Bibliographical Essay

The topic of violence in Inner Asian history has long been neglected, partly because of a general absence of detailed studies in this field, and partly because of the much greater attention paid to the Mongol conquest, whose brutality and savagery have been documented in numerous medieval chronicles from Russia to Armenia, Hungary and the Middle East.

A contribution that includes the arc of Inner Asian history in the period in question, but with a focus on war rather than violence, is Nicola Di Cosmo (ed.), Warfare in Inner Asian History (500-1800) (Leiden: Brill, 2002). The classic book by Rene Grousset, The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1970), includes various episodes of war and violence. Much has been written about the military aspects of the nomadic invasions by popular writers, such as Erik Hildinger, Warriors of the Steppe: A Military History of Central Asia, 500 B.C. to 1700 A.D. (New York: Sarpedon, 1997). Also typical of this literature is James Chambers, The Devil's Horsemen: The Mongol Invasion of Europe (New York: Atheneum, 1985), which includes a chapter entitled ‘The Fury of the Tartars'. More scholarly is the study of the Mongol conquest of China by H. Desmond Martin, The Rise of Chingis Khan and His Conquest of China (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1950) which includes detailed information on military matters. More recently, of note is the book by Timothy May on Mongol military history, The Mongol Art of War: Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Military System. (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2007).

A seminal essay on steppe violence is Joseph Fletcher, Jr, ‘Turco-Mongolian Monarchic Tradition in the Ottoman Empire', Harvard Ukrainian Studies 3 (1979), 236-51. Here Fletcher theorised the similarity between the nomadic system of violent succession and the system known as ‘bloody tanistry' in the Celtic world.

Timothy May is also the author of an essay on military training of steppe nomads, reaching beyond the Mongol period, ‘The Training of an Inner Asian Nomad Army in the Pre-modern Period', Journal of Military History 70.3 (2006), 617-35. The question of the Inner Asian warrior in several literatures, from antiquity to the Middle Ages, was first discussed by Denis Sinor, ‘The Inner Asian Warriors', Journal of the American Oriental Society 101.2 (1981), 133-44.

An excellent guide to primary sources for the Mongol impact on Europe is Felicitas Schmieder, Europa und die Fremden: Die Mongolen im Urteil des Abendlandes vom 13. Bis in das 15. Jahrhundert (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1994), in particular chapter III. Several primary sources mention the violence inflicted by the Mongols on their European victims, such as those contained in Archdeacon Thomas of Split, History of the Bishops of Salona and Split, ed. Olga Peric et al. (Budapest: Central European University, 2006), and Anonymous, Magistri Rogerii Epistola in miserabile carmen super destructione regni Hungariae per Tartaros facta, ed. J. M. Bak, M. Rady and L. Veszpremy (Budapest: Central European University, 2010).

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Source: Gordon Matthew, Kaeuper Richard, Zurndorfer Harriet (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 2: AD 500-AD 1500. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 696 p.. 2020

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