HST3126 Nomadland: The Peoples of the Steppe, 600-1000

HST3126: Nomadland: The Peoples of the Steppe, 600-1000

40 credits (semesters 1 and 2)

Module Leader: Dr Mirela Ivanova (2024-25)

Module Summary

Nomads are the dark matter of history. Choosing neither to produce written sources, nor found cities which are the usual target of archaeology, they defy the typical means of investigation of the historian. Yet their political impact – from the Huns of Attila to the Mongols of Ghengis Khan – was vast. Fear of the nomad other, framed in terms of barbarism, is one of the defining literary themes of the settled civilisations who were their neighbours. This fear had a huge impact on settled society: the Great Wall of China was built to keep nomads out.

This course asks how we can look beyond the fearsome, caricatured image produced by sedentary authors to reconstruct the politics, mentalities, and lifestyles of these crucial agents of pre-modern history. To do so, we will focus on the varied experiences of the nomadic peoples who emerged in the aftermath of the disintegrations of the great Turkic Khaganate in the seventh century. The Khaganate stretched over the vast, flat, grasslands of the Steppe, from China to Hungary and its successors settled regions across modern day Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Ukraine and the Balkans. These new peoples and their cultural and political choices fundamentally transformed the region, and had a profound impact on the great empires around them, namely Byzantines, Sassanian Iranians, and the Islamic caliphate.

Throughout, we will use material culture and sources written originally in Greek, Arabic, Armenian and Slavonic (all available in modern English translation), to ask: how do we write a history of a people who chose not to write? 

Assessment

Please see this page for further information about assessment.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this module, students will be able to: 

• Trace the process of social and political formation in the Steppe lands between 600-1000.

• Evaluate the significance of the Steppe world and its environment to neighbouring societies

• Analyse primary sources, both written and material, for their contents and historical and historiographical significance

• Assess the historiographical problems posed by nomadic life, and critically evaluate the conclusions of historians

• Develop clear and coherent arguments in writing and orally 

• Respond thoughtfully and constructively to the arguments and ideas of others

Selected Reading

Methodological examples:

• David Graeber, David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity (Allen Lane, 2021)

• James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed An Anarchist History of Upland Southest Asia (Yale, 2009)

• David Sneath,  The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, & Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia (Colombia, 2008)

Case study examples:

• Nicola Di Cosmo, Allen J. Frank and Peter B. Golden eds., The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age, (Cambridge, 2009)

• Peter Golden, Central Asia in World History (Oxford, 2011)

• Mykola Melnyk, Byzantium and the Pechenegs: The Historiography of the Problem (Leiden, 2022)

• Boris Zhivkov, Khazaria in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Leiden, 2015).