For these empire-builders, the vast grassy steppe that stretched across Eurasia from Manchuria to Hungary was an open road to commercial wealth and almost limitless power. The trading cities of the Near and Middle East were a natural target.

In the slow merry-go-round of kingdoms and empires, conquerors had come and gone—Phoenicians, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottomans, the British—but markets had remained a crossroads of trade, peoples and languages.