This chapter outlines the history of Mongol Central Asia, known as the Chaghadaid Khanate, the least documented but most enduring of the Mongol successor states. Squeezed between the Chinggisid polities, lacking a strong sedentary basis, and home to two competing uluses, the Middle Mongolian Ulus, as the Mongols in Central Asia called themselves, was often plagued by warfare and suffered from “brain drain.” Yet it not only played a leading role in the dissolution of the Mongol Empire, but also introduced a political culture that impacted Central Asia up to the nineteenth century; contributed to the Islamization of eastern Central Asia; was the root of two of the most influential early modern empires, the Timurids and Mughals; and gave its name, Chaghatay, to the Eastern Turkic language. The chapter discusses its political history during the Mongol moment, and briefly reviews its postimperial history and aspects of economy, administration, and culture.

Arabic sources written in the Mamluk Sultanate, in the territories controlled by the Mongols, and elsewhere play an important role in reconstructing the history of the Mongol world empire and its successor states and of their relations with nearby countries. While some of these sources have been known and used since the early nineteenth century, Arabic-language works have became more significant in the study of Mongol history in the last half-century or so, and especially in the last generation, with the proliferation of proper editions of many of these texts. This article surveys the large – but perhaps not fully appreciated – corpus of Arabic works related to Mongolian studies, in the following order: works written before the establishment of the Ilkhanate (c. 1260), those composed in the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria, books originating in Arabic-speaking countries beyond the Mamluk Sultanate, and finally compositions from Mongol-controlled regions, mostly in the western Ilkhanate.

The Epilogue discusses the impact of the Mongol Empire on world history, stressing the role of the Mongols’ nomadic culture and its main features: mobility and redistribution. It refers to the devastation caused by the empire – its reasons, scope, and outcome; the Mongols’ active role in promoting cross-cultural, economic, and religious exchanges; and the geopolitical, ethnic, and institutional transformation it instigated in the different realms (notably China, Iran, Russia, and Central Asia). It concludes with the Mongol contribution to the Age of Exploration, the transition from the medieval to the early modern world, and the eventual decline of nomadic political power.

The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire studies the Mongol Empire from a holistic point of view in its full Eurasian context, putting the Mongols and their nomadic culture at the center. It scrutinizes the Mongol Empire as a multifaceted phenomenon that combined elements from various Asian imperial traditions (steppe, Islamic, Iranian, and Sinitic empires) and created a common imperial culture – political, material, institutional – that has had a broad and enduring impact on world history. The two-volume set comprises a volume about history – political, thematic, regional, and external – and a volume devoted to sources on the empire – literary (in sixteen languages), archaeological, and visual.

The Introduction reviews the raison d’être behind this Cambridge History, its structure, and the state of the field in the study of the Mongol Empire. Finally, it commemorates two contributors, both leading Mongolists, who passed away in 2019, Thomas T. Allsen and David O. Morgan.