Tolerant Empires? Pluralism and Intolerance in Eurasian Courts-Part 2

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

The Mongols’ intolerant attitude towards those who refused to willfully submit to their domination is often mentioned at the same breath as their tolerance of religious diversity and the cultural eclecticism and cosmopolitan worldview showcased at their courts. This interplay between pluralistic approaches on the one hand and brutal suppression of opposition on the other was not restricted to the Mongol Empire, but was common to other Eurasian imperial projects as well. This two-part panel aims to consider these dynamics across geographical and temporal divides. Were imperial centers driven by practicality and effectiveness, indifference to religious diversity, or an inclusive, tolerant ethos when they chose one approach to religious and cultural difference over the other? How did courtly agents interact with, respond to and conceptualize such diversity? And what were the larger ideological currents at play in the promotion of these political cultures?
The two-part panel is thematically divided to advance a conversation based on a Eurasian comparative view. In this panel, we focus on the relationship between tolerant and intolerant policies and broader ideological, intellectual and cultural currents. Panel presentations investigate how the Mongol institute of urban massacres was conceived in instrumental and moral terms, whether the Mongols triggered the adoption of a new political culture of inclusivity among early modern Muslim empires, and how religious tolerance in Ming China was imagined in early modern Muslim courts as paving the path for a new millenarian age of religious and political hegemony.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing

Session Organizer

• Jonathan Zev Brack, University of Michigan

Chair

• Michal Biran, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Individual Presentations

• A Time to Kill, a Time to Heal: Debating Urban Massacres in the Mongol Empire - Christopher Pratt Atwood, Indiana University

• The Ruin of Islam or Renaissance? Ibn Taymiyya versus Ibn ‘Arabi in Post-Mongol Muslim Empires - Azfar Moin, University of Texas at Austin

• Tolerance, Islamization, and China's Connection to 16th-Century Global Millenarian Currents - Kaveh Louis Hemmat, Benedictine University

Discussant

• Michal Biran, Hebrew University of Jerusalem