Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304-1589

by Donald Ostrowski

Overview

In this innovative and challenging study, Donald Ostrowski adds fresh and important insights to a pivotally important yet poorly understood subject—Mongol influence on Muscovy. Ostrowski considers here the outside origins and influences, as well as the indigenous origins and development, and shows that during the early period of Muscovy the dominant outside influences came through both Byzantium and the Qipchaq Khanate with its capital at Sarai. In considering these outside influences, Ostrowski has set out to study Muscovy as an integral and important part of world history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521590853
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/23/1998
Pages:	346
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.94(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; Introduction: understanding Muscovy; Part I. Mongol Influence: What's What and What's Not: 1. Setting the scene; 2. Administration, political institutions and the military; 3. Seclusion of women; 4. Oriental despotism; 5. Economic oppression; Part II. Development of an Anti-Tatar Ideology in the Muscovite Church: 6. Defining ideology; 7. Anti-Tatar interpolations in the Rus' chronicles; 8. Fashioning the Khan into a Basileus; 9. Byzantine political thought and Muscovy; 10. Third Rome - delimiting the ruler's power and authority; 11. The myth of the 'Tatar Yoke'; Addendum: types of cross-cultural influence; Glossary; Chronology; Works cited; Abbreviations; Sources; Studies.

Editorial Reviews

"...this a very well organized book.... This reinterpretive monoggraph is clearly intended for the serious historian." Choice

"Donald Ostrowski's bold, wide-ranging, argumentative book examines the competing influences that shaped Muscovy in its formative centuries and how Muscovites reconciled, incorporated, or adapted those influences and made them their own. ...the book is...an extraordinary feat, daring in its scope, its ambitions, and its successes." Valerie A. Kivelson, American Historical Review

"Doubtless, the book moves the study of the Mongols in Russia to a much higher plane. Ostrowski has succeeded in refashioning the terms in which the Mongol-Russian interaction will be studied for decades to come." The Russian Review

"Ostrowski is to be congratulated for offering a book that is both erudite and readable. He has taken on a well-worn topic and succeeded in delivering a fresh and insightful new treatment." Russell E. Martin, H-Net Reviews

"This is an engaging and wide-ranging book, based on an impressive scope of reading and research. It will interest not only historians of premodern Russia and the Mongol (or Tatar) Empire but also historians of the medieval Islamic world and the Byzantine Empire. In addition, social scientists and historians studying cultural interaction and influence should find it of much value." Speculum

From the Publisher