ОПИСАНИЕ СУДЬБЫ ГОРОДОВ ХОРАСАНА И МАВЕРАННАХРА В ГОДЫ МОНГОЛЬСКОГО НАШЕСТВИЯ В АРАБО-ПЕРСИДСКИХ ГЕОГРАФИЧЕСКИХ СОЧИНЕНИЯХ

Abstract

The Mongol-Khorezm war of 1219–1221 is widely considered an important milestone in the history of the Middle East, and its consequences are largely noticeable in the subsequent fate of neighboring regions. Almost the main blow from the Mongol invasion fell on the lands of Khorasan and Transoxiana, where many large and small cities fully experienced all the horrors of Genghis Khan’s army advance. The fate of these localities and their inhabitants has long been the object of researchers’ attention, but scientists are till reconstructing those events, relying mainly on the Arab-Persian historical writings of the 13th century, as well as some later written monuments. In this article, we would like to draw attention to the Arab-Persian geographical texts of the Mongol invasion era and domination in the Middle East. Such texts were relatively little used by researchers to build a picture of the Mongol-Khorezm war of 1219–1221 and especially for the analysis of what became of the cities of Khorasan and Transoxiana and their inhabitants after the invasion of the Mongol conquerors. In this study, we do not aim to analyze the entire variety of Arab-Persian geographical works of the time, but provide only individual examples in order to demonstrate the informational potential of those sources. In part, we would like to return to the problem of the fate of the inhabitants of the cities captured by the Mongols during the war with Khorezm, but more importantly, to draw attention to certain Arab-Persian geographical texts, supplementing the information of the actual historical texts, both the earliest and belonging to the corpus of the Mongol court historiography. The author hopes to stimulate research interest both to the individual works cited in this publication, and in General in Arab-Persian geographical texts.