ABSTRACT
The establishment of the mongolian empire (1206-59) inaugurated an unprecedented era of new cultural exchanges within eurasia and considerably enhanced those already taking place. at one level, this meant the physical movement of people and cultural goods from one end of asia to the other and beyond. This included far-distant places such as the african kingdom of mali and its neighbours, featured in detail in the geography of mongol china.2 at another, the mongol era (until 1368 in china) was particularly noteworthy for its many attempts to create culturally mixed institutions that offered something for everyone.3 These generally offered the most for the mongols themselves who were able to use such mixed institutions to avoid getting too close to any of the conquered peoples. Willing collaborators in all of this, sometimes playing a very active role, were representatives of a variety of peoples hailing from almost
1 sections of this article are based upon my unpublished master’s thesis, ‘some aspects of the origin and development of the religious Institutions of the early yüan Period’ (university of Washington, 1968). I would like to thank the national endowment for the humanities for an individual fellowship permitting my continued work on ‘muslim’ (huihui 回回) medicine in china and supporting the present research. Thanks also to dan martin and olaf czaja for detailed assistance in resolving some of the technical issues of the article and for bibliographical suggestions, and also to gene anderson and my wife ngan le for their more generalized discussion and proofing, and to the late T.V. Wylie, with whom I read the primary Tibetan source material used in this study, and who first introduced me to the serious study of Tibetan history, including its sakya period. needless to say, any errors or misconceptions are strictly my own.
