Battle of Indus
The toughness of the Mongol warrior often determined the outcome of a battle. In 1221, at the Battle of Indus, the Turkish Army of Jellalud-din took up an excellent defensive position beside the Indus, its flanks protected by the mountains and a bend in the river. After being repulsed in the front, Genghis Khan sent a tumen over apparently impassable mountains to strike the Turkish flank. Struck from two sides, the Turkish defense collapsed.
Chinggis and Sübe’etei must have been surprised at the lack of resistance shown by the Khorezmian forces and confidently headed straight for Samarkand, driving columns of captives ahead of them. There they were joined by reinforcements from Mongolia, Jebei having successfully negotiated the frozen passes of the Pamirs during winter to reach the Ferghana Valley and Samarkand. Finally Cha’adai and Ögödei arrived after a long but successful siege at Otrar with hordes of prisoners captured along the Syr Darya. After inspecting the defences for two days, Chinggis ordered his forces to lay siege to the city. The Turkish defenders made sorties out from the town into the surrounding Mongol ranks, resulting in casualties on both sides. As a result the Mongols sealed the gates and bombarded the city with their mangonels.
As a last desperate move the defenders deployed their twenty war elephants but to no great effect. Despite months of reinforcement, the city surrendered on the fifth day, the 19th March. One small group of diehards escaped to join the Khorezmshah and another retreated into the cathedral mosque to fight a last ditch battle, the Mongols setting fire to the building using naphtha. Some 30,000 Qipchaq mercenaries were massacred. A further 30,000 of Samarkand’s artisans were rounded up and deported to the various ulus of the Mongolian Empire.
The Kitan Yeh-lü A-hai was appointed darughachi or governor of the city, responsible for a local Mongol garrison, the compilation of a population register, the collection of tax, the despatch of tribute to Mongolia, the issue of coinage and the administration of justice. Mahmud Yalavach, who had been born in Gurganj, was given responsibility for the overall administration of Transoxiana. The Taoist monk K’iu Ch’ang Ch’un and his entourage spent nine months in the remains of the Afrasiab citadel at various times during 1222 and discovered that despite the fact that only one quarter of the population remained, life had quickly returned to some degree of normality.
Arriving in Balkh, the Khorezmshah was met by an emissary who persuaded him to change his plans and to head for central Iran. Muhammad promptly set out for Khurasan, arriving in Nishapur on the 18th April 1220. Unaware of developments in Transoxiana, Muhammad took the opportunity to relax and indulge himself, believing that the Amu Darya would provide a formidable natural barrier to the Mongol army. Unbeknown to Muhammad, Chinggis Khan had received intelligence following his arrival in Samarkand that the Khorezmshah had already fled south from the city. He gave 30,000 men to his two field marshals, Jebei and Sübe’etei, and ordered them to hunt the Khorezmshah down.
On his departure from Balkh, Muhammad had despatched a patrol to a crossing of the Amu Darya close to modern Termez to gather news on developments north of the river. There they discovered that Bukhara had already fallen and that Samarkand had just been captured. The patrol eventually caught up with Mohammad at Nishapur to inform him about the fall of Transoxiana and to warn him that Jebei and Sübe’etei were in hot pursuit, having already crossed the river. With his confidence collapsing Muhammad set out for central Iran on the 12th May, travelling via Isfarayin and Ray before meeting up with his son Rukn ad-Din and 30,000 Iranian troops at Farrazin. The Iranian emirs recommended that he take refuge in the Kuh-i Ushturan Mountains bordering Luristan, but Muhammad thought that the terrain was undefendable. He likewise turned down an option to retreat to a citadel on the border of Luristan and Fars.
The Khorezmshah was finally spurred into action by news that the Mongols had already attacked Ray and were heading towards Farrazin. For the next six months the Mongols pursued Muhammad and his eldest son, Jalal ad-Din, west and then east across the mountains of northern Iran. Muhammad escaped through the Elburz Mountains to the Caspian coast close to Mazandaran, finding refuge on a small island in the Bay of Astarabad. It was there that he died from pleurisy in either December 1220 or January 1221. Jalal ad-Din and two brothers returned to Gurganj by way of Mangishlaq, but Muhammad’s harem, young children and mother were captured at their mountain stronghold near Hamadan. All his male offspring were killed and his mother was despatched to Chinggis Khan who sent her to be detained in Mongolia.
After the fall of Samarkand, Chinggis had retreated into the mountains south of the city to rest his troops and horses until the autumn. So far his campaign had not even touched the wealthy province of Khorezm that had been under the control of the Khorezmshah’s Qipchaq mother, Turkan-Khatun. Chinggis was fully aware that he was a long way from home and that there were still many Khorezmian forces in Afghanistan and Khurasan who could regroup against him. That autumn Chinggis moved south to the Amu Darya to destroy Termez, moving up river into Tajikistan for the winter.
At the start of 1221 his attention turned to Gurganj, the capital of Khorezm, now under the command of the Qipchaq general Khumar Tegin. The siege of a large town like Gurganj would require more than the forces under Jöchi, who had arrived from the Syr Darya after capturing Signaq, Yangi-Kent and Jand. Cha’adai and Ögödei had initially been sent from Bukhara to capture Khojand in Ferghana. Now they returned to join Jöchi with “…an army as endless as the happenings of time”, according to the verbose Juvaini.
Rashid ad-Din writes that Cha’adai and Jöchi disagreed over the conduct of the siege of Gurganj. Chinggis, who at the time was supervising the difficult siege at the fort of Talaqan on the borders of Afghanistan and Khurasan, resolved these differences by placing the younger Ögödei in command of operations. From Nasawi’s account it seems clear that Jöchi made several attempts to negotiate with the defenders, attempting to minimise the destruction of a prosperous capital city that was destined to become part of his appanage. Of course Jöchi had no general abhorrence of death and destruction – he had no compunction in destroying the much smaller town of Signaq. Juzjani went even further and claimed that Jöchi not only disagreed with his brothers but also fundamentally disagreed with his father. However Juzjani’s account is flawed as we shall see later.
The siege commenced in early 1221, by which time Jalal ad-Din, his mother and the young princes had fled. It lasted into April. Prisoners of war were used to fill in the surrounding defensive ditch and the city walls were undermined. Because of a lack of stones, the Mongols made projectiles for their catapults out of mulberry tree logs soaked in water.
Once the walls were breached the Mongols set fire to the houses using vessels filled with naphtha. A bloody battle ensued as the Mongols took the city quarter by quarter. The male defenders were slaughtered and the women and children were taken into slavery. One report claimed that 24 male defenders were killed for each Mongol soldier (of whom, according to Rashid al-Din there were over 50,000).
Either by design or through later neglect, the dam outside the city was destroyed, allowing the unconstrained waters of the Amu Darya to flood the remains of the city. According to Juzjani, only two edifices remained, “the old palace” and the tomb of Muhammad’s father, Sultan Tekesh, who ruled from 1172 to 1200.
Following the fall of Gurganj, Ögödei and Cha’adai led their forces south to join their father at Talaqan in Afghanistan and “were received in audience”. We presume that Jöchi stayed in Khorezm to complete the conquest and to eliminate all resistance. Many of the local Sarts, especially the artisans, were enslaved and despatched to Mongolia. Juvaini recorded that there were now many localities in the east that were well-peopled and cultivated by the inhabitants of Khorezm. Before departing, Jöchi appointed Chin Timur as the basqaq (administrator and tax-collector) of the entire province.
The destruction of Khorezm was not exaggerated by the historical writers. The archaeological record proves that the devastation was truly massive. All the main towns were destroyed: Mizdakhkan, Shemakha Kala, Dzhanpik, Kyat, Guldersun, Kavat Kala, Dargan, and Hazarasp, the latter apparently being “submerged”. The left bank irrigation system in the north fell into disuse and the surrounding agricultural regions dried up and turned into desert, remaining a wilderness until the present day. The once flourishing right bank was so badly affected that it remained a wasteland until the 19th century.
Despite the killing and destruction a considerable resistance movement against Mongol rule was maintained for some years throughout Khorezm and Transoxiana. It was not until 1231 that Chin Timur, by then the governor of Khurasan and Mazandaran, succeeded in wiping out the last pockets of resistance in his province.
Meanwhile Chinggis had embarked on the invasion of Afghanistan, crossing the Amu Darya to capture Balkh. It was probably here that Chinggis received news from Jebei about the death of the Khorezmshah and the escape of his son Jalal ad-Din. To make matters worse Jalal ad-Din had quickly departed from Gurganj with a small group of supporters, crossing the Qara Qum to reach Nisa. There he had overrun a small Mongol force specifically established as part of a cordon to prevent the royal family fleeing to Khurasan. He was lucky – when two of his brothers followed the same route some time later they were captured and beheaded.
After leaving Nishapur on the 10th February 1221, Jalal ad-Din was detected and chased by yet another Mongol detachment, only escaping from them in the vicinity of Herat. He now hastened eastward to reach the safety of Ghazna (modern Ghazni, south of Kabul), which was under the control of friendly forces. Here he was joined by yet more of his allies and their supporters and soon found himself at the head of an army of 60,000 troops composed of detachments of Qanqli, Ghurid and mixed Khalaj and Turkmen forces.
That same February Chinggis entrusted Tolui with the conquest of Khurasan, a task that he accomplished with massive brutality. Travelling due west Tolui crossed the Murgab to take the two small towns of Maruchak and Saraqs before totally devastating Merv. In April he annihilated Nishapur, went on to capture Herat, and then returned in the early summer of 1221 to rejoin his father who was accompanying Mongol forces besieging the fort of Talaqan between Merv and Balkh.
With the onset of spring Jalal ad-Din left Ghazna and moved northwards to Parvan (north of Kabul). There he attacked a nearby Mongol detachment that by chance was in the same area. Hearing the news Chinggis immediately sent 30,000 men to Parvan, where they were thoroughly routed by Jalal ad-Din’s army. Rumours of Jalal ad-Din’s successes reached Khurasan in the second half of the year and led to the outbreak of revolts.
With Talaqin finally overrun and the defenders massacred, Chinggis now set out for Ghazna himself, along with Cha’adai, Ögödei and Tolui. After a one month delay while they overcame heavy resistance on the route to Bamiyan, Chinggis and his sons arrived at Ghazna only to discover that Jalal ad-Din had departed for the northern Indus two weeks earlier. The Mongols hastened eastwards, catching up with Jalal ad-Din’s army somewhere near modern Kalabagh, just as they were preparing boats to cross the river. Jalal ad-Din seems to have made the opening moves against the arriving Mongol forces but was caught in a deadly counter attack in which most of his forces were surrounded and destroyed. Sultan Jalal ad-Din put up a heroic fight and managed to escape across the Indus on horseback, possibly heading for Peshawar with a small band of followers. Cha’adai attempted to follow the Sultan but lost his trail. Chinggis subsequently sent another of his commanders with 20,000 men into the Punjab region of Pakistan to track the Sultan down. They too failed to accomplish their mission. Jalal ad-Din would spend three years of exile in India before returning to Iran.
According to Nasawi, the Battle of the Indus took place on the 24th November 1221. It effectively marked the end of Chinggis Khan’s campaign against the Empire of Khorezm.
There is one fascinating tail end to the story. While the main Mongol army had been campaigning in Afghanistan, Jebei and Sübe’etei had entered the Caucasus Mountains. They had spent most of 1220 criss-crossing northern Iran and whilst they had managed to overtake and destroy one of the Khorezmian armies, they seem to have lost track of the Khorezmshah somewhere in the region of Hamadan. They decided to divide their forces, Sübe’etei searching the eastern Elburz Mountains and Jebei the plains of Mazandaran. Little did Jebei know that his quarry was just a short distance offshore from the Mazandaran coast. With the trail having gone cold, the two commanders reunited at Ray before searching out good pastureland on the Mughan Steppe in southern Azerbaijan for the duration of the winter of 1220. It was there that they were joined by freebooting Kurdish and Turkmen nomads who, in February 1221, guided them into the Christian Kingdom of Georgia. After numerous skirmishes the Mongol expeditionary force decisively overwhelmed the standing army of King Giorgi IV. March saw a return to Azerbaijan, after which they were recalled to violently suppress a revolt in Hamadan. In the autumn they launched a second violent attack on Georgia before entering the steppes to the north of the Caucasus Mountains (today part of southern Russia) to over-winter their livestock.
Chinggis and Sübe’etei must have been surprised at the lack of resistance shown by the Khorezmian forces and confidently headed straight for Samarkand, driving columns of captives ahead of them. There they were joined by reinforcements from Mongolia, Jebei having successfully negotiated the frozen passes of the Pamirs during winter to reach the Ferghana Valley and Samarkand. Finally Cha’adai and Ögödei arrived after a long but successful siege at Otrar with hordes of prisoners captured along the Syr Darya. After inspecting the defences for two days, Chinggis ordered his forces to lay siege to the city. The Turkish defenders made sorties out from the town into the surrounding Mongol ranks, resulting in casualties on both sides. As a result the Mongols sealed the gates and bombarded the city with their mangonels.
As a last desperate move the defenders deployed their twenty war elephants but to no great effect. Despite months of reinforcement, the city surrendered on the fifth day, the 19th March. One small group of diehards escaped to join the Khorezmshah and another retreated into the cathedral mosque to fight a last ditch battle, the Mongols setting fire to the building using naphtha. Some 30,000 Qipchaq mercenaries were massacred. A further 30,000 of Samarkand’s artisans were rounded up and deported to the various ulus of the Mongolian Empire.
The Kitan Yeh-lü A-hai was appointed darughachi or governor of the city, responsible for a local Mongol garrison, the compilation of a population register, the collection of tax, the despatch of tribute to Mongolia, the issue of coinage and the administration of justice. Mahmud Yalavach, who had been born in Gurganj, was given responsibility for the overall administration of Transoxiana. The Taoist monk K’iu Ch’ang Ch’un and his entourage spent nine months in the remains of the Afrasiab citadel at various times during 1222 and discovered that despite the fact that only one quarter of the population remained, life had quickly returned to some degree of normality.
Arriving in Balkh, the Khorezmshah was met by an emissary who persuaded him to change his plans and to head for central Iran. Muhammad promptly set out for Khurasan, arriving in Nishapur on the 18th April 1220. Unaware of developments in Transoxiana, Muhammad took the opportunity to relax and indulge himself, believing that the Amu Darya would provide a formidable natural barrier to the Mongol army. Unbeknown to Muhammad, Chinggis Khan had received intelligence following his arrival in Samarkand that the Khorezmshah had already fled south from the city. He gave 30,000 men to his two field marshals, Jebei and Sübe’etei, and ordered them to hunt the Khorezmshah down.
On his departure from Balkh, Muhammad had despatched a patrol to a crossing of the Amu Darya close to modern Termez to gather news on developments north of the river. There they discovered that Bukhara had already fallen and that Samarkand had just been captured. The patrol eventually caught up with Mohammad at Nishapur to inform him about the fall of Transoxiana and to warn him that Jebei and Sübe’etei were in hot pursuit, having already crossed the river. With his confidence collapsing Muhammad set out for central Iran on the 12th May, travelling via Isfarayin and Ray before meeting up with his son Rukn ad-Din and 30,000 Iranian troops at Farrazin. The Iranian emirs recommended that he take refuge in the Kuh-i Ushturan Mountains bordering Luristan, but Muhammad thought that the terrain was undefendable. He likewise turned down an option to retreat to a citadel on the border of Luristan and Fars.
The Khorezmshah was finally spurred into action by news that the Mongols had already attacked Ray and were heading towards Farrazin. For the next six months the Mongols pursued Muhammad and his eldest son, Jalal ad-Din, west and then east across the mountains of northern Iran. Muhammad escaped through the Elburz Mountains to the Caspian coast close to Mazandaran, finding refuge on a small island in the Bay of Astarabad. It was there that he died from pleurisy in either December 1220 or January 1221. Jalal ad-Din and two brothers returned to Gurganj by way of Mangishlaq, but Muhammad’s harem, young children and mother were captured at their mountain stronghold near Hamadan. All his male offspring were killed and his mother was despatched to Chinggis Khan who sent her to be detained in Mongolia.
After the fall of Samarkand, Chinggis had retreated into the mountains south of the city to rest his troops and horses until the autumn. So far his campaign had not even touched the wealthy province of Khorezm that had been under the control of the Khorezmshah’s Qipchaq mother, Turkan-Khatun. Chinggis was fully aware that he was a long way from home and that there were still many Khorezmian forces in Afghanistan and Khurasan who could regroup against him. That autumn Chinggis moved south to the Amu Darya to destroy Termez, moving up river into Tajikistan for the winter.
At the start of 1221 his attention turned to Gurganj, the capital of Khorezm, now under the command of the Qipchaq general Khumar Tegin. The siege of a large town like Gurganj would require more than the forces under Jöchi, who had arrived from the Syr Darya after capturing Signaq, Yangi-Kent and Jand. Cha’adai and Ögödei had initially been sent from Bukhara to capture Khojand in Ferghana. Now they returned to join Jöchi with “…an army as endless as the happenings of time”, according to the verbose Juvaini.
Rashid ad-Din writes that Cha’adai and Jöchi disagreed over the conduct of the siege of Gurganj. Chinggis, who at the time was supervising the difficult siege at the fort of Talaqan on the borders of Afghanistan and Khurasan, resolved these differences by placing the younger Ögödei in command of operations. From Nasawi’s account it seems clear that Jöchi made several attempts to negotiate with the defenders, attempting to minimise the destruction of a prosperous capital city that was destined to become part of his appanage. Of course Jöchi had no general abhorrence of death and destruction – he had no compunction in destroying the much smaller town of Signaq. Juzjani went even further and claimed that Jöchi not only disagreed with his brothers but also fundamentally disagreed with his father. However Juzjani’s account is flawed as we shall see later.
The siege commenced in early 1221, by which time Jalal ad-Din, his mother and the young princes had fled. It lasted into April. Prisoners of war were used to fill in the surrounding defensive ditch and the city walls were undermined. Because of a lack of stones, the Mongols made projectiles for their catapults out of mulberry tree logs soaked in water.
Once the walls were breached the Mongols set fire to the houses using vessels filled with naphtha. A bloody battle ensued as the Mongols took the city quarter by quarter. The male defenders were slaughtered and the women and children were taken into slavery. One report claimed that 24 male defenders were killed for each Mongol soldier (of whom, according to Rashid al-Din there were over 50,000).
Either by design or through later neglect, the dam outside the city was destroyed, allowing the unconstrained waters of the Amu Darya to flood the remains of the city. According to Juzjani, only two edifices remained, “the old palace” and the tomb of Muhammad’s father, Sultan Tekesh, who ruled from 1172 to 1200.
Following the fall of Gurganj, Ögödei and Cha’adai led their forces south to join their father at Talaqan in Afghanistan and “were received in audience”. We presume that Jöchi stayed in Khorezm to complete the conquest and to eliminate all resistance. Many of the local Sarts, especially the artisans, were enslaved and despatched to Mongolia. Juvaini recorded that there were now many localities in the east that were well-peopled and cultivated by the inhabitants of Khorezm. Before departing, Jöchi appointed Chin Timur as the basqaq (administrator and tax-collector) of the entire province.
The destruction of Khorezm was not exaggerated by the historical writers. The archaeological record proves that the devastation was truly massive. All the main towns were destroyed: Mizdakhkan, Shemakha Kala, Dzhanpik, Kyat, Guldersun, Kavat Kala, Dargan, and Hazarasp, the latter apparently being “submerged”. The left bank irrigation system in the north fell into disuse and the surrounding agricultural regions dried up and turned into desert, remaining a wilderness until the present day. The once flourishing right bank was so badly affected that it remained a wasteland until the 19th century.
Despite the killing and destruction a considerable resistance movement against Mongol rule was maintained for some years throughout Khorezm and Transoxiana. It was not until 1231 that Chin Timur, by then the governor of Khurasan and Mazandaran, succeeded in wiping out the last pockets of resistance in his province.
Meanwhile Chinggis had embarked on the invasion of Afghanistan, crossing the Amu Darya to capture Balkh. It was probably here that Chinggis received news from Jebei about the death of the Khorezmshah and the escape of his son Jalal ad-Din. To make matters worse Jalal ad-Din had quickly departed from Gurganj with a small group of supporters, crossing the Qara Qum to reach Nisa. There he had overrun a small Mongol force specifically established as part of a cordon to prevent the royal family fleeing to Khurasan. He was lucky – when two of his brothers followed the same route some time later they were captured and beheaded.
After leaving Nishapur on the 10th February 1221, Jalal ad-Din was detected and chased by yet another Mongol detachment, only escaping from them in the vicinity of Herat. He now hastened eastward to reach the safety of Ghazna (modern Ghazni, south of Kabul), which was under the control of friendly forces. Here he was joined by yet more of his allies and their supporters and soon found himself at the head of an army of 60,000 troops composed of detachments of Qanqli, Ghurid and mixed Khalaj and Turkmen forces.
That same February Chinggis entrusted Tolui with the conquest of Khurasan, a task that he accomplished with massive brutality. Travelling due west Tolui crossed the Murgab to take the two small towns of Maruchak and Saraqs before totally devastating Merv. In April he annihilated Nishapur, went on to capture Herat, and then returned in the early summer of 1221 to rejoin his father who was accompanying Mongol forces besieging the fort of Talaqan between Merv and Balkh.
With the onset of spring Jalal ad-Din left Ghazna and moved northwards to Parvan (north of Kabul). There he attacked a nearby Mongol detachment that by chance was in the same area. Hearing the news Chinggis immediately sent 30,000 men to Parvan, where they were thoroughly routed by Jalal ad-Din’s army. Rumours of Jalal ad-Din’s successes reached Khurasan in the second half of the year and led to the outbreak of revolts.
With Talaqin finally overrun and the defenders massacred, Chinggis now set out for Ghazna himself, along with Cha’adai, Ögödei and Tolui. After a one month delay while they overcame heavy resistance on the route to Bamiyan, Chinggis and his sons arrived at Ghazna only to discover that Jalal ad-Din had departed for the northern Indus two weeks earlier. The Mongols hastened eastwards, catching up with Jalal ad-Din’s army somewhere near modern Kalabagh, just as they were preparing boats to cross the river. Jalal ad-Din seems to have made the opening moves against the arriving Mongol forces but was caught in a deadly counter attack in which most of his forces were surrounded and destroyed. Sultan Jalal ad-Din put up a heroic fight and managed to escape across the Indus on horseback, possibly heading for Peshawar with a small band of followers. Cha’adai attempted to follow the Sultan but lost his trail. Chinggis subsequently sent another of his commanders with 20,000 men into the Punjab region of Pakistan to track the Sultan down. They too failed to accomplish their mission. Jalal ad-Din would spend three years of exile in India before returning to Iran.
According to Nasawi, the Battle of the Indus took place on the 24th November 1221. It effectively marked the end of Chinggis Khan’s campaign against the Empire of Khorezm.
There is one fascinating tail end to the story. While the main Mongol army had been campaigning in Afghanistan, Jebei and Sübe’etei had entered the Caucasus Mountains. They had spent most of 1220 criss-crossing northern Iran and whilst they had managed to overtake and destroy one of the Khorezmian armies, they seem to have lost track of the Khorezmshah somewhere in the region of Hamadan. They decided to divide their forces, Sübe’etei searching the eastern Elburz Mountains and Jebei the plains of Mazandaran. Little did Jebei know that his quarry was just a short distance offshore from the Mazandaran coast. With the trail having gone cold, the two commanders reunited at Ray before searching out good pastureland on the Mughan Steppe in southern Azerbaijan for the duration of the winter of 1220. It was there that they were joined by freebooting Kurdish and Turkmen nomads who, in February 1221, guided them into the Christian Kingdom of Georgia. After numerous skirmishes the Mongol expeditionary force decisively overwhelmed the standing army of King Giorgi IV. March saw a return to Azerbaijan, after which they were recalled to violently suppress a revolt in Hamadan. In the autumn they launched a second violent attack on Georgia before entering the steppes to the north of the Caucasus Mountains (today part of southern Russia) to over-winter their livestock.
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