The Mongols Erupt into the Lands of Islam

خروج التتر إلى بلاد الإسلام

c. 1220 CE · 617 AH

In 617 the Mongols erupted into the lands of Islam: a large people of Turks whose dwellings were the mountains of Tamghaj, on the side of China. Ibn al-Athir opens their story by saying that he had for years held back from recounting it, out of awe: who could bring himself to write the obituary of Islam and the Muslims, wishing he had died before it and been forgotten? He calls it a calamity such that the days and nights have been barren of its like, and says that had someone claimed no people since Adam had suffered its like, he would have spoken truly; what Nebuchadnezzar did to the Children of Israel, the killing and the wrecking of Jerusalem, is nothing beside it, since every city they ruined was many times Jerusalem. He describes how they came out from the edges of China and made for Turkistan, Kashghar and Balasaghun, then Transoxania, Samarkand and Bukhara; a detachment crossed into Khurasan and left it emptied of rule through ruin and plunder; then Rayy, Hamadan and the Jibal to the borders of Iraq, then Azerbaijan and Arran, then Darband of Shirvan, the lands of the Lan and the Lakz, and the Qipchaq, all in less than a year by the measure of their march alone. Alexander, whom the historians agree ruled the world, held it for about ten years; these took most of the inhabited world in about a year. He describes their way of life: they need no supply train, since their sheep, cattle, horses and mounts dig the earth with their hooves and eat plant roots; they know no barley; they prostrate to the sun at its rising, and they forbid none of the beasts. He explains their success: Khwarazm-shah Muhammad had seized those lands, killing and wiping out their kings, so that once he was beaten nothing stood to bar or defend them ¹.