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Khwarezmid Empire
The Khwarazmian or Khwarezmian Empire) or the Khwarazmshahs ( fa, خوارزمشاهیان, Khwārazmshāhiyān) () was a Turko-Persian Sunni Muslim empire that ruled large parts of present-day Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Iran in the approximate period of 1077 to 1231, first as vassals of the Seljuk Empire and the Qara Khitai (Western Liao dynasty), and later as independent rulers, up until the Mongol conquest in the 13th century. It is estimated that the empire spanned an area of 2.3 million square kilometers to 3.6 million square kilometers effectively making it one of the largest land empires in history. In the beginning of the 13th century, the empire was the greatest power in the Muslim world. The empire, which was modelled on the preceding Seljuk Empire, was defended by a huge cavalry army composed largely of Kipchak Turks. However, in 1219, the Mongols under their ruler Genghis Khan invaded the Khwarazmian Empire, successfully conquering the whole of it in j ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Empire
An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) exercises political control over the peripheries. Within an empire, there is non-equivalence between different populations who have different sets of rights and are governed differently. Narrowly defined, an empire is a sovereign state whose head of state is an emperor; but not all states with aggregate territory under the rule of supreme authorities are called empires or ruled by an emperor; nor have all self-described empires been accepted as such by contemporaries and historians (the Central African Empire, and some Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in early England being examples). There have been "ancient and modern, centralized and decentralized, ultra-brutal and relatively benign" Empires. An important distinction has been between land empires m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
