Why didn't the mongols invade India?

[Archon of Thessaly]

Inspired by my other thread: about alexander the great continuing his invasion of India: https://www.alternatehistory.com/Discussion/showthread.php?t=253066

This question has perplexed me for some time now-why didn't the mongols, at their height around 1240-1270 AD invade the then disunited sultanates of India? On the face of it its a highly logical choice. Not only had one of the rulers of the Muslim sultanates backed an uprising by Jalal ad-Din ( the son of the last Khwarezmian shah) but they were also very wealthy and very dis-united, with a minority Muslim upper class trying to control the lower class Hindu population.

While the Hindu kush and the Indus river may have posed formidable natural barriers, the Mongols had already bypassed or crossed over mountain ranges and rivers on numerous occasions, often using them to surprise and trap their enemies ( battle of the yellow river or badgers pass being two good examples.)

The Indian armies may also have been formidable, but they hardly presented a united front, with moral and training among the peasant levies being low. When you consider that the mongols had already crushed the Chin or northern China who possessed a vast army of well trained troops, and annihilated the Arab army of the Khwarezmian empire which possessed elephants-these smaller armies shouldn't be too much of a threat.
A century later, Tamerlane showed this brutally when his army of horse archers, very slimier to mongol armies in composition and numbers, wiped out a force from Delhi sent to oppose him, including a large contingent of elephants ( who panicked when arrows were fired at them.)
100,000 Delhi inhabitants were massacred.

So why then, with all the resource and troops available too them, did the mongols, in particular under Ogedai, Mongoke and of course, Kublai Khan did they not decide too invade this highly lucrative prize? While the civil war between Ariq Bök and Kublai around 1260-1264 as well as the brief confrontation between
Chagatai, Güyük and Batu following Ogedai's death may well have distracted their attention from the area, not to mention their obsession of finishing the Song dynasty in Southern China. Yet this still fails to explain the lack of Mongol intervention on the subcontinent.

Is their something i'm missing or was their a deliberate purpose behind the mongols missing out India?
All ideas are welcome.

 

[SilverPhantom2]

This may help you.

 

[Archon of Thessaly]

This may help you.

Hmmmm good point, yet what i'm trying to say here is that it wasn't a major, concentrated effort to conquer them, rather a series of large raids into northern India and Kashmir. This is hardly on the scale of the Chinese conquests, or even the invasion of Vietnam! It's always struck me as unusual that Kublai Khan and Ogedai focused on Russia and Vietnam as opposed to the much closer and richer Sultanates right on their borders. After all, its pretty clear that these India sultanates were being a pain in the side for the mongols right from the beginning!

 

[amphibulous]

Hmmmm good point, yet what i'm trying to say here is that it wasn't a major, concentrated effort to conquer them, rather a series of large raids into northern India and Kashmir. This is hardly on the scale of the Chinese conquests, or even the invasion of Vietnam! It's always struck me as unusual that Kublai Khan and Ogedai focused on Russia and Vietnam as opposed to the much closer and richer Sultanates right on their borders. After all, its pretty clear that these India sultanates were being a pain in the side for the mongols right from the beginning!

The climate and terrain might not have suited horse archers as much as the Russian steppes, plus there's a disease barrier for pre-modern foreign military forces operating in India - strong local strains of cholera and malaria for a start.

 

[iori]

When you look at the geography you can see why their was never any real big push; to the North of Iida are the Himalaya's, which would be impassable to even a modern day army, to India's West is a large sparsely populated desert which can only be gotten to either through going South through another desert in Central Asia or by going through Western Persia and finally to India's East is vast jungle and an area beyond the Mongol's Southern most reach.

 

[Elfwine]

Plus the Mongols are rather busy trying to take China and thereabouts - "obsession" or not, it is taking up a lot of military resources. That and the difficulties of terrain involved are enough of a reason.

And nitpick, but the Khwarezmians were Turks, not Arabs.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

The problem of passing through Afganistan is a tough one. Not may armies have done that sucessfully. Alexander the Great had to marry the local kings ugliest daughters, others have done the same or bribed the Afganis. The really arrogant or over confident try to fight their way into Afganistan. That usually ends in tears.

 

[The Kiat]

India isn't the easiest place to invade from the land. You'd probably have to come in from the west, like the Mughals (not to be confused with the Moogles).

 

[Tongera]

Plus the Mongols are rather busy trying to take China and thereabouts - "obsession" or not, it is taking up a lot of military resources. That and the difficulties of terrain involved are enough of a reason.

And nitpick, but the Khwarezmians were Turks, not Arabs.

One nitpick: I think you mean Turkic instead.

Weren't Khwarezmians Persians instead (spoke a Persian group language, not actually Persian)?

 

[Riain]

The did, but not until 1526 when Babur the Timurid, who was a direct descendent of Ghengis Khan as Timur married into the family of Chagatai Khan, founded the Mughal Empire in India.

But I suppose as a question of semantics that doesn't count.

 

[thekingsguard]

The did, but not until 1526 when Babur the Timurid, who was a direct descendent of Ghengis Khan as Timur married into the family of Chagatai Khan, founded the Mughal Empire in India.

But I suppose as a question of semantics that doesn't count.

What did make Babur's invasion so different, OOC?

 

[Tangerine]

One nitpick: I think you mean Turkic instead.

Weren't Khwarezmians Persians instead (spoke a Persian group language, not actually Persian)?

I believe the Khwarezmshahs were Persianate Turks - much like the Seljuks and other contemporary dynasties in Central Asia and Iran.

 

[Elfwine]

I believe the Khwarezmshahs were Persianate Turks - much like the Seljuks and other contemporary dynasties in Central Asia and Iran.

This, I think. The Khwarezmians in the sense of them as a distinct people might be something else, but in the sense of the polity of the Khwarezmshahs, it's a Turkish/Turkic state - Persianate Turkish maybe, but they're the dominant (by numbers) group.

 

[Russian]

What did make Babur's invasion so different, OOC?

Yes, you are right. Babur proved that the Mongols were able to invade and conquer India.

My guess is the Mongols wanted to conquer the whole world. That was their idealogy. But they couldn't do it at once. So they were forced to choose where to start conquering and which places had to be left to be conquered a little bit later.

So our question is not why the Mongols missed out India. The question is - why they decided to conquer India later.
I don't know why. Maybe there were a lot of different reasons put together some of which were in the above posts of this thread (geographical, byological and others).

The Subhuday march to the west (and back) showed that conquest of Persia and asian steppes to Rus including was definitely doable. China had to be conquered as the richest region of the world and it was dangerous to leave some part of it unconquered. So Chengiz Khan made a decision to start from there and left everything else for later.

You see even Babur went to conquer India out of despair - he failed to get and hold his ancestorial lands in Central Asia and was pushed away from there by the Uzbeks. I do not know why it seems that India did not attract the Mongols too much...

While the civil war between Ariq Bök and Kublai around 1260-1264 as well as the brief confrontation between
Chagatai, Güyük and Batu following Ogedai's death may well have distracted their attention from the area, not to mention their obsession of finishing the Song dynasty in Southern China

Yep. After some time the Mongols started squabbling among themselves and it was late to take India. As it was late to take Mamluk Egypt as well.
Lucky bastards!

 

[Flocculencio]

Yes, you are right. Babur proved that the Mongols were able to invade and conquer India.

You see even Babur went to conquer India out of despair - he failed to get and hold his ancestorial lands in Central Asia and was pushed away from there by the Uzbeks. I do not know why it seems that India did not attract the Mongols too much...


Yep. After some time the Mongols started squabbling among themselves and it was late to take India. As it was late to take Mamluk Egypt as well.
Lucky bastards!

India isn't good horse country. IIRC some Mongol expeditions did head down into the Indian lowlands but returned with discouraging news of the terrain with a general lack of sufficient grazing and a tendency for the horses to sicken.

When Babur marched on Delhi he didn't do it with a Mongol style nomad cavalry army but with a Persian style combined arms one.

 

[Flocculencio]

What did make Babur's invasion so different, OOC?

He was Mongol in name only. As I said in the previous post he wasn't using a mongol style invasion force. Calling him a Mongol is like calling Prince William German- technically true but irrelevant to any real world situation.

Timur, admittedly did manage to sack Delhi but again, his troops would have been much more used to the climate and in any case that was just a smash and run looting campaign.

 

[Russian]

India isn't good horse country. IIRC some Mongol expeditions did head down into the Indian lowlands but returned with discouraging news of the terrain with a general lack of sufficient grazing and a tendency for the horses to sicken.

Horses had been widely used in India for a few thousand years when the Mongols came.
I think it is not about a tendency for the Mongol horses to sicken. It is about a tendency for the Mongol horses and for the Mongols themselves to sicken.
Mongolia has one of the worst climatic conditions on Earth. Most of the country is hot in the summer and extremely cold in the winter, with January averages dropping as low as −30 °C (−22 °F), it has deserts and mountains. Which makes the Mongols resistant to almost any climate exept for the tropical and subtropical one.
Russian frosts did not surprise the Mongols at all, they saw them at home. But Indian rains might influence them badly.

IIRC the Macedonians of Alexander the Great refused to go to India further for following reasons:
1) the weather sucks
2) the Indians are too numerous and warlike

I think point #1 might apply to the Mongol invasion.
*Hm, point #2 might apply as well.

 

[Russian]

He (Babur) was Mongol in name only... Calling him a Mongol is like calling Prince William German- technically true but irrelevant to any real world situation.

The issue abour ethnicity or nationality is extremely difficalt even nowadays. What is most essential for ethnicity? Genetics, race? Language? Religion? Customs, habits? What else?
It was even more complicated for steppe nomads and especially so for the victorious conquerors such as the Mongols.

For example, there was a place called Moghulistan (or Mughalistan) which simply means "Land of the Mongols", during Babur's time. But it was not in today's Mongolia.
Mongols and their subordinates who settled in what came to be known as Moghulistan were in origin the steppe nomads from Mongolia.Because of this, they were much more resistant to changing their way of life; they retained their primarily nomadic lifestyle for several centuries and were among the last of the Mongols that converted to Islam to do so.

Babur considered himself to be a Mongol, the Mongols considered him to be a Mongol, non-Mongols called him a Mongol. Which pretty sure makes him a Mongol in my opinion.
Of course he differed A LOT from Chengiz Khan and his dirty stinky Mongol warriors, but that was inevitable for the great-great-great...-children of the world conquerors.

When Babur marched on Delhi he didn't do it with a Mongol style nomad cavalry army but with a Persian style combined arms one.

As a matter of fact Babur had the Mongols from Moghulistan as his crack troops which constituted the core of his invasion force and it was them who won him the victory.
And the Mongolian armies of the immediate successors of Chengiz Khan had what you call "combined arms" which was one of the keys to their tremendous success. For example contingents from Rus took part in Mongolian conquest of China and in other parts of the Empire.
So the Babur's army was not too different from traditional Mongol armies of the times of their glorious days.

 

[Badshah]

Aladdin Khilji did manage to defeat them. And this was the zenith of the Delhi Sultanate, remember. by the time Babur came, it had cracked into little pieces and was generally open to invasion.

 

[Falecius]

I believe the Khwarezmshahs were Persianate Turks - much like the Seljuks and other contemporary dynasties in Central Asia and Iran.

Basically this to my knowledge. The names of the rulers I know of look distinctly like mixed of Turkic and Persian, and the area of Khwarezm was likely heavily Turkified by that point, but the written high culture was largely Persian (provided that Islamic Persian culture was a mixed thing from its start to begin with).