94 Part II: Outsiders
explains the legendary tales of Amazon women by noting that Scythian soci-
ety, like other Central Asian cultures, featured far more balanced gender roles
than Egypt, China, Rome, India, or Persia, and hence when these groups
encountered the Scythians and others who included women in their military
ranks and political posts, their reactions tended toward the scandalized and the
fantastic (Beckwith 2009). Mongol expert Morris Rossabi has found that elite
Mongol women were allowed to own property, and their political power in
other respects was also considerable as observed by the great Persian scholar
and minister, Rashid al-Din, and the Moroccan legal scholar and minister, Ibn
Battuta. Rossabi noted the prominence of Tolui Khan’s widow, Sorqoqtani
Beki, a Nestorian Christian. When she spoke, “the commanders were silenced
and all who heard her approved” (Rossabi 2011:123).The Xiongnu and the Mongols
From its earliest days, the Chinese Empire was almost constantly in a state of
war or uneasy peace with its nomadic neighbors to the north. Chinese philoso-
phers and statesmen sometimes defined themselves in categorical contrast with
the Xiongnu, the Jurchen, the Khitans, the Manchus, and the Mongols. Civiliza-
tion was defined by the differences between the sedentary Han Chinese, with
their complex agricultural methods and their sophisticated cosmopolitan cen-
ters, and the nomads to the north and west.The Amazons or warrior women made famous in Greek legends were inspired by historical
fighting women of Western and Central Asia. While the Amazons of Greek legend blended
fantasy and reality, recent archaeological discoveries have confirmed the existence and the
prominence of women warriors among the steppe nomads. Here two Amazon women are
depicted fighting a Greek warrior.