I image that these would go hand in hand because the without the mongols the timur would not be in Persian so the midal east would avoid both sets of invasions by avoiding the first.Persia probably wasnt that devestated by the Mongols.
Juvayni, our primary source on the devestation caused by the Mongols, is something of a poor source. Not only was he directly in the employ of the Mongol court (which literally liked to emphasise numbers as a fear tactic), but he has built a reputation over the years for just how much he exaggerated. I.e. in the cases of both Urgench and Baghdad, he gave greater numbers of people killed than lived in each city. Contemporary sources actually talk about how bustling a city Urgench was shortly after its depopulation.
The true devestation happened under Timur rather than the mongols specifically.
I would assume that Persia could maintain good relations with the Turks becusee if wikipedia is to be believed it says there ruling house was of Turkish & mamluk origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khwarazmian_dynasty also based on the land controlled by Persia at the time leaving very little for a mongal rout to India (although not impossible)Well, if you are contemplating no invasion of Persia (properly speaking, Khwarezmia at that point in time) - followed by Mesopotamia and points west by the Mongols - it does open up the question as where and how all that potential energy in the Mongol engine becomes kinetic. Much more of Europe? A wave of conquest springing down into India?
My slender guess is that even if the Mongols for some reason do not strike, within a few decades another Turkic federation is going to sweep over Persia. It really is their era.
I would assume they do better because of the middle east (particularly mountainous Persia and Afghanistan) are ill-suited for horse heavy warfare because of poor grazing land but eastern Europe is perfect until you start hitting the Hungarian Carpathian mountains, German forests and of course the castles found more commonly in central and western Europe because the mongal way of warfare is ill-suited for siege warfare which is why their expansion west should come to a halt after shortly after contact with the HRE.I don’t know if they necessarily have to do better in other areas if they don’t conquer khwarezm. It’s possible that the mongols would go down in history as a successful steppe empire limited to the steppe and parts of northern China. This instead of the giant that they were IOTL.
I would assume they do better because of the middle east (particularly mountainous Persia and Afghanistan) are ill-suited for horse heavy warfare because of poor grazing land but eastern Europe is perfect until you start hitting the Hungarian Carpathian mountains, German forests and of course the castles found more commonly in central and western Europe because the mongal way of warfare is ill-suited for siege warfare which is why their expansion west should come to a halt after shortly after contact with the HRE.
if you look at the map above you may notice that poor land qualities (7,8,9) are blurred out. according to national geographic, these "Deserts and xeric, or dry, shrublands rarely receive more than 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rainfall annually. These bone-dry ecosystems have an abundance of life and are characterized by" flatlands, rolling sand dunes, and cactus forests.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/desert-map/An argument could be made that they’d do the same, but I don’t see what effects no conquest of khwarezm would have on them doing any better. IOTL, they did raid into Hungary and Poland, and prolonged the instability within Poland (they were a major reason that the Germans were able to settle in Silesia and Pomerania).
I concede that they could have done better in Europe in such a scenario, but I don’t see it as a given (I don’t buy the pendulum theory). Just because they don’t conquer Khwarezm doesn’t mean they will automatically be inclined to do better elsewhere, even where opportunities are open to them.
I’m also skeptical of the applicability of your map, because it talks of soil performance and resilience. Some of the places where steppe empires are most famous for coming from, including Mongolia itself, are conspicuously lacking in this “soil performance and/or resilience”. Land quality for agriculture doesn’t translate to land quality for nomadic empire building.
if you look at the map above you may notice that poor land qualities (7,8,9) are blurred out. according to national geographic, these "Deserts and xeric, or dry, shrublands rarely receive more than 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rainfall annually. These bone-dry ecosystems have an abundance of life and are characterized by" flatlands, rolling sand dunes, and cactus forests.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/desert-map/
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here are a few of the issues the region has to deal with starting with most of Mongolia
mountains (Altai is a small division of the wider range) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altai_Mountains
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and desert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobi_Desert
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central asia south
desert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakum_Desert
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central Asia north
mostly desert and semi-arid (but the northern is ok like in the national geographic map) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Kazakhstan
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fallowing this little strip of ok land west is probably how many of these nomadic tribes that got into Europe started.
Really, if you look at a map of where the steppe is, you’ll see that most of it is in Central Asia, Mongolia, and what’s now southern Russia, which corresponds very well with where the greatest steppe peoples (mongols, Turks, khazars, cumans, xiongnu) based themselves. Granted, some of Europe is suitable for horse grazing and usage (Pannonian plain), but most of Europe isn’t. In fact, your agricultural map is almost inverted compared to where the steppes (good grazing/cavalry land) actually is. Note that the Middle East, India, and China proper are all not steppe, nor well suited for cavalry.
Regardless, this still doesn’t explain why the Mongols would do better in Europe because they didn’t invade Khwarezm. Yes, they did well in Europe IOTL due to geographic and political factors in Eastern Europe. Yes, there were opportunities where they could do better. But they don’t have to do better. What if Genghis is butterflies to death during an invasion of the Rus’? What if other countries are swayed by Khwarezm’s example to make peace with the Mongols? What if the Hungarians and Polish are butterflied to perform similarly to or better than OTL in battling the Mongols (maybe some Persian contingent of the army IOTL isn’t there ITTL)? Those are only a few scenarios where Khwarezm survives where the mongols don’t do any better in Europe than IOTL.
I would assume they do better because of the middle east (particularly mountainous Persia and Afghanistan) are ill-suited for horse heavy warfare because of poor grazing land
but eastern Europe is perfect until you start hitting the Hungarian Carpathian mountains,
German forests and of course the castles found more commonly in central and western Europe because the mongal way of warfare is ill-suited for siege warfare which is why their expansion west should come to a halt after shortly after contact with the HRE.
Which did not prevent these areas from being captured by the Mongols.
Err... did you hear about Hungarian Plain? BTW, a big part of the Eastern Europe in the XIII was hardly "perfect" being a heavily forested area with the numerous rivers and marshes. Carpathian mountains are a joke comparing to the mountain areas in which the Mongols had been successfully fighting (you can start with the Caucasus Mountains and go Eastward all the way to Pamirs and Tibet). In OTL the Mongols settled in the South-Eastern part of the Eastern Europe (Volga-Don steppes). Which did not mean that they did not conquer the forested area as well.
Speaking of the forests, taiga of the Southern Siberia - conquered, forests of the Central Russia - conquered. As for the castles, this is an old spiel which belongs to the same category as the Mongolian bows falling apart in Western Europe. In other words, mostly legend. In the area of siege warfare the Mongols had been well ahead of anything available at that time in Europe and the castles of the Western Europe would not be a major issue (most of them would be simply ignored due to a simple irrelevance and inability to project any significant force beyond the neighboring village). Anyway, fortifications of the Western Europe circa XIII century were not as impressive as those of the major towns of China.
Of course, the Mongols would not settle in the areas outside steppe belt (as they did not in Russia) but they could raid Western Europe much deeper than in OTL and even establish the sovereign-vassal schema as they did in Russia, Georgia, Armenia Minor, etc. The reasons why they did not had been political and absence of conquest of Persia would have little to do with it: at least conquest of Iran and of the leftovers of Seljuk Sultanate happened after the Western campaign.
I was only aware of Mongolian siege equipment in the beginning of the black death with plague victims and animals being fired over genoise merchant city walls which was used as you describe for the psychological effects and in a way it was early biological warfare but I assumed it was more limited in its usage as I had only heard of it in that instance. However, I was unaware the Mongols employed them like a semi-regular thing as you were saying thanks for the insightJust a quick note:
It's a bit of a popular misconception to identify the Mongol war engine as nearly exclusively light and heavy cavalry. They actually had a substantive and effective artillery corps for sieges, (and in some cases, battlefields) and were quite capable of fighting dismounted - think of them as being at times like dragoons. In essence, they were a distinctive state of the art force, able to deal with heavy fortifications and rugged terrain. (Not to mention being masters of psychological warfare).
The only significant qualifier would be their keen analysis of cost/benefit. Certainly Europe to the Rhine and Danube is very doable, and perhaps the Balkan peninsula as well. Past that, lots of exigences.