He who defends Mongols
Bob Lovell
Well, it seems that Byambaa Garid, our Mongolian in Australia is
soc.history.medieval's defender of the Mongol conquests. Let's see
what he has said. To paraphrase: the Russians, Persians, Chineese, and
other groups deserved what they got. I have a question. What did the
Russians, Persians, Chineese, and those other groups do to DESERVE
being conquered by a bunch of smelly, ruthless, and terroristic
barbarians? I think that the Mongols caused civilization in Europe,
China, and the other parts of Asia a big reversal, a couple of
hundreds years worth of reversal. Was it worth it? I don't think so.
Bob Lovell
Byambaa Garid
In article <5k8tv2$11...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
It is not honest to "paraphrase" without giving authentic quote. I said
that Sung empire outnumbered Mongols 100 to 1. Since Mongols did not had
any technological advantage over the Sung (in fact Sung had gunpowder
and MOngols did not), the only reason for Sung defeat was their criminal
incompetence in organising defence. Indeed, in this sense they well
deserved their defeat.
As for defense of Mongolian conquests:
1. Alexander the Great and Napoleon were in the same business as Genghis
Khan. However,the western conquerors are considered to be heroes,
Mongolian one is considered "smelly, ruthless, and terroristic
barbarian".This is clearly a racism,not that I am very surprised since
Jaskew and others had such a good time bashing Mongols here in such
expressions like "The world, in my opinion, would have been a much
better place with a lot fewer Mongols in it at any time between 221 BC
and 1945."
2."Caused civilisation in Europe,China,and the other parts of Asia a big
reversal"? Well,Europe part is certainly an exaggeration (though
probably case could be made that Hungary, Poland and Czech republic are
so poor now because of the Mongol raid in 1241, not conquest! Russians
do claim exactly that and I usually answer that if things did not get
better for 700 years probably Russians, not Mongols are to blame.Such
accusations have nothing to do with history, only a usual piece of
racism and desire to blame others for your own stupidity)
China would have such catastrophic disaster even without Mongols,simply
because of the cyclical nature of its history, as I pointed in my
article "The Horror that was China". No reversal of civilisation took
place in China simply because China is incapable of progress as cyclical
nature of its history implies(rather like ancient Egypt.Periods of Chaos
every couple of centuries and no change or progress to speak of)
As for other parts of Asia, what do you mean by that? Khalifate? It
started to die long before Mongol conquest, probably since 10th century
when it was captured by Deilem highlanders. Khalifate could only go down
with or without Mongols. Khoresm was destroyed,but Eastern Turkestan(now
Xinjiang) benefited from it. Instead of Samarkand and Bukhara, Kashgar
and Turfan became trade centers on the Silk Road. No "reversal of
civilisation" there.
Overall, I think the revival of Silk Road (Instead of hundreds of
kings,sheiks, barons,emirs,emperial,feudal and tribal chiefs who were
milking the merchants, one Great Khan and one tax. I imagine prices fell
by hundreds of times and trade turnover increased even more)and general
peace on the quarter of world landmass probably accelerated progress of
world civilisation by a couple of centuries.Example: No Mongols, No
Marco Polo, No Columbus, No European domination,No Industrial
Revolution, No Internet. :-). If you want more :No paper, no printing,
no gunpowder and so on and on.
3. The point you did not mention, but should have: Millions of people
died because of Mongol conquest. Was it worth it?
This is a hard question and we have to discuss such matters as
acceptability of moral approach to history.
However you are probably incapable of understanding such issues since
your level of intelligence is shown in sentence "bunch of smelly,
ruthless, and terroristic barbarians".
sw
In article <3367E8...@gse.mq.edu.au>,
Byambaa Garid <bga...@gse.mq.edu.au> wrote:
>In article <5k8tv2$11...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> lov...@aa.washington.edu (Bob Lovell) wrote:
>As for defense of Mongolian conquests:
>1. Alexander the Great and Napoleon were in the same business as Genghis
>Khan. However,the western conquerors are considered to be heroes,
>Mongolian one is considered "smelly, ruthless, and terroristic
>barbarian".This is clearly a racism,
The difference, essentially, is this. The Mongols were a nomadic society.
Almost by definition, nomadic societies have to get the majority of their
wealth and goods from neighboring non-nomadic civilizations, by way of
trading or raids (generally nomads are perfectly capable of feeding
themselves, otherwise they wouldn't be out there). The Mongols were a
conquering nomadic civilization, the French and Macedonians (and Romans, etc)
weren't nomadic.
I'm not sure if *any* of them are considered heroes (except in their home
countries). They all certainly were worthy of respect for their military deeds,
but wether they were heroes or not is another question.
>2."Caused civilisation in Europe,China,and the other parts of Asia a big
>reversal"? Well,Europe part is certainly an exaggeration (though
>probably case could be made that Hungary, Poland and Czech republic are
>so poor now because of the Mongol raid in 1241, not conquest!
Now that's rather silly, as saying that completely ignores the Ottoman
Empire, the German Empire, the Russians, and everyone else that cheerfully
stomped all over that area later on.
> Russians
>do claim exactly that and I usually answer that if things did not get
>better for 700 years probably Russians, not Mongols are to blame. Such
>accusations have nothing to do with history, only a usual piece of
>racism and desire to blame others for your own stupidity)
The Mongols stomped the heck out of the cities around the Caspian and
Black Seas, and dealt reverses to civilization (mainly by taking everything
valuable that wasn't bolted down) that took that region centuries to recover
from. It's rather hard to say what might have happened if the Mongols hadn't
invaded that region -- but there might not have even been a Russian Empire,
if the southern regions weren't so weakened and disrupted. Wether that's a
good or bad thing is a question for someone who knows more about Russian
civilization than I do.
>China would have such catastrophic disaster even without Mongols,simply
>because of the cyclical nature of its history, as I pointed in my
>article "The Horror that was China". No reversal of civilisation took
>place in China simply because China is incapable of progress as cyclical
>nature of its history implies(rather like ancient Egypt.Periods of Chaos
>every couple of centuries and no change or progress to speak of)
I'll admit that the Chinese occasionally did some rather wacky and
counter-productive things, but... incapable of progress? That seems a bit
much.
>Khalifate? It
>started to die long before Mongol conquest, probably since 10th century
>when it was captured by Deilem highlanders. Khalifate could only go down
>with or without Mongols.
The Caliphate had long ceased to be a meaningful political force, but
it was still an important cultural force.
>Khoresm was destroyed,but Eastern Turkestan(now
>Xinjiang) benefited from it. Instead of Samarkand and Bukhara, Kashgar
>and Turfan became trade centers on the Silk Road. No "reversal of
>civilisation" there.
Well, if you don't count the fact of the destruction of all those
underground irrigation systems, anyway.
>Overall, I think the revival of Silk Road (Instead of hundreds of
>kings,sheiks, barons,emirs,emperial,feudal and tribal chiefs who were
>milking the merchants, one Great Khan and one tax. I imagine prices fell
>by hundreds of times and trade turnover increased even more)and general
>peace on the quarter of world landmass probably accelerated progress of
>world civilisation by a couple of centuries.Example: No Mongols, No
>Marco Polo, No Columbus, No European domination,No Industrial
>Revolution, No Internet. :-).
It definitely increased *European* civilization (by providing yet another
kick in the head that their little chunk of the world wasn't all there was
of the Earth, among other things). And by disrupting a lot of the possible
opponents to European global power. Again, wether this is a good thing or
not is left as an exercise for the skilled reader.
>If you want more :No paper, no printing,
>no gunpowder and so on and on.
Urm? Paper had been available for a *long* time in the west before the
Mongols came around, and the printing press is really fairly straightforward
to acheive once you get someone to look at it in the right way, and don't
have crafts guilds holding them down. Dunno about gunpowder, though.
>3. The point you did not mention, but should have: Millions of people
>died because of Mongol conquest. Was it worth it?
>This is a hard question and we have to discuss such matters as
>acceptability of moral approach to history.
That's more of a question of "is war *ever* worth all the people who
die?"
Which isn't really answerable.
--JT
Donald Tucker
Bob Lovell (lov...@aa.washington.edu) writes:
[Bob, i have deleted your personal comments on a poster. ]
[I hope that we can keep our discussions at the level of ]
[*issues* rather than personalities. ]
> What did the
> Russians, Persians, Chineese, and those other groups do to DESERVE
> being conquered by a bunch of smelly, ruthless, and terroristic
> barbarians?
In the modern world, one persons terrorist is another persons
freedom fighter. Consider the point of view of the impoverised
Palestineans living in East Jerusalem. Consider the view of
Israeli construction companies.
The Chinese problem with the nomad predecessors of the Mongols goes
way back. The Great Wall of China was constructed, from 214 BCE
onwards, to exclude the nomadic Hsiung Nu, who were starving and
wished to settle in China.
At least this was the view of Chinese historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien,
writing in 145 BCE. The Chinese emperor of the day, Wu-ti,
rewarded this sympathy by castrating the historian. I trust
that outspoken commentators do not face the same sanctions in
this newsgroup.
Cheers Global history; Alternate history; Maps; ___,__<@~__,___
Donald Civilizations Timelines at: /^/^/^[#]^\^\^\
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4123/ _/|\_
Pteranodon logo Copyright © 1996 " " ©1996
nite...@asiaonline.net
sout...@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Kamal J Southall ) wrote:
>->In article <3367E8...@gse.mq.edu.au>,
>->Byambaa Garid <bga...@gse.mq.edu.au> wrote:
>->>In article <5k8tv2$11...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
>->> lov...@aa.washington.edu (Bob Lovell) wrote:
>
>
>
>
>>1. Alexander the Great and Napoleon were in the same business as Genghis
>>Khan. However,the western conquerors are considered to be heroes,
>>Mongolian one is considered "smelly, ruthless, and terroristic
>>barbarian".This is clearly a racism,
> No it is not. The Mongols not only conquered and stomped on huge
>areas(like Napoleon and Alexander) but they also commited acts of
>barbarity and brutality that clearly surpassed the above mentioned
>conqurers. Barbarity is relative, this I know. But read descriptions of
>the conquest of Baghdad and the central Persian lands.
>
>->2."Caused civilisation in Europe,China,and the other parts of Asia a big
>->reversal"? Well,Europe part is certainly an exaggeration (though
> Ok, but in a *few* areas this was certainly the case. I use the
>example of Islamdom, since this is what I am most familiar with. The
>Mongol conquest caused a severe blow to the Arab and Persian intelectual
>traditions; a blow that they never fully recovered from. One scholar,
>Hafiz Suyuti, describes the exodus of scholars from the central lands of
>Iraq and the massive book losses from that region. Baghdad had many
>libraries totaling *at least* hundreds of thousands, and probably mores,
>volumes. Many are catalogued, most are known lost. The chaos that
>surrounded the centuries of the Mongol conquest saw the demise of two
>whole schools of Islamic legal thought, which froze Sunni law, for close
>to a thousand years, to 4 canonical schools. Philosophic and Scientific
>thought also moved to the periphery of the Islamic world. The only
>intelectual stream that survived to a large degree intact was Sufism as
>Sufi lodges played a heavy role in socialy reorganizing battered regions.
>For centuries Sufi lodges played the same role in the transmission of
>knowlege as monistaries in dark age europe.
>
>
What you have said is true.
We still should not forget how the war started against the Caliphate.
Genghis Khan send his envoys to ask for improved trade links with
them.
The Caliphate send his envoys back to Genghis Khan with their headwear
nailed to their heads.
The world may have been a different place if those envoys had been
treated with courtesy instead.
Warmest Regards
The Taoistic Idiot
nite...@asiaonline.net
Bob Lovell
Byambaa Garid <bga...@gse.mq.edu.au> wrote:
>It is not honest to "paraphrase" without giving authentic quote. I said
>that Sung empire outnumbered Mongols 100 to 1. Since Mongols did not had
>any technological advantage over the Sung (in fact Sung had gunpowder
>and MOngols did not), the only reason for Sung defeat was their criminal
>incompetence in organising defence. Indeed, in this sense they well
>deserved their defeat.
But did they ask to be invaded by the Mongols, or did the Mongols
covet the wealth of the Sung and use force to take it?
>As for defense of Mongolian conquests:
>1. Alexander the Great and Napoleon were in the same business as Genghis
>Khan. However,the western conquerors are considered to be heroes,
I do not defend any conquerer. Those who are power hungry or covet the
belongings of thier neighbors are not to be celebrated. Another
example is the Assyrians.
>Mongolian one is considered "smelly, ruthless, and terroristic
>barbarian".This is clearly a racism,not that I am very surprised since
>Jaskew and others had such a good time bashing Mongols here in such
>expressions like "The world, in my opinion, would have been a much
>better place with a lot fewer Mongols in it at any time between 221 BC
>and 1945."
Smelly is attested to several time as factual. It is recorded in the
histories that Mongols never bathed. They wore an article of clothing
until it rotted off. They actually put new garments on over the old.
Ruthless and terroristic is also attested to. When you create a
mountain of skulls from the heads of the inhabitants of a conquered
city I considder that both terroristic and ruthless.
Barbarian = uncivilized. Not the same as not having a culture. Do not
forget that Northern Europeans were also considdered to be barbarians
by the Mediteranean cultures in the ancient period. They are still
considdered to be barbarians by some cultures today.
>2."Caused civilisation in Europe,China,and the other parts of Asia a big
>reversal"? Well,Europe part is certainly an exaggeration (though
>probably case could be made that Hungary, Poland and Czech republic are
>so poor now because of the Mongol raid in 1241, not conquest! Russians
>do claim exactly that and I usually answer that if things did not get
>better for 700 years probably Russians, not Mongols are to blame.Such
>accusations have nothing to do with history, only a usual piece of
>racism and desire to blame others for your own stupidity)
>China would have such catastrophic disaster even without Mongols,simply
>because of the cyclical nature of its history, as I pointed in my
>article "The Horror that was China". No reversal of civilisation took
>place in China simply because China is incapable of progress as cyclical
>nature of its history implies(rather like ancient Egypt.Periods of Chaos
>every couple of centuries and no change or progress to speak of)
>As for other parts of Asia, what do you mean by that? Khalifate? It
>started to die long before Mongol conquest, probably since 10th century
>when it was captured by Deilem highlanders. Khalifate could only go down
>with or without Mongols. Khoresm was destroyed,but Eastern Turkestan(now
>Xinjiang) benefited from it. Instead of Samarkand and Bukhara, Kashgar
>and Turfan became trade centers on the Silk Road. No "reversal of
>civilisation" there.
>Overall, I think the revival of Silk Road (Instead of hundreds of
>kings,sheiks, barons,emirs,emperial,feudal and tribal chiefs who were
>milking the merchants, one Great Khan and one tax. I imagine prices fell
>by hundreds of times and trade turnover increased even more)and general
>peace on the quarter of world landmass probably accelerated progress of
>world civilisation by a couple of centuries.Example: No Mongols, No
>Marco Polo, No Columbus, No European domination,No Industrial
>Revolution, No Internet. :-). If you want more :No paper, no printing,
>no gunpowder and so on and on.
Others have commented on this point. However if I recall it was the
later reclosing of the Silk Road that inspired the Portugese and
Spanish to look for alternate route to China and the East Indies. This
lead to the discovery of the Americas. Maybe the Americas would have
been discovered earlier if the Road had stayed closed.
>3. The point you did not mention, but should have: Millions of people
>died because of Mongol conquest. Was it worth it?
>This is a hard question and we have to discuss such matters as
>acceptability of moral approach to history.
>However you are probably incapable of understanding such issues since
>your level of intelligence is shown in sentence "bunch of smelly,
>ruthless, and terroristic barbarians".
My intelligence is not in question, just by ability to be Politically
Correct. I do not claim that I was ever Politically Correct.
Bob Lovell
Byambaa Garid
Bob Lovell wrote:
>
> Byambaa Garid <bga...@gse.mq.edu.au> wrote:
>
> >It is not honest to "paraphrase" without giving authentic quote. I said
> >that Sung empire outnumbered Mongols 100 to 1. Since Mongols did not had
> >any technological advantage over the Sung (in fact Sung had gunpowder
> >and MOngols did not), the only reason for Sung defeat was their criminal
> >incompetence in organising defence. Indeed, in this sense they well
> >deserved their defeat.
>
> But did they ask to be invaded by the Mongols, or did the Mongols
> covet the wealth of the Sung and use force to take it?
>
> >As for defense of Mongolian conquests:
> >1. Alexander the Great and Napoleon were in the same business as Genghis
> >Khan. However,the western conquerors are considered to be heroes,
>
> I do not defend any conquerer. Those who are power hungry or covet the
> belongings of thier neighbors are not to be celebrated. Another
> example is the Assyrians.
barbarians.Since every nation in the World at least one time conquered
other nations they are all nothing but a bunch of smelly ruthless, and
terroristic barbarians including Americans and Europeans and everybody
else.
>
> >Mongolian one is considered "smelly, ruthless, and terroristic
> >barbarian".This is clearly a racism,not that I am very surprised since
> >Jaskew and others had such a good time bashing Mongols here in such
> >expressions like "The world, in my opinion, would have been a much
> >better place with a lot fewer Mongols in it at any time between 221 BC
> >and 1945."
>
> Smelly is attested to several time as factual. It is recorded in the
> histories that Mongols never bathed. They wore an article of clothing
> until it rotted off. They actually put new garments on over the old.
monkeys having a carnal knowledge of human women. You are beleiving it
of course, medieval tourists never ever lied in their reports.
> Ruthless and terroristic is also attested to. When you create a
> mountain of skulls from the heads of the inhabitants of a conquered
by Mongols. Don't argue, Timur is no more Mongol than you.
>
> Barbarian = uncivilized. Not the same as not having a culture. Do not
> forget that Northern Europeans were also considdered to be barbarians
> by the Mediteranean cultures in the ancient period. They are still
> considdered to be barbarians by some cultures today.
death across Atlantic?
>
> >3. The point you did not mention, but should have: Millions of people
> >died because of Mongol conquest. Was it worth it?
> >This is a hard question and we have to discuss such matters as
> >acceptability of moral approach to history.
> >However you are probably incapable of understanding such issues since
> >your level of intelligence is shown in sentence "bunch of smelly,
> >ruthless, and terroristic barbarians".
>
> My intelligence is not in question, just by ability to be Politically
> Correct. I do not claim that I was ever Politically Correct.
killed, there is no point to talk about "did they ask to be invaded by
the Mongols, or did the Mongols covet the wealth of the Sung and use
"Screwboy" Askew.
>
> Bob Lovell
Joseph C Wang
In article <33690A...@gse.mq.edu.au>,
Byambaa Garid <bga...@gse.mq.edu.au> wrote:
>Nope, wrong barbarians. Skull mountains were erected by Timur-Leng, not
>by Mongols. Don't argue, Timur is no more Mongol than you.
Correct me if I am wrong, but Timur claimed to be a Mongol. One can
accept his claim or not accept his claim, but this sort of flexibility
leads to something quite interesting.
I don't know if you are consciously aware of this, but you are
selected "good historical items" to be part of the Mongol identity and
rejecting "bad historical items" as not part of the Mongol identity.
There is nothing wrong with constructing an identity that way, and in
fact I have semi-consciously "constructed" a traditional Chinese
identity for myself that way.
The problem comes in when you try to compare group A and group B using
these constructions. Basically you make group A look better or worse
than group B depending on what historical incidents you choose to be
representative of group A and B.
One other point that I should bring up is that the need to construct a
identity is particularly powerful among ethnic minorities and overseas
groups. A person growing up in Beijing never really has to answer the
question "What does it mean to be Chinese?" and probably really
doesn't care too much about it. On the other hand, growing up in the
only Chinese family in a small town in the American South makes that
question very relevant for me, and one of the consequences of this is
that I have an interest in Confucianism and Chinese history that most
people I've met from China find bizarre.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joseph Wang Globewide Network Academy
j...@mit.edu FREE Distance Education catalog database
http://www.gnacademy.org Thousands of Courses and Programs
Richard Tung
bs...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Donald Tucker) writes:
>Bob Lovell (lov...@aa.washington.edu) writes:
>In the modern world, one persons terrorist is another persons
>freedom fighter. Consider the point of view of the impoverised
>Palestineans living in East Jerusalem. Consider the view of
>Israeli construction companies.
>The Chinese problem with the nomad predecessors of the Mongols goes
>way back. The Great Wall of China was constructed, from 214 BCE
>onwards, to exclude the nomadic Hsiung Nu, who were starving and
>wished to settle in China.
>At least this was the view of Chinese historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien,
>writing in 145 BCE. The Chinese emperor of the day, Wu-ti,
>rewarded this sympathy by castrating the historian. I trust
>that outspoken commentators do not face the same sanctions in
>this newsgroup.
Minor quibble-- Wu Di gave Sima Qian the choice of death of castration
because of his defense of a general, not because of his histories.
nayat
I didn't want to get back into this, too many flames to little substance,
but I feel that the Mongols and Ginghis Khan, in particular need to be
defended from the kinds of historical political correctness I've been
hearing for years.
To begin with, I agree with those who have pointed out that we cannot
attempt to judge historical personages without first looking at their view
of the world. A man who gets his meat from a plastic container is going
to view life and death differently from a man who feeds his family by
slitting the throat of a sheep. It is a different time and a different
place and most importantly a different society than any we have today so
we can't know how the Conquest Mongols thought, and therefore cannot judge
their morality. To put it another way, A Hitler's great evil is not the
number of people he killed destructive war he prosecuted, but the fact
that he did it after experiencing much the same thing himself in the
trenchs of WWI, and should have known better.
Ginghis Khan is not that kind of conquorer. If one looks closer at his
history you see that he never started a war without a provocation.
Revenge for the death of his father was his initial reason, then it came
to be punishing people who were disloyal to him. If he was so
gratuitiously cruel why did he let Jamulqa betray him so many times before
destroying him and his tribe? Now destroying the tribe may have been a
bit much, but remember this was standard practice on the steppes at the
time. To avoid blood feuds one had to kill not only ones enemies, but all
their relatives as well. When one starts applying these standards to
"civilized" cities then we begin to get the great massacres which war
seemingly so evil. Again, one must look at the motives, every city he
destroyed had betrayed someone, and turned their coat whether being
treacherous with Temujin himself, or by betraying their past masters, thus
making themselves untrustworthy. There is a certain logic to it in the
lawlessness which was Medieval Central Asia.
Now, we modern cynics who have lived with modern propoganda may say, well
how convient, to such statements. I am not saying that it wasn't
disengenuous, but I think one must also consider that the reasons were
sincere, in which case the massacres are justified as a way of prosecuting
both war and politics.
Law and order are no natural states in history, and must be enforced by a
strong power and fear. We have peace today because we have weapons to
destroy ourselves completely, and that scares us to death. The pax
Tatarica was caused because everyone was terrified of what the Mongols
would do if they violated it. I see no reason to disbelieve the tale that
a virgin with a sack of gold could transverse all of Asia without being
molested. Several parties of western monks did it, and trade was booming
then. It was the only time in the Middle Ages when one could
trully say that there was religious freedom. This not the work of
ruthless, careless barbarians.
Two last things. I have heard that Mongols didn't wash, and the story of
Odegai throwing the gold coin to get the Muslim off for performing his
religious duties seems to bear this out, but remember that if I smell, and
you smell and we all smell the same, the smell is no longer obnoxious.
As to the mountains of skulls set up outside of cities, this was the work
of the later conquorer, Timur, who was much more brutal, everyone of his
wars was a "Jihad", and who had a lot harder time keeping his empire
together.
Rick Umbaugh
Kamal J Southall
->In article <3367E8...@gse.mq.edu.au>,
->Byambaa Garid <bga...@gse.mq.edu.au> wrote:
->>In article <5k8tv2$11...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
->> lov...@aa.washington.edu (Bob Lovell) wrote:
>1. Alexander the Great and Napoleon were in the same business as Genghis
>Khan. However,the western conquerors are considered to be heroes,
>Mongolian one is considered "smelly, ruthless, and terroristic
>barbarian".This is clearly a racism,
No it is not. The Mongols not only conquered and stomped on huge
areas(like Napoleon and Alexander) but they also commited acts of
barbarity and brutality that clearly surpassed the above mentioned
conqurers. Barbarity is relative, this I know. But read descriptions of
the conquest of Baghdad and the central Persian lands.
->2."Caused civilisation in Europe,China,and the other parts of Asia a big
->reversal"? Well,Europe part is certainly an exaggeration (though
Ok, but in a *few* areas this was certainly the case. I use the
example of Islamdom, since this is what I am most familiar with. The
Mongol conquest caused a severe blow to the Arab and Persian intelectual
traditions; a blow that they never fully recovered from. One scholar,
Hafiz Suyuti, describes the exodus of scholars from the central lands of
Iraq and the massive book losses from that region. Baghdad had many
libraries totaling *at least* hundreds of thousands, and probably mores,
volumes. Many are catalogued, most are known lost. The chaos that
surrounded the centuries of the Mongol conquest saw the demise of two
whole schools of Islamic legal thought, which froze Sunni law, for close
to a thousand years, to 4 canonical schools. Philosophic and Scientific
thought also moved to the periphery of the Islamic world. The only
intelectual stream that survived to a large degree intact was Sufism as
Sufi lodges played a heavy role in socialy reorganizing battered regions.
For centuries Sufi lodges played the same role in the transmission of
knowlege as monistaries in dark age europe.
In terms of population, one professor of mine told us in class
that Iraq's population had only recently reached it's pre conquest
level(population records were kept in the Arab khilafate for tax
purposes). No, I have not been able to nail down a proper citation for
this but still...
->Khalifate? It started to die long before Mongol conquest, probably since
->10th century when it was captured by Deilem highlanders. Khalifate could
->only go down with or without Mongols.
->world civilisation by a couple of centuries.Example: No Mongols, No
->Marco Polo, No Columbus, No European domination,No Industrial
->Revolution,
Umm, is this a bad thing ?
;-)
->No Internet. :-).
Well maybe this is...
->If you want more :No paper, no printing,
->no gunpowder and so on and on.
Huh ?
->3. The point you did not mention, but should have: Millions of people
->died because of Mongol conquest. Was it worth it?
->This is a hard question and we have to discuss such matters as
->acceptability of moral approach to history.
Ok, in the long run, as one poster indicated, is it ever worth it ?
How can we judge worth....
It is interesting. Some Muslims, to this day, feel that the Tartar
invasion was divine punishment. That it was diserved. One Professor that
I once had told the class a story that Chingiz Khan had a dream in which
God told him to visit his wrath upon, well, his victims...
It goes, the people of the time had reached a level of degenercy that it
the people diserved, in some way, divine punishment.
I have heard variations of this story from a couple of people. Anyway,
thought you all would find it interesting...
:(
Joseph Askew
Byambaa Garid (bga...@gse.mq.edu.au) wrote:
: It is not honest to "paraphrase" without giving authentic quote. I said
: that Sung empire outnumbered Mongols 100 to 1. Since Mongols did not had
: any technological advantage over the Sung (in fact Sung had gunpowder
: and MOngols did not), the only reason for Sung defeat was their criminal
: incompetence in organising defence. Indeed, in this sense they well
: deserved their defeat.
Actually it is. That is what a paraphrase is. Only the Australian
education system could produce someone so ignorant so obviously
you aren't a Mongol. The Mongols possessed the one huge advantage
the Song did not have - good horses. Added to that the Mongols
were able to mobilise nearly their entire male population and you
have a situation where in terms of effectives the Song Army was
bigger but also slower and less effective. You might think that
being defeated is justification for that loss and any sort of
brutality but I don't.
: As for defense of Mongolian conquests:
: 1. Alexander the Great and Napoleon were in the same business as Genghis
: Khan. However,the western conquerors are considered to be heroes,
No they weren't. They did conquer, and Alexander did annex, but
they were not in the same of mass murder. They were not as brutal
as the Mongols and they did not kill as many people.
Opinion on both Alexander the Great and Napoleon is hardly as
simple as you say. Napoleon, outside France, probably gets more
criticism than praise these days. Alexander goes through phases
where he is sometimes popular and sometimes not. At the moment
I would think that he is less popular than he used to be, but
he is on an upward trend. Is there one Mongol in the world who
is willing to admit that Genghiz Khan was a mass murderer and
committed terrible crimes against the world?
: Mongolian one is considered "smelly, ruthless, and terroristic
: barbarian".This is clearly a racism,
It may be motivated by racism in some people but it is also the
absolute literal truth. The Mongols, at that time, were all
these things. As Thomas Barfield, a writer *you* claim is a
good source, says. Well not smelly. Just terroristic and
ruthless.
: not that I am very surprised since
: Jaskew and others had such a good time bashing Mongols here in such
: expressions like "The world, in my opinion, would have been a much
: better place with a lot fewer Mongols in it at any time between 221 BC
: and 1945."
This remains a statement of fact and so far you have not even
tried to provide any good reasons why the Mongols made the world
a better place between those two dates.
: 2."Caused civilisation in Europe,China,and the other parts of Asia a big
: reversal"? Well,Europe part is certainly an exaggeration (though
: probably case could be made that Hungary, Poland and Czech republic are
: so poor now because of the Mongol raid in 1241, not conquest! Russians
: do claim exactly that and I usually answer that if things did not get
: better for 700 years probably Russians, not Mongols are to blame.Such
: accusations have nothing to do with history, only a usual piece of
: racism and desire to blame others for your own stupidity)
I don't think you can say the Mongols did much damage to Russia
or Europe generally. The "Tartar Yoke" is a bit of a myth in my
opinion. I know this is a brave thing to do on a medieval group,
but I think that most of what people object to is not Mongol but
Byzantine. It is just easier to blame Mongols.
: China would have such catastrophic disaster even without Mongols,simply
: because of the cyclical nature of its history, as I pointed in my
: article "The Horror that was China".
A long rant of anti-Chinese racism does not prove a thing. The Mongol
genocide in China is unique in Chinese history. It did not occur
over and over again. It was worse than anything in Chinese history.
Including the Japanese invasion and the rise of the Chinese Communist
Party. It was a total disaster for China and civilisation generally.
: No reversal of civilisation took
: place in China simply because China is incapable of progress as cyclical
: nature of its history implies(rather like ancient Egypt.Periods of Chaos
: every couple of centuries and no change or progress to speak of)
Such absurd racism is stupid. China did progress (odd that you
object to the use of such terms when applied to Mongols but not
when applied to China. Why is that?) Its history only implies
that the best Mongol is a dead Mongol. Nothing more. China has
always changed, it always has progressed in any rational sense.
Unlike Mongolia.
: As for other parts of Asia, what do you mean by that? Khalifate? It
: started to die long before Mongol conquest, probably since 10th century
: when it was captured by Deilem highlanders. Khalifate could only go down
: with or without Mongols. Khoresm was destroyed,but Eastern Turkestan(now
: Xinjiang) benefited from it. Instead of Samarkand and Bukhara, Kashgar
: and Turfan became trade centers on the Silk Road. No "reversal of
: civilisation" there.
The devastation of long civilised regions in Central Asia (now in
former Russian Central Asia) was not "made up for" by the rise of
those centres in Chinese Turkistan. It is a stupid and contempible
argument from the start. It is like saying the Second World War
was alright and justifiable because after the war Japan became
rich. The damage the Mongols did to Persia and Iraq was huge and
mostly not reversed until this century. In particular the massive
damage to the irrigation works of Iraq. The murder of the entire
population of some Central Asian cities destroyed long established
centres of civilisation and learning. The cities of Xinjiang were
not made richer by it and remained pretty much as they always were.
: Overall, I think the revival of Silk Road (Instead of hundreds of
: kings,sheiks, barons,emirs,emperial,feudal and tribal chiefs who were
: milking the merchants, one Great Khan and one tax. I imagine prices fell
: by hundreds of times and trade turnover increased even more)and general
You can imagine it but that doesn't make it true. There was never
just the one ruler along the Silk Road. When Khublai finally got
around to conquering the Song (ie the Far Eastern end of the Road)
he had already broken with his relatives who went on to form the
Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia. Indeed he spent a great deal of
his life thereafter using the wealth of China to fight his Central
Asian relatives who objected to Khublai's monopoly on exploiting
the Chinese and wanted to go on raiding them.
: peace on the quarter of world landmass probably accelerated progress of
There was no peace anywhere under Mongol rule. Just bitter on going
civil war that was usually brutally supressed. No one liked them
and they failed to establish any proper civil administration in any
region until they started recuiting foreigners.
: world civilisation by a couple of centuries.Example: No Mongols, No
: Marco Polo, No Columbus, No European domination,No Industrial
: Revolution, No Internet. :-).
I don't see that one myself. Columbus would have sailed anyway.
The Portuguese would have continued around Africa either way.
: If you want more :No paper, no printing,
: no gunpowder and so on and on.
The Mongols did not invent anything but in particular did not
invent paper, printing or gunpowder. All Chinese inventions.
Nor did the Mongols transmit paper or printing, both having
reached the Middle East much earlier. Gunpowder they may have.
: 3. The point you did not mention, but should have: Millions of people
: died because of Mongol conquest. Was it worth it?
Tens of millions.
And no it wasn't.
: This is a hard question and we have to discuss such matters as
: acceptability of moral approach to history.
N owe don't. We can ignore the morality altogether. After all if
we try a moral argument you have lost already. Mass murder is so
very rarely moral.
: However you are probably incapable of understanding such issues since
: your level of intelligence is shown in sentence "bunch of smelly,
: ruthless, and terroristic barbarians".
That's Bambi's way of saying "I haven't a leg to stand on so I'll
resort to cheap name calling instead". Be thankful he did not just
lie about what you said.
Joseph
--
"Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall inherit the Earth"
- President Bill Clinton
zqjduenkkn
Byambaa Garid wrote:
>
> It is not honest to "paraphrase" without giving authentic quote. I said
> that Sung empire outnumbered Mongols 100 to 1. Since Mongols did not had
> any technological advantage over the Sung (in fact Sung had gunpowder
It is interesting that sometimes innovation in various methods at those
times resulted in innovations that could result in extreme effects.
One innovation of the Mongols was that they taught their horses to
'trot' over vast distances. That meant that riding the horses was a
less rough experience for the mongols, and would tire out both horse and
rider to a far lesser extent. That meant that the mongols could carry
both themselves and their supplies across vast distances before they
went to battle. Indeed, they could arrive in places where no one had
ever seen them before, engage in battle, plunder the city and get
supplies and resources, and then ride off to somewhere else to do the
same thing. They also came from such far distances that the besieged
had little time to prepare.
Innovations included better tactis from fighting completely on
horseback.
Also, cooking and eating from one's helmets (for them bronze helmets),
started from that time, and has continued until very recently, when the
army has replaced the old steel helmets with plastic ones, to reduce IR
visibility from satellites, and night vision and tracing sensors.
Joseph Askew
Byambaa Garid (bga...@gse.mq.edu.au) wrote:
: They are all nothing but a bunch of smelly ruthless, and terroristic
: barbarians.Since every nation in the World at least one time conquered
: other nations they are all nothing but a bunch of smelly ruthless, and
: terroristic barbarians including Americans and Europeans and everybody
: else.
I think you are missing the point. Lots of other people have gone
around invading other countries. Yet no one has done it with quite
the same degree of violence the Mongols did. The Mongols were very
ruthless to a degree the world had not seen before and were'nt to
see again until the Second World War. If there. Terror was a usual
Mongol practice. And they did smell. These are facts. Sorry if you
don't like them but that won't change a thing.
: > Smelly is attested to several time as factual. It is recorded in the
: > histories that Mongols never bathed. They wore an article of clothing
: > until it rotted off. They actually put new garments on over the old.
: There were reports by the same travelers of people with dog heads and
: monkeys having a carnal knowledge of human women. You are beleiving it
: of course, medieval tourists never ever lied in their reports.
No there were not. Some travellers claimed to have seen people with
dog's heads, but not all or even most of those who pointed out the
serious problems being near a Mongol was if you washed occassionally.
Genghiz Khan in fact made it a crime to bathe in a river. Of course
medieval writers made mistakes, or even lied, but on this there is
ample evidence from more or less reliable sources and everyone is
agreed. Mongols smelled bad because they did not wash.
: > Ruthless and terroristic is also attested to. When you create a
: > mountain of skulls from the heads of the inhabitants of a conquered
: Nope, wrong barbarians. Skull mountains were erected by Timur-Leng, not
: by Mongols. Don't argue, Timur is no more Mongol than you.
Or you. Timur was a Mongol on his mother's side which makes him
mroe Mongol than you. Right barbarians. The Mongols did erect
skull mountains. After the capture of what became Beijing by the
Mongols a Moslem traveller turned up and reported not just a
mountain of bones but also the fact that several weeks after
the city was taken the ground all around was still slick with
human fat.
: If they never knew that riches ever existed would they go almost sure
: death across Atlantic?
People in Europe knew of the richest of China long before the Mongols.
Byambaa Garid
nayat wrote:
>
> I didn't want to get back into this, too many flames to little substance,
> but I feel that the Mongols and Ginghis Khan, in particular need to be
> defended from the kinds of historical political correctness I've been
> hearing for years.
>
> To begin with, I agree with those who have pointed out that we cannot
> attempt to judge historical personages without first looking at their view
> of the world. A man who gets his meat from a plastic container is going
> to view life and death differently from a man who feeds his family by
> slitting the throat of a sheep. It is a different time and a different
> place and most importantly a different society than any we have today so
> we can't know how the Conquest Mongols thought, and therefore cannot judge
> their morality. To put it another way, A Hitler's great evil is not the
> number of people he killed destructive war he prosecuted, but the fact
> that he did it after experiencing much the same thing himself in the
> trenchs of WWI, and should have known better.
>
> Ginghis Khan is not that kind of conquorer. If one looks closer at his
> history you see that he never started a war without a provocation.
> Revenge for the death of his father was his initial reason, then it came
> to be punishing people who were disloyal to him. If he was so
> gratuitiously cruel why did he let Jamulqa betray him so many times before
> destroying him and his tribe? Now destroying the tribe may have been a
says that.The only destroyed tribe was Tatars and killiong was
restricted to males of military age only.
> time. To avoid blood feuds one had to kill not only ones enemies, but all
> their relatives as well. When one starts applying these standards to
> "civilized" cities then we begin to get the great massacres which war
> seemingly so evil. Again, one must look at the motives, every city he
> destroyed had betrayed someone, and turned their coat whether being
> treacherous with Temujin himself, or by betraying their past masters, thus
> making themselves untrustworthy. There is a certain logic to it in the
> lawlessness which was Medieval Central Asia.
>
> Now, we modern cynics who have lived with modern propoganda may say, well
> how convient, to such statements. I am not saying that it wasn't
> disengenuous, but I think one must also consider that the reasons were
> sincere, in which case the massacres are justified as a way of prosecuting
> both war and politics.
>
> Law and order are no natural states in history, and must be enforced by a
> strong power and fear. We have peace today because we have weapons to
> destroy ourselves completely, and that scares us to death. The pax
> Tatarica was caused because everyone was terrified of what the Mongols
> would do if they violated it. I see no reason to disbelieve the tale that
> a virgin with a sack of gold could transverse all of Asia without being
> molested. Several parties of western monks did it, and trade was booming
> then. It was the only time in the Middle Ages when one could
> trully say that there was religious freedom. This not the work of
> ruthless, careless barbarians.
>
> Two last things. I have heard that Mongols didn't wash, and the story of
> Odegai throwing the gold coin to get the Muslim off for performing his
> religious duties seems to bear this out, but remember that if I smell, and
> you smell and we all smell the same, the smell is no longer obnoxious.
>
> As to the mountains of skulls set up outside of cities, this was the work
> of the later conquorer, Timur, who was much more brutal, everyone of his
> wars was a "Jihad", and who had a lot harder time keeping his empire
> together.
like you to say something of outright racism of our common friend
Joseph Askew, who now claims that "Best Mongol is a dead Mongol". I
feel a little uneasy to be calm in presence of such trash. I would
advise you all in the future when you read posts from him remember this
phrase. And BTW, I would like some of you to comment on his racist
statements about Mongols.
>
> Rick Umbaugh
Byambaa Garid
Kamal J Southall wrote:
>
> ->In article <3367E8...@gse.mq.edu.au>,
> ->Byambaa Garid <bga...@gse.mq.edu.au> wrote:
> ->>In article <5k8tv2$11...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> ->> lov...@aa.washington.edu (Bob Lovell) wrote:
>
> >Khan. However,the western conquerors are considered to be heroes,
> >Mongolian one is considered "smelly, ruthless, and terroristic
> >barbarian".This is clearly a racism,
> areas(like Napoleon and Alexander) but they also commited acts of
> barbarity and brutality that clearly surpassed the above mentioned
cities. I would like you to define what "acts of barabrity and brutality
that clearly surpassed the above mentioned" is. I am sure I can find
facts about Europeans, Muslims and Chinese which could also "clearly
surpass" whatever you can find.
> the conquest of Baghdad and the central Persian lands.
shall start drawing conclusions about terroristic nature of Muslim
people?
>
> ->2."Caused civilisation in Europe,China,and the other parts of Asia a big
> ->reversal"? Well,Europe part is certainly an exaggeration (though
> Ok, but in a *few* areas this was certainly the case. I use the
> example of Islamdom, since this is what I am most familiar with. The
> Mongol conquest caused a severe blow to the Arab and Persian intelectual
> traditions; a blow that they never fully recovered from. One scholar,
Don't blame Mongols for your backwardness.It is stupid and unproductive.
Instead look at your own culture and think what caused your poverty and
backwardness. Some aspects of Islam may have something to do with it.
> Hafiz Suyuti, describes the exodus of scholars from the central lands of
> Iraq and the massive book losses from that region. Baghdad had many
> libraries totaling *at least* hundreds of thousands, and probably mores,
> volumes. Many are catalogued, most are known lost. The chaos that
> surrounded the centuries of the Mongol conquest saw the demise of two
> whole schools of Islamic legal thought, which froze Sunni law, for close
> to a thousand years, to 4 canonical schools. Philosophic and Scientific
> thought also moved to the periphery of the Islamic world. The only
> intelectual stream that survived to a large degree intact was Sufism as
> Sufi lodges played a heavy role in socialy reorganizing battered regions.
> For centuries Sufi lodges played the same role in the transmission of
> knowlege as monistaries in dark age europe.
>
> In terms of population, one professor of mine told us in class
> that Iraq's population had only recently reached it's pre conquest
> level(population records were kept in the Arab khilafate for tax
> purposes). No, I have not been able to nail down a proper citation for
> this but still...
population usually recovers in lifetime of one generation, seven hundred
years are enough to make it, even if we assume that at least one woman
and one man survived Mongol conquest. As I said if things did not get
better for 700 years perhaps Iraqis, not Mongols are to blame for it.
punishment before and after Genghis Khan.
The Mongol Invasions are caused by unification of Mongolia and social
reforms by Genghis Khan(abolishing the tribal system and remaking of the
society on military lines) which made Mongolia the world's strongest
military power. And people being people this power was used and I admit
abused.
Joseph C Wang
In article <336A85...@gse.mq.edu.au>,
Byambaa Garid <bga...@gse.mq.edu.au> wrote:
>He was a Muslim, he spoke Turkic language. These disqualify him as
>Mongol, no matter what he said or thought about that.No more than
>Moghuls Akbar and Babur.
Why? One thing that I'm pointing out here is that national identities
are flexible. Someone who is Muslim and speaks a Turkic language can
be identified as an American. You are free to define Mongol in a way
that excludes Muslims and Turkic speakers, but you just realize that
these are not objective definitions and that other people (like for
example a Muslim Turkic-speaker with Mongolian citizenship) might not
agree with your definitions.
>I don't want to offend you, but this perhaps explains the outright
>chauvinsm and racism that dominates China related newsgroups.
Flame wars and people with extreme views dominate USENET groups. I've
given up on reading soc.culture.china and soc.culture.taiwan simply
because there is so little real discussion going on there.
>In particular, Overseas Chinese convinced that Mongolia should be annexed
>by China and "settled", something Chinese from mainland never do.
My own views are that it would be good if Mongolia were part of a
"multi-ethnic" China, but it's not an issue that I think it a high
priority to press.
The reasons for this are political. Because the PRC wanted the
support of the Soviet Union, Mongolia was not an issue to be pressed,
and so people in the PRC just don't get emotional over it (unlike
Tibet and Taiwan). Overseas Chinese communities tend to have strong
KMT-influence, and "giving up" Mongolia is a point that the KMT uses
against the CCP. Also the KMT version of Chinese nationalism is much
more assimilationist than the CCP version because of Soviet influence
and the realities of holding power.
>It is good that you realise peculiar character of your nationalism. You
>should keep in mind that real Chinese may not hold the same views like
>you in many areas.
I should point out that I get rather defensive when people imply that
I am not a "real Chinese." :-) :-) :-) It's a often stated opinion
among overseas Chinese that people from the PRC are not "less Chinese"
because of Communist influence.
My views on Confucianism are different from a lot of people in China,
but does "being Chinese" require ideological or belief conformity?
Does having being in the minority mean that my views are somehow
"inauthentic"? I don't think so.
OSCAR SCHLAF
nayat (na...@panix.com) wrote:
:
: I didn't want to get back into this, too many flames to little substance,
: but I feel that the Mongols and Ginghis Khan, in particular need to be
: defended from the kinds of historical political correctness I've been
: hearing for years.
Well what had maligned old Ghengis is historical data. He is well
deserving of his reputation.
: To begin with, I agree with those who have pointed out that we cannot
: attempt to judge historical personages without first looking at their view
: of the world. A man who gets his meat from a plastic container is going
: to view life and death differently from a man who feeds his family by
: slitting the throat of a sheep. It is a different time and a different
: place and most importantly a different society than any we have today so
: we can't know how the Conquest Mongols thought, and therefore cannot judge
: their morality.
But we can compare it to that of other peoples of the time and even some
of them steppe people, and say that the Mongols were rather excesive in
thier slaughter and brutality.
To put it another way, A Hitler's great evil is not the
: number of people he killed destructive war he prosecuted, but the fact
: that he did it after experiencing much the same thing himself in the
: trenchs of WWI, and should have known better.
Hitler's evil lay in the Concentration camps and Hitler's "logic" for
having them, not the war itself.
: Ginghis Khan is not that kind of conquorer. If one looks closer at his
: history you see that he never started a war without a provocation.
This is quiet laughable.
The provication the Muslim kingdom of Trans-Oxania gave Ghengis was as
well stadged as the thing Hitler set up with Poland in '39.
Also Northern China, didn't give even a bit of provocation, niether did the
Hsi-Hsia kingdom or the Kara Khitai Kingdom.
Saying these kingdoms gave the Mongols provication is like, saying you
gave the bully provication by refusing to hand over your milk money.
: Revenge for the death of his father was his initial reason, then it came
: to be punishing people who were disloyal to him. If he was so
: gratuitiously cruel why did he let Jamulqa betray him so many times before
: destroying him and his tribe?
Now destroying the tribe may have been a
: bit much, but remember this was standard practice on the steppes at the
: time.
To Kill the all the men yes. But not to kill all the Children as was
ordered by Ghengis.
To avoid blood feuds one had to kill not only ones enemies, but all
: their relatives as well. When one starts applying these standards to
: "civilized" cities then we begin to get the great massacres which war
: seemingly so evil.
Not any other steppe people, not even the Huns killed the women and
children of a tribe as well as all the adult males.
Ghengis was overally and un-necessarly brutal, even by steppe standards.
Again, one must look at the motives, every city he
: destroyed had betrayed someone, and turned their coat whether being
: treacherous with Temujin himself, or by betraying their past masters, thus
: making themselves untrustworthy.
No Merv, Nihsapur, and Kabul were destroyed simply because they resisted
him and this delayed him and apparently angered him.
While Samarkand was sacked and burned because the leader of the city had
failed to put up a good fight and wished to surrend, and cowards and
those that deserted thier masters deserved to be destroyed.
So it would seem you were damned if you surrendered and you were damned
if you didn't.
There is a certain logic to it in the
: lawlessness which was Medieval Central Asia.
Destroying the very thing your tring to capture has no logic.
: Now, we modern cynics who have lived with modern propoganda may say, well
: how convient, to such statements. I am not saying that it wasn't
: disengenuous, but I think one must also consider that the reasons were
: sincere, in which case the massacres are justified as a way of prosecuting
: both war and politics.
Ghengis alternatly slaughtered entire populations of cities for
resisting and sometimes for not resisting. His reasons for killing
people changed often, inother words he had not set guide of morals other
then his his will should be obeyed.
His problem was in-consitancy with the way he dealed with enemies.
: Law and order are no natural states in history, and must be enforced by a
: strong power and fear.
Pretty easy to enforce law and order after you've killed 9/10ths of the
population isn't it?
We have peace today because we have weapons to
: destroy ourselves completely, and that scares us to death.
The pax
: Tatarica was caused because everyone was terrified of what the Mongols
: would do if they violated it.
Pax Tatarica? There wasn't any period of peace brought about by
Turko-Mongol rule. Thanks in part because the Mongol rulers fought among
themselves and the Muslim Middle East & parts of Russia continued to
resist the Mongols.
I see no reason to disbelieve the tale that
: a virgin with a sack of gold could transverse all of Asia without being
: molested.
She'd probably get molested by the Turkic tribes that made up the Khan's
army. And her gold stolden, as happened to several traders who weren't
willing to pay tolls(bribes) to the Khans.
Several parties of western monks did it, and trade was booming
: then.
It was the only time in the Middle Ages when one could
: trully say that there was religious freedom.
The Muslim Middle East & Central Asia had religous Freedom, so Did China
before the Mongols came along.
This not the work of
: ruthless, careless barbarians.
No it's the work of Mongols realizing thier far-out numbered by thier
subject peoples, so they should allow them to continue on with thier own
belives. Also having no organized religion or real priesthood themselves,
also helped.
The Golden Horde by the way later tried to force Islam onto the
Russians and others.
: Two last things. I have heard that Mongols didn't wash, and the story of
: Odegai throwing the gold coin to get the Muslim off for performing his
: religious duties seems to bear this out, but remember that if I smell, and
: you smell and we all smell the same, the smell is no longer obnoxious.
If I smell like a flowery perfume as compared to a smelly horse, there is
a differance.
And most Chinese took baths as did the Muslims. So to those two groups
the Mongols were quiet smelly.
: As to the mountains of skulls set up outside of cities, this was the work
: of the later conquorer, Timur, who was much more brutal, everyone of his
: wars was a "Jihad", and who had a lot harder time keeping his empire
: together.
Ghengis Kahn did the same. Check out his sacking of Merv. Hulegu,
Ghengis's grandson and brother to Kublai, did similar things in Bagdad.
: Rick Umbaugh
Mike Cleven
> However you are probably incapable of understanding such issues since
> your level of intelligence is shown in sentence "bunch of smelly,
> ruthless, and terroristic barbarians".
Actually, isn't it true that the Mongols were among the few peoples who
actually regularly _washed_ whenever possible? Didn't Marco Polo note
this, and didn't it scandalize many Chinese? Anyone got any filler on
this?
Donald Tucker
Richard Tung (rt...@merle.acns.nwu.edu) writes:
Thanks for the clarification. I checked my notes and confirmed this
was the reason for the castration. My main point in making the post was to
suggest that there are two sides of every story. We may not like what
the Mongols, and predecessor nomads, but we should recognize that
their actions not motivated merely by some "evil spirit."
Byambaa Garid
Joseph C Wang wrote:
>
> In article <33690A...@gse.mq.edu.au>,
> Byambaa Garid <bga...@gse.mq.edu.au> wrote:
> >Nope, wrong barbarians. Skull mountains were erected by Timur-Leng, not
> >by Mongols. Don't argue, Timur is no more Mongol than you.
>
> accept his claim or not accept his claim, but this sort of flexibility
> leads to something quite interesting.
Mongol, no matter what he said or thought about that.No more than
Moghuls Akbar and Babur.
>
> selected "good historical items" to be part of the Mongol identity and
> rejecting "bad historical items" as not part of the Mongol identity.
particularly find offensive to put it mildly the phrase "Best Mongol is
a dead Mongol". And I dont' like generalizations about Mongol people
made on what Mongols of the 13th century did.
> There is nothing wrong with constructing an identity that way, and in
> fact I have semi-consciously "constructed" a traditional Chinese
> identity for myself that way.
>
> The problem comes in when you try to compare group A and group B using
> these constructions. Basically you make group A look better or worse
> than group B depending on what historical incidents you choose to be
> representative of group A and B.
>
> One other point that I should bring up is that the need to construct a
> identity is particularly powerful among ethnic minorities and overseas
> groups. A person growing up in Beijing never really has to answer the
> question "What does it mean to be Chinese?" and probably really
> doesn't care too much about it. On the other hand, growing up in the
> only Chinese family in a small town in the American South makes that
> question very relevant for me, and one of the consequences of this is
> that I have an interest in Confucianism and Chinese history that most
> people I've met from China find bizarre.
particular, Overseas Chinese convinced that Mongolia should be annexed
by China and "settled", something Chinese from mainland never do.
should keep in mind that real Chinese may not hold the same views like
you in many areas.
>
bruce thompson
In article
<Pine.A41.3.95b.97050...@dante25.u.washington.edu>, "X.
Han" <al...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
> We should also remember that only a SMALL PORTION of the westward campaign
> "Mongol" troops were actually Mongols. The majority were probably central
> Asian/Turkic soldiers who joined the campaign. It was a time of heros and
> heros easily attracted large numbers of followers.
> Both the Mongols and the Manchus were aided by large numbers of "Chinese"
> contingencies in their campaign to conquor "China." I see no reason why
> the westward campaign forces didn't involve an un-ignorable large presence
> of non-Mongol components.
You are quite right, but it's no secret or conspiracy as to why this was
the case. The reason that the other steppe and taiga dwellers joined the
Mongols is quite prosaic. The Mongols offered the men of conquered tribes
and cities the choice of joining the Golden Horde or joining their
slaughtered kin.
> Having said that, on what ground do individuals like J. Askew and B.
> Lovell make accusations of "Mongol barbarity"? What do you by "Mongol"?
> here?
> Non of the "histories" written about the "Mongol" invasion were written by
> neutral parties, as far as I know.
So who could have been neutral in the middle of a ferocious,
destructive, attack by the Golden Horde, huh?
>Can we really depend totally on them
> to make MODERN moral judgement? Given the fact that histories can
> only come down to us through various subjectivities, can we really regard
> them as transparent "facts" to base our judgements on?
History in many cultures is little more than ethnic boosterism, or
hagiography of the tribal or national hero. This has occurred too often in
the West, over time. But most historians, I'll bet, have aspired to the
ideal set up by the Roman historian Tacitus. To tell history "without
anger or bias" is achievable, and frequently achieved, IMO.
>What baffles me is that while TODAY's Mongols still unjustly suffer from
> stigma for something they have never done, nations such as Germany and
> Japan have not suffered a similar fate for what they have committed only
> in the recent past. In other words, despite their rather atrocious war
> acts during the WWII, people seldom make such generalized statements as
> German or japanese barbarity. When we do hear such statements, we don't
> see any sign of people trying to implicate a whole culture or
> civilization. The atrocities in question are only regarded as a strange
> metamorphorsis, an incomprehensible and TEMPORARY mutation, an episode of
> accident. On the contrary, the Japanese and Germans are regarded as among
> the highly civilized nations of the world. This provides a stark contrast
> to the Mongol case, where somehow what the "Mongols" did nearly one
> thouseand years ago precisely have been taken to judge a whole
> civilization and a whole nation.
That's sad, and deplorable. Just remember, to most Westerners, Genghis
Khan is the only noteworthy feature of Mongolian history. Without him, in
Western eyes, the Mongols would be just another faraway horse tribe.
--
bruce
Remove SPAMKILLER from return address to reply.
"Dammit, Philbert; what kind of lepidopterist are you? For god's sake,
man; stand up to them!"
X. Han
On Thu, 1 May 1997 nite...@asiaonline.net wrote:
> > Ok, but in a *few* areas this was certainly the case. I use the
> >example of Islamdom, since this is what I am most familiar with. The
> >Mongol conquest caused a severe blow to the Arab and Persian intelectual
> >traditions; a blow that they never fully recovered from. One scholar,
> >Hafiz Suyuti, describes the exodus of scholars from the central lands of
> >Iraq and the massive book losses from that region. Baghdad had many
> >libraries totaling *at least* hundreds of thousands, and probably mores,
> >volumes. Many are catalogued, most are known lost. The chaos that
> >surrounded the centuries of the Mongol conquest saw the demise of two
> >whole schools of Islamic legal thought, which froze Sunni law, for close
> >to a thousand years, to 4 canonical schools. Philosophic and Scientific
> >thought also moved to the periphery of the Islamic world. The only
> >intelectual stream that survived to a large degree intact was Sufism as
> >Sufi lodges played a heavy role in socialy reorganizing battered regions.
> >For centuries Sufi lodges played the same role in the transmission of
> >knowlege as monistaries in dark age europe.
> What you have said is true.
We should also remember that only a SMALL PORTION of the westward campaign
"Mongol" troops were actually Mongols. The majority were probably central
Asian/Turkic soldiers who joined the campaign. It was a time of heros and
heros easily attracted large numbers of followers. For me it's unjustified
to talk about "Mongol" war deeds of the time with today's moral standards.
CHinggis Khan's time, for example, was not marked by the kind of
nationalism and regid nation-state and ethnic boundaries as we have today.
That made it easier for people to join hands with other ethnics or even
"betray" their own.
Both the Mongols and the Manchus were aided by large numbers of "Chinese"
contingencies in their campaign to conquor "China." I see no reason why
the westward campaign forces didn't involve an un-ignorable large presence
of non-Mongol components. In fact, given the fact of the small overall
total population of Mongols at the time, a strong non-Mongol presence
could only ahve been the case.
Having said that, on what ground do individuals like J. Askew and B.
Lovell make accusations of "Mongol barbarity"? What do you by "Mongol"?
here?
Non of the "histories" written about the "Mongol" invasion were written by
neutral parties, as far as I know. Can we really depend totally on them
to make MODERN moral judgement? Given the fact that histories can
only come down to us through various subjectivities, can we really regard
them as transparent "facts" to base our judgements on?
The only effect of such defective "historical" invocation is to unfairly
fix a modern people in the shadow of some largely constructed "facts" of
centuries ago.
What baffles me is that while TODAY's Mongols still unjustly suffer from
stigma for something they have never done, nations such as Germany and
Japan have not suffered a similar fate for what they have committed only
in the recent past. In other words, despite their rather atrocious war
acts during the WWII, people seldom make such generalized statements as
German or japanese barbarity. When we do hear such statements, we don't
see any sign of people trying to implicate a whole culture or
civilization. The atrocities in question are only regarded as a strange
metamorphorsis, an incomprehensible and TEMPORARY mutation, an episode of
accident. On the contrary, the Japanese and Germans are regarded as among
the highly civilized nations of the world. This provides a stark contrast
to the Mongol case, where somehow what the "Mongols" did nearly one
thouseand years ago precisely have been taken to judge a whole
civilization and a whole nation. "Bloodthirst" is in Mongol blood in a
simple present tense. This prejudice is so deep-rooted that a recent
article on hunting in Mongolia HAS to be titled, "Why Mongolians are
baying for blood" (April 6, 1997, Postmagazine of Sunday Morning Post, by
Jasper Becker). The same is true with the recent National Geographic
issue on Mongolia, delightfully cited by the celebrate Dr Wing Ng as
evidence of some ESSENTIAL "Mongol barbarity" in an earlier posting.
It's high time we expose and stop such blatent hypocrasy. Mongols should
not be the scape goat for the whole humanity. They have no reponsibility
to shoulder the cross for centuries to come for "civilized" people who
dare not to look into themselves for atrocities.
Mike Cleven
In article <5kf82j$c...@news.nevada.edu>, sch...@nevada.edu (OSCAR SCHLAF)
wrote:
> : Two last things. I have heard that Mongols didn't wash, and the story of
> : Odegai throwing the gold coin to get the Muslim off for performing his
> : religious duties seems to bear this out, but remember that if I smell, and
> : you smell and we all smell the same, the smell is no longer obnoxious.
>
> If I smell like a flowery perfume as compared to a smelly horse, there is
> a differance.
> And most Chinese took baths as did the Muslims. So to those two groups
> the Mongols were quiet smelly.
>
No doubt my earlier post citing my belief that the Mongols _did_ wash has
already prompted a firestorm of "you idiot" and "you moron" postings. OK,
I take it back. But I think this fellow's point about olfactory
relativism is quite pertinent - what smells worse - fermented mares milk
or attar of roses? six-week old riding leathers or five-year old court
costume? Europeans in this period were certainly very smelly and used
heavy perfumes to hide their body odours and the rich aroma of stale
garments (outside of Scandinavia, where people _did_ wash), and Tibetans
are still known for their heady olfactory aura, not all of which is due to
yak butter tea. Alexander's sweaty Macedonians turned up their noses at
the perfumes of the Persian court, etc. Dumping on the Mongols because
they didn't live up to someone else's standards of personal hygiene (if
that can be the word for dousing body odour with cologne) is not
relevant. The Mongol cavalry may not have had the baths of the Roman
legions, but their origin in desert country would seem to have something
to do with their failure to bathe according to other people's standards.
nite...@asiaonline.net
David Pugh <davi...@sn.no> wrote:
>nite...@asiaonline.net wrote:
>
>(snip)
>
>> We still should not forget how the war started against the Caliphate.
>> Genghis Khan send his envoys to ask for improved trade links with
>> them.
>>
>> The Caliphate send his envoys back to Genghis Khan with their headwear
>> nailed to their heads.
>>
>> The world may have been a different place if those envoys had been
>> treated with courtesy instead.
>
>Minor correction: the Otrah incident was nothing to do with the
>Caliphate, but was a diplomatic atrocity perpetrated by one Inaldjuk
>Gaïr Khan, the governor of Otrar, perhaps with the knowledge and
>consent of 'Ala' ad-Din Mohammed ibn Tekesh "Khwarazm-shah". He murdered
>Chingiz' trade envoys, and humiliated the next set who came to protest.
>This may have been because Chingiz had previously implied Mongol
>suzerainty over the shah (and everyone else), but one would think that
>there were better methods of conveying a refusal to recognise
>undesirable pretensions. As you say, the implications are
>thought-provoking; shall we then declare Inaldjuk the premier warmonger
>of all time?
>
>It may be noted that the Khwarazm-shah's realm was narrowly founded on a
>military force of Kipchak nomads whose devotion to civilised values is
>not entirely beyond question. The remnants of this army made a great
>nuisance of themselves in Syria in later years.
>
>The Caliphate was far away from all this. There is some talk of caliph
>an-Nasr intriguing to bring the Mongols in, he being in conflict with
>ibn Tekesh over the khutbah at the time, but I don't think this is hard
>fact.
You are quite correct.
I did not have my books readily at hand at that time. Condensing
events into just a paragraph, not to say my condensation into just a
sentence is fraught with dangers.
From the earlier letters, their gist seemed to be that the Mongols
were bood thirsty murderous killers on a mindless rampage through the
various civilizations that we have known.
I felt we have been very unfair to the Mongols notwithstanding that I
am a Chinese.
Please note that even with the murders of the first lot of envoys,
Genghis Khan still tried again by diplomatic means to have good
relations. Perhaps it was because he was outnumbered at that time.
Perhaps again, Genghis Khan had a desire for peace all the time. But
we never did think this way of him.
It is hard to believe that the Governor did it without the knowledge
and blessings of his Shah who sadly underestimated Genghis Khan.
Tons of books have been written on events much more trivial in
comparisn but few accurate books have been written on this score.
Even when one is available, "The secret history of the Mongols",
people tend to scoff at it as propaganda. It is strange that
propaganda lists unfavourably the faults of the one that is supposed
to propagandised about.
That was the start of the chain of events that lead to the incursions
of the Mongols against the Shah and against the Caliphate that was on
more than nodding terms with him.
It was the hunt for the Shah that lead to the first recce into Russia
and later into Europe.
Still I will not go as far as you have suggested that 'to declare
Inaldjuk the premier warmonger of all time? '. We do not know enough.
But talking like this can help us understand better what was done in
the past.
We are also judging what he had done by the standards not just of our
time, but of myobic modern civilised behaviour. After all, Rwanda,
Cambodia killing fields and horrors of ethnic cleansing and other
atrocities took place recently. What have we done to stop that?
Munching popcorn and watching it on CNN as entertainment?
Even so, the use of terror on the part of Genghis had a
ahem...justifiable military purpose. He never had enough troops to
fully garrison the areas he conquered. What he done was in an age
where death by quartering and impaling and worse would have been the
norm.
Making examples of cities that resisted frightened others into
submissions.
To say Mongolians are stinking blood thirsty barbarians implied we are
as innocent as new-borned lambs is a bit of a joke.
I have many Mongolians friends that I am proud to know and who are
better than many Chinese and Caucasians that I have met.
The Idiotic Taoist
nite...@asiaonline.net
nite...@asiaonline.net
Byambaa Garid <bga...@gse.mq.edu.au> wrote:
(snip)
>No. The shah killed 300 Mongol traders for no reason at all. When
>Genghis khan sent an ambassador to settle this "diplomatic incident",
>shah exectuted the ambassador as well. Genghis khan, being civilised
>person sent a messenger with declaration of war. Only after that, Mongol
>army begun hostilities. I would think that if Iran for example dared to
>execute all staff of American embassy, it would be enough reason for
>America to declare war. American habit of using air raids and "carpet
>bombing" "back into the stone age" would be as deadly as anything
>Mongols ever did. All of the above mentioned should tell you that
>Mongols were more civilised and more honorable than Muslim barbarians.
>And by the way, diplomats of all nations should collect money and build
>a Monument for Genghis Khan for his efforts for enforcing the concept of
>"diplomatic immunity".
(snip)
I like that, especially your last statement.
Genghis Khan did go to great lengths through diplomatic means not to
start that war.
I am also an Overseas Chinese for your information and I wish
Mongolians all the best for their future.
I appreciate the information you are providing us on Genghis Khan and
his times.
I also appreciate if you do not make sweeping statements against
others like the way others made sweeping statements against the
Mongols. You will gain much more respect for yourself and Mongolia
that you love so much.
The Idiotic Taoist
nite...@asiaonline.net
Byambaa Garid
Joseph C Wang wrote:
>
> In article <336A85...@gse.mq.edu.au>,
> Byambaa Garid <bga...@gse.mq.edu.au> wrote:
> >He was a Muslim, he spoke Turkic language. These disqualify him as
> >Mongol, no matter what he said or thought about that.No more than
> >Moghuls Akbar and Babur.
>
> Why? One thing that I'm pointing out here is that national identities
> are flexible. Someone who is Muslim and speaks a Turkic language can
> be identified as an American. You are free to define Mongol in a way
> that excludes Muslims and Turkic speakers, but you just realize that
> these are not objective definitions and that other people (like for
> example a Muslim Turkic-speaker with Mongolian citizenship) might not
Thanks, for correcting me. To all Mongol citizens of Kazakh nationality
who might read this:
We are all Mongolians, I did not intend to offend you.Sorry.
> agree with your definitions.
>
> >I don't want to offend you, but this perhaps explains the outright
> >chauvinsm and racism that dominates China related newsgroups.
>
> Flame wars and people with extreme views dominate USENET groups. I've
> given up on reading soc.culture.china and soc.culture.taiwan simply
> because there is so little real discussion going on there.
>
> >In particular, Overseas Chinese convinced that Mongolia should be annexed
> >by China and "settled", something Chinese from mainland never do.
>
> My own views are that it would be good if Mongolia were part of a
> "multi-ethnic" China, but it's not an issue that I think it a high
> priority to press.
I would rather think that it is up to us Mongolians to say in which
country we should live. I appreciate your politeness (Most Overseas
Chinese use expressions like"get your Mongolian asses from Chinese
territory"). And I would rather frankly warn you that Mongols have not
forgotten how to fight and if you try to "press" the issue you'll learn
that Mongols are not "baby seals" like Tibetans whom you can murder and
torture as you like.
>
> The reasons for this are political. Because the PRC wanted the
> support of the Soviet Union, Mongolia was not an issue to be pressed,
> and so people in the PRC just don't get emotional over it (unlike
> Tibet and Taiwan). Overseas Chinese communities tend to have strong
> KMT-influence, and "giving up" Mongolia is a point that the KMT uses
> against the CCP. Also the KMT version of Chinese nationalism is much
You all are fucking sons of bitch!!! You Overseas Chinese became too
brave all of sudden, how can you even dare to speak so bluntly about
takeover of independent countries!!! You all fucked up economic
refugees, you should mind your own bussiness and keep your humble
opinions about what country shall belong to what for yourselves! .
> more assimilationist than the CCP version because of Soviet influence
> and the realities of holding power.
>
> >It is good that you realise peculiar character of your nationalism. You
> >should keep in mind that real Chinese may not hold the same views like
> >you in many areas.
>
> I should point out that I get rather defensive when people imply that
> I am not a "real Chinese." :-) :-) :-) It's a often stated opinion
> among overseas Chinese that people from the PRC are not "less Chinese"
> because of Communist influence.
Obviously in this context to became "less Chinese" means to became less
stupid and ignorant. I wish to all citizens of PRC to became "less
Chinese" in as short time as possible.
>
> My views on Confucianism are different from a lot of people in China,
> but does "being Chinese" require ideological or belief conformity?
> Does having being in the minority mean that my views are somehow
> "inauthentic"? I don't think so.
>
Byambaa Garid
OSCAR SCHLAF wrote:
>
> nayat (na...@panix.com) wrote:
> :
> : I didn't want to get back into this, too many flames to little substance,
> : but I feel that the Mongols and Ginghis Khan, in particular need to be
> : defended from the kinds of historical political correctness I've been
> : hearing for years.
>
> Well what had maligned old Ghengis is historical data. He is well
> deserving of his reputation.
>
> : To begin with, I agree with those who have pointed out that we cannot
> : attempt to judge historical personages without first looking at their view
> : of the world. A man who gets his meat from a plastic container is going
> : to view life and death differently from a man who feeds his family by
> : slitting the throat of a sheep. It is a different time and a different
> : place and most importantly a different society than any we have today so
> : we can't know how the Conquest Mongols thought, and therefore cannot judge
> : their morality.
>
> But we can compare it to that of other peoples of the time and even some
> of them steppe people, and say that the Mongols were rather excesive in
> thier slaughter and brutality.
No.
>
> To put it another way, A Hitler's great evil is not the
> : number of people he killed destructive war he prosecuted, but the fact
> : that he did it after experiencing much the same thing himself in the
> : trenchs of WWI, and should have known better.
>
> Hitler's evil lay in the Concentration camps and Hitler's "logic" for
> having them, not the war itself.
Yes.
>
>
> : Ginghis Khan is not that kind of conquorer. If one looks closer at his
> : history you see that he never started a war without a provocation.
>
> This is quiet laughable.
> The provication the Muslim kingdom of Trans-Oxania gave Ghengis was as
> well stadged as the thing Hitler set up with Poland in '39.
No. The shah killed 300 Mongol traders for no reason at all. When
Genghis khan sent an ambassador to settle this "diplomatic incident",
shah exectuted the ambassador as well. Genghis khan, being civilised
person sent a messenger with declaration of war. Only after that, Mongol
army begun hostilities. I would think that if Iran for example dared to
execute all staff of American embassy, it would be enough reason for
America to declare war. American habit of using air raids and "carpet
bombing" "back into the stone age" would be as deadly as anything
Mongols ever did. All of the above mentioned should tell you that
Mongols were more civilised and more honorable than Muslim barbarians.
And by the way, diplomats of all nations should collect money and build
a Monument for Genghis Khan for his efforts for enforcing the concept of
"diplomatic immunity".
> Also Northern China, didn't give even a bit of provocation, niether did the
> Hsi-Hsia kingdom or the Kara Khitai Kingdom.
Kara Khitai kingdom voluntarily joined Mongol Empire. Being mostly a
trading nation it got a protection from the most powerful nation on
Earth.Rather like Japan and America. As the diplomatic etiquette of the
day demanded,the protecuion was formulated in terms of vassalage and not
in terms of treaty for mutual assistance as in modern times.Not a
single city in former Khara Kitai kingdom suffered from the Mongols.And
by the way ,of those 300 Mongol traders most had been Kara Kitai
merchants. Clearly, Mongols, being honest people, honored their
obligations toward their subjects and avenged. I would think that nobody
after that ever dared to attack the subjects of Gret Khan.
> Saying these kingdoms gave the Mongols provication is like, saying you
> gave the bully provication by refusing to hand over your milk money.
>
> : Revenge for the death of his father was his initial reason, then it came
> : to be punishing people who were disloyal to him. If he was so
> : gratuitiously cruel why did he let Jamulqa betray him so many times before
> : destroying him and his tribe?
>
> Now destroying the tribe may have been a
> : bit much, but remember this was standard practice on the steppes at the
> : time.
>
> To Kill the all the men yes. But not to kill all the Children as was
> ordered by Ghengis.
No. "Secret History of Mongol" explicitly states that only males of the
fighting age were killed, all women and children were spared. Moreover,
Oelun-Ekhe, mother of Genhis Khan adopted orphan children from hostile
tribes. Many Mongol women perhaps followed the queen's example. The best
example is Shikhi-Khutag, Tatar (remember, those who killed Genghis
Khan's father Esugei Baatar) boy and Genghis Khan's adopted brother. He
was a highly educated and made career in Mongol Army.
Let's put this into perspective. Nazis adopting Jewish children? Jews
making career in Wehrmacht?
General Custer adopting Indian child?
>
> To avoid blood feuds one had to kill not only ones enemies, but all
> : their relatives as well. When one starts applying these standards to
> : "civilized" cities then we begin to get the great massacres which war
> : seemingly so evil.
>
> Not any other steppe people, not even the Huns killed the women and
> children of a tribe as well as all the adult males.
> Ghengis was overally and un-necessarly brutal, even by steppe standards.
Nope. See above.
>
> Again, one must look at the motives, every city he
> : destroyed had betrayed someone, and turned their coat whether being
> : treacherous with Temujin himself, or by betraying their past masters, thus
> : making themselves untrustworthy.
>
> No Merv, Nihsapur, and Kabul were destroyed simply because they resisted
> him and this delayed him and apparently angered him.
> While Samarkand was sacked and burned because the leader of the city had
> failed to put up a good fight and wished to surrend, and cowards and
> those that deserted thier masters deserved to be destroyed.
> So it would seem you were damned if you surrendered and you were damned
> if you didn't.
Look. Perhaps, you never heard about Kashgar,Yarkend,
Turfan,Khotan,Hami and many other cities of the Eastern Turkestan. All
of them were richer or as rich as Samarkand. Why were they spared?
Perhaps having less bloodthirsty ruller has something to do with it.
>
>
> There is a certain logic to it in the
> : lawlessness which was Medieval Central Asia.
>
> Destroying the very thing your tring to capture has no logic.
Who said anything about capture. You are stupid if you try to look at
everything from your European perspective. Mongols did not need any
land. Mongolia was twice as big as whole of Western Europe and had only
600.000 people. The whole idea of fighting for more land was alien to
them. As was explicitly stated the goal of war against Khoresm was to
avenge the death of Mongol subjects. Destruction of cities was revenge.
Americans nuked Hiroshima in revenge for Pearl Harbour. Burning cities
as a revenge for killing civilians is not something only Americans have
a right to do!
>
> : Now, we modern cynics who have lived with modern propoganda may say, well
> : how convient, to such statements. I am not saying that it wasn't
> : disengenuous, but I think one must also consider that the reasons were
> : sincere, in which case the massacres are justified as a way of prosecuting
> : both war and politics.
>
> Ghengis alternatly slaughtered entire populations of cities for
> resisting and sometimes for not resisting. His reasons for killing
> people changed often, inother words he had not set guide of morals other
> then his his will should be obeyed.
> His problem was in-consitancy with the way he dealed with enemies.
He had many problems I agree, but "in-consitancy", whatever it might be
was not one of them!
>
> : Law and order are no natural states in history, and must be enforced by a
> : strong power and fear.
>
> Pretty easy to enforce law and order after you've killed 9/10ths of the
> population isn't it?
Stupid!
>
>
> We have peace today because we have weapons to
> : destroy ourselves completely, and that scares us to death.
>
> The pax
> : Tatarica was caused because everyone was terrified of what the Mongols
> : would do if they violated it.
>
> Pax Tatarica? There wasn't any period of peace brought about by
> Turko-Mongol rule. Thanks in part because the Mongol rulers fought among
> themselves and the Muslim Middle East & parts of Russia continued to
> resist the Mongols.
Shows your ignorance. Have you heard of Ibn Khalid or something, a
traveller from Sudan (yes, from Sudan) who visited Mongolia and China in
1290s. Only in 19 centuriy such travels again became possible. Under Pax
Britannica.
>
> I see no reason to disbelieve the tale that
> : a virgin with a sack of gold could transverse all of Asia without being
> : molested.
>
> She'd probably get molested by the Turkic tribes that made up the Khan's
> army. And her gold stolden, as happened to several traders who weren't
> willing to pay tolls(bribes) to the Khans.
Trade tariffs are bribes? Hmm, there is something to it I guess. BTW,
effective May 1st Mongolia abolished ALL tariffs and taxes on trade,
becoming the world's freest trading nation.
>
> Several parties of western monks did it, and trade was booming
> : then.
>
> It was the only time in the Middle Ages when one could
> : trully say that there was religious freedom.
>
> The Muslim Middle East & Central Asia had religous Freedom, so Did China
> before the Mongols came along.
You never heard about persecution of Manicheans, Nestorian Christians
and even Buddists in China under several dynasties. This shows only your
ignorance of Chinese history.
As for Muslim tolerance, it is hardly worth mentioning. Tell that
Armenians and Georgians, Jews and Parsis,Bahais and Ismaelis. They might
not agree with you, to put it mildly.
>
> This not the work of
> : ruthless, careless barbarians.
>
> No it's the work of Mongols realizing thier far-out numbered by thier
> subject peoples, so they should allow them to continue on with thier own
> belives. Also having no organized religion or real priesthood themselves,
> also helped.
> The Golden Horde by the way later tried to force Islam onto the
> Russians and others.
Hahhhaa! Bullshit! I know that Russians hate us, but if there any honest
Russian listening please tell him, whether it is true or not.
>
> : Two last things. I have heard that Mongols didn't wash, and the story of
> : Odegai throwing the gold coin to get the Muslim off for performing his
> : religious duties seems to bear this out, but remember that if I smell, and
> : you smell and we all smell the same, the smell is no longer obnoxious.
>
> If I smell like a flowery perfume as compared to a smelly horse, there is
> a differance.
Your Europeans were the most smelly creatures in the world at that time.
Read my article "Smelly Europeans"
> And most Chinese took baths as did the Muslims. So to those two groups
> the Mongols were quiet smelly.
Have you ever been to China? Perhaps you may have noticed some dark
skinned people on the streets of Chinese cities. They are Chinese
peasants, not Africans. The colour of their skin is atributed to the
fact that they never washed in their lives.
>
>
> : As to the mountains of skulls set up outside of cities, this was the work
> : of the later conquorer, Timur, who was much more brutal, everyone of his
> : wars was a "Jihad", and who had a lot harder time keeping his empire
> : together.
>
> Ghengis Kahn did the same. Check out his sacking of Merv. Hulegu,
By the way according to Muslim historians Merv was taken in 1219. All
inhabitants allegedly were slaughtered. 10 months later the "ghost city"
rebelled against Mongols. Mongols have taken it again killing 80
thousand people. And it rebelled again! Perhaps hundreds of thousands
civilians slaughtered by Mongols existed only in wild imagination of
medieval Muslim historians.
> Ghengis's grandson and brother to Kublai, did similar things in Bagdad.
Perhaps, Armenians and Georgians who contributed a considerable number
of troops to the Allied war effort were at least partly to blame, given
their traditional hatred of Muslims.
>
> : Rick Umbaugh
Ben Krauskopf
X. Han wrote:
> What baffles me is that while TODAY's Mongols still unjustly suffer from
> stigma for something they have never done, nations such as Germany and
> Japan have not suffered a similar fate for what they have committed only
> in the recent past. In other words, despite their rather atrocious war
> acts during the WWII, people seldom make such generalized statements as
> German or japanese barbarity. When we do hear such statements, we don't
> see any sign of people trying to implicate a whole culture or
> civilization. The atrocities in question are only regarded as a strange
> metamorphorsis, an incomprehensible and TEMPORARY mutation, an episode of
> accident. On the contrary, the Japanese and Germans are regarded as among
> the highly civilized nations of the world. This provides a stark
I don't think this is entirely true. I think it is much more subtle,
but both of these nations are viewed in a negative light because of
these acts. People publish books trying to blame the people as a whole
for the acts that took place during the war. They try to establish
that there is some fundimental problem that causes these people to do
such things. Judging from the description on the cover (a bad
practice, I admit), "Hitler's Willing Executioners" seems to be a
good example of a book of this type. Although people certainly don't
use words like "Barbaric" like they do when dealing with the mongols,
but that undercurrent of blame is there for German and Japaneese
cultures as well.
Perhaps the difference is that the Germans at least (I don't know
enough about Japan to comment) are visibly and deeply ashamed of what
happened (on the whole. There are exceptions like the skinheads.)
Speaking as a westerner, perhaps the guilt that many Americans feel
for Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the internment camps keeps us from being
too critical (although there are some museums that make it hard not to
think of the Japaneese of the time as ruthless barbarians). Germany
is a western european nation, perhaps we are worried more about why it
happened there (since German culture is different from ours only in
relatively minor ways) than about dismissing them as barbarians. (I
think this also explains the plethora of books dealing with the "why"
aspect of the war as opposed to the "what happened" books.)
Perhaps it just boils down to the fact that Germany and Japan are
modern industrial nations with people who live life much as the rest
of the western world does. Most westerners know nothing about
modern Mongolia. There are probably a significant number who don't
know it exists. When we see picutures of modern Mongols, it is of
rural herdsmen living like their ancestors. It is just a lot easier
to call someone that dissimilar from oneself a barbarian. It takes
less difference than that to qualify. I grew up in a small town, and
I've run into quite a few city dwellers who were honestly surprised
that I wasn't some kind of inbred "barbarian" out of deliverance or
something.
Ben Krauskopf
David Pugh
ibn Tekesh over the khutbah at the time, but I don't think this is hard
fact.
David Pugh
Mike Cleven wrote:
>
> Actually, isn't it true that the Mongols were among the few peoples who
> actually regularly _washed_ whenever possible? Didn't Marco Polo note
> this, and didn't it scandalize many Chinese? Anyone got any filler on
> this?
I have no idea about Mongol or Chinese hygiene, but it is my
understanding that the smelliest period of Western European history -
everything doused in perfume, doctors advising patients that baths could
be fatal, etc. - is every bit as dreadful as described BUT is also well
after the period we are discussing - in fact the low-point is the
eighteenth century. The early 13th century was cleaner. Not as clean as
us, not as clean as the Muslims, but cleaner than Boswell! Jean Gimpel
writes about the universality of the medieval sauna, later suppressed by
the church for encouraging immorality (stews = sauna, later brothel).
Your phrase "whenever possible" must also be relevant: any soldier,
whether Mongol, Crusader or GI, should be judged by what he does when
you offer him a hot bath, not by how he smells on horseback or in his
NBC suit. A soldier of the Great War once described to me how his boots
had grown into his feet and had to be removed with tweezers, but I don't
think he was proud of it.
nayat
In article <5kcu0f$2...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>,
>
>Correct me if I am wrong, but Timur claimed to be a Mongol. One can
>accept his claim or not accept his claim, but this sort of flexibility
>leads to something quite interesting.
Timur was of Mongol or mixed Mongol blood. He kept a Ginghizid figurehead
of his empire (can't remember the guy's name) to ligitimize his claim to
be remaking the Mongol Empire. Apparently the pax tatarica was as fondly
remembered in Medieval Asia as the pan Romanica was in the West.
Rick Umbaugh
nayat
In article <5kfrs3$l...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>,
Joseph C Wang <j...@athena.mit.edu> wrote:
>In article <5ke9up$s...@panix3.panix.com>, nayat <na...@panix.com> wrote:
>>To begin with, I agree with those who have pointed out that we cannot
>>attempt to judge historical personages without first looking at their view
>>of the world. A man who gets his meat from a plastic container is going
>>to view life and death differently from a man who feeds his family by
>>slitting the throat of a sheep. It is a different time and a different
>>place and most importantly a different society than any we have today so
>>we can't know how the Conquest Mongols thought, and therefore cannot judge
>>their morality.
>
>we judge historical figures?) I'd like to sort out these statements
>and react to them.
>
>>1) A man who gets his meat from a plastic container is going to view
>>life and death differently from a man who feeds his family by slitting
>>the throat of a sheep.
>
>free to judge the other.
I suppose anyone can judge anyone else, but I find it rather futile. All
it is make one feel somehow superior to the other and cloud one's
judgement. YMMV
>
>>It is a different time and a different
>>place and most importantly a different society than any we have today so
>>we can't know how the Conquest Mongols thought, and therefore cannot judge
>>their morality.
>
>I disagree with both these statements. First of all, it is a
>different time and different place, but I think it IS possible to at
>least try to look at the world through the eyes of Conquest Mongols.
>Part of the fun of history is to at least see how other people thing.
>
I agree with you about the fun of putting one in someone else's shoes. I
am a professional actor, I do that kind of thing all my life, but I do not
delude myself that I get it right. I can only cast a conjecture, but a
conjecture not clouded by moral judgements.
Perhaps here is a place to expound on what I feel about morality. I
think that morality is as unknowable as historical truth. I have never
met two people who agree on what is moral and what is immoral under
questioning. Now, this is not to say that people don't have the right to
protect themselves from dangerous people of societies, but that is a long
way from saying that we don't have the right to judge the morality of a
person or society. Down the road of moral judgement lies tyranny.
Sorry for the off topic digression.
>I also have problems with the second statement. The main problem is
>that I can replace "Conquest Mongols" with "the person living next
>door." I really don't know exactly how the person next door thinks,
>and so if I follow this logic, no moral judgements are possible at all
>with anyone.
>
>>Ginghis Khan is not that kind of conquorer. If one looks closer at his
>>history you see that he never started a war without a provocation.
>
>I should point out that you are contradicting what you just said. The
>statement that "X acted justifiably" is a moral statement, and the
>notion that one cannot make moral judgements about the Mongols
>includes both sympathetic and non-sympathetic statements. If one
>truly cannot make moral statements about the Mongols, then it is
>impossible to write the rest of the paragraphs, which attempts to
>justify their activities.
>
I was not trying to justify, for the reasons that you pointed out. I'm
not sure that Ginghis Khan "acted justifiably", only to point out that
there were facts that the original poster hadn't considered, and that
there was a different way to look at things.
>>Again, one must look at the motives, every city he
>>destroyed had betrayed someone, and turned their coat whether being
>>treacherous with Temujin himself, or by betraying their past masters, thus
>>making themselves untrustworthy. There is a certain logic to it in the
>>lawlessness which was Medieval Central Asia.
>
>And understanding this sort of logic allows us to understand the
>psychology of the Conquest Mongol which contradicts the statement that
>you made above.
>
>>Law and order are no natural states in history, and must be enforced by a
>>strong power and fear.
>
>The reason that I study history is that trying to look at the 20th
>century from the viewpoint of Genghis Khan and vice versa will
>(hopefully) allow one to find deep moral principles.
If I may be so bold, find Moral Principles for yourself, that is the duty
of all persons, however do not try to judge Ginghiz Khan by those
principles since they are not his, and he may not have even been aware of
them to begin with.
>I actually agree
>with the statement that you made there. I would like to add, however,
>that rule only by fear is self-destructive, and that there has there
>is an extreme delicate balance between the use of fear and persuasion in
>government.
>
>It's the age-old debate between the Confucian and the Legalist.
>
What I was trying to do with the rest of my post, about the pax Mongolica,
was show that terror and fear brought about something good. It was the
same terror and fear that the Romans used to hold their Empire together,
the Pax Romanica. Since, at least here in the west that is viewed in many
senses as a golden age (at least it was during the Middle Ages) I see no
reason to attack the Mongols who accomplished the same thing, no matter
how fleeting. While I am fond of saying that the ends don't justify the
means, but rather are the means, I don't see how, given the turbulence of
Central Asia at the time, the ends could have been accomplished by any
other means.
Rick Umbaugh
Richard Tung
bru...@SPAMKILLER.atl.mindspring.com (bruce thompson) writes:
>>What baffles me is that while TODAY's Mongols still unjustly suffer from
>> stigma for something they have never done, nations such as Germany and
>> Japan have not suffered a similar fate for what they have committed only
>> in the recent past. In other words, despite their rather atrocious war
>> acts during the WWII, people seldom make such generalized statements as
>> German or japanese barbarity. When we do hear such statements, we don't
>> see any sign of people trying to implicate a whole culture or
>> civilization. The atrocities in question are only regarded as a strange
>> metamorphorsis, an incomprehensible and TEMPORARY mutation, an episode of
>> accident. On the contrary, the Japanese and Germans are regarded as among
>> the highly civilized nations of the world. This provides a stark contrast
>> to the Mongol case, where somehow what the "Mongols" did nearly one
>> thouseand years ago precisely have been taken to judge a whole
>> civilization and a whole nation.
Actually, you still get adverse feelings against Germany and Japan.
For example, some Jews I know still refuse to buy anything made in
Germany, and if you don't think that Japan's atrocities don't have an
effect any more, then I urge you to take a trip around East Asia
(specifically China) and ask various people their feelings about the
Japanese.
Byambaa Garid
David Pugh wrote:
>
> OSCAR SCHLAF wrote:
>
> > The provication the Muslim kingdom of Trans-Oxania gave Ghengis was as well stadged as the thing Hitler set up with Poland in '39.
>
> I don't want to get involved in the Askew-Garid polemics about racism,
> but to know more about the period. Could you explain how Chingiz
> "staged" this provocation? It is new to me but I am open to being
> convinced.
Indeed, how Genghis Khan "staged" to make Khoresm-shah Mohamed to
slaughter 300 Mongol traders, after that to execute Mongol ambassador? I
think he used "mind-control" technology. How did he obtain it? From time
travellers. Or maybe from little green Martians.
Mike Ralls
This seems to have nothing to do with soc.history.what-if. Please remove
it from the header in all future posts.
Thank you.
David Pugh
OSCAR SCHLAF wrote:
> The provication the Muslim kingdom of Trans-Oxania gave Ghengis was as well stadged as the thing Hitler set up with Poland in '39.
I don't want to get involved in the Askew-Garid polemics about racism,
X. Han
I'm fully aware of anti-japanese feelings resulting from the WWII. But my
original point is this kind of negative feelings does not cause chinese
and the whole world to judge the whole Japanese culture/civilization as
barbaric. And it does not affect the image of the people as a whole. In
the case of Mongols, I think it is particularly true with Europeans to
make a direct connection between Mongols today and Chinggis Khan's wars. I
have pointed out one example in my original posting. But there are more.
They again and again invoke this history when they are talking about
Mongols ofthe late 20th century, as if time has frozen when it comes to
Mongols. And Mongols only, since atrocities committed by some nations in
the very recent past are regarded as just that-- a simple past with no
bearings on their contemporary image and representations.
And let me repeat, this is hypocracy and unjust among the most blatent and
yet also the most ignored.
David Pugh
nite...@asiaonline.net wrote:
>
> (huge snip)
>
> Still I will not go as far as you have suggested that 'to declare
> Inaldjuk the premier warmonger of all time? '.
I had my tongue in my cheek, as usual: replacing Chingiz as a
hate-figure by someone almost no one has heard of. We could even have
people saying "The Tories are somewhere to the right of Inaldjuk Gair
Khan." Just my sense of humour, sorry.
Someone else posted that the Mongols are the Western symbol of
bloodthirsty barbarians because the man in the street knows nothing
whatsoever about them *except* for Chingiz' ravages. And certainly
nothing of their modern history (me neither). A very important factor,
I think. And aren't we lucky that there are no Vandals still around?
(snip)
David Pugh
Byambaa Garid wrote:
>
> David Pugh wrote:
> >
> > OSCAR SCHLAF wrote:
> >
> >
> > but to know more about the period. Could you explain how Chingiz
> > "staged" this provocation? It is new to me but I am open to being
> > convinced.
> slaughter 300 Mongol traders, after that to execute Mongol ambassador? I
> think he used "mind-control" technology. How did he obtain it? From time
> travellers. Or maybe from little green Martians.
This thought occurred to me too, but let's give Oscar a chance to come
up with something.
It is my impression that Chingiz had his eyes turned east when this
happened, that it was more of an unwelcome surprise that had to be dealt
with rather than a welcome excuse to go conquering in the "wrong"
direction. Do you agree?
Byambaa Garid
nayat wrote:
>
> In article <5kcu0f$2...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>,
> >
> >Correct me if I am wrong, but Timur claimed to be a Mongol. One can
> >accept his claim or not accept his claim, but this sort of flexibility
> >leads to something quite interesting.
>
> Timur was of Mongol or mixed Mongol blood. He kept a Ginghizid figurehead
Mixed is the word.
> of his empire (can't remember the guy's name) to ligitimize his claim to
He had several I think. Jagatai descendants.
> be remaking the Mongol Empire. Apparently the pax tatarica was as fondly
> remembered in Medieval Asia as the pan Romanica was in the West.
Yep. Not only in Medieval one though.
>
> Rick Umbaugh
Patrick Chew
>> Byambaa Garid <bga...@gse.mq.edu.au> wrote:
>>>wrong barbarians. Skull mountains were erected by Timur-Leng, not
>>>by Mongols. Don't argue, Timur is no more Mongol than you.
> Joseph C Wang wrote:
>> Correct me if I am wrong, but Timur claimed to be a Mongol. One can
>> accept his claim or not accept his claim, but this sort of flexibility
>> leads to something quite interesting.
Byambaa Garid wrote:
> He was a Muslim, he spoke Turkic language. These disqualify him as
> Mongol, no matter what he said or thought about that.No more than
> Moghuls Akbar and Babur.
Anyone archive the discussions we had on Timur all those months back?
From what I remember, we had a difficult time with a definititve
answer, but claims of Timur's ancestry being Mongolian, while being a
Turkic speaker (I don't think we touched on Muslim or not), seems to
tickle my brain...
-Patrick
Byambaa Garid
David Pugh wrote:
>
> Byambaa Garid wrote:
> >
> > David Pugh wrote:
> > >
> > > OSCAR SCHLAF wrote:
> > >
> > > > The provication the Muslim kingdom of Trans-Oxania gave Ghengis was as well stadged as the thing Hitler set up with Poland in '39.
> > >
> > > I don't want to get involved in the Askew-Garid polemics about racism,
> > > but to know more about the period. Could you explain how Chingiz
> > > "staged" this provocation? It is new to me but I am open to being
> > > convinced.
> > Indeed, how Genghis Khan "staged" to make Khoresm-shah Mohamed to
> > slaughter 300 Mongol traders, after that to execute Mongol ambassador? I
> > think he used "mind-control" technology. How did he obtain it? From time
> > travellers. Or maybe from little green Martians.
>
> This thought occurred to me too, but let's give Oscar a chance to come
> up with something.
>
> It is my impression that Chingiz had his eyes turned east when this
> happened, that it was more of an unwelcome surprise that had to be dealt
> with rather than a welcome excuse to go conquering in the "wrong"
> direction. Do you agree?
Yep. Obviously North China Jin empire was a more of a threat to new
Mongol state. As even casual glance at its history shows it was a great
deal interested in steppe affairs,was not beyond genocide and overall
was an aggressive and dangerous neighbour both to Sung and to
Mongolia.Genghis khan therefore wanted to concentrate on this war. I
think that Genghis khan invasion of Jin was completely right,because
what do you think would happen if he didn't. Let's suppose that newly
united Mongolia does not invade Jin, after a few peacefull decades
Genghis khan dies and a civil war starts.Steppe empires are highly
susceptible to such troubles.Jin uses the moment, invades Mongolia and
eliminates Mongolian people. BTW,in 18 century exactly the same thing
happened to Dzungar khanate. It had a civil war over succesion ,
Qing(Manchus,descendants of the Jurchid Jin) intervened and slaughtered
Dzungar Mongols, all 1 million of them. So, it is a clear that China was
a serious threat to Mongolia, more so than Mongolia to China. Genghis
Khan understood this well.Since his prime obligation was a security of
Mongol people it was his duty to eliminate this threat which he
acomplished so well.
Khoresm shah Mohamed was also quite bloodthirsty and unpredictable
neighbour. He used the decline of KaraKitai kingdom (which voluntarily
joined Mongol empire) to annex new territories in the East. His
hostility to Mongolia, combined with his aggresivenss made him a
dangerous enemy to Mongolia. (He allegedly had 400.000 troops, whereas
Mongolia had only 110 thousand). He resembles Saddam Hussein very much,
apparently types like him nver completely die out. He got what he
deserved and his country paid for it dearly,just like Iraq suffered from
stupidity of Saddam.
OSCAR SCHLAF
David Pugh (davi...@sn.no) wrote:
: OSCAR SCHLAF wrote:
:
: > The provication the Muslim kingdom of Trans-Oxania gave Ghengis was as well stadged as the thing Hitler set up with Poland in '39.
:
: I don't want to get involved in the Askew-Garid polemics about racism,
: but to know more about the period.
I don't really care to get into the Askew-Garid debate either, since
both don't full seem to know what thier talking about.
Could you explain how Chingiz
: "staged" this provocation? It is new to me but I am open to being
: convinced.
Well in 1218, Ghengis Khan sent a letter to Ala al Din Muhammad, ruler
of Khwarazm(Trans-Oxania) in which Ghengis called al Din Muhammad his vassal.
Ala al Din Muhammad sent a restrained reply, and detained some Mongol
merchants that were in Trans-Oxania at the time.
Well Ghengis told his Mongols that Ala al Din Muhammad had killed all
the merchants and refused entry of any other Mongol merchants to Khwarazm.
Ghengis neglected to tell his troops about the letter he sent Ala al Din
Muhammad, or that the merchants were actually still alive and other
Merchants from Ghengis hadn't been denied entry as Ghengis had told his
troops.
The following year in 1219, Ghengis invades Khwarazm(Trans-Oxania). By
1221, the kingdom was destroyed.
The Muslim historians Ibn al Athir, al Juwaini, and Abu'l Ghazi all
talk of this particular incident.
---Oscar Schlaf---
David Johnston
I am becoming unspeakably bored by the Mongols.
Byambaa Garid
nite...@asiaonline.net wrote:
>
> David Pugh <davi...@sn.no> wrote:
>
> >nite...@asiaonline.net wrote:
> >
> >(snip)
> >
> >> We still should not forget how the war started against the Caliphate.
> >> Genghis Khan send his envoys to ask for improved trade links with
> >> them.
> >>
> >> The Caliphate send his envoys back to Genghis Khan with their headwear
> >> nailed to their heads.
> >>
> >> The world may have been a different place if those envoys had been
> >> treated with courtesy instead.
> >
> >Minor correction: the Otrah incident was nothing to do with the
> >Caliphate, but was a diplomatic atrocity perpetrated by one Inaldjuk
> >Gaïr Khan, the governor of Otrar, perhaps with the knowledge and
> >consent of 'Ala' ad-Din Mohammed ibn Tekesh "Khwarazm-shah". He murdered
> >Chingiz' trade envoys, and humiliated the next set who came to protest.
> >This may have been because Chingiz had previously implied Mongol
> >suzerainty over the shah (and everyone else), but one would think that
> >there were better methods of conveying a refusal to recognise
> >undesirable pretensions. As you say, the implications are
> >thought-provoking; shall we then declare Inaldjuk the premier warmonger
> >of all time?
> >
> >It may be noted that the Khwarazm-shah's realm was narrowly founded on a
> >military force of Kipchak nomads whose devotion to civilised values is
> >not entirely beyond question. The remnants of this army made a great
> >nuisance of themselves in Syria in later years.
> >
> >The Caliphate was far away from all this. There is some talk of caliph
> >an-Nasr intriguing to bring the Mongols in, he being in conflict with
> >ibn Tekesh over the khutbah at the time, but I don't think this is hard
> >fact.
>
> You are quite correct.
>
> I did not have my books readily at hand at that time. Condensing
> events into just a paragraph, not to say my condensation into just a
> sentence is fraught with dangers.
>
> From the earlier letters, their gist seemed to be that the Mongols
> were bood thirsty murderous killers on a mindless rampage through the
> various civilizations that we have known.
>
Racism,quite common actually.
> I felt we have been very unfair to the Mongols notwithstanding that I
> am a Chinese.
>
> Please note that even with the murders of the first lot of envoys,
> Genghis Khan still tried again by diplomatic means to have good
> relations. Perhaps it was because he was outnumbered at that time.
> Perhaps again, Genghis Khan had a desire for peace all the time. But
> we never did think this way of him.
>
> It is hard to believe that the Governor did it without the knowledge
> and blessings of his Shah who sadly underestimated Genghis Khan.
Obviously, considering his actions this bloodthirsty shah was a threat
to peace in the world. I think Genghis Khan made a service to the
world,eliminating this barbarian.
>
> Tons of books have been written on events much more trivial in
> comparisn but few accurate books have been written on this score.
> Even when one is available, "The secret history of the Mongols",
> people tend to scoff at it as propaganda. It is strange that
> propaganda lists unfavourably the faults of the one that is supposed
> to propagandised about.
You know racism again. Mongols writing books? Mongols are savages,they
are unable to do this.
Pretty common attitude.
>
> That was the start of the chain of events that lead to the incursions
> of the Mongols against the Shah and against the Caliphate that was on
> more than nodding terms with him.
>
> It was the hunt for the Shah that lead to the first recce into Russia
> and later into Europe.
>
> Still I will not go as far as you have suggested that 'to declare
> Inaldjuk the premier warmonger of all time? '. We do not know enough.
> But talking like this can help us understand better what was done in
> the past.
>
He and his shah were dangerous and unpredictable savages. It was a
historic duty of Genghis Khan to remove this trash.
> We are also judging what he had done by the standards not just of our
> time, but of myobic modern civilised behaviour. After all, Rwanda,
> Cambodia killing fields and horrors of ethnic cleansing and other
> atrocities took place recently. What have we done to stop that?
> Munching popcorn and watching it on CNN as entertainment?
>
> Even so, the use of terror on the part of Genghis had a
> ahem...justifiable military purpose. He never had enough troops to
> fully garrison the areas he conquered. What he done was in an age
> where death by quartering and impaling and worse would have been the
> norm.
Americans nuked Hiroshima in revenge for Pearl Harbour. Why Mongols
could not do essentially the same thing to Samarcand using less
barbarious weapons?
Racism again.
>
> Making examples of cities that resisted frightened others into
> submissions.
>
> To say Mongolians are stinking blood thirsty barbarians implied we are
> as innocent as new-borned lambs is a bit of a joke.
Indeed.
>
> I have many Mongolians friends that I am proud to know and who are
> better than many Chinese and Caucasians that I have met.
Thanks
>
> The Idiotic Taoist
> nite...@asiaonline.net
Jian Hui YANG
The image of a nation is largest dependent on the economic and military
strength of the nation. Japan, and Germany have become prosperous, and
strong again after WWII, so people, especially politicians are willing
to overlook the past, or even glorify it. In the case of Mongolia, which
has little clout internationally, it is easy to dismiss them as a
backward people, then can also paint a babaric picture.
It is sad but true that we are judges by the cover. For example in
Australia, Japanese often have a better image than other asians, because
they spend more when they come here, have other more expensive habits,
which are considered essential to be of noble character.
In a similar vein, most people around the world, think that white
australians are kind, generous, noble, or whatever good character that
one may attribute to people who are successful, and the natives are
generally regarded as not possessing these qualities, because they live
in poor areas, dress badly etc, which is certainly not true.
In every country, of every race there are people who have good
character, and those who have bad character, but our perception often
betray us.
David Pugh
OSCAR SCHLAF wrote:
>
> Well in 1218, Ghengis Khan sent a letter to Ala al Din Muhammad, ruler
> of Khwarazm(Trans-Oxania) in which Ghengis called al Din Muhammad his vassal.
> Ala al Din Muhammad sent a restrained reply, and detained some Mongol
> merchants that were in Trans-Oxania at the time.
> Well Ghengis told his Mongols that Ala al Din Muhammad had killed all
> the merchants and refused entry of any other Mongol merchants to Khwarazm.
> Ghengis neglected to tell his troops about the letter he sent Ala al Din
> Muhammad, or that the merchants were actually still alive and other
> Merchants from Ghengis hadn't been denied entry as Ghengis had told his
> troops.
> The following year in 1219, Ghengis invades Khwarazm(Trans-Oxania). By
> 1221, the kingdom was destroyed.
> The Muslim historians Ibn al Athir, al Juwaini, and Abu'l Ghazi all
> talk of this particular incident.
Thanks for the scholarly response. I knew about the letter claiming
suzerainty (and mentioned it in my post), but the double-play about
telling people that they had been killed when they weren't is new to me.
I don't have access to much of a library, I read whatever I can get my
hands on in whatever order I can get my hands on it, and have never seen
this in either the primary sources or the secondary sources that use
al-Juvaini & Co. If you could reproduce your source for me I shall be
eternally grateful. Or if anyone else has it I should be similarly
grateful. (If it's very long, maybe by mail? NB I can pick my way
through French and German if I have to.)
Thanking you in anticipation.
David Pugh
Byambaa Garid
Are Arians the most bloodthirsty killers of all times because of that?
David Pugh
Byambaa Garid wrote:
>
(snip)
> > (Oscar Schlaf:) Well in 1218, Ghengis Khan sent a letter to Ala al Din Muhammad, ruler
> > of Khwarazm(Trans-Oxania) in which Ghengis called al Din Muhammad his vassal.
That _does_ sound like a claim of suzerainty to me. Did not the Sung,
Liao, Jin and Hsia have a diplomatic language of father-son-elder
brother relationships too?
_However_:
> Hardly enough to kill 300 Mongols who had nothing to do with
> it.
Quite so. So it all turns on whether that actually happened or not. If
it did, I agree that Inaldjuk and 'Ala' ad-Din Mohammed (not to mention
Terken Khatun) had it coming to them, though the extension of the
justified revenge to whole cities is quite another question (leave me
out of this whole barbarian/terrorist/racist thing please).
> > Ala al Din Muhammad sent a restrained reply, and detained some Mongol
> > merchants that were in Trans-Oxania at the time.
> This is how you describe Otrar massacre???
> > Well Ghengis told his Mongols that Ala al Din Muhammad had killed all
> > the merchants and refused entry of any other Mongol merchants to Khwarazm.
> > Ghengis neglected to tell his troops about the letter he sent Ala al Din
> > Muhammad, or that the merchants were actually still alive and other
> Alive???
> > Merchants from Ghengis hadn't been denied entry as Ghengis had told his
> > troops. (rest snipped)
Another point occurs to me: to what extent does Chingiz need to tell his
"troops" anything, to justify himself in their eyes? Are we talking
about a kuriltai here, or a tent meeting with Jebe, Subodei and so
forth? It all sounds a little bit strange, maybe anachronistic, to me,
but let's see Mr. Schlaf's sources and their assessment. If I really
have been misinformed I want to know about it.
PS. Should we maybe modify the subject line to "The Otrar Massacre"?
Byambaa Garid
OSCAR SCHLAF wrote:
>
> David Pugh (davi...@sn.no) wrote:
> : OSCAR SCHLAF wrote:
> :
> : > The provication the Muslim kingdom of Trans-Oxania gave Ghengis was as well stadged as the thing Hitler set up with Poland in '39.
> :
> : I don't want to get involved in the Askew-Garid polemics about racism,
> : but to know more about the period.
>
> I don't really care to get into the Askew-Garid debate either, since
> both don't full seem to know what thier talking about.
>
> Could you explain how Chingiz
> : "staged" this provocation? It is new to me but I am open to being
> : convinced.
>
>
>
> Well in 1218, Ghengis Khan sent a letter to Ala al Din Muhammad, ruler
> of Khwarazm(Trans-Oxania) in which Ghengis called al Din Muhammad his vassal.
Wrong. He said that he loves Muhammad as his son. Maybe it was
offensive. Hardly enough to kill 300 Mongols who had nothing to do with
it.
> Ala al Din Muhammad sent a restrained reply, and detained some Mongol
> merchants that were in Trans-Oxania at the time.
This is how you describe Otrar massacre???
> Well Ghengis told his Mongols that Ala al Din Muhammad had killed all
> the merchants and refused entry of any other Mongol merchants to Khwarazm.
> Ghengis neglected to tell his troops about the letter he sent Ala al Din
> Muhammad, or that the merchants were actually still alive and other
Alive???
> Merchants from Ghengis hadn't been denied entry as Ghengis had told his
> troops.
> The following year in 1219, Ghengis invades Khwarazm(Trans-Oxania). By
> 1221, the kingdom was destroyed.
> The Muslim historians Ibn al Athir, al Juwaini, and Abu'l Ghazi all
> talk of this particular incident.
>
>
Well, this is how Gleivitz incident would have been described by
surviving Nazi historian.
> ---Oscar Schlaf---
e...@zianet.com
We can defend or revile what has been done in history, as long as we
study and learn from what has gone on before us.
Fearghus
Christopher Kaplonski
Patrick Chew <pat...@uclink2.berkeley.edu> writes:
[stuff snipped ]
> Anyone archive the discussions we had on Timur all those months back?
> From what I remember, we had a difficult time with a definititve
>answer, but claims of Timur's ancestry being Mongolian, while being a
>Turkic speaker (I don't think we touched on Muslim or not), seems to
>tickle my brain...
Hmmm.... No, I didn't archive the stuff, but...
Working strictly from memory here, I believe that Timur claimed Mongol
ancestry on his mother's side. I believe he even went as far as to claim to
be a descendant of Chinggis, but I don't think that's a widely accepted
claim, and was belied by his own use of Chinggisid puppet rulers (again,
if memory serves).
Cheers,
Chris
M. Farahbakhshian
One case for the mongol conquest is such:
1) mongol conquest caused a more or less homogenous (relatively
speaking), area. There were easy trade routes; i.e. silk road et al, and
because of the mongol horse riding 20+ miles a day, ideas, materials,
and DISEASES travelled farther faster.
2) The Bubonic plague, although known since 515, was mainly transferred
overland by Mongols who caught the rat in their southeast vassal lands
and carried its fleas north and west to Hulagu's lands etc. Over sea, it
was transferred by Javanese and other mongol-related traders.
3) Europe caught the bubonic plague and its relative, pneumonic plague,
as a result of the Mongols. As a result of the decimation of 2/3 of the
society, labor became more valuable. Workers (serfs) had more say,
disrupting feudalism and the intricate "medieval synthesis" between
Church and King.
4) As a result of such breakdown of stability, European culture became
DYNAMIC; seeking to expand or die. SUch dynamism led it from behind
Islamic and CHinese culture to world greatness.
Thank the Mongols and their rats for America.
--
I hate how Goths attempt to enshroud themselves (pun intended) in the
"mystery of the night" or the "lure" of the vampire. Well, let me tell
you, it's a lot harder to find fresh blood at 3 A.M. than it is to get a
decent burger at 1 P.M. Yeah, Goths may be masters of the night, but we
are masters of the day, and that's when the stores are open.
Joseph Askew
OSCAR SCHLAF (sch...@nevada.edu) wrote:
: I don't really care to get into the Askew-Garid debate either, since
: both don't full seem to know what thier talking about.
You know I am having a real hard time being polite over this. I don't
mind intelligent informed criticism from time to time, but when some
one who has asserted the Tibetans introduced Buddhism into China and
needs correcting in Islamic law by me criticises how well *I* am
informed I get tetchy. Very very tetchy. I suggest that until you
manage to find one single mistake in any post I have made in this
entire thread you keep your silly little opinions about me to
yourself. Is that too much to ask?
: The following year in 1219, Ghengis invades Khwarazm(Trans-Oxania). By
: 1221, the kingdom was destroyed.
Making it one of the first to go oddly enough. The Mongols were
fighting with the Jin well before this but they Ruzhen held on
longer. Of course all talk about the merchants sent by Genghiz
should mention the fact that the Mongols often used merchants to
spy for them and it was only a pretext anyway. A man who gets a
great deal of pleasure ou of killing people and raping their women
was hardly going to spend muh longer looking for an excuse.
Joseph
--
"Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall inherit the Earth"
- President Bill Clinton
OSCAR SCHLAF
Joseph Askew (jas...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au) wrote:
: OSCAR SCHLAF (sch...@nevada.edu) wrote:
:
: : I don't really care to get into the Askew-Garid debate either, since
: : both don't full seem to know what thier talking about.
:
: You know I am having a real hard time being polite over this. I don't
: mind intelligent informed criticism from time to time, but when some
: one who has asserted the Tibetans introduced Buddhism into China and
: needs correcting in Islamic law by me criticises how well *I* am
: informed I get tetchy. Very very tetchy.
It was you that talked of Timur's mis-control of India, when Timur never
even controled any bit of India Joseph, and I didn't need correcting of
Islamic law, It was you that implied that Islamic law called for forced
conversion when it certainly does not.
I suggest that until you
: manage to find one single mistake in any post I have made in this
: entire thread you keep your silly little opinions about me to
: yourself. Is that too much to ask?
Well your statemenst about Timur were a bit far-fetched. Considering he
never even ruled India. And your whole debate with Garid seems to amount
to litte more then flames. Your whole arugement in defense of the Sung
seems to be flawed by the way.
: : The following year in 1219, Ghengis invades Khwarazm(Trans-Oxania). By
: : 1221, the kingdom was destroyed.
:
: Making it one of the first to go oddly enough. The Mongols were
: fighting with the Jin well before this but they Ruzhen held on
: longer.
What of it? Still tring to show Chinese superiority or something?
Look, you've made some flaws in your history, such as talking of Timur's
mismanagement of India, when Timur never ruled India in the first place,
or impliing Islamic laws calls for forced conversitions when it doesn,'t,
and your whole defesne of the Sung seems a bit far-fetched, and more then
one person has pointed out the flaws in it.
If you wish to debate me any further, it probably should be taken to
person e-mail, rather then wasting space on the newsgroups.
Alot of what you've said about the Mongols in response to Garid has
been true, but many of your statements on other subjects is somewhat
questionable, especially within reguardes to the Chinese.
----Oscar Schlaf---
: Joseph
Byambaa Garid
David Johnston wrote:
>
> I am becoming unspeakably bored by the Mongols.
Peter Wilkinson
In<5kqpn3$q...@niflheim.rutgers.edu>,
dan...@rci.rutgers.edu (Christopher Kaplonski) wrote:
And, of course, the Chinggisid puppet rulers were themselves Turkic
speakers and good Muslims - as were their contemporaries in the Golden
Horde and (a little earlier) in the Ilkhanate in Persia. Now all of
these were genuinely descended from Chinggis - so were they Mongol or
not?
Peter Wilkinson
p...@pwilkinson.compulink.co.uk
Byambaa Garid
"There is only so much in the world I can learn. Why waste time on
minor people with little literature, less higher culture and no real
significance in the world?"
"Such absurd racism is stupid. China did progress (odd that you
object to the use of such terms when applied to Mongols but not
when applied to China. Why is that?) Its history only implies
that the best Mongol is a dead Mongol. Nothing more. China has
always changed, it always has progressed in any rational sense.
Unlike Mongolia."
"... Mongols, who have brought little good into the world and
destroyed much that was valuable."
"Terror was a usual Mongol practice. And they did smell. These are
facts. Sorry if you don't like them but that won't change a thing."
"The world, in my opinion, would have been a much better place with a
lot fewer Mongols in it at any time between 221 BC and 1945."
Doesn't surprise me at all.
Joseph Askew
X. Han (al...@u.washington.edu) wrote:
: We should also remember that only a SMALL PORTION of the westward campaign
: "Mongol" troops were actually Mongols. The majority were probably central
: Asian/Turkic soldiers who joined the campaign. It was a time of heros and
: heros easily attracted large numbers of followers. For me it's unjustified
: to talk about "Mongol" war deeds of the time with today's moral standards.
The first problem is that your first statement is a statement of fact.
Your second sentence is a suggestion of a probability. Either you
know if most of the "Mongol" soldiers were Mongol or you don't. I
don't see any immediate middle ground. I would also think that the
notion of "Mongol" was invented by Genghiz Khan to cover the group
of people he conquered. Before he came along people didn't call
themselves Mongols, but by smaller tribal names (like Merkid).
After his death and the subsequent expansion the prestige of the
name was so high the Mongols have kept it (as well as others like
Timur and the Mughals trying to adopt it). So it is impossible to
say who was ot wasn't a Mongol as the use of the term wasn't properly
worked out as yet.
: Both the Mongols and the Manchus were aided by large numbers of "Chinese"
: contingencies in their campaign to conquor "China." I see no reason why
: the westward campaign forces didn't involve an un-ignorable large presence
: of non-Mongol components.
Well either the evidence says that there were non Mongols or it doesn't.
Reasonbs why don't come into it. Do you know or are you just making
this up like so much else around here?
: In fact, given the fact of the small overall
: total population of Mongols at the time, a strong non-Mongol presence
: could only ahve been the case.
And I disagree. Define Mongol first.
: Having said that, on what ground do individuals like J. Askew and B.
: Lovell make accusations of "Mongol barbarity"? What do you by "Mongol"?
: here?
On the ground that the Mongols behaved in a barbaric and brutal manner.
As even an author Bambi likes (Thomas Barfield) says. By mass killings
for no real purpose. By killing about 40 million Chinese people. It is
because of things like this. By Mongol I mean Mongols.
: Non of the "histories" written about the "Mongol" invasion were written by
: neutral parties, as far as I know.
It is a fact that the last Jin census gave a population in North
China of about 50 million and the first Yuan one only 8.5 million.
No one made that up. Not even _The Secret History_?
: Can we really depend totally on them
: to make MODERN moral judgement? Given the fact that histories can
: only come down to us through various subjectivities, can we really regard
: them as transparent "facts" to base our judgements on?
If they are the only evidence we have they are the only evidence
we can use. Do you have any suggestions as to why we shouldn't
believe them? If everyone who met the Mongols said they smelled
bad, killed a hell of a lot of people and were extremely violent
and cruel why wouldn't we tend to believe it? The Chinese can hardly
have got together with the Persians and the Poles to concoct a
story together.
: The only effect of such defective "historical" invocation is to unfairly
: fix a modern people in the shadow of some largely constructed "facts" of
: centuries ago.
Rather like the way that the modern former People's Republic of
Mongolia uses the memory of Genghiz Khan to glorify the history
of the Mongol people? Just less unfairly (to Mongols)? These are
not defective histories, they are all we have and there is NO
reason to think they are all wrong. These facts are not "largely
constructed". Your attempts at revisionism are.
: What baffles me is that while TODAY's Mongols still unjustly suffer from
: stigma for something they have never done, nations such as Germany and
: Japan have not suffered a similar fate for what they have committed only
: in the recent past.
Well the Japanese are still paying. The Australian government has
just stepped in to prevent a Japanese-funded park being named the
"Peace" park as this was thought offensive to the memory of the
Australians who fought the Japanese. The Japanese get stick all
over Asia. The Germans did far better than the Mongols - they nor
only apologised but they also paid out large sums to the people
they did so much damage to. The Mongols did more damage to more
people and they are *proud* of it as Bambi shows so well. They
*boast* about how many people they killed and aren't ashamed.
This makes them complicit in the crimes of their ancestors in a
way that isn't true of Germany but is in part of Japan.
: In other words, despite their rather atrocious war
: acts during the WWII, people seldom make such generalized statements as
: German or japanese barbarity.
My Great-Uncle was a POW at Changi and he wouldn't speak to any
Japanese person to the end of his life. Nor stay in the same room
as one. All the statements he made about the Japanese were about
their barbarity. And yet I have made no such statements about
modern Mongols. Nor has anyone else I have noticed.
: When we do hear such statements, we don't
: see any sign of people trying to implicate a whole culture or
: civilization.
You ought to talk to my Great-Uncle (he's dead. So make it soon).
I saw lots of signs when he talked about the Japanese.
: The atrocities in question are only regarded as a strange
: metamorphorsis, an incomprehensible and TEMPORARY mutation, an episode of
: accident.
And yet the Mongols went on to kill a lot more Chinese people over
the Ming dynasties. And after the Qing fell they cut the living hearts
out of a whole lot of Chinese people. Mongol behaviour was not a one
off or an isolated incident.
: On the contrary, the Japanese and Germans are regarded as among
: the highly civilized nations of the world.
Dependswho you talk to. My Grandmother still has trouble being
polite about hte Germans, my Great-Uncle died believing that
civilisation and the Japanese were mutally exclusive sets.
: This provides a stark contrast
: to the Mongol case, where somehow what the "Mongols" did nearly one
: thouseand years ago precisely have been taken to judge a whole
: civilization and a whole nation.
A problem you might have in real life but not one that has ocurred
anywhere in this or any related threads. 1911 was not 1000 years
ago. Nor was 1449. Or 1550. Mongol brutality was on going for as
long as the Chinese were weak and the Mongols were in a position
to kill Chinese people.
: "Bloodthirst" is in Mongol blood in a
: simple present tense.
When have Mongols been *able* to kill farmers but have not
done so?
: It's high time we expose and stop such blatent hypocrasy. Mongols should
: not be the scape goat for the whole humanity. They have no reponsibility
: to shoulder the cross for centuries to come for "civilized" people who
: dare not to look into themselves for atrocities.
No one is suggesting that the Mongols ought to be a scapegoat. But
if you want good, or even polite, relations with your neighbours
and other nations in the world you have to start by admitting that
Mongols have killed a hell of a lot of people over the years in
many brutal and cruel ways. This is obvious. If you deny that such
events took place you are complicit in the crime. Your decision.
VB
sch...@nevada.edu (OSCAR SCHLAF) writes:
> Well in 1218, Ghengis Khan sent a letter to Ala al Din Muhammad, ruler
>of Khwarazm(Trans-Oxania) in which Ghengis called al Din Muhammad his vassal.
> Ala al Din Muhammad sent a restrained reply, and detained some Mongol
>merchants that were in Trans-Oxania at the time.
My understanding is that Khwarazm Shah was addressed as "the most
cherished son" (which may have been a euphemism for vassal, i dont know);
rest of the letter deals with proposed trade agreement. Ghenghis may have
had designs on Khwarazm realm, and could be soft pedalling it for the
time being. Also, it was Shah's frontier governor who imprisoned the
merchants (who, it seems were travelling under mongol banner/protection)
and impounded their goods. He probably had some good reason, since
mongols often sent spies pretending to be merchants.
It was however, Shah's refusal to handover the governor into
mongol hands, and the treatment of mongol envoys that precipitated
the (i'd say) inevitable. Mongols would have attacked Khwarazm on
one pretext or another eventually.
Ghenghis had a strong sense/conviction of his 'manifest destiny'
as the ruler of earth.
Quo vadis ?
Wing C Ng wrote:
>
> Had Xiang Yu won the war, Chinese would call themselves Chu
> rather than Han.
>
> Wing
I wouldn't bet on that. This is a complicate matter involves politic,
economic, tradition, culture, et al, not just name-calling. Would have
everything made it possible for Wuti been the same had Xiang Wu won ?
Not very likely. Xiang Wu favored Western Zhou's ruling system rather
than Liu Pang's modified Qin's system. China would have been divided
into smaller kingdoms (as it was before Liu Pang united it).
Remember, Liu Pang was the aggressor, who wanted to unify China, not
Xiang Wu, who wanted to remain the feudal-like system. By that, Liu was
probably the most significant figure of Chinese history, besides the
First emperor of Qin.
By the way, a friend of mine asked about the relationship between
ShuFu (sp? the ancient kingdom of Tibetans) and TaLi (or NanChao). About
Sui dynasty time, NanChao occupied ShuFu, when did the Tibetans regain
their independence ? If I'm not wrong, under S'ung dynasty, ShuFu still
belonged to Tali ? Thanks in advance.
--
Quo vadis ?
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