The vast expanse of land that forms the physical setting for the Chinggisid era in Inner Asian history extends from the forests of Manchuria in the east to the steppelands west of the Volga River stretching to the Black Sea. The forest and taiga zones of Siberia constitute the northern boundaries while the agrarian-sedentary world of China, the Islamic world and Christian Eastern Europe frame the region from the south and west. With the exception of the oasis city-states, many of them fabled connecting links in the Silk Road, much of this region consists of grassy prairies, the steppe, bounded by forest-steppe zones in the north and interspersed with deserts and semi-deserts in the south.

The history of this region from antiquity to modern times has primarily centred on the interaction of the nomadic world of the steppes with the much smaller Uralic or Palaeo-Siberian forest populations to the north, the settled, largely Iranian-speaking populations of the oasis city-states to the south and the larger states, often empires, south and later north of the steppe zone. The rise of the Chinggisid Mongol Empire was, in many respects, a culminating point in a long line of nomad-based polities with roots and political traditions going back to the Xiongnu (third century BCE–mid-second century CE). It was the most complex of these polities.