The Nāṣirī Generations 128.3.3

128.3.3

Chingiz Khan, after the catastrophe of the city of Bukhara, marched towards Samrkand, in which city Sultan Muhammad, Khwarazm Shah, had stationed 60,000 horse, fully equipped and furnished, consisting of different races of Turks, Ghuris, and Khurasanis, together with the Maliks and troops of Ghur, who were all included among that body of troops. After a few days, on the 10th of the month of Muharram, 617 H., Samrkand was also captured, and the whole of the inhabitants were martyred. When the accounts of these disasters came to the hearing of Sultan Muhammad, the forces, then along with him before the gates of Balkh, consisted almost entirely of Tatar and Khita-i troops, whilst his own old soldiers and vassals had been left behind by him in Mawar-un-Nahr; and those people, on whom the most implicit trust and confidence could be placed, were also all away in those parts. The troops who were along with him [now] conspired together to seize him, and to make that act of perfidy and treachery the means of their own deliverance; and, having seized the Sultan, to take him and deliver him over as an offering to Chingiz Khan!