EMPIRES OF THE STEPPES: The Nomadic Tribes Who Shaped Civilisation by Kenneth W.Harl, Bloomsbury Publishing
Published in History Today, Vol 73, Issue 10, October 2023
This is a roller coaster ride of historical narration, delivered with an infectious delight in the incidents, the accidents and charismatic individuals who have forced their way upon our world. It is empowered by rhetorical energy, so at times, one can catch the cadences of Professor Harl’s famously entertaining public lectures, as he plucks out a fascinating anecdote, or drops into his personal experience of ancient battlefields, moody sanctuaries and ruined palaces so beloved by the poets. So we hear that Josephus (the great historian of the Jewish revolt) had observed Sarmatian cavalry at first hand, when one of their raids sliced into the Near East in 72 AD or the very last Roman Emperor of them all, was the son of the man who ran Atilla’s chancellery, or that Genghis Khan marshalled his various concubines into four regiments of forty women.
He needs these skills, for Harl has embarked on an ambitious quest to take us on an epic journey of forty-five centuries of relentless conflict that spins out from the epicentre of the grassland steppes at the centre of Asia. This time scale will challenge many readers as will the constantly shifting geography, as we turn from events that effected the Chinese Empires, to those that impacted on the ancient and medieval states that dominated the Middle East, and then shift our detailed attention to the frontiers of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Christian kingdoms that stood in its wake. For the central objective of this book is not so much the indigenous nomad society of Central Asia but how it impacts on its civilised neighbours.
I was aware that less than a tithe of what I was reading would be remembered by the end of a week, but if your bookshelves are already decorated with the well-worn spines of John Julius Norwich’s three volume history of Byzantium or Steven Runciman’s three volume history of the Crusades, you will already understand the enchantment of being taken on an epic journey, embellished by a blizzard of exotic names which each take their turn to strut and fret their hour upon the stage and then are heard of no more. We become witnesses to adventures more fabulous than any fiction or film-maker can ever record: be it the foundation of Xanadu, or meeting the Khitan prince (Yelü Dashi) who was the inspiration for the Christian myth of Prester John, or the Chinese gunpowder technicians who launched their deadly projectiles into the wooden fortress cities of the Russians at the bidding of the Mongol Khans or Hulagu storming the mountain top castles of the Assassins on his way to destroy the Caliph at Baghdad, rolled up in a carpet and trampled into mincemeat by Mongol cavalry (which was the honourable form of execution that they awarded their own Shamans). My favourite take away is the realization that the Mameluke ruling class that dominated medieval Egypt for centuries was composed of young Kipchak boys, each one of whom had been kidnapped by Mongol horsemen, then sold to Venetian and Genoese slave traders on the Black sea shore who shipped them to Egypt where they were purchased and trained to become the slave army of the Sultans.
The irresistible strength of the cavalry armies of nomad tribes that emerged out of the steppes was based on the forbidding climate of Central Asia, an oven in summer, a blizzard in the winter and a paradise in the spring. The steppes are vast, stretching over the six thousand miles of grassland between the lower Danube and the Upper Amur. By 3500 BC, the various scattered communities of hunters and sheep herders living in Central Asia had learned to domesticate the horse, and soon after this developed wheeled ox-carts to carry their families and felt tents with them. This mobility combined with the military advantage of the first cavalry armies, can be traced by the wide dissemination of Indo-European culture, followed by wave after wave of further invasions, empowered by such steppe-land inventions as the chariot, the stirrup and most potent of all – the composite bow and then the armoured knight. So whether you look at the origins of Hittites or Hellenes, Cimmerians or Scythians, Persians or Parthians you find their origins in just another generation of steppeland conquerors – the most innovative of whom blend in and mix with the various indigenous cultures they have conquered. I also found it fascinating to discover how much of their restless murderous energy was consumed with internal fighting, against rival clans, tribes and confederations within Central Asia. How it was Tamburlane’s cycle of wars against the Golden Hoarde effectively ended Mongol rule over Russia.
Although are no wars that they cannot win if the nomad tribes were united, there was always a geographical determinate at work that placed a limit on their expansion. They need grassland, for their prized herds of horses which for a cavalry army could be numbered in hundreds of thousands. And whether we read, Herodotus, or a thousand years later, the reports of Ibn Fadlan, the steppe land culture had other dictats. There are many noble lineages amongst the tribes, but a remarkable equality in dress, diet and work helped bind the warrior society together. There was also an irrevocable sense of competition amongst the trouser-wearing horse-riders, almost as if they took their moral example from the stallions who fought each other to become master of the herds of mares. But this understanding that leadership could only be achieved through violence and maintained by murderous cruelty was balanced by generosity and an easy tolerance for all religions.
I have only one complaint. Although 410 pages long, it is still too short. I wanted to learn more about yoghurt and yurts, blood and milk, the circular patterns on their textiles, their felt panels, their sculptures, their disturbing body tattoos, their shaman spirit journeys and how this all fits in with their reverence for Mother Earth and Tengri, Lord of the eternal blue sky. I also thought that Professor Harl stopped his narrative too soon, rather than concluding with the Empire of Timur, we needed to hear the final death throes of this five-thousand-year-old confederacy of Turkic knights, marked by such battles as Chaldiran and Geok Tepe.
“Harl has embarked on an ambitious quest to take us on an epic journey of forty-five centuries of relentless conflict that spins out from the epicentre of the grassland steppes at the centre of Asia. ”