Confronting Overthrow (1218-1281)

The Mongol invasions into the Near East had a devastating effect upon many societies, sultanates, empires and kingdoms. For decades, wave after wave of armies swept across the area, defeating every army sent against them and utterly reshaping the area’s complex political ecosystem. Some powers fell in battle; some submitted when the Mongols moved against their borders; some submitted even when they weren’t directly threatened.

This talk explores how the Near East’s many different communities responded to the prospect of overthrow; it discusses the survival strategies they employed to safeguard their people also later how they attempted to pursue their interests within the newly established Mongol imperium. It also discusses the development of resistance to the Mongol invasion and their early defeats in the later thirteenth century.

Dr Nicholas Morton is Course Leader and Associate Professor in History at Nottingham Trent University history of the Crusades and the Medieval Near East between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries. His latest book is The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East offers a panoramic account of the Mongol invasions into the Near East during the thirteenth century, examining these wars from the perspectives of the many different societies impacted by their conquests.