On the southern steppe of Ukraine in 512BCE, the envoy of Scythian King Idanthyrsus delivered a frog, a mouse, a bird and several arrows to Darius, mighty king of Persia. Then, without saying a word, he departed. Darius was confident the nomadic Scythians were pledging their allegiance. But his adviser understood the intended meaning. Unless the invading Persians turned into frogs and dived into the water, became mice and dug underground, or turned into birds and flew away, they would be riddled with deadly arrows as trespassers in the nomads’ land. Darius withdrew his soldiers.
For two millennia gigantic imperial armies were unable to defeat much smaller numbers of elusive horse archers who utilised tactics of surprise, feigned retreat and ambush rather than engaging in set-piece battles. In this book, which flows as fast as the nomads’ horses galloped, emeritus professor of ancient history Kenneth Harl chronicles the empires that roamed across the Eurasian steppe from ancient times to the death of Tamerlane at the beginning of the 15th century.
To their enemies, the nomadic chariot drivers and then horse archers from the grasslands were barbarians. Attila the Hun is remembered as the Scourge of God, Tamerlane as the Prince of Destruction. But in this book, Harl flips the script to present the booted, felt-capped, leather-trousered and kaftan-wearing nomads as the bearers of civilisation. Empires of the Steppes narrates history from the viewpoint of famous leaders including Genghis Khan, as well as many that no one remembers today. We know about Tamerlane, who was called the Sword of Islam or the Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction by his followers, but who has heard of the first conqueror of the steppes, Modu Chanyu of the Xiongnu? Harl argues nomadic expansions were aided as much by war as by marriage and diplomacy, by invitation as by invasion, by incorporation of the conquered as by their massacre, although he mainly focuses on the fighting.
Much of this book is energetically written traditional history, describing battles between kings, though the reader will be hard pressed to recall the warriors and confederations that parade across 400 pages of text. Even so, there are many memorable episodes. The exploits of female warriors stand out: Queen Tomyris of the Scythians twice defeated the Persians, the largest and most powerful empire of the day. Also notable are the magnificent horses that sweated streams of blood because they were infected by parasites. Nomad leaders executed captured Russian princes and Muslim caliphs alike by rolling them up in carpets and trampling them to death with horses (shedding the blood of a ruler on the earth risked upsetting the god of the eternal blue sky, Tengri). They erected towers of skulls from the corpses of massacred civilians.
Harl does not flinch from presenting such gore, but argues that nomads eventually gave up their animist beliefs and violent ways and turned to Buddhism, Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity, Islam or Judaism. They settled and adopted agriculture, establishing new cities along the Silk Road, and shaping the cultures and societies of Greece, Russia, the Middle East, India and China. Kanishka I of the Kushans, for example, converted from animism and turned Buddhism from an Indian religion into a global faith as its missionaries safely travelled on the central sections of the Silk Road to China.
The author credits the nomads with two military revolutions: by 2,000 BC they introduced the horse-pulled chariot from which warriors fired javelins or bows, an innovation that spread across the world from China to Britain. From 1,000 BC the chariot was replaced by mounted horsemen armed with bows. Horse archers with metal stirrups and superior bows were seldom defeated by armies of the urban, literate empires such as the Byzantines and Chinese, who built great walls to keep them out. Harl’s exhaustively researched book will help ensure they rejoin the narrative of world history.
• Marc David Baer is professor of international history at the LSE and author of The Ottomans (Basic).
• Empires of the Steppes: The Nomadic Tribes Who Shaped Civilisation by Kenneth W Harl is published by Bloomsbury (£30). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
