¹ The earliest surviving Arabic account of the conquest is the Futuh al- Buldan of al-Baladhuri, who died in 892: Eng. tr. Hitti & Murgotten, The Origins of the Islamic State, 2 vols., New York, 1916-24.

² L. Caetani, Studi di storia orientale, Milan, 1, 1911, "L'Arabia preistorica e il progressivo essiccamento della terra." C. H. Becker, Islamstudien, Leipzig, 1, 1924, "Der Islam als Problem" (Reprint of an article published in 1910).

³ "Islamic ideology alone gave the Arabs that outward-looking attitude which enabled them to become sufficiently united to defeat the Byzantine and Persian empires. Many of them may have been concerned chiefly with booty for themselves. But men who were merely raiders out for booty could not have held together as the Arabs did." W. Montgomery Watt, "Economic and Social Aspects of the Origin of Islam," Islamic Quarterly, 1, 1954.

⁴ The most remarkable of recent investigations into the origins of Islam have been carried out by Dr. W. M. Watt in his two studies, Muhammad in Mecca (Oxford, 1953) and Muhammad in Medina (Oxford, 1956), wherein he strives to explain the Prophet's success as a response to a total social situation, the new religion being specially adapted to a society changing from a nomadic to a mercantile economy. Against the charge of neo-Marxism brought against him by G.-H. Bousquet he has defended himself in the article cited above. Bousquet himself seems to play down unduly the non-religious elements, in his "Observations sur la nature et les causes de la conquête arabe," Studia Islamica, 6, 1956, for which he has been criticized by M. Rodinson, "The Life of Muhammad and the Sociological Problem of the Beginnings of Islam," Diogenes, No. 20, 1957. See Rodinson's summary of the controversy in his "Bilan des études mohammadiennes," Revue historique, 229, 1963.

The conquests themselves have not yet been adequately studied from the socio-religious standpoint. If and when this work is undertaken, the comparison made by Eduard Meyer in 1912 between Islam and Mormonism could perhaps be pursued further. The historical circumstances of mid-nineteenth century America prevented a great upsurge of conquest on the part of the Mormons, who could only ride forth (a new Hijra!) and colonize Utah. But the Mormon trek to the West is unthinkable without Muhammad and the Koran.

⁵ On the ancient religion of the Asian steppes, see J.-P. Roux, "Tängri. Essai sur le ciel-dieu des peuples altaïques," Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, 149-150, 1956.

⁶ P. Pelliot, "Neuf notes sur des questions d'Asie Centrale," T'oung Pao, 26, 1929. Cf. J.-P. Roux, "La religion des Turcs de l'Orkhon des VII^e et VIII^e siècles," Rev. de l'Hist. des Relig., 161, 1962.

⁷ V. Thomsen, Inscriptions de l'Orkhon, Helsingfors, 1896, p. 97.

⁸ See O. Turan, "The Ideal of World Domination among the Medieval Turks," Studia Islamica, 4, 1955. The khagan told the Byzantine envoys in 568 that the spirits of his ancestors had revealed to him that it was time for his people "to invade the whole world." Chronique de Michel le Syrien, tr. Chabot, Paris, 1905, 3, 150.

⁹ N. Pallisen, "Die alte Religion der Mongolen," Numen, 3, 1956. See also the supplementary volume (London, 1927) of Howorth's History of the Mongols.

¹⁰ On the Yasa, see V. A. Riasanovsky, Fundamental Principles of Mongol Law, Tientsin, 1937, where all the relevant texts are translated and commented on, and G. Vernadsky, "The Scope and Content of Chingis Khan's Yasa," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 3, 1938.

¹¹ Gregory of Akner, A History of the Nation of the Archers, tr. Blake & Frye, Harvard, 1954, c. 2.

¹² The surviving fragments of the bilik are collected in Riasanovsky, cited above.

¹³ On the cult of Chingis, see the article by Pallisen, cited above, R. A. Rupen, "Mongolian Nationalism," Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, 45, 1958; C. R. Bawden, "Some Recent Work in Mongolian Studies," Bulletin of the School of Oriental & African Studies, 1960, and the reports of modern travel lers in Mongolia, e.g. Henning Haslund, Mongolian Journey, Eng. tr. 1949, p. 119.

¹⁴ A. N. Poliak, "The Influence of Chingis Khan's Yasa upon the General Organization of the Mamluk State," Bulletin of the School of Oriental & African Studies, 1941.

¹⁵ The imperial edicts and letters of the Mongol Khans have been closely scrutinized since Abel-Rémusat published his great pioneer study, "Les relations politiques des princes chrétiens avec les empereurs mongols," in the Mémoires of the French Academy of Inscriptions, tom. 6 & 7, 1822-24. See P. Pelliot, "Les Mongols et la Papauté," Revue de l'Orient chrétien, 23, 24, 1922-24; W. Kotwicz, "Formules initiales des documents mongols aux XIII^e et XIV^e siècles," Rocznik Orjentalistyczny, 10, 1934; and E. Voegelin, "The Mongol Orders of Submission to the European Powers," Byzantion, 15, 1941. The most accessible and accurate translations are in C. Dawson (ed.), The Mongol Mission, London, 1955. The text of the Mongol demand for surrender addressed to the Mamluks of Egypt by Hulegu in 1260 is given in Maqrizi, tr. Quatremère, Histoire des sultans Mamelouks, Paris, 1837, 1, 101.

¹⁶ W. Kotwicz, "Les Mongols, promoteurs de l'idée de paix universelle," Rocznik Orjent, 16, 1950. For Tengri as a war god, see the article by Roux cited in note 5.

¹⁷ See the article "Omar b. al-Khattab" in the Enc. of Islam, and the references cited therein.

¹⁸ For the different "layers" of steppe society, see Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China, 2nd ed., Boston, 1951, part 1.

¹⁹ See G. Vernadsky, "Notes on the History of the Uighurs," Journal of the American Oriental Society, 56, 1936.

²⁰ P. Pelliot, "Les systèmes d'écriture en usage chez les anciens Mongols," Asia Major, 2, 1925.

²¹ See the biographies of these persons collected from the Chinese sources in Abel-Rémusat, Nouveaux Mélanges Asiatiques, Paris, 2, 1829.

²² It may be noted here that the social and economic background of the Mongol conquests still awaits detailed investigation. The first serious studies were made by the great Russian orientalists of the last generation, V. V. Barthold and B. J. Vladimirtsov. As early as 1896 Barthold detected a class conflict in late twelfth century Mongolia between the nomad aristocracy (to which Chingis belonged) and the ordinary tribesmen, and saw in Jamuka, the chief of the Borjigin clan, the friend and later the rival and victim of Chingis, a champion of democracy against the nobles. See his Four Studies on the History of Central Asia, Leiden, 1, 1956, Eng. tr. p. 32. Vladimirtsov, while not accepting this, argued in his life of Chingis (Eng. tr. 1930) and his study of Mongol society (Fr. tr. Le régime social des Mongols, 1948) that the old clan community was being broken up and replaced by what he called "feudal nomadism." This interpretation was for a time generally accepted by Soviet historians, e.g. Grekof and Yakubovsky in their study of the Golden Horde (Fr. tr. La Horde d'Or, 1939), but has been sharply attacked by L. Krader, "Feudalism and the Tartar Policy of the Middle Ages," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1, 1958, who points out the total absence of a lord-serf relationship among the Mongols, and according to A. M. Belenitsky, "Les Mongols et l'Asie Centrale," Journal of World History, 5, 1960, has now been abandoned by Soviet scholars themselves, who have decided that a nomad economy cannot be purely feudal and define the social relations of thirteenth century Mongolia as "semi-feudal, semi-patri archal." Cf. Owen Lattimore, "The Social History of Mongol Nomadism," in Historians of China and Japan (ed. Beasley & Pulleyblank), London, 1961.

²³ D'Ohsson, Histoire des Mongols, The Hague, 1834, 1, 290.

²⁴ Chingis was alleged to have warned his people against this. "After us the descendants of our clan will wear gold-embroidered garments, eat rich and sweet food, ride fine horses, and embrace beautiful women, but they will not say they owe all this to their fathers and they will forget us and those great times." Quoted from the bilik in Riasanovsky, op. cit., p. 88.

²⁵ "Il ne plaça jamais aucun Chinois dans le ministère, et il n'eut pas pour ministres d'état que des étrangers qu'il sçut choisir avec discernement… Plusieurs Chinois, gens de lettres et tres-habiles qui vivoient à la cour de Houpilai han (sic), pouvoient rendre à ce prince les plus grands services dans le gouver nement de ses états s'ils en eussent été chargés, mais on ne leur confia que des emplois subalternes." De Mailla, Histoire générale de la Chine, tom. 9, Paris, 1779, p. 460, translating the annals of the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty. A good critical study of the life and reign of Kubilai is much to be desired. Odd that, despite Marco Polo (and Coleridge!), no biography of this great ruler appears to exist in any European language.

²⁶ Though Marco Polo governed a Chinese city for three years, he seems to have been ignorant of the Chinese language. Yule-Cordier, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, London, 1903, 1, 29, note.

²⁷ For Mongol rule in Persia, see B. Spuler, Die Mongolen in Iran, 2nd. ed. Berlin, 1955, and Ann S. K. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia, London, 1953, c. 4. The most valuable contemporary sources are Juwaini, tr. Boyle, The History of the World Conqueror, 2 vols. Manchester, 1958, and Rashid al-Din, tr. Quatremère, Histoire des Mongols de la Perse, Paris, 1836.

²⁸ The literature on Mongol China in European languages is depressingly meagre. The only important monograph in English is H. F. Schurmann, Economic Structure of the Yüan Dynasty, Camb., Mass. 1956, a translation of and commentary on two chapters on economic and financial matters in the Yüan shih, the official history of the dynasty. Some idea of social conditions in China under Mongol rule may be gathered from the notebooks and jottings of one Yang yü, a scholar official who died in 1361, translated by H. Franke as Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte Chinas unter der Mongolenherrschaft, Wiesbaden, 1956. The civil service examinations in the Confucian classics were revived in 1313; see H. Franke, "Could the Mongol Emperors read and write Chinese?" Asia Major, new series, 1953. Some useful indications of the way Mongol policies and practices in China had been anticipated by earlier nomad invaders, notably the Ch'i-tan (Liao), are given in K. A. Wittfogel and Feng Chia-sheng, "History of Chinese Society, Liao 907-1125," Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 36, Philadelphia, 1949, especially the "general introduction," pp. 1-35.

²⁹ Much material relating to the religious situation in Central Asia in the Mongol age is contained in E. Bretschneider, Medieval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources, 2 vols., London, 1888, and Yule-Cordier, Cathay & the Way Thither, Hakluyt Society, 4 vols., London, 1913-16.

³⁰ On this important Christian people, whose chief was almost certainly the original "Prester John," see D. M. Dunlop, "The Keraits," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 11, 1943-46.

³¹ For the Nestorian Church in Asia, see P. Pelliot, "Chrétiens d'Asie Centrale et d'Extrême-Orient," T'oung Pao, 15, 1914; Wallis Budge, The Monks of Kublai Khan, London, 1928; A. C. Moule, Christians in China before 1550, London, 1930 (a most valuable collection of source-material); and L. E. Browne, The Eclipse of Christianity in Asia, Cambridge, 1933.

³² The narratives of John of Plan Carpini and William of Rubruck are available in the Hakluyt series, tr. W. W. Rockhill, London, 1900, that of Friar Odoric in Cathay & the Way Thither, vol. 2, 1913.

³³ See the account of this interview in A. Waley, Ch'ang Ch'un, Travels of an Alchemist, London, 1931.

³⁴ William of Rubruck, tr. Rockhill, p. 235.

³⁵ The unpopularity of Mongol rule in China and Persia was accentuated by the extortion and corruption of their fiscal agents. The claim of Soviet historians that the peasant masses were reduced to serfdom under the Khan would seem to be substantiated at least as far as Persia is concerned. See the evidence collected by Lambton, op. cit., who notes that owing to the Mongol policy of exempting clergy and religious officials of every creed from taxation, the qadis prospered, merged with the landlord class, and ceased to fill their former role as mediators between the people and the government. For fiscal maladministration in Mongol China, see de Mailla, op. cit., pp. 401-461 (reign of Kubilai). For peasant revolts in the ex-Sung provinces, see Schurmann, Economic Structure, and his article, "Mongol Tributary Practices," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 19, 1956.

³⁶ Yule-Cordier, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, 1, pp. 348-349, note.

³⁷ The conversion of the Mongol leadership in Persia to Islam was clearly prompted by the desire to win popular support against the Mamluks of Egypt (who since Ain Jalut had posed as champions of Islam against the wicked "pagans" who had destroyed the Caliphate) and the Golden Horde, the Il-Khans' rivals for the domination of the western half of the Mongol Empire.

³⁸ It may be asked why the Golden Horde did not turn Christian and adopt Byzantine-Slav culture, holding sway as it did over Orthodox Russia? To this it may be replied that Russia was a marginal land so far as the Horde was concerned, and the heart of the khanate (the lower Volga) was in a Turkish-speaking region, already partly Islamized before the Mongol invasion. Even so, permanent con version to Islam was delayed here longer than elsewhere in the Mongol West. Batu's son Sartak is said to have been baptized, and though his uncle Berke, who succeded him in 1257, was strongly pro-Muslim, the ruling house was not finally converted to Islam till the reign of Ozbeg (1312-1340). The close relationship between the Horde and Mamluk Egypt, based on common hostility to the Il-Khans of Persia, almost certainly tipped the balance against Christianity. See R. Grousset, L'Empire des Steppes, 4th. ed., Paris, 1952, pp. 470-483.

³⁹ See Arthur Waley's translation, The Secret History of the Mongols and Other Pieces, London, 1963. Professor Cleaves of Harvard is preparing a new critical edition and translation.

⁴⁰ The conversion of the Mongols to Lamaist Buddhism in the late sixteenth century produced a faint literary renaissance, and a few mediocre chronicles were composed in the next age. See C. Ž. Žamcarano, "The Mongol Chronicles of the Seventeenth Century," Göttinger Asiatische Forschungen, Wiesbaden, 3, 1955.

⁴¹ See H. Desmond Martin, "The Mongol Army," Journal of the Royal Asia tic Society, 1943.

⁴² See, however the remarks on Mongol and Turkish loan-words in Persian in G. Doerfer, "Prolegomena zu einer Untersuchung der altaischen Lehnwörter im Neupersischen," Central Asiatic Journal, 5, 1959-60.

⁴³ P. Pelliot. "Notes sur l'histoire de la Horde d'Or." Œuvres posthumes, 1, Paris, 1949, pp. 164-165. Guyuk's letter to Innocent IV in 1246 was written in Persian, the original being found in the Vatican archivies in 1920. Marco Polo used Persian in China, but not Chinese! Persian continued to be studied in China even under the Ming dynasty.

⁴⁴ W. Barthold, Turkestan down to the Mongol Invasion, Eng. tr. 1958, p. 461.

⁴⁵ On the spread of the Arabic language, see A. N. Poliak, "L'Arabisation de l'Orient sémitique," Revues des Etudes Islamiques, 12, 1938.

⁴⁶ William of Rubruck, who strikes one as an intelligent and relatively unprejudiced observer, gives a higly unfavorable account of the Nestorian clergy he met at Kara-korum whom he portrays as ignorant and immoral. On the other hand, the life of the Nestorian missionary Rabban Sauma (Eng. tr. Walllis Budge, The Monks of Kublai Khan), who visited Europe at the close of the thirteenth century, affords a brighter picture of his community. A good critical study of Nestorianism in medieval Asia is urgently needed.

⁴⁷ See the section in Ibn Khaldun's Muquaddimah (Eng. tr. London, 1958, vol. 1, pp. 305-306) entitled: "Arabs can obtain royal authority only by making use of some religious colouring, such as prophecy or sainthood, or some great religious event in general."