He spurned the heaven-sent, once-in-a-lifetime chance to conquer India. Instead, to make a long story short, he turned back. He could simply have walked into India, made short work of the Delhi Sultanate, and become the wealthiest man in the world. He did not lose a single military campaign in his life. Genghis Khan is the greatest conqueror in recorded history. This was an unstoppable, all-conquering war machine. It had conquered the enormous Empire of Khwarazm.
It had conquered the Qara Khitai Empire in Central Asia. It had already done the unthinkable by conquering China and capturing Beijing. He had at his command the Mongol army, which he had personally forged into the greatest and deadliest fighting force in the world. If he crossed the river, not only would he be able to kill his enemy, he would also have the opportunity to smash the Delhi sultanate and conquer the world’s richest country. Genghis Khan watched as Jalal-ad-Din frantically rode his horse across the Indus in a desperate bid to escape. It was swept away and slaughtered to the last man. His army proved no match for the polytheistic warriors who came from 2000 miles away. He had prayed fervently for deliverance, but the miracle never came. It was flanked by high mountains on two sides and the great river on the third side.
He had chosen an excellent defensive position for the battle with the Mongols. So, being granted refuge in India was Jalal-ad Din’s only hope. Or Babur, Akbar, Aurangzeb, or Bahadur Shah Zafar. The Iranian people do not look upon Jalal-ad-Din as one of their own, the same way the people of India do not see Iltutmish as one of their own. He was a foreign Turkic invader who ruled Iran, the same way that Iltutmish was a foreign Turkic invader who ruled India. Jalal-ad-Din had the same Turkic Mamluk ancestry as the invaders who ruled northern India at the time, which is why he hoped that Iltutmish would grant him asylum in India. And he pursued Jalal-ad-Din all the way from Uzbekistan into western India. His army burned Islamic libraries and replaced mosques with Buddhist temples. Genghis Khan sacked and destroyed the great cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, Nishapur, Otrar, and Gurganj. It consisted of Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, parts of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and much of north-western India, which is today’s Afghanistan.
Khwarazm was a Turkic Empire that ruled Iran. A land that was groaning under foreign, Islamic occupation: Northern India was ruled at the time by Shams ud-Din Iltutmish, the third sultan of the Turkic Mamluk dynasty, which was founded by Qutb al-Din Aibak in 1206.Ī few months before this battle, Genghis Khan had conquered Jalal-ad-Din’s vast Empire of Khwarazm. A land that would-be invaders fantasized about. A land that accounted for over a third of the entire world’s GDP. Jalal-ad-Din’s army was completely destroyed in this battle, which took place near the town of Kalabagh in Punjab.Īcross the river lay the richest country in the history of the world: India. The Battle of the Indus: Genghis Khan at India’s Doorstepħ99 years ago, in the year 1221, the great Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan stood victorious at the western bank of the Indus river with 50,000 soldiers, having just defeated Jalal-ad-Din, the Shah of Khwarazm.
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