1220 · Bukhara
Genghis Khan at Bukhara
The setting
After the Khwarazmian governor of Otrar massacred a Mongol trade caravan and the shah had one of his envoys put to death, Genghis Khan invaded the Khwarazmian Empire in 1219. When Bukhara surrendered early in 1220 he rode into the city, and according to the Persian historian Juvayni he summoned its leading men to the festival prayer ground and addressed them from the pulpit.
Key passage
I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.
Ata-Malik Juvayni, History of the World Conqueror (c. 1260), translated here. Juvayni served the Mongols and wrote some forty years after the event.
What followed
Bukhara was plundered and burned, and Samarkand fell weeks later. The shah fled and died on an island in the Caspian Sea, and in 1221 Mongol armies destroyed the great cities of Khorasan, among them Merv and Nishapur. Central Asia and Iran passed under Mongol rule, which in Iran became the Ilkhanate.