The Mongols as part of popular imagination have acquired the reputation ofproviding nothing more than a fierce but amusing footnote in history, men onhorseback who appeared from nowhere in the thirteenth-century and recededinto obscurity a century or so later. As the articles in this volumedemonstrate, the popular imagination is un-nuanced and, far from beingtransitory rogues, the Mongols, and their complex narratives, made asignificant impact upon many histories and cultures across the world as theyexpanded through Asia changing, modifying and absorbing much in theirwake.