The Conquest Movement of Chinggis Khan

PAX MONGOLICA : THE STEPPE EMPIRE OF THE MONGOLS HIST 1301 | History The Conquest Movement of Chinggis Khan Many of the Mongol Empire's causes of conflict were eliminated by Chinggis Khan's yassa and social-military organisation. However, they also outlawed customs that had promoted social mobility, such raiding neighbouring clans. Without fresh sources of riches and grandeur, Chinggis Khan thought, people would become restless and reject the tranquilly he was attempting to establish. His personal experiences had not equipped him with a sense of stable economic growth or strategies for focusing the energies of his people towards that end. Chinggis realised that established peoples were a source of wealth ready for the Mongol Empire to seize and for him to distribute as their leader from the moment he joined Ong Khan's campaign on the Tatars and witnessed the luxury gained from the Jin and the Song. To him, the next natural course was to subjugate these peoples or scare them into paying homage. Some soldiers from the established kingdoms between the steppe and Song China departed to join the Mongol Empire as news of Chinggis Khan's accession spread. Presuming that resistance would not succeed, the Kara-Khitan presented homage to Chinggis Khan. Following a coup in 1210, the newly appointed king of Xi Xia agreed to tributary status under conditions akin to those of the Kara-Khitan. But the Jin were another story. When a new Jin emperor in 1210 ordered that Chinggis Khan bow to him and pay tribute, Chinggis marched his superior force, albeit smaller in size, southward to attack. Expert in taking advantage of the weaknesses of his opponents, he understood that the Khitan, his linguistic relatives, were against the Jurchen Jin dynasty and presented his army as a liberating force for them. The Mongols were able to lay siege to Zhongdu, the capital of the Jin, and finally capture the famished city as their force grew with Jin defectors. Tens of thousands were forced into slavery, many more were killed, and the city was completely pillaged by Chinggis Khan's orders. After gathering the riches from Zhongdu, Chinggis Khan and his army returned to the steppe, mostly entrusting his Khitan allies with the fight against the Jin. Chinggis Khan's forces proceeded to conquer the region around the Yellow River, moved farther north into the Jurchen heartland, and even crossed the Korean Peninsula. These regions were peaceful by 1223 and served as tribute to the Mongol Empire and its allies. Ironically, Chinggis Khan was compelled by the quantity of seized goods to erect the first permanent buildings on the steppe—a network of warehouses meant to store war spoils until it could be divided or exchanged at a later date. When the son of the Naiman chieftain Chinggis Khan had vanquished 10 years previously assumed power in the Kara-Khitan kingdom in 1213, Chinggis Khan became interested in the region. Already failing to live up to homage expectations, the Kara-Khitan now had a once-defeated enemy at their head. The Kara-Khitan were swiftly subjugated by the Mongols and assimilated into the empire. That being said, their conquests extended well beyond China and the East. As the Mongol forces advanced westward, many probably believed they were an unstoppable force. The enormous quantity of riches taken from the Jin drastically altered the Mongol leadership's perspective, causing them to demand an increasing number of commodities, food, grazing areas, and raw resources. Chinggis Khan sought out commercial and raiding possibilities further west in response to these new requirements. Khwarazmia, a region extending from Persia across central Asia, served as a direct boundary between the Islamic world and the Kara-Khitan when the latter was absorbed by the Mongol Empire. Approximately in 1218, Chinggis Khan sent a caravan of several hundred of his Muslim people to Allah al-Din Muhammad, the ruler of Khwarazmia, along with a letter asking the creation of commercial relations and a large number of expensive commodities to demonstrate his capabilities. But the Khwarazmian ruler's governor of Otrar murdered the traders and seized the merchandise before the caravan ever made it to him. Then, in a catastrophic error of judgement, Allah al-Din Muhammad slaughtered the majority of the emissaries that Chinggis Khan had dispatched to demand payment, only to have a few of them returned, disfigured. To Chinggis Khan, this meant a war, but a war of the most extreme retaliation. This included the annihilation of Herat, Merv, and Nishapur, three of the most significant and well-known towns in the eastern Islamic world for centuries. On an island in the Caspian Sea, Allah al-Din Muhammad was murdered by Mongol soldiers in 1223. The Khwarazmian empire was split up by Chinggis Khan and left in the hands of his generals and sons. In order to mount surprise attacks against Khwarazmia, the Mongols had to conduct reconnaissance in uncharted area. They came upon the Delhi Sultanate of India to the south during one of its infrequent eras of expansion and unification. Attacking these Muslims, however, would have been a needless diversion as they were not a part of the Khwarazmian domain. Two of Chinggis's most trusted generals, Jebe and Subutai, had entered the territory of the Rus, Slavic predecessors of contemporary Russians who had dominated the agricultural plains east of Hungary and Poland, in search of a way to surprise the Khwarazmians from the north. They swiftly destroyed the Khwarazmian and Rus troops, compelling them to submit to Chinggis Khan as tributary.