No matter what I do, I always find myself back at the Mongol Invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire.

Every time I go on a Wikipedia rabbit hole for long enough, I go back to reading about this specific war from the early 13^th century. It’s some sort of attractor state for my brain, along with (apparently) early Christian doctrinal differences and ill-fated polar expeditions.

Reading about the history of urbanization? Well then you have to read about the largest cities that no longer exist, like the silk road city of Merv which was destroyed in the Mongol invasion of the Khwarazmian empire. How about math? Well, algorithms are named for medieval scholar Al-Khwarazmi, who is named for being Khwarazmian.

So I suppose this is a sign from the universe that I need to tell you about the Mongol Invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire. Thankfully, it’s actually a pretty interesting topic.

First, it was one of the deadliest wars in pre-modern history. Around 10-15 million people died during the war from 1219 to 1221 – around as many as World War One.  This is mostly from the Mongols torching and looting Khwarazmian cities and killing civilians.

Second, the Khwarazmian Empire was itself weird for Persia.  Khwarazm is an oasis region on what’s now the border of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.  It was already an outside power that had adapted to the local Iranian culture.

Third, the Mongols basically crushed the Khwarazmians. The first city in the Mongols’ path, Otrar, held out against a siege for months. After Otrar fell, the Mongols would sneak up on their next target, Bukhara, through the Kyzyl Kum desert that the Khwarazmians thought impassible. Bukhara fell in just a couple weeks. The Khwarazmian capital, Samarkand, fell within days, and the rest of the empire would soon follow. And each city was ransacked and saw much of its population slaughtered.

The Khwarazmian Shah, Muhammad II, died while hiding on an island in the Caspian Sea. His son managed to put up a slightly better resistance, defeating one of Genghis Khan’s generals at the Battle of Parwan, but later lost most of his army once Genghis caught up to them as they tried to flee across the Indus River. The army’s survivors persisted as mercenaries, and were involved in driving the Crusaders from Jerusalem in 1244.

Fourth, it really didn’t have to be that brutal, at least not at that particular moment.  The records show that the Khwarazmians repeatedly insulted the Mongols, up to and including killing a diplomatic envoy.

In general, the Mongols were actually pretty lenient to those who respected their authority.  Their primary mode of operations was to extract tribute from cities that submitted without a fight, and destroy the remainder with fire and sword.  When they attacked other large empires, like China, they toppled those in power but retained the bureaucracy and institutions of the state, with Mongol rulers at the top.  So their invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire wasn’t exactly unique in its brutality, but its brutality wasn’t a foregone conclusion either.

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So why do I keep coming back to this specific war? Part of it must be just the sheer scale of such a little-known war. Another part is that the story involves one of history’s great personalities, Genghis Khan. And the Khwarazmians feel like they should be better known given how powerful they were in their heyday. There’s some element of a morality play – in which a decadent empire falls to a brutal conqueror – though history is of course never actually that simple.

If there’s any lesson here, I think it’s that history moves on. The destruction of the Khwarazmian empire took years and killed millions, and today it seems like a footnote in the broader human story. Which of the world events that seem so important in our own time will go the same way? Whatever it is, I hope that there’s someone like me around to keep going back to it.

Coming Soon: Going Back: Judging Irrational Numbers