The Khwarizm Campaign

• The second most important campaign undertaken by Genghis Khan.
• 5 year campaign against the Khwarizm state in Central Asia (1219-1224 ce).
• This campaign is significant because with the conquest of the Khwarizm state, that opens up Mongol armies to invading both the Middle East and Eastern Europe in the next couple of decades. Even more importantly, it’s in the Khwarizm campaign that the Mongol armies develop their reputation for terrorism. They use the massacre of civilian population strategically to intimidate the people in the place that they are going to invade next, so that those people will simply surrender to them.
• The reason for all of this is because the Mongols are always outnumbered in their conquests.
• At the beginning Genghis Khan realized that it’s vital to save as many Mongol lives as possible in these conquests (so having enemies succumb is the best way to do so).