Even in decline, the Turks remained formidable fighters—their problem was internal politics, not military ineffectiveness, a combination that echoes Herodotus’s assessment of the Scythians. This similarity is no accident, as it reflects the continuity of factors shaping the historical experience of steppe nomads from their earliest appearance in written records down to the eleventh century. Nomadic influence waxed and waned—peaks of nomadic conquering activity characterized both the beginning and the end of the period 400-1100, and there had been many earlier periods of nomadic incursion, as this chapter has shown—but the threat of nomadic military action was a constant for rulers of sedentary civilizations that bordered the steppes. As a result, the nomadic role in ongoing cultural exchanges throughout Eurasia can hardly be overstated. And the pinnacle of nomadic conquest was yet to come: The thirteenth century campaigns of chingiz Khan’s Mongols are detailed in Chapter 13. But, as the Mongol leader’s title shows, his empire stood in direct line of succession to the nomadic imperial traditions of the Turkish confederations: Khan is simply an alternate rendition of Qaghan.
Adshead, S. A. M. Central Asia in World History. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. A readable overview with special emphasis on the important connections between the nomadic and nonnomadic worlds.
Barfield, T. J. The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. An important conceptualization of the character of nomadic “frontiers” and the role of nomadic empires on the political development of China. Christian, David. Inner Eurasia from Prehistory to the Mongol Empire. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. A broad survey that emphasizes the symbiotic relationship between nomadic and sedentary societies.
Golden, Peter B. Nomads and Sedentary Societies in Medieval Eurasia. Essays on Global and Comparative History. Washington, DC: American Historical Association, 1998. A good introduction to the outlines of nomadic history, if a bit heavy on narrative; contains a good bibliography.
Kafesoglu, Ibrahim. A History of the Seljuks. Ed., trans., and intro. by Gary Leiser. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. A classic Turkish account of the rise of the Seljuks, with emphasis on the creation of the Great Seljuk Empire.
Maenchen-Helfen, Otto. World of the Huns. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. An excellent survey of Hunnic culture as well as a narrative of Hunnic history; draws on archaeological and literary evidence.
Sinor, Dennis, ed. The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. An excellent comprehensive introduction to steppe history.