The Political, Military, and Social Environments

Charles Melville observed how historians see the “tossing of waves” but not “below the stormy surface.” An imperfect approach to perceiving processes transpiring below the surface—currents and counter-currents—is through conceptualization.

No two conflicts are identical. The Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz showed that the nature of war is eternal (unchanging). It is only the character of war that changes. There are select factors common to virtually every conflict (ancient, medieval, or modern): multiple political and/or military factions; oppositional politics; conflicting religions and ideologies; symbiosis (mutualism, commensalism, parasitism, amensalism); and external interference (for example, by foreign powers).

Aspects to Consider

A “simple” battle where two antagonist blocs faced each other across a battlefield was not the norm in post-Mongol Khurasan. The region experienced invasions, rebellions, sieges; migrations of peoples and livestock; slave raiding and pillaging of town and country. Khurasan was anarchic; hence Ögödei’s appointment of Chin-Temür to implement law and order; Möngke’s support for Shams al-Dīn Kart’s attempts to implement order. The period from c. 677/1278 to c. 720/1320 was characterized by protracted low-intensity conflict (e.g., civil strife, banditry), interrupted by sporadic episodes of tranquility or eruptions of high-intensity conflict. Examples of intermittent but intense violence include predatory raids on Herat, and sieges of Herat by Ilkhanid expeditions.

Just as vultures and hyenas follow a lion’s kill and hover for scraps, foragers and predators follow in the wake of armies to sift through plundered settlements. Squatters settle in villages, farms, and pastures, and claim ownership of dwellings, shops, windmills, watermills, irrigation channels (jūy, kārīz), and other immovable assets. Watermills (jūy ṭāḥūna), windmills (āsyābi bādī), and subterranean channels (qanāt, kārīz), even if partially wrecked, may be valuable assets. By acquiring properties that belong to others, squatters create the bases for future conflict with other claimants, including the rightful owners. The nineteenth-century Pashtun colonization of Khurasan, for instance, was a cause of twentieth-century conflicts in northern Afghanistan. Certain Ilkhanid fiscal-legal reforms were necessary to settle ambiguities over ownership of lands and waters (see Chapter Eight). Disputes over water rights persisted into the late Kartid era, compelling governmental action (ibid.).