Thunder From The

Steppes
This conference New Perspectives on the
was made possible by the Mongol Empire
generous support of the

government of September 29, 2016

4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Mongolia. September 30, 2016
9:00 AM - 6:30 PM

180 Doe Library

University of California, Berkeley

The UC Berkeley
Mongolia Initiative
and
Institute of East Asian Studies
 Thunder From The Steppes
New Perspectives on the
Mongol Empire

Speakers

Reuven Amitai, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Christopher Atwood, University of Pennsylvania
Brian Baumann, University of California, Berkeley
Dashdondog Bayarsaikhan, National University of Mongolia
Michal Biran, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Bettine Birge, University of Southern California
Nicola Di Cosmo, Institute for Advanced Study
Johan Elverskog, Southern Methodist University
Matthew Mosca, University of Washington
Roxann Prazniak, University of Oregon
Morris Rossabi, Columbia University
Uranchimeg Tsultem, University of California, Berkeley
Leonard Van Der Kuijp, Harvard University

Thunder From The Steppes
New Perspectives on the
Mongol Empire
Introductory Presentation:
Finding Mongolia: Arts, Artifacts, and Early Historiography
Morris ROSSABI, Columbia University

Keynote Address
Agenda
Environmental Perspectives on the
Mongol Empire:
Thursday, September 29:
What Climate Variability May Tell Us
4:00 PM Opening Session About the Mongol Expansion
Chair: Sanjyot MEHENDALE, Vice Chair, Center for
Buddhist Studies Nicola DI COSMO,
Institute for Advanced Study
Welcome Remarks:

Sanjyot MEHENDALE, Vice Chair, Center for Buddhist

Studies

Consul General Erdene SALDAN, Consulate General of

Mongolia in San Francisco

Uranchimeg TSULTEM, History of Art, UC Berkeley

Brian BAUMANN, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC

Berkeley
Friday, September 30:
9:00 AM Contacts, Conflicts, and Transformations
Chair: Brian BAUMANN, East Asian Languages and Cultures,
UC Berkeley
The Mongol Middle Kingdom: Religions and Cross-Cultural
Contacts in the Chaghadaid Ulus
Michal BIRAN, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Birth of Mohammed from the Jami al-Tavarikh: A
Lens on the Transformation of 13th/14th Century Eurasia
Roxann PRAZNIAK, University of Oregon
The Mongol-Isml Relationship Revisited
Dashdondog BAYARSAIKHAN, National University of
Mongolia
Ilkhanid-Mamluk Relations: Further Thoughts
Reuven AMITAI, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Brief introduction to the project "Mobility, Empire and Cross-
Cultural Contacts in Mongol Eurasia"
Michal BIRAN, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
12:00-1:30 PM Lunch Break
1:30 PM The Role of Religion
Chair: Jacob DALTON, East Asian Languages and Cultures
and South and Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
A Secular Empire? Religions, Estates, and Tax Exemptions in
the Mongol Empire
Christopher ATWOOD, University of Pennsylvania
Were the Mongols Atheists?
Johan ELVERSKOG
Tibetan Lamas at the Mongol Court
Leonard VAN DER KUIJP
3:30 PM Break
3:45 PM Exploring the Empire: Literature, Art, and
Documents in the Study of the Mongols
Chair: Patricia BERGER, History of Art, UC Berkeley
Fearful Symmetry: Heavenly Allegory and the Secret
History of the Mongols
Brian BAUMANN, UC Berkeley
Marriage Law in the Age of Khubilai Khan: Challenges of a
Multicultural Society
Bettine BIRGE, University of Southern California
Portraits of Chinggis Khaan: Ancestral Connections Re-
Examined
Uranchimeg TSULTEM, UC Berkeley
The Importance of Qing-era Historiography on the Mongol
Empire: Two Perspectives
Matthew MOSCA, University of Washington

Thunder From The Steppes
New Perspectives on the
Mongol Empire
Abstracts
Ilkhanid-Mamluk Relations: Further Thoughts
Reuven AMITAI, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Abstract: The main foreign policy concern of the leadership
of the early Mamluk Sultanate was the Mongol Ilkhanate,
which ruled in Iran and the neighboring countries from the late-
1250s to 1335. These Mongols, led by Hulegu and his
successors known as Ilkhans, were the primary existential
threat to the new Mamluk state from its first decades until the
end of hostilities in the early fourteenth century. I have spent
much of the last thirty years studying the ongoing struggle for
regional supremacy between the Ilkhanate and the Sultanate.
Less than a year ago, I took the opportunity at a conference in
Bonn to review and sum up my thoughts on some of these
matters, mainly looking at the Mamluk side of these relations.
In the present lecture, I will concentrate on three aspects that
more directly concern the Mongols:
1. Why were the Ilkhans ultimately unsuccessful in
defeating the Mamluk Sultans?
2. How and why was the Mamluk-Ilkhanid war resolved
around 1320?
3. What was the effect of this peace on Ilkhanid politics?
Discussing these matters might lead to a better understanding
of the Ilkhanate and its untimely demise.
A Secular Empire? Religions, Estates, and Tax Exemptions
in the Mongol Empire
Christopher ATWOOD, University of Pennsylvania
Abstract: Since the days of Edward Gibbon, the empire of
Chinggis Khan has been famous for its religious tolerance. In
contrast to other medieval empires, the Mongol empire treated
clergies of various religions equally and publicly expressed a
standard that sounded much like separation of church (or
mosque or sangha) and state. This seeming secularism of the
Mongol empire seems like a fascinating precursor to the
European colonial empires of the modern era. Indeed as recent
research has shown, contemporary concepts of secularism and
world religions were constructed in the scholarship of late 18th
and 19th century European and American exploration and
imperialism. One might interpret the Mongol empire as a 13th-
14th century version of the same phenomenon, classifying both
religions and their opposite, secularism. Yet it is strange that
while the names of the different types of clergy are well
attested in Mongol exemption decrees, for most of the actual
religions as abstract entities, no Middle Mongolian word has
yet been discovered. Nor do we find any word for secularism
as a concept. This paper will explore to what degree the
concept of secularism and religion might be applied to the
Mongol empire and how the Mongol version of religious
policy may be compared with those found in modern Euro-
American imperial discourse.
Fearful Symmetry: Heavenly Allegory and the Secret
History of the Mongols
Brian BAUMANN, UC Berkeley
Abstract: The Secret History of the Mongols has been
described in its commentaries as a literary masterpiece. True
as this may be, the quality requisite to justify the claim has yet
to be fully demonstrated. To date, study of the Secret Historys
literary aspect has lagged behind other, perhaps prerequisite,
pursuits linguistic, philological, and historical. Whether less
fundamental than these or not, study of the text as literature has
been vitiated by a lack of hermeneutic method which, unless
overcome, will inhibit progress interpreting the text
indefinitely. My paper presents a hermeneutic method useful
for interpreting not only the Secret History but literature in
general and demonstrates its applicability with examples from
the text. The method I discuss derives from the science of
orientation fundamental to establishing order against the void
in nature. In this science the relationship between heaven and
earth is one of symmetry expressed figuratively as allegory.
This science of symmetry was known to the Mongols, who
took it as the foundation to their world order and the source of
their legitimacy as sovereign lords. Recognition of the presence
of heavenly allegory in the text helps not only in its
interpretation but also in comparing the texts literary quality
with the literature of other world rulers who did the same.
The Mongol-Isml Relationship Revisited
Dashdondog BAYARSAIKHAN, National University of
Mongolia
Abstract: The subject that I would like to discuss relates to the
Isml history of the period of Mongol incursions in 1256.
This article deals with three topics: the Mongols and their
invasions of Alamut; Mongol-Isml relationship before and
after invasion; and the issues of the death of Isml leader at
the hands of the Mongols.
The Mongol conquest of Nizr Ismls strongholds was
described as the single-most disastrous event in their history,
putting an end to the political aspiration and prominence of the
Ismls in the region. This paper discusses the death of
Isml Imam, arguing against the usual, common view of his
murder.
The Mongol Middle Kingdom: Religions and Cross-Cultural
Contacts in the Chaghadaid Ulus
Michal BIRAN, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Abstract: The Chaghadaid ulus called itself as "Dumdadu
Monggol Ulus", the Middle Mongol Ulus (rendered in Latin as
Medium Imperium and in Arabic as Wasitat al-`iqd, the middle
chain of a necklace), a designation that refers to its location
among the Mongol uluses and later polities. Yet despite this
central location, the Chaghadaids are often left out of the
discussions on cross cultural connections in Mongol Eurasia,
being over-shadowed by their magnificent and much better-
documented neighbors, mainly the Yuan dynasty and the
Ilkhanate.
This paper, originating in my chapter on the Chaghadaids for
the forthcoming The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire,
and based on a large variety of multi-lingual literary sources as
well as on numismatic and archaeological studies, analyzes a
few aspects of the complex culture of Mongol Central Asia. It
highlights the relations between Tibetan Buddhism, Islam and
Christianity in the Chaghadaid realm; the mobile court as a
locus for cross-cultural contacts; and trade networks and their
connections to the Central Asian diasporas all over Eurasia.
Marriage Law in the Age of Khubilai Khan: Challenges of
Governing a Polyethnic Empire
Bettine BIRGE, University of Southern California
Abstract: The Mongol conquest of China in the thirteenth
century and Khubilai Khans founding of the Yuan dynasty
brought together under one government people of vastly
different languages, religions, social customs, and legal
traditions. In their attempt to establish their rule over this
diverse and polyethnic world, Khubilai and the great khans
who succeeded him confronted fundamental questions, such as
the role of government in regulating marriage and family life
and what laws should apply to what people. At times they took
a laissez-faire approach and allowed couples to establish
prenuptial contracts that might contradict aspects of traditional
Chinese marriage law. At other times they attempted to
impose a unified set of ethical values on the populace through
the adjudication of marriage law at the local level. Similarly,
during some periods, emperors allowed different laws to apply
to different ethnic or cultural groups, however unclearly
defined. When this proved unworkable, they tried to unify
marriage law for all peoples within Yuan territory, but this
generated a flood of lawsuits by Chinese and other plaintiffs
who found laws derived from Mongol steppe customs to be
abhorrent. In their struggle to reconcile competing values and
different cultural and religious practices, the Mongol emperors
of China faced challenges not unlike those faced by the courts
in legal conflicts over marriage law in the US today.
Environmental Perspectives on the Mongol Empire: What
Climate Variability May Tell Us About the Mongol
Expansion
Nicola DI COSMO, Institute for Advanced Study
Abstract: Theories of environmental change due to climate
have been put forward in the past to explain the Mongol
conquest have generally been received with skepticism due to
the low quality of the data and to methodological
shortcomings. Today high-definition climate data provides a
key to more accurate interpretations of the relationship between
climate-induced environmental changes and historical events.
Therefore, historians may be able to gain a better appreciation
of the effects that climate may have had on the rise of Mongol
power and on its imperial expansion.
This talk will take into consideration scientific approaches to
climate change in the early thirteenth century and discuss
ecological variability, especially in relation to the availability
of resources and military operations of the Mongols. Special
attention will be paid to questions of steppe ecology and to the
pros and cons of the use of scientific data as historical sources.
knowledge, and other forms of information circulated and
interacted to greatly expand historical knowledge of the
Mongol conquests. This paper considers this period from two
perspectives, the vantage of historians in the Qing, and in the
twentieth century. It examines differences in what historians in
those two eras regarded as the most important historiographical
breakthroughs of the period between 1636 and 1912, and what
these differences reveal about the development of
historiography on the Mongol Empire.

Were the Mongols Atheists?
Johan ELVERSKOG, Southern Methodist University
Abstract: This paper aims to explore recent scholarship on the
religious policies and practices of the Mongols during the
empire period in order to engage with broader scholarly
debates about categories such as religion, secularism, and
atheism.
The Importance of Qing-era Historiography on the Mongol
Empire: Two Perspectives
Matthew MOSCA, University of Washington
Abstract: The period of the Qing Empire (1636-1912) was
particularly formative for the historiography of the Mongol
Empire. This was due largely to unprecedented contact
between China and Inner Asia within the Qing Empire, and
between the Qing Empire and other parts of Eurasia. Under
these conditions, sources, translations, maps, linguistic
The Birth of Mohammed from the Jami al-Tavarikh: A
Lens on the Transformation of 13th/14th Century Eurasia
Roxann PRAZNIAK, University of Oregon
Abstract: A case for the centrality of the Mongol Empire in the
13th/14th century transformation of Eurasia can be seen through
the illustrated world history of Rashid al-Dins Jami al-
Tavarikh, an innovative creation of the imperial workshops of
Tabriz, Ilkhanate capital of the Iranian portion of the Mongol
Empire. This paper takes as its focus the illustration of The
Birth of Mohammed to explore briefly the layers of cultural
and political exchange that circulated among Eurasian societies
during the Mongol era, resulting in the expansion of social and
intellectual conceptual boundaries that ultimately redefined
civilizational agendas.
Finding Mongolia: Arts, Artifacts, and Early Historiography
Morris ROSSABI, Columbia University
Abstract: This presentation starts with a brief consideration of
the American pioneers of research on Mongolian history and
culture and their invaluable scholarly contributions, as well as
their efforts to promote Mongolian studies in the U.S. It
describes the fields they focused on, which has led to the
present status of knowledge about the Mongols. The lecture
then offers a glimpse of the achievements of research on the
Mongols to the present. Illustrations will provide a partial
assessment of the value of the arts and material culture in
understanding Mongolian history and culture.
Portraits of Chinggis Khaan: Ancestral Connections Re-
Examined
Uranchimeg TSULTEM, UC Berkeley
Abstract: A well-known thirteenth-century portrait of Chinggis
Khaan (1162?-1227) is housed at the Taipei Palace Museum
and have been published in numerous occasions in mostly
historical books. The portrait is the major image of the Great
Khaan made closer to his lifetime during the Yuan dynasty.
Lesser attention, however, was given to the painting from the
perspective of portraiture and art-historical analysis.
Several scholars, including Marsha Weidner, Saysiyal, Nyam-
Osoryn Tsultem, Shang Gang (), and Isabelle Charleux,
have agreed that the portrait of Chinggis Khaan is the work by
Ho li Huo Sun or Qorosun ( fl. 1268-1303), a high
ranking Yuan-court government official and a senior member
of Hanlin Academy () who was known for his
achievements during his service. Whereas Weidner was the
first scholar to reveal the authorship of this portrait in her Ph.D.
dissertation at UC Berkeley in 1982, an Inner Mongolian
historian Saysiyal (1987) specifically mentioned the existence
of two portraits, identical in imagery, one in Taipei and the
other one in Beijing. The scholars agree that Qorosun was a
Mongol, and the deviations of this portrait from Chinese
imperial images before and after Yuan are explicit. How can
we understand these deviations in relation to Mongol statues of
stonemen from Yuan period which Isabelle Charleux (2010)
sees as ongon? How were the Chinggis Khaan portraits
different from, and similar to ongon? Offering another reading
of these portraits, this paper will discuss how these images
were important to the establishment of portraiture as an
ancestral connection for preservation of Mongol identity not
only in modern days (Alicia Campi 2006) but also historically,
both within and outside of modern political borders of
Mongolia.
Tibetan Lamas at the Mongol Court
Leonard VAN DER KUIJP, Harvard University
Unavailable.
 Biographies
Reuven Amitai is Eliyahu Elath Professor for Muslim History
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and studies the history
of the pre-modern Islamic world and the adjacent areas. He is
interested in the medieval history of the Turks and Mongols,
especially the history of the Ilkhanate; the Mamluk Sultanate of
Egypt and Syria; the Crusades in the Levant and Muslim
responses; the military history of the medieval Middle East
World; conversion to Islam; late medieval Arabic epigraphy;
and, Palestine in the late medieval period. Until the end of
September 2016 he is a senior fellow at the Annemarie
Schimmel Kolleg: History and Society during the Mamluk Era
(1250-1517).
His publications include Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-
Ilkhanid War, 1260-1281 (Cambridge University Press, 1995);
The Mongols in the Islamic Lands: Studies in the History of the
Ilkhanate (Ashgate, 2007); and Holy War and Rapprochement:
Studies in the Relations between the Mamluk Sultanate and the
Mongol Ilkhanate (1260-1335) (Brepols, 2013). He has co-
edited The Mongol Empire and its Legacy (with David
Morgan, Brill, 1999); Mongols, Turks and Others: Eurasian
Nomads and Their Sedentary Neighbors (with Michal Biran,
Brill, 2005); Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change: The
Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors (with Michal Biran,
University of Hawaii Press, 2015). A forthcoming volume,
Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean,
11th to 15th Centuries, co-edited with Christoph Cluse, will be
published by Brepols.
Christopher Atwood is Professor of Mongolian and Late
Imperial/Early Modern Chinese History at the University of
Pennsylvania. Previously, Atwood taught for two decades at
Indiana University, serving as department chair and
interim director of the Center for Languages of the Central
Asian Region. He received his by A.B. from Harvard
University in 1986 and PhD from Indiana University-
Bloomington in 1994. He has been a visiting scholar at the
Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), Peking
University, Minpaku, Inner Mongolia University, and Inner
Mongolia Normal University, and served as academic
consultant for the History Department of Mongolia National
University.
Atwoods research has centered on the relation of culture
(especially history writing and religion) and the formation
of political power in the Mongolia-Chinese border area. His
publications include the Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the
Mongol Empire, Young Mongols and Vigilantes in Inner
Mongolia Interregnum Decades, 1911-1931, and translations
of Chinese and Mongolian sources for class use. Major
current projects include: 1) the multi-ethnic and multi-
lingual historiography of the Mongol Yuan dynasty; 2) the
Mongol empire, its religious and personnel policy, and the
early modern. He is also working on a Source of
Mongolian Tradition reader (with Johan Elverskog) and a
new translation of the Secret History of the Mongols.
Brian Baumann is the Mongolian language professor at UC
Berkeley's Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.
He specializes in Mongolian Buddhist science (astrology,
astronomy, and mathematics), and is fluent in Mongolian as
well as in reading Chinese (modern and classical), old Turkic,
Manchu and Tibetan. He holds a Ph.D. in Mongolian Studies
from Indiana University. His pursuit of Mongolian Studies
stems from a two-year tenure in Mongolia with the Peace
Corps, from 1991 to 1993. His dissertation concerns a specific
text, a manual of Mongolian Buddhist astral science, which he
transcribes, translates, and analyses in terms of the art and
science to the making of an almanac and the function almanacs
serve in Mongolian Buddhist tradition. Currently he is working
on a book project concerning a Mongolian verse treatise on
salvation in Sa skya pa tradition.
Bayarsaikhan Dashdondog holds MSt in Armenian Studies
(University of Oxford, UK) and DPhil in Oriental Studies
(University of Oxford, UK). At present, she is a lecturer at the
National University of Mongolia, Department of History,
teaching a History of Mongol Empire and Central Asia. She is
a part of an international scholarly project of the Cambridge
History of Mongol Empire (eds. Michal Biran and Kim
Hogong).
Michal Biran is a historian of Inner Asia and a member of the
Israeli Academy of Science and Humanities. She is The Max
and Sophie Mydans Foundation Professor in the Humanities at
the Hebrew University, where she teaches in the Department of
Asian Studies and in the Department of Islamic and Middle
Eastern Studies. Currently she is the director of The Louis
Frieberg Center for East Asian Studies at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, where she also leads the ERC-funded
project Mobility, Empire and Cross-Cultural Contacts in
Mongol Eurasia. She has published extensively on Mongol
and Pre-Mongol Central Asia; the Mongol Empire; nomadism;
and cross-cultural contacts between China and the Islamic
world. Her books include Qaidu and the Rise of the
Independent Mongol State in Central Asia (Curzon, 1997), The
Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History: Between China
and the Islamic World (Cambridge University Press, 2005,
2008) and Chinggis Khan (Oxford: OneWorld Publications,
2007). She has co-edited (with Reuven Amitai) Mongols, Turks
and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the Sedentary World
(Leiden: Brill, 2005) and Eurasian Nomads As Agents of
Cultural Change (Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 2015).
Together with Hodong Kim she is now editing The Cambridge
History of the Mongol Empire (2 volumes) as well as working
on a book on The Cultural History of Ilkhanid Baghdad.
Bettine Birge is a professor in the department of East Asian
Languages and Cultures with a joint appointment in History at
the University of Southern California. She received her B.A.
from Princeton, an M.A. from Cambridge, where she studied as
a Marshall scholar, and her PhD from Columbia University.
Her research focuses on Chinese and Inner Asian social and
cultural history, especially during the Mongol-Yuan dynasty
(1260-1368). Her current interests include marriage law,
gender relations, and constructions of ethnic identity, with
particular focus on how these were influenced by Mongol rule
in China.
She is the author of Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction
in Sung and Yan China (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
and Marriage and the Law in the Age of Khubilai Khan: Cases
from the Yuan dianzhang (Harvard University Press,
forthcoming 2017) as well as numerous articles. She is also a
contributor to the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal
History and the Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire.
Currently, she is working on a book titled, Gender, Ethnicity,
and Social Order in China under Mongol Rule. Her research
has been funded by the National Endowment for the
Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the
Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Andrew Mellon
Foundation, and the Fulbright program at the U.S. Department
of State.
Dr. Birge is the English-language editor of the trilingual
journal Studies in Chinese History (Chgoku shigaku,
Zhongguo shixue), published in Tokyo, and she serves on the
editorial board of the Journal of Song-Yuan Studies.
Nicola di Cosmo is the Henry Luce Foundation Professor of
East Asian Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, School
of Historical Studies (Princeton, USA). He holds a PhD from
Indiana University, and a BA from the University of Venice
(Italy). He is also Visiting Professor of East Asian Studies at
Princeton University. Professor Di Cosmo has previously
taught at Harvard University and at the University of
Canterbury (New Zealand). He lectures at Princeton
University, and was a visiting professor at New York
University-Shanghai in the Spring, 2015.
His research interests are in the history of Chinese and Inner
Asian frontiers from the ancient to the modern periods, history
of nomadic peoples, and history of the Qin dynasty. His books
include Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic
Power in East Asian History (Cambridge), Manchu-Mongol
Relations on the Eve of the Qing Conquest (Brill), The Diary of
a Manchu Soldier in Seventeenth Century China (Routledge).
He has also edited the following books: Military Culture in
Imperial China (Harvard), The Cambridge History of Inner
Asia (Cambridge), Warfare in Inner Asian History (Brill), etc.
His most recent research focuses on the use of palaeoscientific
data as historical sources, with special reference to the history
of China, Central Asia, and Mongolia. He has been working
on several articles that integrate high-resolution palaeoclimatic
data with historical analysis.
Johan Elverskog is Altshuler University Distinguished
Teaching Professor and Professor of Religious Studies at
Southern Methodist University. He is the author and editor of
eight books on the religious history of China and Inner Asia,
which have won several awards and also been translated into
Chinese, Korean, and Russian. All of this work focuses on
historical interactions across Asia.
Matthew W. Mosca is a historian of the Qing Empire,
concentrating on its political and intellectual history. After
receiving his PhD (Harvard, 2008), he has held fellowships at
the Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley, the Hong Kong
Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the
University of Hong Kong, and the Institute for Advanced
Study. After teaching at the College of William & Mary, he is
currently assistant professor at the University of Washington,
with a joint appointment in the History Department and the
Jackson School for International Studies. In addition to his
monograph, From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The
Question of India and the Transformation of Geopolitics in
Qing China (Stanford, 2013), he has published on Qing
geographic worldviews and foreign relations. He is currently
researching the historiography of the Mongol Empire in the
Qing period.
Roxann Prazniak is an Associate Professor of History, Robert
D. Clark Honors College, University of Oregon. She is the
author of Dialogues Across Civilizations: Sketches in World
History from the Chinese and European Experiences (1996)
and Of Camel Kings and Other Things: Rural Rebels Against
Modernity in Late Imperial China (1999). She has published
numerous articles including Siena on the Silk Roads:
Ambrogio Lorenzetti and the Mongol Global Century [1250-
1350], Journal of World History (2010), Ilkhanid Buddhism:
Traces of a Passage in Eurasian History, Comparative Studies
in Society and History (2014), and Artistic Exchange and the
Mongol Empire for the forthcoming Cambridge History of the
Mongol Empire (2017). She recently presented papers on
Sengge Ragi (1283-1331) and the Mahaprajapati scroll by
Wang Zhenpeng (1275-1330): Eurasian Positionality in
Reconfiguring Visual Culture, for a conference on Mobility
and Transformations: Economic and Cultural Exchange in
Mongol Eurasia at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, June
29-July 5, 2014, and Maragha Observatory: A Star in the
Constellation of Eurasian Scientific Translations, for Found in
Translation: World History of Science Conference, University
of Pittsburgh, October 10-12, 2015. Her current book project
is Sudden Appearances: Visuality and Belief in Mongol
Eurasia.
Morris Rossabi born in Alexandria, Egypt, received his Ph.D.
at Columbia University and has taught Mongolian and Chinese
history at Columbia and at the City University of New
York. Author of Khubilai Khan, Modern Mongolia, and
Voyager from Xanadu, and other scholarly books, he has also
written such other works as The Mongols: A Very Short
Introduction and The Mongols and Global History to introduce
Mongol history to a larger audience. He has written chapters
on the Mongols and Inner Asia for three volumes of the
Cambridge History of China and two chapters for the
forthcoming Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire. His
current research focuses on Mongolian posters, the Yuan
maritime administration, and a book on global history, 1150-
1400 for Oxford University Press. As a former Chair of the
Committee on Arts and Culture for the Soros Foundation, he
received an honorary doctorate from the National University of
Mongolia.
Uranchimeg (Orna) Tsultem is a scholar of Mongolian art
and culture. She received her Ph.D. in History of Art from UC
Berkeley in December 2009. She served as an assistant
professor at the Mongolian University of Arts and Culture from
1995 to 2002, associate professor at National University of
Mongolia from 2012 to 2013, and as a James Gray Lecturer at
UC Berkeley from 2010 to 2014. She also taught at Yonsei
University in South Korea from 2015 to 2016. She has curated
Mongolian art exhibitions internationally at Kasumi Center
(Tsukuba, Japan, 1997); E & J Frankel Gallery (New York,
NY, 2000); Frauen Museum (Bonn, Germany, 2001); HanArt
Gallery (Hong Kong, 2011); 9th Shanghai Biennale (2012), and
56th Venice Biennale (2015).
Dr. Tsultems publications include four books in Mongolia,
exhibition catalog essays for two museums in Finland (2010-
11); Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (1999, 2012); Ethnography
Museum in Warsaw, Poland (2011). Her academic articles
were published in Japanese in Arena (Kyoto University, 2012),
Vesna Wallace ed., Buddhism in Mongolian History, Culture
and Society (Oxford University Press, 2015), Orientations
(Hong Kong, 2016), Mongolian Studies (Bloomington:
Mongolia Society, 2013) and forthcoming in Cross Currents in
Fall 2016. Dr. Tsultem was a Kluge Fellow at the Library of
Congress in 2013, and received a Collaborative Research
Award from the American Council of Learned Societies/Ho
Foundation during 2014 to 2015. She is currently working on
two book manuscripts on Mongolian Buddhist art.
Leonard van der Kuijp is professor of Tibetan and
Himalayan Studies and chairs the Committee on Inner Asian
and Altaic Studies at Harvard University. Best known for his
studies of Buddhist epistemology, he is the author of numerous
works on Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. Recent publications
include An Early Tibetan Survey of Buddhist Literature (Vol.
64, Harvard Oriental Series, 2008), coauthored with Kurtis R.
Schaeffer, and In Search of Dharma: Indian and Ceylonese
Travelers in Fifteenth Century Tibet (Wisdom, 2009). Van der
Kuijps research focuses primarily on the Indo-Tibetan
Buddhist thought, Tibetan Buddhist intellectual history,
Tibetan Buddhism, and premodern Sino-Tibetan and Tibeto-
Mongol political and religious relations. Van der Kuijp
received his Master's degree at the University of Saskatchewan
in Saskatoon, Canada, and his doctorate at the University of
Hamburg in Germany. He joined the faculty at Harvard in
1995. He is the former chair of the Department of Sanskrit and
Indian Studies (now the Department of South Asian Studies).
In 1993 van der Kuijp received the MacArthur Fellowship for
"pioneering contributions to the study of Tibetan epistemology,
biography and poetry." Van der Kuijp worked with the Nepal
Research Center of the Humboldt University of Berlin and the
University of Washington in Seattle. In 1999, he founded the
Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC), together with E.
Gene Smith.