Kiev had been a very large and thickly populated town, but now it has been reduced almost to nothing, for there are at the present time scarce two hundred houses there and the inhabitants are kept in complete slavery. Khumar Tegin, one of Muhammad's generals, declared himself Sultan of Urgench. [18], The Mongols conquered, by battle or voluntary surrender, the areas of present-day Iran, Iraq, the Caucasus, and parts of Syria and Turkey, with further Mongol raids reaching southwards into Palestine as far as Gaza in 1260 and 1300. However, it is known that Genghis rejected the notion of war as he was engaged in war with the Jin dynasty and was gaining much wealth from trading with the Khwarezmid Empire. Cited in John Mason Smith, "Mongol Manpower and Persian Population", Additionally, the population of roughly the same area (Persia and Central Asia) plus some others (Caucasia and northeast Anatolia) is estimated at 5–6 million nearly 400 hundreds later, under the rule of the, Tertius Chandler & Gerald Fox, "3000 Years of Urban Growth", pp. The Mongol conquest of Khwarezmia, or the Mongol invasion of Iran (Persia) (Persian: حمله مغول به ایران‎), from 1219 to 1221[2] marked the beginning of the Mongol conquest of Central Asia. [35], The urban population of the empire was concentrated in a relatively small number of (by medieval standards) very large cities as opposed to a huge number of smaller towns, which also aided in the Mongols' conquest. By 1206, Genghis Khan had conquered all Mongol and Turkic tribes in Mongolia and southern Siberia. [1][2] In addition, Mongol expeditions may have spread the bubonic plague across much of Eurasia, helping to spark the Black Death of the 14th century. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools. The major city to fall to Tolui's army was the city of Merv. Jalal al-Din, who took power after his father's death, began assembling the remnants of the Khwarezmid army in the south, in the area of Afghanistan. Most scholars attribute his death to pneumonia, but others cite the sudden shock of the loss of his empire. The Mongols valued artisans' skills highly and artisans were exempted from massacre during the conquests and instead entered into lifelong service as slaves. After the fall of Bukhara, Genghis headed to the Khwarezmian capital of Samarkand and arrived in March 1220. (1979). "From asps to allegations: biological warfare in history,", Rakibul Hasan, "Biological Weapons: covert threats to Global Health Security.". The Safavids were just the last of a long list of foreing dinasties (Arabs, Turks and Mongols) who ended up being Persianized after conquering Iran. List of conflicts in Europe during Turco-Mongol rule, List of conflicts in Eastern Europe during Turco-Mongol rule, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mongol_conquest_of_the_Khwarazmian_Empire&oldid=1006197016, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Articles containing Persian-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from June 2009, Articles with incomplete citations from March 2018, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2018, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2015, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, 1.7 million killed including civilians (25% of the population), Otrar, Urgench, and Bukhara: unknown, but less than 70,000. Genghis was not young when the war began, and he had four sons, all of whom were fierce warriors and each with their own loyal followers. [citation needed], About the time of the fall of Samarkand, Genghis Khan charged Subutai and Jebe, two of the Khan's top generals, with hunting down the Shah. [22] He then organized the Siberians into three tumens. Chandler & Fox, p. 232: Merv, Samarkand, and Nipashur are referred to as "vying for the [title of] largest" among the "Cities of Persia and Turkestan in 1200", implying populations of less than 70,000 for the other cities (Otrar and others do not have precise estimates given). However, Mongols in China did not have a long lasting effect on the Chinese because of their refusal to embrace all aspects of the Chinese civilization The Mongols crossed the Tian Shan mountains, coming into the Shah's empire in 1219. THE EFFECT OF THE MONGOL INVASION ON THE COURSE OF IRANIAN HISTORY . Journal of Asian History 33 (1). Many Mongol elites learned to speak Persian. Cambridge University Press: 229–45. The estimates for the sizes of the opposing armies are often in dispute. Mongol Rule in Russia, Persia, and China Russia •Mongols allowed Russian princes to rule and required them to pay tribute. Some Mongols even took up farming. 7. The new territory proved to be an important stepping stone for Mongol armies under the reign of Genghis' son Ögedei to invade Kievan Rus' and Poland, and future campaigns brought Mongol arms to Hungary and the Baltic Sea. •Mongols tolerated local religious practices. Jochi never forgave his father, and essentially withdrew from further Mongol wars, into the north, where he refused to come to his father when he was ordered to. Genghis Khan forged the initial Mongol Empire in Central Asia, starting with the unification of the Mongol tribes Merkits, Tartars, and Mongols. Western Siberia came under the Golden Horde. [17] As for the Mongols, he estimates them at 120,000 effectives, out of a total Mongol strength of 200,000 (including troops nominally on the campaign but never engaged, and those in China). As the Mongols battered their way into Urgench, Genghis dispatched his youngest son Tolui, at the head of an army, into the western Khwarezmid province of Khorasan. This angered Chaghatai, and Genghis headed off this fight between siblings by appointing Ögedei the commander of the besieging forces as Urgench fell. Emerging Infectious Diseases. [5], The Shah was very suspicious of Genghis' desire for a trade agreement, and messages from the Shah's ambassador at Zhongdu (Beijing) in China described the savagery of the Mongols when they assaulted the city during their war with the Jin dynasty. The Chinese may have used the catapults to hurl gunpowder bombs, since they already had them by this time. Instead the garrison remained on the walls and resisted stubbornly, holding out against many attacks. Mongols and Persia. The suspension of literary examinations, the exclusion of Chinese from higher offices, and the resulting frustration of the former ruling class of scholar-officials led to a sort of intellectual eremitism. Many military tacticians regard this surprise entrance to Bukhara as one of the most successful maneuvers in warfare. On the fifth day, all but a handful of soldiers surrendered. Jalal al-Din, defeated, fled to India. The population of the empire is estimated at 5 million people on the eve of the invasion, making it sparse for the large area it covered. Over the course of three years (1237–1240), the Mongols razed all the major cities of Russia with the exceptions of Novgorod and Pskov. Sverdrup 2017, p. 148, citing Rashid Al-Din, 107, 356–362. The taking of Urgench was further complicated by continuing tensions between the Khan and his eldest son, Jochi, who had been promised the city as his prize. During the Mongol expedition, Azerbaijan and the southern Persian dynasties in Fars and Kerman voluntarily submitted to the Mongols and agreed to pay tribute. However, they failed to penetrate past the outskirts of Delhi and were repelled from the interior of India. The city was built along the river Amu Darya in a marshy delta area. Each soldier was given a quota of enemies to execute according to circumstances. In the words of historian C. E. Bosworth: "[The dynasty was] highly unpopular and a focus for popular hatred; in none of the provinces they ruled did the Khwarazm Shahs ever succeed in creating a bond of interest between themselves and their subjects. This march can be described as the Central Asian equivalent of Hannibal's crossing of the Alps, with the same devastating effects. Of further interest is that the caliph of Baghdad had attempted to instigate a war between the Mongols and the Shah some years before the Mongol invasion actually occurred. [12] Several chroniclers, a notable one being Rashid Al-Din (a historian of the Mongol Ilkhanate) provide the figures of 400,000 for the Shah (spread across the whole empire) and 600,000 or 700,000 for the Khan. Genghis then compounded the damage by repeatedly issuing bogus decrees in the name of either Tertun Khatun or Shah Mohammed, further tangling up the already divided Khwarezm command structure. Halperin, Charles J.. 2000. Despite this establishment, the four sons would eventually come to blows, and those blows showed the instability of the Khanate that Genghis had created. To the west, Hamadan and the rest of Persia was secured by Chormaqan. Merv's garrison surrendered after seven days and a few minor sorties (of only around a couple hundred men each, according to the pro-Mongol Juvayni); they were also all executed, again to their shock. [26], The Mongols invaded and destroyed Volga Bulgaria and Kievan Rus', before invading Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and other territories. Feigning retreat, Genghis drew approximately half of the garrison outside the fortifications of Samarkand and slaughtered them in open combat. Persia under Mongol domination. The Bukharan garrison was made up of Turkic soldiers and led by Turkic generals, who attempted to break out on the third day of the siege. The Mongols arrived at the gates of Bukhara virtually unnoticed. After the defeat of the Kara-Khitans, Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire gained a border with the Khwarezmid Empire, governed by Shah Ala ad-Din Muhammad. For instance, Subutai and Batu Khan spent a year scouting central Europe, before destroying the armies of Hungary and Poland in two separate battles, two days apart.[11]. -They had less impact on government since Mongol rulers used Persian bureaucracy. The Mongol invasions of Vietnam (Đại Việt) and Java resulted in defeat for the Mongols, although much of Southeast Asia agreed to pay tribute to avoid further bloodshed. [6] [43][44], Series of expeditionary wars, invasions and conquests, resulting in the vast Mongol Empire, Andrew G. Robertson, and Laura J. Robertson. Historians regard the Mongol devastation as one of the deadliest episodes in history. The Great Khans favored gyrfalcons, furs, women and Kyrgyz horses for tribute. [4] The divided Mongol forces destroyed the Shah's forces piecemeal, and began the utter devastation of the country which would mark many of their later conquests. [10] The changes had come in adding supporting units to his dreaded cavalry, both heavy and light. Also, the Mongol intelligence network was formidable. Persia •Mongols used Persians to serve as lower government officials, governors, and state officials. The Shah's decisions on troop deployment would prove disastrous as the campaign unfolded, as the Mongol speed, surprise, and enduring initiative prevented the Shah from effectively maneuvering his forces. Mongols continued to rule China into the 14th century under the Yuan dynasty, while Mongol rule in Persia persisted into the 15th century under the Timurid Empire. Rashid Al-Din and Ibn Al-Athir state that the city had 20,000 defenders, though Carl Sverdrup contends that it only had a tenth of this number. [25] Ogedei's grandson Kaidu occupied portions of Central Siberia from 1275 on. Ultimately, a number of Mongols turned to farming, married local people, and were assimilated into Persian society. Furthermore, the Shah's reports from China indicated that the Mongols were not experts in siege warfare, and experienced problems when attempting to take fortified positions. [38][39][40] The havoc included battles, sieges,[41] early biological warfare,[42] and massacres. During this period, the Mongols also waged effective psychological warfare and caused divisions within their foe. [11][better source needed], Against the Alans and the Cumans (Kipchaks), the Mongols used divide-and-conquer tactics by first warning the Cumans to end their support of the Alans, whom they then defeated,[12] before rounding on the Cumans. Genghis had dispatched forces to hunt down the gathering army under Jalal al-Din, and the two sides met in the spring of 1221 at the town of Parwan. Williams, Brian Glyn. Mongol … For six days, Tolui besieged the city, and on the seventh day, he assaulted the city. From then on the Yuan dynasty controlled large portions of Central and Eastern Siberia. 1999. Cambridge University Press: 329–48. The Journal of the Ethnological Society of London (1869–1870) 2 (1). After Genghis Khan. However, the region was far from subjugated, many major cities remained free of Mongol rule, and the region was rife with rebellion against the few Mongol forces present in the region, following rumors that the Shah's son Jalal al-Din was gathering an army to fight the Mongols. They will not kill us." They made the Kingdom of Dali into a vassal state in 1253 after the Dali King Duan Xingzhi defected to the Mongols and helped them conquer the rest of Yunnan, forced Korea to capitulate through invasions, but failed in their attempts to invade Japan, their fleets scattered by kamikaze storms. Genghis Khan and his descendants launched progressive invasions of China, subjugating the Western Xia in 1209 before destroying them in 1227, defeating the Jin dynasty in 1234 and defeating the Song dynasty in 1279. Because Shah decided to march his army up from Samarkand to attack the besiegers of Otrar, Genghis could then rapidly encircle the Shah's army from the rear. Following the destruction of Urgench, Genghis officially selected Ögedei to be successor, as well as establishing that future Khans would come from direct descendants of previous rulers. 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. [32] The Mongols took full advantage of these circumstances with their network of spies, often aided by merchants who had much to gain from Mongol domination and spread rumors imploring the inhabitants of cities to surrender. The Khan returned northwards, content to leave the Shah in India. Bukhara was not heavily fortified, with a moat and a single wall, and the citadel typical of Khwarezmi cities. The Mongol Armies in Persia. [57] Nishapur fell after only three days; here, Tokuchar, a son-in-law of Genghis was killed in battle, and Tolui put to the sword every living thing in the city, including the cats and dogs, with Tokuchar's widow presiding over the slaughter. [28] Balkh's garrison surrendered without a fight. The “Storm from the East” arose from The Mongol forces claime… [7] The rise of the Mongols was preceded by 15 years of wet and warm weather conditions from 1211 to 1225 that allowed favourable conditions for the breeding of horses, which greatly assisted their expansion.[8]. [41], Meanwhile, another Mongol force under Chagatai and Ogedei descended from either the Altai Mountains to the north or the Dzungarian Gate and immediately started laying siege to the border city of Otrar. Bulletin d’Etudes Orientales, Institut Français du Proche-Orient (IFPO), 2006, vol. [27] When Samarkand was subsequently attacked, the Turkic soldiers in the city, who felt no loyalty towards the Shah, allegedly said of the Mongols: "We are their race.