From Turco-Mongolian Dual Kingship to Power Sharing: Questions of Theory and Practice

Date: 

Wednesday, December 5, 2018, 5:00pm

Location: 

Harvard University, CGIS-South Building, Belfer Case Study Room S020 730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge MA 02138

*(Please note room change.)* 

The Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies presents the

2018 Joseph Fletcher Memorial Lecture:

From Turco-Mongolian Dual Kingship to Power Sharing: Questions of Theory and Practice

By Professor İsenbike Togan, Boğaziçi University

Political legitimacy in the Inner Asian world has been understood as arising from compound origins and as being distributed across multiple centers. To sustain their rule, nomadic conquerors had to calibrate a position amid various nodes of power, arriving at an equilibrium often seen as a balance between the sacred and the mundane. This lecture by one of the world’s foremost experts on the history of the Altaic world explores the nature of Turco-Mongolian kingship seen through the historical and epic literature of the steppe peoples, asking how nomadic regimes addressed this challenge in radically differing contexts.

Future Events: Inner Asian and Altaic Studies Lecture Series 2018-19