The Kara-Kitai were one of the steppe people in Central Asia. In 1212 (as OTL), Shah Muhammad of Choresm defeated the Gur-Khan Kutluk and conquered the lands of the Kara-Kitai, to whom the Choresmians once had had to pay tribute. During the 1240s however, some Kara-Kitai tribes displaced by the Mongols defeated the eastern Kipchaks, crossed the lower Volga, attacked the area south of Don and Volga and destroyed the little country of the Alans, a leftover of the völkerwanderung. In 1246, Baibars, who became a Kipchak leader, defeated the Kara-Kitai, threw them back behind the Don.