[1][2] At its height, the Mongol Empire included modern-day Mongolia, China, North and South Korea, Burma, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Siberia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Belarus, Ukraine, and most of Russia.

Large areas of Islamic Central Asia and northeastern Persia were seriously depopulated,[7] as every city or town that resisted the Mongols was destroyed.

One thousand northern Chinese engineer squads accompanied the Mongol Hulagu Khan during his conquest of the Middle East.

In 1207 his eldest son Jochi subjugated the Siberian forest people, the Uriankhai, the Oirats, Barga, Khakas, Buryats, Tuvans, Khori-Tumed [ru], and Yenisei Kyrgyz.

While the Barga, Tumed, Buriats, Khori, Keshmiti, and Bashkirs were organized in separate thousands, the Telengit, Tolos, Oirats and Yenisei Kirghiz were numbered into the regular tumens[19] Genghis created a settlement of Chinese craftsmen and farmers at Kem-kemchik after the first phase of the Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty.

In the swamps of western Siberia, dog sled Yam stations were set up to facilitate collection of tribute.

In 1270, Kublai Khan sent a Chinese official, with a new batch of settlers, to serve as judge of the Kyrgyz and Tuvan basin areas (益蘭州 and 謙州).

[23] Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, the Pope's envoy to the Mongol Great Khan, traveled through Kiev in February 1246 and wrote:They [the Mongols] attacked Russia, where they made great havoc, destroying cities and fortresses and slaughtering men; and they laid siege to Kiev, the capital of Russia; after they had besieged the city for a long time, they took it and put the inhabitants to death.

Kiev had been a very large and thickly populated town, but now it has been reduced almost to nothing, for there are at the present time scarce two hundred houses there and the inhabitants are kept in complete slavery.

[25] The violent character of the invasions acted as a catalyst for further violence between Europe's elites and sparked additional conflicts.

The increase in violence in the affected eastern European regions correlates with a decrease in the elite's numerical skills, and has been postulated as a root of the Great Divergence.

Kublai Khan's Yuan dynasty invaded Burma between 1277 and 1287, resulting in the capitulation and disintegration of the Pagan Kingdom.

[36][37] However, the book from which the figures originate has been criticized for its methodology[38] and the Chinese censuses on which the estimates are based are considered unreliable.

[39] Nevertheless, the campaigns killed a large number of people and involved battles, sieges,[40] early biological warfare,[41] and massacres.