- Physical and human geography
- Emergence of the pastoral way of life
- Military and political developments among the steppe peoples to 100 bc
- Closure of the Iranian borderland to steppe raiders and its consequences, 100 bc–ad 550
- The era of Turkish predominance, 550–1200
- The Mongol Empire, 1200–1368
- Decline of steppe power
Developments on the steppe proper
The tribes that remained behind on the Eurasian Steppe were of course affected by this massive Turkish influx into the Middle East. Trade connections with Islāmic lands intensified, and traders from Middle Eastern cities spread Islām far and wide among steppe peoples. To be sure, full compliance with Muslim law was scarcely compatible with pastoral routines of life; but after the 11th century most of the Western Steppe had become, at least superficially, incorporated into the realm of Islām. Along with the religion, heightened familiarity with civilized ways penetrated deep into the steppe. Miniature cities arose at river crossings and at the headquarters of powerful chieftains, where merchants gathered and urban artisan skills began to find limited scope.
In the Eastern Steppe, Chinese civilization played the same role, although the oasis cities of the Tarim Basin continued to offer steppe peoples alternatives to a purely Chinese pattern of higher culture until long after this period. Collapse of the Turkish Empire in 734, swiftly followed by a drastic weakening of the T’ang dynasty after a massive rebellion in 755, hastened rather than hindered the infiltration of new skills into the Eastern Steppe. The T’ang dynasty recovered control of China only by calling on barbarians for aid, which they received from a newly powerful Uighur confederacy (745–1209) that had started as one of the successor states to the older Turkish Empire of the steppes. But the Uighur horsemen who rescued the T’ang dynasty from its domestic difficulties did so only in return for handsome trade-tribute payments. Once begun, the flow of tribute from China continued as long as Uighur power endured. The Uighurs, of course, consumed some of the goods they carried out of China themselves but traded the rest with neighbours and neighbours’ neighbours for grain, slaves, and special goods such as jade, gold, and furs. A far-flung caravan network thus attained greater importance than ever before, binding steppe peoples to oasis cultivators in the south and forest peoples in the north and joining the parallel Muslim trade net of the Western Steppe.
Such exchanges involved more than simple export and import of goods. Religions continued to travel the caravan routes as they had done for centuries. Buddhism rivalled Islām in the Eastern Steppe, but the Uighurs, interestingly, asserted and maintained their spiritual independence of both of the great civilizations they touched by espousing the Manichaean faith. They also used a Sogdian script, derived from Persian, that supplanted the Turkish runic script and allowed them to create a more thoroughly literate society than earlier steppe peoples had attained.
The Mongol Empire, 1200–1368
Emergence of bureaucratic states
The next important transformation of steppe life occurred when nomad peoples began to supplement their age-old tribal organization by borrowing Chinese bureaucratic principles for the management of armed forces. Such experiments first appeared among rising states in northern China after the collapse of the T’ang dynasty in 907. During the next two centuries China’s political weakness allowed various barbarian peoples to overrun parts of the north once more while continuing to control ancestral steppe lands. The resulting hybrid states were known to the Chinese as the Khitan (907–1124), Tangut (990–1227), and Juchen (1122–1234) empires. It was natural for them to combine nomad tribal and Chinese bureaucratic principles of management in military and other departments of administration. The Khitan, for example, supplemented their horsemen with foot soldiers and developed combined tactics for using infantry and cavalry together in battle. Even more significant was the way in which their successors in northern China, the Juchen, set up a command structure on bureaucratic principles. The Juchen rulers divided their army into tens, hundreds, and thousands and put appointed officers over each unit. Consequently, among the Juchen, hereditary tribal standing did not necessarily coincide with ascribed military rank. For a brave and lucky man, army service became a career open to talent.
The Chinese had relied on appointed officers to command their soldiers for centuries. By applying the idea to steppe armies, a ruler could at least hope to transcend the fragility previously inherent in tribal confederations. No matter how solemn the binding oaths of blood brotherhood might be, because steppe horsemen had always followed their own tribal leaders to war, any quarrel among chiefs could immediately dissolve a formidable army into its original warring fragments. But in a bureaucratic system, hereditary chieftains no longer had their own tribesmen always at their beck and call. Before a chief contemplating rebellion against central authorities could count on support, he had to overcome his tribesmen’s loyalty to appointed commanders. Divided and uncertain loyalties in the ranks therefore made traditional tribal rebellion chancy at best and suicidal if the rebel chieftain’s tribesmen failed to follow. Sudden dissolution of steppe confederacies therefore became much less likely.
The superior stability of steppe polities organized along bureaucratic lines was evident when overthrow resulted not from internal disruption, in the old way, but from conquest at the hands of another bureaucratically organized armed force. The Juchen, for example, supplanted the Khitan only after improving on their rivals’ half-hearted efforts to appropriate Chinese patterns of military management; and the Juchen in turn were overthrown by the Mongols under Genghis Khan (1162–1227), whose armies were led by men appointed on the basis of demonstrated efficiency in battle, regardless of birth or hereditary rank.