Cultural Consequences of Connectivity, Afro-Eurasia 1200-1450
Connecting societies
If you were born in the thirteenth century, your entire life would probably have been lived within a few square miles. Farmers stayed in one place, while pastoralists traveled only as far as their seasonal searches for food and water took them. However, the world itself was on the move. The few people really who did travel long distances carried with them ideas that could slowly transform the lives of whomever they met along the way. How did communities react when they learned of those ideas from far away? Did they adopt them, reject them, or mix them up with their own traditions and cultures?
When we study Afro-Eurasia in this period, history courses tend to focus first on states, cities, villages. We compare them to each other as if they were entirely separate. Then, as we begin to acknowledge how these societies were interconnected, we usually focus on production and distribution, trying to figure out how they traded products like silk, salt, or silver with each other. But you won’t need a shopping cart for this article. The focus will be on the movement of ideas—namely technologies and belief systems. Ideas were an intangible cargo moving through the same networks as goods, but in different ways.
Diffusion of science and technology
One of the big stories for Afro-Eurasia in this period is the movement of important technologies. These technologies included things that could be engineered and produced, like paper and gunpowder, and also included knowledge technologies like mathematics. Although technologies often had a limited impact at first, over time they would dramatically change the course of world history.
Every region of the world contributed new and innovative technology in this period. However, regions like the Americas and Australasia were isolated from Afro-Eurasia and formed their own networks of exchange. Two Afro- Eurasian regions, China and the Islamic world, made especially dramatic contributions to technology in other regions.
The Islamic world of the thirteenth century stretched from North Africa all the way to India, and it was particularly important to the development of modern mathematics. In part, this was about location. Situated between Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and China, the Islamic world was involved in much trade. Its merchants needed to figure out ways to calculate costs and profits. Because Islam is a religion that follows a strict calendar, dates were understood mathematically. Islam calls for its followers to pray facing the city of Mecca, requiring directional calculations. As a result, Muslim mathematicians developed math that used astronomy, that understood and divided up the circle, and that included fractions. Arab scholars developed a book of calculations with the shortened name al-Jabr that became the basis of modern algebra. These ideas then traveled to neighboring regions, including Europe. Arguably, the European scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would not have been possible without these mathematical concepts.
Then there is China. Under the Song Dynasty, economic reforms funded the opening up of the education system and allowed more people to become scholars. The resulting boom in engineering and innovation contributed to inventions like the magnifying glass, the compass, and gunpowder. By 1206, the Mongols had conquered China and ruled it as the Yuan Dynasty. As their control stretched further across central Asia, the Mongols built a huge system of exchange. Trade goods moved from east to west, but so did technologies like gunpowder, which was new, and paper-making, which was not new but hadn’t really gone far beyond China until that point.
By the late thirteenth century, gunpowder was being used in many parts of Europe, Asia, and North Africa. Gunpowder was not very powerful or usable at first, but by the 1380s it was being used for cannons. Cannons allowed the Ottoman Empire to conquer Constantinople and expand Islam into Europe. They also transformed European society. Before cannons, European nobles could hide behind castle walls, but cannons could bring down castle walls, and with them the nobles’ power.
Spread and transformation of major religions
Religions also moved along major trade routes to new areas. Sometimes a traveler from one place would visit a location with a different religion and bring its ideas back. Other times, religion arrived in a new area and was adopted by the local people because it offered advantages like trading partners. Often, different religions blended together—a process called syncretism—to create a local, unique system of belief.
In Southeast Asia, a wide variety of major belief systems spread along trade routes. Hinduism and Buddhism first emerged in India, and both religions had longstanding connections in Southeast Asia. This meant that they were often intermingled by people in the region. For example, the great twelfth century Khmer temple at Angkor Wat began as a temple to the Hindu god Vishnu, then was transformed into a Buddhist temple two centuries later. Its design shows the influence of art and ideas from both religions. In some other places, Hindu and Buddhist temples were often near each other, but kept separate. Across Southeast Asia, kings gave gifts to both religions.
Buddhism began to dominate in Southeast Asia. Hinduism became more central in South Asia. A monastic form of Buddhism known as Theravada became popular in Southeast Asia.1 Monasteries became politically important and influenced people’s religious practice and lifestyles.
At the same time and in the same region, Islam was becoming more widespread. There is evidence of Muslims in the region as early as the eleventh century coming from India. Islam was at first a religion of merchants, but it soon spread more widely, and by the thirteenth century many trading ports had a majority Muslim population. However, the trading cities often included many people of different religions.
Islam was also spreading to parts of Africa. Long established in North Africa and across the Sahara Desert, it was becoming important in the interior of West Africa and along the East African coast—wherever there was trade with the Islamic world. Sufi brotherhoods were particularly important in the spread of Islam through these regions. These brotherhoods emphasized ideas of mysticism and a relationship to God that appealed to many of the nomadic, pastoral people of West Africa. They also helped those pastoralists come together to create political strength and solve problems. The beliefs of the Sufi brotherhood allowed enough flexibility for local culture and existing religious figures to remain.
In South Asia, a Sufi version of Islam attracted many people who were used to a mystical form of Hinduism. It also spread through large-scale conquest that created major states like the Delhi Sultanate. These states ruled many Hindus. They usually tolerated the practice of both religions, but Hinduism and Islam remained largely separate. Christianity also spread by conquest in this era, particularly to the Baltic area of Europe. In the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, a series of crusades slowly drove older beliefs out of these regions. As a result, the people of these areas gradually became culturally closer to the people to their west, who spoke languages related to modern German, Dutch, and English.
Conclusion
The spread of technology, religion, and other ideas is always complex and has had varied results throughout history. When different areas became connected by trade, they influenced each other. Some of the agents of this change were the individuals who made these voyages, while other agents of change were the many people they met along the way. Those non-travelers encountered new ideas and beliefs, and they had to decide what to do with them. Should they accept the new idea and change the way they thought or lived? Should they reject it, or mix it with what they already had? These decisions would heavily impact the interconnected societies of Afro-Eurasia.
1 In a monastic religion, monks and nuns devote themselves to a religious life that they live out in monasteries, away from most other society.
Sources
Dunn, Ross. The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.
Noss, David S. and Blake R. Grangaard. A History of the World’s Religions. Silver Lake: Pearson, 2011.
Trefil, James. Science in World History. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Trevor Getz
Trevor Getz is a professor of African and world history at San Francisco State University. He has been the author or editor of 11 books, including the award-winning graphic history Abina and the Important Men, and has coproduced several prize-winning documentaries. Trevor is also the author of A Primer for Teaching African History, which explores questions about how we should teach the history of Africa in high school and university classes.
Image credits
This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0 except for the following:
Cover image: St. Mark Preaching in Alexandria, Egypt, 1504-07 by Gentile & Giovanni Bellini - (oil on panel). © Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images.
Thirteenth century image of Muslims on a pilgrimage, or Hajj, from Maqâmâ, a book of Arabic poetry. Pilgrimages were one of the major ways people moved around in this era. Based on clothing, these pilgrims were probably from Persia or Mesopotamia, headed for Mecca. By Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti. © Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images.
Chinese gunpowder weapon called a fire lance. Used as early as the tenth century, this predecessor to the firearm used gunpowder to launch projectiles from a spear before the combatants engaged in melee. © ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images.
The Hindu god Vishnu, from a temple in Cambodia. Vishnu is riding Garuda, his supernatural mount. Garudas are also recognized as guardian figures in Buddhism, reflecting the connections between the two religions. © Rene MATTES/Gamma- Rapho via Getty Images.
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