[
    {
        "id": 205099,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1966",
        "page_number": 55,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "50\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\nmonks, missionaries and translators of the holy scriptures came from Iranian Central Asia at a time when there was certainly no universal peace in Asia. But was there really something like a Pax Mongolica, even during a very short time? The Mongol rulers of China who had adopted the Chinese dynastic name of Yüan in 1271, regarded themselves, from Khubilai on, more as rulers of China than of a universal empire of which China was only a part. This is reflected, as we shall see, in the Yuan dynastic history which is usually vague and uninformed as soon as a geographical area outside of China proper is mentioned. Although Khubilai was the Great Khan of all Mongols, his rule was always threatened by dissatisfied pretenders who tried to set up their own kingdoms in the Northern and Western regions, and there are recorded, in Chinese historical sources at least, as many feuds, campaigns and full-scale wars with other Mongol rulers and pretenders as good-will embassies from the other Mongol ulus (dominions); those of Chagatai in Central Asia, the Ilkhans in Persia and the Golden Horde rulers of Southwestern Siberia and South Russia. The situation, at least in the fourteenth century, among the non-Chinese ulus was not much different. The Golden Horde rulers and the Persian Ilkhans were, to say the least, not friendly to each other and war was frequent. In short, it seems as if the Pax Mongolica is no more than one of those brilliant simplifications that can serve as chapter titles for world history books. There remains some doubt whether it was easier to get from, say, Venice or the Black Sea region or Persia to China under the Mongols than some centuries earlier.\n\nHowever that may be, there can be no doubt that there was a certain amount of cultural contact between China and the non-Chinese West under the rule of the Mongol emperors. But the fact remains that there was no Chinese Marco Polo, no Chinese Rubruk or Giovanni da Montecorvino. China, it seems, was not very much interested in learning more about the countries of the West; we have in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries no Chinese pilgrims like I-ching and Hsüan-tsang who had travelled to India in search of the Buddhist religion. There was no appeal and no challenge to learn more about the West. This relative indifference towards the civilization outside one's own geographical habitat and cultural background is to be seen in The Secret History of the Mongols, This fascinating book, the oldest",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205100,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1966",
        "page_number": 56,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n51\n\nsurviving specimen of a Middle Mongolian literary text, and an invaluable source on the customs and mores of the Mongols in their early formative period, has a lot to tell about the feuds and struggles of steppe tribes. But it remains singularly uninformative about the countries outside Mongolia. The campaigns against Russia, for example, are mentioned only in the most laconic terms. It is said in No. 274 \"they destroyed the towns of Ejil, Jayah and Meget\". Of these three only Meget, modern Mzcheti near Tiflis, is a town, whereas Ejil and Jayah are names of rivers—the Volga and the Ural respectively. And later similar confusion reigns between names of tribes and towns—the text mentions the \"population of towns like Asut, Sesut, Bolar and Man-Kerman Kiwa\". Asut are the As, the Ossetes; Sesut are probably the Saqsin; Bolar the Volga Bulgars; and Man-Kerman Kiwa means in Turkish the \"great town Kiwa\" which might refer to Sugdaq near Kaffa in the Crimea raided by the Mongols in 1223. All this shows a grandiose unconcern over countries that, after all, had become parts of the Mongol empire.\n\nThe situation is not very different if we turn to the Chinese sources. The dynastic history of the Yuan, Yuan-shih, compiled in 1368-1369 from existing records does not contain much on those parts of Asia that, at some time under Kublai Khan, had belonged to him who was also emperor of China. The compilers and historiographers whose work finally resulted in the Yuan-shih as we have it were mostly Chinese, and their attitude in writing a dynastic history was as a matter of course centered on China. It is perhaps significant that in the section reserved for foreign states in the Yuan-shih we find only entries of those countries which had always had ambassadorial contacts and so-called \"tribute\" relations with China, countries like North and South Korea, Japan, Annam, Burma and Champa. These were immediate neighbors of China. No special chapters were written on other Western states, even if they were dominated by Mongols—countries such as Persia or the Golden Horde or the Chagatai dominion of Central Asia. If they sent embassies or notifications the records must be looked for in the annalistic section (pen-chi). There are, it is true, a few data on Western Asia and even Russia scattered through the Yuan-shih, but they are extremely scanty. There is an appendix on the Western Regions to the section of political geography (YS ch. 63) where the kingdom of Uzbeg.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205117,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1966",
        "page_number": 73,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "68\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\nadministration of the local rulers of the Tun-huang region who were descended from the Chagatay branch of Chingis Khan's clan was still modelled after the Chinese prototypes. The names of offices mentioned in this Mongol letter written in the Mongol script are transcriptions from Chinese. The same applies to the feudal titles of these local rulers: they are Chinese and can be identified through Chinese sources. The document must have been written about 1355 or 1360, that is, rather late and at a time when the Tun-huang and Turfan regions were certainly not under direct control from Peking. Another document found in Turfan and dating from the same period has furnished evidence for another set of Chinese titles, in a context which is, linguistically, a strongly Turkicized Mongolian. The names of offices mentioned show that the administration of these Chagatay kings was a replica of the Chinese central and provincial government organization. Even the disposition of the Mongol documents found in Central Asia shows Chinese influence: wherever the name of a Khan occurs, a new line is begun.23 This same feature occurs also in the Mongolian letters written by the Ilkhans of Persia to the King of France and to the Pope. The presence of Chinese chancellery practices in Persia under the Ilkhans is further shown by the Chinese seals or rather stamps on these letters.24 We could even go one step further and ask how much of the government and taxation practices of the Golden Horde rulers in Southern Russia is of Chinese origin. It is generally recognized that medieval Russia, that is, the Muscovite kingdom of the Ruriks, was deeply influenced by the \"Tatar\" domination and took over some of the Tatar or Mongol patterns of government. The tendencies toward centralization in sixteenth century Russia can be explained by these Tatar influences which might eventually go back to Chinese administrative patterns.\n\nChinese art forms too have spread West under the Mongols. A good example is Persian miniature painting. It is not necessary to be a trained art historian or a specialist in Islamic art; even a layman would notice that thirteenth and fourteenth century Persian miniatures were deeply influenced by Chinese painting. On some early miniatures we find trees, rocks and clouds painted in the same way as Chinese painters did. Chinese painting must therefore have been known to the Persians under Mongol rule. Recently unassailable proof for the presence of Chinese art in Persia has",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205119,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1966",
        "page_number": 75,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "70\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\ncountry which had direct contacts with Europe, China and India and where information on all these parts of the world was available that went beyond the hazy and fanciful notions which existed in the other civilizations on foreign and distant countries. The geographical situation of Persia evidently favored this universal outlook on history as much as the Mongol domination over great parts of Asia had contributed to it.\n\nIf we try to assess the lasting influences of the Mongol rule in Asia we are confronted with the fact that from the second half of the thirteenth century on, or, to be more specific, from Kublai Khan (r. 1260-1294) on it is difficult to speak of a single Mongol empire. In theory Kublai Khan was, as Great Khan, the ruler of an empire stretching from China and Korea to Iran and Southern Russia, but the diversity of the subjugated countries made itself more and more felt. Kublai regarded himself more a Chinese emperor than a universal ruler. In China as elsewhere in the Mongol empire development followed a line where the local cultural substratum after some initial eclipses gradually re-emerged. In the Near Eastern and South Russian Mongol dominions this process was furthered by the Mongol rulers' conversion to Islam, and in Central Asia the Chagatay dominion followed soon afterwards. In the middle of the fourteenth century this development had already gone far. We should therefore regard the individual Mongol dominions as distinct cultural entities under Mongol rulers. There was no such thing as a Mongol civilization which reached all social strata in the individual dominions. On the contrary, the ruling Mongol and Turkish minority, was everywhere assimilated in varying degrees by the existing national civilizations. This process of assimilation was, as far as China is concerned, accelerated after 1368. The national dynasty of Ming which had, through a series of civil wars, gained supremacy over China and driven the Mongol ruler and his followers out of China and back into the steppes, introduced marriage legislation which forbade foreigners to intermarry within their group and instead encouraged or even prescribed intermarriage with the Chinese. This de-segregation imposed by the state resulted in the virtual extinction of the foreign national and linguistic groups on Chinese soil within a relatively short period.28 China and her traditional civilization had, by the end of the fourteenth century, scored a complete victory over the invaders and immigrants. In the other parts of\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
        "rank": 0
    }
]