Mobility and Immobility in the Mongol Empire
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Abstract
Mobility, and less so immobility, has always been in the focus of socio-cultural analysis of Mongolian societies given their nomadic way of live and the interconnectedness of its various communities scattered all over Eurasia, in particular in the apogee of the Mongol Empire during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Yet, what are the tangible manifestations and the limits of mobility, how can we measure them? This chapter will briefly readdress some well and perhaps lesser-known topics of the medieval Mongolian world generally related to mobility in a wider sense before attention is given to the epistemological arenas of culture transfer and long-distance trade. In the first part of this article, the dialectics of mobility is discussed as socio- cultural mobility, e.g., carrier making, loyalty, integration by difference, models of inclusive ethnicity and exclusive descent (the ‘Chinggisid Principle’), invention of genealogies, marriage alliances, and religious tolerance (until Islamisation). The second part deals with spatial mobility, in particular in terms of tribute relations and military service, culture transfer and travelling ideas, movement control and population transfer, and the flow of goods and peoples.
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