A HORDE OF MANY NATIONS
“BY THE TIME THE KHAN’S ARMIES DESPOILED KHWARAZM, A PERSIAN EMPIRE STRETCHING ACROSS CENTRAL ASIA, THE TATARS WERE RECOGNISED AS THE ELITE CAVALRY OF THE GROWING EMPIRE”
Forever evoking images of horse-riding barbarians, the Tatars are a bewildering ethnic group who changed the course of history yet remain misunderstood. Between ambiguous European chronicles and official Chinese records, the Tatars or ‘Tartars’ were nomadic pastoralists who, once unified by Genghis Khan after 1206 along with other tribes, began conquering large swathes of
