Download PDF | The Mongol Empire Its Rise And Legacy, By Michael Prawdin, Routledge, 2006.
583 Pages
INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION
I t is only in the middle of the sixteenth century that Ivan IV, known as “the Terrible,” was able to successfully lead a counterattack against the Mongols who had overcome Russia at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The fall of Kazan (1556) and of Astrakhan (1557) was due to the use of cannons. The cannon was the new deadly weapon able at long last to overcome the military superiority of the nomads of High Asia. After two thousand years of nomadic waves coming from the East, the tide was reversed from the West to the East. Long before the rise of the Mongols, the Huns and other Altaic people such as the Turkish-speaking tribes had been a threat to China, Persia, India, Byzantium, and, at times, were able to subjugate states and empires.
As early as the fourth century BC, the Hsiung-Nu raided successfully northern China. Nomadic tribes were even able to become Chinese dynasties such as the Wei. The great Gupta dynasty of India collapsed in the fifth century AD under the pressure of the white Huns who had already plundered Persia while the black Huns were deep inside Western Europe. They were stopped with difficulty by the Roman army. Wave after wave, Eastern Europe and Byzantium had to deal with nomadic invasions: Avars, Bulgarians, Pechengs, Cumans, Ungarians from the sixth to the tenth century. Turkic-speaking peoples from central Asia were gradually able to penetrate the Middle East and their heirs created lasting empires: Seljukid, Ghaznevid, and so on. The conflict between nomads and settled peoples is the most longstanding conflict in the world. Central Asia has been the geo-political pivot of the world and its impact on the Eurasian continent has been very powerful in the ancient and medieval world. Among the nomadic people, Mongols have been the most formidable.
They were able to dominate over two centuries China, Iran, Russia, and parts of Southeast Asia. With the Mongols, the mounted archers of Central Asia carried the nomadic way of warfare to its perfection: mobility, capacity to maneuver, and impeccable logistics. This, as Michael Prawdin shows in his Mongol Empire, was due to a nomad of genius: Genghis Khan. Born around 1165, Genghis became Khan of the Mongols in 1197 after ten years of difficult political struggles and conflicts to subdue the Mongol tribal confederacies that usually fought each other. Having united them under his authority, Genghis became the leader of the “peoples who live under tents.” Until the thirteenth century, compared to the Turkic-speaking peoples, Mongols had played a minor role in Central Asia. Genghis Khan prime concern was to avoid whatever might undermine his power.
He tried to break down tribal solidarities by creating intertribal units bound together by very strict discipline. He sought to win loyalty by favoring the promotion of talented war chiefs of humble origins who owed him everything. He instituted a code partly already in existence but gave it a new corpus of rules, the Yassa. As among other nomads of Central Asia, the organization of the army was decimal: ten men were called a arban, a hundred, a jagun, etc. What Genghis instituted was a very harsh discipline to create a degree of cohesion unknown before him. John of Plano Carpino, an Italian Franciscan monk sent by Pope Innocent IV to the capital of the Mongols in 1246 reported: Not only was the discipline rigorous, it affected everybody, whatever his rank. But this harsh discipline was in many aspects egalitarian. The ordinary man received the same food as his superiors.
Officers were not allowed to threat soldiers harshly except for very serious reasons. The military machine forged by Genghis Khan was the key to his success; there are no tactical innovations among the Mongols. They used the usual nomadic way of warfare: attrition, flanking maneuvers, sham flight, and so on. At the time that Genghis Khan attained power and when he had subdued the neighboring Kirghiz and the Uighurs there were two powerful states: one to his south, China, the other to his West, Khorezm. The first campaign was successfully directed against China; Beijing fell but the conquest, by 1216 was not complete and Genghis withdrew from China while entrusting one of his outstanding generals Mukali to further the conquest. Campaigns were waged after solid preparations. Spies were sent disguised as merchants to collect information, spread rumors, reassure the population about religious freedom, and reconnoiter the ground.
The offensive that followed focused on Khorezm. Khorezm was defeated in four months, the Mongols took Bukhara, Samarkand, Urgench and then went southwards to the banks of the Indus (1221). Meanwhile Genghis had sent two of his generals: Subodaï and Jebe in an extraordinary raid of cavalry toward the Caucasus in southern Russia where they were constantly victorious. When Genghis died in 1227, he had already decided who would succeed to him. The Mongol Empire covered the whole of high Asia, the north of Iran and Afghanistan as well as northern China. It was divided in the traditional manner among his sons. The great Khan was his son Ogodaï (1229) and the second phase of the conquest began. The conquest of southern China was difficult. It took forty years to beat the Sung dynasty. But after that China was entirely ruled by a Mongol dynasty, the Yuan, for a century and the new capital of the Mongol Empire under Kubla Khan was Beijing. Meanwhile, Korea was conquered and a very important offensive was sent to subdue the West. Subodeï, one of the great general of Genghis was sent with Batu, grandson of Genghis. They took Moscow, Vladimir, Ryazan, Kiev, then turned to Central Europe. They defeated the Teutonic knights, the Templars, the Knight Hospitaliers and the Polish troops at Leignitz (1241). And then King Bela of Hungary near Gran. News of the death of Khan Ogodeï in Karakorum brought the Mongols back the capital. The next year, the Mongols defeated the Seljukid sultanate of Rum. Less than twenty years elapsed between the death of Ogodaï and the reign of Khubilaï the last of the grand Khan (1260-1294) while Hulagu founded the dynasty of the Ilkhans of Iran. This latter put down the Ismailis of the Assassin order and took their stronghold of Alamut. Then he took Baghdad in 1258, which he sacked for two weeks. Two years later, Hulagu took Damascus with a Christian crusader Bohemond and the king of Armenia, Hetum I. The Mongols suffered few setbacks. Once a small Mongol army was beaten in Aïn Jalut, in Syria by the Mameluks (1260).
Three decades later, they could not conquer Northern Vietnam. And they failed in their attempt to invade Japan, their fleet being destroyed by a typhoon (kamikaze) in port. Disunity among them, two generations after the death of Genghis Khan, became sharp when some of the Mongols converted to Islam and declared that religious ties were more important than blood ties. In fact, while most of the Mongols who were in contact with Muslims converted to Islam, Kublaï Khan, in China converted to Buddhism. During the two first generations, religious freedom for the dominated peoples were proclaimed and was politically very valuable. Mongols avoided conflicts on religious matters and had an open attitude toward all religions whose representatives they met and listened to.
When the conquering nomads had started to adopt the religion of those they had subdued, they became sharply divided. In the fourth century, the Khanates of China and Persia were the first to collapse. The Khanates of the Mongols which survived longest was in the traditional area of the nomads: the Eurasian steppe, from Mongolia to southern Russia. The Mongols had reached their zenith in the mid-fourteenth century and had established an empire in which it was safe to travel from Europe to China. Michael Prawdin does not end his study on the Mongol empire with their decline but deals, more generally with the nomadic empires as long as they remained powerful. While not himself a Mongol but a Turk from the Ulus of the Chagataï and a devout Muslim, Timur Leng (Tamerlan) who lived from 1336 until 1405 saw himself as Genghis Khan’s heir.
Timur proclaimed himself Emir but reigned maintaining the fiction that he held power from the Genghiskhanids. As a Muslim he ensured the removal of the other religions in the area he controlled. Christian Nestorianism was swept away from Central Asia and the Middle East. But he retained the Yassa, the rules of Genghis. Timur took advantage of a power vacuum: there was no great khan since the end of the thirteenth century, and since 1258, there where no longer a caliph in Baghdad. The caliphate was held, far away, by the Mameluks of Egypt. Timur raised himself to power slowly while asserting his leadership over the Ulus of Chagataï. Once he had created loyalties toward his own person he relentlessly kept his army and his subordinate busy campaigning. He divided the member of powerful families by assigning them to remote regions and kept with him in order to control them the most powerful figures.
Like every ruler anxious to create a new order, he encourages the formation of new elites who owed him everything. All of Timur’s military campaigns were successful. He was able to beat the great adversaries he met: the Mameluks, the Ottomans, the sultanate of Delhi and his most tenacious adversary, the Golden Horde led by Tuqtamish skilled in all the tactics of the nomads and having troops as war-hardened as Timur’s own army. Timur’s empire centered in Samarkand had reached from Central Asia to the border of India when he decided a campaign to conquer China and equal Genghis Khan. He died on the way. This is the story that, with great literary talent Michael Prawdin tells us. It reads like a political thriller and reminds us of the outstanding military role of the nomads of High Asia. It should be added that the heirs of the steppe nomads, once settled were able to built lasting empires such as the Mameluks, the Ottoman or the Great Moghols. Gérard Chaliand
PROLOGUE EUROPE AWAITS KING DAVID
HE date is A.D. 122r. For the last four years, since Pope Honorius III summoned Christendom to a new crusade, a human torrent had been pouring from Europe to the East, mainly from Low Germany, Denmark, and Norway. In Frisia, Cologne, and Bremen men took ship, rounded the west coast, tarried awhile in Portugal to give their fellow-Christians there a hand against the infidel. After a year's sojourn they continued their voyage to Syria, the place of assembly for crusaders of all nationalities. Here was formed a composite army of the devout, the ambitious, adventurers of many races and speaking many tongues, with nothing in common but the Cross on their attire and the hope of battle and victory. There was little bond of unity, and the Moslems, aware of their advantage, feeling secure in their impregnable fortresses, bided their time. Nor did they need to wait long before the crusading army began to crumble. The King of Hungary was the first leader to return to Europe, being soon followed by Duke Leopold of Austria. Those left behind in Syria removed to Egypt, which offered richer booty. They attacked the wealthy port ofDamietta at the mouth of the Nile, and took it after an eighteen months' siege during which 65,000 of the 70,000 inhabitants died of pestilence and famine. But the rejoicings in Europe over this success and over the vastness of the loot were short-lived, for now Saladin's nephews, the Sultans of Egypt and Damascus, joined forces against the Christian army and beleaguered it.
The besiegers were in turn besieged, and nothing but a new crusade and fresh recruits could save them. Hopes were centred upon Frederick II, the Hohen-staufen Emperor, who had just been crowned by Pope Honorius III upon giving a pledge to take up the Cross. Under pressure of public opinion Frederick sent the Duke of Bavaria to Egypt in command of a fleet of galleys, but refrained from going thither in person at the head of a powerful army, so that at Easter 1221 Europe was anxiously expecting tidings of disaster from the East. But amid the gloom came a message of hope from the crusading zealot Jacques de Vitry, Bishop of Ptolemais. He wrote to the Pope, to Duke Leopold of Austria, to King Henry III of England, to the University of Paris. Beyond belief were the tidings which the bishop sent in his various missives to Europe. "A new and mighty protector of Christianity has arisen. King David of India, at the head of an army of unparalled size, has taken the field against the unbelievers." Giving the most circumstantial details, Vitry wrote that the Caliph of Bagdad had sought out the Nestorian Patriarch of that city, begging him to indite a dispatch to this Christian King David craving support against the Shah of Khwarizm, since the latter, though a Mohammedan, wished to make war against the Commander of the Faithful. In response to the Patriarch's appeal, King David, said Vitry, had defeated the Shah ofKhwarizm, conquered the mighty realm of Persia, and was (at the time of writing) only five days' march from Bagdad and Mosul. He had then sent envoys to the Caliph, demanding the cession of five-sixths of the latter's realm including the city of Bagdad, which was to become the see of the Catholic Patriarch. The Moslem ruler was further to pay so huge an indemnity that David would be able to rebuild of gold and silver the walls of Jerusalem razed a few years before. Loud was the jubiliation throughout Europe when the news came of this divine intervention. True, no one could say where in the East could be the kingdom of the Christian King David, nor who was the Shah ofKhwarizm overthrown by the monarch with so propitious a name. But even the most learned saw no reason to doubt the accuracy of the information, for Jacques de Vitry's description was precise, and who could fail to welcome the story about David "the King of Kings who was destroying the realm of the Saracens and would protect Holy Church" ~ It chimed in with what had been so fervently believed not a hundred years before, that in the Far East was a huge kingdom ruled by Prester John "whose power was greater than that of all the Kings of the World." In the days of the Second Crusade (II47-II49) the rumour was current that Prester John had attacked and overthrown the Saracens in order to help the crusaders, and Christian hearts had been profoundly stirred by the news. Then belief faded, and only the Nestorians, whose communities were spread far and wide throughout Asia, continued stubbornly to hold that a huge Christian empire existed somewhere in the East. But the Sultan would not permit any Christians from the West to gain access thither, even as Prester John closed his frontiers against the Moslems. Vitry, however, was explicit in his story that King David was the grandson of Prester John, being "the son of King Israel". The vanguard of the troops had reached the borders of the Mesopotamian empire, but had then turned northwards to safeguard communications before attacking Jerusalem. In the north they had defeated the Georgians, who professed Christianity, indeed, but were heretical. Jews in all the towns of Europe rejoiced no less than Christians, holding services of thanksgiving and collecting funds for a mission to meet King David, since in two of Jacques de Vitry's epistles he was described as "rexJudeorum".-This deliverer was the King of the Jews, marching westward to deliver his people from exile. Although after a time a collation of texts showed that there had been an error on the part of the copyist in Damietta, who hd a wntten . " Jd ,. d f" Ind , rex u eorum mstea o rex orum -meanwhile, as news passed from Jew to Jew by word of mouth, "King David" became "the Son of David", and "the Son of King Israel" was modified to "the King of Israel". As for the people whose enormous army was approaching, they must be the scattered tribes of Israel who, at the foot of Mount Sinai, had prayed to the Golden Calf. But while Europe was thus awaiting King David, no further news of him came from the East. In the autumn Damietta had to surrender to the infidel, and the crusaders could congratulate themselves on receiving permission to depart. Still this was taken as fresh proof of the nearness of King David. The Saracens were unusually merciful because their Sultan had warned them against proceeding to extremities. Let them profit by the example of the Shah of Persia who, heretofore always victorious, had been defeated and dethroned and had died in poverty.-Somewhere between Mesopotamia and the Caspian there must assuredly be these formidable armies. But if they were there, they failed to come to the help of the crusaders. Far from it, for intelligence poured in from the Christian principalities of Armenia, Georgia, and other parts of Transcaucasia to the effect that their forces had been annihilated, their cities sacked, their fortresses destroyed. Then news came to hand that the assailants had crossed the Caucasus and were ravaging the plains that lay northward of the Black Sea. Here dwelt the dreaded Kumans, whose raids to the north had long been a scourge to the principalities of Russia, and in the west an affliction to the kingdom of Htmgary. Now these same Kumans fled across the Danube imploring succour, and were glad when the Byzantine Emperor allowed them to settle in Macedonia and Thrace. From the Genoese fortress of Sudak in Crimea came galleys bearing news that the place had been taken by storm and burned. Two years after the sending of Vitry's jubilant letters, from the Russian steppes information trickled through to western Europe to the effect that the armies of the Russian princelings had been destroyed and that the whole country was being ruthlessly ravaged by eastern barbarians. Terrible fellows they were, these invaders. Short in the legs but with excessively long bodies, broad in the chest and dark of visage. They drank blood.-But rumour ran that their banners bore the emblem of the Cross.
Further reports as to their origin and their intentions were as follows. They were descendants of the peoples ruled over by the Three Kings of the East, and they were making for Cologne to carry off the relics of these Kings.-Then came later news. The invaders had turned back towards the East, and had vanished as suddenly as they had come, without leaving a trace. Europe breathed freely. Still undiscovered was the primal law of the Europasian continent, whose working was to persist until it was counteracted by the growth of European civilisation and the development of a new technique of war-the law of unceasing struggle between nomads and settled population. Nor did anyone yet know that this incursion had been no more than the beginning of the last and mightiest onslaught of the nomads upon the civilized world. Not until two decades later, when these fierce horsemen made a fresh descent upon Europe, turning its eastern regions into a heap of ruins and spreading terror throughout the West-exposed to the greatest peril in history-, did it become plain who had been the potentate taken by Vitry for King David. Then only did Europe begin to understand what had happened in the Far East, with the birth of a man and a nation destined to change the aspect of the world for centuries.
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