section_path: Legacy
section_name: Legacy
paragraph_text: Legacy
  
  The Mongol Empire, at its height of the largest contiguous empire in history, had a lasting impact, unifying large regions. Some of these (such as eastern and western Russia, and the western parts of China) remain unified today. Mongols might have been assimilated into local populations after the fall of the empire, and some of their descendants adopted local religions. For example, the eastern khanate largely adopted Buddhism, and the three western khanates adopted Islam, largely under Sufi influence.
  
  According to some interpretations, Genghis Khan's conquests caused wholesale destruction on an unprecedented scale in certain geographic regions, leading to changes in the demographics of Asia.
  
  The non-military achievements of the Mongol Empire include the introduction of a writing system, a Mongol alphabet based on the characters of the Old Uyghur, which is still used in Mongolia today.
  
  Some of the other long-term consequences of the Mongol Empire include:
  
  n this region nomadism really did attempt, and really did to a very considerable degree succeed in its attempt, to stamp a settled civilized system out of existence. When Jengis Khan first invaded China, we are told that there was a serious discussion among the Mongol chiefs whether all the towns and settled populations should not be destroyed. To these simple practitioners of the open-air life the settled populations seemed corrupt, crowded, vicious, effeminate, dangerous, and incomprehensible; a detestable human efflorescence upon what would otherwise have been good pasture. They had no use whatever for the towns. **** But it was only under Hulagu in Mesopotamia that these ideas seem to have been embodied in a deliberate policy. The Mongols here did not only burn and massacre; they destroyed the irrigation system that had endured for at least eight thousand years, and with that the mother civilization of all the Western world came to an end.