Part I: Reflections and Conclusions

It was inevitable that once Chingiz Khan’s armies crossed the Oxus into Persia that the Mongols would eventually have to administer the land. Charles Tilly discerned: the wielders of coercion find themselves obliged to administer the lands, goods, and people they acquire; they become involved in extraction of resources, distribution of goods, services, and income, and adjudication of disputes. But administration diverts them [Mongols] from war, and creates interests that sometimes tell against war.1 The obligations of administering an ancient sedentary civilization such as Persia’s would have distracted the Mongols from the pursuit of portable wealth. Settling could have been perceived as sedentarization, and antithetical to steppe ethos. Pillaging and returning to Inner Asia to enjoy the social, political, and economic fruits of expeditions were possibly preferable to settling and ruling. An alternative to settling and governing is (1) to deport to Inner Asia certain captives of economic or social value (craftsmen, artisans, women, etc.); and (2) to slaughter the remaining population.2 This calculus, conceivably, undergirded the mass deportations and exterminations perpetrated by the Mongols in Persia.