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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

The death of Shah Muhammad II, whose challenging of Genghis Khan backfired on him and his empire. Bibliotheque Nationale de France

16. An Angry Genghis Khan Snuffed Out the Khwarezmian Empire and Its Ruler

Shah Muhammad II’s abuse and execution of Genghis Khan’s envoys, coupled with his refusal to make amends, turned out to be bad decisions. They backfired on him and his realm in horrible ways that he probably could not have imagined. An incensed Genghis interrupted his campaigning in China, and concentrated a force of over 100,000 men against the Khwarezmian Empire. It was smaller than Muhammad’s forces, but the Mongols struck in 1218 with a whirlwind campaign that caught him off balance.

Mongols leading the mother of Khwarezm’s ruler into captivity. Wikiwand

The Khwarezmian ruler and his army never got a breather to regain their footing. The Mongol invasion was a military masterpiece that overwhelmed Muhammad’s empire, and extinguished it by 1221. As to Shah Muhammad, he fled and was denied any opportunity to recover and try a comeback. Genghis put two of his best generals, Subutai and Jebe, in charge of hunting the Khwarezmian ruler. Muhammad was chased and hounded across his domain to his death, abandoned and exhausted, on a small Caspian island as his relentless pursuers closed in.

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.