Part One
TRANSOXANIA AND KHURASAN
(G. A. Pugachenkova)

Part Two
SOUTHERN CENTRAL ASIA
(A. H. Dani)

Part Three
EASTERN CENTRAL ASIA
(Liu Yingsheng)

The accounts of both Chinese and Western travellers during the period of the pax mongolica indicate that the mass movements of peoples at that time brought with them an increase in trade and the transmission of cultural influences, with a consequent florescence of the urban centres along the well-travelled routes which lasted into the fourteenth century. However, with the division of the Mongol patrimony into separate, often warring ulus, or territorial and political units, the trend towards pastoralization seems to have increased in many regions of Inner Asia, probably accounting for the decline and even disappearance of many of the towns mentioned above by the fifteenth century.