8. Mongols (1050-1258)

According to Al-Bukhari, an early Muslim jurist; “In the Muslim community, the holy war (Jihad) is a religious duty, because of the universal-ism of the [Muslim] mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force...”

Muslim destroyed every culture, every religion, every language and also every people that came in the path of Muslim advances. Muslims did not reach as far as Mongolia. How the Muslims tormented the Mongols is unknown. But the Mongols were aware of destruction caused by Muslims and the fierce and vicious counter-attack by the Mongols on Islamdom from 1200 to 1258 speaks of their hatred of Islam. Mongol attack was fiercer than the Crusades and it nearly wiped out Islam.

The Man who almost destroyed Islam is known as Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan attacked the Turko-Persian Muslim Khwarazmian empire of Samarkand to avenge the attacks being launched by the Arab and Persian Muslims in to Central Asia. The Khwarazmıan empire was established by descendants of Kipchak Turks who had converted to Islam. The Kipchak Turks had converted along with the Quarluq Turks after the Chinese defeat against the Arabs in the battle of the Talas River in 751 A.D. By 10th century, the nobility of the Kipchak Turks had interbred with the Persians and Arab Muslims and had established a large empire over Central Asia. This Turko-Persian Muslims of Khwarazmian empire had carried on the Muslim tradition of attacking neighbouring non-Muslim people. Their depredations against other non-converted Turks and Mongols from the 8th century onward, gradually built a simmering resentment among the non-Muslim Turks and Mongols against the Turko-Persian Muslim Khwarazmian empire.

Genghis Khan was the man who led the Mongol attack on Islamdom. He was followed by his grandson Hulagu (or Halaku) Khan. These two bold warriors liberated all of Persia and most of Mesopotamia from the yoke of Islam and almost destroyed Islam. Genghis Khan’s intention was not primarily to loot but to destroy the enemy. Had the Mongols been motivated purely by intentions of looting the Caliphate, the Mongols need not have traversed some four thousand miles from their homeland in Mongolia, to reach Baghdad. They could have as well attacked nearby Japan and Korea which were hardly one thousand miles from their homeland and were more rich and endowed than Baghdad.

The Mongols had given shelter to a significant number of descendants from the Zoroastrian and Nestorian (Persian) Christian refugees who had fled the Muslim persecution in Persia since the 7th century and had settled in Western China and Mongolia. Among the Nestorian (Persian) Christian refugees many had intermarried with the Mongols and held powerful positions of influence within the Mongol ruling hierarchy. They had also made many Christian converts among the powerful Mongol clans. The Persian Christian religious identity and activities of Dokuz Khatun, Hulagu’s wife, is documented. Mention can be made of other notable Christian Mongols, such as Kitbugha and Il-Siban, respectively the military commander of Syria in 1260 and the governor of Damascus who were also Nestorian Mongol Christians. On the contrary, Zoroastrian Persians who lived among the Mongols did not propagate the Zoroastrian faith according to the tenets of their own faith and so they dwindled in number over the six hundred years in their adopted homeland of China and Mongolia.  Interactions with Nestorian (Persian) Christians and Zoroastrian Persians as well as the fact that Muslims were making further incursions from Kazakhstan into Western Mongolia and China made Mongols wary of them. Mongols were well aware of savagery of Arabs and threat from them.

In 1200 A.D., a Mongol named Temujin (Temüjin) rose as a khan over his and various other clans by dint of extraordinary bravery and skill at warfare. He was a good manager and a good leader. Many talented people collected around him. He was vassal to Ong Khan, titular head of a confederacy that differed in its being better organized than the other, normally scattered clans of Mongols. Temujin expressed his loyalty and joined Ong Khan in a military campaign against Tatars to their east. In 1202, Temujin defeated these Tatars, and with this success, the aging Ong Khan declared Temujin his adoptive son and heir.

Ong Khan's natural son, Senggum (Senggüm), had been expecting to succeed his father, and plotted to assassinate Temujin. Someone leaked the plans to Temujin. Those loyal to Temujin defeated those loyal to Senggum, and Temujin became ruler of what had been Ong Khan's coalition. In 1206, Temujin took the title Universal Ruler, which translates to Genghis Khan.

The immediate provocation for war with Khwarazmian empire was killing of chief of an envoy sent by Genghis Khan to the sultan of Persian Muslim Empire at Samarkand. Genghis Khan retaliated, sending his army westwards towards the Persian Muslim Khwarazmian empire of Samarkand.

In the coldest of months the Mongols rode across the desert to Transoxiana with no baggage, slowing to the pace of merchants before appearing as warriors before the smaller towns of the sultan's empire. Their strategy was to frighten their opponents into surrendering without battle, benefiting the Sultan’s own troops, whose lives he valued.

Those frightened into surrender were spared violence, those who resisted were slaughtered as an example for others, which sent many fleeing and spreading panic from the border towns upto the major city of Bukhara. People in Bukhara opened the city's gates to the Mongols and surrendered. Genghis Khan told them that they, the common people, were not at fault, that high-ranking people among them had committed great sins that inspired God to send him and his army as punishment. Subsequent to the fall of Bukhara, the Sultan's capital city, Samarkand, also surrendered. The Sultan’s army surrendered and Sultan fled.

Genghis Khan and his army pushed deeper into the Sultan's empire - into Afghanistan and then Persia. It is said that the Caliph in Baghdad was hostile towards Sultan and supported Genghis Khan, sending him a regiment of European crusaders who had been his prisoners. Genghis, having no need for infantry, freed them, with those making it to Europe spreading the first news of the Mongol conquests. But he refrained from attacking Bagdad.

The Mongol horsemen came as a whirlwind into Islamdom, and pierced through Islamic countries as a hot knife through cheese, overwhelming Islam utterly. Initially the Mongols did not torture, mutilate or maim the Muslims. But the Muslims did. Captured Mongols were dragged through streets and killed for sport and to entertain city residents. To begin with the Mongols did not partake in the gruesome displays that Muslim rulers often resorted to elicit fear and discourage the Mongols - none of the patented Muslim torture and mutilation practices that had been happening under Muslim rule happened initially in Bukhara or Samarkand which were overrun by the Mongols. Only after the Mongols were provoked by Muslim torture like stretching, emasculating, belly cutting and hacking to pieces, Mongols became more ruthless than their Muslim foes.Finally it led to the wholesale slaughter of Muslims by the Mongols at Tabriz, Shiraz and Baghdad. But when the Mongols were provoked, they were far more ruthless than their Muslim foes. When the city of Nishapur revolted against Mongol rule and the Genghis Khan's son-in-law was killed, it is said, his daughter asked that everyone in the city be put to death, and, according to the story, they were.

Genghis Khan had 100,000 to 125,000 horsemen, with his Uighur and Turkic allies, engineers and Chinese doctors -- a total of from 150,000 to 200,000 men. To show their submission, some Uighurs offered food to the Mongols, and Genghis Khan's force guaranteed them protection. Some cities surrendered without fighting. No harm was done to them. Genghis Khan would order killing of all fighting men and the mighty and influential of the city if the Mongols were forced to conquer but generally spared the common men.

While Genghis Khan was consolidating his conquests in Persia and Afghanistan, a force of 40,000 Mongol horsemen pushed through Azerbaijan and Armenia. They defeated Georgian crusaders, captured a Genoese trade-fortress in the Crimea and spent the winter along the coast of the Black Sea. As they were headed back home they met 80,000 warriors led by Prince Mistitslav of Kiev. The battle of Kalka River (1223 A. D.) commenced. Mongols had better weapons. They also had a better strategy. Mongols Stayed out of range of the crude weapons of peasant infantry but they devastated the prince's standing army . Facing the prince's cavalry, they faked a retreat, drawing the armoured cavalry forward, taking advantage of the vanity and over-confidence of the mounted aristocrats. Lighter and more mobile, they strung out and tired the pursuers and then attacked, killed and routed them. But Genghis Khan did not further proceed in Europe.

In 1225 A.D., Genghis Khan returned to Mongolia. He now ruled everything between the Caspian Sea and Beijing. He looked forward to the Mongols reaping the benefits of caravan trade and drawing tribute from agricultural peoples in the west and east. He created an efficient pony express system. Wanting no divisions rising from religion, he declared freedom of religion throughout his empire. Favouring order and tax producing prosperity, he forbade troops and local officials to abuse people.

But soon again, Genghis Khan was at war. He believed that the Tangut were not living up to their obligations to his empire. In 1227 A.D., around the age of sixty-five, while leading the fighting against the Tangut, Genghis Khan fell off his horse and died.

Genghis Khan did not conquer Bagdad. It was his grandson, Hulagu Khan. Hulagu Khan had asked the Abbasid caliph, al-Muta'sim, to recognize Mongol sovereignty. But the Khalifah (Caliph) who called himself the prince of the faithful (Ameer-ul-Momeenin) overconfident of his own prestige, sent word to the conqueror that any attack on his capital would mobilize the entire Muslim world, from India to north west Africa  and Mongols would be devastated.

Not in the least impressed by the Caliph’s boastful threats, the grandson of Genghis Khan announced his intention of taking the city of Baghdad by force. Towards the end of 1257 A.D. he led hundreds of thousands of Mongol cavalrymen who began advancing towards the Abbasid capital - Baghdad. On their way they destroyed the Assassin’s (Hashishin) sanctuary at Alamut and sacked it’s library where the Assassins had collected techniques of murder and terror, thus making it for impossible for future generations to gain any in-depth knowledge of the evil doctrine and nefarious activities of this sect. Thus the Mongol’s did a service to humankind with this one act.

The Caliph’s envoy, Ibn al-Jawzi arrived from Baghdad bearing a message filled with entreaties for Hulagu to turn back, in exchange for which the caliph would remit whatever would be agreed upon to the treasury annually. The Caliph also proposed that Hulagu’s name be pronounced at Friday sermons in the mosques of Baghdad and that he be granted the title “Sultan”. But it was too late, for by now the Mongol emperor had definitely opted for force. After a few weeks of desperate resistance, the “prince of the faithful” had no choice but to capitulate.

Hulagu Khan had ridden against Baghdad - the capital of the Caliphate from all directions and hemmed in the Abbasid caliph in an impossible position. Fearing that Baghdad would be destroyed, the caliph and his three sons, Abu'1-Fadl Abdul-Rahman, Abu'l-Abbas Ahmad, and Abu'l-Managib Mubarak, came out on Sunday the 4th of Safar 656 [February 10, 1258]. With him were three thousand Sayyids (nobles), imams (priests), and dignitaries of the city.When the Caliph shivering with fright approached Padishah Hulagu Khan, the Padishah did not exhibit any anger but asked after his health kindly and pleasantly. This was a leaf that the Khan had taken out of the book of Muslim psychological war of playing a ‘cat-and-mouse’ game with an enemy he had ensnared. After that he said to the Caliph, “Tell the people of the city to throw down their weapons and come out so that we may make a count.” The caliph sent word into the city for it to be heralded that the people should throw down their weapons and come out.

The Muslim defenders of the seat of the Khalifah disarmed themselves and came out in droves to the Mongols.But Hulagu had given his word to the Caliph in deceit. As soon as they were disarmed, as had been premeditated amongst the Mongols all the Muslim fighters were exterminated. After that the Mongol horde fanned out through the prestigious city demolishing buildings, burning neighbourhoods, and mercilessly massacring men, women, and children.

The way in which the victorious Hulagu Khan humiliated the defeated Last Caliph Musta'sim, was history’s ironical way of seeking retribution for the humiliation of the last Persian Emperor Yazdgard in the same city (then known as Ctesiphon) in 637 by the victorious Arab Muslims. In one full swoop the Mongol army went into Baghdad and burned everything except a few houses belonging to Nestorians and some foreigners. On Friday 15^thFebruary Hulagu Khan went into the city to see the caliph's palace. He settled into the Octagon Palace and gave a banquet for the commanders. (In a way reminiscent of the way the Muslims had stormed the White Palace of the defeated Sassanid King six hundred years before at the same spot. History had avenged that injustice and humiliation.)

Summoning the caliph, Hulagu said, “You are the host, and we are the guests. Bring whatever you have that is suitable for us.” The Caliph – the ruler of all Muslims trembled in fear. He was so frenzied that he couldn't tell the keys to the treasuries one from another and had to have several locks broken. He brought two thousand suits of clothing, ten thousand dinars, precious items, jewel-encrusted vessels, and several gems. Hulagu Khan paid no attention and gave it all away to the commanders and others present.Hulagu said to the trembling Caliph “The possessions you have on the face of the earth are apparent,” and added, “Tell my servants what and where your buried treasures are.” The caliph confessed that there was a pool full of gold in the middle of the palace. They dug it up, and it was full of gold, all in huge ingots. An order was given for the caliph's harem to be counted. There were seven hundred women and concubines and a thousand servants. When the caliph was apprised of the count of the harem, he begged and pleaded, saying, “Let me have the women of the harem, upon whom neither the sun nor the moon has ever shone.” Of these seven hundred, choose a hundred,” he was told, “and leave the rest.” The caliph selected a hundred women from among his favourites and close relatives and took them away. Rest were distributed among Mongol commandants.

After the carnage at Baghdad was done Hulagu ordered that the Caliph and his sons were to be taken captive and held as prisoners in tents at the Kalwadha Gate at KetBuqa Noyan's camp. Several Mongols were set over them as guards. The caliph wept over his imminent doom and regretted having abandoned the battlefield. After giving this order to cease all slaughter, Hulagu Khan decamped from Baghdad on Wednesday the 20^th February on account of the foul air emanating from the rotting corpses and camped in the village of Waqaf-u-Jalabiyya. He sent one of his most fearsome commanders to conquer Khuzistan.

Hulagu summoned the Caliph to Waqaf. Having been subjected to such bad commands before, he was extremely afraid. At the end of the day on Wednesday caliph’s eldest son and five of his attendants were executed in the village of Waqaf. The next day the others who had camped with the Caliph at the Kalwadha Gate were also martyred. Next came the caliph’s turn. Here Hulagu faced a problem. According to Mongol ethics, no king could have his blood spilled on the ground. This would be ill omen. (The Mongols considered the Caliph to be a king of the Muslims). So Hulagu devised a novel way of killing the Caliph. He wrapped the Caliph in a thick carpet and then his cavalry stomped the caliph to death. Thus the caliph died due to suffocation and the stomping without his blood being spilled on the ground!

The Mongol commander BuqaTemi saw no threat from the people of Hilla and Kufa and on 16^th February, 1258A.D. he marched on and set out for the Sunni majority fortress town of Wasit. The people of Wasit did not surrender. So he camped and took the city, massacring and plundering. Nearly forty thousand people were put to death at Wasit, in the same way the Muslims had done when they had ravaged the same area then held by the Zoroastrian Persians in 637 A.D. After the sack of Wasit, Mongols went to Khuzistan, then to the city of Shushtar.  Towns like Najaf and Karbala also surrendered without a fight. Ironically, the chief Shiite cleric, Amir SayfuddinBitigchi pleaded with Hulagu Khan to send a hundred Mongols to Najaf to guard the shrine of the Commander of the Faithful Ali and the inhabitants there. Imagine Muslim seeking Kafirs to protect a Muslim shrine. This was Muslim morale at its abject lowest, which it has rarely reached ever since.

Hulagu Khan next attacked Damascus as they failed to surrender. An extract from Hulagu’s letter to the Governor of Damascus; “We stopped in Baghdad in the year 656 (of the Muslim Calendar which translates as 1258 of the Gregorian calendar), and an evil morning it was unto those who were warned in vain. We called upon its lord (the Caliph) to surrender, but he refused, so he suffered. We chastised him with a heavy chastisement. Now we call upon you to obey us. If you come, well and good; if you refuse, woe betide you. Do not be like one who digs his own grave or bloodies his own nose lest you be one of those whose works are vain, whose endeavor in the present life hath been wrongly directed, and who think they do the work which is right. Neither will this be difficult with God. And peace be with him who follows the right path.”After sending this ultimatum, the Mongols overran Damascus and Aleppo, without much of a fight.

The Mongol armies were thought to be unstoppable after they were able to overcome the defenses of both Baghdad and Damascus. In 1260 A.D.Hulagu sent envoys to Saif ad-Din Qutuz, the Mamluk ruler in Cairo demanding his surrender; Quduz responded by killing the envoys and displaying their heads on the gates of the city. But unfortunately, as Qutuz prepared for a Mongol invasion, Hulagu returned home to attempt to seize power when his brother the Great Khan Mongke died.Qutuz allied with a fellow Mamluk, Baubars, who had fled Syria after the Mongols captured Damascus. The Mongols also attempted to ally with the remnant of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, now centered on Acre, but Pope Alexander IV forbade this. The Christians remained neutral. This was the Cardinal Christian folly for which the Crusaders were to pay dearly very soon after the defeat of the Mongols at AynJalut.

When Hulagu Khan departed from Syria, he sent a Mongol emissary with forty liege men on a mission to Egypt, saying, “God the great has elevated Genghis Khan and his progeny and given us the realms of the face of the earth altogether. Everyone who has been recalcitrant in obeying us has been annihilated along with their women, children, kith and kin, towns, and servants, as has surely reached the hearing of all. The reputation of our innumerable army is as well-known as the stories of Rustam and Isfandiar. If you are in submission to our court, send tribute, come yourself, and request a Shahna (royal pardon as an instrument of surrender) otherwise be prepared for battle.”

In 1260 A.D. there was no one left from the ruling Kamilite family of Egypt, worthy of ruling and a Turcoman upstart named Quduz had become ruler when the last Kamilite king had died. The king had left an infant child named Muhammad, who was elevated to his father's position with Quduz as his Atabeg (regent’s protector). But the child prince Muhammad was murdered by Quduz, who proclaimed himself the ruler of Egypt. He curried favour with the people through largesse. He organised defeated soldiers of the Muslim armies of Sultan Jalaluddin who had fled from the gates of Baghdad and fled to Syria and then to Egypt ahead of the advancing Mongols. Their leaders and commanders were Barakat Khan and Malik Ikhtiyaruddin Khan.

The Egyptians decided to meet the Mongols before the enemy reached Egypt. So they sent out an army in Palestine. Both Muslim and Mongol armies encamped in Palestine in July of 1260 A.D. When the Mongol and Muslim armies finally met at Ain Jalut (in today’s Israel)on 3^rdSeptember, with both sides numbering about 20 000 men (the Mongol force was originally much larger, but Hulagu took most of it when he returned home). The Mamluks drew out the Mongol cavalry with a feigned retreat, and were almost unable to withstand the assault. Quduz rallied his troops for a successful counterattack, along cavalry reserves hidden in the nearby valleys. Quduz had stationed his troops in ambush and he himself mounted with a few others, stood waiting. When the unsuspecting, KetBuqa arrived with the main Mongol cavalry, Quduz pounced on him clashed with him and his several thousand cavalry, all experienced warriors, at AynJalut.

The Mongols attacked, raining down arrows, and Quduz pulled a feint and started to withdraw. Emboldened, the Mongols rode out after him, killing many of the Egyptians, but when they came to the ambush spot, the trap was sprung from three sides. A bloody battle ensued, lasting from dawn till midday. The Mongols were powerless to resist, and in the end they were put to flight. KetBuqaNoyan kept attacking left and right with all zeal. Some encouraged him to flee, but he refused to listen and said, “Death is inevitable. It is better to die with a good name than to flee in disgrace. In the end, someone from this army, old or young, will reach the court and report that KetBuqa, not wanting to return in shame, gave his life in battle.

KetBuqaNoyan's last words were “Tell my Padishah Hulagu Khan that he should not grieve over lost Mongol soldiers. Let him imagine that his soldiers' wives have not been pregnant for a year and the mares of their herds have not folded. May felicity be upon the Padishah. When his noble being is well, every loss is compensated. The life or death of servants like us is irrelevant.” Hulagu was told about KetBuqaNoyan that although many Mongol soldiers left him, he continued to struggle in battle like a thousand men. In the end his horse faltered, and he was captured. Near the battlefield was a reed bed in which a troop of Mongol cavalrymen was hiding. Quduz ordered fire thrown into it, and they were all burned alive. After that, KetBuqa was taken before Quduz with his hands bound.” Despicable man,” said Quduz, “you have shed so much blood wrongfully, ended the lives of champions and dignitaries with false assurances, and overthrown ancient dynasties with broken promises. Now you have finally fallen into a snare yourself.”

When the one whose hands were bound heard these words, he reared up like a mad elephant; and replied, saying, “O proud one, do not pride yourself on this day of victory.” “If I am killed by your hand,” said KetBuqa, “I consider it to be God's act, not yours. Be not deceived by this event for one moment, for when the news of my death reaches Hulagu Khan, the ocean of his wrath will boil over, and from Azerbaijan to the gates of Egypt will quake with the hooves of Mongol horses. They will take the sands of Egypt from there in their horses' nose bags. Hulagu Khan has three hundred thousand renowned horsemen like KetBuqa. In me you may take only one of them away.” Quduz said, “Speak not so proudly of the horsemen of Turan, for they perform deeds with trickery and artifice, not with manliness like us Muslims.” As long as I have lived,” replied KetBuqa, “I have been the Padishah's servant, not a mutineer and regicide like you! Finish me off as quickly as possible.” Quduz, in typical Muslim style, ordered his head severed from his body and displayed to the retreating Mongol soldiers.

After the battle of AynJalut, the Muslim armies surged throughout Syria as far as the banks of the Euphrates, overthrowing everyone they found, plundering KetBuqa's camp, taking captive his wife, child, and retainers, and killing the tax collectors.

Only those Mongols who were warned escaped, and when the news of KetBuqaNoyan's death and his last words reached Hulagu Khan, he displayed his grief over his death and the fire of zeal flared up to avenge this defeat. But another Mongol invasion of the Muslim world was not to take place. Hulagu remained confined to the affairs of his homeland and could never bring himself to launch another invasion. After his death, the Mongol Golden Horde did rule the largest empire till then, that stretched from China to Muscovy (modern Moscow).

Meanwhile the truculent Muslim armies did not stop at ejecting the Mongols from the Middle East, but they also give the final push to the Crusaders who were in occupation of Acre and Antioch, by capturing the last Crusader bastion in 1291 A.D. While Crusadors had the chance the they scorned the Mongols and did not form an alliance with them against the Muslims. Now the Muslims defeated their enemies one after the other, and both the Mongols and Crusaders became history in the Middle East.

Hulagu committed two mistakes that led to the eventual defeat of the Mongols by the Muslims.

After destruction of Bagdad, Hulagu ordered, “Henceforth the killing and pillaging will cease, for the kingdom of Baghdad is ours. Let them dwell as they were, and let everyone get on with his business. Sheathe your swords, for they are granted quarter.” This was the first mistake that the Mongols did, for taking advantage of this amnesty, the Muslims began to re-organize and re-arm themselves, and waited for the day, when the Mongols would lower their guard, so that the Muslims could lunge at them when they least suspected and take the revenge that they so fervently sought against the Mongols. Defeated Muslim army was reorganised by Quduz and defeated Mongols in present day Israel. It would not have been possible if Mongols decimated retreating soldiers in Baghdad and Damascus.

Hulagu’s second Mistake led to the gradual conversion of the Mongols to Islam.

After this massacre of the Caliph’s family, only the Caliph's youngest son survived. Hulgau decided to spare him and he was given to OljaiKhatun. He was married to a Mongol woman who bore him two sons. Hulagu allowed the marriages of Mongol women to captured Muslims and also of Muslim women to Mongol warriors, Islam made a back door entry into the Mongol camp, and influenced by their wives, the Mongol warriors slowly turned towards Islam and in a generation after Hulagu’s death, they openly started professing Islam. In fact it was these Muslim converts among the Mongols who invaded India and established the Mughal (derived from Mongol) kingdom. Also the heinous Timor Lang was a Muslim convert from Mongols who carried out decimation of Hindu population of Delhi and North Indian cities.

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