All Things Medieval

In 1251, the Mongol Empire went through an internal coup. Temujin’s son Ögedei had died in 1241, and his widow got their son Güyük installed as Great Khan. But when Güyük died and his widow tried to do as her mother in law had done, installing her son, she was thwarted by the other family branches. Batu Khan, leader of the Golden Horde in Sarai, Russia, colluded with the widow of Temujin’s youngest son Tolui. Batu’s family could not inherit the Great Khanship, but it could help select who did. Batu’s clear choice was another grandson who had ridden out with them in Russia and Poland: Möngke, son of Tolui.

When Tolui’s widow and Batu succeeded in transferring the Great Khanship away from Ögedei’s lineage, rule passed to Tolui’s four sons, who (like Batu) were all more capable than the average Mongol grandson. Their mother Sorkhokhtani had been one of the first princesses married into the family (remember when Temujin and his men were starving in the Gobi Desert and a rebel chief’s brother rescued them? that was her Nestorian Christian Kereyit father).

Under Sorkhokhtani, Möngke, Hulagu, Ariq Böke, and Kublai received much better educations than any of their father’s generation, and perhaps better than any of their cousins. They had tutors to teach reading the new Mongol script and the Chinese and Persian languages, in addition to learning traditional Mongol manly arts of archery and riding. They were raised at least nominally as Christians, though it wasn’t a big concern to any but the youngest.

In the wake of Möngke’s election as Great Khan, some of his other cousins attempted a coup. Sorkhokhtani held a trial for Güyük’s widow, who was convicted of black magic and executed accordingly: sewn into a sack and thrown into the river. Many of the Golden Family cousins were executed, leaving open ruling positions for the families of Batu Khan and Sorkhokhtani’s younger sons.

After 1252, the lineage of Genghis’s two middle sons dwindled in importance. Ögedei’s lineage pretty much ended, and Chagatai’s remained mostly stable but subordinate in Central Asia. Batu Khan’s lineage in the west, and Tolui’s in the east, rose in stature. With Möngke Khan ruling as overlord, Hulagu became a subordinate Khan (Ilkhan) in Iran, while Kublai was given North China to rule. Ariq Böke, the youngest, stayed in Möngke’s court and bided his time.

Möngke Khan retrenched and reformed the central government, putting an end to the spendthrift luxury of Ögedei’s lineage. His cousin Güyük had issued paper money as IOU’s, and to everyone’s surprise, Möngke insisted on honoring and paying them off to keep Mongol credit good. He printed new paper money with a new Department of Currency and sent out officials to make a full tax census of the entire area of conquest. The poll tax he set forth was a cut for some, and increase for others, but it was predictable and universal. No clergy of any religion was taxed, nor was any church or monastery—or any medical doctor!

Louis IX sent an ambassador to Karakorum in 1254, seeking an alliance against the Muslims and to convert the Tatars and Mongols to Catholic Christianity. William was a Franciscan friar in Rubruck, Flanders. William’s party came first to the western Mongol lands of Batu Khan at Sarai. Batu Khan declined to convert, but sent him with an escort to Möngke Khan at Karakorum.

Karakorum meant Black Stones; it was the only stone city the Mongols built or maintained. Each khan had added to it, and Möngke’s addition was the stupa temple wall that now encloses the oldest monastery in Mongolia. He also commissioned a Parisian goldsmith and sculptor to make a tree of silver and gold. The tree became the central wonder of the palace, shown to visitors.

The tree was a machine that used medieval technology to make announcements and serve drinks. Its tall silver trunk supported branches and silver leaves and fruit, but four golden snakes were also wrapped around the trunk. An angel sat at the top, with a trumpet. Möngke Khan could signal for the angel’s mechanism to raise his arm and blow the trumpet. At this signal, the golden snakes poured piped-in wine into a silver basin.

Father William of Rubruck was otherwise unimpressed. Louis IX had recently built the Chapel of St. Denis and nothing in Karakorum could come close to its grandeur. He described a city with four gates and one large palace, of which the silver tree was really the only thing worth describing. There was a Muslim quarter and a Chinese quarter, as well as craftsmen from every part of the Mongol conquest. Every religion had a church or temple in Karakorum: Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and possibly some the priest could only identify as “pagan.”

map of Karakorum

Möngke Khan explained to the Franciscan that the Mongols believed in one God who gave different ways to men. The Mongols had shamans, the Catholics had their Bible. “To you God has given the Scriptures and you Christians do not observe them,” he added. The Khan’s interpretation of God’s will was very direct: sending an army against his rule would be rebellion against God, and he would deal with it quickly. He was doubtless disappointed that King Louis had not sent tribute.

Father William spent Christmas with Möngke and his wife, who gave out gifts after the Christmas Mass (at this time in Europe, nobody gave gifts on Christmas). Christmas dinner was mutton and carp, with copious amounts of grape wine, rice wine, and airak.

William also participated in a debate with Muslims and Buddhists, for the Khan’s appreciation and entertainment. They had to form teams—the Franciscan had to work with Armenians, Assyrians, and Byzantines!—and the Khan appointed 3 judges. Debate topics included whether reincarnation was real, how had evil come into existence if God made the world, and whether animals have souls. In keeping with the Mongol tradition of wrestling competitions, fermented mare’s milk (airak) was passed around between rounds. Gradually everyone got drunk. The Christians grew frustrated and began to sing a hymn. The Muslims felt this was very unfair because they did not use music in worship. The Buddhists just started to meditate. Finally, the judges called it a draw and passed the airak again. (with thanks to Jack Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World!)

During all these centuries, we have sometimes noted the Armenian kingdom in Cilicia made up of refugees who fled Turkish invasion of their original mountain home. By the 13th century, these Armenians were tightly tied to the Christians of both Antioch and Constantinople. In 1252, King Hethum traveled to Karakorum to offer submission of their small Armenia to the Mongols, in exchange for protection. He was graciously received by Möngke Khan, who patiently explained that the Mongols would never force their entire conquest to follow the Christian religion. However, he said, he planned a new expedition to march on Baghdad. Should the Armenians join him in victory, he would gladly give them Jerusalem. Prince Bohemund IV of Antioch and Tripoli joined the Armenian king in submitting to the Mongols.

And so the ground was laid for what we might call the Mongol Crusade, though historians never use that term. As Möngke Khan’s kingdom came into better order, he began to look about and plan the next wave of expansion.

Under the last real Ayyubid Sultan, as-Salih, the Mamluk corps was built up to unprecedented size and strength. They were a neat solution to a political problem because as slaves, they did what they were told, but as people with high social status, they were motivated to uphold the political order that privileged them. The Mongols had given some Italians slave-trading rights to Crimea during the quiet years, so a steady stream of Kipchak and Cuman Turks poured out of the Black Sea. Slavers were also selling Circassians, Slavs, Armenians, and Georgians. With supply so high, prices were low, so the Mamluks bought a really large number.

Mamluks were typically boys between 8 and 10 when they were purchased, and they were carefully indoctrinated to adopt a Mamluk identity. They usually forgot their home languages and religions. They learned Arabic and the Quran, while they trained in elite fighting skills. They were given wives and fine homes; they had good lives and high status, only not the freedom to stop being Mamluks. Their children did not automatically get their Mamluk status unless they went through the same training, but the Mamluks themselves could rise as high in government as was possible. They were viziers, generals, governors and supervisors.

Sultan as-Salih built a fortress and palace for them on an island in the Nile. This group became known as the River Mamluks, the Bahri. From their origins as a personal bodyguard and house soldiers, they increased to a corps of 10,000, and then again to about 40,000.

Sultan as-Salih died during the Seventh Crusade. His wife Shajaret al-Durr worked with his top Mamluks to conceal his death from the enemy and their own people until his heir, Turanshah, could get there. The commander of the Bahri Mamluks raced to fetch Turanshah from Hasankeyf (Turkey) while another helped Shajaret carry out the pantomime of the Sultan’s continuing life. Before he died, he had signed a number of blank papers that they could use as proof of life. They told everyone he was just too sick to come out of his tent. Meals were sent in, dirty dishes came out. Signed orders went out (written by Shajaret and another top Mamluk, Aybak).

When Turanshah arrived to lead the troops at al-Mansurah, they could let the news out. It looked like Shajaret and the Mamluks had stage-managed a peaceful transition in time of war. But as the Crusaders negotiated for King Louis’ freedom, Sultan Turanshah began to offend the Bahri Mamluks by appointing his own commanders, demoting the Mamluks who were already filling those roles. He clashed with Queen Shajaret by demanding that she turn over all jewels his father had given her. Within just a few months, Turanshah was thoroughly hated.

In May 1250, Turanshah gave a feast. At the end of it, the top Mamluks rushed in and murdered him. The Crusaders were very interested in these events; Jean de Joinville left a detailed account of how Turanshah fled to a tower but the Mamluks set it on fire, and so on. In the end, the widowed Queen Shajaret declared herself Sultan.

The Caliph of Baghdad could not accept this regime change, nor could the Ayyubid rulers of cities in Syria. The top Bahri Mamluk commander, Aybak, removed Shajaret from being Sultan but married her, so that she was still in the power loop. Sultan Aybak reigned for seven years.

During this time, Shajaret became more jealous of power. She began taking various matters away from Aybak and quarreling about other wives. At length he married a third wife to make a political alliance, and enraged, Shajaret paid servants to help murder Aybak in his bath. She claimed that he had just drowned. The other top Mamluks didn’t buy it, so they tortured the servants to get confessions. Shajaret was beaten to death and thrown into a moat.

Aybak’s son was briefly made Sultan, but the kind of government that was emerging was not a father-to-son monarchy. One of Aybak’s top Mamluks took over; he may have been a displaced Khwarezmian, sold into slavery by Mongols. He ruled for a few years, then was assassinated by another Mamluk leader, Baibars.

From 1250 until the Ottoman conquest in 1517, the Sultan of Egypt was always the most powerful Mamluk. Sometimes it was a Sultan’s son, but other times, it wasn’t. In a pure monarchy, genetic descent matters most, but in a Mamluk dynasty, descent didn’t matter apart from the head start a Sultan’s son had in building his own power base. The 10th Mamluk Sultan was actually an Oirat tribe member of the Mongol confederation, captured in a Middle Eastern battle and sold into slavery (the Oirats were the Siberian fur-hunters).

The Mamluk government became the most stable dynasty since the Ptolemies. Mamluks were promoted by merit, so the top Mamluk was always physically strong, intelligent, and socially clever.

I want to talk about a minor revolt that took place in Anatolia between 1239 and 1241 not because it’s important on the world stage, but because it illustrates very clearly the strains in the Muslim world at this time. The revolt was led by a mystic named Baba Ishak (Father Isaac), and it went on until authorities captured and hanged him.

When we say that waves of Turkic migrants kept coming west, it’s hard for us to picture exactly what this looked like. Going back to the Abbasid Caliph’s heyday, in the 800s, Seljuk Turks began arriving in large family groups, traveling at the speed of their flocks and carts. They meandered through Iran and Iraq slowly, picking up Islam and other cultural habits over several generations. The Turkish language they spoke in Anatolia, by the time they drifted that far west, was generously peppered with Persian and Arabic words and ideas. They gave their children Arabic Muslim names, so that it becomes harder for us now to distinguish in a written history who was Arabic or who was Turkish.

But as those people settled, a new wave arrived. This went through the 900s, 1000s, 1100s, and now the 1200s. The newest arrivals were Oghuz Turks who were pushed out of the east by the approaching Mongols. They had little in common with the settled Anatolian Turks. They could probably understand the language easily, apart from the unfamiliar borrowed words. But while the old settlers had now been Muslims through the entire Crusade period and several dynastic changes, the new arrivals were fresh off the steppes and still worshiped the Father Sky and Mother Earth. The old settlers had learned farming; the new arrivals were pastoral nomads. The old settlers had lost track of how many ideas and customs had been shaped by Islam and the new western cultures, until they saw how different and “green” the new arrivals were.

The new arrivals were duly converted to Islam, but they didn’t get it. Turkic steppe life had a lot of gender equality; men and women dressed alike, women owned the yurt and carts, and men typically were out in the field or forest while women ran everything at home. Suddenly they were expected to take on Arab norms of female segregation and male leadership. The Arabic language had strong gender markers in every word, where Turkish had none.

Some mystics in Eastern Iran created versions of Islamic theology that were easier for the former Tengrists to digest. Their version was tolerant of alcohol (fermented milk was a steppe staple). It promoted equality of women, played down the Ramadan fast, and followed Tengrist blood taboos rather than Muslim slaughtering laws. Worship with music was okay in this folk religion, too. It seems to have been mostly part of Sunni Islam, but some of the leaders may also have been given commissions by the Nizaris (the Ismaili Shi’ites who were constantly rebelling in Iran, operating out of their stronghold Alamut). It may have overlapped with Sufism (this gets difficult for an outsider to distinguish).

The Seljuks of Anatolia had set up their own Sultanate of “Rum,” which is to say: Rome, that is, Constantinople. This Sultan was trying to govern separately from the Seljuks ruling in Baghdad, and from other Sultans like the Ayyubids of Syria and Egypt. Now his territory was faced with these Oghuz migrants who could not fit in. Worse, when a slightly older migrant wave saw that the newest ones were defiantly creating their own Tengri-Islam blend, they joined them. Sultan Gıyasettin arrested their leaders and everything blew up.

The rebellion caught fire just east of the troublesome region where Armenians and Crusaders had been living. Baba Ishak was one of the popular preachers of the new theology. He became the leader of an armed force, and they went on to capture a number of central Anatolian cities. The Seljuk Sultan’s forces had already been worn down with fighting the Latin Empire of Constantinople, the Empire of Trebizond, and other Christian establishments. So the rebellion flared out of control for two or three years.

Then the Sultan captured Baba Ishak and hanged him. He hired French mercenaries, probably drifters from Constantinople or Antioch, to defeat the rebels in one last big battle. Presumably, with the armed rebellion ended, the Sufi Babas had to stop preaching syncretist religion and become more orthodox Sunni. But the Sultan of Rum had been fighting on too many fronts, and this was the last thing that bled out his resources. Cities had been ruined and plundered, and Rum had lost its control over a Crimean trading colony.

When the Mongols arrived in Rum territory, conquest was easy. By 1243, the Seljuks of Rum were vassals of the Mongols, sending tribute to Karakorum.

The four ruling sons of Genghis Khan didn’t last long. Jochi, the controversial oldest son, died before his father. So already at the Great Khan’s death, grandsons had been assigned to rule parts of the western Empire. Batu was the most capable grandson; Batu Khan’s western army was known as the Golden Horde (Алтан Ордын улс).

In 1235, the Golden Family decided to send a joint force to conquer more western territory. For perhaps the last time in a united Mongol venture, among its leaders were grandsons and even great-grandsons of all four of the Khan’s lineages, all jockeying for power. Who would be named the next Great Khan, after Ögedei’s death? There was no rule saying it had to be a son of Ögedei or an oldest son of anyone. The prize could go to the most successful.

The Mongols took two years to prepare for their westward assault, but they spent it in ways Europeans would not have thought of and could not understand. Essentially, they prepared the infrastructure of the new land in small ways. The chief need of Mongol-Tatar armies was fodder for horses. One way to increase grasslands was to send in small bands to move quickly, avoid showdowns, and just set many farms on fire and tear down walls. Frightened peasants moved out, and a year later, the land reverted to weeds and grass, now more open for a horde to ride through. The Mongols also scouted thoroughly, looking for water and pasture. Last, they set up “Pony Express” mail riders so that their forces could stay in touch over distances.

In 1236, the Golden Horde conquered the Bulgar Turks who lived along the Volga River. The Volga Bulgars were a well-established group in the Volga region, not newcomers. They had adopted Islam even before Kyiv became Christian, and by now they were blending with the surrounding Slavs. The region was dotted with small sovereign states, unlike the way we think of Russia now. The Bulgars comprised their own state, controlling Volga trade from the city of Bolghar.

There’s a curious parenthetical story here; the Hungarians, who came from the east in the 500s, sent a Dominican friar eastward in 1235 to search for their legendary brother tribe, the Magyars. He found such a group near the Bulgars on the Volga, and they could understand each other’s speech. Back in Christian Hungary, the friar made plans to preach to the Magyars on a larger scale, but when he arrived at the Volga again, the Mongols had already made hash of them. The Magyars called their attackers Tatars, their ancestral enemies on the steppes. So the first warning to Europe of the “Tartar” attack came via Hungary. (Europeans generalized the word “Tatar” to have some connection to the Greek mythical river Tartarus.)

The Mongols conquered anyone else in the region, including the Alans, who were Indo-Europeans from the Persian Empire. The Alans were another of the small sovereign states; their capital city of Maghas guarded a pass in the Caucasus Mountains between Georgia and the north, now Russia. It’s called the Darial Pass, which means “Gate of the Alans” in Persian. The Alans are the modern Ossetians, whose territory Russia is taking from Georgia.

With these small states wrapped up, Batu Khan sent an envoy to the Grand Duke of Vladimir-Suzdal, another sovereign state on the other side of the Volga River. The envoy asked, of course, for their surrender, which the Duke refused. And now (1238) the grand sacking of Russia began. They began with Ryazan, and they also burnt Moskva. Smolensk agreed to pay tribute, and Novgorod was far enough north that they didn’t get there. Pretty much every other city was stripped of gold and silver, and burnt. The small town of Kozelsk somehow managed to hold off a combined Mongol army siege for an unheard-of seven weeks. Their ruler at the time was a little boy, so it makes an even better story. In the end, though, everyone died.

According to Jack Weatherford (Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World), the siege of Ryazan was conducted in the Mongols’ idiosyncratic way. On approaching the town, the Mongols had seized peasants for slave labor and sent the rest of them to the city to swell the number of refugees and tax the city’s provisions. Using their slave labor, they quickly built their own stockade wall around the walled city. Western war practice had always encircled a walled city, but never with a literal second wall. Reinforcements could not help the city, and sorties from the city gates could not harm the Mongols. The besiegers had longer-range bows than the defenders, so they were safe out of range while they set up their own catapults.

When the catapults got to work, they threw not only rocks and tree trunks but also pots of gunpowder and other burning substances learned from the Chinese. Simple “firelances” directed rockets at the city. Ryazan’s peasants, who knew little about the world, thought that the Mongols brought dragons. When the city had been sufficiently terrorized and burnt, the Mongols scaled the walls with ladders and took over quickly. Everyone crowded into the church for safety, but of course to the Mongols, this was just an invitation for mass cremation. The city’s rulers were executed; some survivors were enslaved (as always, craftsmen were most likely to be kept) and others were sent to nearby cities to spread the word and start eating siege provisions. Then the clean-up started: the stockade logs were removed and dragged to the next city, while Mongols took a census so that the loot and captives could be fairly divided among their people. And so it went.

Refugees reliably spread the word that the Mongols were unlike anything seen before. They may not even have been human. They drank blood and refused mercy. They were short and invincible; they had no eyelids. The English chronicler Matthew Paris (who had recorded King John’s supposed bid to become a Muslim) recorded the rumors as they reached Western Europe. All learned men in the West wondered: who were these people? Herodotus didn’t say a word about them, and he had cataloged the whole world! They’d have speculated “space aliens” if the idea had occurred to them, but instead, they wondered: descendants of the Magi who came to take back relics that Germany claimed to have? Or a lost tribe of Jews who had forgotten Hebrew and Moses? Of course, as this idea spread, it was clear that there was only one thing to be done: Jews must be massacred to prevent them from opening city gates to their brethren. (what else?)

In 1239, the Mongols entered the Crimean Peninsula and drove out the Cuman people, another of the local older Turkic peoples. The Cuman survivors fled to nearby hills, but eventually were able to return to the plains. They are known today as the Crimean Tatars.

In 1240, Mongol envoys came to Kyiv but were beheaded. The city’s fate was sealed, and total destruction followed. Kyiv’s story had a special twist: believing that the basilica’s holiness would keep them safe, people crowded into the church until it was packed and its doors closed. Those left outside began to climb the walls until they reached the roof, and they perched on the roof until that, too, was full. Then the roof collapsed and killed everyone both inside and out. The Mongols could not have asked better fortune.

Batu Khan still had to jockey for power among his cousins, but the western lands had indisputably been left to him and his brothers. So they solidified their gains by ordering captive craftsmen to build a new city. Sarai (from the Persian word for “palace”) was built near modern-day Astrakhan, which is on the Caspian Sea. Sarai was probably 50 miles upriver, at a place suitable for Mongol life: high wind to keep off mosquitos, sufficient grasslands for horses. They began to build in 1240.

To advance farther into the west, the Horde was split up so that rumors and refugees would report conflicting things about the path they were taking. They’re heading to Poland! No, they’re heading to Hungary! Actually, they were heading to both. Had they chosen one target, the king of the other would have come to an ally’s assistance. Both being the targets at the same time, neither could help the other. The Battles of Legnica, Poland and Mohi, Hungary took place only two days apart in 1241.

The Kings of Poland and Hungary begged for assistance from farther south or west. The Pope helpfully called a Crusade against the Mongols, but Crusading was just not set up to deal with lightning strikes from an unknown foe. Batu Khan led the force into Hungary, while Möngke Khan went into Poland. Henry II of Silesia defended Poland, hoping for Bohemia’s forces to arrive in time. He was killed, and the Bohemian army was dealt with separately by the Mongols.

In Hungary, the Mongols bombarded the king’s camp with burning material until the army panicked and fled through a gap in the Mongol lines: a gap the Mongols had planned, one leading to a corridor of Mongol archers. King Bela of Hungary barely escaped death and fled first to Austria, then to the Adriatic coast, as a government in exile. After the battle, in a bid for mercy, the Hungarian clergy tried to impress the Mongols with holy relics on parade, since they had heard that some Tatars and Mongols were Christians. But Mongols had a taboo against anything dead and these relics only made them disgusted and angry. Batu’s forces devastated Hungary, killing perhaps a quarter of the general population and most of its knights.

A total solar eclipse in October 1241 presaged the utter destruction of Europe, and the peasants became hysterical with fear. But soon after the twin battles had opened the way into Austria, Bohemia, and Germany, a Mongol rider brought news from the east. Ögedei Khan, Temujin’s third son who had been elected Great Khan, had died. Möngke and Batu had emerged as leaders in the western expedition, but their cousin Güyük was actually Ögedei’s son. He was really hard to get along with and had already fought with them all. There was no question he’d be trying to seize central power, and the other grandsons didn’t want to let that happen. Besides, any change in leadership required their personal attendance at a khurultai meeting.

So just like that, the western invasions ended. The grandsons and top generals rode back to Mongolia. The building of Sarai went on; there was no question they’d be back. The Russian princes who had survived and sworn fealty to the Mongols were not permitted to renege. However, it was an open question whether the Mongols would expand their invasions. King Bela came back to Hungary, and Poland had a new High Duke. During the time that the Mongols were gone, their top priority was to stop being Christendom’s buffer states by getting the pagans on their margins to convert (and thus become the new buffer states).

Jack Weatherford supplies another interesting outcome: in the Crimean Peninsula, the Mongols traded luxury goods in Italian port cities for the right of Italian merchants to kidnap Slavs and Kipchaks in Mongol lands and sell them as slaves (Slavs/ slaves not a coincidence). Ironically, many of these tall, strong Slavs were sold to Ayyubid Egypt, where they became Mamluks. The Mongols would live to regret this choice.