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T.N. cuting his Khita campaign), they marched for three days along a hill white as snow

with the bleached bones of the slain in its siege; whilst the ground between to the city was black and grimed with their gore, the stink of which killed some and poisoned most of their party. At the city itself, under one of its towers, he saw a pile of bones, said to be those of twenty thousand virgins, who had been cast from it to escape by such death the fury of the Moghol soldiers.

Khwahrizm Shah's embassy was well received by Chang   dismissed the

envoy with rich presents, and the following brief message of his master :—" I am King of the East. Thou art King of the West. Let merchants come and go between us, and exchange the products of our countries." A caravan of merchants accompanied the returning envoy, who amongst the other presents from Changfz carted away a block of native gold the size of a camel's neck. On arrival at the frontier city of Atrar, 1218 A.D., the Governor, Kadir Khan, by order of Khwahrizm Shah, detained the caravan, and soon after murdered all the merchants to the number of four hundred, and plundered their property.

This treacherous act brought down upon the country the savage vengeance of Changfz. He collected his forces from Turkistan, Chin, and Tamghij, under eight hundred standards of a thousand men each; eight hundred thousand horsemen. He appointed, besides, three hundred thousand horses for the baggage of the army, its carts, and families, &c., including one horse to every ten men, with its load of three sheep made into cadid="sundried salt-meat," a skin of Cumiz="mare's milk wine," and a Kazghan="iron cooking pot." Thus provided his hardy soldiers marched three months across deserts, and rivers, and mountains, and towards the end of 616 H. =1219 A.D. arrived at Atrar. Here he left Jûji and Aoktay with their troops, who on its capture after a siege of five months, in revenge for the murder of their merchants there, destroyed every living thing in it. Meanwhile Changfz himself with a strong force hurried on to Bukhara, the capital.

   P.   We need not here follow the career of his frightful butchery and devastation.
It is sufficient for our purpose to note here that the cities of Kashghar escaped these calamities, and that a strong contingent of their Uighûr soldiery under Aydy Cût and other leaders were in the conqueror's army ; that Khwahrizm Shah, flying before the storm his savagery had raised, was chased into Mazandarin, and escaped his pursuers by ship on the Caspian to disappear from the scene ; that the populous cities of Bukhara, Balkh, Nishabor, Herat, Ghazni, and many another in this region were utterly destroyed with their inhabitants ; that the vaunted impregnable castles and fortresses of Tokharistan, Kabul, Ghor, Sfstan, Khurasan, and Khiva were without exception captured and dismantled or razed ; that the entire region from Azarbfjan on the west to the Indus on the east, and from Dasht Kapchak on the north to Sfstan on the south, was in the short space of only six years so thoroughly wasted and ruined that more than as many centuries has not sufficed to obliterate the effects and marks of the havoc then worked, far less to restore the region to its former state of prosperity and population ; and finally, that having chased Sultan Jalaluddin Khwahrizm Shah, the son and successor at Ghazni of the fugitive King,

across the Indus, he was called back from his mad career of devastation to quell a

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revolt in his own home at Tungiit.

   T. N.   Changfz, the author from whose work these records are taken states, had in 615 H.
= 1218 A.D., just at the time he was preparing to set out against Khwahrizm Shah, received envoys from the Khalif Nasir of Baghdad urging him to do so, in revenge for the independence of the Khalifat assumed by this ruler of Mawaranahar. He was joined on the way by Arslaii Khan of Almilfgh, and by Aydy Cût from Beshbaligh with his Uighur contingent. On arrival at Atrir he left Aoktay and Chaghtay, with Jûji in support to take the place, and sending Alac Noyin and Mangû Bock to Banikat and Khujand, himself hurried on against Bukhara, the Outub-ui- islecm =" centre prop of Muhammadanism" In the Mugh or Parsi language Buklu r is said to signify "collection of knowledge," but with the Uighûr and Khitay it