2.15. History of the Mongols: Mongols went down to Georgia

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">   </span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">While Ogedai Khaan led his armies in the final war against the Jurchen Jin Dynasty, covered in our previous episode, this was far from the only theatre his forces operated in. As the conquest of northern China was completed, Chormaqun Noyan</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">brought Mongols armies back to the west, returning to Iran to hunt down the energetic Khwarezmian Prince, Jalal al-Din Mingburnu, hoping to restore his father’s empire. In the course of this, the Mongols effectively completed the conquest of Iran, the Caucasus and entered Anatolia- a great southwestern expansion of the empire. At the same time, Mongol armies under Subutai conquered the western steppes and Rus’ principalities, a vast, two pronged pincer assault on western Eurasia, and the subject of our following episodes.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">   </span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">First, we must wind the clock back from the 1230s to the Khwarezmian campaign of Chinggis Khan in the 1220s. As you’ll recall from that episode, the Mongol invasion at the end of 1219 brought about the near total collapse of the Khwarezmian defense and flight of the empire’s ruler, Muhammad II Khwarezm-Shah. Muhammad died at the end of 1220, harried to his end by Jebe and Subutai. On his death in December, Shah Muhammad’s son Jalal al-Din Mingburnu, a far braver and more talented general, took up the mantle of leadership- or rather, what was left of it. Rallying what forces he could, he eventually made his way into what is now Afghanistan, defeating two Mongol armies but finally crushed by Chinggis Khan himself on the Indus river in November 1221. At the battle's climax, Mingburnu spurred his horse off the cliff and into the Indus, swimming across and making into the Punjab. Chinggis Khan, to give the devil his due, is said to have personally ordered archers not to fire on him, admiring Jalal al-Din’s courage. The same mercy was not spread to other