Jalal ad Din Mingburnu

Biography

Following the defeat of his father, Ala ad-Din Muhammad II by Genghis Khan in 1220, Jalal ad-Din Mengübirti came to power but he rejected the title shah that his father had assumed and called himself simply sultan. Jalal ad-Din retreated with the remaining Khwarazm forces, while pursued by a Mongol army and at the battle of Parwan, north of Kabul, defeated the Mongols.

Due to the Mongol invasion, the sacking of Samarkand and being deserted by his Afghan allies, Jalal ad-Din was forced to flee to India. At the Indus River, however, the Mongols caught up with him and slaughtered his forces, along with thousands of refugees, at the Battle of Indus. He escaped and sought asylum in the Sultanate of Delhi but Iltutmish denied this to him in deference to the relationship with the Abbasid caliphs. The cities of Herat, Ghazni and Merv were destroyed and massacred by the Mongols, for his resistance or rebelliousness.

Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu spent three years in exile in India. Entering into an alliance with the Khokhars Lahore and much of the Punjab was captured. At this stage he requested an alliance with Iltutmish the Turkish Mamluk Sultan of Delhi against the Mongols. The Sultan of Delhi refused so he could avoid a conflict with Genghis Khan and marched towards Lahore at the head of a large army. Mingburnu retreated from Lahore and moved towards Uchch inflicting a heavy defeat on its ruler Nasir-ud-Din Qabacha, and plundered Sindh and northern Gujarat before returning to Persia in 1224.

Having gathered an army and entered Persia he sought to re-establish the Khwarazm kingdom but he never fully consolidated his power. In 1224 Jalal ad-Din confirmed Burak Hadjib, ruler of the Qara Khitai, in Kerman, received the submission of his brother Ghiyath al-Din Pirshah, who had established himself in Hamadan and Isfahan, and the province of Fars, and clashed with the Caliph An Nasser in Khuzestan. In 1225 the sultan dethroned the Ildegizid Uzbek Muzaffar al-Din and set himself up in their capital of Tabriz on the 25 of July in 1225. In 1226 he attacked Georgia defeating their forces in the battle of Garni and conquered Tbilisi, destroying all the churches and massacring the city's Christian population.

Jalal ad-Din spent the rest of his days struggling against the Mongols, pretenders to the throne and the Seljuk Turks of Rum. He dominance in the region required year-on-year campaigning. In 1226, the governor of Kerman, Burak Hadjib, rebelled against him, but after the sultan marched against him he was again brought back into agreement. Jalal ad-Din then had a brief victory over the Seljuks and captured the town of Akhlat in Armenia from the Ayyubids. In 1227 he battled against the Mongols on the approach to Isfahan and while he didn't defeat the invaders following their great losses they weren't able to utilise their victory and withdrew afterwards across the Oxus river. In 1228, his brother Ghiyath al-Din rebelled and was defeated by the Sultan. Ghiyath al-Din fled to Burak Hadjib in Kerman where he and his mother were murdered. The revived Khwarezmid Sultan by this time controlled Kerman, Tabriz, Isfahan and Fars. Jalal ad-Din moved against Akhlat again in 1229. However he was defeated in this campaign by Sultan Kayqubad I at Erzincan on the Upper Euphrates at the Battle of Yassıçemen (Yassi Chemen) in 1230, from whence he escaped to Diyarbakir. Meanwhile, the Khan Ögedei sent a new army of 30,000 men under the command of Chormagan and the Khwarezmids were swept away while by the new Mongol army. The winter of 1231 in the ensuing confusion the Mongols arrived into Azerbaijan from the direction of Khorasan and Rayy. Jalal ad-Din was afraid of the enemy because he hadn't time to prepare an army and fled again. He was murdered the 15 of August of 1231 in Diyarbakir by a Kurdish man.