Use the passage and image below to answer all parts of the question that follows. Document A
Ibn al-Athir, Arab historian, On the Tatars (Mongols), 1220-1221 CE
For some years I continued averse from mentioning this event, deeming it so horrible that I
shrank from recording it and ever withdrawing one foot as I advanced the other. To whom,
indeed, can it be easy to write the announcement of the deathblow of Islam and the Muslims, or
who is he on whom the remembrance thereof can weigh lightly? O would that my mother had
not born me or that I had died and become a forgotten thing ere this befell! Yet, withal several
my friends urged me to set it down in writing, and I hesitated long, but at last concluded that to
omit this matter could serve no useful purpose. I say, therefore, that this thing involves the
description of the greatest catastrophe and the direst calamity (of the like of which days and
nights are innocent) which befell all men and the Muslims in particular; so that, should one say
that the world, since God Almighty created Adam until now, has not been afflicted with the like
thereof, he would but speak the truth. For indeed history does not contain anything which
approaches or comes near unto it...For even Antichrist will spare such as follow him, though he
destroys those who oppose him, but these Tatars (Mongols) spared none, slaying women, men,
and children, ripping open pregnant women, and killing unborn babes. Verily to God do we
belong, and unto Him do we return, and there is no strength and no power save in God, the High,
the Almighty, in face of this catastrophe, whereof the sparks flew everywhere, and the hurt was
universal; and which passed over the lands like clouds driven by the wind.