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#1
2 chapter one
1.1 The Mongols and Trade
there is no escaping the fact that the massacres and devastation which
the Mongols left in their wake in the course of their conquests will for-
ever—and rightly—cast a shadow over chinggisid history.
nevertheless, even from the very start there were discordant notes
in this dismal image: even those who suffered from the Mongol scourge
could not restrain themselves from admiring comment on the conquerors’
military prowess. Similarly, the sheer size of the empire, which in the mid-
thirteenth century extended from the pacific to the Mediterranean and
the Black Sea, was impressive.
those who had direct experience of internal conditions in the state
were among the most admiring voices. they did not hesitate to praise the
law and order which the rulers could guarantee throughout the whole
extent of the vast empire. positive opinion only increased once foreign
travellers, merchants or missionaries, came forward to say that not only
did the ‘barbarians’ not forbid access to the territories that they ruled, but
they even encouraged travellers to their enormous eurasian domain. this
welcoming attitude was all the more surprising since it so visibly went
against the well-known practice in Islamic and Byzantine lands of com-
pletely forbidding foreigners to travel in the interior of the country.
Indeed, the most positive accomplishment in all of chinggisid history is
precisely the extraordinary ease of access and transit which they created
in an enormous geographical space. people from the most diverse cultural
regions, heretofore isolated from one another, came into contact for the
first time, came to know one another, and exchanged material goods and
religious or intellectual ideas.
among the first to take advantage of the abolition of traditional barri-
ers and the opening of new horizons were, of course, merchants. It is self-
evident that in such unusual conditions, transcontinental trade developed
at a dizzying rate, on a scale unprecedented in the Middle ages.
historians agree in emphasising that this measure was the Mongol
khans’ decisive contribution to the development of the global economy.
no significant voices deny the achievement, just as no arguments would
be sufficient to refute this major fact in world history.
Sadly, the historical consensus is not demonstrably based on concrete
proofs. It is here, precisely in the domain of academic rigour and demon-
stration, above and beyond any general impressions, that the difficulties
begin. as might easily be supposed, the main fault underlying this state of
