[By Chuck Almdale]
[NOTE: If maps, pictures and legends don’t display properly, go to the blog.
The interactive Google map at the end of this posting works on the blogsite, if not in your email.]
Following the Fall of Samarqand
In the last episode, we followed Khwarazmshah Muhammad II to the end of his life on Ashooredeh Island with his son and heir Jalal al-Din by his bedside. We left generals Jebe and Subutai wintering in the Mughan Steppe of far northwestern Persian Iran, and followed the Khwarazmshah’s mother and co-diarch Terken Khadun to the end of her life as a prisoner in Mongolia. Now we turn our spacetime clock back to Samarqand and the spring of 1220. Samarqand has just fallen to Genghis Khan after a siege lasting all of five days. The inhabitants did not fare well.
After spending the spring of 1220 CE ‘securing’ the environs of Samarqand, Genghis Khan and most of the Mongol army retired to the Nakh Shab [Qarshi] plain southwest of Samarqand. Here they would spend the summer far from the cities and battles, watching their horses and themselves fatten up for their next season of battle. In recent centuries the Nakh Shab plain has become the breadbasket of Uzbekistan, with rich soil, strong and plentiful grass, and the Kashka Darya flowing through clear and cool, although these days most of the water flows through canals.
In the fall, when grass begins to yellow and wither, they packed up their gear and headed southeast to Tirmidh [Termez], a city of about 100,000 inhabitants. This journey of about 150 miles took them through the Iron Gate, a narrow pass through the mountains separating the watersheds of the Amu Darya and the Kashka Darya [Qashqadaryo], used by all caravans, travelers and conquerors since before the time of Alexander the Great. For a time the pass had an actual iron gate within it. Beyond the pass on the north bank of the Amu Darya lay Tirmidh, an ancient city, part of the Persian Acheamenid lands until the Khwarazmshah conquered it in 1206 CE.
The Greeks knew this region as Sogdia, and Alexander the Great conquered it in 329 BCE. Many recent scholars believe that Tirmidh was the site of “Alexandria on the Oxus” [Oxus = Greek name for Amu Darya]. During the 1st-5th centuries CE Fayaz Tepe, located in the Tirmidh oasis, became an important center of Mahāsāṃghika Buddhism.
Genghis sent an emissary into Tirmidh with his usual request for submission. It may have been the same Uyghur text Jebe delivered to the Nishapurans:
“Whosoever . . . shall submit, mercy will be shown to them and unto his wives and children and household; but whosoever shall not submit, shall perish together with all his wives and children and kinsmen.”
The citizens of Tirmidh were not interested in abject surrender; they had high thick walls on three sides and a river on the fourth, a well-built citadel with a mangonel catapult, and a large army to give battle. They not only refused the Khan’s request for surrender but opened their gate and attacked. This failed. The Mongols then set up their equipment and battered the city with mangonel-hurled boulders day and night and readied their covered siege ladders in the interim. After ten days of barrage they stormed the city and quickly took it. In retribution for not instantly submitting and forcing the Mongolians to work for their plunder – and also to set an example to the waiting cities of Khorasan to the south – they drove the entire population, both men and women, out of the city and into the fields, divided them among the soldiers who then put them to death, each soldier executing a fixed number of persons.
One woman, not yet executed, told the soldiers, “Spare my life and I will give you a great pearl that I have.” Upon demand that she give it up, she admitted, “I have swallowed it.” The soldiers disemboweled her and found not just one but several pearls. The Khan then ordered all the dead to be eviscerated.
In the fall of 1220, Tirmidh was looted and razed to the ground.
Source: Wikipedia – Termez
Badakhshan, Winter 1220
Genghis Khan then took his army eastward into the region of Badakhshan [current-day eastern Tajikistan, northeastern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan]. Records of this campaign are poor; some sources say they went up the Vakhsh River, other say the Amu Darya. He could easily have gone up one river and returned down the other (see two maps below).
According to Juvayni, all the people in Badakhshan were subjugated. Some cities submitted, most did not. This region occupied the Khan until early spring of 1221 when he returned to Tirmidh. As Chagatai and Ögedei finished their siege of Gurganj in April 1221, they may have reached Tirmidh by following the Amu Darya upstream, taking cities as they went, until they reached Tirmidh and met up with the Khan, back from Badakhshan.
It’s rarely discussed, but the ability of the Mongols to maintain communication over long distances was extraordinary for the time. In China they set up a complicated “pony express” system with regularly-spaced stations, well-staffed with rested horses and ready riders. In areas still being conquered, this level of sophistication was not achievable, but they always seemed to know where the other armies were and were able to coordinate their movements.
South to Balkh and Taliqan
Source: Wikipedia – Balkh
From the Amu Darya river crossing at Tirmidh southwest to Balkh [now in northwest Afghanistan] it is 40 miles as the crow flies or 60 miles by modern road. In mountain and desert terrain, people travel by the easiest and safest routes which are rarely the shortest routes, due to those annoying mountains always getting in the way. Balkh was the next stop for Genghis and his amassed armies. The Persians often called Balkh the “Eastern Mecca.” As there has been animosity between Arabs and Persians and Afghanis for millennia, this sobriquet could be either a compliment or an insult. Jalal al-Din and the Khwarazmshah had been at Balkh a year earlier, and they were well received by the inhabitants.
The events at Balkh are somewhat confused. Historian Ibn al-Athir says that the town immediately surrendered and the inhabitants’ lives were spared. Historian Juvayni says they surrendered but – as with the citizens of Tirmidh – were all slaughtered anyway. It may be their declaration of submission was not accepted because they had sheltered Jalal al-Din and many of the citizens were presumably al-Din sympathizers. Alternatively, they may have surrendered and were spared, later revolted and were then massacred. This sequence definitely happened (later) at the silk road city of Herat, and probably at Ray [now Tehran], as we have already read. Whatever the exact sequence of events, the Mongols eventually besieged the city which fell in seven days. After it was sacked the rampart, palace and all large houses were razed, and all the citizens beheaded in the fields.
Genghis Khan then moved westward to Taliqan [Talikan, Tālaqān, Ta-La-Kien, probably modern-day Chachaktu in Faryab province, now a low ruin. Google references to Taliqan are to a different locale in northeast Afghanistan.]. Taliqan was a city of 100,000 inhabitants in the mountains of Juzjan [Jowzjan, now an Afghani province]. Taliqan’s fortress castle [going by various names, all meaning “Hill of Victory”] held a strategic position on the Mongols’ route to Khorasan, Ghur and southern Afghanistan. For months, passing Mongol parties were invariably harassed by the castle’s soldiers who would seize their prisoners and cattle. A large Mongol force had already attacked the town but could not take it, which brought the Khan onto the scene. While dealing with this tactical problem, he gave an army of 30,000-50,000 cavalry to his fourth son, Tolui, and assigned him the task of subjugating the bulk of Khorasan, including the large and rich silk road cities of Marv, Nishapur and Herat. He probably didn’t quite expect the thoroughness with which Tolui would execute this task. Much of Khorasan never recovered.
Source: Wikipedia – Faryab
The siege of Taliqan must have been an extremely difficult endeavor. According to Ibn al-Athir it lasted ten months – six months before Genghis Khan arrived, and four months afterwards. Rashid al-Din says it took seven months, and the city was finally taken only after the return of Tolui’s forces fresh from the conquest of the rest of Khorasan in the early summer of 1221. The sources are quite vague and contradictory about what the Khan did afterwards. He likely spent the summer in the mountains of Juzjan in the vicinity of Taliqan. He remained here until the late summer or early fall of 1221 when he received the news of Shah Jalal al-Din’s victory at Parvan.
NOTE: Despite Taliqan’s importance within the Khwarazmian Empire and the fact that it took the Mongols 7-10 months to besiege and take it, an extraordinary length of time for them, I found it next-to-impossible to locate Taliqan on a map. The location I put on the interactive google map [below] is my best guess. My clues were:
- Map of Transoxiana in the 8th century which shows Balkh with Faryab to the west and Taliqan farther again to the west.
- Cambridge History of Iran, Boyle, J.A, pgs 311, 317-18, where Taliqan is identified as “probably to be identified with the present-day Chachaktu” and is also located west of Balkh in the “mountains of Juzjan” (now a province of Afghanistan).
- Following the Chachaktu clue, I found in “Northern Afghanistan or Letters from the Boundary Commission” by Major C.E. Yate, 1888, pg 131, the statement “Eiding (sic) up the valley the other day, I came to an old deserted fort at Chachaktu, some seven miles from here [the village of Chahar Shamba],” and I found Chahar Shamba on a google map. Chachaktu, despite being described as “modern-day” (modern-day perhaps in 1888), was not in Google maps.
- This approximate location was supported by numerous references (such as Persia under the Mongols page 88) to “The Chachaktu ruins are forty-five miles as the crow flies from Bala Murghab.” Bala Murghab is on the map and 45 miles east of it brings us to a few miles east of Chahar Shamba.
- Any fortress, city or stronghold so impregnable as to withstand 7-10 months of siege was likely built on a mountain or steep hill, not low in a valley, so I placed Taliqan at the edge of the mountains.
Source: Wikipedia – Faryab
Interactive Google Map. Click on any route or icon and information about it will appear. Zoom in/out: scroll or +/-; Details: left click on lines/icons; Move map: left click+hold & move mouse. Additional routes: upper left toggle arrow. Displayed are all routes and cities following the fall of Samarqand March 1220 through Genghis Khan and Tolui’s arrival at Taliqan, Spring 1221. All routes and some locations are at least partially conjectural. Light green: Genghis Khan, Purple: Shah; Black: Jebe & Subutai; Tan: Jebe; Green: Subutai; Violet: Tolui in Khorasan; Blue: Jalal al-Din; Orange: other; Pale violet: Shah’s proposed trip to Ghanzi; Pink: Shah’s messengers to/from Mela ford.
Entire Mongol Empire Series: Click Here
First Installment: Why didn’t the Mongols Conquer Europe in the 13th Century?
Previous Installment: The End of the Pursuit of the Khwarazmshah | The Mongol Empire: Part XXXII
Next Installment: Tolui Enters Western Khorasan | The Mongol Empire: Part XXXIV
This Installment: Tirmidh, Badakhshan and Taliqan, 1221 | The Mongol Empire: Part XXXIII
Main Sources
Cambridge History of Iran, The; Volume V, Chapter 4, “Dynastic and Political History of the Il-Khans”. Boyle, John Andrew; (1938); pages 310-312, 317-318.
Chingas Khan Rides Again: The Mongol Invasion of Bukhara, Samarkand and other Great Cities of the Silk Road, 1215-1221, Chapter 7 – The Flight of the Khwarezmshah; Croner, Don. Ulaanbaatar, Polar Star Books, 2016. Kindle page location 2979-3096, 3479-3509
Genghis Khan: The World Conqueror. Djang, Sam; New Horizon Books, 2011. Pages 757-758
Other Sources
Unesco – Balkh
WeaponNews – Empire of Genghis Khan and the Khwarazm
Wikipedia – Badakhshan
Wikipedia – Jalal al-Din
Wikipedia – Khwarazmian Empire
Wikipedia – Mongol conquest of the Khwarazmian Empire
Wikipedia – Mongol Conquest of Central Asia
Wikipedia – Termez
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