In 1252 the Qaghan Möngke launched fresh campaigns against
powers that still resisted the Mongols, partly in order to inject fresh vigour
into the process of expansion, which had faltered under Güyüg, but also as a
means of consolidating his rule in the wake of his disputed election and the
conflict with his Ögödeyid and Chaghadayid kinsfolk. The expeditions were
headed by two of his brothers. Qubilai was first deputed in 1252 to outflank
the Song empire by subduing the kingdom of Dali (modern Yunnan) and
subsequently resuming the war against the Song themselves, an enterprise of
which the Qaghan took personal command in 1258, only to die while besieging a
Song fortress in the following year. Hülegü was despatched to Iran.
The immediate objective of Hülegü’s expedition was the
destruction of the Niẓārī Ismā‛īlīs – the Assassins, or the Mulāḥida, as
orthodox Muslims termed them – based in the Alburz mountains and Quhistān. They
had offered their submission to Chinggis Khan at the time of his attack on the
Khwarazmian empire, and appear to have cooperated with the Mongols in the
1240s. But relations had deteriorated, possibly as a result of Chinggis Khan’s
demand that the Master should visit his headquarters. The Assassins
subsequently murdered the Mongol general Chaghadai ‘the Greater’, who had given
them offence, and following his accession in 1246 Güyüg contemptuously
dismissed the envoys of the Master ‛Alā’ al-Dīn with an angry message.
Naturally, the Mongol regime could not for long tolerate the existence of a
power centred upon a network of reputedly impregnable strongpoints in northern
Iran. As the vanguard of Hülegü’s army, the general Kedbuqa had been despatched
against the Assassins in Jumādā II 650/August 1252. Obtaining the submission of
the Ismā‛īlī governor (muḥtasham) of Quhistān, he had invested the fortress of
Girdkūh without success and had then taken the towns of Tūn and Turshīz.
William of Rubruck, visiting Möngke’s headquarters in 1254, heard a rumour that
the Assassins were seeking to assassinate the Qaghan. This may have been their
response to the Mongol attack, but it could equally well have represented
propaganda by Shams al-Dīn, qadi of Qazwīn, who had often appealed for Mongol
assistance and was currently inciting Möngke against them: in a melodramatic
gesture he appeared before the Qaghan, we are told, wearing mail beneath his
clothing and explaining this breach of court etiquette by the terror that the
Ismā‛īlīs inspired.
The subjugation of the Assassins was not Hülegü’s sole task,
however. According to Rashīd al-Dīn, Baiju had recently sent word to Möngke
complaining of both the Ismā‛īlīs and the Caliph al-Musta‛ṣim, and so the
prince’s commission included the reduction of the ‛Abbasid territories in Iraq;
al-Musta‛ṣim was to be given the chance to submit of his own free will. Hülegü
was also to bring to heel the Lurs and the Kurds, notably those of Shahrazūr.
In advance of Hülegü’s arrival and to ease pressure on the grasslands of
western Iran, Baiju and his forces were ordered to move into Anatolia. The
Saljuq Sultan ‛Izz al-Dīn Kaykāwūs attempted to resist this new influx of
nomads, but was defeated on 23 Ramaḍān 654/15 October 1256 at Akseray. After a
brief flight into the territory of the Greek state of Nicaea, he returned and
engaged in a struggle with his half-brother, Rukn al-Dīn Qilich Arslan; but at
length the two Sultans made peace with Hülegü. Of operations conducted by other
Mongol divisions in southern Iran, we know only of those by the general Ötegü
China against the Kurds of Shabānkāra, who submitted in 658/1260 after their
ruler was killed in the fighting.
Hülegü’s westward march through Central Asia to Iran was a
protracted affair, which lasted well over two years. He left his encampment in
Mongolia on 24 Sha‛bān 651/19 October 1253 and did not cross the Oxus until 1
Dhū l-Ḥijja 653/1 January 1256. The winter of 1255–6 was spent in the meadows
of Shabūrghān, doubtless because an attack on the Assassin strongholds in the
Alburz prior to the warm season would have courted disaster. The delays were
only partly a question of logistics. We have no precise total for the Mongol
forces, which have been estimated at around 150,000; but extensive preparations
had been made in advance, including the commandeering of provisions and the
appropriation and reservation of all grazing-lands in Hülegü’s path. One
relevant circumstance is that his army was to be reinforced not only by Muslim
troops recruited along the way, in Transoxiana, but by troops contributed by
other branches of the imperial dynasty. The Oyirat chief Buqa Temür, whose
mother was Chinggis Khan’s daughter Chechegen, may have accompanied Hülegü from
Mongolia. But three princes from Jochi’s ulus, Balagha, Tutar and Quli, and the
Chaghadayid prince Tegüder all joined Hülegü en route, and the need to halt at
more than one preordained rendezvous may have dictated his pace.
Hülegü headed first for Quhistān, where Tūn had rebelled but
was once again taken by force (Rabī‛ I 654/March–April 1256). He then gradually
moved on the Assassins’ principal strongholds in northern Iran. Confronted by
the main Mongol army, Rukn al-Dīn Khūrshāh, who had just succeeded his murdered
father ‛Alā’ al-Dīn as Master, repeatedly played for time over several weeks,
sending out first one of his brothers, then his wazir and lastly an infant son,
but neglecting to comply with Hülegü’s orders to dismantle his fortresses.
However, the mild weather enabled the Mongol forces to converge on his
stronghold at Maymūndiz from three directions. Even after some days of
bombardment by the Mongols’ siege artillery had compelled him to seek a truce,
Khūrshāh still procrastinated, until on 29 or 30 Shawwāl/19 or 20 November he
appeared in person. Received kindly by Hülegü, he despatched contingents of
Ismā‛īlīs to destroy other fortresses, though the garrisons at Alamūt and
Lambasar refused to cooperate. Alamūt was invested by the Jochid prince Balagha
and brought to submit through Khūrshāh’s mediation; Lambasar held out for a
whole year. Khūrshāh, his usefulness by now greatly reduced, asked to be
allowed to go to the Qaghan’s headquarters, but was put to death on Möngke’s
orders, either en route or on the way back from a visit that had proved
fruitless because Möngke refused to see him. All the Ismā‛īlīs in the Mongols’
power, including Khūrshāh’s entire family, were massacred.
Juwaynī’s paeans on the destruction of the Assassins,
allegedly an object of fear for monarchs past and present and those of the
Greeks and Franks included, were at once overblown, as a vehicle for praising
his master the Ilkhan, and a trifle premature. Girdkūh would resist the Mongols
until the end of Rabī‛ II 670/early December 1271, during Abagha’s reign. The
Persian historian also ignored the fact that the Ismā‛īlī strongholds in Syria
were still untouched by the Mongols. They would remain so, succumbing only to a
series of campaigns by the Mamlūk Sultan Baybars during the years
668–71/1270–3; and even thereafter many of the sectaries would find that their
talents were a welcome asset to the Mamlūk regime. Nevertheless, the Mongol
forces had effectively eliminated the Ismā‛īlī state in Iran, a matter for
universal rejoicing on the part of orthodox Muslims.
This would not be the reaction to Hulegü’s next campaign.
During the operations against the Ismā‛īlīs he had demanded reinforcements from
the Caliph. Al-Musta‛ṣim’s instinct was to comply; but at the prompting of his
ministers and amirs, who argued that the Mongol prince’s real purpose was to
reduce Baghdad’s capacity to resist a siege, he had failed to send any troops.
His position was an unenviable one, since Baghdad had suffered a number of
natural disasters over the previous fifteen years and the government lacked
sufficient funds to pay its soldiery. When the wazir Ibn al-‛Alqamī urged the
despatch of valuable gifts to Hülegü, the Caliph made preparations to do so,
only to be dissuaded by the Lesser Dawātdār and his associates, who accused the
wazir of currying favour with the enemy; goods of small value were sent out
instead. On Hülegü ordering him to send either the wazir, the Dawātdār or the
general Sulaymān Shāh Ibn Barjam, the Caliph instructed them to go but then
changed his mind, possibly because all three refused; as a result, those
deputed were persons of lesser importance.
Hülegü decided to wait no longer. While the vanguard under Baiju
and Sughunchaq headed by way of Irbil, he followed with the main army through
the Ḥulwān pass. When the Dawātdār attempted to obstruct the progress of Baiju
and Sughunchaq, who had crossed the Tigris, he suffered a severe defeat, losing
most of his men and retreating into the city. Hülegü reached Baghdad in mid-Muḥarram
656/January 1258 and the Mongols began a close investment. The prince’s own
forces built a rampart on the eastern side of the city, while Baiju, Sughunchaq
and Buqa Temür constructed one to the west. The Caliph belatedly endeavoured to
enter into negotiations, sending out the wazir, but Hülegü claimed that this
was no longer enough and required the Dawātdār and Sulaymān Shāh as well; it
was al-Musta‛ṣim’s decision whether to follow them. The two men were put to
death, while Ibn al-‛Alqamī was spared. The Caliph himself emerged with his
sons and his family on 4 Ṣafar/10 February, and the sack of Baghdad began
shortly afterwards. Once al-Musta‛ṣim had made over his treasury and his harem
to the victors, he was no longer of use to them. As the Mongol army withdrew
from the city and halted for the first night, Hülegü had the Caliph and one of
his sons executed by the time-honoured method of being wrapped in felt and
beaten to death. Another son was put to death in Baghdad around the same time.
It seems that Hülegü had approached the assault on Baghdad
in a spirit of caution, possibly because Mongol generals like Baiju were aware
of Baghdad’s large population and thought that the Caliph had a formidable
army. But he was also influenced, we are told, by the fact that the Mongols
were the most recent in a long line of enemies to harbour designs on the city
and that their precursors had all come to grief; terrible disasters were
forecast in the event of an attack. In an era when the caliphs had been shorn
of real political power, some effort had been made to promote an image of
hallowed inviolability. According to Rashīd al-Dīn, this theme had been
prominent in the response of al-Musta‛ṣim and his officers to Mongol demands
for submission, and it also underlay the gloomy prognosis of the astronomer Ḥusām
al-Dīn when summoned to provide guidance. But his Shī‛ī colleague Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī
offered a more sober – and more congenial – verdict. Asked what would be the
consequence of taking Baghdad, he is said to have retorted simply: ‘Hülegü will
reign in place of the Caliph.’ Waṣṣāf says that Ṭūsī had been consulted
earlier, at Hamadān, when Hülegü first determined to advance against Baghdad,
and had predicted an equally auspicious outcome after examining the stars. He
and other authors differ from Rashīd al-Dīn in linking this debate with an
issue that surfaced some weeks later, namely in what manner – or indeed whether
– the Caliph should be put to death. In all likelihood, the sharp difference of
opinion manifested itself at successive stages in the assault on the ‛Abbasids.
What Hülegü feared – if, as some authors claim, he really was afraid – was
offending Tenggeri by shedding al-Musta‛ṣim’s blood on the ground, since this
taboo in relation to royal figures had long been current among the steppe
peoples; hence the mode of death adopted. Bar Hebraeus may well have been right
in hinting that Hülegü ordered the Caliph’s execution as a means of ‘facing
down’ the doom-laden predictions.
The end of the ‛Abbasid Caliphate, which had lasted for just
over five hundred years, was by any reckoning a momentous event that undeniably
made a strong impression on contemporaries and posterity alike. In the wake of
al-Musta‛ṣim’s downfall, one story of his death circulated widely and passed
into folklore. This was that Hülegü had confronted him with his treasure and
asked why he had not used it to recruit more troops in order to resist the
Mongols (or, in one version, why he had not despatched it to the Mongols to
save himself and Baghdad); he was then incarcerated in a cell with nothing but
the treasure and died of starvation within four days. The tale obviously
represents an embellishment of a conversation between Hülegü and the Caliph
that appears in Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s account of the fall of Baghdad and is
repeated by Waṣṣāf and other Muslim writers. It clearly held a ready appeal for
Christian writers, since variants are supplied by authors as diverse as the
Byzantine historian Georgios Pachymeres (d. c. 1310), the Armenian historian
Grigor Aknerts‛i (c. 1313), the expatriate Armenian prince Hayton of Gorighos
(1307), the anonymous ‘Templar of Tyre’ (c. 1314), the Venetian adventurer
Marco Polo (1298), the Dominican missionary Riccoldo da Montecroce (c. 1300)
and St Louis’ biographer Jean de Joinville (1309).
In 657/1259 Hülegü sent troops under his son Yoshmut against
Mayyāfāriqīn. Its Ayyubid prince, al-Kāmil Muḥammad, who had in person done
homage to Möngke in 650/1252, had experienced a change of heart during the
siege of Baghdad and prepared to bring aid to the Caliph, although in the event
he was too late; he had further endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to form an
alliance against the Mongols with Sultan al-Nāṣir Yūsuf of Aleppo. But although
Yoshmut received reinforcements from Mosul, Mayyāfāriqīn proved strong enough
to hold out until Rabī‛ II 658/April 1260, when al-Kāmil paid for his temerity
with his life. Mārdīn, whose Artuqid ruler, al-Sa‛īd Najm al-Dīn Īlghāzī, had
omitted to wait upon Hülegü and was playing for time while secretly trying to
engineer joint resistance to the Mongols with al-Nāṣir Yūsuf, was another
target. Yoshmut’s forces were able to enter the city on 22 Jumādā I/5 May, but
the citadel held out until al-Sa‛īd died and his son al-Muẓaffar Qara Arslan,
whom he had imprisoned, probably for advocating capitulation, was released and
surrendered Mārdīn on terms, whereupon the Mongols withdrew (Rajab 659/June
1261) and al-Muẓaffar was confirmed as prince.
Sultan al-Nāṣir Yūsuf, the principal Ayyubid ruler of Syria,
who governed the three major cities of Aleppo, Damascus and Ḥimṣ, had himself
been in contact with the Mongols since 642/1244 (p. 84). He had been
represented at Güyüg’s enthronement two years later, had reaffirmed his
submission at the accession of Möngke, and had exchanged messages with Hülegü
since the fall of Baghdad. Yet like al-Sa‛īd of Mārdīn he had repeatedly failed
to visit the Qaghan’s court and more recently had neglected to appear before
Hülegü, who, according to Ibn al-‛Amīd, was offended that al-Nāṣir had sent him
no gifts when he had despatched them annually to Baiju. In 657/1259 the Mongol
prince lost patience. During that year he occupied himself with the reduction
of al-Nāṣir’s fortresses in the Jazīra, notably Ḥarrān, al-Ruhā (Edessa),
Sarūj, Qal‛at Ja‛bār and al-Bīra; the Ayyubid Sultan thus forfeited all his
possessions east of the Euphrates. Towards the end of the year, Hülegü moved
into northern Syria. Aleppo was commanded by al-Nāṣir’s great-uncle al-Mu‛aẓẓam
Tūrān Shāh, one of the few surviving sons of the illustrious Saladin. The city
fell after a seven-day investment, on 9 Ṣafar 658/25 January 1260, and was
subjected to a massacre. The citadel held out under Tūrān Shāh for another few
days, but then surrendered on terms; Tūrān Shāh was spared on account of his
age.
News of the fall of Aleppo, which had defied successive
invaders since the Byzantine attacks of the tenth century and whose
fortifications the Ayyubids had strengthened in recent decades, aroused the
greatest alarm throughout Syria. The inhabitants of Damascus, deserted by al-Nāṣir
Yūsuf, sent to offer the Mongols the keys to their city. When Kedbuqa made a
triumphal entry in Rabī‛ I/March, allegedly accompanied by King Het‛um of
Lesser Armenia and the Frankish Prince Bohemond VI of Antioch, who had both
accepted Mongol overlordship, the Mongols were given a by no means unfriendly
reception. The people of Ḥamā were similarly quick to send Hülegü their
submission, although their Ayyubid ruler, al-Manṣūr, who was absent at Birza
with al-Nāṣir, thereupon abandoned him to join the Egyptians. Al-Nāṣir himself,
distrusting the offer of asylum in Mamlūk Egypt, wandered through Palestine for
some weeks before falling into the hands of Kedbuqa’s troops. But some Ayyubid
princes rallied more or less willingly to the conquerors. Al-Nāṣir’s brother,
al-Ẓāhir Ghāzī, submitted and remained prince of Ṣarkhad. Al-Ashraf Mūsā, the
former Ayyubid ruler of Ḥimṣ who had been dispossessed by al-Nāṣir, visited
Hülegu’s headquarters and was rewarded with the restoration of his principality
and possibly some kind of precedence over all other Muslim rulers in Syria.
Al-Sa‛īd Ḥasan, whom al-Nāṣir had imprisoned at al-Bīra but whom the Mongols
had released and restored to his principality of Bānyās, is said not only to
have donned Mongol garb but to have become a Christian at the desire of
Hülegü’s chief wife Doquz Khatun. At Kerak, in southern Palestine, the ruler
was another distant cousin, al-Mughīth ‛Umar, who had offered his allegiance to
the Mongols as early as 1254, when Rubruck encountered his envoy at Möngke’s
headquarters. Confronted now with Hülegü’s demand for his submission,
al-Mughīth sent his own envoys to the Mongol prince. In response he was given
Hebron and a shiḥna was despatched to Kerak, though in the event he retired
northwards on learning of the Mamlūk victory over Kedbuqa. But at the point of
his withdrawal in the spring, Hülegü was technically the master of all Muslim
Syria. His treatment of those Ayyubids who had submitted suggests that he had
no plan to eliminate the dynasty but rather envisaged maintaining them as
client princes.
Within a few weeks of the capture of Aleppo, Hülegü retired from Syria with the bulk of his forces, leaving Kedbuqa with an army of 10,000 or possibly 20,000 to guard the newly subjected territories. His exact movements are unclear, though Rashīd al-Dīn dates his arrival at Akhlāṭ on 24 Jumādā II/6 June 1260. The same historian cites as the reason for Hülegü’s withdrawal reports of Möngke’s death on campaign in distant China (August 1259), an explanation also found in Mamlūk sources. The lapse of some months since the Qaghan’s demise renders it more probable that Hülegü had learned of tensions over the succession in the Far East, which would lead to the elections of his brothers Qubilai and Arigh Böke as rival qaghans in May and September/October 1260 respectively. In a letter he wrote to the French King Louis IX in 1262, Hülegü himself was to explain his departure by the exhaustion of his provisions and of the Syrian grasslands and the necessity to move to upland pastures at the onset of the warm season. These were probably not the sole grounds for his withdrawal. In endeavouring to secure Frankish cooperation against the Mamlūks, the Ilkhan naturally made no reference either to the outbreak of internecine war in the Far East or to the need to keep watch on the frontier with his (now) hostile Jochid cousins in the Caucasus.
Prior to leaving Syria, Hülegü had despatched an embassy
conveying an ultimatum to the new Mamlūk Sultan Sayf al-Dīn Quṭuz. Although the
regime in Cairo since its inception in 1250 had not been characterized by any
great stability, it had in recent months profited from an influx of military
elements fleeing the Mongols. Prominent among these were the Syrian troops
brought by al-Manṣūr of Ḥamā, Shahrazūrī Kurds, and groups of mamluks,
including many of al-Nāṣir Yūsuf’s and a corps of Baḥrīs headed by Rukn al-Dīn
Baybars al-Bunduqdārī, an enemy of the Sultan who had earlier fled Egypt to
enter al-Nāṣir’s service but had now returned and made his peace with Quṭuz.
Already committed to a policy of resistance as a means of buttressing his own
doubtful title to rule, Quṭuz, at Baybars’ prompting, took the offensive; he
had the Mongol envoys executed and made preparations for an expedition into
Palestine. Leaving Cairo on 15 Sha‛bān 658/26 July 1260, the Mamlūk army –
12,000 horsemen, according to Waṣṣāf – made its way up the coast to Acre, the
capital of the kingdom of Jerusalem. In response to the Sultan’s overtures, the
Franks, still smarting from a recent attack on Sidon by Kedbuqa’s forces, were
ready to grant the Egyptian forces safe conduct through their territory and to
furnish them with provisions. Near ‛Ayn Jālūt, in Galilee, on 25 Ramaḍān/3
September 1260 Quṭuz and his army engaged in a hard-fought battle with the
Mongols. The Mamlūk forces, aided by the fact that al-Ashraf of Ḥimṣ deserted
to them in the heat of the conflict, inflicted a serious reverse on the enemy.
Kedbuqa was killed, and those of his forces who escaped fled northwards towards
Lesser Armenia; al-Sa‛īd Ḥasan of Bānyās was captured and executed for apostasy.
A smaller Mongol contingent that entered northern Syria some weeks later was
crushed near Ḥimṣ in December. The surviving Ayyubids swiftly acknowledged the
overlordship of Cairo, and the frontier between the Mamlūk and Mongol
territories would soon stabilize at the Euphrates. Ironically, Quṭuz did not
live to savour the fruits of his victory: en route back to Egypt he was
murdered by a group of mamluk officers headed by Baybars, who made a triumphal
entry into Cairo as the new Sultan.
Hülegü was unable to avenge these defeats owing to the growing need to keep watch on events in the Far East and, in all probability, to his own plans to establish his autonomy in Iran and Iraq. As the event that halted the seemingly inexorable Mongol advance, the Mamlūk victory at ‛Ayn Jālūt therefore proved more significant in hindsight. Yet there is no doubt that contemporary Muslims in Syria and Egypt viewed it as an unprecedented triumph over a formidable enemy. Abū Shāma commented that the Mongols had been worsted by those of their own race, Turks (ibnā’ jinsihim min al-turk), and that for every pestilence there existed an antidote of its own kind. Even the Syrian Franks and their confrères in Western Europe greeted the news in tones that suggest they saw Quṭuz’s victory as their own. Hülegü himself was under no illusions as to the implications of the defeat. A few weeks before, Kedbuqa had sent him the captive al-Nāṣir Yūsuf. Hülegü treated him kindly and gave him a patent to rule as a Mongol vassal. But when the news of ‛Ayn Jālūt reached him he smelt duplicity and had al-Nāṣir put to death, either at his headquarters or while the Ayyubid prince was on his way back to Syria.
“`Ayn Jālūt Revisited.” Tārīḫ (Philadelphia). 2 (1992), 119-150.
