CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Ning, Ya |
|---|---|
| Title | The Reception and Management of Gifts in the Imperial Court of the Mongol Great Khan, from the early thirteenth century to 1368 |
| Summary | This thesis investigates a pivotal aspect of Mongol court culture, the reception and management of gifts. The spatial and temporal framework is set within the imperial court of the great khans residing in Karakorum and Khanbaliq from the early thirteenth century to 1368. Based on the critical analysis of multilingual written primary sources, Chinese and Latin in original, Persian, Mongolian, and others in translations, as well as visual materials, this thesis presents an inner view of the mechanism and performance of gift-giving in the Mongol imperial court. Methodologically, inspired by the concept “social life of things” and “object biography” developed by cultural anthropologists Arjun Appadurai and Igor Kopytoff, this thesis sketches three major stages of the biographies of gifts: 1) from where, by whom and what kinds of gifts were sent to the Mongol imperial court, viz. the network of gifts; 2) under what ritual and spatial context, these gifts were presented in the court; 3) after the reception, in what place and under by whom these gifts were kept, based on what rules they were distributed, and in what way there were consumed, in other words, the afterlives of gifts. In contrast to the traditional scholarship stressing the avarice and excess of the Mongols in demanding gifts, this thesis argues the Mongols practiced a well-set protocol regarding the reception and management of gifts in the imperial court. This protocol was applied in the diplomatic encounters, further embodied in the ritual occasions such as the enthronement of great khan, the birthday celebration of the great khan as well as the New Year’s celebration, and attested in the repository, (re-) distribution, and consumption of gifts. Additionally the Mongol khatuns notably participated in the reception, distribution and consumption of gifts. Overall, the Mongol court practices of give-giving is a continuation of the centuries-long Central Eurasian court traditions, in terms of power mechanisms, essentially no alien to their counterparts. |
| Supervisor | Nagy, Balázs; Laszlovszky, József |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/ning_ya.pdf |
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