by Joshua Fogel
Before Chinggis pressed the assault on Samarkand, he sent two detachments to two cities that lay between Bukhara and Samarkand. While the main force of his army camped at the Sughd River, news of the capture of these two walled towns arrived.
Garrison troops were stationed on all four sides of Samarkand, led by the finest commanders in Khorazm’s army. Chinggis did not begin the assault precipitously but refined the attack strategy while in camp. Soon after he arrived at the banks of the Sughd River, three units that had earlier gone to capture fortresses along the Syr Darya completed their mission, and after several days arrived to join forces with his main army. First came the unit under Jochi’s command. About six months after setting out, Jochi had captured the city of Sïqnaq, plundered three other nearby cities, taken the city of Jand, and placed the lower reaches of the Syr Darya under his control. All those who fought against the Mongol forces were put to death, the greatest number in the city of Sïqnaq, where the majority of the residents were butchered by Mongol soldiers.
About ten days after Jochi’s unit arrived, that of Cha’adai and Ögedei appeared. They had received orders to attack and take Otrar because Chinggis’s earlier delegation seeking amity had been slaughtered, the immediate cause of the present war. After fighting for five months, Mongol troops took the city, and after another month of fierce fighting within the city walls, they quelled it. Half of the residents were executed, and the remaining half escorted under guard to Samarkand together with the lord of the city, Ghayir Khan. Chinggis would not meet him and simply ordered his execution. Shackled, Ghayir Khan saw at his side a silver bar melting and boiling hot. He asked a soldier what he was planning to do with it. “We’re going to pour it in your eyes and ears,” replied the soldier. And indeed, Ghayir Khan met his end in this fashion.
Another 10 days later, the units under the three young commanders arrived. They comprised a force of only 5,000, but all were dauntingly courageous. They had quickly captured the city of Fanakat, expelled the residents, and put all the troops holding weapons to death. They then had moved upstream along the Syr Darya and attacked the fortress of Khojend that had been constructed in the river. A long battle ensued with the garrison commander, Temür Malik, and ultimately they attacked the city with war boats. The sole error committed by these units was to allow Temür Malik to escape.
The numerous captured troops and voluminous plunder were brought into each unit’s ranks. Hence, one now saw soldiers of many different ethnicities at the Mongol encampment by the Sughd River. The Mongols thus first became aware at this time of the multitude of different peoples in the world.
When the three units came together, Chinggis organized them into two brigades to pursue Muhammad, shah of Khorazm, who had promptly abandoned Samarkand and disappeared in the direction of the Amu Darya. One brigade was to be led by Jebe and the other by Sübe’etei. Chinggis issued the following orders to these two commanders, in whom he invested the greatest of trust:
“Like two arrows shot from this starting point, your two brigades will each set out from here and proceed in two directions. Your task is the same. Seize Muhammad’s unit, hem them in, and exterminate them. Should you see that they have large numbers of troops, then avoid a clash and link up with an allied force. If they retreat, do not even stop to catch your breath but attack. A city that submits will be allowed to do so, but all resisters must be mercilessly annihilated.”
Soon that very day, two large brigades departed camp. At a distance of about half a mile from Samarkand, the two files of troops split apart like two arrows.
The attack on Samarkand began at the end of the third month of the year. Chinggis stood at the head of troops of different ethnicities who had come along from a variety of locales, and he saw to it that they followed behind the Mongol infantry. Khorazm’s army fought largely in cities. The majority of its garrison troops were Qangli, of Turkic origin, while others, a minority, were Persians. After a fierce battle lasting seven days, Chinggis took control of the city except for its innermost area, and he succeeded in getting the Qangli troops who had surrendered out of the city. The attack on the inner city commenced on all sides. It was set aflame, and 1,000 Persian troops fighting to the bitter end were all butchered.
This battle was extremely chaotic, and numerous Samarkand residents burned to death in the fire. Thirty thousand noncombatant Qangli who had surrendered were also massacred in one night.
The night that Samarkand burned was like a scene from a dream for Chinggis. Orange flames singed the jet-black sky, and all manner of human screams filled the night for what seemed like a hideously long stretch of time. When the white rays of dawn began to float onto the horizon, Chinggis could see that only those people blessed with good fortune who had gathered in certain places outside the city walls had survived the inferno. There were 30,000 laborers carrying the tools of their trades, 51,000 captives, a small number of women, and 20 elephants.
Having reduced Samarkand to ashes, Chinggis moved to a site between it and the city of Nakhshab, where he stayed from spring through summer. He had to allow his men and horses a rest until the autumn period of fighting arrived. The encampment was on an ideal site for grazing the horses.
All cities located north of the Amu Darya were now in Chinggis’s hands. Unlike during times of war, Chinggis strictly forbade his Mongol troops from injuring or plundering the local populace. The troops loitering about, like devils looking for blood and women and valuables, gradually reverted once again to human beings. At the same time, green grass was growing on land that had been soaked in quantities of blood, and cities that had been destroyed were slowly coming back to life. Even in places that seemed to have been permanently transformed into uninhabited ruins, people began returning as if unaware and picking up their lives again.
Chinggis sent Mongol officers to such cities, and as a basis for observation, had them establish a political system run by present inhabitants selected from the Muslims. He placed occupying forces at sites where there was the least danger to public order. Then they built wide roads to facilitate movement of large military units between cities. In the expansive lands between the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya, there were grasslands and desert, and laborers from the resident populace being guided by Mongol troops were visible everywhere.
During this time, a succession of messengers, like fiends with bodies drenched in blood, came from the expeditionary units under Jebe and Sübe’etei. They had taken the city of Balkh, which had not resisted, with injury to no one there, whereas in the city of Zava, which had resisted, every single resident was slaughtered. One by one, the units attacked and captured all of the cities until they came to Nishapur, the central base of operations for Khorazm. A place that did not resist the Mongols was left as is, but if it resisted even a bit, it was reduced to ashes. Mongol troops entered the city of Nishapur without bloodshed at the beginning of the sixth month of the year. The two units pursued Muhammad, who left and headed for a succession of cities along the coast of the Caspian Sea, and nothing was heard from him thereafter. In the capture of Muhammad’s armies, the two Mongol units had the mission of hunting down Muhammad himself wherever the trail led them.
When the period of pasturage from spring to autumn came to a close, Chinggis learned that Muhammad’s heir, Jalal al-Din, had established his base in Khorazm’s capital of Urganch. He placed his three sons Jochi, Cha’adai, and Ögedei at the head of a great army and dispatched them to attack and take it.
The walled city of Urganch was a large metropolis built to span the Amu Darya where it spilled into the Aral Sea. Mongol soldiers attempted to destroy the bridges connecting the two districts of the city, but this resulted in 3,000 deaths of their own and failure. Defense of the city was firm and garrison troop morale high. The siege lasted for six months, and they were unable to bring the city down. Every time the Mongols launched an attack against the city, it resulted in numerous deaths on their side.
Realizing that the number of dead and wounded wa
s needlessly high and that the reason they had been unable to attain a swift victory was the antagonism between his two sons Jochi and Cha’adai, Chinggis issued orders that Ögedei was to take over command of the army. Not unexpectedly, Ögedei tried to reach an understanding between his two elder brothers, and he then set off to attack the capital of Khorazm. The resistance within the city was fierce, and to take one section of it, they literally built a mountain of corpses. In the fourth month of 1221, Mongol troops seized full control over Urganch. Of the residents and soldiers, only 100,000 craftsmen were absorbed into the Mongol army, and everyone else was put to death. Although Mongol troop strength stood at 50,000, every soldier had to kill 24 members of this alien people. In body and spirit, the troops were literally dyed red in all the blood.
When this great slaughter was over, the Mongol army destroyed the dikes on the Amu Darya, causing an inundation of water into the city piled high with dead bodies that washed away all the homes and possessions there. Because of the length of this brutal war, everything in the city was drenched in blood, and the Mongol troops could not bring themselves to plunder it. They had, however, been unable to capture the brave leader of the enemy, Jalal al-Din.
After receiving news of the capture of Urganch, Chinggis made camp in the grassland region along the banks of the Amu Darya. After a six-month absence, Cha’adai and Ögedei returned to Chinggis’s camp, but after the occupation of Urganch, Jochi separated from his two brothers and led his own military unit north to the Syr Darya to pacify that region. This action went beyond Chinggis’s orders. When he heard reports from Cha’adai and Ögedei, Chinggis felt a rage burning within, but he said nothing and showed nothing on his face. While Jochi’s action was reproachable for going beyond his orders, the strategy he adopted was wise, and had Jochi not done this, Chinggis would have had to order someone else to do so. For this reason, Chinggis forced himself to swallow his anger.
Chinggis now gave his troops—whose numbers had swelled several dozen times with numerous soldiers of different ethnicities—a respite in camp to enjoy life as normal men. He deprived his youngest son, Tolui, of a rest, though, and sent him deep into Khorazm’s terrain to track down Jalal al-Din.
At the end of summer, Chinggis again moved his military operations to cities along the northern bank of the Amu Darya, capturing a few walled settlements and placing his headquarters at a pastureland by the river. Following Jalal al-Din’s footsteps, Tolui seized a number of cities at which the former had been based, but he was unable to capture him. Shigi Qutuqu, the foundling raised by Ö’elün, had fought against Jalal al-Din at Parvan and lost. This was a terribly hard blow to the Mongol troops on expedition. Shigi Qutuqu returned to Chinggis’s base, having lost the majority of the men under his command. He awaited judgment as the man responsible for this defeat. Chinggis, though, did not blame him:
“Shigi Qutuqu, you have become accustomed to always winning. You now know the severities of fate. Make good use of this first taste of defeat!”
That was all the great khan said. He wasn’t shielding Shigi Qutuqu, just demonstrating respect for his mother, Ö’elün, who had raised him.
Soon after Shigi Qutuqu’s defeat, Chinggis learned that Muhammad, who had escaped in the second month of the year to a small isolated island in the Caspian Sea, died there of illness. Jebe and Sübe’etei, who had been sent to capture him, now found the object of their mission gone and sent a messenger to the camp of the great khan. They were seeking his approval to take up a new task and march off in that direction. They hoped to be able to cross the Caucasus Mountains with their armies.
These two exceptional Mongol commanders could not think of camping their troops in the area straddling the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea until permission arrived from Chinggis. The messenger returned, but Chinggis could not imagine that he caught up with them.
They had not forgotten that Chinggis had sent them off with orders to advance like two arrows. Two arrows shot out of a bow must cut straight through the air until they hit the ground. Although he had been angry at Jochi, Chinggis showed not the least unhappiness with Jebe and Sübe’etei, although they had similarly acted beyond their orders.
When early that winter Chinggis received a report that Jalal al-Din had appeared with a great army in the Kashmir region, he personally led an army riding over a long distance in the direction of Kashmir. En route he captured a string of cities, and in every case he used the same tactic: in cities that did not resist, all of their troops were assimilated into his forces unharmed; in those that resisted, every person and building was completely destroyed. In the fighting, they faced numerous difficulties. Mongol soldiers surrounded the city of Bāmiyān in the heart of the Hindukush Mountains, and in the combat one of Cha’adai’s sons was killed by a stray arrow. Chinggis deeply loved this grandson of his who died in battle, and his orders for the seizure of Bāmiyān were extremely severe.
“Attack, attack, and destroy—and don’t leave a single tree or blade of grass standing! This city will remain uninhabited for the next hundred years!”
Chinggis thus forbid plundering anything whatsoever from this city. It eventually fell, all of its people perished, and the city disappeared from the face of the earth without a trace.
Cha’adai did not know of his son’s death, and when he returned from another battle to his father’s camp, Chinggis, his face crimson with rage, asked him in harsh words:
“Will you follow my orders?”
Stunned, Cha’adai replied: “I would choose death before repudiating the orders of the great khan, my father.”
Chinggis listened and then continued: “Listen, Cha’adai. Your son died in the fighting. I forbid you to grieve.”
Thus, Cha’adai was unable to lament the death of his beloved son before the great khan.
Chinggis then went on to India in pursuit of Jalal al-Din, shifted the scene of fighting a number of times, and eventually captured his troops on the banks of the Indus River. Able to restore Shigi Qutuqu’s honor for his earlier defeat, Chinggis himself stood at the head of his entire armed forces. At the end of his tether after a fierce fight and exhausted, Jalal al-Din leaped with his horse from a 20-foot precipice, and with his shield on his back and bearing a flag in his hand, attempted to cross the great river. Mongol troops showered him from behind with innumerable arrows, but Chinggis, demonstrating esteem for this courageous enemy commander, called a halt to them.
Chinggis found himself camped early in the year 1222 in the northern foothills of the Hindukush Mountains, covered in a thick snow. He dispatched his commanders to cities within Jalal al-Din’s sphere of influence with orders to mop them up completely. Cities south of the Amu Darya that had until then not been laid waste in warfare were one after the next subjected to Mongol attacks and the majority of their populations slaughtered. Messengers bearing news of bloody victories from military contingents on various fronts were arriving in camp almost daily, and one day early in the fourth month of the year a visitor with a somewhat different complexion also appeared. This was the Daoist priest Changchun (1148–1227), who had traveled, at Chinggis’s invitation, the great distance from Shandong province in eastern China.
Just a year earlier, Chinggis had learned the name of this Daoist master, a man with the highest authority within the Daoist world who had gathered around him a number of followers. Chinggis had Yelü Chucai draft an edict summoning him, and then with a twenty-man escort, he sent Liu Zhonglu as a messenger to Changchun’s home. The main reason Chinggis wished to meet Changchun was to ask him about techniques for attaining immortality. At some point in the helter-skelter of war, Chinggis had turned sixty years of age, and he was becoming aware of his own declining physical strength.
No sooner had he welcomed this guest from afar than Chinggis summoned him to his tent. The great khan watched as the old man with bent back, enfeebled by age, merely stooped forward, not bowing down, and then, with arms folded, approached the khan.
“You responded
to my summons from a distant land,” said Chinggis through an interpreter. “And having acceded to my request, you have traveled thousands of li in coming here. I am extremely pleased.”
“I received your decree and came,” replied the old man. “This is all in accordance with the will of heaven.”
Changchun did not actually see Chinggis’s face. As if there was, in fact, no one standing before him, the short elderly man cast his unfocused gaze at a point in space.
“Perfected one who has come from afar, do you possess any kind of elixir for longevity? If you do, can you provide it to me?”
“I do have a way of protecting life, but no elixir to extend it.”
Chinggis watched the old man’s mouth move and heard the words emerge from it, but there was no emotion whatsoever in his expression.
“Is there then really no medicine for immortality?” asked Chinggis again, this time in a louder voice.
“I do have a way of protecting life,” said the old man again in precisely the same words, “but no medicine for prolonging life.”
Although he felt somewhat betrayed, Chinggis thought it was certainly good to have summoned this old man. Their conversation was carried on entirely through an interpreter, but there was nonetheless a certain freshness to their exchange of words. For Chinggis it was the first time in quite a long while that he had met anyone who did not take his every word as a direct order.
“The people call the Daoist master a celestial being. Do you call yourself that?”
“That is merely something other people say of me. I cannot vouch for that which is given to me.”
Master Changchun said nothing beyond replying to queries addressed to him by Chinggis.
For the next two or three days, a number of poems written by Changchun over the course of the long voyage to the Mongol camp were offered to the great khan in Liu Zhonglu’s transcription. These poems spoke of Samarkand, Luntai, various settlements in the desert, and many other places. Chinggis gave them to Yelü Chucai and asked him for the poems he’d written while accompanying the army, so they could be given to Changchun. Chinggis thought that although one was young and one old, these two extraordinary individuals in whom he placed such trust certainly seemed to have reached a mutual understanding.