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When Mongolians ruled the Middle East

mongol_empire.jpg

The Mongol Empire was founded by Genghis Khan in the first decade of the 1200s. Under the reign of his grandson Kublai Khan, the Empire was the greatest contiguous land empire in history, stretching from the Pacific Ocean to Eastern Europe. In China the period of rule of the Mongol Empire is known as the Yuan Dynasty.

All of which is just an excuse to introduce an animated timeline and map of the Middle East that shows the different powers that have controlled the area since 1400 BC. The image above is a screenshot of the map; you can watch the animation here: Middle Eastern History map.

The different powers illustrated on the map are listed below. If you switch out Mongol Empire for China and Persian Empire for Iran etc., the list seems eerily contemporary: Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, China, Turkey, Europe.

The list of powers is presented with dates as given in the animation linked above

BC

1405 Kingdom of Egypt

1340 Hittite Empire

1050 Kingdom of Israel

721 Assyrian Empire

600 Babylonian Empire

550 Persian Empire

336 Macedonian and Greek Empire

AD

117 Roman Empire

564 Byzantine Empire

610 Sassanid Empire

750 The Caliphate

1100 The Seljuk Empire

1140 The Crusader Kingdoms

1187 Saladin's Empire

1279 Mongol Empire

1700 Ottoman Empire

1912 European Colonialism

1920 Nation states and borders are established

1948 State of Israel is founded

1979 Era of independence

There are currently 6 Comments for When Mongolians ruled the Middle East.

Comments on When Mongolians ruled the Middle East

The Mongol Empire---human beings' disaster

"The Mongol Empire---human beings' disaster"

How so? How was it different from all the western colonialism, or better yet, what the US is doing currently? (Except maybe the Mongols were much less subtle in their conquerings.)

bush for sure deserves all the criticism we can throw at him, but drawing an analogy between US foreign policy and the mongol empire may be stretching things just a little too far, don't you think? Kind of destroys any credibility such criticism would have in the first place.

If you argue that the analogy is inappropriate, please provide your reasoning as how it is inappropriate. Both are groups of people trying to expand their spheres of influence, in order to benefit their own interests. And as I pointed out earlier, the difference is one is more subtle and with better PR (at least among Westerners--Genghis Khan is not considered a villain in Eastern cultures) than the other.

Is the link to the sequence map correct? I keep getting to some kind of game page. Please help.
s

Looks like the original link rotted away. Fixed it to point to another host.

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