The Mongols would often raze entire cities to the ground in retaliation for the execution of their ambassadors, and invaded and destroyed the Khwarezmid Empire after their ambassadors had been mistreated.

By 1219, the empire had fallen to the Mongols, led by Genghis Khan.

The princes of southern and eastern Russia had to pay tribute to the Mongols of the Golden Horde, commonly called Tatars ; but in return they received charters authorizing them to act as deputies to the khans.

Ibn Battuta joined the royal caravan for a while, then turned north on the Silk Road to Tabriz, the first major city in the region to open its gates to the Mongols and by then an important trading centre as most of its nearby rivals had been razed by the Mongol invaders.

Abu Sa ' id's territories had subsequently collapsed due to a fierce civil war between the Persians and Mongols.

Among the Turks and Mongols, he was astonished at the way women behaved, remarking that on seeing a Turkish couple, and noting the woman's freedom of speech, he had assumed that the man was the woman's servant, but he was in fact her husband.

The Khwarazmians were nomadic Turks from central Asia, who had recently been displaced by the Mongols further to the east and were now residing in Mesopotamia.

Hethum I of Armenia and Bohemond VI of Antioch had already submitted to the Mongols as vassals.

After the fall of Liao Dynasty in 1125, the Mongols became a leading tribe on the steppe and also had power in Northern China.

The Mongols, in particular the Borjigin, had their holiest Tengriist shrine on Mount Burkhan Khaldun where their ancestor Borte Chinua ( Blue Wolf ) and Goo Maral ( Beautiful Doe ) had given birth to them.

By 1241, having conquered large parts of Russia, the Mongols continued the invasion of Europe with a massive three-pronged advance, following the fleeing Cumans, who had established an uncertain alliance with King Bela IV of Hungary.

The Hungarians and Poles had responded to the mobile threat by extensive fortification-building, army reform in the form of better armoured cavalry, and refusing battle unless they could control the site of the battlefield to deny the Mongols local superiority.

Turkish peoples had founded a number of principalities after the demise of the Anatolian Sultanate of Rum, after its defeat by the Ilkhanate Mongols.

The Mongols were then free to lay siege without interference of the field army as it had been destroyed ... At the siege of Aleppo, Hulegu used twenty catapults against the Bab al-Iraq ( Gate of Iraq ) alone.

By this time the Mongols had subjugated most of continental Asia.

Russian Orientalist art was largely concerned with the areas of Central Asia that Russia was conquering during the century, and also in historical painting with the Mongols who had dominated Russia for much of the Middle Ages, who were rarely shown in a good light.

The Mongols had seized control of religious and civil power in Tibet in the 1630s and established Gelugpa as the state religion.

By 1450, the Tatar language had become fashionable in the court of the Grand Prince of Moscow, Vasily II, who was accused of excessive love of the Tatars and their speech, and many Russian noblemen adopted Tatar surnames ( for example, a member of the Veliamanov family adopted the Turkic name " Aksak " and his descendents were the Aksakovs ) Many Russian boyar ( noble ) families traced their descent from the Mongols or Tatars, including Veliaminov-Zernov, Godunov, Arseniev, Bakhmetev, Bulgakov ( descendents of Bulgak ) and Chaadaev ( descendents of Genghis Khan's son Jagatay ).

In the thirteenth century they made a stout resistance to the Mongol conquerors, and though driven into the mountains they long continued their forays on the tracts subjected to the Tartar dynasty that settled on the Wolga, so that the Mongols had to maintain posts with strong garrisons to keep them in check.

Because the Mongols had dominated the trade routes, it allowed more trade to come in and out of the region.

The 13th century also saw attempts at a Franco-Mongol alliance, with exchange of ambassadors and ( failed ) attempts at military collaboration in the Holy Land during the later Crusades, though eventually the Mongols in the Ilkhanate, after they had destroyed the Abbasid and Ayyubid dynasties, eventually themselves converted to Islam, and signed the 1323 Treaty of Aleppo with the surviving Muslim power, the Egyptian Mamluks.

He made peace with the Tanguts, who had been allied with the Mongols.

According to Yuanshi, the official history of the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols militarily subdued the Guwei ( 骨嵬, Gǔwéi ), and by 1308, all inhabitants of Sakhalin had surrendered to the Mongols.

He led two embassies to the Mongols: the first carried letters from Pope Innocent IV and the second bore gifts and letters from Louis IX of France to Güyük Khan.

He found Christian prisoners from Germany in the heart of " Tartary " ( at Talas ), and was compelled to observe the ceremony of passing between two fires, as a bringer of gifts to a dead Khan, gifts which were of course treated by the Mongols as evidence of submission.

Historical accounts from medieval Europe detail the use of infected animal carcasses, by Mongols, Turks and other groups, to infect enemy water supplies.

Scholars such as Frederick W. Mote argue that the wide drop in numbers reflects an administrative failure to record rather than an actual decrease ; others such as Timothy Brook argue that the Mongols created a system of enserfment among a huge portion of the Chinese populace, causing many to disappear from the census altogether ; other historians like William McNeill and David Morgan argue that the Bubonic Plague was the main factor behind the demographic decline during this period.

Chinese soldiers fighting under the Mongols appear to have used hand cannon in Manchurian battles during 1288, a date deduced from archaeological findings at battle sites.

The spread of gunpowder across Asia from China is widely attributed to the Mongols.

Led by Ghengis Khan, the Mongols were a group of steppe nomads that established a decentralized empire that, at its height, extended from China in the east to Black and Baltic seas in Europe.

During the late 13th century and first half of the 14th century, Chinese under the Mongol-controlled Yuan Dynasty were not allowed to enter higher posts of government ( reserved for Mongols or other ethnic groups from Central Asia ), and the Imperial examination was ceased for the time being.

The Mongols held Russia and Volga Bulgaria in sway from their western capital at Sarai, one of the largest cities of the medieval world.

Fleeing from the Mongols, they reached the borders of Hungary in the 1100s.

from: 1237 till: 1240 text: Mongols

Three prominent proto-Mongol groups split from the Xianbei, as recorded by the Chinese histories: the Nirun ( claimed by some to be the Avars ), the Khitan and the Shiwei ( a sub-tribe called the " Shiwei Menggu " is held to be the origin of the Genghisid Mongols ).

After the Khitans left Mongolia the Shiwei Mongols rose to prominence, when from the 1130s there were reciprocally hostile relations between the successive khans of the Khamag Mongol confederation ( Khaidu, Khabul Khan and Ambaghai Khan ) and the emperors of the Jin dynasty.

With the expansion of the Mongol Empire, the Mongols settled over almost all Eurasia and carried on military campaigns from the Adriatic Sea to Java and from Japan to Palestine.

The original religion of the Mongols from the time of the Donghu was Tengriism.

Mongols were also exposed to Zoroastrianism ( Qormusta Tengri is still worshipped ), Manicheism, Nestorianism, Islam and Catholicism from the west.

Some of the Mongols today who exhibit some slight Caucasoid features most likely stem from historical intermixing with ancient Central Asian and Siberian Europoids, as opposed to recent intermixing with Slavics and other Europeans.

The first recorded inhabitants of the area are some 50, 000 people seeking refuge in Macau from invading Mongols in 1277, during the Southern Song Dynasty.

Mongols distinguish Gobi from desert proper, although the distinction is not always apparent to outsiders unfamiliar with the Mongolian landscape.

In addition, the Turkic population of Osman's emirate were constantly reinforced by a flood of refugees, fleeing from the Mongols.

The Manchu court keenly aware its own minority status reinforced a strict policy of racial segregation between the Manchus and Mongols from Han Chinese for fear of being sinicized by the latter.

Han Chinese and Mongols were banned from settling in Manchuria.