introduction 3
am not focusing my attention on the sedentary civilizations. Instead,
the research interest focuses mainly on the steppe lands of Eurasia and
on the world of the nomads and semi-nomads/semi-sedentary societ-
ies and their perception of the ‘outside Other’ (e.g. Arabs, Sassanian
Persians, Chinese, Byzantines). At the same time, this study takes into
consideration that the relations, the interactions, the contacts, and the
encounters with the others are a source and sometimes a motivating
power for the economic, military, cultural, religious and other changes
occurring in a certain environment as a result of their impact.
To put it another way, it is Arnold Toynbee’s famous “challenge-
and-response” theory that is especially appropriate to our case. In my
view, here it should be applied with certain modification: the sed-
entary societies are not only and solely a subject of the “challenge”
in the studied region and time span; often they were in the position
to provide responses to the challenges of the steppe (e.g., the fash-
ion of the “Hunnic” hairstyle was in fact introduced in sixth-century
Constantinople, as clearly attested by Procopius of Caesarea). I hope to
be able to prove that much through a number of historical examples.
It is important to understand in what media and ways were various
challenges met, whether or not there was any selective approach, and
under what circumstances was selection applied to borrowings from
the other culture, who had the power to control the selection, and in
which regions was convergence of various cultures stronger.
So in reality there are two ways to look at the evidence available. My
goal is to analyze and interpret the attitudes and the approaches taken
by members of the so-called steppe empires towards sedentary societ-
ies, which may thus be used to reveal the notion the steppe empires
had about themselves, that is the way in which they constructed their
respective group identities. Such a notion could be teased out of a
study of the cultural relation between the two worlds, which stood
in sharp contrast to each other in many respects. Each one of them
attempted to impose its own concept about ‘peace’ and ‘world order’
on territories that look vast even by present-day standards.
The Latin word ‘pax’, which is normally translated as “peace,” also
connoted “order” and “empire” (specifically “imperial order”). As a
consequence, when Omeljan Pritsak employed the phrase “Pax Nomad-
ica” to refer to the steppe lands of Eurasia, he drew a fundamental dis-
tinction between nomadic polities and the ‘sedentary’ empires of the
ancient and medieval world. Peter Golden subsequently introduced