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protracted discussion of Yangdis move of the capital to Luoyang from out of thatfrontier military center (not until Tang was Changan the center of the world),there is barely a whisper reminding us that just over a century before, the North-ern Wei lord Xiaowen (r.47199) had done much the same thing, for much the

same reasons: to escape the domination of generals in militarized borderlands,and ease transportation of wealth extracted from the richer Chinese lands thatlay south and east.

On page 3 of the introduction, Xiong points out the tendency to focus on theTang and to leave Sui as unstated background. I will cautiously suggest that theauthor does much the same for the dynasty under discussion, leaving as unstatedbackground the social and political welter of which Sui was fundamentally still apart. And in this writers opinion, we cannot fully understand Sui politics, policies,or personalities without placing them in that broader context. The general reader

needs a few defter, broader strokes to understand this age. Nevertheless, Xiongserves the medieval China specialist well, richly fortifying our understanding ofimportant aspects of the state in early seventh-century China by gathering,summarizing, and expanding on a huge body of data. Emperor Yang of the SuiDynasty is a worthy contribution for those studying this period of Chinesehistory.

SCOTT PEARCEWestern Washington University

INNER ASIA

Mongols, Turks, and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the SedentaryWorld. Edited by REUVEN AMITAI and MICHAL BIRAN. Leiden: Brill,

2005. xx, 550 pp. $156.00 (cloth).doi: 10.1017/S0021911807000241

The essays in this ambitious volume, the fruit of a research group on TheInteraction of Nomadic Conquerors with Sedentary People in China and theMiddle East, are a welcome addition to the work on nomads and sedentarypeoples. They cover a huge swath of chronological and geographic territory,from the second millennium BCE in northeastern Asia to contemporaryRussia, China, and Central Asia, but they focus on the Mongols and Turkic-

speaking nomadic groups during the tenth tofi

fteenth centuries CE.The volume is divided into four sections. Part I, Early Contacts, comprisesthree essays. First, Gideon Shelach takes a true comparative approach to under-standing a commonly shared steppe identity (p. 37) among peoples in northeastChina. Shelach taps early and late Xiajiadian archeological data to argue that

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socioeconomic choice was a determinative factor in the rise of pastoralism in thearea. Yuri Pines next presents a much-needed corrective to the usual view thatthe Chinese have always viewed the other in exclusive and racial terms. Heuses Zhou-era sources to argue that an inclusive, culturally determined view of

the other was normative before 221 BCE, and only thereafter did theChinese think in racially exclusive terms. Finally, Askold Ivantchik movesfurther west to describe the Cimmerians, the first Eurasian nomads in AsiaMinor and a group that has not been well studied. Like their more famoussuccessors, the Scythians, they raided rather than migrated permanently to theNear East.

Part II, The Pre-Mongol Period, is also weighted in favor of easternEurasia. Naomi Standen revises our traditional views of the Liao conquest ofnorthern China in 947, arguing persuasively that their failure to conquer all

of northern China was, in fact, a result of Emperor Yel Deguangs primaryconcern with his status. Michal Biran takes an innovative approach in explaining

the unusual phenomenon of the Qara Khitai nomads not adopting the culture oftheir sedentary subjects in the strong Chinese-Liao cultural tradition and theQara Khitais goal of restoring the Liao kingdom. Yehoshua Frenkel thendescribes how Turkic nomadic peoples were viewed in Arabic literature. His isperhaps the best example of the world history approach advocated by theeditors, not least because it surveys the entire western steppe region.

Part III, The Mongol Empire and Its Successors, comprises seven essays.Peter Jackson demonstrates that realpolitik rather than toleration guided Mongolattitudes toward their subjects and enemies. David Morgan revisits the thornyissue of Chinggis Khans legal code and argues provocatively that it was a collec-tion of laws or decrees, aGreat Book ofYasas, rather than a single, fundamentallaw, or Book of the Great Yasa. Hodong Kim reappraises the third Mongolqaan, arguing persuasively that, if viewed from a non-Toluid perspective,Gyg Khan was not the illegitimate and incompetent ruler that we have beenled to believe. Liu Yingsheng adopts a comparative approach in his study of here-tofore relatively neglected YuanChaghadaid relations by using a combination ofChinese and Persian sources. Next, Reuven Amitai proposes that the Ilkhanid

Mongols saw definite advantages in peaceful relations with the Mamluk sultanatein the 1320s, but that settlement ultimately proved disastrous for them. He con-cludes by proposing that the mamluk system actually preserved the fightingability and lan of the nomadic peoples. Nicola Di Cosmo examines the inter-actions of the Italians and Mongols in the Black Sea. He uncovers the activerole of the Mongols in promoting Black Sea trade while also showing that theItalian lack of interest was just as responsible for the drop in long-distancetrade between Europe and China as was the demise of the Pax Mongolica.Finally, Beatrice Manz examines the roles of the Iranians in the Timurid military

and finds, contrary to received wisdom, that the Iranian notables and urbanpopulations were actively involved in the defense of their own cities, evenwhen Turco-Mongolian personnel were also present.

Part IV, Into the Modern Period, concludes this volume with three essaysof broad geographic and chronological scope. First, Elizabeth Endicott argues

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that nomadism in Mongolia is more flexible than most studies have presented,especially if we take the full last eight centuries, rather than only the lastcentury, into account. Moshe Gammer, by contrast, argues that Russia hasexperienced a different type of interaction with nomads than most other Eurasian

states and posits the end of nomadism there. Finally, Anatoly Khazanov andKenneth Shapiro find a similarly bleak view of pastoralism in Central Asia,owing mainly to the loss of traditional forms combined with the blockage ofmore market-oriented forms of pastoralism.

The editors introduce this collection as an example of world and comparativehistorical approaches, and the wide range of the essays will certainly further ourunderstanding of world history. Read together, these essays are also comparative,looking at similar phenomena diachronically and synchronically (p. 3). Someauthors even consciously adopted these approaches. But I was surprised by a

noticeable lack of conversation or comment among the authors and essays,something that would have made this collection hang together better. Thescholarship is first rate, the writing engaging. But this volume reads as a collectionof individual essays rather than a joint effort. One thinks, for example, of narrativethreads that could run among the studies of the Mongols in Russia or those inves-tigating the religious concerns of nomadic peoples. Did any specific comparativeor world historical issues guide this research group beyond the general theme ofnomadicsedentary relations? Apart from this, however, this volume presentssignificant advances in the field of nomadic studies generally and on Mongoland Turkic studies in particular. It is essential reading for anyone interested inthese issues.

MICHAEL C. BROSEUniversity of Wyoming

Lhasa: Streets with Memories. By ROBERT BARNETT. New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 2006. xxix, 219 pp. $24.50 (cloth).doi: 10.1017/S0021911807000253

Beautifully crafted, with graceful, vivid prose, Lhasa: Streets with Memoriespresents an evocative and multilayered account of Lhasa, Tibets capital. Its nineshort chapters interweave several narratives in what Robert Barnett describes asan attempt to scrape a little of the topsoil off the affective history (p. xii) of thecity. The book reads Lhasas streets and architecture as a text through which theaspirations and ideologies of its builders can be excavated and examined. The cityis a palimpsest, with eight distinct architectural styles inscribed on its surface atdifferent times, through specific conjunctures of political, economic, and cultural

forces.This history of Lhasa, read through its changing urban form, is interwoventhroughout the book with another narrative, both more personal and gripping:Barnetts recollections of his own interactions with Lhasa residents, beginningwith the aftermath of the demonstration that he witnessed in October 1987.

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