THE MONGOL WOMAN WARRIOR AT MARAGHA, 1221
Ibn al-Athir is one of our key sources on the Mongol invasion of the Khwarezmian Empire. Writing in the 1220s in Mosul, northern Iraq, he was not an eyewitness to the invasion, but was a contemporary who received almost daily reports of Mongol movements and all manner of rumours.
He reports for us a short tale of a Mongol woman who partook in the sack of Maragha in 1221:
"I was told that a Tatar woman entered a house and killed several of its inhabitants, who thought that she was a man. She put down her arms and armour and - there was a woman! A man whom she had taken prisoner killed her." (Ibn al-Athir/D.S. Richards, vol. III, pg. 378.
We have no other clues to the identity of this woman, or if this is anything more than a rumour. A few things broadly support it though;
1) evidently, this woman was so well-armoured that it covered most of her body. Maragha was sacked by Jebe and Subedei; Jebe is in other sources like Zhao Gong (writing around 1221, almost exactly contemporary to the event) noted as "supervising Chinggis' heaviest troops," and was often left in charge of the heavily-armoured vanguard (manglai).
2) In general, the sources note that well-armoured Mongols were the wealthier parts of the army. When Mongol women are noted taking part in combat in some form in these sources, they are almost all Chinggisid princesses and other high-ranking women (Qutulun of course being the most famous example). It seems a privilege allowed to elite women, and it would support her also affording good equipment that almost entirely covered her.
Are we any closer to identifying her? No. If the story is even true (which it might not be!), we might suspect this was a woman of some relative status; not high enough that she would be reported as missing in a chronicle like Juvaini's, but perhaps a daughter of some Noyan who accompanied Jebe in his pursuit of Muhammad Khwarezmshah? As the Mongols would say, only Tengri knows.
I talk about Mongol heavy cavalry in the war against Khwarezm in my latest video:
