Download PDF | Kalka River 1223 Genghiz Khans Mongols Invade Russia By David Nicolle, OspreyPublishing [ Campaign 098], 2001.
92 Pages
Looking back at the 13th century, before the Mongols erupted onto the scene, it is obvious that this was not a peaceful or quiet period. Wars seemed to flare all across Europe and Asia between stales large and small, between kings, princes, emperors and even between local barons or governors. This was as true in Russia as elsewhere. Here the Russian princes fought between themselves and against their neighbours. The latter included Volga Bulgars to the east, Finnish tribes to the east and north-east, Poles and Hungarians to the west and Polovtsians to the south.
The latter formed a loose federation of Turkish tribes otherwise known as Kipchaqs or Cumans. Rivalry with the Polovtsians sometimes also drew in the rulers of Georgia, Abkhazia, Armenia and even the Byzantine Empire. Competition for control of wealthy trading outposts in t Ue Crimean peninsula also began to draw in the western European Genoese and Venetians as well as the Seljuk Turkish rulers of Anatolia on the far side of the Black Sea.
Meanwhile the Islamic world was no more peaceful. Here an ambitious dyt tasty of rulers had emerged in the previously rich but rather isolated province of Khwarazm on the southern shore of the Aral Sea in Transoxania. These Khwarazmshahs were now carving out a huge state encompassing much of Transoxania, Iran and Afghanistan, built on the ruins of the fragmented Great Seljuk state which had preceded them. At the same time the remaining Seljuk Turkish princes and their other smaller successor states were all too often fighting against each other when they were not engaged in trying to suppress the aggressive Crusader States in the Middle East. In the Far East things seemed somewhat more peaceful; but even here there was bitter rivalry between the three states which made up China, each of which also watched their Central Asian Turkish and Mongol neighbours with increasing alarm. Everywhere it seemed that peace agreements were cirawn up, adhered to for a while then broken as wars flared up again and again. Yesterday's enemies became today's allies, and vice-versa in seemingly endless repetition.
While such habitual and destructive wars appeared to be die normal mode of international relations, particularly in Europe and the Middle Hast, a new power was rising far away on the li inges of the Gobi Desert north of China. This was the vigorous state of the Mongols - a people who played their part on the international stage before but who would come to dominate the 13th century. They would, in fact, soon govern the destinies of a great many Asian and European peoples.
In 1206 the leaders of all Mongol tribes held a quriltai or meeting of chieftains at which they chose Temuchin of the Borjigin clan as their Supreme Khan or overall ruler. Temuchin may then have adopted the title of Genghiz Khan, meaning Universal Ruler’. The warriors of the new Mongol state thus created would subsequently ride thousands of kilometres across the continents of Europe and Asia. They would also prove a cruel ordeal for the many nations, including Russia, who came up against this irresistible new Mongol military power.
The 13th century would prove to be the last in the long and glorious his to 17 of Kievan Russia. By that time its huge territories on the eastern edge of Europe had already fragmented into a number of self-governing principalities. The great and beautiful city of Kiev had itself declined in importance and was no longer the centre of Russian power. In fact Kiev was even l aving difficulty maintaining its status as the religious capital of the Russian people.
In 1169 the city was devastated by the army of Andrei Bogolyubskiy, the Prince of Vladimir, which was one of the strongest principalities in the eastern part of Russia. Not many years later Kiev was again ravaged by the armies of other rival Russian rulers, including the Prince of Smolensk and then in 1203 by Ryurik Rostislavich. After that the city could not recover and it never regained its former grandeur, beauty and power. As Kiev declined politically and economically, other Russian cities rose to rival and then surpass this the traditional centre of medieval Russia. Most notable were Ryazan and Vladimir in the east. Meanwhile Polotsk and Great Novgorod in the north and west of the country gradually became almost entirely separated from the other Russian lands, at least in political terms.
Meanwhile the life of the ordinary people of Russia continued much as usual. The century before the Mongol invasions was, in fact, something of a golden age for medieval Russian culture, art and architecture. The expanding towns and cities were decorated with new cathedrals, princely palaces and in a few cases by imposing stone or brick fortifications though these remained rare, most Russian fortification still being made of earth and timber. In the countryside around such cities the fields were still ploughed and market-gardens spread outside the town walls.
Internecine wars between the various Russian princes were usually of short duration, causing limited casualties, and were followed by all too often short-term truces. Oaths of loyalty between greater and lesser princes, like those between princes and their senior followers, were confirmed by the kissing of the Christian Cross in a ceremony that formed an integral aspect of political agreements or truces. Yet in a relatively short time these solemn oaths tended to be forgotten. As a result many of the fine cathedrals were destroyed or burned, the towns’ market-gardens ravaged and pillaged, the surrounding fields trampled. In response to repeated devastation, the patient Russian people rebuilt and replanted, reconstructing what had been lost. Beyond their horizon, however, a cataclysmic storm was approaching. Its initial thunderbolt would strike at a dreadful battle on the banks of the Kalka River when Russian armies would first feel the power of a new and terrible enemy.
Apparently unknown to the Russian princes and dieir advisors, Genghiz Khan, supreme ruler of the Mongols, had been waging a bloody war against Iris eastern and southern neighbours in Central and Further Asia. At the same time the Great Khan was anxious to strengthen his western frontier, where he faced an equally ambitious rival. This rival was Muhammad, the Khwarazmshah, who had already siezed control of so much territory that he now dominated most of the eastern Islamic World. Between Genghiz Khan and Muhammad the Khwarazmshah lay lands that as yet neither of them fully controlled. These stretched from Dzungaria, east of Lake Balkash, to the southern L ral Mountains.
This apparently inhospitable territory was criss-crossed by the rich caravan trade routes which linked Europe and the Middle East with China. The merchants who used these various roads carried many different goods, but all of them were highly valuable. Above all there was silk from China. Furthermore these merchants paid good money for local services, as well as paying the taxes, Fines or tribute imposed on them by whoever controlled these territories and their caravan routes. During this period conditions along the Silk Roads were not, in fact, particularly peaceful nor secure, and the merchants often suffered injustice from local authorities or attack by bandits.
Religious enthusiasm added another element of uncertainty in this t of Central Asia. Muhammad the Khwarazmshah bore the name ofi lie Muslim Prophet. He was also known as al-Ghazi , which meant warrior against the infidels’. Indeed Muhammad the Khwarazmshah was not only deeply committed to his religious beliefs but was also worried about the rising power of his Mongol neighbours to the east. A true ghazi fought in defence of Islam and it would not be the first time that a non-Islamic Central Asian state, nor indeed one of Mongol origin, had threatened the wealthy Islamic provinces of Transoxania. These had, in fact, sometimes even fallen under infidel rule - a completely unacceptable situation for Muslims. Genghiz Khan and his followers were, in the eyes of the Khwarazmshah and his people, primitive but dangerous pagans, so a clash was almost inevitable.
In 1216 Genghiz Khan's Mongols reached l iie River Irgiz in what is now Kazakhstan. Ahead of them fled the Merkit tribe who were oldenemies of Genghiz Khan's own Borjigin clan. The River Irgiz was situated a little to the north of the Aral Sea, in territory which Muhammad the Khwarazmshah regarded as falling within his sphere of influence, if not actually within his state. So the Khwarazmshah sent some troops against the Mongols, but his soldiers were defeated. For their part the Merkits were now given shelter by the Kipchaq Turks, eastern or ‘wild’ Polovtsians. They and the ‘civilised’ or western Polovtsians dominated the vaste Eurasian steppes from the Aral Sea in the east to the Danube River in the west. Thus these Polovtsians inhabited much of what are now western Kazakhstan, southern Russia, the Ukraine, part of Moldova and even part of Romania.
They were a numerous, militarily powerful and culturally sophisticated people. Known to the Russians and the Polovtsy, and to the Byzantines, Hungarians and western Europeans as the Cumans, they consisted of a number of tribal unions forming two major but somewhat loose federations - the eastern or wild' Polovtsians and the western or‘civilized’ Polovtsians. The majority may still have been pagan but some had adopted Islam and some Judaism, while it seems as if 11 leir ruling elite was in the process of converting to Christianity.
These Turkish Polovtsians would prove to be serious military opponents for the Mongols, being similar in numbers and in their military capabilities. Indeed these Turks of the western steppes, though they would lose their own Kipchaq-Polovtsian-Cuman identity, would eventually come to dominate the westernmost Mongol state of the Golden Horde - at least numerically. That, of course, lay far in the future, after the great Mongol conquests and after Genghiz Khan's extraordinary ‘World Empire' had itself fragmented into competing states.
In 1220, after mobilizing his forces, Genghiz Khan moved against the Khwarazmshah. The latter, however, had his own very large army consisting of well-trained and particularly well-equipped troops. Its elite units were recruited from ghulams , professional soldiers of slave origin better known in a Crusader context as mamluks. \)nfortunately for Muhammad the Khwarazmshah, these forces were scattered amongst the garrisons of a large number of fortresses and fortified cities. In fact Muhammad the Khwarazmshah, fearing intrigue or even rebellion amongst his own followers, had considered it wiser to keep his leading military commanders separate from one another. This proved to be a fatal mistake.
I he massive fortresses of the Khwarazmshah’s sprawling realm had been designed and built by the best military architects and engineers of Islamic Transoxania, who were i hemselves recognised as being amongst the best in the world. Nevertheless, these fortifications failed miserably, surrendering one by one - usually with little or no resistance. Even the great cities such as Bukhara, Samarqand and I lerat surrendered and as a result the Mongol armies soon penetrated deep into the heart of the eastern Islamic world. Some even pressed on into Iran. Meanwhile the unloved son of Muhammad the Khwarazmshah, Jalal al-Din, retreated to south-eastern Afghanistan and northern India with some of the best Khwarazmian troops. Militarily this had been the strongest frontier zone of the Khwarazmian state and Jalal al-l)in was himself a skilled military commander. Nevertheless, he suffered a crushing defeat in 1221 on the banks of the River Indus.
At the same time Muhammad the Khwarazmshah, having lost his army and his throne, fled westward, hoping to find safety in the rugged and isolated region of Mazanderan on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. He was pursued, however, by 20,000 Mongol troops under the command of Siibodei Bahadur and Jebei Noyon. Abandoned by the remnants of his panic-stricken troops, Muhammad the Khwarazmshah eventually sought shelter on a small island near Astara. There he died of pleurisy and perhaps despair in February 1221.
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