MUHAMMAD II KHWAREZM-SHAH
'Ala al-Din Muhammad ibn Tekish was the penultimate ruler of the Khwarezmian Empire from 1200-1220. In the opinion of contemporaries like Ibn al-Athir, he was the most powerful Islamic monarch since the collapse of the Great Seljuqs, ruling a realm stretching from the Caucasus, today's Iran across Central Asia to the Syr Darya River. His armies were vast; Juzjani speaks of him (allegedly) raising 400,000 men and horse "arrayed in defensive armour," to send against Qara-Khitai (Juzjani/Ravery vol. 1, pg. 262-263). He greatly expanded the Khwarezmian realm, absorbing much of the lands of his dynasty's long-time rivals, the Qara-Khitai and the Ghurids. At the height of his confidence, he even marched on Baghdad itself, though a vicious winter storm while crossing the Zagros Mountains brought an end to that campaign. This did not stop his from styling himself "the Second Alexander [the Great]."
Of course, pride cometh before the fall. Muhammad II in many ways embodied all the characteristics of Anushteginid Dynasty of Khwarezm; an intelligence, well learned man, yet scheming, paranoid, cruel and expansionistic. The fact that in 1212 he carried out his own massacre of the population of Samarkand is often forgotten. He struggled to control his Qipchaq-Qangli relations, who formed not only an important military element of the empire, but an elite within it. He often feuded with his mother, Terken Khatun, and the actions of his uncle Inalchuq at Otrar to a group of merchants sent by Chinggis Khan —the infamous Otrar Massacre in 1218— forced Muhammad, reluctantly or otherwise, into war with the Mongol Empire. By the end of 1220 Muhammad was dead on a island in the Caspian Sea, his empire overrun by the Mongols.
I talk about Mongol heavy cavalry in the war against Khwarezm in my latest video:
