Biggest Empires

I always thought before the time of Ghenghis Kahn Mongolia had never been a unified state or empire, but rather a bunch of politically inconsequential in-fighting tribes.  Do you have a source on the Gokturk empire?

BTW, the Mongols did not have hand-held firearms, only firelances which were, as was said above, basically fireworks which was only useful to start fires in cities (a very powerful weapon in the day of straw and wooden buildings) or an incredibly lucky shot could kill a man.  They had awesome technology in their time, but the idea of a hand-held rifle was far beyond their technological capabilties.

"We're speaking about empire so it mean controled and administered territories, not tributary states( which generally don't bother themself making war, just sending some presents, considered by chinese dynasty as a sign of submission)"

No, these vassals are required to visit court, provide troops for campaigns and are politically obedient to the ruling state not just some state that merely present gifts.

"Tibet(tufan on your map) has never been crontrolled by yuan administration, actually tibetan and mongols did have the same religion, but the dalai lama was tibetan and so was considered by yuan as the head of the religion. That why no expedition was ever send against qiang nation. "

Tibet was controlled by the Yuan, administrative prefectures are set up over it, although it wasn't under direct central control, it was part of the Yuan empire. But Yuan never did control territory west of Hami as shown on that map, plus Yuan had cannons not just normal firearms.

Huigu, xixia and nuzhen were only tributary states, they were independant states.

"I always thought before the time of Ghenghis Kahn Mongolia had never been a unified state or empire, but rather a bunch of politically inconsequential in-fighting tribes.  Do you have a source on the Gokturk empire?"

the following nomads united all of mongolia:

1. xiongnu

2. Xianbei

3) Rouran

4) Tujue

5) Uighur

mongolia was just a bunch of tribes. temujin then unified the tribes and started his conquest. that was when his people named him genghis khan(universal ruler). genghis was not only a military genius , but also a politcal genius. genghis left behind a well organized empire stretching 8,000 miles east to west(from the sea of japan to hungary)and 2,000 miles north to south(frome the forest of siberia to central iran, the himalayas and china). it was 16 million suare miles.

"not really, they had so called firelances, btu that are basically just lances with some sort of firework attached. basically a small one-way flamethrower but by no means as deadly..."

The earliest handheld gun for mongols is uncovered in 1271 a.d., and most likely already existed during the middle of the 13th century.

The Naiman were actually more as Turkic people than Mongol

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2) Tang empire: 4.8 million sq mile

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Tang empire 12.000.000 km2? When?

And, how can we count the nomad territory? Since xioung nu...