The Plague on the Silk Road

Posted on November 3, 2023 by Ruth

Some time during a world history survey course in high school, or perhaps in a good documentary on the History Channel, you learned that medieval Europeans didn’t realize that rats carried fleas that carried Yersinia pestis bacteria. They were used to rat infestations and flea bites, so when they all got sick, they were puzzled and believed it was “bad air.” I’ve seen so many pictures of the rats (who scurried off ships and swam to shore, infecting the rats of each passing city) and jokes about the rats…it’s weird to find that there’s little evidence that rats had much to do with it.

The deadliest infectious diseases are those that jump from animals to humans; they may not be serious to the animal, and in theory, they can’t survive in a human body. But they do. Just as some common human foods are actually lethal to your cat or dog, these mild animal infections slay millions of people. Y. pestis is an infection of rodents, but different strains live in rats or in groundhogs—or to use the formal name for the ones in Asia, marmots. Marmots are the prairie dogs of the steppes. They live all across Asia and into Northern China; their habitat is the arid grassland. And marmots, not rats, are the primary carriers of the deadliest plagues.

Much of what we think we know about Bubonic plague comes from a modern pandemic. Alexandre Yersin, a Swiss-French doctor, isolated the bacteria at the root of an epidemic in Hong Kong in 1894. This plague is known as the Third Pandemic; it began in 1855 in China. It was during this 19th century pandemic that dead rats were observed, and the linkage between fleas and Y. pestis was made. But it’s also clear that the Y. pestis strain was much weaker during the modern Third Pandemic than it had been in the past. After trying out the idea that medieval writers exaggerated, we’ve mostly settled on the realization that Bubonic plague is at its weakest if you have to be bitten by a flea. When you really worry is when it goes airborne. “Bad air” indeed.

There had been two infamous ancient plagues, the Plagues of Athens and of Justinian, and we don’t know if they were caused by Y. pestis. We can guess, but it’s only with the 14th century one that we can know by digging up bones to test. Most of our information about the medieval plague comes from Europe, where it shocked the population into trauma that lasted for centuries. We know a lot less about its ground zero history in China, perhaps because it was just one of many diseases. We also know less about its history in the Middle East, but we do know a little. Let’s look now at the plague as it affected the Mongolian domains of China, the Silk Road, and the Middle East.

The first outbreak of the bacteria from the marmot population in northern China probably came around 1330. Yuan Dynasty China had not been doing as well under Kublai’s successors, but there was also a lot of severe weather in the early 1300s. It was severe in Northern Europe, too, but both trends are generally seen as regional. As part of a larger pattern, they were early signs of massive global cooling that we call the Little Ice Age. It’s arguable that we’re only now emerging from the Little Ice Age; it’s also possible that during times of climate change, microscopic populations go through shifts that we don’t understand.

The effect was that in both northern Europe and northern China, there were terrible famines that lasted for multiple years, and more routine epidemics of things like typhoid that left the population thinned by about 10% and weakened by malnutrition. When the marmot infection crossed over, perhaps through some hunters who killed a sick animal, it met the weakened immune systems of adults who had starved as children. Between 1330 and 1350, there may have been three separate waves of plague infection in China, in various regions, each recorded at the time as slaying over half the population. Modern estimates suggest as many as 25 million deaths in the vicinity of China. We have no detailed medical descriptions from the Chinese outbreaks, perhaps because it was mistaken for other common epidemics.

We’re pretty sure that the plague came to Europe along the Silk Road. It may not have been carried by infected travelers; it may have jumped from marmots again in the steppes of Afghanistan or Iran. We don’t know. We do have signs of early plague deaths along the Silk Road as early as 1345. Over the next two years, the infections came closer to Europe and at last some Tatars who were besieging a Black Sea port began to die. Then their corpses were used as weapons, perhaps with no understanding that these corpses were much more dangerous than the usual.

The siege wasn’t very effective; ships could and did leave. Some unknown number of ships set out for Alexandria, Constantinople, and Genoa. They tried to make provision stops along the way. But somewhere between the Silk Road and the ships, the infection became airborne. And the airborne form of Y. pestis is very rapidly lethal; death can come within 8 hours of infection. This rapidity may have helped it spread slowly at first, as whole families in isolation died out without spreading it. This could be why there’s no record of the plague spreading to India, although the Silk Road ran across its northern edge. But on ships, even two hours of asymptomatic infection were enough to infect ten more people.

Within a few stops, it was clear to every harbor that the ships had plague. Probably, a boat with a few “healthy” people met to discuss the situation, and that was enough to transfer the plague ashore even if nobody was allowed to land. By the time the Genoa-bound ship had gone around the boot of Italy, everyone knew; ports shot fire arrows at the plague ships to drive them off. But it was too late.

The plague hit Alexandria, Constantinople, and port cities of Italy within the same months of 1347. It spread rapidly through Turkey and Syria, and from Alexandria, it fanned out into Egypt and North Africa. It raged through the ancient cities, devastating economies that had already been suffering from repeated conquest. Baghdad was rebuilt after its utter sacking in 1258 and was now a dirty market town: want to catch the plague there? What about depressed, crowded Constantinople or Alexandria? Damietta, anyone? Ashkelon? Oh, I know, how about Jerusalem, which had been depopulated, burned, wrecked, and repopulated in cycles for the last few centuries?

In each city, the plague stayed in a highly infectious stage for a little over a year, then new infections and deaths began to slow. About two years after the first cases, there were no new ones. So in Italy, Alexandria, and Constantinople, the hot years were 1347 to 1348, while in Germany, there were places that saw no plague cases until 1349, and it lasted into 1350.

Christian and Muslim medical science was very similar at that time, since both were based on Greek texts translated into Arabic or Latin. If you went to medical school in Pisa, you’d read works by Avicenna, a great Muslim doctor. But cultural attitudes to the epidemic were very different.

Christian societies believed the plague was punishment for sin. They tried to fight it with repentance, both with parades of relics and with flagellation to demonstrate remorse. Those who could afford to flee from the “bad air” did so, and some survived for that reason (one Italian family sealed up their house and didn’t come out for two months, while the Pope at Avignon stayed very isolated near a fire). They saw the plague as coming from God, but also as something that the saints could stop if they chose. Doctors did their best to understand the disease process, but the problem was that so many people died so fast. A man might make a last will and call in a notary to see it witnessed, only to find the notary dead, and a few hours later, his witnesses dead. When his heirs tried to bury him, they couldn’t execute the will because they began to sicken and die, and there was no time to make a proper new will. You can imagine how chaotic medical observation was, in those conditions.

The Muslim world saw the plague as a God’s will, not to be changed or fled. Death could be a merciful release from this life, and hadiths said that plague deaths were a special kind of martyrdom. Their doctors observed and treated as they could, but they may not even have been called in for most cases. While individuals might flee the epidemic, their culture did not encourage their attitudes; one hadith of Mohammed specifically says “do not flee from the plague.” Instead, their leaders encouraged greater exercise of personal piety and prayer. They probably recited the hadiths (Sahih Bukhari 622-631) about the blessed state of death from plague more often than before. On the whole, they made their wills and waited to see if they would die or live. They attended weekly public funerals for large number of the dead, instead of keeping track of individual funerals.

Lisad al-Din ibn Khatib, Vizier to the Emir of Granada, wrote a book about his plague observations. Squarely facing the hadith tradition that plague was only an expression of God’s will, he stated that so many accounts of transmission by garments, earrings, eating/drinking vessels, and direct human contact just couldn’t be ignored. He stated that the hadith tradition must be modified if it’s in such “manifest contradiction with the evidence of the perception of senses.” In 1374, about 12 years after his book was published, he was executed for heresy in Fez, possibly for his medical opinions among others.

Ibn Khaldun, whose parents died in Tunis’s plague, saw the plague as a watershed in history. Everything was going along the same each century, until the plague hit:

It swallowed up many of the good things of civilization and wiped them out. It overtook the dynasties at the time of their senility, when they had reached the limit of their duration. It lessened their power and curtailed their influence. It weakened their authority. Their situation approached the point of annihilation and dissolution. Civilization decreased with the decrease of mankind. Cities and buildings were laid waste, roads and way signs were obliterated, settlements and mansions became empty, dynasties and tribes grew weak. The entire inhabited world changed.

There’s no way to measure the devastating effect of the plague on the cities left behind. Whole houses were left empty, whole professions stripped of masters and teachers. In England, the routine teaching of French at school came to an end. Some large buildings lost their architects and had to be completed in simpler ways. So many priests died in Europe that the old apprenticeship training system fell apart; they had to found seminaries to train young men in larger groups. There were chaotic population transfers between farms and towns, as vacancies got filled. Within two generations and about four plague episodes, Europe’s feudal system was mostly dead and peasants began uprisings to demand wages.

Constantinople was gutted. The plague was the last blow to this city that was once the capital of its region, with the best of everything. After the Fourth Crusade burned much of it, and then the Byzantines spent 50 years battling back into power, there was much to recover from. In 1347, the recovery shut down. There’s a direct link between the plague and the city’s humiliation in having to pay tribute to the Turks around 1360. By 1371, when peasant revolutions began to roil Europe, Constantinople was officially a vassal state.

The last Ilkhan descended from Hulegu died of plague during early Silk Road outbreaks in the 1330s. His heirs all died with him, leaving a complete vacancy, which led to the break-up of the Ilkhanate into warring, impoverished cities. The new Mamluk Sultan, a 12 year old boy, survived but the city was weakened, which must have affected Mamluk politics.

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Building the Alhambra Palace, 1333

Posted on November 3, 2023 by Ruth

In 1333, Emir Yusuf began to build the splendid palace that came to be known as The Red Fort, Qalat al-Hamra: the Alhambra. His reign and his son’s spanned most of the 1300s and established the palace that we tour today. There are other sections built by later Christian kings, but I won’t write about them here.

During the Reconquista years of the 1200s, the Emirs of Granada chose to move their residence to an ancient fortress on a hilltop. The first fort, the Alcazaba, had been built in the early years of the Muslim Conquest. It was seated at the point of the long hilltop, where steep hillsides fell away to the river valley, like the prow of a land-based ship. Of course, it was strictly practical, modeled after the classical world’s fortresses in Syria. There were few windows and no residential chambers.

To make it into a residence, the 13th century Emirs built three square tower keeps, each about 16 meters to a side. Interior arches supported four floors that included residential rooms. One of the towers had a bell that was used for many years to keep time for farmers who needed to turn on and off irrigation systems. In 1492, when Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada, the hoisting of their flag over this bell tower was the symbolic “Mission Accomplished” moment.

The next important task was to bring water into the fortress, using canals and, I suppose, a system of pumps to get it to the hilltop. New warehouses held stores in case of a siege. During the next few Emirs’ reigns, they added public baths (complete with steam room supported by a copper boiler) and a mosque.

The technology used to pump water up to the hilltop and then keep pipes pressurized for fountains was a primary luxury of the time; Southern Spain is very hot and dry. The Alhambra managed the climate with interior courtyards (blocking hot dry wind) that offered shade and evaporative cooling. Keeping ponds full and fountains running took up a lot of the available water resources. The most famous fountain courtyard has 12 lions with water jets, while the Court of the Myrtles contains a large pool of water.

In Yusuf’s time, the fortified gate called Gate of Justice was the main entrance, completed in 1348. Visitors passed under a horseshoe arch with a carving of The Hand of Fatima. This hand is a charm against evil, and its five fingers represent the five principles of Islam. The same design, more stylized than in the 14th century carving, is used as a general good-luck symbol in the Middle East, even in Israel, where it’s known as a Chamsa (chamesh means 5).

The Emir’s private living quarters, known as the harem, used a lot of water. They had running water (early taps had been invented by the 1300s) both hot and cold, and both baths and pressurized showers! Female grooming had a long tradition in the Middle East; women were shaved, bathed and perfumed, often with plucked eyebrows and cosmetics. But the word “harem” originally just means “restricted,” the way White House tour guides never cross lines into the restricted private areas where the President actually lives, so it was not supposed to mean “women only.”

Emir Yusuf and his son, Mohammed, wanted their living quarters to amaze the world, so they were decorated more elaborately than any monarch’s palace until Versailles. The Alhambra Palace’s decoration with geometric figures really stands out to Western eyes, since European decorative traditions tended to use figures of humans, animals, and flowers. M. C. Escher was inspired by the tesselated tiles to develop his tesselation drawings. “Circle Limit” (1960) closely resembles the domed tiled ceilings of some Alhamabra rooms.

Instead of using color, yeseria technique uses carved plaster to create three-dimensional wall art. Where Greek sculpture had created bas-relief, in which figures are in half-round, Islamic yeseria actually cut through the plaster so that darkness behind the screen of carved plaster made the designs stand out very starkly. They showed geometric figures, leaves, and Arabic scripts, often in combination. The “Hall of the Boat” (actually “Blessing” in original, Arabic baraka –> Spanish barca) has walls and ceiling entirely covered in yeseria plasterwork.

An even more three-dimensional decoration can be found in the techniques of muqarnas and mocarabe, from Persian decorative tradition. The muqarnas uses concave surfaces to create texture, sometimes with colored decorations inside each concave bowl or cell. The mocarabe is an extreme form of muqarnas technique; it is like a honeycomb tipped to point its openings downward, hanging from above like a stalactite. One hall in the Alhambra is known as the Hall of the Mocarabes.

Finally, the Alhambra’s rooms were often decorated by poems in Arabic. The poems praised the artistry of each room, and many praised Mohammed V, the Emir whose long reign in the late 1300s saw the completion of the palace’s greatest beauties. The Alhambra Palace was the most beautiful king’s residence of its time.

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North Africa in the 14th Century

Posted on November 3, 2023 by Ruth

North Africa’s Muslim story in the 14th century mostly stars a Moroccan dynasty we call the Marinids, after their founder whose first name was Marin. They were Berbers of the Zenata tribe, locked in long rivalry and conflict with other Berber tribes such as the ones who had become the ruling Alhomad dynasty. The Marinids spent some time in the mountains, then swept down into the valley and began assaulting the Almohads’ main cities.

The Almohads had one foot on the Iberian Peninsula, where the Reconquista led by Castile had powerful momentum. Losses in Spain weakened the Almohads generally, so that their dynasty was vulnerable. The Marinids over-ran their capital and key fortress of Marrakesh in 1269, overthrowing them as a ruling power.

They, however, centered their new capital on Fez. The Marinids built a new quarter onto Fez, called Fez J’did (“New Fez”), a center for civil administration. That’s now part of the Old City of Fez that tourists visit. Fez had a thriving Jewish section, too. Marrakesh remained an important city for Sufi pilgrimages, because it had the tombs of seven Muslim saints. But it never regained administrative or commercial power until after 1500.

The Marinids had a key problem: Arabic nomads had settled among the Berbers during the early Conquest years. By now, they were as “native” as the Berbers, but they were ethnically distinct and felt superior by their genetic connection to the Prophet. They still kept track of themselves as tribes, often called the Bani Something—-the Sons of Somebody. Originally very small groups of no more than 200 settlers, they had become almost a majority in much of Western Sahara, Mauritania, and Southern Algeria. They’re still a large presence in those places. They speak a dialect of Arabic called Hassaniya, probably of much interest to linguists because it’s a transplantation of classical Arabic that developed in isolation from Arabia, with influence from African languages like Wolof. There are about 3 million Hassaniya speakers today.

The Berber Marinids wanted to rule over the Arab tribes, but the Arab tribes strongly believed that a descendant of Mohammed should be in power. They were the launch-pad of the Fatimid Dynasty around 900, after all; they may have adopted Sunni theology, but they still cared deeply about Mohammed’s genetic line. The Marinid solution was to talk up the lineage of Idris.

Idris had been a great-grandson of Mohammed’s grandson Hasan. He fled to hide among the Berbers after an unsuccessful rebellion of Ali’s descendants against the Abbasid Caliphs. He is known as the first Muslim king of Morocco, Idris I. He founded a town called Moulay Idris, and he conquered cities like Fez and Tlemcen. He married the Berber chief’s daughter but was poisoned by Caliph Harun al-Rashid in 791, two months before his son Idris II was born. The Berbers raised the child and kept him in power, establishing the first kingdom of Morocco. Their dynasty lasted until 985, when it had been wiped out by Abd al-Rahman of Cordoba.

Idris made a good founding myth for the Marinids. He was a Sharif, that is, a descendant of Hasan (Sayid means a descendant of Husein). Although his dynasty was not in power, plenty of men could claim to trace their ancestry back to the family of Idris. The Marinids encouraged and financed some official Sharifs to show respect to the line of Mohammed, while actually cutting the Arab tribes out of power. It seems to have worked some of the time, at least well enough to keep the Marinids in power.

Northwest Africa was divided into roughly four zones of rule or influence: the Empire of Mali and the Kingdoms of Ifriqiya, Tlemcen, and Fez. Fez, of course, was the perch of the Marinids, and we’ve separately looked at Mali with its caravan city, Timbuktu. The other two kingdoms were portions of the Mediterranean coast. Starting with Fez in the extreme west, next came Tlemcen, roughly modern Algeria. Next to the east, Ifriqiya was ruled by the Hafsid dynasty. It was a much larger area, expanding as far east as Egypt would tolerate.

Tlemcen’s independence from the Marinids lasted until 1337. Prior to the annexation, there had been chronic war. Starting in 1299, the Marinids had built a rival city to draw trade away from Tlemcen. Their city had nicer streets and a public bath, and it did succeed in emptying Tlemcen’s markets and port. But only for a while: after winning a battle, the rulers in Tlemcen tore the rival city down. With Tlemcen annexed, the Marinids had absolute control of the western end of the Saharan trade routes. Their control must have extended only so far south, with the powerful Empire of Mali jealously controlling its ability to tax and mine gold.

Ifriqiya’s fortunes went up and down, after it had become an independent kingdom in 1229 when its Alhomad governors dared the weakening Almohad kings to come stop them. It was the scene of the 9th Crusade, when King Louis landed at Tunis, then died. The resulting trade treaty with Sicily must have increased its wealth and security. It often controlled the islands off Spain, such as Majorca, too.

The Marinids’ Kingdom of Fez grew to its largest size under Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Uthman, between 1331 and 1351. His name in simpler form was Hasan, son of Uthman II (1310-1331). Both of these kings worked to stabilize the Kingdom of Fez. Uthman established many madrassas in Fez and cities like Rahat, to support the growth of a middle-class civil servant base. Uthman had a little breathing space from Arab tribal revolts because his mother had been a tribal leader’s daughter.

Uthman probably married at least one Arab girl, but the wife who became the next ruler’s mother was an Ethiopian. Her son Hasan was called “the Black Sultan.” I’m not sure what advantages were gained with this alliance, but you can be sure there were some. The Black Sultan then chose very strategically: he married a princess of the Hafsid dynasty of Ifriqiya, which left Tlemcen squeezed to death and probably aided its 1337 annexation.

Hasan had enough power to get back into the Spanish game. In 1309, Castile had captured the island of Gibraltar, the stepping-stone between Africa and Europe. Even while they were still busy fighting Tlemcen, Hasan’s navy managed to capture back Gibraltar in 1333. The Emir of Granada was worried that the Marinids would try to annex their foothold in Spain, too, in spite of past Marinids having renounced their Spanish land. But the year following the recapture of Gibraltar, a three-way truce was signed between Fez, Granada, and even Castile.  The truce was for four years, allowing all parties to rebuild their strength. It ran out in 1338, and in 1340, the Marinids had a major naval battle against Castile—-and won.

During the years when Granada’s Emir was building the Alhambra Palace, Granada acted more or less like a client state to the Kingdom of Fez. As long as the Marinids controlled the entire Mahgreb—-the coastlands and mountains of northwest Africa—there was a stable balance of power.

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Europe: Early 1300’s Famine

Posted on November 1, 2023 by Ruth

In Northern Europe, the 14th Century was a time of very short life expectancy. France really had the worst of it, since their king from 1285 to 1314 was Philip IV “the Fair,” one of the worst kings in history. His literal devaluing of gold coins (mixing in copper) and overtaxing the County of Champagne crashed the French economy, taking away any flexibility the people had for surviving the climate.

The century would see slow cooling, just as our century has been seeing slow warming, but from about 1305 to 1325, some other regional weather patterns made it even worse. France had local famines at least once per decade through the 1300s, and during the early years, some French regions starved in 1304, 1305, and 1310, in addition to what the rest of Europe was about to experience.

Between the years 1315 and 1318, it rained far more than Europe’s climate and geography could sustain. During the summers, it was a cold rain, and the ground never really dried out. Crops got fungal diseases in the field and stored grain—and stored anything—grew mold. During the first overly rainy year, the peasants had to dip into their seed grain for the next year, but during the second rainy year, 1316, they also ate up wild food supplies and many of their animals. During the third overly rainy year, 1317, the tree bark was stripped off so that some trees died. This was the peak of the famine.

Winters were even worse because they couldn’t cure fish or pork in salt, since salt came from evaporation and it kept raining. In the Netherlands, there were major floods that wiped out large communities. Many children didn’t survive. I suspect that the fable of Hansel and Gretel, left in the forest to starve, has roots in these famines. There are sensational reports of worse happening, including various forms of human cannibalism.

The weather was a bit more normal in 1318, but of course there was hardly any seed grain or baby farm animals, so starvation continued. It took several years to build back a normal food supply; it’s estimated that the famine continued until 1325. The children born during this less severe period survived better, but their health was impaired. Additionally, as these kids grew up, England and France began their Hundred Years’ War to settle the problem of English-ruled lands in France. It was a very rough century in Northern Europe.

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Mamluk Game of Thrones, 1290-1330

Posted on October 28, 2023 by Ruth

The Mamluks governed based on competence, in a time when governance was always based on inheritance. They didn’t come up with a framework for peaceful transfers of power or group selection of the leader. Instead, they functioned like a monarchy that’s constantly at risk of internal coup. Every Mamluk Sultan wanted to leave power to his kids if he could, but “if” was the big question. Let’s look at some of the stories.

Baybars oversaw the rising dominance of the Mamluk regime between 1260 and 1277; he is thought to have had ten children, including three sons. At his death, his son Barakah took control, so that at first it looked like the Mamluks might have started a new monarchist dynasty. Barakah understood how to use power; he started weeding out powerful Mamluk Emirs who might shoulder him aside as his father had done to Qutuz. After about a year, the Emir who was also Barakah’s father in law put a stop to it, forcing him to abdicate in favor of his seven-year-old brother. Barakah withdrew to Kerak,  Jordan, where the Mamluks had captured a Crusader castle, and later died there.

No child can rule a Mamluk kingdom, so the real ruler was Qalawun, the father in law. By 1279, the child was expelled to Constantinople and Qalawun simply became the Sultan. The Emir of Damascus thought this was very wrong, since his concept of government was still royal inheritance, but by the time the Mongols came around for the Second Battle of Homs, he was glad to accept a strong Mamluk Sultan’s help. Qalawun successfully negotiated with the remaining Latins of the Holy Land to pay tribute and accept restrictions on fortifying cities like Tyre and Beirut.

Qalawun had at least two sons, too. Like Baybars, he preferred to establish a family dynasty, and he had an idea to weaken the other Emirs around him. He started promoting Circassians, another ethnic minority from around Georgia, to power among the Mamluks. This disrupted the old-boy networks that his fellow Kipchaks had built up. It worked: his son Khalil inherited after him. Khalil was the conqueror of Acre in 1291.

Khalil continued to promote Circassians, probably rewarding those who were loyal to his family, until he was assassinated by other Kipchak Mamluks. And then the Circassians supported his brother an-Nasir Mohammed, so the family kept power. Qalawun’s family strategy not only worked, it also brought a wave of Circassians into Egypt, so that eventually they would become the rulers in their turn (and into modern times). Even before they took power, they became known as the Burji Mamluks, fighting the mainstream Bahris.

An-Nasir Mohammed’s nemesis was an Oirat Mongolian named Kitbogha, who had been captured as an adult fighter in the Second Battle of Homs. Although the Mamluks abandoned their ethnicity in theory, it seems like in practice they formed ethnic mafias. A whole group of Oirats (roughly equivalent to today’s Tuvans?) were in a conspiracy to cast down Qalawun’s legacy and put their own guy into power, and they succeeded twice—and failed twice.

Kitbogha had his own nemesis: his Vizier, probably a Kipchak Turk loyal to Qalawun’s family. The Burji faction drove Kitbogha out of Cairo, but he returned with the support of Mongolian and Kurdish Mamluks and besieged the Vizier in the Citadel. Qalawun’s Mongolian widow, mother to nine-year-old Sultan an-Nasir, sided with Kitbogha by locking the rival Emir out of the Citadel. A third Emir named Lajin (whose ethnicity is uncertain: his hair was blond) persuaded Kitbogha to depose and exile the child, after all, so they set up as Sultan and Vice-Sultan in 1294.

Lajin was a dangerous guy: not only had he been the assassin of Khalil, he then deposed Kitbogha in 1296. Not to worry: soon Lajin was also assassinated by another Mongolian Mamluk. Now what? One of the Mamluk Emirs had to rule, but there was no clear leader. They finally decided to reinstate the King: they brought back 14-year-old Nasir Mohammed from exile at Kerak Castle and agreed to two viziers: an Oirat Mongol and a Circassian.

Sultan Nasir Mohammed led the Mamluk army against Ghazan’s third Mongolian invasion in 1299, just in time to lose the battle. He won the peace, though, when Ghazan inevitably withdrew. In 1303, Ghazan and the Mongols tried one more time, but the young Sultan led an army to surprise them into defeat just south of Damascus. But unknown to everyone else, the Sultan was getting sick of power struggles with domineering Viziers. The Circassian Burji Mamluks had started a protection racket in Cairo, too, and nobody could call them to heel. In 1309, Sultan Nasir announced he was going on Hajj and just didn’t come back. Instead, he went “home” to Kerak, the Crusader castle in Jordan where he had been exiled as a child.

The Circassian Vizier, Baibars al-Jashnakir, ruled as Sultan for nearly a year. It was dreadful; the Mongols and Latins were still threatening war, while the new “Sultan” was greeted with riots in Cairo. So a delegation sent to Kerak, begging an-Nasir (now 24) to come back. He did, and his first act was to execute Baibars al-Jashnakir. Then he started on the rest, and boy he knew where the bodies were buried, as they say. He got rid of the Oirats, stopped the Circassian Mafia racket, and shut down a prison where the Mamluk Emirs had been disappearing their enemies.

This time, Nasir Mohammed ruled until his death in 1341. He oversaw the redigging of a canal in Alexandria and received envoys from the Pope and the King of France (who simply wanted Jerusalem back, please?). When he died, he left eight sons who all became Sultans in their turn, followed by four grandsons. Sounds good, right? But wait, why eight of his sons? If the family dynasty was really settled in now, like a real monarchy, what happened? Ah…

So in truth, although Nasir groomed and trained his oldest son to be the best Sultan ever, the Mamluk Emirs around him were still too much for them. It was only a peaceful power transition on the surface, and really another strongman was in control and used Nasir’s sons as puppets. Qusun was another easterner of some kind, who had come west with a Mongolian army, perhaps as a merchant or suttler. He was powerful enough by 1341 to have Nasir’s son, the new Sultan, arrested and executed. He installed the infant Ashraf Küçük (which means “little”) as Sultan, but dang if Little Ashraf didn’t need a strong Regent, you know?

It was a stormy year, and by the end, Qusun had been executed. The next living son of Nasir, who like his brothers had been trained in strict desert warfare at his father’s “home” of Kerak Castle, came to power. He only wanted to go back to Kerak, so the Emirs installed another brother. That one lasted a few years, then another (we’re up to 5 now) who was a terrible partier and made it only one year. Time for number six, who turned out to be an obsessive pigeon racer and gambler. Number 7 was a child but stayed alive long enough to have 11 children and rule as Sultan, twice (interrupted by #8).

The Mamluks were groping toward a system of oligarchy in which they’d privately elect an executive from among the dynastic potentials. They swapped out sons (and grandsons) as different factions seized power. Earlier, the Mamluks had actually taken a stab at peaceful power transitions by exiling former child Sultans, not killing them. During this period, usually the losing Sultan lost his life, but the last of Nasir’s sons was not executed during at least one coup, so that he was still there to return to power.

This last son of Nasir took steps to trim the powers of Mamluk Emirs, as his father had done. His weapon of choice was clever: he began promoting the descendants of Mamluks who had never been made into Mamluks themselves. The core “Mamluk” experience was to be enslaved then freed (or to free self via coup), but these descendants, the Awlad al-Nas, had not undergone this process, but had just lived as a sort of Cairo aristocracy. They now became Sultan an-Nasir Hasan’s civil servants, governing cities and heading up departments.

Naturally, by 1361, the still-young Sultan was assassinated by one of the Mamluks whose power he was trimming back. This murderer, Yalbugha (whose ethnic background is unclear), became the new strongman who chose which grandson of Nasir Mohammed to install at the moment. And so it went on, until the Mamluk Vizier Barquq ended the farce and just started a new Mamluk era, making himself the first Circassian Burji Mamluk Sultan.

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The First Ottomans and the Last Ilkhan, 1302-37

Posted on October 21, 2023 by Ruth

In 1280, a Turk named Osman became the Bey of Söğüt, Turkey, and over the next 20 years, he took control of neighboring tribes and towns. His son Orhan named the new cluster of towns and tribes the “Osmanlı,” or as we would say, the Ottomans. In Osman’s time, they were just Turks, and perhaps not even much of a tribe, more like a political block. But any real estate agent will tell you what matters: location. Söğüt was far from the areas where Turks had clashed with Franks during the Crusades; it was in the heart of the old Roman empire, in Bithynia.

Bithynia is a long swath of land along the southern Black Sea coast; it was a kingdom in the Hellenistic period, then a Roman province. Its western edge touches the Bosporus Strait (at Constantinople), and its eastern edge is bounded by the Sakarya River. In the time of Emperor Justinian, they built a massive stone bridge where the military road met the river. The chief city of Bithynia, Nicaea, had just been serving as the seat of the Greek Byzantine government in exile. With the Greeks back in control of nearby Constantinople, Nicaea should have been a secure part of its territory. But Osman’s Turks were attacking many Byzantine towns to their north: Nicaea, Prussa, and  the port town of Nicomedia.

The Byzantine Empire was trying to recover its lost footing by crowning father-son pairs as co-Emperors, so that succession would be clear and they could send one ruler on military campaign while the other secured the city. Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos had used marriages, including his own, to bring rival claimants into the family. He had resettled displaced persons from the long Venice-Crete-Constantinople wars around the Meander River (worth mentioning just for its name), and he had hired mercenaries from among the Alan tribe (who were probably part of a Mongolian confederation, therefore loosely Byzantine allies).

Now in 1302, his son Co-Emperor Michael led a large force to confront the Turks on a field between Nicomedia and Nicaea.

The Battle of Bapheus was a simple engagement; the confederated Turks led by Osman overwhelmed the Byzantine army until it fell back to Nicomedia. From that point on, Bithynia was ruled by the Byzantines only from its forts, while the countryside became a no-go zone. When the town of Prussa fell, it became the Turks’ new capital. The name “Prussa” in Greek turned into “Bursa” in Turkish. Osman’s son Orhan ruled from Bursa and continued his conquests. In 1337, the port of Nicomedia also fell to the Turks. From this point on, Osman’s line grew in power.

But what of the last of the Mongolian kingdom that had been ruling much of the Middle East? In 1335, still many years before the Black Death broke out in Europe, an early round of the plague carried off the last Ilkhan and his heirs. His territory broke into small fiefdoms and declined in power; Iran was not powerful again until the Safavid Empire in 1501. Everyday life went on as usual, but in the 1300s few Muslims enjoyed the privileges of Empire, as many had done in the past, and as many would again in the future.

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The End of the Templars, 1307

Posted on October 16, 2023 by Ruth

By the end of the 13th century, the Order of Knights of the Temple had received so much property as charitable gifts that they were wealthier than many kings. A large number of their members were involved not in protecting pilgrims in the Holy Land, but in managing the property, which included estates with farms and mines as well as cash invested in shipping. The Templars had become international bankers who first tried out the idea of traveling with a verified receipt for money deposited in one city’s Temple, to be withdrawn in another city’s Temple—-in other words, a banker’s cheque, or check as we say.

The end of the Order came suddenly with unexpected violence: hundreds of knights were burned alive. To understand why, we need some context of what was happening in Europe during the previous decade or so.

First, the Orders of Knights had lost their actual function when Acre fell in 1291. They hung onto a base in Limassol, Cyprus and a few islands, including the isle of Ruad just off the coast of Lebanon. The Templars and Hospitalers were using the island as a base to attack Tortosa, the nearest mainland city. In 1303, the Mamluks cleaned up a bit more, taking the fortress at Ruad from the Templars. About forty knights were captured and remained in prisons in Cairo for the rest of their lives, refusing to convert to Islam.

Second, the King in France was the grandson of King Louis IX, the great Crusader who died of dysentery at Tunis in 1271. Since the time of King Louis, France had become locked in territorial wars with England, as France tried to take portions of its Atlantic coast that had been ruled by Anglo-Norman kings. France also got drawn into war against Aragon. Philip IV (“the Fair”) inherited debt from his father and perhaps even his Crusading grandfather. He owed large sums to Jews and Templars.

Philip IV tried a number of tactics to become solvent again. He evicted the Jews in 1306, seizing their property, which included debts to other people—who now faced the king as their creditor. Next, he evicted bankers from Lombardy (northern Italy) in the same way. He minted new coins several times, cheating on the value of gold and silver to try to make a little profit. Some of that old saw about biting a gold coin to tell if it’s genuine might come from Philip’s 1295 mixture of copper with the gold, which made it harder than true gold. Currency lost so much value that riots in Paris forced the king to hide, at one point–ironically–in the Templars’ headquarters.

But perhaps Philip’s most influential money scheme came first: in 1290, he tried out taxing the income of the church. They were a tempting target, since so much charitable giving in people’s wills had left them owning vast estates. But the Pope issued a bull forbidding the church to transfer any property to the French crown. Philip actually attempted to arrest the Pope near Rome. When this Pope passed away and the conclave elected a new Pope in 1305, their choice was a Frenchman who decided not to live in Rome. The new Pope Clement V set up his Papal court in Avignon, France in 1309. One of Clement’s first actions was to nullify the previous Pope’s decrees against the King of France. For the next 70 years, the Pope was always French, and always under the King’s thumb.

Pope Clement wanted to wind down the Orders of Knights; he thought maybe the Templars and Hospitallers could at least merge. The Grand Master of the Templars traveled to Avignon to discuss this with the Pope in 1307, and another small item came up on the agenda: a former Templar knight had lodged a criminal complaint against the organization. Although the Pope wasn’t inclined to believe the charges, he sent the King of France a letter about them, asking for his input.

King Philip acted quickly: he would inflate the charges to be as great as possible and use them to bring down the Temple. On Friday the 13th of October, he sent out an arrest order for the Grand Master and most of the other knights. He charged them with heresy and indecency: spitting on the Cross during secret ceremonies, worshiping idols, indecent homosexual practices, and financial fraud. Knights were questioned under torture until they admitted to anything the King wanted. In November 1307, at the King’s request, the Pope issued a bull instructing all Christian monarchs to arrest all Templars.

When Pope Clement V got involved, the torture stopped. He held trials, but some of the Templars defended themselves, and most of those who had confessed under torture recanted their confessions. This was a serious problem for Philip, so he made sure a French archbishop took control of the trials. With direct crown control restored, Philip could ensure that the original confessions were upheld as trial evidence. Those convicted were immediately burned at the stake in Paris.

Even as the King’s puppet, Pope Clement V was reluctant to continue suppressing the Templars. The King had to threaten military action, and then the Pope cooperated, outlawing the Order at the Council of Vienne (in France) in 1312. The Grand Master and the Preceptor of Normandy were sentenced to be burnt for heresy on March 18, 1314. Legend says that the Grand Master called out of the flames to the Pope and King, saying that God knew the right of it and would judge them. Both Pope and King did die soon, the same year.

The Temple properties were made over to the Hospital Order, though I think the Hospital chose wisely to cancel all certificates of debt to the King of France. Many Temple knights and other staff who had not been swept up in the heresy charges became Hospitallers. These knights continued on with headquarters on the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, and Malta.

The King of Portugal started the Order of Christ in 1317 with the remnants of the Templars in his region. He still needed them for the rest of the Reconquista. This Order still exists in Portugal.

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At the Close of the 13th Century

Posted on October 16, 2023 by Ruth

Before going on to the momentous events of the 14th Century, let’s look at what Europe and Asia were like in the late 13th. Life was soon to change.

Climate:

First, and at the largest scale, a climatic maximum—-a warm period—was ending. It’s not clear how much of the world had been affected, though it seems logical to say that all of the globe was involved, but “warmth” may not have been the experience of other regions. In Europe, it was warmer and drier for the centuries 950-1250, as it had been also from 250 BC to 400 AD. During the intervening period, 400-950, temperatures seem to have been mostly cooler. Since the period 400-950 was also the time when Europe experienced many large-scale migrations and invasions from Asia, it’s possible that the slight change in the climate made steppe life harsher and pushed people to move away. There is some evidence that China experienced the same climate fluctuations as Europe.

If you were an old man in 1299, the climate didn’t yet feel much different from earlier in your life, but it was soon to change. During the early 1300s, Northern Europe experienced abnormal rains that created widespread and severe famine. By the 1400s, it was palpably colder and we see artists depicting people huddling by fires or skating on rivers. The cold trend continued to worsen, until the time of America’s settling, when it was coldest of all. Since then, we have been in a warming trend, independent of possible human influence.

During the 1300s, the Bubonic Plague began circulating in a newly virulent form, and this may have been influenced by the cooling temperatures. We don’t know how large climatic changes influence life forms at the microscopic level but it’s possible that they do. In Asia, marmots on the northern steppe may have found it too cold, choosing to move a mile south—and pushing other marmots to do the same, until the marmot population around the Silk Road had shifted. This may be why, suddenly in 1330, disease crossed from marmots to humans.

It’s really hard to know how much climate affects human actions. Did the severe cold make the Reformation era’s civil wars harsher? Did the Medieval Warm Period encourage or discourage war? The end of the Warm Period coincided with growth in the iron industry so that by the late medieval years, Europe was deforested, and this pushed innovation toward finding coal.

Empires:

The Muslim world was between empires in 1299. Crusader states had ended, but so had the Baghdad-based Caliphate and its rival Egypt-based Fatimid Caliphate. The Mongolian lords were assimilating, losing touch with each other and becoming less powerful. A Turkish chief named Osman, born in 1280, was starting to dominate neighboring Turkish towns in the former Byzantine heartland. Of course, during the 1300s and 1400s, it grew steadily and became the Ottoman dynasty that would rule the entire Muslim world.

In Europe, a different sort of empire arose. The “Hanseatic League” was first mentioned by name in 1267 document. centered in Lubeck. It began when some merchants in northern Germany negotiated to be exempt from English import tolls in 1175. The League’s economic base was the abundance of cod and herring in the North Atlantic. It became as powerful as a government and maintained its own navy to guard merchant ships. But in 1299, it was still just a few cities seeking a trade advantage by not paying import taxes.

Pope Boniface dominated Europe’s political scene in 1299, having standardized canon law and excommunicated King Philip IV of France. But this would not continue: in the 1300s, Papal power was reduced to dependency on the King of France when the Pope’s residence moved to Avignon. Out of the long crisis of a fractured Papacy, Europeans began to consider how power should be handled, leading to their later studies of political science.

It’s worth noting that in 1299, the most powerful city in Russia was Novgorod, near Estonia and Lithuania. It was governed as a Republic, not as an autocracy. In 1299, nobody could foresee that the impoverished, forested area of Moscow would rise to dominate both Novgorod and Kyiv. In 1299, the Duchy of Muscovy was paying tribute to the Golden Horde based in their city of Sarai. The Duke of Muscovy at that time was the son of Aleksandr Nevsky, hero of Novgorod’s Battle on Ice.

Business

After 1299, the iron industry grew tremendously. In past centuries, they had been finding ways to use water and wind power for iron processing, for example, for the bellows that pushed furnace temperatures ever higher. Higher temperatures allowed more steel production, but they also required even more fuel. At that time, the only fuel was charcoal, made mostly from oak trees. Jean Gimpel, a French historian writing in 1976, estimated that for 50 kilograms of iron, 25 cubic meters of wood had to burn. To put this into more vivid terms, one iron furnace could wipe out 3 square kilometers of forest in one month.

Oak wasn’t used only for charcoal; it was the primary building wood, too. King Edward III’s expansions at Windsor Castle in the mid-1300s used about four thousand oak trees (Gimpel, 79). An average large house used twelve oaks. Ships used the tallest trees, of course, as did bridges and cathedral ceilings. And so wood became increasingly expensive, leading to funerals with rented coffins, houses and carts made from wicker, and a wider search for another fuel.

Coal could be picked up near the surface in some places; by 1299, London was experiencing its first coal smoke pollution. Miners in France were tunneling for deeper coal seams; Paris had already been extensively tunneled to dig out granite for its buildings. But really deep coal mines needed ventilation and water pumps, investments that didn’t come until later. In the 1300s, cities and industries got by on a mix of surface coal and wood.

Modern banking was invented in Italy, starting with the need to fund ships. By 1299, it included investment by shareholding, commercial insurance, and the buying of future crops. English wool was bought in bulk and brought to Northern Italy’s water-powered textile mills. This began to change the relationship of workers to the final product, since textile workers in Florence were specialized in just one step of the process. While Northern Europe was still operating on the feudal system of work-trading obligations, Italy had moved into a modern system of negotiating wages. Some Italian merchants were using Arabic numbers, but in 1299 the city of Florence banned their use, as did other cities.

Food

In 1299, Germans were only starting to export hopped beer. Hops had been just one of many herbal flavorings for ale, but then they found that this bitter herb preserved the ale for up to six months, instead of five days. When the Hanseatic League really got going with making barrels on a massive scale, they carried beer as well as salted herring, and this imported beer started displacing local ale. In 1299, most people still drank local ale flavored with pine needles or mint, or whatever the local “gruit” was.

Fava beans, chickpeas, and lentils were the main food of the poor, with cheap grains like barley and rye. Porridge for the poor was roughly ground and could contain peas, millet, barley, buckwheat, or even chestnuts. Like porridge, food for the poor tended to be boiled. Brewet was a stew of whatever was on hand; the rich didn’t add vegetables, but the poor lived much on cabbage, turnips, onions, carrots and beets. Carrots were purple, and beets could be yellow.

When people ate meat, it was likely to be wild game (deer, hare, boar), poultry (duck, goose), or the two main farm meats: pork and mutton. Cows were not often eaten; in earlier times they had been draft animals, but with more horses about, they could also be used for milk. Milk from cows, sheep, and goats tended to go straight into butter and cheese. A lot of organ meats and butcher’s scraps went into cheap pies.

Carp farming was popular all over France, Germany, and Poland, because the last two centuries of the Warm Period permitted carp to migrate up the Danube River. Carp could grow up to five feet long, a perfect cash crop for feasts. Chains of ponds for sorting the fish as they spawned and grew created artificial marshes in areas that had never had them. Malaria was more prevalent in Central Europe for a while—-but after the 13th century ended, the growing cold ended the carp fad.

By 1299, most of Europe’s farm and town poor considered it enough to have two meals a day. It’s clear that many people went a little bit hungry much of the time. The hearty foods we associate now with German or French country cooking were not yet part of the diet. In Muslim lands, food tended to be more varied, since the Muslim empire had imported eastern plants like dates, rice, sugar, and oranges. Later, these foods were imported to Northern Europe.

Clothing

Wool and linen had always clothed both Europe and the Middle East. During the 11th and 12th centuries, cotton had made its way from Muslim lands into Northern Italy, first as quilt padding, then as spun thread. By the 1100s, cotton fabric increased fashion options, still often appearing as padding, too. It didn’t wear well, compared to wool and linen. There was a higher turnover in weaving new cotton fabric and recycling it via rags into paper.

The Crusades had brought Eastern silk as a luxury into the cold castles and homes of Northern Europe. Silk was not often seen by any but the wealthiest, unless it was in the form of colored embroidery floss. European ladies sewed silk patterns onto woolen cloth. Jewish weavers from Spain and Sicily brought silkworms to Lucca, Italy, and in 1299, silk had not spread farther. Just a few years later, in 1314, war between Lucca and Pisa sent silk-workers to the cities of Florence and Venice as refugees. Gradually, after that, silk became more available and was eventually imported in raw form into other regions of Europe.

The clothing styles of the 1200s were not radically different from those of the 1100s. The basic plan was always a linen under-tunic, either a women’s gown or a men’s long shirt, with a colored wool or silk thing over it. Styles changed slowly and the basic concept of what it meant to get dressed never changed. But during the 1300s, with other aspects of social life shifting faster, styles changed faster. The 14th and 15th centuries had extremes in fashion like very short coats that barely went past the waist and long coats that dragged on the ground.

Hat fashion is a good example: until the 14th and 15th centuries, hats had been practical, like little coifs (shaped like baby bonnets) and basic hoods. But as fashion took over, hoods grew long narrow points that fell almost to the ground—and then someone had the notion of using the face hole as the hat brim, which left the shoulder cape flopping around and the long point wrapped about like a turban. The hat looks just plain silly that way, but paintings attest to its becoming the standard men’s hat for many decades. Women’s hats went to extremes, too, with steeples and horn-like yokes sticking out wider than the body.

Books

The era just ending had been one of conservatism in language. Although Latin out on the street was becoming the separate tongues we recognize today, in writing it was still always written as correct Roman Latin. In England, the court still spoke the Norman French of the Conqueror, 200 years after the Conquest. Schools devoted more time to Latin than to any other subject, in all countries, so that Latin still worked as a common tongue at the universities. English boys who wanted to work in the judicial courts or at the royal court learned French at school. In the Muslim world, of course, schooling was all about Classical Arabic.

Although paper was widespread in the Muslim world, it had not yet caught on in Europe by 1299. Even the very educated and progressive Emperor Frederick II had outlawed the use of paper for legal documents, because it was too easy to erase and change. This is probably why we still like heavy paper we call “parchment” for things like diplomas. But the first paper mill had gone up in Fabriano, Italy in 1270, and the first watermark was used in 1282. By 1350, paper was readily available in Italy but it was still somewhat uncommon in the rest of Europe.

Even so, there were many scribes who made a living copying books on parchment. Universities needed textbooks that were literally books with the text in them, perhaps by Aristotle or Avicenna, with wide margins for students to write lecture notes. Many of our conventions like capital letters, word and line spacing, punctuation, and the use of red ink for special words were developed at that time. And even before 1299, there were booksellers who sold door to door, sometimes to housewives who wanted to read medieval romances in the vernacular language (that’s apparently how Yiddish got its start).

Still, the next two centuries would, of course, see an explosion in paper, printing, and the creation of books in common languages. While the wealthy would still commission hand-painted prayer books, everyone else began to buy much cheaper practical books.

Castles and warfare

By 1299, the Cistercian Order of monks had 500 houses all through Europe. Cistercians tended to build with brick, instead of stone. Under their influence, brick became a dominant building material for houses in Northern Europe. This included the castles built by Teutonic Knights across Germany, Poland, and the Baltic countries they were conquering. Brick castles were actually just as strong as stone ones, and they were less vulnerable to fire if the brick had been kiln-fired to begin with. Similarly, kiln technology made possible tile floors and tiled roofs, which were also less vulnerable to fire in growing cities.

Most castles were built before 1299, but kings and lords continued to build them for the next century. Once gunpowder came into wide use after 1400, castles provided less protection. Then battles were fought in the field, not around the wall. Castles were still built after 1400, but more and more they were just fancy residences that were somewhat resistant to riot or break-in. Glass windows in brick castles were comfortable and beautiful but not effective for truly keeping an army out. Castles after 1299 increasingly had tiled floors, simple bathing rooms, and even carpets. Before 1299, they had plastered walls, tapestries, and fireplaces, but not much else for modern comfort.

Of course, gunpowder changed everything. In 1299, gunpowder was a scientific curiosity or, at most, a party trick. During the 14th century, simple cannons started shooting large rocks at castle walls, and from there, it was a rapid developmental line to large cannons and personal firearms. Knights’ armor from the 14th and 15th centuries is often found in museums because it ceased to be a practical fighting tool, and became instead a rich man’s luxury item. The only part of armor that was useful with firearms was a steel breastplate and helmet, similar to the tactical vests and helmets our soldiers still wear. In 1299, warfare was still very similar to the tactics of the Classical world, but by 100 years later, it was looking more like modern warfare.

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Mamluks vs. Mongols, 1299

Posted on August 29, 2023 by Ruth

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.

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Marco Polo and his Golden Ticket, 1299

Posted on August 29, 2023 by Ruth

We owe the first descriptions of Xanadu and Khanbalik (Beijing) to Marco Polo of Venice, whose book was published in 1299, co-written by Rusticello of Pisa. The book was quickly translated into many languages; the oldest manuscript we have is in Old French. The copies were not controlled by a publisher, but were hand-copied and later printed at will. It first came into English in 1503, but by then it was very well-known (if not always believed) in Italian and French, and it had begun to influence map-making.

Marco was one of the Europeans living at the court of Kublai Khan. He told his story while he was a prisoner of war in Genoa, shortly after he got back to Venice. In 1260, his father and uncle had set off on the Silk Road and eventually came to the Great Khan’s court in China. They were gone for ten years, while Marco grew from 6 to 16. In 1271, Marco joined them. He served Kublai Khan in various official posts while his father and uncle traded and, at times, helped build siege engines.

After 17 years, the Polos and the Khan were both growing old, so they wanted to return to Italy with their wealth before the Khan’s death might throw the Silk Road into anarchy. The Khan reluctantly gave them leave to go as escorts for the princess Kököjin. They traveled by ship, going through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. As they feared, Kublai Khan died soon, and their portion of travel through Iran was dangerous. Their protection along the way came from a tablet of gold that stated a death penalty for anyone who did not honor the Khan’s name. This golden ticket was a foot long, and it was still listed among Marco’s possessions when he died in 1324.

There are some questions about Marco’s authenticity, partly because his name is not mentioned in Yuan Dynasty records. Also, his account of China tells less of China than it might; he didn’t talk about the Great Wall or tell much about native Chinese customs. On the other hand, the Yuan Dynasty was not a time when the Wall was important, since the Mongols were some of the invaders it was meant to keep out. Marco’s family apparently learned languages that were spoken along the Silk Road, perhaps even Mongolian, but not Chinese. They mixed with the ruling class, not the farmers, and his reports about Mongolian customs seem accurate.

Marco loved the Chinese city of Hangzhou, which was filled with canals like Venice. He was very impressed with paper currency and the Yuan postal system. He described a system of first, second and third-class mail; first-class mail was the Khan’s own urgent business, carried by relays of riders without stopping. Marco was also very impressed with Kublai’s summer palace, a giant tent made of bamboo and cords, with a hall that seated thousands. That’s what he was describing when he wrote about Xangdu (or Xanadu, as it appeared in English).

Marco saw several natural resources for the first time, too. Europe had coal, but there was no mining until the 15th century. They just found lumps of “sea coal,” a burnable rock, here and there. But China was mining coal for an additional fuel source, and Marco was amazed to see black rocks that burned like wood. He also reported seeing an asbestos-making industry among the Uyghurs; to his surprise, asbestos fabric was cleaned by throwing it into a fire!

Marco’s book’s greatest value to Europe was its geography. On the journey toward Cathay, his family party took the long haul overland across Afghanistan, and eventually across the G0bi Desert. He reported on these places with realistic detail, effectively adding them to European maps. As a Yuan official, he traveled to Karakorum and saw parts of Siberia. These places had been so unknown to Europe that a century before, scholars had literally not known where the Mongols might be coming from, since their maps showed China but nothing beyond it.

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