeping away the last resistance of the Seljuk power that had installed itself there, they preyed on the Byzantine Empire’s weakness, exhausted by the disastrous Fourth Crusade of the early thirteenth century.
The Caucasus represents a decisive political and social junction between the West and Asia and one of the most sensitive historical links between Christianity and Islam. This book is the English version of a monograph that I published in Italian years ago. I found it necessary to reflect further on the origin of organized power structures at the root of the present situation in that region. In the last two decades and the last one, in particular, scholars have given growing attention to the history of the Mongols. Research has multiplied in Europe, in the United States, in Russia, and in all the countries directly or indirectly related to the empire created by Chinggis Khan. Many works have been relegated to the “local” dimension in the past years because they are written in languages difficult to access: Hungarian to Persian, Russian to Chinese. However, since the beginning of this century, we are witnessing a robust effort to translate these sources into English and an intense research program whose results are also increasingly published in English, thus accessible to the international scientific community. The list of initiatives that have stimulated academic reflection on this subject would be very long. See the bibliography, widely reviewed and updated, for a complete overview of publications. Yet, it is worthwhile to dwell on initiatives that, more than others, have made a fundamental contribution to the revision of the themes and problems connected to the constitution, life, and decline of the Mongol Empire. In 2003, thanks to the initiative of Nicola Di Cosmo, The Inner Asian Library was born, a prestigious series that has now reached 40 volumes published by Brill. With the same publisher, since 2007, Florin Curta is editing the series East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, which has now reached more than 70 volumes.
One of the turning points in the field of Mongolian studies is undoubtedly the work of Thomas T. Allsen. In 2001, the American scholar published Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia.3 Today, the book is a watershed in the research dedicated to the Mongols and represents the methodological reference for all those who intend to undertake this line of study. The novelty introduced by Allsen was an asymmetrical investigation, i.e., the study of Mongol history and power culture not from the perspective of those who suffered their domination but from an internal perspective. Allsen analyzed the available sources and developed a line of work undertaken in the sixties of the twentieth century by the great French turcologist Jean-Paul Roux for the religious and ideological aspect with his La mort chez les peuples altaïques.4 It took a few years for Allsen’s analysis to be elaborated and finally absorbed by the new generation of scholars. Nevertheless, within a decade, the influence of the American historian’s work was felt. Many books were influenced by Allsen’s method in the early 2000s; the reader will find ample references both in the text and in the bibliography. Another pioneering study was that of Peter Jackson, who in 2005 published The Mongols and the West (1221–1410),5 and showed how close the Mongol experience was to the Christian West and how the opening of international transit routes – itself a consequence of the establishment of a coherent political power extended over two continents – was decisive for the development of a new commercial season for Europe. Jackson’s work completed the investigation begun many years earlier by Igor De Rachewiltz with his Papal envoys to the Great Khans.6
A further step forward in Mongolian history was taken in 2009 when Nicola Di Cosmo, Allen J. Frank, and Peter B. Golden edited The Cambridge History of Inner Asia. The Chinggisid Age,7 a volume in which the historical synthesis and the depth of investigation merged perfectly, giving scholars an indispensable tool for this field of study. With regard more specifically to the Caucasus, it is worth mentioning the beautiful book published in 2011 by the Mongolian Armenian historian Bayarsaikhan Dashdondog: The Mongol and the Armenians (1220–1335),8 thus establishing a fundamental point of reference for studies in this field. An expert historian and a profound connoisseur of the medieval Caucasus, B. Dashdondog has carried out extensive research on Armenian sources, presenting a very complex local reality during the Mongol domination and shedding light on the relationship between the indigenous ruling class and the new rulers. In addition to the quality of the research, Dashdondong’s merit was to make available in English sources otherwise difficult to access. Finally, however, we should not forget the powerful work of “indirect” translation of Armenian authors undertaken since the 1980’s by the Armenianist Robert Bedrosian, whose texts are all available online.
Since 2012 the Hebrew University, in which Michal Biran and Reuven Amitai, two of the most prominent scholars of Mongolian history, have managed a very ambitious project whose results are already tangible. Mobility, Empire, and Cross-Cultural Contacts in Mongol Eurasia is a container that has converged initiatives of great importance: international conferences, publications, seminars, databases, workshops, and the upcoming Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire. In 2012, in Wiesbaden, a miscellaneous volume explicitly dedicated to Mongols and the Caucasus was published, demonstrating that this field of study has a growing interest.9
In light of the many publications and the research that scholars from all over the world are still carrying out in their respective departments, I thought it appropriate to revise the text of this book. Today, much more than in the past, specialists understand that only teamwork and an interdisciplinary approach can give noticeable results on such a vast and complex historical experience as the Mongol Empire. New technologies have made it possible to broaden the relationships between scholars who, only a few years ago, would have had great difficulty in getting to know one another. International collaborations are increasing every year, and the relationships between academics of different disciplines, languages, and cultures are growing.
A traditional view of European history as detached from Asia is changing, fading, replaced by a more “integrated” idea of Middle Ages. The Caucasus was the contact zone of adjacent cultural, political, and economic spheres. Its history concerns the present. Today, more than ever, I believe it is necessary to look at this region with the gaze of those who want to understand, with the avidity to know better the history of men and cultures to which a double thread, fortunately, ties us together.
See on this the beautiful monograph of R. Minuti, Oriente barbarico.
Il caucaso. Cerniera fra culture.
Cambridge University Press 2001.
La mort (la survie) chez les peuples altaïques anciens et médiévaux d’après les documents écrits, Maisonneuve et Larose 1963. On the importance of Allsen’s work and the status of Mongol studies, see Biran, “The Mongol Empire,” 1021–1033.
Taylor and Francis (Repr. Routledge 2014). In 2107, Jackson published The Mongols in the Islamic World.
Stanford 1971. The fundamental contribution of Igor De Rachewiltz to Mongol studies lays into the massive effort that gave birth to the most reliable edition and the most complete comment to the Secret History of the Mongols (paperback edition in 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2006).
Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Brill 2011.
Tuback, Vashalomidze and Zimmer, Caucasus/Der Kaukasus.