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For some sixty years, commencing in 1260, the Mamluk state in Egypt and Syria was at war with the Ilkhanid Mongols based in Persia. This is the first comprehensive study of the political and military aspects of the early years of the war, the twenty-one-year period commencing with the battle of Ayn Jalut in Palestine in 1260 and ending in 1281 at the battle of Homs in northern Syria. Between these major confrontations, which resulted from Mongol invasions into Syria, the Mamluk-Ilkhanid struggle was continued in the manner of a 'cold war' with both sides involved in border skirmishes, diplomatic maneuvers, psychological warfare, ideological posturing, espionage and other forms of subterfuge. Here, as in the decisive battles, the Mamluks usually maintained the upper hand, establishing themselves as the major Muslim power at the time. Using primarily contemporary Arabic and Persian sources, Reuven Amitai-Preiss sheds new light on the confrontation, examining the war within the context of Ilkhanid/Mamluk relations with the Byzantine Empire, the Latin West and the crusading states, as well as with other Mongol states.
The Mongol Empire was founded by Chinggis Khan in the early thirteenth century. Within the span of two generations it embraced most of Asia. It left a lasting impact on this area and its people, which was often far from negative! The volume offers fresh perspectives on the Mongol Empire and its legacy. Various authors approach the matter from a variety of views, including political, military, social, cultural and intellectual. In doing so, they shed a new light on the Mongol Empire. This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.
The interaction between the Eurasian pastoral nomads - most famously the Mongols and Turks - and the surrounding sedentary societies is a major theme in world history. Nomads were not only raiders and conquerors, but also transmitted commodities, ideas, technologies and other cultural items. At the same time, their sedentary neighbours affected the nomads, in such aspects as religion, technology, and political culture. The essays in this volume use a broad comparative approach that highlights the multifarious nature of nomadic society and its changing relations with the sedentary world in the vicinity of China, Russia and the Middle East, from antiquity into the contemporary world.
The sixty year struggle (1260-1320) between the Mamluk Sultanate of Syria and Egypt and the Ilkhanate, the Mongol realm in Iran and the surrounding countries, had a profound impact on the region's ruling elites and the general population, as well as on neighboring countries and beyond. It is possible to speak of a thirteenth century world war: on one side were arrayed the Mamluks and the Mongol Golden Horde of southern Russia, at times Genoa and the Byzantine empire, while on the other side we find the Ilkhanate, the Venetians (albeit still trading with the Mamluks), the states of western Europe, the Papacy, the Armenians of both the Caucasus and Cilicia, and Georgia. To these we could add m...
This book is the first substantial study of Islamization in any part of Inner Asia from any perspective and the first to emphasize conversion narratives as important sources for understanding the dynamics of Islamization. Challenging the prevailing notions of the nature of Islam in Inner Asia, it explores how conversion to Islam was woven together with indigenous Inner Asian religious values and thereby incorporated as a central and defining element in popular discourse about communal origins and identity. The book traces the many echoes of a single conversion narrative through six centuries, the previously unknown recounting of the dramatic &"contest&" in which the khan &Özbek adopted Isla...
This collection of essays discusses the rich and varied tradition of history writing in mediaeval and early modern Egypt, providing new insights into the works and the lives and outlooks of their authors.
A new understanding of the transformation of Anatolia to a Muslim society in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries based on previously unpublished sources.
This book brings together a series of studies that deal with the impact of the Mongols in the eastern Muslim world. Their focus is the state established around 1260 by HÃ1/4legÃ1/4, grandson of Chinggis Khan, and the subjects covered include: the development of the land-tenure system; the title ilkhan; the use of Arabic sources for the history of the Ilkhanate; the eventual conversion of the Mongols to Islam; and - most prominently - the ongoing war with the Mamluk Sultanate to the west.
The nine essays in this book seek to answer the questions of what made a "frontier" between the ancient and modern eras, how people imagined their frontiers, and why historians have sometimes had very different ideas of what these frontiers were like. The collection spreads across much of Europe and Asia, familiar frontiers in Western Europe and around the Mediterranean Sea, and includes examples from China, Mesopotamia, and Lithuania. Ranging from the eighth to the seventeenth centuries, the essays challenge us to rethink our modern notions of frontiers as neat lines intended to divide one state from another because frontiers in the past were often far more complex.
An epic historical consideration of the Mongol conquest of Western Asia and the spread of Islam during the years of non-Muslim rule The Mongol conquest of the Islamic world began in the early thirteenth century when Genghis Khan and his warriors overran Central Asia and devastated much of Iran. Distinguished historian Peter Jackson offers a fresh and fascinating consideration of the years of infidel Mongol rule in Western Asia, drawing from an impressive array of primary sources as well as modern studies to demonstrate how Islam not only survived the savagery of the conquest, but spread throughout the empire. This unmatched study goes beyond the well-documented Mongol campaigns of massacre and devastation to explore different aspects of an immense imperial event that encompassed what is now Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Afghanistan, as well as Central Asia and parts of eastern Europe. It examines in depth the cultural consequences for the incorporated Islamic lands, the Muslim experience of Mongol sovereignty, and the conquerors’ eventual conversion to Islam.