How Barbaric were the Barbarians? The Mongols were a barbaric peoples that reigned with cruelty. They displayed their barbaric tendencies showed through in their invasion and destruction of Nishapur, Persia, their methods of execution, and their rules. Throughout all these events and topics, the Mongols show an extreme level of cruelty, shown by no other before them. During their invasion in Nishapur, Persia, they killed many and left the city in a pile of rubble. Before the Mongols were able to get into the city, the people of Nishapur put up a fight (Document 4). They lined the wall with three thousand crossbows and had other lines of defense including hundreds of mangonels and ballistas (Document 4). They tried their best to hold off the army of Mongols, but they weren’t able to. The Mongols got to the wall and wasted no time to get into the city. Once they were in, they drove all of the people out on the the plains to be executed (Document 4). They raided the town so nothing remained. Not even dogs and cats were allowed to live (Document 4). The people on the plains were later killed by decapitation and piled up. The total destruction of the city of Nishapur and its inhabitants shows that they had no mercy on those whom they killed and didn’t blink an eye at the idea of flattening a town so it no longer remained standing. An act to this magnitude shows how barbaric the barbarians actually were. …show more content…
They had many other methods as well. One method they used was burying people alive (Document 5). The Mongols buried just the prisoners’ heads under the earth so they couldn’t breathe, but they could watch them struggle. Another way was tying a the prisoner to a tree to act like a target (Document 5). Once he or she was fastened securely, the Mongolian army shot arrows at them until they killed them (Document 5). These methods of murder further display how cruel the Mongols