CHAPTER VI

DESTRUCTION OF THE KWARESMIAN EMPIRE

That immense Kara Kitai, or Black Cathay, or Black China was added to the Mongol dominions which now were conterminous with the Kwaresmian Empire. This Empire, begun on Seljuk ruins, was increased soon by other lands, and in 1219 it extended from the Syr Darya or Yaxartes to the Indus, and from Kurdistan to the great roof of the world, those immense Pamir highlands. The sovereign at the opening of the thirteenth century was Alai ud din Mohammed, great-great-grandson of a Turk slave named Nush Tegin. The master of this slave was a freedman of Melik Shah the Seljuk Sultan, and this freedman transferred Nush Tegin to his sovereign. The slave became cupbearer to Melik Shah, and prefect of Khwaresm at the same time by virtue of his office. In Mohammedan history cases of Turkish slaves seizing sovereignty are frequent. Turkish captives in Persia were highly esteemed and appeared there in multitudes. Throughout the vast regions north and east of the Caspian various Turk tribes fought unceasingly; each seized the children of an enemy whenever the chance came, and sold them in the slave marts. These children, reared in the faith of Mohammed, were trained to arms for the greater part, and became trusted body-guards of princes. They served also as household officials, or managers. Those of them who earned favor gained freedom most frequently, and next the highest places at courts, and in armies. A lucky man might be made governor, and when fortune helped well enough he made himself sovereign.

Turkish slaves grew all-powerful in Moslem lands, till those lands were invaded at last by Turk warriors. Persia, lowered much by Arab conquest, recovered under Bagdad rule in some slight degree, till the eleventh century saw it conquered again by Turk nomads from those immense steppes north and east of the Caspian. Under the descendants of Seljuk these fierce sons of wild herdsmen pushed their way on to the Propontis and to Palestine; camped in Persia, and in lands lying west of it. These self-seeking, merciless adventurers brought torture, oppression, and brigandage to all people equally, till at last intestine wars and social chaos put an end to Seljuk rule toward the close of the twelfth century.

Kutb ud din Mohammed, son of the manumitted slave, Nush Tejin, and also his successor, won the title of Kwaresmian Shah, a title used before the Arab conquest. Atsiz, son of Kutb ud din, raised arms repeatedly against Sindjar, the son of Melik Shah, and was forced to render tribute to the Gurkhan. When Sindjar died (1157) Il Arslan, son of Atsiz, seized West Khorassan; his son, Tukush, took Persian Irak from Togrul, who fell in battle. By the death of Togrul and Sindjar, both Persian Seljuk lines became extinct.

Tukush obtained investiture at Bagdad from the Kalif, and Persia passed from one line of Turkish tyrants to another. Mohammed, who succeeded his father Tukush, in 1200, seized the provinces of Balkh and Herat and made himself lord of Khorassan. Soon after this Mazanderan and Kerman passed under his power and direction. Mohammed now planned to shake off the authority of the Gurkhan of Kara Kitai, to whom he, and three of his predecessors, had paid yearly tribute. Besides he was urged to this step by Osman, Khan of Samarkand and Transoxiana, who, being also a vassal of the Gurkhan, endured with vexation the insolence of agents who took the tribute in his provinces. Osman promised to recognize Mohammed as his suzerain, and pay the same tribute that he had paid to the Gurkhan. The Shah accepted this offer with gladness; he merely waited for a pretext, which appeared very quickly: An official came to receive the yearly tribute, and seated himself at the Shah’s side, the usual place in such cases, though it seemed now that he did so somewhat boldly. Mohammed’s pride, increased much by recent victory over Kipchaks living north of the Caspian, would endure this no longer, so in rage he commanded to cut down the agent and hack him to pieces.

After this act Mohammed invaded the lands of the Gurkhan immediately (1208), but was defeated in the ensuing battle, and captured with one of his officers. The officer had the wit to declare that the Shah, whose person was unknown in those regions, was a slave of his. In a short time the amount of ransom for the officer was settled; he offered to send his slave to get the sum needed. This offer was taken and an escort sent with the slave to protect him. Thus did Mohammed return in servile guise to his dominions, where reports of his death had preceded him. In Taberistan his brother, Ali Shir, had proclaimed his own rule, and his uncle, the governor of Herat, was taking sovereign power in that region.

The following year Mohammed and Osman, the Samarkand ruler, made a second attack on the Gurkhan. Crossing the Syr Darya at Tenakit, they met their opponents, commanded by Tanigu, and won a victory.

They conquered a part of the country as far as Uzkend, and instated a governor. The news of this sudden success caused immense joy in the Kwaresmian Empire. Embassies were sent by neighboring princes to congratulate the victor. After his name on the shield was added “Shadow of God upon earth.” People wished to add also “Second Alexander,” but he preferred the name Sindjar, since the Seljuk prince Sindjar had reigned forty-one years successfully. After his return the Shah gave his daughter in marriage to Osman, and the Gurkhan’s lieutenant in Samarkand was replaced by a Kwaresmian agent. Soon, however, Osman was so dissatisfied with this agent that he gave back his allegiance to the Gurkhan, and killed the Kwaresmians in his capital.

Mohammed, enraged at this slaughter, marched to Samarkand, stormed the city, and for three days and nights his troops did naught else but slay people and plunder; then he laid siege to the fortress and captured it. Osman came out dressed in a grave shroud; a naked sword hung from his neck down in front of him. He fell before Mohammed and begged for life abjectly. The Shah would have spared him, but Osman’s wife, the Shah’s daughter, rushed in and demanded the death of her husband. He had preferred an earlier wife, the daughter of the Gurkhan, and had forced her, the Shah’s daughter, to serve at a feast that detested and inferior woman. Osman had to die, and with him died his whole family, including the daughter of the Gurkhan.

Mohammed joined all Osman’s lands to the Empire, and made Samarkand a new capital. He further increased his Empire by a part of the kingdom of Gur, which extended from Herat to the sacred river of India, the Ganges.

After the death, in 1205, of Shihab ud din, fourth sovereign of the Gur line, his provinces passed under officers placed there as prefects. When Mohammed took Balkh and Herat, Mahmud, nephew of Shihab, kept merely Gur the special domain of the family, and even for this he was forced to give homage to the Kwaresmian monarch. Mahmud had reigned seven years in that reduced state when he was killed in his own palace. Public opinion in this case held the Shah to be a murderer, and beyond doubt with full justice.

Ali Shir, the Shah’s brother, who had proclaimed himself sovereign so hurriedly when Mohammed was returning, disguised as a slave, from his war against the Gurkhan, was now at the Gur capital; he declared himself Mahmud’s successor and begged the Shah to confirm him as vassal. Mohammed sent an officer, as it seemed, for this ceremony, but when Ali Shir was about to put on the robe of honor sent him the officer swept off his head with a sword stroke, and produced thereupon the command of his master to do so. After this revolting deed the Gur principality was joined to Mohammed’s dominion (1213).

Three years later, 1216, Mohammed won Ghazni from a Turk general once a subject of Shihab ud din. This Turk had seized the province at the dissolution of Gur dominion. In the archives of Ghazni the Shah came on letters from the Kalif Nassir at Bagdad to the Gur Khans, in which he gave warning against the Kwaresmian Shahs, and incited to attack them, advising a junction with the Kara Kitans for that purpose.

These letters roused the Shah’s wrath to the utmost. The Kalif, Nassir, who ascended the throne in 1180, had labored without success, though unceasingly, to stop Kwaresmian growth and aggression. He could not employ his own forces to this end, since he had none. The temporal power of the Prophet’s successors had shrunk to the narrow limits of Kuzistan and Arabian Irak. The other parts of their once vast dominions had passed to various dynasties whose sovereigns were supposed to receive lands in fief from the Kalif. If these sovereigns asked for investiture it was simply for religious, or perhaps more correctly, for political reasons.

Outside the bounds of their own little state the Abbasid Kalifs had only two emblems of sovereignty: their names were mentioned in public prayer throughout Islam, and were stamped on the coins of all Moslem Commonwealths. They were not masters even in their own capital always.

When the Seljuk Empire, composed at that time of Persian Irak alone, was destroyed by disorder under Togrul its last Sultan, the Kalif, a man of quick mind and adventurous instincts, did much to bring on the dissolution of the tottering state, through his intrigues, and by calling in Tukush, the Kwaresmian monarch. He had hoped to win Persian Irak, but when Tukush had won that great province he would cede not a foot of it to any man. The Kalif saw himself forced to invest a new line with the sanction of sacredness, a line which threatened Bagdad far more than that which he had helped so industriously to ruin.

When Mohammed succeeded Tukush, Nassir roused Ghiath ud din of Gur to oppose him. This prince, lord already of Balkh and Herat, desired all Khorassan, and began war to win it. His death followed soon after. Shihab ud din, the next ruler, continued the struggle but lost his whole army, which was slaughtered and crushed in the very first battle. When at Ghazni, Mohammed found proof of the Kalif’s intrigues, he despatched to Nassir an envoy; through this envoy he demanded the title of Sultan for himself; a representative in Bagdad as governor; and also that his name be mentioned in public prayers throughout Islam. Nassir refused these demands and expressed great surprise that Mohammed, not content with his own immense Empire, was coveting also the capital of the Kalif.

On receiving this answer Mohammed resolved to strip the Abbasids of the succession, or Kalifat. To do this he must obtain first a sanctioning fetva from Mohammedan theologians (the Ulema). So he proposed to that body the following questions: “May a monarch whose entire glory consists in exalting God’s word and destroying the foes of true faith, depose a recalcitrant Kalif, and replace him by one who is deserving, if the Kalifat belongs by right to descendants of Ali, and if the Abbasids have usurped it, and if besides they have always omitted one among the first duties, the duty of protecting the boundaries of Islam, and waging sacred wars to bring unbelievers to the true faith, or, if they will not accept the true faith, to pay tribute?”

The Ulema declared that in such cases deposition was justified. Armed with this decision the Shah recognized Ali ul Muluk of Termed, a descendant of Ali, as Kalif, and ordered that in public prayers the name of Nassir be omitted. The Shah assembled an army to carry out the sentence against Nassir.

Ogulmush, a Turk general who had subdued Persian Irak and then rendered fealty to Mohammed, was murdered at direction of the Kalif, under whose control a number of Assassins had been placed by their chieftain at Alamut. In Persian Irak the name of the Shah was dropped from public prayers, after the slaying of Ogulmush. The princes of Fars and Azerbaidjan hastened promptly to seize upon Irak, at the instance of Nassir. Sád, prince of Fars, was taken captive, but secured freedom by ceding two strongholds, and promising the third of his annual income as tribute. Euzbek of Azerbaidjan fled after defeat, and the Shah would not pursue, as the capture of two rulers in the space of one year was unlucky. Euzbek, on reaching home, sent envoys with presents, and proclaimed himself a vassal. Mohammed annexed Irak to the Empire, and moved his troops on toward Bagdad.

Nassir sent words of peace to his enemy, but those words had no influence, and the march continued. Nassir strove to strengthen Bagdad and defend it, while Mohammed was writing diplomas, which turned Arabian Irak, that whole land of which Bagdad was the capital, into military fiefs and tax-paying districts.

The Shah’s vanguard, fifteen thousand strong, advanced toward Heulvan by the way of the mountains, and was followed soon by a second division of the same strength. Though the time was early autumn, snow fell for twenty days in succession, the largest tents were buried under it; men and horses died in great numbers, both when they were marching through those mountains and when they halted. A retreat was commanded at last when advance was impossible. Turks and Kurds then attacked the retreating forces so savagely that the ruin of the army was well nigh total. This was attributed by Sunnite belief to Divine anger for that impious attack on the person of the Kalif.

The reports of Mongol movements alarmed the Shah greatly and he hastened homeward, first to Nishapur, and later on to Bukhara, where he received the first envoys from Jinghis Khan, his new neighbor.

It is well to go back to the time when the Shah chose a new Kalif from among the descendants of Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Mohammed. In the Moslem world there are seventy-three or more sects, varying in size and degree of importance, but the two great divisions of Islam are the Sunnite and Shiite, which differ mainly on the succession. Among Sunnites the succession was from Abbas, the uncle of Mohammed the Prophet of Islam; that is the succession which took place in history. Among Shiites the succession which, as they think, should have taken place, but which did not, was that through Ali, the husband of Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed.

The Shiites of Persia thought that the day of justice had come after six centuries of abasement and waiting, and that the headship of Islam would be theirs through the accession of Ali ul Muluk of Termed to the Kalifat. In their eyes the Kwaresmian Shah had become an agent of Allah, a sacred person. His act created an immense effect throughout Persia, and certainly no less in the capital of Islam at Bagdad, where the Kalif Nassir called a council at once to find means of defence against so dreadful an enemy as Shah Mohammed. After long discussion, one sage among those assembled declared that Jinghis Khan, whose fame was sounding then throughout Western Asia, was the man to bring the raging Shah to his senses.

The Kalif, greatly pleased with this statement, resolved to send an envoy, but the journey was perilous, since every road to the Mongols lay through Shah Mohammed’s dominions. Should the envoy be taken and his message read, the Shah, roused by resentment and anger, would spare no man involved in the plot, least of all Kalif Nassir and his servants. To avoid this chance, they shaved the envoy’s head and wrote out, or branded, his commission upon it. His skull was then covered with paint, or a mixture of some kind. The entire message to Jinghis was fixed well in the mind of the envoy, and he set out on his journey.

After four months of hard traveling he reached Mongol headquarters, delivered his message in words, and was admitted soon after to the Khan of the Mongols in secret. The envoy’s head was shorn a second time and the credentials traced with fire on his crown became visible. There was branded in also an invitation to invade the Kwaresmian Empire, and destroy the reigning dynasty.

Jinghis meditated over this invitation. The thought of conquering a new Empire did not leave him, but as he had spoken not long before with its ruler in friendship, he waited till a reason to justify attack should present itself.

In 1216–17 in Bukhara, as mentioned already, Shah Mohammed received three envoys from Jinghis; these men brought ingots of silver, musk, jade and costly white robes of camels’ hair, all creations and products of Central Asia, sent as presents to the Kwaresmian sovereign. “The great Khan has charged us,” said the envoys, “to give this message: ‘I salute thee! I know thy power and the great extent of thy Empire. Thy reign is over a large part of the earth’s surface. I have the greatest wish to live in peace with thee; I look on thee as my most cherished son. Thou art aware that I have subdued China, and brought all Turk nations north of it to obedience. Thou knowest that my country is swarming with warriors; that it is a mine of wealth, and that I have no need to covet lands of other sovereigns. I and thou have an equal interest in favoring commerce between our subjects.’”

This message was in fact a demand on Mohammed to declare himself a vassal, since various degrees of relationship were used among rulers in Asia to denote corresponding degrees of submission.

The Shah summoned one of the envoys in the night-time. “Has Jinghis Khan really conquered China?” asked he. “There is no doubt of that,” said the envoy. “Who is this who calls me his son? How many troops has he?” The envoy, seeing Mohammed’s excitement, replied that Mongol forces were not to be compared with his in any case. The Shah was calmed, and when the time came he dismissed the envoys with apparent good feeling and friendliness. When they reached the boundary of the Shah’s land they were safe, for wherever Jinghis Khan became sovereign there was safety for travelers immediately, even in places where robbery had been the rule for many ages.

Since Kara Kitai had fallen, Mohammed’s possessions reached the heart of Central Asia, and touched the land of the Uigurs, now tributary to Jinghis, hence commercial relations were direct and of very great value. Soon after the Khan’s envoys had made their visit, a party of between four and five hundred merchants from Mongolian places arrived at Otrar on the Syr Daryá. Inaldjuk, the governor of the city, tempted by the rich stuffs and wares which those strangers had brought with them, imprisoned the whole party, and declared to the Shah that the men were spies of the Mongol sovereign. The Shah gave command to slay them in that case immediately, and Inaldjuk obeyed without waiting. When news of this terrible slaughter was borne to Jinghis he wept with indignation as he heard it, and went straightway to a mountain top where he bared his head, put his girdle about his neck, and fell prostrate. He lay there imploring Heaven for vengeance, and spent three days and nights, it is stated, imploring and prostrate. He rose and went down then to hurl Mongol strength at the Kwaresmian Empire.

The request of the Kalif of Islam ran parallel now with the wish of the Mongols. But before striking the Empire, Jinghis had resolved to extinguish Gutchluk, his old enemy, the son of Baibuga, late Taiyang of the Naimans. Meanwhile he sent three envoys to the Shah with this message: “Thou didst give me assurance that thou wouldst not maltreat any merchant from my land. Thou hast broken thy word! Word breaking in a sovereign is hideous. If I am to believe that the merchants were not slain at Otrar by thy order, send me thy governor for punishment; if thou wilt not send him, make ready for conflict.”

Shah Mohammed, far from giving Jinghis Khan satisfaction, or offering it, slew Bajra, the first envoy, and singed off the beards of the other two. If Mohammed had wished to punish or yield up Inaldjuk he could not have done so, for the governor was a kinsman of Turkan Khatun, the Shah’s mother, and also of many great chiefs in the Kwaresmian army.

And now it is important to explain the position of Turkan Khatun, the unbending, savage mother of Mohammed. This woman was a daughter of Jinkeshi, Khan of the Baijut tribe of Kankali Turks; she married Tukush, the Kwaresmian Shah, and became then the mother of Shah Mohammed. A large number of Kankali chiefs who were related to Turkan followed her with their tribesmen to serve in the Kwaresmian Empire.

The influence of this relentless, strong-willed woman, and the valor of Turkish warriors raised those chiefs to the highest rank among military leaders; their power was enormous, since commanders of troops governed with very wide latitude. Amid this aristocracy of fighters the power of the sovereign was uncertain; he was forced to satisfy the ambition of men who saw in all things their own profit only. The troops controlled by those governors were the scourge of peaceful people; they ruined every region which they lived in or visited.

Turkan Khatun, the head of this military faction, not only equalled her son in authority, but often surpassed him. When two orders of different origin appeared in any part of the Empire, the date decided which had authority; that order was always carried out on which the date was most recent, and the order of recent date was the order of that watchful woman. When Mohammed won a new province he always assigned a large part to the appanage of his mother. She employed seven secretaries at all times, men distinguished for ability. The inscription on her decrees was “Protectress of the world and the faith, Turkan, queen of women.” Her device was: “God alone is my refuge.” “Lord of the world” was her title. The following example shows clearly the character of the Shah’s mother: She had obtained from Mohammed the elevation of Nassir ud din, a former slave of hers, to the position of vizir, or prime minister of the Empire; soon the Shah came to hate the man, for personal and also other reasons. His ability was small, and his greed without limit. At Nishapur the Shah appointed a new judge, one Sadr ud din, and forbade him to give the vizir any presents. Friends, however, warned the judge not to neglect this prime dignitary, so he sent Nassir ud din a sealed purse containing four thousand gold pieces. The Shah, who was watching both judge and vizir, caused the latter to send the purse to him. It was sent straightway, and the seal was intact on it. The judge was summoned, and when he appeared the Shah asked before witnesses what gift he had made the vizir; he denied having made any, persisted in denial, and swore by the head of his sovereign that he had not given one coin to the minister. The Shah had the purse brought; the judge was deprived of his dignity. The vizir was sent home without office to his patroness.

Nassir ud din went back to the Shah’s mother. On the way he decided every case that men brought him. On the vizir’s approach Turkan Khatun ordered people of all ranks and classes to go forth and meet him. The vizir grew more insolent now than he had been. The Shah sent an officer to bring the recalcitrant minister’s head to him. When the officer came to her capital, Turkan Khatun sent him to the vizir, who was then in the divan and presiding. She had given the officer this order: “Salute the vizir in the Shah’s name, and say to him: ‘I have no vizir except thee, continue in thy functions. No man in my Empire may destroy thee, or fail in respect to thee.’”

The officer carried out the command of the woman. Nassir ud din exercised his authority in defiance of Mohammed; he could do so since Turkan Khatun upheld him, and she had behind her a legion of her murderous kinsmen. The sovereign, who had destroyed so many rulers unsparingly, had not the power or the means to manage one insolent upstart who defied him.

The murder of the merchants in Otrar was followed soon by such a tempest of ruin as had never been witnessed in Asia or elsewhere. Shah Mohammed had mustered at Samarkand a large army to move against Gutchluk, whom he wished to bring down to subjection or destroy altogether, but hearing that a body of Merkits was advancing through Kankali regions lying north of Lake Aral, he marched to Jend straightway against them, and learned upon reaching that city, that those Merkits, being allies of Gutchluk, were hunted by Jinghis, and that Gutchluk himself had been slain by the Mongols.

He returned swiftly to Samarkand for additional forces, and following the tracks of both armies, found a field strewn with corpses, among which he saw a Merkit badly wounded; from this man the Shah learned that Jinghis had gained a great victory, and gone forward.

One day later Mohammed came up with them and formed his force straightway to attack them. The Mongol leader (perhaps Juchi) declared that the two states were at peace, and that he had commands to treat the Shah’s troops with friendliness; he even offered a part of his booty and prisoners to Mohammed. The latter refused these and answered: “If Jinghis has ordered thee not to meet me in battle, God commands me to fall on thy forces. I wish to inflict sure destruction on infidels and thus earn Divine favor.”

The Mongols, forced to give battle, came very near victory. They had put Mohammed’s left wing to flight, pierced the center where the Shah was, and would have dispersed it, but for timely aid brought by Jelal ud din, the Shah’s son, who rushed from the right and restored the battle, which lasted till evening and was left undecided.

The Mongols lighted vast numbers of camp fires, and retired in the dark with such swiftness that at daybreak they had made two days’ journey.

After this encounter the Shah knew Mongol strength very clearly. He told intimates that he had never seen men fight as they had.

Jinghis, having ended Gutchluk and his kingdom (1218), summoned his own family and officers to a council where they discussed war with Mohammed, and settled everything touching this enterprise and its management. That same autumn the Mongol conqueror began his march westward, leaving the care of home regions to his youngest brother. He spent all the following summer near the Upper Irtish, arranging his immense herds of horses and cattle. The march was resumed in the autumn, when he was joined by the prince of Almalik, the Idikut of the Uigurs, and by Arslan, Khan of the Karluks.

Shah Mohammed was alarmed by the oncoming of this immense host of warriors, more correctly this great group of armies, though his own force was large, since it numbered four hundred thousand. His troops were in some ways superior to the Mongols, but they lacked iron discipline and blind confidence in leaders; they lacked also that experience of hardship, fatigue and privation, that skill in desperate fighting, which made the Mongols not merely a terror, but, at that time, invincible. The Kwaresmian armies were defending a population to which they were indifferent, and which they were protecting, hence victory gave scant rewards in the best case, while the Mongols, in attacking rich, flourishing countries, were excited by all that can rouse human greed, or tempt wild cupidity. The disparity in leaders was still more apparent. On the Mongol side was a chief of incomparable genius in all that he was doing; on the other side a vacillating sovereign with warring and wavering counsels. The Shah had been crushing and assassinating rulers all his reign, and now he feared to meet a man whom he had provoked by his outrages. Instead of concentrating forces and meeting the enemy, he scattered his men among all the cities of Transoxiana, and then withdrew and kept far from the fields of real struggle. Some ascribed this to the advice of his generals, others to his faith in astrologers, who declared that the stars were unfavorable, and that no battle should be risked till they changed their positions. It is also reported that Jinghis duped the Shah, and made him suspect his own leaders. The following is one of the stories:

A certain Bedr ud din of Otrar, whose father, uncle and other kinsmen had been slain by Mohammed, declared to Jinghis that he wished to take vengeance on the Shah, even should he lose his own soul in so doing, and advised the Grand Khan to make use of the quarrels kept up by Mohammed with his mother. In view of this Bedr ud din wrote a letter, as it were, from Mohammed’s generals to Jinghis, and composed it in this style: “We came from Turkistan to Mohammed because of his mother. We have given him victory over many other rulers whose states have increased the Kwaresmian Empire. Now he pays his dear mother with ingratitude. This princess desires us to avenge her. When thou art here, we shall be at thy orders.”

Jinghis so arranged that this letter was intercepted. The tale is, that the Shah was deceived by it and distrusted his generals, hence separated them each from the others, and disposed them in various strong cities. It is more likely by far, that he and they, after testing Mongol strength, thought it better to fight behind walls than in the open. They thought also, no doubt, that the Mongols, after pillaging the country and seizing many captives, would retire with their booty.

The Shah was light-minded and ignorant. He knew not with whom he was dealing. He had not studied the Mongols, and could not have done so; he had no idea whatever of Jinghis Khan and could not acquire it; he knew not the immense power of his system, and the far reaching nature of his wishes.

Jinghis arrived at the Syr Daryá with his army, and arranged all his troops in four great divisions. The first he fixed near Otrar and placed two of his sons, Ogotai and Jagatai, in command of it; the second, commanded by his eldest son, Juchi, was to act against the other cities, from Jend to Lake Aral; the third division he directed against Benakit on the river, south of Jend. While the three divisions were taking these cities on the Syr Daryá, Jinghis himself moved toward Bokhara to bar Shah Mohammed from the Transoxiana, and prevent him from reinforcing any garrison between the two rivers.

Otrar was invested late in November, 1218. The walls had been strengthened, and the city, with its fortress, provisioned very carefully. The strong garrison had been increased by ten thousand horsemen. After a siege of five months the troops and the citizens were discouraged, and the commander thought it best to surrender, but Inaldjuk, the governor, could not hope for his life, since he was the man who had slain the Mongol merchants; hence, he would not hear of surrender. He would fight, as he said, to the death, for his sovereign. The chief of the horsemen felt differently, and led out his best troops in the night to escape, but was captured. He and they offered then to serve the besiegers. The Mongols inquired about conditions in the city, and, when the chief had told what he knew, they informed him that he and his men, being unfaithful to their master, could not be true to another. They thereupon slew him, and all who were with him.

The city was taken that day, April, 1219, and its inhabitants driven to the country outside, so that the captors might pillage the place in absolute freedom. Inaldjuk, the governor, withdrew with twenty thousand men to the fortress, and fought for two months in that stronghold. When the Mongols burst in he had only two men left; with these he retired to a terrace. The two men at his side fell soon after. When his arrows were gone he hurled brickbats. The besiegers had orders to seize the man living. He struggled like a maniac, but they caught and bound him at last, and bore him to the camp before Samarkand. Jinghis had molten silver poured into his ears and eyes to avenge the slaughtered merchants. The surviving inhabitants of Otrar were spared but the fortress was levelled.

Juchi, before marching on Jend, went to Signak and asked that the gates be thrown open. Scarcely had the message been given when the furious inhabitants tore Hassan Hadji, Juchi’s envoy, to pieces and called on God’s name as they did so.

Juchi gave the order at once to attack, and forbade his men to cease fighting till the city was captured. Fresh troops relieved those who were wearied. After seven days of storming the Mongols burst in and slew every soul in that city.

Juchi made a son of Hassan Hadji commandant of the ruins; then he moved up the river and sacked every place that he visited.

As the Mongols drew near to Jend, Katluk Khan, the commandant, fled in the night time, crossed the Syr Daryá and took the desert road for Urgendj beyond the southern shore of the Oxus. Juchi demanded surrender through Chin Timur his envoy. Deserted by their chief, the people were in doubt what to do, and when Chin Timur came they wished to kill him, but he told them of Signak, and promised to turn aside Mongol vengeance in case they were prudent. The people then freed him, but very soon saw the enemy under the walls, which they thought proof against every besieger. The Mongols scaled those walls quickly, and rushed in from all sides. No hand was raised then against them. The inhabitants were driven to the open country and left nine days and nights there, while the pillage continued. Excepting those who had abused Chin Timur, the people were spared, since they had made no resistance.

Meanwhile a detachment of the army had seized Yengikend, the last town on the river, and Juchi’s work was done on the right bank with thoroughness.

The third division of the army moved from Otrar to the left up the river, and attacked Benakit which was garrisoned by Kankalis. At the end of three days the officers wished to capitulate. Their lives were promised them, and they surrendered. The inhabitants were driven from the city. The Turks were taken out to one side, and cut down to the last man, with swords and other weapons. Being warriors whom the Mongols could not trust, they were slaughtered. The artisans were spared and divided among the Mongol army. Unskilled, young, and strong men were taken to assist in besieging; all other people were slain immediately.

The march was continued to Khodjend, and soon the invaders were in front of that city, and storming it. In Khodjend, Timur Melik, a man of great valor, commanded. He took one thousand chosen warriors to a fort on an island far enough from either bank to be safe from stones and arrows. The besiegers were reinforced by twenty thousand Mongols for conflict, and fifty thousand natives of the country to carry on siege work. These natives were employed first of all at bearing stones from a mountain three leagues distant, and building a road from the shore to the fortress in the river. Timur Melik meanwhile built twelve covered barges, protected from fire with glazed earth, which was first soaked in vinegar. Every day six of these boats went to each shore and sent arrows, through openings, at the Mongols. Night attacks were made suddenly and wrought much harm on the invaders.

But despite every effort Timur saw that failure would come if he stayed there. He was met by preponderant and crushing numbers at last. So he put men and baggage in seventy strong boats and his chosen warriors in the twelve covered barges; and they sped down the swift river at night by the light of many torches fixed on the boats of his flotilla. The boats snapped a chain stretched across from one bank to the other by Mongols near Benakit, and passed along, hunted by the enemy on both sides.

Timur learned now that Juchi had posted a large corps of men on the two banks, close to Jend, captured recently; he learned also that balistas were ready and that a bridge of boats had been made near the same place. He debarked higher up, therefore, and took to horse to avoid capture. Pursued by the enemy, he gave battle till his baggage was brought near him. He repeated this day after day till forced at last to abandon the baggage. Finally, having lost all his men, he was alone and pursued by three Mongols. He had only three arrows left, one of these had no metal point on it; he shot that and put out an eye of the nearest pursuer. Then he cried to the other men: “There are two arrows still in my quiver, ye would better go back with your eyesight.” They did so. Timur Melik made his way to Urgendj, and joined Jelal ud din, whom he followed till the death of that sovereign.

Meanwhile Jinghis moved against Bokhara with his main forces and arrived at that city during June of 1219. On the way he seized Nur and Charnuk, which he pillaged; then he took from those places all stalwart men useful in siege work. Bokhara, the great city with a garrison of twenty thousand, was invested on all sides, and attacked by relays of fresh warriors, who gave neither respite nor rest to it.

After some days the defenders lost hope of success and resolved to burst through in the night time, trusting in that way to save themselves. They fell on the Mongols unexpectedly, and scattered them, but instead of pursuing this advantage and fighting, those escaping defenders hastened forward. The Mongol troops rallied, and hunted the fugitives to the river, where they cut down nearly all of them.

Next morning early, the Ulema and notables came out to give homage to the great Mongol Khan, and open the gates to him. Jinghis rode in, and going to the main mosque of the city entered it on horseback. Dismounting near the minbar, or pulpit, he ascended some steps of it and said to the people who assembled there quickly before him: “The fields now are stripped; feed our horses in this place!”

The boxes which had been used to hold copies of the Koran were taken to the courtyard to hold grain for Mongol horses; the sacred volumes were thrown under the hoofs of those animals and trampled. Skins of wine were brought into the mosque with provisions; jesters and singers of the city were summoned, and while wild warriors were revelling in excesses of all sorts, and shouting songs of their own land and people, the highest chiefs of religion and doctors of law served them as slaves, held their horses and fed them. While thus employed one great man whispered to his neighbor: “Why not implore the Almighty to save us?” “Be silent,” said the other, “God’s wrath is moving near us; this is no time for beseeching. I fear to pray to the Almighty lest it become worse with us thereby. If life is dear to thee hold their beasts now for the Mongols, and serve them.”

From the mosque Jinghis went to the place of public prayer beyond the city, and summoned all people to meet there. He stood in the pulpit and inquired: “Who are the richest men in this multitude?” Two hundred and eighty persons were presented; ninety of these had come from other cities. The Khan commanded all those wealthy persons to draw near, and then he spoke to them. He described the Shah’s cruelties and injustice, which had brought on the ruin of their city: “Know,” continued he, “that ye have committed dreadful deeds, and the great people of this country are the worst of its criminals. Should ye ask why I speak thus, I answer: I am Heaven’s scourge, sent to punish. Had ye not been desperate offenders I should not be standing here now against you.” Then he said that he required no one to deliver wealth which was above ground, his men could discover that very easily, but he asked for hidden treasures. The wealthy men were then forced to name their agents, and those agents had to yield up the treasures, or be tortured. All strong men were set to filling the moats encircling the city; even copies of the Koran and furniture of mosques were hurled in to fill ditches. The fortress was stormed and not a man of its defenders found mercy.

When the fortress was taken, all its inhabitants were driven from the city with nothing but the clothes which they had on their bodies. Then began the great pillage. The victors slew all whom they found in any place of hiding. At last Mongol troops were sent out to surround the inhabitants on the plain, and divide them into parties. Deeds were done there which baffle description. Every possible outrage was enacted before those to whom it was most dreadful to be present, and have eyesight. Some had strength to choose death instead of looking at those horrors; among spectators of this kind were the chief judge of the city, and the first Imam, who seeing the dishonor of their women rushed to save them, and perished.

Finally the city was fired; everything wooden was consumed, nothing was left save the main mosque, and a few brick palaces.

Jinghis Khan left the smoking ruins of Bokhara the Noble, to march on Samarkand, which was only five days distant. He passed along the pleasant valley of Sogd, covered at that time with beautiful fields, orchards and gardens and with houses here and there in good number. All inhabitants of Bokhara taken to toil in the coming siege were driven on behind the army. Whoso grew weak on the way or too weary for marching was cut down at once without pity.

Samarkand was one of the great commercial cities of the world. It had a garrison which numbered forty thousand. Both the city and the citadel had been fortified with care, and all men considered that a siege of that place would continue for months, nay, for years perhaps.

The three other army corps appeared now, for every place on the lower river had been taken, and Northern Transoxiana was subjected. These divisions brought with them all captives who were young, firm and stalwart, men who might be of service in siege work; there was an immense host of those people arranged in groups of ten, and each ten had a banner. Jinghis, to impose on the doomed city, paraded his legions before it; cavalry, infantry, and at last those unfortunate captives who had the seeming of regular warriors.

Two days were spent in examining the city defenses and outworks; on the third morning early the Mongol conqueror sounded the onset. A host of brave citizens made a great sally, and at first swept all before them but not being sustained by their own troops, who feared the besiegers, they met a dreadful disaster. The Mongols retired before the onrushing people, who pressed forward with vigor till they fell into ambush; being on foot they were surrounded very quickly and slaughtered before the eyes of the many thousands looking from the walls, and the housetops. This great defeat crushed the hopes of the citizens.

The Kankali troops being Turks believed that the Mongols would treat them most surely as kinsmen. In fact Jinghis had promised, as they thought, to take them to his service. Hence this great multitude, the real strength of the city, issued forth that same day with their leaders, their families, and their baggage, in one word, with all that belonged to them. On the fourth day, just as the storm was to be sounded, the chief men of the city went to the Mongol camp, where they received satisfactory answers concerning themselves with their families and dependents; hence they opened the gates of Samarkand to the conqueror; but they were driven from the city save fifty thousand who had put themselves under the protection of the cadi and the mufti. These fifty thousand were safe-guarded, the others were all slaughtered.

The night following the surrender, Alb Khan, a Turk general, made a sortie from the citadel and had the fortune to break through the Mongols, thus saving himself and those under him. At daybreak the citadel was attacked simultaneously on all sides. That struggle lasted till the evening, when one storming party burst in, and the stronghold was taken. One thousand defenders took refuge in a mosque and fought with desperation. The mosque was fired then, and all were burned to death in it. The Kankalis who had yielded on the third day, that is the first day of fighting, were conducted to a place beyond the city and kept apart from others. Their horses, arms, and outfits were taken from them, and their hair was shaved in front, Mongol fashion, as if they were to form a part of the army. This was a trick to deceive them till the executioners were ready. In one night the Kankalis were murdered to the very last man.

When vast numbers of the citizens had been slaughtered a census was made of the remnant: Thirty thousand persons of various arts, occupations and crafts were given by Jinghis to his sons, his wives, and his officers; thirty thousand more were reserved for siege labor; fifty thousand, after they had paid two hundred thousand gold pieces, were permitted to return to the city, which received Mongol commandants. Requisitions of men were made at later periods repeatedly, and, since few of those persons returned to their homes, Samarkand stood ruined and unoccupied for a long time.

Jinghis Khan so disposed his forces from the first, that Shah Mohammed could not relieve any city between the two rivers; now all those cities were taken, and the forces defending them were slaughtered. The next great work was to seize Shah Mohammed himself, and then slay him, and with him his family.

Thirty thousand chosen men were employed now in chasing the Kwaresmian ruler. Never had a sovereign been hunted like this victim of the Mongols. He fled like a fox, or a hare; he was hunted as if he had been a dreadful wild beast, which had killed some high or holy person, or as if he were some outcast, who had committed a deed which might make a whole nation shudder. But here we must say a few words concerning the hunted man, and explain his position.

##