Publishers Weekly
10/10/2022
A series of Mongol invasions in the 13th century brought “sudden and dramatic change” to societies stretching from Vietnam to China, the Middle East, and Europe, according to this dense and revealing study. Historian Morton (The Field of Blood) explains how the Mongols’ nomadic culture and the massive size of their armies (up to 80,000 men) gave them an advantage over the agricultural and hybrid societies they invaded, including the Khwarazmian Empire of Central Asia, the Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate, and the smaller caliphates of the Middle East. Contending that the Mongol Empire’s “greatest military strength was the sheer terror it provoked” (they reportedly slaughtered 200,000 people during the siege of Baghdad in 1258), Morton notes that many societies decided to submit rather than fight. Morton provides a wealth of evidence showing that the Mongols left “a much more connected Eurasia in their wake” by opening new trade routes to China, allowing multiple religions to coexist within their empire, and incorporating innovative military technologies from the forces they conquered. Though the byzantine details of political infighting and dynastic upheavals slow things down, this expert study casts the Middle Ages in a new light. (Nov.)
From the Publisher
A remarkable scholarly achievement.” —New Yorker
“The Mongol Storm is an elegant reproach to the sort of academic history seen in narrow studies that are of interest only to other academic historians, exclude the general reader and, worst of all, are frankly unreadable. It is a reminder that the best history writing…is eminently readable. What is the point of it otherwise?” —Sunday Times
"A sobering account told with a stark Hobbesian realism, yet with a light writerly touch for all that.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
“[An] erudite, often thrilling and much-needed study…This is imperial history at its most ‘complex and messy’, but Morton passes little judgement…instead, he scrupulously contextualises all the actors within the belief systems of their day, and the harsh realities of their lives.”—Daily Telegraph
“With powerful prose, Morton leads readers through the complicated affairs of the Medieval Near East…A virtue of Morton’s book is that it doesn’t simplify anything but makes the most complicated parts understandable. For anyone who loves history, especially with military and diplomatic focuses.” —Library Journal
“A tremendous book. This is, at heart, a timeless story about the power of the survival instinct.” —The Critic
“This expert study casts the Middle Ages in a new light.”—Publishers Weekly
“This is the most exciting study of the Mongols and their encounters with the peoples of the Near East I have ever read. It is a story of epic proportions demanding much from an historian. Morton rises to the challenge. His scholarship is impeccable, and his judgments are judicious and compelling. He has an exceptional facility for finding the apt quotation to underscore his points, and his prose is precise, clear, and elegant. I found it extremely difficult to put this marvelous book down.”—William Chester Jordan, Princeton University
“When Mongol armies arrived in the Near East in the later Middle Ages, they transformed the region utterly and irreversibly. Nicholas Morton’s new history of their extraordinary deeds and conquests is deeply researched and elegantly written—essential reading for anyone interested in the descendants of Genghis Khan in the age of the Crusades.”—Dan Jones, New York Times-bestselling author of The Templars
“Morton’s The Mongol Storm is a well-researched and lucidly written book that will transform thinking about the great transitions of the Middle Ages. The phenomenon of Mongol expansion in the thirteenth century is usually told from the perspective of its Central Asian origins. Here, readers find the story of how the largest land empire in human history pushed westward into the Middle East, almost reaching Egypt itself. As medieval studies expands its focus onto more global connections, Morton’s book enables readers to see how war and trade, fear of violence, and desire for material goods tied this vast expanse together. This is a history we’ve been needing for some time."—Monica Green, fellow, the Medieval Academy of America, and independent scholar
“This outstanding book takes a deep look at Mongol history and the Islamic world over two centuries. Rulers of the largest land empire in history, extending from Korea to Poland, the Mongols are today often associated with conquest and destruction. In The Mongol Storm, Morton complicates these misconceptions, unearthing a wealth of references to their religious tolerance and their dissemination of revolutionary Asian technologies and cultures to the Middle East. He brilliantly examines the conflicts and alliances between the Mongols, Crusaders, Byzantines, and innumerable Muslim powers. Morton’s invaluable book shows how the Muslim world was profoundly reconfigured, and the broader history of our planet influenced for centuries to come, by the mandate from heaven.”—Taef El-Azhari, University of Helwan, Egypt
“An accessible and gripping narrative of the most important developments of the late medieval Near East.”—Anthony Kaldellis, University of Chicago
Library Journal
10/01/2022
With powerful prose, Morton (history, Nottingham Trent Univ.; The Crusader States and Their Neighbors) leads readers through the complicated affairs of the medieval Near East (from the Caspian and Aral Seas to Constantinople and Hungary) in the 13th century as the Mongol Horde swept over its lands, destroying every army it met and disrupting existing power relations. It starts with Chinggis (Genghis) Khan in 1218 and ends half a century after the death of Qubilai (Kublai) Khan in 1353, with the breakup of the Mongol Empire into four khanates fighting among themselves. At its peak, it was the largest contiguous land empire known. Some of the names discussed may not be familiar to readers—Khwaramzians, Ayyubid Muslims, Mamluks, Anatolian Seljuks, Cilician Armenians, and Frankish Crusaders. But these were some of the power players in small to large states in the medieval Middle East, where Mongol pressure continuously overturned things. A virtue of Morton's book is that it doesn't simplify anything but makes the most complicated parts understandable. VERDICT For anyone who loves history, especially with military and diplomatic focuses.—David Keymer
