The Loser Sultan Who Called Out Genghis Khan
“Life’s greatest joy is to rout and scatter your enemies, and drive them before you. To see their cities reduced to ashes. To see their loved ones shrouded and in tears, and to gather to your bosom their wives and daughters” – Genghis Khan. The kind of person who drops chilling quotes like the preceding is not somebody a wise ruler would go out of his way to insult. Yet that is precisely what Shah Muhammad II, ruler of the Khwarazmian Empire from 1200 to 1220, did.
Not only that, but as if to double down on the stupid, Muhammad II then dared Genghis Khan to do something about it. He did, and in the process, transformed the Khwarazmian ruler into an epic loser. Genghis Khan (1162 – 1227) founded the Mongol Empire, and was one of history’s most terrifying figures. His conquests were often accompanied by widespread massacres, even genocide. As a percentage of global population, the estimated forty million death toll of the Mongol conquests initiated by him would be equivalent to 278 million deaths in the violent twentieth century – far more than total fatalities of both world wars.
