The Mongol Empire and Eurasian Exchange, c. 1240-1350

Evaluate the extent to which the Mongol Empire promoted exchange across Eurasia in the period c. 1240 to c. 1350.

John of Plano Carpini, an Italian friar sent by the pope as an envoy to the Mongol khan, account of his journey across the western steppe, 1247

In this country and also in Comania, we found many human skulls and bones scattered about on the ground like cattle-dung. We travelled through this country (of the Cangitae) from the eighth day after Easter to nearly the Ascension of our Lord. These people are pagans, and the Comans as well as the Cangitae do not till the soil, but only live on the produce of their animals; nor do they build houses, but live in tents. The Tartars have also annihilated them, and now occupy their country . . . .

William of Rubruck, a Flemish Franciscan friar who traveled to the Mongol court as a missionary, carrying a letter from King Louis IX of France, describing the Mongol capital of Karakorum, 1254

There are two quarters in it; one . . . of the Saracens in which are the markets, and where a great many Tartars gather on account of the court . . . and on account of the great number of ambassadors; the other is the quarter of the Cathayans, all of whom are artisans. Besides these quarters there are great palaces, which are for the secretaries of the court. There are there twelve idol temples of different nations, two mahummeries in which is cried the law of Machomet, and one church of Christians in the extreme end of the city.

Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant who served at the court of Kublai Khan in China, account of his travels, c. 1298

With these pieces of paper, made as I have described, he causes all payments on his own account to be made; and he makes them to pass current universally over all his kingdoms and provinces and territories, and whithersoever his power and sovereignty extends. And nobody, however important he may think himself, dares to refuse them on pain of death. . . . Furthermore all merchants arriving from India or other countries, and bringing with them gold or silver or gems and pearls, are prohibited from selling to any one but the Emperor. . . . The merchants accept his price readily, for in the first place they would not get so good an one from anybody else, and secondly they are paid without any delay.

Summary of exchanges between the Mongol states in Persia and China, 1250s-1310s (original summary written for this course)

After the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258, the Ilkhan Hulegu founded an observatory at Maragha in northwestern Iran under the Persian scholar Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, where an astronomer from China worked alongside Muslim scholars. In 1267 the Persian astronomer Jamal al-Din presented astronomical instruments and a calendar to Kublai Khan, who later created an office of Muslim astronomy in his capital. Rashid al-Din, a minister of the Ilkhans, compiled a history of the world around 1307 that drew on Mongol, Chinese and European informants. Persian cobalt was carried east, and potters at Jingdezhen in China used it to make blue-and-white porcelain that was sold across the Indian Ocean.

Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, an agent of a Florentine banking company, handbook of advice for merchants trading to China, c. 1340

The road you travel from Tana to Cathay is perfectly safe, whether by day or by night, according to what the merchants say who have used it. Only if the merchant, in going or coming, should die upon the road, everything belonging to him will become the perquisite of the lord of the country in which he dies . . . . And there is another danger: this is when the lord of the country dies, and before the new lord who is to have the lordship is proclaimed . . . . And neither will the roads be safe to travel until the other lord be proclaimed who is to reign in room of him who is deceased.

Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan Muslim scholar, describing his travels in China in the 1340s, account written down in 1355

China is the safest and best regulated of countries for a traveller. A man may go by himself a nine months’ journey, carrying with him large sums of money, without any fear on that account. The system by which they ensure his safety is as follows. At every post-station in their country they have a hostelry controlled by an officer, who is stationed there with a company of horsemen and footsoldiers. After sunset or later in the evening the officer visits the hostelry with his clerk, registers the names of all travellers staying there for the night, seals up the list, and locks them into the hostelry.

Places and dates recorded for the plague later called the Black Death, c. 1338-1353 (original summary of chronicle and archaeological evidence written for this course)

c. 1338-1339: Christian communities near Lake Issyk-Kul in Central Asia record deaths from pestilence on gravestones.

1346: Caffa, a Genoese trading port in Crimea, is struck while under siege by an army of the Golden Horde.

1347-1348: Constantinople; Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt; Messina in Sicily.

1348: Damascus; Florence; Paris; southern England.

1349: Norway.

1352-1353: Russian cities, including Novgorod and Moscow.