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The Mongol Empire and its Legacy. Edited by REUVEN AMITAIPREISS and DAVID 0. MORGAN. Islamic History and Civilization: Studies and Texts, Vol. 24, ULRICH HAARMANN and WADAD KADI, gen. eds. Leiden: Brill, 1999. PP. 361. Maps, footnotes, index; $146.50.
Mughal India and Central Asia. By RICHARD C. FOLTZ. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. xi + 190. $13.00.
These are two very good books. Though very different, they both have much to offer those interested in World History. And they share a common theme, which is captured by the title of the first volume: The Mongol Empire and its Legacy. In different ways, each shows the extraordinary extent, richness, and durability of the Mongol impact, and the way in which it accelerated the emergence of a single Eurasian world.
The volume edited by Reuven Amitai-Preiss and David Morgan is a collection of seventeen essays from a conference held in March 199 1 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. The essays convey a powerful impression of the vitality of studies on the Mongol empire and its successor states. The editors have grouped the essays under four main headings: the history of the Mongol Empire, the Mongols in the Middle East (mainly on aspects of the Ilkhanid empire), the Mongols in China and the Far East, and the Mongol Legacy. But the themes of the volume cross these borders at many points.
One important theme (touched on also in Richard Foltz's book) is the astonishing durability of Chinggissid legitimacy. Peter Jackson offers a nuanced account of the breakup of the Mongol Empire into different "Muses" that have too easily been seen as the patrimonies of members of Chinggis Khan's own family. Amitai-Preiss argues that the Mongol "Imperial idea" exerted a durable influence on Ilkhanid foreign policy. Hodong King and Junko Miyawaki explore the complex succession conflicts of Moghulistan in the fourteenth century, and of the Oyirad (western Mongolian) worlds. In both regions, claims to Chinggissid descent, or the absence of such claims, were amongst the most important factors in the outcome of...