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Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change: The Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors

Online ISBN:
9780824869526
Print ISBN:
9780824839789
Publisher:
University of Hawai'i Press
Book

Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change: The Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors

Reuven Amitai (ed.),
Reuven Amitai
(ed.)
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Published online:
17 November 2016
Published in print:
31 December 2014
Online ISBN:
9780824869526
Print ISBN:
9780824839789
Publisher:
University of Hawai'i Press

Abstract

Since the first millennium BCE, the nomads of the Eurasian Steppe have played a key role in world history, especially in adjacent sedentary regions: China, India, the Middle East, Eastern and Central Europe. Although the sedentary population often saw them as an ongoing threat, an imminent danger and “barbarians,” their impact on the sedentary cultures was far more complex than the raiding and devastation usually associated with them. The nomads were also facilitators and catalysts of social, demographic, economic, and—last, but not least—cultural change. Nomadic culture had a significant impact on the sedentary Eurasian civilizations, especially when the nomads ruled these regions. The nomads were frequently active contributors to the process of cultural exchange and transformation, influencing it through their active choices, and shaping the cultural and intellectual agenda of the lands they ruled and beyond. This present volume brings together scholars from different disciplines and specializations to look at the role nomads played as “agents of cultural change,” both in ancient and medieval times, especially during the heyday of nomadic power in Mongol Eurasia. This comparative approach, and the spatial and temporal wide scope enable a clearer understanding of the key role that the Eurasian nomads played in the cultural history of the Old World.

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