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| 8190885680 | Nomadic people | People who have no fixed home and move according to the seasons from place to place in search of food, water, and grazing land. The people of central Asia were pastoralists who drove their animals to lands with abundant grass and then moved them along as the animals thinned the vegetation. Two social classes were generated by these people—elites and commoners. These people made their influence felt throughout much of Eurasia as early as classical times, but they became more prominent than ever between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries. | 0 | |
| 8191048545 | Karakorum | The location of the Mongol capital. It is located about 300 kilometers west of the modern Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar. The city symbolized a source of Mongol authority superior to the clan or the tribe. Many thirteenth-century roads led to this location. Guillaume Boucher, the Goldsmith of the Mongolian Steppe, lived here for 15 years, and Flemish missionary William of Rubruck visited here in 1254. | 1 | |
| 8191141687 | Turks | These people never formed a single, homogeneous group but organized themselves into clans and tribes that fought with one another. They spoke related languages, and all were nomads or descendants of nomads. They expanded their influence until they dominated the steppes of central Asia, along with settled societies in Persia, Anatolia, and India. | 2 | |
| 8191183419 | Steppe | One of the vast, usually level and treeless tracts in southeastern Europe or Asia. | 3 | |
| 8191212573 | Yurts | Tents used by nomadic Turkish and Mongol tribes. | 4 | |
| 8191225125 | Kumiss | An alcoholic drink of the nomadic groups of Central Asia made of fermented mare's milk. | 5 | |
| 8191239454 | Shamans | Religious specialists who the Turks believed possessed supernatural powers and who they thought had communicated with the gods and the spirits of nature. | 6 | |
| 8191272939 | Khan | A ruler among the nomads who ruled through the leaders of allied tribes. | 7 | |
| 8191317004 | Seljuk Turks | Large numbers of these people served in Abbasid armies and lived in the Abbasid realm. By the mid-eleventh century, they overshadowed the Abbasid caliphs. These people inflicted a devastating defeat on the Byzantine army at Manzikert in eastern Anatolia and took the Byzantine emperor captive. The peasants of Anatolia often looked upon these people as liberators instead of as conquerors. | 8 | |
| 8191399077 | Abbasid Empire | Cosmopolitan Arabic dynasty (750-1258) that replaced the Umayyads; founded by Abu al-Abbas and reached its peak under Harun al-Rashid. From about the mid-eighth to the mid-tenth century, Turkish people lived mostly on the borders of this realm. By the mid- to late tenth century, large numbers of Seljuk Turks served in armies here and lived in the realm. For the last two centuries of this state, actual governance of it lay in the hands of the Turkish sultans. | 9 | |
| 8191451151 | Persia | A Turkish ruling clan known as the Seljuqs migrated to this area in hopes of improving their fortunes through alliance with Abbasid authorities and service to the caliphate. The Turkish people approached this area much as Germanic peoples had earlier approached the Roman empire. | 10 | |
| 8191575639 | Anatolia | Known as the rich land and breadbasket of the Byzantine empire, the Seljuq Turkish peoples began migrating into this area in large numbers in the early eleventh century. The Turks transformed the area by displacing Byzantine authorities and setting up their own political and social institutions. | 11 | |
| 8191659997 | Tughril Beg | The Seljuq leader who the Abbasid caliph recognized as sultan in 1055. He first consolidated his hold on the Abbasid capital at Baghdad, and then he and his successors extended Turkish rule to Syria, Palestine, and other parts of the realm. | 12 | |
| 8191687916 | Sultan | Term that means chieftain or ruler. | 13 | |
| 8191700550 | Manzikert | In 1071, Seljuq forces inflicted a devastating defeat on the Byzantine army here in eastern Anatolia and took the Byzantine emperor captive. Following this victory, the Seljuqs and other Turkish groups entered Anatolia almost at will. | 14 | |
| 8191746106 | Byzantine Empire | Long-lasting empire centered at Constantinople; it grew out of the end of the Roman empire, carried the legacy of Roman greatness, and was the only classical society to survive into the early modern age; it reached its early peak during the reign of Justinian (483-565). | 15 | |
| 8191774338 | Ghaznavid Turks | This group conducted raids on lucrative sites in northern India. Their principal goal was plunder, but they gradually became more interested in permanent rule. They asserted their authority first over the Punjab and then over Gujarat and Bengal. | 16 | |
| 8191821297 | Mahmud | The leader of the Turks in Afghanistan, he was a determined and ruthless warrior who spent much of his time in the field with his armies. He was a zealous foe of Buddhism and Hinduism and launched frequent raids on shrines, temples, and monasteries. His forces stripped Buddhist and Hindu establishments of their wealth, destroyed their buildings, and often slaughtered their residents and attendants. | 17 | |
| 8191935940 | Sultanate of Delhi | By the thirteenth century, this group of Turks claimed authority over all of India. Several of these made plans to conquer southern India and extend Muslim rule there. They faced constant challenges from Hindu princes in neighboring lands and sometimes had to defend their northern frontiers from new Turkish or Mongol invaders. | 18 | |
| 8192065579 | Mongols | For most of their history, these nomadic peoples lived on the high steppe lands of eastern central Asia and displayed deep loyalty to kin groups organized into families, clans, and tribes. They often allied with Turkish peoples but rarely played a leading role in the organization of states before the thirteenth century. | 19 | |
| 8192076498 | Genghis Khan | He forged the various Mongol tribes into a powerful alliance that built the largest empire the world has ever seen. After bringing all the Mongol tribes into a single confederation, he was proclaimed universal ruler. His policies greatly strengthened the Mongol people. His conquests in central Asia were important because they protected him against the possibility that other nomadic leaders might challenge his rule. By the time of his death, he had united the Mongols, established Mongol supremacy in central Asia, and extended Mongol control to northern China in the east and Persia in the west. | 20 | |
| 8192140592 | Tibet | Region of southwestern China on a high plateau north of the Himalayas and bordering on India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar (Burma); the capital is Lhasa. Genghis Khan attacked the various Turkish people ruling here. | 21 | |
| 8192212438 | Marco Polo | This Venetian explorer traveled extensively through central Asia and China in the late thirteenth century. His book of travel writings is a source of valuable information about the Mongol age. He lived almost two decades at Khubilai Khan's court, praised him for his generosity toward the poor and his efforts to build roads. | 22 | |
| 8192262567 | Khubilai Khan | One of Genghis Khan's grandsons, he was perhaps the most talented of the great conqueror's descendants. The consolidation of Mongol rule in China came during his reign. He ruthlessly attacked enemies, but he also took an interest in cultural matters and worked to improve the welfare of his subjects. He also promoted Buddhism and provided support for Daoists, Muslims, and Christians. | 23 | |
| 8192299864 | Kamikaze | A Japanese term meaning "divine wind" that is related to the storms that destroyed Mongol invasion fleets; the term is symbolic of Japanese isolation and was later taken by suicide pilots in World War II. | 24 | |
| 8192328007 | Yuan Dynasty | This was created by Khubilai Khan in 1279, when he proclaimed himself emperor. It ruled China until its collapse in 1368. | 25 | |
| 8192377476 | The Golden Horde | Mongol tribe that controlled Russia from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. Mongols of this tribe prized the steppes north of the Black Sea as prime pastureland for their horses and maintained a large army on the steppes from which they mounted their raids into Russia. They did not occupy Russia, which they thought of as unattractive land, but they extracted tribute from the Russian cities and agricultural provinces. | 26 | |
| 8192417451 | Ilkhanate of Persia | Mongol state that ruled Persia after abolition of the Abbasid empire in the thirteenth century. Khubilai Khan's brother, Hulegu, established this. It lasted until the last of the Mongol rulers died without an heir in 1335, when it simply collapsed. | 27 | |
| 8192538967 | Tamerlane | During the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, this Turkic-Mongol conqueror built a central Asian empire rivaling that of Genghis Khan. His empire deeply influenced three surviving Turkish Muslim states—the Mughal empire in India, the Safavid empire in Persia, and the Ottoman empire based in Anatolia. He was born as Timur, but since he walked with a limp, people referred to him as Timur-i-lang (Timur the Lame). He was a charismatic leader and a courageous warrior. By 1370, he had extended his authority throughout the khanate of Chaghatai and started to build a magnificent imperial capital in Samarkand. He spent almost his entire life planning and fighting military campaigns. | 28 | |
| 8192625773 | Ottomans | The followers of Osman came to be known as this term. During the 1350s, they gained a big advantage over their Turkish rivals when they established a foothold across the Dardanelles at Gallipoli on the Balkan peninsula. By the 1380s, they had become the most powerful people on the Balkan peninsula, and by the end of the century, they were poised to capture Constantinople and take over the Byzantine empire. They eventually ruled all of Greece and the Balkan region and extended their rule to southwest Asia, southeastern Europe, Egypt, and north Africa. | 29 | |
| 8192742980 | Osman | A Turkish leader who during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries carved a small state for himself in northwestern Anatolia. In 1299, he declared independence from the Seljuq sultan and launched a campaign to build a state at the expense of the Byzantine empire. | 30 | |
| 8192772448 | Mehmed II | In 1453, this sultan captured the city of Constantinople, thus bringing an end to more than 1,000 years of Byzantine rule. He made this city his own capital under the Turkish name of Istanbul. With Istanbul as a base, the Ottomans quickly absorbed the remainder of the Byzantine empire. | 31 |
