Samarkand was one of the great commercial cities of the world. It had a garrison which numbered forty thousand. Both the city and the citadel had been fortified with care, and all men considered that a siege of that place would continue for months, nay, for years perhaps.
The three other army corps appeared now, for every place on the lower river had been taken, and Northern Transoxiana was subjected. These divisions brought with them all captives who were young, firm and stalwart, men who might be of service in [[111]]siege work; there was an immense host of those people arranged in groups of ten, and each ten had a banner. Jinghis, to impose on the doomed city, paraded his legions before it; cavalry, infantry, and at last those unfortunate captives who had the seeming of regular warriors.
Two days were spent in examining the city defenses and outworks; on the third morning early the Mongol conqueror sounded the onset. A host of brave citizens made a great sally, and at first swept all before them but not being sustained by their own troops, who feared the besiegers, they met a dreadful disaster. The Mongols retired before the onrushing people, who pressed forward with vigor till they fell into ambush; being on foot they were surrounded very quickly and slaughtered before the eyes of the many thousands looking from the walls, and the housetops. This great defeat crushed the hopes of the citizens.
The Kankali troops being Turks believed that the Mongols would treat them most surely as kinsmen. In fact Jinghis had promised, as they thought, to take them to his service. Hence this great multitude, the real strength of the city, issued forth that same day with their leaders, their families, and their baggage, in one word, with all that belonged to them. On the fourth day, just as the storm was to be sounded, the chief men of the city went to the Mongol camp, where they received satisfactory answers concerning themselves with their families and dependents; hence they opened the gates of Samarkand to the conqueror; but they were driven from the city save fifty thousand who had put themselves under the protection of the cadi and the mufti. These fifty thousand were safe-guarded, the others were all slaughtered.
The night following the surrender, Alb Khan, a Turk general, made a sortie from the citadel and had the fortune to break through the Mongols, thus saving himself and those under him. At daybreak the citadel was attacked simultaneously on all sides. That struggle lasted till the evening, when one storming party burst in, and the stronghold was taken. One thousand defenders took refuge in a mosque and fought with desperation. The mosque was fired then, and all were burned to death in it. The Kankalis who had yielded on the third day, that is the first day of fighting, were conducted to a place beyond the city and kept [[112]]apart from others. Their horses, arms, and outfits were taken from them, and their hair was shaved in front, Mongol fashion, as if they were to form a part of the army. This was a trick to deceive them till the executioners were ready. In one night the Kankalis were murdered to the very last man.
When vast numbers of the citizens had been slaughtered a census was made of the remnant: Thirty thousand persons of various arts, occupations and crafts were given by Jinghis to his sons, his wives, and his officers; thirty thousand more were reserved for siege labor; fifty thousand, after they had paid two hundred thousand gold pieces, were permitted to return to the city, which received Mongol commandants. Requisitions of men were made at later periods repeatedly, and, since few of those persons returned to their homes, Samarkand stood ruined and unoccupied for a long time.
Jinghis Khan so disposed his forces from the first, that Shah Mohammed could not relieve any city between the two rivers; now all those cities were taken, and the forces defending them were slaughtered. The next great work was to seize Shah Mohammed himself, and then slay him, and with him his family.
Thirty thousand chosen men were employed now in chasing the Kwaresmian ruler. Never had a sovereign been hunted like this victim of the Mongols. He fled like a fox, or a hare; he was hunted as if he had been a dreadful wild beast, which had killed some high or holy person, or as if he were some outcast, who had committed a deed which might make a whole nation shudder. But here we must say a few words concerning the hunted man, and explain his position. [[113]]