Abstract:

Modern scholarship suggests that a cold period caused crises in the 11th century causing the Turkmen and Pechenegs to migrate southwards and westwards (Bulliet 2009, Ellenblum 2011, El-Hibri 2021). In conflict with this narrative, a diverse group of proxy records from Lake Gölcuk (Anatolia), the Aral Sea, Lake Balkhash (Kazakhstan), the Plotnikovo Mire (Russia), and Lake Ayakum (Northern Tibetan Plateau) show dry conditions during the eleventh century. My paper will propose a middle ground between the paleoenvironmental and human evidence with a discussion of how the Seljuks and Qarakhanids structured their economies in ways that allowed adaptation to the dry period. These cases challenge earlier crisis narratives of the eleventh century while considering environmental factors when analyzing the administrative systems of these two mobile pastoralist states. This period saw the Turkification and Islamization of much of Central Asia and the Middle East as well as the institutional development of Sufism and waqf, thus, understanding the connections between environment and society of this period develops our knowledge of Central Asian history over the long durée.