| Jalal al-Din Mangburni | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Uzbek25 soʻm coin commemorating Jalal al-Din | |
| Khwarazmshah | |
| Reign | 1220 December – 15 August 1231 |
| Predecessor | Muhammad II |
| Born | 1199 Gurganj |
| Died | 15 August 1231[1] Silvan, Diyarbakır |
| Spouse |
|
| Dynasty | Anushtegin dynasty |
| Father | Muhammad II |
| Mother | Ay-Chichek |
| Religion | Sunni Islam |
Jalal al-Din Mangburni (Persian:جلال الدین مِنکُبِرنی), also known asJalal al-Din Khwarazmshah (جلال الدین خوارزمشاه), was the lastKhwarazmshah of theAnushtegin dynasty. The eldest son and successor ofAla ad-Din Muhammad II of theKhwarazmian Empire, Jalal al-Din was brought up atGurganj, the wealthy capital of the Khwarazmid homeland. An able general, he served as second-in-command to his father inat least one battle; however, since he was the son of a concubine, he was challenged as successor by a younger brother, whose cause was supported by the powerful Queen Mother,Terken Khatun. Nevertheless, after theMongol conquest of the Khwarazmian Empire led to his father's flight and death on an island in theCaspian Sea, Jalal-al Din gained the loyalty of the majority of Khwarazmian loyalists.
The new Shah Jalal al-Din moved to Gurganj, but departed eastwards after Terken Khatun moved against him; evadingMongol patrols, he gathered a substantial army atGhazni. He managed to inflict an excellent defeat onShigi Qutuqu at theBattle of Parwan, but soon lost a good portion of his army in a dispute over spoils. He was defeated by a vengefulGenghis Khan at theBattle of the Indus, and fled across the river. Now essentially a warlord, Jalal al-Din managed to establish a succession of short-lived states: first in thePunjab from 1222 to 1224, and then innorthwest Iran andGeorgia after 1225. Jalal al-Din did not have the political ability needed to underpin his martial exploits, and he was forced to combat several large revolts and increasing pressure from Mongol forces. Eventually, he was killed in 15 August 1231. The army he had gathered would continue to terrorize theLevant as the mercenaryKhwarazmiyya until its final defeat in 1246.
The spelling and meaning of hisTurkic personal name is obscure.[2] Inal-Nasawi's work (written in Arabic) his name was written as "Jalal al-Din Mankubirti[a], son of the SultanMuhammad, son ofTekish, son ofIl-Arslan, son ofAtsiz, son ofMuhammad, son ofNushtekin" (Arabic:جلال الدين منكبرتي ابن السلطان محمد بن تكش این ایل ارسلان بن اتسز ابن محمد ابن نوشتكين,romanized: Jalāl al-Dīn Mankubirtī ibn al-Sulṭān Muḥammad bin Tekiš ibn ʾIl Ārslān bin Ātsiz ibn Muḥammad ibn Nūštekīn).[3] Original publisher of the manuscript,Octave Houdas [fr], rendered his name (in French title) as "Mankobirti" and translated it as "Dieu donné" (Gift of God).[4]: V Due to Arabic rendering, early scholarship spelled it as Manguburti (or similar variants), whilst the most common variant today is Mangburni ("with a birthmark on the nose") or Mingirini ("valiant fighter worth one thousand men"; cf. Persianhazarmard).[5]: 142
Jalal al-Din was reportedly the eldest son of the KhwarazmshahAla ad-Din Muhammad II (r. 1200–1220),[6] while his mother was a concubine ofTurkmen origin, whose name was Ay-Chichek.[7] Due to the low status of Jalal al-Din's mother, his powerful grandmother andKipchak princessTerken Khatun refused to support him as heir to the throne, and instead favored his half-brother Uzlagh-Shah, whose mother was also a Qipchaq. Jalal al-Din first appears in historical records in 1215, when Muhammad II divided his empire among his sons, giving the southwestern part (part of the formerGhurid Empire) to Jalal al-Din.[5]: 142
Genghis Khan had chosen to ignorea skirmish between his sonJochi Khan and the Shah, in which Jalal al-Din's military acumen had saved the Shah from a humiliating defeat.[8]: 255 However, he could not ignore the seizure of a trade caravan inOtrar and subsequent execution of Mongol envoys inGurganj.[9] War between the two new neighbours was inevitable.[10]: 111 The Khan commanded a skilled and disciplined army: the precise size of it is disputed, but most agree on around 75,000 to 200,000 soldiers.[11]: 404 The Khwarazmshah, meanwhile, faced many problems.[b] His empire was vast and newly formed, with a still-developing administration.[11]: 404 In addition, his motherTerken Khatun still wielded substantial power in the realm – one historian termed the relationship between the Shah and his mother as 'an uneasy diarchy', which often acted to Muhammad's disadvantage.[13]: 14–15 The Shah also distrusted most of his commanders, with the only exception being Jalal al-Din. If he had sought open battle, as many of his commanders wished, he would certainly have been greatly outmatched in quantity of troops, let alone quality.[14] The Shah thus made the decision to distribute his forces as garrison troops inside his most important towns, such as Samarkand,Merv andNishapur.[9][15]: 238 Meanwhile, the Shah raised taxes to raise a field army, with whom he would harass the besieging Mongol forces.[10]: 113
However, through a combination of excellent manoeuvering and planning, the Mongols managed to carve a path of destruction through Khwarazmia.Otrar fell, andBukhara was taken, as was Samarkand. Genghis Khan then sent an army under his elite generalsJebe andSubutai specifically to pursue the Shah; although Muhammad, accompanied by Jalal-al Din and two other sons, managed to escape, he was prevented from gathering any forces as his empire collapsed around him.[10]: 120 Fleeing to the loyal region ofKhorasan, the Shah died destitute on an island in theCaspian Sea.[11]: 419 Jalal al-Din would later claim that his father had appointed him as his successor on his deathbed. Meanwhile, the Mongols had occupied all ofTransoxania, and had invadedTocharistan,Guzgan andGharchistan during the latter half of 1220.
Jalal al-Din rode toGurganj, a city reportedly housing 90,000 soldiers, and found the city in turmoil.[11]: 432 The city's nobility, like Terken Khatun, were not prepared to accept Jalal al-Din as Shah, preferring the more malleable Uzlaq, and planned a coup against Jalal al-Din.[10]: 123 Jalal Al-Din left the capital after being warned of the coup, accompanied byTimur Malik and 300 cavalry.[11]: 432 Crossing theKarakum Desert, he attacked the garrison of a Mongol detachment atNesa, killing most of the force including two brothers of Toghachar, son in law of Genghis Khan.[8]: 295 The Mongols pursued, past Nishapur and Herat, but lost the trail before Ghazni, where Jalal al-Din found 50,000 loyalists waiting for him. After a few days, he was joined by his maternal uncle Temur Malik, who brought an additional 30,000 veterans – Jalal al-Din now had a sizeable force with which to strike back at the Mongols.[8]: 303–4 Meanwhile, back in Khwarazm,Gurganj,Merv,Balkh, andNishapur had all been taken by the Mongol forces.[12]: 150–2
Jalal al-Din, who had just married Temur Malik's daughter to solidify ties, marched towardsKandahar which was under siege by a Mongol army and defeated them after a two-day battle.[10]: 127 In autumn 1221, he then moved north toParwan and attacked a besieging army north ofCharikar in theBattle of Waliyan; the numerically inferior Mongols lost 1,000 and retreated across the river, destroying the bridge.[11]: 442 Genghis sent an army numbering between thirty and forty-five thousand underShigi Qutuqu to confront the Shah. TheBattle of Parwan was fought on a rock-strewn, narrow valley which was unsuitable for the Mongol cavalry, and the Muslims fought dismounted until the final charge led by Jalal al-Din, who personally commanded the center, resulting in the repulsion of the Mongols.[16] This battle made Jalal al-Din's reputation; however, he soon lost half of his army through infighting: the sources report a dispute over booty between Temur Malik and Ighrak, commander of the right flank.[5]
Jalal al-Din had won several victories against the Mongols in 1221, and after the Battle of Parwan, independent insurgency groups emerged in multiple cities inspired by his deeds. Kushteghin Pahlawan launched a revolt inMerv and ousted the Mongol administration; he then made a successful attack onBukhara, whileHerat also rebelled. These revolts would be crushed by the Mongols, and many atrocities perpetuated as retribution.
Genghis Khan, now atBamiyan, did not take this defeat lightly. After executing that fortress, he made his way eastwards to confront Jalal al-Din, using his powers of organisation to send detachments out to prevent the disparate Khwarazmid factions from uniting, one of whom al-Din managed to isolate and defeat.[12]: 132 [10]: 128 Jalal Al-Din knew he had no chance of winning against Genghis in a pitched battle with his diminished army and after attempts to win back Ighrak and his men failed, he marched towards India.[11]: 445 [8]: 307 The Khan's army managed to surround Jalal al-Din's army on the banks of theRiver Indus and crushed them in theensuing battle in November 1221.[11]: 446 The Shah escaped the battle by jumping into the river fully armed, and reaching the other shore.[8]: 309 This act of desperation is said to have drawn the admiration of Genghis Khan, who forbade Mongols to pursue the Shah or shoot him with arrows. The Shah's surviving troops were however slaughtered, along with his harem and children.[12]: 133–4
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After theBattle of the Indus, Jalal al-Din crossed the Indus and settled in India. A local prince, who had six thousand men attacked Jalal al-Din's makeshift forces of no more than four thousand, but al-Din still triumphed, greatly enhancing his Indian appeal.[7]: chapter 38 [17] He then sought asylum in theSultanate of Delhi butIltutmish denied this to him because of al-Din's poor relationship with theAbbasid caliphs; he did however give one of his daughters to al-Din as a peace offering.[8]: 310 The Khan sent Dorbei Doqshin with twotumens to pursue al-Din, whom he still regarded as a threat, in early 1222; one account has Doqshin fail to secure al-Din, and return to the Khan inSamarkand, who was so infuriated Doqshin was sent out at once on the same task.[12]: 141 Meanwhile, al-Din was quarrelling with local princes, but was mostly victorious when it came to battle.[17]
Under Doqshin's leadership, the Mongol army tookNandana fort ofJanjua tribe from one of the lieutenants of Jalal al-Din, sacked it, then proceeded to besiege the largerMultan. The Mongol army managed to breach the wall but the city was defended successfully by the Khwarazmians; due to the hot weather, the Mongols were forced to retreat after 42 days. Peter Jackson suggests that Doqshin, having been instructed not to return unsuccessfully, eventually converted to Islam and joined al-Din.[17] The rest of al-Din's three years in exile in India were spent in taking large parts ofLahore and thePunjab; he returned to Persia at the behest of his brother Ghiyath al-Din Pirshah, who still controlled parts of Persia, in late 1223.[17]
Having gathered an army and entered Persia, Jalal al-Din sought to re-establish the Khwarazm kingdom, but he never fully consolidated his power. In 1224, he confirmedBurak Hadjib, ruler of theQara Khitai, inKerman, and received the submission of his brother Ghiyath, who had established himself in Hamadan and Isfahan, and the province of Fars, and clashed with theCaliph An Nasser in Khuzestan, from whom he captured parts of Western Iran. The next year, he dethroned the Uzbek Muzaffar al-Din, ruler of theEldiguzids, and set himself up in their capital ofTabriz on 25 July 1225. That same year, he attackedGeorgia, defeating its forces in thebattle of Garni, and capturedTbilisi,[15]: 260 after which a hundred thousand citizenswere put to death for not renouncing Christianity.
Jalal al-Din spent the rest of his days struggling against the Mongols, pretenders to the throne and theSeljuqs ofRûm. His dominance in the region required year-after-year campaigning. In 1226, Burak Hadjib, the governor of Kerman and Jalal al-Din's father-in-law, rebelled against him, but after Jalal al-Din marched against him he was subdued. Jalal al-Din then had a brief victory over the Seljuqs and captured the town ofAkhlat in Turkey from theAyyubids. In 1227, after the death of Genghis Khan, a new Mongol army commanded byChormagan was sent to invade al Din's lands; they were met nearDameghan and defeated.[18] In August 1228, a new Mongol army under the leadership of Taymas Noyan invaded the re-established kingdom. Jalal al-Din met them near Isfahan and the two armies battled. The Mongols scored apyrrhic victory in this battle, unable to exploit their victory as they had no power left to advance.[18] The same year, his brother Ghiyath al-Din rebelled but was defeated. Ghiyath al-Din fled to Kerman where he and his mother were killed. The revived Khwarazmshah by this time controlled Kerman, Tabriz, Isfahan andFars. Jalal al-Din moved againstAhlat again in 1229. However, he was defeated in this campaign by SultanKayqubad I at theBattle of Yassıçemen in 1230, from whence he escaped toDiyarbakır.[19]
Through the ruler ofAlamut, the Mongols learned that Jalal al-Din had recently been defeated; theNizari Ismaili Assassins sent a letter toÖgedei Khan, proposing joint operation against Jalal al-Din.[8]: 392–3 Ögedei Khan sent a new army of 30,000 – 50,000 men under the command of Chormagan and the remaining Khwarazmians, whose numbers were in hundreds, were swept away by the new Mongol army, which occupiedNorthern Iran.[20] Jalal al-Din once again escaped from the Mongols and took refuge in theSilvan mountains and there in August he was killed by aKurd who claimed that he was avenging his brother, who had been killed by Jalal al-Din's forces inAhlat.[21][22]
Jalal al-Din's kingdom swiftly collapsed after his death; his nobles squabbled over territory and would be overcome easily by the Mongols. Several thousand, however, took up service with the princes of Anatolia and Syria to escape the Mongols. They continued to be a force in Syrian politics until their destruction in 1246.[17] His daughter, Turkan, would grow up in the court ofÖgedei Khan and thenHulagu Khan, who married her to the governor of Mosul.
Some pretenders to the name of Jalal al-Din arose after his death. In 1236, the founder and the leader of an insurgency inMazandaran claimed he was Jalal al-Din. After he was defeated, the Mongols verified that his claim was false, and he was executed. In the year 1254, a leader of a merchant group claimed he was Jalal al-Din; detained and tortured, he asserted he was truthful until his death.[23]
Jalal al-Din was considered by many to be a fearless commander and a great warrior. His biographer,Shihab al-Din Muhammad al-Nasawi, described him as follows:
He was swarthy (dark-skinned), small in stature, Turkic in "behavior" and speech, but he also spoke Persian. As for his courage, I have mentioned it many times when describing the battles he took part in. He was a lion among lions and the most fearless among his valiant horsemen. He was mild in his temper though, did not get easily provoked and never used bad language.[24]
Juzjani described al-Din as "endowed with great heroism, valour and high talents and accomplishments".[25]Yaqut al-Hamawi notes that Jalal al-Din was known as a bellicose warrior and Jalal al-Din's passiveness after theBattle of Yassıçemen was seen as unbelievable. Modern historians are also positive concerning his military talent. Carl Sverdrup described Jalal al-Din as "brave and energetic";[26] while Timothy May describes him as the most stalwart enemy of the Mongols in West Asia until the time of the Mamluk Sultanate.[9] Due to his reputation for resisting the Mongols, Jalal al-Din is commonly depicted on artwork resembling that of the Persian epicShahnameh, where he is associated with the mythological warriorRostam.[5]: 145 Jalal al-Din's contemporary Ibn Wasil attributed the Mongol triumph over the Muslim countries into Jalal al-Din's fall, which was in turn attributed to Jalal al-Din's treachorus behaviour. Ibn Wasil explicitly stated that Jalal al-Din's army could have been a buffer between the Islamic countries and the Mongols.[27] Even after defeating Jalal al-Din at the battle of Indus, Genghis Khan was keen on maintaining peace with Jalal al-Din, promising not to cross the demarcation between the Mongol empire and Jalal al-Din's re-established realm after being informed of Jalal al-Din's might.[28]: 146
Though considered a successful warrior and a general, Jalal al-Din is considered a poor ruler and the loss of his re-established empire to Mongols has been attributed to his poor diplomacy and rulership; he was seen as untrustworthy and warmongering.[23] His enmity with many neighbors resulted in his isolation against the Mongol army of Chormaqan.[18]Vasily Bartold believed that Jalal al-Din executed more cruel and irrational brutality than Genghis Khan did. Even al-Nasawi was unable to justify the negative impact Jalal al-Din's rule and conduct of his soldiers had on his subjects.[5]: 145 Jalal al-Din is represented as a hero valianty fighting for "Persian independence" by the Iranian bureaucrat and historianAta-Malik Juvayni (died 1283), who, however, was in reality aware that Jalal al-Din was fighting for his own survival and selfish motives.[29]
Ottoman patriotNamık Kemal hailed him as a national and religious hero in his workCelâleddin Harzemşâh (Khwarazmshah Jalal al-Din). In Kemâl's work he was fighting against Mongols for the national unity and wellbeing ofOghuz Turks, and against Georgians for the spread of Islam. Influenced by theCromwell of Hugo, Kemâl wrote a preface to it, commonly called asMukaddime-i Celâl (Preface to Jalal), and just as whatHugo did with his preface, Kemal too outlined his understanding of a modern play with the preface.
Jalal al-Din was the subject of the Uzbek-Turkish TV seriesMendirman Jaloliddin, created byMehmet Bozdağ in collaboration with theUzbek Ministry of Culture and Sports, where he was played byEmre Kıvılcım.[30] A sculpture of him by Saragt Babaýew won a national competition in 2015, receiving a prize from thepresident of Turkmenistan,Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow.[31]
1231 August 15 Jalal al-Din, last Khorezm - Shah, is slain fleeing from Mongols
| Preceded by | Sultan of the Khwarazmian Empire 1220 – 15 August 1231 | Succeeded by |
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