In the year 1200, the third crusade has just ended and is mildly successful, but Jerusalem is still in control of the Muslims. The Byzantine Empire, what's left of the true Roman Empire, is on the decline, losing more and more territory to the Turks. In the Middle East and Persia, you have the golden age of Islam. The Abbasid Caliphate is still around, although it has now been fragmented into many different Muslim empires. Modern day North India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan is under control of the Ghurid Sultanate, with the rest of India being divided amongst various Hindu kingdoms. In the East, in other videos, we study the Song Dynasty, which is one of the really high points of Chinese civilization, although they're suspicious of their northern neighbors. But in the midst of all of this, it ends up being a nomadic people that we really haven't talked a lot about in our survey of world history, that become the main catalyst for change over the next several hundred years.