Nomad horsemen on the move
I have been working on the history of the steppes of Central Asia recently and looking at the interaction between the nomadic and sedentary world.
To the naked eye, the former looks completely chaotic: nomad tribes were famous for their vicious and savage lifestyles, as different as night and day to the civilisation of cities and towns. The Persians had names for this: Touran, for the world of disorder; and Ouran, for the world of slippers, country clubs and a man was as good as his word. It gives us the name of one of today's popular countries by the way - Iran.
But as is usually the case with history, things are never quite what they seem.
I've been looking at the great tribal movements in the Middle Ages and particularly at the Mongols and the way they came to dominate cities, states and regions that had been greatly admired for their nice table manners, clever lawyers and poets with a neat turn of phrase (one of my bugbears, by the way, is just how bad a lot of surviving medieval poetry is - but that's another story).
The other night, though, the light-bulb came on when I watched Real Madrid and then Barcelona being dismantled by German teams on successive evenings. The excitement was partly about the football itself, but mainly at the way two powerhouses of European football were swept away with barely a whimper. The much-heralded and admired tiki-taki of Spanish football - admired across the world and assumed to be dominant - was swatted away like a fly.
To the naked eye, the former looks completely chaotic: nomad tribes were famous for their vicious and savage lifestyles, as different as night and day to the civilisation of cities and towns. The Persians had names for this: Touran, for the world of disorder; and Ouran, for the world of slippers, country clubs and a man was as good as his word. It gives us the name of one of today's popular countries by the way - Iran.
But as is usually the case with history, things are never quite what they seem.
I've been looking at the great tribal movements in the Middle Ages and particularly at the Mongols and the way they came to dominate cities, states and regions that had been greatly admired for their nice table manners, clever lawyers and poets with a neat turn of phrase (one of my bugbears, by the way, is just how bad a lot of surviving medieval poetry is - but that's another story).
The other night, though, the light-bulb came on when I watched Real Madrid and then Barcelona being dismantled by German teams on successive evenings. The excitement was partly about the football itself, but mainly at the way two powerhouses of European football were swept away with barely a whimper. The much-heralded and admired tiki-taki of Spanish football - admired across the world and assumed to be dominant - was swatted away like a fly.
Civilisation being swept away
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Good with the off-side trap
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It was the same with the Mongols. The great empires of China and Persia went up in a puff of smoke, demolished without throwing a punch in self-defence. Kiev, Novgorod and the cities of Russia were smashed, one after another. Europe buckled at the knees. It was like an imperious procession to the final - the equivalent of not conceding a single goal in any round, and scoring more than any other team had done in history in the process.
But it was the triumph of another set of nomads from Central Asia that I've been tracking with even more interest: the Mamluks. These were men captured on the steppes and sold into slavery in Egypt, in due course overthrowing the leadership and taking control for themselves. At Ayn Jalut in 1260, the Mongols and the Mamluks met in battle with an enormous amount at stake. The former were fighting for world dominance; the latter were fighting for their lives. (As a neat side note, the implications for Christianity and Islam hung in the balance - there was everything to play for, as the Crusaders looking on realised only too well)
But it was the triumph of another set of nomads from Central Asia that I've been tracking with even more interest: the Mamluks. These were men captured on the steppes and sold into slavery in Egypt, in due course overthrowing the leadership and taking control for themselves. At Ayn Jalut in 1260, the Mongols and the Mamluks met in battle with an enormous amount at stake. The former were fighting for world dominance; the latter were fighting for their lives. (As a neat side note, the implications for Christianity and Islam hung in the balance - there was everything to play for, as the Crusaders looking on realised only too well)
Location of Champions League Final 1260
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Scene for the epic showdown 2013
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The Champions' League Final at Wembley Stadium later this month when Borussia Dortmund meet Bayern Munich is unlikely to be quite so eventful - for one thing, the winning captain at Ayn Jalut was assassinated by his own team after the battle.
But like the battle between the Mongols and the Mamluks, the final is not so much a confrontation between two teams in an epic battle as the triumph of a system. Spain and the Spanish league teams might have dominated in the past; but history counts for nothing when it comes to the battlefield - or the football field.
But like the battle between the Mongols and the Mamluks, the final is not so much a confrontation between two teams in an epic battle as the triumph of a system. Spain and the Spanish league teams might have dominated in the past; but history counts for nothing when it comes to the battlefield - or the football field.
Oh, and I should probably admit that I've had a soft spot for nomads since I was an student. They are not chaotic at all in fact - if you can work them out, they're like a bunch of extremely vicious accountants on a blood-curdling away day: you might not like them, but they do know what they are doing....
Blood-curdling and ruthless
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Terrifying with numbers
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