Khwarazmian army between 1231 and 1246
It was active in Upper Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Syria and Palestine and shifted its allegiance several times, often acting autonomously before it was defeated and destroyed by the Ayyubids.
He remained there for about three years, after which, leaving behind governors and troops, he set out to re-establish the Khwarazmian Empire in its original territories and further west in late 1223.
[10] Known by the collective term Khwarazmiyya in the Arabic sources,[11] the Khwarazmians were among the first wafidiyya (or musta'minun), groups of refugee soldiers from the east who took up service in Syria and Egypt.
[15] They were predominantly Kipchak Turkish and other pastoralist cavalrymen who, in light of the Mongols' destruction of their homeland, had no reason to return home.
[16] Besides Kipchaks, there were probably Kangly, Khalaj and Oghuz Turks, the latter being the same people as the Seljukids, whose earlier empire in Iran had been supplanted by that of the Khwarazmshahs.
[17] The Khwarazmian soldiers travelled with their families and a staff of katibs (secretaries) and faqihs (jurists), the latter mainly of Iranian origin.
[21] In 1231 or 1232,[22] they switched allegiance to their other former enemy, the Seljukid sultan Kayqubad I, through the frontier commander, Sinan al-Din Kaymaz.
[23] In a ceremony in Tatvan, Kaymaz received the oaths of allegiance of Kirkhan and the other Khwarazmian leaders and distributed to them title deeds to various iqta's (tax revenue districts) in the frontier province of Erzurum, included some 36 castles.
[24] Not long after, a group of 4,000 Khwarazmians trying to return to Khwarazm were surprised near the village of Tugtap (Dogodaph) by 700 Mongol raiders and fled to the Seljukid interior, where they requested safer lands.
[31] Since the Khwarazmians were apparently unsure whom to support, Kaykhusrau's chief minister, Sa'd al-Din Köpek, had their leaders arrested.
[33] With the permission of al-Kamil, the Ayyubid emir al-Salih Ayyub enrolled them in his army and gave them iqta's in Diyar Mudar.
Acting for the captive emir, Jamal al-Din ibn Matruh presented al-Nasir Da'ud's letter to Berke-Khan at Harran.
[36] The Khwarazmians did not act immediately, but it may have been in fulfilling al-Nasir Da'ud's request when in the autumn of 1240 they crossed the Euphrates and raided northern Syria.
Learning of the Aleppan defeat, the Emir al-Mansur Ibrahim of Homs brought his forces to Aleppo, entering the city on 11 November.
[40] After the Khwarazmian retreat, Dayfa Khatun sent Kamal al-Din ibn al-'Adim to Damascus to gather reinforcements, which al-Salih Isma'il gave.
According to Ibn Bibi, Ghiyath al-Din Kaykhusrau ordered the governor of Malatya to raise 3,000 men from the border fortresses and take them to Aleppo.
[46] In 1244, according to the contemporary historian Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Khazraji, al-Salih Ayyub gave the Khwarazmians the entire province of Damascus (except Nablus) as an iqta'.
[57] The combined army under Rukn al-Din Baybars al-Salihi roundly defeated the Syro-Frankish forces at the battle of Forbie on 17 October.
[59] They swept through much of the coastal territory of the kingdom of Jerusalem, but did not attack the fortified places and so did not take permanent control.
[60] After Forbie, the Khwarazmians joined the army of the Egyptian vizier Mu'in al-Din ibn al-Shaykh at Gaza.
While the Egyptian army bombarded the city with mangonels, the Khwarazmians raided the countryside to prevent food from getting to the defenders.
[61] After the fall of Damascus in October 1245, Mu'in al-Din granted the Khwarazmians iqta's in Syria (around al-Sahil) and Palestine, but the mercenaries did not consider these commensurate with the promises made by the sultan.
In preparation for a full rebellion, they allied with al-Salih Isma'il, al-Nasir Da'ud and 'Izz al-Din Aybeg al-Mu'azzami.
[65] According to Ibn al-Dawadari, the disloyalty of the Khwarazmians and Qaymariyya led al-Salih Ayyub to purchase "more Turkish mamlūks [slave soldiers] than all the previous sultans combined" so that they became a majority of his army.
[48] When the Khawarazmians learned that al-Mansur Ibrahim and al-Nasir Yusuf of Aleppo had allied against them, possibly at the urging of al-Salih Ayyub, they broke off the siege of Damascus and marched north.
Berke-Khan was killed and his head given to Shams al-Din Lu'lu' al-Amini, who hung it from the gate of the citadel of Aleppo.
[49] Although 1246 marks the effective disappearance of the Khwarazmians from the Arabic sources, they re-appear in the work of the historian Rashid-al-Din over a decade later.
He records that some former emirs of Jalal al-Din came to Egypt during the reign of the Mamluk sultan Qutuz (1259–1260), who gave them gifts and plied them for intelligence.
When the Mongols demanded tribute from Egypt in 1260, the Khwarazmian emir Nasir al-Din Muhammad Kaymuri advised Qutuz that they would not honour their word.
