Voice and song in early encounters between Latins, Mongols, and Persians, c1250–ca1350

Abstract

For a global history of music, the Mongol age affords considerable opportunities for gaining early insights into cultural encounters and interactions between the distant peoples of Eurasia. Even if medieval Europeans-a term of convenience used here to denote a loosely associated group of peoples from the far west Eurasia-operated from a position of commercial inferiority compared to the sophisticated trade networks of Asia (Abu-Lughod, 1989: 154), cultural contacts during the Mongol age resulted in an exchange of ideas that Timothy May (2012: 22) has termed the 'Chinggis Exchange,' a Eurasian analogue to the trans-Atlantic Colombian Exchange. According to Morris Rossabi (2010: 3), The Mongol age marked a major step in the direction of truly global history. Europeans reached Asia for the first time, and economic and cultural developments on one continent had reverberations on the other. The so-called Pax Mongolica extended across Eurasia, and, although it was not as peaceful as its name implies, it enabled craftsmen, merchants, and missionaries to travel from Italy and France to China.