Storm from the east, p.18
Storm from the East, page 18
With Hulegu’s withdrawal the military landscape was transformed. He had left his redoubtable commander, Ked-Buqa, in Damascus with a small fragment of the once great army to stand at the frontier of his empire. The first to test the Mongols’ strength were two crusader lords, Julian of Sidon and John of Beirut, who led raids into Mongol territory. Ked-Buqa’s retaliation led to the sack of Sidon and the total destruction of an army of Templars led by John of Beirut. The crusaders reeled in fright. But the Mongol action had fully revealed their strength – or, more to the point, their weakness – and news soon spread. As the Mamluks were pondering Hulegu’s demand for surrender, sent before his withdrawal from Syria, they learned that a much-depleted contingent was all that held the Mongol frontier. Having assumed they would soon have to defend their capital, the Mamluks now decided to throw caution to the wind and march out to meet the Mongols on their own territory. There would never be a better opportunity to repel the invader, and they signalled their intentions by executing the Mongol envoys and impaling their heads on the spikes of one of Cairo’s gates.
The Mamluk commander, Qutuz, had become fired with what he saw as his mission to save Islam and civilisation. In an audacious move he sent emissaries to the crusaders, asking for an alliance against the Mongols. Barely able to believe this token from Islam, the crusaders struggled to produce a response. Despite the recent Mongol raids, there were still Christian voices arguing that an alliance with the Mongols was the best chance of ridding the Holy Land of Islam. Whether they realised it or not, as they debated the merits of an alliance with either the Mongols or the Muslims the crusaders were in fact weighing up the future of Christianity and Islam in the Middle East. In the event, the memories of Sidon were too fresh for the pro-Mongolists to have prevailed, and while the crusaders found it impossible actually to fight with the Mamluks, they did eventually send word to Qutuz that they would at least not impede his army’s journey north into Syria. It was an absolutely crucial decision.
Qutuz led his army north through Gaza, where they encountered and destroyed a small Mongol force out on a long-range patrol. Encouraged, the Mamluks moved further north, passing through Christian-held territory where they received supplies and fresh horses. While Qutuz and his generals were enjoying crusader hospitality at Acre, Ked-Buqa led his two tumens, perhaps 15 000 men, out of Damascus and headed south-west. Among his army was a large contingent of native Syrian conscripts. On 3 September 1260, Ked-Buqa crossed the River Jordan and began his final march towards the Mamluk army.
Qutuz in the meantime had also advanced, and the two forces drew up in the valley where legend held that David had slain Goliath. At Ayn Jalut, Goliath’s spring, the Mongols finally encountered the Mamluk vanguard. Ked-Buqa ordered a charge, and the Mamluk vanguard turned and fled. But the Mongols had fallen for one of their own tactics, for they were led straight into the main Mamluk force spread thinly across the 6-km (4-mile)-wide valley. Accounts vary about the sizes of the two forces, but what is known is that at some point in the proceedings, possibly as the Mongols discovered they had charged into a trap, the Syrian contingent broke ranks and fled the field. From that moment the Mongols were at a great disadvantage.
Realising that he was now committed to engaging the entire Mamluk force, Ked-Buqa ordered his ranks to charge the Mamluk flank. This they did, turning it and eventually destroying the Mamluk wing. Qutuz despaired at the lost advantage as the battle swung first one way, then the other. For either side it was a fight to the death, and for most of the day the result might have gone either way. But then two events occurred that decisively turned the tide. As the Mamluk ranks appeared in danger of being routed, Qutuz is reported to have thrown his helmet to the ground and implored his troops to regroup and renew the fight. He reminded them that they were fighting not simply for their lives, but for the very future of Islam. Fired by his call, the Mamluks regrouped and charged the Mongols’ ranks. At the same time, fortune struck against the Mongols as their commander Ked-Buqa fell in combat. There is a conflicting report that he was actually captured by the Mamluks and executed on the battlefield; but whatever the case, the result was the same. Against overwhelming odds the Mongol generals finally lost their nerve, turned the army and retreated. They were pursued for 12 km (7 miles) to the town of Beisan, where they drew up to face the Mamluk cavalry. But they had already lost the momentum, and the resulting clash decimated the Mongol ranks. Within days a Mamluk messenger, bearing Ked-Buqa’s head on the end of a staff, returned to Cairo to spread the news. Qutuz was about to enter Damascus in triumph.
What had happened in the valley of Ayn Jalut was one of the most significant battles in world history. Although the battle itself was not conclusive – it did not sweep the Mongols from the Middle East – it nevertheless utterly smashed the myth of Mongol invincibility. They were just as fallible as any other army, and subject to the same twists of good and bad fortune. Ayn Jalut also marked the end of any concerted campaign by the Mongols to conquer that part of the world. After Damascus was taken by the Mamluks, and soon afterwards Aleppo, the Mongols sent contingents back into Syria to conduct revenge raids – but there was no sign of a co-ordinated reconquest. All this was not, however, due to Mamluk hegemony alone. The Mamluks had not encountered the full weight of the Mongol force, and never would. There were other reasons for Hulegu’s reticence – reasons related to events that were unfolding on the other side of Asia.
CHAPTER 8: KHUBILAI KHAN AND CHINA
At the death of each Khan it was Mongol custom for the widow to rule as regent until the question of his succession had been settled; this policy provided women with a brief opportunity to exercise some influence over the direction of the empire. Unfortunately, during the regencies of Toregene and Oghul-Ghaimish their energies were largely devoted to securing the succession of their favourite sons. However, by far the most influential woman at the Mongol court never actually reigned as regent.
Sorghaghtani Beki, Tolui’s widow, bore him four sons before he died, probably of alcoholic poisoning, about 1233. Soon afterwards, Ogedei tried to get Sorghaghtani to marry his son Guyuk – a union between aunt and nephew – in the hope of uniting the two houses of Tolui and Ogedei; but the good widow declined. Her commitment to her children, she explained, prevented her from accepting the responsibility of marriage. One suspects it was more political than maternal instincts that obliged her to turn down the proposition.
As time passed, it became obvious that the qualities that distinguished the sons of Tolui were entirely the result of Sorghaghtani’s influence. Throughout the reigns of Ogedei and Guyuk, she emerged as easily the most accomplished, learned and certainly the wisest woman in the Mongol court, and as she aged so her importance grew. Rashid al-Din, the Persian historian, described her as ‘extremely intelligent and able and towered above all the women in the world’. A poet of the age waxed even more lyrical: ‘If I were to see among the race of women another woman like this, I should say that the race of women was far superior to that of men!’ One can only speculate how she might have directed the course of the empire had she, a lifelong Christian, managed to rule as regent. How differently might she have received the various papal envoys. But it was not to be.
Instead, Sorghaghtani devoted herself to the education and development of her four sons: Mongke, Khubilai, Hulegu and Ariq Boke. It was her shrewd and careful manoeuvring that forged an alliance with Batu Khan after Guyuk’s death and ensured the election of her eldest son, Mongke, as Khan in 1251. Unfortunately, the great woman died a year later, surviving only just long enough to share in her son’s triumph and to see the empire once again striving to expand. Nevertheless, her influence was felt long afterwards through the actions of her children: a Great Khan who was to revitalise the empire; Hulegu, who conquered Persia, Mesopotamia and Syria; Ariq Boke, another great commander steeped in Mongol lore and tradition; and, of course, Khubilai, also a gifted warrior, arguably the most learned and most cultured, and easily the most sophisticated of the four.
CHINESE INFLUENCES
Sorghaghtani gave birth to her second son in 1215 at Chung-tu, while her husband and father-in-law were on campaign in northern China. Khubilai was brought up to ride and shoot, as every Mongol was, but Sorghaghtani was also at pains to ensure that he was literate and so from childhood he was attended by tutors who were either Uighurs or Chinese. His early life was spent on his mother’s appanage in northern China, and when he was old enough, he moved to his own large tract of territory in the Hopei region. Under his mother’s tutelage Khubilai became deeply concerned with the administration of his lands, and in particular with the wellbeing of his peasants, who at that time were abandoning their farms and migrating elsewhere. Sorghaghtani taught him to appreciate that the peasantry were leaving because Mongol taxes were far too high, and that, unless something was done quickly, soon there would be no one left to tax. Khubilai dismissed the Mongol tax merchants and installed Chinese officials, who brought in a more affordable and productive tax regime. Soon the young Khubilai drew the attention of his contemporaries because both his attendants and advisers were mostly Chinese. It was not long before other Mongols complained that not only did he spend most of his time in China, hardly ever visiting Qaraqorum, but that he actually seemed to identify with his Chinese subjects.
Despite these complaints, when Mongke Khan set in motion the long-overdue campaign against the Sung he gave his brother Khubilai command of an important part of the campaign: the capture of the kingdom of Ta-li, south of Szechwan Province at the eastern end of the Tibetan Plateau. It was a daunting objective. The kingdom of the Ta-li was strategically vital, coveted by both the Mongols and the Sung as it provided access from the khanate of the Great Khan to the western territories of the Sung empire, and to Burma and Thailand. Populated by a mixture of Tibetans, Central Asians and a heavy suffusion of Chinese, it remained vigorously independent. Khubilai’s first obstacle was to march his army all the way from the northern plateau, down through Szechwan and into the mountains of the Tibetan Plateau. Having accomplished this, he and his generals successfully, and somewhat uncharacteristically, subdued the Ta-li with the minimum of bloodshed. It was a huge military success, placing Khubilai among the already long list of great Mongol commanders. Mongke Khan rewarded him with even more land to add to his already considerable ulus in northern China, to which he returned with his Chinese advisers to begin long-term plans.
The most significant decision he made after his return was to demonstrate his growing commitment to the lands he governed by ordering the construction of a capital. To the Chinese it seemed a perfectly reasonable act, but to the Mongols in Qaraqorum it was an extremely provocative decision. To avoid provoking too much outrage, Khubilai went to some trouble finding an appropriate location – roughly on the frontier between the steppe and the western edge of Chinese agrarian territory, north of the Luan River and about ten days’ ride from the city of Chung-tu. However, his concern for Mongol sensibilities eluded him when it came to its construction, for what emerged was a classic Chinese imperial city in all but name.
He had turned to his most important Chinese adviser, Liu Ping-chung, to supervise the design of what was to be known as K’ai-p’ing. Liu created a walled city based on the Chinese principles of geomancy: a near-perfect square with each side facing one of the four points of the compass. There were in fact three separate walled compounds, one inside the other, containing the Outer City, the Imperial City and, in the very heart of the complex, the Palace City. However, it was in the design of the buildings, halls and temples that made up the Palace City that Liu’s influence was most strongly felt. He had called for the construction of eight large Buddhist monasteries in the ‘eight corners’ of the city, that is at the four cardinal points of the compass and the midpoints in between. These eight points corresponded with the eight fundamental trigrams of the Yi jing (Book of Changes), the Confucian book of divinations. It could not have been more Chinese. Against the northern wall stood the largest building, the Da’an Ge, a large central hall for audiences and banquets. It was built by Chinese craftsmen and painters, including the famous artist Wang Zhenpeng, who had joined Khubilai’s employ.
Ten years after construction began, Khubilai renamed the city, giving it the Chinese title Shang-tu (Upper Capital), and it was this that was described by Marco Polo as containing rivers and forests running with game, which the Great Khan hunted for sport. In his account, Polo mistranslated Shang-tu, calling it Ciandu – which, of course, the poet Coleridge eventually transformed into Xanadu. The groves and fields, ‘where Alph the sacred river ran’, were laid out in the 6.5 hectares (16 acres) that made up the Outer City. It was the Khan’s hunting park, an artificial steppe environment that was Khubilai’s token affirmation of his Mongol origins.
But long before Khubilai had renamed the city Shang-tu its mere existence aroused opposition at Qaraqorum. To the traditionalists, Khubilai had gone native – he had more than identified with his subjects, and seemed utterly infatuated with the attractions of Chinese civilisation. To have a prince of the empire building a city in China was bad enough, but when reports arrived that it rivalled Qaraqorum with its marbled halls and magnificent temples it was seen by Mongke Khan’s advisers as a challenge to the traditional Mongol way of life. Soon the Khan was hearing that his brother had dispensed with fundamental Mongol taxation policies and was exercising Chinese laws. Inevitably there were charges of treason, and soon a rift developed between the two brothers that threatened to break out into open conflict. At one point, plots were even laid to have the young upstart assassinated, but in the event the sibling bonds proved too strong and eventually there was a reconciliation.
It appeared, for a time, as though the conservatives in Qaraqorum had been silenced. Khubilai relinquished some of his tax-gathering powers, and in 1257 the two brothers resumed the campaign against the Sung; Khubilai was once again entrusted with a large contingent of the army. The campaign was an ingenious one, involving the co-ordination of two separate attacks: one from the north and the other, by Khubilai, from the west. Everything progressed well, with Khubilai having the best of the military encounters. But then, with the Mongols on the path to victory, on 11 August 1259, Mongke Khan died of dysentery in the hills at Tiao-yu Shan.
CIVIL WAR OVER THE SUCCESSION TO THE KHANATE
As has been seen, the news brought Hulegu’s breath-taking campaign in the Middle East to a juddering halt, with terrible consequences for the Mongol presence there. But Mongke Khan’s untimely death had even more dire consequences: it exposed once again the chaotic and unwieldy process of succession and presented an opportunity for the disaffected elements in Qaraqorum to challenge Khubilai openly. Although none of the other great houses of Genghis – Ogedei, Chaghadai or Jochi – presented a serious challenge, the absence of Sorghaghtani’s influence over her children meant that the question of succession degenerated into a violent dispute among siblings that eventually heaved the empire into civil war.
When news reached Khubilai of his brother’s death, he had been leading his army southward in preparation for the co-ordinated attack and had just reached the northern banks of the Yangtze River. But instead of returning north to be present at a quriltai, Khubilai decided to press on with his part of the campaign. He was keenly aware of the opposition in Qaraqorum, and probably reasoned that if he secured a spectacular new victory against the Sung it would ensure his success. It was a crucial decision – and a bad one.
For the next two months he campaigned deeper into Sung territory, crossing the Yangtze and eventually laying siege to the heavily fortified town of O’chou. As the Mongols settled in for what looked like being a long siege, the Sung sent forth emissaries in the vain hope that a bribe might send the Mongols away – but times had changed. Khubilai spurned the offers and, thinking time was on his side, decided to sit and wait.
Unfortunately, in those precious months when he was camped outside the walls of O’chou, dramatic moves were taking place back in Mongolia. During all the years that Khubilai and Hulegu had been abroad in China and Persia, their youngest brother, Ariq Boke, had remained in the Mongol heartland. His had been a far more parochial upbringing surrounded by a far more conservative nobility – and he had emerged as the representative of traditional Mongol values. To those at court who felt isolated from the new power centres and who despised Hulegu and Khubilai as having betrayed the Mongol ethic and succumbed to the soft life in the towns and cities, Ariq Boke became the champion to drag the empire back to its origins – by force if necessary. Powerful figures in Qaraqorum had flocked to Ariq Boke’s side: the late Mongke Khan’s sons; one of his widows; the grandchildren of Ogedei, Chaghadai and Jochi; plus many important officials and advisers. They had secretly begun to raise an army, and by November were already marching on K’ai-p’ing and Chung-tu.
When word reached Khubilai he must have cursed the fates, for just as the first major Sung city was about to fall he had to abandon his campaign, and most of the lands he had conquered, to return to his own backyard. Having garrisoned K’ai-p’ing, he cloistered himself with his advisers to plan the next move. They unanimously agreed that Khubilai must establish his authority as quickly as possible; so he called a quriltai and had himself elected Great Khan on 5 May 1260.
It was another wrong move. Instead of riding to Qaraqorum with his army, confronting his detractors and demanding a quriltai, he immediately laid himself open to charges of having usurped the position of Great Khan. His quriltai contained none of the major Mongol nobility, and moreover it had been convened on foreign soil. Everything about it was illegitimate. With Qaraqorum now in open revolt, Khubilai’s response was to appear even more Chinese than before, exhorting his Chinese subjects to come to his aid. In return, he offered a reduction in taxes, food for the hungry and a promise to reunite the country. They were the words of a typical Chinese emperor; he could hardly have done a better job of inciting Qaraqorum, and what followed was four years of civil war.
