Grassland Empire (Abbreviated Color Illustration Edition)

Author: (French) Gruschke
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-12-01
Features: We rarely turn our gaze to Central Asia, yet it is precisely the countless struggles over Central Asia that rewrote the course of human history. Whether the Xiongnu, Turks, Mongols, or Xianbei, Khitan, and Jurchen, these major nomadic peoples on the grasslands have always possessed a simple nature. Their bravery and magnanimity are as genuine and lovable as their savagery and cruelty. In their unrestrained expressions of destruction upon individuals, they played unique historical roles and established distinctive historical cultures. Attila, Genghis Khan, and Timur— their deeds are widely known. World chroniclers have made them famous through their accounts of the grasslands. These great barbarians swept into developed historical civilizations, turning Rome, Iran, or China into ruins in an instant. Their arrivals and disappearances remain difficult to explain, leading modern historians to still tend to the conclusions of ancient writers: they were the scourge of God, sent to punish ancient civilizations. The renowned oriental historian René Grousset, with his broad perspective and majestic tone, has depicted for us a series of grand epics performed by nomadic peoples on the world stage over three millennia.