This attractively illustrated collection of forty papers was designed to accompany the exhibition Genghis Khan by presenting a scholarly treatment not merely of the Mongol conqueror's career, but also of the history and culture of the empire that he founded and its longer-term legacy. By and large, it succeeds admirably. Following a comprehensive introduction (“Genghis Khan: Empire and Legacy”) by William Fitzhugh, the volume is divided into five sections: (I) “Before Genghis: Lands and Peoples of Mongolia,” (II) “Genghis [sic] Times,” (III) “The Mongolian Western Empire,” (IV) “Kublai Khan and Yuan China,” and (V) “Genghis Khan's Legacy.” There is a rich diversity of approaches: a number of both Mongolian and Japanese scholars appear among the contributors, while archaeologists and anthropologists are well represented alongside historians. Each of the papers brings to its theme a valuable expertise; some of them quite simply furnish a splendid overview of the narrative history and of the associated problems and debates.
A number of papers might be said to provide the volume with its chronological spine: “Precursor to Empire: Early Cultures and Prehistoric Peoples” (Honeychurch, Fitzhugh, and Chunag Amartuvshin, pp. 75–83); “Empire Building before the Mongols” (Jonathan K. Skaff and Honeychurch, pp. 85–89); “Genghis Khan Emerges” (senbike Togan, pp. 91–95); “Genghis Khan” (Rossabi, pp. 99–109); “Xi Xia: The First Mongol Conquest” (Ruth W. Dunnell, pp. 153–59); “The Mongolian Western Empire” (David Morgan, pp. 163–70); “The Golden Horde and Russia” (Daniel C. Waugh, pp. 173–79); and “The Vision in the Dream: Kublai Khan and the Conquest of China” (Rossabi, pp. 203–16). The Chaghadayid khanate in Central Asia is thus the only one of the four polities into which the empire fragmented in the 1260s that is not covered here—understandably, perhaps, given the notorious lack of sources.
Far outweighing that omission, however, are the numerous essays embracing matters as diverse as the principal primary sources (Paul Kahn introducing the Secret History of the Mongols; David Morgan on Rashid al-Din); travelers between the empire and the lands that contrived to remain outside it (Morgan on the Western European visitors Plano Carpini and Rubruck; Rossabi on Rabban Sauma and Marco Polo; Ross E. Dunn on Ibn Battuta); the claim to world rulership by commission from the Sky-God, Tenggeri (Shagdaryn Bira); Mongol cavalry warfare and tactics (Rossabi, Timothy May, and Fitzhugh on the battle of the Sajó River); Mongol women (Rossabi); and cultural syntheses fostered within the empire (François Louis on Chinese influences on Mongol culture under the Yüan; William J. Vogelsang on Chinese influence on Iranian art under the Ilkhanids). There are even close studies of Kublai's failed attempts at the conquest of Japan (James P. Delgado, Randall J. Sasaki, and Kenzo Hayashida) and of the relations between the Great Khans in China and the client kingdom of Koryŏ in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (George L. Kallander).
Several papers deal with archaeological research: on ancient cities of the steppe (J. Daniel Rogers); on the ruins at Avraga (Noriyuki Shiraishi); on Kharakorum (Ulambayar Erdenebat and Ernst Pohl; Hans-Georg Hüttel); on the material culture of the Golden Horde territories (Mark G. Kramarovsky); on the mummies discovered in the Hets Mountain Cave (Bruno Frohlich, Tsend Amgalantugs, David R. Hunt, Janine Hinton, and Erdene Batshatar); and on Mongolia's cave burials (Erdenebat).
The discrete section on the conqueror's legacy, which begins with “Mongolia from Empire to Republic, 1400 to 1921” (Pamela K. Crossley, pp. 265–71), includes also Shagdaryn Bira on Buddhism in Mongolia and Theodore G. Schurr on the genetic legacy of Chinggis Khan, and concludes with surveys of the vicissitudes undergone by the conqueror both in the Western popular imagination (Peter K. Marsh and Myagmar Saruul-Erdene) and at the hands of the various regimes of twentieth-century Mongolia (Nomin Lkhagvasuren).
One can certainly take issue with some of the assertions made (even discounting the claim, in a foreword by the Mongolian ambassador to the United States, that Chinggis Khan's achievements justify his selection as “The Man of the Second Millennium”). I˙senbike Togan's statement, for instance, that with the end of the empire a century and a half after Chinggis Khan, “the same groups” (i.e., the constituent tribes absorbed within the Mongols' ranks at an early date) “re-emerged as steppe tribes once again, mostly under their old names” (p. 94), flies in the face of the evidence. Although the tribal affiliations of many of the imperial elite were by no means forgotten, the prominent “ethnic” elements that had emerged in Ilkhanid Iran or in Chaghadayid Transoxiana by the mid- to late fourteenth century were new formations, born of Chinggis Khan's dispersal of most of the tribes among new military units; significantly, they derived their name from an erstwhile Mongol commander (the Ughanis, the Yasa'uris) or from the levying process that had brought them into being (the Je'ün-i Qurban). There are also a few irritating slips: the occasional abridgement of Rashid al-Din's name as “al-Din” (pp. 33, 34, and a caption at p. 107); some glaring typos (“Rashi al-Din” in the heading at p. 170; “Bulgurs” in the index). Yet these are minor gripes. This volume is a welcome addition to the burgeoning literature on the Mongol Empire; we have good reason to be grateful to its editors and contributors.
