Sykes' History of Persia Vol 2 (pdf) - Heritage Institute

MANGU.
CHAPTER LV
THE MONGOL CATACLYSM
They came, they uprooted, they burned,
They slew, they carried off, they departed.
Tarikh-i-Jahan-Gusha.
The Awful Nature of the Mongol Invasion. The history
of Persia as forming part of the Eurasian continent has
from one point of view consisted of a record of wave after
wave of invasion by tribes whose conquest usually was
attended with much human suffering.
But no invasion
in historical times can compare in its accumulated horrors
or in its
far-reaching consequences with that of the
Mongols, 1 which swept across the entire width of Asia
annihilating populations and civilizations, and from which
Eastern Europe did not escape. Russia was conquered and
annexed ;
Silesia and Moravia were ravaged after the defeat
of the Poles at the battle of Lignitz in A.D. 1241, and
another Mongol army under Batu laid waste the plains
of Hungary and defeated its monarch at Pesth. Europe
apparently lay at the mercy of the invaders but
;
the death
of Ogotay, together with the mountainous nature of Central
Europe and its remoteness, saved the tender growth of its
civilization. On the other hand, neither Central Asia nor
Persia, nor to some extent Russia, has as yet recovered
1
The special authorities for this period are D'Ohsson's Histoire des Mongols and
Sir Henry Howorth's History of the Mongols. The former especially is based on trustworthy
Moslem authorities, among them being Ibn-ul-Athir and the Tarikh-i-Jahan-
Gufha, or " History of the World-Conqueror," by Ala-u-Din, better known as Juwayni,
the Secretary of Hulagu Khan. I have also consulted A History of the Mongols of
Central Asia, by Ney Elias and Denison Ross.
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