Reading path · 9 stops

Empires of the Steppe

How mounted nomads built some of the largest states in history, from the Xiongnu to Timur.

The grasslands stretching from Mongolia to the Black Sea produced a distinctive kind of empire: mobile, built on horses and herds, held together by charismatic leaders and tribute rather than bureaucracy. Steppe powers repeatedly humbled settled neighbours, extracted silk and grain from them and controlled the trade passing between them. This path traces that tradition from the Xiongnu confederation that confronted Han China, through the Turkic khaganates, to Genghis Khan's world empire and its heirs.

Suits the Strategist · the Timekeeper

  1. 1 · Profile · 318 BCE – 36 BCEXiongnu EmpireThe first great steppe empire of eastern Eurasia, united by Modu Chanyu around 209 BCE, forced Han China into decades of appeasement.
  2. 22 · Encyclopedia · InstitutionHeqinThe 'peace through kinship' arrangement of annual gifts and Han brides that bought peace from the Xiongnu after the Battle of Baideng.
  3. 3 · Profile · 546 CE – 744 CEGokturk EmpireFounded by Bumin in 552, the first state to bear the name Türk managed Silk Road commerce and left the Orkhon Inscriptions.
  4. 4 · Profile · 650 CE – 969 CEKhazar KhaganateA western steppe power poised between Byzantium and the caliphate, notable for its religious pluralism and its rulers' conversion to Judaism.
  5. 5 · Encyclopedia · Person · c. 1162–1227Genghis KhanTemüjin unified the rival Mongol and Turkic tribes and was proclaimed Genghis Khan at a kurultai in 1206.
  6. 6 · Profile · 1206 CE – 1368 CEMongol EmpireDecimal units, promotion by merit and the yam relay system carried Mongol armies from China to Legnica and Mohi by 1241.
  7. 77 · Encyclopedia · InstitutionYasaThe body of Mongol customary law that Genghis Khan's heirs, Chagatai above all, enforced across the conquered lands.
  8. 8 · Profile · 1225 CE – 1500 CEChagatai EmpireThe Central Asian appanage of Genghis Khan's second son shows the lasting tension between nomadic tradition and the sedentary Silk Road cities.
  9. 9 · Encyclopedia · Person · 1336–1405TimurRising within the Chagatai Khanate, Timur used the Mongol framework of legitimacy to build an empire from Anatolia to the borders of China.

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