CHRONOLOGY
1210–1236 Reign of Iltutmish, founder of Delhi sultanate
1219–1222 Campaigns of Chinggis into Muslim world
1240s Batu founds Saray, begins to administer his Qipchaq khanate
1250 Mamlukes seize power in Egypt and Syria
1253–1260 Hulagu’s campaign
c1250–c.1290 Career of Hajji Bektash
1260 Mamlukes defeat Hulagu’s army at ‘Ayn Jalut
1260–1265 Hulagu is first ruler of Il–khanate, establishes Maragha observatory
1261 Byzantines regain Constantinople from Latin Kingdom
1269 Marinids replace Almohads in Morocco
1271–1295 Marco Polo’s adventures in the Mongol Empire
c.1280–1326 Career of Osman, founder of Ottoman dynasty
c.1280–1334 Career of Shaykh Safi al–Din
1291 Mamlukes capture the last Crusader castle in Syria
c.1290–1327 Career of Ibn Taymiya in Mamluke Empire
1310–1341 Third, and most successful, reign of Mamluke ruler, al–Nasir Muhammad
1313–1341 Reign of Uzbeg, and the Islamization of Qipchaq khanate
1325–1351 Reign of Muhammad ibn Tughluq of Delhi
1325–1349 Ibn Battuta’s journey east; serves Ibn Tughluq seven years
1326–1362 Reign of Orhan of Ottoman sultanate
1334 Schism in Chaghatay khanate, Transoxiana is lost
1335 Collapse of Il–khanate
c.1335–1375 Career of Ibn al–Shatir
1347 First wave of plague
c.1350–1390 Career of Hafez
c.1350–1398 Career of Baha al–Din Naqshband
c.1350 Consensus has been achieved in most madhhabs that, theoretically, ijtihad is no longer permitted
1359–1377 Civil war in Qipchaq khanate; Toqtamish secures control by 1383
c. 1360–1406 Career of Ibn Khaldun
1368 Ming dynasty overthrows Yuan dynasty of the Mongols in China
1370 Timur’s career begins in Transoxiana
1381–1402 Timur’s campaigns from Ankara to New Saray to Delhi
1405 Death of Timur
CHAPTER 10
The Great Transformation
By 1248, the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula had seized all Muslim territory north of the Strait of Gibraltar except for the small principality of Granada. Over the next century and a half, they secured their control over this area, confirming that the Reconquista had succeeded in destroying one of the most populous and culturally creative zones of the Muslim world. Simultaneously, a similar process of conquest and consolidation of power was taking place in the eastern Muslim world. During the 1250s, the second major Mongol invasion of southwestern Asia took place. Millions of Muslims were now under the rule either of Christian Europeans or of pagan Mongols. For the first time since the Islamic calendar began, half or more of the world’s Muslims were subject to governments dominated by non-Muslims.
In spite of the similarities, the situation in the eastern Muslim world differed from that of the Iberian Peninsula. The challenges facing Muslims in Iberia were insidious and chronic, but those in the east were violent and episodic and transformed the eastern Muslim world in profound ways. Whereas the Iberian Muslim community slowly suffocated under increasing restrictions, Muslims in three of the four Mongol empires rejoiced at the conversion of their rulers to Islam by the early fourteenth century. Their joy was short lived, for all three dynasties suddenly lost their grip on power in the middle third of the fourteenth century. Anarchy and widespread destruction became the order of the day. As the dynasties were collapsing, the worldwide epidemic of plague began its deadly work, leaving large areas of the Muslim world underpopulated. The first wave of the plague had hardly subsided when a half-Turk, half-Mongol warlord named Timur Lang began his career. His inexplicably vicious campaigns ranged from Delhi to Damascus and caused the horrors of Chinggis and Hulagu to pale by comparison. From 1380 to 1405, the very mention of his name sent panic into the hearts of multitudes, and his conquests laid waste to vast regions. The region from the Aegean Sea to the Ganges River had been violently shaken, with consequences that would reverberate for centuries.
The Mongol Khanates
Shortly before his death in 1227, Chinggis Khan gave each of his four sons a portion of his great empire. He did so in accordance with the ancient Mongol custom of establishing a home for the eldest son at the furthest distance and assigning the youngest to tend the family hearth. Accordingly, Jochi, the eldest, received the steppe land that lay north of the Aral sea and extended westward “as far as the hooves of Mongol horses have reached,” whereas Tolui, the youngest, received the ancient Mongol homeland that is now eastern Mongolia. The second son, Chaghatay, and the third son, Ogedai, divided the lands that lay between those extremes. Ogedai succeeded his father as Great Khan, and his son Guyuk replaced him in the 1240s. In 1251, Tolui’s eldest son Mongke became the Great Khan.
From his capital at Qaraqorum in modern Mongolia, Mongke (1251–1259) planned a new campaign of expansion. Leaders of Christian Europe hoped that he was Prester John, and they appealed to him to join them in a crusade against Islam, but he was unwilling to do so unless the Christian rulers and the Pope submitted themselves to him. Confident that the Lord of the Sky had entrusted the world to the Mongols, he embarked upon an ambitious campaign of conquest on his own terms. He sent one brother, Qubilai, to conquer the Sung dynasty in southern China and another brother, Hulagu, to subjugate southwestern Asia. When Mongke died, he was succeeded by Qubilai (1260–1294), who completed the conquest of China and is regarded as the first ruler of the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) in China. He symbolized his new status by moving his capital from Qaraqorum to Beijing.
During the rule of Mongke and Qubilai, the Mongol domains became more or less institutionalized: The Great Khan ruled over Mongolia and China; Jochi’s son Batu and his successors ruled over the Golden Horde in the vast steppe that extended from north of the Aral Sea almost to the Baltic Sea; the Chaghatay khanate ruled over the area that now comprises the Chinese province of Xinjiang and eastern Afghanistan, as well as the territory north of the Amu Darya River; and Hulagu’s Il-khanid regime comprised Iraq, eastern Anatolia, the southern Caucasus, and Iran to just east of Herat.
The Qipchaq Khanate
Europeans from the sixteenth century on referred to the domain of Batu’s successors as the Golden Horde. The origin of the name is lost in obscurity. The English word Horde derives from the Mongol word ordu, meaning “camp” or “domain,” but the meaning of the term Golden has spawned considerable debate, with no consensus having emerged. The name Golden Horde is commonly used in English to refer to the entire period of the dominance of the Mongols on the Eurasian steppes. Europeans have also frequendy referred to the people of the Golden Horde as Tatars, a word that has been very loosely used throughout history. Understood in its linguistic sense, however, it has some value, because the various Tatar dialects belong to the Qipchaq division of the Turkic languages. In fact, the Golden Horde’s neighbors in the east knew it as the Qipchaq khanate, which is a more appropriate name for it. For ease of reference, this discussion will refer to the khanate as the Horde.
MAP 10.1 The Mongol Empire, ca. 1300
At its height, the Horde dominated the area from eastern Poland to the Siberian forests. The core was the vast, grassy plain known as the Qipchaq steppe that extended from northwest of the Black Sea to northeast of the Caspian Sea. This sea of grass was broken by three of the great rivers of Russia: the Dnieper, the Don, and the Volga. Batu had no doubt immediately recognized that the level, endless plains were ideal for his horse culture. The rivers complicated travel on an east–west axis, but facilitated travel and trade on a north–south axis.
This core region of the khanate was populated by numerous ethnic groups, but was dominated by the Qipchaq Turks. Batu’s followers quickly became assimilated into the majority Turkish culture when their Mongol leader
s intermarried with local Qipchaq elites and adopted the local language. The “Mongol” elite of the khanate always boasted of their lineal ties with Chinggis Khan and retained certain aspects of their Mongol culture, but they were soon indistinguishable from their Qipchaq subjects.
Our knowledge of the first century and a half of the history of the khanate is frustratingly scanty, due to Timur Lang’s destruction of its cities in the 1390s. What we know about it is derived largely from the observations of outsiders and from archaeological evidence. It began with Batu, whose invasion in the late 1230s was as catastrophic for Russia as Chinggis Khan’s invasion was for Khorasan. Catapults and battering rams pummeled cities into ruins, and thousands of people were slaughtered. The scale of the destruction is detected by art historians, who note that Russian artisanal skills declined permanently in the area.
The Horde exercised direct control over the Qipchaq steppe, but exacted tribute in a system of indirect control over the forested north and west. The latter region covered a vast area that included Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Lithuanian, and Latvian cities. The most important among these were Kiev, Novgorod, and Moscow. The ruling elite preferred to remain nomadic, whereas a majority of the population was settled. Unlike the Mongols in China and Iran, who assimilated to the local culture, the Qipchaqs did not live among the Russians or in any way become integrated into Russian society. On the whole, the rulers resisted the urge to raid and loot their territory, but retribution for failing to pay the quite heavy tribute was typically severe, and the armies would often engage in slave raiding even in areas that had not been targets of punishment.
The economy of this new empire was quintessentially Mongol, based on pastoralism and long-distance trade; the leaders of the Horde were interested in agriculture only insofar as it generated the revenue among the Russians that enabled them to pay tribute. Pastoralism was the means of subsistence that most Mongols wanted to retain, but they recognized the benefits that long-distance trade could bring. The security that the various Mongol regimes quite successfully enforced across the huge region from the Pacific Ocean to the Black Sea enabled merchants of all nationalities to benefit from the new commercial possibilities. Batu, like other Mongol rulers, was interested in trade, which would augment the revenues derived from taxes on peasants and townsmen. In pursuit of this objective, he established his capital of Saray near the Volga delta, situated at the crossroads of trade routes that connected China with eastern Europe in one direction and Scandinavia with Iraq and Iran, in the other. It rapidly became a commercial center with a distinctly international air. From the forested zones to the north came amber, furs, timber, Russian slaves, and honey, to be exchanged for textiles, tools, and scientific instruments from the Muslim heartland and for spices from the east.
Merchants from all nations were encouraged to live in the capital, and a wide variety of religious missionaries—Muslim, Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, and Nestorian—were tolerated. The Russian Orthodox Church supported Mongol rule precisely because of the Horde’s religious tolerance, and especially because of the tax exemption the regime allowed the Church. The Horde established correct relations with the Byzantines once the latter had recaptured Constantinople from the Italians in 1261, but they also welcomed Italian traders to Saray. Trade was encouraged with both the Latin Catholics and the Greek Orthodox, despite their hostility toward each other. The Mamluke regime took particular pains to foster good relations with the government at Saray because of the abundance of Qipchaq boys available to be shipped to Egypt as mamluks. Many Egyptian and Syrian craftsmen made their way to Saray to create objects of art in the Mamluke style. By contrast, the Horde’s relations with its fellow Mongol regime, the Il-khanids, were hostile throughout the thirteenth century due to competing claims over the Caucasus. Several expensive wars drained the resources of both Mongol powers.
Too much can be made of the fact that Batu’s brother Berke (1257–1267) was the first Mongol khan to convert to Islam. He did not pressure the remainder of the Mongol elite to convert, and he tolerated the Jesuit and Orthodox Christian missionaries who proselytized in his realm. Until the early fourteenth century, only one other khan converted to Islam, and shamanism remained the focus of the religious life of the masses. Nevertheless, Islam slowly became the dominant religion in the khanate. It had been the religion of the leaders of the Bulghar Turks along the middle Volga from the tenth century, but the religion had not expanded westward. During the era of the Horde, however, the caravans that plied the long-established routes between Syria and the lower Volga provided a means for Muslim merchants, scholars, and craftsmen, as well as wandering preachers, to make their presence felt in the realm. Mosques, the call to prayer, Ramadan observance, and numerous other signs of a growing Muslim presence provided strong witness to a vibrant Islam.
The definitive turning point in the religious history of the Horde was the conversion in 1313 of the khan Uzbeg (1313–1341). Like Berke, he did not force other members of the elite to convert, and Christianity maintained a strong and tolerated presence, but Uzbeg did expel shamanistic priests. During his reign Islam became well established as the dominant religion, at least in the urban centers. Muslims coming in from Syria or Egypt would have felt comfortable in the larger cities, particularly the capital, which Uzbeg moved upriver to New Saray on a site near the present city of Volgograd. By the end of Uzbeg’s reign, the new city had large mosques and madrasas, and qadis were dispensing justice in Shari‘a courts.
Uzbeg’s rule represented the height of the Horde’s wealth and prestige. Under him the Horde had become an international power feared and respected by other nations. Even during Uzbeg’s lifetime, however, his eastern European vassals were beginning to become restless. During the reign of his two sons, Lithuania gained its independence and other regions began challenging Mongol power. With the death of Uzbeg’s son Berdi-beg in 1359, the last of Batu’s descendants was gone. The rival leaders within the Horde began fighting each other, and in the midst of the chaos, Moscow refused to pay tribute. A distant cousin of Berdi-beg, Toqtamish of the White Horde, seized New Saray in 1377. He crushed Novgorod and Moscow, and by 1383 he had restored Mongol control over Russia. The Horde seemed as strong as it had ever been, but Toqtamish’s ambitions exceeded his good judgment. He unwisely challenged Timur Lang, who was building his power in Transoxiana. As we shall see, Timur would administer a defeat to the Horde that would shatter its mystique in the eyes of its subjects, and it would never again be so formidable.
The Il-khanate
In the aftermath of Chinggis Khan’s conquest of eastern Iran during 1219–1222, a formal Mongol authority was set up only in the area of the former Khwarazmian Empire. In Khorasan and Transoxiana, anarchy reigned, interspersed with occasional Mongol raids. Hulagu’s campaign through northern Iran, Iraq, and Syria in 1253–1260 inflicted further destruction in the predominantly Muslim world. Hulagu, however, proved to be a gifted administrator in the areas he had just devastated. He established his headquarters in northwestern Iran immediately after the destruction of Baghdad, and his state came to be known as the Il-khanid Empire. The name comes from il-khan, meaning “subject khan,” in the sense of being subject to the Great Khan in China.
Like Qubilai and the leaders of the Horde, Hulagu valued the wealth that trade generated. He realized that he needed thriving cities in order to benefit from trade and that he would need a strong agricultural sector to feed the population of those cities. The southern half of Iran had not been harmed by the Mongol invasions of 1219–1222 and 1253–1260, but the northern half was in ruins. The irrigation system of qanats in Khorasan had not been rebuilt since the destruction of Chinggis Khan, and the riverine system of irrigation in Iraq had been destroyed during Hulagu’s own campaign. He ordered the rebuilding of cities and the restoration of the irrigation works, but he was able to accomplish little in the five years remaining in his life. In his short reign, he did lavish patronage on art and architecture, inaugurating a polic
y that would eventually make his royal city of Tabriz widely admired for its beauty. He also built an astronomical observatory at Maragha, some sixty miles south of Tabriz, which became the most highly regarded scientific institute in the Muslim world.
Hulagu’s efforts to rebuild Iran were handicapped by the fact that he was surrounded by enemies. The Mamlukes, the Horde, and the Chaghatay khanate were all hostile to him, forcing him to disperse his troops to confront them. The greatest threat was the Mamluke Empire, and Hulagu initiated contacts for an alliance with Louis IX of France against it, beginning a diplomatic correspondence between France and the Il-khans that lasted well into the next century. Hulagu’s death in 1265 interrupted his plans to revive the economy that he and his predecessors had shattered so thoroughly in their conquests.
The next several rulers of the Il-khanid realm were remarkable for their lack of ability. For thirty years, the khanate was subject to constant infighting among the ruling elite and was the victim of neglect of the economic infrastructure. The population had suffered a catastrophic decline due to a combination of mass murder, famine, and flight, and it remained low. The peasants suffered particular hardship, for the Il-khanid rulers actually increased the taxes on villages compared to pre-conquest levels, even though both population and production had fallen precipitously. Mongol nomads stole peasants’ livestock and grazed their horses on what had been prime cultivated fields. Most towns on both sides of the Euphrates were deserted, and Marco Polo described Baghdad as having been a “trading town” when he passed through it in 1272. Other major cities such as Nishapur lay in ruins until the early fourteenth century.
A History of the Muslim World to 1405 Page 45