A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

Bokhara resisted, but its mercenaries tried to make off during the night; the Mongols caught them
and killed them. Then they marched into the town and ordered all the inhabitants outside while they
looted. But they were not to escape with this punishment. Women were raped in front of husbands
who did not dare to intervene; the few who did were committing suicide. Some women did commit
suicide rather than submit. Then the town was burnt to the ground.
Samarkand was besieged in May 1220. There was a very large Turkish force there - fifty thousand.
The walls looked impregnable. So Genghis Khan drove prisoners in front of him as he attacked.
The townspeople came out to fight. The Mongols pretended to break and flee. The defenders
poured after them - and the Mongols suddenly turned and hacked them to pieces - fifty thousand of
them. Half the mercenaries in the town deserted to Genghis Khan, and the townspeople decided to
surrender. The remaining mercenaries were besieged in the citadel, starved out and killed to a man.
Then the men who had deserted to the Mongols were also executed - Genghis Khan loathed
treachery. Thirty thousand craftsmen were taken away; another thirty thousand men had to
accompany the Mongols as ‘shock’ troops. Other prisoners were allowed to ransom themselves.
Urgenj also decided to fight. The Mongols made their prisoners fill in the moat, which took ten
days. Then they began to mine the walls -it is possible that gunpowder was used here. Inside the
town, they used buckets of oil to set fire to the houses. Poor relations between two of the khan’s
sons led to some early defeats in this siege, and the Mongols were now determined to take revenge
- they regarded it as an insult when people defended themselves. District by district, house by
house, they took the town, killing everyone. Women and children helped the defenders, knowing
they would die in any case. Finally, when a few thousand defenders were left in one fortified area,
they asked for mercy. The reply was ambiguous - which should have made anyone acquainted with
the Mongols suspicious. The population was made to stand outside the city walls, then all the men
were massacred - with the exception of the craftsmen. The women and children were taken as
slaves. Then the Mongols breached the dykes holding back the river and submerged the charred
ruins.
The Turkish sultan was appalled at the total ruin brought about by his own stupidity. He fled, and
Genghis Khan ordered Jebe the Arrow to hunt him down. The sultan was too panic-stricken to do
the sensible thing and collect troops. He still had millions of loyal subjects. Instead, he fled south
into Persia, hoping to get to Baghdad, changed his mind and doubled back towards the Caspian Sea
and was only one step ahead of his pursuers as he leapt into a boat - arrows followed him out to sea.
He reached the island of Abeskun and died soon after - probably of exhaustion.
Meanwhile, Genghis Khan was slaughtering indefatigably. After a pleasant summer at a quiet oasis
near Samarkand, he marched on a town called Termez on the Amu-Darya (Oxus) river. It refused to
surrender, was stormed, and all the inhabitants massacred. As one old woman was about to be
killed, she cried out that if they would spare her she would give them a pearl. They asked her where
it was and she said she had swallowed it. They immediately disembowelled her and found several
pearls. Genghis Khan told his men to open up all the dead to inspect their stomachs.
Balkh (Bactria) surrendered quietly - in fact, it had already made token submission to Jebe the
Arrow. Its inhabitants were told to assemble outside the walls and then massacred. It seems to have
been an act of pure sadism - or possibly it was intended as a warning to the other forts and towns of
the region. These were also taken by the now familiar method of using local people as a kind of
human shield.