Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles.

• Author: Blair, Sheila S.
• Position: Review

By THOMAS T. ALLSEN. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1997. Pp. 137. $49.95.

Several of the previous volumes in this series have dealt with the Mongols, notably Beatrice Forbes Manz's biography of Tamerlane, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (1989), and Reuven Amitai-Preiss's study of the war between the Mongols and Mamluks in the 1260s and 1270s, Mongols and Mamluks (1995). This volume on the cultural transmission of textiles by the Mongols is a welcome and worthy addition.

Allsen sets out the problem and its parameters in his introductory chapter. A wide array of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century sources from Europe to China mention "tartar cloth." Anne Wardwell had identified these so-called panni tartarici as drawloom silks woven with gold, and Allsen connects these cloths to the textiles called nasij in the Arabic sources and nakh in Persian, generically meaning woven stuff or textile and then more narrowly denoting a cloth of silk and gold. The question Allsen poses is how did the Mongols become so identified with this particular type of luxury textile.

To answer the question, Allsen addresses a series of interrelated questions. In chapter two, on consumption and use, he examines how true the image was of Mongols draped in gold cloth. He cites a large body of textual evidence showing the wide use of gold textiles for tents and clothing, including headgear, girdles, shoes and, especially, robes. Much of the textual evidence is anecdotal, but by its sheer volume it is convincing.

In chapter three, on acquisition and production, Allsen turns to the mechanisms of supply to understand how the Mongols met this apparently insatiable demand for gold cloth. The silk itself came from China, and the limited amount of gold needed was available through reuse, tribute, or deposits in the frontier provinces. The most important element, the artisans, were, he suggests, imported from West Asia. He describes three colonies of artisans that were taken during the Mongol campaigns of 1219-22 in Turkestan and Khurasan. All three were first organized under Chinggis and Ogodei and then reorganized under Qubilai in the 1270s.

In the fourth chapter, on clothing and color, Allsen examines questions of cultural tradition to explain why the Mongols were so attracted to gold brocade. He argues that it was an indigenous cultural value which existed before the rise of the Mongol empire. After reviewing the importance of...