Siege of Samarkand

In 1218 a Mongol-backed trade caravan was massacred at Otrar, a town of the Khwarazmian Shah Muhammad II, and when Genghis Khan sent envoys to demand justice, one of them was put to death. Mongol armies poured into the Shah's empire the next year, and in 1220, after taking Bukhara, Genghis marched on Samarkand, driving captives ahead of his army to make it look even larger. The garrison's sortie, reportedly with war elephants, was beaten back, and within days the city's clergy and notables opened the gates. The citadel held out for a time before it was stormed, and many Turkic troops who had tried to surrender were killed. Samarkand was left partly ruined until Timur rebuilt it as his capital in the fourteenth century.

Almost everything known about the siege comes from Muslim historians writing in its aftermath, chiefly Juvaini, who served the Mongol Ilkhanate, and Ibn al-Athir, who wrote in Mosul in horror at the invasion, so the massacre figures carry the rhetorical weight of both sides. Modern historians read the huge numbers skeptically but broadly accept the pattern of surrender, selective slaughter and deportation of skilled craftsmen. The Taoist master Changchun, travelling to meet Genghis Khan, passed through Samarkand in 1221 and described a city whose population had fallen to a fraction of its former size. The campaign is also a standing case study in how a diplomatic incident can escalate into the destruction of a state.