Sea of Grass, Scourge of God

Doing some reading in the archives of a new-to-me history blog...

To wit, in 1700, the dominant states spanning the breadth of Eurasia had ruling elites with roots in the steppe. Manchu China, Mughal India, Ottoman Turkey, Safavid Iran and even Tsarist Russia, were all dominated by aristocracies stamped by nomadic empires, whether because the ruling dynasties were from the steppe, like the Ottomans and Safavids, or because they integrated steppe nobility like the Russians and the Manchus.