In A.H. 596 (1200) Tekish died, and was succeeded by his famous son, `Alā ud-Dīn Mohammad, who soon made himself master of Khorāsān, Balkh, Herāt, Māzenderan, and Kirmān.[342] He now considered himself sufficiently powerful to assert his independence of the Gūr-Khān, to whom, like his three predecessors, he had paid an annual tribute. He was encouraged to resist his liege lord by `Othmān, prince of Samarkand and Transoxiana, who was also a vassal of the Gūr-Khān, who promised to pay him the same allegiance as he had rendered to the Kara-Khitāys in return for his assistance against the common enemy.[343] An occasion for the rupture of friendly relations between the Khwārazm-Shāh and the Gūr-Khān was soon found. It was identical with the method employed by Tekish,--the slaughter of one of the receivers of tribute.[344] After perpetrating this outrage, Mohammad entered the Kara-Khitāy territory, A.H. 605 (1208), where he suffered a crushing defeat and barely escaped capture.[345] In the following year Mohammad made a second incursion into the land of the Kara-Khitāy. Crossing the Jaxartes at Fināket, he gained a signal success over their general, Tanigū, beyond Tarāz, pushed his conquests as far as Otrār[346] (Fārāb), and returned in triumph to Khwārazm. But the tangled knot of Central Asian politics was soon to be cut by a conqueror whose annals are as devoid of complexity as his career. In the place of paltry struggles for supremacy in isolated states, attended by obscure and ever-changing fortunes, we have the triumphant advance of one who, like Alexander of Macedon, was destined to give a new impulse to the world’s history. CHAPTER XXI CHINGIZ KHĀN It is not within the scope of the present work to trace in any detail the meteor-like path of Chingiz; for we are concerned with it only in so far as it affected the internal affairs of Central Asia. His career has exercised a peculiar fascination for students of Oriental history, though by no means all the available evidence has yet been marshalled in elucidation of the controversies which still rage round that mighty name.[347]