In these penetrating essays, Morris Rossabi offers pioneering studies of the often neglected regions and peoples around China. His narratives concerning both traditional and modern Mongolia, including significant analyses about the great Mongol Empire, and traditional Chinese foreign relations challenge the conventional wisdom. His writings about the Yuan and Ming dynasties of China, Islam in China, and Mongol women provide fresh insights into these rarely studied subjects. He also brings greater attention to the first attested traveller from China to reach and write about thirteenth-century Europe.

Morris Rossabi (Ph.D., Columbia University) is Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York and is the author of numerous books and articles on China and the Mongols, including Khubilai Khan (1988), Voyager from Xanadu (1992), and Modern Mongolia (2005). He wrote two chapters for the authoritative Cambridge History of China.