Introduction

Extract

The Mongols as part of popular imagination have acquired the reputation of providing nothing more than a fierce but amusing footnote in history, men on horseback who appeared from nowhere in the thirteenth-century and receded into obscurity a century or so later. As the articles in this volume demonstrate, the popular imagination is un-nuanced and, far from being transitory rogues, the Mongols, and their complex narratives, made a significant impact upon many histories and cultures across the world as they expanded through Asia changing, modifying and absorbing much in their wake.