Large-Scale Devastation

Continued warfare, together with other reasons, could result in large-scale devastation of certain regions.^[118] One example of such destruction is the migration of large groups of Turkmen nomads into Khurasan and north­western Iran, the Caucasus and Anatolia in the eleventh century.

Contemporary sources note widespread looting after the Seljuq victory in which local populations also took part. More importantly, the incoming Turkmens, even if their numbers were not particularly high, had their herds with them; ‘a migration of a mere 4,000 households would have been accompanied by 400,000 sheep, quite apart from the larger livestock such as camels of whom smaller - although still significant - numbers were required'. And thus, ‘a smaller migration would have a huge impact and would inevitably be drawn into conflict over the limited pasturage available in Khurasan'.^[119] A detailed analysis of the Turkmen campaigns has led to the conclusion that their main objective was pasture and plunder; pasture had to be secured by destroying fortresses and also towns which could have served as strongholds from where to control access to pastures, and plunder was an easy method to pay the warriors who otherwise did not receive a salary.^[120] Where the incoming Turkmens clashed with pastoralists and transhumant stockbreeders already in place, a fierce competition over pasture was the result.

The destruction caused by the Turkmen migrations in the first half of the eleventh century is therefore more or less immediately linked to their nomadic lifestyle: they had to secure pastures for their flocks. Another point is the different form of warfare in which plunder was the essential form of rewarding the efforts of warriors. And sometimes tactics were employed which sought to destroy the food basis of the adversary, without heeding long-term consequences. This could sometimes result in wholesale destruction on a local level. Thus, in 1100-1, in the dynastic war between Barkyaruq and his brothers Muhammad and Sanjar, the latter party destroyed the region around Damghan, including the felling of trees, so that famine spread and people were forced to eat carrion. This was no unique case, as an example for the early thirteenth century, the siege of Nishapur, can be mentioned. The Khwarazmian prince ‘Alishah tried to hold out against the Ghurid sultan, and in the process he had the environs of the city destroyed, again including the felling of trees. This continued into the Timurid period: Shahrukh is notorious for having destroyed the complex irrigation system of Sistan in 1408 (after the city and the province had been devastated by Timur in 1383).

Turkmens kept migrating into Iran during the twelfth century. One of the most spectacular and also most destructive episodes in these migrations was the Ghuzz ‘rebellion' against Sanjar in the 1150s. After they had clashed with the Seljuq provincial ruler at Balkh and killed him and his son, the sultan went to war against them. In the ensuing battle, the Ghuzz took Sanjar captive (1153) and dragged him around Khurasan where they left a swath of destruc­tion; Marw alone was pillaged three times. The Ghuzz had obtained pasture in the region of Balkh and farther south - the oases and towns of Khurasan which they ravaged during these years were not really valuable as pasture.

Another example of large-scale destruction comes from the period imme­diately preceding the Mongol invasion, and it concerns Transoxiana and the region along the Syr Darya, both part of the empire of the Khwarazmshah Muhammad b. Tekesh (1200-20). The contemporary geographer Yaqut writes that the region had been flourishing, but that the Khwarazmshah destroyed it.^[122] The author adds that this was only a prelude to the enormous destruction and general massacre caused by the Mongols, but his remarks on the earlier scorched earth politics of the Khwarazmshah are still worth keeping in mind. In this case, it was the ruler himself who ordered one of his provinces to be destroyed for fear of its being overrun by invaders.