AHMAD DEFTLY PUNISHED his enemies in the Mongol court, but his rapaciousness sowed hatred beyond its confines. During an obscure military campaign in a northern province of the Mongol Empire, a Chinese soldier and ascetic named Wang Chu happened to encounter a Buddhist monk named Kao, who claimed to be skilled in magic. For a time, Kao marched with the Mongol army, but when his spells failed, he was mustered out. If not capable of working magic, he did demonstrate a flair for the macabre. To persuade the world of his death, he spread rumors and even killed a man, whose corpse he dressed as if it were his own. Once Kao and Wang Chu came together, they discovered their shared loathing for Ahmad, and they hatched a wild scheme to assassinate him.
Whether they acted alone or as instruments of a larger clandestine conspiracy remains an open question. The record suggests they were loners, but Marco insists that the Chinese whom Ahmad had oppressed “planned to assassinate him and to rebel against the rule of the city.” In Polo’s feverish retelling, Wang Chu emerges not as an ascetic but as a man “whose mother, daughter, and wife Ahmad had violated,” a man acting out the will of the Chinese, who despised Ahmad.
In the early months of 1282, the ascetic soldier and the devious monk conspired to insinuate themselves into Kublai’s court. Wang Chu worked up documents supposedly from Chinkim ordering him to report to the prince’s palace. It was all a deception, because Chinkim himself was nowhere to be found.
Next, Wang Chu approached Ahmad, bearing false reports of Chinkim’s imminent arrival at his palace. Ahmad and other dignitaries would be expected to greet him properly out in front.
Marco, drawing on unofficial sources and gossip, explains that they planned a much larger conspiracy: they were to signal with torches to others spread across the land to “kill all those who have beards, and make the signal with fire to the other cities that they should do the like.” Since the Chinese were beardless, those with beards would have been Mongols, Muslims, and Christians.
The two conspirators had raised a ragged little army of a hundred or so men to help carry out the plot. Under cover of darkness, they approached the palace on horseback, lighting their way with an impressive display of lanterns and torches. Occupying a prominent position in their midst, the monk Kao rode high on his horse, doing his best to impersonate Chinkim arriving at his palace.
At the same time, Ahmad was entering the city gate on his way to meet Chinkim and happened to meet a “Tartar named Cogatai, who was captain of twelve thousand men with whom he kept continual guard over the city,” according to Marco Polo, whose account of these events deserves attention because he claimed to be close at hand.
“Where are you going so late?” Cogatai asked Ahmad.
“To Chinkim, who is this moment come.”
Cogatai was understandably suspicious. “How is it possible that he is come so secretly that I have not known it?”
Historical records suggest that as he drew up, Kao, still posing as Chinkim, summoned the soldiers on guard to approach, a move that suddenly exposed Ahmad. Lying in wait, Wang Chu withdrew a substantial brass bat from his sleeve, leapt at Ahmad, and beat him to death.
Marco offers a more sophisticated insider account of the assassination: “The moment that Ahmad came into the palace, seeing so many candles lighted, he knelt down before [Kao], believing he was Chinkim; and Wang Chu who was there ready with a sword cut off his head. And seeing this, Cogatai, who had stopped in the entry of the palace, said, ‘Here is treason’ and immediately shot an arrow at [Kao], who was sitting on the seat, and killed him.” (In the historical record, Kao survived a bit longer.)
Cogatai ordered that “anyone found outside his house be killed on the spot” and proceeded to slaughter Chinese on the assumption that the two assassins had worked closely with the local populace. And the barbarism spread quickly to other cities.
WITHOUT LEADERSHIP, the uprising soon played itself out. Within days, Wang Chu and Kao gave themselves up to the authorities, proclaiming themselves heroes for ridding the empire of the wicked Ahmad.
On May 1, 1282, both conspirators were quartered—their limbs pulled off by horses walking in opposite directions—and beheaded as punishment for their deed.
Just before he was executed, Wang Chu cried out, “I, Wang Chu, now die for having rid the world of a pest. Another day, someone will no doubt write the story for me.”
WHEN NEWS OF Ahmad’s assassination reached Kublai Khan, the supreme ruler reacted with alarm and uncharacteristic decisiveness. He traveled to Shang-tu and ordered a thorough investigation. Expecting to learn of the perfidy of Ahmad’s murderers, Kublai instead heard tales of Ahmad’s treachery; now that the minister was gone, those whom he had harmed came forward to describe his flagrant dishonesty and abuse of power.
Indignant at these revelations, Kublai prosecuted Ahmad’s followers, his children, and other members of his clan. Within weeks it was decreed that anyone who had offered his wife or daughter to Ahmad in exchange for a government post should be removed from office, and all property that he had confiscated returned to its rightful owners. In all, 714 government appointees were dismissed, according to official records.
In June, the Yüan dynasty tallied Ahmad’s staggering assets, which included more than 3,700 camels, oxen, sheep, and donkeys. His slaves were freed, his property was claimed by the state or given away. Marco vigorously narrates Kublai’s relentless retaliation: “He ordered Ahmad’s body to be taken from the grave and flung in the street to be torn to pieces by dogs. And those of his sons who had followed the example of his evil deeds he caused to be flayed alive.” And Rashid al-Din, the era’s leading historian, adds a few grisly details of his own, revealing that Kublai, enraged even after Ahmad’s death, ordered the minister’s body to be “dragged from his grave, that a rope be tied to his feet and that he be hanged at the cross-roads in the bazaar; over his head they drove wheels.”
RETRIBUTION PERSISTED long after Ahmad had disappeared from the scene, largely because the culture of corruption that he created remained. According to Chinese custom, executions occurred in the fall, and when the season arrived, four of his sons, including Husain, as well as a nephew, were dispatched; to deepen the disgrace, their bodies were pickled. All Ahmad’s followers were blacklisted. The government compiled a catalog of his crimes and announced it in cities and towns throughout the empire so that all would know his evil deeds and treachery. Most of the hundreds of government offices he had established were dismantled, and the excesses associated with his administration, such as harsh treatment of prisoners, were curbed.
Ahmad’s personal effects included bizarre items that gave clues to his inner life and suggested he was not the conventional Muslim that Kublai Khan believed him to be. His closet held a pair of tanned human skins, and the eunuch who had cared for him told an alarming tale: Ahmad would from time to time place them on an altar and mutter mysterious invocations. Equally troubling, he owned a silk scroll depicting a provocative image of mounted soldiers surrounding a large tent and attacking the unseen occupant, perhaps the khan himself. Marco took these items as proof that “Ahmad so bewitched the khan with his spells that the khan gave the greatest belief and attention to all his words, and did all that he [Ahmad] wished him to do.”
Revelations such as these inspired Kublai Khan to purge Muslims from his court, as Marco relates: “When he recalled the cursed sect of Saracens [Muslims], by which every sin has been made lawful to them and that they can kill whoever is not of their law, and that the cursed Ahmad with his sons had not for this reason reckoned that they committed any sin, he despised it much and held it in abomination.” From that time forward, says Marco, Kublai Khan ordered that Muslims must conduct themselves “according to the law of the Tartars, and that they must not cut the throats of animals, as they did, to eat the flesh, but must cut them in the belly.”
Ahmad’s legacy bedeviled Kublai Khan and the Yüan court. Courtiers wondered aloud how such a power-mad schemer could have flourished in their mids
t for so many years, and questioned why his critics had remained silent until his death suddenly loosened their tongues. There was an outstanding reason for Ahmad’s steady ascent: he brought critical financial and bureaucratic skills to government. He imposed a uniform currency on a fragmented society, formalized taxation to pay for Kublai Khan’s expensive military campaigns, and partly succeeded in his goal of indoctrinating all of China with the revolutionary idea that a central Mongol authority administered the entire country.
One unresolved question about this enigmatic tyrant remains. Did Ahmad plan to carry out a palace coup, or did he expect to prosper indefinitely while remaining subordinate to Kublai Khan? If he had led such a coup, the advent of Muslim rule over China would have dramatically changed the course of Asian history. Not even Marco Polo ventured a guess about that prospect. For Marco, Ahmad’s fall marked a coming of age. He had arrived at the Mongol court as a young man enthralled with the larger-than-life figure of Kublai Khan, whom he regarded with undisguised hero worship. His account makes it seem that he could not believe his good fortune in establishing rapport with the powerful ruler. But the Ahmad affair demonstrated to Marco, and to the Mongol world, that Kublai Khan, for all his military prowess and enlightened domestic policies, was capable of making errors of judgment serious enough to threaten the empire itself.
FOR MORE THAN thirty years, the complementary skills of the warrior khan and the bureaucrat had permitted the Mongol Empire to flourish. The sumptuousness of the Shang-tu summer palace (Xanadu) reflected the tastes of Kublai Khan and the organizational skills of Ahmad. For all its excesses, their collaboration might have lasted even longer, had Ahmad known how to win the affection or respect of the Chinese people whom he ruled, and not just their fear.
Kublai Khan turned to a man whom he believed would be a safe choice to succeed Ahmad. His name was Sanga, and he was a Uighur, a member of a Turkic tribe. But he soon ran into trouble when a jealous rival told Kublai about Sanga’s supposed treachery. Kublai Khan disciplined the errant minister with a Mongol-style beating.
Sanga held his ground, and Kublai turned his wrath on the informant, who insisted that he was simply trying to warn the khan of danger. The khan held an inquiry and learned from a trusted Persian aide that Sanga was stockpiling pearls and gems at the expense of the government. When the khan asked to share in this hoard, Sanga protested that he had no such riches. The khan arranged for Sanga to be distracted briefly, and during that time the Persian retrieved not one but two caskets stuffed with valuable pearls.
“What is all this?” Kublai Khan asked his minister. “You have so many pearls, but refuse to give me even a few. Where did you get these riches?”
Sanga awkwardly explained that he had collected them from Muslims governing provinces throughout China. His answer infuriated the khan.
“Why did they bring me nothing? You bring me trifles and keep the most precious items for yourself.”
“They were given to me,” Sanga insisted, and offered to return them, if his lord and master wished.
Unimpressed, Kublai Khan condemned Sanga to be put to death by having his mouth filled with excrement. The Khan seized the hoard of gems and executed several of Sanga’s Muslim loyalists. Kublai had learned the lesson of the Ahmad uprising only too well. But he had eliminated one threat only to face others, as adversaries crowded him on all sides.
KUBLAI KHAN’S next challenge came from his detested “uncle,” Nayan, who was determined to become the Great Khan, at Kublai’s expense. While still a young man, Marco Polo says, Nayan had become “ruler of many lands and provinces, so that he could easily raise a force of 400,000 horsemen.” Having an army of this size at his disposal inspired dreams of glory: “He resolved that he would be a subject no longer.”
Although Nayan was a Nestorian Christian, as were many of his followers and soldiers, Marco’s sympathies clearly lay with Kublai Khan in this contest. But the conflict between the two warlords was in no sense a religious crusade. Nayan wanted power, and to acquire it he formed an alliance with another insubordinate member of the Mongol royal family, Kublai’s subversive nephew Kaidu, whom Marco describes as the khan’s “bitter enemy” and a perpetual menace to stability in Asia. “I assure you,” he says, “that Kaidu is never at peace with the Great Khan, but maintains constant warfare against him.” Marco despaired at the havoc this troublemaker had wrought over the years. “Kaidu has already fought many battles with the Great Khan’s men,” he says. Even though Kaidu had lost all the battles, he clamored for his share of Kublai Khan’s hard-won victories. To hear Marco tell it, Kublai would have obliged if only Kaidu had promised to appear at Cambulac whenever summoned. But Kaidu was “afraid for his life if he went,” and Kublai Khan maintained 100,000 “horsemen in the field” to contain his adversary.
In 1287, Nayan and Kaidu concocted a plot to attack Kublai simultaneously from opposite directions and force him into submission. “When the Great Khan got word of this plot,” Marco relates, “he was not unduly perturbed; but like a wise man of approved valor he began to marshal his own forces, declaring that he would never wear his crown or hold his land if he did not bring these two false traitors to an evil end.”
Within only twenty-two days, Kublai assembled an army consisting of 260,000 cavalry and 100,000 infantry, but the forces arrayed against him were larger still. “The reason why he confined himself to this number was that these were drawn from the troops in his own immediate neighborhood,” Marco reports. Kublai commanded some twelve additional armies, but they were “so far away on campaigns of conquest in many parts that he could not have got them together at the right time and place.” If he had summoned all his guards on duty in distant parts of his empire, “their numbers would have been past all reckoning or belief.” But such measures would have been too slow and too public; Kublai preferred speed, “the companion of victory,” and secrecy to “forestall Nayan’s preparations and catch him alone.”
CHINESE ANNALS confirm Marco’s account of this matter, and they suggest that Kublai was willing to sacrifice Bayan by sending him on a hazardous intelligence-gathering mission. With Bayan at close range, “Nayan conceived the plan of kidnapping him; but Bayan, informed of his plans, was able to escape and returned to the emperor.”
At the same time, other Mongol barons in northwestern China, learning of Nayan’s rebellion, sided with him, and as the annals relate, “the emperor was very afflicted.” Acting on the advice of a military official, Kublai Khan dispatched an envoy to try to talk sense into the upstart barons, now known as the confederates. Although the envoy was able to persuade them that their cause was doomed, Nayan refused to surrender. Rather, he formed allegiances with other leaders, who supplied him with troops. Kublai Khan’s forces surrounded their encampment. Eventually a “small, secret expedition” consisting of only a dozen “intrepid and determined men” under the command of a Chinese officer penetrated the enemy.
Although Kublai Khan won this contest, he had not succeeded in eliminating Nayan, whose power and ambition seemed to gain strength from the Mongol efforts to contain it.
ALTHOUGH MARCO wished to persuade his audience, and himself, that Kublai Khan was a wise and beloved leader who ruled the empire by virtue and the mandate of Heaven, the Venetian’s account occasionally betrays an opposing point of view—that the khan could be a wily despot who ruled China and rival Mongol clans by cunning and military force. “In all of his dominions,” Marco admits from the safe remove of his prison cell in Genoa, “there are many disaffected and disloyal subjects who, if they had the chance, would rebel against their lord.” To prevent local insurrection, Kublai Khan rotated the occupying armies every two years, as well as the captains in charge of them.
Maintaining large standing armies across the length and breadth of China cost Kublai Khan dearly. Marco relates that the troops, in addition to receiving regular pay, “live on the immense herds of cattle that are assigned to them and on the milk that they send into towns to sell fo
r necessary provisions.” In time, the armies drained both the Mongol treasury and Chinese natural resources. The Mongols were stretched too thin to rule all of China, especially by force, and while they displayed amazing dexterity with their messenger service, and their admirable (if necessary) respect for local languages, religions, and customs, they presided over barely controlled chaos. Marco was fortunate to travel across China during the years of the Pax Mongolica, when the Mongols maintained a delicate balance between Chinese nationalism and Mongolian imperial ambitions. This state of affairs meant that travelers along the Silk Road enjoyed relative safety, especially in the Mongol strongholds in the north, where marauders who often terrorized traders were kept at bay. But as Marco came to realize, the status quo could not last, because Nayan expected to rule China himself.
DRAWING CONFIDENCE from the predictions of astrologers, as was his habit, Kublai Khan assured himself that his cause would be successful. Only then did he lead his forces—now reckoned at 400,000 horsemen—into battle against Nayan. Fortune once again favored Kublai Khan, as Marco points out: “When they arrived Nayan was in his tent, dallying in bed with [one of ] his wives, to whom he was greatly attached.” Nayan had felt so secure that he had not troubled to post sentries or send out patrols.
Without warning, the Great Khan appeared. “He stood on the top of a wooden tower, full of crossbowmen and archers, which was carried by four elephants wearing stout leather armor draped with clothes of silk and gold. Above his head flew his banner with the emblem of the sun and moon, so high that it could clearly be seen on every side. His troops were marshaled in thirty squadrons of 10,000 mounted archers each, grouped in three divisions; and those on the left and right he flung out so that they encircled Nayan’s camp in a moment. In front of every squadron of horse [men] were five hundred foot-soldiers with short pikes and swords. They were so trained that, whenever the cavalry proposed a retreat, they would jump on the horses’ cruppers and flee with them; then, when the retreat was halted, they would dismount and slaughter the enemies’ horses with their pikes.” The Mongols’ false retreats proved highly effective.
Marco Polo Page 31