The Horde, Marie Favereau
The Horde, Marie Favereau
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The Horde
How the Mongols Changed the World

Author: Marie Favereau

Narrator: Anne Flosnik

Unabridged: 12 hr 8 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/14/2021


Synopsis

In the first comprehensive history of the Horde, Marie Favereau shows that the accomplishments of the Mongols extended far beyond war.

Favereau takes us inside one of the most powerful sources of cross-border integration in world history. The Horde was the central node in the Eurasian commercial boom of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and was a conduit for exchanges across thousands of miles. Its unique political regime—a complex power-sharing arrangement among the khan and the nobility—rewarded skillful administrators and diplomats and fostered an economic order that was mobile, organized, and innovative. From its capital at Sarai on the lower Volga River, the Horde provided a governance model for Russia, influenced social practice and state structure across Islamic cultures, disseminated sophisticated theories about the natural world, and introduced novel ideas of religious tolerance.

The Horde is the eloquent, ambitious, and definitive portrait of an empire little understood and too readily dismissed. Challenging conceptions of nomads as peripheral to history, Favereau makes clear that we live in a world inherited from the Mongol moment.

About Marie Favereau

Marie Favereau is associate professor of history at Paris Nanterre University. She has been a member of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study, and a research associate at Oxford University for the major project Nomadic Empires. Her books include La Horde d'Or et le sultanat mamelouk and the graphic novel Gengis Khan.


Reviews

Goodreads review by RJ on May 19, 2021

Another entry in the growing body of work from Western scholars seeking to revive, reinterpret, and restore the place of the Mongol Empire in world history, this book focuses on the Ulus of Jochi, or the Golden Horde, which ruled large swaths of Russia and Central Asia from the 13th-16th centuries.......more

Goodreads review by Sanjay on November 21, 2024

A basic chronology, with minimal sketches of the historical personages and ethnic differences. I'm not a historian and I find it challenging to read whole chapters filled with dates and events. I enjoyed it when the author slowed down and filled in some details, such as when she told about Berke the......more

Goodreads review by Shane on December 08, 2021

"The Horde" just didn't quite work. This book didn't quite find that balance that you want in a history book like this: written so as to be reasonably digestible but also very informative with in-depth analysis. I'm never read much on the Mongols before, but it's not like I know 0% about this time p......more

Goodreads review by Patrick on August 19, 2021

To absorb this slice of Mongol history, you need to learn a new language, memorize a 1,000-year-old map of Eurasia and master some of the nuances of ancient genealogy ... it's complex, maybe a bit intimidating ... probably a little over my head, I came to enjoy the book and appreciate the depth of t......more

Goodreads review by Gabit on June 06, 2021

I am, of course, biased, but this book is so good I am planning to initiate its translation into the Kazakh and the Russian. Beautifully written ✊......more