Merv and Emir Timur

We arrived in Merv expecting a great city like we had read about in our stories. Instead we arrived in a nearly empty city with almost no one on the streets. Most of the buildings had been partially destroyed by fire and were in decrepit shape. Only one man was out on the streets.  He introduced himself as Juvayni, a Persian historian who wrote about the Mongol wars. He told us that, “The Mongols ordered that, apart from four hundred artisans. .., the whole population, including the women and children, should be killed, and no one, whether woman or man, be spared. To each was allotted the execution of three or four hundred Persians. So many had been killed by nightfall that the mountains became hillocks, and the plain was soaked with the blood of the mighty.” He also said that nearly a million people had been killed in the city. We were horrified to hear of such brutal and evil massacres. The Mongols had managed to kill more people than the entire population of Greece. The town was also primarily Christian too, which struck us close to home. We were unable to sell anything to the few remaining citizens and we decided to donate some of our profits to them. We figured they would need it much more than us. We then continued on into the fairly new and strong Timurid dynasty of Persia. While passing through we noticed an extremely large amount of soldiers heading the opposite way as us. They stopped us and spoke with us. We were introduced to a man named Timur, who was the Emir of this new dynasty. He told us that he planned to conquer all of Central Asia including Merv. He was disgusted by the Mongols and wanted them out of his lands. He purchased some of our gunpowder, by force, but still paid a good price. We left him and then continued our journey on to Antioch.