the lands of Khurasan, which the Tatars call al-Maghriba (1), and another detachment after Khwarazm Shah. They were twenty thousand strong; he told them, “Pursue him and seize him, even if he were to cling to the very sky.” So they rode after him and caught up with him (2), the River Jayhun lying between them and him, and he felt safe because of it. Finding no boats, they fashioned tubs on which they placed (3) their weapons. Each man sent his horse into the water, seized its tail, and the animal dragged him across (4) while he towed the tub that held his arms, until they had all reached the opposite bank. Khwarazm Shah had no inkling of them until they were already mingling with his men; he fled to Nishapur and thence to other towns, while they stayed on his heels, giving him no respite to gather forces (5). Thus, whenever he entered a town to rally his troops they overtook him and he fled once more, until he boarded the Sea of Tabaristan and made for a fortress on an island within it, where (6) he met his death.

Some say that after he put to sea nothing further was known of him: he disappeared, and no one knows where he went or to what refuge he escaped. The Tatars (7) then took possession of his depots and found in his treasury ten thousand dinars, a thousand loads of silk brocade and other goods (8), twenty thousand horses and mules, and an immense number of male and female slaves and tents. He owned ten thousand mamluks, each one like a king, yet all of it was scattered to the winds (9).

Khwarazm Shah had been a distinguished Ḥanafī jurist, versed in several branches of knowledge and keen of understanding. He ruled vast territories and numerous realms for twenty-one years and some months, and after the Saljuq kings none enjoyed greater esteem (10) or wielded a mightier dominion than he, for his sole passion was sovereignty, not pleasures and sensual desire. For that reason (11) he subdued the kings of those lands and dealt the Khitans a severe blow, so that no sovereign remained in Khurasan, Transoxiana, ʿIraq-i ʿAjam, and the other provinces save him alone, all the territories being in the hands (12) of his deputies.

They then advanced toward Mazandaran (13) and its citadels—among the most impregnable of fortresses—such that the Muslims had not