gained over by Sultan Shah, and sent her husband Karmā1 with a large force into Khwārazm to defend the rights of Sultan Khān. Tekish, hearing of their advance, commanded the waters of the Jīhūn (Oxus) to be diverted across their line of march, so that the progress of the Kara-Khitays was rendered almost impossible. Meanwhile he busied himself with military preparations. Karma, seeing clearly that Sultan Shah's pretensions to the esteem of the Khwārazmians were unfounded, led his army home. Sultan Shah, with his own followers and a small body of Kara-Khitāys, marched to Sarakhs, and, evicting its governor, established himself there.

In A.H. 576 (1180) we find him at the head of 10,000 horsemen, and lord of Nishāpūr. In A.H. 582 (1186) Tekish set out for Khorāsān with a large army; while Sultan Khan hastened to Khwārazm by another road. These hostilities between the two brothers continued with only short intermissions until the death of Sultan Shah in A.H. 589 (1192), when Tekish became master of all Khorāsān and Khwārazm.2

In A.H. 590 (1194) he entered Persian 'Irāk and overthrew Toghrul III., the last of the great Seljuks of Persia,3 After adding Ray, Isfahan, and other important towns to his dominions, he obtained an investiture from Caliph Nasir li Din-illāh of all the countries which he had conquered.

1 Cf. Habib-us-Siyar.

2 In this account of the reign of Tekish we have followed the Habib-usSiyar. There is, however, a great discrepancy in this part of the history, for in one place Khwändamir says that the hostilities lasted only ten years (A.H. 568-578), when they were brought to a close by a treaty between the two brothers, in which Tekish granted the rule of certain towns in Khorāsān to his brother. An account of Sultan Shah Mahmud may be found in the Tabakat-i-Nasiri, trans., i. 245-249.

3 There is a misprint in d'Ohsson, op. cit. i. 180, the date being given as 1149. He also waged war on the Assassins in 'Irāk and Kūhistan, and took from them their strongest fort, Arslan Kushāy.

From this epoch-time till his death Tekish appears to have paid tribute regularly to the Gur-Khān, and retained his friendship. He recommended his son and successor to follow the same policy, for the Kara-Khitay were a bulwark against the dreaded hordes of the East.1

In A.H. 596 (1200) Tekish died, and was succeeded by his famous son, 'Alā ud-Din Mohammad, who soon made himself master of Khorāsān, Balkh, Herāt, Māzenderan, and Kirman. He now considered himself sufficiently powerful to assert his independence of the GurKhān, to whom, like his three predecessors, he had paid an annual tribute. He was encouraged to resist his liege lord by 'Othman, prince of Samarkand and Transoxiana, who was also a vassal of the Gūr-Khān, who promised to pay him the same allegiance as he had rendered to the Kara-Khitays in return for his assistance against the common enemy.3 An occasion for the rupture of friendly relations between the Khwārazm-Shāh and the Gūr-Khān was soon found. It was identical with the method employed by Tekish,—the slaughter of one of the receivers of tribute.4

After perpetrating this outrage, Mohammad entered the Kara-Khitay territory, A.H. 605 (1208), where he suffered a crushing defeat and barely escaped capture.5

1 Tārikh-i-Jahān-Kushāy, as quoted by Bretschneider, op. cit. i. 229, from d'Ohsson.

2 Cf. d'Ohsson, op. cit. i. 180; and Tabakāt-i-Nāsiri, trans., i. 253-260. He had solicited the hand of a daughter of the Gur-Khan, and, having been refused, had become his secret enemy. Howorth, J.R.A.S., New Series VIII. p. 282.

4 Cf. d'Ohsson (op. cit. i. 181), who does not quote his authority.

5 Thus according to d'Ohsson. But De Guignes gives a very different account of Mohammad's first Eastern campaign, which he dates A. H. 604 (1209). He says that Bokhārā and Samarkand were delivered over to him by the friendly Turkish princes, that on entering the Kara-Khitay territory he gained a splendid victory. Thus the first disastrous campaign is wholly ignored. De Guignes, op. cit. i. pt. ii. pp. 266, 267.

In the following year Mohammad made a second incursion into the land of the Kara-Khitay. Crossing the Jaxartes at Fināket, he gained a signal success over their general, Tanigū, beyond Tarāz, pushed his conquests as far as Otrār1 (Fārāb), and returned in triumph to Khwārazm. But the tangled knot of Central Asian politics was soon to be cut by a conqueror whose annals are as devoid of complexity as his career. In the place of paltry struggles for supremacy in isolated states, attended by obscure and ever-changing fortunes, we have the triumphant advance of one who, like Alexander of Macedon, was destined to give a new impulse to the world's history.

1 Cf. De Guignes, i. pt. ii. p. 267. D'Ohsson says as far as Uzkend, op. cit. p. 182.

CHAPTER XXI

CHINGIZ KHAN

IT is not within the scope of the present work to trace in any detail the meteor-like path of Chingiz; for we are concerned with it only in so far as it affected the internal affairs of Central Asia. His career has exercised a peculiar fascination for students of Oriental history, though by no means all the available evidence has yet been marshalled in elucidation of the controversies which still rage round that mighty name.1

1 The name of this famous conqueror has been spelled in many different ways,―e.g., Genghiz (De Guignes), Gengis (Voltaire, in his tragedy of that name), Zingis (Gibbon), Tehinguiz (d'Ohsson), etc. We have adopted the one which most nearly approaches the Turkish and Persian pronunciation of the name. For authorities we would refer the reader to Sir H. Howorth's History of the Mongols, part i. (1876); R. K. Douglas, Life of Jinghiz Khăn (1877); an article by same author in the Encyclopædia Britannica; Erdmann's Temudschin der Unerschütterliche (1862); and d'Ohsson and De Guignes (vol. iv.). The principal original sources for the history of Chingiz Khan are: (1) the Chinese account of a contemporary named Men-Hun, which has been translated into Russian by Professor Vassilief, and published in his History and Antiquities of the Eastern Part of Central Asia (see Transactions of Oriental Section of the Russian Archæological Society, vol. iv.); and (2) the Tabakat-i-Nāsiri of Juzjānī, translated by Major Raverty. This important work comprises a collection of the accounts of Chingiz Khan written by his Mohammedan contemporaries. Other Chinese and Persian sources might be mentioned, but the above are the most important.

One very important authority for the Mongol period is the compilation, from Chinese sources, by Father Hyacinth, entitled History of the first four Khans of the House of Chingiz, St. Petersburg, 1829. This Russian work is

"All that can safely be said about the early history of the Mongols," writes Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole, "is that they were a clan among clans, a member of a great confederacy that ranged the country north of the desert of Gobi in search of water and pasture; who spent their lives in hunting and the breeding of cattle, lived on flesh and sour milk (kumis), and made their profit by bartering hides and beasts with their kinsmen the Khitans,2 or with the Turks and Chinese, to whom they owed allegiance. The name Mughal was not known until the tenth century, and probably came to be applied to the whole group of clans only when the chief of a particular clan bearing that name acquired an ascendency over the rest of the confederacy, and gave to the greater the name of the less.3 Yissugay, the father of Chingiz Khan, if not the founder of his clan, was a notable maintainer of it, and it was probably he who first asserted the independence of the Mongols from Chinese comparatively little known outside Russia. Both Erdmann and d'Ohsson often lay it under contribution. It may be added that Sir Henry Howorth, in his first volume on the Mongols (published in 1876), gives a complete bibliography of all the available sources for the history of Chingiz and his

successors.

1 M. Barthold, of the St. Petersburg University, has devoted much time to the study of the Mongol period in Central Asia, the fruits of which he has not yet published on an extended scale, though some shorter articles of great value have appeared in Baron Rosen's Zapiski. The expeditions of Chingiz Khan and Tamerlane were admirably treated by M. M. I. Ivanin in a work published after his death, entitled On the Military Art and Conquests of the Mongol-Tatars under Chingiz Khan and Tamerlane, St. Petersburg.

2 Since the discovery and decipherment of the Orkon inscriptions it may be regarded as certain that the form Khitan, or Kidan, is but the Chinese transcription of the word Kitai, which is the name of a people, most probably of Manchurian origin, who, as is well known, ruled over Northern China during the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. It was borrowed by some of the tribes inhabiting those parts. Cf. note on p. 106 of vol. x. of Baron Rosen's Zapiski, article by M. Barthold.

3 Precisely the same thing occurred in the case of the Yué-Chi and the Kushans.