The Rise and Fall of the Nomad-Dominated Empires of Eurasia Pavel Osinsky, Appalachian State University The purpose of this article was to integrate the multidisciplinary studies of the nomad-dominated empires of Eurasia in the field of historical sociology. The large poli- ties of militarized pastoralists ruled over most of Inner Eurasia for about two millennia (c. 500 BC–c. 1500 AD). By examining five such polities (the Scythians, the Huns, the Xiongnu, the Turks, and the Mongols), this study addresses four research questions: Why did such states emerge? How did it happen? How did the nomadic rulers obtain resources to uphold their power? Why did the nomad-dominated empires have a limited life span? In conclusion, I discuss the long-term effects of the rise and fall of the steppe empires on state formation in the whole Eurasia. Introduction Sociologists examined empires for a long time (Steinmetz 2014:2), but rarely the study of empires was as flourishing as it is today (Kumar 2017:xi). To a large extent, a resurgence of academic attention to empires was spurred by the hegemonic endeavors of the U.S. government under George W. Bush administration (2001–2009). Although most of these endeavors have failed while the very categorization of the United States as an imperial state was con- tested (see Kumar 2010), a newly rekindled interest in studying past empires— centralized, hierarchical, multiethnic states formed by conquest and maintained by coercion—has allowed to make a significant step toward a better under- standing the nature of large power structures that dominated the global political landscape before the rise of the modern nation-state (e.g., Adams 1996, 2005; Adams and Steinmetz 2015; Barkey 2008; Centeno and Enriquez 2010; Go 2008, 2011; G€ oc ßek 1996; Goldstone and Haldon 2010; Kumar 2017; Mahoney 2001, 2010; Mann 1986, 1993, 2012; Scheidel 2019; Steinmetz 2007, 2014, 2017). Yet, one important category of empires has eluded the attention of histori- cal sociologists. Nearly all studies in the field examined the bureaucratic empires formed by the settled societies, predominantly modern and mainly, albeit not exclusively, European. So far, except for Ibn Khaldun’s (1967/2015) celebrated analysis of the Bedouin civilization and few tackles by the world- system theorists (e.g., Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997; Chase-Dunn et al 2010; Hall Sociological Inquiry, Vol. xx, No. x, 2020, 1–25 © 2020 Alpha Kappa Delta: The International Sociology Honor Society DOI: 10.1111/soin.12360