I Am The Punishment Of God

This saying is recorded by the Persian historian ʿAlā al-Dīn ʿAṭā-Malik Juvaynī in his Tārīkh-i Jahān-gushā (History of the World Conqueror, c. 1252–1260), describing Genghis Khan's speech at the Friday mosque of Bukhara after his forces took the city in 1220. Juvaynī, writing roughly 30 years after the event, presents Chinggis as framing the Mongol conquest as divine punishment for the sins of the Muslim population — a framing consistent with the Mongol concept of ruling by divine mandate of the Eternal Blue Sky (Tengri). The siege of Bukhara was one of the most consequential of the western campaigns, effectively ending the Khwarazmian Empire.