Terken Khatun

Terken Khatun was a Qipchaq princess — a khan's daughter of the Qangli tribe in the Arabic article, of the Qangli or the Bayandur tribe of the Kimek in the English article — who married Sultan Ala al-Din Tekish and became empress of the Khwarazmian Empire and mother of Ala al-Din Muhammad II.¹² No source read fixes her birth year: some lists give 1155, while Wikidata carries 1150 and 1151.³

After her marriage she placed her relatives and close associates throughout the administration and the army, so that every region conquered by her husband or her son was assigned to one of her trusted people and she effectively controlled the whole territory of the Khwarazmshahs.² She bore the laqab Khudavand-e Jahan, "Ruler of the World", and her decrees ran under the seal "Ismat al-Dunya wa'l-Din, Ulug Turkan, Malikat Nisa al-Alamin" — Protector of Peace and Faith, Turkan the Great, Ruler of the Women of Both Worlds.² She kept her own diwan, palace, territories, vizier and guard commander, and the sultan's orders were not effective without her signature, in rewards and punishments alike.²

After Tekish's death in 1200 she dominated the court of her son Muhammad II — one historian has termed their relationship an "uneasy diarchy", often to Muhammad's disadvantage.² She quarrelled bitterly with his heir Jalal al-Din, a son by another wife, and worked instead to advance Uzlaq, a son she had raised herself, as crown prince; her extensive political interference is counted among the reasons for the Khwarazmian Empire's collapse before the Mongols.²

When the Mongols invaded, she left the capital Gurganj with the royal treasures before the city fell and took refuge in a fortress in Larijan; the Mongols besieged it at the start of 617 AH and it surrendered for lack of water, after which she was sent to Genghis Khan at Talqan in Khurasan and exiled to the Qara Qorum desert, remaining in captivity until her death in 630 AH, corresponding to 1233.¹³