| Mongol conquest of Khwarazm | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of theMongol campaigns in Central Asia and theMongol conquest of Persia and Mesopotamia | |||||||||
TheKhwarazmian Empire and theMongol homeland in continental Asiac. 1215, five years before the Mongol invasion | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Mongol Empire | Khwarazmian Empire | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Units involved | |||||||||
| Predominantly citygarrisons | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
Disputed (see below). Estimates include:
| Disputed (see below). Estimates include:
| ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Low | Possibly as high as 10–15 million people[1] | ||||||||
Between 1219 and 1221,[2] theMongol forces underGenghis Khan invaded the lands of theKhwarazmian Empire inCentral Asia. The campaign, which followedthe annexation of theQara Khitai Khanate, sawwidespread devastation and atrocities. The invasion marked the completion of theMongol conquest of Central Asia, and began theMongol conquest of Persia.
Both belligerents, although large, had been formed recently: theKhwarazmian dynasty had expanded fromtheir homeland to replace theSeljuk Empire in the late 1100s and early 1200s; nearly simultaneously, Genghis Khanhad unified theMongolic peoples and conquered theWestern Xia dynasty. Although relations were initially cordial, Genghis was angered by a series of diplomatic provocations. When a senior Mongol diplomat was executed byKhwarazmshahMuhammed II, the Khan mobilized his forces, estimated to be between 90,000 and 200,000 men, and invaded. The Shah's forces were widely dispersed and probably outnumbered—realizing his disadvantage, he decided to garrison his cities individually to bog the Mongols down. However, throughexcellent organization and planning, the Mongols were able to isolate and conquer theTransoxianan cities ofBukhara,Samarkand, andGurganj. Genghis and his youngest sonTolui then laid waste toKhorasan, destroyingHerat,Nishapur, andMerv, three of the largest cities in the world. Meanwhile, Muhammed II was forced into flight by the forces of Mongol generalsSubutai andJebe; unable to reach any bastions of support, he died destitute on an island in theCaspian Sea. His son and heirJalal-al Din managed to mobilize substantial forces, defeating a Mongol general at theBattle of Parwan, but these were crushed by Genghis at theBattle of the Indus a few months later.
After clearing up any remaining resistance, Genghis returned to hiswar against the Jin dynasty in 1223. The war was one of the bloodiest in human history, with total casualties estimated to be between two and fifteen million people. The subjugation of the Khwarazmian lands provided a base for the Mongols' later assaults onGeorgia andthe rest of Persia; when the empire laterdivided into separate khanates, the Persian lands formerly ruled by the Khwarazmids would be governed by theIlkhanate, while the northern cities would be ruled by theChagatai Khanate. The campaign, which saw the Mongols engage and defeat a non-sinicized state for the first time, was a pivotal moment in the growth of theMongol Empire.
The dominant power in late twelfth-centuryCentral Asia was theQara Khitai, which had been founded byYelü Dashi in the 1130s.Khwarazm and theQarakhanids were nominallyvassals of the Qara-Khitai, but in practice, due to their large population and extent, they were allowed to operate almost autonomously.[3]: 12 Of these two major vassals, the Qarakhanids were by far the more prestigious; they had ruled in the area for two centuries, and controlled many of the richest cities in the region, such asBukhara,Samarkand,Tashkent andFergana. By comparison, Khwarazm had only one major city inUrgench, and had only come to prominence after 1150 underIl-Arslan.[3]: 13–14
However, as theSeljuk Empire slowly fractured after the death ofAhmad Sanjar in 1154, the Khwarazmids were able to take advantage of the chaos due to their geographical proximity; Il-Arslan's sonTekish captured large cities such asNishapur andMerv in the nearby region ofKhorasan, gaining enough power to declare himself a fully-fledged sovereign in 1189.[4]: 32–33 Allying with theAbbasid caliphAl-Nasir, he overthrew the last Seljuk emperor,Toghrul III, in 1194, and usurped thesultanate ofHamadan.[5] Tekish now ruled a great swathe of territory stretching fromHamadan in the west toNishapur in the east; drawing on his newfound strength, he threatened war with the caliph, who reluctantly accepted him as Sultan ofIran andKhorasan in 1198.[4]: 44–48 The rapid expansion of what was now the Khwarazmian Empire greatly destabilized the Qara-Khitai, which was nominally the overlord. In the early thirteenth century, the khanate would be destabilized further by refugees fleeing the conquests ofGenghis Khan, whohad begun to establish hegemony over theMongoltribes.[6]
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Muhammad II becameKhwarazmshah after his father Tekish died in 1200. Despite a troubled early start to his reign, which saw conflict with theGhurids ofAfghanistan, he followed his predecessor's expansionist policies by subjugating theQarakhanids and taking their cities, includingBukhara.[7] In 1211,Kuchlug, a prince of theNaimans, managed to usurp the Qara-Khitai Empire from his father-in-lawYelü Zhilugu with Muhammad's help, but alienated both his subjects and the Khwarazmshah with anti-Muslim measures.[8]: 30–31 As a Mongol detachment led byJebe hunted him down, Kuchlug fled; meanwhile, Muhammad was able to vassalize the territories ofBalochistan andMakran, and to gain the allegiance of theEldiguzids.[7]
Following the defeat of Kuchlug, their shared enemy, relations between theMongols and the Khwarazmids were initially strong; however, the Shah soon grew apprehensive regarding his new eastern enemy. The chroniclerAl-Nasawi attributes this change in attitude to the memory ofan unintended earlier encounter with Mongol troops, whose speed and mobility frightened the Shah.[9] It is also likely that the Shah had grown in pride — like his father, he was now embroiled in a dispute with theAbbasid caliphAl-Nasir, and even went so far as to march onBaghdad with an army, but was repulsed by a blizzard in theZagros Mountains.[7] Some historians have speculated that the caliph tried to ally withGenghis Khan, especially after Mongol-Khwarazmid relations deteriorated. Mongol historians are adamant that Genghis at that time had no intention of invading the Khwarazmian Empire, and was only interested in trade and even a potential alliance.[10] They cite the fact he was already bogged down inhis war against the Jin in China, and that he had to deal with theHoi-yin Irgen (Tumed) rebellion inSiberia in 1216.[11]
In 1218, the Khan sent a largecaravan of Mongol merchants to Khwarazmia; it seems probable that a large proportion of the Mongol elite had invested in the expedition, and thus had a personal interest in its success. However,Inalchuq, the governor of the Khwarazmian city ofOtrar, seized the caravan's goods and executed its members on charges of espionage.[12] The validity of the accusations has been debated, as has the Shah's involvement; it is certain, though, that he rejected the Khan's subsequent demands that Inalchuq be punished, going so far as to kill one Mongol envoy and humiliate the other two. This was seen as a grave affront to the Khan himself, who considered ambassadors "as sacred and inviolable" as the Great Khan himself.[13]: 80 He abandoned his war against the Jin, leaving only a small army to pursue it, and gathered as many men as possible to invade Khwarazmia.[11]
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The precise sizes of each force have been heavily disputed; the one certainty is that the Mongol army numbered more than the Shah's.[14]: 113 The medieval chroniclerRashid al-Din Hamadani attested that the Mongol army numbered over 600,000 strong, and that they were opposed by 400,000 total Khwarazmians;[15] his contemporaryJuzjani gives an even greater estimate of 800,000 for the Khan.[16] These numbers are regarded as greatly inflated by modern historians; the only contemporary source regarded as near-reliable isThe Secret History of the Mongols, which gives totals of between 100,000 and 135,000 for the Mongol army, although these totals may have been deflated by a pro-Mongol chronicler.[14]: 109 [17]
WhileStubbs andRossabi indicate that the total Mongol invasion force cannot have been more than 200,000,Sverdrup, who hypothesizes that atumen had often been overestimated in size, gives a minimum figure of 75,000.[14]: 109, 113 [18][19] Most historians have given figures between these two extremes:McLynn estimates the Mongol force at around 120,000;[20]: 268 whileSmith follows theSecret History with a figure of 130,000.[17] The uncertainty is made worse by the high flexibility and efficiency ofthe Mongol force's operational structure, allowing it to separate and coalesce at will.[21] As for the Khwarazmians, there is no similarly reliable contemporary source; Sverdrup, taking the proportional exaggeration of the Muslim forces as equal to that of the Mongols, has estimated a total of around 40,000 soldiers, excluding certain town militias.[14]: 113 Mclynn however provides a much greater figure of 200,000.[20]: 263
TheKhwarazmshah faced many problems. His empire was vast and newly formed, with a still-developing administration.[22]: 373–380 It is known that in 1218 he had overhauled the Seljuk-era administration, replacing it with a streamlined, loyal bureaucracy; the ongoing change may have contributed to disorder during the Mongol invasion.[23]: 174 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.[3]: 14–15
Additionally, many of the areas that Muhammad charged his troops to defend had been devastated recently by Khwarazmian forces; when later passing throughNishapur, he urged the citizens to repair the fortifications his father had broken down, whileBukhara had been sacked by Muhammad only eight years earlier, in 1212.[24] The Shah also distrusted most of his commanders, with the only exception being his eldest son and heirJalal al-Din, whose military acumen had been criticalon the Irghiz River the previous year.[8]: 31 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.[25] The Shah thus made the decision to distribute his forces as garrison troops inside his most important towns, such asSamarkand,Merv andNishapur.[11]
Genghis' army was commanded by his most able generals, with the exception ofMuqali, who was left behind to continuethe war against the Jin. Genghis also brought a large body ofChinese siege and construction experts, including several Chinese who were familiar withgunpowder.[26] Historians have suggested that the Mongol invasion had brought Chinese gunpowder weapons, such as thehuochong, toCentral Asia.[27]
TheKhwarazmshah and his advisers assumed that the Mongols would invade through theDzungarian Gate, the natural mountain pass in between their (now conquered)Qara-Khitai andKhwarazmian empires. One option for the Khwarazmian defence was to advance beyond the towns of theSyr Darya and block the Dzungarian Gate with an army, since it would takeGenghis Khan many months to gather his army in Mongolia and advance through the pass after winter had passed.[28] A Mongol force underChagatai andÖgedei soon descended ontoOtrar from either theAltai Mountains to the north or theDzungarian Gate and immediatelystarted laying siege to it.Rashid Al-Din stated that Otrar had a garrison of 20,000 whileJuvayni claimed 60,000 (horsemen and militia), though like the army figures given in mostmedieval chronicles, these numbers should be treated with caution and are probably exaggerated by an order of magnitude considering the size of the city.[29]
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Unlike most of the other cities,Otrar did not surrender after little fighting, nor did its governor march its army out into the field to be destroyed by the numerically superior Mongols. Instead the garrison remained on the walls and resisted stubbornly, holding out against many attacks. The siege proceeded for five months without results, until a traitor within the walls (Qaracha) who felt no loyalty to theShah orInalchuq opened the gates to the Mongols; the princes' forces managed to storm the now unsecured gate and slaughter the majority of the garrison.[30] The citadel, holding the remaining one-tenth of the garrison, held out for another month and was only taken after heavy Mongol casualties.Inalchuq held out until the end, even climbing to the top of the citadel in the last moments of the siege to throw down tiles at the oncoming Mongols and slay many of them in close quarters combat. Genghis killed many of the inhabitants, enslaved the rest, and executed Inalchuq.[31][32]
At this point, the Mongol army was divided into five widely separated groups on opposite ends of the enemy empire. After the Shah did not mount an active defence of the cities on theSyr Darya,Genghis andTolui, at the head of an army of roughly 50,000 men, skirted the natural defence barrier of the Syr Darya and its fortified cities, and went westwards to lay siege to the city ofBukhara first. To do this, they traversed 300 miles of the seemingly impassableKyzyl Kum desert by hopping through the variousoases, guided most of the way by captured nomads. The Mongols arrived at the gates of Bukhara virtually unnoticed. Many military tacticians regard this surprise entrance to Bukhara as one of the most successful manoeuvres in warfare.[33]
Bukhara was not heavily fortified, with amoat and a single wall, and the citadel typical of Khwarazmian cities. The Bukharan garrison was made up ofTurkic soldiers and led byTurkic generals, who attempted to break out on the third day of the siege.Rashid al-Din andIbn al-Athir state that the city had 20,000 defenders, thoughCarl Sverdrup contends that it only had a tenth of this number.[34] A break-out force was annihilated in open battle. The city's leaders opened the gates to the Mongols, though a unit of Turkic defenders held the city's citadel for another twelve days. The Mongols valued artisans' skills highly and artisans were exempted from massacre during the conquests and instead entered into lifelong service as slaves.[35] Thus, when the citadel was taken survivors were executed with the exception of artisans and craftsmen, who were sent back to Mongolia. Young men who had not fought were drafted into the Mongolian army and the rest of the population was sent intoslavery in the Mongol Empire. As the Mongol soldiers looted the city, a fire broke out, razing most of the city to the ground.
After the fall ofBukhara, Genghis headed to the Khwarazmian capital ofSamarkand and arrived in March 1220. During this period, the Mongols also waged effective psychological warfare and caused divisions within their foe. The Khan's spies told them of the bitter fighting between theShah and his motherTerken Khatun, who commanded the allegiance of some of his most senior commanders and his eliteTurkic cavalry divisions. SinceMongols andTurks were both steppe peoples, Genghis argued that Terken Khatun and her army should join the Mongols against her treacherous son. Meanwhile, he arranged for deserters to bring letters that said Terken Khatun and some of her generals had allied with the Mongols. This further inflamed the existing divisions in theKhwarazmian Empire, and probably prevented the senior commanders from unifying their forces. Genghis then compounded the damage by repeatedly issuing bogus decrees in the name of either Terken Khatun or Shah Muhammad, further tangling up the already divided Khwarazmian command structure.[36] As a result of the Mongol strategic initiative, speedy manoeuvres, and psychological strategies, all the Khwarazmian generals, including the Queen Mother, kept their forces as a garrison and were defeated in turn.
Samarkand possessed significantly better fortifications and a larger garrison compared toBukhara.Juvayni andRashid al-Din (both writing under Mongol auspices) credit the defenders of the city with 100,000–110,000 men, whileIbn al-Athir states 50,000.[37] A more likely number is perhaps 10,000, considering the city itself had less than 100,000 people total at the time.[38][39] As Genghis began his siege, his sonsChaghatai andÖgedei joined him after finishingthe reduction of Otrar, and the joint Mongol forces launched an assault on the city. The Mongols attacked using prisoners as body shields. On the third day of fighting, the Samarkand garrison launched a counterattack. Feigning retreat, Genghis drew approximately half of the garrison outside the fortifications of Samarkand and slaughtered them in open combat.Shah Muhammad attempted to relieve the city twice, but was driven back. On the fifth day, all but a handful of soldiers surrendered. The remaining soldiers, diehard supporters of the Shah, held out in the citadel. After the fortress fell, Genghis reneged on his surrender terms and executed every soldier who had taken arms against him at Samarkand. The people of Samarkand were ordered to evacuate and assemble in a plain outside the city, where many were killed.[citation needed]
About the time of the fall of Samarkand, Genghis Khan chargedSubutai andJebe, two of the Khan's top generals, with hunting down theShah. The Shah had fled west with some of his most loyal soldiers and his son,Jalal al-Din, to a small island in theCaspian Sea. It was there, in December 1220, that the Shah died. Most scholars attribute his death to pneumonia, but others cite the sudden shock of the loss of his empire.[citation needed]
Meanwhile, the wealthy trading city ofGurganj was still in the hands of Khwarazmian forces. Previously, theShah's mother had ruled Gurganj, but she fled when she learned her son had absconded to theCaspian Sea. She was captured and sent to Mongolia.Khumar Tegin, one ofMuhammad's generals, declared himself Sultan of Gurganj.Jochi, who had been on campaign in the north since the invasion, approached the city from that direction, whileGenghis,Ögedei, andChagatai attacked from the south.
The assault on Gurganj proved to be the most difficult battle of the Mongol invasion. The city was built along the riverAmu Darya in a marshy delta area. The soft ground did not lend itself to siege warfare, and there was a lack of large stones for the catapults. The Mongols attacked regardless, and the city fell only after the defenders put up a stout defence, fighting block for block. Mongolian casualties were higher than normal, due to the unaccustomed difficulty of adapting Mongolian tactics to city fighting.
The taking of Gurganj was further complicated by continuing tensions betweenGenghis Khan and his eldest son,Jochi, who had been promised the city as his prize. Jochi's mother was the same person as his three brothers': Genghis Khan's teen bride, and apparent lifelong love,Börte. Only her sons were counted as Genghis's "official" sons and successors, rather than those conceived by theKhan’s 500 or so other "wives and consorts". But Jochi had been conceived in controversy; in the early days of the Khan's rise to power, Börte was captured and raped while she was held prisoner. Jochi was born nine months later. While Genghis Khan chose to acknowledge him as his oldest son (primarily due to his love for Börte, whom he would have had to reject had he rejected her child), questions had always existed over Jochi's true parentage.[40][full citation needed]
Such tensions were present asJochi engaged in negotiations with the defenders, trying to get them to surrender so that as much of the city as possible was undamaged. This angeredChagatai, andGenghis headed off this fight between siblings by appointingÖgedei the commander of the besieging forces as Gurganj fell. But the removal of Jochi from command, and the sack of a city he considered promised to him, enraged him and estranged him from his father and brothers, and is credited with being a decisive impetus for the later actions of a man who saw his younger brothers promoted over him, despite his own considerable military skills.
As usual, the artisans were sent back to Mongolia, young women and children were given to the Mongol soldiers as slaves, and the rest of the population was massacred. The Persian scholarJuvayni states that 50,000 Mongol soldiers were given the task of executing twenty-four Gurganj citizens each, which would mean that 1.2 million people were killed. While this is almost certainly an exaggeration, the sacking of Gurganj is considered one of the bloodiest massacres in human history.[citation needed]
Then came the complete destruction of the city of Gurganj, south of theAral Sea. Upon its surrender the Mongols broke the dams and flooded the city, then proceeded to execute the survivors.[citation needed]
After capturingBalkh in early 1221 and while continuing to besiegeTaliqan, Genghis dispatched his youngest sonTolui to Khorasan to make sure that no opposition remained in the extensive and wealthy region. His task was to pacify and subjugate the region and its cities by any means possible, and he carried out the task "with a thoroughness from which that region has never recovered", in the words of the historianJ.A. Boyle.[41]
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Tolui's army was composed of a tenth of the Mongol invasion force augmented by Khwarazmianconscripts; the historian Carl Sverdrup estimates its size at around 7,000 men.[43] He marched westwards from Balkh toMurichaq, on the present-dayAfghanistan–Turkmenistan border, and then crossed theMarghab river and its tributary theKushk to approach the city ofMerv from the south. He ambushed a force ofTurkmen raiders during the night of 24 February; the surprise attack caught the raiders off guard, and those who were not killed by the Mongols or did not drown in the river were scattered. The Mongols arrived at Merv the following day.[44] After assessing the city for six days, Tolui came to the conclusion that the city fortifications would withstand a lengthy siege. Having been subjected to a general assault on the seventh day, the townspeople, who twice attempted asortie to no effect, lost the will to resist and surrendered to the Mongols, who promised to treat them fairly.[45] Tolui, however, reneged on this guarantee, and ordered that the entire population be driven out on the plain and put to the sword, excluding a small number ofartisans and children. It was reported that each Mongol soldier was allotted between three and four hundred people to kill; the contemporary chroniclerIbn al-Athir estimated the number of deaths at 700,000, while the chroniclerAta-Malik Juvayni, writing a few decades later, recorded that a cleric spent thirteen days counting the dead and arrived at a figure of 1,300,000.[46]
Tolui had meanwhile marched on south-westerly towards Nishapur, which had already seen a number of events during the war.Muhammad II, the ruler of theKhwarazmian Empire, had arrived nearly a year earlier on 18 April 1220, fleeing the Mongol advance in Transoxiana. He departed in mid-May that year, just in time to escape the armies of Jebe and Subutai, who arrived the following day.[47] The city submitted to the generals, who requested them to reduce their walls and aid any Mongols who passed by. However, the city did not heed these instructions and instead began causing trouble for the Mongols, killingTaghachar when he attempted to enforce control.[48]Jalal al-Din, the eldest son and heir of the now-deceased Muhammad II, arrived at the city on 10 February 1221, attempting to escapethe ongoing Mongol siege atGurganj, the capital of the empire; he remained at the city for only a couple of days before departing in the direction ofZozan.[49]
Tolui arrived at the city on 7 April and the inhabitants, awed by the size of his force, immediately sought to agree surrender terms. Because the killing of the khan's son-in-law had been a grave insult to the Mongols, all proposals were rejected; the assault had begun before the end of the day, with the walls being breached on 9 April and the city captured the next day.[50] According to Juvayni, the city was razed in revenge; Taghachar's widow supervised the massacre of the entire population of the city, with the exception of 400 craftsmen. Unlike in Merv, all children were killed, and the corpses of the alleged 1,747,000 victims, including all the cats and dogs in the city, were piled in great heaps.[51] The ground was subsequentlyploughed over.[52] While marching through the region, Tolui was also sending detachments against surrounding towns such asAbiward,Nasa,Tus, andJajarm.[53]
There has been some confusion about the fate ofHerat, the last of the great cities of Khorasan. The early 20th-century historianVasily Bartold, citing a local history from the 1400s, stated that none of the inhabitants were killed with the exception of the garrison; meanwhile, the chroniclerMinhaj-i Siraj Juzjani, who fought the Mongols nearby, recorded that after an eight-month siege, the city was taken and its population slaughtered.[54] It is now known, thanks to a chronicle rediscovered in 1944, that there were two sieges of Herat. The first started with the execution of a Mongol diplomat in the town; an incensed Tolui launched an eight-day assault, which culminated in the death of the town'smalik (governor). From the edge of the city moat, Tolui proclaimed that the inhabitants would be spared if they surrendered. Unlike at Merv, the Mongols honoured their word, only killing the 12,000 men in the city garrison. Having appointed a Mongol overseer to govern the town, Tolui left the region to rejoin his father at Taliqan in mid-1221.[55] The population subsequently rebelled and were besieged for months by the Mongol general Eljigidei, who was said to have killed between 1,600,000 and 2,400,000 people during his sack of the town, in a massacre lasting seven days in June 1222.[56]
The death tolls traditionally attributed to Tolui's campaign in Khorasan are considered exaggerated by modern historians. The cities of Merv, Nishapur, and Herat could have only supported fractions of their reported populations,[57] and populations were reported to return almost miraculously to destroyed cities—Genghis Khan's adopted sonShigi Qutuqu was said to have ordered the deaths of a further 100,000 at Merv in November 1221, after yet another rebellion.[58] The figures do however clearly represent a demographic catastrophe so extreme the native populations found it difficult to quantify the destruction.[59] The historian Michal Biran has suggested that the speed with which the Mongols brought the pragmatically brutal warfare of East Asia into the less ruthless Muslim world was a factor in this cultural shock.[60]
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After the Mongol campaign inKhorasan, theShah's army was broken.Jalal al-Din, who took power after his father's death, began assembling the remnants of the Khwarazmian army in the south, in the area ofAfghanistan. Genghis had dispatched forces to hunt down the gathering army under Jalal al-Din, and the two sides met in September 1221 at the town ofParwan. The engagement was ahumiliating defeat for the Mongol forces. Enraged, Genghis headed south himself, anddefeated Jalal al-Din on the Indus River. Jalal al-Din, defeated, fled toIndia. Genghis spent some time on the southern shore of theIndus searching for the new Shah, but failed to find him.
Genghis sent general Dorbei Doqshin with twotumens to pursueJalal al-Din, whom he still regarded as a threat, in early 1222; one account has Doqshin failing to secure Jalal al-Din, and returning to the Khan inSamarkand, who was so infuriated Doqshin was sent out at once on the same task.[13]: 141 Meanwhile, Jalal al-Din was quarrelling with local princes, but was mostly victorious when it came to battle. Under Doqshin's leadership, the Mongol army tookNandana 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 toIslam and joined Jalal al-Din.[61][62]
Encouraged by Jalal al-Din's success against the Mongols, the Khwarazmians started an insurgency. Kush Tegin Pahlawan led a revolt inMerv and seized it successfully. After recapturing Merv, Kush Tegin Pahlawan made a successful attack onBukhara. People inHerat also rebelled and disposed the Mongol vassal leadership. An insurgency leader named Muhammad al-Marghani twice attacked the camp Genghis Khan accommodated atBaghlan and returned with some loot. As a response, Genghis Khan sent a large army underÖgedei back toGhazni.[63] Genghis Khan appointed Yelü Ahai to restore Mongol sovereignty order inSamarkand andBukhara. Yelü Ahai managed to restore the order in the cities in 1223.[64]Shigi Qutuqu dealt withthe revolt that dethroned the pro-Mongol governance of Merv.[65]
After the defeat of the Khwarazmian Empire, Genghis Khan gathered his forces inPersia andArmenia to return to the Mongolian steppes. Under the suggestion ofSubutai, the Mongol army was split into two forces. Genghis Khan led the main army on a raid throughAfghanistan andnorthern India towards Mongolia, while another 20,000 (twotumen) contingent marched through theCaucasus and intoRus',Armenia andAzerbaijan under generalsJebe andSubutai.
In the following yearsJalal al-Din tried to reestablish the Khwarazmian kingdom, but never fully consolidated his power. He retook control of areas ofwestern Iran, inKerman,Tabriz,Isfahan andFars, but was eventually defeated by theRum Seljuk SultanKayqubad I at theBattle of Yassıçemen in 1230.[66] The Mongols came back to conquer the western areas of the former Khwarazmian Empire in 1230–1231, at the time of Genghis Khan's successorÖgedei, who sent an expedition of threetumens led by generalChormaghun.[67] After attempting a defensive strategy,Jalal al-Din finally died inDiyarbakir in 1231.[67] The Mongols under Chormaghun established themselves innorthwestern Iran, from where they were able to raid the neighbouring territories ofArmenia,Azerbaijan andMosul during the next ten years, culminating with theinvasion of Georgia in 1236.[67]
The destruction and absorption of the Khwarazmian Empire would prove to be a sign of things to come, for theIslamic world as well as forEastern Europe.[68] The new territory proved to be an important stepping stone for the Mongol armies when they invadedKievan Rus' andPoland during the reign of Genghis' sonÖgedei, and future campaigns brought Mongol armies toHungary and theBaltic Sea. For the Islamic world, the destruction of Khwarazmia leftIraq,Anatolia andSyria wide open. All three regions were eventually subjugated by future khans.
The war with Khwarazmia also brought up the important question of succession.Genghis Khan was not young when the war began, and he had four sons, all of whom were fierce warriors and each of them had his own loyal group of followers. Their sibling rivalry almost came to a head during theSiege of Gurganj and Genghis was forced to rely on his third son,Ögedei, who ended the battle. Following the destruction ofGurganj, Genghis officially selected Ögedei to be his successor, and he also ruled that future khans would be the direct descendants of previous rulers. Despite Genghis's establishment of this practice, the four sons would eventually come to blows, and those blows revealed the instability of the khanate that Genghis had created.
Jochi never forgave his father, and he essentially withdrew from future Mongol wars, he moved to the north, and he refused to come to his father when he was ordered to.[40] Indeed, at the time of his death, Genghis Khan was contemplating a march on his rebellious son. The bitterness that resulted from this event was transmitted to Jochi's sons, especiallyBatu andBerke (of theGolden Horde), who would conquerKievan Rus'.[69] When theMamluks of Egypt managed to inflict one of history's most significant defeats on the Mongols at theBattle of Ain Jalut in 1260,Hulagu Khan, one of Genghis Khan's grandsons by his sonTolui, who hadsacked Baghdad in 1258, was unable to avenge that defeat whenBerke Khan, his cousin (who had converted toIslam), attacked him in theTranscaucasus in order to aid the cause of Islam, and Mongol battled Mongol for the first time.[70] The seeds of that battle began in the conflict with Khwarazmia when their fathers struggled for supremacy.[68]
...he (Genghis Khan) led his main army over 1,000 miles to invade the Khwarazmian Empire in 1219. Within two years, a once dynamic and powerful empire has been erased from the map and largely forgotten in history.
He actually succeeded in routing a Mongol detachment at Parwan near Kabul in Afghanistan, an event which raised many false hopes and led to fatal uprisings against Mongol rule in Mery, Herat and elsewhere in the autumn of 1221.
The new Khan Ögedei decided to complete the conquest of Khorazm and entrusted the general Chormaghun (fl. 1221–1241) with three tümen to accomplish the task. The Mongol army arrived in Khorasan in the winter between 1230 and the following year. Jalal ud-Din heard the news and fled. He was probably pursuing a defensive strategy, aware of the effectiveness of the adversary. The flight to inaccessible places could have been a boost for his troops as they were indigenous, while perhaps he hoped that the Mongols did not have this knowledge. After running through a quite extensive territory, he arrived near Amid (Diyarbakir) where he died under strange circumstances in August 1231.
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