Mongol invasions
Family: War, peace and the conduct of conflict · 14 entries
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The battle that destroyed the Khitai
c. 1207 CE · 604 AHIn 604 the surviving Khitai gathered under their king when word came that a great body of Tatars was advancing from beyond the lands of Turkistan under their king Kushli Khan, because of what Khwarazm-shah had done to the Khitai; they marched against them. The Khitai king sent to Khwarazm-shah asking him to overlook the past and come to his aid; Kushli Khan also sent to him, seeking his help against the Khitai, his enemies and the enemies of his fathers. Khwarazm-shah answered each that he was with him against the other, and marched his armies until he camped near the place of the encounter, without mixing with either side in a way that showed which he was, so that each took him to be on its side. The Khitai and the Tatars clashed, and the Khitai were routed in a great defeat. Khwarazm-shah fell upon them, killing, capturing and plundering; only a small band escaped, sheltering with their king in a place ringed by mountains with a single approach, and some of them joined his army. Kushli Khan then asked to share the lands of the Khitai, and Khwarazm-shah replied, 'You have nothing from me but the sword.' He advanced, courting him and raiding his baggage. Kushli Khan wrote to him: 'This is not the conduct of kings; it is the conduct of thieves. If you are a sultan, let us meet.' He did not answer, and ordered the people of Shash, Farghana, Isfijab and Kasan to leave for the lands of Islam, laying them waste for fear the Tatars would seize them. Then it happened that other Tatars, under their king Genghis Khan, rose against Kushli Khan and occupied him, and Khwarazm-shah crossed the river into Khurasan.The Mongols Erupt into the Lands of Islam
c. 1220 CE · 617 AHIn 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.The Mongol Sweep through Jibal, Azerbaijan and Georgia
c. 1220 CE · 617 AHIn 617 the Mongols reached Rayy in pursuit of Khwarazm-shah, catching its people off guard; they seized and plundered it, took the women captive, enslaved the children, and moved on at speed. Along their way they plundered every city and village, doing many times what they had done at Rayy, until they reached Hamadan; its ruler came out with money, garments and mounts seeking safe-conduct, and they granted it and then left, marching on to Zanjan, where they did many times over the same. Then Qazvin: its people sheltered in the city and fought them, but they entered it by storm, and the fighting went on inside until they were cutting one another with knives; more than forty thousand dead were counted among the people of Qazvin. When winter came upon them they went to Azerbaijan and reached Tabriz, where its lord Uzbek ibn al-Bahlawan did not even consider fighting them, being occupied with heavy drinking night and day; he made peace with them for money, garments and mounts. They then went to the sea coast to winter there, and pushed out toward Georgia, where some ten thousand Georgians fought them; they were routed and most of them killed. A Turkic mamluk of Uzbek's named Aqush joined the Mongols; he gathered the Turkmen and Kurds and corresponded with the Mongols, who inclined toward him on account of their shared stock, and he marched at their head into Georgia, until the Georgians gathered near Tiflis. Aqush met them first and they fought fiercely; the Mongols caught up with them when they were exhausted, and they were routed in the worst defeat, in Dhu'l-Qa'da. Ibn al-Athir says: by God, I have no doubt that whoever comes after us, once the time has grown distant and he reads this event written down, will deny it and find it hard to credit, and the truth is in his hands.The Mongols Seize Mazandaran and the Treasures of Khwarazm-shah's Mother
c. 1220 CE · 617 AHWhen the western Mongol detachment despaired of catching Khwarazm-shah in his fortress by the sea, they turned back and made for Mazandaran, which they took very quickly despite its strength and the difficulty of entering it. Ibn al-Athir notes that it had always resisted, old and new: when the Muslims had taken all the Sasanian lands from Iraq to the far reaches of Khurasan, the districts of Mazandaran still paid tribute while the Muslims could not enter, until it was conquered in the days of Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik in 90. Now the Mongols took it outright, killing, enslaving, plundering and burning. They then headed for Rayy and came upon the mother of Khwarazm-shah, with his women, property and treasures, precious goods the like of which had never been heard of, for she had left Khwarazm making for Rayy and then Isfahan to seek refuge, and they caught her before she arrived. They sent everything on to Genghis Khan at Samarkand.The Mongols Take Maragha and Slaughter Its People
c. 13 March 1221 CE · 4 Safar 618 AHIn Safar 618 the Mongols marched from the Georgian side into Azerbaijan; the lord of Tabriz placated them with money, garments and mounts, so they turned aside to Maragha and besieged it. It had no lord to defend it, its lord being a woman who resided in the fortress of Ruwindiz. They set up catapults and advanced. Their custom, when attacking a city, was to send the Muslim captives they had with them ahead to advance and fight; if the captives turned back, they killed them, so the killing fell on the captives while they themselves stayed out of reach. They camped before the city for some days, then took it by storm on 4 Safar and put its people to the sword, killing an uncountable number; they plundered what was useful and burned the rest. They would take captives and make them call out through the lanes that the Mongols had departed; whoever came out of hiding was seized and killed. Ibn al-Athir relates, from its people, that a Mongol man entered a lane where a hundred men were, and kept killing them one by one until he had finished them, and no one raised a hand against him, or humiliation would have been laid upon all people; and that a Mongol woman entered a house and killed a number of its people, who took her for a man. They then departed toward Irbil; news reached Mosul, and some of its people resolved to leave.The Tatars Return to Rayy and Hamadan in 621 AH
c. 1224 CE · 621 AHIn 621 the Tatars returned from the Qipchaq lands to Rayy; the survivors who had drifted back found the Tatars upon them — killing and enslaving — then Qum and Kashan were sacked, Hamadan massacred, and at Tabriz they fought a set battle with the Khwarazmians.Jalal al-Din takes the city of Tiflis from the Georgians
c. 11 March 1226 CE · 8 Rabi' I 623 AHOn 8 Rabi' I 623 Jalal al-Din b. Khwarazmshah took the city of Tiflis from the Georgians. He marched against them after they had mustered an uncounted host from neighbouring peoples, the Alans, the Lakz and the Qipchaq; he set ambushes in several places, and when the armies met the Georgians fled. He ordered his troops to spare no one, and they pursued until they nearly annihilated them. Some urged him to march on Tiflis, the seat of their kingdom, but he said: 'We have no need to kill our men beneath the walls; if the Georgians are wiped out, the land will be taken whole.' He set out against it with three thousand horsemen, most of his army hidden in ambush. When the Georgians came out, thinking him few, he drew back until they had passed into the ambushes; they fled into the city, the Muslims followed, its Muslim people called out the cry of Islam and Jalal al-Din's name, the Georgians laid down their arms, and the Muslims took the city by storm. Ibn al-Athir mentions that it was among the strongest cities on both banks of the Kur river, that the Georgians had seized it in 515 when Sultan Mahmud b. Muhammad b. Malikshah reigned, and that neither he nor his brother Mas'ud, nor al-Dukuz and al-Bahlawan after them, could take it, until Jalal al-Din came, when the land had first been weakened by the Georgians and then uprooted by the Tatars; and so he did these deeds to them.The Battle of Yassi Jaman (Basi Jaman)
c. 16 August 1230 CE · 28 Ramadan 627 AHOn Saturday, the twenty-eighth of Ramadan in the year 627, Jalal al-Din ibn Khwarazm Shah was routed at a place known as Basi Hamar, in the lands of Arzinjan, by Ala al-Din Kayqubad ibn Kaykhusraw, lord of the lands of Rum, and al-Malik al-Ashraf, lord of Damascus, the Jazira and Khilat. The cause was that the lord of Arzan al-Rum obeyed Jalal al-Din and helped him besiege Khilat. Ala al-Din feared him and kept sending messengers to al-Malik al-Kamil and to his brother al-Ashraf, to the point that it was said five messengers reached them from him in a single day, urging al-Ashraf to meet him even if alone. Al-Ashraf gathered the armies of the Jazira and Syria, and the two met at Sivas and marched toward Khilat; Jalal al-Din advanced against them eagerly and they met. Ala al-Din had about twenty thousand horsemen, and al-Ashraf about five thousand fine, brave troops under the command of Izz al-Din Umar ibn Ali of the Hakkari Kurds. When they met, Jalal al-Din was taken aback by their numbers, especially the army of Syria, for he saw such finery in their equipment, arms and mounts that terror filled his breast. Izz al-Din ibn Ali opened the fighting against the army of Aleppo, and Jalal al-Din could not hold his ground; he fled with his army, and they scattered in every direction. He returned to Khilat, then to Khoy in Azerbaijan. The lord of Arzan al-Rum was taken prisoner, and they said: the ostrich went out seeking two horns and came back without ears.The Mongols Enter Diyar Bakr and al-Jazira
c. 1231 CE · 628 AHIn 628, after Jalal al-Din ibn Khwarazm-shah was routed by the Mongols at Amid, they plundered the countryside of Amid, Arzan and Mayyafariqin, then marched on the city of Sa'ird. Its people fought them until they were granted safe-conduct; they trusted and surrendered, and once the Mongols had them in their power they put them to the sword. Ibn al-Athir reports from a merchant that the dead were estimated at more than fifteen thousand. They did the same at Tanza, then went to the valley of al-Qurayshiyya, where a Kurdish group called the Qurayshiyya fought them, repelled them and held their ground, so the Mongols turned back without reaching their aim. They then marched unopposed to Mardin and plundered its countryside, while its people sheltered in the citadel; to Nusaybin of al-Jazira, where they stayed part of a day, plundered its environs and withdrew; to the mountains of Sinjar, the Khabur and 'Arabanan; and to the village of al-Mu'nisa, a day's march from Nusaybin on the way to Mosul, whose people took refuge in an inn, and the Mongols killed everyone in it. Ibn al-Athir also tells of a man who hid in a room full of straw and watched through a window: when they wished to kill someone, the victim said 'la billah' ('no, by God') and they killed him anyway. Later he saw them playing on horseback, laughing and singing in their own language, 'la billah'. He tells too of a man with seventeen companions who was met by a Mongol horseman ordering them to bind one another; none dared kill his companion until the man took a knife and killed him, and they escaped. They then went to Bidlis and burned the city after its people had fortified themselves in the citadel and the mountains; to Bakri, in the districts of Khilat, one of the strongest places, which they took by storm, killing all within; and to Arjish, where they did likewise in Dhu'l-Hijja. A group came from Azerbaijan into the districts of Irbil and on the way killed Turkmen of the Ayvā'iyya, Kurds and al-Jawzaqan, plundering the villages until they entered the land of Irbil. Muzaffar al-Din, lord of Irbil, marched out with his troops, seeking reinforcement from Mosul's forces; when he learned they had gone back to Azerbaijan, he stayed put and did not pursue them. The Mongols reached al-Karkhini and Daquqa and returned safely, no one having frightened them.The Tatar Raid on Shahrazur in 629 AH
c. 1231 CE · 629 AHIn 629, with Jalal al-Din dead, the Tatars raided as far as Shahrazur; the caliph al-Mustansir spent on armies sent with Qushtumur al-Nasiri, who joined Muzaffar al-Din Kokburi of Arbil, and the Tatars fell back.The Tatars Take Arbil by the Sword in 634 AH
c. 1236 CE · 634 AHIn 634 the Tatars descended on Arbil, besieged it and took it by the sword until the city was choked with corpses, departing with countless spoils — the Begteginid capital overrun.
Screening Room
Al-Zahir Baybars
A Syrian-Emirati series on Sultan al-Zahir Baybars — from the Mamluk ranks to the defeat of the Mongols at Ain Jalut; among the largest Arabic productions on the Mamluk era.Mendirman Jaloliddin
2021 CE · 1442 AH†Uzbek-Turkish series on Jalal al-Din Khwarazmshah and his resistance to the Mongol invasion; a Central Asian production.Oh Islam
1961 CE · 1381 AH†Salah Abu Seif's Egyptian classic on Mamluk Egypt's resistance to the Mongol invasion after the fall of Baghdad.
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