This article addresses the topic of nomadic cart culture in the Eurasian Steppe, which developed over the long term and reached its apex with the advent of the imperial Mongols. A range of narrative, ...archaeological, and visual sources are employed in order to examine how the carts were used, adapted, technologically improved, and ritualized in lives and burials of the imperial Mongol and specifically the Golden Horde nomads. A unique Golden Horde burial with ornamented cart parts from Kalmykia is analyzed. It is argued that this example reveals the inclusivity of the cart culture in Ulus Jochi whereby a wide use of personal carts by nomads of different ages, genders, and states of health encouraged their active participation in the mobile social life of this Steppe Empire.
This paper addresses the topic of Islamisation among the nomads of the Golden Horde in the Lower Volga Region in the 13-14th centuries. Due to ideological and methodological constraints, this topic ...has been neglected, and the lack of reliable written and emic/native sources have led to scholarly misunderstandings and an underestimation of this conversion process, which pervaded nomadic society far beyond its ruling elite. In order to gain a more holistic perspective on this issue, recent research on native conversion stories of the denizens of the Golden Horde can be fruitfully supplemented by evidence of native beliefs and actions from archaeological data. As an example, I introduce and analyse an Islamicate burial from the remote region of the steppe in modern day Kalmykia (Russian Federation) that was populated exclusively by nomads in the Middle Ages. By evaluating the details of this burial, such as its construction and the grave goods, against the norms prescribed in Muslim legal writings, I argue that this burial represents indigenous Islam. It demonstrates the concerns of the Islamicised nomads with kinship, ancestry, and status. My paper stresses how indigenous Islam, which was embraced and promulgated by the nomads’ agency, should not be seen as a superficial phenomenon, but as a crucial ingredient of nomadic ritual life, identity, and political power that served their society and the Golden Horde at large.
The horse is central to many Indigenous cultures across the American Southwest and the Great Plains. However, when and how horses were first integrated into Indigenous lifeways remain contentious, ...with extant models derived largely from colonial records. We conducted an interdisciplinary study of an assemblage of historic archaeological horse remains, integrating genomic, isotopic, radiocarbon, and paleopathological evidence. Archaeological and modern North American horses show strong Iberian genetic affinities, with later influx from British sources, but no Viking proximity. Horses rapidly spread from the south into the northern Rockies and central plains by the first half of the 17th century CE, likely through Indigenous exchange networks. They were deeply integrated into Indigenous societies before the arrival of 18th-century European observers, as reflected in herd management, ceremonial practices, and culture.
Les conversions des khans Berke (1257-67) et Özbeg (1312-41) eurent un immense retentissement dans le dār al-islām et au-delà de ses frontières. Les souverains de la Horde d’Or furent les premiers ...descendants de Gengis Khan à prendre le titre de sultan. Leurs orientations politiques et religieuses eurent des conséquences à long terme en Asie Centrale, en Russie et en Europe, où l’islamisation de nombreuses communautés date de la période mongole. Le passage à l’islam alla de pair avec des rituels et des règles de vie collective, l’acceptation d’un système économique et monétaire, et la construction d’une histoire commune. En milieu nomade, les récits de conversion se substituèrent aux récits d’origine en tant que narration du moment fondateur de la communauté. Quelles furent les conséquences politiques de la tolérance religieuse des Mongols ? Peut-on parler d’un islam des steppes, associé à des pratiques funéraires particulières ? Qui furent les acteurs de la transmission de l’islam et quels étaient leurs modes de prosélytisme au sein de la Horde d’Or ? Les artisans, les lettrés, et les bénéficiaires de privilèges impériaux ont-ils joué un rôle plus important que les soufis? Enfin, doit-on établir un lien entre turquisation et islamisation ? Ce numéro de la Remmm, qui réunit quatorze historiens, historiens d’art et archéologues d’une dizaine de pays, apporte des réponses concrètes à ces questions et propose de nouvelles pistes de recherche à la lumière de sources méconnues. Il offre un éclairage inédit sur un phénomène complexe touchant des régions qui s’étendent de la Chine à la Bulgarie. The conversions of the khans Berke (1257-67) and Özbeg (1312-41) had a major impact on the dār al-islām and beyond its frontiers. The rulers of the Golden Horde were the first descendants of Chinggis Khan to bear the title of ‘sultan’. Their political and religious policies had long-standing consequences in Central Asia, Russia, and Europe, where many communities converted to Islam during the Mongol period. Adopting Islam implied the acceptance of new rituals and rules for collective life, it meant entering into new economic and monetary systems, and building a new common history. In the nomadic world, conversion stories often replaced older legends of origin as the foundational narratives of peoples and communities. What were the political implications of Mongol religious tolerance? Can we discern the “Islamisation of the Steppe” through distinctive burial practices? Who were the agents of Islamisation and how did they proselytize within the Golden Horde? Did craftsmen, literati, and holders of imperial grants play a more important role in the transmission of Islam than Sufis? And, finally, should we see a link between Turkicisation and Islamisation? This volume brings together fourteen historians, art historians, and archaeologists, from ten countries, to discuss these issues. By analysing unpublished and little known sources, they open new paths for research and shed light on a complex phenomenon that spread from China to Bulgaria.
The nomadic Khazars inhabited the North-Western frontier of Iran and the Islamic Caliphate and were at the vanguard of the large Turk/Khazar Empire that dominated the Western Eurasian Steppe and its ...trade routes from the 6 th to the 10th centuries AD. The Turk/Khazar polity was formed as a “shadow empire” which was politically and economically linked to Sasanian Iran and later, the Islamic Caliphate. The Khazar nomads, who were strategically located in the wider North-Western Caspian Region, witnessed a number of dramatic cultural and political transformations, such as incorporation into the Turk/Khazar imperial polity, Islamization, and the economic explosion of market exchange during the 9th-10 th centuries AD. These cultural and political developments are evident from scarce historical sources, but archaeologically they have been demonstrated to some degree only in the context of settled peoples, who were the tributaries of the Turk/Khazar Empire. This study uses interdisciplinary sources, including historical, anthropological, and archaeological data, to redefine the cultural category of the Khazars and highlight the important role these nomads of the North-Western Caspian region played in the aforementioned transformations during the second half of the first millennium AD. This dissertation also deals with modern politicized interpretations of Khazar material culture and the crisis of the archaeological representation of the Khazar nomads in the framework of the positivist Eurocentric paradigm. Instead, this study begins with a cosmological approach and reinterprets available historical data by filtering them through relevant anthropological models according to a cultural “hierarchy of difference.” The main focus falls on an emic perspective, the politics of representation, and the value of materiality in the world of the nomadic Khazars. Thus a new approach to this nomadic material culture is developed, which allows for a comparative evaluation of the cultural and political continuity and change among the Khazar nomads and their settled neighbors. In addition, original archaeological data were collected during seasonal surface surveys (2002-2004) in the core territory of the nomadic Khazars (in the Republic of Kalmykia, Russia) that demonstrate strong links between the nomadic sites, the frontier population of Iran and the Islamic Caliphate.
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