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Monday, February 7, 2011

Into Afghanistan and Persia

Genghis Khan wanted trade and goods, including new weapons, for his nation. A Mongol caravan of several hundred merchants approached a recently formed Khwarezmid Empire in Persia and Central Asia. The sultan there claimed that spies were in the caravan. Genghis Khan sent envoys. The sultan received them by having the chief of the envoys killed and the beards of the others burned, and he sent the other envoys back to Genghis Khan.
Genghis Khan retaliated, sending his army westward. In the coldest of months the Mongols rode across the desert to Transoxiana with no baggage, slowing to the pace of merchants before appearing as warriors in front of the smaller towns of the sultan's empire. His strategy was to frighten the townspeople into surrendering without battle, benefiting his own troops, whose lives he valued. Those frightened into surrender were spared violence, those who resisted were slaughtered as an example for others, which sent many fleeing and spreading panic from the first towns to the city of Bukhara. People in Bukhara opened the city's gates to the Mongols and surrendered. Genghis Khan told them that they, the common people, were not at fault, that high-ranking people among them had committed great sins that inspired God to send him and his army as punishment. The sultan's capital city, Samarkand, surrendered. His army surrendered, and he fled.
Genghis Khan and his army pushed more deeply into the sultan's empire -- into Afghanistan and then Persia. It is said that the caliph in Baghdad was hostile toward the sultan and supported Genghis Khan, sending him a regiment of European crusaders who had been his prisoners. Genghis Khan, having no need for infantry, freed them, with those making it to Europe spreading the first news of the Mongol conquests. Genghis Khan had 100,000 to 125,000 horsemen, with Uighur and Turkic allies, engineers and Chinese doctors -- a total of from 150,000 to 200,000 men. To show their submission, some offered food to the Mongols, and Genghis Khan's force guaranteed them protection. Some cities surrendered without fighting. In cities the Mongols were forced to conquer, after killing its fighting men, Genghis Khan divided the survivors by profession. He drafted the few who were literate and anyone who could speak various languages. Those who had been the city's most rich and powerful he wasted no time in killing, remembering that the rulers he had left behind after conquering the Tangut and Jurchen had betrayed him soon after his army had withdrawn.
The Mongols did not torture, mutilate or maim, but their enemies did. Captured Mongols were dragged through streets and killed for sport and to entertain city residents. Nor did the Mongols partake in the gruesome displays of stetching, emasculation, belly cutting and hacking to pieces that European rulers often resorted to elicit fear and discourage potential enemies -- as was soon to happen to William Wallace on orders from England's King Edward I. The Mongols merely slaughtered, and preferring to do so from a distance.    [COMMENT]
The city of Nishapur revolted against Mongol rule. The husband of Genghis Khan's daughter was killed, and, it is said, she asked that everyone in the city be put to death, and, according to the story, they were.

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