Welcome to the History Extra Podcast, fascinating historical conversations from BBC History Magazine and BBC History Revealed.

In the 13th century, the Mongols masterminded one of the most extraordinary campaigns of conquest in all of history.

Within just a few decades, these nomadic warriors had established the largest, continuous empire the world had ever seen,

one that stretched from the borders of Hungary all the way to the East China Sea.

The question is, how?

For our latest, everything you wanted to know episode, Spencer Misen sat down with Nicholas Morton,

both of the Mongol storm making and breaking empires in the medieval near East.

To tackle your questions on the Mongols.

So Nick, the Mongols, we've all heard of them.

We're all familiar with the stories of their extraordinary campaigns of conquest, of their brilliant horsemanship,

and of course their fearsome historical reputation for brutality and destruction.

But before a diving deeper into all of that, I wonder if you could give us a quick introduction to the Mongol Empire.

What were the main milestones in its meteoric rise and its eventual fall?

If you can sort of build up a picture of the Eurasian continent, in the centre of it, there is a huge area of grassland.

And it's not solely grassland, there's forests and there's mountains.

But for thousands of miles, there is a huge expanse of grassland that is very suitable for postural nomadic communities.

And every now and again in the history of the last couple of thousand years,

those nomadic communities from time to time grouped together to form a coalition.

And then they made war against one of it more predominantly agricultural societies around their margins.

And that could be places like China, or the Muslim world, or Western Christendom.

And so you've got the invasions of people like the Huns or the Seljuk Turks.

And then you have the Mongols.

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