Born Then1219–1223
Life during the Mongol invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
After the Khwarazmian ruler killed a Mongol trade mission, Genghis Khan invaded in 1219. Bukhara, Samarkand, Urgench, Merv and Nishapur fell, and cities that resisted were destroyed with most of their people. Irrigation systems were wrecked, and parts of Khurasan took centuries to recover.
Deaths: estimates range from about 2 to 15 million; medieval chronicles give much higher figures.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from scholarly estimates.
Around the same time
- Indian Ocean slave trade 700–1799
- Song dynasty commercial revolution 960–1270
- Polynesian settlement of Hawaii 1000–1200
- The Crusades 1096–1291
- Thule migration across the Arctic 1200–1300
- Rise of Great Zimbabwe 1200–1450
- Mongol conquest of the Jin 1211–1234
- Mongol invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire 1219–1223
- Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' 1237–1242