Genghis Khan by Frank McLynn

Author:Frank McLynn
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781446449295
Publisher: Random House

13

The Twilight Years

THE HISTORY OF Genghis Khan and the Mongols can sometimes seem no more than an endless recital of massacres with pyramids of skulls. Yet Genghis and the Mongols were more than that. Even before Genghis there existed among the Mongols a ‘steppe intelligentsia’ of men interested in long-distance trade, the modalities of the sedentary world, literacy and even abstract thought.1 One sign of this was the care with which the Mongols preserved the caravanserais or oases, intended to provide shelter for caravans that had been travelling for days and useful for billeting troops on the march. There were two main types. In one a central courtyard had a covered area for the quartering of pack animals with separate living quarters for travellers, plus refectories and areas set aside for religious devotions. In the other model the caravanserai was more clearly divided into two, with one courtyard in front with general living quarters and a separate courtyard at the back around which were set more elaborate bedrooms.2 So far from wrecking or pillaging these caravanserais, the Mongols took particular care of them and ensured they were up to date in all respects.

So much for practicalities. At the level of abstract thought there was a surprising mutual sympathy between the Sufis of Iran and the Mongols. The Sufis, roughly speaking the practitioners of the mystical side of Islam, accepted to an amazing extent Genghis’s claim that he had been divinely appointed to rule the world. They thought that God guided the Mongols and provided them with a dazzling array of military talents and gifted collaborators; some Sufis even claimed that Genghis had the divine protection accorded a dervish.3 In particular, they asserted that he was wholly in the right in his conflict with Muhammad and the empire of Khwarezmia. The spirits were said to have been so angry at the luxury and decadence of the shah and his people that they cried out to the Mongols: ‘O infidels, kill the evil-doers.’ For them the sole cause of the calamity that overtook Iran and Islam was that Muhammad had lusted after Genghis’s riches and had stolen them at Otrar, and the devastation of the Khwarezmian empire was essentially divine punishment for wickedness.4

It was true that some leading Sufis such as Najm al-Din Kubra and his disciple Majd al-Din did not go over to the Mongols. Najm was offered safe passage out of Khiva when the Mongols besieged it but he preferred to stay and go down fighting with his compatriots; the story goes that he was struck down in the main square when the enemy burst in, in the very act of throwing stones at them.5 Majd al-Din got away to Anatolia, but the orthodox Sufi position was that he had been punished with exile for boasting about his spiritual powers.6 For his part, Genghis was always fascinated by holy men and their alleged powers, and this fascination led him to one of the oddest encounters of his career.

As a result

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