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Historic Schemes that Backfired in Catastrophic Fashion

Khalid Elhassan April 30, 2021 36 min

Battleship USS West Virginia sunk and burning at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, with the battleship USS Tennessee in the background. History on the Net

18. This Ruler’s Rash Decision to Taunt One of History’s Scariest Conquerors Backfired Horribly

Genghis Khan (1162 – 1227) once said: “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“. Somebody who says stuff like that is probably not the kind of person that a wise ruler should deliberately insult. Yet that is precisely what Shah Muhammad II, ruler of the Khwarezmian Empire from 1200 to 1220, did.

As if to double down on the stupid, Shah Muhammad then dared Genghis Khan to do something about it. Needless to say, it backfired. Genghis Khan founded the Mongol Empire, the world’s largest contiguous 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 40 million deaths of the Mongol conquests he initiated would be equivalent to 278 million deaths in the 20^th century.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.