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Juvaini believed that the arrival of the Jebe and his Mongols in the realm of the Khara Khitai was an act of Divine Providence:  God Almighty, in order to remove the evilness of Küchlüg [Khüchüleg], in a short space dispatched the Mongol army against him; and already in this world he tasted the punishment of his foul and wicked deeds and his ill-omened life; and in the hereafter the torments of hellfire. Ill be his rest!   Chingis Khan may have been acting out of more down-to-earth considerations. Khüchüleg had earlier escaped from the Mongols at both the battles at Tuleet Uul and on the Upper Irtysh and this must have rankled. Then he had gathered under his own banner all the disaffected tribesmen who had fled the Mongolian Plateau, thus posing a threat to the Uighurs and others at the western end of Chingis’s own domains. Perhaps the Naiman adventurer even had his sights set on some day leading his assembled forces back to Mongolia and challenging Chingis Khan on his home tu...

The Gür Khan, whatever his personal failings, had enjoyed during most of his reign the popular acclaim of many the people in his realm. Not until his army under Tayangu was defeated in the autumn of 1210 and many of his disheartened troops went on a looting spree did the Gür Khan’s subjects turn on him. Khüchüleg was cut from different cloth. Although he entertained pretensions of ruling the old Khara Khitai Empire he was basically a freebooter who was more interested in loot and plunder than the day-to-day administration of a functioning society. A nomad from the steppes of Mongolia, he was particularly insensitive to the needs of the sedentary peoples which he now at least nominally ruled. And not of all the local chieftains who were loyal to the Gür were ready to bow down to the Naiman marauder.  Trouble started first at Almaliq, near the current-day city of Ili in the Valley Of The Ili River , the source of which is deep in the Tian Shan to the east. The Ili River was the easte...