Climate in Medieval Central Eurasia

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Thesis

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the

Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Henry Misa

Graduate Program in History

The Ohio State University

2020

Thesis Committee

Scott C. Levi, Advisor

John L. Brooke

Copyrighted by

Henry Ray Misa

2020

Abstract

This thesis argues that the methodology of environmental history, specifically climate history, can help reinterpret the economic and political history of Central Eurasia. The introduction reviews the scholarly fields of Central Eurasian history, Environmental history and, in brief, Central Eurasian Environmental history. Section one introduces the methods of climate history and discusses the broad outlines of Central Eurasian climate in the late Holocene. Section two analyzes the rise of the Khitan and Tangut dynasties in their climatic contexts, demonstrating how they impacted Central Eurasia during this period. Section three discusses the sedentary empires of the Samanid and Ghaznavid dynasties in the context of the Medieval Climate Anomaly. Section four discusses the rise of the first Islamic Turkic empires during the late 10th and 11th century. Section five discusses the Qarakhitai and the Jurchen in the 12th century in the context of the transitional climate regime between the Medieval Quiet Period and the early Little Ice

Age. The conclusion summarizes the main findings and their implications for the study of

Central Eurasian Climate History. This thesis discusses both long-term and short-term time scales; in many cases small-scale political changes and complexities impacted how the long-term patterns of climate change impacted regional economies.

Vita

2017…………………………………………..Bachelor of Arts, University of Wisconsin,

Madison

2017 to present ………………………………PhD Student, Department of History, The

Ohio State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: History

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Vita ...... v Introduction ...... 1 The Historiography of Medieval Central Eurasia ...... 5 Historiographies of Climate and Environmental History ...... 12 Defining Central Eurasia for the purposes of environmental history ...... 23 Central Eurasian Environmental History: the medieval Period ...... 24 Section 1. Nature as a historical protagonist ...... 38 The Methods of climate science ...... 39 The Climate history of Central Eurasia during the late Holocene ...... 45 Section 2. The conquests of the Xixia and the Liao: economies and climate ...... 53 Khitan Political history ...... 56 Climate during the Liao dynasty ...... 63 Tangut Political history ...... 66 Tangut Climate and Economy ...... 68 Reverberations across the Steppe ...... 70 Preliminary conclusions ...... 78 Section 3. Sedentary society during the Medieval Climate Anomaly ...... 80 Samanid Political history ...... 80 Climate and Irrigation Agriculture ...... 82 Ghaznavid Expansion ...... 85 Section 4. The mobile pastoralist economy and the Medieval Climate Anomaly ...... 90 Seljuk political and economic history ...... 130 An eleventh century crisis? ...... 134 Section 5. The Qarakhitai, the Jurchen and the end of the Medieval Quiet Period ...... 141

Conclusion ...... 153 Bibliography ...... 159

vii

Introduction

This thesis discusses the economic and political history of Central Eurasia from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries in the context of Holocene climate change and regional ecologies. Drawing on an extensive scientific literature that has just been emerging in the past ten to fifteenth years, I connect the existing scholarship on Central Eurasian history with broader discussions in climate history and environmental history. I argue that this new data — extracted from trees, lake beds, soil sediments and ice cores — helps us understand how changes in climate, as well as stable continuities in past climate regimes, impacted the long-term historical trajectory of Central Eurasia. For the short-term, I argue that each dynasty, or political system, analyzed in this thesis, interacted with their own environmental and climatic contexts in unique ways. They all faced different ecological and social problems and each found different solutions.

For the long term, I argue that the transition to the Medieval Climate Anomaly

(MCA, also referred to as the Medieval Quiet Period and the Medieval Warm Period) was compete as of c. 900 CE and that during the majority of the MCA Western Central

Eurasia experienced drier conditions compared to the Late Antique Little Ice Age and the early modern Little Ice Age (LIA). Eastern Central Eurasia had a more complex climate history during this period, impact by both the South Asian and East Asian monsoon

1 systems. During the twelve century, climatic patterns began to shift away from the MCA regime. The disharmony between these two times scales is what makes generalizing human-environment-climate interactions so difficult. It some centuries the 9th and the 12th the two time scales connect in intriguing was. Those connections do not define the entirety of the intervening periods.

This introduction acquaints the reader with the scholarly traditions that have built the fields of scholarship that I draw on in this thesis. First, I review the historiography on medieval Central Eurasia. Second, I survey the historiographies of environmental and climate history. Finally, I assess the recent scholarship on Central Eurasian environmental history. This introduction is followed by five sections and a conclusion. In section one, I review the methods of climate history. Then, I present a narrative of natural climate change in Central Eurasia during the late Holocene. This survey provides the larger framework for the detailed case studies and analysis of more traditional types of historical evidence in sections two through five.

The first section operates on a long-term time scale. It offers a broad outline of the history of climate in Central Eurasia. The following sections focus on smaller time scales and evaluates questions of human-environmental interactions and symbiosis on a dynasty by dynasty basis. The second section focuses on the origins of two powerful Inner Asian dynasties, the Liao (916-1125) and the Xixia (1038-1227), and how the climatic and environmental context impacted the rise of these two dynasties. These two dynasties were selected for the starting point because they impacted the broader political history of the steppe region. I look closely at the ramifications of these two imperial expansions in a

2 broader trans-Central Eurasian discussion of climate and societal movement. In this context, I analyze the discussion of climate and mobile pastoralist1 powers in the 10th and

11th centuries, a crucial problem in Central Eurasian environmental history discussed later in this introduction. In section three, I explore the sedentary world of Transoxania and Khurasan during the Samanid (819-999) and Ghaznavid (977-1186) periods. This section provides a comparative context for the surrounding sections by analyzing how the

MCA climate regime impacted the oasis and sedentary irrigation-agricultural world of

Central Asia. Mobile pastoralist societies interacted with the same climatic patterns in different ways from their agricultural neighbors. Understanding how oasis societies used water and animals differently from how mobile pastoralists societies shows how political changes could have an impact on resource use. Here, I use archeological data to reconstruct human interaction with ecosystems. Khurasan is known to have been an agricultural and economic center during this period. The fourth section returns to a discussion of mobile pastoralist empires. In this section, I evaluate how the Qarakhanid and Seljuk dynasties used environmental resources and introduced new modes of socio- ecological interaction to Central Asia and the Middle East, differing from the earlier

Islamic dynasties. In this section I analyze the rise of alpine “nomadic” urbanism in the

Qarakhanid context and the impacts of frontier politics on Seljuk expansion.

1 Throughout this thesis I use the word “mobile pastoralist” instead of the older term “nomad,” to describe societies who had a mobile economy. For a discussion of this terminology see David Sneath, The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Caroline Humphrey and David Sneath, The End of Nomadism?: Society, State, and the Environment in Inner Asia (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999). 3

Although it is possible to see the impact of the stability of the Medieval Quiet

Period in the stories of sections two through four, it is in the fifth section that I connect the discussion of short-term and long-term environmental change. Global shifts in the

12th century climate, beginning with a series of volcanic eruption coincide with the expansion of the Jurchen and Qarakhitai empires. This section argues, alongside Bradley et al.,2 that the volcanic eruptions of the twelfth century ushered in a transitional phase from the MCA climatic regime to the LIA. Our discussion of Qarakhitai history in the context of a greater increase in mobile pastoralist power in the twelfth century is connected in with the broader global climatic shifts as well as the transition from silver to gold currencies. The Jurchen use of different types of currencies also provides us with an opportunity to understand the economic history of this period in Eastern Central Eurasia.

Jurchen expansion, first to the west and then to the south, impacted Central Eurasian history more broadly. However, the Jurchen rose to power in a region that was impacted entirely by the East Asian monsoons, a climate system that did not impact the long-term growth of ecologies of the regions in the west. The Jurchen, similar to the Samanids and

Ghaznavids had a mixed or mostly sedentary economy. Mobile pastoralist expansion in

Transoxiana and Khurasan, under the various names of the Oguz, Karluk, Qangli and other tribes, coincide with the Jurchen and Qarakhitai conquests during this period.

Interestingly, after the Jurchen expansion numerous Khitan tribes stayed in the east and either defected to the Song or was incorporated into the Jurchen army. The trend of

2 Raymond S. Bradley, Heinz Wanner and Henry F. Diaz, “The Medieval Quiet Period,” The Holocene 26, no. 6 (2016): 1-4. 4 urbanization and intellectual curiosity continued through the transitional climate regime of the twelfth century, which scholars have labeled as chaotic due to the increase in mobile pastoralist populations.

The interaction between the two time scales discussed in this theses provides unique problems. At times, I focus more on fitting the larger structures of human history into the broader sweeps and turns of natural climate history. At other times, I focus on smaller developments like political change and economic stress. The interaction between these two time scales is one of the challenges of this type of research; it is also one of its contributions to historiography more broadly.

The Historiography of Medieval Central Eurasia

The field of medieval Central Eurasian history developed out of orientalist scholarly traditions that have privileged detailed studies of written sources along with linguistic virtuosity at the expense of asking broader complex historical questions. Since the nineteenth century much of this work had been carried out in two separate spheres: one focused around Islamic history, the other focused on East Asian and Chinese history.

By the late 20th and early 21st century, it became clear that certain tools from both of these scholarly disciplines would prove to be useful for studying Central Eurasian history. This bi-directional approach to Central Eurasian studies balances literary evidence from both the Eastern and Western sides of Central Eurasia.

The complexity of this approach has limited methodological development. The current study takes on only a small portion of this larger problem. By integrating

5 medieval economic and agricultural history with climate history, I approach central

Eurasian history in a way that can be of general interest to historians in other fields.

When the field was first established, historians of medieval Central Eurasia focused on political, economic and religious aspects of the region’s history. Scholars in this tradition are often ingenious philologists as well as historians. Over decades of research, these scholars have established detailed political and cultural histories of

Central Asia based largely on the Islamic manuscript sources.3 Vasily Bartold was one of the first scholars in this tradition. His work Turkestan down to the Mongol originally published in 1900 is still widely read today, despite the imperialist agenda of much of his scholarship. Clifford Edmund Bosworth has utilized a deep philological knowledge to establish many complex aspects of the political history of the Eastern Islamic world.

Recently, British scholars Deborah Tor and Andrew Peacock have taken this approach to new levels, still emphasizing the causative agency of religious factors. An example of this trend is Peacock’s study of Bal’ami’s Tarikhnama. Peacock argues that the Samanid

“milieu,” in which this work was composed, can be characterized more by “religious conservatism” than “Iranian national sentiment;” and, it is in this religious context that the Persian renaissance of the Samanid period must be interpreted.4 Peacock further argues that, “Persian prose seems to have emerged from the state’s desire to propagate

3 Yuri Bregel, “Barthold and Modern Oriental Studies,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 12, no. 3 (November 1980): 385-385; Wasilij Barthold, Turkestan: Down to the Mongol Invasion (London: Luzac and Company, 1968); Clifford E. Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, their empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran 994-1040 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963). 4 A. C. S. Peacock, Medieval Islamic Historiography and Political Legitimacy: Bal’ami’s Tarikhnamah (New York: Routledge, 2007), 15. 6 conservative Islamic values amongst the pious Tranoxianan public[.]”5 Accordingly, the

Samanids seem to be first and foremost Islamic rulers. Jurgen Paul’s study of the

Samanid political and military culture also follows this trend.6 More recently, the edited volume Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate World: Iranian Tradition and Islamic

Civilization demonstrates that as the corpus of knowledge of this period grows the focus on religious and political transformations remains strong.7 As the editors of this volume point out, “our corpus of sources has expanded somewhat […] since Barthold was writing, especially as historians have learned to use a more diverse array of texts, in a more sophisticated manner[.]”8 The incorporation of more archeological evidence and further collaboration “among historians, scholars of literature and intellectual life, and specialists in material culture” will advance the field further.

A different group of scholars approaches Central Asian, and more directly Inner

Asian, history from the field of East Asian studies. Much of this literature comes from the study of the so-called “conquest dynasties,” that are not perceived as “Chinese” by modern or medieval historians.9 Karl A. Wittfogel and Feng Chia-Sheng’s study is a prime example of the early state of this field. Based on the work of a large research team, this volume provides us with an anthropological description of society during the Liao

5 Ibid., 47. 6 Jurgen Paul, The State and the Military: The Samanid Case (Bloomington: Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1994). 7 A. C. S. Peacock and D. G. Tor eds., Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate World: Iranian Tradition and Islamic Civilization (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2014). 8 A. C. S. Peacock and D. G. Tor, “Preface” in Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate World: Iranian Tradition and Islamic Civilisation, eds. A. C. S. Peacock and D. G. Tor (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2014), xxiii. 9 Herbert Franke and Denis Twitchett eds., The Cambridge History of China: Volume 6 Alien regimes and border states, 907-1368 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 7 period, including many translations of primary sources.10 Recent, archaeological and numismatic studies from mainland China are also of great use for Central Eurasian history, particularly during the Liao and Qarakhanid periods.11

The utility of the bi-directional approach has been well understood since the

1980s. The work of Christopher Beckwith, Peter Golden, Étienne De La Vaissière, as well as Joseph Fletch, has all already demonstrated the usefulness of this approach.12

However, it did not become common scholarly procedure until recently. The work of

Michal Biran has been instrumental in establishing the economic and political history of

Inner Asia during the medieval period.13 Biran, embracing the bi-directional approach, connects data from Chinese sources with data from the Islamic sources. Biran has explored the connections between the Liao empire and the Muslim states of Central Asia and the Middle East, suggesting that the Qarakhitai’s (Xi Liao 西遼) ability to maintain harmonious relations with its Muslim subjects, after the conquest of Transoxania, owes a great deal to the Liao’s relations with the Islamic world and the dual image of the Khitans as “nomads” and “Chinese.”14 Biran sees the greatest influence of the Khitan/Liao on

10 Karl August Wittfogel and Feng Chia-Sheng, History of Chinese Society: Liao, (907-1125) (New York: The Macmillan Co, 1949), 43. 11Jiang Qixiang 蔣其祥，新疆黑汗朝錢幣 Hei han chao qian bi yanjiu (1990); Michal Biran, “Qarakhanid Studies: A view from the Qara Khitai Edge” Cahiers d’Asie Centrale 9 (2001): 77-89. 12 Christopher I. Beckwith, The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia: A History of the Struggle for Great Power among the Tibetans, Turks, Arabs, and Chinese during the Early Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987). Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples: Ethnogenesis and State-Formation in Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia and the Middle East (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1992). Etienne De La Vaissiere, Sogdian Traders: A History Trans. James Ward (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2005). 13 Michal Biran, The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History: Between China and the Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 14 Michal Biran, “Unearthing the Liao dynasty’s relations with the Muslim world: Migrations, diplomacy, commerce and mutual perceptions,” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 43 (2013): 229. 8 broader Inner Asian history as being the way that they provided a catalyst for a huge movement of peoples in the early tenth century. The early Khitans, in this regard, impacted the Muslim world most directly with population movements. Biran argues that the Liao dynasty’s rise to power caused population movements and displacements that, in her view, “triggered Turkic Islamization,” eventually culminating with the arrival of the

Khitans themselves in the Islamic world.15 It is for this reason that I discuss the Liao conquests in depth in section two.

The bi-directional approach to Central Eurasian history became common scholarly procedure by the 2010s. A 2013 series of articles in the Journal of Song-Yuan

Studies places the Liao dynasty into a trans-Eurasian context. Valerie Hansen’s article in this collection on Liao gift-giving demonstrates how the Liao participated in an increase in connectivity across Eurasia starting from around the year 1000. Walrus tusk provides a good example of the wide-reaching nature of this connectivity. Vikings frequently carved items out of walrus tusk from the North Atlantic and “possibly even the Americas,” certainly possible considering the warmth of the North Atlantic during this period.16

Muslims and the Khitans prized walrus tusk as well; thus, the possibility arises that walrus tusk connected the Vikings, the Muslims, and the Khitans, with North America.

As Hansen puts it “The Khitans stood at the center of this connected world, so strikingly different from the more isolated world that proceeded it.”17 However, the exact criteria

15 Ibid., 250-251. 16 Bruce M. S. Campbell, The Great Transition: Climate, Disease and Society in the Late Medieval World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2016), 50-58. 17 Valerie Hansen, “International gifting and the Kitan world, 907–1125,” Journal of Song Juan studies 43 (2013):302. 9

Hansen is using to define the previous period as “more isolated” are unclear. The Turk

Qaghanate stood at a similar position at the heart of Eurasia, but in a different global climatic context. By including natural climate change into our analytical framework for discussing this period we can differentiate between the periods of Türk and Khitan connectivity. The first two Turk qaghanates rose and fell in the context of the Vandal

Solar Minimum and the Late Antique Little Ice Age, whereas the Liao ruled in the center of a dried Inner Asia during a period of warming in the North Atlantic. A warm North

Atlantic facilitated the Vikings’ expansion into North America, 18 which indirectly provided walrus tusk to the Khitan economy.

The musk trade also connected the Khitans with the Muslim world. As King points out, the Khitans first appear in Arabic literature in the late tenth century alongside accounts of musk.19 Khitan musk was “highly regarded by those who distinguished it from the other Turkic and Chinese musk types.”20 Discussions of Khutu ivory also connect the Khitan with Islamic history. References to khutu ivory first appear in Islamic literature during the tenth and eleventh centuries, which King identifies as the golden age of Khitan/Liao power.21 As is often the case when the bi-direction approach is employed with such linguistic virtuosity, King focuses mainly on the references to the Khitan, and their trade in the Arabic sources, without delving into the questions of what these items

18 Brian Fagan, The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010). 19 Anya King, “Early Islamic Sources on Kitan Liao: The Role of Trade,” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 43 (2013): 254. 20 Ibid., 270. 21 Ibid., 267. 10 meant to the people who used them and how this specific connection with a distant

“infidel” power influenced how people perceived the world around them.22

More recently Uzbek historian Dilnoza Duturaeva has used a similar approach in her detailed studies of the Qarakhanids, the Qarakhitai and the Seljuks, especially focusing on Central Asia’s connections with Song China.23 Duturaeva points out how, although the Islamic sources give detailed information about the western Qarakhanids,

Chinese sources provide crucial information about the eastern side of the qaghanate; therefore, one must combine information from both sides to fully understand Qarakhanid history.24 This observation applies to the entire Medieval Climate Anomaly period.

The achievements of the bi-directional approach situate scholarship at a good place to begin understanding the political, economic and ethno-linguistic history of

Central Eurasia. This study contributes to this literature by bringing it into conversation with paleoclimatic historical data and the larger field of global environmental history.

The intervention that this study makes in Central Asian history does not stretch beyond the introduction of scientific material about past climates into our understanding of economic changes and the economic possibilities available to past societies over long periods. It advocates for taking nature seriously as a “historical protagonist” when discussing economic changes and structures, rather than redefining the field from the

22 I do not mean to belittle King’s contribution in this regard. Only that in light of the central theses of this work, the bi-directional approach must include more that just source criticism of written sources. 23 Dilnoza Duturaeva, “Qarakhanid Envoys to Song China,” Journal of Asian History 51, no. 1 (2018): 179- 208. 24 Dilnoza Duturaeva, “Between the Silk and Fur Roads: the Qarakhanid Diplomacy and Trade,” Orientierungen 28 (2016): 179. 11 ground up.25 In a field dominated by primary sources left by court chroniclers and bureaucrat-historians on both the Islamic and Sinitic sides, the environmental approach provides a framework for us to consider the histories of non-elites and what they may have experienced. This ecological and environmental approach was developed in fields that have, as of yet, taking little interest in Central Eurasia. I now turn to a discussion of these fields, so that we can better understand the ideological underpinnings of global environmental history, and better reveal what it can bring to the discussion of Central

Eurasian economic history and vis versa.

Historiographies of Climate and Environmental History

In order to better explain the intervention this study intends to make I will need to analyze the development of environmental history and climate history as historiographical fields. The following discussion shows that these fields have deep roots in Western European and American intellectual traditions and have yet to realize their full potential in global and comparative contexts. I argue that world historical research and the addition of Central Asia to global environmental debates will help globalize the field as a whole. Furthermore, the intellectual roots of environmental history as a social phenomenon must be evaluated before it will be possible to successfully utilize the methodological promise that this field offers.

Similar to the Orientalist fields discussed above, the field of environmental history has roots deep in nineteenth century intellectual traditions. George Perkins Marsh,

25 See for example Bruce M. S. Campbell, “Nature as historical protagonist: environment and society in pre-industrial England” The Economic History Review 63, No. 2 (May 2010): 281-314. 12 in Man and Nature (1864), argued that nature avenges herself on societies that degrade the environment, recognizing nature as a historical protagonist.26 In 1893, Frederick

Jackson Turner argued that “American development” could be explained by the progressive transformation of “wilderness” into “civilization.”27 In France during the

1920s, Marc Block and Lucien Febvre rejected event based histories in favor of what

Braudel would later call the history of “man in his relationship to the environment, a history in which all change is slow, a history of constant repetition, ever-recurring cycles,” what has since been referred to as the long durée.28 Although a direct connection between the Annales scholars and the environmental field has been contest, slow changes and repetitive cycles will be at the center in section one below.29

Even at this early stage, the environmental field stressed interdisciplinary approaches. Turner urged historians to adopt methodologies from economics and sociology and the French Annales scholars emphasized the use of geography as well as the social sciences in the writing of history. Thus, the ideas of environmental history were present before the advent of the environmentalist movement in the late twentieth century.

That being said the establishment of environmental history as an academic discipline and the rise in interested in environmentalist ideas writ large, is hard to disentangle. William

26 But this book has more to do with conversation?? 27 Andrew C. Isenberg ed., The Oxford Handbook of Environmental History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 4. 28 Ibid. 29 McNeill comments that “although Braudel and the Annales school offered one of the most compelling perspectives available to professional historians in the latter half of the twentieth century, they had only modest impacts on what was becoming environmental history and did not conceive of their own work in those terms.” John McNeill, “The State of the Field of Environmental History” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 35 (2010): 349. 13

Cronon’s Changes in the Land is often cited as a foundational text in environmental history, because it tells the story of environmental change beyond the impact and histories of humans, in this case Europeans.

In 1988, Donald Worster, in The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives in Modern

Environmental History, defined the field broadly as the study of the “interactions people have had with nature in past times.”30 The field now fully embraced the work of economists, ecologists and geographers. In the 1980s, historians saw the relationship between human society and the environment as “dialectical” or “reciprocal.”31 Andrew

Isenberg notes that during this period in the field’s development, environmental historians found closer intellectual allies in departments of anthropology, geography, or biology, than they could find in their own history departments. Isenberg also notes that, at this time, the binary between people and nature served as a simple way that helped define a field that “integrated the material insights of the environmental sciences with an analysis of human societies and cultures.”32 It was around this time, roughly the 1980s and 1990s that historians in the neighboring fields of social, cultural and political history began to incorporate aspects of environmental history into their own work.33 By the early

1990s, mainstream historians understood that, in addition to cultural changes and interactions, they also needed to take note of “our encounters and collisions with all other

30 Donald Worster ed., The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on modern Environmental History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 31 Ibid., 5. William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983). Richard White, “American Environmental history: the Development of a new Historical Field,” Pacific History Review 54, No. 3 (August 1985): 297-335. 32 Isenberg, Environmental History, 5. 33 Ibid., 1. 14 organism that make up Earth’s ecosystem.”34 This transformation of what had been revisionism into mainstream historical fashion created conceptual problems for the field of environmental history itself.

A roundtable discussion in 1990, held by many of the field’s founders, revealed a healthy lack of consensus as to what the field should be. Regardless, this discussion unfolded across the pages of the Journal of American History, featuring comments by

Donald Worster, Alfred Crosby, William Cronon, Carolyn Merchant, Richard White and

Stephen J. Pyne.35 All of the participants were historians of Europe (including “Neo-

Europes” in Crosby’s case) or of North America. Despite the reflective theoretical fermentation, on a geographical level the main practitioners of the field cared little about the rest of the world.36

It was at this moment that the field became seriously divided into the different camps, the materialist and idealist camps, focused around different ideas about what environmental history should be and what its purpose was. Worster’s large scale materialist model of environmental history was criticized as relegating culture “to the super-structural periphery” and unable to recognize the role “of value judgments and beliefs.”37 Isenberg argues that this dispute created an overly rigid distinction between the two approaches, which neglected “the work of their contemporaries such as McEvoy and

34 Ibid. 35 The Journal of American History vol. 76, No. 4, (1990): 1087-1147. 36 However, there were a few early exceptions to this trend. Mark Elvin, The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 37 Isenberg, Environmental History, 8. Richard White, “Environmental History, Ecology, and Meaning,” Journal of American History 76 (March 1990): 1111-1116. 15

Carolyn Merchant, who had suggested ways of integrating materialist and idealist approaches[.]”38 Nonetheless, the two sides continued on in opposite directions.

Worster’s materialist approach advocated for an environmental history had would operate on the grand scale along the lines of the Annales school’s historie totale. The Cronon-

White idealist approach sought to focus environmental history into hyphenated histories, where “environmental historians would also have to be cultural, social, labor or gender historians.”39 In a field as large as environmental history perhaps it is for the best that these two poles be left where they are, while new scholars can always imagine a spectrum between these two extremes. The 2014 Oxford Handbook of Environmental History documents a field splintered into a vast array of different subfields, as it surveys the developments in the main field as well as charting the continued interactions with different historical genres along the idealists’ lines. This thesis draws on both of these two approaches to environmental history. The larger-scale materialist approach is used in section one and the smaller-scale idealist approach is explored in sections two through five. The written portion of our sources often works better with the idealist approach while the archaeological and climatological sources work better with the materialist approach.

The field of climate history developed alongside the larger field of environmental history, but stayed closer to the hard sciences. Similar to what I argued above concerning environmental history, climate history was created by European and North American

38 Isenberg, Environmental History, 8. 39 Ibid., 9. 16 scholars. Despite a partial globalization, the field remains focused on Europe and North

America. The idea that climates and climate change could influence societies and history can be traced as far back as ancient authors like Herodotus, or to the works of

Enlightenment thinkers. Ibn Khaldun is famous for theorizing the complex relationships between climate, environment and social structures.40 While many of these thinkers saw climate as an important way of explaining different aspects of the societies that they sought to analyze and understand better, they did not necessarily take into account changes and shifts in past climates and the impacts these changes may have had on other types of historical change. In order to do such a thing, one needed a reliable way of proving that changes in past climates and environments did occur and a way of quantifying these types of change. The story of how we know what we know about the nature of past climates is long and complicated. I will review only part of it here in general outline, revisiting this same discussion in section one in my analysis of the methods of climate history.

Systematic efforts to compile evidence about the past of weather and climate began in earnest in the late nineteenth century in Europe and the US. The German geographer Eduard Bruckner (1852-1927), in collaboration with the English meteorologist C. E. P. Brooks (1888-1957), used evidence from European historical

40 For Khaldun’s impact on theorization of climate in European intellectual history see Warren E. Gates, “The Spread of Ibn Khaldun’s Ideas on Climate and Culture” Journal of the History of Ideas 28, No. 3 (Jul- Sep 1967): 415-421, especially 422. 17 sources to argue that changes in climate could have economic and political consequences.41

Starting in the mid-twentieth century, historians began connecting phenological data42 with human records to reconstruct past seasonal temperatures. Emmanuel Le Roy

Ladurie, in 1967, drew public attention to historical climatology, especially using glacier variations in the French and Swiss Alps to help popularize the idea of the early modern

“Little Ice Age.” This early foray into climate history leaves us with a note of caution, as

Ladurie warns, “in the long term the human consequences of climate seem to be slight, perhaps negligible, and certainly difficult to detect[.]”43 Pfister et al. 2018 suspect that Le

Roy Ladurie feared being labeled as a climate determinist. Also scholars lacked the hard evidence we have today about the cyclic fluctuations of past climate regimes.

A few years later, Hubert Horace Lamb, working at the UK Meteorological Office

(established 1854), discovered how “meaningful circulations patterns for past climatic periods” can be reconstructed from the archive of historical weather data. By the early

1970s, Lamb had established a history of European climate, including the “Medieval

Warm Period,” working from archaeological, botanical, and documentary evidence.

41 Christian Pfister, Sam White, and Franz Mauelshagen, “General introduction: Weather, Climate and Human History,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History, eds. Sam White, Christian Pfister, Franz Mauelshagen (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 6. 42 Phenology is the study the impact of seasonal and inter-annual variations in climate on plant and animal life. Coined by the Belgian botanist Charles Morren in 1848, the term derives from the Greek phainō “to show, to bring to light, make to appear” and logos “study, discourse, reasoning.” Phenology has typically been concerned with dating of first occurrence of biological events in the annual cycle. Gaston R Demarée and This Rutishauser, “From ‘Periodical Observations” to ‘Anthochronology’ and ‘Phenology’ —the scientific debate between Adolphe Quetelet and Charles Morren on the origin of the world ‘Phenology’,” International Journal of Biometeorology 55, No. 6 (2011): 753-761. 43 Pfister et al., “General Introduction,” 7. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate Since the Year 1000, trans. Barbara Bray (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1971), 119. 18

Lamb was also the first to investigate the global impacts of tropical volcanic eruptions.

While he did take pains “to eschew climate determinism,” he also gives us a model for interpreting environmental data as history. He argued that human history was not acted out in a vacuum, but rather “against the background of an environment in which many sorts of changes are always going on beside the changes imposed by man.”44 He suggests that climatic fluctuations can be understood as destabilizing influences and catalysts of change in human history.

Like environmental history more broadly, climate history may have suffered from the cultural turn, during which mainstream historians distrusted “quantitative approaches” and “positivistic” materiality.45 But such pretensions did not bother historical climatologists or meteorologists, who continued the material reconstruction and modeling of past climates and temperatures unhindered. In 1979, the Climate Research Unit (CRU established in 1972) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, hosted the first interdisciplinary conference on historical climatology. This conference brought together more than two hundred and fifty historians, geographers, climatologists and archaeologists. By 1989, documentary evidence from the Euro-Climhist database was used to establish monthly weather during the Late Maunder Minimum (1675-1715).46

44 Pfister et al., “General Introduction,” 7. Hubert H. Lamb, Climate, History, and the Modern World (London: Routledge, 1995), 6 and 318. 45 Pfister et al., “General Introduction,” 8. 46 Ibid. 19

The CRU now broadened its focus to include the related fields of paleoclimatology and climate modeling.47

In the 2000s, climate history was supported by the rise of environmental history in the USA and Europe, especially feeding off of the growing interest in interdisciplinary research. By the late 1990s, the field had also gained ground outside of the US and

Europe, as documentary-based studies were conducted across Africa, Australia and Latin

America. Pfister et al. connect the partial globalization of the field, during this period, with the “rising interest in global history, particularly in US universities.”48 At the same time, public interest in anthropogenic global warming led scholars to take historical climate variability more seriously; as “efforts to project future climate variability and extreme weather generated new interest in past climate variations and their impacts[.]”49

In 2011, the American Society for Environmental History established the Climate History

Network, an organization design to facilitate the sharing of news and publications pertaining to climate history.50 Soon the Late Bronze Age crisis and the seventeenth- century “general crisis” acquired climatic contexts, specifically Halstatt events.51

Furthermore, the “new world history” approach, which focused more on large scale connections and patterns rather, than events or nations, provided a useful analytical

47 The issue of modeling and the network of knowledge creation that creates paleoclimatic data on a global scale can be studied from a history of science approach. Paul N. Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2010). 48 Pfister et al., “General Introduction,” 8. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., 10. http://climatehistory.net. 51 Ibid. Eric H. Cline, 1177 B. C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014). Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013). 20 framework to interpret the findings of paleoclimatology and the earth system sciences.52

Eventually, it was suggested in The American Historical Review that the “cultural turn” of the early 1990s was being replaced by a “new materialism,” which was influenced by the rise of environmental history and the incorporation of the hard sciences into historical research.53

Despite the triumph of new materialism, Brazdil et al.’s 2005 state-of-the-field assessment of historical climatology in Europe included “exploring past discourse and social representations of weather and climate” as a key topic in the field.54 A few years later, Mark Carey argued that climate history should incorporate race, class and gender into its analysis. He also argued that understanding the social and cultural implications of climate research was just as important as regurgitating the narratives provided by scientists.55 As a field, climate history weathered the conceptual instability of the materialist-idealist split and the cultural turn quite well. At the same time, culture provides opportunities for new research. Pfister et al. reflect that “the cultural and intellectual history of weather and climate […] has been spread across multiple disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, sociology, religious studies, geography

52 Victor Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). John Brooke, Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 53 Pfister et al., “General Introduction,” 10. Julia Adeney Thomas, “Historiographic ‘Turns’ in Critical Perspective (Comment)” The American Historical Review 117 (2012): 794-803. 54 Ibid., 11. Rudolf Brazdil et al. “Historical Climatology in Europe—The State of the Art,” Climate Change 70 (2005): 363-430. 55 Mark Carey, “Climate and History: A Critical Review of Historical Climatology and Climate Change Historiography,” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 3 (2012): 233-249. 21 and anthropology,” which suggests there is still much to be done in this subfield of climatology.56

Our brief historiographical surveys of environmental history and climate history have shown how these fields developed in European and American contexts. While important new studies have appeared,57 the globalization of these fields remains incomplete. Historical climatology that incorporates the uses of historical sources in

Persian and Arabic is just beginning.58 In 2010, John McNeil in his state of the field article commented that “the rest of Asia [excluding the India and China] remains almost terra incognita for environmental history—in other words — a beckoning opportunity.

Although historical geographers have done excellent work on south-west Asia, Central

Asia, and Russia, environmental historians have scarcely set to work.”59 As the discussion of Central Eurasian environmental history below shows a few scholars have taken on this beckoning opportunity.

Despite the need for scholarship on regions beyond Europe, as late as 2018 the editors the Palgrave Handbook of Climate History concede that the survey chapters of

56 Pfister et al., “General Introduction,” 13. 57 J. R. McNeil and Erin Stewart Mauldin eds., A Companion to Global Environmental History (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). Mark Elvin and Liu Ts’ui-jung eds., Sediments of Time: Environment and Society in Chinese History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). A study of the Jin dynasty suggests that drought and freezing in north China, as well as the collapse of the Jin dynasty provided a context for the southward movement of numerous Han Chinese populations at times including whole villages. 58 S. Vogt et al., “The Grotzfeld Data Set - Coded Environmental, Climatological and Societal data for the Near and Middle East from AD 801 to 1821.” In: Glaser, R.; Kahle, M. & R. Hologa (Eds) tambora.org data series vol. I. doi:10.6094/tambora.org/2016/c156/serie.pdf (2016). Fernando Domínguez-Castro et al., “How useful could Arabic documentary sources be for reconstructing past climate?,” Weather 67, No. 3 (March 2012): 76-82. Jürgen Paul, “Nomads and Bukhara. A Study in Nomad Migrations, Pasture, and Climate Change (11th century CE),” Der Islam 93, no. 2 (2016): 495-531. A. Naderi Beni et al., “Caspian sea-level changes during the last millennium: historical and geological evidence from the southe Caspian Sea” (2013): especially 1651-1662. 59 McNeill, “State of the Field,” 352. 22 their book “emphasize the work of European and American scientists,” and yet, “the editors do not wish to imply that ideas about climate were exclusively the work of white men.”60 In their view, colonial exchanges and interactions with “indigenous peoples” are seen as having played a role in shaping ideas about climate, but modifications to this story await the expansion of climate science into new parts of the world. The incorporation of Central Asian history into this global discussion, the task that this thesis hopes to begin, will help balance the field of climate history as we move beyond colonial and core-periphery paradigms. We hope to begin this process in the case studies developed below.

Defining Central Eurasia for the purposes of environmental history

Geographical terms have cause problems for historians and climatologists alike. In this thesis, I use Central Asia, Inner Asia, Central Eurasia, Arid Central Asia, and Inner

Eurasia. Each have slightly different meanings. Central Asia corresponds with the modern territory of Uzbekistan, Kyrghystan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Southern

Kazakhstan. During the period covered by this thesis this region was usually referred to as Khurasan and Transoxiana. Inner Asia is generally the steppe zone particularly the eastern section of it. Central Eurasia is used as a broader term for the region between the

Caucasus and Manchuria inclusive. Arid Central Asia came from Chinese Scientists and is used to describe the arid western parts of Central and Inner Asia. The term Inner

Eurasia was coined by David Christian to describe the regions that are not part of the

60 Pfister et al., “General Introduction,” 14. 23 agricultural and climatically more wet sections of Eurasia, which he refers to as Outer

Eurasia.

Central Eurasian Environmental History: the medieval Period

The application of the environmental approach in Central Asian historiography began only a decade ago. At first scholars were particularly interested in the explicative and causal value that they saw in environmental forces. Quite soon thereafter, other scholars pushed back hard against this intervention, challenging the scholarly community to incorporate this new approach and its new types of evidence into the existing debates with a more nuanced perspective; a more sophisticated theorization of causality and deeper understanding of the material and archaeological data proved necessary.

In 2009, Richard Bulliet advanced an environmental argument for the medieval period of Iranian history.61 Bulliet argues that Iran experienced a cold spell in the first half of the tenth/fourth century, which was followed by cooler climate in the eleventh/fifth and early twelfth/sixth centuries. This climatic event, hypothesized from documentary evidence, is believed to have impacted a large swath of land from Anatolia to Central Asia. Bulliet calls this event “the Big Chill” and it is supposed to have led to the agricultural and demographic decline that ended the early Islamic cotton boom, as well as the immigration of the Oguz Turkic tribes into the Middle East.

Bulliet’s non-textual data comes from an analysis of tree-rings from Solongotyn

Davaa in Western Mongolia. This data shows that the cotton boom in Iran coincided with

61 Richard W. Bulliet, Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran: A Moment in World History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). 24 a warm period with the exception of a brief cold period in the mid tenth/early fourth century. Bulliet argues that the Siberian High weather system connects weather in

Mongolia with weather in Iran.62 Bulliet’s use of non-traditional historical information is admirable however this record is too far away and does not reflect conditions in Iran. He also provides no way of measuring the Siberian high during the period under discussion.

John Brooke suggests that drought caused by the northward shift of the Westerlies during the MCA influenced the Oghuz movements during this century.63 This discussion is continued more deeply in sections two and four below. Science aside, Bulliet’s argument is built from his interpretation of the written sources. As he jibes, “if historians of medieval Baghdad had been the first to arrive on the field of climatic battle, they might well have postulated a Medieval Cold Period.”64 In fact, one cold spike in 855/241 recorded by the Solongotyia Davaa data corresponds with a report from Hamza al-

Isfahani that “a freezing cold wind emerged from the land of the Turks [Central Asia] and moved towards Sarakhs [in Khorasan].”65 Having connected the two bodies of evidence in this way, Bulliet then returns to his discussion of the textual evidence for what he sees as climatic events. To summarize, Bulliet argues that Iran’s climate suffered a two- decade long “chill” starting in 920/307 after which a period of severe winter cold and drought ensued through the eleventh/fifth century. Cotton production diminished during the cold eleventh/fifth century, but as a commodity it had already fallen out of fashion.66

62 But the Siberian high was weak during the mca. 63 John L. Brooke, A Rough Journey 363-364. 64 Ibid., 76. 65 Ibid., 77. 66 Ibid., 94-95. 25

The world historical implications of such an argument being true were not lost on Ronnie

Ellenblum, who advocates for a much larger 11th century crisis.67 The complexity of much of this controversy comes from the predicament of medieval writes not being paleoclimatologists. Thus it is often impossible to tell whether weather references to bad weather in our sources depict a climatic event or just the perception of weather.

A. C. S. Peacock contests Bulliet's arguments concerning both climate change and the medieval Iranian cotton boom. In terms of climate, he points out that severe cold weather in Baghdad was recorded regularly beginning from the early third/ninth century onwards, before the Seljuks appeared along the northeastern fringes of the Muslim world around the beginning of the eleventh century.68 In fact even such a fact does not prove that is was colder during the 9th century than previously, because it was at this time that our sources, the Arabic chronicles, began to take an interest in such matters. Peacock also shows how scientific research contradicts the anecdotal evidence of the chroniclers and suggests that the Middle East was in general warmer and wetter during this period. Even if short term climate change was occurring it may not have to be a forcing factor in the movement of mobile pastoralist societies, because, in Peacock view, “most nomads will

67 Ronnie Ellenblum, The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean: Climate Change and the Decline of the East, 950-1072 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 68 Dominguez-Castro et al. (2012), reviewing some of the same sources as Bulliet, demonstrate that Baghdad experienced a “greater frequency of significant climate events and more intense cold that today, and also than the ninth century and the second half of the tenth century.” Fernando Dominguez-Casto et al., “Arabic documentary sources,” 81. Of particular interest is a cold spell in July 920, which they authors suggest, but do not confirm, a volcanic explanation for. “In July of this year, the weather became so cold that people left the roof terraces (where they usually slept) and wrapped themselves in blankets. (Al- Hamadhani, 1959, Takmilat ta’rikh al-Tabari, p. 31) In July of this year, the weather became so cold that people left the roof terraces (where they usually slept) and wrapped themselves in blankets. Later on, in winter, a strong hail poured down, damaging palm-trees and other trees. There was also a great snowfall. (Ibn al-Jawzi, 1938, Al-Muntazam fi ta’rikh al-umam, VI, p. 156) In July of this year there was a severe cold, which affected the palm-trees. (Ibn Kathir, 1978, Al-Bidaya wa-l-nihaya, VI, p. 131)” Ibid., 79. 26 prefer to adapt to changing conditions if possible.”69 Jurgen Paul’s research on

Khwarazm shows that this region provided key pasture for pastoralist groups throughout the Seljuk period.70

Peacock also takes issue with Bulliet’s argument for a cotton boom in early

Islamic Iran. The brain drain of Iranian scholars towards the end of the cotton boom, which Bulliet attributes to the Seljuk invasion and the Big Chill, in reality, happened later than Bulliet suggests. Peacock points to the upheavals of the Khwarazmian period (1141-

1231)71 in conjunction with new opportunities provided by dynamic regimes like the

Zangids (1127-1250) and the Ayyubids (1171- 1260) in the west, who sought to emulate the prestige and institutions of the Seljuk sultanate, as explanations for the movement of these scholars. Furthermore, skilled craftsmen from Egypt came to Iran in the late twelfth century, bringing with them new techniques, which brings the very concept of a brain drain itself into question. By the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the results of this immigration of Egyptian craftsmen are to be found in how artistic production, especially of refined luster (mina’i) ceramics, could not be patronized by a much broader section of society than just the court in Iran and Iraq.72 Peacock’s picture of a period of

69 A. C. S. Peacock, The Great Seljuk Empire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 288-289. Ibn al-Jawzi, Al-Muntazam, XVII, 196-197. Ibn al-Athir, Al-Kamil, X, 595-6.; Fernando Dominguez-Castro et al., “Arabic Documentary Sources,” 76-82. Henry F. Diaz et al., “Spacial and Temporal Characteristics of Climate Change in the Medieval Period Revisited”, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 92(2011): 1487-99. Jessie Woodbridge and Neil Roberts, “Late Holocene Climate of the Eastern Mediterranean Inferred from Diatom Analysis of Annually-laminated Lake Sediments” Quaternary Science Review, 30 (2011): 3381-92. 70 Jürgen Paul, “The Role of Hwārazm in Seljuq Central Asian Politics, Victories and Defeats: Two Case studies,” Eurasian Studies 8 (2007-2008): 1-17. 71 The dynasty rules vassals of the Seljuks and the Qarakhitai for parts of this period. 72 Peacock, Great Seljuk, 289. Michael Decker, “Plants and Progress: Rethinking the Islamic Agricultural Revolution,” Journal of World History, 20 (2009): 197-205. Oliver Watson, Persian Lustre Ware (London: 27 widespread prosperity despite political complexity, which strengthens an earlier argument, advanced by Michael Chamberlain, that the decentralization and fusion of steppe and Islamico-Persian ruling models of the Seljuq period fostered the continuation of the “cosmopolitan-agro-empire”, fits better with the scientific argument for a warm and wet period of ameliorative climate in the Middle East and Southern Central Asia,73 than the argument for a decline caused by a “Big Chill.”74

One year later, Jurgen Paul fought back an even harder against Bulliet’s “Big

Chill Hypothesis” analyzing a few climate studies from Central Asia. Paul also demolishes Ronnie Ellenblum’s argument that climate change was the prime mover of the Turkic migrations into the Middle East.75 Ellenblum argues that “the cold made life in the Trans-Oxonian [sic] steppes insupportable and spurred the nomads to move onto

Khurasan, Iran and later to Baghdad.”76 However, Paul asserts that “climate change in itself is not a sufficient explanation for large-scale migrations.”77 Here, he draws on the work of geographer William B. Meyer, who argues that in order to make a sound argument that a climatic stress drove a migration you must also prove that “adaptive resources and repertoires of that system did not contain elements capable of dealing with

Faber and Faber, 1985). Melanie Gibson, “The enigmatic figure: ceramic sculpture from Iran and Syria, 1150-1250”, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society (2008-9): 39-50. 73 I am using “South Central Asia” to the refer the part of Central Eurasia that is governed by the South Asian Monsoons. To the south of Chen Fahu’s “Arid Central Asia.” 74 Add in Chamberlain Seljuqs. 75 Ronnie Ellenblum, The Collapse of The Eastern Mediterranean. Ellenblum’s argument for a cold induced decline in “the East” is contradicted by pollen evidence from Syria. D. Kaniewski, E. Van Campo, E. Paulissen, H. Weiss, J. Bakker, I. Rossignol, K. Van Lerberghe, “The medieval climate anomaly and the little Ice Age in coastal Syria inferred from pollen-derived palaeoclimatic patterns” Global and Planetary Change 78 (2011): 178. 76 Paul, “Nomads and Bukhara,” 521. Ellenblum, Collapse, 65. 77 Paul, “Nomads and Bukhara,” 521. 28 that stress.”78 In order for a climatic explanation to be defended in the mobile pastoralist context, historians must simultaneously explore other contributing factors as well. Paul’s case is quite easy to follow because he cites scientific data from the Aral Sea region — the exact place where the Ghuzz (the Arabic name for the Turkman/Seljuk tribes) lived before they invaded Transoxania and Iran — which should show evidence of the Siberian

High-Big Chill event, as hypothesized by Bulliet, if it did occur. Paul’s summary of the climate literature shows no evidence of a sudden and lasting cooling in the eleventh century. Paul’s paleoclimatic sources 79 show that cooling “is mostly reported for later periods, in particular the 17th century” and “the 11th and 12th centuries seem to have known some extraordinarily extreme years, but over the longer run, they did not witness dramatic change in either direction.”80 Paul’s survey of the climate literature also stresses

78 Ibid., William B. Meyer, “Climate and Migration,” in The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe, ed. Andrew Bell-Fialkoff (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 287-294. 79 Much of the climatological literature that Paul cites was published before Bulliet advanced his Big Chill Hypothesis. See, Hedi Oberhansli et al., “Climate variability during the past 2,000 years and past economic and irrigation activities in the Aral Sea basin,” Irrigation and Drainage Systems 21 (2007): 167-183. Philippe Sorrel, “The Aral Sea: A Paleoclimate Archive” (PhD diss., Universität Potsdam, 2006). E. A. Tsvetsinskaya et al., “An integrated assessment of landscape evolution, long-term climate variability, and land use in the Amudarya Prisarykamysh delta,” in Journal of Arid Environments 51 (2002): 363-381. Nikolaus Boroffka and Hedi Oberhansli, “Zaselenie Priaral’ia I izmenenia urovnia Aral’skogo moria (novye danye k problem Uzboia,” in Priaral’e na perekrestke kul’tur, ed. V. N. Yagodin (Samarkand: MITsAI, 2013), 20-28. I. Boomer et al., “Advances in understanding the late Holocene history of the Aral Sea region”, in Quaternary International 194 (2009): 79-90. Yan Zhang, Zhao Chen Kong, Shun Yun, Zhen Jing Yag, Jian Ni, “’Medieval Warm Period’ on the northern slope of central Tianshan Mountains, Xinjiang, NW China”, Geophysical Research Letters 36, L11702, 2009 (doi 10.1029/2009GL037375). Hui Yang, Yun Zhang, Zhaochen Kong, Zhenjing Yang, Yumei Li, Pavel A. Tarasov, “Late Holocene climate change and anthropogenic activities in north Xinjiang: Evidence from a peatland archive, Caotanhu wetland,” The Holocene 25 no. 2 (2015): 323-333. Jan Esper, Fritz H. Schweingruber and Matthias Winiger, “1300 years of climatic history for Western Central Asia inferred from tree-rings,” The Holocene 12.3 (2002): 267-277. Olga Solomin and Keith Alverson, “High Latitude Eurasian Paleoenvironments: introduction and synthesis,” Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology 209 (2004): 1-19. Fa-Hu Chen, Jian-Hui Chen et al., “Moisture changes over the last millennium in arid central Asia: a review, synthesis and comparison with monsoon region,” in Quaternary Science Reviews 29.7 (2010): 1055-1068; Bao Yang, Jinsong Wang, Achim Brauning, Zhibao Dong and Jan Esper, “Late Holocene climate and environmental changes in arid central Asia,” Quaternary International 194 (2009): 68-78. 80 Paul, “Nomads and Bukhara,” 527. 29 the importance of regional differences.81 Neither Paul’s nor Peacock’s attack against

Bulliet aim to say that climate was irrelevant in medieval middle eastern and Central

Asian history; they are just questioning the uni-directional, mono-causial explanation supported by their colleagues. Recently Yehoshua Frenkel, a specialist in Arabic and

Islamic sources on Inner Asia, follows Paul’s counterargument. He concluded that “we need archives of nature, namely analysed data of changing climatological conditions in the medieval Eurasian Steppe, which will illuminate the lacuna not covered by the archives of society, written in Persian and Arabic. This deduction can be compared to arguments advanced by scholars who have inspected the history of Byzantine during the tenth-eleventh century (Preiser-Kapeller 2015).”82

The role of relative drought in these events is discussed in sections two and four below. A recent reconstruction based on tree rings from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and

Kyrgyzstan shows that “during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), two dry periods occurred (900-1000 and 1200-1250) interrupted by a phase of wetter conditions.”83 Under this scenario the collapse of Samanid power occurred as the climate in Transoxania shifted from dry to wet conditions. Although they did not control the steppes and these

81 We return to this issue in sections two and four. 82 Yehoshua Frenkel, “Chapter 13 The Coming of the Barbarians: Can Climate Explain the Saljūqs Advance?” in Liang Emlyn Yang, Hans-Rudolf Bork, Xiuqi Fang and Steffen Mischke eds., Socio- Environmental Dynamics along the Historical Silk Road (Cham: Springer, 2019), 271; Citing Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, “A collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean?: New results and theories on the interplay between climate and societies in Byzantium and the Near East, ca. 1000-1200AD” Jahrbuch Der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 65 (2015): 195-242. This study evaluates Ellenblum’s argument from the Byzantine perspective. 83 Magdalena Opała-Owczarek and Piotr Owszarek, “Dry and Humid Periods Reconstructed from Tree Rings in the Former Territory of Sogdiana (Central Asia) and Their Socio-economic consequences over the Last Millennium,” in Liang Emlyn Yang, Hans-Rudolf Bork, Xiuqi Fang and Steffen Mischke eds., Socio- Environmental Dynamics along the Historical Silk Road (Cham: Springer, 2019), 195. 30 proxies did not originate from the steppe region, it would seem that the immigration of

Oguz/Turkmen tribes to the south occurred during a transition to wetter conditions in agricultural Transoxania. Opala-Owczarek et al. write that “at the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries, a shift to wetter conditions occurred. This period of two hundred years is characterized by a high level of variability with a clear predominaces of above-average precipitation.” Their study spots were high in the mountains, therefore, an increase in moisture would have impacted the agricultural societies in Central and Eastern

Transoxiana more than Khwarazm and the steppes around the Aral sea.

This debate is developed further in sections two and four with the discussion of the Khitan and Tangut conquests — two of the contenders for forcing the Qarakhanids and Seljuks to the west. Here I argue that although the Oghuz migrations across Inner

Asia occurred during an arid MCA, the political history of the mobile pastoralist societies in the 10-11th century must inform our understanding of human-environment interaction during the MCA. However, while the proxy data may suggest aridity then it will still be imperative to comb the primary sources for references to an impact of this shift on society and economic. Our aim here is not to support the argument that the specific climatic conditions caused the movements of peoples and tribes, but rather to establish the ecological and climatic context in which these events took place.

We now turn to the East Asian side of the field and to a slightly earlier stage in the historiography. From this early stage, the East Asian side of the field engaged more closely with the natural sciences. James Millward’s 2010 article on the possibility of an environmental history of Xinjiang demonstrates that the incorporation scientific data into

31 the discussion will change our understanding of the region’s history.84 Millward warns that the textual sources for environmental history are “difficult to interpret” and

“inaccurate in key respects[.]”85 Many sources, for example, Xu Song’s Xiyu shuidao ji

西域水道記, are more interested in working of the territory that is now Xinjiang into the moral-geographical order of the Chinese classics, than in depicting physical realities.

Millward also points out that data from space can enhance our understanding of

Xinjiang’s environmental history. Satellite photography can help identify archaeological sites, trace the contours of defunct rivers and lake beds as well as help with mapping. A group of scientists working on the Cele 策勒 (Chira) oasis used a “combined fuzzy clustering and supervised classification” process to categorize types of vegetative cover for a given location and were able to trace variations in land quality over time.86 Remote sensing, when compared with other forms of evidence, is an important method for understanding the long-term changes in land use. In section three this type of information is integrated in with other sources to reconstruct changes in land use during the Samanid period.

A flurry of articles by Nicola Di Cosmo and collaborators has established specific aspects of the climate history of eastern inner Asia. Focusing on case studies rather than laws, theories or long-term patterns, these articles have allowed developments in climate science to shed light on difficult aspects of Inner Asian economic and ecological history.

84 James A. Millward, “Towards a Xinjiang Environmental History: Evidence from Space, the Ground, and in Between,” in Studies on Xinjiang Historical Sources in 17-20th Centuries, eds. James A. Millward, Shinmean Yasushi and Sugawara Jun (Tokyo: The Tokyo Bunko, 2010), 279-303. 85 Ibid., 281. 86 Ibid., 283. 32

In 2015, Di Cosmo analyzed the movement of the political center of the Mongol empire from the banks of the Onon River to Qara Qorum in the Orkhon river in light of climatic data.87 Building on Thomas Allsen’s argument that the Orkhon valley had a “historical importance and charismatic essence” having been the capital of the Uyghur empire (744-

840), Di Cosmo argues that we need to analyze climatic evidence and how it “may relate to strategic and political choices” in the context of the early Mongol empire.88 This environmental hypothesis suggests that the creation of a permanent capital in Mongolia depended on both the “availability of sufficient local resources (chiefly grass and water) to support a relatively large mass of people” and a location that would work for a centralized government to rule over a vast territory that provide imported goods for its people.89

By correlating stream-flow records with tree-ring proxies, it can be argued that the Khangai and Hentii regions constitute a “bimodal climate system,” the western side of which is subject to greater swings in conditions and the eastern side is more stable.

Leland et. al (2013) argue that, the “Khangai and Khentyi mountain-ranges are climatically different in terms of both cloud frequency, and summer precipitation patters.

Li et al. (2009) also identified strong regional differences in moisture variability between far western/central Mongolia and Eastern Mongolia.”90 Di Cosmo suggests that,

87 Nicola Di Cosmo, “Why Qara Qorum? Climate and Geography in the Early Mongol Empire,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 21 (2015): 67. 88 Ibid., 71. 89 Ibid., 73. 90 Ibid., 75. C. Leland, N. Pederson, A. Hessl, B. Nachin, N. Davi, R. D’Arrigo and G. Jacoby, “A hydroclimatic regionalization of central Mongolia as inferred from tree rings,” Dendrochronologia, 31, no. 3 (2013): 205-215. 33 concerning the current understanding of the data (as of 2015), during the pluvial that was registered for the Orkhon Valley at the time of the Mongols’ expansion, the best conditions were to be found in the Khangai region rather than in the Hentii region.91 By

1219 the Orkhon valley had experienced a period of good weather and “high energy” increasing its “carrying capacity.”92 Di Cosmo’s argument makes use of archaeological, climatological and, to a lesser degree, ethnographic data in addition to more traditional textual data. By using the climatic/ecological frameworks of the “bimodal climate system” and “carrying capacity,” he breaks away from some of the theoretical limitation of earlier scholarship, that had focused on questions of economic development and legitimacy. His argument that valley-specific climate variations provided a favorable ecological context for the moving of the capital to the Khangai seems tenable.93 His qualifications are equally important. This environmental thesis does not denied the possibility of other arguments — the centrality of Qara Qorum, political necessity and the charisma of the Orkhon valley — it only “subordinates them to the high productivity of the region and the necessity, for a centralized government, to control its resources.”94

Most environmental theses, like this one, will not be able to deny the possibility of other arguments. As we saw above in Jurgen Paul’s argument, climate change cannot be the only causative factor in our analyses of historical transformations, until all other factors are ruled out. It is unclear as to whether they should be.

91 Ibid., 76. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid., 77-78. 94 Ibid., 78. 34

A few years later, the ecological vulnerability of mobile-pastoralist empires came under question. Inner Asian mobile pastoralist empires of Inner Asia turned out to be more resilient to ecological stresses than was originally assumed.95 Di Cosmo et al.

(2018)’s study of the Uyghur empire analyzes how the empire responded to prolonged drought. Paleoclimatic reconstruction reveals that the center of the empire experienced the longest drought in the last 1700 years lasting sixty-eight years (783-850), which was proceeded by four decades of relative moisture.

And yet, both Chinese and Uyghur sources do not record any of the events that are expected to accompany adverse climatic conditions such as animal mortality, depopulation, migrations, or aggressive military actions. The empire seems to have remained stable throughout this period without moving its capital or invading neighboring territories. That the Uyghur Empire prospered during a severe six-decade- long drought suggests that they must have developed the capacity to withstand such climatic conditions.96 The period of political instability from 789 to 795 coincides with the drought, but did not cause the empire to collapse. During this same period, the

Uyghurs vied for control over the Tianshan region with the Tibetans, retaining control over the eastern half of the Tianshan region. Right at the turn of the ninth century, during the most severe part of the drought, the Uyghurs resumed commercial and diplomatic

95 Nicola Di Cosmo, Clive Oppenheimer and Ulf Büntgen, “Interplay of environmental and socio-political factors in the downfall of the Eastern Türk Empire in 630 CE,” Climatic Change (November 2017): https//doi.org/10.1007/s10584-017-2111-0; Rustam Talgatovich Ganiev and Vladimir Vladimirovich Kukarskih, “Natural Disasters in the History of the Eastern Turk Empire,” in L. E. Yang et al. (eds.), Socio- Environmental Dynamics along the Historical Silk Road, (Cham: Springer, 2019), 177-193. 96 Nicola Di Cosmo et al., “Environmental Stress and Steppe Nomads: Rethinking the History of the Uyghur Empire (744-840) with Paleoclimate Data,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 48, no. 4 (2018): 452. 35 relations with China, culminating in an arranged marriage between the Tang Princess

Taihe and the Uyghur qaghan, as well as the largest volume of trade between Tang China and the Uyghurs during the 820s.97 This scholarship shows how archaeological and written evidence can be woven together to how one empire displayed resilience and adaptability in the face of adverse climatic and environmental conditions. This type of thinking further complicates the one to one correlation between scientific events, as displayed by the proxies, and impacts on humans. This focus on adaptation takes us further away from questions like, how did climate impact human history, to what was the broader climatic and ecological context that medieval societies adapted to and what resources were available to them and how did that change over time. However, scholars have not yet turned their attention to the Liao, Jin, Xixia dynasties and many other crucial

Inner Asian empires with this climatic and ecological case study approach. It is impossible to exhaust the whole medieval period in one thesis, nonetheless the case studies in sections two through five begin part of this work.

Having assessed the development of the field of Central Asian environmental history, I offer the following conclusions. First, more extensive analysis of the textual and archaeological sources is needed to better integrate the historical discoveries of climatologists and biologists into historical discussions. Second, the scientific literature must be digested whole-heartedly in order for it to be put to use in historical arguments.

As we saw with Paul’s and Peacock’s destruction of Bulliet’s Big Chill argument,

“scientific” evidence can support absurd suggestions when not fully integrated into other

97 Ibid., 454-457. 36 types historical data or too quickly “borrowed” without real comprehensive understanding of the uncertainties in the statistical analysis of proxy records. The problem of correlating references to cold weather in Baghdad with spikes in data from

Mongolia in Bulliet’s case is easily solved by an investigation of paleoclimatic information from regions closer to Baghdad. More importantly, Bulliet has helped us understand what weather events may have meant to the medieval chroniclers. Third, while it has been established that both plague and climate played a role in shaping the context of the medieval Central Asia, we need a better understanding of the world historical importance of climate in the medieval period before we can fully understand on how it affected Central Eurasian history.

Section 1. Nature as a historical protagonist

Scientific research has advanced far enough as to present reliable information about past climates. It is now possible to begin discussing the question of what it means for the economic history of Central Eurasia. This knowledge allows us to add nature as one of the historical protagonists in our story.98 This approach forces us to rely on the analysis of scholars who discipline is different from our own. I discuss briefly the production of this knowledge before I present a synthesis of the long-term climate history of Central

Eurasia.

The development of the field of Central Eurasian climatology developed in late in the 1990s a bit after environmental history established it sense as a discipline in US history departments. The work of Jan Esper and collaborators established some of the earliest dendro-chronological studies, beginning in the early 2000s.99 The analysis of lacustrine sediments began a few years later, with the publication of Phillippe Sorrel’s work on the Aral sea and other studies carried out by European research teams.100 Around

98 Cambell. “Nature as historical protagonist” 99 Jan Esper, Fritz H. Schweingruber and Matthias Winiger, “1300 years of climatic history for Western Central Asia inferred from tree-rings” The Holocene 12 (2002): 267-277; J. Esper, S. G. Shiyatov, V. S. Mazepa, R. J. S. Wilson, D. A. Graybill, G. Kunkhouser, “Temperature-sensitive Tien Shan tree ring chronologies show multi-centennial growth trends” Climate Dynamics 21 (2003): 699-706. 100 Phillippe Sorrel, “The Aral Sea: a palaeoclimate archive” PhD diss., (Universität Potsdam, 2006); Phillippe Sorrel, Speranta-Maria Popescu, Stefan Klotz, Jean-Pierre Suc, Hedi Oberhänsli, “Climate variability in the Aral Sea basin (Central Asia) during the late Holocene based on vegetation changes” Quaternary Research 67 (2007): 357-370. 38 this same time Chinese scientists began publishing research on the Central Asian paleoclimate, introducing a model of out of phase relations between the histories of the monsoons and the westerlies.101 These scientific advances in paleoclimatology made it possible to approach questions of human-environment interactions from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Many of the techniques employed by the researchers mentioned throughout this thesis will be unfamiliar to most historians. I will explain them briefly, just as more tradition histories would need to explain which sources they choose. Chemical and morphological records are deduced from many different types of natural evidence. I focus studies that analyze on tree-ring growth, lake-bed sediments, soil profiles and ice cores. I will explain each one these in detail so that when changes in humidity or temperature are hypothesized by the scientific literature it is clear how they have come to these conclusions.

The Methods of climate science

Modern ecology has allowed us to understand how the natural world works with itself. Within this context a number of records give us an understanding of what past ecologies were like.102 For historical purposes, dating the changes between different periods of past ecologies is crucial for understanding what these changes meant for past

101 Fa-Hu Chen, Jian-Hui Chen, Jonathan Holmes, Ian Boomer, Patrick Austin, John B. Gates, Ning-Lian Wang, Stephen J. Brooks, Jia-Wu Zhang, “Moisture changes over the last millennium in arid central Asia: a review synthesis and comparison with monsoon region” Quaternary Science Reviews 29 (2010): 1055- 1068. 102 The following discussion of methods in by no means exhaustive. I only found it necessary to discuss this methods in brief so as to point out some of the complexities of this type of historical data. I have relied heavily on Neil Roberts, The Holocene: An Environmental History Third Edition (West Sussex and Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 10-81. 39 societies. It is for this reason that I begin my discussion of climate sciences methods with dating.

Radiometric dating allows us to measure the age of natural elements. Most natural elements exist as mixtures of several different isotopes. Isotopes are atoms that have the same chemical properties (numbers of electrons), the same atomic numbers (the number of protons), but differing numbers of neutrons. Therefore, they have different atomic masses (the overall weight of an atom). One particular isotope is always dominant for each element on the periodic table. For example, 12C is the dominant isotope for Carbon, although both 13C and 14C exist. Carbon-14 is “isotopically unstable” which means that it decays at a fixed rate to form stable 14N. Isotopic decay rates are measurable, which means that each unstable isotope can be analyzed as if it was a “natural clock.”103 The natural clock is set to zero when the isotope begins to decay and the amount of time that has passed can be gauged by measuring the amount of radioactivity left in the element.

The rate of this decay is measured by a period of time called a “half-life,” about the about of time it takes for the radioactivity of the isotope to be reduced by half. Each isotope has a different half-life, varying vastly between elements. For example, Radon-222 has a half-life of 3.8 days, whereas Potassium-40 has a half-life of 1300 million years.

Radiometric dating using the isotope Carbon-14 was pioneered by Willard Libby in the late 1940s. In addition to its more well-known use in dating archaeological sites, this method of dating natural substances is used for understanding biological and climatic changes during the Holocene the climatic period from the Last Ice Age to the current

103 I’m using Neil Robert’s metaphor here. Ibid., 13. 40 warm period (approximately 9750 BCE to 1850 CE). Carbon-14 is formed in the upper atmosphere by the bombardment of Nitrogen atoms from space. The result this bombardment, the Carbon-14 isotope, is then oxidized to form carbon dioxide which is distributed across the atmosphere. Plants take up these oxidized isotopes during photosynthesis, which passes them on to other organisms. Carbon-14 is present in very small quantities in all living organisms. When an organism dies, their carbon-14 supply is

“no longer replenished,” and isotopic decay begins, starting the isotopic clock at zero.

Libby calculated the half-life of carbon-14 as 5560 ± 30 years (the present-day estimate is

5730 ±40 years). Libby cross referenced his estimates with materials of known historical age and suggested that the existing correlation was close enough for carbon-14 dating to be applied universally.104

Like other isotopic studies carbon-14 dates include an “error function representing one state deviation about the mean.”105 For instance, the date 8160 ± 110 14C yr BP, laboratory number 1666, produced at the British Museum radiocarbon laboratory indicates that there is 68% chance that the age of the sample lies between 7940 and 8380 yr BP.

In the 1960s, Hans Suess compared Carbon-14 dates with dates deduced from dendrochronology (the study of tree-ring growth). He learned that dates older than 2500 year significantly underestimated the actual age of the items being analyzed. These deviations from true age were systematic and worldwide making it possible to calibrate

104 Ibid., 13. 105 Ibid., 14. 41 the two dating methods and create more accurate dates. Carbon dating methods improved in the 1980s when the use of mass spectrometers allowed scientists to measure Carbon-14 directly. The resulting Accelerator Mass Spectrometer (AMS) dating method allows scientists to pick out the date small samples, as small as 10 mg, which decreasing the chances of younger or older carbon impacting the sample. Nonetheless, the most accurate dates are deduced from the calibration of multiple different dating methods, similar to how the most convincing climatic reconstructions come from multiple different types of sources.

Luminescence and Uranium-Thorium dating are another form of radiometric dating. Luminescence dating measures the impacts of solar bleaching of samples as diverse as pottery or the quartz and feldspar grains in sediments. Uranium-Thorium dating uses a more complex decay chain that Carbon-14 dating uses. The “parent” isotope decays into a sequence of “daughter” isotopes, which allows the dating of much older materials. Uranium and Thorium (U-TH) isotopes can be taken out of water by corals in the ocean, or precipitated into cave speleothems or lake carbonates.106 The use of high- precision mass spectrometry on samples of U-TH has provided another calibration method for C-14 dates separate from dendrochronology.

Lead-210 and Caesium-137, isotopes with shorter half-lives, allow for radiometric dating of more recent periods not covered by 14C dating. Lead-210 (210PB) has a half live of a little more than 22 years and provides a dating range of one to two hundred years.

210PB is part of a larger decade change that begins when Radium-226 is release from

106 Ibid., 16. 42 catchment erosion. Some of the Radium enters streams and lakes and then decays to

Lead-210. Other parts of Radium-226 escapes into the atmosphere as the gas Radon-222, which decays through a serious of isotopes to form Lead-210, which returns to Earth as rainfall or dry fallout. Caesium-137, an isotope of artificial origin, is used to date sediments from the era of nuclear power (the 1950s to the present). 137Cs along with

Beryllium-7 (7Be) and other short-lived radioisotopes can be used to trace soil erosion and sediment accumulation and to calibrate dates deduced from 210Pb chronologies.

Dendrochronology was first used systematically in the early 20th century by A. E.

Douglas working in Arizona. Chronologies can be extracted from living trees by using an incremental borer which extracts a small tree core from a tree without seriously harming the tree’s growth. Each tree has its own tree-ring signature which shows differential growth from year to year which can be linked to variations in the weather. Tree-ring signatures from living trees can be cross-dated with sequences from dead trees and wood used in ancient buildings. Many different sequences can be fit together to form long chronologies. Douglass compiled a master chronology from living yellow (ponderosa) pine trees stretching back to the thirteenth century and compared it with a floating chronology from pine timbers found in pre-historic buildings. In 1929, he found an excavated wooden bean from and archaeological site at Pueblo Bonito dating to between

1237 and 1380 CE, which allowed him to connect the sequences together. This cross- dating approach has allowed researchers to construct chronologies covering the entire

Holocene, a famous example being the chronology from bristlecone pines, which stretch

43 back eight thousand years.107 14C dating can be applied to the tree-ring sequences because new 14C is laid down in each growth ring, allowing for detailed cross-dating between these two methods.

Another dating technique is provided by counting the annual layers of snow which build up in ice sheets in regions were accumulation exceeds summer melting. The chemistry of each layer can be analyzed and the content of dust and pollen and other organic material frozen into the glaciers provide evidence for reconstructing past climates.

Pollen analysis, also called palynology, is one of the most important branches of terrestrial paleoecology for the Holocene period. This method, which dates back to the early twentieth century, rests on the simple basis of how pollen grains and spores that are produced as part of plant reproduction are preserved in lake mud, peat bogs, and other sediments. This pollen, when analyzed properly, can serve as a record of past vegetation.

This method does not record all plant species, it rather records those which are pollinated by wind, rather than those pollinated by another species. For this reason, paleo-ecologists often analyze the pollen record in conjunction with an analysis of modern pollen in each ecosystem. Different ratios of species can tell researchers about the types of vegetation that were more or less prevalent in past times. However, as with other historical sources interpretation is key and it is dangerous to overstate what the evidence suggests. As will become clear below, it is sometimes impossible to differentiate between climatic and

107 Ibid., 21. 44 human impacts on vegetation coverage for areas with long histories of agriculture. Many factors including climate change can impact pollen histories.

Plant remains can also be preserved in sediments. It can be useful to use plant macrofossils to supplement the record provided by the pollen assemblages. Aichner et al.

2015, for example, argue that their reconstruction infers plants’ use of year-round precipitation, which includes snowmelt, because the changes in the leaf wax values respond “to shifts in the proportion of moisture derived from westerly storms during late winter and early spring.”108 Plant leaves change their protective waxy coverings, kind of like clothes, in response to different types of water stresses. Leaf waxes are tough and resistant and can be found in biomarker compounds, which can survive in soils for millions of years, making them good sources of paleoclimatic studies.109 The analysis of leaf wax is crucial to our understanding of glacially fed water systems.

All of these forms of historical evidence are indirect and are often referred to as proxies. None of the proxy records offer a perfect measurement of past climate by themselves.

The Climate history of Central Eurasia during the late Holocene

Our case studies in chapters two through five occur during the during the tenth through twelfth centuries. In climatic history terms, this period coincides with the

Medieval Climate Anomaly. In order to better understand what made this period unique

108 Ibid. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/02/a-new-but-unbelievable-climate-proxy-plant-leaf-wax/ 109 Yvette L. Eley and Michael T. Hren, “Reconstructing vapor pressure deficit from leaf wax lipid 2 molecular distributions” Scientific Reports (2018) 8:3967. Thomas et al. “Leaf wax ¶ H and varve- thickness climate proxies from proglacial lake sediments, Baffin Island, Artic Canada” J Paleolimnol 48 (2012): 193-207. 45 in climatic terms I will now survey the Climate history of Central Eurasia during the late

Holocene focusing on the Classical Warm Period, the Late Antique Little Ice Age (the volcanic-solar “Dark Ages” 450-900CE) and the beginning of the fourth Hallstatt Little

Ice Ace (the twelve and thirteenth centuries). This section is a history of the earth system processes and how they relate to climate in Central Eurasia. This outline traces the broad trends in wide brush strokes, with only cursory refences to the “froth of events.” Detailed historical discussion is presented in sections two through five.110

Central Eurasian climate is governed by three different circulation patterns: the

Westerlies, the South Asian Monsoons, and the East Asian monsoons. I will discuss them geographically first.

The circulation systems of each hemisphere, north and south, comprise three different climatic cells between the equator and the poles: the Arctic Polar Cell, the

Ferrell cell and the Hadley Cell. The northern and southern Hadley cells share a common boundary, often around the equator, which is call the Intertropical Convergence zone

(here after ITCZ). As the sun warms the equatorial latitudes water evaporates into the warm equatorial air and rises until it hits cold tropospheric air. This collision creates a band of clouds and rainfall along the ITCZ which shifts north and south with the seasons.

The reverse process occurs at the sub-tropical boundary between the Hadley and Ferrell cells, as air rising from the equator falls at the sub-tropical boundary. Air circulating in the Ferrell Cell mirrors this pattern, rising at the border with the Arctic cell and falling at

110 For more a detail assessment stretch back to eight thousand years ago, see Nikolaus G. O. Boroffka, “Archaeology and Its Relevance to Climate and Water Level Changes: A Review,” in Andrey G. Kostianoy and Aleksey N. Kosarev eds., The Aral Sea Environment (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2010), 283-304. 46 the sub-tropical boundary. The descending dry air in both the northern and southern subtropical boundary inhibits cloud formation. Without clouds, rising surface temperatures created the mid-latitude deserts: the North American Southwest, the Sahara, the Middle

East and Central Asia for the Northern Hemisphere; Patagonia, the Kalahari and the

Great Sandy Desert in western Australia for the Southern Hemisphere.111 As air moves northward the Coriolis force deflects it to the east. This eastward movement of air forms the Subtropical jet stream which circles the globe. The Subtropical jet runs from the west to the east anchoring the westerly system and bringing moister from the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean and the Black and Caspian seas to Inner Eurasia. The key to understanding the Medieval Climate Anomaly in Arid Central Asia, the geographical term used by climatologist to describe the part of Central Eurasian that is impacted mostly by the Westerlies, is in understanding that the Sub-tropical jet does not just move north and sound based on the seasons, but rather the larger patterns of global cooling and warming effect the subtropical jet’s position, effectively moving the westerlies and the monsoons from north to south and back again. On a yearly scale the springtime shift of the subtropical jet to the north along with rising air over a warming Tibetan plateau bringing precipitation from the Pacific and Indian Oceans to the regions impacted by the

South and East Asian monsoons.112 Periods of global cooling, coinciding with solar

111 This summary is taken from John L. Brooke and Henry Misa, “Earth, Water, Air, and Fire: Toward an Ecological History of Premodern Inner Eurasia,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History (Oct-Dec 2019). 112 Ibid. Citing Wei Wei, et al., "Relationship between the Asian Westerly Jet Stream and Summer Rainfall over Central Asia and North China: Roles of the Indian Monsoon and the South Asian High," Journal of Climate 30 (2017), 537-552; Yong Zhao, et al., "Relationships between the West Asian subtropical westerly jet and summer precipitation in northern Xinjiang,” Theoretical Applied Climatology (2014) 116:403–411; Yong Zhao, et al., "Impact of the Middle and Upper Tropospheric Cooling over Central Asia 47 minima and periods of increased volcanic eruptions, also affect the annual cycle of the subtropical jet. A colder spring in the north, inhibits the northward migration of the subtropical jet resulting in monsoon failure in South and East Asia and the continuing run of moisture bearing westerlies across the steppe increasing precipitation in Arid Central

Asia.113 Therefore during the Little Ice, the Pre-Classical Hallstatt, the mid-Holocene

Hallstatt, etc., the precipitation of Inner Eurasia and monsoonal Asia was, in a sense, reversed.114 However, as we will see below the dividing line between the Monsoonal

Asia and Westerly-influence Asia can be quite complex.115

The Westerlies derive their strength from a circulation system called the North

Atlantic Oscillation. During periods of global cooling the westerlies moved south, bringing generally wetter conditions. During periods of global warming the Westerlies shifted to the north bringing drier conditions to arid Central Asia. During cooler periods, northern forests expanded towards the south into the steppes; during warmer periods the steppes and deserts shifted to the north. Warmer periods also brought higher levels of evaporation to northern latitudes, creating centuries of relative drought. Shifts in global

on the Summer Rainfall in the Tarim Basin, China," Journal of Climate 27 (2014), 4721-4732; Liangcheng Tan, et al., "Centennial-to decadal-scale monsoon precipitation variations in the upper Hanjiang River region, China over the past 6650 years," Earth and Planetary Science Letters 482 (2018), 580–590; T. Mölg, et al., "Prominent midlatitude circulation signature in High Asia’s surface climate during monsoon,” Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 122 (2017), 127021-27712; Jing Ge, et al., "The influence of the Asian summer monsoon onset on the northward movement of the South Asian high towards the Tibetan Plateau and its thermodynamic mechanism,” International Journal of Climatology 38 (2018), 543– 553. 113 Ibid. 114 The issue is far from being resolved. See also Chen, et al., “Holocene moisture evolution,” QSR 27 (2008); John C.H. Chiang, et al., "Role of seasonal transitions and westerly jets in East Asian paleoclimate," Quaternary Science Reviews 108 (2015) 111-129; Liangcheng Tan, et al., "Centennial-to decadal-scale monsoon precipitation variations in the upper Hanjiang River region, China over the past 6650 years," Earth and Planetary Science Letters 482 (2018), 580–590. 115 For useful diagrams see http://geophile.net/Lessons/atmosphere/atm_circulation_05.html. 48 climate from relative warm and cold periods directly impacted vegetation distribution in

Central Eurasia over the long term.116

Just as the Westerlies systems gets its moister from the Atlantic Ocean, and therefore generally tend to phase with the North Atlantic Oscillation,117 the Monsoon system draws moisture from the Indian and Pacific oceans. The monsoon systems are regulated by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (hereafter ENSO). The ENSO cycles between the La Nina state, which defines low pressure in the western part of the Pacific ocean with high pressure in the west, the ocean of the coast of the Americas, and the reverse called the El Niño (high pressure off the coast of the Americans and low pressure around South East Asia). A strong El Niño year generally brings rain to the Americas and drought to South and East Asia. A La Niña year brings the opposite: drought in the North

American South West and strong Asian Monsoons.118 The MCA climate regime tended towards the La Niña phase of the ENSO, cause by the increase in solar heat into the pacific ocean, leading to relatively warm and west conditions in South and East Asia and cool/dry conditions in the Americas.119 Thus the questions we need to answer are: How strong were these monsoons during the middle of the Medieval Climate Anomaly? And how far north did their influence reach?

116 Ibid. 117 Bruce M. S. Campbell, The Great Transition: Climate, Disease and Society in the Late-Medieval World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 45-49. 118 The ENSO is a “seesawlike” pattern of reversing air pressures between the eastern and western tropical Pacific Ocean. In the 1920s Sir Gilbert Walker discover that when atmospheric pressure was high in the Pacific, it tended to be low in the Indian Ocean. For more on the ENSO see Brian Fagan, The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008), 161-163. See also https://www.e-education.psu.edu/meteo3/node/2272 119 John L. Brooke, Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 348-350. 49

The influence of the South Asian Monsoons can reach as far as northern Tibet and

Southwestern Xinjiang during periods of strong monsoon strength. The El Niño Southern

Oscillation (ENSO) plays a role in regulating the Monsoons. The ENSO is generally an occilation between warm temperatures in the eastern atlantic ocean during the El Nino phase and warm ocean temperatures in the western pacific and Indian ocean during the

La Nina phase. El Niño years bring rain to the Americas and drought to South and East

Asia; La Niña years bring drought to the Eastern Americas and strong Asian monsoons.

The operation of the ENSO corresponds with the conditions in the North Atlantic, which drives the westerlies.

Having outlined the geographical configurations of Central Eurasia climate, I now move to a more direct chronology. Global climates have cycled back and form between relative warm periods and relative cold periods since the mid-Holocene. Four periods of relatively cooler, and lest stable periods have occurred four times during the Holocene: in the middle of the seventh millennium BCE (the Early Holocene Siberian High), during the fourth millennium (the mid-Holocene Hallstatt), at the turn of the first millennium

BCE (the bronze age-iron age transition, also called the Pre-classical Hallstatt), and during the Little Ice Age.120

The period between the pre-classical Hallstatt and the Little Ice Age as generally warm and dry punctuated by a brief period of cooling in response to volcanic activity

120 See figure in Brooke and Misa, “Earth, Water, Air, and Fire.” E. J. Rohling, P. A. Mayewski, R. H. Abu-Zied, J. S. L. Casford, A. Hays, “Holocene atmosphere-ocean interactions: records from Greenland and the Aegean Sea,” Climate Dynamics 18 (2002): 587-59; 50 around the 6th century CE.121 The first part of this period is often called the Roman Warm

Period. During this period the Sogdian networks expanded.122 The cooler period from 536 to approximately 660 called the Late Antique Little Ice Age by Ulf Büntgen et al., brought an increased in moister in Arid Central Asia due to a cooler North Atlantic and the southward shift of the westerlies. D’Arrgo et al note that, “One of the most notable frost ring occurrences is in AD 536, which shows visible frost damage in the latewood and signals the onset of an unusually cold decade (AD 536-545). The mean ring-width index for this decade is 0.670, with a minimum value of 0.37 in AD 543.” 123 Coinciding with the rise of the first Türk empire in the early 6th century. The Chinese sources record heavy snowfall, famine and devastating livestock mortality among the East Turk Empire ca 627, triggered by the volcanic eruption of circa 626 CE.124

After the relative coldness of the Late Antique Little Ice Age, a period of globally warmer temperatures from about 900 to 1200 called the Medieval Climate Anomaly occurred. This period was impacted by solar forcing and a decrease in equatorial volcanic eruptions. As the NAO switched to its positive mode, the Westerlies shifted north. The western portion of Central Eurasia experienced relatively drier conditions, demonstrated by decreases in the level of the Caspian sea.125 The levels of the Aral sea also were lower

121 Ulf Büntgen, Vladimir S. Myglan, Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, Michael McCormick et al., “Cooling and society change during the Late Antique Little Ice Age from 536 to around 660 AD,” Nature Geoscience 9 (March 2016): Doi: 10.1038/NGEO2652. 122 De La Vaissière, Sogdian Traders, 13-193. This period remains understudied. 123 Rosanne D’Arrigo, Gordon Jacoby, David Frank, Neil Pederson, Edward Cook, Brendan Buckley, Baatarbileg Nachin et al., “1738 Years of Mongolia Temperature Variability Inferred from a Tree-Ring Width Chronology of Siberian Pine,” Geophysical Research Letters 28, no.3 (2001): 544, figure 2. 124 Nicola Di Cosmo, Clive Oppenmheimer, Ulf Büntgen, “Interplay of environmental and socio-political factors in the downfall of the Eastern Türk Empire in 630 CE” Climate Change 14 November 2017. 125 Beni et al., “Caspian sea-level changes during the last millennium,” 1647. 51 during the MCA and the earlier Roman Warm Period (0-400 CE).126 This context is part of what made the Liao/Khitan trans-Eurasian exchange difference from the period of the

Türk empires.

The increase in South Asian Monsoon intensity during the MCA has lead some scholars to suggest that parts of Central Eurasia experiences increases in moisture, similar to South Asia. The evidence for this is review in section four below. It is possible that the

La Niña like mode of the ENSO, impacted the Strong South Asian Monsoons, causing an increase in population over Southern Central Asia and South Asia.127

A series of equatorial eruptions during the 12th century began the shift toward the

Little Ice Climate regime and the fourth Hallstatt Siberian High event.128 The increase in moisture during this period is demonstrated by the rising of the Caspian Sea level. For example, Al-Istakhri describes Abeskun as the best port on the Caspian.129 Other 10th century writers, al-Mas’udi and Ibn Hawqal, describe this same city as a port. In 1208 Al-

Bakri describes Abeskun as being on the shoreline of the Caspian.130 By the mid-thirteen and fourteenth centuries Abeskun is described as an island.131 Which indicates the increase in precipitation, via the expansion of the Caspian Sea.

126 Renato Sala, “Quantitative Evaluations of the Impact on Aral Sea Levels by Anthropogenic Water Withdrawal and Syr Darya Course Diversion During the Medieval Period (1.0-0.8 ka BP),” in Yang et al. eds., Socio-Environmental Dynamics, 101. 127 Jothiganesh Shanmugasundaram, Yanni Gunnell, Amy E. Hessl, Eungul Lee, “Societal response to monsoon variability in Medieval South India: Lessons from the past for adapting to climate change,” The Anthropocene Review 4, no. 2 (2017): 110-135. 128 For a discussion of drought in South Asian and Afghanistan see Akhilesh K. Yadava, Achim Bräuning, Jayendra Singh, Ram R. Yadav, “Boreal spring precipitation variability in the cold arid western Himalaya during the last millennium, regional linkages, and socio-economic implications,” Quaternary Sciences Reviews 144 (2016): 28-43. 129 Beni et al, “Caspian sea-level Changes during the last millennium,” 1652, especially figure 9. 130 Ibid., 1653. Al-Bakri 1999, 31. 131 Ibid., 1652. Jovayni (1911, p. 115/2) Banaketi (1969, p. 240) Mostowfi (1999, p. 239). 52

Section 2. The conquests of the Xixia and the Liao: economies and climate

This section enters the boarder discussion of the interrelations between state formation and climate change in Central Eurasia. At the beginning of the twentieth century

Ellsworth Huntington argued that “pulsations of climate had served as a driving force of the history of Eurasia impelling nomadic invaders to overrun the civilized nations that surround them.”132 This “Pulse of Asia” paradigm was influential for years to come as the history of mobile pastoralist societies was generally considered to be formulaic and predicable. The subordination of history to geography and climate has become unpopular more recently and Huntington racial theories are quiet disturbing. However, some of his ideas concerning the relations between climate and mobile pastoralists are still alive.

Thomas Barfield has developed the concept of “shadow empires” to describe how states from on the steppe. This basic thesis is that Inner Asian empires form as shadows of the Chinese empires: the Han caused the raise of the Xiongnu and the Sui/Tang caused the rise of the Turks and so on.133 Nicola Di Cosmo has established a theory of state formation were various types of stress and crisi lead to militarization and conquest. As this pattern repeated itself across two thousand years each … of empires developed an

132 Ellsworth Huntington, The Pulse of Asia: A journey in Central Asia Illustrating the geographic basis of history (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1907). 133 Thomas J. Barfield, The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1989). 53 increaly complex mode of production. From the tribute ecnomy to the direct taxagion empire.

Scholars have argued that the ecological forces, by contributing to economic and societal crisis forcing society change in new and complex directions. Still other times, the ecological context acted as a catalyst for societal developments that could not have happened otherwise. In the context of the dry warm Medieval Climate Anomaly in most of northern Central Eurasia, just a few years of increased precipitation could have spectacular results. The most dramatic example of this type of phenomenon is the

Mongol pluvial (1211-1225). Here, the increase in precipitation and temperature (fifteen consecutive years of above-average moisture in central Mongolia when compared with the last 1,112 years) contributed to high grassland productivity and the resultant trophic cascade favoring the formation of Mongol political and military power in the early 13th century at a time when the global climate regime had already been shifting towards the

LIA.134

A different but related theory, advanced by John Brooke suggests that cold summer temperature in China when combined with warming in Mongolia helps to “set the stage for dynastic collapse and invasion.”135 This argument is the climatic equivalent of Barfield’s “shadow empire” hypothesis. The Jurchen invasion of North China came in

1127 in the context of a warm rebound after twenty could years in Mongolia and a cold spike in north China. The Mongol, invasion of North China in 1214 began as Mongolia

134 Neil Pederson, Amy E. Hessl, Nachin Baaterbileg, Kevin J. Anchukaitis, and Nicola Di Cosmo, “Pluvials, droughts, the Mongol Empire, and modern Mongolia,” PNAS 111, no 12 (March 25, 2014): 4375-4379. 135 Brooke A Rough Journey, 369-370. 54 warmed (during the Mongol pluvial mentioned above), at the same time as China was experiencing intense summer cold. The pattern continues in 1279, when the Mongols conquer the Southern Song at a time of Mongolian warming and Chinese cooling.136

While climate was by far not the only factor at play in these developments, it is clear that it played some role.

It is also clear that the crumbling of the Liao regime upset the Liao/Song balance of power (i.e. the diplomatic stability of two sons of heaven) and the Jurchen invaded

Mongolia first from Manchuria before focusing on North China, as similar strategy was adopted by Nurhachi several centuries later.137 And we also need further historical and climatological research to establish the differences in climate histories between

Mongolia, which located at the far eastern reachs of the Westeries zone, and Manchuria, which is part of the East Asian monsoon system. A 2012 dissertation argues that the

Jurchens’ conquest of the Liao gave them the key position “as legitimate successors to

Liao hegemony over the multi-state system in the following decade.”138 In this case the rise of the Jurchen has more to do with Liao weakness after a two century period of rule in north China. As discussed below environmental and monetary stress were present in

136 Ibid. Chen et al., “Moister Changes over the Last Millennium in Arid Central Asia”; Frank Schlütz and Frank Lehmkuhl, “Climate Change in the Russian Alta, Southern Siberia, Based on Palynological and Geomorphological Results, with Implications for Climate Teleconnections and Human History since the Middle Holocene,” WHAb 16 (2007), 101-118, 114-115. Tan et al., “Climate Patterns in North Central China during the Last 1800 yr”; Mote, Imperial China, 193-248. Temperature proxies from Osborn- Briffa/IPCC Box 6.4. The peaks in these cold summer periods in China were 907-910, 996-1001, 1097- 1100, 1137-41, 1216-20, 1276-81, and 1357-60. 137 Jing-shen Tao, Two Sons under Heaven: Studies in Sung-Liao Relations (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988); David Curtis Wright, From War to Diplomatic Parity in Eleventh-Century China: Sung’s Foreign Relations with Khitan Liao (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 138 Chad D. Garcia, “Horsemen from the Edge of Empire: The Rise of the Jurchen Coalition” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 2012), 253. 55 the last decades of the Liao in north China. The environmental history of the Jurchen is best understood at the end of the dynasty as well. I evaluation the beginning of this empire in section five. The environmental stress on the Liao and the Song, particularly flooding, were another factor that should be added to discussions of Mongolian and

Manchurian climate.

Theorizing larger patterns works well for connecting with the cyclic patterns of climate history, as shown in section 1, over large time scales. However this section demonstrates that the reality on the ground was always more complex both in human and climatic terms. This section switches to a small time scale to analyze smaller parts of this larger problem.

This session begins by focusing on how the rise of the Khitan/Liao fit into the patterns of Inner Asian climate and state formation. Here we hope to tell the story of the rise of the Liao in in its climatic context. We then move on to a discussion of Tangut climate history. Having discussed the climatic and natural influence on these two emergences we can then return to the discussion of climatic forcing for moving the oguz

Turks and other mobile pastoralist groupings across the steppes, which we discussed in the introduction. Before this I will need give a brief political history of the early Khitan state. Tribal politics seem to have been an important factor as well as the veritable power vacuum left by the Kyrghyz.

Khitan Political history

An earlier generation of scholars has suggested that the Khitan’s rise to power was a result of the Kyrgyz’ lack of interest in establishing a grand Turkic empire in

Mongolia following the Uyghur-Turk-Rouran-Xiongnu tradition. We will look more closely at why the Kyrghyz did not attempt to assert hegemony over the larger Turkic world and did not establish a capital in the “sacred” ïduq Turkic lands around the Orxon and Selena rivers below. The historical Otuken Mountains, corresponding to some part of the modern Khangay mountians, from which flow the Orkhon and Selenga, referred as either the ötüken yïš or the ötüken yer/yir. Yiš means a mountain forest “the upper parts of a mountain covered with forest, but also containing treeless grassy valleys.”139 Kyrghyz control over Mongolia was confined to the Northwest and their power base remained in the Yenisei region (present-day Tuva).140 They established their capital on the south side of the Tannu-ola range in the Tes-Xem valley near lake Ubsu-Nur.141 It seems that the power vacuum provided by limited Kyrgyz imperial leanings was sustained from 840 through 900.142

Other explanations of the Liao’s rise to power143 have also pointed even further far a field to the interregional situation in northern Asia at the end of the ninth century,

139 Michael R. Drompp, “Breaking the Orkhon Tradition: Kirghiz Adherence to the Yenisei Region after A. D. 840,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 119, no. 3 (1999): 391. Gerard Clauson, An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972), 979. 140 Denis Sinor, “The Uighurs, the Kyrgyz and the Tangut (eighth to the thirteenth century),” in History of Civilization of Central Asia Volume IV The Age of achievement a.d. 750 to the end of the fifteenth century: Part One: The Historical social and economic setting, eds. M. S. Asimov and C. E. Bosworth (Paris, UNESCO, 1998), 205. 141 Peter Golden, “The Migration of the Oghuz,” Archivum Ottomanicum 4 (1972): 60. 142 Drompp, “Breaking the Orkhon Tradition,” 390. 143 The pre-dynastic period of Khitan history is too complicated of an issue to treat fully in this thesis. The general scholarly consensus seems to be that the Khitan originated from the Yuwen branch of the Xianbei. In 345 the You-wen were crushed by the stronger Mujung group of Xianbei, who founded the state of Yen, and they split into three tribes, one of which was call the K’u-mo-hsi, to which the Khitan belonged. In 388 the group split again in to K’u-mo-hsi (later referred to as just the Hsi) and the Khitan. Many of the intervening periods are quite difficult to follow due to meager references in our Chinese sources. For more on this issue see: Denis Twitchett and Klaus-Peter Tietze, “The Liao,” in The Cambridge History of Chinese Volume 6: Alien regimes and border states, 907-1368, eds. Herbert Franke and Denis Twitchett (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994), 44-53. 57 not just the specific context of Mongolia. The 840s bear witness to large scale changes across Eurasia. In the context of the transition from the LALIA to the MCA, momentous events unfolded: the Samanids took Isfijab (Sairam) and Taraz in the late 9th century expanding the first Iranian empire into the steppe, the Tibetan empire collapsed in the

840s; the Kyrghyz defeated the Uyghurs in Mongolia also in the 840s; The Tang empire, while significantly weakened since the 750s, collapsed between 880 and 907, with

Ch’ang-an in ruins after the 880s.144 The late 9th century also witnessed the Uyghur-

Qarluq wars and the Uyghur-Qirghuz wars, which, as Golden suggests, “caused considerable disturbances in the steppes.”145 Perhaps another reflection of turbulent steppe conditions is the increase in Turkic gulams at the caliphal and Samanid armies at this time.146 The purchase of Turkic soldiers begain during the reign of al-Ma’mūn, 198-

218AH/ 813-833 CE.147 It seems that the climatic context for these events was the 9th century drought across Northern China confusingly reaching into Arid Central Asia.

While this broader context did not force the Liao to rise to power, it definitely helped.

Chinese sources often attribute the Liao’s success to the strength of their dynastic regime, but the crucial aspect of their early success, as it was for the Qing several centuries later, was their wide-reaching conquests of the steppe and eventually Manchuria as well. The Khitan first attacked the Xi and the Shiwei, their tribal adversaries, in the steppe. After establishing their control over the steppes beyond the Great Wall, they

144 Franke and Twitchett, Alien Regimes,10, 16. Valerie Hansen, The Silk Road: A New History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 126. 145 Golden, “The Migrations of the Oghuz,” 61. 146 Ibid. 147 Matthew S. Gordon, The Breaking of a Thousand Swords: A History of the Turkish Military of Samarra (A.H, 200-275/815-889 C.E.) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001). 58 could then turn their attention to the Po-hai (Parhae/Balhae) 渤海 state in eastern

Manchuria. While the collapse of the Tang in the 880s could be seen as contributing the

Kitan success, Twitchett and Tietze argue that “it was the removal of central constraints on the aggressive border governors in Ho-tung and Lu-lung, and the tough stance these provinces — Lu-lung in particular — took toward their Khitan neighbors, that provoked

[the Khitan] to unite.”148 Despite the disappearance of the Tang’s centralizing power, the

Chinese border provinces remained powerful or thoroughly militarized and it was against this challenge that Yelu Abaoji 耶律阿保機 fused the Khitan tribes into a powerful dynasty. Militarization was a key aspect of Inner Asian state formation since at least the

Xiongnu if not earlier.149

The key turning point seems to be when Abaoji was elected chieftain of the I-la

(耶律) tribe in 901 and led the attacks on the Shiwei to the North, the Jurchen in the

Northeast and the Xi in the South. In 902, he raided the Chinese border province of

Hedong, taking almost a hundred thousand captives as well as confiscating huge herds of animals. The next year he obtained more plunder revenue from this same province, before turning to the Lu-lung province. In autumn of 903, Abaoji, at thirty-one, was elected yü-yüeh, i.e. commander in chief, of the Khitan, and he continued to lead the annual raids of Lu-ling until 907.150 The governor of this province, Liu Jen-kung, retaliated by crossing the border each autumn to burn off the grasslands, thereby denying

148 Twitchett and Tietzi, “The Liao,” 56. 149 Nicola Di Cosmo, “State Formation and Periodization in Inner Asian History,” Journal of World History 10, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 1-40. 150 Ibid., 58. 59 the Khitan grazing for their herds. During one of these raids they even captured a brother of Abaoji’s wife. These counter raids caused great hardship, loss of livestock, and famine among the Khitan. Another factor that could have contributed to the chaos resulting from these counter raids was that it seems Central Mongolia was experiencing a prolonged drought from 900 to 964CE.151 This period falls under the longer warm and dry period reveled by a pollen sequence from Bayan Nuur Lake in western Mongolia, from 800 to

1150 CE. This record stretches back to the Roman Warm Period and observes a correspondence between high-precipitation episodes with the negative mode of the North

Atlantic Oscillation.152 Under drier conditions in Mongolia, the burning of pastures would have had catastrophic results for the pastoral economy. This stage in the rise of the

Liao corresponds with the period of cold summer periods in China given by the Osborn-

Briffa/IPCC data.153 However, this would have had little impact on the success or failure of the Liao, because their next interest was the conquest of Mongolia and the West.

So weakened, the Khitan Qaghan Hen-te-chin was reduced to bribing Liu Jen- kung to leave the Khitan pastures intact by giving him large numbers of horses. In 907, when Hen-te-chin came up for reelection, the tribal chieftains, embarrassed by his passive response to Liu Jen-kung, elected the more militaristic Abaoji as qaghan in his place, ending the old order of Khitan politics that had been dominated by the Yao-lien tribe.154

This episode illustrates that at this time the Khitan economy was closely dependent on its

151 Pederson et al., “Pluvials,” 4376. 152 Yunpeng Yang, Min Ran and Aizhi Sun, “Pollen-recorded bioclimatic variations of the last ~2000 years retrieved from Bayan Nuur in the western Mongolian Plateau,” BOREAS (2019): 9. DOI 10.111/bor.12423; early access. 153 Brooke, A Rough Journey, 360, note 38. 154 Twitchett and Tietzi, “The Liao,” 53. 60 livestock and its diversification, and the ultimate agro-pastoral symbiosis, would not be complete until later in the tenth century.

The Khitan took a positive view towards their non-Khitan subjects. The Khitan built cities for their “captured” populations. These “Chinese cities” 漢城 often had

Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist temples and soon became trade centers attracting voluntary refugees, fleeing from the chaos of the Northern Chinese border provinces during the early 10th century. Such a respect for foreign, mainly Chinese (hanren), people were become a hallmark of Liao policy.

The key aspects of Khitan state craft were already established before Abaoji became unchallenged leader of the Khitan in 907.155 In 916, he began to adopt Chinese modes of legitimacy, by putting on a coronation ceremony. Then, in 924-5 Abaoji led a great expedition into the steppe, conquering the tribes of northern Mongolia and reaching as far as the old Uyghurs’ capital city of Ordu Baliq on the Orkhon River.156 Abaoji now appealed to Turk legitimacy in-full-force, ordering an inscription to be made on Turkic holy ground imitating the earlier inscriptions and inviting the Uygurs back to their homeland.157 Abaoji himself then led his army west into eastern Dzungaria, while he sent another force southwest across the desert to establish Khitan sovereignty over those of the Uyghurs who had settled in the western Gansu corridor, between the Gobi and the

Tibetan plateau. A third Khitan force, led by Abaoji’s second son Te-kuang (Khitan “Te-

155 Insert the controversy around this date. 156 Ibid., 65. 157 P. B. Golden, “Imperial Ideology and the Sources of Political Unity Amongost the Pre-Chinggisid Nomads of Western Eurasia,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 2 (1982): 54-76. 61 chin”), was sent across the Gobi to establish control over the tribes of the Yin-shan area and northeastern corner of the Ordos, including remnants of the Tu-yü-hun and a few

Tangut tribal groupings. Having established Khitan rule in the steppe and desert regions,

Abaoji turned to the conquest of the Bohai in 926. Bohai was a centralized Confucian state, containing five capitals, fifteen superior prefectures and sixty-two subprefectures; it also had stable international relations with China, Korea and Japan. This large agrarian state fell to Abaoji’s armies in two months. However, the Khitan did not attempt direct rule at this point. After its king and nobility had been relocated to the Khitan court,

Bohai, now called Tung-tan, became an appanage. The indirect rule of the Bohai territories would have negative consequences in the earlier 12th century (see section five believe), but it seems that the Khitan had not fully established their model of dual administration in the 920s.

In only two decades Abaoji had transformed a local tribal confederation into a well-organized empire stretching from Eastern Dzungaria to the former Bohai lands

(modern Manchuria), including many Chinese from the border regions, who had either been taken captive or immigrated to the border trade towns fleeing violence in North

China. While importing Chinese systems of belief and culture, Abaoji also laid the grounds for the preservation of Khitan culture, by providing his people with a writing system in 920, the “large script,” adapting the Chinese writing system to the heavily inflected paramongolic Khitan language. On learning the Uyghur alphabet from envoys in 925, Abaoji’s younger brother Tieh-la created the second alphabetic “small script” for

Khitan. These developments laid the foundation for the dual administration system, in

62 which the tribal section of the empire conducted business in Khitan and the southern section of the empire kept documents in both Khitan and Chinese. Although the Khitan did not take the Sixteen Prefectures until 938, for our purposes it is enough to say that the

Khitan rise to power and assertion of hegemony over Inner Asia was established over the first three decades of the tenth century. In 938, the Later Jin 後晉 (936-947) emperor Shi

Jingtang 石敬瑭 (r. 936-942) ceded the “sixteen Prefections” to the Liao.158

By the end of the tenth century the Liao economy was divided between the pastoralism of the northern tribes, relying on their herds and only occasionally engaging in agriculture, and the Hsi people, the population of Bohai and the Sixteen Prefectures all practicing agrarian farming. Under Sheng-tsung 聖宗 (r. 982-1031) the government took a greater interest in promoting agriculture. Thus, we can suggest that the Khitan’s power base rested in the pastoral economy at the beginning of the tenth century, but by the end of tenth and the beginning of eleventh the agricultural section gain prevalence.

Climate during the Liao dynasty

It is possible that part of the context in which Kyrgyz made the decision to not create an empire in Mongolia was “the economic devastation caused by prolonged droughts and catastrophic frosts” in the Orkhon Valley peaking in 839-840.159 The drought was especially severe in the early 9th century. Historical sources from Tongwan city, along a Uyghur trade rout, describe desertification. A record from the high elevation

158 Yuan Julian Chen “Frontier, Fortification, and Forestation: Defensive Woodland on the Song-Liao Border in the long eleventh century” Journal of Chinese History 2, no. 2 (July 2018): 316. Tuotuo 脫脫, Liaoshi 遼史 [History of the Liao] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 4: 44–45. 159 Di Cosmo et al., “Environmental Stress,” 458. 63

Lake Karakuli in the eastern Pamir Mountains shows that the driest periods in the last two millennium occurred in the early 9th century.160 The Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas shows a transition from moist or neutral conditions to a widespread megadrought stretching from western Tibet to north China beginning in 783.161 Perhaps the far researching nature of this dry period into Central Asia can be attributed to the movement of the Westerlies to the North and the beginning of the drier MCA climate regime, however the exact dating of the beginning of the MCA varies in each reconstruction and location.

Wolfram Eberhard suggests that famines as well as other catastrophes caused decrease the the Sha-tuo turkic populations, the Khitans’ rivals in North China. In 930,

Jiezhou was partially depopulated and other prefectures were met a similar fate in 942.162

In 926, excessive cold brought about the death of approximately 10,000 Shatuo

“tribesmen.”163

Small scale climatic events were important throughout the tenth century. In the sixth month of 907 (Kaiping 1 of the Later Liang) Locusts despoiled Cai 蔡, Chen, Ru

160 Ibid, 450. 161 Ibid, 451. Cook et al., “Asian Monsoon Failure and Megadrought during the Last Millennium,” Science 328 (2010): 486-489. Further documentary evidence, included poems, for this climatic event is presented in Nicola Di Cosmo “Maligned Exchanges: The Uyghur-Tang Trade in the Light of Climate Data” in Haun Saussy ed. Texts and Transformations: Essays in Honor of the 75th Birthday of Victor H. Mair (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2018), 117-136. Di Cosmo argues that “While mechanistic understandings of the interaction between human and natural systems are not historically acceptable — and therefore theories that climate change might be responsible for the downfall of the Tang dynasty would be exceedingly dubious — the climatedata showing that increased aridity occurred in northern China from around 790 cannot be ignored as a possible cause of economic losses, depopulation, or, as in the case of hand, more trying conditions in the transportation of horse.” Ibid., 127. 162 Wolfram Eberhard, Conquerors and Rulers: Social Forces in Medieval China (Leiden, Brill, 1970), 142. 163 Ibid., 143. 64

汝, Xu 許, and Ying Prefectures.164 The forces of nature seem to conspire against the

Later Tang dynasty (923-937) as well. During the reign of Li Siyuan (Mingzong) (r. 926-

933) , “Ouyang Xiu concedes in commentary that Later Tang dynast Mingzong, a ruler both disciplined and humane, reigned over “a time when wars had abated and harvests were bountiful.” [At least for part of his reign] Despite seizing power by military coup against his brother by adoption, Zhuangzong, he ruled from the heart. In a conversation with his military commissioner on the appropriateness of military expenditures,

Mingzong laments, “To fatten war horses, I have to emaciate my people — this would shame me!” (see Fan Yanguang). Forces of nature seemed to conspire against the circumspect ruler all the same, his reign beset with a constant stream of natural disasters and anomalies. Earthquakes are reported in 927 and 931, major floods in 932, and five solar eclipses from 926 to 931, plus a succession of lunar eclipses, falling stars, and assorted celestial anomalies from 928 to 931. [Wudai huiyao chaps. 10-11, pages 172-

184. Wu dai huiyao 五代會要 (documentary abstracts from the Five dynasties) Wang Pu

王溥， comp. Shanghai: Shanghai guiji chubanshe, 1978.] Davis notes that “the symbolism of such events, never lost on the Chinese, surely undermined an otherwise credible regime.”165 In 938 (Tianfu 3), fires killed more than a thousand residents of

Xiangzhou.166

164 Ouyang Xiu, Historical Records of the Five Dynasties Trans. Richard L. Davis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), xxxi. 165 Ibid., lviii. 166 Ibid., xxxv. 65

Natural disasters intervened in the affairs of the already cash strapped Jin dynasty in the 940s, prior to their demolishment by the Liao. Davis: “Modern historians credit Shi

Jingtang, or Emperor Gaozu of Jin, with strengthening the center against local military power by broadening the powers of trusted palace officials; he also reorganized the bodyguard to enhance its responsiveness to the throne. [Wang, Structure of Power, p.

164.] The Basic Annals for his reign further allude to the abolition of abusive forms of taxation, such as collecting taxes two to four years in advance or prodding officials to pay for imperial banquets as an informal assessment.

In 948 (Qianyou 1), Locusts despoil Cao 曹, Mi 密, Qi 齊, Qing 青, Xing 邢, Yan

兗, Yi 沂 and Yun 鄆 prefectures, during the seventh month, July.167

As the discussion above indicates short term environmental stresses on their rivals as well as the broader drought were part of the Liao rise to power. Abaoji’s institutionalization of Khitan culture as well as the lack of another imperial rival were other important factors. Another of these factors was the establishment of the hancheng cities to which frontier populations fled during the chaotic early 10th century.

Tangut Political history

Similar to the rise of the Khitans, the rise of the Tangut empire impacted the broader history of Inner Asia. Here I briefly discuss the political history of the Tanguts.

In 982 the leader of the Tang-hsiang tribes, Chi-chien, set in motion that chain of events that brought the Tangut state into being. The catalyst was conflict with both the Song and

167 Ibid., xxxvi. 66 the Uyghurs. After a series of unsuccessful attacks on the Uyghurs of Kanzhou in the early eleventh century, the Tanguts succeeded in taking the capital of that state in 1028.

The Uyghur Qaghan, who appears to have borne the clan name Yaghlaqar (Chin. Yeh-lo- ko 藥羅葛) as part of his throne name, committed suicide. Liangzhou fell to the Tanguts in 1032. Other Uyghur territories of the Gansu corridor (Su-zhou, Kua-zhou, Sha-zhou

[Tun-huang]) fell to the Tanguts in 1036.168 However Sha-zhou 沙州（Tun-huang 敦

煌）appears to have remained at least semiautonomous until 1052-3, when it sent its last

“tribute” mission to Song, and a Tangut ruler does not appear in a Dunhuang cave inscription until 1074.169

The Tanguts also fought the Qingtang/Tsongkha Tibetans and the Song throughout the 1030s.170 The Shatuo-Qay group was forced to leave the desert steppe of

Kan-su and Eastern Turkestan when attacked by the Tanguts. This confrontation — and we should remember here that, regardless of political enmities, the carrying capacity of the region between the Eastern Tarim Basin and Gansu 甘肅 was probably insufficient for supporting two tribal confederations at the same time — forced the Shatuo-Qay group into the territory of the Qun/Kimak. I will continue this discussion below in the

168 Golden, Introduction, 167. 169 Ruth Dunnell, “The Hsi Hsia,” in The Cambridge History of Chinese Volume 6: Alien regimes and border states, 907-1368, eds. Herbert Franke and Denis Twitchett (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994), 179. 170 Ruth W. Dunnell, The Great State of White and High: Buddhism and State Formation in Eleventh- Century Xia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996), xxii. 67 discussion of the 10th and 11th century movement of mobile pastoralist tribal confederations across Eurasia.

Tangut Climate and Economy

In the 920s the Tangut economy was dominated by livestock, especially the horse trade with North China. Both the Jiu wudai shi, as well as Ouyang Xiu’s rewriting of this work the Wudaishiji, notes that Li Siyuan, Mingzong (r. 926-33) of the Later Tang, was unable to reduce the amount of money lavished on an unending stream of foreign horse dealers, primarily Uyghurs and Tanguts, traveling to and from the capital. In 929, the

Later Tang court attempted to limit the livestock trade to just border markets, but “the sheep and horse of the tribes did not cease [to fill] the roads.”171 This observation suggests that the Tanguts would have made use of most, if not all of, the available pastureland to produced such a surplus of horses. Therefore, there would have been few resources left for the Shatuo-Qay groupings after the conquest of Hexi in the 1030s.

A pollen sequence from Tian’E Lake in the western Qilian mountain range, near the northern part of the Hexi corridor — perhaps close to the western extent of the Tangut conquests — may shed some light on the preceding discussion. The Qilian mountain range sits at the boundaries of three different climatic regions: the northern border of the

Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (influenced by the South Asian monsoons), the arid zone of northwestern China (which expands into the Westerly dominated portions of Inner

Eurasia), and the Eastern Monsoon region. This study suggested that the Qilian region was affected by the Asian Summer Monsoon before 1300, by the westerly winds between

171 Ibid., 165. Citing: Chiu Wu-tai shi, 138, p. 1845; Xin wu-dashi 74, 912-13. 68

1450 and 1750 and by both systems after 1750.172 This study records wet periods from

1270 BCE-AD 400, 1200-1350, and AD 1600-present. They give us a long period of drier conditions from 400CE to 1200 which suggests that the Tangut experience was similar to those of the rest of ca during mca. Local documentary evidence record a drought at 1110 CE.173

At best we can say that both of these waves of movement occurred in the context of dry and warm MCA in the Inner Asian steppes. Dry and warm conditions would have decreased the carrying capacity of the steppe, meaning that the even a small encroachment onto a tribe’s land would necessitate its movement. This could explain why the reverberations across the steppe were so wide-reaching in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries. However, the drought did not impact the southern part of this region. A pollen record from Dunde ice cap, Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, records relatively humid conditions between 450 and 1150 AD.174 A recent dendrochonological study from the

Hexi corridor allows us to beginning understanding how climatic changes affected

Tangut society and empire.175 Yang et al. 2019 repart of 1556 year-long ring-width chronology for the Hexi corridor. This chronology is significantly longer than the previous 2011 study that covered 620 years and the 2015 study that extended the

172 Jun Zhang, Xiongzhong Huang, Zongli Wang, Tianlong Yan and En’yuan Zhang, “A late-Holocene pollen record from the western Qilian Mountains and its implications for climate change and human activity along the Silk Road, Northwestern China” The Holocene 28, No. 7 (2018): 1141. Zhang Y, Gou XH, Chen FH et al., “A 1232-year tree-ring record of climate variability in the Qilian Mountains, North- western China” IAWA Journal 30 no 4 (2009): 407-420. 173 Ibid., 1147. 174 Kam-biu Liu, Zuju Yao, Lonnie G. Thompson, “A pollen record of Holocene climatic changes from the Dunde ice cap, Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau” Geology 26 no. 2 (1998): 135-138. 175 This study was unavailable in the Spring of 2019 when I started this project. 69 chronology to 850 years.176 This team used the Signal-Free Regional Curve

Standarization methodology to calculate a chronology based on 416 Qilian juniper ring- width samples. The reconstructions shows two multi-centennial droughts from 800-

950CE and 1000-1200 CE as well as two multi-centennial pluvials during the periods of

1200-1450 and 1510-1620CE. This first drought corresponds with the bother Uyghur-

Qyrghyz wars and the Liao expansion. The second drought corresponded with the expansion of the Tanguts and then the expansion of the Jurchen into Mongolia.

Therefore, it seems that both drier conditions and politics were important factors in the

Tanguts’ rise to power.

Reverberations across the Steppe

I would now like to review the possible connection between the Tangut and the

Liao expansions with the Turkic migration into the Middle East. Scholars of European and Middle East history have viewed the founding of the Khitan in the early 900s has a catalyst for a domino effect wave of mobile pastoralist movements towards the West from Mongolia as one tribe pushed the next out of their original pastures.177 However, we still lack basic scholarly consensus as to how far west these movements reached. These migrations are hard to trace in as much historical detail as we would like, because our

176 Yang et al., “Rainfall history for the Hexi corridor in the arid northwest China during the past 620 years derived from tree rings,” International Journal of Climatology 31 (2011): 1166-1176; Gou et al., “An 850- year tree-ring-based reconstruction of drought history in the western Qilian Mountains of northwestern China,” International Journal of Climatology 35 (2015): 3308-3319. 177 Omeljan Pritzak, Studies in Medieval Eurasian History (London: Variorum Reprints, 1981), VI “Two Migratory Movements in Eurasian Steppe in the 9th-11th centuries” Proceedings of the 26th International Congress of Orientalists, New Delhi 1964, vol. 2, New Delhi 1968, 159. Pritzak originally believed that Marwazi’s report refered to just one movment. “The Decline of the Empire of the Oghuz Yabghu” The Annals of the Ukrainina Academy of Arts and Sciences in the US II. New York, 1952. Idem, XIX, 291-292. This opinion is also held by Michal Biran, “The Liao Dynasty’s Relations with the Muslim World”, 229. 70

information about them is scattered and often vague. Michal Biran points to the account

given by the physician Sharaf al-Zamān Tāhir al-Marwazī concerning the domino effect

“migration” triggered by the Liao. Along this line of reasoning the Qun migrated out of

fear of the Khitan and a shortage of pasture. After being evicted from their new pastures

by the Qay, the Qun entered the land of the “Sari” (the Yellow Uyghurs?), who

themselves were pushed into the lands of the Turkmen. The Turkman were then forced

into the Pecheneg realm on the Pontic steppes. Marwazi’s passage is as follows:

و ﻢﮭﻨﻣ ﻓﺮﻗﺔٌ لﺎﻘﯾ ﻢﮭﻟ ﻗ ُﻮم اﻮﻠﺒﻗأ ﻦﻣ ضرأ ﺘﻗ ىﺎ و ﻢھ ﺴﻣ ﺘ ﻮﺸﺣﻮ ن ﻦﻣ نﺎﺧﺎﺘﻗ و ﻢھ ﻧﺴﻄﻮرﯾّﺔ ﻓَﺎرﻗﻮا ﺮﻣ ا ﻛ ھﺰ ﻢ ﯿﻀﻟ ﻖ

ﻰﻋﺮﻤﻟا ﻠﻋ ﻢﮭﯿ ﻢﮭﻨﻣ ﻰﺤﻛا ﻦﺑ ﻗُﺤﻐﺎر ﻮﺧ ا ﺸﻣزر ﺎ ه ﺿﺎُﺗﺒّﻌﮭﻢ اُ ّﻣﺔٌ لﺎﻘﯾ ﻢﮭﻟ ﻗَﺎى ﻢھ اﻛﺜ ُﺮﻣﻨﮭﻢ ﻋﺪدًا و أﺷﺪﱡ ﻗ ّﻮةً وأﺟﻠ َﻮھﻢ

ﻦﻋ ﻚﻠﺗ ﻰﻋاﺮﻤﻟا ﻓﺎُرﺗﺤﻮا ﻰﻟا ضرا ﺸﻟا ﺎرﯾّﺔ ﻰﻟا ضرا ﺔﯿﻧﺎﻤﻛﺮﺘﻟا او ﻧ ﺘ ﻞﻘ اﻟﺘﺮﻛﻤﺎﻧﯿّﺔ ﻰﻟا ﺸﻣ ﺎ قر اﻟﻐُﺰﯾّﺔ و ﻞﻘﺘﻧا

اﻟﻐﺰﯾّﺔ ﻰﻟا ضرا ﺔﯿﻛﺎﻨﺠﺒﻟا بﺮﻘﻟﺎﺑ ﻦﻣ ﻞﺣﺎﺳ ﺮﺤﺑ ﯿﻣرا ﻨ ﺔﯿﻨﯿر

To them (also) belong the Qūn; these came from the land of Qitāy, fearing the Qitā-khan. They (were) Nestorian Christians, and had migrated from their habitat, being pressed for pastures. Of their number [is? or was ?] Äkinji b. Qochqar (?) the Khwarazmshah. The Qūn were followed [or pursued] by a people called the Qāy, who being more numerous and stronger than they moved on to the territory of the Shāri, and the Shāri migrated to the land of the Tūrkmäns, who in their turn shifted to the eastern parts of the Ghuzz country. The Ghuzz Turks then moved to the territory of the Bajānak, near the shores of the Armenian (?) Sea.178

The unclear dating of this passage has led to scholarly controversy. The

book that it was taken from was a zoological compendium called the Tabā’i’ al-

hayawān. It is worth discussing some of what we know of this work, because how

the source was created informs how we can use it to infer information about

178 Marvazi, Sharaf Al-Zamān Tahir Marvazi on China, The Turks and India, trans. V. Minorsky (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1942), 29-30. 71 societies to the north of Merv, where Al-Marwazī spent most of his life. A passage from the section on parasitic worms indicates that the text was copied by

Al-Marwazī’s assistant during Al-Marwazī’s life time. The assistant says that the copying began in AH 518/CE 1124-1125.179 Al-Marwazī was consulted concerning the treatment of one of the Seljuk ruler Malik-Shāh’s (r. 1072-1092) elephants. The elephant had an ulcer in its foot and Marwazī was able to stop the bleeding temporarily but could not save the animal’s life.180 His book shows that he witnessed events between AH 448/CE 1056-1057 and AH 518/CE 1124-1125, which suggests a life span of sixty-eight years, and that he was in his eighties when he finished the book. We can assume that he finished the book and died not earlier than the 1120s. The book consists of “hearsay accounts, interesting personal experiences” and “quotations from the author’s predecessors,” stretching back to ancient Greek physicians with considerable accuracy.181 His main interest was animals, as the author explains the purpose of his book, “since animals are the most noble beings in the lower world, we wish to single out one book in which we mention their genera, species, and individuals, their distinctive

[features] and conditions, their description, disposition, habitat, uses and abuses, their repulsion and attraction, and their enmity and friendship.”182 However he also covered humans, which he ordered into a racial hierarchy. A description of

179 Albert Z. Iskander, “A Doctor’s Book on Zoology: al-Marwazī’s Tabā’i’ al-hayawān (Nature of Animals) reassessed,” Oriens 27/28 (1981): 270-271. 180 Ibid., 283. 181 Ibid., 273. 182 Ibid., 276. 72 the Persians, considered to be the highest race, is followed by descriptions of the other races in descending order: the Chinese, the Turks, the Byzantines, the

Arabs, Indians, Abyssinians, people living in equatorial regions, and finally the populations of islands and distant places.183 This hierarchy may seem disturbing to modern readers, however, it is interesting that the Chinese, Turks and

Byzantines are placed above the Arabs. He also uses false prophethood and

Sufism as examples of insanity when discussing psychological disorders. The sections of the Chinese and Turks concern us most in this thesis. The sections on the Chinese, Turks, and Indians were translated into English by Minorsky in the

1940s.184 Pritzak argues that Marvazi’s report is a “contamination of two reports dealing with two different migratory movements, being, however, in a certain connection with each other.”185 This seems plausible considering the composition of Marwazi’s book, which was intended to be a zoological compendium and not an annalistic chronicle.

Pritzak dates the first of these “migratory movements” to between 860 and 1000

CE. He argues that it was set off by the rise of the Khitan (Ch’i-tan) in Mongolia. As mentioned above, the Khitan had expanded into Mongolia and Eastern Dzungaria in the

920s reaching as far as Tangut territory to the south-west. Pritzak proposes that the Qun were the Kumak/Kimak who had previously occupied the region between the Ob and the

Irtysh rivers. They were banished by one part of the Qai, another tribe of the “Proto-

183 Ibid., 277. 184 See above note 153. 185 Pritzak, Studies, VI, 159 73

Mongol Kitan” branch, and forced to occupied the region between the Irtysh and the Ural

Mountains, which had belonged to a group descendent from the Eastern Turkut Empire

(after 740), called Qibchaq by the Uyghurs and called shar by the Qun. This is how

Pritzak calls the Kitan the Qay and . ﺎﺸﻟا رﯾّﺔ Pritzak explains the confusing tribal (?) name the Kimeks “proto-mongol” because the Kitan language was entirely undesciphered when he was writing.186 This movement forced the tribes of the Pecheneg confederation to the

West, as reported by the “De administrando imperii” written by Konstaninos Porstantinos

Porphyrogennetos (d. 957), from the region between the Aral sea and the Ural Mountains towards the Kawar-Magyar federation. The Kawar-Magyars were then pushed into

Pannonia sometime after the 890s. However, Golden asserts that “the Hungarian movement to the Pontic steppes from Bashkiria should be viewed as a reverberation of the larger migration of the Pechenegs which, in turn, had been set off by the Oghuz,

Qarluqs and Kimäks whose movements into the Syr Darya and adjacent region were the result of, first, the continuing warfare of the Qarluqs and their allies with the Uyghurs and, later, the Uyghur-Qirghiz wars (820-840) which caused an Uyghur migration south and westwards (which brought with it a partial displacement of the Qarluqs in Eastern

Turkestan).”187 This would suggest that the movment of tribes occurred before the Liao rose to power, dating the whole movement to before 900 CE. This reconstruction of the migration would show that much of the migrations hypothesized by Pritzak actually occurred earlier.

186 Daniel Kane, “An Update on the Deciphering of the Kitan Language and Scripts,” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 43 (2013): 11-25. 187 Peter Golden, “The Migration of the Oghuz,” 68. 74

Also theoretically part of this first movement, Pritzak suggests that part of the

Qay group joined the Chomul (Sha-tuo 沙陀) Turks, who during the tenth century founded a series of short-live dynasties in North China. Since Pritzak’s day this period of

Inner Asian history has come into better focus. Confusingly, the Moyun Čur inscription

(dated to the 750s) and Ibn al-Athir indicate that the Oghuz seem to have been present in the Syr Daryâ region from the late eighth century until he early tenth century. However, the interpretation of this literary evidence is unclear, because at the time that the Moyun

Čur inscription was carved, the term “oghuz” meant “tribal union” and it is unclear whether or not this word could refer to the tenth century Syr Dariâ Oghuz as well. Most likely the Moyun Čur’s “Oghuz” and Ibn al-Athir’s “ghuzz” refer to different tribal groupings. Ibn Al-Athir’s reference is more likely a reference to the Syr darya Oghuz, however he was writing over four centuries after the events he describes.188 The first coins minted in the names of the Syrdarya oguz are dated to the 9th century and show an almost entirely Islamic titulature. One coin mentions ‘Abdallāh b. Tāher (the governor of

ﯾﻮﺒﺟ ﮫ ) [Khuraran from 213/828 to 230/845) on one side and a certain Jabūah arsl[ān

on the other. Amongst these coins, researchers have identified the toponym ( ]نا[ﻞﺳرا

the pronunciation of which is unclear, but which probably refers to the center , ﺮﺿ ب عوﺮﺣ of the Syrdarya Oghuz state known to us through the work of the geographer Ibn Hawqal

188 Peter Golden, “The Migration of the Oguz” 54. Ibn Al-Athir writes: “And some historians of Xorâsân have written … that the Guzz are are tribe which migrated from the borderlands of the most distant parts of the Turks to Mâ warâ’n-nahr in the days of al-Mahdi. They became Muslims and al-Muqanna’, the mast of incredible lies and tricks, asked for their aid…” Ibn al-Athir, Chronicon, ed. Tornberg (Beirut reprint), XI, p. 178. Al-Baladhuri records that ‘Abdallah Ibn Tahir (governor of Xorasan 828-844) sent his son, Tahir to raid the country of the *ghuzziyah, but it is unclear whether this refers to the Ghuzz of the Ghur (and people then living in Afghanistan), because our texts of Al-Baladhuri do not have diacritical marks and (Ibid., 55) .و most other spellings of the Oghuz do not have 75 as Khuvara or Juvara.189 Although these coins a not numerous they demonstrate that a

Turko-Islamic titulature system existed almost two centuries before the establishment of the Qarakhanid and Seljuk empires, the first Turko-Islamic dynasties.

Considering that the Khitan did not campaign in Mongolia until the 920s, it seems

860 is much too early of a date for the beginning of this movement and the Magyars arrived in Pannonia before the Khitan rose to power. But it is still possible that the

Uyghur collapse caused the chain reaction that set off the Magyars’ movement. If the exact dating of these movements needs to be defended, then we can say that the Uyghur-

Qyrgyz wars started off the chain reaction. However, in the context of a dry Inner

Eurasia, both the Liao conquests of the early 10th century and the Qirghuz Uyghur wars of the 840’s would have been felt across the steppe.

Pritsak hypothesizes that the second of the “migratory movements” described by

Marwazi dates to between 1000 and 1050 CE and was triggered by the rise of the

Tanguts. It is because of this hypothesis that I evaluated the climatic context of the East

Inner Asian steppe, before discussing the controversy between the vastly different interpretations of the role of climate in the movement of pastoral nomads offered to us by

Bulliet, Ellenblum, Paul and Peacock. Between the 9th century and the thirteenth-century

Mongol onslaught numerous waves of mobile pastoralist tribes moved across the steppe zone and the steppe desert ecotone. Each one of these movements had an important impact on the history of the Eastern Islamic world. What complicates the arguments advanced by the current scholarship is that each one of these movements occurred in

189 E. Yu. Goncharov and V. N. Nastich, “Monety syrdarynskikh oguzov IX v.” (2013), 81-83, 90. 76 different political contexts. Therefore, if ecological and climatic contexts were stable during this period then the MCA does not directly correspond with the Oghuz migrations and we also have records of dry conditions prior to the typical MCA period.

The Qun/Kimak tribes moved into the land of the Turkman/Oghuz. It is at this point that the Oguz tribes began to move into the Middle East (see section four below).

The Qun/Kimak, together with part of the Oguz, appear in the western Inner Asian steppe in 1054. Their arrival there pushed the Pechenegs into Byzantine territory.190 Oguz legend records a period of struggle with the Pechenegs, whom they drove westward into the Pontic steppes.191 The Pecheneg raids into Byzantine territory being in the 1050s, continuing through the 1070s. A report of these raids by the Armenian historian Matheos of Urha suggests that they were a link in a chain of movement. In his words, “A people of

Sepents defeated the Pallidi (or Fallow) ones, the latter did the same to the Uz and

Patsinnak.”192 The “uz” refers to the Oguz and the “patsinnak” refers to the Pechenegs.

This report seems to describe another westward movement of Inner Asian tribal groupings this time in a different climatic context.

It is unclear whether or not we should trust Pritzak’s suggestion, in its specifics, that Marwazi’s report refers to two waves of mobile pastoralist movements. Although some of our sources suggest that movements of one tribe were connected to movements of the neighboring tribes and tribal confederations, most of the time the literary evidence

190 Pritzak, Studies, VI, 163. 191 “Gozz,” Peter Golden and C. Edmund Bosworth Encyclopaedia Iranica Published December 15, 2002. Last Updated February 17, 2012. Vol. XI, Fasc. 2, pp. 184-187. Accessed online http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/gozz 192 Pritzak, Studies, VI, 161. (S. Markwart, Komanen, 55.) 77 is too sparse to confirm or deny a domino-theory-type of causation. The expansion of the

Liao in the early 10th century, especially the conquest of Mongolia in the 920s and the expansion of the Xixia into Hexi in the 1030s, had ramifications across the steppe. The question of how far west these ramifications reached seems unanswerable.

The relationship between the ramifications of these two conquests and the climatological context has modern implications. Ronnie Ellenblum used Richard Bulliet’s big chill hypothesis to argue for a much more dramatic intervention of nature into the course of human institutions suggesting that the modern environmental crisis was similar.

Although his book talks about the 11th century Ellenblum points out that, it was “written while events similar to the ones therein described were shaking the entire world.” Here he is equating modern anthropogenic climate change with Bulliet’s big chill hypothesis.

Ellenblum points to rising food prices, hunger in East Africa, ice on the Danube and the

Black Sea, modern states in the Middle East and North Africa “on the verge of collapse” as well as “religious fanaticism[,]” as aspects of his modern world that are similar to the crisis suggested by Bulliet. As far as the Central Eurasian side of this story is concerned, it is clear the human-environment interactions were much more complex then was originally thought. When considering the entire MCA period and including a preliminary level of complexity in political history, it seems that the crisis model of climate-human interaction does not apply to the MCA period.

Preliminary conclusions

The relative aridity of the MCA in Inner Eurasia, that is the westerly dominated part of it, in general further northern parts of Central Eurasia, did not cause the

78 movements of the people directly, rather, it provided the larger context for these movements to take place. Aridity was part of the context of Khitan and Tangut expansion, however literary sources do not yet prove that the expansion impacted the

Islamization of the Turks and Turkic invasions of the Middle East, as is suggested by some of the scholarship. The mobile pastoralist confederations that at times grew into trans-regional empires discussed above had a complex relationship with the oasis societies of Transoxania and Khurasan to which we now turn.

Section 3. Sedentary society during the Medieval Climate Anomaly

This section reviews the scholarship on the Samanid and Ghaznavid dynasties. After analyzing the political and economic structures of these dynasties, I analyze them in their environmental and climatic contexts. In this section, I argue that the hydraulic policies of the centralized dynasties facilitated a unique type of resource utilization.

Samanid Political history

The Samanids rose to power, at roughly the same time as the Khitan Liao, in the late ninth/early tenth century. In 893 Isma’il b. Ahmad captured the Qarluq capital at

Talas, turning their Nestorian Christian church into a mosque and taking the Yabghu’s

Khatun (wife or queen) hostage, along with 15,000 prisoners.193 Golden suggests that the instability of the steppe, and specifically the Qarluq confederation, during this period was

“perhaps the result of strife over the question of conversion to Islam which, emanating from the highly cultured Islamicized Iranian oasis-cities of Farghanah and Soghd, had begun to peacefully penetrate the Turkic steppe, adding to the number of those who converted as a result of holy war.”194 The symbiosis between Soghdians and the Turk empires, and earlier Inner Asian empires, does predate the Islamic conquest of Central

193 Golden, “The Migrations of the Oghuz,” 69. Sümer, Oghuzlar, page 27. Bosworth, Ghaznavids, page 31. 194 Ibid., 69. 80

Asia.195 Clearly the change in religious landscape in the oases must have influenced their northern neighbors.

Ismā’il’s victories over the Saffarids to the south in 898 and 900 facilitated the incorporation of Khurasan, Sistan, Tukharistan and Kabulistan into the Samanid domains.

At the height of their power, the Samanid domains extended as far south as the Sulayman

Mountains, Ghazna, Kandahar all the way to the Persian Gulf. However, many of the peripheral provinces remained semi-autonomous as local dynasties continued ruling undisturbed. Badakhshan, Wakhan and Shughnan remained autonomous as seem by the continuation of their pre-Islamic religions.196 Isma’il was succeed by Ahmad b. Isma’il in

907, who reinstated Arabic as the language of administration and favored Arabic- proficient officials. After Ahmad b. Isma’il’s assassination in 914, the young Nasr II b.

Ahmad took the throne, but he left the tasks of ruling the state largely entrusted to the viziers ‘Abd Allah Jayhani (914-18) and Abu ‘l-Fadl Bal’ami (918-938), who engineered the stable conditions for the cultural development of this period. The Samanid rulers and their amirs valued poetry and scholarship, and art, many of them composed poetry as well as works of geography and history. The Samanid Isma’il b. Nūh al-Muntasir was well- known for his poetry; the Samanid vizier Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad b. Ahmad b. Nasr

Jayhani composed works of geography and the vizier Abu ‘Ali Muhammad b. Mummad

Bal’amī (d. 974) was a famous historian and a pioneer of New Persian prose writing.

195 Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History translated by James Ward (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), 107-111, 197-260. 196 N. Negmatov, “The Samanid State,” in History of Civilizations of Central Asia Volume IV Part 1, ed. M. S. Asimov and C. E. Bosworth (Paris: Unesco, 1998), 85. 81

The late ninth and the tenth centuries witness a period of expansion and florescence for the cities and towns of Khurasan and Transoxania.197 The relative aridity of the MCA during this period meant that resources most have been used efficiently, or that the relative aridity did not matter in this context because the form of irrigation agriculture in this region had developed through periods of wet/cool and warm/dry conditions during the mid- to late-holocene.

Climate and Irrigation Agriculture

In this section I would like to evaluate how the Samanids’ economy could have been related to increased aridity in the steppe as well as a monsoon surge effecting their south eastern vassals. I first present a basic discussion of the Samanid economy, I then discuss ways it interacted with its climatic and ecological contexts. During this period

Transoxiana and Khurasan flourished economically, largely through irrigation agriculture. The ninth and tenth centuries witnessed the construction of canals and hydrotechnical installations. Geographers in the ninth and tenth centuries praise the fertility of the oases as “unbroken carpets of green.” A well-known passage of Estakhri comments that in addition to the wonderful fruits of Transoxiana the waters ob-ha were use efficiently and livestock were numerous.198 The most fertile lands were considered to be the province of Balkh and the region between Herat and Merv al-Rudh. Regions that

197 N. N. Negmatov, “The Samanid State,” 84. و آﺑ یﺎﮭ نﺎﺸﯾا ﺧ شﻮ ﻦﯾﺮﺗ و ﺳ ﮏﺒ ﺮﺗ ﻦﯾ ھﻤ ٔﮫ آﺑﮭﺎ .دﻮﺑ و ﮐﻮه و ﺻﺤ اﺮ آﻧ ﺎﮭ ناواﺮﻓ ﺪﺷﺎﺑ ( ﻮﺑ )د . و ﺘﺳ رﻮ و ﮭﭼ ﺎ ر ﭘﺎی 198 ﮏﯿﻧ ﺑﺴﯿ رﺎ دراد . و ﮔ ﺳﻮ ﻔﻨﺪ از ﺘﺴﮐﺮﺗ ﺎ ن و زا ﺰﻏ ﯿﺴﺑ رﺎ آر .ﺪﻧ و ﺮﮐ ﺑ سﺎ ﺮﻤﺳ ﺪﻨﻗ ی ﮫﻤھ ﺎﺟ ﯾ ﺎﮭ ﺳﺘ دﻮ ه .ﺖﺳا و ﺰﻗ و ﻮﺻ ف و یﻮﻣ ﺑ ﯿﺴ رﺎ ا .ﺪﺘﻓ و ﻌﻣ ﺎ ند زر و ﯿﺳ ﻢ و هﻮﯾژ و ﻦھآ رد ﻻو ﺖﯾ ﻣﺎ رو ا اء ﻟ ﻨ ﺮﮭ ﯿﺴﺑ رﺎ ﺖﺳ . و ﻣ ﺪﻌ یﺎﮭﻧ اﯾﺸ نﺎ ﺑﮫ زا ﯾد ﺮﮕ ﻣ ﺪﻌ ﺖﺳﺎﮭﻧ ، ﺮﮕﻣ ﯿﺳ ﻢ ﮐﯽ رد ﻨﭘ ﮭﺠ ﯿ ﺮ ﮭﺑ ﺮﺘ ﺖﺳ . ا ﺎﻣ رز و ژﯾ هﻮ و ﺲﻣ و ﻧآ ﭻ زا نﺪﮭﻣ ﺧ دﺰﯿ ﮫﻤھ ﻣ اروﺎ اء ﮭﻨﻟ ﺮ ﮭﺑ ﺮﺘ .دﻮﺑ و ﻌﻣ نﺪ ردﺎﺷﻮﻧ رد ﮫﻤھ ﮭﺟ نﺎ .ﺖﺳﺎﺠﻧآ و ﻮﭼ ن ﺬﻏﺎﮐ ﻤﺳ ﺮ یﺪﻨﻗ ﯿھ ﭻ یﺎﺟ ﯾد ﺮﮕ ﺒﻧ دﻮ .د Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm Istakhrī, Masālik va mamālik: Anonymous Persian translation from V/VI Century A.H. Edited by Iraj Afshar (Tehran: B. T. N. K., 1340/1961), 226-7. 82 are quite dry today. In Transoxania and Khurasan and their mountain and steppe regions, animal husbandry was practiced, particularly the rearing of sheep and horse.199

Mining also occupied an important place in the Samanid economy. Mines were constructed at Koni Mansura, Kukhi Sim, Konjol, Kansai, Tarazkan in the Karamaz mountains, Koni Gut in Ferghana and at other locations. The iron fetters of slave miners have been unearthed the Koni Gut, suggesting the intensity of metal extraction.200 The mining boom of 850-960 in Transoxania contributed greatly to the world’s supply of silver in India, China and Europe.201 The transformation of this silver and luxury goods economy into a gold based economy in the 12th century is still an open question in monetary history.

A whole host of material objects were produced in the Samanid realm. Paper produced in Samarqand was exported to much of the Middle and Near East. Glass produced in Samarkand was prized in China. Pottery was produced for a larger body of consumers including large pieces for the poor and exquisite glazed ware with quotation from the Qur’an or works of famous poets from the rich.

Negmatov highlights the development of agricultural technologies during this period. In the Hari Rud valley, Balkh, Sistan and other provinces watermills were constructed and operated. To get a sense of the amount of power used, the Balkh river provided motive over for seventy watermills. The Tarikh-i Sistan reports that windmills

199 Ibid. 89. 200 Ibid. 201 Ian Blanchard, Mining, Metallurgy and Minting in the Middle Ages: Vol. 2. Afro-European Supremacy, 1125-1225 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2001), 556-557. 83 were used to raise water from wells to support irrigation agriculture.202 In the context of the drying climate these windmills and other hydraulic policies were crucial to the general wellbeing of the population. The increase in agriculture with the addition of trans-regional trade led the Samanids to have a trans-regional importance similar to the

Sogdians. In around 330 AH/941 CE and embassy from the Samanids arrived at the court of Qalin b. Čakir, the ruler of the Sarī Uyghurs. And towards the end of the Samind period the ‘Abbasids sent an envoy to the Liao court in 363 AH/ 974.203 In this context it seems possible that the Chinese embassy to Amir Nasr b. Ahmad in AH 327/939, the historicity of which was questioned by Bosworth, did actually occur.204

Having touched on aspects of the Samanid economy, I now turn to the climatic evidence for understanding the environment that was available to the Samanids and their subjects. One reconstruction based on geochemical analysis of sediments from the Aral

Sea suggests the following reconstruction. At a round AD 445 the Aral Sea was characterized by high water levels. Then at around the 9th century CE the Amu Darya began to move naturally towards Lake Sarykamysh, along the modern Uzbekistan-

Turkmenistan border to the south west of the Aral sea, as its delta was filled up with sediment; this observation is inferred by an increase in diatom-inferred conductivity of

202 Negmatov, “The Samanid State,” 90. 203 J. M. Rogers, “Chinese-Iranian Relations ii. Islamic Period to the Mongols” Encyclopedia Iranica Vol 4 pp. 431-434. Originally published Sec 15; 1991; updated October 14, 2011; accessed on line dec 19, 2019: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/chinese-iranian-ii 204 C. E. Bosworth, “An alleged embassy from the Emperor of China to the Amir Nasr b. Ahmad: a contribution to Samanid military history,” Yad-name-ye īrānī-ye Minorsky, Ed. M. Minovi and I. Afshar (Tehran, 1969), 1-13, reprinted in C. E. Bosworth, The Medieval History of Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia (London: Variorum Reprints, 1977). 84 lake sediments from the Aral Sea.205 Remote sensing data indicates that the

Prisarykamysh alluvial-deltaic plain experienced a renewed period of exploitation in the

9th-10th centuries and onwards. As Tsvetinskaya et al. 2002 describe, “since the 9th century AC, the aridity of climate began to decrease, water flow in the Daudan and

Daryalyk rivers resumed, providing water for irrigation and stimulating [the] concentration of settled farmers along the banks of these rivers.”206 This change land use was probably part of Samanid urban expansion. Austin et al. suggest that this period coincides “new irrigation laws” that were implemented along the lower reaches of the

Amu Darya. These new laws, although they allowed some continued discharge into the

Aral Sea, coincide with a shift towards mesosaline conditions and lower lake levels.207

The context of a drier climate forced the Samanids to develop hydraulic policies and administrative strategies to maximize water usage. It terms of the administration of

Khurasan it seems that these policies were passed on to the Ghaznavids.

Ghaznavid Expansion

The Ghaznavid empire was established by Sebuktegin and his son the famous

Mahmud of Ghazna to whom Firdawsi dedicated his Shahname. This ruling family came from humble origins. Sebuktigin was the Turkic slave solder-general of the Samanids.

Khurasan was the center of the early Ghaznavid economy. The complexity of politics in

205 P. Austin et al. “A high-resolution diatom-inferred palaeoconductivity and lake level record of the Aral Sea for the last 1600 yr,” Quaternary Research 67 (2007): 390. 206 P. Austin et al., “A high-resolution diatom-inferred palaeoconductivity and lake level record,” 390; E. A. Tsvetsinskaya et al., “An integrated assessment of landscape evolution, long-term climate variability, and land use in the Amudarya Prisarykamysh delta,” Journal of Arid Environmental 51 (2002): 370, 372, Fig 6. 207 Austin et al., “A high-resolution diatom-inferred palaeoconductivity and lake level record,” 390. Citing I. M. Blanchard, Mining, Metallurgy and Minting in the Middle Ages, Asiatic Supremacy, 425-1125 AD, Vol .1 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2002). 85 governing Khurasan during the Samanid period is where the Ghaznavids came from. In

287/900 Khurasan, Sistan and parts of Eastern Afghanistan became part of the the

Samanid empire understand Ismail b. Ahmad. Alptigin, the commander-in-chief of the

Samanid forces in Khurasan, sent Sebuktigin to the nomadic regions to collect the customary taxes from the Khalaj and Turkmens. Alptigin had retreated to the south eastern fringes of the Samanid realms after he was involved in a failed attempt to put his own choice of ruler on the Samanid throne after the death of Amir ‘Abd al-Malik b. Nūh in 350/961. At this time many Turkic ghulams of the Samanids had become independent on the southern borders of the empire. For example, Qaratigin of Isfijab had established himself as ghulam-governor of Bust and ar-Rukhkhaj. When he died in 317/929 a line of his own ghulams became the governors of Bust. Alptegin fought against Abū ‘Ali Lawik

(also called Abū Bakr Anük, possibly from the Turkic änük meaning the cub of a lion, hyena, wolf or dog) for control of Ghazna.208 After Alptegin got control of Ghazna,

Bamiyan and Kabul he received a patent of investiture (manshūr) from Amir Mansur b.

Nūh (r. 961-976).

It seems Alptigin ruler semi-autonomously. On his death in 352/963, Alptegin’s son Abu Ishāq Ibrahīm became the governor of Ghazna. One year later Lawīk re- occupied Ghazna and Abu Ishāq had to call on the Samanids for military help to re- established his control. After Abu Ishaq’s death in 355/966 the Turkic troops in Ghazna chose Bilgetigin, a former ghulam of Alptigin as their leader. Relations between Ghazna and Bukhara seem to have been quite strained at this point. After getting elected

208 Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 37. 86

Bilgetigin sent a message to Bukhara offering his allegiance, at which point Fā’iq, a general in Bukhara, sent an army to control Ghazna and end the independence of the

Turkic ghulams. Bilgetigin defeated this army and the ruled Ghazna for ten years.

Despite the military conflicts between Ghazna and Bukhara, Bilgetigin recorded the

Samanid Mansur b. Nuh on his coinage. After Bilgetigin died in 364/975, he was succeeded by another of Alptigin’s ghulams called Piri (Piritigin presumably a

Persianized form of the Turkic Böri/Böri-tegin). Böri-tegin’s misrule cause the people of ghazna to invite Lawīk back. It was in this chaotic context the Sebuktigin established his control over Ghazna in 366/977. During the Sebuktigin’s twenty-year-long reign, he established the foundations of Ghaznavid rule. Sebuktigin was originally from the Qarluq tribes living in Barsghān along the shores of Issik-Kul. He was captured by a neighboring group of Qarluqs called the Bakhtiyān (presumably the Tukhsiyan from Tukhs). The

Tukhs lived in the Chu valley to the north-west of Issik gol.209 He was then sold to a slave-dealer in Chāch who took him along with other slaves to Nakhshab. After a period of training he was bought by Alptigin in Nishapur. Under Alptigin he quickly rose up the ranks and at eighteen became the commander of 200 ghulams. After Alptigin’s death, he became the property of Abū Ishāq Ibrahīm. His prestigue among the Turkic troops grew throughout the reins of Bilgetigin and Böritigin and it seems he was chosen by the Turkic troops as their leader on Boritigin’s deposition. Sebuktigin had won fame among the army leaders by holding lavish feasts twice a week and had married the daughter of a ra’īs of Zābulistān and fathered the future sultan Mahmud in 362/971, before taking total

209 Ibid., 40. Bosworth cites both Marwazi and the Hudud al-Alam. 87 control of Ghazna. He was also fully commited to the status of governer of the Samanids, whom are listed on his coins. In 383/993 when Fā’iq and Abū ‘Alī Sīmjūrī rebelled against Amīr Nūh b. Nasr, Sebuktigin help Nuh b. Nasr stay in power. Sebuktigin established his power in Ghazna, a small town in Eastern Afghanistan, which was hypothetically under Samanid control but had excercised a certain degree of atonmy during the 10th century under the Samanids.

Ghazna was a trading center between Khurasan and India. Although a greater volume of trade passed through Kabul during this person, Ghazna was perfectly situated for trade between Central Asia and India as well as planning campaigns into India. In

367/977-8 Sebuktigin made use of a dispute between two of Qarategin’s ghulams,

Toghan and Baytuz, to intervene and add Bust to his own territories.

It was at Ghazna that Sebuktigin established the Ghaznavids administration.

When he took power the mustaghall fiefs had been started to be converted to direct ownership tamlik of the warriors, who then became farmers. His first move as governor was to reform the system and insisted that all fiefs would be the mustaghall type and that their revenues should be paid to the army through the central dīwān. That way the central state could pay the soldiers their allotted amount. We don’t quite know when they were established but at least three diwans most have existed at this time: one to administer and tax the Ghaznavid territories, a second to deal with correspondence and diplomatic relations with Bukhara and a third to pay and provision the army. This three diwans:

Diwan-i wazir, the Diwani rasa’il and the Divan-i ‘ard, were all administered by Persian bureaucrats. It is for this reason that the contacts with the Samanids were so crucial and

88 possibly why the governors of Ghazna sustained the fiction of vassalage, while basically ruling their own state. Abū’l-Hasan-i Quraish, who served the Ghaznavids as treasury official dabir-i khizana, had previously worked as a secretary in the Samanid treasury at

Bukhara and was brought to Ghazna by the vizier Isfarā’inī.210 Apart from the system of military fiefs, Sebuktigin left much of society as it was before. For example, his mint at

Parwān minted silver coins that were at least five grams heavier than the Samanid coins, similar to the coinage of the Indian Kabul kings, whose coins averaged 50 grains. During

Sebuktegin’s rein coins were struck for Indian circulation, with legends in both Arabic and Devanāgarī. Minting coins for Indian use would continue in the eleventh century.

A growing body of literature is illumining the impact of the strong medieval south

Asian monsoons on India during the MCA.211 Shi et al. highlight thirteen extremely high

SASM years during the Asian MCA (AD 1030-1280). However extreme low SASMI years coincide with famines in the 10th through thirtieth centuries.212 Both the Ghaznavids and the Smanid had centralized states, which meant that rule over resources production would have been different. Dispite the Turkic-ghulam origins of the Ghaznavids they rose up in and implemented a Persian form of imperial bureaucracy. In Khurasan their hydraulic policies would have been similar.

210 Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 58. 211 Shanmugasundaram, et al., “Societal response to monsoon variability in Medieval South India,” 110- 135. 212 Feng Shi, et al., “A tree-ring reconstruction of the South Asian summer monsoon index over the past millennium,” Scientific Reports 4 (2014), 4. Doi: 10. 1038/srep06739. 89

Section 4. The mobile pastoralist economy and the Medieval Climate Anomaly

In the eleventh century, two mobile pastoralist empires came to power leading to the

Turkification and Islamization of Central Asia: the Qarakhanids and the Seljuks. In this section, I first analyze the Qarakhanid relationship with the environment and their climatic context. I then discuss the expansion of the Seljuk empire. Since the Seljuk conquests have been covered extensively in recent articles, I devote more space to the

Qarakhanids.

The Qarakhanid dynasty (840-1212)213 developed a set of specific policies that facilitated their utilization of a unique climatic and ecological context. The Qarakhanid policy towards nature and the environment consisted of three biotic factors: a decentralized model of political rule, the expansion of urban communities into highland environments, and the utilization of non-human animals in diplomatic and economic exchanges. These three factors contributed to the successful utilization of the MCA climatic context. The MCA climatic context, an abiotic factor, was beyond Qarakhanid

213 The political history of the Qarakhanid dynasty can be divided into three different phases. The first phase stretches from the middle of the tenth century until the conquest of Transoxania around the turn of the 11th century. The second phase of Qarakhanid history begins with the conquest of Transoxania in the late 10th century and lasts until the 1040s when the Great Seljuks came to power. Third phase covers the period of vassalage to first the Seljuks and then the Qarakhitai. Michal Biran, “Ilak-khanids” Iranica 12 (2012): 612-628. Updated 2012 90 control. However, a review of literary and material evidence reveals that these four factors were integrated together.214

The first aspect of Qarakhanid rule was the decentralization of political and administrative authority that had been common in other mobile pastoralist empires, but had not been used to this extent in Transoxiana. The Qarakhanid’s decentralized kinship ruling strategy is best known to us during the second phase of Qarakhanid history, beginning with the conquest of Transoxania in the late 10th century and lasting until the

1040s, when the Seluqs come to power. Decentralized kinship rule was common among

Turkic dynasties, states and confederations, during the Qarakhanid period this decentralization created important economic possibilities.

The original conquest of Transoxiana was carried out by two different sides of the

Qarakhanid family. The Hasanids invaded first under the command of Hasan b.

Sulayman Bughra Khan who led a campaign to take Isfijab from the Samanids in

380/990. In 381/991-2, the Hasanids expanded their domain into the Ferghana valley and in the following year, 382/992, they took Ilaq, Samarkand and Bukhara. Hasan b.

Sulayman, the leader of this invasion, fell ill in Bukhara and died on his way back to

Kashgar. Thereafter, Bukhara fell back into provisional Samanid control and local dihqans ruled Ilaq as vassals.215 The second invasion of Transoxania began in 386/996,

214 Walker writes that, “The hybrid causation model does not shirk focused analyses and careful explanations in favor of descriptions of the big picture, rather it simply acknowledges that environmental history is moved by many forces, and so understanding our past demands that we acknowledge these forces as well.” Brett L. Walker, Toxic archipelago: a history of industrial disease in Japan (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2010), xiv. Watemore has suggested something similar for geography. Sarah Whatmore, Hybrid Geographies: Natures, Cultures, Spaces (London, Sage Publications, 2002). 215 Davidovich, “The Karakhanids,” 130. (citing Davidovich 1978, pp. 80-100.) 91 this time led by Nasr b. ‘Ali b. Musa (the son of ‘Ali b. Musa Qara khan/Arslan Khan d.

388-998), who conquered Chach (close to modern day Tashkent), beginning the ‘Alid invasion. The ‘Alids took Samarkand in 387/997 and Bukhara in 389/999. This same year the vizier Begtuzun switched sides from the Samanids to the Qarakhanids; coins show that he became the Qarakhanid vassal governor of Kish from 399/1008 to 402/1012 and

Khujand in 415/1024-5.216 As ‘Alid power was established in Transoxania, the Hasanid side of the family continued to rule in Kashgar; one coin dating to 395/1004-5 shows that the Hasanid ruler Yusuf Qadir Khan (son of Hasan b. Sulayman Bughra Khan) adopted

King of the East).217) ﻚﻠﻣ ا قﺮﺸﻤﻟ the title malik al-mashriq

At the beginning of the 11th century, the Hasanid-Qarakhanids expanded to the

East as well. In 970, the Khotanese had extended their territory to Kashgar and sent a dancing elephant to the Song emperor to mark their success. Shortly thereafter, Yusuf

Qadir Khan fought a war with the Khotanese eventually conquering Khotan in 1006.218

However, the Qarakhanids’ rule over Khotan was indirect, because it is unclear whether the 1015 Khotanese delegation to the Liao was from the Qarakhanids or their Buddhist adversaries. After 1021, the Qarakhanids appear to be in better control of Khotan, because a Liao princess married the son of Qadir Khan, who ruled the Khotan apanage.219

216 Ibid., 129. (Citing Kochnev 1982, pp. 152-7.) 217 Ibid., 130. 218 Valerie Hansen, “The Tribute Trade with Khotan in Light of Materials Found at the Dunhuang Library Cave,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute, New Series, Vol. 19, Iranian and Zoroastrian Studies in Honor of Prods Oktor Skjaervo (2005): 43. It was at this time that the Khotanese royal family living in Dunhuang donated their entire archive to the Three Realms Monastery. 219 Michal Biran, “The Qarakhanids’ Eastern Exchange: Preliminary Notes on the Silk Roads in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” in Complexity of Interaction Along the Eurasian Steppe Zone in the First Millennium CE, eds. Jan Bemmann and Michael Schmauder (Boon: Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, 2015), 578. Liaoshi 1976, 16: 188, 189; Marwazī/Minorsky 1942, 8; 20). 92

Apart from Khotan, Shazhou 沙州 (Dunhuang 敦煌)220 became another crucial lowland

Qarakhanid city in the East. The Liaoshi 遼史 reports that on September 11th, 1006, the

Uyghurs of Shazhou presented the Liao empire with jade and horses from the Dashi 大

食.221 Dashi was one of the names for the Qarakhanid state used by the Sinitic sources.222

Shazhou was also a key departure point for Qarkhanid envoys to the North Song (960-

1127). Although Qarakhanid trade went through these oasis cities, they did not administer each city directly.

Qarakhanid rule was indirect in the western half of the khanate as well. When

Nasr b. ‘Ali died in 403/1012-13, his appanage was broken up by successors. During this same year, Mansur b. ‘Ali assumed the title of Arslan Khan and seized the city of

Balasaghun. Thus, three members of the dynasty bore the title of Khan at this time:

Ahmad and Mansur for the ‘Alids and Yusuf b. Hasan for the Hasanids.223 In 408/1017-

18, when Ahmad b. ‘Ali died, Mansur b. ‘Ali ruled under the title of Arslan Khan, effectively as the nominal head of the dynasty. Numismatic evidence from Akhsikath shows that, during Mansur b. ‘Ali Arslan Khan’s rule from 409/1018-19 to 415/1024-5 his brother, Muhammad b. ‘Ali Ilek, ruled in Akhsikath. Muhammad b. ‘Ali Ilek gave some of his rights to the income of that city to his nephew Ahmad b. Mansur (as shown by coinage from 409-10/1018- 20) and to his other nephew Muhammd b. Nasr (coinage

220 For more on Dunhuang and Turfan Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual 5th edition (2017), 830-835. 221 Dilnoza Duturaeva, “Between the Silk and Fur Roads,” 198. 222 Dilnoza Duturaeva, “Qarakhanid Envoys to Song China,” 180. Citing Song Shi 宋史[History of the Song Dynasty] ed. By Toqto’a [chin. Tuotuo] 脱脫(Beijing: Zhonghua, 1977), 485. 13981. 223 Davidovich, “The Karakhanids,” 131. 93 from 412/1021-2). Power was even shared with Muhammad b. Nasr’s son ‘Abbas as a coin indicates from 415/1024-5. This same year, 415, the ‘Alid Mansur b. ‘Ali Arslan

Khan died and was replaced by the Hasanid Toghan Khan II Muhammad b. Hasan.224

Muhammad b. Hasan appears as suzerain on the coins, while the ‘Alids Mummad b. Nasr and his son ‘Abbas are shown ruling Akhsikath collectively.225 What this episode illustrates is that regardless of who was given the title of khan in the dynasty, the

Qarakhanids ruled together as a family and power could switch hands very quickly between the ‘Alid and Hasanid lineages, furthermore, political power was often shared rather than centralized. In 411/1020-1, ‘Ali Tegin (‘Ali b. Hasan) escaped from prison and ruled Transoxania, while Muhammad b. Hasan Toghan Khan II became the nominal head of the dynasty. Hasanid rule was unstable in the 1020s. ‘Ali Tegin had allied with

Muhammad Toghan Khan II against Yūsuf Qadir Khan, who ruled in Kashgar. After

415/1024-5 supremacy passed to the Hasanid side of the family who became the nominal leaders of the dynasty. Yusuf Qadir Khan sought to strengthen Qarakhanid power across

Central Eurasia, by sending an envoy to the Liao Emperor and allying with the

Ghaznavid Sultan Mahmūd in 1025.226 It was in this context that he facilitated the 1027

Khitan/Liao envoy sent to the Ghaznavids as reported by Marwazi.227 Yusuf Qadir Khan was able to depose Muhammad Toghan Khan II and strengthen the Qarakhanid transregional ties at the same time that political power remained shared on a local level

224 Written sources use “Toghan Khan” to describe a variety Qarakhanid rulers. Kochnev, 1979, pp. 125-31, shows that Toghan khan was Muhammad b. Hasan. Ibid., 132, note 14. 225 Ibid. 226 Duturaeva, “Qarakhanid Diplomacy and Trade,” 199. 227 Ibid. 94 with ‘Ali Tegin remaining in control of central Transoxania. His appanage was passed on to his sons after his death in 426/1034-5.228

When Yusuf Qadir Khan died in 424/1032, his two sons assumed the highest titles: Sulaymain b. Yusuf ruled in Balasaghun and Kashgar under the title of Arslan

Khan, and Muhammad b. Yusuf in Taraz and Isfijab bore the title Bughra Khan. This same year, the two sons of the ‘Alid Nasr b. ‘Ali broke away completely from the

Hasanids politically. Muhammad b. Nasr claimed rulership of Ferghana, with a residence at Uzgend, claiming the title Arslan Khan. Meanwhile, Ibrahim b. Nasr established himself as the ruler of central Transoxania.

In 430/1038-9, coins from Chaghaniyan, just to the north of the Amu Darya affluent, were minted in the name of Ibrahim b. Nasr, who is referred to as Böri Tegin in the written sources. In 431/1039, Ibrahim b. Nasr Böri Tegin fought against ‘Ali Tegin for Transoxania. His military successes were marked by the replacement of his earlier title Böri Tegin with the title Tamghach Bughra Khan.229 In 431/1040, the Dandanqan battle between the Seljuqs and the Ghaznavids marked that rise of Seljuk power in

Central Asia beginning a new period in Qarkhanid history when the family would be vassals of first to the Seljuks and then to the Qarkhitai.230

The political decentralization of this period has caused problems for modern historians. Michal Biran describes the hierarchy of Qarakhanid rule as “akin to the game

228 Davidovich, “The Karakhanids,” 132. It is possible that the Ghaznavids played a role in keep the lands to the north of the Oxus ununified. C. E. Bosworth, “’Alītigin” Encyclopedaedia Irania ʿALĪTIGIN,” Encyclopaedia Iranica. 229 Ibid., 135. Citing Davidovich 1970, pp. 88-94. 230 Ibid., 133. Barthold 1928 p. 304. 95 of musical chairs, as aspirants moved up the ranks while changing their honorifics and sometimes even their fiefs.”231 She also observes that “tracking the careers of the dynasty’s rulers is at times like searching for a needle in a haystack” suggesting shared power and decentralized rule.232 The lack a diwan administrative system also influenced what types of written sources were produced during the period.233 However, in ecological terms it seems that decentralization was a strength. In brief, the Qarakhanid model of decentralized rule facilitated the three interrelated phenomena: (1) the expansion of towns into the highlands and the development of highland pastoralist “urbanism,” (2) the internal manufacture of goods produced by the pastoral economy for export, and (3) the increase in transregional silk/fur road trade between China, the Middle East and

Europe.234

The second aspect of Qarakhanid rule that facilitate their utilization of their environment was the development of highland urbanism. One of the opportunities that

Qarakhanid decentralization provided was the utilization of highland regions that had not been integrated into the Samanid economy. Although it is likely that the Samanid hydraulic policies continued throughout the Qarakhanid period, recent discoveries in highland archaeology have shown that the development of urban settlements allowed the

Qarakhanids to utilize the economic resources of highland environments, possibly for the

231 Biran 2015d: 576. Biran 2005B, “Ilak-khanids (or Qarakhanids)” Encyclopedia Iranica 12 (New York 2005): 621-628. 232 Ibid. 233 The Qarakhanids did patronize history writing to a degree. However as far as we know al-Alma’i’s Ta’rīkh Kashgar and Majd al-Dīn ‘Adnān al-Surkhakatī’s Akhbār Turkestān are both lost. Michal Biran, “The Qarakhanids’ Eastern Exchange,” 576. Note 2. 234 Duturaeva “Fur Roads” 96 first time.235 The establishment of highland “urban” settlements, often involving aspects of the pastoral economy, was facilitated by the Qarakhanid’s unique form of administration. The archaeological record suggests that the population of mountain towns increased, alongside lowland urban populations, during this period.

Beginning in the eleventh century archaeological evidence suggests that urban populations in the Qarakhanid lands began to increase, paralleling developments in the

Middle East, Southeast Asia and Europe.236 In the 1990s, E. A. Davidovich pointed out that the eleventh and twelfth centuries were a period of growth in towns and the expansion of craft production and trade in the Qarakhanid realms. Particularly towns along the frontier with the steppe expanded during these two centuries. The increase in the construction of ribāts along the roads between towns and of caravanserais inside of the towns build under the Qarakhanids facilitated an increase in caravan trade during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Pottery also became cheaper and more affordable for the bulk of the urban population due to technical innovations in its production. The usage of

“urban ware” was not confined to urban consumers in the lowlands; it also reached remote mountain populations. In fact, the aesthetics of the mountain regions may have influenced urban ceramic production. As Davidovich points out, “unglazed ware thrown on the potter’s wheel and embellished with simple terra-cotta designs made its appearance in the towns, copying the forms and decorations of the unthrown mountain

235 However, Frachetti has drawn our attention to the rule of the Central Eurasian mountains in the development of mobile pastoralist societies since the third millennium BCE. Michael D. Frachetti, “Multiregional Emergence of Mobile Pastoralism and Nonuniform Institutional Complexity across Eurasia,” Current Anthropology 53, no. 1 (February 2012): 2-38. 236 Peacock, The Great Seljuks, Liberman, Strange Parallels , Campbell The Great Transition. 97 ware.”237 Glassware (flasks for toiletries and pharmaceuticals, bowls, stemless drinking cups, long-stemmed goblets, engraved silver-encrusted bronze jugs and simpler unadorned vessels) are also prevalent in Qarakhanid archaeological finds. The use of baked brick, patterned brick lacework and engraved terra-cotta were employed extensively in Qarkhanid building projects. Four mausoleums in Ferghana, the mosque of

Magok-i Attari, the Kalan minaret (of the Friday mosque) in Bukhara and the Ribāt-i

Malik in the steppes between Bukhara and Samarkand are surviving legacies of the

Qarakhanids’ patronage of architecture and urbanization.238 The established of madrasas and the proliferation of their economic vitality through pious endowments, waqf, fits into the boarder theme of urbanization under the Qarakhanids.239 Two waqf documents from the mid 11th century show the founding of a hospital and a madrasa.240 Literary records of Qarakhanid urbanism are indeed scarce; only one waqf document survives from the

12th century.241 A continuer of Narshakhi recorded an account of the rebuilding of

Baikand at the beginning of the twelfth century during the reign of Arslan Khan

Muhammad ibn Sulaiman (1102-1130). As per the Khan’s orders: “People assembled in it [Baikand — H M] and built lovely buildings there, Mardum-on dar vay gard omadand,

237 Davidovich, “The Karakhanids,” 149. Davidovich gives maddeningly little direct evidence to support this and does not footnote this entire passage of her essay. 238 Ibid. 239 Biran, Iranica “The Qara-khanids also established madrasas and dedicated endowments for their upkeep” (Khadr and Cahen, pp. 305-34; Jovayni, ed. Qazvini, I, pp. 49, 53, tr. Boyle, pp. 65-66, 70-71; for a selection of poems in praise of the Qara-khanids see Nafisi, pp. 1270 ff.). 240 Shamsiddin Kamolidin, Mukhayyo Makhmudova and Bakhodir Musametov, Dva vakfa Tamgach Bugra-khana v Samarkande (Saarbrücken, Germany: Lap Lambert Academic Publishing, 2012). 241 V. N. Nastich, “Vakfnyi document na skale v ushchel’e Tanga” Vostochnoye istoricheskoye istochnikovedenie i spetsial’nye istoricheskiye distsipliny 4 (1995): 162-176. 98 va ‘emorat-ha-i nek kardand.”242 The Khan (Arslan) had a mansion built for himself

“with great diligence bo tafkaf-e ‘azim.”243

Thus, contrary to what one might expect after a mobile pastoralist take over, the building of archaeological monuments show that the Qarakhanids continued the Samanid tradition of patronizing building projects in the lowlands. The establishment of highland urban-like settlements, at the beginning of the eleventh century, were connected to the continuation of building projects at lower altitudes.

An archaeological survey of the northern slopes of the Turkestan Range in present-day Tajikistan — a collaboration between the Institute of History, Archaeology, and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of Tadzhikistan and the Department of

Oriental Art and Archaeology at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, led by Sören Stark

— shows a pattern of highland settlement during the Qarakhanid period.244 The

Turkestan mountain range divides the Ferghana and the Zaravshan valleys. The three sites studied by this team in 2005, 2006 and 2007 respectively were highland valleys located to the south of Shahriston and Uroteppa, covering three highland valley systems:

242 Abu Bakr Muhamad ibn Ja’far an-Narshakhi, Tarikh-e Bukhoro (Mashhad: Intesharat-e Tus, 1363 [1984]), 26. The sentence, “The khan (Arslan) had a mansion built for himself with great diligence, as the water of the Haramkam flows there” is miss-translated by Frye to imply that the Haramkam river cause the which I decided to translate as “with great , ﻒﻠﮑﺗ ﯿﻈﻋ ﻢ .khan great difficulty when they rebuilt Baikand diligence” refers to the building of the mansion, not the influence of the river which would be implied by Fry’s translation “with great difficulty”. I would like to thank Professor Mehrak Kamali-Sarvestani of the Ohio State NELC department for helping me better understand this passage. One farsang is about six kilometers. Narshakhi, The History of Bukhara, trans. Richard N. Frye (Cambridge, Mass.: The Medieval Academy of America, 1954), 18-19. At least four authors contributed to the manuscripts that preserve this work, Narshakhi being the first among them. و دﺮﻣ ﻣ نﺎ رد یو دﺮﮔ ﺪﻧﺪﻣآ ٬ و ﻤﻋ ﺎ ر ﺗ ﮭ یﺎ ﮏﯿﻧ دﺮﮐ ﻧ ﺪ ﺮ ﺎﺑ ﻒﻠﮑﺗ ﻈﻋ ﯿ ﻢ 243 244 In fact, they do not refer to this period as the Qarakhanid period, perhaps for nationalist reasons. 99 the Aktangi valley in the west, the Argly/Basmanda-say in the central section and the

Dzhokat-su/Dakhkat-say valley in the east. Among the discoveries were rectangular or oval stone enclosers potentially used to provide shelter for herdsmen and their flocks.

These enclosers were discovered at the higher altitudes of the summer pastures above

2900 m. Labeled as “herdsmen’s stations,” these structures could have between connected to either a sedentary or “a rather mobile economic strategy[.]”245 On the basis of glazed and unglazed pottery, eleven of the fourteen sites studied by this team are dated to the High Middle Ages (10th-12th/Early 13th centuries CE), with the rest either undated or dated to between the 7th and the 18th century.246 Burials from site Aktangi-7, comprising simple pits covered by a schist slab or surrounded by a cist of schist slabs with the body lying supine with their head oriented towards the north, are similar to other early Muslim graveyards from Ustrushana (Machitli, Khonyaylov, Kalai Sar and Kul’- tyube) and the upper Zerafshan (Zosun).247 Despite a history of mobile economy, Stark et al’s argues that the substantial archaeological evidence can be associated with sedentary life in the Aktangi valley up to an altitude of 2600 m. The existence of sedentary life contradicts references from written sources from the 15th to the early 20th centuries which suggest a more mobile economy. However, Stark et al. suggest that this contradiction

245 Sören Stark, Usman Eshonkulov, Matthias Gütte, Nabidzhon Rakhimov, “Resource exploitation and settlement dynamics in high mountain areas. The case of mediaeval Ustrūshana (Northern Tadzhikistan)” Archaologische Mitteilungen aus Iran und Turan 42 (December 2009): 71. 246 Stark et al. write that, “Fragments of glazed and non-glazed pottery from the surface [are] from the 10th/11th to the early 13th century. [see Stark et al. page 77-79 for images] This observation was fully confirmed by the test trench which revealed no deep cultural layers: below the recent surface and a homogenous clay-gravel-humus filling, which seems to have been accumulated after the abandonment of the settlement, only one respectively two floors of trampled clay were observed at a depth between 0.96- 1.17 m. Therefore, there is a strong indication that the site is single-phase in character.” Ibid., 73-74. 247 Ibid., 74. For the analogue burials see Mandel’shtam 1965; Negmatov 1977, 103-104; Negmatov 1978, 154-155; Kiyatkina 1987, Polyakov 1983, Gritsina/Usmanova 1992. 100 disappears if we have a closer look at the chronology: the dating provided by the settlements points to a rather sudden development of a regular chain of small and compact villages in this part of the valley in the late-Samanid or early-Qarakhanid Period.

This chain of settlements disappears abruptly at the beginning of the 13th century. There is so far no archaeological evidence for a comparable sedentary occupation in the

Aktangi valley system prior to the late 10th/early 11th century or after the beginning of the

13th century.248

Stark et al. suggest a few explanations for the sudden and unprecedented shift of settlement patterns in the Aktangi valley system in the late Samanid/Early Qarakhanid period. First, they suggest that the settlement of the Aktangi valley was facilitated by economic and commercial ties with the belt of “urbanized micro-oases” in Ustrushana and south-western Fergana. The glazed pottery found in Aktangi which must have been produced elsewhere, suggesting the circulation of goods between these regions. Two other areas follow as similar pattern: the Shakhristan oasis, where the medieval capital of

Ustrushana, the town of Bundzhikat could have been located (another possibility for the location of Bundzhikat being Ura-tyube)249 and Karabulak, located in south-western

Fergana, which was believed to be a possible location for the medieval town of

248 Ibid., 75. 249 For the Shahristan hypothesis see V. V. Bartold, Turkestan v epokhu mongol’skogo nashestviya, Sochinenia 1 (Moskva, 1963), 223, and N.N. Negmatov and S. G. Khmel’nitskiy, Srednevekoviy Shakhristan. Material’naya kul’tura Ustrushany 1 (Dushanbe, 1966), 191-196; For the Ura-tyube hypothesis see I. A. Kastan’e, Drevnosti Ura-Tyube i Shakhristana, Protokoly Turkestanskago kruzhka lyubitelei arkheologii god 20, vyn. 1 (Tashkent, 1915), 50-51, O. I. Smirnova, “Arkheologichekiye razvedki v Usrushane v 1950 g.” in A. Y. Yakubovskiy ed., Trudy Tadzhikskoy arkheologicheskoi ekspeditsii 2. MIA 37 (Moskva, Leningrad, 1953), 215, and A. M. Belenitskiy, I. B. Bentovich and O. G. Bol’shakov, Srednevekovy gorod Srednei Azii (Leningrad, 1973), 191; For a discussion see Stark, “Resource exploitation,” 81, note 37. 101

Arsbānīkat, known for its coal and iron mining. The Hudud al-Alam, a Persian geographical work from the mid-10 century, describes Bunjikath, spelt as Navīnjkath, as

“the chief place of Surūshna and the residence of its amīr. It has a numerous population and is very prosperous and pleasant. It has running waters.”250 This source describes

Chadhghal, also Jadhul or Chatal, as “a district of Farghāna lying amidst mountains and broken country and possessing many boroughs and villages. It produces horse and a great number of sheep, and has mines as well.”251 Although the Hudud al-Alam was written during the Samanid period, it is possible that such natural resources were also available during the Qarakhanid period.

Stark et al. put extra weight into their second explanation, namely, that the

Aktangi valley developed this type of highland urbanism as a response to the development of mining and metallurgy in the eleventh century. The discovery of traces of iron processing in the valley system are in-line with the excavations at Tashbulak (see below). Muslim geographers of the 10th and 12th centuries praised the mountain rūstāqs of Ustrūshana as a place of iron mining, smelting and processing. The rūstāq of Mīnk (or

Mānk) is described by Estakhri, Ebn Hawqal, Maqaddasi, Edrisi and Ya’qubi, as a place of iron mining and iron processing. Although these sources may just be copying the accounts of each other rather than surviving as cross references for the modern reader, they do indicate that iron mining and processing was prevalent in the region of

Ustrūshana.252 The Hudud al-alam, for example, describes Ustrūshana, spelled

250 Hudud page 115. 251 Ibid., 252 Stark et al. “Resource exploitation and settlement dynamics,” 81. note 39: Estakhri (1870): 328; Ebn Hawqal (1938): 483; Muqaddasī (1906): 265-266; Edrīsī (1970-1984): 506; Ya’qūbī (1892): 294. Robert 102

Surūshana, as “a large prosperous region with a town and numerous districts (rustā).

Much wine (nabīdh) comes from it, and from its mountains comes iron.”253 The reports of the medieval sources are supported by archaeological investigation the upper Zaamin- su (Uzbekistan) and at the upper Dakhkat-say (Tadzhikistan).254 Stark et al. also point out that iron ore outcrops of high quality were found by geological surveys carried out in the early 20th century, furthermore, “archa forests on the hill slopes (which are still extensive in this area) could have easily provided the necessary fuel for the furnaces.”255 Wood resources readily available in the Aktangi valley may have been a key factor for the mining business. Stark et al. suggest that ore could have been brought from elsewhere and processed for the market in Shakhristan (Bunjikant) “in close proximity to the firewood resources in the Aktangi Valley.”256 The similarity between the ceramics from

Aktangi and the ceramics from Karabulak in south-western Fergana suggest similarities in the cultural assemblages of these two regions. Substantial iron mining around

Karabulak was discover by G. A. Brykina in the 1970s.257

The highly specialized market economy of the highland settlements was stimulated by the economic boom of the nearby oasis centers. From the end of the 10th century until the 1030s, the mint at Bunjikat issued both dirham (silver coins) and fels

(copper coins). Numismatist Boris Kochnev argues that the demand for copper coins can

Joseph Haug, “The Gate of Iron: The Making of the Eastern Frontier,” PhD diss., (University of Michigan, 2010). 253Hudud al- alam page 115. 254 Excavations carried out in the 1990s and early 2000. See Stark et al. note 40. 255 Stark page 81. 256 Ibid., note 43 page 81. 257 Ibid., note 43 page 81. Citing G. A. Brykina, Karabulak (Moskva, 1974), 103-104. 103 be attributed to the local need for change due to the flourishing retail trade in the Bunjikat region during the early Qarakhanid period.258 The establishment of specialized settlements in the Aktangi valley was connected with these lowland developments. At this point in the analysis Stark et al. are hesitant to suggest a complete shift from the proceeding herdsman economy to the more agricultural “market” economy suggested by the late 10th century finds. When compared with other archaeological evidence it seems that the mountain populations merely added this new mode of research exploitation to their already diverse repertoire. In this case, literary sources help us interpret the archaeological data. The Kutadgu bilig, although it discusses them separately, shows that both agriculture and pastoralism were crucial to the Qarakhanid economy. A passage on

“associating with cultivators” stresses the necessity of “the tillers of the soil.”

Balasaghuni comments that, “Everyone alive derives benefit from them, to each comes the taste of food and drink. All who draw breath, all who get hungry and full, are dependent on them so long as they live.”259 The agricultural section of the economy produced enough for a large part of the population. A different passage refers to stock breeders as “an unmannerly and impudent lot,” but still demonstrates how they were vital to the Qarakhanid economy. As Highly Praised, one of the characters who offers advice to the King, describes,

After [the merchants] come the cattle breeders, the masters of livestock.

They are simple and honest men, without folds and corners, and they put

258 Stark et al., “Resource exploitation and settlement dynamics,” 82, note 44; B. D. Kochnev, “Musul’manskiy chekan Ustrushany (no materialam monetnogo chekana Ustrushana i Zaamina)” in N. S. Umarov ed., Drevnyi Zaamin — istoriya, arkheologiya, numismatika, etnografia (Tashkent 1994), 72. 259 Ibid., 183. 104

no burden on other people. They provide us with food and clothing; horses

for the army and pack-animals for transport; koumiss and milk, wool and

butter, yoghurt and cheese; also carpets and felts—take a little of each for

your home. They are a useful class of men and you should treat them well,

my calf! Associate with them, give them food and drink, and deal justly

with them. Pay them what they ask, and take what you need, for they are

an upright lot and do not practice guile.”260

This passage also shows a close relationship between Qarakhanid state craft and the pastoral economy. This literary evidence suggests that both agriculture and pastoralism could exist in the same regions.261 During the Qarakhanid period a complex pattern of resource exploitation spread to the Aktangi valley system, including stockbreeding, rain- fed and irrigation farming, thereby securing the subsistence of the newly established settlements.262

A third explanation, that shifts in climate could have influenced the establishment and dissolution of the alpine settlements is discussed by the German-Tajik research team with great caution. The authors point out that the end of the settlements corresponds with

260 Yusuf Khass Hajib, Wisdom of Royal Glory (Kutadgu Bilig) A Turko-Islamic Mirror for Princes, trans. Robert Dankoff (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1983), 184-5. Verses 4439-445. Reshid Rahmeti Arat ed., Kutadgu Bilig I Metin (Istanbul: Milli Egitim Basimevi, 1947), 446. “Muningda basa ol bu igdishçiler/ Qamug’ yīlqīlarqa bular bashçīlar/ Bütün çin bolurlar qatī yoq büki/ Kishilerke tegmez bularnīng yüki/ Yigü kedgü mingü at adg’īr sülük/ Bulardīn çīqar ham yüdürgü kölük/ Qīmīz süt ya yüng yag’ ya yog’rut qurut/ Yadīm ya kidiz ham evke tut/ Asig’lig’ kishiler bolur bu qutu/ Bularīg’ yime edgü tut ay botu/ Qatīlgīl qarīlg’īl yitür ham içür/ Könilik özele tiriglik keçür/ Negü qolso birgil kerek bolsa al/ Köni kördüm ush bu qutu bilmez al 261 The symbiosis between agriculture and pastoralism alongside iron production and animal-themed artwork date back to the first millennia BC. Nicola Di Cosmo, Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 37-41, 262 Stark et al., “Resource exploitation and settlement dynamics,” 82, Note 44. 105 a “supposed shift towards a moister and cooler climate in Central Asia” as suggested by an analysis of data from the Inner Kyzylkum.263 However, Stark et al. also point out how

Boroffka et al. 2005 and Boroffka 2010 have published an analysis of data from the northern shore the Aral Sea that contradicts the Kyzylkum study. Boroffka argues for a political and seismographic change in the early 13th century that disrupted water use and ecological relationships in Central Asia.264 The Mongol invasion of 1221 corresponded with the Amudarya changing its course towards the Sarykamysh Basin, flooding

Kunya/Urgench as well as other areas to the west as suggested by sediment records. The result was that the water of the Amudarya flowed through the Uzboi to the Caspian Sea causing a major regression and high strontium peaks in the Aral Sea during the early 13th century. The strontium, originally from the rock of the Syrdarya watershed, could only reach the Aral Sea from the Syrdarya. High levels of strontium indicate that the Syrdarya contributed a disproportionately large about of water to the sea’s inflow during this period. A major earthquake destroyed dams across Central Asia in 605 AH (1208/1209

CE) indicating that both natural and human factors ended the pre-mongol/Qarakhanid pattern of resource usage.

Stark et al favor the human side of the causality. They point out how the Muslim geographers in the 10th-12th centuries state that the Turkistan valleys were known for their

263 Here Stark et al. references A. V. Vinogradov and E. D. Mamedov, Pervobytnyy Lyavlyakan. Etapy drevneishego zaseleniya i osvoyeniya Vnutrennykh Kyzylkumov. Materiyaly Khorezmskoy ekspeditsii 10 (Moskva 1975): 23-25. However, this book does not present a climatic reconstruction on the pages cited. It covers mostly research on the Neolithic across the Kyzylkum. Stark et al. did not clarify the exact periodization of the Kyzylkum data. 264 Nikolaus G. O. Boroffka, “Archaeology and Its Relevance to Climate and Water Level Changes: A Review,” 295. 106 cold climate which prevented the establishment of vineyards and orchards. They suggest that resource exploitation in the highland areas around Ustrūshana was dependent on external urban markets. Therefore, the decline of the urban center of Shakhristan in the early 13th century caused by either the disturbances of the Khorezmshah ‘Alā’-al-Din

Mohammad in the region in ca. 1212-1213 or by the Mongol invasion seven years later.

While ‘Alā’-al-Din Muhammad Khwārazm Shāh worked to quell rebellions in

Samarqand, the Mongol renegade Güchülüg was attempting to reestablish the Qarakhitay empire while Chinggiz Khan was busy fighting the Jin.265 Both human and environmental chaos contributed to the disappearance of the Aktangi valley settlements and to the end of the Qarakhanid environmental policy’s impact in this region. The continuation of the quasi-urban settlement patterns up until the early 13th century suggests that Qarakhanid policies were left in place during the periods of vassalage. Although Stark et al. were extremely cautious of climatic explanations for the appearance or disappearance of the

Aktangi valley settlements and iron industry, the period from the 10th through early 13th century corresponds with the MCA climate regime in Central Asia, with the unique system of Qarakhanid rule in place from ca. 1000 CE onwards.

When compared with recent research from Tashbulak, a site in eastern

Uzbekistan, it seems that Stark’s study of the establishment of a peripheral highland economy was not a coincidence, but part of the impact of a larger Qarakhanid policy.

Farhad Maskudov et al. 2019 suggest that the establishment of highland “nomadic”

265 Stark et al., (2010): 82, note 47; Michal Biran, The Empire of the Qarakhitai in Eurasian History, 81; citing, Juwaynī 1: 122-6 tra. Boyle, 392-6; Ibn Al-Athir, 12: 267-8. 107 towns, such as Tashbulak in eastern Uzbekistan, show that Qarakhanid decentralized rule facilitated the utilization of highland ecologies.266 While the Samanids had facilitated an increase in urbanization in lowland urban centers, it was the Qarakhanids that established new administrative centers in the foothill and highland regions creating new economic possibilities.267

Minting, the capitalization of alpine metal resources, was a way that this new environment contributed to the Qarakhanid economy. New urban outposts were often accompanied by mints such as at Osh and Kasan in Ferghana, Zamin in Ustrushana, and

Tunket in the Chagh-Ilaq region.268 This pattern of mid- to high-land urban expansion was unique to the Qarakhanid period. This policy integrated the highland populations and highland resources more closely into the Qarakhanid economy. Similar to Karabulak, mentioned by Stark et al., iron-mining sites such as Kuh-i-Ohan and Mink demonstrate this trend.269 The excavations at Tashbulak show the emergence of a “highland urban system and rich tradition of ceramic production that was unique and distinctive to the nomadic population.”270 The authors argue that “while the planning of this highland

266 Farhad Maksudov et al., “Nomadic Urbanism at Tashbulak: A new highland town of the Karakhanids,” in Christopher Baumer and Mirko Novák eds., Urban Cultures of Central Asia from the Bronze Age to the Karakhanids: Learnings and conclusions from new archaeological investigations and discoveries: Proceedings of the First International Congress on Central Asian Archaeology held at the University of Bern, 4-6 February 2019 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019), 286. 267 Maskudov et al., “Nomadic Urbanism,” 287; F. Maksudov, “Bati Türkistanda Karahanli kentlerinin Gelišimi Üzerine, IIB Intl. Refereed Academic Social Sciences Journal 3/5, 339-351;Yury Karev, “From Tents to City: The Royal Court of the Western Qarakhanids between Bukhara and Samarqand” in David Durand-Guédy ed. Turko-Mongol Rulers, Cities and City Life (Leiden and Bosten: Brill 2013), 99-147. 268 Maksudov et al., “Nomadic Urbanism,” 287; Kochnev, Numismaticheskaya istoria, 43. 269 Maksudov et al., “Nomadic Urbanism,” 287; S. Stark, “Approaching the Periphery: Highland Ustrushana in the Pre-Mongol Period” in É. De La Vaissiere, Islamisation de l’Asie central: processus locaux d’acculturation du VII-XI sièle (= Studia Iranica 39) Paris 2008, 215-238. 270 Maksudov et al., “Nomadic Urbanism,” 288. 108 centre was broadly in line with lowland sites, the Karakhanids adapted their construction at Tashbulak in the highlands to better align with the nomadic political structure, land tenure, economy, craft and industrial development that prevailed across Central Asia’s mountainous regions at the time.” The authors further argue that “the Karakhanids innovated this unique form of highland ‘nomadic’ urbanism, possibly to increase the political integration of nomads across geographic settings and to leverage a wider geographic range of demographic and economic resources fundamental to the growth and control of their empire.”271 Such a model would also explain the changes between the sedentary and mobile pastoralist economic modes in the Aktangi valley.

These two archaeological studies help us better understand how the Qarakhanid policies influenced the exploitation of the material world. This material insight helps us better understand what the complexity of Qarakhanid politics meant for non-elites. The advice from the Kutadgu bilig also offers us an understanding of how Qarakhanid politics were meant to impact the population. When Highly Praised explains to the King “how to govern the realm,” he recommends making the troops happy by distributing treasure among them, “then demand of them a thousand favors in return. As one doughty general once said: Give silver and gold, you’ll defeat the foe! If you would always have the upper hand, first satisfy your troops, give them praise and encouragement, then ask them to carry out your wish and bend the enemy’s neck. Keep the mass of your troops happy for a year and they will give up for you their own dear souls in a day.”

Er atnī sevindür hazine üle Olardīn özüngke ming arzu tile

271 Ibid., 283. 109

Negü tir eshitgil yag’īçī kür er Kümüsh birse altun yag’īsīn urar Qalī qolsa sen tutçī üsteng elig Er atnī sevindür öge bir erig Et atnī sevindür tilegil tilek Tilek barç kelgey yag’ī boynī eg Er at köp qalīn tut sevindür sene Sevüg cannī birgey sanga bir küne272 Highly Praised repeatedly advises the King to pay his troops well so that they will remain loyal. The development of more mints in new highland regions as well as the patronage of transregional trade makes it seem like the Qarakhanid khans took this advice to heart. “You have to gather troops, then and favor them with gifts, enriching the poor and feeding the hungry. For men remain in service only so long as they have hope of reward: cut off this hope, and they leave.”273

Ay ilig er attīn sanga çare yoq Er at birle begler süzer bulg’anuq Er at tirgü yīg’g’u açing’u açīg’ Çīg’ayīg’ bayutg’u todurg’u açīg’ Tapug’da yorīg’lī umīnçqa yorīr Tapug’çī umīnç kesse turmaz barīr.274

The Qarakhanids’ flexible balance between decentralized political control and economic opportunity necessitated the establishment of stable administrative centers in highland areas, in order to fully realize the economic potential of summer pasture and raw materials such as iron ore and wood. Having established the material context of the

Qarakhanid environmental policy. I now turn to an analysis of Qarakhanid legitimacy and diplomacy through the use of non-human animal.

272 Hajib/Dankoff, Wisdom of Royal Glory, 218. Hajib/Arat, Kutadgu Bilig, 544-545. Lines 5479-5484. 273 Ibid., 219. Lines 5512-5515. 274 Hajib/Arat, Kutadgu Bilig, 548. 110

The utilization of non-human animals in trade and diplomacy was the third aspect of Qarakhanid rule that facilitated their utilization of their environment. In The Royal

Hunt in Eurasian History, Thomas Allsen, shows how animals were deployed by various empires across Eurasia as legitimacy symbols.275 The use of animals in state titulature and ritual demonstrated to their subjects how the regimes dominated, established control over and also conserved the material world. He points out that “the concept of royal glory, [for us the kut in the kutadgu bilig — HM] so closely associated with hunting and animals, is encountered as well in the religious beliefs of the early Iranian nomads and appears to have passed to the Turkic people through the mediation of the Soghdians.”276

In harmony with this argument, I argue that the Qarakhanids used non-human animals in two ways: first, as legitimacy symbols and as gifts in diplomatic exchanges and second, as part of their economy that could be leveraged in transregional trade.

In the discussion of political history above, the titles Arslan khan and Bughra khan were used by a number of different rulers. It is now time to return to these titles and their place in Turkic symbolism. Animals have often served as Turkic legitimacy symbols. Qarakhanid titles, many of which have been preserved on their coins, show that the Qarakhanids utilized these Turkic and broader Eurasian traditions to show their connections with earlier imperial displays dominance over nature. Titles often use the following Turkic words: Arslan (lion), Bughra (camel), Toghan (falcon), Bori (wolf),

275 Thomas T. Allsen, The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History (University of Pennsylvania Press 2006), 141- 185. 276 Ibid., 163. Citing B. A. Litvinskii, “Das K’ang-chü-Sarmatische Farnah.” Central Asiatic Journal 16, no. 4 (1972): 266-82, and Guitty Azarpay, Sogdian Painting: The Pictorial Epic in Oriental Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981): 70-73 and 110-12. 111

Toghrul or Toghril (a bird of prey). 277 Boris Kochnev has published many of the

Qarakhanid titles in his foundational studies of Qarakhanid numismatics. One coin minted in Bukhara in 390 AH (999-1000 CE) gives Nasr b. ‘Ali the title Arslan-ilig

Mu’ayyid al ‘Adl.278 A coin minted in 410 AH (1019-1020 CE) in a location called Kuz ordu (possibly Balasagun)279 refers to Mansur b. ‘Ali as Umdat ad-din Arslan

Qarakhaqan Abu-l-Muzaffar Mansur b. ‘Ali mawra amīr al-mu’minin.280 The title

“mawla amir al-mu’minīn” was used as a political honorary title.281

A coin dated to 423 AH refers to ‘Ali b. Hasan as Tabgach Bughra Qara-khaqan

‘Ali.282 This coin was minted in a location called kutluq ordu, Turkic for “holy camp”, possibly Dabusiya, an ancient city on the southern banks of the Zeravshan.283 Other ideological depictions of animals include paintings of animals in court ceremony preserved in the Samarkand pavilion constructed in the late 12th century.284 These images include a hunting dog, a royal eagle and other fighting birds.

Apart from coins, animals are prevalent in Qarakhanid literature. In the discussion of food Balasaghuni uses a bird metaphor to extenuate his discussion of the “tillers of the soil” and their role in society. He muses that, “Every living creature gets its share of nourishment: the one that walks has its food, the one that flies, its prey.”285 When Highly

277 E. A. Davidovich, “The Karakhanids,” in History of Civilizations of Central Asia Volume IV Part 1, ed. M. S. Asimov and C. E. Bosworth (Paris: Unesco, 1998), 127, 148-9. 278 Kochnev, Numismaticheskaya Istoria, 132. 279 Kochnev suggests that Kuz Ordu refered to Balasagun and Kutlug Ordu refers to Dabusiya. Ibid., 43. 280 Ibid., 132. 281 Duturaeva, “Between the Silk and Fur Roads,” 179. 282 Kochnev, Numismaticheskaya istoria, 135. 283 See above note 285. 284 Karev, “From Tents to City,” 117-119. 285 Kochnev, Numismaticheskaya istoriya. Böri-tegin (Ibrahim b. Nasr b. ’Ali, Ilak 408-411 AH); Toghan- khan (Shu*ays b. Ibrahim b. Nasr, Bukhara 461 AH); Toghryl-khan/Jalal ad-duniya wa-d-din al-Husain 112

Praised is describing the stock breeders to the King he says “They are a useful class of men and you should treat them well, my calf!” Referring the Khan as “my calf”, which I believe was an endearing comment, shows that animals were a symbol of power for the

Qarakhanids and their subjects.

The prestige of animals carried over to the Qarakhanid’s diplomatic interactions as well. A diplomatic exchange between the Qarakhanid Great Khān Yūsuf Qadïr Khān and the Ghaznavid Mahmūd, recorded by Abu Sa’id ‘Abd al-Hayy Gardizi, shows how animals were important in inter-empire relations. Among the gold, silver and jewels given to Qadir Khan by Mahmud were “ten female elephants with gold trappings and goads set with jewels” and “mules from Bardha’a with golden bells” and many other clothing items for the mules.286 Among the many other gifts were “hunting dogs, falcons and eagles trained to a high pitch for hunting down cranes; and gazelles and other game animals.”287 The animals were a central focus of the “great honor and magnificence”

(‘azoz u akram] of the gifts displayed.288 Qadir khan, after consulting with his treasurer, took out a similar display of wealth representing the “specialties of Turkestan” (chize-ho- e ke az torkestān khizad), including “fine horses with precious trappings and accoutrements of gold, Turkish slave boys with golden belts and quivers; falcons and

(Husain b. Hasan, ?,?); Jalal ad-duniya wa-d-din Mukhammad Toghryl-khan (Muhammad b. Nasr, 591 AH); Muhammad Bughra-khan Taj ad-duniya wa-d-din (Muhammad, ?, 574 AH); Chaghri-tegin/’Imad ad- daula (Sulayman b. Yusuf b. Harun, Yarkand, 415 AH); Sharaf ad-daula Toghryl-tegin Zain ad-din (‘Umar b. Yusuf b. Sulayman, Tunkat [Sogdian “Tunakand”, capital of Ilaq, to the south of Tashkent along the middle reaches of the Syr Darya] 462 AH. 286 Abū Sa’īd ‘Abd al-Hayy Gardīzī, The Ornament of History: A History of the Eastern Islamic Lands AD 650-1041, trans C. E. Bosworth (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 94-95. 287 Ibid., 95. 288 Ibid. 113 hawks, pelts of sable (samūr), grey squirrel (sinjāb), ermine (qāqum) and fox (rūbāh); vessels made from leather skins; narwhal or walrus horn (? danīsha-yi khutuww); delicate cloth and Chinese brocades; Chinese dārkhāshāk, and such.”289 These types of products agree with our understanding of the Qarakhanid economy in this period, especially concerning the products from the mobile pastoralist economy and various items referred to in Persian as Chinese. Apart of what could be called the capitalization of animals on both sides, this exchange shows us how the Qarakhanid eastern exchange provided them with Chinese products that the Ghaznavid ruler could not obtain himself.

Apart from the diplomatic and legitimacy inducing aspect of animal usage, trade was another area where animals played a key role in human economics. The animal trade in the east predates the period of Qarakhanid expansion. However, the intensity of this trade was contingent on political stability as the rise of the Tangut Xixia Empire in the

1030s demonstrates. The Xixia empire blocked the Hexi corridor trade routes leading to

Central China, which had flourished since the Tang period (618-906). Qarakhanid relations with the Tanguts and Khitan were not always peaceful so they were forced to find an alternative road, namely, through the Tsongkha kingdom in Northern Tibet (997-

1099).290 From the 1030s onward, the Qarakhanids’ diplomacy in the East hinged on finding alternative routes to the Song. Their main allies in this regard were the Uyghurs of Dunhuang and the Tsongkha Tibetan kingdom in Qingtang.291 Despite the hostilities with the Xixia, the Song still made extensive use of Qingtang as a source of horses and a

289 Ibid. 290 Duturaeva, “Qarakhanid Envoys,” 184. Gray Tuttle and Kurtis R. Schaeffer eds., The Tibetan History Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), xvii. 291 Ibid., 199. 114 link to the Western Regions and the Qarakhanids; they opened up border markets there in the 1030s.292

The appearances of dromedaries, horses, donkeys, saddles, bridles and belts decorated with jade, products originating in the pastoral economy, among the goods the

Qarakhanids exported to North China during this period show the trans-regional power of the trade in animal produced.293 These were items that the Northern Song could not produce themselves.

The three aspects of Qarakhanid rule discussed above allowed for a specific type of resource exploitation. I now turn to the impact of the MCA on Central Eurasia and how it may have shaped Qarakhanid resources exploitation. The context of climate and water availability impacted the Qarakhanid environmental policy and its implementation.

The Medieval Climate Anomaly climate regime brought a unique set of features to medieval Central Eurasia. I have divided the paleoclimatic studies to be discussed here into four groups, each of influence our understanding of Qarakhanid history. The first group of studies focuses on the westerly-winds system which impacted most of western

Central Asia. The second group relates the history of the South Asian monsoons, revealed to us by environmental proxies from Pakistan, India and China. The third group of climatic reconstructions is from the Tibetan plateau. These studies elucidate how far north the impacts of the strong medieval Monsoons reached and also show how the

Tibetan plateau was influenced by both the westerlies and the Asian summer monsoon

292 Dunnell, “The Hsia,” 179. 293 Duturaeva, “Qarakhanid Envoys,” 195. 115 during the MCA. On a more abstract level, these studies provide a climate context of the

Qarakhanids eastern exchange a crucial part of their economic and diplomatic power. The fourth group synthesizes the first two groups into a more complicated climate history.

This group of records shows the impacts of both the westerlies and the south Asian monsoons. This convergence zone hypothesis is a minority opinion among the studies analyzed here, possibly because it blurs the monsoon boundary line. Each of these four zones provide different implications for understanding Qarakhanid climate.

The studies that I have grouped into the “westerlies” category argue for a dry and warm Medieval Climate Anomaly as compared with a wetter and cooler Little Ice Age, as well as wetter conditions during the Late Antique Little Ice Age.294 An analysis of carbon and hydrogen isotopic compositions of n-alkanoic acids295 from a sediment core from Lake Karakuli (also called Kala Kule) located in the eastern Pamir region of

Xinjiang provides a good introduction to the climate history of this zone. This lake has an altitude of 3650 meters and sits in the valley between the Kongur Shan and Muztagh Ata ridges, both ridges have peaks exceeding 7500 meters. Lake Karakuli is fed by several creeks that originate in the meltwater from glaciers on the western flank of Mt Muztagh

Ata. Vegetation in this valley consists of alpine grasslands with full glaciation starting at about 5000 m.

294 Chen et al. 2010 “Moisture changes over the last millennium…”; Lauterbach et al. 2014 “Climatic imprint of the mid-latitude Westerlies in the Central Tian Shan…”; Esper et al. 2002 “1300 years of climatic history for Western Central Asia inferred from tree-rings”. 295 N-alkanes are a type of acyclic saturated hydrocarbon, which are studied by researchers as biomarkers. See Aichner et al. (2015) pages 623-626 for a further discussion of the Carbon and Hydrogen isotopic signals which are derived from these molecules. 116

The analysis of this 820-centimeter-long sediment core reveals a simple chronology: a gradual shift toward cooler and wetter climates began between 3.5 and 2.5 cal kyr BP. This trend was interrupted by a warm and dry episode between 3.0 and 2.7 kyr BP. Further cool and wet episodes occurred between 1.9 and 1.5 and between 0.6 and

0.1 kyr BP.296 The last of these cool and wet periods coincides with the Little Ice Age roughly 1350-1850 CE. The cool/wet period of 3.5-2.5 cal kyr BP corresponds with the

Pre-Classical Hallstatt and Siberian High, roughly 1550-550 BCE. Warm and dry episodes are recorded between 2.5 to 1.9 and 1.5 to 0.6 kyr BP, coincided with the

Roman Warm Period (550BCE-50AD) and the Medieval Climate Anomaly (450-

1350CE); quite a big range indeed, in our terms from the Helphalites almost until the

Timurids. Dendrochronological evidence, and other proxies, allow us to pinpoint this development a bit more. Based on an analysis of tree-rings from the North West

Karakorum (Pakistan) and the Tien Shan (Karagui valley, Kyrghyzstan), Esper et al.

2002 argue that “The warmest decades since AD 618 appear between AD 800 and 1000, whereas the coldest periods were recorded in the first half of the seventeenth century.”297

Therefore was can disregard the first 400 years or so of Aichner’s period. Oberhansli et al. 2007’s reconstruction from Aral-sea sediments shows drier conditions from 900 to

1150 with evidence for maximum irrigation activities during from 800 to 1300.298

296 B. Aichner et al., “High-resolution leaf wax carbon and hydrogen isotopic record of the late Holocene paleoclimate in arid Central Asia”. Climate of the Past 11 (2015): 619-633. 297 Jan Esper et al., “1300 years of climate history,” 276. 298 Hedi Oberhänsli et al., “Climate variability during the past 2,000 years and past economic and irrigation activities in the Aral Sea basin” Irrig Drainate Syst 21 (2007): 167-183. A later article of what is presumably the same research team suggests that runoff “resulting from warmer winter temperatures in Western Central Asia and resulting in a reduction of snow cover, decreased between AD 100-300, AD 117

Inventories of dust particles found in ice cores demonstrate that the midlatitude westerlies are the primary source of moisture during the winter and spring, bringing moisture from the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Black and Caspian seas.299

The lack of seal salt in the Muztagh Ata ice core is believed to demonstrate that the

Indian monsoon did not influence the moisture balance of this region.300 If we apply the westerlies argument to the Qarakhanid context it seem like drier conditions in the low lands (oases and valleys) would have forced people to utilize highland resources, as we saw demonstrated in the material record. However, what does not fit with this explanation is now the highland economies were, as understood by the archaeologies, intensely connected with the oasis and lowland economies. The strength of these lowland economies was one of the causes for the expansion of settlements into more mountainous regions. The literary sources, as far as I know, do not suggest drought conditions during

1150-1150, AD 1380-1450, AD 1580-1680[.]” Hedi Oberhänsli et al., “Variability in precipitation, temperature and river runoff in W Central Asia during the past ~2000 yrs” Global and Planetary Change 76 (2011): 95-104. 299 Here Aichner is citing three studies. Yanbin Lei et al., “A 2540-year record of moisture variations derived from lacustrine sediment (Sasikul Lake) on the Pamir Plateau” The Holocene 24, no. 7 (2014): 761, “Our results show that generally dry conditions at Sasikul Lake during the past 2540 years were interrupted by a pronounced wet period between AD 1550 and 1900, corresponding to the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA). More negative values of carbonate d18O, lower total inorganic carbon (TIC) and sand content during the LIA all indicate a relatively wet period with higher lake level. Higher TIC during the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ (MWP; AD 950-1200) reveals a lower lake level relative to the LIA. [interestingly] Low d18O during this time is probably attributed to changes in the isotopic composition of input water and/or upstream moisture sources.”; Seong et al., 2009a and b; Wu et al., 2008, as per Aichner 2015. 300 Aichner et al. (2015): 628. Lei et al., “A 2540-year record of moisture variations derived from lacustrin sediment (Sasikul Lake) on the Pamir Plateau” The Holocene, 24 (2014): 761-777. Seong et al., “Quaternary glaciation of Muztag Ata and Kongur Shan: Evidence for glacier response to rapide climate changes through the Late Glacial and Holocene in westernmost Tibet” 2009a; ——. “Geomorphology of anomalously high glaciated mountains at the northwestern end of Tibet: Muztag Ata and Kongur Shan” 2009b. Wu et al. “Seasonal variations of dust record in the Muztahata ice cores” 2008. Aizen et al. “Precipitation and atmospheric circulation patterns at midlatitudes of Asia” International Journal of Climatology 21 (2001): 535-556. (Aizen et al., 2001; Seong et al., 2009b) 118 this period.301 But it is equally possible that our sources did not pay attention to the issue of moisture changes, because they operate on a different time scale to the sources of climatic history.

The second group of climatic reconstructions describe the South Asian monsoon circulation system. Despite the strength of the westerlies induced dry MCA argument, we need to review the literature on South Asian monsoon circulation system during this period as well. The ideal of a relatively dry MCA does not align well with the above discussion of alpine mobile pastoralist urbanism as well as building projects in the lowlands.

A pollen core from lake Xingyu on the south eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau demonstrates the influence of the Indian Summer Monsoon (hereafter ISM) on the climate of this part of the Tibetan plateau.302 This record provides evidence for climatic shifts stretching back to 8500 cal a BP (6550 BCE). Although the general trend from the early Holocene was a decline in ISM intensity, Chen et al.’s reconstruction shows a rapid decline at 2000 cal a BP (50BCE) then a gradual increase to 1200 cal a BP (750CE).303

The authors point out that “it is interesting that despite the trend of declining MAP during the Holocene, an interval of relatively high precipitation occurred from 1200 to 800 cal a

BP [750-1150CE — HM], corresponding to the MWP [Medieval Warm Period — HM], which is also observed in the other proxy records derived from the same core. [see Chen

301 More research is needed in this direction, especially establishing the exacted dates for the composition of the Atebetü’l-Hakayik. Resid Rahmeti Arat, ed., Atebetü’ l-Hakayik (Istanbul, Ates Basimevi, 1951). 302 Fahu Chen et al., “Holocene vegetation history, precipitation changes and Indian Summer Monsoon evolution documented from sediments of Xingyun Lake, south-west China” Journal of Quaternary Science 29, no. 7 (2014): 661-674. 303 Ibid., 669. 119 et al. 2014 Fig 6d-g —HM]” 304 A speleothem oxygen isotope proxy from central India also documents a strong ISM during the MWP.305 Liu et al., 2014a support the argument for strong East Asian Summer Monsoons during the MCA, however they also show a relative weakening of the monsoon occurred during the 11th century. To understand this fluctuation between Liu et al., compared this event with the variations of sea surface temperature (SST) for the Indian Ocean-western Pacific as well as with proxy records of solar activity with the result that “a significant covariation” was revealed.306 One way to explain this is that the India Ocean-western Pacific responded to the Ort solar minimum mid-11th century, which is understood to have influenced European climate during this period.307 Evidence of human activity further complicate the monsoon history revealed by the Xingyu lake sediments. Increases in magnetic susceptibility and poaceae taxa at around 1060 cal BP (890CE) suggest intensified land use, however, the period of increased magnetic susceptibility stretches from the 6th to the 11th centuries.308

The Xingyu sequence suggests that the ISM was strongest during the Early

Holocene, declining up until the present interrupted by an increase during the MWP. This general trend is also reflected in oxygen isotope records speleothems in Oman and

304 Ibid. Sinha et al., “The leading mode of Indian Summer Monsoon precipitation variability during the last millennium” Geophysical Research Letters 38 (2011): L15703.. 305 Sinha et al., “The leading mode of Indian Summer Monsoon precipitation variability during the last millennium” Geophysical Research Letters 38 (2011): L15703. 306 Liu et al., “Weakening of the East Asian summer monsoon at 1000-1100 A.D. within the Medieval Climate Anomaly: possible linkages to changes in the Indian Ocean-western Pacific,” Journal of Geophysical Research, Atmospheres 119 (2014a): 2209-2219. 307 Campbell, “The Great Transition,” 56, figure 2.9. 308 Wu et al., “Changing intensity of human activity over the last 2000 years recorded by the magnetic characteristics of sediments from Xingyun Lake, Yunnan, China” Journal of Palaeolimnology 53 No. 1 (2015): 47-60. 120 southern China.309 These records differ from the records of the East Asian Summer

Monsoon, which show a mid-Holocene monsoonal maximum.310

The Xingyu monsoon record comes from a region far to the south east of the

Qarakhanid empire. However, records showing a similar pattern does exist for the regions under Qarakhanid rule. Proxy evidence from a study of lacustrine sediment from the

Minfeng oasis (37º08' 37.46' N, 82º46' 34.79' E, 1300 m above sea level) along the southern border of the Tarim Basin suggests humid and cooler conditions from 930 to

1030 as suggested by drops in ∂13C and ∂18O isotope levels and increases of clay and silt fractions. When compared with the previous pollen zone the content of gramineae (grass) pollen declines. Zhong et al. 2007 argue that the high value of gramineae (26.4%) at 1.20 m (ca. AD 900) “indicates another phase of agricultural activity possibly related to the rise of the ancient Nixiang Town in the Tang Dynasty of Chinese history.”311 But by 900, the Tang dynasty controlled very little of the territory it controlled before the An Lushan rebellion in 755 and the Huang Chao rebellion in 880.312 While the authors of this study connect this increase in gramineae pollen to agricultural development to the Nixiang town, this sequence also indicates that wetter conditions prevailed up until 1300 AD,

309 Fleitmann et al., “Holocene forcing of the Indian monsoon recorded in a stalagmite from southern Oman” Science 300 (2003): 1737-1739. Wang et al., “Palaeosol development in the Chinese Loess Plateau as an indicator of the strength of the East Asian summer monsoon: evidence for a mid-Holocene maximum” Quaternary International 334-335 (2014a): 155-164. 310 Chen et al., “Holocene Sediments of Xingyun Lake” (2014): 671. 311 Wei Zhong, Jin Bin Xue, Qiang Shu and Li Guo Wang, “Climatic changes during the last 4000 years in the southern Tarim Basin, Xinjiang, northwest China” Journal of Quaternary Science 22, no. 7 (2007): 659-665; Yin et al., 1993 Yin Z., Yang Y., Wang S. 1993. “Holocene environmental changes and human civilization in arid northwestern China.” In Research on Living Environmental Changes in China during Historical Period, Zhang L. (ed.) Ocean Press: Beijing; 260-283. 312 On the Huang Chao rebellion see Nicolas Tackett, The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy (Cambridge Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 2014), 187-234. 121 when higher average ∂13C values, together with an increase in coarser grain size material, indicate the beginning of a relatively dry interval.313 The authors suggest possible solar forcing for the dry-wet changes in arid Central Asia.314 Although the authors mention that the present climate of their study area is “strongly influenced by westerly winds,” in their discussion of the historical period they point to neither the monsoons nor the westerlies as influencing atmospheric circulation in this region. We can guess that this region the

Minfeng Oasis might fall in the westerlies/south asian monsoon transition zone, however wetter conditions between 930 and 1300 seem to be in line with the stronger medieval

Monsoons recorded by other South Asian monsoon records. Zone 4 of this sequence, dated between 850 and 1300 CE shows a pollen assemblage showing “desert-steppe characteristics” compared to zones 3 and 5 which suggest a desert environment.315 The expansion of steppe into desert regions provides a climatic context for highland urban development, revealed by our archaeological sources. This period coincides with the strong ISM displayed by the Xingyu lake sediments, which suggests the possibility that the precipitation from the ISM reached the southern Tarim basin.

A lake sediment record from Nir’pa Co in southeastern Tibet details an Indian

Summer Monsoon hydroclimate during the late Holocene. Hydroclimatic expressions during the MCA and LIA are not statistically significant when the sediments were analyzed for millennial scale variability, however, “decreasing sand and increasing lithics and silt during the MCA between 950 and 800 cal. yr BP [1000-1150 CE, exactly the

313 Zhong et al., “Climate changes during the last 4000 years,” 663. 314 Ibid. 315 Ibid., 662. 122

Qarakhanid period —HM] may suggest briefly wetter conditions, while increasing sand and reduced lithics and silt from 500 to 200 cal. yr BP suggest potentially drier conditions during the LIA.”316 The South Asian Monsoon argument would allow us to suggest that moisture was brought to the high mountains by the strong Medieval Monsoons, which facilitated Qarakhanid building at high and low elevations at least in the eastern have of the Khanate. The world’s tallest mountains do stand in the way of this simplistic “trickle down” argument. However, Qarakhanid trade with the monsoon region was massive.

Accordingly, if the strong medieval monsoons did not impact the Qarakhanid lands directly, they impacted Qarakhanid trade partners.

In order to understand how much the strong South Asian Monsoons impacted the

Qarakhanid domains (Transoxania and the Tarim Basin) we need to understand how far north into Tibet and Inner Asia their influence reached. The apparent correlation between

South Asian monsoon proxies and moisture increases from the Minfeng sequence means that we need to review some of the climate history of Tibet itself during this period to understand how far north the monsoons could have reached.

One dendrochronology from the northeastern Qaidam Basin (mainly in Delingha and Wulan counties in the province of Qinghai, provides us with an annually and decadally resolved reconstruction. The alluvial fans of Delingha region are slightly lower in elevation than the Karakuli valley discussed above, ranging from 2900 to 3000 meters above sea level, with surrounding peaks of 4400 meters or higher. The Qilian juniper

316 Broxton Bird et al., “Late-Holocene Indian summer monsoon variability revealed from a 3300-year-long lake sediment record from Nir’pa Co, southeastern Tibet” The Holocene 27, no. 4 (2017): 541. 123

(sabina przewalskii kom) and Qinghai spruce (Picea crassifolia) trees analyzed by Yin et al 2008 are found in the zone between 3450 meters and 4200 meters covering an elevation range comparable to the Karakuli. Tree ring chronologies present different types of uncertainties than lake sediment profiles; thus, after passing a 31-year moving average filter to the time-series, significant low-frequency variation patterns can be seen, including prominent dry periods during 700-800AD, 1110-1200 AD, 1425-1525 AD, and, 1650-1750; with wet period around 1225, 1350 and 1525-1650 AD.317 This reconstruction shows a relatively wet period between 800 and 1110 CE, which corresponds with the Qarakhanid period.

This discussion shows that both the South Asian Monsoon and the Westerlies impacted Central Eurasian climates during the MCA. For this reason, I’d like to turn to a fourth explanation. The convergence zone synthesis helps us understand why some proxies suggest a correlation with the westerlies and others seem to follow the ISM. This synthesis has only appeared sense about 2010. Fahu Chen et al.’s 2010 review separated arid Central Asia from Monsoon Asia, arguing for an out of phase relationship between the Westerlies and the monsoons, implying that the two systems were entirely separate.

Zhao et al. 2012, with their analysis of a sequence from the Kashgar oasis, complicate this picture, commenting that “the question of whether the Asian monsoon delivers precipitation to the western Tarim Basin, a region that is influenced by several climate systems, is still open to debate.”318 Such a pattern seems possible because many

317 Ibid., 49. 318 Zhao et al., “Climatic variations over the last 4000 cal yr BP in the western margin of the Tarin Basin, Xinjiang, reconstruction from pollen data” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 321-322 (2012): 16-23. 124 paleoclimatic records indicate that both the westerlies and the monsoons impacted this region during the Holocene. A sediment core from the south-western sub-basin of lake

Qinghai analyzed by An et al. 2012 shows influence of both the westerlies and the Asian

Summer Monsoon over the past 32,000 years.319 Although they do not present direct evidence for this Zhao et al., comment that “The Asian Summer and winter monsoon may also be an important influence in this region. The Tsuga pollen identified in this study is likely to have been transported by the Asian summer monsoon from the southern flanks of the Tibetan Plateau[.]” 320 But they cannot confirm that this tsuga pollen arrived with moisture. A recent appraisal of instrumental evidence suggests that it was possible to have Indian Ocean precipitation reach the Tarim Basin. Huang et al. 2015 suggest that water vapor from the northern Arabian Sea can be transported first “to the foothills of the southern Tibetan Plateau by low-level wind and then transported to the TB [Tarim Basin

—HM] by upper level wind.”321 This modern analysis of circulation patterns provided the possibility for the impact of South Asian Monsoon on the TB. However, we need to base what we say on what happened on the ground in the medieval period.

Zhao et al,’s 2012 study from the Kashgar oasis deserves particular attention because Kashgar was the eastern capital of the Qarakhanid state. The Kashgar oasis is

319 An et al., “Interplay between the Westerlies and Asian monsoon recorded in Lake Qinghai sediments since 32 ka” Scientific Reports (2012) 320 Ibid., 21. 321 Huang et al., “Physical Mechanisms of Summer Precipitation Variations in the Tarim Basin in Northwestern China” Journal of Climate 28 (May 2015): 3582-3583, especially figure 3 and table 1. See also Yatagai, A., and T. Yasunari, 1998: “Variation of summer water vapor transport related to precipitation over and around the arid region in the interior of the Eurasian continent” J. Meteor. Soc. Japan, 76, 799-815; Tao, H., H. Borth, K. Kraedrich, B. Su, and X. H. Zhu, 2014: “Drought and wetness variability in the Tarim River Basin and connection to large-scale atmospheric circulation” Int. J. Climatol. 34, 2678-2684,. Doi:10.1002/joc.3867. 125 located at the western edge of the Tarim basin at an average altitude of 1300 meters above sea level. The landscape is called an alluvial-diluvial plain, which is fed mostly by three rivers, the Kealsu, Gaiz and the Kushan, which originate in the Pamir and Western

Kunlun mountains. The Wupaer section (39°15’53.6’’ N, 75°35’43.6’’E), studied by

Zhao et al. is located to the southeast of the modern Kashgar City (Kashi 喀什).

Assemblages of pollen in the Tarim basin tend to be dominated by Chenopodiaceae and

Ephedra. Ephedra tolerates drier conditions than Chenopodiaceae does, so the ratio of

Chenopodiaceae to Ephedra can be used as a proxy to estimate moisture levels in the

Tarim Basin across the time covered by the sediment core. High

Chenopodiaceae/Ephedra ratios suggest a more humid climate. The outline of Zhao et al.,

2012’s reconstruction supports the westerly argument — warm and dry conditions between CE 690 and 1110 — however, the “discussion” section of their publication complicates this picture. Although the record begins at around 3000 BCE, I will enter into their discussion at CE 690, following how they connect their own results to other proxies.

High concentrations of Ephedra between ca. 1260 and 840 cal yr BP (690-1110

CE) in the pollen record of the Kashgar oasis indicate a relatively dry climate. This period coincides with the Medieval Warm Period across the globe.322 A reconstruction based on a study of tree rings from the Dulan area of Qinghai shows a warm period

322 W. S. Broecker, “Was the Medieval Warm Period global?” Science 291 (2001): 1497-1499. 126 between 819 CE and 1086 CE as compared to the rest of the 2000-year-long record.323

Tree rings records from the Karakorum, Kunlun, and Tienshan Mountains record warm temperatures over a longer period between 618 and 1139.324 Two sediment cores from the northern part of Issyk-Kul show a decrease in moisture between 1000 and 1180, led to a

“slight fall in the arboreal biomass,” however, this sequence starts at 1000 CE so we don’t have a prior level to compare it with.325 Chen et al. 2010 argue for a warm and dry climate during the MWP, however Zhao et al., 2012 argue that “considerable variation in the climate of Xinjiang is evident over this time period.”326 Zhang et al., 2009’s study of a 84 cm deep from the ancient Sichang lake (44°18.6’ N, 89°8’ E, 589 m a.s.l.), located at the southeastern margin of the Gurbantunggut Desert, in the Northern Tian Shan mountains, Xinjiang, indicates humid conditions and both high plant diversity and high biomass during the MCA.327 A reconstruction from Lop Nor (east Tarim Basin see map

323 X. C. Kang, L. G. Graumlich and P. Sheppard, “The last 1835 years of climate changes inferred from tree ring records in Dulan region, Qinghai, China” Quarternary Sciences 1 (1997): 70-75. 324 J. Esper, F. H. Schweingruber and M. Winiger, “1300 years of climatic history for Western Central Asia inferred from tree-rings” The Holocene 12 (2002): 267-277. It seems either that Zhao et al. have access to a better understanding of Esper’s data than I do and they have rejected the temperature peak at 800-1000CE mentioned above. 325 S. Giralt et al., “1,000 year environmental history of Lake Issyk-Kul” in J. Nihoual et al., Dying and Dead Seas, Climatic Versus Anthropic Causes (Kluwer Academic Publishers 2004), 253-285. 326 Zhao et al., 2012 seem hesitate to question the 2010 synthesis, and yet they complicate Chen et al’s conclusions repeatedly. 327 Yun Zhang, Zhao Chen Kong, Shun Yan, Zhen Jing Yang and Jian Ni, “”The Medieval Warm Period” on the northern slope of central Tianshan Mountains, Xinjiang, NW China” Geophysical Research Letters 36 (2009): L11702, doi: 10.1029/2009GL037375. This study is particularly interesting because the authors conclude that “From 1100 to 600 cal. a BP, flouring aquatic plants, such as Phragmites, Typha and Sparganium, and freshwater green algae, dominated in the Caotan Lake. It is noticeable that the grain-size data shows good agreement with the pollen-based inference of the humidity change in these three profiles. In general, the lower average granularity usually indicates a wet environment over the lake region, such as Caotan Lake and Sichang Lake [Chen et al., 2004]. But the indication significance of sediment grain sizes in Daxigou is different from that in Caotan and Sichang Lakes. The reason may be that they are located at different latitudes. The elevation of Daxigou profile is about 3450 m, which is five times higher than that of Caotan Lake (380 m) and Sichang Lake (589 m) profiles. And the distance between Daxigou region and snow line is very near, only about 500m. It is likely that more glacial meltwater and high precipitation rates during a wet period would enhance the soil erosion and increase the transport capacity of streams, leading 127 below) shows a reduction in storms and favorable climatic conditions during this period.328

Zhao et al. point out the decrease in ice-rafted debris in the North Atlantic during the MCA indicates the warming of the North Atlantic Ocean.329 At this time two additional studies identify an enhanced intensity of the Indian and Asian monsoons.330

Based on Zhao et al.’s reconstruction and the brief comparison with other records the western Tarim Basin, the climate of the eastern Qarakhanids differs from both the eastern monsoon area and from northern Xinjiang.

The high Picea abundance in Wupaer pollen record between 1110-1270 CE indicates cool wet conditions during the 12th and 13th centuries, in other words the later part of the Medieval Warm Period. Ice-rafted debris at this time and diatom flora and dinoflagellate cyst assemblages from the Aral Sea suggest low water levels (dry conditions) from approximately 1100 CE to 1300CE.331 An early study of oxygen isotope records from the Guliya ice show suggested a colder climate during the 11th and 12th centuries, however, no reports of glacier advances in the Muztag Ata-Kongur Mountain

for more, coarser clastic materials available for stream transport and subsequent deposition in the Daxigou region. […] Additionally, it should be mentioned that humid climate in the Middle Ages were also registered by a 2326-year tree ring data of Sabina przewalskii for Dulan area in western China (Zhang et al., 2003) and that historical records in Xinjiang (The Historical Book of Song written by Shen Yue [As apposed to the one written by Tuotuo] show the occurrences of snow disasters in the first year of Yonglong period (1020 aBP) and rainstorms and floods in Gaoshang (i.e. Turpan in Xinjiang) in the third year of Kaibao period of the North Song Dynasty (980 aBP).” 328 Ma et al., “Climate and Environment reconstruction during the Medieval Warm Period in Lop Nur of Xinjiang, China” Chinese Science Bulletin 53 (2008): 3016-3017. 329 Bond et al., “Persistent solar influence on North Atlantic climate during the Holocene,” Science 294 (2001): 2310-2316. 330 Gupta et al., “Abrupt changes in the Asian south-west monsoon during the Holocene and their links with the North Atlantic Ocean” Nature 421 (2003): 354-357; Wang et al., “The Holocene Asian Monsoon: links to solar changes and North Atlantic Climate” Science 308 (2005): 854-857. 331 Boomer et al., “Advances in understanding the lake Holocene history of the Aral Sea region,” Quaternary International 194 (2009): 79-90. 128 region exist at this time.332 Zhao et al. cite Esper et al.’s 2002 study of tree ring records from the northwest Karakorum mountains of Pakistan and the southern Tianshan in

Kyrgyzstan which records below average temperature between 1140 and 1874 as compared to the average of the last 1400 years, however, it is likely that this data shows the Little Ice Age.333 Although lower temperatures and low evaporation tend to bring a wetter climate and the expansion of spruce forests on the slopes of the west Kunlun and southern Tian shan at this time, the Wupaer record shows relatively dry climate from

1270 to 1400 CE, which is supported by sediment records from the Kunlun mountains and the Niya Oasis.334 Zhao et al’s study shows that, even if the brought outline of the climate history suggest the Westerlies model it is quite likely that a third — convergence— zone may help us explain the MCA better in the Tarim Basin.

The evaluation of climate proxies and historical evidence leaves us with two possibilities. First, that the South Asian Monsoon brought moisture to the higher altitudes allowing for the expansion of the Qarakhanid trade networks into alpine regions. Second, relative drought in the western half of the empire forced the Qarakhanids to move parts of their economies up into the mountains. Although an increase in moisture would be anomalous for our current understanding of the MCA in westerly-dominated Arid Central

332 Shi et al., “Decadal climatic variations recorded in Guliya ice and comparison with the historical documentary data from East China during the last 2000 years” Science in China Series D: Earth Sciences 42 (1999): 91-100. Paleo-climatology is a fast moving field, so it is unwise to base major conclusions on studies that are 20 years old. 333 Esper et al., “1300 years of climatic history” (2002). 334 Zhao et al., (2012): 21. Tang et al., “Palaeoenvironment of mid- to late Holocene loess deposit of the southern margin of the Tarim Basin, NW China” Environmental Geography 58 (2009): 1703-1711. Zhong et al., “Climatic change during the last 4000 years in the southern Tarim Basin Xinjiang nourhtwest China” JQS 22 (2007): 659-665. 129

Asia, significantly to the north and west of the Tibetan plateau, it is possible that water from the strong medieval South Asian monsoons reached north of the Tibetan Plataea in this period. Although it seems possible that the South Asian monsoons effected parts of the Tarim Basin during the MCA, it seems highly unlikely that the South Asian monsoons impacted the Qarakhanid domains in the west. Even if the SAM did not impact the Qarakhanid lands directly, they impacted the Qarakhanids’ North-Indian, Tibetan and

Chinese trading partners and indirectly influenced the economic possibilities at the center of the Silk Roads.

Seljuk political and economic history

Seljuk history has received the more attention in climatic terms than Qarakhanid history has. Yehoshua Frenkel has discussed this question most recently.335 As a specialist in the depictions of Turkic mobile pastoralists in Arabic and Persian sources he is well qualified to review the primary source evidence that has been discussed by historians since Bulliet’s first charge in 2009.336 References to early Seljuk history in the

Islamic sources are numerous, as we saw in the discussion of Ghaznavid history above

Turkic slave-soldiers were common in the Islamic world in the 10th century and earlier.

When the mobile pastoralists arrived, the Islamic world already had a decent about of knowledge about Central Eurasia.

The Seljuks were from the Kïnïk tribe of the Oghuz Turks. In the mid tenth century, the Oguz had lived in the steppes to the north of the Aral Sea and East of the

335 2019 article, 336 Yehoshua Frenkel, The Turkic Peoples in Medieval Arabic Writings (London and New York: Routledge, 2014). 130

Casprian. Ibn Fadlan describes them as shamanists at the time, but their coins as mention in section two were of Islamic make.337 At this time they also had some type of relationship with the Khazar state, which is why Peacock attributes a Khazar origin to

Seljuk statehood.338 The Yabghu of the Oguz appointed Seljuk ibn Duqaq as sü-bashï, the equivalent of war leader, in Ibn Fadlan’s words sahib al-jaysh.339 Sometime after being appointed sü-bashï, Seljuk and his followers moved up the Syr Darya from the Yabghu’s winter camp at Yengi-kent to the pastures around Jand. It is at this time that they came into some type of treaty relationship with the Samanids. When the later Seljuqs rewrote this part of their history, they recorded that they immediately became ghāzīs (fighters for the Islamic faith) and the Seljuq’s son Mika’il died in this fighting so that Toghrïl Beg

Muhammad and Chaghrï Beg Dāwūd were brought up by their grandfather. The alliance with the Samanids allowed the Seljuks to fight against the Qarakhanids and their Qarluq followers on the Samanid side. In 990, the Samanid Amir Nuh II b. Mansur recruited

Seljuq troops under the leadership of Seljuq’s son Arslan Isrā’īl at which time they settled near the small town of Nakhshab or Nur (modern Nur Ata between Bukhara and

Samarkand. Seljuq ibn Duqaq did not move south with his sons and died in Jand around

1007. At Seljuq’s death, Arslan Isra’il adopted the title of Yabghu of the Seljuqs in direct opposition to the other branch of the Oghuz, still centered around Yengi-kent. Yabghu was the khan-like title which implied leadership over all of the Oguz people. Similar to the rivalry between the Alids and the Hasanid Qarakhanids, though without direct

337 HCCA, 151. 338 Andrew C. S. Peacock, Early Seljuq History: A New Interpretation (London and New York: Routledge 2010), 27-35. 339 Ibid. 131 familiar ties, the Seljuk branch of the Oghuz and the Yangi-kent elder side of the Oghuz vied for power until at least the middle of the 11th century. Various groups of Oghuz gave their allegiance to a number of leaders from the Seljuq family including Toghrïl, Chaghrï and Mūsā ibn Seljuk.340 After the Samanid collapse the Seljuks forged links with the

Qarakhanids. Arslan Isrā’īl gave military assistant to ‘Ali Tegin ibn Bughra Khan Hārūn, helping him to invade Bukhara and eventually marrying the Khan’s daughter. Toghrïl and

Chagrï were not involved in these diplomatic maneuvers and separated a bit from Arslan

Isra’il. At the time they were in the steppes to the west of Sogdiana, the modern Qarakum desert. As we discussed above, pressure from the east may count for part of the impetus for the Seljuks’ move south. Bosworth suggests that tribes called the Qūn by Marwazi who “came from the land of Qitāy, fearing the Qitā-khan” and “migrated from their habitat, being pressed for pastures,”341 were responsible for the Seljuks’ movement south.

Zahir ad-din Nishapurī states of the Seljuqs that “these noble ones left Turkestan for the province of Transoxiana on account of the large number of families and the shortage of pastures.”342 Jamal Qarshi also states that the Seljuks moved south “because of the crowding-together of their families.”343 The aridity of the Aral sea environment may have been part of this complex political and economic situations. Bosworth writes that “the

Seljuqs and their followers were in a wretched physical and material condition whilst they were spreading into Ghaznavids Khurasan. But the arguments of climatic change, increase desiccation, over population and economic pressure have so often been put

340 Ibid., 152. 341 See above setion 2. Bosworht, Ghaznavids, 222. ‘Aufi also records Marwazi’s words. 342 Ibid., 222. 343 Ibid. 132 forward as facile explanations for complex population movements that it is safest to treat the economic motive behind the Seljuq invasions as only one among several.”344 Pressure from the Qïpchaq and their associated tribe the Qanghlï as well as the tribal groups called

“the Qūn” by Marwazi (potentially the “Kimaks”) were also potentially influence by the

Liao conquest of Eastern Dzungaria.

Our climatic understanding of this period is based on studies from the Aral sea region. Starting in around 2006 paleoclimatologist began publishing research on the sediments of the Aral sea, which shows us the outline of the history of the environment in which the early Seljuqs history was played out. Oberhänsli’s 2007 reconstruction shows generally wet conditions between 400 and 900 changing dry conditions during the period between 900 and 1150.345 By the mid-1020s the Turkmen/Oguz mobile pastoralists had crossed the Kara kum steppes and were moving into Ghaznavid Khurasan. Peacock suggests that “increased aridity in Central Asia from c. 900 onwards[,]” could have contributed to the movement of Oghuz tribes “as sources of pasture, essential for feeding the animals on which a nomadic lifestyle relies, dried up.”346 He also advocates for multiple different movements of various groups that took the name “Oghuz” from

Mongolia to the west. The increased aridity of the Aral sea region could have been part of this complex movement. However it seems our paleoclimatic sources are still not well- dated for this period. A more recent study, Oberhänsli et al 2011, suggests that the higher

344 Ibid., 222-223. 345 Oberhänsli et al., “Climate variability during the last 2,000 years and past economic and irrigation activities in the Aral Sea basin” Irrig Drainage Syst 21 (2007): 167-183; Sorrel et al. come to a similar conclusion. Philippe Sorrel et al., “Climate variability in the Aral Sea basin (Central Asia) during the late Holocene based on vegetation changes,” Quaternary Research 67 (2007): 366. 346 Peacock, Early Seljuq History, 19-20. 133 mineralization of the Aral Sea and lower lake levels did not begin until 1150.347 If inflow from the Amu Darya was impacting the climatic proxies so much then the human use of this water during the medieval period would be impossible to differentiate from larger climatic forcings.

An eleventh century crisis?

In this next section, I evaluate the case for an 11th century crisis. I discuss famines, bad harvests and other environmental events that effected the livelihood of the non-elite profoundly. Some historians have suggests that an 11th century crisis unfolded across the Middle East, for which climate change as a major driver.348 Scientific sources do not support this mono-causal interpretation and scholars have already argued for a more complex interpretation of human response to short term climate change, in the medieval period.349 Our discussion of the earlier Seljuqs shows that it was as much the aridity of the Aral sea environment as it was the complexity of frontier politics that began the conquest. On a global scale, it was not until the volcanic eruptions of the 12th century that the global climate regime began to shift towards the Little Ice Age climate regime.350

This shift brought more moisture to Arid Central Asia, north of the monsoon convergence zone; we will discuss the 12th century in the next chapter, but for now let us review the

347 Hedi Oberhänsli et al., “Variability in precipitation, temperature and river runoff in W Central Asia during the past ~2000 yrs,” Global and Planetary Change 76 (2011): 95-104. 348 Bulliet and Ellenblum. 349 Peacock, The Great Seljuk Empire; Paul, “Nomads and Bukhara”; Preiser-Kapeller, “A collapse of the Eastern Meditteranean?”. 350 Bradley et al., “The Medieval Quiet Period.” 134 evidence that has led historians to propose an eleventh-century environmental crisis in the

Middle East and Central Asia.

The Tarikh-e Sistan reports a bad crop and famine in 400/1009-1010, during which grain prices rose considerably. In Ramadan of 400, Amir Nasr Ibn Sübüktakin lowered the price of grain to give relief.351 Abu Nasr Muhammad al-‘Utbi reports a famine in 1011/401 in Khurasan. This same year cholera struck Sistan and “many people died.”352 The arrival of the Seljuks and their Turkmen tribesmen in Khurasan in

431/1039-1040CE strained the tax base of the province. Ibn Funduq reports famine in

Bayhaq, a district to the west of Nishapur, from 422 to 429/1038.353 In 429/1037-1038 flooding brought chaos to Sistan, and the following year poor crop harvests are reported, although they were not as severe as in A.H. 400.354 Bayhaqi, writing in what is today

Afghanistan, describes cold spells in 1035/426, 1037/429 and 1038/430, as well as crop failure and famine in 1040/431. In 429/1037-1038, flooding is reported in Sistan. Ibn al-

Athir reports an increase in food prices in Khurasan in 1098/492, because “cold weather

[had] entirely destroyed the crops.”355 These reports, as well as reports of cold weather in

Baghdad supplied the textual backbone of Richard Bulliet’s Big Chill argument discussed in the introduction.

351 Anonymous, Tarikh-e Sistan, trans. Milton Gold (Roma: Istituto Italiano per il medio ed estremo orienti, 1976), 292. 352 Ibid., 293. 353 Peacock, Great Seljuk, 34. Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 259-260. Bayhaqi, Tarikh, 942-3, 949-50 (in Khurasan in 431); Nasir-I Khusraw, Safarnama, ed. Muhammad Ghanizada (Berlin, 1341), 5 (at Qazwin in 438); Ibn Funduq, Tarikh-i Bayhaq, ed. Ahmad Bahmanyar (Tehran, n. d.), 268, 273 (famine in Bayhaq in the seven years up to 429/1038); Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 250-1, 260-1. 354 Anonymous, Tarikh-e Sistan, 297-298. 355 Bulliet, Cotton, Climate, and Camels, 84. 135

Interestingly, historians looking for crises can find it in the eastern side of the steppe as well. A minting crisis in hit the Liao empire at around the same time as the crisis in the west.356 This monetary crisis began in 1055 and would continue until the end of the dynasty. The dynasty attempted to cope with this crisis by regulating the counterfeiting and trade in copper and iron as well as prohibiting the export of metals to the Uyghurs and the Mongols. Starting in 1056, coinage was minted for the first time in the Eastern Capital. New coinages were minted in 1055, 1056, 1074, 1084, 1102 and

1112, but there seems to have been little control over the quality of the copper coins in circulation, as Koryo records suggest. The typical responses to cash shortage began to appear in the 1070s; the manufacture of copper implements was prohibited in 1084 and bans were placed on the export of metals and cash. By 1090, Su Ch’e, who visited the

Liao as an envoy, noted that all of the coin that was in circulation there was Song copper.

At the turn of the twelfth century, government expenditures exceeded both revenue and the production of coin.357 This minting crisis occurred at roughly the same time as the

Qarakhanid silver crisis, although the debasement of currency began before the

Qarakhanid conquests and Samanid silver production declined between the 970s and

990s.358 The Qarakhanid “silver crisis” is usually believed to have begun in the 1030s, as demonstrated by the Chaghaniyan “silver” dirhams of 1034-5, which contain 73-75%

356 The Oort solar minimum may have influenced these events, however, as far as I know no study of paleoclimatic evidence from Central Eurasia has confirm the impact of the Oort solar minimum on regional climate as it has been confirmed for the Latin West. 357 Twitchett and Tietze, “The Liao,” 97. 358 Richard Nelson Frye, Bukhara: The Medieval Achievement (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), 154. I hesitate to cite Frye directly because of his lack of critical apparatus. Fur a more detailed discussion of Samanid silver see Thomas S. Noonan, “Volga Bulgharia’s Tenth-Century Trade with Samanid Central Asia” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 11 (2000-2001): 198-199. 136 copper. This was a change from the Samanid double dirhams of ca. 1000, one of which contained only 28.2% copper.359 By 1041-2 the copper content on Qarakhanid coins reached 80%.360 Around this same time, or earlier, the Seljuks began minting gold dinars, which must have had an impact on the exchange of silver in the western Qarakhanid domains.361 The silver crisis seems to have hit the Ghaznavids less severely, considering that the coins of Sultan Mas’ud I (1030-41) fell to only 70%, from the 95% silver standard. The Ghaznavids also had at their disposable a revenue source of inexhaustible wealth: plundering India.362 Firishta notes that at Kanauj and Mathura, “Mahmūd broke down or burned all the idols, and amassed a vast quantity of gold and silver bullion […]

Then he went back to Ghazna with twenty million dirhams worth of gold and silver bullion. And the private spoils of the army were no less than that which came into the royal treasury.”363 The Ghaznavids responded by immediately issuing gold dinars, at very high standards of fineness (the dinars of Nishapur were 93-96% gold).364 While much could be made of the Qarakhanid silver crises, it seems that the minting crisis was more severe for the Liao. As demonstrated above, iron production was consistent throughout the Qarakhanid period.

359 David Sellwood, “The striking of Samanid double dirhems,” in Metallurgy in Numismatics Volume 1 edited by D. M. Metcalf and W. A. Oddy (London: The Royal Numismatic Society, 1980), 176-177. 360 E. A. Davidovich, “Coinage and the Monetary System,” in History of Civilizations of Central Asia Volume IV Part 1, ed. M. S. Asimov and C. E. Bosworth (Paris: Unesco, 1998), 404. 361 Ibid., 405. 362 André Wink, Al-Hind The Making of the Indo-Islamic World: Volume 2 The Slave Kings and the Islamic Conquest (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 113-135. 363 Ibid., 124. 364 Ibid., 407. Davidovich (1980), 61-2. 137

Further exacerbating the financial problems, beginning in the 1065 up until the end of the Liao hardly a year went by without some area of the Liao Empire being stuck by a natural disaster.365 For the first two decades these natural disasters only affected the southern agricultural region, but in the 1080s and 1090s the northern tribal regions began to suffer as well. These disasters reached our sources, because they forced the government to pay relief to the local populations or forced them to grant tax exemptions.

While these disasters did not influence politics directly, they meant a constant loss of revenue for the government, as it attempted to provide relief to displaced families exacerbating the already existing currency crisis. The government’s attempts at relief, however, seemed to be relatively ineffective. For example, in 1074, when floods hit the

Eastern Capital circuit, orders were given to build flood control works. But these orders were not implemented, because the hardship caused by the necessary levees of labor outweighed the benefits.366 From 983 until 1118 invasions of locusts, earthquakes, droughts, famine, floods, conflagrations, herd-decimating blizzards and crop-damaging frosts weighed heavily on the Liao dynasty’s financial situation. Twitchet and Tsetze argue that, “it is impossible to give any precise estimate of the impact of these natural disasters” from a statistical perspective, because there is no reliable data for estimating the Liao population in this period. There is a possibility that in parallel with the Song, the

Liao witnessed a population increase in the eleventh century creating a subsistence crisis, as it did for the Song.367 The Song also suffered from the locust that devastated northern

365 Twitchet and Tietze, “The Liao,” 132. Wittfogel and Feng, 389-395. 366 Ibid. Liao Shi, 105, p. 1460. 367 But for now we do not have enough information to prove such a parallel. 138

China in the 1070s and 1080s. It is possible that the monsoonal instability that put climatic pressure on the Song loess plateau disaster, also influenced the energy to water balances of the Liao economics/ecologies.368 For now, such parallels will need to remain at the level of speculation.369

One type of disaster could only hurt the Liao. The bitter winter of 1082-3 devastated the tribal populations as increased snowfall killed between 60 and 70 percent of the livestock.370 If these statistics are correct (only one source, the Liao Shi, records that 6 or 7 out of every ten horse died and nothing about other populations), then it is miraculous that the Khitan were able to hold on to power in the North until the 1120s. It is in this context of environmental and fiscal disorder that the rebellion of the Tsu-pu (a

Mongolian people probably related to the Tatars, Ta-ta, Ta-tan) occurred in 1069, which was put down by Yeh-lü Jen-hsien. In 1089, possibly in response to the environmental stresses, the Tsu-pu came under the strong leadership of Mo-ku-suu. In 1092, the Khitan attacked some of the Tsu-pu’s neighboring tribes and the Tsu-pu got involved. In 1093,

Mo-ku-ssu led the Tsu-pu in a series of powerful raids across the northwestern borders of the Liao, driving off many of the state herds grazing there. These herds were probably part of the Khitan side of the Liao administration. The Tsu-pu rebellion was joined by the

Ti-lieh (Tiriet), who lived around Hulun-nor (in western Heilongjiang 黑龍江) and had

368 Michael J. Storozum et al., “The Collapse of the North Song Dynasty and the AD 1048-1128 Yellow River floods: Geoarchaeological evidence from northern Henan Province, China,” The Holocene 28, no.11 (2018): 1759-1770; Ling Zhang, The River, the Plain, and the State: An Environmental Drama in Northern Song China, 1048-1128 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 369 For a recent discussion of Yellow River flooding see Ruth Mostern, “Loess is More: The Spatial and Ecological History of Erosion on China’s Northwest Frontier,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 62 (2019): 560-598. 370Ibid., 132-133. LS 24, 288. 139 rebelled previously in 1073. The Tsu-pu rebellion seriously threatened Khitan grazing lands and it took the general Yeh-lü Wo-t’e-la until the spring of 1100 to quell the rebellion and have Mo-ku-suu hacked to bits. It took Wo-t’e-la until 1102 to finished crushing the uprising of other northwestern tribes and quell a second Tsu-pu rebellion. It seems possible that depletion of herds in 1082-3 and other environmental stresses provided the ecological context for these inopportune wars in the North.

The short-term shifts in ecological contexts had an important impact on human societies. The regional complexities of these human-environment interactions present us from connecting this events either with the broader trends of the Medieval Climate

Anomaly, or with a Bulliet’s Big Chill or Ellenblum’s collapse. The above discussion does show that the Seljuks were influenced by the greater movements of mobile pastoralists in the tenth and eleventh centuries, covered in section two. Aridity along with a complex and opportunistic political strategy allowed them to create such a large empire.

The decentralization of Qarakhanid political culture meant that both invasions from the

Seljuqs and Qarakhitai as well as the devaluation of silver currency did not seem to influence their pattern of resources exploitation. Perhaps this can be attributed to the stability of alpine settlements.

140

Section 5. The Qarakhitai, the Jurchen and the end of the Medieval Quiet Period

The twelfth century witnessed another movement of mobile pastoralists across in Central

Eurasia. Similar to the earlier movements this movement occurred during a period of political change. This section analyzes the political and economic developments of the twelfth century in the context of global climatic shifts that were triggered by a succession of volcanic eruptions. By the 13th and 14th centuries, this series of eruptions ushered in the Little Ice Age climate regime, characterized by a Hallstatt solar event and a prolonged

Siberian High, which governed the global climatic system until the onset of the Modern

Warm Period in ca 1850. These changes in Central Asia coincide with shifts in the global climate regime. Bradley et al. 2016 point to the equatorial eruptions of the 12th and 13th centuries as ending the “unperturbed state” of the Medieval Quiet Period. Equatorial eruption in 1108, 1171 and 1230 impacted global surface temperatures.371 During the last quarter of the twelfth century heightened winter aridity and summer cooling that coincided with political and economic disruptions in Byzantium were possibly related to this increase in volcanic activity.372 One wonders if these same volcanic eruptions effected Central Asian climate in the twelfth century. However, before considering the

371 Ibid., 3. 372 E. Xoplaki et al., “The Medieval Climate Anomaly and Byzantium: A review of the evidence on climatic fluctuations, economic performance and society change,” Quaternary Science Reviews 136 (2016): 249. 141 consequences of this shift in climate, occurring in the long-term time scale, I need to discuss the political history further in the eastern part of Central Eurasia in the short-term time scale.

Two extremely dry periods are recorded by Central Mongolian tree ring series, namely 1115-1139 CE and 1180-1190.373 The second period coincides with the turbulent early years of the rise of Chinggis Khaan.374 It is still unclear how far west the 1115-1139 drought extended. It extended at least until Hexi, seeing as on dendrochronology records a dry period from 1100 to 1160, roughly corresponding to the drought in Mongolia.375

This drought in Mongolian coincides with the Jin invasion of North China and the

Qarakhitai invasion of Central Asia.

The political history of Qarakhitai dynasty has been largely established by Biran and Duturaeva.376 Biran attributes the establishment of the Qarakhitai state to Yelu Dashi.

Yelu Dashi, known as Nūshī Taifū, Qushqīn Taifū or Qughqīn son of Baighū in the

Islamic sources, is known be an eighth-generation descendant of Abaoji and born around

1087. Yelu Dashi was literate in both Chinese and Khitan, and he was awarded the title of jinshi in the Chinese bureaucracy in 1115 as well as joining the linya academy (the

Khitan version of the Hanlin).

373 Pederson et al., “Pluvial,” 4376. 374 Ibid. and Di Cosmo “State formation and periodization in Inner Asian history” Journal of World History 10 (1): 1-40. 375 Yang et al. 2019. 376 Michal Biran, The Empire of the Qarakhitai. Dinoza Shukurillaevna Duturaeva, “Tsentral’naya azia v periode pravlenia karakitaev (vtoraya chetvert’ XII- nachalo XIII vv.” PhD diss. IV AN RUz Tashkent 2010. 142

In 1130, the Qarakhanid Arslan khan asked the Seljuqid Sultan Sanjar for help in controlling his mobile pastoralist army. The Sultan Sanjar took Samarkand in 1130 and

“began to dispose of the throne in a despotic fashion, replacing one Qarakhanid with another.”377 A similar event occurred in the East. Around 1134, the Eastern Qarakhanid ruler of Balasaghun asked Yelu Dashi to assist him in controlling the Qarluq and Qangli tribes on his northern frontier. The Qara-khitai response, quite obviously pushed by the

Jurchen from the East, was to invade the Eastern Qarakhanid territories and make

Balasaghun their new capital. The Qarakhitai steamrollered on through the Qarakhanids and conquered the Farghana valley in 531/1137, laying open the “heart of Islamic Central

Asia.”378 In 1141 the Qarakhitai crushed the Seljuqs at the battle of the Qatwan steppe

(north of Samarkand). After this battle, both Sultan Sanjar and ruler of the Qarakhanids fled to Khorasan.379 The Qarakhitai invasion of Central Asia has been seen as a part of the increase in mobile pastoralist activity in this period. Although the Liao and the Xi

Liao shared many characteristics with other steppe empires, the Liao dynasty had adopted many aspects of Chinese and sedentary rule in north China prior to the conquest of

Central Asia. Wittfogel has argues that Khitan/Liao society did not assimilated to the

Chinese but rather formed a “third culture.”380 Biran calls this the “Chinese” part of Xi

Liao rule. What is perhaps more important is the Qarakhanids’ control over its mobile pastoralist population, the Qarluq and the Qanqli tribes, was decreasing during this

377 Davidovich, “The Karakhanids,”139. 378 Peacock, The Great Seljuk empire, 103. [Ibid., 41-42, Juzjani, Tabaqat, I, 261-2.] 379 Davidovich, “The Karakhanids,” 139. 380 Cited in Jing-shen Tao, The Jurchen in Twelve Century China: A Study of Sinicization (Seattle and Long: University of Washington Press, 1976, x. 143 period. Ibrahim III Tamghach Khan (536-51/1141-56), head of Western Qarakhanids was killed by the Qarluqs, and his body was left in the steppe.381

In 1141, the Xixia empire, despite opening up trading markets with the Jin and concluding a peace treaty with the Song, suffered from societal, economic and ecological unrest.382 The first few years of Jen-tsung’s reign were plagued by uprisings and natural disasters throughout the North and northwest of China. An uncorroborated account from

Wu Kuang-ch’eng indicates, that in 1140 a group of Khitan exiles rebelled under the leadership of Li (or Hsiao) Ho-ta. In 1142-3, famine and earthquakes lead to serious unrest in Xiazhou 夏州 and Xingzhou 興州. Jen-tsung responded by enacting tax remissions and relief measures, as well as sending his Chinese commander Jen Te-ching to pacify the uprisings.383 The Xixia seem to have experienced something similar to the

Qarakhanids in this regard losing control over significant parts of their populations. The

Jin expansion and Liao chaos may have impacted these revolts. Drought, which our dendrochronological sources record until approximately 1160, may have been another factor.

Scholars in the Islamic side of the field have described the 12th century changes as the end of the “dazzling efflorescence of medieval Khorasan and Persianate Central

Asia.” The Qarakhitai invasion is described as a “political disaster.” Transoxania was chaotic during this period. Sultan Sanjar was captured by a newly arrived group of Oguz

381 Ibid. 382 Dunnell, Great State of White and High, xxiv. 383 Dunnell “The Hsia,” 199. Wu Kuang-ch’eng 吳廣成, Hsi Hs ia shu shi 西夏書事. Pref., 1826; repr. In vols. 88-91 of Shih liao Ts’ung pien hsü pian 史料編續編 ed. Kuang-wen shu-chü pien i so 廣文書局編譯所 (Taipei: Kuang-wen shu-chü, 1968), 35, page 9a-11b, 16a. 144 tribesmen, possibly pushed into Transoxania from the Jin-Khitan westward moments.

Sanjar was imprisoned for three and a half years, meanwhile Khorasan was left without a leader and wide open to Oghuz plunder. This was a different group of Oghuz tribes from the ones that accompanied the original Seljuq conquest in the mid-11th century. Debora

Tor points out that during Sanjar’s captivity “the physical and intellectual infrastructure of Khurasan was destroyed.”384 However other scholars argue that the downfall of Seljuq power in the east did not result from external attacks, it was rather the discontent of the

Khurasanian population itself caused by the policies of Sanjar’s officials. Sanjar spent a massive sum (said to be three million dinars) on his unsuccessful campaign in

Transoxiana against the Qarakhitai, the taxes spent on this expedition came from both his sedentary and mobile pastoralist subjects. Khurasan and the steppes to the south-east of the Caspian in Gurgan and Dihistan had provided sufficient pastures for the

Turkmen/Oghuz tribes. Pressure from the Khwarazmian and Qarakhitai expansion was one factor that led to their revolt. Another aspect was how the Seljuqs had favored the tribes that had sided with them earlier on and often granted special administrative arrangements for these mobile pastoralist groups. There were other groups of

Oghuz/Turkmen who did not receive positions of political power but retaining political autonomy.385 When the Seljuqs invaded Khurasan they had not fully unified the steppe tribes. The same Oghuz power that brought the Seljuqs to power in the first place was not

384 D. G. Tor, “The Importance of Khurasan and Transoxiana in the Persianate Dynastic Period (850- 1220),” in D. B. Tor and A. C. S. Peacock eds. Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate World Iranian Tradition and Islamic Civilization (I. B. Tauris 2015), 4. 385 C. E. Bosworth, “The Eastern Seljuq Sultanate (1118-57) and the Rise and Florescence of the Khwarazm Shahs of Anūshtegin’s line up to the appearance of the Mongols,” in HCCA Volume VI part 1, 172. 145 fully controlled by the Seljuq political system, which was more focused on the Persian bureaucracy needed to administer the sedentary populations, with disastrous results in the

12th century. Some scholars maintain that by the 1150s Khorasan had shifted from the cultural and economic powerhouse of the preceding three centuries to a type of periphery or frontier zone, over which the Khwarazmshahs and the Ghurid sultans vied for influence. And yet Khurasan must have still been important enough for both of these two power to be vying for control. The Khwarazmshahs only gained full control over

Khurasan after the Ghurid collapse in 1206.386

Despite the societal and economic changes in the 12th century, cultural and intellectual life continued in this period as before. The Qarakhitai, ruling from a cosmopolitan standpoint with roots in the Inner Asian, Chinese and Islamic worlds, patronized both religious and secular scholarship in Transoxiana, largely through their

Qarakhanid vassals.387 In 556/1160-1 Mas’ud b. Hasan, as a vassal of the Qarakhitai,

(brother of ‘Ali b. Hasan, who fought the Karluks) fought against “pagan Turks,” winning a victory near the Ribat-i Malik, a caravanserai between Bukhara and

Samarqand. Muhammad al-Katib al-Samarqandi presented Mas’ud b. Hasan with the

Sindbad-nama, in which he praises the ruler for fighting off the pastoralist invaders. In addition to the Sindbad-nama, Al-Samarqandi also dedicated the ‘Arad al-Siyasa to

Mas’ud b. Hasan, and the poet Suzani Samarqandi wrote a number of qasidas (odes) in

Mas’ud’s honor. In 560/1164-5, Mas’ud oversaw the rebuilding of the walls of Bukhara.

386 Ibid., 6. 387 Michal Biran, “Scholarship and Science under the Qarakhitai (1124-1218),” in The Coming of the Mongols: The Idea of Iran Volume VII, eds. David O. Morgan and Sara Stewart (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2018), 55-68. 146

He also conducted a successful campaign against the Karluks to the South (in Nakhshab,

Kish, Chaghaniyan and Termez) and established order there. He suppressed an uprising by one of his commanders and was successful in his operations against the Oghuz, who had plundered Khorasan after the imprisonment of Sanjar. After a successful carrier his rule came to an end in 566 AH (1170-1AD).388 Further to the east despite the political upheavals of the Qarakhitai invasion, the growth of the Muslim community in Khotan during this period indicates the long-term success of the Qarakhanids’ eastern policy. By the middle of the twelfth century, the city had produced several Islamic scholars and by the beginning of the 13th century the town is said to have had 3,000 imams.389 As Peter

Bol has demonstrated that Chinese literary culture continued under the Jurchen, particularly the practice of wen among the shih class of Han literati.390

The Jin/Jurchen (1115-1234) conquest impacted other events across Central

Eurasia in the twelfth century. The economy of the Jurchen differed from the economies of the Khitan, the early Seljuqs and the Qarakhanids. Although they are often aligned with other mobile pastoralist people, their economy rested on fishing and hunting in the forests and farming and cattle raising on the plains. Although they raised horses for export the majority of their domestic animals were oxen. Jurchen exports included horses, falcons, gold, pearls and forestry products such as beeswax, pineseeds and ginseng.

Similar to the Khitan, Jurchen tribal prehistory is immensely complex. It is easier to

388 Davidovich, “The Karakhanids,” 140. Davidovich notes that two manuscripts of Jamal Qarshi give this year as AH 560, but she has corrected many of the errors in Qarshi’s account with numismatics. (Davidovich, 1977, pp. 179-83.) 389 Biran, “Eastern Exchange,” 582. 390 Peter K. Bol, “Seeking Common Ground: Han Literati Under Jurchen Rule,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47, no. 2 (December 1987): 461-538. 147 speak of a Jurchen confederacy, or as Herbert Franke calls it a “federated nation” than of a unified ethnicity as per the modern definition.391 During the Liao period they are known to have inhabited Manchuria. In the early tenth century, they were referred to as the Nü- chen, apparently pounced in Khitan, as Lü-chen. However, during the Liao the character chen was prohibited because it was part of the personal name of the Liao emperor Hsing- tsung. Therefore, the Jurchen were referred to was Nü-chih.

Parts of the Shi-wei confederation joined the Jurchen in the early 10th century and with the subjugation of the Bohai kingdom part of the Jurchen became the subjects of the

Liao. But the Liao conquest of Bohai and subsequent indirect rule of their territory, gave part of the Jurchen more diplomatic freedom. They sent an envoy to the Later Tang in

925 and beginning in 961 sent envoys to the Song court via the sea routs along the Liao- tung peninsula. It is unknown whether the Jurchen envoys to the Song from 916 to 1019 were from the Jurchen groups who were under nominal Liao control or from other groups living outside the reach of Liao administration. In 991, the Liao built palisades long the routs that travelers would take from Manchuria blocking the Jurchen land envoys.

However, Jurchen groups seem to have profited from their proximity to the sea and during the 1010 Khitan campaign against the Koryo they helped the Koreans defeat the

Liao. Allying with the Koreans allowed them to keep the sea routes open to the Song.

Thus, the Jurchen enjoyed a certain amount of political and economic independence under the Liao before the consolidation of the confederation by Wu-ku-nai (1021-74).

391 Herbert Franke, “The Chin dynasty,” in The Cambridge History of China Volume 6: Alien regimes and border states, 907-1368 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 218. Franke uses the term “nationlike federation” for the period of consolation under Wu-ku-nai. Ibid, 219. I follow Franks account of the rise of the Jurchen closely. 148

Wu-ku-nai extended his rule over eastern Manchuria from the Ch’ang-pai shan, “ever white mountain 長白山,” to the five nations wuguo 五國 in the north and was awarded the title of jiedushi 節度使 by the Liao. Despite the awarding of many Liao titles to the

Jurchen tribal leaders, the yearly tribute-trade transactions between the Liao court and the

Jurchen were at times violent and coercive. A trend that did not lean toward the Liao’s favor. By the 1070s, the Liao were in the midst of a financial and environmental stress, whereas the Jurchen’s extensive access to natural resources and their own iron working industry gave them power the Liao could not control. All that was needed was a greater sense of political unity to turn the tables against the Liao.

This political unity was established by Wu-ku-nai’s grandson, A-ku-ta. Under A- ku-ta’s predecessor Wu-ya-shu (r. 1103-13) the Jurchen stabilized their border with

Korea and the Wan-yen house, later the Jin imperial family, gained more support from the other tribal groupings. The Wan-yen clan was originally from the valley of the An- ch’u-hu (an-chu-hu “Golden”) river. An-chu-hu was the Jurchen name for the modern

Ashi river (which got its name during the Qing period). It is the right or southern tributary of the Songhua (also called the Haixi, Xingal and Sunggari) river in Eastern

Manchuria, to the east of Harbin. It was also referred to as the A-la-ch’u-k’o (pin. a-la- chu-ke) in the 1990s. This region was the center of the Jurchen state and the location of the Jin Supreme Capital (shang-ching), situated near the town of A-ch’eng to the southeast of Harbin.

In 1113, A-ku-ta was elected as leader of the Jurchen and was appointed as a military governor by the Liao. Soon thereafter a war broke out between the Liao and the

149

Jurchen. The Liao armies were crushed and A-ku-ta became the ruler of Manchuria. The next ten years saw the defeat of the Liao. In the third and fourth month of 1123, oath letters were exchanges that gave the Jin the status of Liao successors, thus the recipients of the annual payment of 200,000 tales of silver and 300,000 bolts of silk that had been exchanged between the Liao and Song since 1005. A-ku-ta died a few months after the letters with the Song were exchanged. It seems the Liao put up very little resistance to the

Jin advance. In 1124, a peace treaty was concluded with the Xixia, who recognized their status of “outer vassal” of the Jin.392 Although the conquest of the Northern Song did not begin until 1125, it was during the first two decades of the 12th century that Jin power in

East Asia was formed. In 1126 the Koryo king declared himself a vassal of the Jin.393 By

1127 the Jin had crushed the Song and a Jin puppet dynasty the Ta-Ch’u “great Ch’u” was set up in its place in north China. The drawn-out war between the Jurchen and what would become the South Song does not really concern us here, although we do know that the Yellow river Hubei crisis contributed to the weakening of the Northern Song. The fatal blow was dealt to the Liao in the very beginning of the twelfth century.

A recent study has suggested that short term climatic events contributed to the early 12th century weakness of the Liao.394 Based on a systematization of references from the Liao Shi and the Jin Shi, Li et al argue that “the intensity and concentration of extremely cold anomalies in the Liao and Jin records from 1109 to 1127, which is much

392 Ibid., “The Chine dynasty,” 226. 393 229. 394 Yali Li, Gideon Shelach-Lavi, Ronnie Ellenblum, “Short-Term Climatic Catastrophes and the Collapse of the Liao Dynasty (907-1125): Textual Evidence,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 49, no. 4 (Spring 2019): 591-610. The others claim to be using the same methodology as in Ellenblum’s Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean, and do not analyze broader Liao economy history. 150 greater than those in Mongolia from 2000 to 2013, can explain the rapid influx of the

Jurchen tribes southward into Liao and Song territories.”395 As per Li et al’s reconstruction, “prolonged cold spikes” during the period from 1109 to 1113 influenced the unification of diverse tribes under A-ku-ta. The advance of the Jurchen to the south also corresponds with cold events in 1116 and 1125-1127. These cold events, defined formulaically by Li et al, followed the first equatorial eruption that ended the Medieval

Quiet Period. However, this is likely to be coincidence and Li et al do not present an analytical framework for connection to hypothesized cold periods and economic changes.

As discussed above the Liao financial crisis began in the 1050s, well before these cold spells, but Li et al’s insistence on the influence of the short-term cold spells on the early

Jurchen is worth pursuing. Li et al’s interpretation contradicts Ge et al. 2014’s study which suggests that the period between 1020 and 1120 was one of the four warmest epochs in the last two thousand years, with the period of 1081 to 1110 as the second- warmest period in the sequence.396 Liangcheng Tan et al. have also suggests that drought was an important factor in dynastic change in the early 12th century.397 Tan et al’s work on speleothem proxies the Huangye Cave, eastern Gansu Province, indicates a period of

“declining precipitation or temperature” from 1111 to 1140 CE, with in the context of a generally wet period from 730 to 1200 CE.398

395 Ibid., 607. It is unclear how they are measuring this comparison because medieval sources do not record temperature in the same way as modern sources do. 396 Ibid, 599, note 9. 397 Liangcheng Tan, Yanjun Cai, Zhizheng An, R. Lawrence Edwards, Hai Cheng, Chuan-Chou Shen and Haiwei Zhang, “Centennial- to decadal-scole monsoon precipitation variability in the semi-humid region, northern China during the last 1860 years: Record from stalagmites in Huangye Cave,” The Holocene 21, no., 2 (2010): 287-296. 398 Ibid., 291. 151

As we saw above in the Seljuq and Qarakhanid examples, the impact of short- term climatic shifts, were just as important as the complexities as controlling a diverse and mobile population. The Manchurian Khitan rebelled against the Jin in 1161. Shih- tsung (emperor Yung, originally named Wan-yen Wu-lu, b. 1123, r. 1161-1189), was able to defeat the rebellion the next year. Part of the defeated Khitan fled to the Song and the rest were distributed among that Jurchen units.399 Toyama Gunji has argued that

Yellow River flooding put stress on the Jurchen towards the end of their reign. In 1194, the river breached its banks and formed two new courses. This catastrophe impacting the fertile and economically crucial regions of the Jin state and lead to unrest among the population. The natural causes debilitated the economic foundations of the Jin state.400

The defense against the Mongols in the north further taxed the state coffers as Franke describes, “these defense measures, together with the repeated ‘punitive’ campaigns into

Mongolian territory, severely taxed the resources of the Chin just at a time when the

Yellow River floods had hit their agricultural surplus areas in north China.”401 The

Jurchen case indicates the both environmental and political factors were responsible for the rise and fall of the dynasty.

399 Franke, “The Chin dynasty,” 243. 400 Ibid., 245. Toyama Gunji, Kinchō shi kenkyū, Tōyōshi kenkyū sōkan no. 13 (Kyoto, 1964), 565-592. 401 Ibid., 246. 152

Conclusion

This thesis has attempted to upset the trend towards philologically oriented studies in the historiography of pre-modern Central Eurasia. Its main intervention in American scholarship was connecting the medieval history of Central Eurasia with global environmental and climate history.

In section one, the large-scale cycles of natural climatic shifts were explained, and a rough outline of their impact was described for Central Eurasia. This section demonstrated the Central Eurasian climate shifted in responses to global trends.

In the second section, the analysis moved into the more complicated realm of short-term climatic and environmental change, much of which is not fully explained by the scientific data alone. On the other hand, understanding the ecological context of well understood historical events also contributes to the historians’ goal of giving his readers access to past realities. The short-term environmental stresses put on the Shatuo/Jin,

Liang and Later Tang dynasties helped the Liao rise to power and establish a transregional and multi-ethnic empire in only twenty years. As the eleventh century dragged on, the Liao experienced a set of natural disasters that put undo monetary strains on their economy. A drier Inner Asia, connected with a warmer MCA climate regime, put strains on the pastoralist economies to the north of the Liao. This drier epoch was proceeded by a period of environmental instability that began during the Uyghur period. 153

A similar moment of pastoralist weakness, or a change in resource base, is found on the western side of the steppe in the Qarluq weakness and Samanid expansion into the steppe in the late 9th and early 10th centuries.

In section three, I discussed the sedentary administration of the Samanid and

Ghaznavid dynasties. In the context of relative aridity their hydraulic policies were successful. At the same time, developments in irrigation agriculture, that began in the early Samanid period, allowed the medieval society to impact the landscape in a more direct way.

The fourth section returned to the discussion of mobile pastoralist regimes. The

Qarakhanid rule interacted with the convergence zone histories demonstrated by proxies from Central Asia, China, and India. It is possible that in the Tarim basin, increased runoff from the Tibetan plateau facilitated the establishment of the Qarakhanid highland urbanization. The Tangut conquests on the 1030s interrupted the Qarakhanid trade with

North China and pushed tribes into the steppe to the north of the Qarakhanids.

Nonetheless, trade with North China flourish during the period of Qarakhanid vassalage to the Seljuks. The Qarakhanid case shows that during the MCA the impact of the climate was ameliorative to the expansion of urban culture in the highlands. One of the implications of this argument is that the crisis model of environmental impact does not apply to the Medieval Climate Anomaly period in Central Asia.

The fifth section showed the connection between the long-term time scale in section one operated under and the smaller time scale that sections two through four operated under. The transition between short-term and medium-term environmental

154 changes influences how we think of the transition between the 10th and 11th centuries and the 12th century in Central Eurasian history. In the short-term climatic changes, which were not often fully appreciated by the chronicles, had a significant impact on the non- elite populations and economic context that each regime was presented with. In the boarder context of massive flooding and chaos during the late Northern Song dynasty, the climatic context helped usher in the Jin dynasty’s conquest and the Khitans’ invasion of

Central Asia proper. It was not a warming in Mongolia and a cooler China, which would have induced drier conditions, that facilitated the Jin conquest, rather it was the economic strain wrought by natural forces on both the Liao and the Song that facilitated the

Jurchens’ success.

The purpose of this thesis was to connect the discoveries of paleoclimatology with the existing scholarship on medieval Central Eurasia. The discussion was highly limited when it comes to primary source materials. The next step in this research is to conduct a synthesis of economic change based on the primary source materials from both Islamic and Sinitic textual archives and the archives of material culture. Such research will facilitated our understanding of the short-term time scale.

Setting aside the short-term time scale for the moment a few conclusions are in order concerning the long-term time scale. In general, the climatic conclusion of this thesis is that the crisis model does not work for the MCA at least in the Central Eurasia context. In the shadow of Geoffrey Parker’s Global Crisis, historians from fields as diverse as military history and world history have explored the importance of the Little

155

Ice Age climatic crisis.402 This discussion of a 17th century crisis with global impact has been pick up by the field of East Asian history.403 Although some regions still lack coverage, in the past ten years the Little Ice Age has developed an extensive and nuanced scholarly literature on this period.404 This model of climatic crisis and its human ramifications may have influenced, either positively or negatively, the agendas of historians Richard Bulliet and Ronnie Ellenblum. These two writers apply a similar type of crisis model to their own discussions of the eleventh century in the Middle East and

Central Asia.405 I have discussed a portion of the evidence for this eleventh century crisis in section four. In the Qarakhanid case the expansion of a mobile pastoralist empire coincided with the expansion of urbanization during the Medieval Climate Anomaly. As mentioned in the introduction, the crises model has been applied productively to the Late

Antique Little Ice Age in Central Eurasia. It is possible that future researchers will be able to apply an a qualified version of the crisis model to the Little Ice Age/Hallstatt event in Central Eurasia as well and research is emerging on this topic.406 However, if studies of the Little Ice Age in Central Asia are to be successful, human-nature and

402 Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2013); Sam White, The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 403 William S. Atwell, “Some Observations on the ‘Seventeenth-Century Crisis’ in China and Japan,” Journal of Asian Studies 45, no. 2 (February 1986): 223-244; Jiang Wu, Leaving for the Rising Sun: Chinese Zen Master Yinyuan & the Authenticity Crisis in Early Modern East Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Timothy Brook, The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties (Cambridge and London: Harvard Universityr Press, 2010). 404 Dagomar Degroot, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Sam White, “The Real Little Ice Age,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 44, no. 3 (Winter, 2014): 327-352. 405 Bulliet, Climate, Camels, and Cotton. Ellenblum, The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean. 406 Guobao Xu et al., “Regional drought shifts (1710-2010) in East Central Asia and linkages with atmospheric circulation recorded in tree-ring d18O,” Climate Dynamics 52 (2019): 713-727; Jianxin Cui, Hong Chang, Georger S. Burr, Xiaolong Zhao, and Baoming Jiang, “Climatic change and the rise of the Manchu from Northeast China during AD 1600-1650,” Climatic Change 156 (2019): 405-423. 156 human-climate interactions during the MCA will need to be established. As I have shown above the analysis of historians needs to embrace the complexity of contradictory evidence, whether it be related to us by medieval chronicles or modern paleo-climatic proxy reconstructions. The complexity of environmental interactions need not follow the linear causation.407

Second, the westerlies argument for medieval central Asian climate history gives us a sense of the world historical importance of this period. Brian Fagan in his popular history of the MCA remarked that having intended to find a story of society progress basking in medieval warmth, he was surprised that what he found had so much to do with drought. In fact, megadroughts are the most important characters in his story.408

However, the differentiation between relative dry periods and sudden droughts is crucial to understanding the climate history of the period.

Third, understanding the impact of natural climate change and its relation to

Central Eurasia economic history addresses world history more directly. David Christian in his 1990 article “Inner Eurasia as a unit in world history” argues for an Inner Eurasia ecologically doomed from the beginning by low levels of precipitation.409 Significantly more arid than Christian’s Outer Eurasia, Inner Eurasia would seem to be incredibly susceptible to drought and climate induced crisis. Many of the early studies in Central

Eurasian climate history have assumed this ecological weakness. This interpretation of

407 Preiser-Kapeller, A Collapse?, 217. 408 Fagan, The Great Warming, 106-119, 229. 409 David Christian, “Inner Eurasia as a Unit of World History,” Journal of World History 5, no. 2 (Fall, 1994): 173-211. This article is still an important statement in world historical writings. The comparison of my findings with it just shape better what I’m trying to argue. 157 long-term Central Eurasian history, which stems from the breakup of the Soviet Union has seen a lot of revision over the years, but if we apply the westerly zone narrative to

Christian’s Inner Eurasia model, then a fluctuating climate between relatively warm/dry and cool/wet period would mean that we should expect urban expansion only during cold and wet periods. It has been suggested that Chinese expansion into Xinjiang occurred during these cold and wet periods, because there were more resources for agricultural production.410 However the complexity of climate history should not be underestimated.

Christian writes that, “Harsh climates compound the effects of low rainfall.

Northernliness and continentality make for greater extremes of temperature than in Outer

Eurasia, for long winters and hot summers. Taken together, these factors have depressed the ecological productivity of most of Inner Eurasia. The differential in natural productivity between Inner and Outer Eurasia has shaped the history of Eurasia in profound ways and over long periods.”411 The environmental history of Central Eurasia more broadly shows that the region was not ecologically impoverished. A better understanding of the ecology of Central Eurasia as well as a deeper understanding of how that ecology interacted with global climatic patterns will have to be taken into account when periodizing resource utilization in Central Eurasian history over the long term.

410 Millward, “Towards a Xinjiang Environmental History,” 299. 411 Christian, “Inner Eurasia,” 181. 158

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