Khwarezm at the time of Genghis Khan
West, or rather south-west of Kara Khitai, and
bordering upon it, was the empire of Khwarezm, with
which the Mongols had a most bloody and prolonged
struggle. This empire, like several others in
South-western Asia, was founded by a Turk who had
been originally a slave. The sovereigns of Persia
were in the habit of purchasing young Turks, who were
captured by the various frontier tribes in their
mutual struggles, and employing them in their
service. They generally had a body guard formed of
them, and many of them were enfranchised and rose to
posts of high influence, and in many cases supplanted
their masters. The founder of the Khwarezmian power
was such a slave, named Nushtekin, in the service of
the Seljuk Sultan Malik Shah. He rose to the
position of a Teshtedar or chamberlain, which carried
with it the government of the province of Khwarezm,
that is of the fertile valley of the Oxus and the
wide steppes on either side of it, bounded on the
west by the Caspian and on the east by Bukhara. He
was succeeded by his son Kutb-ud-din Muhammad, whose
services to the Seljuk rulers, Barkiarok and Sandjar,
obtained for him the title of Khwarezm Shah, a title
which was borne by the rulers of that province before
the Arab invasion. He was succeeded by his son Atsiz,
who several times took up arms against his sovereign Sandjar,
and became virtually independent of him. He was ruler
of Khwarezm when Yeliu Tashi, the founder of Kara
Khitai, entered his dominion, and having been
defeated by him he was obliged to become his
tributary. He was succeeded in 1156 by his son lyal
Arslan, who, on Sandjar's
death in 1157, conquered the western part of
Khorassan. He left two sons named Takish and Sultan
Shah, between whom a long struggle ensued. Takish was
eventually victorious. He also conquered the Seljuk
ruler Togrul, and sent his head to the Caliph at Baghdad.
By this conquest Irak Adjem was added to his
dominions. With the deaths of Togrul and Sandjar, the
Seljuk dynasty in Persia came to an end, and Takish
obtained the investiture of their states from the
Caliph. Takish was succeeded in 1200 by his son Alai
ud din Muhammad, who by the conquest of Balkh and Herat
completed the subjection of Khorassan to the
Khwarezmian Empire. Shortly after Mazanderan and Kerman
were reduced to obedience. He then broke off his
allegiance to the ruler of Kara Khitai, whose
dependent in Transoxiana, named Osman, became his
man. He also conquered a portion of Turkistan as far
as Uzkend, where he placed a garrison. Some time
after, having quarreled with Osman, the ruler of
Transoxiana, who had become his son-in-law, he
attacked and took him prisoner, and afterwards put
him to death. He then appropriated his dominions and
made Samarkand his capital. In 1212-13 he annexed the
principality of Gur, and three years later attacked
and subdued the country of Ghazni. When he captured
its chief town he discovered proofs that the Caliph
had been intriguing against him. He accordingly
determined to depose him. He marched a large army
westwards. On his way he received the submission of
the rulers of Azerbaijan and Fars, and at length
entered the dominions of the Caliph, which at this
time were limited to the provinces of Irak Arab and
Khuzistan. Muhammad occupied the former province, and
proceeded to divide it into various military fiefs;
but this was the extent of his aggression in this
direction. A terrible snowstorm overtook his troops
on the mountains of Essed abad, and after losing many
of them the rest were attacked by the Turkish and
Kurdish tribes and suffered terribly, a fate which
popular superstition naturally assigned as the result
of so unholy a war. Muhammad deemed it prudent to
retire, and his retreat was probably hastened by the
approach of the Mongols. He gave Irak Ajem as an
appanage to his son Rokn ud din. The provinces of Kerman,
Kesh, and Mukran were assigned to Ghiaz ud din;
Ghazni, Basinan, Gur, Bort, &c., which formed the
old Gur Empire, were assigned to Jelal ud din; while
his youngest son, whom he had fixed upon as his heir,
was assigned Khwarezm, Khorassan, and Mazanderan.
From this enumeration it may be gathered that
Muhammad was a very powerful sovereign. He controlled
an army of 400,000 men, and his dominions at the
invasion of the Mongols stretched from the Jaxartes
to the Persian Gulf and from the Indus to Irak Arab
and Azerbaijan. Here also, as in the case of Kara
Khitai, we can see how the work was prepared for the
hands of Jingis by the consolidation of a great
number of small states into one powerful one, on
whose fall a vast empire was at once added to the
Mongol dominions.
Howorth, Sir Henry Hoyle. History of the
Mongols, from the 9th to the 19th Century ...: The
Mongols proper and the Kalmuks ... with two maps by
E. G. Ravenstein Part 1 of History of the Mongols,
from the 9th to the 19th Century, Longmans, Green,
and co., 1876