Itinerant Kingship outside Europe?

[Båtsman]

Something I know very little about and have read even less on is the practical usage of any form of itinerant kingship outside of Europe. But firstly, what exactly is itinerant kingship? Well, here's what wikipedia says:

An itinerant court was a migratory form of government, common in European kingdoms in the Early Middle Ages. It was an alternative to having a capital city, a permanent political centre from which a kingdom is governed. Especially medieval Western Europe was characterised by a political rule where the highest political authorities frequently changed their location, bringing with them parts of the country's central government on their journey. Such a realm therefore had no real centre, and no permanent seat of government.

The only country/region outside of Europe where I've read something on itinerant kingship was when I read up on Early Modern India a few years ago. All can remember is that the Mughal Empire (and the other big empires on the Indian subcontinent) had a gigantic court procession following the emperor and his royal army (where the two are heavily intertwined and the difference between diplomacy and warfare is very "fuzzy") as he travelled across India and maintained his empire. In any case, from what I can remember, the Arabic term for this form of itinerant kingship begins with an F and translates to "The Circus".

Otherwise I am drawing a complete blank on this, and thus I thought it would be a lovely topic to discuss. And something I have a very specific interest in is pastoral nomadic society, and how nomadic society interacts with sedentary ones. So how does nomadic traditions interact with and influence any concept of itinerant kingship? That would most obviously be with all Islamic empires which weren't in India (seeing as India has no pastoral nomads). And I'm also interested in the Middle East and North Africa before the rise of Islam. @Semper Victor may have covered how the nomads of the Zagros mountains interacted with the ruling monarchy in his monster post on Sassanid Iran, but in that case I must have missed it.

Then there is the Mongols who on the one hand may be the most famous nomads ever, but on the other hand these are people who built Beijing just a generation later. So how did Beijing interact Vis-à-vis the Mongol tradition of nomadism under the Yuans. Likewise there is Qing vs. Ming and what where the differences between Han and Manchu kingship? Am I completely wrong in my perception that Manchuria had a concept of itinerant kingship, or is that just anti-Manchu propaganda?

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

It's about food & poop.

A large court - with all its thousands of courtiers, harem, guards, etc. - is essentially a city unto itself. It cannot stay in the same location for very long. Not only does it quickly eat through all the food in the vicinity, but just as problematic (and often overlooked) they poop up a storm. In pre-sewage days, that means latrines are quickly overflowing, which is not only a health hazard (remember water sources), it is also nearly impossible to maintain by old methods. A large court will pile up the poop faster than it can be scooped & carted off. When it become unbearable, they must move on, and give local palace staff time to clean it up.

 

[Båtsman]

It's about food & poop.

A large court - with all its thousands of courtiers, harem, guards, etc. - is essentially a city unto itself. It cannot stay in the same location for very long. Not only does it quickly eat through all the food in the vicinity, but just as problematic (and often overlooked) they poop up a storm. In pre-sewage days, that means latrines are quickly overflowing, which is not only a health hazard (remember water sources), it is also nearly impossible to maintain by old methods. A large court will pile up the poop faster than it can be scooped & carted off. When it become unbearable, they must move on, and give local palace staff time to clean it up.

Personally, I think the logistical constraints behind the decentralised itinerant kingship is far, far less important than the political ones. If the rulers of a nation decides that a centralised capital is beneficial, a permanent capital will be established and a supply network to feed it will appear. So long as there are rich and influential power-holders residing within the capital, it will in turn see a cadre of artisans and labourers flocking to the capital for a chance to serve those very power-holders. And feeding the capital will not be a problem, if anything the regular business of supplying the capital will by themselves pay for expanding and maintaining the road network leading there just through toll dues.

No, the big constraint is convincing the established power-holders controlling all those regions where the capital isn't located that paying for a far away ruler is beneficial to those regional and local power-holders. An itinerant kingship neatly side-steps that whole business, you don't pay for a distant king and court to rule you - you pay for a king and massive court who pass through you lands at least semi-regularly.

But that is an interesting question though, how much more efficient is ruling from a pre-industrial capital city that is a veritable death-trap for the lower class but which supports a centralised administration, Vs. ruling from an itinerant court?

 

[JodelDiplom]

Personally, I think the logistical constraints behind the decentralised itinerant kingship is far, far less important than the political ones. If the rulers of a nation decides that a centralised capital is beneficial, a permanent capital will be established and a supply network to feed it will appear. So long as there are rich and influential power-holders residing within the capital, it will in turn see a cadre of artisans and labourers flocking to the capital for a chance to serve those very power-holders. And feeding the capital will not be a problem, if anything the regular business of supplying the capital will by themselves pay for expanding and maintaining the road network leading there just through toll dues.

No, the big constraint is convincing the established power-holders controlling all those regions where the capital isn't located that paying for a far away ruler is beneficial to those regional and local power-holders. An itinerant kingship neatly side-steps that whole business, you don't pay for a distant king and court to rule you - you pay for a king and massive court who pass through you lands at least semi-regularly.

But that is an interesting question though, how much more efficient is ruling from a pre-industrial capital city that is a veritable death-trap for the lower class but which supports a centralised administration, Vs. ruling from an itinerant court?

Efficient in which way?

I'm not sure I follow your logic on "it's not logistics, it's about political power"

The Frankish kingdom/empire was a society with only very little cash in its economy. The king could have had all the political power he wanted, and he still wouldn't be able to get useful taxes out of the far flung corners of the realm.

If he set up his capital in Aachen, the Duke of Bavaria wouldn't really have much in to send him? The duke rules over a frontier region populated with peasants and monks, but almost no towns of any note. He has grain and meat and eggs, but asking him to send something durable like cash isn't going to happen. There is not much of a cash economy that he can tax, he can't scrounge up cash for his emperor in Aachen.

You need cash to run a stationary court, because only with cash can you motivate people to come from far away and bring you what you need. The Arab armies of the Islamic conquest knew this and brought a lot of cash with them whenever they went on campaign. The places where their armies set up camp became cities in very short time. Kairouan started out like that, also a number of other cities IIRC. Cash moves goods, and you need goods to be brought to you on a steady basis if you want to rule from a stationary capital.

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

Personally, I think the logistical constraints behind the decentralised itinerant kingship is far, far less important than the political ones. If the rulers of a nation decides that a centralised capital is beneficial, a permanent capital will be established and a supply network to feed it will appear. So long as there are rich and influential power-holders residing within the capital, it will in turn see a cadre of artisans and labourers flocking to the capital for a chance to serve those very power-holders. And feeding the capital will not be a problem, if anything the regular business of supplying the capital will by themselves pay for expanding and maintaining the road network leading there just through toll dues.

No, the big constraint is convincing the established power-holders controlling all those regions where the capital isn't located that paying for a far away ruler is beneficial to those regional and local power-holders. An itinerant kingship neatly side-steps that whole business, you don't pay for a distant king and court to rule you - you pay for a king and massive court who pass through you lands at least semi-regularly.

But that is an interesting question though, how much more efficient is ruling from a pre-industrial capital city that is a veritable death-trap for the lower class but which supports a centralised administration, Vs. ruling from an itinerant court?

Depends when you're talking about. But generally speaking, until the advent of the modern age there wouldn't be many rich & influential power holders in the capital. Wealth & power is in land, and landholding is often hereditary (in Europe, from the 9th Century), so there's really no purpose in hanging out at court. Land is already parceled out, the king has nothing to give you. Only if the monarch is cash rich (which is rare before the modern age, although it varies by place) does he have anything to give. Until then, he is more dependent on you than you are on him.

You could posit that an itinerant court could have a mild supervisory function, but if you track its actual itinerary it is typically not so - it tends to travel relatively short distances (winter to summer palaces and the like). And that's typically about logistics (food & poop).

Powerful men - i.e. landholders - live on their estates, in the countryside, with their own manors and castles, armies and servants, and the less they have to do with the king the better. The king has nothing to offer them.

Towns per se are garbage pails and hardly attractive places to live. Powerful men outside the safety of their domains, without their armed retinues, are vulnerable to ambushes and assassins by rivals in city streets. Only if forced (at pike's point) might they take up residence in towns.

So the critical element to centralization you're overlooking is money - cold hard cash, gold & silver. Unless the king has gold, his power is constrained and dependent on the goodwill of rural lords. How the king gets cash is the trickiest thing in the book. Varies by country.

EDIT: Jodel'd.

 

[Rubidium]

Carolingian-era medieval monarchies were very much about personal interaction between the king and his followers. They issue charters (confirming rights and privileges), they appoint folks to plum positions (both secular and religious), bestow favors and prestige, and they resolve disputes. It has been argued that one of the factors supporting the breakup of the Carolingian empire into various separate kingdoms is that it was to the advantage of the upper nobility to have multiple kings (and thus a more local king to personally interact with), as one emperor was unable to fulfill the needs of his far-flung subjects to personally interact with him.

An itinerant court helped solve this, by making the ruler travel around the country (and thus interact with a bunch of different nobles; some might still follow him around, especially the most important/ambitious/favored, but plenty could stay near their estates and still get a chance to interact with the king in person when he happened to visit).

A good and reasonably readable discussion of rulership and politics in this period would be: Goldberg, Eric Joseph. Struggle for Empire : Kingship and Conflict Under Louis the German, 817-876 Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. Which focuses on the reign of Louis the German (one of Charlemagne's grandsons; if you play the 867 scenario in CK2/3, he's the ruler of East Francia, although he may be called Ludwig).

Most major Islamic powers, even the ones founded by nomadic conquerors, tended to be more focused around major cities (Baghdad, Cordoba, Cairo, etc.) for their political power, even if their military power still leaned heavily on a combination of slave warriors and nomads.

 

[Kovax]

Outside of Europe you have practically every nomadic tribal ruler, including a list of very powerful conquerors over the course of several centuries. A couple of the more successful ones eventually set up "capitals" to handle the "accounting", but they typically didn't live there or do court business from there.

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

Carolingian-era medieval monarchies were very much about personal interaction between the king and his followers. They issue charters (confirming rights and privileges), they appoint folks to plum positions (both secular and religious), bestow favors and prestige, and they resolve disputes. It has been argued that one of the factors supporting the breakup of the Carolingian empire into various separate kingdoms is that it was to the advantage of the upper nobility to have multiple kings (and thus a more local king to personally interact with), as one emperor was unable to fulfill the needs of his far-flung subjects to personally interact with him.

An itinerant court helped solve this, by making the ruler travel around the country (and thus interact with a bunch of different nobles; some might still follow him around, especially the most important/ambitious/favored, but plenty could stay near their estates and still get a chance to interact with the king in person when he happened to visit).

A good and reasonably readable discussion of rulership and politics in this period would be: Goldberg, Eric Joseph. Struggle for Empire : Kingship and Conflict Under Louis the German, 817-876 Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. Which focuses on the reign of Louis the German (one of Charlemagne's grandsons; if you play the 867 scenario in CK2/3, he's the ruler of East Francia, although he may be called Ludwig).

Most major Islamic powers, even the ones founded by nomadic conquerors, tended to be more focused around major cities (Baghdad, Cordoba, Cairo, etc.) for their political power, even if their military power still leaned heavily on a combination of slave warriors and nomads.

If there are goodies to give away. The Carolingian court was unique in that all the land fiefs were still in the king's hand to distribute periodically. So, yeah, you hang out at court for the spoils. But once landholding became hereditary (by Quierzy in 877), there is no more need for him. The Carolingians collapsed within ten years of Quierzy - if there is no more land to give away, there is no more need for him, the local lords are now in charge.

Bishoprics (unlike countships) were still in his power to hand out - this is what the Ottonians realized and the building bricks of their kingship. Until the investitures controversy made it clear that the Pope had something to say about that.

Kingship needs gifts to buy loyalty. Whether the temple & trade goods of Babylonians and Cherokee, or land fiefs of the Carolingians, or raid plunder & tax revenues from the Caliphs, or cash pensions and salaries from early modern monarchies. A king without gifts is useless and will be ignored.

 

[mayorqw]

I remember listening to a podcast on Morocacn history that discussed the itinerant court in 16th, 17th and 18th-century Morocco. I am trying to find the specific episode, but it essentially touched on several functions this nomadic capital played that have already been introduced by other posters: spreading out the burden of supplying the court, maintaining control and personal ties to magnates in far-flung regions, and collecting taxes* and other obligations.

*To my knowledge, Morocco - with an Islamic fiscal structure - didn't have what we would call 'taxes' in the modern Western sense, but I assume that the hosts meant the various dues and tolls (plus the jizya?)

 

[viola]

I recall that the Achaemenid Empire had multiple capitals with the court moving across them.

 

[Lord Tim]

I recall that the Achaemenid Empire had multiple capitals with the court moving across them.

Variously Persepolis, Ecbatana, Susa, Pasargadae and sometimes Babylon. To be fair, the "Capital" was where the King of Kings was, at any one time, and there was not only the regular seasonal movement between the cities I mentioned but also campaigns where the KoK would establish a temporary capital wherever they went - Memphis, iirc, was a temporary capital during one conquest of Egypt.

Further north-east, and somewhat later, you have the Kushan Empire. It's not quite certain how that operated but at least four cities are identified as the capital and not at different times with twin capitals being known ~(Begram and Mathura being the traditional Summer and Winter capitals). And the Kushan were a nomad dynasty that took over power in the area in the 2nd century BCE, and may have retained in the early years some of those traditions. Although multiple capitals are also a tradition of the Achaemenids who ruled the area and aren't unknown in India, so maybe that's the reason.

There's an argument that some Roman emperors - Hadrian would be a very notable example - ran itinerant courts. Hadrian certainly spent a lot of time travelling around the empire, much more than he spent in Rome.