The main aim of this book is to present a detailed overview of the history, organization and equipment of the military forces deployed by the nomadic peoples of the steppes during the period ad 376–1227, from the appearance of the Huns in Eastern Europe to the death of Genghis Khan. For reasons of space, our analysis will be focused on the most important nomadic peoples interacting with the Ancient and Medieval civilizations of Europe, and thus will not cover some of those living only in Asia. Each chapter will be devoted to a different nomadic people, in order to present – in almost chronological order – a complete history of all the Eurasian civilizations that played a prominent military role during Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The first chapter will describe the first two nomadic peoples living on the Pontic Steppe – the Scythians, who interacted with the Greek world, and the Sarmatians, who interacted with the Roman world. The second chapter will deal with the Huns of Attila, whose migration was one of the key factors behind the fall of the Roman Empire, while the third chapter will be devoted to the Avars, who established a large state in Eastern Europe that rivalled that of Charlemagne. The fourth chapter will cover the Magyars, who terrorized most of Europe with their incursions during the tenth century before creating the Kingdom of Hungary, and the fifth chapter will reconstruct the history of the Bulgars, who became the fiercest enemies of the Byzantine Empire in the Balkans but also created a flourishing state in the Volga region of Russia. The sixth chapter will deal with the Khazars and the Alans, who dominated vast portions of southern Russia and stopped Arab expansionism in the Caucasus. The seventh chapter will be devoted to the Turks, who were for a long time a major power of the Eurasian steppes before playing a crucial role in the Crusades. The eighth chapter will cover the Pechenegs and the Cumans-Kipchaks, who were great military powers of the Eurasian steppes during a chaotic historical period, and finally the ninth chapter will focus on the history of the Mongols from the unification of their tribes to the death of the great Genghis Khan. By describing the military organization, weapons and tactics of these nomadic peoples, we will see how they dominated the battlefields of the European world for almost 2,000 years thanks to their superior fighting abilities. We will also examine how they interacted with other civilizations and how the latter learned so much from the steppe peoples, especially from a military point of view. Indeed, without the existence of the warlike nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppes, the history of Europe and even the whole world would have been completely different.