ABSTRACT
The Mongol conquests initiated by Chingis Khan in the thirteenth century attached Central Asia to a succession of Mongol khanates, stretching at their height from China to central Europe, but the ruling Mongols soon adapted to the dominant Turkic and Persian cultures. Resistance to Russian rule among the Muslim peoples of the empire was concentrated intellectually within the more open Tatar communities of the Volga region and the Crimea. The only regional power in a position to dominate Central Asia and the Caucasus remains Russia. The Muslim peoples of the Balkans, until the collapse of Ottoman rule at the end of the First World War, were the privileged residents of a theocratic empire. Bulgaria was geographically proximal to the seat of the Sublime Porte at Istanbul and it continues to contain the Balkan’s largest relative Muslim minority. Since the fall of Albanian communism in 1991 the measures have been rescinded and a religious revival is in progress.
