The Mongol age in retrospect

The Mongol conquests, which shook the globe, were of a scope and range never equalled. The Mongols were invading Japan and Java thirty years after their armies stood on the frontiers of Germany and the shores of the Adriatic. Ethnically, the most striking result of the Mongol conquests was the wide dispersal of the Turkish race over Western Asia. The Turkish entry into Islam had begun long before the Mongol age, and the occupation of Baghdad by the Seljuk chief Toghril Beg in 1055 signalized the coming of a third Muslim people, after the Arabs and Persians, who were to dominate the greater part of Dar al-Islam down to the first World War. The Persian dynasties of the Samanids and Buyids were succeeded by the Ghaznavids and Seljuks, and the Mongol period appears in retrospect as but a short break in the series of Turkish regimes.

Ancient Near East History · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History · Linguistics and language evolution