From Mongol Empire to Qazaq Juzder: Studies on the Steppe political cycle (13th-18th centuries)

This dissertation is devoted to the study of the central Eurasian pastoral nomadic polities of the 13th-18th centuries, with the particular aim of revealing the political evolutionary process of the Qazaq Khanate in the Steppe. The study views the entire nomadic history of central Eurasia in the period as a coherent nomadic cycle that began with Mongolian tribes' regrouping themselves into one political power--the Mongol empire--at the turn of the 12th-13th centuries. The fluid resources--livestock--shaped the pastoral nomadic society, its political institutions and controlled its ascendance and decay.; This fluid infrastructure manifested itself through the process of material redistribution achieved by the interaction of two inherent pastoral nomadic mechanisms: (1) the nomadic disposition of territory, livestock and population; (2) raiding held against the outside nomadic and sedentary communities. The first was consisted of individual property inheritance and the state conducted disposition. The second mechanism, the "raiding," alternated with the first periodically to balance and enhance its process.; Thus, the individual upon claimed khanship would extend the family inheritance to the state level on the one hand; and on the other, he led centrally-directed wars on neighbors to maintain a material flow. However, in the wake of the growth of individual power from their appanages and an ensued conflict would develop into reciprocal raids that would eventually replace coordinated war to become a primary form for material distribution.; If a rapid and continuous tendency toward political centralization characterized the development of the Eurasian steppe as a whole in the first half of this nomadic cycle (1206-1227), a gradual and uninterrupted disintegration came to dominate the second half of what I have termed Mongol cycle (1227-1723), in which a united Mongol empire saw itself dissolve into several rival political factions which in their turn continued to disintegrate into smaller replicas until the Qazaqs disintegrated into three geographical, economical, political and genealogical divisions--Juzder.