In The Pechenegs: Nomads in the Political and Cultural Landscape of Medieval Europe, Aleksander Paroń offers a reflection on the history of the Pechenegs, a nomadic people which came to control the Black Sea steppe by the end of the ninth century. Nomadic peoples have often been presented in European historiography as aggressors and destroyers whose appearance led to only chaotic decline and economic stagnation. Making use of historical and archaeological sources along with abundant comparative material, Aleksander Paroń offers here a multifaceted and cogent image of the nomads’ relations with neighboring political and cultural communities in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

The author traces 150 years of the study of relations between Byzantium and various North Pontic nomads, with particular attention to how colonialist or national aspirations often triggered, hampered, biased, or otherwise influenced scholarship.

"This book traces 150 years' worth of scholarly interpretations of relations between Byzantium and various North Pontic nomads, with particular attention to how colonialist or national aspirations often triggered, hampered, biased, or otherwise influenced these interpretations. Original in its interdisciplinary approach, Mykola Melnyk's book highlights an overlooked topic: the history of non-historic peoples. Going beyond the well-studied written sources for nomadic history, the author incorporates insights provided by archaeology, linguistics, and the natural sciences, bringing forth promising avenues of research into the subject of nomadic cultures in the medieval world"--

Drawing on archaeological and narrative sources, this collection of studies offers a fresh look at some of the most interesting aspects of the current research on the medieval nomads of Eastern Europe.

Monograph

In Khazaria in the Ninth and the Tenth Centuries Boris Zhivkov offers a new view on Khazaria by scrutinizing the different visions offered by recent scholarship. The paucity of written sources has made it necessary to turn to additional information about the steppe states in this period, and to analyze exceptional cases not directly related to the Khazars. In re-examining the Khazars, he thus uses not only the known documentary sources and archaeological finds but also what we know from history of religions (comparative mythology), history of art, structural anthropology and folklore studies. In this way the book draws together a synthesis of conclusions, information and theory.

This book is an authoritative survey of the history of southeastern Europe from 500 to 1250.

Between the ninth and the fifteenth centuries, Central Asia was a major political, economic and cultural hub on the Eurasian continent. In the first half of the thirteenth century it was also the pre-eminent centre of power in the largest land-based empire the world has ever seen. This third volume of Christoph Baumer's extensively praised and lavishly illustrated new history of the region is above all a story of invasion, when tumultuous and often brutal conquest profoundly shaped the later history of the globe. The author explores the rise of Islam and the remarkable victories of the Arab armies which - inspired by their vital, austere and egalitarian desert faith - established important new dynasties like the Seljuks, Karakhanids and Ghaznavids. A golden age of artistic, literary and scientific innovation came to a sudden end when, between 1219 and 1260, Genghiz Khan and his successors overran the Chorasmian-Abbasid lands. Dr Baumer shows that the Mongol conquests, while shattering to their enemies, nevertheless resulted in much greater mercantile and cultural contact between Central Asia and Western Europe.

Gabriele Esposito presents an overview of the history, organization and equipment of the military forces deployed by the nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppes during the period from the appearance of the Huns in Eastern Europe to the death of Genghis Khan. Each chapter is devoted to a different group that played a prominent military role during Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Starting with the Huns of Attila, whose migration was one of the key factors behind the fall of the Roman Empire, he moves on to the Avars, who established a large state in Eastern Europe that contested with Charlemagne’s Frankish Empire. Chapter three covers the Magyars, who terrorized most of Europe during the tenth century before creating the Kingdom of Hungary. Next are the Bulgars, who became the worst enemies of the Byzantine Empire in the Balkans but also created a flourishing state in the Volga region of Russia. The Khazars and the Alans share a chapter, as do the Pechenegs and Cumans-Kipchaks, while the Turks merit a dedicated chapter. Last but not least are the Mongols, who are traced from the unification of their tribes to the death of the great Genghis Khan. By describing the military organization, weapons and tactics of these nomadic peoples the author shows how they dominated the battlefields of the world for almost 1,000 years thanks to their superior capabilities. He also discusses how they interacted with other civilizations and how the latter learned a lot from them, especially militarily. Without the existence of the warlike nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppes, the history of the world would have been very different.