was Indian. He used to wear a tartūr—a tall, conical head-piece made of horsehair and dyed in various colors. His brother Ghiyāth al-Dīn was the handsomest of men and the fairest-skinned, yet he was oppressive; his mother was Turkish.

I say: His army was a rabble in whom wickedness, debauchery, and insolence were rife.

Al-Muwafaq said: “Fornication was common among them, and sodomy was not regarded as shameful by either old or young (1). Treachery was their habit: they took Tiflis under a pledge of safety, then betrayed the city, slaughtered its people, and carried off captives.

I say: They became proverbial for plunder and killing; they committed every vile act, a hungry, motley horde, weak in numbers and mounts.

Jalāl al-Dīn met the Tatars and routed them; their commander, a son (2) of Chinggis Khān, was slain. This enraged his father, who marched against him. The two armies met on the River Sind, and Chinggis Khān was defeated; but an ambush later struck, scattering Jalāl al-Dīn’s forces. He fled toward Ghazna in dire straits, with only four thousand men, themselves exhausted.

He then made for Kirmān, whose king treated him generously (3). Once strengthened, he betrayed and killed him (4), and advanced on Shīrāz; his soldiery rode oxen and donkeys, and many went on foot, so its ruler fled. Many events followed—too long to detail—alternating between rise and decline. The Tatars stood in awe of him; but for him, they would have trampled the whole world.

Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-Jawzī was sent to him as an envoy and found him reciting the Qur’an and weeping. He then excused the excesses of his troops, attributing them to their great numbers and their refusal to obey, and he had