Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road by Elverskog Johan;

Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road by Elverskog Johan;

Author:Elverskog, Johan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.


The Calm Before the Storm

To connect all of these developments into a coherent whole let us step back and look again at the larger picture. In particular, we need to recognize that the Buddhist-Muslim détente of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries cannot be explained solely by events unfolding within the borders of the Chaghatai Ulus. Two other factors shaping the situation in Inner Asia were the simultaneous collapse of the Yuan dynasty in China and the rise of Tamerlane (1336–1405), the founder of the Timurid dynasty (1405–1507), in Central Asia.52

The fall of the Mongols in China in 1368 should not have surprised anyone. The dynasty had in fact been wracked by political paralysis and economic malfeasance ever since the death of Khubilai Khan in 1294. At the root of many of these problems lay the same question faced by the Chaghataid Khans: should the Yuan rulers maintain their Mongol ways, or else adopt the imperial and cultural practices of China? On one side of this debate stood the powerful Turkic and Mongol military elite and on the other the entrenched Chinese bureaucracy, and both of these forces operated behind the scenes promoting their competing agendas through a series of young, incompetent, and politically beholden emperors.53 The most ludicrous example of this dynamic was the six-year-old Rinchenbal, who in 1332 was accepted as a compromise candidate by the Turkic general El Temür and the Empress Dowager Budashiri. After being put on the throne he passed away fifty-three days later.54

Yet even before Rinchenbal's inglorious tenure Mongol rule was woefully unstable. In the previous twenty-five years six different emperors had graced the Yuan throne, all promoting the competing agendas of their powerful political backers.55 And this tradition continued apace as Rinchenbal's successor, Toghan Temür—the last Mongol ruler of China—took the throne in 1333. He was the grandson of Khaisan Khan (r. 1307–1311), who had himself promoted a steppe-oriented policy. He had even ordered a new capital, Zhongdu, to be built on the steppes north of Zhangjiakou on the Mongolian plateau. But when he passed away his designated heir, Buyantu, completely reversed these policies and promoted instead a Chinese agenda. Most notably in 1313 Buyantu reinstated the Neo-Confucian–oriented civil service exam. Moreover, he also ordered the codification of the Yuan dynasty's laws based on Chinese precedent, which was completed in 1324 with the 2,400 legal documents of the Da Yuan Tongzhi.56

It was in the nexus of these competing Turko-Mongol and Chinese forces that Toghan Temür had been perceived as a threat. At the age of ten he had therefore been exiled to an island off the northwest coast of Korea. He was then moved to Guangxi in the far south of China. Upon Rinchenbal's death, however, Toghan Temür's supporters outflanked El Temür and put him on the throne. Since he was only thirteen, however, the real power was in the hands of others and they set about promoting their “pro-China” policy, which in turn was invariably challenged by the “pro-Mongol” side. But



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