By the Third Battle of Homs, when the Mongols defeated the Mamluks after two previous losses at the same place, the stakes had gone down. Eighty years had passed since the Mongols first invaded the Muslim East. Central Asia and the Middle East had returned to their normal state of cross-religious alliances. Some Mongols were Muslims, and while few Crusaders remained in the region, those who did were open to allying with non-Christians.
The Golden and Blue Hordes of Batu Khan’s lineage had converted to Islam and now aligned with the Egyptian Mamluks against their own Mongolian kin. Hulegu’s great-grandson Ghazan had converted to Islam, but he was still at war with the other Muslim Mongols. Being a Muslim didn’t mean he couldn’t ally with Franks or anyone else; it was a matter of one regional power balancing against another. Conflict was no longer about religion, and sometimes it was not even about ethnicity, as you’ll see from the following stories.
When Ghazan’s Mongols allied with Christian Armenians and some remaining Templars and Hospitallers, and won a battle against the Mamluk Egyptians at Homs, near Damascus, in 1299, it was not game-changing. Mongolian cavalry still couldn’t actually hold the region, and soon they retreated to places with more grass. Ghazan’s ambassador joined the Christian knights when they tried to establish a base on Ruad Island, just off Syria’s coast. Ghazan made plans with Pope Boniface VIII for a new Crusade in 1302, but it never materialized. The Mongols just could not operate in the region.
Ghazan’s brother Öljeitu was baptized Christian by his mother, tentatively converted to Buddhism, then became a Muslim like Ghazan. At the same time, as the next Ilkhan, Öljeitu was very friendly with the Pope and wanted to re-establish a Frankish Holy Land. But on the other hand, the old Greek dynasty had finally taken Constantinople back from its Latin Crusade rulers and was trying to rebuild its power. So although Öljeitu was friendly with the Frankish Latin Christians, he married a Byzantine princess, allying with Constantinople against their local Turks—who were Muslims like him.
In China, Kublai Khan’s grandson Temür became Emperor in the new city of Khanbalik, and in 1304, the other lineages of Genghis who had been in rebellion against Kublai decided to accept Temür as Great Khan. Unified, the Mongols could have organized a new giant expedition as they had done before, but they recognized the geographical limits. It was difficult enough to just go on maintaining what they had. The Great Khans of China became more and more Buddhist and Confucian as they assimilated to their conquest.
Mongolian invasions had come to a point of rest. That’s how it remained until 1370, when Amir Temur (Tamerlane) revived the Mongol invasions. Instead, for the next 70 years, the main story in the region was the growth of a new Turkish dynasty.