The vast expanse of land that forms the physical setting for the Chinggisid era in Inner Asian history extends from the forests of Manchuria in the east to the steppelands west of the Volga River stretching to the Black Sea. The forest and taiga zones of Siberia constitute the northern boundaries while the agrarian-sedentary world of China, the Islamic world and Christian Eastern Europe frame the region from the south and west. With the exception of the oasis city-states, many of them fabled connecting links in the Silk Road, much of this region consists of grassy prairies, the steppe, bounded by forest-steppe zones in the north and interspersed with deserts and semi-deserts in the south.

The history of this region from antiquity to modern times has primarily centred on the interaction of the nomadic world of the steppes with the much smaller Uralic or Palaeo-Siberian forest populations to the north, the settled, largely Iranian-speaking populations of the oasis city-states to the south and the larger states, often empires, south and later north of the steppe zone. The rise of the Chinggisid Mongol Empire was, in many respects, a culminating point in a long line of nomad-based polities with roots and political traditions going back to the Xiongnu (third century BCE–mid-second century CE). It was the most complex of these polities.

Neighbours of the steppe

The steppe, extending from the Danube to Manchuria, has been uncharitably termed the ‘inhospitable land of the barbarian’. These ‘barbarians’ were largely pastoral nomads whose neighbours viewed them as avaricious and violent marauders. In the west, this nomadic world was framed by Hungary and Rus', the latter an increasingly divided state contested by rival branches of the Riurikid ruling house. Both states included steppe lands and pastoral nomadic populations that had taken service with the Hungarian and Rus' rulers. South of the steppe lands and the fabled Silk Road cities of its southern rim (Samarqand, Bukhara, Kashghar) were the petty states of the Balkans, the fading Byzantine Empire, the Seljukid state of Rūm (Anatolia), Georgian-dominated Transcaucasia, and the fragmented ʿAbbāsid Caliphate and post-Seljuk polities of the Near East. In the east, China was also politically divided. In the north-west were the Tanguts (Chin. Xixia, 1038–1227) in Ningxia, Shaanxi and Gansu, extending to Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang. They spoke a language related to or a branch of Tibeto-Burmese. South of the Yangtze River was the ethnically Chinese Southern Song state (1127–1279), with its capital at Hangzhou. The Manchu-Tungusic Jurchen dominated the north-east, its ruling elite moving between five capitals (including Beijing). In 1125, the Jurchen had toppled the Khitan-Liao dynasty (907–1125), another Inner Asian people of Mongolic, or perhaps ‘para-Mongolic’, ethno-linguistic affiliations and took the Chinese dynastic name Jin (‘Golden’, 1115–1234).

Ethnogenesis: clan, tribe and state organization in Inner Asia

In Inner Asia, the nomads were organized hierarchically in lineages, clans and tribes defined by descent, real or fictive, from a common patrilineal ancestor. Although sharing a common name, territory, culture, language and political interests, tribes were fractious and prone to internal power struggles. The indigenous terminology for these entities was fluid and as a consequence often appears less than precise in the Arabic, Persian and even native sources that describe them. Expanding clans could become tribe-like in power and authority. Tribes often formed loose, polyethnic unions, potential states depending on their response to interaction with neighbouring sedentary states.

In nomad-based empires, the ruling clan, having achieved power by conquest, exercised a collective sovereignty over the realm. This gave rise to a succession system based on tanistry, which produced frequent throne struggles as any member of the ever-growing imperial house could claim supreme power. Attempts to regulate the ever-present possibility of internecine strife by establishing systems based on variants of collateral fraternal succession ultimately failed. Among some peoples, electoral councils (e.g. Mongol quriltais) confirmed power. Within the ruling clan, favour was usually given to princes born of noble mothers.