Muhammad II of Khwarazm

Muhammad II, whose full name was Ala ad-Dunya wa-d-Din Abu’l-Fath Muhammad ibn Tekish, ruled the Khwarazmian Empire. He was born around 1169 in Gurganj and was originally named Qutb ad-Din Muhammad. His father was the Khwarazmshah Tekish and his mother was Terken Khatun, the daughter of a Kipchak (Qangli) khan. In the 1190s his father made him governor of a province in Khorasan, and in 1197, after the death of his elder brother Malik-Shah, he became heir to the throne.

Tekish died on 3 July 1200, and Muhammad was crowned on 3 August, taking his father’s title Ala ad-Din. The first years of his reign were taken up by war with the Ghurids, who overran cities of Khorasan and besieged Gurganj, but were beaten near Andkhud in 1204 with the help of the Qara Khitai. After Mu’izz ad-Din of Ghur was murdered in 1206 the Ghurid state broke up, and its lands gradually came under Khwarazmian control.

The Khwarazmshah then turned on the Qara Khitai. In 1207 he was captured by them but escaped; in September 1210 he routed their army at the battle on the Ilamish plain and annexed Transoxiana. The victory was widely noted in the Muslim world, and he began to style himself the “Second Alexander”. A revolt in Samarkand in 1212 was put down with great cruelty, and Samarkand later became his residence and capital.

Between 1210 and 1215 Muhammad took Persian Iraq, Mazandaran, Azerbaijan, Ghazna and Bamiyan; his realm stretched from the Aral Sea in the north to the Caspian in the west and Semirechye in the east. In 1217 he marched on Baghdad, but a snowstorm in the mountains cost his army heavy losses. His mother Terken Khatun had great influence in government, and Muhammad named his younger son Qutb ad-Din Ozlagh-Shah as heir, which displeased his eldest son, Jalal ad-Din.

In 1218 a caravan of merchant-envoys sent by Genghis Khan was put to death at Otrar on the orders of its governor Inalchuq. Muhammad refused to hand Inalchuq over, and in 1219 a Mongol army invaded Khwarazm. The shah did not risk a battle in the field and spread his troops among the cities; in 1220 Otrar, Bukhara and Samarkand fell. He fled to Khorasan, then to the Caspian coast, and crossed to the island of Ashur-Ada in the sea.

There, gravely ill, Muhammad II died in December 1220. Before his death he named Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu as his successor. The Khwarazmian state was destroyed by the Mongols.