Anne F. Broadbridge

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Professor Broadbridge is working on her third book, Women, Men, Power and Prestige in the Medieval Middle East, which addresses the way Turkish military slaves (mamluks) and their Turkish or Mongol wives together sought to create lasting dynasties in Arabic-speaking Muslim Egypt despite a political system that favored a one-generation Turkish elite.

Her second book, Women and the Making of the Mongol Empire (Cambridge, 2018), investigates the impact of Chinggis Khan’s mother, wives, daughters, and daughters-in-law on the creation, daily administration, and military expansion of the famous Mongol Empire, which is widely known as the largest contiguous land empire ever.

Her research interests include the Mamluk Sultanate, the Mongol Empire, and Temür (Tamerlane), as well as ideology, legitimacy, diplomacy, and women in history. Her first book, Kingship and Ideology in the Islamic and Mongol Worlds (Cambridge, 2008), examines the conflicting ideas of kingship that the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt and Syria exchanged through diplomacy with Mongol and Turkish rulers in Southern Russia, Central Asia and Iran.

Her articles have covered topics including women and gender under Mongol rule (2023, 2022 (two articles), 2017); Chinggis Khan’s murdered daughter (2023); Mamluk-Temürid relations (2024), diplomatic careers among Mamluks and Mongols (2019); the Mongol queen Töregene as an unexpected model of leadership (2018); the political careers of in-law families in Genghis Khan’s empire (2016); a case of Temürid-Mamluk espionage (2010); the impulse towards bringing family from home among the Mamluk elite (2008); diplomatic conventions in Egypt (2007); apostasy trials in Egypt and Syria (2006); Islamic monarchy (2004); the influence of the North African scholar Ibn Khaldun on Mamluk and Ottoman historical writing (2003); Mamluk legitimacy and the Mongols (2001) and academic rivalry and patronage in Egypt (1998).

Her two Ted-Ed animated shorts, “Day in the Life of a Mongolian Queen” and “The Rise and Fall of the Mongol Empire” have together reached over 6 million views.

Professor Broadbridge was a Lilly Teaching Fellow in 2003-04, won the College Outstanding Teachers Award in 2004-05, was nominated five or six times for the Distinguished Teaching Award and won it in 2020, and won the Manning Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2021.

Professor Broadbridge is not accepting new graduate student advisees at this time.

• Third monograph (in progress): Women, Men, Power and Prestige in the Medieval Middle East.
• “The Dynastic Impulse: Mamluk Husbands, Nomadic Wives and Family Ambitions in the Early Sultanate.” In Festschrift for Professor Reuven Amitai, Mamluk Studies Review 26 (2025)
• “Daughters, Consort Families and the Military.” In Chapter 5 (Administration and Political Structure), The Mongol World. Edited by Tim May and Michael Hope Routledge, 2022.
• “Consort Families in the Successor Khanates.” In Chapter 6 (Gender and Sexuality), The Mongol World. Edited by Tim May and Michael Hope (Routledge, 2022).
• “Princess Al Altan, Queen of the Uighurs and sister to Grand Khan Ögedei: Why and how did she die?” in Festschrift for Paul D. Buell in Honor of his 70 th Birthday. Edited by Timothy May. Brill, 2022.
• Published online, January 2019. “Day in the Life of a Mongolian Queen.” Ted-Ed animated short video. 1.8 million views as of November 14, 2022. https://ed.ted.com/lessons/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-mongolian-queen-anne-f-broadbridge.
• Published online, August 2019. “The Rise and Fall of the Mongol Empire.” Ted-Ed animated short video. 4.1 million views as of November 14, 2022. https://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-mongol-empire-anne-f-broadbridge
• Published June 2019: Interview on Mongol women with All About History magazine.
• “Toregene, Imperial Widow in the Mongol Empire in the 1240s: Opposing her husband’s will on behalf of her son.” In Historians on Leadership and Strategy: Case Studies from Antiquity to Modernity. Edited by Martin Gutmann. Springer. 233-254. Published online, October 2019; print edition published December 2019.
• “Mothers of the Mongol Empire.” In History Today, Volume 69, Issue 4, April 2019.
• “Careers in Diplomacy among Mamluks and Mongols, 1260-1341.” In  Proceedings of the “Mamluk Cairo, a Crossroad for Embassies,” Conference, 6-8 September 2012, Liège, Belgium. Brill, 2019. 
• “The Timurids and Their Extra-Dynastic Affairs: The Mamluk Sultanate.” In The Timurid Empire: A Handbook. Edited by John Woods and Evrim Binbaş, Muslim Empires and Dynasties (Brill, 2024?).
• Women and the Making of the Mongol Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
• “Marriage, Family and Politics: The Ilkhanid-Oirat Connection.” In The Mongols and Post-Mongol Asia: Studies in Honour of David O. Morgan. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Special edition, edited by Timothy May and Peter Jackson, 2016.
• “Spy or Rebel? The Curious Incident of the Temürid Sulṭān-Ḥusayn’s Defection to the Mamluks at Damascus in 1400-01/803.” In Mamluk Studies Review  XIV (2010): 29-42.
• Kingship and Ideology in the Islamic and Mongol Worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 
• “Sending Home for Mom and Dad: The Extended Family Impulse in Mamluk Politics.” Mamluk Studies Review  12 (2008): 1-18. 
• “Diplomatic Conventions in the Mamluk Sultanate.” Annales Islamologiques  41 (2007): 97-118. 
• “Apostasy Trials in Eighth/Fourteenth Century Egypt and Syria: A Case Study.” In The History and Historiography of Central Asia: a Festschrift for John E. Woods. Ed. Judith Pfeiffer and Sholeh A. Quinn in collaboration with Ernest Tucker. (Wiesbaden, 2006): 363-82. 
• “Monarchy, Islamic.” Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz. Charles Scribner’s Sons (2004): 4:1494-96. 
• “Royal Authority, Justice and Order in Society: The Influence of Ibn Khaldun on the Writings of Maqrizi and Ibn Taghribirdi.” Mamluk Studies Review  7 ii (2003): 231-45. 
• “Mamluk legitimacy and the Mongols: the Reigns of Baybars and Qalawun.” Mamluk Studies Review 5 (2000): 91-118.
• “Academic Rivalry and the Patronage System: al-Maqrizi, al-Ayni and Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani.” Mamluk Studies Review  3 (1999): 85-107.