The Mongols, Part One (debrief)

1456 - Three years after the fall of Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire seemed unstoppable. Sultan Mehmed II turned his attention towards the great fortress of Belgrade, the gateway to Central Europe. Against overwhelming odds, defenders led by John Hunyadi prepared for a despera ...  Show more

1453 - 1566 - The fall of Constantinople transformed the Ottoman Empire from a rising regional power into one of the dominant states of the sixteenth century. Follow the stories of Mehmed the Conqueror, Selim the Grim and Suleiman the Magnificent as Ottoman armies expanded across ...  Show more

Kublai Khan will go down in history as the man who cemented the Mongol empire's status as the one of the mightiest powers in the world – and changed the course of Chinese history in the process. In our latest Life of the Week episode, Nicholas Morton tells Spencer Mizen how this ...  Show more

The Crusades are well-known but only part of the complex history of the medieval Near East. During the same era, the region was completely remade by the Mongol invasions.  In a single generation, the Mongols upended the region’s geopolitics. 

In this e ...

The Mongol Empire that rose in the early 13th century was fractured and in crisis by the mid-14th. But then a new warlord arose who sought to rebuild what had once been the most powerful empire in the world.  Operating in Genghis Khan’s shadow, Tamerlane deliberately drew ...

Genghis Khan roughly translates to 'Universal Ruler', a fitting name for the most famous nomadic conqueror to have ever lived. He was born as Temüjin, outcast by his tribe as a young child and left to fend for his family in the wild. But the determined young man would go on to ...