Episode 18 The Pax Mongolica 

The Mongol Empire

Dr Craig Benjamin (2020)

Film Review

This lecture mainly concerns European-Mongol contact The Mongol conquests in China, Central Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe reconnected Europe to Asia for the first time in centuries. Owing to the Mongol’s passion for  trade, from 1256 on they guaranteed security for not only traders, but diplomatic envoys and pilgrims along the length of the Silk Road.

European contacts with the Mongols:

Pope Innocent IV – sent envoy to the Great Khan Guyuk in 1243. He respodned by demanding the pope present to his court in person.

Louis IX – sent Flemish prince William Rubrick to Karakorum in 1253 in response to a request from Chagatai (who ruled the Ilkhanate)  that they join forces against the Muslims occupying the Holy Land.

Marco Polo’s father and brother (Venetian merchants living in Constantinople) – following a trip to the Golden Horde In 1266, they traveled to Beijing to meet with Qubilai Khan. He supplied them with a letter requesting 100 scholars, holy oil and a letter from the pope. After returned to Venice to collect 15-year old Marco Polo, they returned to China, where Marco spent 17 years as advisor to Qubi;ai Khan.

Pope Nicholas IV – 1in 1289 sent the Franciscan missionary John of Montecarvino to all of the khanates. He built a Catholic church in Beijing when her arrived in China in 1299.

Rabbabn bar Sawma – a Nestoric monk of Turkic ancestry, he became one of the first Mongol to travel east from China. Visiting Constantinople, Rome and Paris, where he met with the French king Phillip the Fair. In 1288 he visited the English king Edward I in Gascony, which was under English control. He traveled to Baghdad in 1288 seeking to promote a European-Ilkhanate alliance but was unsuccessful. In 28 years of sustained travel, he visited Battuta (Morocco) and every other Islamic state, as well as all four Khanates. In 1325 he participated in a Hajj to Mecca.

Until the advent of air travel, it would never be this easy to travel from China to Europe via Central Asia and the Middle East.

Film can be viewed free on Kanopy with a library card.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/12373094/12373130