How did a steppe power learn to conquer cities?
From the headwaters of the Onon to the sea off Kyushu in seventy-five years. Not a story about how good the cavalry were — a story about what a steppe state did every time it met something it could not do.
About 10 min1206 CE – 1281 CE9 cited sources
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What you will follow
This guided story moves the same world map through 15 sourced scenes. It begins at the opening rather than dropping you into an unexplained year.
How to read the map: The map uses discrete, approximate border snapshots. A narrated year may use the closest available snapshot, and schematic arrows show relationships rather than precise routes.
Related subjects on the map
- Mongol conquest of China
- Mongol conquest of Khwarazm and West Asia
- Mongol invasion of eastern Europe
- Mongol invasions of Japan
Sources used by this story
- Timothy May, The Mongol Conquests in World History (London: Reaktion, 2012).
- David Morgan, The Mongols, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).
- Michal Biran, Chinggis Khan (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007).
- Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221-1410 (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2005).
- Thomas T. Allsen, Mongol Imperialism: The Policies of the Grand Qan Mongke in China, Russia, and the Islamic Lands, 1251-1259 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
- Reuven Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Ilkhanid War, 1260-1281 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
- Morris Rossabi, Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
- Thomas D. Conlan, In Little Need of Divine Intervention: Takezaki Suenaga's Scrolls of the Mongol Invasions of Japan (Ithaca: Cornell East Asia Series, 2001).
- Ulf Buntgen and Nicola Di Cosmo, 'Climatic and environmental aspects of the Mongol withdrawal from Hungary in 1242 CE', Scientific Reports 6 (2016).