From Yuan to Modern China and Mongolia
The Writings of Morris Rossabi
Morris Rossabi, the City University of New York
Morris Rossabi, the City University of New York
Saturday, 31 January 2015
Friday, 30 January 2015
Recordings from the Past: A Timurid Embassy to China in 1419- 1422
A Timurid Embassy from Herat to Beijing, 1419-22, Recorded by Artist Ghiyath al-Din Naqqash: Timurid Art After China from Shangri La Hawaii on Vimeo.
Presenter: David Roxburgh
When: June 21, 2014
Where: Shangri La Hawai
The lecture examines an embassy that left Herat, Afghanistan, in December 1419, and traveled through Central Asia and China to Beijing with the return journey concluding in August 1422.
It was one of several exchanges orchestrated between Timurid ruler Shahrukh (r. 1409-47) and Ming dynasty emperor Yongle (r.1402-24).
Ghiyath al-Din, an artist sent by Shahrukh's bibliophile son Baysunghur, recorded the details of the journey describing the movement of the embassy through changing landscapes and Chinese cities, art, architecture, and the ceremonial life of the Ming imperial palace.
Futhermore, the lecture examines the journal as a source, the journey it narrates and considers the consequences of increased access to Chinese art for Timurid art in the arts of the book and portable objects throughout the 1420s.
Dr. David Roxburgh is Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Islamic Art History at Harvard University. He received an M.A. with Honors in Fine Art from Edinburgh College of Art and completed his doctoral thesis at the University of Pennsylvania as a fellow at the Smithsonian Institution and Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art in 1996.
His books include Prefacing the Image: The Writing of Art History in Sixteenth-Century Iran (Leiden, 2001) and The Persian Album, 1400-1600: From Dispersal to Collection (New Haven, 2005).
He has also worked as a curator on the exhibitions Turks: A Journey of A Thousand Years (London, Royal Academy of Art, 2005) and Traces of the Calligrapher: Islamic Calligraphy in Practice, c. 1600-1900M (Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, 2007).
Presenter: David Roxburgh
When: June 21, 2014
Where: Shangri La Hawai
The lecture examines an embassy that left Herat, Afghanistan, in December 1419, and traveled through Central Asia and China to Beijing with the return journey concluding in August 1422.
It was one of several exchanges orchestrated between Timurid ruler Shahrukh (r. 1409-47) and Ming dynasty emperor Yongle (r.1402-24).
Ghiyath al-Din, an artist sent by Shahrukh's bibliophile son Baysunghur, recorded the details of the journey describing the movement of the embassy through changing landscapes and Chinese cities, art, architecture, and the ceremonial life of the Ming imperial palace.
Futhermore, the lecture examines the journal as a source, the journey it narrates and considers the consequences of increased access to Chinese art for Timurid art in the arts of the book and portable objects throughout the 1420s.
Dr. David Roxburgh is Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Islamic Art History at Harvard University. He received an M.A. with Honors in Fine Art from Edinburgh College of Art and completed his doctoral thesis at the University of Pennsylvania as a fellow at the Smithsonian Institution and Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art in 1996.
His books include Prefacing the Image: The Writing of Art History in Sixteenth-Century Iran (Leiden, 2001) and The Persian Album, 1400-1600: From Dispersal to Collection (New Haven, 2005).
He has also worked as a curator on the exhibitions Turks: A Journey of A Thousand Years (London, Royal Academy of Art, 2005) and Traces of the Calligrapher: Islamic Calligraphy in Practice, c. 1600-1900M (Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, 2007).
Thursday, 29 January 2015
800 million modern men are descended from a handful of ancient leaders - including Genghis Khan
The 11 fathers of Asia: 800 million modern men are descended from a handful of ancient leaders - including Genghis Khan
- Scientists from the University of Leicester traced DNA in modern men to 'founding fathers' that lived across Asia between 1300BC and 1100AD
- The geneticists traced each the eleven lineages back to their potential roots in the Middle East, India, China, Mongolia and south east Asia
- They analysed Y chromosomes from 5,000 men from 127 populations
- 16 million men are thought to be directly descended from Genghis Khan
- 1.5 million are descended from 14th Century Chinese leader Giocangga
More than 800 million men living today are descended from just eleven men, including the ruthless Mongolian leader Genghis Khan, according to new research.
Geneticists have been able to find eleven distinctive sequences in Y-chromosomes - the chunk of DNA that is only carried by men - that are persistent in modern populations in Asia.
By systematically analysing the DNA of more than 5,000 men, they have been able to trace these male lineages to their approximate 'founding fathers'.
This map shows ten of the 11 lineages (labelled DC) with the approximate date when they originated and how they appear to have spread around the continent. The arrows show how the lineage may have spread
They found that along with Khan, who is reputed to have sired hundreds of children as his hoards cut a swathe across much of Asia, they traced ten other lineages.
These are thought to originate from the Middle East to Southeast Asia between 2100BC and 1100AD.
They found that 37.8 per cent of the 5,000 men they tested belonged to one of these eleven lineages.
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If this is reflected in the entire Asian population, then it could mean around 830 million men living in Asia currently owe their Y-chromosomes to one of these eleven men.
Among them is a lineage that has previously been attributed to a Chinese ruler called Giocangga, who died in 1583 and whose grandson founded the Qing Dynasty that ruled China between 1644 and 1912.
Giocangga is thought to have had many children with his wives and concubines and is the direct male ancestor of more than 1.5 million men.
The researchers also found that another of the lineages appears to have population clusters that are concentrated along the Silk Road trading route and date back to around 850AD.
This suggests they may have their origins among the powerful rulers who dominated the steppes where the route passed - the Khitan, Tangut Xia, Juchin, Kara-Khitan and Mongol empires.
The researchers suggest that Abaoji, Emperor Taizu of Liao and the Great Khan of the Khitans, who died in 926AD in the Khitan area of China, is a possible candidate for the father of this lineage.
Professor Mark Jobling, a geneticist at the University of Leicester who led the work, which is published in the European Journal of Human Genetics, said that more research was needed before they could identify the individuals.
The founding fathers who lived between 2100BC and 300BC appear to have existed in both sedentary agricultural societies and nomadic tribes, he added.
Genghis Khan is thought to have fathered hundreds of children as his armies conquered much of Asia while his sons also continued to spread his Y-chromosome around the world as they expanded the Mongol empire
Writing in the European of Human Genetics, he said: 'High reproductive success is often associated with high social status, ‘prestigious’ men having higher intramarital fertility, lower offspring mortality and access to a greater than average number of wives.
'Those with recent origins in the historical period are almost exclusively found in Altaic-speaking pastoral nomadic populations, which may reflect a shift in political organisation in pastoralist economies and a greater ease of transmission of Y-chromosomes through time and space facilitated by the use of horses.
'New social systems and economic adaptations emerged after horse domestication.
'Horse-riding greatly enhanced both east–west connections and north–south trade between Siberia and southerly regions, and allowed new techniques of warfare, a key element explaining the successes of mobile pastoralists in their conflicts with more sedentary societies.'
One of the male lineages that have come to dominate in Asia appears to have originated from one of the empires that sprung up along the Silk Route, depicted here in this Catalan nautical map from 1325-1387
The researchers analysed the Y chromosomes of 5,321 men from 127 different populations around Asia.
They found 11 common Y chromosome sequences that cropped up repeatedly in the genomes they examined.
By searching these for distinctive random mutations that accumulate over time they were able to estimate roughly when these Y chromosome sequences originated.
Giocangga, grandfather of the Qing ruler Emperor Nurhaci (above), is thought to be directly related to 1.5 million men now living in China and Mongolia
Looking at the distribution of these sequences in the populations they tested also allowed them to estimate where they may have originated by looking for clusters.
Previous research conducted in 2003 had shown that almost 16 million men across the world could be related to the Mongol leader Genghis Khan, who died in 1227.
Scientists traced a cluster of extremely similar Y-chromosomes back to a single ancestor living in Mongolia around 800 years ago.
They believe the only man with the opportunity to father enough children would have been the Mongolian warlord.
Within 80 years he built an empire that covered much of China, Iran, Pakistan, Korea and South Russia.
The empire he founded went on to stretch across much of Asia and into Europe, meaning there was potential for his descendants to spread his genes far and wide.
Tom Robinson, an accountancy professor whose ancestors came from the Lake District, was the first man outside Asia to be identified as carrying the Khan chromosome.
It was found that Professor Robinson's paternal forebears came from the Caucasus near the Black Sea.
Similar work found Giocangga was also the most probably origin of another distinct Y chromosome found in modern China and Mongolia.
However, tracing the other dominant Y chromosomes to other individuals will require similar educated guesswork by looking for men who had the power and potential to sire large numbers of children at around the right time that the sequences are found to originally occur.
One of the 'founding fathers' appears to have lived in what is now northern Turkey in 700BC while another came from Iran in around 1100AD.
Others seem to originate around 2100BC and 1500BC in southeast Asia. Around this time farming populations were moving down through Burma into Laos, Thailand and Cambodia, leading to the Mon and Khmer empires.
The only way to know for sure who these 11 founding fathers were will be to find their remains and extract DNA.
If the tomb of leaders like Genghis Khan are ever unearthed, it could result in the ultimate paternity test for millions of men around the world.
Chris Tyler-Smith, an evolutionary geneticist now at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, who led that orginal study in 2003, told Nature: 'Looking for these links is fascinating.
'When we did it, we were using pretty indirect lines of reasoning, and you could try and do that with each of these lineages.
'What I really hope is that at some point someone will find Genghis Khan's tomb and remains.'
Mongol Khans: Patrons of Islam
Morris Rossabi will give a lecture " Kublai Khan's Legacy: Inner- Asian Influence on Chinese Art" on the 19th of February 2015 in one of the most beautiful locations in the world, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam
It's not his first lecture.
As an appetizer for this coming lecture in Amsterdam, watch his lecture from 2012 "Mongol Khans: Patrons of Islam"
Speaker: Dr. Morris Rossabi
When: July 14, 2012
Where: Shangri La Hawai
When: July 14, 2012
Where: Shangri La Hawai
In the initial stages of their thirteenth-century invasions of the Islamic world, the Mongol Khans killed untold numbers of people and caused considerable damage in the areas they subjugated. Yet after their conquests, Kublai Khan, his brother Hulegu, and other Mongol rulers promoted various Islamic orders, fostered agriculture and commerce, and patronized poets and historians in the Middle East and Iran, as well as Islamic communities in Russia and China. This colorful presentation, using images from 13th and 14th century Islamic arts, describes these remarkable developments and also shows the Mongols' contributions to Islamic art and architecture throughout their domains. It aims to provide a balanced portrait of Mongol influence on Islamic societies, cultures, and arts.
Dr. Morris Rossabi is a professor of Inner Asian and East Asian history at Columbia University, New York. He is the author of Modern Mongolia: From Khans to Commissars to Capitalists (University of California Press, 2005) and Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times (University of California Press, 1988). He has helped to organize exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
Wednesday, 28 January 2015
Lecture 19 Febr: Kublai Khan's Legacy- Inner Asian Influence on Chinese Art
ILIAS International Institute for Asian Studies- Leiden
Februar
2015
19
2015
Kublai Khan's legacy: Inner Asian Influence on Chinese art
Lecture by Professor Morris Rossabi (Columbia University / The City University of New York), organized by the Asia Pavilion of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and IIAS, in cooperation with the Vereniging van Vrienden der Aziatische Kunst.
The lecture
This slide-illustrated presentation challenges the conventional wisdom that portrays the thirteenth-century Mongolians as merely destroyers, killers, rapists, and plunderers. Although the lecture does not minimize the massacres and destruction wrought by the Mongolians, it also reveals their contributions to the arts and culture in China. Khubilai Khan, in particular, supported several of the most prominent Chinese painters, recruited Muslim weavers to add new motifs in Chinese textiles, appointed Mongolians to supervise the spectacular porcelain industry, and commissioned Tibetan and Nepalese painters and artisans to produce portraits of the Imperial family and to construct remarkable buildings in Dadu (or Beijing). Marco Polo, whose book introduced Khubilai to the West, was himself dazzled by the extraordinary art and culture he encountered in Mongol-ruled China.
To be sure, the Mongolians were not the artists and craftsmen, but they acted as sponsors, patrons, and consumers of the arts, thereby performing an invaluable service. Women, especially Khubilai’s wife and great granddaughter, were avid supporters of Chinese art.
The programme14.30 - 15.00 Reception with coffee & tea in the foyer at the Auditorium
15.00 - 15.10 Welcome & Introduction
15.10 - 16.00 Lecture by Professor Morris Rossabi (Columbia University, NY, USA)
16.00 - 16.30 Q&A
The speakerMorris Rossabi is a historian of China and Inner Asia who conducted his initial research on traditional Chinese foreign relations and on the peoples along China's borders. He wrote a biography of Khubilai Khan, which has been translated in many languages, including Korean and Russian, and helped to organize exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. He was commissioned to write three chapters for the Cambridge History of China. After serving as a Consultant for the Soros Foundation, he wrote the book Modern Mongolia. The author of numerous articles and speeches, he travels repeatedly to Central Asia and Mongolia, where he teaches courses on Mongolian and East Asian history.
RegistrationEntrance and registration are free of charge. Please register via: h.m.van.der.minne@iias.nl
Inline image: Empress Chabi (1227–1281).
The lecture
This slide-illustrated presentation challenges the conventional wisdom that portrays the thirteenth-century Mongolians as merely destroyers, killers, rapists, and plunderers. Although the lecture does not minimize the massacres and destruction wrought by the Mongolians, it also reveals their contributions to the arts and culture in China. Khubilai Khan, in particular, supported several of the most prominent Chinese painters, recruited Muslim weavers to add new motifs in Chinese textiles, appointed Mongolians to supervise the spectacular porcelain industry, and commissioned Tibetan and Nepalese painters and artisans to produce portraits of the Imperial family and to construct remarkable buildings in Dadu (or Beijing). Marco Polo, whose book introduced Khubilai to the West, was himself dazzled by the extraordinary art and culture he encountered in Mongol-ruled China.
To be sure, the Mongolians were not the artists and craftsmen, but they acted as sponsors, patrons, and consumers of the arts, thereby performing an invaluable service. Women, especially Khubilai’s wife and great granddaughter, were avid supporters of Chinese art.
The programme14.30 - 15.00 Reception with coffee & tea in the foyer at the Auditorium
15.00 - 15.10 Welcome & Introduction
15.10 - 16.00 Lecture by Professor Morris Rossabi (Columbia University, NY, USA)
16.00 - 16.30 Q&A
The speakerMorris Rossabi is a historian of China and Inner Asia who conducted his initial research on traditional Chinese foreign relations and on the peoples along China's borders. He wrote a biography of Khubilai Khan, which has been translated in many languages, including Korean and Russian, and helped to organize exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. He was commissioned to write three chapters for the Cambridge History of China. After serving as a Consultant for the Soros Foundation, he wrote the book Modern Mongolia. The author of numerous articles and speeches, he travels repeatedly to Central Asia and Mongolia, where he teaches courses on Mongolian and East Asian history.
RegistrationEntrance and registration are free of charge. Please register via: h.m.van.der.minne@iias.nl
Inline image: Empress Chabi (1227–1281).
Sunday, 25 January 2015
New post from IDP (the International Dunhuang Project from the British Library)
FRIDAY, JANUARY 23, 2015
A Suicidal Thunder God?
Drawing at the end of Dunhuang manuscript Or.8210/S.3326.
The crude line drawing shows a figure dressed as a Chinese official with the label 電神 (Dianshen, thunder god) to the right and an apparent book title to the left — ending with 電經一卷 (Thunder Sutra, one roll). Most curious, however, are the drawn bow and arrow: the arrow is back to front, ie pointing towards the thunder god himself.
The image appears at the end of a very interesting — but also somewhat mysterious — manuscript which consists of two texts (translated for IDP by Imre Galambos). The first is a divination text based on cloud formations (nephelomancy). This is followed by a series of star charts. In a paper by Jean-Marc Bonnet-Bideau and Francois Praderie on this manuscript, the authors showed the star charts to be very accurate: it is a scientific document. The paper is extremely fine but the writing and the graphics appear sketchy and are certainly not in a fine scribal hand. It is therefore possible that this was a working copy which used a master — and fine — copy of a star chart, perhaps even tracing from it, hence the accuracy of the stars' positions. But how did this end up in Dunhuang, 1500 miles from the Imperial Astronomy Bureau in Chang'an where it was almost certainly produced?
Although we will probably never have all the answers to these questions, I hope that the suicidal thunder god might yet have more to tell us.
POSTED BY SUSAN WHITFIELD
Saturday, 24 January 2015
Classic, Treasure and Magic along the Silk Road
19 janvier 2015
Le cycle de conférences données par Yu Xin, professeur invité à l'EHESS, se poursuit tout le mois de janvier.
- Archaeological Evidence, Cultural Imagination and Image of the Medieval World: New Perspectives on Treasures from Kucha
Mardi 20 janvier, de 14h à 16h, Salle des réunions (étage 3B, 52 rue du Cardinal-Lemoine, Paris 5e)
dans le cadre du séminaire de d’Étienne de la Vaissière
- The Journey to the East: A Magical Tradition of Figurine Across Eurasia: from Gaochang to Kyoto
Mercredi 21 janvier, de 17h à 19h, Salle 2, RdC, EHESS, Le France (190, Avenue de France, Paris 13e)
dans le cadre du séminaire d’Antonella Romano
- The Transformation of Sacrificial Money: New Hypotheses Based on the Archaeological Discoveries in Turfan
Jeudi 29 janvier, INHA, de 11h à 13h, Salle Mariette (6 rue des petits-camps, Paris 2e)
dans le cadre du séminaire de Marcello Carastro et Stéphan Dugast
YU Xin
Université Fudan, Shanghai
Le labex TransferS invite, du 10 février au 10 mars, le Professeur YU Xin - Professeur d’Histoire chinoise médiévale, département d’Histoire de l’Université Fudan, Shanghai.Classic, Treasure and Magic along the Silk Road
Après un cycle de 4 conférences en janvier à l’EHESS, le Pr. Yu donnera 2 séminaires à l’École normale supérieure.
- Vendredi 13 février
- Exploration on Zhujunda : The legend of a vegetable along the Silk Road
- 16h-18h, Amphithéâtre Rataud, ENS (45, rue d’Ulm, 75005 Paris)
In Dunhuang Manuscripts P. 3391, the problematic entry “zhujunda” is found in the category of vegetable in the text. What’s the meaning ? This puzzle baffles scholars. This research aims to provide an accurate description of this word from the dimensions of semantics and natural history, employing materials from various unearthed documents, medical books, anecdotes, and encyclopedias. It tries to show the role which zhujunda had played in the medieval social life as well as in the cultural exchange between the west and the east. It arrives at the following conclusions : both of leaf-beet and root-beet came from Persian. In the period of Sassanid Empire leaf- beet arrived in China, and its translation “junda” was originated from Medieval Persian language, while root-beet came in after Arab invaded Iran, and its translation “zhujunda” found its root in new Persian language, which should be no late than the early 10th century. These things and their corresponding names passing from Iran to China enriched Chinese culture in the medieval ages.
- Vendredi 6 mars
- New Perspectives on the Horse Anthroposcopy through the Archeological Materials
- 16h-18h, salle Cavaillès, ENS (45, rue d’Ulm, 75005 Paris)
The horse anthroposcopy comprises one important aspect of Xingfa, which is a practical technique that utilizes observation to judge things’ good or bad, and also serves as the basic paradigm of that people conceive the world around them in traditional China. In recent years, several lost books concerning anthroposcopy have been excavated : The Book of Horse Anthroposcopy in the Mawangdui silk texts ; The Book of Dog Anthroposcopy in the Shuanggudui bamboo slips ; The Book of Dog-judging Methods in the Yinqueshan bamboo slips ; The Methods for Sword-judging in the Juyan wooden slips. These findings of ancient books concerning anthroposcopy reveal their significance in the knowledge, belief, and society of traditional China. In this lecture, I will try to use the wooden slips from Dunhuang discovered by Stein, the Mawangdui silk texts, the Shuihudi bamboo slips, the Xuanqun wooden slips, Dunhuang manuscripts, mural paintings in tombs, art crafts and received texts, such as Qimin Yaoshu, to discuss the origin and development of the horse anthroposcopy technique from Han through Tang synthetically. I hope this research will shed a new light on the study of Xingfa in medieval China.
- Programme complet
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