Karabalgasun and Karakorum: Nomad Cities as Means of Communnication between Nomad Elites and the Multicultural Subjects

This paper introduces the phenomenon of urbanism in the context of the medieval empires of the steppe from a historical archaeological perspective. Several of the Inner Asian empires that emerged from predominantly nomadic societies developed some degree of urbanization. However, it seems inappropriate to regard this as a transition from nomadic to sedentary societies. On the contrary, we argue that the cities of these polities represent a specific type of urbanism that could only exist in this form in a nomad environment and served to facilitate interactions between the nomad elites and their often-sedentary subjects, allies and enemies. In this paper we present some of the archaeological evidence from two of these sites: Karabalgasun, the Uyghur capital from around 745 until 840 and Karakorum, which was allegedly founded 1220 by Genghis Khan and came to be known as capital of the Mongol Empire. In the comparison of the archaeological remains and the representation of these sites in the written sources of different cultures lie the hints that provide an insight into the purposes these cities served for their builders.

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