THE WORLD ATLAS

War · 1206 – 3 September 1260

Mongol conquests (1206–1260)

In 1206 an assembly on the Onon river proclaimed Temüjin Genghis Khan, ruler of the united Mongol and Turkic tribes of the steppe. His cavalry armies, disciplined in decimal units and quick to adopt Chinese and Muslim siege engineers, forced the Tangut kingdom of Western Xia to submit in 1210 and then attacked the Jurchen Jin dynasty, taking its capital Zhongdu (Beijing) in 1215.

When the governor of Otrar killed a Mongol caravan, Genghis destroyed the Khwarazmian Empire of Central Asia and Iran in 1219–1221, while his generals Jebe and Subutai rode round the Caspian and beat the Rus' and Cumans on the Kalka. After his death in 1227 his sons finished off the Jin (1234), Batu and Subutai conquered the Rus' principalities (1237–1240) and routed Polish and Hungarian armies in 1241, and Hulagu destroyed the Assassins and sacked Baghdad (1258). The advance was halted in 1260, when the Mamluks of Egypt defeated a reduced Mongol army at Ain Jalut. By then the empire stretched from Korea to Hungary, but it was splitting into four khanates.

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Dates
1206 – 3 September 1260
Casualties
No reliable count exists; a total of 40–60 million deaths from war, massacre, famine and flight is often cited (from McEvedy and Jones, 1978) but is disputed, and chroniclers' figures of over a million dead at single cities such as Merv and Nishapur are greatly exaggerated.

The sides

Mongol Empire

States the Mongols attacked (not allied with one another)

Mamluk Sultanate

Timeline of the Mongol conquests (1206–1260)

  1. Temüjin is proclaimed Genghis Khan at a great assembly on the Onon

    After two decades of wars against rival clans and confederations, the Tatars, Keraites, Merkits and Naimans, Temüjin had united the peoples of the Mongolian plateau. At a kurultai, an assembly of the steppe nobility, held near the source of the Onon river in 1206, he took the title Genghis Khan. He reorganised the tribes into a single army of decimal units of tens, hundreds, thousands and ten-thousands led by loyal companions, and set up a personal guard, laws and a script, the base for all later conquests.

  2. Western Xia submits after a long siege of its capital

    Genghis's first major invasion of a settled state was aimed at the Tangut kingdom of Western Xia, which guarded the road from the steppe into China. In 1209 his army broke through the passes and besieged the capital Zhongxing (Yinchuan) for months, even trying to flood it by diverting the Yellow River's canals. In January 1210 Emperor Xiangzong submitted, gave a daughter in marriage and promised tribute and troops. Western Xia became a Mongol vassal, securing Genghis's flank for war on the Jin.

  3. Genghis Khan invades the Jin and wins at Yehuling (Badger's Mouth)

    In 1211 Genghis refused tribute to the Jurchen Jin dynasty, which ruled northern China, and invaded with about 65,000 men and allies. In the mountain passes of Yehuling, north-west of the Jin capital Zhongdu, his army routed a much larger Jin field army in the autumn of 1211. The Mongols then ravaged the plains of northern China and its horse pastures, though without siege skills they could not yet take the great walled cities. The war with the Jin would last 23 years.

  4. The Jin capital Zhongdu (Beijing) surrenders and is sacked

    In 1214 Genghis besieged Zhongdu and accepted a rich tribute and a Jin princess to withdraw, but Emperor Xuanzong then moved his court south to Kaifeng, which Genghis treated as a breach of the peace. His armies returned and blockaded the capital; famine and disease raged inside, and the commanders fled or killed themselves. In June 1215 the defenders opened the gates. The city was plundered and burned and many of its people killed. The Jin were left holding only the south of their empire around Kaifeng.

  5. Jebe overruns Qara Khitai and hunts down Kuchlug

    Kuchlug, a Naiman prince defeated by the Mongols in 1208, had fled west and seized the throne of Qara Khitai, the Khitan-ruled empire in Central Asia, where he persecuted Muslims. Genghis sent his general Jebe after him. Jebe won over the towns of the Tarim basin by proclaiming freedom of worship, and in 1218 Kuchlug was caught in the mountains of Badakhshan and beheaded. The Mongol Empire now bordered the Khwarazmian Empire along the Syr Darya.

  6. Otrar, Bukhara and Samarkand fall to the Mongols

    In 1218 Inalchuq, governor of the Khwarazmian border town of Otrar, executed the merchants of a Mongol caravan as spies, and Shah Muhammad II killed one of Genghis's envoys. Genghis invaded in 1219. While his sons besieged Otrar, he crossed the Kyzylkum desert and appeared before Bukhara, which surrendered on 10 February 1220; its citadel was stormed and the city burned. Otrar's inner citadel fell in February, and Samarkand's garrison surrendered on 16 March. The shah, who had spread his army among the cities, fled west.

  7. Shah Muhammad II dies, a fugitive on a Caspian island

    Genghis sent Jebe and Subutai with about 20,000 horsemen to hunt the shah. Muhammad fled across Khorasan and northern Iran, while the pursuers took or plundered towns such as Tus, Qazvin and Ardabil. He found refuge on an island in the Caspian Sea, where he died, probably of pleurisy, in December 1220. His son Jalal al-Din took up the fight. Jebe and Subutai, instead of returning, rode on into the Caucasus, where they routed a Georgian army at Khunan.

  8. Gurganj is destroyed; Tolui sacks Merv and Nishapur

    In the spring of 1221 the Mongols destroyed the great cities of the Khwarazmian heartland and Khorasan. Genghis's sons Jochi, Chagatai and Ögedei ended a long siege of Gurganj (Urgench), the old capital, and flooded its ruins. His youngest son Tolui took Merv after a few days in April and killed most of its people, then took Nishapur, where his brother-in-law had been killed, and destroyed it. Chroniclers' death tolls of over a million per city are impossible, but the slaughter was immense.

  9. Jalal al-Din defeats a Mongol army at Parwan

    Shah Muhammad's son Jalal al-Din gathered a new army around Ghazni in what is now Afghanistan. Near Parwan, north of Kabul, he defeated a Mongol army of about 30,000 under Shigi Qutuqu, one of the few Mongol defeats of the war. His victory raised revolts across Khorasan, but his Turkic and Afghan allies quarrelled over the spoils and many left him. Genghis himself marched south to destroy him.

  10. Genghis Khan crushes Jalal al-Din at the Indus

    Genghis caught Jalal al-Din's army with its back to the Indus river. On 24 November 1221 the Mongols broke the Khwarazmian wings and surrounded the centre; most of the army was killed. Seeing the battle lost, Jalal al-Din rode his horse off a cliff into the river in full armour and reached the far bank. The Khwarazmian Empire was finished, and Khwarazm and Khorasan were annexed, though Jalal al-Din fought on in India and western Iran until 1231.

  11. Jebe and Subutai rout the Rus' princes and Cumans on the Kalka

    After crossing the Caucasus, Jebe and Subutai defeated the Alans and the Cumans (Kipchaks) of the steppe, who asked the Rus' princes for help. A coalition led by Mstislav of Kiev, Mstislav of Galich and the princes of Chernigov and Smolensk advanced against the Mongols, who retreated for days and then turned on them by the Kalka river on 31 May 1223. The disunited Rus' and Cuman armies were destroyed, and Mstislav of Kiev was killed after surrendering. The Mongols then rode back east.

  12. Genghis Khan invades Western Xia a second time

    Western Xia had refused to send troops for the war against Khwarazm and then allied with the Jin. In 1226 Genghis led a punitive invasion, his last campaign. His armies took the cities of the Hexi corridor, including Ganzhou and Wuwei, destroying towns and countryside, and in the winter of 1226 defeated the Tangut field army near the Yellow River. Early in 1227 they laid siege to the capital Zhongxing (Yinchuan), while other columns attacked Jin territory to the south.

  13. Genghis Khan dies during the siege of the Tangut capital

    In August 1227, on either 18 or 25 August, Genghis Khan died during the campaign in the Liupan mountains; the cause is uncertain, with accounts ranging from illness to injuries from a fall from his horse. His death was kept secret so as not to endanger the siege. He left his empire to his sons, with his third son Ögedei chosen as successor; after a regency by his youngest son Tolui, Ögedei was elected Great Khan in 1229.

  14. Western Xia surrenders and is destroyed

    Unaware of Genghis's death, the last Tangut ruler, Li Xian (Emperor Mo), surrendered his besieged capital Zhongxing in September 1227. In keeping with Genghis's orders he was executed, and much of the population was massacred. The Western Xia state, which had ruled north-west China for nearly two centuries, disappeared, and its lands were absorbed into the Mongol Empire. The Tangut people and their writing survived, but their kingdom was never restored.

  15. Tolui destroys the last Jin field army at Sanfengshan

    Ögedei renewed the war on the Jin in 1230. While he attacked across the Yellow River, Tolui led a wide flanking march through Song territory and into Henan. The main Jin army of about 150,000 pursued him through snow and freezing rain, and at Sanfeng mountain, south-west of Yuzhou, on 9 February 1232 the exhausted Jin troops were surrounded and wiped out. The battle destroyed the Jin dynasty's last field army and left Kaifeng exposed.

  16. Kaifeng, the last Jin capital, surrenders to Subutai

    Subutai laid siege to Kaifeng in April 1232. Its defenders used gunpowder bombs and fire lances against the Mongol siege works, but plague and famine killed vast numbers inside the crowded city. Emperor Aizong slipped out early in 1233 and fled to Caizhou, and on 29 May 1233 Kaifeng surrendered. Subutai wanted to massacre the population, as was usual after long resistance, but the Khitan adviser Yelü Chucai persuaded Ögedei to spare it.

  17. Caizhou falls to the Mongols and the Song; the Jin dynasty ends

    The Southern Song, long-time enemies of the Jin, allied with the Mongols, and in late 1233 a joint Mongol and Song army besieged Emperor Aizong in Caizhou. As the walls fell on 9 February 1234 Aizong passed the throne to a kinsman and killed himself; the new emperor was killed in the fighting the same day. The Jin dynasty was over. Within a year the Song tried to seize the old capitals Kaifeng and Luoyang, beginning a Mongol–Song war that lasted until 1279.

  18. Batu's army storms and destroys Ryazan

    In 1235 Ögedei ordered a great western campaign under Genghis's grandson Batu, with Subutai in command in the field. After crushing the Volga Bulgars and the Cumans, the Mongols attacked the Rus' principalities in winter, when frozen rivers served as roads. Ryazan, refused help by the other princes, was besieged from 16 December 1237 and stormed on 21 December. Prince Yuri Igorevich was killed, and the city was burned and its people massacred.

  19. Vladimir, capital of Vladimir-Suzdal, falls

    After Ryazan the Mongols took Kolomna and Moscow and marched on Vladimir, capital of the Grand Prince Yuri II, who had gone north to raise an army. The city fell on 8 February 1238 after a short siege, and the grand prince's family died in the burning cathedral. Mongol columns sacked Suzdal and a dozen other towns that month, and on 4 March they destroyed Yuri's army on the Sit river, where he was killed. The spring thaw stopped them short of Novgorod.

  20. The Mongols storm Kiev

    After resting on the steppe and taking Pereyaslavl and Chernigov in 1239, the Mongols crossed the frozen Dnieper in late 1240 and besieged Kiev, the old capital of Rus', defended by the voivode Dmytro for Daniel of Galicia. Battering rams broke the walls and the last defenders fell in the Church of the Tithes on 6 December 1240. Much of the city was destroyed. The Mongols went on through Galicia and Volhynia towards Poland and Hungary.

  21. A Mongol army defeats Henry II of Silesia at Legnica

    To protect the main attack on Hungary, a Mongol force under Baidar, Orda and Kadan raided Poland, sacking Sandomierz and Kraków. At Legnica in Silesia on 9 April 1241 it met an army of Polish knights, local levies and a few Templars and Teutonic knights under Duke Henry II the Pious. The Mongols drew the knights into pursuit, broke them and killed Henry. They then rode south through Moravia to join the main army in Hungary.

  22. Batu and Subutai destroy the Hungarian army at Mohi

    In March 1241 the main Mongol armies broke through the Carpathian passes into Hungary. King Béla IV gathered his army at Pest and advanced to the Sajó river near Mohi. On the night of 10–11 April the Mongols forced the bridge and forded the river upstream, surrounded the Hungarian camp and left a gap through which the fleeing army was cut down. Tens of thousands died. Béla escaped, and the Mongols occupied the Hungarian plain east of the Danube.

  23. The Mongols withdraw from Hungary

    Over the winter the Mongols crossed the frozen Danube, destroyed Esztergom at Christmas 1241 and chased King Béla to the Dalmatian coast. In late March 1242 they began to withdraw through Serbia and Bulgaria to the steppe. Great Khan Ögedei had died in December 1241, and the princes wanted to be present at the election of his successor; historians also point to heavy losses, poor pasture and the stone castles that held out. The Mongols never returned in force to central Europe.

  24. Hulagu forces the Nizari Assassins to surrender their castles

    In 1253 Great Khan Möngke sent his brother Hulagu west with a large army to subdue Iran and the caliphate. Its first target was the Nizari Ismaili state, whose mountain castles in northern Iran had defied all rulers and whose agents were blamed for assassinations. The young imam Rukn al-Din Khurshah surrendered at Maymun-Diz on 19 November 1256, and Alamut capitulated in December. The castles were dismantled, and the imam was later killed.

  25. Hulagu captures and sacks Baghdad; the Abbasid caliph is killed

    When Caliph al-Musta'sim refused to submit and sent no troops, Hulagu's army, with Georgian, Armenian and Chinese contingents, advanced on Baghdad from several sides. It routed the caliph's army on 17 January 1258 by flooding its camp, besieged the city from 29 January and broke through the walls; Baghdad surrendered on 10 February. For days the city was sacked, its people slaughtered and its libraries burned, and about 20 February the caliph was executed. The Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad, five centuries old, was ended.

  26. Hulagu takes Aleppo and massacres its people

    Hulagu next invaded Ayyubid Syria, joined by King Hethum I of Cilician Armenia and Prince Bohemond VI of Antioch. His army crossed the Euphrates in January 1260 and stormed Aleppo after a week-long siege; the citadel held out for another month. For six days the inhabitants were massacred. The fall of Aleppo spread panic across Syria, and the Ayyubid ruler an-Nasir Yusuf abandoned Damascus.

  27. Damascus surrenders to Kitbuqa

    Damascus opened its gates without a fight, and on 1 March 1260 the Mongol general Kitbuqa, a Nestorian Christian, entered the city. Mongol raiders went on south through Palestine as far as Gaza, and an-Nasir Yusuf was captured. Then news arrived that Great Khan Möngke had died in China in 1259. Hulagu withdrew most of his army towards Azerbaijan, leaving Kitbuqa in Syria with perhaps 10,000–20,000 men.

  28. The Mamluks defeat the Mongols at Ain Jalut

    The Mamluk sultan Qutuz executed Hulagu's envoys and marched out of Egypt; the crusaders of Acre let his army pass through their land. On 3 September 1260 at Ain Jalut, the Spring of Goliath, in the Jezreel valley, the Mamluk vanguard under Baybars made a feigned retreat that drew Kitbuqa's army into the hills, where the main Mamluk force surrounded it. Kitbuqa was killed, and within weeks the Mamluks took back Damascus and Aleppo. It was the first decisive defeat of a Mongol army in the west.

Related

Other wars of the time

Sources