Genghis Khan and the Quest for God by Jack Weatherford

Author:Jack Weatherford
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-09-29T11:51:06+00:00

News of the Mongol defeat by the forces of Jalal ad-Din spread quickly throughout the former Khwarizm Empire. Compared with their own losses over the past two years, it was only a minor defeat, but it heartened them that the barbarians finally proved vulnerable. Defeating even this small army and then killing the survivors exposed the Mongols’ weakness. As the news traveled with refugees and merchants from village to village and city to city, the people still holding out against the Mongols felt greatly encouraged, and many of those who had previously surrendered now revolted. They killed the officials left in place by the Mongols, even when they were Muslims and fellow Turks or Persians. The conquered people of Khwarizm resisted the Mongols at every opportunity and raided their baggage trains crammed with looted wealth.

The Mongol army had never been spread out over such a large area, and it was vastly outnumbered by the urban populations around it. At this point, a coordinated rebellion or organized army could have defeated it. Genghis Khan moved quickly and violently to put down the uprisings before they could become an organized campaign against him.

The people of Balkh, another city noted for its wealth and scholarship, famed as the home of the Bactrian princess Roxana, who had married Alexander the Great, rose up in rebellion. Juzjani informs us that afterward, “the few remaining people, for the period of a full year, had to sustain life on the flesh of dogs and cats and human beings, for this reason that the forces of Chingiz Khan had burnt all the stores, barns, and granaries leaving not a grain of corn, and no cultivation whatever existed.”17 Some fifty thousand were killed, but one of the many families to escape was that of one of the greatest of Persian poets and mystics, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi, better known in the West as Rumi. He spent much of his life fleeing the Mongols through Nishapur, Baghdad, and Damascus, and finally settled in Konya in modern Turkey, where he became a renowned scholar and Sufi teacher.

Despite his suffering at the hands of the Mongols, Rumi, noted for his generosity of spirit and deep spirituality, seemed accepting, almost forgiving. Finding some good in everything that happens, he even seemed to appreciate the peripatetic life that resulted from being forced to flee his home as a refugee.

Oh, if a tree could wander

and move with foot and wings!

It would not suffer the axe blows

and not the pain of saws!18

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