Ideas about the goals of Chingis Khan's invasion to the countries of Islam in Muslim historiography before 1260

Abstract

We can judge the goals and plans of Chingis Khan mainly on the basis of information that has been preserved in the works of sedentary civilizations that faced the Mongol threat in the XIII century. A significant part of these works have been developed after the emergence of the Mongol Empire, and among the authors there were many who served the Mongols. Therefore, the conquering plans of the Mongol leaders, and first of all of Chingis Khan himself, are often transmitted decades later and with significant distortions, when the resulting geopolitical results are seen by chroniclers as the ideas of world domination realized by the Mongols. However, studying the few Arabic- and Persian-language sources that have come down to us, written in the Muslim environment directly during the period of the Mongol onslaught, i. e. before 1260, allows us to assume that Chingis Khan went to the countries of Islam not for the sake of conquering the whole earth and not even with the aim of subjugating the Islamic world, but to take revenge on Khorezm Shah. Having achieved his goal, he returned to his native steppes and left most of the territories he had captured to the mercy of fate. The analyzed sources, which have already become classic in Mongol studies, as well as less well-known ones, also do not contain information about Chingis Khan's will to his descendants to conquer the whole world. This goal was formulated by the Mongolian elite somewhat later, and the Western campaign of his grandson Hulagu represented a systematic conquest carried out by the forces of the entire Mongol Empire.