The genocide was due to China's refusal to capitulate, the population was so large rebellion was again and again organised to drive the Mongols back. At first 90 cities around Beijing were destroyed (the Mongols knew Beijing was so big it would take another year), then as rebellion fermented, another 800 cities and towns were razed. Yet another round of resistance saw the Mongols beaten back - until they started their genocidal campaigns, killing off 1/3 of Northern China (estimated to be 18 million deaths). As resistance refused to die, the Mongols increased the quota, and cut off entire provinces - it was said the province of Honan was so starved of resources the Mongols resorted to cannibalism, as did the locals who by then had begun to kill each other, and spread famine exacerbated diseases.
When Beijing finally fell, after being laid siege for years, and having diseased bodies periodically catapulted into its midst, the city was said to be mostly a ghost town and the streets slick with a sheen of human fat, all that remained of the inhabitants.
The Western campaigns into Central Asia were just as brutal. The Mongols operated on showing up a prime example of killing as a lesson to all the others. The half million city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan for instance, the prime city of the Eastern Muslim world, and it's 100,000 strong army befell that fate. The outer walls were destroyed, then 30,000 craftsmen and artists saved, alongside 50,000 families. The rest were massacred. Notably the Kangli Turks, who thought they would be treated as fellow Turkic peoples. However, Genghis Khan detested betrayal: the 30,000 strong Kangli garrison was ordered to have a haircut to resemble their fellow Mongols, but the barbers slit their throats instead.
All cities that mounted a defense were laid siege and massacred, including the 200,000 inhabitants of Signak, and all the inhabitants of Zaveh, Persia whose crime was people shouting insults from their walls.
The worst came in the form of the world's biggest city, and the crossroads of the world: Baghdad. One million strong, whose walls formed a perfect circle around concentric rings of housing, moats and more walls, with palatial gardens at the centre. The Baghdadis believed they could survive despite 100,000 soldiers attacking- how wrong they were. The Mongols ended up decapitating every man, woman, child, cat and dog on storming the city, and creating a huge mound of skulls outside the walls. After that every city in the region capitulated without a fight. It marked the end of the
Islamic Golden Age (art, literature, science, maths, city building, exploration), that stretched from Spain to India. The Tigris was said to have run black from the ink of the great libraries thrown into the river, and red with the blood of its scholars and writers. Those who fled were massacred, as were those who stayed, with estimates of the death toll ranging from 200,000-800,000 (Western sources) - 2 million (Arab sources).
The Siege of Baghdad, and of sister city Merv in Turkmenistan (where as many as 700,000 were claimed to have died under the Mongols) may have been history's worst single massacre.
www.thestrangecontinent.com
The Caliph had to watch his people and family killed, and was himself rolled into a rug and trampled to death by the cavalry (the Mongols thought spilling royal blood onto the ground was bad luck. Other accounts said he was locked into a tower and left to starve). His sole surviving family member, one son, was captured and taken to Mongolia, where the local historians recorded that he married and had children after, but had nothing more to do with royalty or Islam.
The story of Mongol commander Halagu, imprisoning Caliph Al' Mustasim among his treasures, to know their real worth:
https://gigcasa.com
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