This chapter explores four legal opinions (fatwās) of the Mauritanian jurist al-Qaṣrī b. Muḥammad (d. 1235/1819) from the Nawāzil al-Qaṣrī. Islamic law has typically been an urban discourse produced by scholars based in cities, but from the 17th century onwards, the emergence of nomadic groups specialising in religious studies fostered the spread of Islamic literacy and law in the trans-Saharan region. This rural juristic activity, produced away from the cities and among pastoralist and other non-sedentary groups, differed from that of the urban jurists, and is available in the form of ‘case collections’ (nawāzil), responsa (ajwiba) and archival documents that allow us to write the cultural and social history of pre-colonial West Africa from an insider’s perspective.

The pattern of the settlement stories of the founding father found in the genealogical traditions of both cultures, ties the origin of an ethnic group or residents of a certain city to a forefather who at some point emigrated to the area. This pattern does not exist within the literatures of the ancient regional civilizations, such as Mesopotamia or Egypt, whose people did not regard themselves as immigrants, even though, throughout the centuries, many wanderers and immigrants from other places integrated within their societies and even held leadership positions. This chapter discusses the founding-father pattern and traces signs for the existence of similar literary traditions in other areas within the Mediterranean basin, such as in a series of Anatolian inscriptions that originated in the kingdom of Que in Cilicia, northwest of the Syrian coast. Following this, the chapter discusses the reasons for the growth of this literary pattern in the eastern Mediterranean.

Prior to the Opium War China was central to Pacific Asia, but it was not in control of its neighborhood. The mobility of the various nomadic groups threatened China’s northern and western frontiers, and Vietnam’s successful resistance to Ming annexation set a southern boundary-stone. While China’s centrality was not hegemonic, its location, demographic preponderance, and artisanal production made China the center of regional attention. Conversely, because of China’s demographic and production centrality, China was more interested in defending what it had than in imperial adventures abroad. Its foreign policy was one of controlling exposure in relationships—thin connectivity. By the Ming Dynasty this evolved into the tribute system, whose core was a ritualized exchange of deference by the neighbor for acknowledgement of autonomy by China.

Chinggis Khan granted his eldest son Jochi parts of Mongolia, Siberia, Khwārazm, and the Qipchaq steppe. The Golden Horde (Jochid Ulus) rose from these territories and newly conquered lands, including the Russian principalities, in the 1260s. Benefiting from their unique location at the intersection of Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, they pursued a multilateral diplomacy and built lasting trade and military partnerships with the West and the Islamic world. Although politically independent, the Golden Horde kept close ties with the other Mongol khanates until they collapsed gradually in the fourteenth century. The Jochids subsequently adapted to the new environment and created several khanates in the Crimea, Central Asia, and Siberia. These smaller but enduring powers inherited the Golden Horde’s political and literary traditions, some surviving into modern times. The Golden Horde also had a deep impact on the state formation of its sedentary neighbors and former vassals.

Attempts to re-write recent world history as a long series of struggles against European imperialism are inherently self-defeating, for the effect is exactly what it is purportedly trying to avoid. By making struggle against Europe the sine qua non of the past two hundred years of overall human experience, such an approach privileges Europe, and so is by definition Eurocentric. Furthermore, it would be wrong to assume that only European imperial pasts are present in the contemporary international system. Other imperial systems have also left their marks on historical polities that are kept up by today’s polities. In this chapter, we discuss ho what we have elsewhere baptised the steppe tradition is still alive in parts of Central Asia. It has also left a solid legacy in Turkey, as well as remnants in Russia. The difference between these polities and European ones are often observed. The debt they owe to the Eurasian imperial steppe tradition takes us one step closer to accounting for these differences.

Volume 1 of The Cambridge History of Global Migrations documents the lives and experiences of everyday people through the lens of human movement and mobility from 1400 to 1800. Focusing on the most important typologies of preindustrial global migrations, this volume reveals how these movements transformed global paths of mobility, the impacts of which we still see in societies today. Case studies include those that arose from the demand for free, forced, and unfree labor, long- and short-distance trade, rural/urban displacement, religious mobility, and the rise of the number of refugees worldwide. With thirty chapters from leading experts in the field, this authoritative volume is an essential and detailed study of how migration shaped the nature of global human interactions before the age of modern globalization.

Volume 1 of The Cambridge History of Global Migrations documents the lives and experiences of everyday people through the lens of human movement and mobility from 1400 to 1800. Focusing on the most important typologies of preindustrial global migrations, this volume reveals how these movements transformed global paths of mobility, the impacts of which we still see in societies today. Case studies include those that arose from the demand for free, forced, and unfree labor, long- and short-distance trade, rural/urban displacement, religious mobility, and the rise of the number of refugees worldwide. With thirty chapters from leading experts in the field, this authoritative volume is an essential and detailed study of how migration shaped the nature of global human interactions before the age of modern globalization.

Chapter 3 examines Armenian deportees and locusts in the Jazira between 1908 and 1918. It places the Armenian genocide within the longer history of efforts to control the Jazira, as the district created for the settlement of nomads in 1871 transformed into the final destination for many of the empire’s Armenian citizens. The chapter exposes the complicated ways the violence affected and was affected by the environment. One German locust expert even suggested that the deportations of the genocide coupled with war mobilization to make the locust invasions worse because so much land was left fallow. But the environment also managed to help some escape, whether children who survived by working as shepherds for pastoralists or the Armenian who, while concealing his identity, worked as the locust-control officer of the Jazira. In a mark of the enduring challenge of the Jazira and its provincial division, Ottoman officials discussed how to draw better borders in the region throughout, from the lead-up to deportations in 1915 all the way to the end of the war in 1918.

Why do some societies emulate a hegemon, while others do not? Why did most societies accept Chinese civilization while some resisted it, and why do some societies in general emulate a hegemon while other societies resist? Conversely, more rare were societies that rejected Chinese civilization. Located mostly on the sparsely-populated northern and central Asian steppe, some semi-nomadic societies did not see as appropriate or desirable almost anything about Chinese civilization: settled agriculture, written language, and territorial states. The contrast with Korea and Japan – and later, Vietnam – is clear. Culture, not geographic or material interests, explains why some societies did not emulate China.

This chapter challenges a key precondition for many sustaining commons institutions - tight-knit communities. It argues that the gradual transformation of traditional nomadic societies into modern urban societies reflects a major change that has weakened the ability of kinship relations to serve as a social incentive to support sustainable common property regimes resulting in the fostering of a modern urban tragedy of the commons.

The chapter illuminates this argument by analyzing theories of social evolution and examining closely the urbanization processes undergone by Bedouin society in Israel, in which tight kinship relations traditionally supported sustainable management of the commons. The urbanization of Bedouin society challenged this traditional regime and triggered the evolution of private urban-style property units, on the one hand, and modern tragedies of the commons, on the other.

The chapter raises the question whether societies in which kinship ties have become less powerful can still produce strong enough incentives for collaboration.

According to the Mongol imperial ideology, when the Mongols fought with neighboring nations, they not only expanded their empire by conquest but also fulfilled the heavenly task of establishing order throughout the world by subordinating it to Chinggis khan (r.1206–27) and his successors. Therefore, the Mongols demanded the subordination to their empire of all peoples without exception, regardless of whether they were nomadic or sedentary. To be at peace with the Mongols meant unquestioning obedience to them, and other nations could not hope for peace without the official recognition of this subordination.

Examination of the art of war among the nomad peoples of the steppe could easily lead to archetypes. Indeed, the sustained similarities between the different descriptions that have survived, from the Xiongnu to the Mongols, are certainly very strong: the type of weapon, the tactic of the ‘Parthian shot’, the small horses, the decimal organisation of the army – over a long period these various elements have contributed to a unified pattern of nomadic warfare. Yet despite these undoubtedly important points of resemblance, the analysis should not be limited to them by ignoring developmental variations and interaction with different contexts and societies. One way to resolve this impasse is to identify the historically coherent periods individually within this continuum, and to restrict sources to this specific group of periods. The Turkish period is one such historical era: the expanses of the steppe were indeed unified during the second half of the sixth century, part of the framework of the trans-Asiatic Turkish empire and its tremendous prestige. At its heart, and then at the heart of the political organisations which it inspired and which succeeded it, we can imagine the existence of political and social lines of transmission which influenced military practices in this geographical zone as a whole. Sooner or later, all the later nomad empires were its descendants; the accent here will therefore fall on military life, in order to tease out the specific characteristics of the Turkish period from the archetype, without recourse to Xiongnu or Mongol sources. But elements of comparison with the Uighur empire which followed it in Mongolia, the Khazar empire which followed it in the western steppes, and finally the Khitan empire which dominated the extreme east from the tenth century, are identified.

Imperial Chinese society accepted and even lauded certain types of violence. Ideas about sanctioned violence developed largely in response to ideas about masculinity. In ancient China’s prevailing honour culture, elite men often used violence to win public approbation. They undertook hunting and warfare in order to construct a positive masculine identity. Up through the medieval era, the elite considered vengeance a legitimate response to shame. This value system fostered instability, so the government strove to limit sanctioned violence to representatives of the state. Over time, Chinese society reassessed traditional ideas about violence. Officials and thinkers deliberately sought to curtail violent behaviour in order to reduce the threat of chaos. Instead of glorifying bellicose heroes, historians reserved the highest praise for rulers and officials who fostered ethics, order, and harmony. From the tenth century onward, literati became China’s primary administrative class. These educated men prized scholarship and high culture, and they belittled violent behaviour as demonstrating a person’s embarrassing lack of self-control. The political and cultural pre-eminence of refined literati caused Chinese to further question the legitimate role of violence. Over time, Chinese behavioural norms became increasingly benign.