40 chapter two
did not last beyond the spring of 1218, however, when a caravan of four
hundred and fifty men from the Mongol domains arrived in the border
town of otrar.13 inalchïk, the shah’s local governor, sent a message to his
lord that he believed that they were spies and agents provocateurs sent
by chinggis Khan, and were whipping up the populace with the threat of
an imminent invasion. Muḥammad ordered their arrest, but his governor
exceeded his orders, confiscating their goods and executing the owners.14
it is not clear how far exactly the shah’s court was responsible for the
massacre of otrar. however, when chinggis Khan’s envoys arrived to
demand compensation and the extradition of those directly responsible
for the murders, the shah ordered the emissaries killed. this decision was
the declaration of war that chinggis Khan had been waiting for. his troops
entered transoxiana to avenge the merchants’ deaths and, according to a
contemporary account, to shed rivers of innocent blood.15
the deployment of great numbers of nomad cavalry to support the
merchant caste is the first striking proof of how important commerce was
to imperial policy promoted at the highest echelons of the Mongol state.
the otrar incident also demonstrates the contribution of long-distance
commerce to the expansion of chinggis Khan’s power. the support which
the great merchants lent to the khan is expressed in a very telling manner,
namely in their readiness to renounce their legitimate ruler: the shah’s
subjects, Muslims like himself, did not hesitate to abandon him and to
enter the service of his ‘infidel’ enemy.16 From the professional point of
view, this decision to betray their lord can be explained in terms of the
turncoats’ commercial habits of mind: they showed remarkable foresight
in recognising the victorious rival ahead of time, a conqueror willing and
able to let the merchant class thrive in step with the breakneck expansion
of his empire.
it is also easy to see what concrete benefits they expected from the vic-
tory of their candidate, whose military successes to date seemed to back
up his claims to world domination: unhindered freedom of movement
over the greatest possible territory had always been the great merchants’
13 nasawī/houdas, p. 59; nasawī/Bunyatov p. 79; bearing in mind the terms of the
agreement, it is clear that it was doomed from the start to be “provisional at best” (“jeden-
falls vorläufig,” spuler, Mongolen, p. 18).
14 ibid.
15 nasawī/houdas, pp. 60–61, laments the tragic fate of his Muslim coreligionists in
these terms; on Mongol military operations at this time, see especially petrushevskij,
“pohod.”
16 their confessional identity is clear from their names (see above, p. 38).