diff --git a/docs/source/changelog.rst b/docs/source/changelog.rst
index 44157c7..4e511e0 100644
--- a/docs/source/changelog.rst
+++ b/docs/source/changelog.rst
@@ -2,6 +2,12 @@
 Changelog
 =========
 
+v1.2.4 (2015-05-21)
+-------------------
+* Don't crash when the ``query_params`` kwarg is omitted from calls to
+  ``send_request()``.
+
+
 v1.2.3 (2015-04-17)
 -------------------
 * Make ``delete_all_indexes()`` work.
diff --git a/pyelasticsearch/__init__.py b/pyelasticsearch/__init__.py
index 7a7b606..da69515 100644
--- a/pyelasticsearch/__init__.py
+++ b/pyelasticsearch/__init__.py
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@
 __all__ = ['ElasticSearch', 'ElasticHttpError', 'Timeout', 'ConnectionError',
            'ElasticHttpNotFoundError', 'IndexAlreadyExistsError', 'BulkError',
            'InvalidJsonResponseError', 'bulk_chunks']
-__version__ = '1.2.3'
+__version__ = '1.2.4'
 __version_info__ = tuple(__version__.split('.'))
 
 get_version = lambda: __version_info__
diff --git a/pyelasticsearch/client.py b/pyelasticsearch/client.py
index 6fdc522..82d736b 100644
--- a/pyelasticsearch/client.py
+++ b/pyelasticsearch/client.py
@@ -234,6 +234,8 @@ def send_request(self,
         :arg query_params: A map of querystring param names to values or
             ``None``
         """
+        if query_params is None:
+            query_params = {}
         path = self._join_path(path_components)
 
         # We wrap to use pyelasticsearch's exception hierarchy for backward
diff --git a/pyelasticsearch/tests/client_tests.py b/pyelasticsearch/tests/client_tests.py
index d6e57f5..9a744ec 100644
--- a/pyelasticsearch/tests/client_tests.py
+++ b/pyelasticsearch/tests/client_tests.py
@@ -390,6 +390,11 @@ def test_percolate(self):
         result = self.conn.percolate('test-index', 'test-type', document)
         self.assert_result_contains(result, {'matches': []})
 
+    def test_send_request_without_query_params(self):
+        """Demonstrate that omitting the query_params kwarg to send_request
+        doesn't try to call iteritems() on None."""
+        self.conn.send_request('GET', [])
+
 
 class SearchTestCase(ElasticSearchTestCase):
     def setUp(self):