Mongol Rule Research Articles

Maintaining Gods in Medieval China: Temple Worship and Local Governance in North China under the Jin and Yuan

Maintaining Gods in Medieval China: Temple Worship and Local Governance in North China under the Jin and Yuan Iiyama Tomoyasu Translated by Macabe Keliher Despite the wealth of recent research on China’s middle period, local society and state control in North China under the Jin and Yuan remain unexamined.1 Work to date on middle-period history has given us a greater understanding of the economy and demographics of the Song, but it is confined to trends in the south, taking the Jiangnan region as the focus of research. As such, not much light has been shed on society in North China under Jurchen and Mongol control after the demise of the Northern Song, not to mention the forms of Jurchen and Mongol rule.2 Likewise, although research related to [End Page 71] the politics, economy, and military of the Yuan dynasty and Mongol Empire3 has developed steadily, little work has been done on Jurchen and Mongol rule of the north. In light of this problem, the following article addresses the role of local officials in society and the social and political control they enacted in North China under the Jin and Yuan. Research on the north has not been completely lacking. Indeed, some of the first work on this subject was undertaken by Kobayashi Morihiro 古林森廣, who examined the professional development of local officials as reflected in the Yuan dynasty guanzhenshu 官箴書 (guidebooks for governance), and Elizabeth Endicott-West, who investigated Yuan dynasty local government through the activities of the daruγa (an office created by the Mongols for the purpose of governing conquered territories) and suboffical functionaries (xuli 胥吏).4 However, both of these scholars have only given general overviews of Yuan dynasty provincial rule, and in doing so they consider the dynasty as a discrete unit of time separate from what came before or after. We therefore lack a comprehensive perspective of the developments in North China under Jurchen and Mongol rule since the fall of the Northern Song, and have little understanding of the degree of continuity between the prefectural and county administrations of the Yuan and that of the Northern Song, Liao, and Jin. Furthermore, these studies focused primarily on administrative structures and the nature of the central bureaucracy, but did not address the actual practice of local government or the interaction and intersection of state and society. In attempting to address these issues, I have shown elsewhere that the changing of local power-holders in North China during the Jin and Yuan did [End Page 72] not necessarily coincide with the rise and fall of dynasties. In an investigation of local elite advancement strategies, I pointed to a situation of continuity in local influence and authority from the Northern Song through the Jin and Yuan.5 Given those findings, it is also necessary to investigate local governance and how local officials confronted particular situations in their jurisdiction, and to do so from a trans-dynastic perspective. Furthermore, it is also necessary to look at the local circumstances of officials of the time, as well as how those local officials were evaluated by their predecessors. This will not only reveal developments in local control, but also lead to a consideration of the character and mechanism of that control. What methods, then, will be most effective in getting at these questions? In order to advance research along a longer time frame, I propose to look at phenomena and events diachronically. An arbitrary example of such a method would be irrigation and land reclamation, which by their very nature were long-term enterprises and thus would serve as suitable objects of investigation. However, in undertaking such inquiry, we must be wary of the problem of the paucity of historical records that can provide the necessary details and description for a concrete investigation. For instance, although we should make use of the memorials and personal correspondence of officials, as well as administrative guidebooks, each of these sources has its limitations. We have ample memorials and other correspondence from the early and middle Yuan, but the vast majority of these documents focus exclusively on the policies and circumstances of that period alone and thus cannot serve as primary sources for...

Kunst mit Botschaft: Der Gold-Seide-Stoff für den Ilchan Abū Saʽīd von Iran (Grabgewand Rudolfs IV. in Wien) – Rekonstruktion, Typus, Repräsentationsmedium

A unique cloth of silk and gold with Arabic inscriptions praising the Ilkhan Abū Saʽīd “Būsaʽīd”), Mongol ruler of Iran (1316-35), survives in three pieces used for the burial garment of Rudolph IV at Vienna (d. 1365). Presenting some of the findings from a new study of this textile, this article reconstructs the original cloth, draws attention to a specific type of striped design and discusses its context of use. In the reconstructed cloth, bold inscriptions in broad golden letters, alternating with a delicate repeat pattern, ran lengthwise from both short sides in opposite reading directions. Meeting at some point in the cloth, they divided it into two parts, raising questions about its use. While striped designs are well-known, this monumental type with large inscriptions may have been a new form, relating to Iranian textile traditions and ṭirāz inscriptions in Islamic art; contemporaneous Chinese art seems to have had no particular bearing on the motifs. In the cloth as a medium of representation, monumental inscriptions and gold may have visually communicated an identity, both Islamic and Mongol, of the Ilkhanid ruler.

Subjects and Masters: Uyghurs in the Mongol Empire (review)

Reviewed by: Subjects and Masters: Uyghurs in the Mongol Empire Nicolas Tackett Michael Brose. Subjects and Masters: Uyghurs in the Mongol Empire. Bellingham, WA: Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 2007. $50.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-0914584292. At the core of Michael Brose’s recent monograph (esp. Chapters 4–7) is a fascinating case study of a family of Uyghur Semuren 色目人 who, after four generations in China in the service of the Mongol Yuan regime, came to emulate Chinese literati. Family members adopted Chinese-style surnames (in this case either Xie 偰 or Lian 廉) and literary names; they studied the Classics; they became noted poets and calligraphers; they cultivated a reputation for filial sons and chaste widows; and they participated actively in a variety of elite pastimes, exchanging poems and parting prefaces with Chinese acquaintances, penning colophons to paintings, and hiking into the mountains to appreciate nature and cavort with Buddhist hermits. Although Brose may at times be too quick to take certain claims at face value—as when he concludes on the basis of a tomb epitaph that one Uyghur woman really was “steeped in the Confucian classics, and understood the proper roles of the filial wife and daughter-in-law” (p. 242)—taken as a whole, the evidence he provides is overwhelming. As such, Brose’s monograph not only constitutes the most detailed study to date of a Uyghur Semuren family in Yuan China, it can also serve as a basis for comparison with other well-known non-Chinese clans residing in China (such as the Tibetan Lun 論 family under the Tang and Pu Shougeng’s 蒲壽庚 family under the Song). Brose’s study raises a number of stimulating questions. To begin with, why did Uyghur officials feel compelled to emulate Chinese elite practices? Here Brose focuses primarily on two possibilities: “They were undoubtedly genuinely attracted to Chinese cultural modes and ways, as we can see in examples such as Xie Wenzhi, who is said to have got the bug as a very young boy. They were probably also canny, sensing. . . . that Mongol rule of China would not last so very long, and were thus positioning themselves to be able to survive a future loss of Mongol political authority in China” (p. 266). In other words, they had both ideological and pragmatic reasons, surely a sensible explanation. Curiously Brose chooses not to enter into the sinicization debate, though in fact he provides fodder for both sides of the argument. On the one hand, when the author argues that “the consistent references . . . to the Xie family’s origins in Uyghuristan [i.e., Gaochang] and their Confucian character seems to be a subtle ploy to rest the family’s prestige on two, seemingly [End Page 258] contradictory, bases of identity as ‘Confucianized Uyghurs’” (p. 203), one is reminded of Pamela Crossley and Evelyn Rawski’s accounts of the Qing emperors’ meticulous efforts to maintain a Manchu identity while simultaneously remaining “culturally null.” On the other hand, it is worth observing that these references to Gaochang are found in texts composed by Chinese contemporaries and, thus, they do not necessarily reflect the Xie family’s own sense of self-identity. Moreover, one should remember that places of origin were frequently appended to surnames as a sign of respect and that, within Chinese biographical genres, it was the norm to identify the individual’s place of origin. Would one necessarily expect the Chinese sources to falsify this information? In the end, given the sheer number of ways in which certain Uyghur Semuren emulated Chinese literati, the term “sinicization” would seem not entirely inappropriate. Another important question raised by the book concerns the place of the Uyghur Semuren in Yuan society. On this issue, it seems to me, the author makes three important points. First, he rejects “the assumption that there was a clear division between political elites (Mongols and Semuren) and social and cultural elites (Chinese)” (p. 14). Instead, Uyghur Semuren “created simultaneous identities as political and social elites,” by means of which they “straddled that gap between subjects and masters” (p. 135), thus becoming “social actors as much at home among the powerful Chinese shidafu elite as they were among the...

Neo-Confucianism in History (review)

Reviewed by: Neo-Confucianism in History Franklin J. Woo (bio) Peter K. Bol . Neo-Confucianism in History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. xi, 366 pp. Hardcover $49.95, ISBN 978-0-674-03106-7. In this study, Peter Bol, professor of East Asian languages and civilizations at Harvard University, shows how the neo-Confucian tradition developed, contested, thrived, and evolved throughout the history of China, despite military invasions from its northern neighbors. These concrete realities of politics, economics, social situations, and war all interacted within the cauldron of competing traditions, including native Daoism and Buddhism, which came to China in the first century. Neo-Confucianism, however, rejected the otherworldliness of both Buddhism and Daoism, but, nevertheless, learned from them and even incorporated their metaphysical insights and interconnectedness with nature, respectively, to correct and augment the inherited provincial and unduly introspective interpretations of classical Confucianism. Technological inventions such as printing, combined with increasing wealth in the Song dynasty, had greatly widened the distribution of its classical Confucian texts throughout the China. "Neo-Confucianism," Bol reminds his readers, is a foreign term, whereas ruxue is the general Chinese term for Confucianism. It is based on the legendary myth that in the ancient past there was a golden era where exemplary [End Page 75] rulers (Yao , Shun , Yu , Tang , Wen , Wu , and the Duke of Zhou ) were wise and perfectly moral. All under tian, "heaven," was done with justice and with grace. Individually and collectively, the aim of life was to regain or to live up to this siwen (this great culture of ours, Bol's rendering). Song-ming lixue , however, is the more precise Chinese term for neo-Confucianism, which claims that the ancient ideal was lost for a thousand years after Mencius and not recovered until the Song dynasty, largely through the efforts of Cheng Yi (1033-1107) and his brother Cheng Hao (1032-1085) and a coterie of others, including Zhou Dunyi (1017-1073). Later, the great educator and systematizer Zhu Xi (1130-1200) structured education in China, both formal and informal, in a way that was to shape the culture for more than half a millennium. Zhu's selection of four books (Analects, Great Learning, Mencius, and The Mean) and his commentaries constitute a corpus that became the official curriculum for the examination system under foreign Mongol rule in the Yuan dynasty, extending to every county in China from 1315 to 1905. With this curriculum well established plus other proposals such as the village compact and family ritual for daily living, Zhu was able to permeate Chinese society from elite to common folk. Bol even suggests that Neo-Confucianism can even be regarded as "Zhu Xi-ism" (p. 89). The author points out the different interpretations by scholars as to who should or should not be included in the chaotic transmission process, daotong, of this neo-Confucian tradition. The claims of authentic transmission are not unlike the claims of direct line of apostolic succession in Christianity, which continuously passed on the control of the gospel from generation to generation. In ruxue, however, that transmission suffered a millennial hiatus. Neo-Confucianism can be known as Daoxue , Lixue , or Xinxue , depending on the particular emphasis of the scholars of this tradition with its wide spectrum of diversity. According to conventional wisdom, there are essentially two schools: the Cheng-Zhu school of principle (li), named after the work of Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi, and the Lu-Wang school of the mind (xin), named after Lu Jiuyuan (1139-1194), also known by his literary name, Lu Xiangshan , and Wang Yangming (1472-1529). However, Wm. Theodore de Bary of Columbia University has shown that these two principals were already present within the Cheng-Zhu school—long before the creative tension was presumably resolved in the two schools. Here the two emphases of principle and mind were hotly debated but with civility and commitment to the human discourse. In short, de Bary claims that even if a Wang Yangming did not arrive on the scene in the sixteenth century that gave rise to the school of the mind, Wang Yangming types were already emphasizing direct intuition within what would become the Cheng-Zhu...

Christianity and Judaism under Islam in Medieval Iraq: Da'ûd al-Muqammas and Sa'd b. Mansûr Ibn Kammûna

In the present paper two attitudes towards Christianity among Jews in Medieval Iraq are discussed, viz. Da'ûd al-Muqammas (second half of the 9th century) and Sa'd b. Mansûr Ibn Kammûna (second half of the 13th century). Da'ûd al-Muqammas was writing in a period when Christianity may have been an attractive alternative for intellectual Jews. His major work still available, 'Ishrûn Maqâla, "Twenty chapters", is an anti-Christian tract demonstrating the continuing validity of Judaism. Addressing a Gentile readership in his Tanqîh al-abhâth li'l-milal al-thalâth, "The examination of the inquiries into the three faiths", Sa'd b. Mansûr Ibn Kammûna upholds the validity of Judaism and Christianity against the claims of Islam in a period when Islam had been reduced to the same status as Judaism and Christianity in the early Mongol rule of Iraq.

Deconstructing the myth of the Tatar Yoke

Analysing and comparing the various conventional and revisionist narratives on what is known as the ‘Tatar Yoke’, this article aims to show that Western historiography has long been critical of the dominant negative view on the Tatar–Mongol rule over Russian principalities and that in Russia we find similar revisions in history – with some exceptions – only in post-Soviet times. This article aims to demonstrate how the revisionist views on the Tatar–Mongol rule contributed to the political and cultural transformation of contemporary Russia. In the part which analyses the revisionist discourse in Russia the emphasis lies on the new Tatar narrative. For Tatars the new interpretation of the Tatar–Mongol rule is of outstanding importance because it functions as a means to enhance Tatar national pride, and it contributes to Tatarstan's sovereignty project.

Ibn Kammūna at Aleppo

Sa‘d b. Mansūr Ibn Kammūna, a Jewish polymath whose writings are now receiving a good deal of scholarly attention, worked in Baghdad under the aegis of the Mongol rulers and their courtiers. Born early in the thirteenth century, so it seems, he was forced to flee the capital after rioters protested against his book which compared the three revealed monotheistic faiths; he died in the 1280s. His oeuvre includes a treatise on ophthalmology, no longer extant; quotations from it are however available in the writing of another ophthalmologist, Sadaqa ibn Ibrāhīm al-Shādhilī. From these we learn that Ibn Kammūna practiced medicine in Aleppo (Halab).

Muscovite Taxation and the Problem of Mongol Rule in Rus'

Muscovite Taxation and the Problem of Mongol Rule in Rus'

How Nineteenth-Century Russian Historians Interpreted the Period of Mongol Rule as a Largely Positive Experience in Nation-Building

SUMMARY: Статья Сеймура Беккера посвящена взглядам российских историков – авторов популярных учебников либо влиятельных обобщающих трудов, формировавших массовое историческое сознание XIX века, на монгольский период в истории России. Беккер рассматривает их интерпретацию монгольского “ига” как элемент создания национального нарратива. Он выделяет мотивы централизации территорий, диалога с Западом и Востоком, манипулирования монголами со стороны российских князей, что свидетельствовало об их “цивилизационном” превосходстве, темы устойчивости русских обычаев, “национальной” мобилизации против врага и проч.

Genghis Khan and Mongol Rule

Introduction: Historical Overview Overview of the Steppe The Fall and Rise of Temujin Chinggis Khan the World Conqueror China and Founding of the Yuan Dynasty (1260-1370) Mongols in Iran History Repeated Legacy Biographies Quotations from Primary Sources Timeline Glossary Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources in Translation Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Sources 5 Maps (Appendix) Illustrations

George lane: genghis khan and mongol rule. (greenwood guides to historic events of the medieval world.) xlvi, 225 pp. westport, connecticut and london: greenwood press, 2004.

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The Assassination of King Het'um II: The Conversion of The Ilkhans and the Armenians

AbstractOn November 17, 1307, the Armenian king, Het'um II, was assassinated by a Mongol, recently converted to Islam, the noyan Bularghu. In this paper I will look at this assassination, which has often been seen as significant in the context of the conversion of the Mongols of Persia to Islam, and also at the effects, or perceived effects, of that conversion, especially regarding Ilkhanid foreign policy. I shall consider the attitude of the Ilkhans to the small Armenian kingdom centred on Cilicia, now in south-eastern Turkey, which, by 1307 had shrunk from the size and importance it had enjoyed in the middle of the thirteenth century. First, I intend briefly to describe Armenian relations with the Mongols, from the irruption of the latter until about 1307; then I shall discuss the assassination, the sources and reasons for it; next I shall look at the conversion of the Mongol rulers of Persia to Islam, and any effects that this may have had on Ilkhanid foreign policy; finally I shall consider how both this conversion and the assassination have been interpreted by historians, and what this event actually shows us about the effects of the Mongol Ilkhans' conversion to Islam on their relationship with their subject, Christian, Armenian satellite.

Genghis Khan and Mongol rule

Genghis Khan and Mongol rule

Un ensemble funéraire Öngüt du début de l'époque Yuan provenant de Mongolie intérieure

Twelve items, all from the same Inner Mongolian cemetery, west of Hohhot in Wulanchabu league, are studied here. They are mostly gold ware and personal adornments supplemented by a bronze mirror and a tombstone with a nestorian cross. Their stylistic differences mirror the succession of influences that the Öngüt received their whole history long (the nomadic Öngüt tribe had indeed settled in this region). Most of its members were Christians. They are first mentionned under the Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) and were to become faithful allies to the Mongol rulers but reverted slowly to their former anonymity with the dynasty's decline. Christians under the cultural influence of the Jin Dynasty, they slowly turned Mongolian and, once the effects of the short lived conversion to latin christianism at the end of the 13th century were made away with, yielded to lamaist buddhism's attractiveness then privileged by the Mongol rulers. The syriac written epitaph on the nestorian tombstone and an invocation to the goddess Tara written in lants'a script on the golden ribbon obviously testify to this.

Zhou Mi's Record of Clouds and Mist Passing before One's Eyes: An Annotated Translation

Subject of this book is the social and cultural history of Chinese art collecting during the early years of Mongol rule in China (the Yuan dynasty, 1276-1368). At the core of Weitz's book is a complete translation of the Record of Clouds and Mist Passing Before One's Eyes (Yunyan guoyan lu), an art catalog written by the Song dynasty loyalist Zhou Mi (1232-1298). This text contains detailed records of more than forty private art collections that the author saw in Hangzhou between 1275 and 1296. The careful annotations, scholarly introduction, and well-researched appendices help to broaden our understanding of the early care and transmission of artworks, the social dimensions of art collecting, and the development of a multi-ethnic society in Yuan China.

モンゴル時代におけるペルシア語インシャー術指南書

In the history of the Persian art of insha' (the epistolary art for the official and private correspondence), the Mongol period (from the 13th century to the later 14th century) has been regarded as an age of stylistic regression between the Saljugid and the Timurid periods. This report, through the analysis of some Persian insha' manuals written in the Mongol period, throws light on the continuity and development of the Persian insha' tradition under the Mongol rule, and how it coexisted with the Mongol chancellery system.In the insha' manuals of the Mongol period, it is observed that the way of Persian letter-writing had become more complicated since the Saljugid period. The structure of ideal letters explained in some manuals in the 14th century was more fractionalized than that in those of the 13th century and very similar to the style in the Timurid period. Even some forms that had been considered incorrect became predominant during the period in order to show extreme respect to distinguished addressees.Even under the rule of the Mongol chancellery, the writers of insha' manuals kept the traditional forms of drafting official documents, concentrating on genres of documents which needed the literary skill of insha', like deeds of appointment to religious ranks. At the same time, for many literates, writing of insha' manuals was regarded as a suitable way to display their literary skill and to win their patrons' favor.On the other hand, the insha' writers understood some concepts of the Mongol chancellery in the context of their own insha' tradition and accepted a portion of them positively. For example, the practice of Mongol edicts of writing words with holy or royal referents jutting into the upper margin was very agreeable for them because of its similarity to the convention of Persian letter writing that the name of honorable persons must be written in the upper part of letters. They adapted it by writing honarable words jutting into the right margin.We can conclude that under the Mongol rule the Persian insha' tradition continued developing and prepared for the flowering of the art in the Timurid period.

Tolerance and Intolerance: Social Conflict in the Age of the Crusades (review)

Tolerance and Intolerance: Social Conflict in the Age of the Crusades. Edited by Michael Gervers and James M. Powell. (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 2001. Pp. xx, 191. $39.95 hardbound; $18.95 paperbound.) Religious tolerance is not a characteristic that one tends to associate with medieval Christendom in general and with the era of the crusades in particular. The twelve essays that appear in this volume add some original, and occasionally unexpected nuances to this view. The essays collected here began as papers in a session sponsored by the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East during the Eighteenth International Congress of Historical Sciences, which met at Montreal in 1995. The editors have grouped them in four thematic sections. The opening section, Confrontation, Captivity, and Redemption, contains four papers that deal with the consequences that defeated participants in military engagements might suffer. David Hay cautions in the first of these papers that historians must treat medieval accounts of massacres with considerable caution, since chroniclers whose sympathies lie with either side in the encounter are notoriously prone to exaggerate the numbers of those slain. Crusading chroniclers, he notes, tended to be ideologically driven, which led them to claim that their foes suffered huge, often totally unrealistic, casualties. Noncombatants in general, and women in particular, were less likely than men to be killed in the aftermath of battle. Since they were potentially valuable, women were commonly taken prisoner as part of the spoils of war. The remaining essays in this section, by Yaacov Lev, Giulio Cipollone, and James W. Brodman, deal with what happened to prisoners of war. Lev deals with the treatment of POWs captured during wars between Muslims and Crusaders under Fatimid and Ayyubid rulers. In contrast to the common image of Saladin as a merciful victor, Lev characterizes his treatment of POWs as callous. Giulio Cipollone next provides a brief overview of the religious foundations of intolerance in Islam and Christendom, while James W. Brodman closes this section with a discussion of the rhetoric that surrounded the ransom of captives taken during crusading expeditions in the Iberian peninsula. In the following section, entitled Cooperation, Conflict, and Issues of Identity,James D. Ryan provides an account of the changing relationships between the Latin and Armenian churches during the crusading period. Paul L. Sidelko follows with an essay on the taxation of the Muslim population in the crusader states, while Reuven Amitai examines the unsuccessful attempt of Edward I of England to establish an alliance with the Mongol ruler of Iran, Ilkhan Abagha against the Mamluks. …

MICHAL BIRAN, Qaidu and the Rise of the Independent Mongol State in Central Asia (Richmond, Surrey, U.K.: Curzon, 1997). Pp. 208. $75.00 cloth.

Michal Biran fills an important gap in research on the 13th-century Mongol empire with her recent study of Qaidu (1236–1301), a great-grandson of Chinggis Khan and champion of the house of Ögödei. Characterizing Qaidu as a pragmatist, not an “ideological warrior” (p. 107), she challenges the conventional view that he was one of the quintessential defenders of nomadic values against the sedentarizing ethos of other Mongol rulers, and that he claimed the office of qa⊂an (supreme Mongol overlord). The work argues that his long struggle with Qubilai and his ruling career in Central Asia had two main goals: to restore to the Ögödeid ulus its rightful territory according to the original division of the empire by Chinggis and to secure the political and economic viability of that territory. It concludes that Qaidu did not aspire to become the qa⊂an but played a crucial role in the emergence of an independent Chaghadaid khanate in the early 14th century.

Fear of Gynarchy in an Age of Chaos: Kong Qi's Reflections on Life in South China under Mongol Rule

AbstractOver the long term, the Mongol conquest of the Southern Song in 1276 was less destructive to members of the local South Chinese elite than was the failure of the Yuan regime to establish strong and durable institutions of dynastic rule. For not long after the elite survivors of the Sino-Mongol wars had returned to a comfortable prosperity under Yuan rule, their children were buffetted by the instability and civil wars that engulfed Yuan society from the late 1330s to the collapse of the dynasty in 1368. The Kongs of Liyang typify many of the most salient features of elite life in South China under the compressed Yuan dynastic cycle: the orphaned son of a minor Song official who immediately capitulated to the Mongols, by the 1320s Kong Wensheng had translated talent, pedigree, and his position as a respected clerk in provincial government into such accoutrements of elite Yuan life as a library, sojourning literati guests, and a steady flow of slaves and bondservants thrown onto the market by penury and natural disaster. The prosperity built up by men like Kong Wensheng unravelled in the last tumultuous decades of the Yuan, an era of chaos that is captured by Wensheng's son Kong Qi in his Frank Recollections of the Zhizheng Era of ca. 1365. Even as it exemplifies many aspects of the compressed Yuan dynastic cycle, this collection of cautionary anecdotes and observations is also colored by Kong Qi's special circumstances as a minor son and a uxorilocal husband, circumstances that incline Kong Qi to blame the perils of his family, his society, and ultimately his dynasty on women's usurpation of male-centered institutions of public authority to create their own private gynarchies. Kong's jeremiads against usurpatious women in turn raise the possibility that during the Yuan, if not at all times, women exercised far more power and autonomy than normative prescriptions would suggest.

Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation: The Reordering of Chinese Society following the Era of Mongol Rule.

This volume deals with the social legislation of Zhu Yuanzhang, who founded the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), following the era of Mongol rule in China. It recounts the circumstances under which the laws were enacted and what the Emperor claimed he was trying to accomplish - a restoration of traditional Chinese social norms. The contents of several codes are discussed in terms of the groups to which they applied and the range of activities they purported to regulate. The early Ming codes formed one of the most comprehensive and cohesive bodies of law in all of Chinese history. Taken as a group, they constituted an autocrate's blueprint for the ideal society. The texts of three codifications - an imperial clan constitution, a general summary of the laws, and guidelines for village life - are translated as appendixes.