Plants that like to show their heads higher than the ears of grain are the weeds that everyone hates.

- Jingpo proverb

In the summer of 1220, the mighty empire of Central Asia, Khorezm, was overwhelmed by the clouds of war, and Mongol troops from the east were overwhelming the border like autumn winds sweeping away the leaves in the Amu Darya and Syr Darya Daryas.

In the glittering royal palace of Samarkand, the capital of the empire, King Mahamat of Khorezm is gathering his generals to discuss how to hold on to the land and resolutely defend Kyoto. Ahmed, the clerk, recorded the king's conversations with his generals in a distraught manner.

King Mahamat asked, "Now that the Mongol army is rushing towards our country like a hungry tiger, what do you think?" ”

The ministers looked at each other, each with their own concerns.

Minister Ismaili flattered: "Our country is as strong as an iron wall under the wise leadership of His Majesty, the great and unparalleled Majesty. The Mongols are moths that kill themselves. ”

King Mahamat was well aware of the present situation, and did not want to let go of the lies that pleased him, so he turned his head in disgust to the always upright minister Rouhani.

Rouhani usually dared to tell the truth, and although he was repeatedly snubbed by the king, he was not deposed. He knew that the country was in danger, and as a minister, he had to take care of the king's face and protect the country's lifeblood.

Rouhani said: "Your Majesty, I have a suggestion, on the one hand, to use our army to resist the Mongol army, to express our determination to resolutely resist the enemy; On the other hand, it was necessary to send envoys to negotiate peace with the Mongols in an effort to avoid a heavy blow to the empire. ”

Isma angrily criticized Rouhani: "You are destroying your own ambition and growing the prestige of your enemies." ”

King Mahamat twisted his thick beard with his hand and said meaningfully, "Yes. I decided to send Rouhani to negotiate peace with the Mongols, and to send Ismaili to the front line to fight the invaders. Stand down, all of you. My head hurts again. ”

The princes and nobles of Samarkand had prepared for the worst for themselves, and hurriedly packed up their gold and silver treasures in order to find an opportunity to escape from the capital and save their lives.

The common people of Samarkand were divided into two opposing sides. Some of them exalted their brave and mighty national blood, shared the same hatred, actively participated in the defense of the capital, and vowed to fight the invading enemy to the end. Others denounced the Mahamat king for his arrogance and unwarranted anger against the Mongol barbarians, leaving the rich and prosperous country in jeopardy.

On June 12, on a shopping street in Samarkand, Ali, a tea seller, was cleaning up the goods in his shop.

Ali is just 16 years old this year, with a slender and tall figure, thick eyebrows and big eyes, a high nose, fair skin, and thick and lush hair. He wears a peaked hat embroidered with grapevines in golden silk thread. He wears a knee-length white cotton jacket on the outside and a gray collarless cotton shirt on the inside. Wearing a pair of fat blue bloomers on his legs. On his feet he wore a pair of semi-new black patent leather boots.

Ali was born into a family of tea merchants who had been selling tea for generations, and since he became sensible, in addition to learning Islam in mosques, he has helped his parents sell tea on the shopping streets. Unconsciously, my father gradually grew old, my brothers were conscripted by the state to fight everywhere, and my sisters also married into their in-laws. So, Ali took on the task of running the tea shop alone.

The tea in Ali's shop was trafficked by merchants from Samarkand and Bukhara from the Song Dynasty in the far east and India in the southeast by camels and caravans. The tea leaves of the Song Dynasty were mostly green tea, which was suitable for drinking in the hot summer. Most of the tea leaves in India are black tea, which is suitable for drinking with milk during the cold winter.

Ali's ancestors were descendants of the Aryans, the East Iranians (known as the Scythians in Europe and the Cypriots in East Asia), and later mixed with the blood of some Turkic people who migrated westward from the east, but they considered themselves to be the indigenous people of Khorezm and had a large family here. Most of the people in the family were engaged in business, with the exception of Ali's uncle, Ahmed.

Uncle Ahmed held a clerical job in the royal palace and specialized in recording the contents of the king's meetings. He was very fond of tea, and whenever he had free time, he would visit Ali's house, enjoying tea and telling them about the things in the palace.

In the last year, as the international situation has become more and more severe, Uncle Ahmad has come to Ali's house less and less, and each time he has done so in a hurry, and the news he brought has become more and more sad: Khorezm's army has been defeated again and again by the Mongol army; Ali's eldest brother, Yunus, was killed in battle; The second brother Musa and the third brother Ayub were also fighting the enemy on the front line.

Ali's parents prayed with tears in their eyes every day, asking the Almighty Huda (Allah) to bless the health and safety of their children who were fighting in the army and the peace and tranquility of the country.

Last night, Ali heard that the Mongol army, which had besieged Samarkand for seven months, had finished building fortifications, and the four armies were surrounding Samarkand. He saw that the business was bleak at the door of the commercial street, and he planned to go to the store today to clean up the goods, and then lock the door of the store and go home to rest for a few days, and then improvise.

At this time, Ali suddenly heard the chaotic running and shouting outside: "Oh no, the Mongols have entered the city!" ”

Ali couldn't help but be stunned: how did the enemy come so quickly......

People may ask: what kind of country is Khorezm? Why did you meet the Mongols in the east? Why is a powerful and wealthy empire so vulnerable?

Originally an ancient city in the lower reaches of the Amu Darya River, Khorezm expanded into a state in western Central Asia, roughly located on the lower reaches of the Amu Darya River, on the southern shore of the Aral Sea, in present-day Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Khorezm is the language of the Aryan East Iranians, meaning the land of the sun.

The Han people of China in successive dynasties respectively called Khorezm Huan Qian, Ji Qian, Hu Like Honey, Goods and Profits Xi Miga, Huo Xun, Guo Li, Huo Ci Mi, etc., and later simply called it Hui Guo.

The Mongols called it Sarida, Saltaul, and Saltagol.

Khorezm is located in an arid climate with the Kizilkum Desert to the east, the Karakum Desert to the south, the Aral Sea and the vast Kazakh steppe to the north. Because the banks of the Amu Darya River are suitable for primitive humans who live by fishing and hunting, Khorezm has been inhabited and active by humans for a long time, and has become an area with highly developed agricultural production. The inhabitants learned to raise livestock, use iron tools such as sickles, and irrigate their fields in a primitive way.

From the 16th century BC to the 12th century BC, the Aryans, a nomadic Indo-European race from the Ural-Volga River, migrated south from the steppe region of present-day northern Kazakhstan, settled in oases near the rivers of Central Asia and the Iranian plateau, and drove the Tocharians, who had arrived here earlier, to the east of the Tianshan Mountains to the Loess Plateau, and established their own city-states. Cities such as Bukhara and Samarkand gradually formed as centers of domination and culture.

The Aryans who settled on the Iranian plateau became the ancestors of the Iranians. Iran is the diacritic of Aryan. Persia is the name given to Iran by the Greeks and Romans

The Aryans who settled in Central Asia, including Khorezm, became the ancestors of the Eastern Iranians.

Iranians are accustomed to referring to the nomadic Scythians of East Iran north of the Amu Darya River and east of the Aral Sea as the Sakhas. They inhabited a vast area from the Black Sea to the Hindu Kush on the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in northern Xinjiang and Central Asia, and were divided into three major groups: the leaf-worshipping Sakha people were distributed in the Ferghana Basin and the Green Mountains in Central Asia; The Sakha people wearing pointed hats are distributed in the steppe areas of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, that is, from the Pamir and the north of the Alai Mountains to the Tien Shan and Altai Mountains, including Tashkent, the Talas River, the Chu River, the Ili River basin and the area east of Lake Balkhash; The Sakha people on the other side of the sea or river were located north of the Amu Darya River and southeast of the Aral Sea, in the land of Sogdia (Sogdiana).

The early Khorezmians were part of the East Iranians.

Later, the Iranians established the Persian Empire, which occupied Central Asia. Khorezm became a province of the Persian Empire.

In the mid-6th century BCE, the inhabitants of Khorezm rebelled against the Persian Empire, defeating and killing the Persian king Cyrus.

In 329 BC, Alexander of the Macedonian Empire marched eastward, destroying the Persian Empire and invading Khorezm. Khorezm was part of the Macedonian Empire and the Seleucid Kingdom of the Greeks.

Later, the Persians rose up to defeat the forces of the Seleucid kingdom and established the Assachim dynasty on the Iranian plateau (known as the Anxian dynasty in China and the Parthian dynasty in the West). Khorezm returned to the hands of the Persians.

At that time, Khorezm was surrounded by Sogdia (Kangju, Sogdiana) founded by the Eastern Iranians, Dhavans, Usun founded by the Usuns, and Bactria (Bactria and Tocharo) founded by the Greeks.

There was little difference between the Khwarazmian and Persians, and between the Sogdians and Bactrians, and the language was the same. During this period, cities such as Bukhara (Bukhara) and Rakanda (Samarkand) gradually took shape and became the centers of political domination and culture of various countries.

From 305 to 950, the Afrig Dynasty established by the Khorezm people has always been a vassal state of the surrounding powers such as the Sassanid Empire of Iran, the Kushan Dynasty of the Dayue people, the Hunnite-Yueban of the Banda and the Huns, the Turkic Khanate of the Turkic people, the Tang Empire of the Han people, the Arab empire of the Arabs, the Tahir Dynasty and the Samanid Dynasty of Iran, and maintained a relatively independent status and economic prosperity for a long time.

When the Han Chinese from the East entered the Western Regions and began to trade silk with the West, these cities of the Eastern Iranians became trading centers because of their geographical advantages. They used a network of cities and settlements to quickly become the wealthiest of these East Iranian merchants. As a result of what came to be known as the Silk Road, Bukhara and Samarkand eventually became extremely wealthy cities, and Khorezm became one of the most influential and powerful Persian provinces.

Khorezm has had close economic and cultural ties with China since the Han Dynasty. They used the Sogdian, Manichaean, and Syriac alphabets of the gospel script. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, documents of this language have been found in Xinjiang, Gansu and Tajikistan in China.

Affluence often provoked aggression from the northern Eurasian steppes, as well as from the east. Many regional wars are waged between countries in the Central Asian region and between external countries. Persia and the Eastern Empire were also in frequent conflict in the region.

The Turks suddenly rose to prominence in Northeast Asia and expanded to control Central Asia. Under the fierce pursuit of the Tang Empire and the Uighur Khanate, the Turks entered the Western Regions in large numbers.

Previously, the main ethnic group of Khorezm was the indigenous East Iranians, as well as some Han Chinese and Tibetans. The East Iranians were the rulers of the time.

Beginning in the 6th century, the Turkic people continued to move westward, and the majority of the people were still East Iranians. However, the human race gradually began to change over the course of its long history. Among the long-headed, white-skinned, blond-haired, slender inhabitants there were round-headed, yellow-skinned, black-haired, short, stocky Turks and their hybrids. The ethnicity and language of Central Asia began to tilt towards Turkicization.

At the beginning of the 8th century, the Arab Empire, a regional power established by the Arabs of West Asia, used Mulu (present-day Mare, Turkmenistan) as its base, and successively conquered large areas of land such as Khorezm and Tocharian (present-day northern Afghanistan), introducing Islam to Central Asia, which originally believed in Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Christianity, Buddhism, and shamanism. Since then, the culture of Central Asia has shifted from Buddhist civilization to Arab-Islamic civilization.

After the Arab conquest, they became rulers, and a small number of Arabs came to do business and settle here, further enriching the ethnic composition of the area.

Later, due to the corruption and degeneration of the Eastern Iranians and Arabs, the Turks still retained their original courage and good warfare, so they seized the right to rule from the hands of the Eastern Iranians and Arabs, and successively established the Qarluq and Qarakhanid dynasties, the Oghuya Protectorate, the Ghazni Dynasty, and the Seljuk Empire in Central Asia.

Once again, Khorezm became a vassal of the great powers.

In 995, the Persian Samanid governor in Khorezm, Ma'mun ibn Muhammad, overthrew the 690-year-old Eastern Iranian Avrig dynasty and established the Ma'mun dynasty, a small eastern Iranian kingdom that had survived for only 22 years, and made Urgench the capital of the kingdom.

Urgenchi, known as the city of Khorezm, is located south of the Amu Darya River and belongs to the present-day Dashoguz Oblast of Turkmenistan, bordering the border with Uzbekistan. When the Arabs invaded, it was renamed Urgench, and the Chinese history called it the Jade Dragon Jiechi.

Urgench soon became the largest city in Khorezm and an important trading city of the Silk Roads in Central Asia.

In 962, the Uzbeks, formed by the Turks and the Eastern Iranians, established the Ghazni dynasty in Afghanistan, and then united with another Uzbek Qarakhanid dynasty to overthrow the Iranian Samanid dynasty and conquer Khorezm.

The Ghazni dynasty and the Qarakhanid dynasty shared the fruits of victory, and you carved up Central Asia in the north and in the south.

In 1037, a Turkic army rose up in northern Iran, defeated the Qarakhanid and Ghazni dynasties, captured Khorezm, and established a Seljuk empire that spanned Central and Western Asia.

In 1077, the Seljuk Empire appointed a brilliant Turkic slave named Nash Tijin as governor of the province of Khorezm. What the Seljuks never imagined was that this man would become the ancestor of King Khizm, who would later destroy the Seljuk Empire.

Nash's Jin is an official, and he can be regarded as diligent and diligent, and is welcomed and supported by the people. After his death, his son, Khududdin Mahamat, succeeded his father.

Mahamat grew in fledgling and had two hearts for the Seljuk Empire, but on the surface he pretended to be very loyal, which further made Khorezm stable and economically prosperous, and laid a solid foundation for future prosperity.