The population was divided into sections

Last night I was reading Storm from the East: from Genghis Khan to Khubilai Khan by Robert Marshall.  The barbarity of the Mongols is well established but poorly comprehended.  20-40 million killed, perhaps 10% of the global population.  And the casual quotidian cruelty - populations slaughtered, women mass raped, survivors sold into slavery.  

Everyone was touched by the barbarism, even Genghis Khan.  When considering the succession in his older age, 

Despite his obvious qualities as a general the eldest son, Jochi, was ruled out because of doubts about his paternity. His mother, Borte, had given birth to him after being rescued from the Merkids, who had captured and raped her soon after her marriage to the young Genghis. 

But the Mongols made barbarism a strategic asset, a force multiplier.  The fate of Bukhara was used to conquer Samarqand.  

However, the majority of the population had been allowed to escape, to roam the countryside and seek refuge where they could, and take with them terrible accounts of the fate of Bukhara. The object was to terrify and demoralize the inhabitants of Samarqand, the Khwarazm Shah’s capital. When Genghis approached that city he forced prisoners from Bukhara to march ahead, which swelled the ranks of his army and, of course, provided shields against the enemy’s arrows. Samarqand was expected to hold out for a year; it capitulated after five days. Neither Genghis Khan nor any of his army had ever seen anything quite like it. They roamed the streets and avenues, drinking at the fountains and gorging themselves on the exotic fruits and sherbets. The Turkish garrison, all 30000, were put to the sword. The population was divided into sections; women were set apart to be raped and then sent off as slaves; the clerics were all spared; while the entire population of craftsmen and artisans were also transported to the Mongol homeland where they would be employed at Genghis’s court.

All brought to mind today by Stone Age Abduction, 1888 by Paul Joseph Jamin (France, 1853-1903).

Click to enlarge.

We take our progress so for granted that I think we fail to grasp that we are only some couple of hundred years away from a world where the behaviors of the Mongols were closer to the norm than unimagineable exception as we fancy them to be today.  The stakes are existential and we indulge foolish fancies.  

Brings to mind the Robert Heinlein quote in Time Enough for Love.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck."