Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu

Who was Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu?

Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu or Manguberdi, also known as Jalâl ad-Dîn Khwârazmshâh, was the last ruler of the Khwarezmian Empire. Following the defeat of his father, Ala ad-Din Muhammad II by Genghis Khan in 1220, Jalal ad-Din Mengübirti came to power but he rejected the title shah that his father had assumed and called himself simply sultan. Jalal ad-Din retreated with the remaining Khwarazm forces, while pursued by a Mongol army and at the battle of Parwan, north of Kabul, defeated the Mongols.

Due to the Mongol invasion, the sacking of Samarkand and being deserted by his Afghan allies, Jalal ad-Din was forced to flee to India. At the Indus River, however, the Mongols caught up with him and killed his forces along with thousands of refugees at the Battle of Indus. He escaped and sought asylum in the Sultanate of Delhi but Iltumish denied this to him in deference to the relationship with the Abbasid caliphs.

Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu spent three years in exile in India. Mingburnu entered into an alliance with the Khokhars and captured Lahore and much of the Punjab. He requested an alliance with Iltutmish against the Mongols . The Sultan of Delhi refused, not wishing to get into a conflict with Genghis Khan and marched towards Lahore at the head of a large army. Mingburnu retreated from Lahore and moved towards Uchch inflicting a heavy defeat on its ruler Nasir-ud-Din Qabacha, and plundered Sindh and northern Gujarat before returning to Persia in 1224.