[laishly]

The great Khan was the guy who broke the back of the muslim empire, a catastrophe from which it has never recovered. The muslim wackos like OBL seem to blame western European civilization. The truth is that, as Khan was edging into the middle east, he sent a party of emissaries to a muslim capitol. They slaughtered them and sent their heads back to Khan. With that Khan proceeded to butcher everyone in the city and in the ensuing years methodically went from city to city in the middle east totally destroying muslim culture and civilization. It was probably the most devastating calamity to ever happen to a major civilization, something on the order of what happened to the Incas.

[combat_boots]

True. And it was Genghis Khan, the Chinese King, who burned the library at Alexandria, Egypt, detroying all those ancient documents.

[Seydlitz]

The Muslim world had already fractured into smaller states by the time the Mongols hit. Your story about the decapitation of the Mongol emissaries is true, but it was done by one of the smaller Muslim states, Khwarezm, in central Asia.