The apprehensive army of Rum fled during the night; Baiju missed the opportunity to capture the Sultan because he suspected the deserted enemy camp was a trap.

Known as the Sultanate of Rum, it conquered many groups, including the rebellious Turkoman nomads, and gained control of large parts of Anatolia over the next 150 years.

By the 1230s, aided by the collapse of Byzantine power, Seljuk Rum had attained significant maritime and commercial capabilities through their control of the key ports of Antalya and Sinope.

During his reign, the Mongols dismantled the Jin dynasty and the Western Xia state in northern China, the Qara Khitai in Turkestan, and the Khwarazmian Empire in Central Asia and Persia.

Under Genghis's son and successor Ögedei Khan (r. 1229–1241), further military campaigns were launched against the remnants of the Jin, while another force invaded first the Russian principalities and then central Europe between 1236 and 1242.

[2] A further army, commanded by the general Chormaqan, was dispatched in 1230 to eliminate the renegade Khwarazmian prince Jalal al-Din who had founded a state in western Iran.

[4] With 30,000 men under his command, he marched every year against hostile fortresses in the Caucasus region, focusing especially on subduing the Kingdom of Georgia; by 1239 the Mongols had conquered much of its land and forced the remainder, ruled by Queen Rusudan, to become a vassal state.

[9] Kayqubad I, the sultan of Rum between 1220 and 1237, had correctly feared that Jalal al-Din's activities would draw the attention of the Mongols to the lands surrounding his realm.

[12] By 1240, relations had degraded so badly that the Mongols began to raid Seljuk territory; that year, Rum was likely weakened by the Babai revolt led by a local preacher.

[20] Although the powerful remnants of the Khwarazmian army had been employed by Rum as mercenaries until 1237, they had resisted Kaykhusraw's accession and refused to fight for him, as did the Turkomans who had participated in the Babai revolt.

[24] The Mongol force was certainly outnumbered by Kaykhusraw's army, whom contemporary chroniclers claimed to have contained 160,000 or 200,000 men; a more realistic estimate, according to the historian Bayarsaikhan Dashdondog, is 80,000.

The more prudent nobles again encouraged Kaykhusraw to take a defensive position on the favourable terrain and await reinforcements who were still arriving, but they were overruled by their younger counterparts, who accused them of cowardice.

[28] This confusion, alongside the terrain at the pass, which led through a narrow and steep ravine, allowed Baiju to take advantage of his army's discipline and his own excellent generalship.

[29] The two vanguards clashed at the bottleneck in the ravine, whereupon the Georgian heavy cavalry contingents proved essential for both sides, and the soldiers of Rum slightly superior in quality overall.

John III Vatatzes was forced to abandon a planned campaign against the Latin Empire to strengthen Nicaea's eastern defences against a possible Mongol or Turkoman invasion.