The great doctor and philosopher Sheikh-al-Rais Ibn-e-Sina was born in 980 AD in Kharmaitan. He taught himself medicine, and became such a well known doctor that Ibn-e-Sina was given money to run school of medicine in the Persian city of Isfahan. He died while on a journey from Isfahan to Hamadan at the age of 58 in 1036. His fame even reached Europe, where the name Ibn-e-Sina came to be written down as Avicenna.

The Battle of Manzikert, in 1071, saw the smashing defeat of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine army by the Seljuk Turks (also spelled Saljuq). The Seljuks were the most important of the various Turkish clans that had moved into West Asia. Manzikert saw the end of Roman control over Anatolia, the region which today still makes up the modern nation of Turkey.

When first known to history, the Turks were a varied group of nomadic people living in what is now Russian Siberia. The Huns may have been Turkish. The earliest known writing in a Turkish tongue dates from the 8th century AD; found in the Orhon inscriptions near Lake Baikal. Turkish speakers are a very ethnically diverse group of people, some with red hair and blue eyes, while others have brown skin, dark hair and long noses, and others have more Mongolian looking features. Place names in Turkish, sprinkled in a wide belt from central Mongolia and western China across inner Asia through Iran, the Caucasus and Black Sea regions, and Turkey, into the Balkans as far as Yugoslavia, show the route of migration and expansion of the Turks in past centuries.

The Mongols under Chingghis Khan attack West Asia. In two campaigns, between 1219 and 1225, the Turko-Persian empire of Khwarizm was completely destroyed. It was the turn of the Seljuk Turks next, and in 1243 their army was defeated at the Battle of Kosedag. In 1258, Baghdad, one of the largest cities in the world with one million people, is destroyed.

Thereafter the Seljuk state was tributary to the Mongols, who, following a local rebellion, kept troops and a governor in Anatolia. Persia was ruled by the Il- Khans, which simply means "the rulers". This was a Mongol dynasty, a branch of Chingghis Khan's family who had converted to Islam. Most Mongols followed their own native religion, a form of nature worship, or were followers of Buddha.

The Mongols seem unstoppable--until they meet the fearless Mamluk warriors of Egypt. In 1260, the Egyptian Mamluks stop the Mongol advance cold at the Battle of Ain Jalut. The main strength of the Egyptian army was based on a warrior caste of Turk and Circassian slaves, called Mamluks, who fought as armoured cavalry. As with the Germans in the ancient Roman army or the Mexica Aztecs in the Toltec army, the Mamluks through their control of military power took over political control, and ruled Egypt for almost 300 years from about 1250.