A Dispute Started by a Poorly Thought Out Attempt to Punk Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan once stated that: “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“. The kind of person who says stuff like that 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 Khwarezmian Empire from 1200 to 1220, did. Worse, he then doubled down on the stupid, and dared Genghis Khan to do something about it.
Genghis Khan (1162 – 1227) founded the Mongol Empire, the world’s largest contiguous empire, and was one of history’s scariest 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 twentieth century. In 1218, Genghis Khan was busy fighting the Chinese, when he sent an embassy and trade mission to Muhammad II. In addition to diplomatic emissaries, it included numerous merchants with valuable trade wares.
