The
last time we gathered in the Cave of the Moonbat, your resident historiorantologist made dark hints (and a few overt references) to a storm gathering on the steppes far to the east of the Caliph in Baghdad. For a century and a half, the Muslims had been swatting various crusader armies that would occasionally show up in the Holy Land, but this time the threat was far greater than any piecemeal assault from Europe. Soon Islam would be fighting for its very existence.
Tonight, the Mongol horde arrives on the scene, setting the stage for a clash of medieval superpowers at one of those battles (like Tenochtitlan in 1521) that many historians would list among the 10 Most Influential in History, but about which (like Talas in 751) most of us were not obligated to learn much (if anything) about in high school. Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat - I'd like to tell you about a little patch of desert called Ain Jalut, the Spring of Goliath...
The story of the Mongols begins at the end of the 12th century, when a particularly talented warlord named Temujin started finding ways of uniting the different nomadic clans on the Mongolian steppe. Some he incorporated through shrewd alliance and clever trade, some through marriage arrangements, some with brute force. By 1206, he had united around 200,000 people under his banner; around 70,000 of these - about a third of the entire population - were in Temujin's army when he began his wars of conquest against the Chinese state of Western Xia.
Those familiar (from earlier historiorants) with the process of Moonbatification know that I tend to ramble - for both good and ill, it's a trait shared by many in the historical trades. Tonight, however, I'm resolved to being good. And to that end, let me just walk over to this-here Guardian of Forever......in the back of the Cave of the Moonbat, hit the fast-forward button, and off we go! (FF): We'll zip past...
...Temujin's early years, and the outrageously harsh life of a steppe nomad
...The time his daughter got married and he brings leather and furs for gifts
...When he attacked a nearby kingdom so he could pillage some better presents
...How he warred with the Jurchen of Manchuria
...The fall of Yanjing (Beijing), capitol of the Jin Dynasty, in 1215
(stop)...okay, I have to pause for a second to mention the first interactions between the Muslims and the Mongols, because this is where they occur. We'll resume fast- forwarding in just a second.
A Couple of Ways to Piss Someone Off, Diplomatically Speaking
By 1218, Temujin (the title Genghis - "Great Khan" - was awarded posthumously, as was credit for founding the Yuan Dynasty in China) owned about half of modern China, Mongolia, and Central Asia as far west as Lake Balkhash and the Caspian Sea. He wanted to expand his influence into Persia, and like many diplomats, he thought trade would be the best way to do it. He'd heard the Muslims were literate and civilized, so he sent a massive, 500-man trade caravan toward the city of Otrar, which was controlled by the Kwarezmians, a Turkic (or possibly ethnic Iranian) Islamic group then running things in Persia.
The governor of Otrar, a guy named Inalchuq, had several options open to him: He could tell the Mongols that the Persians already had all the silk and porcelain they needed and ask them to leave, knowing that they might eventually come back and insist on making him a deal he couldn't refuse. He could open Persia's doors and listen to what the emissaries had to say, but he'd heard rumors of Mongol tricks and thought he might be looking at a Trojan-horse scenario. Finally, he could just slaughter the whole lot and steal everything the camels were carrying, then hope the show of force would cow the Mongols into avoiding the Kwarezmians. A man after our Preznit's own heart, Inalchuq chose option #3.
Even after the massacre of his caravan (some sources report that the caravan was simply seized and only two merchants killed) and the Shah's refusal to pay restitution or extradite the governor, Temujin tried to play nice. He sent another group of ambassadors to see the Shah; of these, only one returned to the Khan with his head still atop his neck. He'd been left alive so that he could pass the warning on to the Mongols: If you come unarmed into the cities of the Kwarezmians under a flag of truce, they'll kill you. When he next came to Persia, Temujin did not come under a flag of truce.
Crossing mountainous and desert terrain that the Kwarezmians mistakenly thought would protect them, the Mongols swept through south-central Asia and onto the Iranian Plateau. The Shah, Ala ad-Din Muhammad, turned out to be a coward, but it didn't really matter: his army, already scattered and divided by intertribal rivalries, was no match for the highly organized tactics of the Mongols. According to legend, Temujin ordered a river diverted so as to obliterate the birthplace of the Shah who had insulted him, but he came up with something even better for Inalchuq, the governor whose arrogance had brought this fate down upon his people: molten silver was poured into his mouth and eyes.
Taking Advantage of History's Tivo Feature, Part II
(FF)...so that's how the Mongols first meet up with Islam. Lemme hit fast-forward again, and we'll move past...
...how part of his army conquered southern Russia and burned Kiev
...his sensible decision to put off attacking Baghdad in favor of consolidation
...how he used his considerable organizational skills to set up a dynastic empire
...Temujin's death in 1227
...the ascension of his son, Ogadai, to the throne
...the subjugation of Russia and Korea
...attacks into Europe that brought Poland and Hungary to their knees
...the death of Ogadai (1241) just as the hordes were marching on Vienna
...how Mongke Khan, grandson of Genghis/Temujin, came to power in 1251
(stop)...ah, here we are - the early 1250's. At the same time that the future St. Louis was messing around in the politics of the Christian Palestinian barons, Mongke Khan was instructing his brother, Hulagu, to prepare the largest army the Mongols would ever field. By 1255, he was ready to march into what's now Iraq with somewhere in the neighborhood of 120,000 of his closest pony-riding, bow-shooting buddies.
The Abassids Employ the Ostrich Plan
In Baghdad, the Caliph was cocky. Baghdad was one of the largest cities in the world, the cosmopolitan cultural center of the Islam - from the inside, it must have seemed invincible. The Abbasid Dynasty had been in power for 500 years, and though the caliphate had been splintering and factionalizing for over three centuries, al-Musta'-sim was confident that no matter what the Mongols brought to bear against him, Allah would step in to unify and save the faithful. With divine intervention thus a key component of his foreign policy, the Caliph (a Sunni who had little respect for the Shiites next door, and so hadn't lifted a finger to liberate Persia) prepared to receive a message from Hulagu.
Ruknuddin Khor-shah, a/k/a the Old Man of the Mountain, had already got the message. The Old Man (probably a literal translation of the word, "sheikh") was the head of the secret order/society/sect/cult of the Assassins, based in the impregnable fortress of Alamut, about 100 km east of modern Teheran. He'd heard so many scary stories about the way Hulagu had been behaving in southern Persia that when the Mongols arrayed themselves in front of his castle in December, 1256, he surrendered it pretty much without a fight. He shouldn't have. Hulagu recalled that the Old Man had once, in prouder days, sent a bunch of assassins to kill members of his family. The Assassins were virtually wiped out that day; what survivors there were may have made their way to the area that's now southern Pakistan, but as a force in Middle Eastern politics, they were finished.
Still al-Musta'-sim shrugged and harrumphed. Hulagu, who had asked the Caliph for troops in support of his attack on the Assassins, now used the lack of commitment as a pretext for invasion. He had the following message sent to Baghdad:
"When I lead my army against Baghdad in anger, whether you hide in heaven or in earth
I will bring you down from the spinning spheres;
I will toss you in the air like a lion.
I will leave no one alive in your realm;
I will burn your city, your land, your self.
If you wish to spare yourself and your venerable family, give heed to my advice with
the ear of intelligence.
If you do not, you will see what God has willed."
trans. John Woods, via Wikipedia
By nearly every account, the Caliph did very little to prepare for the Mongol hordes. He neither strengthened the city's defenses, nor raised an army, nor did he attempt to negotiate alliances with any of the other powers in the region. If what happened next wasn't so horrific, one might be tempted to say that he got what he deserved when Hulagu arrived before Baghdad in late January, 1258.
An Atrocity for the Ages
There was a brief siege, during which an Abbasid sally was foiled when the Mongols broke a few dykes in the irrigation canals surrounding the city, and many of the Caliph's soldiers were drowned. By February 10th Baghdad had surrendered; on the 13th, the Mongols stormed into the city. What transpired next is still remembered as one of the most brutal sackings of a captured city in the entire history of warfare:
Many historical accounts detailed the cruelties of the Mongol conquerors.
* The Grand Library of Baghdad, containing countless precious historical documents and books on subjects ranging from medicine to astronomy, was destroyed. Survivors said that the waters of the Tigris ran black with ink from the enormous quantities of books flung into the river.
* Citizens attempted to flee, but were intercepted by Mongol soldiers who raped and killed with abandon. Martin Sicker writes that close to 90,000 people may have died (Sicker 2000, p. 111). Other estimates go much higher. Wassaf claims the loss of life was several hundred thousand. Ian Frazier of the New Yorker says estimates of the death toll have ranged from 200,000 to a million.
* The Mongols looted and then destroyed. Mosques, palaces, libraries, hospitals -- grand buildings that had been the work of generations were burned to the ground.
* The caliph was captured and forced to watch as his citizens were murdered and his treasury plundered. The caliph was killed by trampling. The Mongols rolled the caliph up in a rug, and rode their horses over him, as they believed that the earth was offended if touched by royal blood. All but one of his sons were killed.
* Hulagu had to move his camp upwind of the city, due to the stench of decay from the ruined city.
Typically, the Mongols destroyed a city only if it had resisted them. Cities that capitulated at the first demand for surrender could usually expect to be spared. The utter ferocity of the rape of Baghdad was to some extent a military tactic: it convinced other cities and rulers to surrender without a fight.
Baghdad was a depopulated, ruined city for several centuries and only gradually recovered something of its former glory
Source: Wikipedia
The caliphate was shattered; Baghdad would never again serve as capital of an even ostensibly-unified Muslim state. Now the fate of Islam now lay in the hands of the Abbuyid descendents of Saladin in Syria and the recently-self-emancipated Mamluk slaves of Egypt.
A Colorful Cast of Characters
The Mongols were profoundly affected by the religions of the countries they conquered and the civilizations they encountered, and it was not at all unusual to find in the Mongol ranks converts to Buddhism (Hulagu), Christianity (one of his generals, Kit-Buqa, and one of his wives), or Islam (Burkai). This last guy is another grandson of Genghis and the brother of Batu Khan, who had been leader of the Blue Horde (which controlled Russia west of the Volga); he took over the horde upon Batu's death in1255. When he heard about what Hulagu did to Baghdad, he took an oath of revenge that would eventually result in a Mongol civil war.
Hulagu's relations with the Christians were a little more complicated. At his wife's insistence, the Christians of Baghdad were spared the slaughter, but the barons in Palestine were split on the question of with whom they should ally. For the most part, the crusaders sought to simply stay out of the way of these two titanic forces, though there was some raiding and reprisal (as when the Mongols destroyed Sidon in 1260) and some deal-cutting (as when the horde was granted safe passage through Christian territory on its way to meet the Mamluks). Settling matters from a distance, Pope Alexander IV, upon reading the report of William of Rubruck, declared that the Mongols were pagan and not to be trusted.
Those Mamluks - a slave army made up largely of Turkic peoples from the south Russian steppe - had overthrown the Egyptian branch of the Ayyubid dynasty a few years before, and were now in the midst of trying to legitimize their rule. This had caused some dissention in Egypt; the guy responsible for the initial vacancy on the sultan's throne had gone so far as to withdraw to Syria with some supporters and start raiding his former homeland.
You remember Baibars: We met him last time around, when he just a slave who happened to be killing the Sultan of Egypt. Now, eight years later, Baibars was the guy Sultan Saif al-Din Qutuz (who had himself usurped power just a few months before, and who strongly disliked Baibars) would turn to as the Mongols approached. Baibars, who knew a little about dividing and conquering, agreed to set aside his differences with Qutuz in the face of a common threat to Mamluk survival.
Mas Vale Morir a Pie que Vivir en Rodillas
Presumably, Qutuz did not speak Spanish, but there's little doubt that he understood the sentiment behind what La Pasionaria would state amidst the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War: It's better to die on one's feet than live on one's knees. As indicated by his subsequent actions, the thought must have been running through Qutuz' head when a group of Mongol ambassadors delivered to him this letter from Hugalu in early 1262:
From the King of Kings of the East and West, the Great Khan. To Qutuz the Mamluk, who fled to escape our swords.
You should think of what happened to other countries and submit to us. You have heard how we have conquered a vast empire and have purified the earth of the disorders that tainted it. We have conquered vast areas, massacring all the people. You cannot escape from the terror of our armies. Where can you flee? What road will you use to escape us? Our horses are swift, our arrows sharp, our swords like thunderbolts, our hearts as hard as the mountains, our soldiers as numerous as the sand. Fortresses will not detain us, nor arms stop us. Your prayers to God will not avail against us. We are not moved by tears nor touched by lamentations. Only those who beg our protection will be safe. Hasten your reply before the fire of war is kindled. Resist and you will suffer the most terrible catastrophes. We will shatter your mosques and reveal the weakness of your God and then we will kill your children and your old men together. At present you are the only enemy against whom we have to march.
Source: Wikipedia
The Mongols thought very highly of ambassadors. When the Khans received emissaries from other lands, they almost invariably treated them as honored and protected diplomats - Marco Polo, who visited Kublai Khan later in the century, testified to this. They expected a similar degree of respect be shown to their ambassadors when they sent them out, as well. If you were a king during this period, one of the quickest ways to seal the fate of your people was to mistreat a Mongol ambassador.
There must have been something in the water of the 13th century that made people want to swagger and do stupid things in the name of pride, though. Virtually every defeat the Crusaders suffered came as a result of some hothead calling everybody else a coward, then leading the army heroically into the maw of death. Inalchuq of Otrar, as we've seen, was possessed of the same trait, as was the Caliph of Baghdad. So, too, were the Mamluks of Egypt: Qutuz ordered the emissaries cut in half, and their heads hung from Cairo's Zuwila Gate.
Oh, It's On...
An enraged Hugalu began assembling his forces in February, 1261, but then - just as he was setting out to burn Cairo to the ground - one of those quirky little fate things that happen sometimes in history intervened. Back in Mongolia, the Great Khan Mongke had died, and Hulagu, feeling the need to be in on the upcoming succession battle, turned most of his army around (when you're a Mongol warlord, you don't go anywhere, even home, without a massive army). He left Kit-Buqua, a trusted general who had led one of the columns against Baghdad, in charge of a much-reduced force of 2-3 tumens (a tumen was a unit of about 10,000 soldiers, with about 40% being heavy Mugadai cavalry and the remainder Keshik horse archers), with orders to find and punish the Mamluks.
Syria had fallen to the Mongols in 1259, so it was from Damascus that Kit-Buqa (who, btw, claimed to be a direct descendent of one of the Three Magi) launched preparatory raids that reached as far south as Gaza. The Mamluks were on the defensive and in retreat, awed by the very reputation of their enemy and its commander; the raids were only turned back at Gaza due to the battlefield presence of Baibars. Kit-Buqa was still afflicted with that ole' Mongol confidence, and despite his much-diminished force (as contrasted with Hulagu's entire army), he began his march on Egypt in the early summer of 1261.
That force-reduction thing had changed matters in the strategic eye of Qutuz - he saw an opportunity here. He then called out the crusaders: Grant the Mamluk army safe passage through Christian territory and the right to buy supplies at Acre. Nervous - and probably mournful about the suckiness of their role in all this - the Christian allowed the Muslims to camp in the shadows of Acre's walls while they assembled provisions for a late-July offensive.
The armies converged on the Plain of Esdraelon on September 3, 1261, near the Spring of Goliath - and yes, local lore has it that this is indeed the place were the Big Guy bought the farm. Interesting metaphor, that...
The Battle of Ain Jalut
The Muslims were fighting for the survival of Islam as a political force; if they lost here, there would be nothing to stop the Mongols from taking Cairo, then the rest of North Africa. From a nice, safe distance, the crusaders were also contemplating what it might be like to have Europe completely surrounded by Mongol hordes. It is not hyperbolic to say that the fate of western civilization itself hung in the balance at Ain Jalut.
Qutuz knew it, too. As reported by David Tschanz in an excellent article on the battle:
Ghengis Khan's policy of remorseless brutality and no mercy might have been effective in paralyzing lesser men, it had stiffened the resolve of the Mamluks and reinforced their determination. Before the advance, Qutuz, in a speech that brought tears to the eyes of his men, reminded them of the nature of Tatar savagery. There was no alternative to fighting, he said, "except a horrible death for themselves, their wives and their children." It steeled the souls of the Mamluks for the coming battle against an enemy that had never tasted defeat.
Given all the buildup, the battle itself was not exactly a marvel of innovative tactics. Baibars, leading elements of the Mamluk army, encountered the Mongols near the spring. Kit-Buqa, thinking that this was the entire force, ordered a charge which, by virtually every account, was successful: the Mamluks were put to full retreat. The thing was, Baibars had anticipated this development, and so he basically was able to serve the Mongols a favorite revenge dish of their own devising: a feigned retreat with a side of ambush.
Kit-Buqa ordered a headlong pursuit of the fleeing Mamluks, and so was drawn into a narrower part of the plain - an area that was bordered by hills and canyons, among which were deployed the bulk of the Mamluk army. When they saw the Mongols enter the kill zone, the Mamluks poured out of the valleys and hit the horseman hard in the flank. Kit-Buqa responded in true Mongol fashion: with repeated charges. It almost worked, too; the Muslims seemed about to break when Qutuz appeared at the scene of the heaviest fighting, threw his helmet at the enemy, and rallied his troops. Numerically superior (by about four times), the Mamuks began pushing back. According to Strategypage.com:
Kitbuqa was now faced with a deteriorating situation. When one subordinate suggested a withdrawal his response was brief: "We must die here and that is the end of it. Long life and happiness to the Khan."
link
Kit-Buqa, was foiled in his Klingon-like aspirations to die in glorious battle when his horse was shot with an arrow and he was thrown. Again from Strategypage.com:
Captured by nearby Mamluk soldiers he was taken to the Sultan amidst the sounds of battle. "After overthrowing so many dynasties you are caught at last I see," Qutuz exulted.
Kitbuqa, for his part, was still defiant - "If you kill me now, when Hulegu Khan hears of my death, all the country from Azerbijan to Egypt will be trampled beneath the hoofs of Mongol horses." In a move calculated to insult his captor, Kitbuqa added "All my life I have been a slave of the khan. I am not, like you, a murderer of my master." Qutuz ordered Kitbuqa executed and his head sent to Cairo as proof of the Muslim victory.
ibid.
(Historiorant: Isn't it nice that we no longer put the heads of vanquished enemies on public display?)
The remaining Mongols tried to regroup a few kilometers away, but were again attacked by a charge of the Mamluk cavalry. What few survivors there were fled east across the Euphrates, leaving Damascus, Aleppo, and the other recently-Monogolified cities of Syria easy pickings for Qutuz' new liberation/unification movement.
Mamluks in da' House!
On the heels of the stunning victory at Ain Jalut, Qutuz quickly regained control of Syria, but it seems he was a little stingy when it came to sharing the credit. Baibars thought that his part in the battle had earned him...well, Syria. Qutuz disagreed - probably one of those "friends close, enemies closer" things - and ordered Baibars to accompany him on his triumphal ride back to Egypt.
He shouldn't have: Baibars stuck a knife in his heart a couple of days before the army arrived at Cairo, then rode into the city as its victorious new sultan. Since nobody really liked Qutuz - and because they all were scared of Baibars - no one really said anything.
Weird Historical Sidenote: That fear thing could have had something to do with Baibars' physical appearance: He's described as a giant of a man, with an extremely dark complexion and a noticeable white blotch in one of his blue eyes. Never one to trust a spy, Baibars turned out to be one of those rulers who liked to disguise himself and go out into the streets to seek the perspective of the common man. - and needless to say, it was very rare for Egyptians of that period to say anything disparaging about the sultan if they happened to be talking to an enormous, dark-skinned, blue-eyed "stranger."
Presently, though, he had a Mongol counterattack to anticipate. He shouted "boo!" at the Christians (this was enough to ensure their neutrality), then evacuated Syria and burned its fields - he knew from his growing-up days on the steppes that the Mongol cavalry was especially susceptible to scorched-earth tactics, since their horses relied on grazing for daily sustenance, as opposed to the European and Muslim preference for stored grain.
As it turns out, he needn't have bothered. Internal politics at the highest levels of the Mongol empire eventually resulted in a civil war between the Ilkhanate in Persia (Hulagu) and the Khanate of the Golden Horde in Russia (Burkai, who even talked with Baibars about an anti-Hulagu alliance), and revenge for the defeat at Ain Jalut was put on an eternal back-burner. Although Hulagu did make a stab at marching on Egypt again in 1262, he was forced to turn north and fight an indecisive battle with Burkai instead, and he was not able to mount another effort before his death in 1264. His son, Abaka, engaged Baibars' successor, Kalawun, at the Battle of Homs in 1281, and lost. At that point, the Mongols went ahead and used ink on their maps, marking their southwestern border at the Euphrates.
Epilogue
Islam had survived, but as a political entity, it had been hit hard. This had been a Muslim Battle of Tours; it had saved them from conquest, but the loss of Baghdad added a touch of Phyrrus to the celebratory mood. Cairo now became Islam's political and intellectual center, and though the later Ilkhans did try to reassemble some of what had been lost, much of it turned out to be irreplaceable.
The Mamluks went on to control Egypt on their own until the early 1500s, when they were conquered and absorbed by the Ottoman Turks. They were still a potent and somewhat unpredictable force in Egyptian politics until the time of Napoleon, when they first lost to the French, then once and for all to the Ottomans.
The Mongol invasions, though short-lived, are a watershed period in the history of every nation they touched - in some countries, over thirty percent of the population was killed off in the period between 1200 and 1300. The social and cultural ramifications of devastation like this are mind-boggling:
The Mongol invasions and their subsequent rule in the lands east of the Euphrates left a legacy of shattered cities, population decline, and overturned technology that undercut the basis for prosperity and success that had sustained the Middle East for five thousand years.
link
Historiorant
Once embarked upon, invasions often have unintended negative consequences for the invaders, even if they enjoy initial military success. Your task for this evening, historiokossians, is to uncover and explore the lessons that Ain Jalut has to teach us about how the United States should be conducting its own occupation of Baghdad - we'll meet in a couple of minutes next to the allegory-laden spring...