Quote by Richard M. Eaton

“[D]uring the years 1219-21 Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol empire in eastern Asia, burst into western Asia. Offended by the insolent behaviour of the same ruler of Khwarazm who a few years earlier had annihilated the Ghurids, the Mongol leaders personally marched across Asia to punish the impudent monarch. In the course of this expedition, Mongol cavalry inflicted fire and fury throughout Central Asia and Khurasan, driving many thousands of terrified town-dwellers and semi-nomadic peoples into India, where they sought and found refuge. It was a propitious moment both for them and for Iltumish, who needed men skilled in civil and military affairs in order to govern his fledgling kingdom. The influx of a host of refugees in search of a stable state with a successful and generous Muslim ruler boosted the Sultan's claims to being precisely that sort of sovereign. For Iltumish and the youthful Delhi sultanate, then, the Mongol holocaust in Central Asia proved a timely book, unlike the catastrophy it represented for millions in Asia and the Middle East.”

Quote by Richard M. Eaton