Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him?’ JOB XXXIX, II
When William of Rubruck arrived at the Court of the Great Khan, in the Last days of 1253, he found a government very different from that which had entertained King Louis’s previous envoy, Andrew of Longjumeau. When Guyuk, son of Ogodai, died in 1248, his widow, Oghul Qaimish, acted as regent for her young sons, Qucha, Naqu and Qughu. But she was an inept ruler, given to avarice and to sorcery; and none of her sons showed promise of greater ability. Their cousin, Shiremon, whom his grandfather Ogodai had destined for the succession, continually plotted against them. But more formidable opposition came from an alliance between Batu, the viceroy of the West and the Princess Sorghaqtani, the widow of Jenghiz’s youngest son, Tului. Sorghaqtani, a Kerait by birth and, like all her race, a devout Nestorian Christian, was highly respected for her wisdom and her incorruptibility. Ogodai had wished to marry her after her husband’s death to his son Guyuk; but she tactfully refused, preferring to devote herself to the education of her four remarkable sons, Mongka, Kubilai, Hulagu and Ariqboga. When Guyuk carried out an inspection of the finances of the Imperial family, she and her sons alone were proved to have acted always with perfect scrupulousness. Batu, whose feud with Guyuk had never been healed, had a great admiration for her. Knowing that his own title to the throne would always be weakened by doubts about his father Juji’s legitimacy, he joined her in advocating the claims of Mongka. He came to Mongolia and, as senior prince of the House, summoned a Kuriltay, which, on 1 July 1251, elected Mongka as supreme Khan. Despite Sorghaqtani’s genuine attempts to placate them, Ogodai’s grandsons refused to attend the Kuriltay, but plotted to attack its members when they would be inebriated at the feasts that followed the inauguration ceremony. The plot miscarried; and after a year of desultory civil war Mongka triumphed over all his rivals and was installed as Supreme Khan at Karakorum. The Regent Oghul Qaimish and the mother of Shiremon were convicted of sorcery and drowned. The princes of the House of Ogodai were sent into exile.
With Mongka’s accession the Mongols revived their policy of expansion. The great princes returned to their governments. The eastern provinces were entrusted to Mongka’s second brother, Kubilai, who set energetically and methodically about the conquest of all China. He became a convert of Buddhism; and his wars and his treatment of the conquered were remarkable for their humanity and forbearance. Mongka and his youngest brother, Ariqboga, remained in Mongolia, keeping watchful control of the whole vast empire. The heirs of Jagatai, in Turkestan, began tentative efforts to extend their power across the Pamirs into India. Batu moved his headquarters to the lower reaches of the Volga, so as to dominate his vassal princes in Russia, and founded there the Khanate called Kipchak by Moslem writers, and by the Mongols and the Russians the Golden Horde. The government of Persia passed to Mongka’s third brother, Hulagu; and it was to his frontier and to Kubilai’s in the east that the main efforts of the Mongols were now directed.
1254: Armenian Alliance with the Mongols
Of the states that bordered the Mediterranean, it was the Armenian kingdom in Cilicia that first realized the importance of the Mongol advance. The Armenians had witnessed with interest the collapse of the Seldjuk army in 1243 before a Mongol expedition led by a provincial governor. They could estimate how irresistible the Imperial army would be. King Hethoum had wisely sent a deferential message to Baichu in 1243. But the Mongols had then retired; and Kaikhosrau recovered his lost Anatolian territory and began once more to press upon Armenia, aided by a rebel Armenian prince, Constantine of Lampron. Hethoum calculated that the Mongols would come back and that they could be of value to all Asiatic Christendom, and in particular to himself. In 1247 he sent his brother, the Constable Sempad, on an embassy to the Court of the Great Khan. Sempad arrived at Karakorum in 1248, not long before Guyuk’s death. Guyuk received him with cordiality and, on hearing that Hethoum was ready to regard himself as a vassal, promised to send help for the Armenians to recapture towns taken from them by the Seldjuks. Sempad returned home with a diploma from the Great Khan guaranteeing the integrity of Hethoum’s dominions. But Guyuk’s death held up any immediate action. In 1254, hearing of the accession of a new vigorous Khan, King Hethoum set out for Karakorum.
Karakorum was now the diplomatic centre of the world. When Louis IX’s ambassador, William of Rubruck, arrived there in 1254, he found embassies from the Greek Emperor, from the Caliph, from the King of Delhi and from the Seldjuk Sultan, as well as emirs from the Jezireh and from Kurdistan and princes from Russia, all waiting upon the Khan. There were several Europeans settled there, including a jeweller from Paris with a Hungarian wife and an Alsatian woman married to a Russian architect. There was neither racial nor religious discrimination at the Court. The supreme posts in the army and the government were reserved to members of the Imperial family, but there were ministers and provincial governors from almost every Asiatic nation. Mongka himself followed the faith of his fathers, Shamanism, but he attended Christian, Buddhist and Moslem ceremonies indiscriminately. He held that there was one God, who could be worshipped as anyone pleased. The chief religious influence was that of the Nestorian Christians, to whom Mongka showed especial favour in memory of his mother Sorghaqtani, who had always remained loyal to her faith, though she was broad-minded enough to endow a Moslem theological college at Bokhara. His principal Empress, Kutuktai, and many other of his wives also were Nestorians. William of Rubruck professed himself much shocked by the ignorance and debauchery of the Nestorian ecclesiastics and considered their services to be little more than drunken orgies. One Sunday he saw the Empress return reeling from High Mass. When his affairs went badly he was inclined to lay the blame upon the rivalry of this heretic hierarchy.
1254: William of Rubruck at Karakorum
His embassy, indeed, was not an entire success. He had travelled by way of Batu’s capital on the Volga, where he found that Batu’s son, Sartaq, though probably not actually a Christian, was particularly well disposed towards the Christians. Batu sent him on to Mongolia. He travelled at the government’s expense along the great trade-road, in comfort and security, though occasionally whole days passed without a single house being seen. He arrived at the end of December 1253, at the Great Khan’s encampment, a few miles south of Karakorum. Mongka received him in audience on 4 January; and soon afterwards he moved with the Court to Karakorum itself. He found the Mongol government already determined to attack the Moslems of western Asia, and ready to discuss common action. But there was one impassable difficulty. The Supreme Khan could not admit the existence of any sovereign prince in the world other than himself. His foreign policy was fundamentally simple. His friends were already his vassals; his enemies were to be eliminated or reduced to vassaldom. All that William could obtain was the quite sincere promise that the Christians should receive ample aid so long as their rulers came to pay homage to the suzerain of the world. The King of France could not treat on such terms. William left Karakorum in August 1254, having learned, like many subsequent ambassadors to the Courts of further Asia, that Oriental monarchs understand neither the usages nor the principles of Western diplomacy. He travelled back through central Asia to the Court of Batu, and thence over the Caucasus and Seldjuk Anatolia to Armenia and so to Acre. Everywhere he was treated with the respect due to an envoy accredited to the Supreme Khan.
King Hethoum arrived at Karakorum shortly after William’s departure. He had come of his own accord as a vassal; and as the other foreign visitors were either vassals who had been summoned against their wills or representatives of kings who arrogantly claimed independence, he was shown especial favour. At his formal reception by Mongka on 13 September 1254, he was given a document confirming that his person and his kingdom should be inviolate, and he was treated as the Khan’s chief Christian adviser on matters concerning western Asia. Mongka promised him to free all Christian churches and monasteries from taxation. He announced that his brother Hulagu, who was already established in Persia, had been ordered to capture Baghdad and to destroy the power of the Caliphate, and he undertook that if all the Christian Powers would co-operate with him he would recover Jerusalem itself for the Christians. Hethoum left Karakorum on 1 November, laden with gifts and delighted by the success of his efforts. He journeyed home by way of Turkestan and Persia, where he paid his respects to Hulagu, and was back in Armenia the following July.
Hethoum’s optimism was natural, but a little excessive. The Mongols were certainly eager to control or else to destroy the Caliphate. They had already so many Moslem subjects that it was essential for them to dominate the chief religious institution in the Moslem world. They had no particular animosity against Islam as a religion. Similarly, though they favoured Christianity more than any other faith, they had no intention of permitting any independent Christian state. If Jerusalem was to be restored to the Christians, it would be restored under the Mongol Empire. It is interesting to speculate what might have happened had the Mongol ambitions for western Asia been realized. It is possible that a great Christian Khanate might have been formed and might have in time devolved from the central power in Mongolia. But Saint Louis’s dream that the Mongols would become dutiful sons of the Roman Church was unthinkable; nor would the Christian establishments in western Asia have kept any independence. A Mongol triumph might have served the interests of Christendom as a whole; but the Franks of Outremer, who were aware of the Great Khan’s attitude towards Christian princes, cannot be entirely blamed for preferring the Moslems, whom they knew, to this strange, fierce and arrogant people from the distant deserts, whose record in eastern Europe had not been encouraging. Hethoum’s attempt to build up a great Christian alliance to aid the Mongols was well received by the native Christians; and Bohemond of Antioch, who was under his father-in-law’s influence, gave his adhesion. But the Franks of Asia held aloof.
1256: The Mongol Army moves Westward
In January 1256, a huge Mongol army crossed the river Oxus, under the command of the Great Khan’s brother Hulagu. Like his brother Kubilai, Hulagu was better educated than most of the Mongol princes. He had a taste for learned men and himself dabbled in philosophy and alchemy. Like Kubilai, he was attracted by Buddhism, but he never himself gave up his ancestral Shamanism, and he lacked Kubilai’s humanitarianism. He suffered from epileptic fits, and they may have affected his temper, which was unreliable. He was as savage towards the conquered as any of his predecessors. But the Christians had no reason to complain of him; for the most powerful influence at his Court was that of his principal wife, Dokuz Khatun. This remarkable lady was a Kerait princess, the granddaughter of Toghrul Khan and cousin, therefore, of Hulagu’s mother. She was a passionate Nestorian, who made no secret of her dislike of Islam and her eagerness to help Christians of every sect.
Hulagu’s first objective was the Assassin headquarters in Persia. Till the sect was destroyed an orderly government would be impossible; and the sectaries had especially offended the Mongols by murdering Jagatai, the second son of Jenghiz Khan. The next objective was Baghdad; then the Mongol army would proceed to Syria. Everything was planned with care. The roads across Turkestan and Persia were repaired and bridges built. Carts were requisitioned to bring siege-machines from China. Pastures were cleared of their herds so that the grass might be plentiful for the Mongol horses. With Hulagu were Dokuz Khatun and two of his other wives, and his two elder sons. The house of Jagatai was represented by his grandson, Nigudar. From the Golden Horde Batu sent three of his nephews, who travelled down the west shore of the Caspian and joined the army in Persia. Every tribe of the Mongol confederacy provided one-fifth of its fighting men, and there were a thousand Chinese archers, skilled at hurling fire-laden arrows from their cross-bows. An army had been sent nearly three years before to prepare the way, under Hulagu’s most trusted general, the Nestorian Kitbuqa, a Naiman by race, who was said to be descended from one of the Three Wise Men from the East. Kitbuqa re-established Mongol authority over the main towns of the Iranian plateau and had captured some of the lesser Assassin strongholds before Hulagu’s arrival.
1257: Annihilation of the Assassins in Persia
The Grand Master of the Assassins, Rukn ad-Din Khurshah, vainly tried to avert the danger by diplomatic intrigues and diversions. Hulagu entered Persia and moved slowly and relentlessly through Demavend and Abbassabad into the valleys of the Assassins. When the huge army appeared before Alamut and began the close investment of the citadel, Rukn ad-Din yielded. In December he came in person to Hulagu’s tent and made his submission. The governor of the castle refused to obey his orders to surrender it, but it was taken by storm a few days later. Rukn ad-Din was promised his life by Hulagu, but he asked to be sent to Karakorum hoping to obtain better terms from the Great Khan Mongka. When he arrived there, Mongka refused to see him, saying that it had been wrong to tire out good horses on such a fruitless mission. Two Assassin fortresses still held out against the Mongols, Girdkuh and Lembeser. Rukn ad-Din was told to go home and arrange for their surrender. On the way he was put to death with his suite. Orders were sent at the same time to Hulagu that the whole sect must be exterminated. A number of the Grand Master’s kin were sent to Jagatai’s daughter, Salghan Khatun, that she might herself avenge her father’s death. Others were collected on the excuse of a census and massacred in their thousands. By the end of 1257 only a few refugees were left in the Persian mountains. The Assassins in Syria were as yet out of the Mongols’ reach; but they foresaw their fate.
At Alamut the Assassins kept a great library full of works on philosophy and the occult sciences. Hulagu sent his Moslem Chamberlain, Ata al-Mulk Juveni to inspect it. Juveni set aside the Korans that he found, as well as books of scientific and historical value. The heretical works were burnt. By a strange coincidence there was about the same time a great fire, caused by lightning, in the city of Medina, and its library, which had the greatest collection of works on orthodox Moslem philosophy, was totally destroyed.
After the Assassins had been wiped out in Persia, Hulagu and the Mongol host moved against the headquarters of orthodox Islam at Baghdad. The Caliph al-Mustasim, the thirty-seventh ruler of the Abbasid dynasty and son of the Caliph al-Mustansir by an Ethiopian slave, had hoped to revive the power and prestige of his throne. Since the collapse of the Khwarismians the Caliphate had been its own master, and the rivalry between Cairo and Damascus enabled the Caliph to behave as the arbiter of Islam. But, though he surrounded himself with pomp and ceremony, al-Mustasim was a weak and foolish man, whose main interest was his personal amusement. His court was torn by a feud between his vizier, the Shia Muwaiyad ad-Din, and his secretary, the Sunni Aibeg, who had the support of the heir to the throne. Baghdad was strongly fortified, and the Caliph could call upon a large army. His cavalry alone numbered 120,000. But it depended on military benefices; and al-Mustasim did not trust his vassals. He therefore followed his vizier’s advice to reduce the army and spend the money thus economized on a voluntary tribute to the Mongols which would keep them away. Such a policy of appeasement was hardly likely to succeed, even were it consistently carried out. But when Hulagu replied by demanding suzerain rights over the Caliphate, Aibeg’s influence was in the ascendant; and the suggestion was haughtily refused.
Hulagu approached the campaign with some trepidation. His astrologers were not all of them encouraging; and he feared treachery from his own Moslem vassals and the intervention of the rulers of Damascus and Egypt. But his precautions against treason were effective; and no one came to the rescue of Baghdad. Meanwhile his own army was strengthened by the arrival of the contingent from the Golden Horde and the army that Baichu had kept for the last decade on the borders of Anatolia, and by a regiment of Georgian cavalry, eager to strike against the infidel capital.
At the end of 1257 the Mongol army moved down from its base at Hamadan. Baichu with his troops crossed the Tigris at Mosul and marched down the west bank. Kitbuqa and the left wing entered the plain of Iraq due east of the capital while Hulagu and the centre advanced through Kermanshah. The Caliph’s main army started out under Aibeg to meet Hulagu, when it heard of Baichu’s approach from the north-west. Aibeg recrossed the Tigris, and, on ii January 1258, he came upon the Mongols near Anbar, about thirty miles from Baghdad. Baichu feigned to retreat and so lured the Arabs into a low marshy terrain. He sent engineers to cut the dykes of the Euphrates behind them. Next day the battle was renewed. Aibeg’s army was driven back into the flooded fields. Only Aibeg himself and his bodyguard managed to escape through the waters to Baghdad. The bulk of his troops perished on the battlefield. The survivors fled into the desert and dispersed.
1258: The Mongols sack Baghdad
On 18 January Hulagu appeared before the east walls of Baghdad, and by the 22nd the city was completely invested, with bridges of boats constructed across the Tigris just above and just below the city walls. Baghdad lay on both sides of the river. The western city, which had contained the palace of the earlier Caliphs, was now less important than the eastern, where the government buildings were concentrated. It was against the eastern walls that the Mongols made their heaviest attacks. Al-Mustasim began to lose hope. At the end of January he sent the vizier, who had always advocated peace with the Mongols, together with the Nestorian Patriarch, who, he hoped, might intercede with Dokuz Khatun, to try to treat with Hulagu. They were sent back without obtaining an audience. After a terrible bombardment during the first week of February, the eastern wall began to collapse. On 10 February when Mongol troops were already swarming into the city, the Caliph emerged and surrendered himself to Hulagu, together with all the chief officers of the army and officials of the state. They were ordered to lay down their arms and then were massacred. Only the Caliph’s life was spared until Hulagu entered the city and the palace on is February. After he had revealed to his conqueror the hiding-place of all his treasure, he too was put to death. Meanwhile massacres continued throughout the whole city. Those that surrendered quickly and those that fought on were alike slain. Women and children perished with their men. One Mongol found in a side-street forty new-born babies whose mothers were dead. As an act of mercy he slaughtered them, knowing that they could not survive with no one to suckle them. The Georgian troops, who had been the first to break through the walls, were particularly fierce in their destruction. In forty days some eighty thousand citizens of Baghdad were slain. The only survivors were a few lucky folk whose hiding-places in cellars were not discovered, and a number of attractive girls and boys who were kept to be slaves, and the Christian community, which took refuge in the churches and was left undisturbed, by the special orders of Dokuz Khatun.
By the end of March the stench of decaying corpses in the city was such that Hulagu withdrew his troops for fear of pestilence. Many of them left with regret, believing that there were still objects of value to be found there. But Hulagu now possessed the vast treasure accumulated by the Abbasid Caliphs through five centuries. After sending a handsome proportion to his brother Mongka, he retired by easy stages back to Hamadan, and thence into Azerbaijan, where he built a strong castle at Shaha, on the shore of Lake Urmiah, as a storehouse for all his gold and precious metals and jewels. He left as governor of Baghdad the former vizier, Muwaiyad, who was closely supervised by Mongol officials. The Nestorian Patriarch, Makika, was given rich endowments and a former royal palace as his residence and church. The city was gradually cleaned and tidied, and forty years later it was a prosperous provincial town, a tenth of its former size.
News of the destruction of Baghdad made a deep impression throughout Asia. The Asiatic Christians everywhere rejoiced. They wrote in triumph of the fall of the Second Babylon and. hailed Hulagu and Dokuz Khatun as the new Constantine and Helena, God’s instruments for vengeance on the enemies of Christ. To the Moslems it was a ghastly shock and a challenge. The Abbasid Caliphate had for centuries been shorn of much material power, but its moral prestige was still great. The elimination of the dynasty and the capital left the leadership of Islam vacant, for any ambitious Moslem leader to seize. The Christian satisfaction was short-lived. It was not long before Islam conquered its conquerors. But the unity of the Moslem world had suffered a blow from which it could never recover. The fall of Baghdad, following half a century after the fall of Constantinople in 1204, put an end for ever to that old balanced dyarchy between Byzantium and the Caliphate under which Near Eastern humanity had flourished for so long. The Near East was never again to dominate civilization.
1259: The Mongols enter Syria
After the destruction of Baghdad Hulagu turned his attention to Syria. The first step was to strengthen the Mongol hold over the Jezireh and in particular to repress the Ayubite prince of Mayyafaraqin, al-Kamil, who refused to accept Mongol suzerainty and had gone so far as to crucify a Jacobite priest who had visited him as Hulagu’s envoy. Before he left his encampment near Maragha Hulagu received envoys from many states. The old Atabeg of Mosul, Badr ad-Din Lulu, came to apologize for past misdeeds. The two Seldjuk Sultans, sons of Kaikhosrau, Kaikaus II and Kilij Arslan IV, arrived soon afterwards. The former, who had opposed Baichu in 1256, vainly tried to placate Hulagu by fulsome flattery which shocked the Mongols. Finally an-Nasir Yusuf, ruler of Aleppo and Damascus, sent his own son, al-Aziz, to pay humble duty to the conqueror. Mayyafaraqin was besieged and captured early in 1260, largely thanks to the help of Hulagu’s Georgian and Armenian allies. The Moslems were massacred and the Christians spared. Al-Kamil was tortured by being forced to eat his own flesh till he died.
In September 1259, Hulagu led the Mongol army out for the conquest of north-west Syria. Kitbuqa led the van, Baichu the right wing, another favourite general, Sunjak, the left, while Hulagu himself commanded the centre. He advanced through Nisibin, Harran and Edessa to Birejik, where he crossed the Euphrates. Saruj attempted to resist him, and was sacked. Early in the new year the Mongol army closed in round Aleppo. As its garrison refused to surrender, the city was invested on 18 January. The Sultan an-Nasir Yusuf was at Damascus when the storm broke. He had hoped that the presence of his son at Hulagu’s camp would avert the danger. When he found that he was wrong, he made the still more humiliating move of offering to accept the suzerainty of the Mameluks of Egypt. They promised him help, but were in no hurry to provide it. In the meantime he gathered an army outside Damascus, and summoned his cousins of Hama and Kerak to his aid. But while he waited there some of his Turkish officers began to plot against him. He discovered their plans in time; and they fled to Egypt, taking with them one of his brothers. Their defection so weakened his army that he gave up all hope of going to the rescue of Aleppo.
Aleppo was bravely defended by an-Nasir Yusuf’s uncle, Turanshah; but after six days of bombardment the walls crumbled and the Mongols poured into the town. As elsewhere, the Moslem citizens were given over to be massacred and the Christians spared, apart from some of the Orthodox whose church had not been recognized in the heat of the carnage. The citadel held out for four more weeks under Turanshah. When at last it fell Hulagu showed himself to be unexpectedly clement. Turanshah was spared because of his age and his bravery, and his suite was untouched. A vast horde of treasure fell into the conqueror’s hands. Hulagu allotted Aleppo to the former Emir of Horns, al-Ashraf, who had had the foresight to come as a client to the Mongol camp a few months before. Mongol advisers and a Mongol garrison were provided to keep him in control.
1260: The Fall of Damascus
The fortress of Harenc, on the road from Aleppo to Antioch, next had to be punished for refusing to surrender unless Hulagu’s word was guaranteed by a Moslem. When it had been captured with the usual massacre, Hulagu came to the frontier of Antioch. The King of Armenia and his son-in-law the Prince of Antioch visited his camp to pay him homage. Hethoum had already provided him with auxiliaries and had been rewarded with some of the spoil from Aleppo, while the Seldjuk princes had been ordered to retrocede to him their father’s conquests in Cilicia. Bohemond was also rewarded for his deference. Various towns and forts that had belonged to the Moslems since Saladin’s day, including Lattakieh, were given back to the Principality. In return, Bohemond was required to install the Greek Patriarch, Euthymius, in his capital in place of the Latin. Though King Hethoum was not well disposed towards the Greeks, Hulagu understood the importance of their element at Antioch. It is possible that his friendly relations with the Emperor at Nicaea gave him a further inducement.
To the Latins at Acre Bohemond’s subservience seemed disgraceful, especially as it involved the humiliation of the Latin Church at Antioch. Venetian influence was still paramount in the kingdom, and the Venetians were on good commercial terms again with Egypt. Their interest depended on the trade from the Far East travelling by the southern route, up the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea. They watched with growing concern the Mongol caravan routes across central Asia to the Black Sea, where the Genoese, with their alliance with the Greeks, were strengthening their control. The government at Acre looked round for a lay protector. It was known that Charles of Anjou, the French King’s brother, had Mediterranean ambitions and was already intriguing for the Sicilian throne. An anxious letter was sent in May 1260, to describe the dangers of the Mongol advance and to beg him to intervene.
By the time that the letter was written, the Mongols were masters of Damascus. The Sultan an-Nasir Yusuf made no attempt to defend his capital. On the news of the fall of Aleppo and the approach of a Mongol army he fled to Egypt, to take refuge with the Mameluks, then changed his mind and was captured by the Mongols as he rode northward again. Hama sent a delegation to Hulagu in February 1260, offering him the keys of the city. A few days later the notables of Damascus followed suit. On 1 March Kitbuqa entered Damascus at the head of a Mongol army. With him were the King of Armenia and the Prince of Antioch. The citizens of the ancient capital of the Caliphate saw for the first time for six centuries three Christian potentates ride in triumph through their streets. The citadel held out against the invaders for a few weeks, but was reduced on 6 April.
With the three great cities of Baghdad, Aleppo, and Damascus fallen it seemed that the end of Islam in Asia had arrived. In Damascus, as everywhere else in western Asia, the Mongol conquest meant the resurgence of the local Christians. Kitbuqa, as a Christian himself, made no secret of his sympathies. For the first time since the seventh century the Moslems of inner Syria found themselves a repressed minority. They burned for revenge.
During the spring of 1260 Kitbuqa sent detachments to occupy Nablus and Gaza, though they never reached Jerusalem itself. The Franks were thus completely surrounded by Mongols. The Mongol authorities had no intention of attacking the Frankish kingdom, provided that it showed them sufficient deference. The wiser Franks were ready to avoid provocation, but they could not control their hotheads. The most irresponsible of the barons was Julian, Lord of Sidon and Beaufort, a large, handsome man, but self-indulgent and foolish, with nothing of the subtle intelligence of his grandfather, Reynald. His extravagance had already forced him to pledge Sidon to the Templars, from whom he had borrowed vast sums; and his bad temper had involved him in a quarrel with Philip of Tyre, who was his half-uncle. He had married one of King Hethoum’s daughters; but his father-in-law had no influence over him. The wars between the Mongols and the Moslems seemed to him to offer a good opportunity for a raid from Beaufort into the fertile Bekaa. But Kitbuqa was not going to have the newly established Mongol order upset by raiders. He sent a small troop under a nephew of his to punish the Franks. Julian then summoned his neighbours to his aid, and they ambushed and slew the nephew. Kitbuqa then angrily sent a larger army, which penetrated into Sidon and ravaged the town, though the Castle of the Sea was saved by Genoese ships from Tyre. King Hethoum when he heard of it was furious, and blamed the Templars, who had taken advantage of Julian’s losses to foreclose on Sidon and Beaufort. A raid conducted shortly afterwards by John II of Beirut and the Templars into Galilee met with equally severe treatment at the hands of Mongol auxiliaries.
1259: Death of the Great Khan Mongka
Kitbuqa, however, was unable to embark on greater enterprises. On II August 1259, the Great Khan Mongka had died while campaigning with his brother Kubilai in China. His sons were young and untried. The army in China therefore pressed for the succession of Kubilai. But Mongka’s youngest brother, Ariqboga, controlled the homeland, including Karakorum and the central treasury of the Empire, and he desired the throne for himself. After several months of manoeuvring and discovering who was his friend, each of the two brothers held a Kuriltay in the spring of 1260 which elected him as supreme Khan. Ariqboga was supported by most of his imperial relatives who were in Mongolia, while Kubilai had the stronger support amongst the generals. Neither Kuriltay was strictly legal as all the branches of the family were not represented. Neither side was prepared to wait until Hulagu and the princes of the Golden Horde or even of the house of Jagatai were informed and sent their delegations. Hulagu himself favoured Kubilai, although his son Chomughar was of Ariqboga’s party, while Berke, Khan of the Golden Horde, sympathized with Ariqboga. It was only at the end of 1261 that Kubilai finally crushed Ariqboga. In the meantime Hulagu cautiously remained close to his eastern frontier, ready to move into Mongolia should it become necessary. He had reasons for anxiety. Ariqboga intervened autocratically in affairs of the Turkestan Khanate, displacing the regent Orghana by her husband’s cousin, Alghu, whose later defection and marriage with Orghana contributed largely to Kubilai’s victory. Hulagu feared a similar intervention into his own dominions. He was moreover on worsening terms with his cousins of the Golden Horde. While his Court showed strong Christian sympathies, the Khan Berke was definitely moving into the Moslem camp and disapproved of Hulagu’s anti-Moslem policy. There was friction in the Caucasus, which was the frontier between Berke’s and Hulagu’s spheres of influence. Berke and his generals continually persecuted the Christian tribes; but Hulagu’s attempt to establish his authority on the north side of the mountains was thwarted when one of his armies was severely defeated by Berke’s grand-nephew Nogai near the river Terek in 1269.
With these preoccupations, Hulagu was obliged to withdraw many of his troops from Syria as soon as Damascus was taken. Kitbuqa was left to govern the country with a greatly reduced command. Unfortunately for the Mongols their advance into Palestine provoked the one great unbeaten Moslem power, the Mameluks of Egypt; and the Mameluks were now in a fit state to take up the challenge.
The first Mameluk Sultan, Aibek, had been unsure of his position. To legitimize himself he had not only married the Dowager Sultana Shajar ad-Dur but had appointed an infant Ayubite prince as co-Sultan. But the little al-Ashraf Musa counted for nothing and soon was found to be a useless expense; and in 1257 Aibek quarrelled with the Sultana. She was not prepared to be insulted by an upstart; and on 15 April she arranged for his murder by his eunuchs as he was taking his bath. His death almost provoked a civil war, some of the Mameluks crying for vengeance against the Dowager, others supporting her as the symbol of legitimacy. Eventually her enemies won. On 2 May 1257, she was beaten to death, while Aibek’s fifteen-year-old son, Nur ad-Din Ali, was made Sultan. But the youth neither represented a respected dynasty nor had himself the personality of a leader. In December 1259, he was deposed by one of his father’s former comrades, Saif ad-Din Qutuz, who became Sultan in his place. On his accession various Mameluks such as Baibars, who had fled to Damascus from dislike of Aibek, returned to Egypt.
1260: The Mameluks ask for Help from the Franks
Early in 1260 Hulagu sent an embassy to Egypt to demand the Sultan’s submission. Qutuz put the ambassador to death and prepared to meet the Mongols in Syria. It was at this moment that news of Mongka’s death and of the civil war in Mongolia obliged Hulagu to remove the greater part of his army away to the east. The troops left with Kitbuqa were considerably fewer than those which Qutuz now collected. Besides the Egyptians themselves there were the remnants of the Khwarismian forces and troops from the Ayubite Prince of Kerak. On 26 July the Egyptian army crossed the frontier and marched on Gaza, with Baibars leading the van. There was a small Mongol force at Gaza, under the general Baidar. He sent to warn Kitbuqa of the invasion, but before help could arrive, his men were overwhelmed by the Egyptians.
Kitbuqa was at Baalbek. He prepared at once to march down past the Sea of Galilee into the Jordan valley, but he was held up by a rising of the Moslems in Damascus. Christian houses and churches were destroyed, and Mongol troops were needed to restore order. Meanwhile Qutuz decided to march up the Palestinian coast and strike inland further north, to threaten Kitbuqa’s communications if he advanced into Palestine. An Egyptian embassy was sent therefore to Acre to ask for permission to pass through Frankish territory and to obtain provisions on the march, if not active military aid.
The barons met together at Acre to discuss the request. They were feeling bitter against the Mongols owing to the recent sack of Sidon, and they were distrustful of this Oriental power with its record for wholesale massacre. Islamic civilization was familiar to them; and most of them much preferred the Moslems to the native Christians to whom the Mongols showed such favour. They were at first inclined to offer the Sultan some armed auxiliaries. But the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, Anno of Sangerhausen, warned them that it would be unwise to trust the Moslems very far, especially if they were to become elated by victory over the Mongols. The Teutonic Order had many possessions in the Armenian kingdom; and Anno probably appreciated King Hethoum’s policy. His prudent words had some effect. The military alliance was rejected, but the Sultan was promised free passage and victualling facilities for his army.
During August the Sultan led his army up the coast road and encamped for several days in the orchards outside Acre. Several of the emirs were invited to visit the city as honoured guests, and amongst them was Baibars, who on his return to the camp suggested to Qutuz that it would be easy to take the place by surprise. But Qutuz was not ready to be so perfidious, nor to risk Christian reprisals while the Mongols were still unbeaten. The Franks grew somewhat embarrassed by the number of their visitors, but were consoled by a promise that they should be allowed to buy at reduced prices the horses that would be captured from the Mongols.
1260: The Battle of Ain Jalud
While he was at Acre Qutuz learned that Kitbuqa had crossed the Jordan and had entered eastern Galilee. He at once led his army south-eastward, through Nazareth, and on 2 September he reached Ain Jalud, the Pools of Goliath, where the Christian army had defied Saladin in 1183. Next morning the Mongol army came up. The Mongol cavalry was accompanied by Georgian and Armenian contingents; but Kitbuqa lacked scouts, and the local population was unfriendly. He did not know that the whole Mameluk army was close by. Qutuz was well aware of his own superiority in numbers. He therefore hid his main forces in the hills nearby, and only exposed the vanguard led by Baibars. Kitbuqa fell into the trap. He charged at the head of all his men into the enemy that he saw before him. Baibars retreated precipitately into the hills, hotly pursued, and suddenly the whole Mongol army found itself surrounded. Kitbuqa fought superbly. The Egyptians began to waver, and Qutuz entered the battle himself to rally them. But after a few hours the superior numbers of the Moslems made their effect. Some of Kitbuqa’s men were able to cut their way out, but he refused to survive his defeat. He was almost alone when his horse was killed and he himself was taken prisoner. His capture ended the battle. He was taken bound before the Sultan, who mocked at his fall. He answered defiantly, prophesying a fearful vengeance on his victors and boasting that he, unlike the Mameluk emirs, had always been loyal to his master. They struck off his head.
The battle of Ain Jalud was one of the most decisive in history. It is true that owing to events that had occurred four thousand miles away the Mongol army in Syria was too small to be able, without great good fortune, to undertake the subjection of the Mameluks, and it is true that had a greater army been quickly sent after the disaster, the defeat might have been retrieved. But the contingencies of history forbade the reversal of the decision made at Ain Jalud. The Mameluk victory saved Islam from the most dangerous threat that it has ever had to face. Had the Mongols penetrated into Egypt there would have been no great Moslem state left in the world east of Morocco. The Moslems in Asia were far too numerous ever to be eliminated but they would no longer have been the ruling race. Had Kitbuqa, the Christian, triumphed, the Christian sympathies of the Mongols would have been encouraged, and the Asiatic Christians would have come into power for the first time since the great heresies of the pre-Moslem era. It is idle to speculate about the things that might have happened then. The historian can only relate what did in fact occur. Ain Jalud made the Mameluk Sultanate of Egypt the chief power in the Near East for the next two centuries, till the rise of the Ottoman Empire. It completed the ruin of the native Christians of Asia. By strengthening the Moslem and weakening the Christian element it was soon to induce the Mongols that remained in western Asia to embrace Islam. And it hastened the extinction of the Crusade States; for, as the Teutonic Grand Master foresaw, the victorious Moslems would be eager now to finish with the enemies of the Faith.
The Mongols in Syria
Five days after his victory the Sultan entered Damascus. The Ayubite al-Ashraf, who had deserted the Mongol cause, was reinstated in Horns. The Ayubite emir of Hama, who had fled to Egypt, returned to his emirate. Aleppo was recovered within a month. Hulagu, angry as he was at the loss of Syria, could do nothing till order was restored in the heart of the Mongol Empire. He sent troops to recover Aleppo in December, but after a fortnight they were forced to retire, having massacred a large number of Moslems in reprisal for the death of Kitbuqa. But that was all that Hulagu could achieve to avenge his faithful friend.
The Sultan Qutuz set out on the return journey to Egypt covered with glory. But, though Kitbuqa’s prophecy of vengeance was never wholly fulfilled, his taunt of the disloyalty of the Mameluks very soon was justified. Qutuz had grown suspicious of his most active lieutenant, Baibars; and when Baibars demanded to be made governor of Aleppo, the request was brusquely refused. Baibars did not wait long to take action. On 23 October 1260, when the victorious army reached the edge of the Delta, Qutuz took a day’s holiday to go hunting hares. He set out with a few of his emirs, including Baibars and some of his friends. As soon as they were well away from the camp, one of them came up as though to make a request of the Sultan, and while he firmly held him by the hand as though he was going to kiss it, Baibars rushed up from behind and dug his sword into his master’s back. The conspirators then galloped back to the camp and announced the murder. The Sultan’s chief of staff, Aqtai, was in the royal tent when they arrived and at once asked which of them had corn-mitted the murder. When Baibars admitted that it was he, Aqtai bade him sit on the Sultan’s throne and was the first to pay him homage; and all the generals in the army followed his example. It was as Sultan that Baibars returned to Cairo.