by Nayab Naseer
Having decided to battle at Ayn Jalut, in a narrow defile just wide enough to be held by the small Mamluke force, Qutuz and Baybars engaged in a long and protracted deliberation.
Much to the chagrin of the Syrian amirs, the timid Syrian and Khwarizm contingents were marshaled to the front lines. They were flanked on either side by strong Mamluke infantry detachments. The second line was composed entirely of Mamluke infantry, deployed in regiments with sufficient intervals between them. Behind this line was the Baharite cavalry under Baybars. Qutuz personally took overall command.
The Mongols, when they came were much superior in numbers, but being crammed into the defile, had little room for maneuver. Nevertheless, wave after wave of galloping, shooting horsemen charged the enemy, poured in a shower of arrows, swerved and rode away before coming into the range of Mamluke bows.
Ever afraid of the Mongols and helpless against the onslaught, the frontline wavered, broke and fled through the gaps left between the Mamluke regiments. Seeing the enemy falter and run, Ketbuga ordered his whole host to charge the disorganized enemy. The Mongol charge was a mad, yelling onslaught – those fleeing suffered heavily.
Qutuz climbed on a rock, threw his helmet away, and shouted "Wa Islamah wa Islamah." The frustrated leaders of his army looked towards the voice to see their leader's flushed face infiltrating Mongol rows, hitting angrily with his sword and leaving behind dozens of dead corpses. Qutuz's courage stunned his leaders who promptly followed his footsteps.
Ketbuga then had the first and last shock in his long military career.
The cleaver choice of battlefield, a narrow defile protected by obstacles on either sides – Mt. Gibboa and Nehr Jalut prevented Ketbuga from adopting the outflanking movement that could attack from the rear. The presence of the Baysian marshes nearby made it impossible for Ketbuga to put in a feigned fight – they had no choice but to rush in all at once.
When the front line wavered and fled, the Mamluke detachments on either flanks stood firm, and the second Muslim line, the strong Mamluke infantry withstood and stopped the Mongol charge. The Mamlukes thus formed a hollow square into which the whole Mongol cavalry poured in. Caught on three sides and crammed into very little space, the Mongols could neither move nor use their weapons effectively, and into this mass of seething humanity and champing horse flesh, the short Mamluke bows kept up an incessant rain of arrows.
Qutuz was not only holding the Mongols within killing range of his short bow, but also completely immobilized the most mobile troops of Middle Ages.
The tables had been turned on the followers of Hulagu.
When the retreating Syrians and Khwarizmis found they were neither being killed nor pursued, they gathered courage and returned to battle. They formed a line behind the Mamluke infantry and started dealing with the few Mongol horsemen who sneaked through the gaps.
After a fearful slaughter, Ketbuga was taken prisoner and executed. The remaining Mongols turned and fled!
Baybars was a hard-riding, hard-hitting ruthless cavalry commander, who throughout his life, packed with dangers, would neither ask nor give any quarter. Throughout the hard fought battle, he, with his corps of Bahari Mamluke cavalry waited impatiently.
Now he was let loose.
Baybars first caught the Mongols against the Baysan marshes, and burned out the thousands who had taken refuge there. Those who fled further were caught at River Jordan and slain.
But Baybars would not be Baybars if he stopped there.
Emerging from the valley of Jordan, he launched one of the longest and hottest pursuits in history. For over five hundred kilometers he chased, hunted and killed every Mongol he could find. Relentlessly, he dug these sneaking murderers, robbers and tax collectors out of villages, groves and fox-holes.
When the news reached Damascus city and its surroundings, the inhabitants rejoiced and having regained their honor and esteem, began to attack the Mongols and their supporters.
The Mongols realized their state in the Islamic East was fading. Those who survived lost no time to flee eastward, and within a matter of weeks, Qutuz and Baybars liberated all Sham.
Then the Quranic verse “He will replace you with other people; then they will not be like you” manifested itself fully. The Mongols were under many Christian generals like Kitbuga and had many Christian wives. But the Mongol chiefs of Transoxania converted to Islam, and the Mongols of the “Golden Horde” ruling Southern Russia became more and more attracted to Islam and started invading Hulagu’s territories. Soon even Hulagu’s successors became Muslims, and Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India, was one of Hulagu’s descendents through Timerlane. Within the span of a generation, the sons of the deadliest foes of Islam became its great champions.
THE ADVENTURES OF IBN BATTUTA
Like most children of his time, Abu Abdullah Mohammed ibn Battuta started school in his native Tangier, at the age of six. His goal, just like most young students of his time was to learn the Quran by heart.
For an 8th hijri century (14th century CE) student in the dar-es Islam, learning, in the first instance, meant memorizing the Quran and understanding its meaning. However, it did not end there. Elementary arithmetic was an obligatory part of the curriculum, as were any vocational skills from the range of options available. Classes started when a child reached six years of age, in the masjid or at the teacher's home.
Higher studies meant advanced Arabic grammar, history, ethics, law, geography, commercial mathematics, and military art. Although no institutional degrees existed, the student received a certificate from his teachers. The highest accolade was adah, meaning "one who is adept" at manners, taste, wit, grace, gentility, and above all, "knowledge carried lightly." Those religiously inclined had another stream to pursue though – wandering students, on a journey from one end of dar-us-Islam to the other were a common sight of the times. Anyone who aspired to be an alim embarked on a scholarly Grand Tour – with Makkah, Madinah, Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo the obligatory stops.
It was to such a journey that Ibn Battuta set out from his native Tangier. His first target was hajj. In the words he dictated to his scribe three decades later, he says "I set out alone, having neither fellow-traveler in whose companionship I might find cheer, nor caravan whose party I might join, but swayed by an overmastering impulse within me, and a desire long-cherished in my bosom to visit these illustrious sanctuaries [of Makkah and Madinah]. So I braced my resolution to quit all my dear ones...and forsook my home as birds forsake their nests. My parents being yet in the bonds of life, it weighed sorely upon me to part from them, and both they and I were afflicted-with sorrow at this separation."
From Tangier Ibn Battuta proceeded to Algeria and Tunis. During those days, wandering scholars were given modest free meals and place to stay in the madrasas that dotted dar-us-Islam, or if no better accommodation were available they slept on masjid floors.
The journey had its fair share of dangers though. Ibn Battuta got the first taste of the big bad world when his fellow traveller fell ill by the wayside. Government agents, far from providing succor, confiscated the entire estate of this unfortunate fellow-traveller, which he was carting away his gold to his needy heirs. Ibn Battuta himself fell ill, but he was determined enough and strapped himself to the saddle of his mule. "if Allah decrees my death, it shall be on the road with my face set towards the land of the Hijaz and Makkah,” he resolved.
In Tunis, Ibn Battuta joined a caravan headed for Alexandria. Here he met one Burhan al Din, who made him set his sights forever on the travels he eventually undertook. He narrates:“I met the pious Burhan al-Din...whose hospitality I enjoyed for three days. One day he said to me, "I see that you are fond of traveling through foreign lands." I replied, "Yes, I am" (though as yet I had no thoughts of going to such distant lands as India or China). Then he said, "You must certainly visit my brother Farid al-Din in India, and my brother Rukn al-Din in Sind, and my brother Burhan al-Din in China. When you find them, give them greetings from me." I was
amazed at his prediction, but the idea of going to these countries once cast into my mind, my journey never ceased until I had met these three and conveyed his greeting to them.”
In Cairo, Ibn Battuta encountered mainstream Muslim society for the first time. Egypt at the time was in the midst of an unprecedented economic boom, thanks to its thriving trade with Asia and the good administrative bureaucracy provided by the Malemuke sultans.
Tempted as Ibn Battuta was to stay back and enjoy the pleasures of the high life that prosperous Egypt offered, he set out to his original goal – Makkah. He crossed the Nile and took a caravan to Aydhab on the Red Sea coast, a transit town "brackish of water and flaming of air." He arrived just in time when the ruling clan of the province started a revolt against his Mamluke sovereign of Cairo.
Making the best out of the worst, something in which Ibn Battuta became quite adept, he returned to Cairo and decided to try his luck, crossing the Sinai by camel. This he did, sojourning in the khans of Palestine and Syria until he reached Damascus and joined the annual hajj caravan to Makkah. That another caravan left directly from Cairo betrays Ibn Battuta's temperament. Rather than endure a brief residence in Cairo, he chose to extend his travels.
Ibn Battuta speaks of the waqfs of Damascus: “The variety and expenditure of the religious endowments of Damascus are beyond computation. There are endowments for the aid of persons who cannot undertake the hajj [such as the aged and the physically disabled], out of which are paid the expenses of those who go in their stead. There are endowments to dower poor women for marriage. There are others to free prisoners [of war.] There are endowments in aid of travelers, out of the revenues of which they are given food, clothing, and the expenses of conveyance to their countries. There are civic endowments for the improvement and paving of the streets, because of which all the lanes in Damascus have sidewalks on either side, on which foot passenger’s walk, while those who ride the roadway use the center. One day I passed a young servant who had dropped a Chinese porcelain dish, which was broken to bits. A number of people collected around him and suggested, "Gather up the pieces and take them to the custodian of the endowment for utensils." He did so, and when the endowment custodian saw the broken pieces he gave the boy money to buy a new plate. This benefaction is indeed a mender of hearts.”
Of Damascus's one hundred and seventy one waqfs, as Ibn Battuta reports, ten were endowed by the sultan, eleven by court officials, twenty five by merchants, forty three by members of the ulema, and eighty two by military officials. And this was a time almost immediately after the Muslim rule in the area was restored, after more than two hundred years of Crusader and Mongol rule.
The hajj caravan was a moving city in all aspects, complete with a vibrant and cosmopolitan crowd of traders, servants, poets, camel-tenders, soldiers, singers, ambassadors, clerks, physicians, coiners, architects, stable-sweepers, scullery boys, waiters, legalists, minstrels, jugglers, beekeepers, artisans, peddlers, shopkeepers, weavers, smiths, carters, hawkers, beggars, slaves and the occasional pickpocket and thief, all accompanying the pilgrim. The one thousand three hundred and fifty kilometer caravan journey through the interior of Arabia took almost two months to complete.
The caravan had its own kind of cruise-ship economy, with several qadis for dispute resolution, muezzins to call people to prayer, imams to lead prayers; and even a scribe to record of the property of pilgrims who died en route.
At Dhu al-Hulaifa, just outside Madinah, the hajjis changed their weather-worn caravan clothes for the ihram. Once in the ihram, the Muslim's behavior was expected to be a model of piety, and the spiritual aura of Makkah reinforced that expectation.
Ibn Battuta says: “I entered the pilgrim state under obligation to carry out the rites of the Greater Pilgrimage...and [in my enthusiasm] I did not cease crying, "Labbaik, Allahumma Labbaik Labbaik la shareek labbaik" ["At Thy service, O Allah!"] through every valley and hill and rise and descent until I came to the Pass of Ali (upon him be peace), where I halted for the night.
We saw before our eyes the illustrious Kaa'ba, may Allah increase it in veneration, like a bride displayed on the bridal chair of majesty and the proud mantles of beauty.... We made the seven-fold circuit of arrival and kissed the Holy Stone. We performed the prayer of two bowings at the Maqam Ibrahim and drank of the water of the well of Zamzam which, if you drink it seeking restoration from illness, Allah restoreth thee; if you drink it for satiation from hunger, Allah satisfieth thee; if you drink it to quench thy thirst, Allah quencheth it.... Praise be to Allah Who hath honored us by visitation to this Holy House.”
Makkah was the ultimate destination for most devout. Not for Ibn Battuta though. For him there was the rest of the world and a lifetime of footsteps ahead. Ibn Battuta’s appetite for more travels was probably whetted on hearing word that jurists like him might find lucrative employment in the remote corners of dar-us-Islam, where such skill-sets were rare and offered a premium.
Rather than take the return caravan to Tangier, Ibn Battuta rode out to the Arabian deserts. He looped through southern Iran and ventured north to Tabriz, and from there via Kufah towards the Tigris, to enter the once famous city of Baghdad.
Baghdad never recovered from the devastation Hulagu wrecked on it in 1358, although its new Mongol overloads, had, by Ibn Battuta’s time converted to Islam. . When Ibn Battuta visited the city, sixty nine years had passed from that gory day, and the tell-tale signs were still visible.
Ibn Battuta's account of Baghdad is elegiac. The western side of the city, where kalifah al-Ma'mun had built his fabled Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) and other monuments still remained a vast edifice of ruins. Most of the settlement was now confined to the then impoverished eastern side of the Tigris.
The average workmen's houses were humble rectangles of sun-dried brick. Better homes had a courtyard, a water basin or pit well, a shade tree and ornamental plants. Curiously, streets were wide enough for two loaded donkeys to pass—the same width in Baghdad as in Seville. The code of social behavior that governed life in these homes was also strikingly similar in Baghdad as it was in Tangier, or anywhere else in dar-us-Islam.
Ibn Battuta was obviously successful in impressing Sultan Abu Said, for he invited him to accompany him for a second hajj. For ten days he traveled with the sultan’s camp, but then left it and proceeded to visit the cities of Shiraz, Isfahan and Tabriz, the last having become a major center of Islamic Mongol influence and power. In Tabriz, Ibn Battuta regretted being able to remain only one night, without having met any of the scholars, although his haste was due to a summons ordering him to rejoin Sultan Abu Sa'id's retinue.
After his second hajj, when Ibn Battuta set out again, it was southward. He visited Yemen, which he called al-Mashrabiyah (The Latticed Windows.) His description of the byways of old Sana'a and Ta'iz still hold today. The ornate latticework of carved wood admitted light and cooling breezes into Yemeni homes, but they blocked the inward view of passersby, preserving the residents' privacy.
From Yemen, Ibn Battuta crossed the Red Sea to Somalia, disembarking north of Djibouti, which at that time was called Zeila. He describes the place as "a large city with a great bazaar,” but also “the dirtiest, most disagreeable and most stinking town in the world," because of its inhabitants' habits of selling fish in the sun and butchering camels in the street.
Ibn Battuta proceeded down the East African coast as far as Mombasa and Kilwa before he returned to Arabia by way of Dofar in southwestern Oman. Here he mentions the ways the sultan lured merchants to his ports: “When a vessel arrives from India or elsewhere, the sultan's slaves go down to the shore, and come out to the ship in a sambuq carrying with them a complete set of robes for the owner of the vessel [and his officers].... Three horses are brought for them, on which they mount with drums and trumpets playing before them from the seashore to the sultan's residence.... Hospitality is supplied to all who are in the vessel for three nights.... These people do this in order to gain the goodwill of the sh
ip owners, and they are men of humility, good dispositions, virtue, and affection for strangers.”
Traveling further up the coast, Ibn Battuta describes the efficient way Omani fishermen used the sharks they caught. “They cut and dry the meat in the sun,” as dwellers on the coast still do, “then dry the cartilaginous backbones further and use them as the framework of their houses, covering the frame with camel skins.”
From Oman, Ibn Battuta returned to Makkah for his third hajj. This is the time he heard of the sultan of Delhi, Muhammad ibn Tughlaq. He probably heard of his extraordinarily generosity towards Muslim scholars, and his open invitation to such people from dar-us-Islam. Having failed to find a suitable placement in any of his wanderings, Delhi became Ibn Battuta's lodestone for the next decade.
A goal oriented traveler would go back to Oman, to embark on a dhow and ride the monsoon winds about forty days to the west coast of India. But Ibn Battuta would have to wait several months for the onset of eastbound winds, and this was clearly not his style.
Ibn Battuta made his way back to Cairo, and from there took to the Mediterranean coast, through Gaza and Hebron thence to a ship bound for Anatolia. Guided by little more than serendipity and impulse, he crisscrossed Anatolia, and became so familiar with its petty sultanates and local customs that his Rihala is the primary factual source for the history of Turkey between the time of the Seljuqs and the arrival of the Ottomans.
One of the customs Ibn Battuta came to know first hand was the akhi, the Turkish word for "generous" and the Arabic word for "brother." The fraternal societies that adopted the term clearly acknowledged both meanings. Ibn Battuta was introduced to them in a bazaar in Ladhiq (Denizli). He recounts: As we passed through one of the bazaars, some men came down from their booths and seized the bridles of our horses. Then certain other men quarreled with them for doing so, and the altercation between them grew so hot that some of them drew knives. All this time we had no idea what they were saying [Ibn Battuta did not speak Turkish], and we began to be afraid of them, thinking that they were the [brigands] who infest the roads.... At length Allah sent us a man, a pilgrim, who knew Arabic, and I asked what they wanted of us. He replied that they belonged to the fityan...and that each party wanted us to lodge with them. We were amazed at their native generosity. Finally they came to an agreement to cast lots, and that we should lodge first with the group whose lot was drawn [and then with the other].”