This chapter surveys the extant examples of Islamic literature in Turkic produced in the western parts of the Mongol-ruled world in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as evidence for the process of Islamization and cultural assimilation occurring under Mongol rule. A brief note on the production, in the Mongol era, of most of the surviving manuscripts of pre-Mongol Islamic Turkic works is followed by discussion of the questions of authorship, content, and patronage for the major Turkic literary products from the ulus of Jochi – the Muʿīn al-murīd, the Khusraw va Shīrīn of Quṭb, the Maḥabbat-nāma of Khwārazmī, and the Nahj al-farādīs of Maḥmūd b. ʻAlī – and for those from the Chaghadaid realm – Rabghūzī’s Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā and the work of Isḥāq Khwāja b. Ismāʻīl Ata.

The archaeological study of Chaghadaid material culture began in the second half of the nineteenth century, after the annexation of Central Asia to the Russian Empire. The main archaeological sites on the territory of the Chaghadaid Ulus consisted of settlements. Judging by the numismatic data, the largest cities of the ulus were Almaliq (China), Pulad (China), Samarqand (Uzbekistan), Bukhara (Uzbekistan), Otrar (Kazakhstan), Shash (Uzbekistan), Taraz or Talas (Kazakhstan), Khujand (Tajikistan), Andijan (Uzbekistan), and Tirmidh or Termez (Uzbekistan). Archaeologists have studied the nomadic burials of the Chaghadaid period in Kazakhstan. Features of the funeral rites indicate the preservation of pagan traditions in the nomadic environment (for instance the ritual of burning corpses, sepulchral mounds, the remains of funeral food, horse harnesses). The erection of mausoleums reflects the Islamization process of the Chaghadaid Ulus. Among the Chaghadaid-period epigraphic monuments, Christian tombstones are the most apparent.