The Fourteenth Century on the Steppe
West of the Tienshan and East of the Aral, life was never easy, never comfortable. The cities of Qarabat and Akmola were still growing in size and prosperity as irrigation works replaced pastureland and as the people of Central Asia began to enjoy the fruits of complex, urban society. This is not to say that their pastoralism was not complex - it was, and it certainly was a viable way of life for countless thousands of people - but the establishment of nearby urban centers lead to an increased diversity and quality of finished goods.
Such sedentary life was protected and supported by the presence of Iranian arms and sometimes, Iranian troops. Iranian interventions into India had sapped this presence to some degree, especially as the fourteenth century wore on and the cost Iranian military adventurism became more apparent, and the Iranians began to look to the security of their western and southern flanks. Into this fourteenth-century vacuum strode confidently the old Oghuz clans, now almost unrecognizable. Their names were new and unfamiliar, but they had the same swagger and confidence that the old steppe warlords had once possessed.
These new would-be warlords were more protection rackets than glorious conquerors however. Pressed in the north by the steady expansion of bright-eyed Russians and their trading forts, they moved in to offer protection where the Iranians could not. But they were as much horse-traders as horse-lords. The Kitai demand for “Sakan” horses expanded far beyond the capacity of the actual surviving Saka to provide - it was a proto-brand name, more than reality. The horses of the Kitai armies were like as not to come from any far flung part of Central Asia. Authenticity was near impossible to prove, especially with the trade primarily mediated by clever Tangut traders, whose markup on the beasts was extreme, especially as the Yaol Dynasty collapsed into final irrelevance. Although on the subcontinent these horse-merchants had to compete with Arab traders, the steppe horse could fetch a fine sum in India as well, with the era of fracturing empires leaving plenty of avenues for an ambitious seller of horses to make a profit.
By 1344 CE, Nanjing had fallen, and with it the Kitai Empire as a whole was tottering. After a failed rear-guard action outside Kaifeng in 1347 CE, the remaining generals and officers of the Empire - those who had not taken their lives or fallen to the gunfire of Xu Zhenyi, fled back to the steppe. Ordobeliq, the “Exalted Northern Capital” still held out. It was remote, far beyond the most ambitious dreams of the rebel Qing to seize. The rebel armies, after all, were mostly peasant in their orientation - after “liberating” their own locality only vague ideological compulsions and fear of their officers could persuade them to go onwards. Leaving “China” proper to embark on assaults past the great wall? That was another question entirely. Even the magistrates and officers of the rebellion-cum-dynasty questioned the value of that, and Xu Zhenyi was wise not to press the issue, with the Tangut and the Tibetans now autonomous, and insurrection still smouldering in the Tai South.
So where did that leave the Kitai? Emperor Xingzong was dead. His children were children with a Han woman, and captives who were soon to be dead besides. Qadir Irbas, the last man to try to hold it all together, had died in his sleep a year before the fall of the capital. This clique of generals and nobles who had fled north were, in the eyes of the steppe nomads who surrounded them, soft and effeminate. Buyan was beloved among the Kitai, but almost laughable for the people who actually had to survive on the steppe. The generals and aristocrats began to face a grim reality - they had not been canny enough for the south, but maybe, just maybe, they were not hard enough to survive in the north. They had expected to rally all the federate tribes to their banner, but this was pure arrogance. The Julishe and Naiman, Merkit and Kerait, all laughed at this claim. They had exacted tribute from the Kitai. They were not vassals, not really.
By the fourteenth century, one tribe stood particularly prominent. Da’aritay Khan, leader of the Jalayr Mongols, was particularly happy to see the Kitai humiliated, and proposed that Ordobeliq should be sacked. Gathering a conference of the great steppe leaders, he suggested that the heads of prominent Kitai generals and officers could be gathered and sent south to the new Qing… before the traditional demand of continued tribute was made. An offering of peace such as that would make their collective demands seem more reasonable.
Da’aritay, it is probable, had grander ambitions still. By leading an assault on Ordobeliq, he hoped to unify the disunited peoples of the northeastern steppe into a single, unified confederation. Perhaps in time such a confederation could even challenge China. But by the time the confederation reached Ordobeliq, they found the city largely deserted, apart from monks and those too poor or too stubborn to flee. The Exalted Northern Capital made a poor target for a sack. Da’aritay would be killed later that same year while hunting, and the Turco-Kerait Toghril Khan would instead take up that honor - by virtue of proximity to China, he became the primary diplomat mediating the relations between the steppe and the settled rivers and valleys of China. His attempt to make himself Khagan, however, would be met with equal failure, as the other tribes rallied together to ensure none of them would ever become too powerful. Long history under the Yaol had hardened them against such a future.
What then was the fate of the Kitai? The remaining commanders of the Kitai, with all their armor and horses and fine guns, fled west - they had no other option, with their enemies everywhere rising in power. They slipped through the land of the Naiman with relatively little opposition - a fact that suggests the Khan of the Naiman was intentionally trying to slight Da’aritay and ensure his plans came to nothing - and passed into Turkic lands. There, they came into direct conflict with the mercenaries and bandits making their living off of the trade of the west, and at first were able to score major victories when misunderstandings inevitably ensued. The Kitai were well armed veterans, and the Oghuz had bled much of their martial vigor in southern campaigns where the Iranians offered the promise of land and silver in exchange for service.
In another world, those who survived might have been driven south, pushed hard against the Iranian border, leading to the cyclical collapse of the Iranian state, the rise of a new Turkic regime, while the Kitai created a new tribal confederation on the steppe until they in turn were driven off, perhaps by the Naiman, when the next harsh famine or cold winter struck. But these days were over. The Oghuz took shelter in their walled cities and towns, and the Kitai lacked the means to disrupt them. So while some flocks might be savaged, the rough years of the late forties, where the Kitai operated as brigands, were not so hard as to be unbearable. Furthermore, the Kitai adhered to a strict rule of not harming monastic communities, which were, if not numerous in the region, at least commonplace enough that herders could shelter within their walls and wait for the rampaging Kitai to pass.
The Turkic people, however, sought out a more permanent solution, and they found it in a young and promising leader named Kuluq Kurkun. Kuluq had served in the Iranian armies for a time, before traveling home to Akmola, where he had found his way into the service of the town elders as a sort of caravan guard and leader of the Akmola’s army, such as it was. Kuluq was no stranger to the tactics of the Kitai, nor was he a stranger to violence - in fact, he excelled at both things. In addition, he was well-connected within the broader tribal community - able to rally herders and townsfolk alike to his banner. In summary, he was simply a perfectly well-connected person at the right moment. And when he took the field against the Kitai, he did not simply wander out looking, but rather he staged an elaborate trap - a caravan ostensibly loaded with valuables, but in fact filled with tufenj and even a few cannon.
The Kitai were repulsed quickly after the “Battle of the Ditch” as it became known (for a particularly muddy spot where many of the Kitai raiders became stuck and were slain). Not every Kitai warrior died here - many survived, and either continued their now hopeless campaign to carve out a dominion, or ultimately were assimilated into various armies as mercenary soldiers. But they were finished as a viable threat. Those who endured left little visible influence in culture or language, whether on the plains of Central Asia or those lucky few who survived the slaughters of the early Qing Dynasty.
Apart from this burst of political chaos, the first half of the fourteenth century should be seen, especially in Central Asia, as a period of artistic and cultural solidification. The “Turkificiation” of the steppe, as noted in the return to traditional religious and cultural practices, and the rejection of Iranian culture and Nowbahar Buddhism, continued apace, perhaps encouraged by a similar process in the eastern steppe, where the various tribal confederations, now free of the Kitai, shed themselves of the “foriegn innovation” of buyan and China in one fell swoop.
Still, this is not to say that the material culture of Turkic Central Asia was not vibrant and did not take in outside influences. Wild songbirds preserved in wine and apple jam were another famous delicacy noted by travelers to the region, along with the quality of its lamb (served by the rich with imported saffron from Tabaristan). Persian delicacies, such as surkhabaj (meat served with crushed grain, honey and vinegar) made their appearance in the fare of the common people, as did great quantities of grape and date wine, which began replacing the traditional fermented drinks of the Turks even as religion and art grew more conservative. Wine, of course, could never truly replace milk as the great drink of the nomadic peoples, and the monastic communities were quick to counsel against the deleterious effects of drunkeneness.
Trade continued and expanded in this period. Akmola in particular was famous for its export of watermelon in ice-filled lead containers, where it became a favorite of the courts of the Near East and India. This melon was famed for its sweetness and texture, and became a watchword among melon cultivars the world over. Carpets, rugs, silk cloth, bedding, and cotton robes were exported in great quantities from the lands around the Vehrod. Cloth of gold and silk were made in small quantities for the elites, but these rare artistic achievements were preserved meticulously in the palaces of the elite across the Near East. In the Xasar court such techniques were imitated meticulously.
The cities grew fat on this trade, fat enough that the Turkic “protectors” of trade were able to take their fill and leave plenty behind. Structures of sun-dried brick and stone more and more replaced the old yurts as people began to move less and less, and shift their agricultural packages towards more sedentary behaviors further and further north.
All these depictions, of course, focus on the Turkic world, and those places not under outright Iranian rule besides. In places like Samarkand and Pandjikent, which had long been settled (and were home to far less Turks besides), these changes were of course less obvious. Here, the local Sahs presided over a world that was, for the first time in ages, seemingly in a sort of stable and prosperous stasis. They hoped that it would never change.
