The Mongols are widely known for one thing: conquest. But in this first comprehensive history of the Horde, the western portion of the Mongol Empire that arose after the death of Chinggis Khan, Marie Favereau takes us inside one of the most powerful engines of economic integration in world history to show that their accomplishments extended far beyond the battlefield.

The Horde was the central node in the extraordinary commercial boom of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that brought distant civilizations in contact for the first time. Its unique political regime-a complex power-sharing arrangement between the khan and nobility-rewarded skillful administrators and fostered an economic order that was mobile, organized, and innovative.

From their capital at Sarai on the lower Volga River, the Mongols provided a governance model for Russia, influenced social practice and state structure across the Islamic world, disseminated sophisticated theories about the natural world, and introduced novel ideas of religious tolerance. An eloquent, ambitious, and definitive portrait of an empire that has long been too little understood, The Horde challenges our assumptions that nomads are peripheral to history and makes it clear that we live in a world shaped by Mongols.