Qalam Media Global

Qalam Media Global From Central Asia to Anatolia. History of the Turkic World.

Podcasts, interviews, opinion pieces, articles and documentairies, featuring esteemed historians from across the world.

06/06/2026

The Göktürks founded the first Turkic empire in 552 CE and dominated the Eurasian steppe for nearly two centuries.

Who inherited the legacy of the people who gave all Turkic peoples their name?

Professor Joo-Yup Lee offers a perspective.

📷public domain

04/06/2026

The Mongol conquest of Iran and Mesopotamia was not a single campaign. It lasted almost 40 from the first invasions under Chinggis Khan in 1219 to the fall of Baghdad in 1258. After the conquest, the Mongols established the Ilkhanate. The Ilkhanate ruled Iran and much of Mesopotamia from 1256 to 1335 — a period of 79 years.

By the time the Ilkhanate collapsed, the Mongols had spent well over a century in Iran. Yet for generations, they continued to use the Mongolian language and preserve key elements of their steppe identity.

Historian Michael Hope explains why.

📷 public domain

02/06/2026

History is rarely as simple as ancestry charts.

According to historian Joo-Yup Lee, the Ashina clan that founded the Göktürk Empire may have included Iranian or Indo-European elements. Yet the safest conclusion is not that they were one thing or another, but that they emerged from the ethnically diverse world of the Eurasian steppe, where peoples, languages, and identities constantly intertwined, he believes.

📷 public domain

01/06/2026

Many historians have placed the Xiongnu (the Huns), among the ancestors of the Turkic peoples.

In this interview, historian Joo-Yup Lee, a scholar of Central Eurasian history at the University of Toronto, examines what Chinese chronicles, linguistic evidence, and recent genetic studies actually reveal about the Xiongnu. Were they Turkic? A multi-ethnic confederation? Or something more complex altogether?

📷 public domain

28/05/2026

In 1258, Baghdad fell under Mongol conquest.

For many historians, this was more than the fall of a city.

It marked the end of the Islamic Golden Age — and the beginning of a profound political, intellectual, and spiritual crisis across the Islamic world.

Historian Michael Hope explores how contemporary Muslim writers understood the Mongol invasion.

📷 public domain

27/05/2026

In 1258, the armies of Hulagu Khan stormed Baghdad and executed the last reigning caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate, bringing a 500-year empire to an end.

Yet history took an unexpected turn.

Within years, Mongols were fighting Mongols over the destruction of the Muslim world itself. Berke Khan—Chinggis Khan’s grandson and the first Mongol ruler to embrace Islam —condemned the sack of Baghdad and went to war against his cousin Hulagu.

The empire that had shattered the Islamic world began to fracture from within.

Michael Hope, Professor of Asian History at Yonsei University, explains how Hulegu Khan was able to conquer the Middle East.

📷 public domain

25/05/2026

Every summer, an entire temporary city rose near the Taldy River outside Qarqaraly in what is now Eastern Kazakhstan. This was the famous Qoyandy Fair (1848-1930). Merchants arrived from Siberia, the Urals, Central Asia, and western China. Here, they could buy Belgian lace, Chinese silk, Indian tea, Turkmen carpets, Kazakh horses, perfumes from Paris. At its peak, before WWI, the turnover of the fair approached 5 million rubles - equivalent of nearly 90 tons of silver.

📷 Getty images

24/05/2026

What made collectivization in Kazakhstan catastrophic compared to other sedentary economies?

Historian Marianne Kamp explains how Soviet policies destroyed the entire basis of nomadic life almost overnight with devastating consequences.

📷 public domain

23/05/2026

Dekulakization was one of the Soviet Union’s most brutal campaigns. People accused of being “kulaks” — supposedly wealthy or exploitative peasants — could lose their property, be deported, imprisoned, or executed. In Central Asia, the label was often applied far more broadly, targeting people seen as economically self-sufficient, independent or influential within their communities. Historian Marianne Kamp explores how dismantling of self-sufficient and entrepreneurial groups led to devastating economic consequences and dramatic human losses.

📷 public domain

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