Download PDF | The Mongol Empire Between Myth And Reality Studies In Anthropological History By Denise Aigle, Brill 2014.
408 Pages
Acknowledgements
The studies in this volume are the result of a decade of research relating to the Mongols. My interest initially spurred with Ilkhanid Iran, and I later broadened the scope of my analysis in an attempt to understand the Mongol Empire as a point of cross-cultural contact. Iran remained the fulcrum, since at this time the Persian Ilkhanate was the centre of a great geopolitical space, linking China, Central Asia, Syria-Palestine and the Latin West.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to those who inspired this research. What I owe to Jean Aubin cannot readily be put into words. He infected me with his curiosity and his constant desire to broaden the field of investigation. Françoise Aubin did me the great favour of drawing my attention to the Mongols of China. Thanks to Roberte Hamayon, I became interested in shamanism. An understanding of this universe, so different from Islam, is essential to make sense of the system of representations of the medieval Mongols.
To Michel Tardieu I owe my interest in studying contacts between East and West, in particular through the myth of Prester John. Jean-Claude Garcin’s very constructive comments enabled me to sharpen my approach to the Mamluk sources. I had the opportunity to present elements of this research in a number of academic institutions, in particular during my period at the Institut Français du Proche-Orient in Damascus (2001–2005) and my seminars at the EPHE. I would like to thank my colleagues and students for their comments and encouragement. I am grateful to Michele Bernardini, Jean-Claude Garcin, Roberte Hamayon and Charles Melville who agreed to read some of the chapters that make up this volume.
The studies presented here are that much better thanks to their comments. I wish to express my particular thanks to Yann Richard, to whom is owed the appearance of this volume, for proposing the publication of these studies in Brill’s “Iranian Studies” series. The chapters of the present volume consist of a number of previously published papers which have been completely revised and reconsidered, as well as some new studies.
The original essays were published in various North American and European journals and volumes. It gives me great pleasure to thank the editors (and former editors) for permission to use this material here: Ali Amir-Moezzi, Michele Bernardini, Isabelle Charleux, Sylvie Denoix, Roberte Hamayon, Pierre Lory and Marlis J. Saleh. The English translation of this volume was prepared by Pól Ó Grádaigh. I thank him warmly for his patience and attention to detail. I would like also to thank Damien Simon for the revision of the translation.
Introduction
Both modern historiography and the mediaeval chronicles have often portrayed the period of Mongol rule as one of the darkest times for the Iranian lands. It has been seen as a major split in their history. The Mongol conquest brought about an unprecedented situation in Muslim Iran: a society organized on the basis of Islamic precepts and customs was suddenly in the hands of a people whose world-view and mores were utterly different.
The descendants of Genghis Khan used the shared political culture of the nomadic peoples of the steppes to establish their rule over the great stretches of Asia and Eurasia.1 The Secret History of the Mongols, the founding text of Mongol identity, is a source of the utmost importance. It informs us as to the social organization of these tribes, their values, and their religious and cultural universe. We find in it their models of political legitimization at the time of the conquests, in particular the concept of “Heaven” (tenggeri). The first paragraph begins:
The origin of Činggis Qan. At the beginning there was a blue-grey wolf, born with his destiny ordained by the Heaven above. His wife was a fallow doe. They came crossing the Tenggis.2 After they had settled at the source of the Onan River on Mount Burqan Qaldun, Batačiqan was born to them.3
From his birth and on, thus, Heaven had chosen Genghis Khan for a lofty destiny.4 The term “Heaven” appears in other expressions too: Genghis Khan is the “son of Heaven.”5 The “force of Heaven” assists him in his conquests. Heaven grants him and his successors his protection, as is attested in the diplomatic documents. But while the khan’s success is explained by the support of the “Heaven Above,” he has not in fact received any order to conquer the world in the name of the tenggeri.6 The Secret History mentions Heaven’s mandate to Genghis Khan only once, in words spoken by the shaman Kököchü (Teb Tenggeri).
The context is to rule over the Mongol ulus, i.e. the steppe nomads and not over the whole world.7 The references to Heaven in the Secret History do not show that Genghis Khan’s foundation of the Mongol empire was due to a heavenly decree. Rather, they serve primarily to retrospectively legitimize a human act,8 but some researchers pointed out a religious inspiration of Mongol expansion.9
The sudden appearance of the Mongols on the stage of history brought about profound changes across Eurasia. They created the greatest empire in human history because they were able to mobilize the human and material resources of the territories that came under their control. All the subjects of the empire, whether nomadic or settled, city dwellers, craftsmen or farmers, had to assist the Mongols’ imperial ambitions. Thomas Allsen rightly observes that Hülegü’s siege of Baghdad was not a confrontation between the Mongols and the Abbasid caliphate, but between the human, financial, material and technological resources of Northern China, Central Asia, Russia, the Caucasus and Iran, on the one hand, and those of the caliphate on the other.10 The beginning of Mongol rule in Iran was marked with a particularly traumatic invasion.
The massive psychological impact of the installation of the Mongols was due to the violence with which it came about. The first invasion, in 1218–22, marked by the general massacre (qatl-i ʿāmm) of the populations of the great cities of Transoxiana and Khurasan, was particularly devastating because at first the sole purpose of the conquerors was to systematically exploit the populations and territories that they had crushed. The final conquest took place when Möngke decided that the Iranian lands, while remaining under his authority, were to form an ulus for his brother Hülegü. He reduced the Ismāʿīlī main fortresses in Qūhistān and the southern Caspian in the first months of 1256.
The campaign ended with the capture of Alamut on 19 November. Hülegü then returned to Azerbaijan, which became the centre of Mongol rule in Iran. In late 1257 he moved on Baghdad. He had the population massacred and the Abbasid caliph executed. The city fell to the Mongols on 13 February 1258. The title of “il-khān” that was granted to Hülegü clearly expresses his inferior rank: it means “khan subordinate to the Great Khan.”11 Ruptures never take place at the same time as the events that decide of them. It takes at least a generation, often longer, for the changes to take effect. Furthermore, their seeds often precede the events from which they seem to spring and which later come to symbolize them. Such is the case with the apparent decline of Iran: its immediate cause may have been the devastating effects caused by the shock of conquest, but the roots were of longer standing. The region’s economic and cultural slump followed long decades of disruption. In the eleventh century, Iran was invaded by the Saljuq Turks.
These Muslims were quickly adopted into its Islamic society, whose social and political structures did not undergo any profound transformation. Nevertheless, the consequences of the Turkish conquests were felt in the long term, especially with the growth in nomadism and with destruction in Khurasan, Azerbaijan and Kirmān due to the ravages of the Ghuzz. When the Mongols invaded Iran, the country had been in crisis for almost two centuries. In the cities, conflicts between quarters, often based on religious antagonism, had caused much destruction and hobbled small traders and craftsmen.12 In Isfahan, there was persistent conflict between Hanafis and Shafiʿis.13 The latter turned the city over to the Mongols in the hope that they would wipe out their rivals.14
The sectarian struggle between Hanafis and Shafiʿis triggered the massacres committed by the invaders.15 In Baghdad, destruction and pillaging resulting from the clashes that had been taking place between Sunnis and Shiʿites since the Buyid period had already left the city partly ransacked long before it was taken by Hülegü.16 In the Ilkhanid period, Iran came under a dual judicial system. Qurʾānic law, the Sharīʿa, was freely applied as the private law of the Muslims, pronounced by the jurists ( faqīh) and applied by judges (qāḍī ). Mongol law, the yāsā, served as public law applicable to all political matters.17 Judgements were pronounced before a special court, the yārghū, by Mongol judges.
The contradictions between the law of Genghis Khan and the precepts of the Qurʾān were predominantly tangible in relation to taxation and the status of land holdings. The innovations (bidʿa) which offended Islamic legality were made up for by the advantages enjoyed by the various religious communities under a nonIslamic regime. The pious sought a theological meaning to the Mongolian domination, foremost among those who collaborated with the new regime and accepted its benefits; these including ʿulamāʾ. ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla al-Simnānī, a harsh critic of his age’s moral decadence, entered Arghun’s court when he was fifteen years old, but against the wishes of his master, he determined to leave the dīwān and to devote himself to Sufi path.18 Abaqa’s reign was a long period during which Persian culture once again flourished, as is attested by the literary clients of the Juwaynī.19
In the history of Iran, the Ilkhanid period probably saw the widest freedom for the country’s religious communities at large.20 According to Peter Jackson, despite the enforcement of certain steppe customs religious groups gained a freedom of action that they had not enjoyed before the advent of the Mongols. In 1230 the Nestorian monk Simeon Rabban Ata was able, with the approval of the Mongol military, to build Christian churches and erect crosses in Muslim Azerbaijan.21 The presence of churches at the court of the Mongol princes (or princesses) in Iran is mentioned not only from Christians sources.
Rashīd al-Dīn relates Doquz Khatun and Hülegü manifested consideration for the Christians, so much so that “they build churches throughout the realm. A church was always built at the gate of Doquz Khatun’s ordu, and the nāqūs22 was sounded.”23 Hülegü, Abaqa and Arghun were generally favourable to Christianity and, among other privileges, exempted churches and monasteries from taxes.24 Even Ghazan Khan is not uniformly besmirched in the sources. Stepʿanos Ōrbēlean never accused the Ilkhan for its deeds directly. When he describes devastations and plunder of churches under Ghazan’s rule, he blames Nawrūz.25 Mongol rule did not lead to cultural decline—on the contrary.
There was intense cultural exchange between Iran and China. Many Chinese elements were integrated into Iranian culture in a range of fields including historiography, cartography, agriculture, medicine, astronomy, and material culture.26 Rashīd al-Dīn is probably the best example of the trend. His Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, in which he compiled historical information on the known world, is the first universal history in the true sense. Furthermore, in this unprecedented historiographical enterprise, Rashīd al-Dīn transmitted many Mongol sources in Persian.27 His geographical compendium, entitled Ṣuwar al-aqālīm (The Configuration of Climes), has not come down to us. But from indirect sources, we know that he had a fair understanding of the basic geography of the Far East, Korea and Japan.28 One of the most interesting Persian manuals written at the time of Ghazan Khan was connected with the agricultural works carried out at Tabriz.
In this, the Kitāb-i Āthār wa aḥyāʾ, also compiled by Rashīd al-Dīn, he provides detailed information on the botanical characteristics of many foreign, particularly Chinese, plants.29 Under the Ilkhans, a paradoxical renewal of the sciences took place. Hülegü selected Marāgha as the site of a major observatory. This establishment served as a training centre for astronomers. Its first director was Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī. Scientific works in multiple languages were compiled at Marāgha by scientists from many parts of Eurasia. The Ilkhan ordered Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī to collaborate with the Chinese astronomers he had brought from the East.30 In the field of medicine, Hülegü had a contingent of Chinese doctors attached to his court.31 The court of the Ilkhans at Tabriz, where many Western merchants, especially Italians, stayed, became a crossroads not only of international commerce,32 but also of cultural exchange.
There was an active trade in commodities such as carpets and gold cloth.33 Also in Tabriz, Rabʿ-i Rashīdī’s scriptorium was Iran’s most important centre for the production of illustrated manuscripts.34 It is true during the first decades of their rule over Iran, the Mongols brought about a break in the country’s history. Their invasion led to a long-term shift in the demographic and political balance in favour of the nomadic world which would last until the Pahlavi period. Many Turkic populations were pushed westwards, either fleeing the Mongols or fighting in their armies. The process of Turkification of Iranian Central Asia, which had begun much earlier, was completed.
The same can be said for Azerbaijan. In addition to the destruction and the inflow of tribes, the Mongols also brought new political practices. The Persian elites were made to collaborate with their new masters who, while tolerant in matters of religion, introduced alien customs into Persian culture— especially in the administration. The Ilkhanid state in Iran had a dual administration: a Mongol one with a Mongol staff and an Iranian one with an Iranian staff. The period was characterized at all levels, from the staff of the dīwān down to junior local officials, by harshness of social relations. Jean Aubin has shown that the Persians were the most exposed to sudden reversals of fortune which could culminate in bloodbaths.35 Throughout the existence of the Persian Ilkhanate, policy was decided not just at the court of the Ilkhan (the urdu) but also at those of the emirs (noyad).
The latter surrounded the ruler, and sometimes created him. They dominated him or plotted against him, and intervened incessantly in matters of state. The careers of great men were made at the urdu. It was also where local notables came to seek the grant of administrative functions in their areas. The rivalries among these men for the management of a mere bulūk explains the numerous intrigues that were hatched at the Ilkhan’s court and which, throughout the period, had devastating effects in all regions.36 After the shock of the conquest, the Mongols implemented the so-called pax mongolica, which facilitated trans-Asiatic cultural transmission and trade.37 The destructive impact of the first phase of the conquest on the economy of the captured territories cannot be denied. But the various regions that came under the “Tatar yoke” do not seem to have been ruined.
On the contrary, studies show that the economy recovered rapidly. The key factor in this revival was long-distance trade.38 Historians have noted the close association between the nomads of the Eurasian steppe and the merchants of the sedentary world. The former were obliged to acquire such goods as winter fodder, textiles, luxuries, and manufactured wares available only in the sedentary world.39 The expansion of a nomadic empire might be described as the extension of nomadic political control over a long-distance trade network.40 The interest of Genghis Khan’s line in commerce is well known. The term ortoy, of Turkic origin, means “partner.”41 According to Thomas Allsen, this term passed into Mongolian and was used in the thirteenth-and fourteenth-century sources “to denote a merchant operating with a capital supplied by a Činggisid prince.”42
From the time of Genghis Khan’s first conquests, the Mongols made a point of asking the rulers with whom they were in contact to grant free passage and protection to merchants. They created new commercial infrastructure, developing the caravan routes linking the Pacific to the eastern Mediterranean.43 The entire territory of the empire thus benefited from the Mongols’ trade policy.44 In China, Muslim and Chinese merchants as well as religious institutions also gained from the new situation created by the Yüan.45 In Armenia and Georgia, which were subdued by the Ilkhans, the beneficiaries of their trade policy were parvenu merchant families.46 The courts of the Mongol Khans came to serve as centres of redistribution for the luxury products brought from eastern regions. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa writes that in the capital of the Golden Horde the traders lived in a walled quarter to protect their goods.47 Alongside the development of trading activity, two other characteristic traits marked the Mongol empire. After the conquests, the Great Khans ruled a considerable number of different peoples and ethnicities.
In this period, international diplomatic exchanges all across Eurasia and the Far East soared to an unprecedented level. The Mongol empire was therefore characterized by multilingualism. Few states at that time could equal its capacity to translate documents.48 In Qaraqorum there were scribes who knew Persian, Uyghur, Chinese, Tibetan and Tangut.49 They were employed in the central chancellery, which was a centre of intense linguistic contact. One of the first results of that linguistic situation was that a number of words came to circulate throughout Eurasia. The term ʿalafa, which appears in the Persian sources when emissaries arrived in a region to collect taxes, means “wage” or “provision of food.” It became a widespread technical term in the fourteenth century, entering Mongolian, Turkic and Russian.50 It is interesting, however, to note that it first appears in a Latin text in the form alafa in a letter written in 1326 by a Christian missionary stationed in Ch’üan-chou, a city on the southern coast of China.51
The prestige language was Mongolian, written in the Uyghur alphabet, but Persian and Chinese remained useful in administration.52 In Iran, knowledge of the Uyghur language and script was deemed the highest form of learning.53 This language was learnt by such figures as Saʿd al-Dawla, Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Zanjānī and Rashīd al-Dīn. They were able to converse directly with the Ilkhans.54 Mongolian, written vertically, inspired the Persian poets as a metaphor for tresses of hair.55 The need to translate Mongolian documents into Persian explains why a Mongolian chancellery was established in Cairo to deal with correspondence with the Ilkhans and the khans of the Golden Horde.56
There were officials in charge of correspondence in Mongolian. One of them, Aytamish al-Muḥammadī,57 was sent on embassy to Abū Saʿīd thrice, because he had not only mastered the oral and written language but was also knowledgeable about Mongol customs.58 The impact of Mongolian and Turkic on Persian has been exhaustively documented by Doerfer,59 while the sociolinguistic aspects of this issue, namely the roles of Mongolized Persians and Persianized Mongols, have been studied by Martinez.60 The need to communicate with Mongol rulers, and to engage in missionary and trading activities, aroused an interest in learning languages in Europe.61 In the Muslim East, multilingual glossaries and dictionaries were drawn up for merchants.
The most renowned for the number of languages it contains is the Rasūlid Hexaglot, composed in the fourteenth century by a Yemeni ruler of literary bent. It is an Arabic lexicon with Arabic transcriptions of Persian, Turkish, Mongolian, Greek and Armenian words. Although the Ilkhans were no longer an active political force at the time the Rasūlid Hexaglot was composed, it may be said that the Mongols of Iran were probably one of the sources (if not the sole source) for the Mongolian vocabulary found in the text.62 Early works on the Mongol empire concentrated on political history, emphasizing the barbarity of the conquerors and the destruction that they wreaked. In recent decades, historical works on the various khanates, in particular the Ilkhans, have been published.
Researchers have also sought to shed light on the Mongols’ interest in learning, technology and major international commerce, as well as their great ability to implement an effective administrative system using the ways of the practices of the sedentary peoples they had conquered.63 I here present the Mongol empire, taking the Persian Ilkhanate as my principal point of reference, as a moment of contact between political ideologies, religions, cultures and languages, and, in terms of reciprocal representations, between the Far East, the Muslim East, and the Latin West.
In Part 1, “The memoria of the Mongols in historical and literary sources,” I examine how the Mongol rulers were perceived by the peoples with whom they were in contact. Chapter 1 aims at a broad comparative perspective of the use of memory to reinterpret the feats of great historic figures. To put it another way, it studies how the past serves the present through historiography and literary sources in East and West. The development of the figure of Prester John in the Mongol period is the subject of Chapter 2. This famous Western legend played a part in integrating the Mongols into the mediaeval eschatological dream. Armenians used this famous legend about Prester John as an ally of the Mongols to promote the project of the common Latin-Mongol crusade.
The following two chapters are devoted to the historiography. Barhebraeus, head of the Jacobite church in the lands of the East, spent twenty-two years moving between Iraq and Azerbaijan, spending much time at Marāgha where he was able to access the Ilkhans’ library to compose his Syriac chronicle. His account reflects the point of view of a Christian prelate who was in contact with the Mongol authorities. To some extent the chronicle makes up for the almost entire lack of indigenous sources. It is more objective concerning the Mongols’ culture and way of life than most of the Islamic sources. From the thirteenth century on, the Persian historical sources are enhanced by the appearance of new genres. The Ilkhans commissioned verse chronicles on the model of the Shāh-nāma.
The purpose was to integrate the Mongols into the history of Iran through the literary model of the Persian epic tradition. In this same period, there appears a very particular type of historiography in which facts are presented in a visual form, the taqwīm, combining genealogies with textual narrative. The authors of these texts hoped to impose a certain social representation of the various clans of Turkic-Mongol lineage on future generations. Here we once more see the role of memoria as an instrument of historiographical propaganda. Part 2, “Shamanism and Islam,” is devoted to the perception of shamanism by Muslim authors. Chapter 5 describes that we can know of the representational system of the medieval Mongols and the shamans’ practices. Islamic heresiography does not take shamanism into consideration. In other words, shamanism was not seen as a religion. The Muslims thought of it more as a medical and divinatory discipline than as a system of religious representations. Nevertheless, some shamanistic practices bear similarities to Sufi rites, as may be seen in Central Asia to day.
The way in which Muslim historians attempted to integrate the would-be successors of Genghis Khan into an Islamic framework is considered in the chapter 6, using the case of Timur. In chapter 7, I explain why Mongol law, the jasaq, was considered by the Muslims to be at odds with Sharīʿa. Until recently, researchers adopted this view. They relied largely on a late Mamluk source, resulting in considerable mythicization. But on the basis of a comparison of a large number of textual attestations of various origins, including the Secret History, we can question much of what has been written on the Mongol jasaq. Parts 3, “Conquering the world protected by the Tenggeri,” and IV, “Mamluks and Ilkhans: The quest for legitimacy,” deal with geopolitical questions involving the Ilkhans and the Latin West.
Genghis Khan’s successors, as we have noted above, claimed the protection of “Eternal Heaven” (möngke tenggeri) to justify their conquests. This protection of the tenggeri is cited in all the Ilkhanid diplomatic correspondence, albeit only implicitly by Ghazan Khan and Öljeitü, who had converted to Islam. The failure of the attempted alliance between the Ilkhans and the papacy can be partly explained by a clash between two ideologies. The protection granted by Heaven to the khans of Genghis’ line renders all resistance futile and prone to harsh punishment. The papacy, with its universal vision of Christendom, laid down as a precondition to any alliance that the khans should convert to Christianity.
It therefore ran into another universal vision on the Mongol side. The question of the relations between the Ilkhans and the Mamluks is taken up in the last four chapters. Baybars, the true founder of the Mamluk sultanate, suffered a twofold handicap. Domestically, he had committed a double regicide with his role in the killing of Tūrān Shāh—the son and successor of his master al-Ṣāliḥ Ayyūb—and, after the victory of ʿAyn Jālūt, of the Mamluk sultan Quṭuz. Faced with the imperial dynasty of the Mongols of Iran, the former slave Baybars could not lay claim to any lineage. He instead based his legitimacy on Islam, re-establishing in Cairo the Abbasid caliphate that Hülegü had destroyed. He led campaigns against the Armenians—who had formed an alliance with the Ilkhans—the Franks, and the Shiʿites communities of Syria-Palestine.
Through these feats Baybars forged for himself the image of a ghāzī sultan who intended to make himself the guarantor of Islam. For his part, Ghazan Khan, after converting to Islam, continued the expansionist policy of the Ilkhans, attacking the region three times. His own attempt to portray himself as head of the umma can be seen in several documents issued during his occupation of Damascus in 1300–1, as well as in the diplomatic correspondence. The presence of Christians in his army drew criticism from Mamluk religious authorities, especially the Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya who composed several anti-Mongol fatwās casting doubt on the sincerity of Ghazan Khan’s conversion and denouncing the Islam of the Mongols.
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