the mediterranean and asia 451
the flow of goods westwards, and was usually as concerned as the Romans in main-
taining the flow of trade even in wartime (Morony, 2004: 172). Centuries later we
find that the silk trade was also an important policy consideration for the Ottoman
and Safavid Persian states, each of which relied heavily on duties on silk: Suraiya
Faroqhi refers to the “politics” of this silk trade. Safavid attempts to restrict imports
or to use the trade for political leverage was a major factor in Ottoman–Persian
conflict (Faroqhi, 1994: 503).
Asia’s pastoralistsBetween the mid-thirteenth and mid-fourteenth centuries, the Mongol Empire of
Genghis (Chinggis) Khan linked the markets of Eurasia as never before, including
those within the Mediterranean. Italian cities such as Siena found their wealth in trading
luxury goods from the Silk Roads rather than in local manufacturing (Prazniak, 2010:
178). The system that produced the Pax Mongolica may also have been responsible
for circulating the great trans-continental plagues.
The overall historical impact of Asia’s pastoral peoples on the course of Eurasian
history is difficult to overestimate. The peoples who occupied the semi-arid marginal
regions of the continent, whose numbers were always significantly smaller as com-
pared to the agricultural groups that occupied the more fertile and climatically tem-
perate outer Eurasian rim, nevertheless played a major role in shaping the political and
cultural profile of China, India, West Asia, and the Mediterranean. The critical factor
was horsemanship. Pastoral nomads were trained from a very young age to ride horses
at high speed, and to fight and hunt on horseback. When organized under such lead-
ers as Genghis Khan or Tamerlane, these highly mobile nomadic warriors usually
enjoyed an advantage over infantry-based armies. Indeed military organization and
even the state systems of China and Persia were shaped to a large extent by the need
to keep these horsemen at bay (Christian, 1994).
From about third century ce, instability among central Asia’s pastoral groups
caused westward mass migrations that had major implications for the Mediterranean
world. To a significant degree, the destruction of the political unity created under
the aegis of Rome can be attributed to Asia’s nomads. The Germanic invasions
that precipitated the fall of the western half of the empire was a complicated pro-
cess, but the invasions were a knock-on effect of Central Asian pressure. Pastoral
groups intervened more directly in Roman affairs from the 370s, when the Huns
moved into central Europe, although the lack of grassland forced the Huns to
become sedentary—Attila’s stunning victories against Roman legions were
achieved mainly by infantry (Lindner, 1981). Before the sixth century, the East
Roman world was also sheltered from pastoralist raids by the Carpathian Mountains
and the Danube (Christian, 1998: 220), but pressure from what is now Kazakhstan
pushed other Turkic groups further west, such as the Avars, Bulgars, Pechenegs
and Cumans, who moved into the Balkans. The most significant group was the
Bulgars, who in 679 asserted their authority over local Slavic chieftains, and who
by 700 had wrested much of the Balkans from Byzantine control. The Bulgars in
fact created a series of kingdoms that directly threated Constantinople on a
number of occasions, but which at the same time acted as a buffer against other
Turkic nomads from the steppe.