Mongols sack Samarkand

1220

Samarkand's turquoise-domed skyline fell to Genghis Khan after a brief siege. Craftsmen were spared and deported east; the clerical class was massacred; the rest of the population was driven before the army as human shields. The Silk Road's jewel was half emptied. The city's famed paper mills, which had introduced Chinese papermaking to the Islamic world, fell silent amid the devastation.