Remembering Thomas T. Allsen (1940–2019): Medieval Eurasia Reimagined

Abstract

Remembering Thomas T. Allsen (1940–2019)Medieval Eurasia Reimagined Ruth Dunnell and Michal Biran The passing of Tom Allsen in February of 2019 provides an opportunity for medieval Eurasianists and Mongolists across the globe to review and celebrate their debt to this practitioner of comparative Eurasian history. Allsen's scholarly work constituted a profound paradigm shift that liberated the study of the Mongol Empire from its confines in philology and the sedentary-nomad binary opposition, and set it on an innovative new path. His rare ability to use sources in the major languages of the empire—Chinese, Persian, Russian—allowed him to look at the empire in its full Eurasian context and highlight the Mongols' indigenous norms and their composite imperial culture. Adopting the larger Eurasian perspective led him to pursue a series of comparative cultural studies that opened up new vistas on the political, socio-economic, and military history of the empire. His monographic studies and numerous articles and book chapters remain essential references and valued teaching tools (see the extensive bibliography that accompanies this remembrance). If the Mongols today are known not only as destroyers of cultures but also as the champions of cross-cultural contacts across Eurasia, this is first and foremost due to Allsen's scholarly enterprise. Tom Allsen's extensive body of research rests on the sturdy edifice of five path-breaking books: Mongol Imperialism, The Policies of the Grand Qan Möngke in China, Russia and the Islamic Lands, 1251–1259 (1987); Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire, A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles (1997); Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia (2001); The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History (2006); and The Steppe and the Sea, Pearls in the Mongol Empire (2019). Five trim volumes—The Royal Hunt, at ca. 400 pages including the index, was more than twice as long as the other four—worth their weight in gold brocade or pearls to scholars of the era. A posthumous monograph on alcohol in the Mongol Empire may be forthcoming.1 The topics trace a [End Page v] trajectory that reweaves the inextricably linked concerns of politics, economics, and material culture: theory and practice; sedentary and nomadic realms; humans and animals; the global and the local; the Eurasian steppes and the southern seas. It is now hard to imagine Mongol studies before Tom, prompting one senior scholar to remark, "I was fortunate to work on the Mongol world in what I now call the Age of Allsen."2 Many features of Tom Allsen's scholarship incite admiration; we are not alone in finding his spare style and modest presentation of bold hypotheses quite bracing. Free of jargon and fond of arresting examples, Allsen's arguments unfold in clear and purposeful fashion, even when the evidence to support some of his contentions is hypothesized rather than at hand: pose a question, investigate all varieties of data, and draw what now seem as entirely logical, but were then often novel, conclusions. Even the most complex topics emerged as clear, germane, and accessible to a general reader. Browsing through the bibliography of Allsen's later books, besides a rewarding education on its own, shows how widely and deeply this scholar read in the social sciences and how imaginatively he culled the literary record for evidence. A perfect model for students writing research papers at all levels. Stepping back to imagine the larger geospatial and temporal context of his subject, Allsen transcended conceptual and evidentiary barriers to pose new questions and draw connections in unlikely places. The value of such imaginings far exceeded the limitations of the data. While earlier scholars such as Paul Pelliot and John Andrew Boyle performed essential services in unpacking thorny linguistic issues and translating key sources, Allsen took the next necessary step of looking at the Mongol Empire and Eurasia from the perspective of the qan's court and its concerns, not through the eyes of outsiders, antiquarians, or conquered populations. He treated the Mongols like intelligent human beings, pursuing goals as rational to them as any group of like-minded people. This transformative approach began with Mongol Imperialism (based on his Ph.D. dissertation), which reoriented attention from philology to history, [End...