Podcasts about Ordos

Dr Solam Mkhabela is an Architect, Lecture and author. He was educated at Waterford Kamhlaba, UWCSA, the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, The Cooper Union, New York and the University of Cape Town. He holds a BAS degree in Architecture (UCT) and a Masters Degree of City Planning and Urban Design (UCT). In 2002 he co-founded blacklinesonwhitepaper, a design collaborative recognized through invitation to international events like the Rotterdam Biennale of Architecture, Cologne Plan5, the Ordos project in China, African Perspectives in Casablanca and winning competition entries. Solam has also served as an urban design consultant for the Inner City Transport Study in Johannesburg and for SHIFT's professional task team’s guidelines for neighbourhood development and informal settlements upgrading. Solam coordinated the Braamfontein City Studio in 2016.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode we are taking a trip down the Silk Road--or perhaps even the Spice Road--as we investigate references in this reign to individuals from "Tukara" who seem to have arrived in Yamato and stayed for a while. For photos and more, see our podcast webpage:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-119 Rough Transcript   Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  This is episode 119: The Question of “Tukara”   Traveling upon the ocean was never exactly safe.  Squalls and storms could arise at any time, and there was always a chance that high winds and high waves could capsize a vessel.  Most people who found themselves at the mercy of the ocean could do little but hold on and hope that they could ride out whatever adverse conditions they met with.  Many ships were lost without any explanation or understanding of what happened to them.  They simply left the port and never came back home. And so when the people saw the boat pulling up on the shores of Himuka, on the island of Tsukushi, they no doubt empathized with the voyagers' plight.  The crew looked bedraggled, and their clothing was unfamiliar.  There were both men and women, and this didn't look like your average fishing party.  If anything was clear it was this:  These folk weren't from around here. The locals brought out water and food.  Meanwhile, runners were sent with a message:  foreigners had arrived from a distant place.  They then waited to see what the government was going to do.     We are still in the second reign of Takara Hime, aka Saimei Tenno.  Last episode we talked about the palaces constructed in Asuka, as well as some of the stone works that have been found from the period, and which appear to be referenced in the Nihon Shoki—at least tangentially.   The episodes before that, we looked at the expeditions the court sent to the far north of Honshu and even past Honshu to Hokkaido. This episode we'll again be looking past the main islands of the archipelago to lands beyond.  Specifically, we are going to focus on particularly intriguing references to people from a place called “Tukara”.  We'll talk about some of the ideas about where that might be, even if they're a bit  far-fetched. That's because Tukara touches on the state of the larger world that Yamato was a part of, given its situation on the far eastern edge of what we know today as the Silk Road.  And is this just an excuse for me to take a detour into some of the more interesting things going on outside the archipelago?  No comment. The first mention of a man from Tukara actually comes at the end of the reign of Karu, aka Koutoku Tennou.  We are told that in the fourth month of 654 two men and two women of “Tukara” and one woman of “Sha'e” were driven by a storm to Hiuga.  Then, three years later, the story apparently picks up again, though possibly referring to a different group of people.  On the 3rd day of the 7th month of 657, so during the second reign of Takara Hime, we now hear about two men and four women of the Land of Tukara—no mention of Sha'e—who drifted to Tsukushi, aka Kyushu.  The Chronicles mention that these wayfarers first drifted to the island of Amami, and we'll talk about that in a bit, but let's get these puzzle pieces on the table, first.  After those six people show up, the court sent for them by post-horse.  They must have arrived by the 15th of that same month, because we are told that a model of Mt. Sumi was erected and they—the people from Tukara—were entertained, although there is another account that says they were from “Tora”. The next mention is the 10th day of the 3rd month of 659, when a Man of Tukara and his wife, again woman of Sha'e, arrived.  Then, on the 16th day of the 7th month of 660, we are told that the man of Tukara, Kenzuhashi Tatsuna, desired to return home and asked for an escort.  He planned to pay his respects at the Great Country, i.e. the Tang court, and so he left his wife behind, taking tens of men with him. All of these entries might refer to people regularly reaching Yamato from the south, from a place called “Tukara”.  Alternately, this is a single event whose story has gotten distributed over several years, as we've seen happen before with the Chronicles.  .  One of the oddities of these entries is that the terms used are not consistent.  “Tukara” is spelled at least two different ways, suggesting that it wasn't a common placename like Silla or Baekje, or even the Mishihase.  That does seem to suggest that the Chronicles were phonetically trying to find kanji, or the Sinitic characters, to match with the name they were hearing.   I would also note that “Tukara” is given the status of a “kuni”—a land, country, or state—while “sha'e”, where some of the women are said to come from, is just that, “Sha'e”. As for the name of at least one person from Tokara, Kenzuhashi Tatsuna, that certainly sounds like someone trying to fit a non-Japanese name into the orthography of the time.  “Tatsuna” seems plausibly Japanese, but “Kenzuhashi” doesn't fit quite as well into the naming structures we've seen to this point. The location of “Tukara” and “Sha'e” are not clear in any way, and as such there has been a lot of speculation about them.  While today there are placenames that fit those characters, whether or not these were the places being referenced at the time is hard to say. I'll actually start with “Sha'e”, which Aston translates as Shravasti, the capital of the ancient Indian kingdom of Kosala, in modern Uttar Pradesh.  It is also where the Buddha, Siddartha Gautama, is said to have lived most of his life after his enlightenment.  In Japanese this is “Sha'e-jou”, and like many Buddhist terms it likely comes through Sanskrit to Middle Chinese to Japanese.  One—or possibly two—women from Shravasti making the journey to Yamato in the company of a man (or men) from Tukara seems quite the feat.  But then, where is “Tukara”? Well, we have at least three possible locations that I've seen bandied about.  I'll address them from the most distant to the closest option.  These three options were Tokharistan, Dvaravati, and the Tokara islands. We'll start with Tokharistan on the far end of the Silk Road.  And to start, let's define what that “Silk Road” means.  We've talked in past episodes about the “Western Regions”, past the Han-controlled territories of the Yellow River.   The ancient Tang capital of Chang'an was built near to the home of the Qin dynasty, and even today you can go and see both the Tang tombs and the tomb of Qin Shihuangdi and his terracotta warriors, all within a short distance of Xi'an, the modern city built on the site of Chang'an.  That city sits on a tributary of the Yellow River, but the main branch turns north around the border of modern Henan and the similarly sounding provinces of Shanxi and Shaanxi.  Following it upstream, the river heads north into modern Mongolia, turns west, and then heads south again, creating what is known as the Ordos loop.  Inside is the Ordos plateau, also known as the Ordos Basin.  Continuing to follow the Yellow river south, on the western edge of the Ordos, you travel through Ningxia and Gansu—home of the Hexi, or Gansu, Corridor.  That route eventually takes to Yumenguan, the Jade Gate, and Dunhuang.  From there roads head north or south along the edge of the Taklamakan desert in the Tarim basin.  The southern route travels along the edge of the Tibetan plateau, while the northern route traversed various oasis cities through Turpan, Kucha, to the city of Kashgar.  Both routes made their way across the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush into South Asia. We've brought up the Tarim Basin and the Silk Road a few times.  This is the path that Buddhism appears to have taken to get to the Yellow River Basin and eventually to the Korean Peninsula and eastward to the Japanese archipelago.  But I want to go a bit more into detail on things here, as there is an interesting side note about “Tukara” that I personally find rather fascinating, and thought this would be a fun time to share. Back in Episode 79 we talked about how the Tarim basin used to be the home to a vast inland sea, which was fed by the meltwater from the Tianshan and Kunlun mountains.  This sea eventually dwindled, though it was still large enough to be known to the Tang as the Puchang Sea.  Today it has largely dried up, and it is mostly just the salt marshes of Lop Nur that remain.  Evidence for this larger sea, however, can be observed in some of the burials found around the Tarim basin.  These burials include the use of boat-shaped structures—a rather curious feature to be found out in the middle of the desert. And it is the desert that was left behind as the waters receded that is key to much of what we know about life in the Tarim basin, as it has proven to be quite excellent at preserving organic material.  This includes bodies, which dried out and naturally turned into mummies, including not only the wool clothing they were wearing, but also features such as hair and even decoration. These “Tarim mummies”, as they have been collectively called, date from as early as 2100 BCE all the way up through the period of time we're currently talking about, and have been found in several desert sites: Xiaohe, the earliest yet discovered; Loulan, near Lop Nur on the east of the Tarim Basin, dating from around 1800 BCE; Cherchen, on the southern edge of the Tarim Basin, dating from roughly 1000 BCE; and too many others to go into in huge detail. The intriguing thing about these burials is that  many of them don't have features typically associated with people of ethnic Han—which is to say traditional Chinese—ancestry, nor do they necessarily have the features associated with the Xiongnu and other steppe nomads.  In addition they have colorful clothing  made from wool and leather, with vivid designs.  Some bodies near Hami, just east of the basin, were reported to have blonde to light brown hair, and their cloth showed radically different patterns from that found at Cherchen and Loulan, with patterns that could reasonably be compared with the plaids now common in places like Scotland and Ireland, and previously found in the Hallstadt salt mine in Central Europe from around 3500 BCE, from which it is thought the Celtic people may have originated. At the same time that people—largely Westerners— were studying these mummies, another discovery in the Tarim basin was also making waves.  This was the discovery of a brand new language.  Actually, it was two languages—or possibly two dialects of a language—in many manuscripts, preserved in Kucha and Turpan.  Once again, the dry desert conditions proved invaluable to maintain these manuscripts, which date from between the late 4th or early 5th century to the 8th century.  They are written with a Brahmic script, similar to that used for Sanskrit, which appears in the Tarim Basin l by about the 2nd century, and we were able to translate them because many of the texts were copies of Buddhist scripture, which greatly helped scholars in deciphering the languages.  These two languages were fascinating because they represented an as-yet undiscovered branch of the Indo-European language family.  Furthermore, when compared to other Indo-European languages, they did not show nearly as much similarity with their neighbors as with languages on the far western end of the Indo-European language family.  That is to say they were thought to be closer to Celtic and Italic languages than something like Indo-Iranian.  And now for a quick diversion within the diversion:  “Centum” and “Satem” are general divisions of the Indo-European language families that was once thought to indicate a geographic divide in the languages.  At its most basic, as Indo-European words changed over time, a labiovelar sound, something like “kw”,  tended to evolve in one of two ways.  In the Celtic and Italic languages, the “kw” went to a hard “k” sound, as represented in the classical pronunciation of the Latin word for 100:  Centum.  That same word, in the Avestan language—of the Indo-Iranian tree—is pronounced as “Satem”, with an “S” sound.  So, you can look at Indo-European languages and divide them generally into “centum” languages, which preserve the hard “k”, or “Satem” languages that preserve the S. With me so far? Getting back to these two newly-found languages in the Tarim Basin, the weird thing is that they were “Centum” languages. Most Centum languages are from pretty far away, though: they are generally found in western Europe or around the Mediterranean, as opposed to the Satem languages, such as Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Armernian, or even Baltic Slavic languages, which are much closer to the Tarim Basin.  So if the theory were true that the “Centum” family of Indo-European languages developed in the West and “Satem” languages developed in the East, then that would seem to indicate that a group of a “Centum” speaking people must have migrated eastward, through the various Satem speaking people, and settled in the Tarim Basin many thousands of years ago. And what evidence do we have of people who look very different from the modern population, living in the Tarim Basin area long before, and wearing clothing similar to what we associated with the progenitors of the Celts?  For many, it seemed to be somewhat obvious, if still incredible, that the speakers of this language were likely the descendants of the mummies who, in the terminology of the time, had been identified as being of Caucasoid ancestry.  A theory developed that these people were an offshoot of a group called the Yamnaya culture, which may have arisen around modern Ukraine as an admixture between the European Hunter Gatherers and the Caucasian Hunter Gatherers, around 3300-2600 BCE.  This was challenged in 2021 when a genetic study was performed on some of the mummies in the Tarim basin, as well as several from the Dzungarian basin, to the northeast.  That study suggested that the people of the Dzungarian basin had genetic ties to the people of the Afanasievo people, from Southern Siberia.  The Afanasievo people are connected to the Yamnayan culture. It should be noted that there has long been a fascination in Western anthropology and related sciences with racial identification—and often not in a healthy way.  As you may recall, the Ainu were identified as “Caucasoid” by some people largely because of things like the men's beards and lighter colored hair, which differ greatly from a large part of the Japanese population.  However, that claim has been repeatedly refuted and debunked. And similarly, the truth is, none of these Tarim mummy burials were in a period of written anything, so we can't conclusively associated them with these fascinating Indo-European languages.  There are thousands of years between the various burials and the manuscripts. These people  left no notes stashed in pockets that give us their life story.   And Language is not Genetics is not Culture.  Any group may adopt a given language for a variety of reasons.  .  Still, given what we know, it is possible that the ancient people of the Tarim basin spoke some form of “Proto-Kuchean”, but it is just as likely that this language was brought in by people from Dzungaria at some point. So why does all this matter to us?  Well, remember how we were talking about someone from Tukara?  The Kuchean language, at least, is referred to in an ancient Turkic source as belonging to “Twgry”, which led several scholars to draw a link between this and the kingdom and people called Tukara and the Tokharoi.  This leads us on another bit of a chase through history. Now if you recall, back in Episode 79, we talked about Zhang Qian.  In 128 BCE, he attempted to cross the Silk Road through the territory of the Xiongnu on a mission for the Han court.  Some fifty years earlier, the Xiongnu had defeated the Yuezhi.  They held territory in the oasis towns along the north of the Taklamakan dessert, from about the Turpan basin west to the Pamirs. The Xiongnu were causing problems for the Han, who thought that if they could contact the remaining Yuezhi they could make common cause with them and harass the Xiongnu from both sides.  Zhang Qian's story is quite remarkable: he started out with an escort of some 99 men and a translator.  Unfortunately, he was captured and enslaved by the Xiongnu during his journey, and he is even said to have had a wife and fathered a child.  He remained a captive for thirteen years, but nonetheless, he was able to escape with his family and he made it to the Great Yuezhi on the far side of the Pamirs, but apparently the Yuezhi weren't interested in a treaty against the Xiongnu.  The Pamirs were apparently enough of a barrier and they were thriving in their new land.  And so Zhang Qian crossed back again through Xiongnu territory, this time taking the southern route around the Tarim basin.  He was still captured by the Xiongnu, who spared his life.  He escaped, again, two years later, returning to the Han court.  Of the original 100 explorers, only two returned: Zhang Qian and his translator.  While he hadn't obtained an alliance, he was able to detail the cultures of the area of the Yuezhi. Many feel that the Kushan Empire, which is generally said to have existed from about 30 to 375 CE,was formed from the Kushana people who were part of the Yuezhi who fled the Xiongnu. In other words, they were originally from further north, around the Tarim Basin, and had been chased out and settled down in regions that included Bactria (as in the Bactrian camel).  Zhang Qian describes reaching the Dayuan Kingdom in the Ferghana valley, then traveling south to an area that was the home of the Great Yuezhi or Da Yuezhi.  And after the Kushan empire fell, we know there was a state in the upper regions of the Oxus river, centered on the city of Balkh, in the former territory of the Kushan empire. known as “Tokara”.  Geographically, this matches up how Zhang Qian described the home of the Da Yuezhi.  Furthermore, some scholars reconstruct the reading of the Sinic characters used for “Yuezhi” as originally having an optional reading of something like “Togwar”, but that is certainly not the most common reconstructed reading of those characters.  Greek sources describe this area as the home of the Tokharoi, or the Tokaran People.  The term “Tukhara” is also found in Sanskrit, and this kingdom  was also said to have sent ambassadors to the Southern Liang and Tang dynasties. We aren't exactly certain of where these Tokharan people came from, but as we've just described, there's a prevailing theory that they were the remnants of the Yuezhi and Kushana people originally from the Tarim Basin.  We know that in the 6th century they came under the rule of the Gokturk Khaganate, which once spanned from the Liao river basin to the Black Sea.  In the 7th and 8th centuries they came under the rule of the Tang Empire, where they were known by very similar characters as those used to write “Tukara” in the Nihon Shoki.  On top of this, we see Tokharans traveling the Silk Road, all the way to the Tang court.  Furthermore, Tokharans that settled in Chang'an took the surname “Zhi” from the ethnonym “Yuezhi”, seemingly laying claim to and giving validation to the identity used back in the Han dynasty.   So, we have a Turkic record describing the Kuchean people (as in, from Kucha in the Tarim Basin) as “Twgry”, and we have a kingdom in Bactria called Tokara and populated (according to the Greeks) by people called Tokharoi.  You can see how this one term has been a fascinating rabbit hole in the study of the Silk Roads and their history.  And some scholars understandably suggested that perhaps the Indo-European languags found in Kucha and Turpan  were actually related to this “Tokhara” – and therefore  should be called “Tocharian”, specifically Tocharian A (Kuchean) or Tocharian B (Turfanian). The problem is that if the Tokharans were speaking “Tocharian” then you wouldn't expect to just see it at Kucha and Turpan, which are about the middle of the road between Tokhara and the Tang dynasty, and which had long been under Gokturk rule.  You would also expect to see it in the areas of Bactria associated with Tokhara.  However, that isn't what we see.  Instead, we see that Bactria was the home of local Bactrian language—an Eastern Iranian language, which, though it is part of the Indo European language family, it is not closely related to Tocharian as far as we can tell. It is possible that the people of Kucha referred to themselves as something similar to “Twgry”, or “Tochari”, but we should also remember that comes from a Turkic source, and it could have been an exonym not related to what they called themselves.  I should also note that language is not people.  It is also possible that a particular ethnonym was maintained separately by two groups that may have been connected politically but which came to speak different languages for whatever reason.   There could be a connection between the names, or it could even be that the same or similar exonym was used for different groups. So, that was a lot and a bit of a ramble, but a lot of things that I find interesting—even if they aren't as connected as they may appear.  We have the Tarim mummies, which are, today, held at a museum in modern Urumqi.  Whether they had any connection with Europe or not, they remain a fascinating study for the wealth of material items found in and around the Tarim basin and similar locations.  And then there is the saga of the Tocharian languages—or perhaps more appropriately the Kuchean-Turfanian languages: Indo-European languages that seem to be well outside of where we would expect to find them. Finally, just past the Pamirs, we get to the land of Tokhara or Tokharistan.  Even without anything else, we know that they had contact with the court.  Perhaps our castaways were from this land?  The name is certainly similar to what we see in the Nihon Shoki, using some of the same characters. All in all, art and other information suggest that the area of the Tarim basin and the Silk Road in general were quite cosmopolitan, with many different people from different regions of the world.  Bactria retained Hellenic influences ever since the conquests of Alexander of Macedonia, aka Alexander the Great, and Sogdian and Persian traders regularly brought their caravans through the region to trade.  And once the Tang dynasty controlled all of the routes, that just made travel that much easier, and many people traveled back and forth. So from that perspective, it is possible that one or more people from Tukhara may have made the crossing from their home all the way to the Tang court, but if they did so, the question still remains: why would they be in a boat? Utilizing overland routes, they would have hit Chang'an or Louyang, the dual capitals of the Tang empire, well before they hit the ocean.  However, the Nihon Shoki says that these voyagers first came ashore at Amami and then later says that they were trying to get to the Tang court. Now there was another “Silk Road” that isn't as often mentioned: the sea route, following the coast of south Asia, around through the Malacca strait and north along the Asian coast.  This route is sometimes viewed more in terms of the “spice” road If these voyagers set out to get to the Tang court by boat, they would have to have traveled south to the Indian Ocean—possibly traveling through Shravasti or Sha'e, depending on the route they chose to take—and then around the Malacca strait—unless they made it on foot all the way to Southeast Asia.  And then they would have taken a boat up the coast. Why do that instead of taking the overland route?  They could likely have traveled directly to the Tang court over the overland silk road.  Even the from Southeast Asia could have traveled up through Yunnan and made their way to the Tang court that way.  In fact, Zhang Qian had wondered something similar when he made it to the site of the new home of the Yuezhi, in Bactria.  Even then, in the 2nd century, he saw products in the marketplace that he identified as coming from around Szechuan.  That would mean south of the Han dynasty, and he couldn't figure out how those trade routes might exist and they weren't already known to the court.  Merchants would have had to traverse the dangerous mountains if they wanted to avoid being caught by the Xiongnu, who controlled the entire region. After returning to the Han court, Zhang Qian actually went out on another expedition to the south, trying to find the southern trade routes, but apparently was not able to do so.  That said, we do see, in later centuries, the trade routes open up between the area of the Sichuan basin and South Asia.  We also see the migrations of people further south, and there may have even been some Roman merchants who traveled up this route to find their way to the Han court, though those accounts are not without their own controversy. In either case, whether by land or sea, these trade routes were not always open.  In some cases, seasonal weather, such as monsoons, might dictate movement back and forth, while political realities were also a factor.  Still, it is worth remembering that even though most people were largely concerned with affairs in their own backyard, the world was still more connected than people give it credit for.  Tang dynasty pottery made its way to the east coast of Africa, and ostriches were brought all the way to Chang'an. As for the travelers from Tukhara and why they would take this long and very round-about method of travel, it is possible that they were just explorers, seeking new routes, or even on some kind of pilgrimage.  Either way, they would have been way off course. But if they did pass through Southeast Asia, that would match up with another theory about what “Tukara” meant: that it actually refers to the Dvaravati kingdom in what is now modern Thailand.  The Dvaravati Kingdom was a Mon political entity that rose up around the 6th century.  It even sent embassies to the Sui and Tang courts.  This is even before the temple complexes in Siem Reap, such as Preah Ko and the more famous Angkor Wat.  And it was during this time that the ethnic Tai people are thought to have started migrating south from Yunnan, possibly due to pressures from the expanding Sui and Tang empires.  Today, most of what remains of the Dvaravati kingdom are the ruins of ancient stone temples, showing a heavy Indic influence, and even early Buddhist practices as well.  “Dvaravati” may not actually be the name of the kingdom but it comes from an inscription on a coin found from about that time.  The Chinese refer to it as  “To-lo-po-ti” in contemporary records.  It may not even have been a kingdom, but  more of a confederation of city-states—it is hard to piece everything together.  That it was well connected, though, is clear from the archaeological record.  In Dvaravati sites, we see coins from as far as Rome, and we even have a lamp found in modern Pong Tuk that appears to match similar examples from the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century.  Note that this doesn't mean it arrived in the 6th century—similarly with the coins—but the Dvaravati state lasted until the 12th century. If that was the case, perhaps there were some women from a place called “Shravasti” or similar, especially given the Indic influence in the region. Now, given the location of the Dvaravati, it wouldn't be so farfetched to think that someone might sail up from the Gulf of Thailand and end up off-course, though it does mean sailing up the entire Ryukyuan chain or really running off course and finding yourself adrift on the East China sea.  And if they were headed to the Tang court, perhaps they did have translators or knew Chinese, since Yamato was unlikely to know the Mon language of Dvaravati and people from Dvaravati probably wouldn't know the Japonic language.  Unless, perhaps, they were communicating through Buddhist priests via Sanskrit. We've now heard two possibilities for Tukara, both pretty far afield: the region of Tokara in Bactria, and the Dvaravati kingdom in Southeast Asia.  That said, the third and simplest explanation—and the one favored by Aston in his translation of the Nihon Shoki—is that Tukara is actually referring to a place in the Ryukyu island chain.  Specifically, there is a “Tokara” archipelago, which spans between Yakushima and Amami-Oshima.  This is part of the Nansei islands, and the closest part of the Ryukyuan island chain to the main Japanese archipelago.  This is the most likely theory, and could account for the entry talking about Amami.  It is easy to see how sailors could end up adrift, too far north, and come to shore in Hyuga, aka Himuka, on the east side of Kyushu.  It certainly would make more sense for them to be from this area of the Ryukyuan archipelago than from anywhere else.  From Yakushima to Amami-Oshima is the closest part of the island chain to Kyushu, and as we see in the entry from the Shoku Nihongi, those three places seem to have been connected as being near to Japan.  So what was going on down there, anyway? Well, first off, let's remember that the Ryukyuan archipelago is not just the island of Okinawa, but a series of islands that go from Kyushu all the way to the island of Taiwan.  Geographically speaking, they are all part of the same volcanic ridge extending southward.  The size of the islands and their distance from each other does vary, however, creating some natural barriers in the form of large stretches of open water, which have shaped how various groups developed on the islands. Humans came to the islands around the same time they were reaching the Japanese mainland.  In fact, some of our only early skeletal remains for early humans in Japan actually come from either the Ryukyuan peninsula in the south or around Hokkaido to the north, and that has to do with the acidity of the soil in much of mainland Japan. Based on genetic studies, we know that at least two groups appear to have inhabited the islands from early times.  One group appears to be related to the Jomon people of Japan, while the other appears to be more related to the indigenous people of Taiwan, who, themselves, appear to have been the ancestors of many Austronesian people.  Just as some groups followed islands to the south of Taiwan, some appear to have headed north.  However, they only made it so far.  As far as I know there is no evidence they made it past Miyakoshima, the northernmost island in the Sakishima islands.  Miyako island is separated from the next large island, Okinawa, by a large strait, known as the Miyako Strait, though sometimes called the Kerama gap in English.  It is a 250km wide stretch of open ocean, which is quite the distance for anyone to travel, even for Austronesian people of Taiwan, who had likely not developed the extraordinary navigational technologies that the people who would become the Pacific Islanders would discover. People on the Ryukyu island chain appear to have been in contact with the people of the Japanese archipelago since at least the Jomon period, and some of the material artifacts demonstrate a cultural connection.  That was likely impacted by the Akahoya eruption, about 3500 years ago, and then re-established at a later date.  We certainly see sea shells and corals trade to the people of the Japanese islands from fairly early on. Unlike the people on the Japanese archipelago, the people of the Ryukyuan archipelago did not really adopt the Yayoi and later Kofun culture.  They weren't building large, mounded tombs, and they retained the character of a hunter-gatherer society, rather than transitioning to a largely agricultural way of life.  The pottery does change in parts of Okinawa, which makes sense given the connections between the regions.  Unfortunately, there is a lot we don't know about life in the islands around this time.  We don't exactly have written records, other than things like the entries in the Nihon Shoki, and those are hardly the most detailed of accounts.  In the reign of Kashikiya Hime, aka Suiko Tennou, we see people from Yakushima, which is, along with Tanegashima, one of the largest islands at the northern end of the Ryukyu chain, just before you hit Kagoshima and the Osumi peninsula on the southern tip of Kyushu.  The islands past that would be the Tokara islands, until you hit the large island of Amami. So you can see how it would make sense that the people from “Tokara” would make sense to be from the area between Yakushima and Amami, and in many ways this explanation seems too good to be true.  There are a only a few things that make this a bit peculiar. First, this doesn't really explain the woman from “Sha'e” in any compelling way that I can see.  Second, the name, Kenzuhashi Tatsuna doesn't seem to fit with what we generally know about early Japonic names, and the modern Ryukyuan language certainly is a Japonic language, but there are still plenty of possible explanations.  There is also the connection of Tokara with “Tokan”, which is mentioned in an entry in 699 in the Shoku Nihongi, the Chronicle that follows on, quite literally to the Nihon Shoki.  Why would they call it “Tokan” instead of “Tokara” so soon after?  Also, why would these voyagers go back to their country by way of the Tang court?  Unless, of course, that is where they were headed in the first place.  In which case, did the Man from Tukara intentionally leave his wife in Yamato, or was she something of a hostage while they continued on their mission?   And so those are the theories.  The man from “Tukara” could be from Tokhara, or Tokharistan, at the far end of the Silk Road.  Or it could have been referring to the Dvaravati Kingdom, in modern Thailand.  Still, in the end, Occam's razor suggests that the simplest answer is that these were actually individuals from the Tokara islands in the Ryukyuan archipelago.  It is possible that they were from Amami, not that they drifted there.  More likely, a group from Amami drifted ashore in Kyushu as they were trying to find a route to the Tang court, as they claimed.  Instead they found themselves taking a detour to the court of Yamato, instead. And we could have stuck with that story, but I thought that maybe, just maybe, this would be a good time to reflect once again on how connected everything was.  Because even if they weren't from Dvaravati, that Kingdom was still trading with Rome and with the Tang.  And the Tang controlled the majority of the overland silk road through the Tarim basin.  We even know that someone from Tukhara made it to Chang'an, because they were mentioned on a stele that talked about an Asian sect of Christianity, the “Shining Religion”, that was praised and allowed to set up shop in the Tang capital, along with Persian Manicheans and Zoroastrians.  Regardless of where these specific people may have been from, the world was clearly growing only more connected, and prospering, as well. Next episode we'll continue to look at how things were faring between the archipelago and the continent. Until then thank you for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  

Ved første øjekast ligner det bare en supermoderne storby. Med den ene betongrå kasse efter den anden, der rejser sig mod himlen i lange, lige rækker. Man kan se legepladser og parker. Gadelygter opstillet langs de brede gader. Stoplys og fodgængerfelter. Alt sammen er rammerne om en million menneskers liv.  Men der er noget galt. Der er ingen børn på legepladserne, ingen biler i gaderne. Og de mørke vinduer i husene i byen Ordos i det nordlige Kina glor bare tomt tilbage på en. Byen er ikke forladt. Folk er bare aldrig flyttet ind. Og sådan står der rundt om i Kina 65 millioner boliger tomme. Det er ruiner af en drøm. Den kinesiske drøm. Og de mange spøgelsesbyer er blot et af flere tegn på, at den kinesiske økonomi, som vi troede ville blive ved med at brage af sted, nu næsten ikke flytter sig ud af stedet.  Dagens gæst i 'Du lytter til Politiken' er Politikens Asien-korrespondent Sebastian Stryhn Kjeldtoft, der fortæller, hvad der er i vente for Kina – og hvad det kan komme til at betyde for os.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Ryan and Mez discuss the Holy Ordos, Malleus, Hereticus and Xenos, aswell as the Minor Ordos and their responsibilities in warhammer 40K --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/iteratorsoftheimperium/message

https://www.patreon.com/isyanderandkodaYou already know how to please the Machine Gods at this point so thank you so much. And make your voices heard for which faction you would like to see next! -Isyander Welcome to the dark and mysterious world of the Inquisition in Warhammer 40k, where secrecy, power, and loyalty to the Emperor are paramount. In this deep dive, we explore the Inquisition, a pivotal and enigmatic force within the Warhammer 40k universe.We will cover the Inquisitors role in safeguarding the Imperium of Man from heretics, mutants, the taint of Chaos, and alien threats. Discover how they operate outside the standard administrative hierarchy, answering only to the Emperor himself.Their various factions within the Inquisition, including the various Ordos and their specialized focus areas. Understand the ideological differences that separate Puritan Inquisitors from their Radical counterparts.Explore the composition of an Inquisitor's retinue, including their trusted and often uniquely skilled companions. From Psykers to hardened warriors, each member plays a vital role in the Inquisitor's quest.Trace the origins of the Inquisition back to the aftermath of the Horus Heresy, and see how their history has shaped their current role in the 41st Millennium.–TIMESTAMPS ——————————  TAGS————————————Opinions expressed in this video are solely those of Isyander & Koda and in no way reflect the views or opinions of Games Workshop Ltd.Artwork throughout this video is used for educational purposes. if you see your artwork and would like an art credit, message me.Support the show

https://www.patreon.com/isyanderandkodaYou already know how to please the Machine Gods at this point so thank you so much. And make your voices heard for which faction you would like to see next! -Isyander The Inquisition stands as the Imperium's silent guardian, and within its ranks, three powerful Ordos wage an unending war against the forces that seek to destroy mankind. This comprehensive video delves into the depths of the Ordo Malleus, Ordo Xenos, and Ordo Hereticus, exploring their histories, missions, and the daunting challenges they face.Ordo Malleus - The Daemonhunters: Venture into the shadowy realm of the Ordo Malleus, the fearless Daemonhunters. These Inquisitors are the Imperium's first and last line of defense against the Daemons of the Warp. We explore their secretive and perilous missions, their sacred alliance with the enigmatic Grey Knights, and their relentless crusade to shield humanity from the terrors of Chaos. Discover the legendary figures within their ranks and the epic tales of their battles against the darkness.Ordo Xenos - The Alien Hunters: The Ordo Xenos stands vigilant against the alien menace. These Inquisitors are tasked with a crucial role: to protect the Imperium from the countless alien species that threaten its existence. From the diplomatic yet treacherous Eldar to the insatiable Tyranids, we delve into the complex and often deadly interactions between humanity and the alien races. Uncover the tactics and strategies employed by the Ordo Xenos, ranging from covert espionage to all-out warfare, and the moral quandaries they face in their duty.Ordo Hereticus - The Witch Hunters: Enter the dark and unforgiving world of the Ordo Hereticus, the feared Witch Hunters. These Inquisitors are the shield against corruption from within, tirelessly hunting down heretics, rogue psykers, and apostates. We examine their relentless pursuit of internal enemies, their controversial methods, and the heavy burden they bear in their quest to maintain the spiritual purity of the Imperium. Learn about the famous Witch Hunters, their infamous trials, and the impact they have on the lives of ordinary citizens.Inter-Ordo Dynamics and Conflicts: Beyond their individual missions, discover the complex dynamics and occasional conflicts between these three powerful Ordos. How do they collaborate or clash in their interpretations of the Emperor's will? What happens when their missions intersect or oppose each other? This section provides a fascinating insight into the politics and power struggles within the Inquisition itself.We also dive into the following figures:Inquisitor Kryptman is a figure of both fame and infamy within the Imperium, particularly known for his expertise and actions against the Tyranid threat. As a member of the Ordo Xenos, Kryptman's life's work has been dedicated to understanding and combating the Tyranid menace, a relentless alien race that consumes entire worlds. His deep knowledge of the Tyranids is unparalleled, making him one of the foremost experts on these extragalactic predators.Kryptman's most controversial and desperate measure was the enactment of the "Kryptman Gambit." In a drastic attempt to halt the Tyranid advance, he ordered the destruction of several Imperial worlds to create a barren, lifeless zone, effectively starving the Tyranids and slowing their invasion. This act, while tactically sound, was seen as extreme and led to his excommunThe Gaming BlenderHave you ever wanted to design your own video game?Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the show

Are you prepared to explore the insane heresies and dive into the controversial theories of Teilhard de Chardin and his recent rehabilitation by Pope Francis? Embark on this enlightening journey with our guest, Michael Hichborn, as we explore the profound impact of de Chardin's theories on the evolution of the universe and evolution of God, his contentious beliefs around Original Sin, and his encounter with the "spirit of the world" in the Ordos desert in Mongolia. We don't shy away from the big questions - was this encounter with the spirit demonic?Intrigued by the mythology of Pachamama, and its association with human sacrifice? We dig into the ancient practices and beliefs surrounding this deity, and the current perspectives of various individuals, including Pope Francis. Hichborn offers insights into a prayer to Pachamama, penned by the Catholic Bishops Conference of Italy, and we delve into the complex history of a former Catholic tribal leader who reintroduced banned tribal practices. We also illuminate the ties between these practices and the concepts of liberation theology and communism. The dialogue takes an unexpected turn as we connect the dots between modernist belief in the 'evolution of doctrine' and the transgender movement. We bring light to the symbolism of Lucifer as the first 'trans being' and its association with Pachamama. Examining the role of women in religion, we dive into the implications of the male-only priesthood, the influence of women in the Anglican Church, and the newest pastoral letter of Bishop Strickland. This conversation promises to be thought-provoking and engaging – you won't want to miss it.********************************************************https://www.avoidingbabylon.comLocals Community:  https://avoidingbabylon.locals.comStore:  https://avoiding-babylon.sellfy.store/RSS Feed for Podcast Apps: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1987412.rssSpiritusTV:  https://spiritustv.com/@avoidingbabylonRumble: https://rumble.com/c/c-1626455Odysee:  https://odysee.com/@AvoidingBabylonBuzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREE Support the showCheck out our new store!

英语新闻丨重庆今年将为18万名初二女生免费接种HPV疫苗Chongqing will offer free vaccinations against human papillomavirus to 180,000 female second-year junior high school students this year, as more Chinese cities join efforts to combat cervical cancer.中国城市逐步加入了防治宫颈癌的行列，重庆今年将为18万名初二女生免费接种人乳头瘤病毒疫苗。China has backed the global strategy of accelerating the elimination of cervical cancer, which was initiated by the World Health Organization in November 2020, according to the National Health Commission.国家卫生健康委员会表示，中国积极响应世界卫生组织于2020年11月提出的“加速消除宫颈癌全球战略”。The strategy stipulates getting 90 percent of girls under 15 in 194 countries vaccinated with HPV vaccines by 2030, and set a target of eliminating cervical cancer through vaccination, screening and treatment.这一战略宣告，全球194个国家将携手在2030年实现90%的女孩在15岁前完成HPV疫苗接种的目标。Cervical cancer, which can be caused by HPV, is one of the most common and fatal cancers affecting women all over the world. It caused more than 60,000 deaths in China alone in 2020, and the number of new cervical cancer patients surpassed 110,000 that year, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer.宫颈癌由人乳头状瘤病毒引起，是影响全世界女性最常见和最致命的癌症之一。根据国际癌症研究机构的数据，仅2020年一年，中国就有6万多人因为宫颈癌去世，当年新增的宫颈癌患者人数超过了11万人。Getting fully vaccinated is regarded as the most effective way to protect women from the disease, and the primary target of HPV vaccination in China is girls aged 13 to 15, the National Health Commission said.国家卫生健康委员会表示，全面接种HPV疫苗是保护女性免受疾病侵害最有效的方法，中国HPV疫苗接种的主要目标是13至15岁的女孩。According to the municipal government's work plan, Chongqing is offering a standard subsidy of up to 600 yuan ($88) per person, about the cost of the doses. It also provides the same subsidy for girls who prefer to use other types of HPV vaccines, which might be more expensive.根据重庆市政府的工作计划，重庆将提供每人最高600元(88美元)的标准补贴，约等于疫苗成本。同时还为愿意使用其他可能价格更贵的HPV疫苗的女生提供相同的补贴。"I learned about HPV and its harmfulness from a school lecture as well as my parents, and I feel happy that a free vaccine is coming soon," said Zhao Lanxun, a second-grade student from Chongqing Bashu Secondary School.重庆巴蜀中学二年级学生赵兰勋说：“我从学校的讲座和父母那里了解到了HPV及其危害，很高兴能见证免费疫苗的问世。”So far, Liangjiang New Area and Yubei district in the city have launched the program.目前，重庆市两江新区、渝北区已启动接种疫苗的项目。Since Feb 11, many parts of Xi'an, Shaanxi province, have also launched a free HPV vaccination program for junior high school girls aged 13, according to local media.据当地媒体报道，自2月11日起，陕西西安多地也启动了面向13岁初中女生的免费HPV疫苗接种计划。According to a notice issued by the local health commission and the bureau of education, Xi'an is offering all types of HPV vaccines for the group on a voluntary basis.根据当地卫健委和教育局发布的通知，西安市在接种群体自愿的基础上提供所有类型的HPV疫苗。In September, Xi'an became the country's first city to administer a 9-valent HPV vaccine to females aged 9 to 45, said Liu Li, an official from a health service center in the city's Xincheng district. Earlier, use of 9-valent vaccines was limited to females aged 16 to 26.9月，西安市成为全国首个为9至45岁女性接种九价HPV疫苗的城市，西安市新城区一家卫生服务中心的官员刘丽说道。此前九价疫苗仅限于16至26岁的女性。Liu said there is a huge demand for the 9-valent HPV vaccine among girls. "Now they have a wider range of choices."刘丽说，女生对九价HPV疫苗的需求量很大。“现在他们的选择更多样。”To date, several districts including Xincheng, Beilin, Lianhu, Chang'an and Xixian New Area in the city have rolled out vaccination programs.到目前为止，包括新城、北林、莲湖、长安和西咸新区在内的几个区已经开展了疫苗接种计划。Some regions in the country have made early progress by launching free trial programs targeting junior high school students. In August 2020, Juungar Banner in Ordos, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, became China's first area to offer free HPV vaccinations for female students aged 13 to 18. Many other areas have followed suit since.全国部分地区已率先推出针对初中生的试用项目，并取得了初步进展。2020年8月，内蒙古自治区鄂尔多斯市准噶尔旗成为全国首个为13-18岁女学生免费接种HPV疫苗的地区，此后，其他地区纷纷效仿。Cervical英 [ˈsɜ:vɪkl] 美 [ˈsɜrvɪkl]adj.子宫颈的Stipulate英[ˈstɪpjuleɪt] 美[ˈstɪpjuleɪt]v.规定Municipal英 [mjuːˈnɪsɪpl] 美 [mjuːˈnɪsɪpl]adj. 市政的

Mix of the Week #450 is "Influences of Sisyphean Audio Therapy Mix" by Ordos Mk.0 Follow and include @ordosmarkzero in your track ID requests the new album "Sisyphean Audio Therapy 3" is available now: https://ordosmarkzero.bandcamp.com/album/sisyphean-audio-therapy-3 Mix of the Week: https://www.dreamchimney.com/motw/subscribe *NEW* the Dream Chimney App: https://apple.co/3R7i4FX Dream Chimney Radio: https://www.dreamchimney.com/radio

PILNO EPIZODO TEMOS: 00:00:00 Bačiulis giria Šimonytę 00:30:17 Kiek sėkmingas ukrainiečių puolimas? 00:50:36 Moskovija –– ne Ordos, o Bizantijos įpėdinė 01:00:10 Bačiulis vėl giria Šimonytę 01:01:44 Blinkevičiūtės šiokiadienis Remdami mus Patreon matysite PILNUS epizodus ir laidas, taip pat turėsite priėjimą prie labai didelio archyvo. Ačiū. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/baciulisirramanauskas Mes būsime labai dėkingi jei pranešite miestui ir pasauliui apie mūsų Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/baciulisirramanauskas Mūsų Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Ba%C4%8Diulis-ir-Ramanauskas-261379194566105/ Radioshow ir SSG platinami čia: https://www.youtube.com/user/whatlooksrightisrigh/videos Algis & Justas platinami čia: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj2SYwpifggjRONErb8Ws_g/videos?view_as=subscriber

Dans cette nouvelle mini-série d'épisodes, nous revenons en quelques minutes sur des faits étonnants, marquants, décalés, qui doivent te permettre de briller dès le début de ta dissertation, d'où son nom "L'accroche". Pour ce premier épisode, on part à la découverte d'Ordos, une "ville fantôme" de Mongolie intérieure, en Chine. Conçue pour accueillir plus d'un million d'habitants, elle a été abandonnée suite à l'effondrement de l'industrie charbonnière.

Matsya Nyaya: Are there codified rules of Dibs in Podcasting? Similarly, no body no death. Ordos is a real place, disturbingly. Even though it's Pablo Schreiber, we care so very little about this week's number... especially compared to the flasback plot. It feels like treading water in the present while they get past elements stacked up for the end of the season. Is knowledge of the Machine an SCP infohazard?Many Happy Returns:  Jarold shippers denied by a key. Jessica's death is probably a fridging. John increases his badge collection. Harold's thought counts, but gosh does he not know what a former operative would want in an apartment's architecture. We go through five or six different metaphors for how Donnely is bad at his job.Also, the introduction of a new segment Zathras hopes to never hear again, Baja Bits.Connect with the show at @babylonpodjectHelp us keep the lights on via our Patreon!Justen can be found at @justenwritesAna can be found at @The_Mianaai, and also made our show art.Both Ana and Justen can also be found on The Compleat Discography, a Discworld re-read podcast.Jude Vais can be found at @eremiticjude. His other work can be found at Athrabeth - a Tolkien Podcast and at Garbage of the Five Rings.Clips from the original show remain copyrighted by their original rightsholders, and are used under the Fair Use doctrine.Theme Music is by Arne Parrott, who can be found at http://atptunes.com/Additional music comes from  Muzaproduction from PixabayThis show is edited and produced by Aaron Olson, who can be found at @urizenxvii

https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://orchideight.com/https://www.collectiblesquids.com/ code: ADRICSupport the show

Kommer Kina rädda världen eller elda upp den med kol? Xi Jinping lovar att sluta bygga kolkraftverk utomlands men öppnar nya kolgruvor på hemmaplan. Vi besöker kolrushen i Inre Mongliet och gör nedslag i Bosnien och Zimbabwe för att förstå ifall resten av världen kan påverka Kinas klimatpolitik. Lastbilschaufförerna Zang, Han och Song, Ordos, kolspeditören Jing Hui, Ordos, Li Danqing, Greenpeace, Peking, Denis Zisko, Tuzlas center för ekologi och energi i Tuzla, Melania Chiponda, klimataktivist och doktor i utvecklingsstudier i Harare, Lauri Myllyvirta, Center for Energy and Clean Air i Helsingfors, Howey Ou, kinesisk klimataktivist i London. Programledare: Robin Olin robin.olin@sr.se Producent: Lotten Collin lotten.collin@sr.se Reportrar: Björn Djurberg, Filip Kotsamboukidis och Hanna Sahlberg Tekniker: Brady Juvier

Troisième vidéo fluff consacrée à l'inquisition: Ce cycle couvrira toutes les facettes de l'Inquisition, des ordos aux différentes philosophies des inquisiteurs. Dans cette vidéo, nous passons en revue les trois Ordos Majoris: -Ordo Malleus-Ordo Xenos-Ordo HereticusAinsi que les plus connus (ou plutôt les moins inconnus) des Ordos Minoris: -Ordo Chronos-Ordo Machinum-Ordo Scriptorum-Ordo Sicarius

Seconde vidéo du cycle consacré à l'inquisition: Ce cycle couvrira toutes les facettes de l'Inquisition, des ordos aux différentes philosophies des inquisiteurs.Dans cet épisode, nous discutons des Radicaux et Puritains

With the loss of control over the western half of the Mongol Empire, Kublai Khan was left to direct his considerable energies against the single strongest holdout to Mongol rule; the Southern Song Dynasty, dominating China south of the Huai River since the early 1100s. An immense economic and military power, the conquest of this dynasty would be no small feat- trying to do so claimed the life of no less that Kublai’s predecessor the Grand Khan Mongke in 1259, as covered in episode 31. The completion of the conquest of China was to be Kublai’s greatest accomplishment; but first Kublai needed to overcome the mighty walls of Xiangyang, the key to Song China. I’m your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.       As discussed in episode 31 and 32, at the end of 1259 Kublai was forced to withdraw from his campaign against the Song, returning to his residence in Inner Mongolia where he declared himself Khan in the first months of 1260. The led to war between Kublai and his brother Ariq Boke for the throne, culminating with Ariq’s surrender in 1264 and Kublai securing his title as Khan of Khans. However, the upheaval of this conflict broke Mongol imperial unity, and by the mid 1260s the Mongol Empire was irrevocably broken into independent Khanates. Kublai had little authority over these western Khanates, his effective power only with difficulty reaching to the Altai Mountains and the Tarim Basin.        Unlike the previous Khans whose power centres were in Mongolia proper, Kublai’s very legitimacy was tethered to his Chinese territory. Aside from his own personal interests in Chinese culture, it had been the resources of northern China which had allowed him to overcome his brother Ariq. Abandoning Karakorum in Mongolia, which was exposed and difficult to support, Kublai moved his capitals south: first at Shangdu, in what is now Inner Mongolia on the very border of the steppe and China; and then at the site of the former Jin Dynasty capital of Zhongdu, where modern Beijing sits. This was Dadu, the “great city” in Chinese, or as it was known to Turks, Mongols and Marco Polo, Khanbaliq, the Khan’s city. The indications were clear from the outset; Kublai was not just a Mongol Emperor, but Emperor of China- though the specifics of this political aspect we will explore in a future episode.        As a part of this, Kublai needed to bring the Song Dynasty under his rule. Kublai, much like his brothers, was a firm believer in the eventuality of Mongol world domination.  It was not a debate of if, but when. Kublai may have cultivated an image as a more humane conqueror than the likes of Chinggis or Mongke, but he was a conqueror nonetheless. The Song Dynasty had to accept Mongol overlordship or be destroyed. For a man also trying to overcome his ‘barbarian’ origins to show himself as rightful ruler of China, having a rival dynasty claiming to be the heirs of the illustrious Han and Tang Dynasties was a major hurdle to his legitimacy in the eyes of many Chinese. The flight of refugees from north China to the Song Dynasty was considerable throughout the thirteenth century, and any revolt within Kublai’s domains could see Song aid, financial, moral or military.       The subjugation of the Song to solidify his rule as both a Mongol Khan and a Chinese Emperor was, in Kublai’s mind, absolutely necessary. The problem was actually doing that. Warfare with the Song broke out in 1234, months after the final defeat of the Jin Dynasty. Thirty years later, in 1264, the frontier had hardly shifted. The Mongols controlled the territory across the Song’s northern and western frontiers, including Tibet and the Dali Kingdom in Yunnan. Even the northern Vietnamese Kingdom of Dai Viet, known to the Chinese as Annam, now paid tribute to the Khan. Advances against Song were difficult; western Sichuan was under a tenuous Mongol hold, unmoved since Mongke’s death in that province. The Mongols had found they could often easily penetrate the Song border, but holding territory was another matter. Unlike northern China, marked by the relatively open North China Plain, the south was a myriad of thick forest, mountains, rivers and canals, the available space covered in rice paddies and other agriculture. This was not the open terrain so suited to Mongol cavalry warfare. The humidity and heat grew ever more oppressive the farther south one travelled, spreading diseases the Mongols and their horses struggled against. It was also home to the largest cities in the world. The Song capital of Linan, modern Hangzhou, held well over one million people- about the population of Mongolia when Chinggis Khan unified the tribes in 1206. The Song fielded a regular army of at least 700,000, supported by a large navy. The many huge cities built along the Yangzi River could be resupplied by naval support, an area in which the Mongols had little experience. The thoroughly planned campaign of Mongke in 1258-9 had wrought much devastation but little gain, and on the Mongol withdrawal at the end of 1259 the Song reoccupied most of the lost territory.       A military conquest of the Song was an immense task, and something Kublai wanted to avoid. Soon after declaring himself Khan in 1260, he sent an emissary with terms. The Song Emperor, Lizong of Song since 1224, could continue to reign as a client of the Khan. They had merely to recognize Kublai as the Son of Heaven and they could continue to rule, with of course yearly tribute and prayers in the name of the Khan. It was, from Kublai’s point of view, a chance for them to enjoy great prosperity and avoid the many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives that would be lost by further fighting.  Since it didn’t involve extensive retribution as punishment for thirty years of fighting, Kublai must have thought it a very generous offer.       Kublai’s envoy, one of his top Chinese advisors named Hao Ching, was promptly imprisoned. He would not be released for 15 years. Hao Ching had run afoul of the man now in charge of the southern Song, the infamous Jia Sidao. To some, Sidao was the last intelligent man in Hangzhou, deftly guiding the dynasty against an indomitable enemy, outmaneuvering his foes and a political mastermind let down by a corrupt and rotten dynasty. To others, Sidao is the archetypal “bad minister,” overconfident and inept, downplaying the Mongol threat and hiding the truth from the emperors until it was too late. For some, he is best known as the ‘Cricket Minister,’ who liked to train the insects to fight each other. Sidao’s role in the fall of the Song is complicated, though his 15 year mastery of the Song court saw the loss of the final chance to avoid disaster.       Unlike the majority of the court officials, Jia Sidao was no graduate of the Examinations from which most bureaucrats from the Tang to the Qing were chosen. Born in 1213 to a military family in Zhejiang province, Sidao’s father Jia She was a respected Song military commander in Shandong, and Sidao followed in a variety of military and civil positions in strategic areas along the Yangzi River. Sidao’s good fortune was helped by his talent and the fact his sister was a favourite consort of Emperor Lizong. Lizong and Sidao did not meet until 1254 when Sidao was Associate Administrator of the Bureau of Military Affairs, and immediately struck up a friendship. Promotions quickly followed. The relationship seems to have been genuine; contrary to the Netflix series where Sidao’s rise is due to his sister’s influence, Sidao’s sister had died in 1247, leaving Sidao to ascend on his own charisma and competence.        In Sichuan when Mongke attacked in 1258, Sidao returned east after the Khan’s death. His timing was good; the removal of the Chancellor of the Right, Ding Daquan, left an opening at the top of the Song court, which Lizong replaced with his buddy Jia Sidao at the end of 1259. One of Sidao’s first acts was to play up Kublai’s withdrawal, acting as if Sidao had won a great victory. It was Sidao who imprisoned Kublai’s envoy, Hao Ching in 1260. Acting as sole Chancellor from 1260 onwards, Sidao wished to fervently resist the Mongols, something in which the court was in agreeance. How to do it was another matter. For Sidao, an important step was fiscal reform to strengthen the dynasty. The economic cost of the war was immense. A massive standing army, destruction of valuable regions across the frontier, alongside rampant corruption and hyperinflation of their paper currency put the Song court in a precarious economic position. Sidao ordered land surveys in 1262 to find those avoiding taxation. In 1263, he ramped this up with his Public Fields Measures, wherein officials with tax exempt status had  their excess lands confiscated. The government was supposed to purchase the land from the owners, but they were largely paid in the increasingly worthless paper money, or the land was outright seized.  Sidao hoped to use this land to grow the foodstuffs necessary for the Song army, but his effort had the side effect of creating a large body of Song officials and elite highly antagonistic to Sidao.        Sidao also set up letter boxes to anonymously report corruption and official offensives. It was a fine sentiment, though it turned out many of these corrupt officials also happened to be the ones Sidao didn’t like. Removing and at times executing those who stood in his way, Sidao appointed his own men to their positions. The polarization of the court was intense, though Sidao could overcome this as he had the strong support of the Emperors. Lizong died suddenly in November 1264, succeeded by his 24 year old nephew Zhao Qi, known by his temple name Duzong of Song. Duzong, if anything, had an even closer relationship with Jia Sidao, who had been his tutor. Duzong was much more interested in extravagant feasts and women than affairs of state -hardly the image of austerity expected when facing the threat of the Mongols, when other lordly men were required to give up lands and sons for the cause. The new Emperor was immensely loyal to Sidao, and in some depictions subservient to him. In 1269 when Sidao played with resigning from the court, Emperor Duzong came on his knees begging and crying for Sidao to return, which Sidao did with the dismissal of more of his court foes.       While this was going on, Sidao was putting substantial investment in defense, especially around the region of Xiangyang, which we will get to shortly, and in improving the walls of the capital. Diplomatic efforts were at their lowest with the Mongols since the outbreak of war in the 1230s, and even though Kublai Khan routinely released captured Song merchants and prisoners in an effort to build goodwill, Jia Sidao did not budge. And since Sidao controlled the court and policy of the Song, the Song court did not budge either.       Aside from retaking some cities and border skirmishing, Jia Sidao did not take any larger offensives against Kublai during his occupation with Ariq in Mongolia. Sidao likely recognized that, with their well-built walls and defensive weapons supported by rivers and ships, the Song’s defense could stick up to the Mongols. Yet on the offense, especially in the more open territory of the north, the Song armies would suffer the same results they had on every other northern expedition in the Dynasty’s 300 year history; a dismal defeat against the cavalry based armies.  Perhaps the most notable effort at undermining Kublai’s rule in north China was by encouraging a Chinese warlord in Shandong allied to the Mongols, Li Tan, to revolt. Despite both he and his father, the Red Coat warlord Li Quan, having fought the Song for decades, Li Tan was not feeling like he was favoured under Kublai. Encouraged by Song promises and Kublai’s conflict with Ariq, in February 1262 Li Tan declared for the Song and threw off Mongol rule.        It took about a month for Mongol forces to arrive and defeat Li Tan’s rebels in the field. Li Tan was caught in August 1262 and executed. The Song had provided no direct aid for Li Tan, whose small forces were quickly overcome by Mongolian and Chinese under Shih Tienzi, a Northern Chinese whose family had loyally served the Mongols since the late 1210s. Jia Sidao may have wanted to see if the Chinese of the north would rise up against the Mongols, but the Mongol response was quick enough to violently put a stop to any talk of rebellion. The most significant outcome of the rebellion was upon Kublai himself. Not only had Li Tan, a Chinese warlord considered a loyal subject of the Khan rebelled, but Li Tan’s father-in-law Wang Wentung was found to have been complicit. Wang Wentung was the Chief Administrator of Kublai’s Central Secretariat, and one of the most influential figures in Kublai’s administration. Executed only weeks after Li Tan’s initial revolt, it was a blow to Kublai’s trust of the Chinese in his government. In the aftermath, Kublai decreased the power of many of the Chinese in the upper echelons of the bureaucracy, replacing them with Central Asians, Muslims, Turks and Tibetans. Many of the Chinese warlord families who had served the Mongols since Chinggis Khan saw their holdings reduced or forfeited. The family of Shih Tienzi, a man noted for his loyalty to the Mongols over many decades of service, ceased to be feudal lords, though this was partly on Tienzi’s urging in order to not lose the trust of the Khan.  Such was the effect of Sidao’s effort to undermine Mongol rule in North China.       Kublai’s first years as Khan were focused on consolidating and establishing his governing apparatus of northern China, and for the first half of the 1260s conflict with the Song was relegated to border skirmishes. Aside from diplomatic efforts to encourage a surrender of the Song Dynasty, Kublai also offered great rewards and lands for defectors in an effort to encourage desertions. Here, Kublai had some successes, perhaps the most notable early on being Liu Zheng, who became one of Kublai’s staunchest supporters and the ardent proponent of a navy. Liu Zheng and other like minded men convinced Kublai that the key was not multi-front attacks, but seizing control of the Yangzi River, the backbone of the Song realm where the Dynasty’s most prominent cities sat. To do this, the Mongols needed to build a navy and take the stronghold of Xiangyang.       If you look at a topographic map of China, three river systems should stand out to you, running in three lines from west to east. The northernmost and the longest is the Yellow River, which curls from the foothills of Tibet down into the Ordos desert, where it forms its great loop before cutting across the north China plain to spill out into the sea by the Shandong peninsula. This was the barrier which the Jin Dynasty moved their capital behind in an effort to protect themselves from Chinggis Khan. South of the Yellow River is the Huai, the shortest of the three rivers here, which marked the border between Jin and Song for a century, and now served as the Mongol-Song border line. By Kublai’s time, the Mongols had failed to hold it, the area south of the Huai a mess of canals and smaller rivers serving agriculture, terrain unsuited to cavalry maneuvers. Our third river on the map is the Yangzi, a wide and fast flowing river which was the natural defense against any northern invader. The most populated cities in the world were clustered along it, including the Song capital of Hangzhou, a short trip south from the River’s eastern end on the ocean. The Yangzi could only be crossed with difficulty, and the Song used it as a highway to reinforce and resupply cities, ferry troops and generally prevent a Mongol conquest. Lacking any beachheads on the Yangzi, the Mongols had nowhere to build up a navy and begin to challenge Song authority there.       That is, except for the Han River. Nestled between the mountains of Sichuan in the west and end of the Huai river to its east, runs the Han River, cutting north to south to intersect with the Yangzi at what is now Wuhan. The Han was the strategically vital access point, one where the Mongols had the potential to build up a river fleet in security before assaulting the Yangzi. Kublai knew this, and so did Jia Sidao, who for this reason spent huge amounts improving the defences of the twin cities of Xiangyang and Fancheng, which today are the super-city of Xiangfang. Sitting on opposite sides of the Han River, the two cities stood at the edge of the Song Dynasty and the Mongol Empire. Xiangyang and Fancheng were both huge, well fortified with wide moats, well provisioned and guarded by large garrisons and a variety of counter siege weapons. With both cities right on the river, they could continually be resupplied and deny the Mongol advance. Liu Zheng and the other Chinese defectors argued that Kublai should forget the favourite Mongol ploy of vast pincer movements. The Song had resources and moral enough to withstand these. Instead, the defectors argued, Kublai needed to throw his total might against Xiangyang and Fancheng.        Preparations began in the second half of the 1260s with the creation of a river fleet. In 1265, the Mongols won a battle at Tiaoyu Shan in Sichuan against the Song, capturing 146 boats. Koreans, Jurchen and Northern Chinese were put to work building more ships; in early 1268, officials in Shaanxi and Sichuan were ordered to construct another 500 vessels. By the last months of 1268, a large force of Mongols, Turks and northern Chinese converged upon Xiangyang and Fancheng. The Song defector Liu Zheng was placed in charge of the Mongol fleet, blocking off the Han River south of the cities to cut them off from the Yangzi. Aju, Subedei’s grandson, was entrusted with the siege of Fancheng; Shih Tienzi, the Chinese warlord long in service to the Khans, held overall command outside the walls of Xiangyang. A frontal assault was dismissed; the wide moats and thick walls were all but impervious to the catapults the Mongols brought with them. Attempting to storm the cities would result in heavy losses. No, they would need to be starved out. To do so, the Mongols erected walls and defensive works around the cities to cut off land access, while Liu Zheng and his fleet prevented Song reinforcements from the river.        In December of 1268 the garrison made an attempt to break out before the cordon could be tightened, but this was repulsed. The Song commander in Xiangyang, Lu Wenhuan, was a steady hand and kept moral up. They probed the Mongol besiegers continuously, trying to find the weak point in the lines. By March 1269, Shih Tienzi requested another 20,000 reinforcements from Kublai for this reason. The large cities and river access made closing them off a great challenge.       While Jia Sidao has often been accused of hiding the details of the siege of Xiangyang from the Song court, this is a baseless accusation. Duzong of Song may have taken little interest in military matters, but it was beyond the skill of Jia Sidao to hide the massive efforts going on outside Xiangyang; everyone along the Yangzi River would have known of it. The court was very much aware of the siege; the annals of the Song Dynasty, the Song shih, describe the court heaping rewards onto the defenders of Xiangyang in order to encourage their resistance. The court was still united in the opinion of resisting Kublai, even if the how was not agreed upon. Sidao sent multiple armies to relieve the defenders, some of them led by his own brother-in-law, Fan Wenhu. In August 1269, the first of these relieving forces sailed up the Han River to Xiangyang, but was defeated by the Mongol fleet and their boats captured.        In March of 1270 another attempt by the garrison of Xiangyang to break out was defeated and another Song relief fleet was repulsed. Though by then the city was largely closed off by the ever expanding Mongol fortifications, the Mongol commanders needed more men: 70,000 men and 5,000 more ships were requested, giving an image to the scale of the task to really surround these cities. Xiangyang was a whirlpool pulling in men from across the Mongol and Song empires, neither side willing to budge. Several times in later 1270 and 1271 Sidao’s brother-in-law Fan Wenhu led fleets up the Han River to assist Xiangyang, and each time the new Mongol navy proved victorious. The skilled Mongol fleet commanders, most notably the Chinese Liu Zheng and Zhang Hongfan, were adept at this river warfare, luring the Song into ambushes and developing a lengthy system along the Han to detect approaching fleets and communicate response. Jia Sidao ordered attacks on Sichuan, along the border and even a naval attack on the Shandong peninsula. His hopes these would divert Mongol resources were dashed, as most of these were inconclusive, won only minor victories or were outright disasters, as with the Shandong attack. All Sidao achieved was the wasting of Song resources while the noose tightened on Xiangyang.       Though the Mongol navy had a good chokehold on Xiangyang and Fancheng, the cities stood defiant. Well stocked and moral still high, any sort of frontal assault would still result in high losses and possibly allow the Song to break the siege. In 1272 one relief force actually pushed through to reach the city, albeit with heavy losses of most of their men and resources.  Kublai needed something to bring the siege to an end, and reached out west to see about acquiring some news tools.       In 1271, Kublai’s nephew Abaqa sat on the throne of the Ilkhanate. Abaqa was Hulegu’s son, and unlike his cousins in the Golden Horde, still recognized Kublai as the nominal head of the empire. When Kublai’s envoys arrived in 1271 asking for something to assist in the siege, Abaqa had just the ticket. Abaqa sent two Muslim siege engineers, Ismail and Ala al-Din, experienced in the newest advancement in projectile weaponry; the counterweight trebuchet. Developed in Europe in the early thirteenth century, it spread to the crusader kingdoms by the end of the 1250s, where Hulegu may have utilized them in his campaign in Syria in 1260. They were pretty nifty; instead of manpower, as required by the Chinese catapults the Mongols used, the trebuchet used its counterweight and gravity to hurl projectiles with greater accuracy, power and distance.        By the last weeks of 1272, Ismail and Ala al-Din arrived outside the walls of Fancheng and began to build the machines. In December, the first shots were launched into the walls of Fancheng. Within days, they were breached, the Mongols in the city and Fancheng was overrun. A massacre was conducted on those found within, ensured to be visible from the walls of Xiangyang. Still, Xiangyang held out.  Carefully, the trebuchets were disassembled and transported across the river. In the first weeks of 1273, the weapons were carefully set up at  the southeastern corner of Xiangyang. The trebuchets were carefully calibrated and launched a projectile supposedly nearly 100 kilos in weight. The first shot hit a tower along the city walls, a crack like thunder heard across Xiangyang. Panic set in, Xiangyang’s formerly untouchable walls now under real threat.       One of the Mongol commanders, a Uighur named Ariq Qaya, rode to the walls and called for the city’s commander, Lu Wenhuan. He commended Wenhuan on his skilled resistance, but now it was time to submit; do so now, and he would be rewarded by Kublai. Resistance would meet the same end as Fancheng. Lu Wenhuan recognized there would be no relief force from the Song for him now. On the 17th of March, 1273, Lu Wenhuan surrendered Xiangyang to the Mongols. After a 5 year siege, the battle was decisely won in the favour of the Mongols, and the Han River could now become a veritable shipyard for the Mongol advance on the Song.       The fall of Xiangyang sent shockwaves across the Song Empire; Jia Sidao’s authority was greatly undermined, though Duzong of Song’s confidence in him was not shaken. He had  now to prepare for a full river and land invasion of the Song heartland. For Lu Wenhuan, the Mongols kept their promise; siding with the Khan, he would now lead the Mongol spear thrust against the Song. Xiangyang was perhaps the decisive victory in the Mongol-Song war, its fall ensuring the Mongols had a route to truly conquer the dynasty. So great was the story that Marco Polo retold it time and time again on his return to Europe; either through his own ‘enhancing’ of the story, or that of his ghost-writer Rustichello, the account was shifted to remove the Muslims’ role from the siege. Instead, Polo, his father and his uncle became the ones who shared the knowledge of the trebuchet with Kublai. Considering that the siege ended in early 1273, and Polo did not arrive in China until 1274 or 5, we can rather safely dismiss that. However, Polo, the Chinese language Yuan Shi compiled around 1370, and Rashid al-Din, writing in Iran in the early 1300s, all include the story of Kublai gaining his siege equipment from westerners.  Polo just happened to be the only one indicating it wasn’t a Muslim.     Kublai Khan was now poised to end the forty year long war with the Song Dynasty, completing the conquest of China begun by Chinggis Khan some sixty years prior. Our next episode will look at the fall of the Song Dynasty, so be sure to subscribe to our podcast. If you’d like to help us continue bringing you great content, please support us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. I’m your host David, and we’ll catch you on the next one. 

Dune (1992)  1992's Dune from Cryo Interactive/Virgin Interactive blends adventure with strategy. Loosely following the story of the 1965 novel Dune and using many visual elements from the 1984 film of the same name by David Lynch, the game casts the player as Paul Atreides, with the ultimate goal of driving the Harkonnens from the planet Dune and taking control of its valuable export, the spice. Key to success is the management of spice mining, military forces, and ecology as the player amasses allies and skills. Dune II (1992)  Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty, later retitled Dune II: Battle for Arrakis for the Mega Drive/Genesis port, was released in December 1992 from Westwood Studios/Virgin Interactive. Often considered to be the first "mainstream modern real-time strategy game", Dune II established many conventions of the genre. Only loosely connected to the plot of the novels or films, the game pits three interplanetary houses — the Atreides, the Harkonnens, and the Ordos — against each other for control of the planet Arrakis and its valuable spice, all while fending off the destructive natural forces of the harsh desert planet itself.  Dune 2000 (1998)  Dune 2000, a 1998 remake of Dune II from Intelligent Games/Westwood Studios/Virgin Interactive, added improved graphics and live-action cutscenes. Though gameplay is similar to its predecessor, Dune 2000 features an enhanced storyline and functionality. Emperor: Battle for Dune (2001)  Emperor: Battle for Dune (Intelligent Games/Westwood Studios/Electronic Arts) was released on June 12, 2001. A sequel to Dune 2000, the real-time strategy game features 3D graphics and live-action cutscenes, and casts players as Atreides, Harkonnens, or Ordos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_based_on_Dune

Dune (1992)  1992's Dune from Cryo Interactive/Virgin Interactive blends adventure with strategy. Loosely following the story of the 1965 novel Dune and using many visual elements from the 1984 film of the same name by David Lynch, the game casts the player as Paul Atreides, with the ultimate goal of driving the Harkonnens from the planet Dune and taking control of its valuable export, the spice. Key to success is the management of spice mining, military forces, and ecology as the player amasses allies and skills. Dune II (1992)  Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty, later retitled Dune II: Battle for Arrakis for the Mega Drive/Genesis port, was released in December 1992 from Westwood Studios/Virgin Interactive. Often considered to be the first "mainstream modern real-time strategy game", Dune II established many conventions of the genre. Only loosely connected to the plot of the novels or films, the game pits three interplanetary houses — the Atreides, the Harkonnens, and the Ordos — against each other for control of the planet Arrakis and its valuable spice, all while fending off the destructive natural forces of the harsh desert planet itself.  Dune 2000 (1998)  Dune 2000, a 1998 remake of Dune II from Intelligent Games/Westwood Studios/Virgin Interactive, added improved graphics and live-action cutscenes. Though gameplay is similar to its predecessor, Dune 2000 features an enhanced storyline and functionality. Emperor: Battle for Dune (2001)  Emperor: Battle for Dune (Intelligent Games/Westwood Studios/Electronic Arts) was released on June 12, 2001. A sequel to Dune 2000, the real-time strategy game features 3D graphics and live-action cutscenes, and casts players as Atreides, Harkonnens, or Ordos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_based_on_Dune

Hey everyone! Here's the latest ep of Scrabble Dabble Doo featuring the uncommon 5 Letter "o" words. Not too many, so it's easily digestible:OMASAOBEAH, BOHEAOCTADOCREA ORACH, ROACH OCTAL OCTAN, CANTO, COTAN OIDIA OAVES, SOAVE OFFAL OGHAM OSSIA, OASIS OSTIA, IOTAS, STAOI OAKUM OTAKU OLLAS, SALOL ONLAY OTTAR, TAROT, TORTA OBELI OBOLE OMBRE, OMBER, BROME OUTBY CHORE, OCHRE, OCHER OCKER ORGIC, CORGI OHMIC, MOCHI OCHRY OCULI OSMIC ORCIN TONIC, ONTIC OCTYLOGEED, GEODE ODEUM ODYLE, YODEL, YODLE ODIUM, DUOMI OOTID ODIST, DOITSDOORS, ODORS, ORDOS, ROODSOXEYE OKEHS, HOKES OUPHE OLLIE ORIEL, OILER, REOIL OXIME, MOXIE OSIER ORLES, ROLES, LOSER, LOrES, SORELOWLET, TOWEL OUZEL ORMER ENOWS, OWSEN OLEUM OYERS, YORES OLOGY, GOOLY OUPHS OXLIP OXIMS, SIXMO OPSIN, PIONS ONIUM ORRIS OSMOL, LOOMS, MOOLS, SLOMO OVOLO ORLOP

A desperate, starving crowd of thousands presses together, smothering each other in the narrow city streets; defenders clad it broken or hastily repaired lamellar armour hurry to and fro, responding to new alerts along the city walls; the constant thundering of stone slamming into the city walls; the loud cracks of bombs exploding, lobbed into houses by the enemy siege weapons and setting them alite. Screams, some ongoing and others cutting off suddenly, marking where a poor defender, foolish enough to stick his head over the ramparts, was struck by arrows. Outside the city, smoke billowed up enemy sieges machines set on fire by the defender. Beyond them, was the whinnying of tens of thousands of Mongol horses, with Chinese subjects and allies sharpening swords and preparing for the assault. Such was life in the nearly year-long siege of Kaifeng, capital of the Jin Empire and now the target of the Mongol war machine. Today, we look at the final collapse of the Jurchen ruled Jin Dynasty, ending the twenty year long Mongol conquest of Northern China. Victory here laid the groundwork for Mongol war with the masters of southern China, the Song Dynasty, setting the stage for a conflict which would eventually leave the Mongols the rulers of the Middle Kingdom. I’m your host David and this is Ages of Conquest: The Mongol Invasions!        We’ve covered the early stages of the Mongol-Jin war in previous episodes but to give a quick recap. Mongol armies under Chinggis Khan had invaded the Jin Empire in 1211. The Jin, ruled by the Jurchen, hailing from Manchuria and ancestors of the later Manchu, controlled China north of the Huai river and had enjoyed a fearsome military reputation, renowned for their heavy cavalry and horse archers. But after nearly a century of their rule, the semi-nomadic Jurchen in China had adopted Chinese culture and language, losing their formidable military edge. Jin armies were routinely swept away in the field by the Mongols, and those Jurchen and Khitans who still lived as nomads or semi-nomads were soon allied with Chinggis Khan. In 1215, the Emperor Xuanzong of Jin fled south of the Yellow River, abandoning the capital of Zhongdu, now modern Beijing, and cutting ties to his Manchurian homeland. Formerly hardy horsemen, the final emperors of the Jin Dynasty, though still ethnically Jurchen, were now little different from the Chinese. Their armies were now made up of Chinese infantry, having lost most of their access to horse producing regions. Defections from the Jin army early on in the war brought the Mongols knowledge of Chinese siege weapons, and soon the fortifications of northern China were reduced one by one.  When Chinggis Khan moved against the Khwarezmian Empire in 1219, the Jin were granted no respite, as the talented commander Mukhali was left to continue pressure on the Jin. Only Mukhali’s death in 1223 granted the Jin a brief rest, with Mongol attacks for the next few years becoming decidedly more limited.       The Jin had been in an unenviable position from 1215-1223. Mongol pressure in the north was unrelenting and of great concern, bringing the losses of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians. In the west, the Tangut ruled Xi Xia, former Jin vassals, had submitted to the Mongols and joined them in attacking the Jin. In the east, the Shandong peninsula and surrounding coastline was lost to a local insurrection known as the Red Coats, an umbrella term for a collection of independent warlords, some of whom declared for the Mongols, some who declared for the Song Dynasty, and all hating the Jin. The Chinese Song Dynasty ruled almost all of China south of the Huai river,  and were a formidable economic power as well as being longtime foes of the Jin. Having lost their northern territories, and two emperors, to the Jurchen in the early 1100s, few tears were shed in the Song court for the Jin’s struggles. In 1217 the Jin invaded the Song- a shocking development considering their ongoing military issues, but one with the intention to essentially provide further room to retreat from the Mongols. Fighting continued until 1221, proving both indecisive and wasteful.       1223-1224 provided an unexpected change of events. Beginning with Mukhali’s death, we have the already noted reduction in Mongol pressure. Though Mukhali’s son and brother continued to campaign, it was without Tangut military support, as their forces had abandoned Mukhali in his final days. Furthermore, Chinggis Khan was still absent in Central Asia, though making his return. This was the first real breathing room northern China had experienced in well over a decade. In the first days of 1224, the Emperor Xuanzong of Jin died, succeeded by his third son Ningjiasu (Ning-ji-asu), known also by his chosen Chinese personal name, Wanyan Shouxi (Wan-yan Shou-shi), Wanyan being the royal clan of the Jurchen Jin.    25 years old on his ascension, Ningjiasu (Ning-ji-asu) was the closest the Jin came to a competent monarch since the death of Shizong of Jin in 1189. More evenhanded and thoughtful than Xuanzong (shuan-zong) of Jin, and more competent than the arrogant and inept Wei Shao Wang, had Ningjiasu taken the throne at any other time, he may have enjoyed a fine reputation. However, he was unable to arrest the collapse of his state, and would die only a few hours before the end of his dynasty. In life, rulers of Chinese-style dynasties are simply known as ‘the Emperor,’ and prior to the Ming Dynasty, would take era titles to delineate certain years of their reign. After their deaths, they are all given posthumous temple names, such as ‘Taizu’ for dynastic founders. Xuanzong of Jin was the posthumous title for Ningjiasa’s father, whose personal name had been Wudubu. Wudubu’s predecessor was so hated he was posthumously demoted from emperor to prince, and hence known as the Prince of Wei, or Wei Shao Wang. The posthumous temple name given to Ningjisau was Aizong, meaning, ‘pitiable ancestor.’ His Chinese personal name, Shouxu (Shou-szhu), was also turned into a pun by the Mongols, as it sounded similar to “little slave.”        Aizong of Jin, as we’ll call him had a promising start to his reign. Both the Tangut and Song emperors died in similar time, and Aizong quickly set about organizing peace between them, though no military cooperation came of this. Able to redistribute troops against the Mongols and Red Coats, the Jin also began to receive horses in trade from the Tangut. Seeking to inprove relations with the Mongols, on Chinggis Khan’s death Aizong even sent envoys bearing formal condolences to the Mongols, though they were turned away. Jin forces were able to reoccupy some territory and strengthen fortifications. As we mentioned earlier, Xuanzong of Jin had moved the capital from Zhongdu to Kaifeng in 1215. Though a foolhardy decision which brought Mongol armies back into China, it wasn’t strategically awful. Kaifeng, in the central Henan province, had been the capital of the Song Dynasty before captured by the Jurchen in the early 12th century. With massive walls, a large population and rich hinterland, the city itself was difficult to siege. Unlike Zhongdu, which was situated comparatively close to Mongolia, Kaifeng was sheltered behind the Yellow River, fordable only at select, and guarded, points. Any passage directly over the river could prove highly costly. The Mongols would thus be more inclined to ford the river further along its great bend towards the Ordos, allowing them to make an approach to the west of the city. This would bring them into mountainous territory in Shaanxi (Shaan-shi) province to Henan’s west, the passage between these provinces guarded by the fortress of Tongguan. Bordered by mountains and possessing a strong garrison, either Tongguan would have to be forced by a costly siege, or bypassed entirely by cutting south through the territory of the now neutral Song Dynasty. Indeed, this was advice Chinggis Khan was said to have given his sons on his deathbed. But since peace had now been reached between Jin and Song, it was impossible to say if they would allow Mongol troops through their country unimpeded.       Such was the problem Ogedai faced when he became Khan in 1229. Ogedai was not the military equal of his father or brothers, and to quiet questions of how fit he was to succeed his famous father, he needed to complete the conquest of the Jin. Growing bolder through the recapture of their cities, defeats of small Mongol parties and absence of any major offensives for some years, the Jin would be a test of worthiness for the new Khan. Weeks after becoming Khan, Ogedai sent an army against the Jin, perhaps to test the waters. A Mongol army of  8,000 under Doqulqu (do-khul-khu) entered Shaanxi (Shaan-shi) at the end of 1229, besieging Qingyangfu (Ching-yang-foo). After a failed Jin peace embassy, a relief force was raised under the commander Pu’a with a vanguard of the “Loyal and Filial Army.” Pu’a was a bit of a rapscallion who had led raids into Mongol occupied territory for several years, looting and carrying off captured horses and provisions, then withdrawing before Mongol forces could catch him. Through his habit of playing up minor skirmishes like they were great victories, he had earned a reputation for skill against the Mongols, though whether it was deserved was another matter. The ‘Loyal and Filial Army,’ which Pu’a had been associated with for years also had an unsavoury, though effective, reputation. Made up of deserters and captives from the Mongols it included northern Chinese, Uighurs, Naiman, Tanguts and the odd Qipchaq, these were mounted units specializing in Mongol tactics. Paid three times that of normal soldiers, to encourage defections from the diverse Mongol armies, by the 1230s this was a crack force of 7,000. Often undisciplined and unruly, they proved effective at plundering and were fine horse archers- one of Pu’a commanders, Chenheshang (Chen-hae-shang) commanded a 1,000 strong vanguard of these men.        At Dachangyuan (da-chang-yuan) in January-February 1230, Pu’a drew Doqulqu’s (Do-hool-hoo’s) force up for battle. Chenheshang led the Loyal and Filial Army as vanguard, and for the first time in the nearly 20 years of war, the Jin defeated the Mongols in open battle. After the battle, Pu’a released a captured Mongol envoy, and sent him to Ogedai with a simple message: “We’ve got all our soldiers and horses ready- come on over and fight!” Soon afterwards, Pu’a, Chanheshang and the general Hada defeated  a Mongol army investing Weizhou on the northern bank of the Yellow River in Henan.        Ogedai was furious and frightened. Doqolqu (do-khul-khu) was removed from command  and possibly poisoned. Pu’a’s boast, followed by actual Jin victories coupled with peace between Jin and Song, made the new Khan very nervous. Naysayers within his own court who whispered how the more militaristic Tolui, Ogedai’s younger brother, should have been Khan, saw this as signs of Heaven’s displeasure. Ogedai tried to quiet these whispers by saying this was like the candle flaring up before it goes out, while at the same time raising a large army to personally lead against the Jin. It should be noted that details of this campaign are often contradictory, with later authors hiding details due to the Mongol defeats suffered in the campaign. The reconstruction which will follow is based on the work of historian Dr. Christopher Atwood, and his fantastic article on Doqulqu’s death.        Ogedai set out in early 1231, praying for nine days to Eternal Blue Heaven for victory. His solution to the described defenses of the Jin- the wide and fast moving Yellow River guarding the north, the neutral Song border to the south and the fortress of Tongguan protecting the west, was to bring the full might of his army against Tongguan, to force it or bypass it.       Up to 100,000 men in Ogedai’s army, including his brother Tolui, the general Subutai freshly recalled from the western steppe, and Mongols, Khitans, Uighurs and subject Chinese, marched into Shaanxi province, already suffering from a severe famine. With such a large army and limited resource available, Ogedai needed to find a way through Tongguan quickly. The Jin commanders, Pu’a and Hada, pulled all their available troops out of Shaanxi before the Mongol advance in order to reinforce Tongguan, and it quickly became apparent that an assault on the fort would be costly and lengthy.    An attempt by Ogedai’s adopted brother Shigi Qutuqu (shi-gi hoo-too-hoo) to draw the Jin defenders into a feigned retreat resulted in heavy Mongol losses, the Jin refusing to leave the safety of their fortifications. Subutai for his part, was able to find a route through the hills south of Tongguan, and seemed likely to outflank the fort. However, his forces became spread too thin during the rough voyage, and a counterattack led by Chenheshang and 1,000 of the Loyal and Filial Troops defeated Subutai at Daohuigu (dao-hui-goo). Subutai and part of his force returned, humbled, to Ogedai, who was so furious he threatened to totally remove him from command, and was only restrained by Tolui. The Mongols withdrew from Tongguan, besieging the large city of Fenxiangfu. The city fell in May 1231, 400 catapults concentrating on one corner of the walls. Despite this victory, Ogedai’s mood was little improved, and lambasted his generals, saying “If Mukhali were alive, I would not have had to come here myself!”       Struggling to support the large army in famine stricken Shaanxi, Ogedai ordered a withdrawal to Inner Mongolia for summer 1231 and replan the assault. There, Tolui suggested a plan which their father had discussed in his final days, bypassing Tongguan by going through Song territory and arriving deep behind Jin defenses. Ogedai agreed, ordering Tolui and Subutai to take their tumens on this flanking maneuver. Meanwhile, Ogedai and the main army would attempt a crossing of the Yellow River, while a smaller force under Ochin Noyan was to try the end of the Yellow River in Shandong, guarding Ogedai from encirclement. The plan was for their armies to act as a giant pincer, striking Kaifeng from the north and southwest simultaneously, Tolui coming up behind enemy lines and preventing the Jin from marshalling all of their forces on a single army.         Nothing started off to plan. While Ogedai’s force was held up by a long siege at Hezhongfu (Hay-zhong-foo) in their effort to cross the Yellow River, early indications were that the Song would not cooperate with Tolui. At the start of 1231 the Song had killed Li Quan, the Mongol’s Red Coat ally in Shandong. Also, the envoy sent at the end of summer to request passage through Song territory had disappeared. Entering into the Song empire without their approval could mean Tolui would face resistance or an army. If Tolui was bogged down fighting Song troops, he would be unable to rendezvous with Ogedai, leaving his brother isolated. Much of Tolui’s army had been in famine stricken Shaanxi, or relocated to the barren Qinling mountains during summer 1231- lacking resources to feed perhaps 20-30,000 men, medieval authors speak of cannibalism occurring here. They could hardly eat the horses they needed for war, afterall. These starving men faced a difficult ride through hostile territory, beyond which  they needed to return to the Jin realm with strength and numbers to fight.            It is testament to Tolui’s military ability that he kept his men together through this hard ride through mountainous territory. Once they reached the Song border in November 1231, Tolui allowed his men a month of pillaging across Sichuan. This Song province was rich, fertile and untouched by the two decades of Mongol-Jin warfare, a chance for Tolui’s men to regain strength, morale and fatten their horses. It also showcased a noted weakness of the Song border defenses- Tolui’s troops travelled over 290 kilometres into Song territory before turning back. This was not the first occasion of Mongol-Song warfare: a brief clash had occurred in 1227 during the destruction of the Tangut Kingdom when Mongol forces attacking the western edge of the Jin empire had gone over the border and raided Song prefectures. The Chief Councillor of the Song Dynasty, Shih Mi-yuan, in power since 1208, was as cautious and pragmatic as he was unpopular in the empire, and he was very unpopular. Neither clash was enough for him to send Song Chinese to die at Mongol hands, and he didn’t let Tolui’s raid escalate into a full military response. Tolui was thus able to enter the southern flank of Jin ruled Henan province in January 1232.       The Jin were panicking now, and Pu’a and Hada rapidly withdrew the garrisons of Tongguan to catch Tolui. At Sanfeng mountain, Tolui and Subutai found themselves surrounded by multiple converging Jin forces under Pu’a and Hada. Pu’a sent a message to Tolui which, in the words of the Ilkhanid vizier Rashid al-Din, the Jin threatened to “do this and that to their women folk.” The actual message was certainly not so polite, and Tolui bristled at this. Surrounded, the Mongols were in a tough position. Aid came from an unexpected direction, as it suddenly began to snow forcefully, a blizzard mixed with hail. Subutai reminded Tolui that they were facing soft men from cities and small villages- the Mongols, used to harsh winters on the open steppe, put on their winter coats and waited on their horses. The Jin troops were unprepared for the early February storm, and for four days they froze and suffered. On the fourth day, deciding their enemy was suitably weakened, Tolui ordered the assault. Racing down the mountain side, the Mongols cut into the Jin and obliterated them, Pu’a and Hada both captured. As punishment for their threat to rape the Mongol women, we are told the Mongols sodomized the captured Jin troops, and made a huge mound of severed ears from the slain.    The defeat at Sanfang mountain and capture of their best generals marked the end of the Jin Dynasty’s offensive capabilities. Ogedai pushed through the northern defenses, and was soon reunited with his brother. Subutai was given overall command of the army while Ogedai and Tolui returned to Mongolia,  possibly because Ogedai had fallen quite ill.  In April 1232, Subutai began the siege of Kaifeng, a noose which took almost a year to tighten.   Ogedai  and Tolui returned to Mongolia. Precisely what occurred is unclear, but by the end of 1232 Tolui was dead. The ‘official’ verison in the Secret History of the Mongols had Ogedai fall deathly ill, and Tolui urges the spirits to take him instead, sacrificing himself for his brother- but mention of him drinking  a ‘special  brew’ prepared for him have fueled rumours that Ogedai in fact had his brother poisoned. The problem with this theory is that it relies too strongly on later antagonism between the heirs of Ogedai and Tolui. By all accounts the two brothers were extremely close, and later editing to what became the Secret History of the Mongols by Tolui’s sons may have chosen to portray their father more heroically, and by villianizing Ogedai, helped justify their eventual ascension to the throne. Other writers like Juvaini say Tolui drank himself to death. Since this was the fate Ogedai, and numerous other Mongolian princes, shared, this is rather likely. Ogedai Khaan lost his closest companion late in 1232, a loss from which he never recovered.   Back at Kaifeng, Subutai led a brutal siege. The city, so flooded with refugees that it held over 1 million people, was totally blockaded, starvation and pandemic setting in over the summer of 1232. Gunpowder weapons were used by both sides in the form of bombs lobbed by catapults, and in fire-lances by the Jin. Essentially a flame thrower, fire-lances shot a jet of fire three metres long, burning men to death horrifically and were used to effectively block breaches in the walls. You can see this in action in episode 10, season 1, of Netflix’s Marco Polo. Subutai tried various means to breach the walls of Kaifeng, but the city was skillfully defended. Sappers would approach the walls under mobile shelters, with the intention to physically dig through them. Jin defenders dropped bombs onto them, destroying both shelter and attackers. Dykes on the Yellow River were broken, flooding the plain and the city.    This resistance was valiant, but ultimately doomed. The Jin leadership was chaotic, with individuals promoted, then demoted and executed within days for perceived slights or on suspicion of treachery. Finally, in February 1233 Aizong of Jin abandoned the city with some loyal guards, leaving it to its fate. One commander left in Kaifeng, Cui Li (Tsui Li),  assassinated those still loyal to Aizong, leaving himself in control. Realizing the only way to spare the population was a voluntary surrender, on 29 May 1233 Cui Li (Tzui Li) opened the gates to Subutai. Ogedai was urged to mercy by the protests of his adviser Yelu Chucai, and Subutai was restricted to plundering, killing only 500 members of the royal Wanyan clan who were still in the city. Cui Li for his efforts was assassinated by another Jin officer, in response for an offense Cui Li had committed to the man’s wife.   By August 1233, Aizong of Jin and his ever decreasing retinue fled to Caizhou (Tsai-zhou), only 64  kilometres from the Song border. Aizong’s messages to the Song for aid, warning them they would be the next target of the Mongols, fell on deaf ears. The Song agreed to cooperate with the Mongols against the Jin, closing off Aizong’s route of escape. By November 1233, a Song army joined Subutai outside Caizhou. Caizhou was reduced to starvation, but its defenders fought tooth and nail, inflicting heavy casualties. But there could be no other end now.   As Mongol-Song forces filled in a nearby lake with bundles of reeds and sticks to gain access to the city in February 1234, Aizong declared he would not be remembered as the last Jin Emperor. He abdicated for a distant relation, a man in better shape who Aizong faintly hoped would escape and continue to resist. Barely had Aizong hanged himself and the new emperor been enthroned when the Mongols had broken through the walls. On the 9th of February, 1234, the final emperor of the Jin Dynasty died fighting in the streets alongside his men, having reigned only a few hours. So ended the Jurchen Jin Dynasty, controlling north China for a little over a century. Despite defections, defeats and numerous other setbacks, both Jurchen and Chinese alike showed loyalty to the Dynasty to the very end. Few other kingdoms had suffered the full might of the Mongols as the Jin had, and it was not an easy conquest. In 400 years, the descendants of the Jurchen, the Manchu, would come to rule both the Mongols and the Chinese, but that’s quite another story.   The Mongol-Song alliance barely outlasted the Jin. Subutai moved north with his armies not long afterwards, eager for discussions on where to take them next. The Song commander in the region, Meng Gung, withdrew as well, the devastated Henan province no place to keep an army fed. Aside from a few sites, most of the area, including Kaifeng, stayed in Mongol hands.    As we’ve noted earlier, Kaifeng had once been a capital of the Song Dynasty before it fell to the Jurchen. Long had voices in the Song clamoured to reclaim the north. Chief Councillor Shih Mi-yuan had kept these hawks in check during his long administration, but his death in late 1233 left a vacuum, one the feeble Emperor Lizong of Song could not fill. Those Song officials and commanders who had firsthand experience of conditions in the north and against the Mongols knew what a foolhardy thought a campaign there would be, and understood the limits of the Song army, an army which had never performed well offensively against either the Khitan Liao or Jurchen Jin. However, Song generals who had won battles against the Red Coats and had been uninvolved with the Caizhou campaign were ecstatic at news of the destruction of the Jin, and immediately urged war.    Assuming the local Chinese would happily rise up and supply them, two Song armies marched into Henan in summer 1234, walking into the undefended Kaifeng and Loyang, the birthplace of the founder of the Song Dynasty- and found a population hardly able to feed itself, let alone an entire army. So expectant of a gracious local population, the Song armies had brought provisions for only two weeks. Their men refused to advance further, and a retreat began… just as Mongol forces returned to deal with the incursion. The Song army at Loyang was ambushed and almost totally destroyed. For a campaign that had lasted barely a month, the Song had unwittingly began what was to be a 40 year long war resulting in the destruction of their own Dynasty.   Rather inconclusive Mongol-Song warfare continued for the rest of Ogedai’s reign- much of the Mongol armies freed up from the fall of the Jin were sent to conquer the far west. This early Mongol-Song conflict did cost the life of one of Ogedai’s sons and designated heir, Kochu, in 1236. This was perhaps the final blow to Ogedai’s interest in anything other than alcoholism, which consumed his final years even as his armies under Subutai blazed into Europe. But we’ll return to those years of Ogedai’s  reign in future episodes. Our next episode will discuss the  continued Mongol expansion into the Middle East in the 1230s, led by Chormaqun Noyan (chor-ma-huun Noyan) against the Khwarezmian prince Jalal al-Din Mingburnu, so be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals podcast and to continue helping us bring you more outstanding content, please visit our patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. Positive reviews on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or any other podcast catcher of your choice are also greatly appreciated. Thank you for listening, I am your host David and we will catch you on the next one!

Dune II: The building of a Dynasty, blir regnet som bestefaren til RTS-sjangeren. Sigve har såvidt tittet på ursuppe-spillet «Hetzog Zwei». MrMamen forteller kort om filmatiseringene og de øvrige Dune-spillene før vi går inn på Ordos, Atreides, og Harkonnen i Dune II. Les også: Et spennende tilbakeblikk

Adam James Smith is an award-winning, US-based filmmaker originally from the United Kingdom. Adam holds degrees from Stanford and Cambridge, the latter of which he is currently an Affiliated Filmmaker at the university’s Visual Anthropology Lab. He is also an Assistant Professor of Multimedia at Florida Atlantic University. His films focus on the expression of identity in urban China and include The Land of Many Palaces (2015) co-directed with Song Ting, on the “ghost city” of Ordos, Inner Mongolia and his first solo-feature, Americaville (2020) on an American Wild West-themed community in Beijing’s suburbs. The Land of Many Palaces participated in the Sundance Institute workshop and premiered at the 2015 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. The film then went on to screen at festivals around the world, picking up awards in Moscow, Rome, and Kyoto. Adam also embarked on an academic tour in North America, screening at Harvard, Columbia, Duke, Stanford, the Asia Society, and many more universities and organizations. About Americaville: Hidden among the mountains north of Beijing, a replica of the Wyoming town of Jackson Hole promises to deliver the American dream to its several thousand Chinese residents. In Americaville, Annie Liu escapes China’s increasingly uninhabitable capital city to pursue happiness, freedom, romance, and spiritual fulfillment in Jackson Hole; only to find the American idyll harder to attain than what was promised to her.

We’ve now covered Chinggis Khan’s conquest of much of the Jin Dynasty and the Khwarezmian Empire, leaving him with an empire stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Pacific Ocean. With the defeat of Jalal al-Din Mingburnu on the borders of India at the end of 1221, Chinggis Khan began the long journey back to his homeland- much of this trip being discussed on our last episode where we also discussed the Khan meeting the Taoist, Qiu Chuji (Chee-u Chu-ji). Chinggis Khan was certainly returning to his native steppe with an idea for continued campaigning in north China, hoping to deliver the death blow to the Jin Dynasty. In his absence, his general Mukhali, supported by Tangut forces, had been left to maintain pressure on the Jin until the Khan’s return. Mukhali’s death in 1223 unravelled this plan, as it was followed by the ascension of new Jin and Tangut rulers who organized peace between their respective empires. The treachery of his erstwhile vassals, the Tangut, had to be punished, while the succession of the aging Chinggis had yet to be settled. Now, let us discuss the final years of Chinggis Khan! I’m your host David and this is the Ages of Conquest Podcast: The Mongol Invasions!       By the 1220s, Chinggis Khan was in his sixties, having lived a long and difficult life. In the almost  20 years since he had unified the Mongols, a generation of new warriors had known nothing but his rule. The thought that Chinggis even could die must have seemed impossible to many: the great success of the Khwarezm campaign had only demonstrated how Chinggis Khan was Heaven’s chosen, and surely he was destined to conquer the remainder of the world. His impending demise however, was something his top advisers were concerned over, and all knew the tendency for nomadic confederations to fragment on the ruler’s death. You will recall that Chinggis himself had taken advantage of  the division of the Naiman Khanate between Tayang and Buiruk after their father’s death in the 1190s. If the Secret History of the Mongols is to be believed, the matter was brought up and settled on the eve of the Khwarezmian campaign- so in 1219, though other sources have it settled as late as on Chinggis’ deathbed. It’s possible it was something dealt with in stages.       Though Chinggis had God knows how many children with likely hundreds of lesser wives and concubines, there were only four choices over who would become Khan after his death, those born of his first and chief wife, Borte Khatun. The eldest of these was Jochi [Зүчи, Züchi]. A skilled hunter and capable commander, infamously, Jochi was born after Borte’s abduction by Merkits in the 1180s. A haze therefore always hung over Jochi’s legitimacy, and though Chinggis Khan always publicly treated Jochi as his own, his second son Chagatai [Цагадай] utterly refused to. Perhaps two years Jochi’s junior, Chagatai was stern, a strict enforcer of his father’s laws, and had an intense dislike for his elder brother. Possibly by encouraging rumour of Jochi’s illegitimacy, Chagatai hoped to increase his own chances of succeeding their father. Their conflict escalated and resulted in Chinggis removing both from succeeding him as Great Khan, a decision made easier by Jochi’s untimely death in 1225. The sources are unclear as to the reasons for his death and cite anything from illness, to injuries from a hunting accident, to rumours that he was poisoned by Chinggis himself. Chinggis allowed Jochi’s sons to inherit their father’s territory, with Jochi’s second son, Batu, succeeding him.       The other two options to succeed Chinggis were his third and fourth sons, Ogedai [Өгэдэй] and Tolui [Тулуй]. Both were notable alcoholics, even by Mongolian standards but where Tolui built himself a reputation as a ruthless military commander, Ogedai was famously generous and conciliatory, a man capable of reaching compromise between the many loud voices of the empire. Unlike the less flexible Chagatai and Tolui, Chinggis anticipated Ogedai as having a head for establishing an actual administration, rather than just expansion. Indeed, the intention may have been for Ogedai to be a ruler, not just a conqueror, though he would undoubtedly do that. If we are to believe the account in the Secret History of the Mongols, Chagatai himself suggested Ogedai as the best choice from among them.    Chinggis Khan returned to Mongolia in spring 1225 in what was to be a short stay in the land of his birth. As we’ve already mentioned, the general Mukhali, with Tangut support, had campaigned against the Jin Dynasty while Chinggis was subduing the Khwarezmian Empire. With Mukhali’s death in early 1223, the Mongol offensive in China lost its impetus, though his son and brother continued to campaign. The Tangut abandoned the war, which was both hugely expensive and unpopular within their kingdom. In similar time, the Jurchen emperor Xuanzong (shu-an-zong) of Jin died, succeeded by Aizong (Ai-zong) of Jin, and the Tangut king was forced to abdicate by his son, Weiming Dewang (Way-ming De-wang).    With the slate wiped clean and the great Khan still in Central Asia, the Jin and Tangut entered into negotiations and proclaimed a peace treaty and fraternal relations in 1225- a treaty with no provisions for military assistance, mind you. Organizing their own peace treaty with the Jin Dynasty was, of course, an open refutation of the Great Khan’s mandate, the culmination of a defiant trend that had started with their refusal to supply troops in 1219.   Sitting comfy in our armchairs 800 years later with the benefit of hindsight, we know what a foolish decision this was. There was some sense to it from the Tangut point of view though. With Mukhali’s death and Chinggis still distant in the west, the Tangut gambled that the high tide of the Mongols had passed, the aging Chinggis Khan burning out the last of his energies in Central Asia. The known tendency for nomadic confederations to splinter on their founder’s demise, and the vast breadth of the Mongol Empire could have brought hopes of an approaching Mongolian civil war and breathing room for the Tangut. It turns out, this was not a good gamble.    On his return to Mongolia in 1225, Chinggis Khan sent messengers  to the Tangut court demanding they send a royal hostage to reaffirm their vassalage- an act the proud Tangut had never partaken in before. Mongol sources have the Tangut refuse to provide this hostage, and thus brought on Mongol wrath.  However, we have two very rare and precious Tangut documents- a commander’s report dated to 1225, and an early 14th century ritual song- which say the Tangut did provide a royal hostage, a prince who was less than 10 years old who the Mongols promptly murdered. That this killing went unmentioned in Mongolian documents makes sense. Killing a royal hostage, an envoy, a child, was not a good look, especially when unprovoked and even more when the Mongols tried using it to justify the invasion and destruction. If true, perhaps Chinggis Khan was already set on attacking the Tangut, intending to use their refusal as casus belli, not anticipating they might actually comply. That the Tangut actually did send a child took the Mongol leadership by surprise and made it hard to justify an invasion- so they killed the boy, spread rumours the Tangut had refused, and proceeded with their invasion.   In winter 1225, Chinggis Khan left Mongolia for what would be the final time, marching at the head of an army into the Tangut Kingdom in January  1226. In these months according to the Secret History of the Mongols, Chinggis Khan fell from his horse while hunting wild asses- the second such fall he suffered, with one a few years earlier mentioned in our episode on Qiu Chuji. This fall however was more serious. The elderly Khan developed a fever and was bedridden, and his captains argued that the army should fall back to allow Chinggis to recover. The Tangut in their pounded-earth walls would not be going anywhere. Chinggis refused,  instead ordering a final set of envoys to meet the Tangut and based off the response they received, Chinggis would decide if they should retreat.   Chinggis’ messengers reached the Tangut Emperor, called Burqan (Bur-chan) by the Mongols, and shared the Khan’s message, as per the account in the Secret History of the Mongols.   “... you, Burqan (Bur-chan), did not keep your promise and did not give me troops, but came out with  mocking words. As I was moving in a different direction at the time, I said that I would call you to account later. I set out against [Khwarezm] and being protected by Eternal Heaven I brought them duly under submission. Now I have come to call Burqan to account for his words.”       Before the emperor could reply, the minister Asa Gambu spoke up, the man who had issued the rebuff to Mongol requests for troops in 1219, and the same man dominating and leading the anti-Mongol faction in the Tangut court:   “I spoke the mocking words. As for now, if you Mongols, who are used to fighting, say, ‘Let us fight!’, then turn towards the [Alashan mountains] and come to me, for I have an encampment in the [Alashan].”       When the messengers came to Chinggis with Asa Gambu’s response, the injured Khan made this declaration:   “This is enough! When one lets oneself be addressed so boastfully, how can one withdraw? Even if we die let us challenge their boasts!... Eternal heaven, you be the judge!”    Thus did Chinggis Khan, suffering from internal injuries, remount his horse and ride into his final campaign. He had used his time wisely, developing a simple, perfectly executed strategy to ruin the Tangut. The western territory of the Tangut was taken methodically, preventing these garrisons from reuniting at the capital. Then, Mongol armies cut east, coming up behind the Alashan mountains and bypassing the defensive passes which had proved so troublesome in 1209. With their armies situated between the Tangut capital of Zhongxing and the Jin Empire, the Mongols cut the Tangut off from possible Jin support, investing the city while they reduced the other Tangut holdouts in the east of the kingdom.       Everything went according to plan. The fortress of Qara-qoto, famous ruins today, fell in February 1226, and the western settlements fell in perfect succession. Tanguts in Mongol service at times managed to prevent slaughter or reached negotiated surrenders, but the bloodbath could not be averted. By that autumn, entire districts were surrendering to the Mongols, and then Tangut emperor died suddenly, supposedly of fright. The reign of the kinsman who succeeded him was short and chaotic, watching helplessly as the 200 year old Tangut kingdom was reduced to an ever shrinking strip of land around the capital.       In winter 1226 Chinggis was outside Lingzhou (Ling-zho), northeast of Zhongxing (Zhong-shing). A Tangut army was sent from the capital, a desperate final gamble to kill the Khan and end the invasion. When the Yellow River froze, Chinggis Khan crossed the river and destroyed  the army- the final field battle Chinggis Khan seems to have commanded in person. An army was then ordered to invest the Tangut capital, while Chinggis moved to the kingdom’s southeast, to Lintao, to mop up those untouched cities and act as guard should Jin reinforcements come. By spring 1227, Chinggis had secured most of the region, but the injuries sustained the year prior had not gone away. Whatever the injury had been, the year of campaign had prevented it from healing properly. Perhaps ribs had been broken in the fall and been unable to heal, and now infection was setting in, the Khan’s old body failing him. To avoid the approaching heat of summer, and have a chance to rest, Chinggis made  his encampment high in the valleys of the Liupan (Leeo-pan) mountains. It was here that the Khan spent the last months of his life.        The order of events of the Khan’s final month, August 1227, are highly contradicted among the historical sources. Zhongxing (Zhong-shing) resisted for 6 months before it finally surrendered in July or August, the Tangut ruler asking for a month to prepare gifts for the Khan. When Weiming Xian (Way-ming Shian) came to surrender before the Khan’s ger in August, he was forced to stand outside his ger for three days- quite likely because Chinggis Khan had already died.       What exactly killed Chinggis Khan goes unspecified in the Secret History of the Mongols, though it strongly suggests it was related to the injury from his earlier fall. By then, Chinggis was in his late sixties and had gone through a life of injuries and rigour. Complications from internal injuries at that age in this period would hardly be an unusual way to die. Chinggis is recorded as ordering the time, the cause of his death and the very fact of it to remain secret: had news of it reached the Tangut too early, they could have found new courage to continue and brought renewed resistance. Furthermore, dying before the campaign was actually completed could have been interpreted as heaven rescinding its favour. Coupled with Mongolian taboos about discussing death, it’s almost a wonder we even learned he died at all!    His generals proved loyal to him until the very end and succeeded in keeping his death a secret. The true details around it were only known to a select audience of his commanders and family. The problem with this reasonable enough explanation is that it just wasn’t sexy enough for the rumour mills of Asia, and in the absence of an official explanation, we are provided with a litany of different variations in every medieval source which mentions it. The Persian writers Juvaini, Rashid al-Din and the Ming era Yuan shi speak of illness aggravated by the climate while the Syriac writer Bar Hebraues specified malaria. The Franscian Friar John de Plano Carpini thought Chinggis was killed by lightning and Marco Polo said Chinggis died of infection from a Tangut arrow to the knee; he used to be an adventurer, after all. A later Mongolian tradition from the 17th century said that Chinggis was severely injured during coitus with a captured Tangut princess, Gurblechin, who had… ‘cleverly’  hidden a knife in her body somewhere. We’ll let you fill in the blanks on that one.   Whatever the specifics, Chinggis Khan died in August 1227, with August 18th or 25th commonly given dates in the sources. The Tangut king was left standing for three days, for which the Mongols gave him the ironic name of ‘Sidurqu,’ (shid-ur-hoo) meaning ‘upright.’ With Sidurqu’s (shid-ur-hoo’s) death, Mongol forces rode down upon the unsuspecting Zhongxing, which was subject to fire and plunder. Though some were rescued by Tanguts in Mongol service, Zhongxing was obliterated, the vast pyramidal tombs of the Tangut kings looted and stripped of their tiles. These still stand today, barren, eroding memorials to a lost kingdom.         The Secret History of the Mongols treats the Tangut with nothing but scorn, this passage illustrating this:   “After he had plundered the Tang’ut people and, making Iluqu Burqan change his name to Sidurqu, had done away with him, and after having exterminated the Tang’ut people’s mothers and fathers down to the offspring of their offspring, maiming and taming, Chinggis Khan gave the following order: ‘While I take my meals you must talk about the killing and destruction of the Tang’ut and say, ‘Maimed and tamed, they are no more.’”   The Tangut Kingdom ceased to exist in August 1227, an escort for Chinggis Khan to the   afterlife. Temujin had entered the world clutching a blood clot in his fist, and Chinggis Khan left it with the blood of kingdoms on his hands. The Tangut people were scattered, their official records burned along with Zhongxing. It was not however a total genocide, as we know several Tangut cities surrendered without issue, with communities spread across China and the Mongol Empire. Tanguts would actually enjoy higher ranking than even Khitans and Jurchen under the Yuan Dynasty later in the century, as the Tangut were seen as less sinicized than them!       Chinggis Khan’s body was, according to contemporary accounts, returned to Mongolia beside an honour guard, buried most likely on mount Burkhan Khaldun, the mountain which had provided him shelter in his childhood and not far from his place of birth. The grave was kept small and hidden, trees supposedly planted to hide it, and the entire region placed under guard and forbidden to enter. Even today, the area is called the ikh Khorig, the great taboo, and only the most limited of non-intrusive scientific surveys have been undertaken in the area. There are of course other variations to the story, such as the caravan becoming stuck in the Ordos desert. In the Ordos during the Qing Dynasty a shrine was built to honour the Khan’s spirit, the cause of some misconception today that he was literally buried there. Other rumours mentioned the killing of every individual the funeral cortege came across. Human sacrifice is not mentioned with Chinggis’ immediate burial, but a few years later his son Ogedai sent 40 maidens for his father’s soul. Beyond that, we know almost nothing about the details: inference based off of what we know of the burials of later Khans are hard to apply to Chinggis, as these later burials had influence from sedentary cultures, though many Mongols Khans and notables would be buried on Burkhan Khaldun in the following two centuries.       So ends the life of Chinggis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire, conqueror of much of Eurasia and flail of God. His death was met by sorrow among his people, cheers from peoples across Asia, and bated breath by the empire’s neighbours, waiting to see what would come next. Chinggis’ third son, Ogedai, was to succeed his father, inheriting a powerful, experienced and loyal army staffed by generals and officers who believed it was their destiny to ride over everything under the Eternal Blue Sky.    Once a young boy abandoned by his tribe, Chinggis had over time forged his people into a weapon, by the end of his life approaching the status of a demi-god among them. Today, Mongolians cherish him as the founder of their nation, and his reign was a turning point in Eurasian history. Kingdoms across the world were washed away by his armies, and an unprecedented era of Eurasia integration was to be ushered in his successors. Could Ogedai live up to Chinggis’ legacy, or would he be lost in the shadow of a man which could blot out the sun?  The continued expansion of the Mongol Empire is the topic of our next episodes, so be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals podcast and to continue helping us bring you more outstanding content, please visit our patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are unable to help financially but still want us to support us, it would be highly appreciated if you can leave a positive review on Apple Podcasts to help us grow and bring you more Mongols. Thank you for listening, I am your host David and we will catch you on the next one!

Mit meinem Freund Seishiroa habe ich mich für euch das dritte Mal in die Settingvorstellung zu Warhammer 40.000 gewagt. Nachdem unsere erste Folge einen Überblick über das Imperium der Menschheit gegeben hat, kam auch die zweite Folge bei euch gut an. Wir haben uns bereits um die Inquisition und deren drei Ordos gekümmert. Nun blicken wir auf die einfachen Menschen und deren Leben.

Columns of Mongol rider, armed with bow, lance and mace, march through the dark defiles and narrow valleys of the Yan mountains, a confined route for warriors used to the open steppe. Here, the valleys were marked by towns and villages in close proximity, a track for their army to follow, falling upon terrified settlements whose newly collected harvests now fed hungry Mongols. After days of this claustrophobic territory, of surprising and outwitting the garrisons of the forts blocking their path, the mountains suddenly gave way, opening up to the Northern Chinese Plain: low, open country, marked by the great Yellow River, farmland and the capital of the mighty Jin Empire: Zhongdu, modern day Beijing. Northern China was now open to the Mongol horde, and the Mongol conquests were about to begin in earnest. I’m your host David and welcome to Ages of Conquest: a Kings and Generals Podcast.  This is the Mongol Conquests.   After returning from the Tangut Kingdom in early 1210, and shortly thereafter disrespecting the envoys of the new Jin Emperor, Wei Shao Wang, Chinggis Khan began his preparations, reviewing his forces and gathering intelligence. Alongside Muslim, Uighur and Ongguds  merchants and travelers who brought him information on the Jin, a few Khitan and Chinese officials had already defected to Chinggis, bringing him detailed intelligence and urging an attack. Though still mighty, the 13th century had not been kind to the Jin Dynasty. The 1190s saw a huge flood of the Yellow River, so severe it changed its course; once entering the ocean north of the Shandong peninsula, it now spilled to the south, a drastic shift which displaced entire villages, destroyed cropland and sowed discontent. War with the Song Dynasty from 1206-1208 drained Jin finances, and inflation caused the paper currency of the Jin to be near worthless.  The Jin armies, though large and their horsemen still fierce, were past their prime, many having become quite sinicized and lost the biting edge of their grandfathers. The time was as good as any for an assault upon the Altan Khan, the Golden Khan, as the Mongols called the Jin Emperors.    At the start of 1211, the Qarluqs (Kar-luk) of Almaliq (alma-lik) and Qayaliq (kaya-lik) submitted to Chinggis Khan, providing their own Turkic horsemen as auxiliaries. Chinggis positioned his son-in-law, Toquchar, in the west of Mongolia, doubtless with Qarluq forces, to act as a guard against roaming tribes or the Naiman prince Kuchlug (whooch-loog), who usurped power in Qara-Khitai that year. Feeling himself secure and that he had the favour of Eternal Blue Heaven, Chinggis Khan was ready. He marched south early in the spring of 1211 with as many men as he could muster, around 100,000 split into two armies, one commanded by himself, the other by his three oldest sons, Jochi ( Джучи, Зүчи, Züchi) Chagatai (Цагадай) and Ogedai (Өгэдэй). By May 1211, they had crossed the Gobi desert, entering what is now modern Inner Mongolia, the band of steppe between the Gobi and the Yanshan mountains which shield north China.    You may be anticipating the Mongols cinematically bursting through the Great Wall of China, or the popular internet variation wherein the Mongols ‘just went around it.’ But the Great Wall of China as it exists today was built by the Ming Dynasty in the 15th and 16th centuries, well after Chinggis’ invasion. There had been sections of walls built prior, most notably in the Qin and Han dynasties a millenium prior, but the 1000 odd years between the Han and the Ming saw only sporadic building, generally of rammed or stamped earth, which erodes comparatively quickly over time in unmaintained. The Jin Dynasty in the late 12th century had ordered the creation of several dozen kilometres of wall built in Inner Mongolia, a ditch before a rammed earth wall, marked by gates and a few forts. The base of this is still extant, a long, low, grass covered ridge which today doesn’t even block the wanderings of sheep. This wall was manned by whichever people inhabited the local area, largely from the Onggud tribe, a Turkic Nestorian people who had been on friendly terms with Chinggis Khan since 1204. The Naiman Khan had tried to urge them to attack Chinggis’ southern flank, which they refused, alerting the Mongol Khan to the scheme.    When Chinggis Khan arrived, the Onggud wisely opened the gates and submitted voluntarily to him: it was a fair assumption he may have forced his way through them had they refused. Rather than conquer the Great Wall, or go around it, we might better say that it was  opened to him. For their part, the Mongols treated the Onggud well, and a daughter of Chinggis Khan married into their ruling family- she would effectively rule the Onggud in her own right, the direct representative of Chinggis Khan. The Mongols spent the summer in Onggud territory, resting, fattening their horses on the local pasture, and taking the few Jin towns in the region- the first to fall was Fu-zhou, stormed after a brief resistance in late August 1211.       The Jin Emperor, Wei Shao Wang, was bolted awake by the news of the Mongol arrival on his doorstep. To his credit, he did not sit idle-  two large armies were mobilized and sent to the most likely route. Dividing the Northern Chinese plain from the steppe was the Yan Mountains, relatively low mountains with numerous towns and villages nestled in its many valleys. The primary defile which provides access from the steppe through the northern side of these mountains is the Yehuling, the Wild Fox Ridge, just south of Fu-zhou.    The army led by Chinggis’ sons was making its way into the Ordos to the west, but Chinggis himself was certainly to try passing through Yehuling (ye-hu-ling), a route which would lead him only a few days away from the Jin’s central capital of Zhongdu. It was here, the Jin leadership rightly supposed, that the determining battle should be fought with as much might as possible; kill the Khan, and the princes would certainly withdraw.  As Chinggis stormed Fu-zhou, a major force of crack Jurchen and Khitan cavalry, supported by Chinese infantry, all under the Jurchen commander Hushahu (hoosh-a-hu), was sent to Yehuling (ye-hu-ling). Hushahu was an unpopular, arrogant individual but influential with the Emperor, and had shown himself a cunning figure during the war against the Song Dynasty. Just a small note here; Hushahu is known by a dozen variations of Heshihlie Jiujun Hushahu (hesh-ee-hlee djioo-jun hoosh-a-hu), with some sources just calling by one of these names. Hushahu is the easiest to say, so we’ll stick with it here.   Supporting Hushahu was a smaller force under Wanyen Ho-Sha, who was sent ahead to repair the fort of Wo-shao-pao, between Fu-zhou and the entrance to the Yehuling. Together, this was a massive mobilization, given in the sources as anywhere from 300,000-500,00 men- though a good many of these were probably labourers, who would be tasked with digging ditches and building defenses along the passage.       Before the Wu-sha-pao fortifications could be completed, Chinggis sent his commander Jebe (Зэв) to surprise this smaller army in August shortly before the fall of Fu-zhou. Ho-sha escaped with much of his army, making his way to Huihebao, a fort south of the Yehuling, all before Hushahu could even reach Yehuling. Once within the defile, Hushahu set up at the narrow point within the Yehuling known as Huanerzui (Huan-er-zui), the Badger’s Mouth Pass. Here,his labourers were put to work, digging ditches and defences. His Khitan scouts informed him of the fall of Fu-zhou, and that the Mongols seemed occupied with looting the city, but Hushahu declined advice to immediately attack them. Wary of Mongol cavalry in the open field, he was hoping to use the narrow Huanerzui to protect his flanks.    A Khitan officer who had previously been sent as embassy to Chinggis Khan, Shimo Ming’an, was sent to speak to the Khan, officially to reprimand him for his actions but intended to gather intelligence and stall for time. Ming’an, a proud Khitan who admired the Mongol Khan, promptly defected and told Chinggis of Hushahu’s battle plans.  Alarmed, Chinggis’ scouts confirmed his statements.    The Jin had sent a great army to crush the invasion in one fell swoop, and Chinggis had only a part of the total Mongol force, his sons still in the west. Ming’an’s information, and Hushahu’s caution was to the Khan’s advantage. As one, the Mongols  moved into Yehuling, approaching the Jin army at Huanerzui. Jin scouts informed Hushahu of Chinggis’ sudden advance, and the Jurchen general ordered his huge army into position- wings of Jurchen and Khitan heavy cavalry and horse archers in the front, supported by a large group of Chinese infantry and the labourers who had started the fortifications. In the narrow defile, Hushahu’s army was tightly packed, unable to maneuver or envelop the smaller Mongol army.       Mongol archers got to work first, sending volleys of deadly arrows into the thick rows of Jin warriors, who had nowhere to move under the hail. One of Chinggis’ commanders, the tireless Mukhali ( Мухулай) saw opportunity, and his lancers led the first charge into the injured enemy- Chinggis followed with the imperial bodyguard, the Keshig. The Jurchen and Khitan horsemen buckled, and fell back, right into the dense rows of Chinese infantry behind them, who were trampled and crushed under the panicking horsemen. Discipline and command broke down, and the army disintegrated in the confusion, the Mongols cutting through them like a hot chainsaw through butter. As they ran, the Mongols pursued: bodies lined the road for kilometres, and the Secret History of the Mongols repeatedly described the fallen ‘heaped like rotten logs.’ Hushahu and Ho-sha met up at Huihebao (hwee-he-bao) fort several kilometres south, and put up another stand, only to be overwhelmed by the end of the day.        Huanerzui was long remembered by the Mongols as their greatest victory. Ten years later, a Taoist monk travelling through the region to meet with Chinggis Khan passed through and found bones still piled high throughout. Perhaps the finest warriors of the Jin fell that day, and the chance to nip the Mongol conquest in the bud had been ripped bloodily from their hands.       Hushahu fled to Zhongdu with nothing but bedraggled, bloody remnants of his great army. Mongol forces were briefly halted by the fortified pass of Juyongguan (joo-yong-guan), which guarded the narrow, 18 kilometre long Guangou Valley, the final barrier before entry into the North China plain, some 53 kilometres north of Zhongdu. During the Ming Dynasty, the famous Badaling section of the Great Wall was built at the north end of this valley. Badaling is the most popular tourist site of the entire wall, due to its preservation and proximity to Beijing. Indeed, it was this proximity to the capital that made it such a strategic pass, the final chokepoint before the open space of the Chinese plains. Therefore, even in the 13th century Juyongguan (joo-yong-guan) was strongly fortified with a large garrison, and the Mongols lacked any weapons to force it. So, Jebe Noyan fled before its impenetrable gate, and the defenders, eager to avenge their fallen comrades, sallied out to pursue. 30 kilometres from Juyongguan, Jebe (Zev) turned about and destroyed them. The mighty Juyongguan surrendered shortly thereafter.       By the end of October 1211, Chinggis Khan was on the North China Plain, and all hell was let loose. Chinggis made a brief effort to besiege Zhongdu itself, but this great city was far too well defended, its walls defiant and unbreachable. Leaving a force to blockade Zhongdu, Chinggis sent his armies to ravage across the plain. One army captured the imperial horse herds, depriving the Jin of much of their cavalry.  From the Jin’s western capital, Xijingto (Shi-jin-to)their eastern capital, Dongjing (dong-jing) in Manchuria, those are modern Datong and Liaoyang respectively, Mongols armies pillaged and raided. Dongjing fell to Jebe Noyan through another expertly executed feigned retreat, while Xijing stood firm against the Mongols.       Mongol armies withdrew back to Onggud territory in February 1212, loot and animals in tow, eager to give horses and riders a well deserved rest. The border passes they had fought so hard for were, somewhat surprisingly, left unoccupied. Why the Mongols chose not to garrison them is unclear- some suggest Chinggis had no ambitions beyond that initial raid, while others note that with the Mongols’ lack of administrative experience, attempting to hold territory at this point was foolish with the Jin still strong. The Jin, meanwhile, were left bloodied but still unbroken. The defeats at Huanerzui (Huan-er-zui) were horrific for the Jin, decimating their prized cavalry, but reinforcement Jurchen were called upon from Manchuria. Wei Shao Wang appointed Hushahu as Deputy Military Commander of the Empire and sent him to reoccupy the border forts, Juyongguan (joo-yong-guan) in particular.    Suspicious that the Khitan population of Manchuria may align themselves with the Mongols, Jurchen colonists were sent amongst them, an act which ironically prompted the large Khitan revolt the Jin so feared. Led by Yelu Liuge (ye-lu liu-ge), within a few months he had not only submitted to Chinggis Khan, but also declared a new Liao dynasty with himself as king. The Tangut began to raid the Jin’s western frontier, the Song ended their tribute payments to the Jin, and famine began to break out in several provinces.  To top it off, the Mongols returned in autumn 1212 after resting their horses for the summer, but this campaign was cut short when Chinggis was injured by an arrow to the leg at Xijing, and forced to withdraw.        Famine, Tangut attacks and insurrection did not abate, and only continued to spread in 1213. In July or August of that year, a healed Chinggis Khan returned to Jin China. In the valleys south of Yehuling, towns and settlements fell or surrendered with alarming speed. On the road towards Juyongguan, at modern Huai-lai, Chinggis was met by a large army under the commander Zhuhu Gaoqi. Supposedly a force of 100,000, in the narrow valley they had no room to maneuver and were crushed by the Mongols. The survivors fled to the refortified Juyongguan, where the ground for almost 50 kilometres was said to be covered by caltrops. For a month, Chinggis waited before the fort, trying to lure the garrison out. Finally he withdrew and wisely, the garrison stayed in the fort. A small Mongol force was left to watch the northern mouth, while Jebe was sent through the hills, finally coming out south below the Juyongguan, where the fortifications had not been improved. Surprising the garrison, its Khitan commander panicked and surrendered, and by the end of October 1213, the road to Zhongdu was once more open.    Things had developed rapidly in Zhongdu in the meantime. Hushahu had been ordered to remain in the city to defend it, though had spent the weeks before the Mongol return in 1213 hunting. When the Mongols returned to Juyongguan in September, a messenger had arrived from Wei Shao Wang to reprimand Hushahu for inactivity, but the panicked general killed the messenger. Now forced to act, he made his way to Zhongdu, overwhelmed the palace guards, captured and executed the emperor. He appointed Wei Shao Wang’s nephew, the 50 year old Wudubu, as Emperor, expecting him to be submissive. Hushahu’s arrogance and disrespect to the new emperor made him no allies in the court. He succeeded in defeating two Mongol raiding parties outside the walls in November, but fell ill. In Hushahu’s absence, Zhuhu Gaoqi was ordered to repulse the Mongols, on pain of death should he fail. Gaoqi failed, and hurried back to the palace before Hushahu could learn of it. Hushahu was captured and decapitated by Gaoqi, who was pardoned by Wudubu and made Vice-Commander of the Empire.    The course of this political upheaval left the Jin leadership paralyzed for two valuable months as the Mongols broke through Juyongguan. With the Mongol army before Zhongdu, the new emperor sent Chinggis a peace offering in December 1213. Recognizing the weakness of the Jin, Chinggis left a small force to blockade the Jin, and then unleashed a massive onslaught across the north China plain, a three pronged assault across the whole of Hebei province, into Shanxi and western Shandong. “Everywhere north of the Yellow River there could be seen dust and smoke and the sound of drums rose to Heaven,” was how one Chinese writer described the offensive. Almost 100 towns fell to the Mongols, farmland was destroyed, and the Mongol reputation for both invincibility, and cruelty, blossomed. The Jin had been hamstrung, unable to retaliate. By February 1214, Mongol forces were converging on Zhongdu.       While the Mongols had shown frightening success in the field and against less fortified settlements, Zhongdu was a different beast altogether. The Jin’s central capital since the early 1150s, now the site of modern Beijing, it had been keenly designed to withstand assaults. Built in a rough square, the city had almost 30 kilometres of stamped earthen walls 12 metres high. Over 900 towers were said to line these walls, lined with various types of defensive siege weapons. Before the city were three lines of moats, as well as four forts outside the main city, each with their own walls, moats, garrisons and supplies, connected to the main city by underground tunnels. The surrounding countryside had been stripped bare of not just food stores, but even stones and ties which could have been for projectiles. Each fort held 4,000 men, with another 20,000 manning the walls of the city itself. Zhongdu was well stocked, well fortified and well prepared for a siege.       The Mongols, with their siege knowledge still in its infancy, were not without their own cards to play.  They had near total freedom of movement outside of the city, and now had begun to have their forces bolstered by desertions, especially among the Chinese and Khitans in the Jin military. Some of these deserters had brought along their own catapults, and captured engineers provided knowledge to construct more. At one point, the Mongols burst through a gate of Zhongdu, or were perhaps allowed in, as they found themselves surrounded, the street behind them set on fire. That party only escaped with heavy losses. Another assault was repulsed by the garrisons of the forts. It seems some sort of disease was spreading among Chinggis’ forces as the siege dragged on, and they must have started to become frustrated. In April 1214, Chinggis sent an embassy under a Tangut officer in his service with terms, entailing the submission of the Jin and the Emperor relinquishing his title. Wudubu refused to be demoted. Since Wudubu had no bargaining position beyond ‘we haven’t starved yet!’ Chinggis sent his envoys again, with the message:     “the whole of Shandong and Hebei are now in my possession, while you retain only  Zhongdu; God has made you so weak, that should I further molest you, I know not what  Heaven would say; I am willing to withdraw my army, but what provisions will you make  to still the demands of my officers?”       Wudubu was finally convinced to come to terms, noting the reality of his situation. In May, 1214, the Jin Emperor capitulated. A daughter of Wei Shao Wang was sent in marriage to Chinggis, with 500 boys and girls for her retinue, and 3,000 horses, 10,000 liang of gold and 10,000 bolts of silk, which would have been a mighty caravan of tribute. For reference, 1 liang is equal to 50 grams. The Jin, who had once held the forefathers of Chinggis Khan in such contempt, were now his vassal, and Chinggis Khan withdrew back to Onggud territory, doubtless proud of his work.        What Chinggis Khan’s plans were from this point we will never know- perhaps he was to turn west, pursue those final few enemies like Kuchlug? Allow his men to grow fat and soft off the tribute from the Jin and enjoy his own retirement? Or perhaps, with his new vassals, march south against the Chinese Song Dynasty. But we’ll never know. For in June 1214, the anxious Wudubu, fearing himself too close to Chinggis Khan, made the ill-fated decision to abandon Zhongdu and flee to his southern capital, Kaifeng, in territory untouched by the Mongols and shielded by the mighty Yellow River. Shortly after his departure, he began to have misgivings over the 2,000 Khitans in his retinue, and tried to take their horses. The Khitans, like the Mongols, were skilled horsemen who prized their mounts. To take their horses was to take their legs, and they abandoned the fleeing Emperor, riding all the way north to Chinggis Khan in inner Mongolia.        When the Khan learned of this, he was incensed. This was the Jin Emperor breaking his word, violating the treaty in an action tantamount to preparation for future hostilies. South of the Yellow River, he would be beyond the authority of Chinggis Khan where he could plan further troubles. Zhongdu was left with a much smaller garrison and would now pay the price for Wudubu’s cowardice. In late summer the general Samukha, with Shimo Ming’an, and the 2,000 Khitans who had abandoned Wudubu marched to Zhongdu with perhaps 50,000 men. The city was reached around September 1214, and placed under siege. The garrison, forlorn but proud, stoutly manned their doomed walls. Even with it defenders reduced, an assault on the city’s mighty fortifications would be costly, so Samukha aimed to starve it out.        Wudubu hadn’t completely abandoned the city, and belatedly in early 1215 sent relief columns bearing foodstuffs and reinforcements to Zhongdu. The Mongols overcame these columns with ease, and sated their own hunger with the supplies meant for the people of Zhongdu. The noose only continued to tighten around the city. Those communities in the region still untaken were reduced: most of the Jurchen homeland in Manchuria had fallen to the Mongols and their vassal Khitan kingdom. One Jurchen commander in Manchuria, upon learning of Wudubu’s flight, deserted and founded his own kingdom in the far east of Manchuria. In the Shandong peninsula, a long simmering local uprising erupted quickly, commonly known as the Red Coats, who proved themselves staunch foes of the Jin government. Whatever Jin forces that remained had either joined the Mongols, or were already destroyed. North of the Yellow River, only a strip along it, and around Xijing in the west, remained under Jin rule.    For Zhongdu, these happenings made the chance of reinforcement grow ever dimmer. Starvation was severe in the city. All possible animals were eaten, and accusations of cannibalism seem unfortunately probable. At one point, thousands of the city’s virgins were said to have thrown themselves from the walls, rather than suffer fate at the hands of the Mongols. The city’s leadership began to fight each other, with one top commander committing suicide, while another made his way through the blockade, arriving in Kaifeng where he was executed for desertion.        In June 1215, Zhongdu finally surrendered. Mongol troops let out their pent up frustration on the poor souls still within the city. Many thousands were slaughtered, every home and shop looted. Parts of the city were said to have burned for a month. So terrible was the slaughter that a Khwarezmian embassy passing the city a few months later was horrified to see piles of human bones surrounding the city, the ground greasy with human fat and disease rampant. Some of their embassy even fell ill and died as a result.        For the Mongols, it is interesting to note what anecdotes they took away from this tragedy. Chinqai, an officer of importance in the decades to come, climbed one of Zhongdu’s towers and sent an arrow in every direction. When Chinggis learned of the feat, he was so tickled by it that he granted Chinqai ownership of everything within the range of arrows. Chinggis Khan always found a particular joy in these sorts of acts. The event most fondly reported by the Mongols was when several officers attempted to bribe Chinggis’ adopted son, Shigi Qutuqu, in splitting the loot of the city between them. He declined, stating he could not take it, as it was all the possessions of the Khan. Such loyalty to the Khan was prized greater than all the treasures of China.       There can be little doubt that the flight of Wudubu and destruction of Zhongdu a year later was an irreverseible blow to the prestige of the Jin Dynasty, alongside the obvious territorial losses. To many, coupled with years of natural disasters, disorders, and poor governance, the Mongol invasion and Wudubu’s abandonment of the north must have looked like the Jin had lost the Mandate of Heaven, the supernatural approval necessary to rule China. When Heaven rescinded its Mandate, it always awarded it elsewhere, and it seemed that Chinggis Khan had received its blessing. It should not be a surprise that the following years saw the desertions to the Mongols turn into a flood, and they were now able to staff their newly taken territory with loyal Chinese, Khitan and even Jurchen officials. Entire armies of Chinese were soon fighting for the Mongols to aid their conquest of China, something we will explore in detail in future.       Zhongdu was left a shell of its former self, and was renamed ‘Yen’ or ‘Yenching’ by the Mongols. It remained an important command centre, but only began to return to real significance again when Chinggis’ grandson Kublai built a capital near the site. But that’s a few decades ahead of us. In the meantime, Chinggis Khan returned to his homeland and found himself distracted by uprisings and the pursuit of old enemies- a path which brought him, unintentionally, into a collision course with the Khwarezmian Empire to west.        In the next episode we will explore the first western movements of the Mongols, so be sure to hit subscribe to the Kings and Generals podcast and to continue helping us bring you more outstanding content, please visit our patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. Thank you for listening, I am your host David and we will catch you on the next one!

Rain. The constant, incessant rains of autumn.  A wide brown river, its water swirling and churning, now overflowing its banks due to the rain. A great inconvenience and threat to the local farmer, but to the commander on horseback, his piercing eyes see a weapon. Men are sent with buckets of earth, stones and trees, and a makeshift dyke soon rises. The water is now unable to travel its standard route, and is now diverted, towards the great city and proud defenders who  have dared to resist the Mongols. Lacking tools to take down the city’s walls, Chinggis Khan will now use the very landscape itself to strike his foe.        This was the tactic Chinggis Khan would use in his first conquest of sedentary power, a campaign against the Tangut Kingdom, known also as the Xi Xia Dynasty, in what is now northwestern China. His armies having never even seen walled cities before, this campaign would be the first true test of the army of the newly established Mongol Empire, the prelude to the fearsome conquests which would soon grip Asia. I’m your host David and welcome to Ages of Conquest: a Kings and Generals Podcast.  This is the Mongol Conquests.   Before we get to the first Mongol invasion of the Tangut, we must step back a few  years. When we last left off with Chinggis Khan, he had finally unified the Mongol tribes and proclaimed the Mongol Empire in 1206. A little over 50 years of age, Chinggis had spent his life fighting for every inch of ground. He had known victory as keenly as defeat, and learned from not only every mistake he himself had made, but all that his enemies had made as well. The new Mongol state had been hard won: yet, it was a brittle entity. Tribal confederations were not known for their longevity, and Chinggis Khan had to ensure that the animosity of the tribes would not rear its head and tear his new empire apart.    He developed several strategies to prevent this. First, was breaking down the powers of the traditional chiefs and Khans: loyalties were now to be to the Great Khan. Old leaders who had resisted were removed from power entirely, extinguishing them as possible beacons of resistance. The majority of these tribes were broken up, their families mixed among Chinggis’ own people, which was then cemented by the extension of the army’s decimal system to the entire nation, totally reorganizing Mongol society.    But what was the decimal system that we have now made reference to several times? Organized into units of 10, 100, 1000 and 10,000, or in Mongolian, arban, jaghun, minghaan and tumen, peoples from various tribes were placed into the same minghaan, replacing the tribal social organization with the decimal one. Just as there was the military unit of the minghaan, now families were placed into their own ‘units,’ which were used as basis for taxation. Each military Minghaan was supported by the ‘civilian’ minghaans, which supplied, produced and maintained equipment and utensils used by the warriors, and in the absence of the fighting men, were responsible for managing the various herds of the Mongols. "No longer were they Taychiud, Tatar, Kereyit or Naiman, but Mongols. A few select tribes who had shown themselves loyal were allowed to maintain their integrity and their rulers, but had to recognize the absolute authority of Chinggis Khan himself. There was to be no Khan but the Khan himself.   The individual law codes and customs of each tribe were now overruled by a single code set out by Chinggis- the great yassa. The yassa standardized tribal customs, forbidding acts which would antagonize the spirits and bring misfortune upon the young nation. Acts seemingly as innocuous as washing dirty things in running water, putting a knife into a fire or urinating in ashes were all punishable by death, as they offended the spirits within and could bring calamity.  Such prohibitions mattered when Heaven’s support was crucial for success. Death seems to have been a common punishment in the yassa, and none doubted that the Khan was willing to carry it out. It also ordained the proper way to slaughter animals, via crushing the heart and not spilling any blood. All religions were to be respected, and religious figures exempt from taxation- though how far this religious tolerance went, when the yassa expressly forbid the Islamic method of slaughter which mandated draining the blood, is a part of the strong debate around the code. Was the yassa intended to apply to sedentary peoples?  When it was, how thoroughly was it enforced upon them? The answers to this vary over time and place, and we will discuss these in due course.   To aid in the management of the Mongols,Chinggis Khan needed to establish an administration for his new empire. Now, this should not be conflated with the hulking bureaucracies of China, in comparison to which the Mongol 'administration’ would have been a laughably simple thing. But it was necessary for managing a state of about one million people and the roughly 100,000 strong army. With the defeat of the Naiman, Chinggis had acquired their Uighur scribes. Mongolian at that time had no written form, and Chinggis Khan quickly saw the use of a script. Thus, Mongolian gained its first alphabet, still in use today in Inner Mongolia. One of Chinggis’ adopted sons, a Tatar named Shigi Qutuqu (Koo-too-koo), was appointed yeke jarghuchi,(Yayk-eh jarg-hoochi) the chief judge of the empire, given great power settling legal matters, preserving justice and recording the edicts of Chinggis Khan and judicial decisions in their new alphabet.       To assist the burgeoning administration was the expansion of the keshig to 10,000 men. The keshig had been established only in 1204, essentially as a bodyguard for the Khan. Aside from guarding the Khan, they acted as grooms, preparing his meals, maintaining his ger, his herds, weapons and even musical instruments. Made up of trusted men, sons of commanders or sons of vassal chiefs and Khans, it also served as a sort of military college. It provided first hand learning experience at army leadership and administration, to see who was fit to ‘graduate’ to command armies, govern peoples or in time, territories. Richly rewarded and trusted, when those of keshig who were sons of vassals were sent back to their homelands, they acted as agents for the Khan to ensure the loyalty of their people, and were an important instrument of control for Chinggis Khan and his successors.        These actions helped strengthen what the Mongols valued most in their armies: loyalty, and discipline. Great trust would be placed in the commanders of not just armies, but of each level of the decimal system. In order for their maneuverability in warfare to succeed, where Mongol armies could literally be operating hundreds of kilometres apart, it was absolutely necessary that commanders could trust each other to meet timetables, objectives, stay in contact and meet up to surround enemy armies. It is to the credit of the Mongol military that the Khan could be operating on the far side of Asia, and he could trust his commanders to remain loyal, carry out his duties and expand the empire. By removing possible allegiances that could challenge loyalty to the Khan, rewarding those who showed ability and skill while supporting and protecting the soldiers’ families, the Great Khans were rewarded by a hardy, adaptable and reliable army. Individual soldiers went to great lengths to prove their worth and carry out orders: abandoning their arbans would bring strict punishment, or even death, to their comrades and families. Defections of Mongol soldiers, officers or commanders during the height of Mongol unity was extremely rare, and almost every contemporary foreign author commented on that loyalty, how the average Mongol stoically, even happily, endured the fiercest hardship for the Khan.        The few possible rivals for power who emerged from within the early empire were quickly dealt with. An ambitious shaman, Chinggis’ step-brother Kokochu, also known by the title of Teb-Tenggeri, grew greedy and bold. Already famous for his strong connection with the spirits, and supposed ability to walk naked through even the fiercest of snow storms, it was he, we are told in one source, who gave the title of Chinggis Khan to the warlord Temujin in 1206. Having in his view, appointed the Great Khan, he was  soon bold enough that he assaulted Chinggis’ brothers. When he overstepped, Chinggis allowed his youngest brother to break the shaman’s back and leave him to die. It served as a stark message: the Khan was stronger than even the mightiest of shamans. No religious authority would be able to claim power over the Great Khan of the Mongols.       These methods provided internal control to his new state, but its footing was not entirely stable yet. Various enemy leaders or their sons had survived the wars of unification- Toqto’a Beki of the Merkit and his sons, Buiruk Khan of the Naiman and his nephew Kuchlug, and the son of the late Ong Khan, Senggum Ilkha of the Kereyit. The Naiman and Kereyit sons were a particular concern, as the Jin Dynasty in the south could choose to support them as candidates against Chinggis, a beacon for those extant disaffected elements to gather around. In the years immediately following unification in 1206, it was against these potential sparks that Chinggis Khan had to stamp down. Buiruk was crushed first in the later part of 1206, leading the surviving Naiman under Kuchlug to move west, joining the Merkit under Toqto’a on the Irtysh River, where they were defeated in 1208. Toqto’a was killed in battle, his sons fleeing to the far west to the Qipchaq tribes, and Kuchlug would in time end up in the Qara-Khitai, where he would usurp power in 1211. We’ll pick up with him in a later episode for his final fate.       To the north, a number of the tribes of the Siberian forests around Lake Baikal were forced to submit in 1207. This included the Kirghiz, the Tumed and the Oirat, among others. By 1208, Chinggis had secured his northern and western borders, and with his eastern borders bounded by the Khingan mountains, that left the south, the kingdoms of China.        While these other actions to establish an administration and destroy potential rivals helped secure his power, he knew that without a common enemy to throw the whole of his people against, if left idle, the Mongol would begin to fight each other in due time. Reminiscent of Otto von Bismarck’s ploy to unify the German states against their French foe, Chinggis Khan needed ample loot and warfare to burn off their excess energies and keep them united towards a shared goal. It served other aspects as well- we noted already the danger from the potential of the Jin Dynasty giving support to a rival chief and churning up the internal rivalries of the new empire. The late 12th century seems to have been a drier period with an increase in desertification, accentuating the decrease in herds brought on by years of continuous warfare in Mongolia. Attacking China would replenish their herds, and by providing the Mongols with loot, Chinggis Khan would be undertaking part of his duties as the steppe warchief par excellence.    Ideologically it buttressed his new state as well. Part of Chinggis Khan’s legitimacy was based on his connection to the Khamag Mongol union of the early 12th century. The Khamag was destroyed by the Jurchen Jin, the Khan Ambaghai tortured and murdered by them. By attacking the Jin, Chinggis would also be performing another duty of the Khan, that is, avenging past wrongs. Finally, while in the first years of the 1200s the Jin Dynasty was distracted by internal revolts, flooding and renewed warfare with the Chinese Song Dynasty to their south, they would not sit idly by for long while the steppes to the north were unified under a single power. The Jin considered Chinggis Khan their vassal, and confrontation would be inevitable. It was to the advantage of the Mongols to make the first move.       It should be noted that no evidence suggests at this point that the Mongols believed in dominating the world or any such thing. At the outset, even an actual conquest of China doesn’t seem to have been considered.       In a previous episode, we discussed the states of 13th century China, so we won’t repeat that at length here. The two kingdoms the Mongols faced at the outset was the Jurchen Jin empire, its capital at Zhongdu, modern day Beijing, which controlled a huge stretch of territory from the Ordos loop to the far east of Manchuria. Ruled by the Jurchen, a semi-nomadic people originally from Manchuria, it was certainly the strongest single military force in the world at this point, with a population of about 40 million, mainly Chinese but a notable Jurchen and Khitan minority. Chinggis Khan would have considered them the single greatest foe he faced. To the west of the Jin Dynasty, in the Gansu corridor, was the ‘backdoor’ to north China. The Xi Xia Dynasty, or the Tangut Kingdom. Considerably smaller in both population, geographic size and in its military, it was a stout kingdom ruled by a people of Tibetan heritage, with a mixed population of Turkic nomads, sedentary Chinese and Uighurs. Much of it was covered by desert and mountain, its major cities huddled along the Yellow River west of the Ordos desert. Controlling the Gansu corridor, the narrow strip between the Gobi desert and Mongolia in the north, and the offshoots of the Himalayas to the south, most of the overland trade routes, the Silk routes, were funnelled through here, increasing the wealth of the kingdom substantially.  It was here the hammer would fall first.       The first Mongol raids into the Tangut realm were in 1205, pursuing the fleeing Kereyit prince Senggum Ilka. The Senggum evaded them, as he had been chased out by the Tangut and was then murdered shortly afterwards in the Tarim basin. The Mongols made due with captured animals and goods before withdrawing. In 1207, the Mongols returned to the Tangut, a more serious probe this time, taking advantage of the first coup d’etat in the Xi Xia’s history, and the ascension of the new King Weiming Anquan (an-quan). Tangut garrisons were sent out to meet the raiders, and were destroyed, and the border fort of Wu-la-hai was sacked and occupied until early 1208.       The new Tangut King looked to the Jin, their nominal overlords, for aid, but in the winter of 1208 the Jin emperor had died and was succeeded by his uncle, Wanyan Yongji. History does not look kindly on him. So poor was his reign that his successor posthumously demoted him from Emperor to Prince, and hence, instead of emperor, sources call him the Wei Shao Wang, the Prince of Wei. To give you an idea of his character, his helpful response to the Mongol attacks on the Tangut was allegedly to say “it is to our advantage when our enemies attack one another. Wherein lies the danger to us?” How could a man who tempts fate so willingly have been a poor emperor?       By autumn 1209, Chinggis Khan was ready for more serious actions. His flanks now secured with the defeat of the Naiman-Merkit force on the Irtysh in the west, the submission of the forest tribes to his north, and the voluntary submission of the Uighurs, the neighbours of the Tangut in 1209, the Mongol conquests were to begin. The Mongols marched in spring 1209, when there would be sufficient water and sparse grasses to allow the perhaps 60,000 man army to cross the Gobi desert. The Tangut armies, generally Turkic and Tangut horse archers and lancers, supported by Chinese infantry, fared poorly against Chinggis, who personally led the invasion.    His disciplined army in the open proved itself almost immediately. Made strong by their hard lifes, at a strategic level the army moved swiftly, effectively and without complaint. Honed and sharpened by decades of continuous war, at the tactical level they were a storm, out maneuvering and surrounding their enemies on the field, their arrows flying far, hitting hard and striking true. Thousands of arrows would rise into the sky like a cloud, dropping like rain and suddenly releasing cries of anguish from an army of dying men and horses.  Wings of the Mongol army, separated by kilometres but kept in touch through messengers, signal arrows, flags and drums, seemed to move as one to envelope their foe. Or, in their units of 10, 100 or 1,000, sent to run against the enemy, appearing like an undisciplined horde before suddenly forming into a wall of unyielding cavalry, or swiftly wheeling about, turning in their saddles to send arrows behind them, tempting the foe to pursue. Often, they took the bait, charging the Mongol archers, who parted, the impetus of the enemy charge leading into nothing. Isolated, these horsemen were quickly surrounded, filled with arrows or crushed by the Mongols’ own lancers. The enemy infantry without cavalry support could be then almost contemptuously picked off, like a wolf among a flock of sheep.   Chinggis Khan marched first to Wu-la-hai, where he destroyed a Tangut army sent against him. The fort fell once more shortly afterwards. Marching south along the Yellow River, they had to cross the Helan mountains, which formed a shield from west to north in which the Tangut capital, Zhongxing, modern Yinchuan, lay huddled in its fertile valley. On its eastern approach it was guarded by the Yellow River, which watered the irrigation canals that sustained life and crops in this beating heart of the Tangut realm. The approach through the Helan Shan was marked by the fort of Kei-min, reinforced in the aftermath of Wu-lai-hai’s fall, and led by an imperial prince. The Mongol vanguard was initially repulsed, but with the arrival of the main Mongol army the Tangut garrison remained on the defensive, hiding behind their walls. For two months, the Mongols waited before the fort, lacking the means to force Kei-min and the garrison refusing to sally forth. Frustrated in the summer heat, Chinggis Khan was not outplayed.  Feigning a retreat, the Tangut garrison was tricked into pursuing their fleeing foe- only to find themselves met by the full Mongol army far from the protection of their walls. Kei-min surrendered shortly afterwards.       Descending from the Helan Shan, Chinggis Khan was now before the walls of the Tangut capital, and it was these walls which threatened to halt his invasion. Thick walls of stamped earth, dotted by sturdy towers and well armed defenders and surrounded by irrigation canals, without siege equipment the Mongols could barely advance to the city. They looted the surrounding countryside and villages, but Zhongxing itself stood defiant, unassailable. So Chinggis sat before the walls, wasting away until the autumn of 1209, when a solution seemed to present itself. The rains of the fall swelled the nearby Yellow River, and Chinggis had an idea. His horsemen were sent forth with looted tools, and built an impromptu dyke, diverting the water which now was forced into the city. The stamped earthen walls were undermined, homes were washed away and the standing water threatened disease in Zhongxing, all while the usual rigours of the siege and blockade, starvation and illness, sapped away at Tangut moral. Somewhat embarrassingly, the makeshift dyke broke and flooded the Mongol camp, but by then it could not change the outcome, and finally in January 1210 the Tangut agreed to peace talks.          Humiliated, the Tangut became vassals of the Mongols, providing a princess in marriage for Chinggis and extensive tribute, including falcons, camels and textiles. Chinggis Khan returned to Mongolia in early 1210, vindicated- the Tangut King, Weiming Anquan, died under suspicious circumstances the next year. Thus ended the first Mongol conquest.    Cities and walls had proved an issue, but in the field the Mongols had performed spectacularly, and proved highly adaptable. No reliable method for forcing cities had yet been determined, but garrisons could be tricked out into the field by thoughts of easy victory. Compared to later Mongol conquest, the Tangut got off relatively light in 1210. The tribute was costly, but not prohibitively so, and cost less than the damage which continued Mongol attacks would cause. Neither did the Mongols leave a garrison in the country, and aside from demands for troops and tribute, the Mongols would interfere little in the internal autonomy the Tanguts so dearly prized. The submission was not popular within the Kingdom, and a notable faction in the court would develop urging the Tangut King to break with the Mongols at every opportunity. Despite the fact the Tanguts had survived the Mongol conquest more or less intact, this element in the court would ultimately lead to the destruction of the Tangut Kingdom.        Not long after his return, Chinggis Khan received messengers from the Jin court, informing him of the ascension of Wanyan Yongji and to reaffirm Chinggis’ tribute obligations. You may recall that Chinggis had fought against the Tatar tribes with Jin assistance in 1196. The Jin would have considered him a vassal after that, and he likely sent gifts, or tribute, to the Jin for a few years. It seems around 1206, he had stopped this, and in 1208 Emperor Zhangzong of Jin had sent his uncle Wanyan Yongji as embassy to get Chinggis to supply that tribute and reaffirm his vassalage. Chinggis had found Yongji utterly unthreatening, and had disrespected him. Now in 1210, learning that Yongji was the new emperor, Chinggis could only laugh. According to protocol, he was supposed to kowtow to the news. Instead, he spat on the ground towards the south, the direction of the Jin Emperor, and said, “I thought that the ruler of the Middle Kingdom must be from Heaven. Can he be a person of such weakness as Wei Shao Wang? Why should I kowtow for him?” before riding away. War had been declared, the start of a 20 year struggle that would outlast both Chinggis Khan and Wei Shao Wang.   This has been the start of our discussion on the Mongol conquests, and the next one is going to be even bigger, so be sure to hit subscribe to Ages of Conquest: A Kings and Generals podcast and to continue helping us bring you more outstanding content, please visit our patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. Thank you for listening, I am your host David and we will catch you on the next one!  

I’m your host David and welcome to Ages of Conquest: a Kings and Generals Podcast.  This is the Mongol conquests. Before we get into all that material you’re expecting for any good series on the Mongols- the conquests, the smoking ruins and the towers of skulls, we must discuss Chinggis Khan’s long and troubled rise to power. But before we can do that, it will help the humble listener immensely if we take the time to introduce what was going on, and who was who, in 12th century Mongolia. In the previous episode we introduced some aspects of Mongolian culture in this period as groundwork: now we will introduce the various tribes who played a role in the rise of the Mongol Empire.        Our episode on introducing thirteenth century China provides some important context on the general overview of Mongolian-Chinese relations, and details on the power vacuum following the fall of China’s Tang Dynasty in 907 that I won’t repeat at length here. In short though, parts of northern China and Mongolia came under the rule of the Liao Dynasty, ruled by the nomadic Khitans, a people related to the Mongols, beginning in the 900s. Their rule included garrisons and forts stationed throughout Mongolia,  and mainly kept things in order for about two centuries, dealing with sporadic uprisings and resistance. One of the final military victories of the Liao Dynasty was the suppression of an uprising by the Tatar tribes at the beginning of the 1100s.    Just over two decades later though, the Liao Dynasty disintegrated under the onslaught of the Jurchen, a Tungusic semi-nomadic people from Manchuria and ancestors of the Manchu. Their newly declared Jin Dynasty seized control of Manchuria, took control of all of China north of the Huai River from the Song Dynasty, and vassalized the Tangut Xi Xia in northwestern China: but, they did not make an attempt to control Mongolia as the Liao had done. With the Khitan garrisons moving west with the general Yelu Dashi to found the Qara-Khitai empire, Mongolia was basically left in a power vacuum, and the local tribes now rose into their own.        When we describe the Mongol tribes in the 12th century, we are discussing a large, rather disparate group of clans and tribes, some of whom were speakers of Mongolic languages, some were speakers of Turkic languages, and some were in a sort of milieu, described by historians as Turko-Mongols, tribes perhaps ethnically Turkish but speakers of Mongolian, and vice-versa. By convention, we use ‘Mongol tribes,’ to refer to the various nomadic groups north of China but south of the Siberian forests. However, in this period ‘Mongol’ referred to just a rather distinct and smaller grouping in the northeast, in the region of the Onon and Kerulen Rivers, the tribe to which the young Chinggis Khan belonged.    If we were to place a clock face over the whole of Mongolia, they would be situated at about 2 o’clock. The other tribes of the region, who we will be meeting shortly as we go around this clock, such as the Merkit, Kereyit, Tatars and Naiman, did not consider themselves Mongol, and indeed, evidence suggests they would have been rather insulted by it. A recent argument by historian Stephen Pow suggest that ‘Tatar,’ may have been the general endonym used by the steppe tribes. The Liao and Jin Dynasties generally referred to them all as ‘zubu.’ Either way, Mongol was, in the 1100s, a very limited term, and in the following discussion, will refer to the specific tribe and its subclans.       The history of the Mongol tribe before the 12th century is not an easy one to trace, and the mentions prior to this period are often controversial. The most commonly agreed upon, (though not a universal agreement, mind you) is that the Mongols’ ancestors were the Meng-wu, mentioned in histories of the Tang Dynasty as a minor branch of the larger Shih-wei ethnic grouping, a grouping which were vassals of the Gokturk Khaganates until their final collapse in the 740s. At this time, they lived in the area south of the Amur river, which is today the border between Russia and Chinese Manchuria, and would have been semi-nomadic, relying on hunting, fishing, agriculture and raising pigs as much as pastoralism. For a refresher on nomadic pastoralism, check out this seasons 2nd episode, on Mongolian nomadism. During the 900s, the Meng-wu moved west to the Arghun River, on the edge of modern Mongolia,  becoming subjects of their linguistic cousins, the Khitan Liao Dynasty. They gradually continued west and south, and were likely in the region of the Onon-Kerulen Rivers by the 11th century, by then relying on full pastoralism, as pigs and agriculture are unsuited for the steppe.        In the Mongols’ own legendary accounts, preserved in the 13th century Secret History of the Mongols, their people originate from the union of the blue-grey wolf and the fallow deer, Borte Chino and Gua Moral. The entire ancestry from the wolf and deer down to Chinggis Khan is recorded in the Secret History, and we won’t bog you down with it here. A particularly interesting conception occurs at one point, where a ray of light, also translated as yellow man, enters the tent of one of Chinggis’ ancestors, Alan Qo’a and impregnates her, a sort of divine conception. At this section in the Secret History, the most famous Mongolian parable first appears. Alan Qo’a, to prevent her sons from fighting each other, gives them each an arrow, and asks them to break it, which they do easily. Then, tying five arrows together in a bundle, asks them to break it, which they are unable to do. The message was clear: divided and alone, they are easily broken, but united they are unbreakable. It is a famous passage for the Mongols, and for good reason, as its lesson was applicable again and again.        The first of Chinggis Khan’s ancestors commonly agreed to exist was Khaidu, who in the Secret History of the Mongols is a great-great-great-grandson of Alan Qo’a, a figure who brought his branch of the Mongols, the Kiyat Borjigon, to some prominence over the other Mongol branches.  Khaidu’s great-grandson Khabul, with the fall of the Liao in 1125 creating a power vacuum in Mongolia, was able to organize what seems to have been a sort of military confederation, called by modern authors the Khamag Mongol Khanate, and at the time was known as something like Monggyol ulus, or Mongol state.    Little is known about this early Mongol state, or what sort of suzerainty its Khans exercised. What we do have takes the form of anecdotes. For Khabul, the Jin Dynasty took note of his rise to power, and invited him to the imperial court, intending to make him a vassal. At a feast at the imperial court, Khabul became incredibly drunk, went over and pulled on the Jin Emperor’s beard! The Jin Emperor allowed Khabul to leave with his life, but changed his mind and sent officials to kill him- Khabul ambushed them instead. The Jin Dynastic sources do not, unfortunately, provide direct corroboration for the above events, making it unclear if they were the stuff of legend, though they do remark on the Mongols being a nuisance along the frontier in this period.        Khabul was succeeded as Khamag Khan not by any of his sons, but by his cousin Ambaghai, a Mongol of the Taychiud line. Ambaghai, shortly into his reign, was captured by the Tatar tribes of eastern Mongolia, who on our clock of Mongolia, would be located between 2 and 3 o’clock. Turkic tribes, speaking most likely Mongol, the Tatars in this period were  in three main divisions, an unruly control of much of eastern Mongolia. Even though Ambaghai had been en route to organize a marriage alliance with them, the Jin Dynasty had gotten to the Tatars first, the Tatars acting as the Jin Dynasty’s ‘men on the ground,’ disrupting local politics to keep the tribes from unifying. The Tatars handed Ambaghai over to the Jin, who nailed him to a wooden donkey. His dying breaths were allegedly urging the Mongols to avenge him-      “Until the nails of your five fingers     Are ground down,     Until your ten fingers are worn away,     Strive to avenge me!” So began the decades long rivalry between the Mongols and the Tatars, with the Jin Dynasty as the puppet master behind them.        Khabul’s son Qutula (Ku-tu-la) succeeded Ambaghai, and though he was famous among the Mongols for immense physical strength and an appetite to match, over a series of thirteen battles he was unable to defeat the Tatars, and was killed in about 1160, heralding the collapse of the  Khamag Mongol confederation. It must be stressed that the Khamag Mongol was much more of a military alliance than a state in the form of the later Mongol Empire. Though it held influence in the steppe, it did not hold domination over the whole of Mongolia, but simply among those branches of the Mongol tribe- Borjigon (Bor-ji-gon), Taychiud (Tay-chi-ood) and the like, in northeastern Mongolia. To quote Volume 6 of the Cambridge History of China, “none of the available evidence even hints at the emergence at this time of any kind of administrative machinery or lines of authority independent of and in competition with the traditional kinship structure. The experience and memory of this brief unity may have contributed to the consolidation of the Mongolian nation, but it bequeathed nothing in the way of institutional foundations on which the later empire of the Great Mongols could build. The preliminary work would have to be done anew.”    Over the course of these battles, one of Khabul Khan’s grandchildren, Yesugei, captured a Tatar chief, Temujin-Uge. Upon his return to his own encampment, Yesugei found that one of his wives, Hoelun, had given birth to a boy clutching a blood clot in his fist the size of a knucklebone. The Tatar chief was sacrificed, and the boy was given his name- Temujin, the future Chinggis Khan. But you’ll have to wait until the next episode for more on his story.       With this brief history of the Khamag Mongol, we should quickly note  the other clans of the Mongol tribe in this period. The two main to know are the Kiyat Borjigon and the Taychiud. The Kiyat Borjigon are the clan to which Khabul, Qutula, Yesugei and Chinggis Khan belonged. Of the Taychiud lineage, Ambaghai was the most notable leader. The switching of the Khamag leadership between these two lineages sowed the seeds for future divisions- Ambaghai’s family held a grudge when the title of Khan when back to the Borjigon, and this was one of the factors which lead to the famous abandoning of Yesugei’s family, which we will explore next episode. Other clans of the Mongols included the Jadaran, to which Temujin’s blood brother Jamukha belonged, the Jurkin, and the Uriyangqat (Uri-yang-kat), to which the famous Subutai belonged. Subutai’s Uriyangqat are not to be confused with the very similar sounding Uriyangkhai, a northern tribe famous for reindeer herding.        Continuing clockwise on our clock, if the Mongols were 2 o’clock, the Tatars between 2 and 3 o’clock, then at 3 o’clock we would have the Onggirad, a less warlike grouping which in this period was famous for the beauty of its women. Chinggis Khan’s mother Hoelun, his wife Borte, and numerous wives for the rest of his descendants, came from this tribe or its subgroupings. At 5 o’clock we have the Onggut, close to the border of China proper. The Onggut were what the Jin Dynasty called their juyin, the tribes who made up their border guards. The Onggut were among those whose duty was to man the border defences the Jin erected, particularly in the final years of the 12th century- this included forts and an extensive earthen wall and ditch along the frontier. The Onggut were given a chance to join a coalition against Chinggis Khan, but chose to warn him instead, and their ruler was granted a daughter of the Khan in marriage, and soon submitted to him proper. Contrary to the description that Chinggis Khan simply ‘went around the Great Wall of China,’ we might find it more accurate to describe it as being opened to him by those appointed to man it!       At 6 o’clock is the noted Gobi desert, a sparsely populated expanse of gravel and low scrub brush. It was a formidable, but not unpassable, barrier, especially if an army chose to travel during the milder times of year. Connecting to the Alashan desert and the great western loop of the Yellow River, known as the Ordos loop, it served as the divider between the steppe and the Tangut Xi Xia Kingdom.    From 6 o’clock, if one was to move towards the centre of our clock face, they would encounter one of the most powerful tribes of 12th century Mongolia, the Kereyit. Centered on the Black Forest of the Tuul River, the Kereyit may have originated as a branch of the Tatars, asserting their independence in the final years of the Liao Dynasty, emerging as a distinct political body in about 1100. Though the Kereyit were likely of Turkic origin, the sources indicate close contact with the Mongols and little trouble conversing between them, suggesting they were bilingual or spoke Mongolian. Much closer to the main trade routes and China proper, the Kereyit were considerably wealthier than their northern cousins, their population was higher, and, perhaps surprisingly, they were Christians, or at least their ruling class were.    Specifically, they were Nestorian, or Church of the East, a sect which had gradually made its way east after being deemed heretical at the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431. Several names associated with the Kereit, such as Marqus and Qurjaqus (Kur-jak-us), were Mongolized forms of Marcus and Cyricaus (syr-i-cus). Indeed, Marqus-Buyruq Khan was the Khanate’s founder in about 1100, and Qurjaqus-Buyruq (kur-jak-us booy-ruk) Khan was his descendant and the father of the Khanate’s final ruler, the famous Toghrul-Ong Khan. When Qurjaqus died around the mid 12th-century, his.. potent manhood, shall we say, left him the issue of numerous children, 40 by one account. Toghrul was able to seize control only after killing a number of his brothers, with the military assistance of the Mongol Yesugei, the father of Temujin. Yesugei and Toghrul swore oaths to be blood-brothers, anda, a relationship which would bring Temujin to seek Toghrul’s assistance in due time.    At 7 o’clock, to the west of the Tangut and far side of the Gobi, we meet the Uighurs. A mainly sedentary Turkic people, we mentioned them in our episode on North China as an empire based in Mongolia until their defeat in 840 by the Kirghiz. After that, a large number of Uighurs migrated south, into the Gansu corridor and the oases of the Tarim Basin, Turfan Depression and into the Dzunghar Basin, in what is now Xinjiang in China, the far northwest of the country where it meets with Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia.    The Gansu Uighurs were conquered by the Tangut Kingdom, but the remainder, in their realm sometimes called ‘Uighuristan,’ retained their independence. Qara-Qocho, or in Chinese, Gaochang, in the Turfan Depression, was their major city. During the days of their empire, they had practiced Manicheism, but in their new homeland largely converted to the Buddhism of the locals in the following centuries, or Christianity in lesser numbers. With the establishment of the Qara-Khitai Empire to their west in the 1130s and 40s, by Khitans fleeing the fall of the Liao Dynasty, the Uighurs became their vassals, though they kept a great deal of autonomy and were an important link in the regional trade routes. Uighurs were able to often find employment as merchants or skilled advisers to the Khanates to their north, a role which would only increase when their script became adopted for the Mongolian language with Chinggis Khan’s expanding empire.   Continuing north from the Uighurs, we head to roughly 9 o’clock, where we end up in western Mongolia on the slopes of the Altai Mountains, in the territory of the Naiman. Meaning ‘eight’ in Mongolian, for the number of tribes or lineages making up this turkic Khanate, the Naiman in the 12th century were the most powerful union within Mongolia, nomadic yet relatively centralized, with a distinct ruling dynasty and literacy, making use of the Uighur script and a strong military. A number of the Naiman elite were Nestorian Christians, like the Kereyit, but shamanistic practices are observed multiple times in the sources. Their main competition was with the Kereyit, but were also involved with Central Asia- for several decades they were vassals of the Qara-Khitai. The Naiman maintained their unity until the mid 1190s, with the death of their Khan Inancha-Bilge, when the Khanate was split between his sons, Tayang and Buyruq, weakening it in the face of Mongol aggression. Despite their power, we know very little about the Naiman. Their name, Naiman, is what the Mongols called them. We don’t even know what they called themselves.   With the Naiman at 9 o’clock, we have a selection of smaller tribes on the borders of, or within, the great Siberian forest which take us to 12 o’clock. At 10 o’clock, around Khovsgol Lake, were the Oirat, in this period a relatively minor tribe, but the seed of a later union, the Four Oirat, which would dominate Mongolia in the fifteenth century, from which the Dzunghars and the Kalmyks would spring.  At 11 to 12 o’clock, on the lower Selenge River to the south of Lake Baikal, a massive body of water in Russia which is the deepest lake in the world, we find the Merkit. Speaking likely a Mongolic language, they were a fragmented collection of tribes, of little danger to the Naiman or Kereyit, but could pose a threat when the Mongols were disunified.    On the edge of the steppe, the Merkit practiced a mix of pastoralism, hunting, fishing and even it seems, agriculture. The Merkit would have a long antagonism with the Mongols, dating at least to the late 1150s when Chinggis Khan’s father Yesugei stole Hoelun, Chinggis’ mother, from her Merkit husband. This left a long suffering grudge which led to the capture of Chinggis’ own wife Borte by the Merkit, a captivity which resulted in the birth of Jochi, a child whose uncertain paternity would have major consequences for the Mongol Empire. One chief of the Merkit, Toqto’a Beki, would be a particular thorn in Chinggis Khan’s side, and after his death, his sons fled to the Qipchaq (chip-chak) in the far western steppe, bringing the Mongols eventually into Russia.   Aside from the Merkit, there are the smaller tribes of the Siberian forests the Mongols collectively dubbed the hoi-yin irgen, meaning ‘forest peoples.’ This included the aforementioned Oirat, the Kirghiz in the Yenisei valley, controlling one of the most northerly grain producing regions, and the Qori Tumed to the east of Lake Baikal, among others. All of these mentioned come under the authority of the Mongol Empire, but how far north Mongol control went is unclear. Lake Baikal is often seen as a rough estimate for the northern extent of Mongol rule, but there is suggestion their trade networks extended far among the peoples of what is now Yakutia, the Russian far east.        This has been a very brief introduction to the various peoples inhabiting the Mongolian steppe, or were in close proximity to it. This is not exhaustive: we didn’t mention every single clan and sub clan and lineage among the Mongols, nor did we go into Manchuria, or discuss in much detail the lands and tribes of the Qara-Khitai. Ideally, this should give you, dear listener, a fine basis for understanding the tribes and politics at play for our next discussion: the birth of Temujin, and his rise to become Chinggis Khan, the conqueror of the World. That’s coming soon, so be sure to hit subscribe to the Kings and Generals podcast and to continue helping us bring you more outstanding content, please visit our patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. Thank you for listening, I am your host David and we will catch you on the next one!

Contrary to some popular internet opinions, the Mongol Empire was not an unprecedented, utterly unique presence on the stage of world history. It was neither the first or the last nomadic empire, though it was certainly the greatest. This depiction of the Mongol Empire as a total historical aberration is due, perhaps, to a lack of context. When one learns of the Mongols through hyperbole and dramatized retellings of the rise of Chinggis Khan, it neighbours portrayed only long enough to explain their destruction, it is easy to feel you’re learning about perhaps the only nomadic empire to really conquer anything, instead of just raiding. In this episode, we will provide first a very brief history of Mongolia based nomadic empires- not encyclopedic, but enough to give you an idea of what the precedent here was. Then, we will explain the first of what is known in Chinese history as the ‘conquest dynasties,’ the Khitan Liao Dynasty, the Tangut Xi Xia Dynasty, and the Jurchen Jin Dynasty, who laid the groundwork for the Asia Chinggis Khan would emerge into. With that background, it will make puts the events of the conquest of China into greater context for you, our dear listener, so that the significance of particular events should perhaps take greater event. Now, prepare yourself as we take a speedy 1,000 year journey through Mongolian and northern Chinese history.  In broad strokes, we must first note that the Empire founded by Chinggis Khan in 1206 was not the first empire ever based in Mongolia. For that honour we must go back over 1400 years to the Xiongnu Empire, a tribal confederation founded around 209 BCE, perhaps a reaction to the unification of China under their first imperial dynasty, the Qin Dynasty. The well known Terracotta warriors come from the magnificent tomb of the first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi, to place this into a well known context. The Xiongnu’s military might put the Qin’s successors, the famed Han Dynasty into what was essentially a vassal relationship, forcing them to send tribute for decades. Before the rise of the Mongols, the Xiongnu were the archetypal nomadic threat to the Chinese, who struggled to find ways to successfully resist their pressure. One effort was to ‘civilize’ the Xiongnu by sending them Chinese brides and goods, to force the Xiongnu to become dependent on them. It proved expensive and unsuccessful, and with the Xiongnu based still in Mongolia, they could maintain the divide between their society and the Chinese. The Han saw more success militarily, building border walls, expanding towards Central Asia to cut off the Xiongnu from their client kingdoms on whom they depended for revenues and forming alliances with various tribes along the Xiongnu’s border- although military operations into Mongolia proper were difficult and costly for the Chinese. What finally allowed the Han to overcome the Xiongnu was the end of their long unity. Unlike effectively every other nomadic confederation to follow them, the Xiongnu maintained a remarkable degree of unity from 209 until 60 BCE. The civil war which broke out over the Xiongnu ruler’s succession was the true end of their confederation. Various claimants sought support from the Chinese, increasing Chinese influence, weakening the central authority of the Xiongnu ruler, encouraging their enemies and ultimately, resulting in the fragmentation of the confederation and rise of other powers in Mongolia.   Now, you may ask, why did we have all that preamble for events literally over a millennium before Chinggis Khan? The reason is because of trends which will be apparent in this, and future episodes: The significance of Chinese goods and tribute, as something desired by the nomads, and a tool to be used by Chinese with the intention of ‘corrupting,’ or from the Chinese point of view, ‘civilizing’ the nomads, forcing them to lose their military edge in favour of the finer things. The great military potential of the nomads, and the difficulty the various Chinese dynasties had operating militarily directly in the vast Mongolian steppe, where the nomads could easily escape on horseback or surround them And nomadic unity: when they organized, the various nomadic powers were an incredibly potent weapon. But when they fragmented, invariably due to a succession crisis, their infighting was horrific, and old micro-tribal loyalties would assert themselves over the macro-tribal confederation. Wise Chinese dynasties would play these tribes off on-another, providing goods, resources or even military support to a certain leader, keeping the nomads at each other’s throats and preventing them from unifying and directing their fearsome energy to the south.     The Xiongnu was among the most stable and longest lasting tribal union in Mongolia’s history. Among these successors included the Xianbei confederation, founded in the late first century CE, then the Rouran, the first to use the title of Khan, then the Gokturk Khaganaes, and the Uighur Khaganate, which collapsed in 840 CE. All rose to power in what is now modern Mongolia, forming mighty empires which spanned huge territory and threatened the Chinese Dynasties. The Gokturks, in particular, saw their influence stretch even to Crimea, and proved highly influential to Turkic peoples who emerged in the following centuries.   One thing we have not noted as of yet, is the make up of these empires. Were they Mongols? Proto-Mongolic? Turks? Irish? Well, prior to the Gokturks, known also as the Turkic Khaganates, who were unequivocally turkic tribes speaking turkic languages, the make up of these confederations is a messy, messy thing. Many a long academic paper has been written arguing for Mongolic, Altaic, Tungusic, Turkic, and many more, for the identity of these various earlier empires. These were all ethnically quite diverse, various tribes united by charismatic leadership or by one tribes military might. This is part of why these states suffered such violent fragmentations: once that leadership stopped being charismatic enough, generally associated with the death of a major monarch and conflict for the throne between his sons or brothers, then those old tribal ties would reassert themselves. These were not nation-states, but better thought of as military alliances. The constituent peoples who made up the empire could have all been nomads, but speaking totally unrelated languages, lacking a common identity beyond “we’re not sedentary or Chinese.”   The Uighur Khaganate, a Turkic empire, was destroyed in 840 under the assault of the Yenisei Kirghiz, who did not establish their own empire. Many Uighur moved south, to Gansu and Turfan in what is now modern China. With the fall of the Uighurs, and at a similar time the Tibetan Kingdom, China’s mighty Tang Dynasty, the most powerful Dynasty since the Han and the latest to unify the country, had lost its main rivals of the last century, and had no major nomadic threat on its border. However, the Tang Dynasty was well past its prime and collapsed in 907, creating a power vacuum across the whole of China. While China went through its favourite process of small kingdoms fighting their way back to unity, in the north a people speaking a Mongolic-language had unified, and were to proclaim their own kingdom, the first of the conquest dynasties.    Oh yes, you guessed it: the Khitans!    A nomadic group from southern Manchuria, culturally and linguistically close to the Mongols, under their chief Abaoji they declared their own empire after the final collapse of the Tang in the early 900s. Now, this was not a confederation/military alliance in the likes of the Xiongnu, where the ruler’s actual authority outside of military direction was limited, but a true, structured state, one which took on the outward trappings of a Chinese dynasty. In fact, among other things, they took their own dynastic name in the style of other Chinese Dynasties, Abaoji choosing Liao, from a river in their territory in southern Manchuria. The Khitan Liao empire incorporated much of Mongolia, Manchuria, and the very north of China, with what is now modern Beijing made their southern capital, a part of China known to their contemporaries as the 16 prefectures. The Khitans practiced a style of government which would be picked up by their nomadic successors, known as the dual administration system, to accommodate the nomadic tribesmen and vast sedentary Chinese population within their empire. Under this system, the nomadic tribes who made up the military core, command and the elite, were governed according to their own tribal customs, while the Chinese were separately administered under their own laws, its bureaucracy there based off the Tang model.   In Mongolia, the Khitan presence was not extensive, but it was notable especially in the east. Military forts and garrisons were established across the steppe, such as Bars-Hot, which were also centres of trade and provided valuable, reliable smiths. Essentially, they kept the peace, offering a stability to the region, though details on this aspect come as much from archaeology as they do the textual record: what happened on the steppe between nomads was not often of interest to Chinese writers. It does not seem to have been a level of control like that of the Manchu occupation centuries later.   Khitan rule in northern China lasted two centuries, and their name became the basis for Kitai or Cathay, the name by which China is known in a number of languages. Their rule was not uncontested: the most notable conflict was with the Song Dynasty which emerged in the south, swallowing up the petty kingdoms south of the Yellow River in the decades following the collapse of the Tang. The Song will be a dynasty we will revisit later in this series, but for now know this: while the northern conquest dynasties were ruled by nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples over a Chinese population, the Song were ruled by Chinese and considered themselves the heirs of Tang, though deliberately weakened the power of their military, to their later chagrin. The Song sought to bring the aforementioned 16 prefectures back under Chinese rule, and to this end fought a series of inconclusive wars with the Liao. The Song proved unable to wrest control from the Liao, while the Khitans were unable to push deep into Song territory, though they had a notable expedition to the Song capital of Kaifeng, culminating in the Treaty of Chanyuan in 1005, finalizing the border and the Song providing large amounts of silver and silk annually to appease the Liao. This was an often uneasy peace, one punctuated by raids and expeditions. The Song, for their part, cultivated extensive forests along their border with the Liao, an effort to hampher the cavalry which was so important to the Khitans.    The other notable relationship which emerged in this period, was with the Tangut Kingdom, known also as the Xi Xia Dynasty. The Tangut ancestors were a Tibetan people who had moved into the Gansu corridor, a sparse desert region of oasis cities, the great Ordos loop of the western Yellow River and the fertile valley known today as Ningxia. Slowly granted rights by the Tang Emperors, like many others they asserted their independence with the fall of the Tang, first as Kings, then in 1038 declaring their own empire, taking the dynastic name of Xi Xia, though they knew themselves as the State of White and High. The Tangut Kingdom was a peculiar little state: Buddhism was strong there, with Chinese Confucianism finding little ground. It was a diverse though small population of approximately three million, with Tangut rulers, about half the general population Han Chinese, and the remainder various Turkic or Tibetan peoples, a strong nomadic and agricultural element. They created their own script, visually similar to Chinese but distinct: likewise, their government had Chinese trappings but internally unique, and did not use the dual administration system of the Liao. Unfortunately due to the Mongols, little information on their internal structure survives to us. They had a strong, cavalry based military, though they lacked the great offensive potential of their neighbours in the steppes or the Khitans. Generally seen as trade oriented, especially in the 12th century they turned their attention to the silk routes in the west as much as they did the east, and had influence towards the Tarim Basin. A favoured destination for leaders in the Mongolian steppe seeking refuge, their relationship with the Khitan was amicable and had marriage relations with them: while with the Song Dynasty it often took the form of raids, urging the Khitans to join them in attack. Visually, the Tangut had a rather unique hair style which bears brief mention: known as a tufa, the head was shaved except for the bangs and temples, framing the forehead.Trust me when I say it is incredibly ugly, but it does make it easy to identify them in surviving artworks.   Though their rule was long, the Liao rulers after Abaoji were not his equals. Much like their successor conquest dynasties, the Khitan struggled between adopting Chinese customs and maintaining their nomadic heritage. One place this was manifested was the succession, something to take note of for future discussion. The Liao Emperor, often influenced by his wives,often wanted t a designated heir, as per the Chinese style. Yet the Khitan elite wanted to maintain the nomadic preference for electing who they saw as the most suitable ruler, a choice which could be from the emperor’s sons or brothers. In this case, most suitable often meant whoever had developed the greatest military reputation or contacts, or who this elite thought could be most malleable. These disputes could manifest into assassination, and neither the Liao nor the Mongols would ever find a suitable solution to this problem at the imperial level. The later Liao Emperors struggled to deal with the rebellions along their borders, such as the Tatars in Mongolia, and in Manchuria, the Bo-hai peoples of the former Bo-hai kingdom in the far east, and the Jurchen tribes in the north, and the ones to usurp the Khitans.   The Jurchen tribes were the ancestors of the Manchu, and a semi-nomadic Tungusic people, nomadizing only a part of the year and inhabiting a large swath of territory from northeastern Manchuria towards the Yalu River. The Liao court classified them into three broad groups, based on proximity to China: the ‘civilized’ Jurchen, the closest, around the Liao River who were under firm control and generally assimilated to Chinese culture. North of them were the ‘obedient’ Jurchen, under regular contact and, well, obedient. Beyond them were the largest group, the ‘wild’ Jurchen, of the middle valley of the Sungari and the eastern mountains of Heilongjiang. They were vassals of the Liao, but the court held little direct power there. Originally split between numerous small tribes and clans in spread out villages, over the eleventh century the wild Jurchen were gradually unified by the Wan-yen clan, who gained recognition and titles from the Liao. Though the Liao court held little direct control over the wild Jurchen, they could still pose a threat if they turned their might to them, and the Jurchen rankled over the perceived abuses of the Khitan border guards, a sentiment worked up by the ambitious Wan-yen chief, Aguda.    The ultimate fall of the Liao Dynasty rose from a well known incident. It was the custom of the Liao Emperor to go on seasonal hunting and fishing trips into Manchuria, during which the tribes and chiefs of the region would come and pay homage to the Liao Emperor. As a gesture of submission, each chief would stand up and dance before him. During this ceremony in winter 1112, when it came time for Aguda to dance before the emperor, he refused. Annoyed, the Liao Emperor asked him again. Again, Aguda refused. On the third time, Aguda still refused. Incensed, the Liao Emperor wanted to execute Aguda for his insolence, but was talked out of it by his chancellor, allegedly saying something along the lines of ‘what harm could he do?’   In 1113, Aguda was elected chief of the Wild Jurchen; in autumn 1114, he began raiding the Liao frontier. That winter, he crushed Liao armies sent against him, and several border prefectures surrendered to him. By the start of 1115, Aguda had declared himself emperor of a new Jin Dynasty. What followed was the shockingly quick collapse of the Liao. A campaign by the Liao Emperor against Aguda was undermined when his court appointed his uncle as emperor in his absence. The Bo-hai in the east rebelled, killed their Khitan viceroy and submitted to the Jurchen. In 1118, Aguda crossed the Liao River, and the next year the Song Dynasty opened contact with the Jin, hoping to use this as a chance to regain those lost prefectures.   After a round of failed negotiations between Jin and Liao, war resumed in 1120. The supreme capital of the Liao Dynasty fell almost immediately, the imperial tombs sacked. By 1122, the Liao Emperor fled to inner Mongolia while his empire was swallowed by the Jurchen armies, their heavy cavalry rolling over all in their path. The Tangut attempted to aid the Khitans, but their army was swiftly defeated and forced to offer tribute. The Song, their armies initially distracted by war with the Tangut and an internal revolt, were finally able to attack the Liao, though embarrassingly were repulsed. This would not be the last time the Song would ally against their current enemy with a dangerous nomadic group from the north.   The final Liao emperor was soon joined by the able general Yelu Dashi, a distant relation who brought with him the empress and a number of Khitan troops. Yelu Dashi however, quickly became disillusioned with the Liao Emperor’s incompetence and abandoned him, gathering up the Khitan garrisons of Mongolia and moving west to Central Asia. There, he founded the Qara-Khitai Empire, a state we will revisit in the future. By doing so, the garrison outposts in Mongolia were abandoned, and there was no reason at this time for the Jin to expand their presence into the steppe, leaving Mongolia in a power vacuum. The Liao Emperor was finally captured in 1125 by the Jin, and spent his final years humiliated and imprisoned. Thus ended the Liao Dynasty.   Aguda did not live to see this great success, dying in 1123 a few months after concluding the alliance treaty with the Song. The Song still hoped to gain those prefectures back, but their poor military performance, and the overwhelming might of the Jin armies, radically changed the balance of power as the Liao state disintegrated. The relationship was tense, and by the end of 1125 the Jin under Aguda’s brother attacked the Song. Once more, Jin success was shocking. By 1127, the Song capital of Kaifeng had fallen, the emperor captured and the dynasty was reeling. Jin advance forces were even able to cross the Yangtze River. Yet it seems the speed and scale of their conquest was too rapid, and they struggled to hold onto the vast territory they now controlled. Local militias sprang up to resist the Jurchen, and Song forces rallied under the command of the talented Yue Fei, who pushed the Jin back over the 1130s, culminating in a peace treaty in 1142 which set the Huai River as their border. The older Song-Liao treaty was used as a basis, and the Song had to deliver 250,000 bales of silk and bolts and silver yearly, and the Jin Emperor was to be regarded as the ‘elder brother’ of the Song emperor, now based in Hangzhou in the south. Though the war would flare up again between the two, the treaty of 1142 effectively set the borders of China until the Mongol conquests.    For the Song Dynasty, this was a grand humiliation, the total loss of northern China to the invaders. 1127 is the end of what is known as the ‘Northern Song Dynasty,’ its salvaged successor the ‘Southern Song,’ which found trade and economics more to their skill than military aspects. The Jin Dynasty, at its height in the 12th century, was perhaps the single greatest military on earth. The Jurchen state had a number of problems however. Perhaps four million Jurchens now ruled over fifty million northern Chinese. Many of the Khitans of the Liao had not left with Yelu Dashi, but remained in northern China. The Jin borders were distant, their territory vast: garrisoning the entire kingdom with just Jurchen troops was impossible. Khitans and Chinese were incorporated in large numbers into the army, but excluded from promotion in both the military and government. The Khitans, still skilled horsemen, did not forget or forgive the loss of their dynasty, and rebelled periodically. The long reign of Emperor Shizong, from 1161-1189 was a golden age for Jin rule, but saw a growing sinicization of the Jurchen rulers, separating them from their kinsmen remaining in Manchuria. Under Shizong’s successors, corruption became endemic and was compounded by intense natural disasters, particularly devastating flooding of the Yellow River in the early 1190s. Like the Liao, the Jin ruled through a dual administrative structure, and maintained the Liao practice of having five capitals, one of which was at the site of modern Beijing. Prohibitions were made preventing Jurchen from wearing Chinese clothes or to learn Chinese and vice versa, in an effort to preserve Jurchen culture, and Chinese were even forbidden from calling the Jurchen ‘barbarians.’ Unique Jurchen scripts were developed, and Jurchen bards were to play the old songs in the emperor’s presence. These efforts could not halt the steady flow of assimilation, however, and only in the Manchurian homeland, removed from the Chinese culture altogether, were any Jurchens able to resist sinicization   This was China as the Mongols would find it in the thirteenth century: the Jurchen ruled Jin Dynasty in the north, a massive military power but spread thin over its vast borders, its rulers adopting Chinese customs, important sections of its military and population, especially the Khitans, feeling alienated and disrupted by natural disasters. Conflict would be renewed with the Song Dynasty in the south in 1206, the heirs of the Tang Dynasty who still dreamt of bringing the north back under Chinese control, but though their economic might in the Asian trade routes was significant, militarily they were not the equals of the conquest dynasties. In the northwest, the Tangut ruled Xi Xia dynasty bordered the Mongolian steppe, a small but sturdy state which was the vassals of the Jin, but had no great love for the Jurchen. A fractured China, ready to descend into warfare with the correct spark. That sparks name would be Chinggis Khan.   We hope that you have enjoyed this introduction to 13th century, a basis for our explanation on the upcoming Mongol conquests, so be sure to hit subscribe to the Kings and Generals podcast and to continue helping us bring you more outstanding content, please visit our patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. Thank you for listening, I am your host David and we will catch you on the next one!

The pace of urbanization in contemporary China is nothing short of dizzying. Seventy years ago, at the time of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, 80% of the population were farmers based in rural areas. Now, over 60% of all Chinese citizens live in cities of various sizes, and it is projected that by 2030, the number of urban dwellers will exceed 1 billion. As one would expect, the challenges that these dynamics pose to Chinese architects and urban planners are staggering. So how do these beleaguered builders design a modern city in China from scratch in the face of so many changing variables? How do they create cities that strike a balance between modern and traditional aesthetics? And what kinds of obstacles can they expect to face throughout this process?Featuring:Andrea Krupski von Mansberg | architect, urban designerAndrea’s LinkedIn Li Shuwen | architect, urban plannerShuwen’s websiteLars Ulrik Thom | founder of Beijing PostcardsBeijing Postcards websiteAnd, as usual, your host, Aladin Farré.Aladin’s LinkedIn | Aladin’s TwitterWith thanks to Brenden Gonsalves for graphic design support.Middle Earth is made by China Compass Productions. If you have a China-themed cultural project, please get in touch!Recommended watching:Imperial City Wall Relics Park, located on the east side of the Forbidden City in Beijing.Xiangshan Central Campus of the China Academy of Art, located in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Answers to the episode quiz:1. The CCTV headquarters in Beijing is the most expensive building in China, with an estimated cost of $800 million (approximately 5.7 billion yuan).2. Tiananmen Square has the same area as Vatican City, 0.44 km2 (0.17 sq mi). 3. Ordos 鄂尔多斯 may be the most famous Chinese “ghost town.” Located in Inner Mongolia, Ordos was supposed to house almost a million people working in the natural resources industry.

After a long, relaxing month of June, we're back and ready to melt your brains! We're talking about Stoner/Doom extraordinaires Ordos, and their album from 2019 called The End. We're also talking about a 2015 found footage film called Hellhouse LLC. It's all there for you… but YOU MUST CHOOSE [...]

After a long, relaxing month of June, we're back and ready to melt your brains! We're talking about Stoner/Doom extraordinaires Ordos, and their album from 2019 called The End. We're also talking about a 2015 found footage film called Hellhouse LLC. It's all there for you… but YOU MUST CHOOSE TO TAKE IT!

Making a feature film can be a long and painful process — especially when you’re shooting an indie film in below-freezing conditions 16 hours per day for 14 days. But that is exactly what the creative team behind The Last Sunrise 最后的日出 was able to do, and along the way, they generated useful insight into China’s science-fiction movie scene and the realities of filmmaking in China on a shoestring budget. Featuring: Wen Ren: Director | 任文 ：导演 Wen’s IMDB | Wen’s Instagram | Wen’s Vimeo  Elly Li: Producer, Co-writer | 李昳青：制片人，编剧 Elly’s IMDB  And, as usual, your host, Aladin Farré. Aladin’s LinkedIn | Aladin’s Twitter Four main takeaways from this week’s episode:     从这期访谈中，我们总结出四个主要观点： 1) Chinese science-fiction productions tend to be optimistic about the future. While Western science-fiction productions are dominated by dystopian tropes, in contrast, Chinese sci-fi tends to paint a far more benign portrait of how science will usher in a better future. Of course, state regulations that govern cultural production in China have something to do with this, but gifted creators can often find workarounds to these restrictions. 2) In China, getting started in the film industry is like founding a startup. The main goal of most filmmakers is to make a good-quality film and, if at all possible, to pay the filmmaking team along the way. There is no shortcut to a successful career in making feature films; making a high-quality movie is the end result of years of experience in the industry. Big payoffs do not happen by accident. Just like any other entrepreneur, filmmakers need to make good products before they can hope to earn serious revenue, and this means working on as many projects as possible. In China as in many other markets, the jump from making low-budget films online to big-budget films intended for cinematic release is a large one, and not everyone makes it. 3) Chinese internet distributors usually pay a flat fee and keep audience numbers secret. If an internet platform agrees to distribute a film, the producer will receive a flat fee and will need to budget the film accordingly. There is no incentive or bonuses for films that reach a large audience on an internet platform. The general public will likely never learn how many people have actually watched the movie, just as with Netflix in the West. Platforms like Youku do provide an indicator of popularity 热度 and share it with the creators after some time. However, the popularity of any given film peaks only briefly before audiences move on. In the case of The Last Sunrise, for example, the movie was the second-most widely viewed movie on Youku for a few weeks before plunging down to number #799 three months later. 4) There are a few key secrets to shooting a film in 14 days. Do a lot of advance planning to avoid wasting time. Surround yourself with a team who can work long hours and understand your creative vision. Select only a few locations, and shoot indoors as much as possible. For The Last Sunrise , for example, the team limited filming locations to only three places: Beijing 北京,  Zhangbei 张北 in Hebei Province, and Ordos 鄂尔多斯 in Inner Mongolia. As you pitch the project, be prepared to propose a variety of budgets and lengths to appeal to different types of investors. Recommended watching and reading: The Last Sunrise 最后的日出 (2019): Youku (VIP account needed) | Facebook page Train to Busan (2016): Wikipedia page Black Coal, Thin Ice 白日焰火 (2014): Wikipedia page  The Wandering Earth 流浪地球 (2019): Wikipedia page South Korean director Kim Ki-duk: Wikipedia page  Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda : Wikipedia page Zhang Yimou’s opinion piece in the New York Times, “What Hollywood looks like from China.” Answers to the episode quiz: Lu Xun 鲁迅 was the famous Chinese author who translated several science-fiction books over a century ago. Amazon Prime bought the rights to the book The Three-Body Problem 三体, by Liu Cixin 刘慈欣. The full series has yet to be released.  The year 2003 was when the first Chinese astronaut, or taikonaut, Yang Liwei 杨利伟, went to space.

This week, Tim teaches us about California City! A 1950s business venture by Nat Mendelsohn that turned out different than he had planned! The guys also introduce a MORNING SHOW!  Get Immediate Access to Bonus Content http://patreon.com/jaronmyers Contact Us podcast@jaronmyers.com   SHOW NOTES: 00:00 - Introduction to topic, and what the third largest city in California is! 05:06 - Markerboard vs. Dry-Erase board! A math equation that was left in the studio! 09:20 - 33 Miles the band. Wonder what they’re up to these days 13:00 - We calculate how many Manhattans could fit into California City. Using the whiteboard to determine the math equation 17:14 - How do Mayors work? Are there Mayors for each suburb? 19:00 - We (kinda) get to the actual topic. Talking about the history of California City. “Nat is the Tib of Nate” 23:00 - Is Cardi B a Christian artist?? 24:37 - The 1950s and all of the land out there in California. The vision, and how suburbs work 26:37 - The TILLN Morning Show with Jim Mone and Taron Syers! 32:37 - Developing infrastructure in California City, a well system designed for a large city now home to 14,000 people 39:20 - We announce a pretty ridiculous and totally real (nope) land giveaway! 43:00 - The difficulties ahead for the government there and how to get people there! And their biggest export! (Spoiler: Marijuana Mecca) 53:15 - How the marijuana industry is building economies and our thoughts on what that will look like in a few years 56:45 - WE’RE GONNA BUY A CICI’S PIZZA 1:01:37 - Ordos, China - a massive potential capitol city, that no one moved to

Hey hey! Vi inleder med en rant om NSMB, Metalsucks och allt det där. Kanske inte så mycket om Metalsucks givna oduglighet, men vi avhandlar impotensen och skevheten i NSBM. Häng på! Utöver detta lyssnar vi på transatlantisk symfoni-black, lam Oregon-"black" (antar jag), doom från Uppsala och en norsk otippad mix. Mycket missnöje! Swish för tish (150:- ink. frakt): 0708-961174 Playlist: Gårdsghastr - Of Crimson Eyes L'Acéphale - Runenberg Ordos - Embrace the Dark Mork - På Tvers Av Tidene

THE DOOMED & STONED SHOW -Season 5, Episode 2- Billy Goate is back from winter hibernation and ready to take on the world again! He is joined in this episode by Bucky Brown from The Ripple Effect, here to help him tackle another Doom Chart Countdown, as we look at our favorite tracks from the featured albums at www.DoomCharts.com. This time, we're looking at the critic's choice for the month of February, with plenty of new music for you to discover by Saint Vitus, Candlemass, Geezer, Crypt Trip, Dead Witches, Demon Head, and more! The doom metal and stoner rock sound is alive and well in 2019. TRACKLIST: 1. INTRO (00:00) 2. Saint Vitus - "12 Years In The Tomb" (00:26) 3. Flame, Dear Flame - "The Millennial Heartbeat, Part I" (05:51) 4. HOST SEGMENT I (12:25) 5. Numidia - "Red Hymn" (26:51) 6. Dead Witches - "When Do The Dead See The Sun" (35:24) 7. Poste942 - "Whiskey" (37:10) 8. HOST SEGMENT II (42:49) 9. Crypt Trip - "Hard Times" (53:17) 10. BUS - "Moonchild" (59:57) 11. LáGoon - "Worship The Van" (1:02:43) 12. HOST SEGMENT III (1:06:39) 13. The Black Heart Death Cult - "Black Rainbow" (1:14:13) 14. Sàbba - "Pentacle" (1:18:43) 15. Red Eye - "Waves" (1:26:25) 16. HOST SEGMENT IV (1:32:06) 17. Red Beard Wall - "My Queen" (1:39:58) 18. Geezer - "Dark World" (1:43:47) 19. WARLUNG - "Between The Dark and The Light" (1:48:40) 20. HOST SEGMENT V (1:53:04) 21. Sacred Monster - "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (2:04:58) 22. AVER - "Hemp Fandango" (2:09:41) 23: Ordos - "Embrace The Dark" (2:20:35) 24. Candlemass - "Astorolus - The Great Octopus" (2:28:24) 25. HOST SEGMENT VI (2:35:06) 26. About Wizards - "Black Obelisk" (2:40:05) 27. Gypsy Chief Goliath - "Crash 'n' Burn" (2:48:58) 28. Yatra - "Black Moon" (2:50:38) 29. HOST SEGMENT VII (2:57:20) 30. Demon Head - "Mercury and Sulfur" (3:04:13) 31. Silver Devil - "No Man Traveller" (3:12:42) 32. Palace In Thunderland - "This Illusion's Come Alive" (3:16:53) 33. HOST SEGMENT VIII ( 3:28:14 ) 34. Birdstone - "Alquézar" (3:36:43) 35. The Lunar Effect - "Woman" (3:44:03) 36. Witchers Creed - "Salem(Resurrection)" (3:47:26) Explore the music and the stories of the heavy underground, with exclusive debuts, album reviews, in-depth interviews, festival scrapbooks, and more at www.DoomedandStoned.com. Daily updates at https://facebook.com/doomedstoned (while there, join our Facebook group!)and https://twitter.com/doomedandstoned. Help us continue with another year strong by becoming a monthly "High on Fiver" patron, with access to all past rewards and more on the way: https://patreon.com/billygoate.

Девятнадцатый выпуск! Этот выпуск полностью посвящён замечательной игре Warmachine & Hordes. Мы обсудим историю мира, особенности игрового процесса, потравим байки о былом и самое главное - позовём вас на DOOMБуль Challenge 2019! DOOMБуль Challenge 2019 - https://vk.com/the_ordos?w=wall-154237673_598 Клуб Ordos - https://vk.com/the_ordos Тайм коды выпуска: 01:00 - История мира Warmachine & Hordes 29:15 - Как играть в Warmachine & Hordes 54:30 - История про 2D тиррейн 59:30 - Как начать играть 1:04:40 - Необычные форматы игры 1:12:00 - Зачем столько линеек? 1:16:00 - Богатая история сообщества 1:34:30 - DOOMБуль Challenge 2019 Новые выпуски вы найдёте: - В нашей группе https://vk.com/podwargame - Нашем Telegram-канале https://t.me/podwargame - Лента RSS http://feeds.feedburner.com/Podwargame Пожалуйста оставляйте комментарии и делайте репосты! Спасибо и приятного прослушивания!

In today's episode Nicky P & Lizzie examine Signs by The Five Man Electric Band. No need to even guess where this one goes if you’ve ever heard it...but how riled will I get? http://bit.ly/2StIGCT Synthpop and Stoner Metal this week in I Heard This Happened. Nicky’s pick is Swedish metal band Ordos with The End.  I really enjoyed the textured approach to vocals on the record. Some Jim Morrison-esqe cleans next to some Tray Sanders styled grows really works. There is a fantastic squelch on the guitars that is incredibly appealing. They’re crazy thick but somehow smooth & never drop the heavy. They’re not exactly breaking the sludge/stoner mold here but fans of the genre probably see that as a feature not a bug. I certainly do. http://ordosofficial.bandcamp.com/album/the-end-2 Liz’ went for some Synthpop with Pastel Skies by  Detuned Goom. It sounds like the ‘80 we wish there was. You would have looked fab in those leg warmers.It is not completely instrumental but the vocals are so oddly tonal that they are almost like another instrument. It’s really smooth overall like the poly windbreaker I imagine this artist wearing. https://detunedgloom.bandcamp.com/album/pastel-skies Ben Pangie is host of the Homesteads and Homeschools podcast and graces us with his exasperation...Nicky has that effect on people. https://homesteadsandhomeschools.com Ben Recommends Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show - Sloppy Seconds http://bit.ly/2Ua4KnI Jethro Tull - Thick as a Brick http://bit.ly/2SpwSBz Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera - Velvet Opera http://bit.ly/2T2SNU7 Dan Deacon - Spiderman of the Rings (w/ Wham City) http://bit.ly/2XrjG2B Sublime - 40oz to Freedom http://bit.ly/2Ef0qwx Find all the episodes at ancapmusic.com http://www.ancapmusic.com Check out the show’s spotify soundtrack here: https://spoti.fi/2MFxkKG To Support Us Join The Freedom Choir here: http://www.supportsll.com Click here to sign up for email list: http://bit.ly/2MDWoSg

Hoy, en "La Biblioteca de Tizca", sigo ampliando mis relatos sobre la Inquisición. Ya os hablé acerca de los Ordos Majoris Inquisitoriales, pero hoy os voy a hablar acerca de algunos de los incontables Ordos Minoris que forman parte de esta mastodóntica organización Imperial. Tras este relato, más breve de lo habitual, leo vuestros comentarios y os hago una crónica de nuestro WAAAGH!!! a Warhammer World.

Hoy, en "La Biblioteca de Tizca", recupero uno de los primeros temas que traté en estos archivos. Voy a hablaros con más profundidad acerca de los Ordos Inquisitoriales, empezando por los tres Ordos Majoris.

The main episodes are back in full swing with Episode 7 of Target Obscured. In this episode I discuss some of the Rogue Trader infor that dropped over the preorder weekend, we have some rules clarifications that can affect everyone's game and I discuss how my Deathwatch and Thousand Sons are playing in the light of these rules insights. The main article for todays episode is a review of the Deathwatch Kill Team Mordelai box and what the tactics cards can do for the Ordos Xenos.   Lets get ready for another episode of Target Obscured...

ORDOS - (Original Mix) MASTER by TRONUS

ORDOS - (Deepbass Remix) MASTER by TRONUS

An arranged marriage brought Yin Yuzhen to Inner Mongolia's Ordos desert. Depressed by the sandstorms and poor productivity of the region, Yuzhen began to plant trees. Over 30 years she has planted a million trees in 70,000 hectares of desert. Those trees improved the soil and served as a barrier, blocking the sandstorms. She's transformed the region, allowing a whole community to thrive in once uninhabitable conditions. Didi Akinyelure travels to the Maowusu Desert to meet Yuzhen and the local farmers and officials who see her work as an example to the rest of China, a nation threatened by encroaching deserts and land degradation. If we're to feed a growing population then it's vital that the deserts aren't just held back but shrunk or adapted to make food production feasible. Didi also talks to the proponents of Africa's Great Green Wall, designed to battle the march of the Sahara, and to researchers who believe that deserts can be turned into friends for mankind. Image: Yin Yuzhen

Un capítulo repletito repletito. Hoy encontrarás de todo: La aparición de Kiko Kent como nuevo colaborador, un poco de trolleo al troll, otro poco de trolleo al abuelo, y juegos, todos los juegos a los que hemos estado jugando desde nuestro último capítulo. También hay sitio para bazofias como No Man's Sky y Ghost Recon Wildlands. Y como no podría ser de otra forma, nuestras opiniones sobre el nuevo Zelda y la nueva consola de Nintendo.

THE DOOMED & STONED PODCAST Just in time for the weekend, Doomed & Stoned is bringing you 2+ hours of downtuned devastation and fuzzed-out riffage. In this podcast, BillyGoat's counting down his favorite tracks from the latest edition of the Doom Charts​, sampling new albums from around the world. Lots of great music, including an incredible track from that upcoming 12" split by groovy Portland stoners Pushy that'll take you right back to the '70s, more from The Hobbit themed split between Thorr-Axe & Archarus, and the long awaited return of The Obsessed! INTRO 1. PUSHY​ - Salem Man (00:18) 2. BLACK RAINBOWS​ - The Red Sky Above (04:11) DOOM CHART COUNTDOWN 3. Spidergawd​ - "Stranglehold" (#25) (12:00) 4. Super Snake​ - "Leap of Love" (#24) (17:23) 5. Ordos​ - "The Infernal God" (#23) (25:36) 6. Earth Witch​ - "Pilgrim" (#22) (29:41) 7. Thorr-Axe​ - "Dawn Take You All" (#21) (35:20) 8. Archarus​ - "Foehammer" (#21) (40:32) 9. Kujara​ - "Three Days" (#20) (48:23) 10. Cloud Catcher​ - "Visions" (#19) (52:59) 11. Mage​ - "Heroic Elegy" (#18) (58:51) 12. Acid Wolf​ - "White Raven" (#17) (1:04:12) 13. Curse the Son​ - "Sleepwalker Awakes" (#16) (1:07:50) 14. OHHMS​ - "The Magician" (#15) (1:13:50) 15. Hyborian​ - "Dead Lies Dreaming" (#14) (1:22:21) 16. Hark​ - "Fortune Favors The Insane" (#13) (1:27:04) 17. Spaceslug​ - "The Great Pylon Collider" (#12) (1:31:28) 18. In the Company of Serpents​ - "The Middle Pillar" (#11) (1:37:19) 19. Goya​ - "Misanthropy on High" (#10) (1:46:51) 20. The Devil And The Almighty Blues​ - "Neptune Brothers" (#9) (1:58:37) 21. Alastor​ - "Nothing To Fear" (#8)(2:04:52) 22. Devil's Witches​ - "Velvet Magic" (#7) (2:14:25) 23. Pallbearer​ - "Heartless" (#6) (2:20:55) 24. ATTALLA​ - "Devil's Lake" (#5) (2:29:10) 25. Forming the Void​ - "The Witch" (#4) (2:33:25) 26. Mothership​ - "Wise Man" (#3) (2:39:41) 27. Telekinetic Yeti​ - "Electronaut" (#2) (2:42:24) 28. The Obsessed Official​ - "Punk Crusher" (#1) (2:50:19) Support the bands. Info on the purchase of music in this podcast at www.DoomCharts.com Cover art by Mike Lawrence from 'Ain-Soph Aur' by In The Company of Serpents. Explore the music of the heavy underground through our scene-by-scene compilation series: http://doomedandstoned.bandcamp.com (a free download) Dig deeper with interviews, reviews, and more: www.DoomedandStoned.com Daily updates: http://Facebook.com/DoomedStoned Live Footage: http://YouTube.com/DoomedandStoned and http://YouTube.com/user/Crazispeedemon

This is Special English. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.More than 18 million children were born in Chinese hospitals last year, an increase of 11 percent from 2015. More than 45 percent of the newborns were not the first child of the family.Last year, China saw the largest number of newborns since 2000, following the abolition of the decades-long one-child policy.Moreover, the health authority reports that the maternal and infant mortality rates also dropped last year.China has pledged to improve maternal and child care services by increasing the number of obstetricians, midwives and hospital beds.This is Special English.China will host a United Nations meeting on fighting desertification in September.An estimated 1,400 delegates from around 200 parties to a United Nations special convention on desertification will participate in the event. They will gather in Ordos in north China&`&s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region for the meeting.The participants will discuss their national goals and action plans to achieve zero net land degradation by 2030. China&`&s desertified areas were greatly reduced in the period between 2009 and 2014.According to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, 12 million hectares of land are lost to desertification every year across the globe. And the figure could rise due to population growth, climatic reasons and unsustainable farming practices. You&`&re listening to Special English. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing.More than 100 golf courses have been banned in China, as part of its efforts to clamp down on illegal use of land and water resources.Of the total 680 golf courses across China, 110 have been closed since a national project was launched in 2011.Among their illicit behavior, these golf courses were found to have illegally used large amounts of arable land or nature reserve areas, or extracted groundwater in prohibited areas. Eighteen of the golf courses have been required to return their illegally occupied land, and another 47 have been ordered to stop business activities or construction. The central government has ordered the rectification of the remaining 500 golf courses, of which a dozen have closed voluntarily. China imposed a ban on the construction of new golf courses in 2004, when there were fewer than 200 in the country. However, the number continued to rise as the sport gained popularity, especially among business people and government officials. Golf courses are seen in all provincial-level regions except Tibet.This is Special English.Moving some colleges out of central Beijing, either to the suburbs or other cities, is necessary to ease overcrowding; but experts say any new locations will have to first meet the needs of the employees. Beijing&`&s rich education resources have long attracted large numbers of people from across China, leading to chronic congestion and putting a strain on public services. To alleviate the problem, the city government released a five-year plan last year for education development. The plan aims in part to keep higher-education institutes small in size. It also aims to remove some university facilities from central areas. Experts say it is imperative that some colleges and universities leave the city, but they expect it to be a long term process.You&`&re listening to Special English. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing.Seven hundred million Chinese people, or around half of the country&`&s total population, had used mobile phones to access the Internet as of the end of last year.The number of people who used their mobile phones to surf online continued to increase by an annual 10 percent during the past three years. Last year, almost 500 million people used mobile phones to make payments, an increase of 30 percent from a year earlier.China has more than 700 million internet users, accounting for 53 percent of the total population. The user number increase is now stable after almost 10 years of fast growth.Last year, the public used Internet-based government services more often than they used offline service centers and hotlines to access government information. Officials say this means that government information was disclosed to the public in an increasingly mobile, immediate and transparent manner.This is Special English.Surgeons in a central China hospital have succeeded in performing two complex pediatric heart surgery operations using 3D printing technology.One of the patients was a 13-year-old girl who suffered a condition which causes her heart muscle to grow abnormally thickly. The other patient was a 3-year-old boy with severe left ventricular outflow tract obstructions.Complexity was involved in both cases. Doctors at the hospital used a 3D printer to produce full-size replicas of the patients&`& hearts. The models allowed doctors to carefully study the condition and plan the operations.The surgery was successful and the patients are recovering.The event marked the first time that 3D printing technology was used in Hunan Province for pediatric cardiovascular surgery. This is Special English.Shanghai police have detained a gang of 83 people for faking auctions with illegal gains of 6 million yuan, roughly 870,000 U.S. dollars.The suspects charged antique owners high commission fees for fake auctions. They then told the clients that their auction items remained unsold.The suspects were also found to have issued fake authentication certificates and charged very high fees.Police started investigating the case in July last year when three fake auctions were discovered in the city.Around 100 people had been captured as of mid-December, with 83 of them facing criminal charges. You&`&re listening to Special English. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program by logging on to newsplusradio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. That&`&s mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. Now the news continues.A teenage pop star from China, Wang Yuan, has addressed a United Nations youth forum at the UN headquarters in New York.Wang spoke at the United Nations youth forum on Jan. 31, calling for equal access to high quality education for young people worldwide.Wang is a member of the popular boys band TFboys. He told the crowd that China has 280 million young people, which is the second largest youth population in the world. He said he is fortunate to work with the United Nations to end poverty, promote gender equality and combat climate change.Wang said his dream for 2030 is that every young person will have access to good quality education; and girls have the same potential to achieve amazing things as boys.The United Nations youth forum is aimed at involving the efforts of youth to eradicate poverty and promote prosperity across the globe. This is Special English.Beijing has received more than 2 billion cubic meters of diverted water from the Yangtze River, benefiting 11 million local people.Since it began operation in December 2014, the south-to-north water diversion project has pumped over 2 billion cubic meters of water to Beijing, with 70 percent of the water from the Yangtze River.The water has been stored in reservoirs or is being used for groundwater, rivers and lakes.Officials say the project is running smoothly and safely. The water supply is stable and the water quality is up to standard.The project has greatly relieved the water shortage problems in the city. Previously, Beijing relied mainly on underground water with high calcium and magnesium salt levels.The middle route of the diversion project transmits water through canals and pipes from a reservoir in central China&`&s Hubei Province, bringing water to northern China. You&`&re listening to Special English. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing.Major parks in Beijing received a record high of 460,000 visitors in a single day on January 31, the fourth day of the Lunar New Year holiday.The visitor numbers in a dozen parks were up 14 percent year on year.Temple fairs, cultural exhibitions and other traditional events were held in the parks to celebrate the Spring Festival.Major parks in Beijing attracted some 1.4 million visitors during the week-long holiday.Beijing had blue skies for most of the holiday week, after the city had seen frequent smog earlier in the winter. This is Special English.The Chinese New Year was in the beginning of spotlight at a newly-founded cultural center in Athens, as Greeks celebrated the Year of the Rooster.On the weekend of the New Year, 40 children aged four to eight attended a craft workshop where they had the chance to make their own traditional Chinese paper kite. To many of the children, this was their first experience of Chinese culture.Excited about their new decorative toys, the children played in the vast indoor and outdoor spaces of the cultural center, flying kites.Adults were invited to make paper mache lanterns to take home with them, as a souvenir of their participation in the celebration. Afterwards, they decorated a wire dragon figure with paper strips and lighting, and attempted their first dragon dance. The auspicious dragon is a symbol of good luck, wisdom and power in Chinese culture.The workshops were followed by two Chinese film screenings, with one being the 2011 martial arts drama "Dragon", and the other, "The Grand master", a 2013 film based on the life of Chinese martial-arts grand master Ip Man.A statement from the center said that starting with the Chinese New Year celebration, its goal is to introduce a new events section to initiate visitors into foreign cultures.You&`&re listening to Special English. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing.A naval ship has been found in southern Sweden some 400 years after it went missing.The naval ship was the first to set sail from a naval base in southern Sweden in 1682 and is considered to have marked the launch of the famed shipbuilding history of the country.With its 70 canons and 450-strong crew, the ship was used in the bombing of Copenhagen and King Karl the Twelfth&`&s landing in Denmark in 1700. Later, the ship fell into oblivion.Last year, the area in southern Sweden where the ship was clearly marked out was located on old maps of the area.Diving expeditions were carried out and it was confirmed that an old shipwreck was indeed buried in thick layers of sediment at the bottom of the sea.Now, all evidence seem to point to it being a well-known warship and it seems it was deliberately sunk, with the intention of using it as a blockhouse.However, the ship will likely not be salvaged because marine biologists cannot tell how much of the ship remains. But there is a theory that at least one deck is intact.This is Special English.A collection of over 300 works of art from Russia&`&s State Historical Museum is on display at a museum in north China&`&s Shanxi Province.The items on display in the Shanxi Museum include oil paintings, sculptures, fashion and jewelry, as well as gold and silver ware from the 18th and 19th centuries.The collection displays the life of the Russian people in that period. The curator of the museum says the event has helped visitors to understand Russia, as well as its culture and history.Last November, as part of the cultural exchange program, a similar show from the province was held in Moscow.The exhibition is free of charge and will run until May before moving on to other parts of China.That is the end of this edition of Special English. To freshen up your memory, I&`&m going to read one of the news items again at normal speed. Please listen carefully.That is the end of today&`&s program. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing, and I hope you will join us every day, to learn English and learn about the world.

No solo vamos a dedicarnos a lanzar bilis sobre las pelis de DC, de las películas de Marvel también tenemos un buen puñado de buenas mierdas en las que soltar toda nuestra bilis. Hacemos un buen repaso sobre las peores películas que se han realizado en nombre de Marvel. Además como cada semana las mejores noticias de este lado de la galaxia.

No solo vamos a dedicarnos a lanzar bilis sobre las pelis de DC, de las películas de Marvel también tenemos un buen puñado de buenas mierdas en las que soltar toda nuestra bilis. Hacemos un buen repaso sobre las peores películas que se han realizado en nombre de Marvel. Además como cada semana las mejores noticias de este lado de la galaxia.

On this weeks show we have :JP looms gone Name changes Ordos stops being an elitest Jerkface Jeanelle Tell us about Some undead chick Poke tells us his primary stat [...] Source