When Genghis Khan's armies took Samarkand in 1220 and shattered the Khwarazmian Empire, one prince refused to accept the end of his world. For eleven years Jalal al-Din fled, fought, leapt off a cliff into the Indus on horseback, conquered an exile-empire in Persia — and died alone in the mountains of Kurdistan.
Jump to a chapter
▸ Hover a marker for the headline, click it for the full story, then page through the saga with ‹ Prev / Next › or the arrow keys. Click an empire's name to learn about it. 🐎 Ride in any story picks up the journey from that point; during the ride, ⏸ pause to read at your own pace. Unfamiliar name? The 🎓 glossary explains them all.
Political borders, period labels and travel routes are approximate reconstructions (c. 1226), drawn for storytelling rather than scholarship. Some journeys are simplified; the distance figures are measured along the plotted route, so the real mileage was greater still.
Chief sources: Sirat al-Sultan Jalal al-Din Mankubirti by al-Nasawi, the sultan's own secretary, and Juvayni's History of the World-Conqueror.
Built by Claude (Fable 5), Anthropic's AI, as a single self-contained web page using the open-source Leaflet library. Terrain and modern basemaps © Esri and contributors.
© 2026 YingzhiVA · Released under CC BY 4.0 — share, adapt and reuse freely, as long as you credit YingzhiVA as the original creator. Basemap tiles remain © Esri.
Spotted an error, or have an idea? Feedback is very welcome — please open an issue on GitHub.
An A-to-Z of the people, realms, places and titles in this story.