Thus we find, at the commencement of the thirteenth century, the posterity of Saladin wielding power over almost the whole of the western part of the Arabian empire. A descendant of Nur ad-Din, it is true, possessed a part of Jezireh, and certain Eyyub princes reigned over provinces of the peninsula; while the name of the Abbasids, last representatives of the former Arab supremacy, was still proclaimed in public prayers. The Alids and Fatimites formed a single sect, without unity or political influence. Armenia and Georgia had reverted to Christianity, and a considerable faction known in history as the Ismailians, Bathenians, or Assassins had still retained a certain prominence.
[1090-1250 A.D.]
This sect was founded toward the close of the eleventh century by Hassan Sabba, who succeeded in gaining an absolute ascendency over the minds of his followers. An enemy alike to Christianity and Islam, he promulgated a doctrine which was similar to that of the Karmathians, and among his possessions were several fortresses, in one of which he resided. The name “assassins” is a corruption of the word hashish, a sort of intoxicating drink by means of which Hassan Sabba persuaded his followers that he could initiate them in all the joys of paradise. Hassan assumed the character of a lesser providence charged with redressing wrongs and punishing untruth; and as he at the same time permitted all sorts of brigandage on the part of his sectarians, the dynasty he established terrorised all western Asia for more than two centuries. They carried their arms into Syria, where they erected fortifications and pillaged all the caravans that passed through. As late as the thirteenth century they possessed stations in Irak and Syria, not far from Damascus and Aleppo.
THE MONGOLS UNDER JENGHIZ KHAN INVADE WESTERN ASIA
[1220-1258 A.D.]
Such was the situation of the oriental world when a new race of conquerors, the Mongols, descended upon western Asia. Like the Turks the Mongols formed one particular branch of the Scythian race, but had preserved, in the depths of Tatary, their primitive customs and religion. Their life was nomadic, their organisation tribal, and obedience to their chiefs, together with love of war and pillage, were their distinguishing characteristics.
Jenghiz Khan was already ruler of Tatary and Northern China when he directed his movements westward and menaced Mawarannahar (1219). This province belonged at the time to Muhammed, sultan of Khwarizm, who was at war with Nasir, caliph of Baghdad, for a very serious cause. Nasir, alarmed at the growing power of Muhammed, had armed the Ghurid princes against him; whereat Muhammed had summoned to a grand council in his palace a number of doctors and jurists whose decision could not be doubtful, and had declared the reign of the Abbasids, usurpers of the caliphate, to be at an end. A descendant of Ali, Ala ad-Din, was proclaimed caliph in place of Nasir, and a mighty expedition was prepared against Baghdad. Nasir was saved by the arrival of the Mongols at that juncture, the sultan being obliged to direct his entire force toward Mawarannahar, where it was cut to pieces. Muhammed himself fled to an island in the Caspian Sea, leaving his son Jelal ad-Din to meet and resist the invaders as best he might (1220). Courageous to foolhardiness, this prince would actually have opposed a successful resistance to the terrible enemy had he been supported by a people determined to defend their homes at any cost; but betrayed and abandoned by those upon whom he should have been able to rely, he experienced the sorrow of seeing the hordes of Jenghiz Khan sweep devastatingly through Mawarannahar, Khwarizm, Gilan, and Aderbaijan. When the conqueror, master of 1,700 square leagues, retired to his own capital, Karakorum (1220-1227), Jelal ad-Din, who had taken refuge in India, returned, and all the populations who had escaped subjugation flocked to his banners. Out of the remains of his father’s possessions he formed a new empire which extended from the source of the Ganges to Mosul, and for yet a little while Baghdad was secure against attack by the Mongols. But Ogdai became khan by the consent of his father, Jenghiz, and all the greatest chiefs immediately set out to invade the domains of Jelal ad-Din, so that the latter was again reduced to flight, and later found death at the hands of an assassin.
Ogdai was less fortunate in his attempts against the sultan of Iconium and against Baghdad, which was ably defended by the caliph Mustansir (1235-1241). Kuyuk his successor (1241-1251) also made but little progress and had to be content with driving from his court the ambassadors of the caliph and of the sultan. Mangu Khan, who reigned next, was seized with a desire for conquest, and sent his brothers Kublai and Hulagu on missions of aggrandisement. While Kublai was occupied in completing the submission of China, Hulagu left Karakorum at the head of a numerous army and besieged Baghdad, with which he had already held secret communication. The caliph Mustasim, informed of his approach, made no attempt at resistance, and for seven days his capital was at the mercy of the Mongols, who pillaged and destroyed on all sides, burning many priceless manuscripts that they found in the libraries and colleges. Mustasim was strangled and his corpse dragged around the walls of Baghdad, which had been witnesses of all the different phases of the Abbasids’ rise and fall—their grandeur, their decadence, and their closing ignominy.
The Mongols had now only a step to take to seek the conquest of Egypt and Syria; but they encountered the mamelukes, whom they were unable to vanquish. As their name indicates, the mamelukes were Circassian slaves whom Saladin’s successors had imported to their palaces, and who renewed at Cairo the insubordination and excesses of which the Turkish soldiery had been guilty at Baghdad.
When the Khwarizmians fled to Syria before Jenghiz Khan, the sultan of Damascus gave to the Franks Tiberius, Jerusalem, and Ascalon in return for their aid. Now the sultan of Egypt and his mamelukes joined forces with the Khwarizmians, and during a series of combats in which Jerusalem was taken and retaken several times, they concluded by turning upon their own allies and almost destroying them (1240-1245). Three years later they repulsed at Massur the attack of St. Louis, who had begun an invasion of Egypt. In 1250 a revolution occurred which changed the whole face of the country.
[1258-1517 A.D.]
The mamelukes, dissatisfied with the treaty they had concluded with the king of France, their prisoner, rose in revolt and proclaimed one of their chiefs, Muiz ad-Din, sultan. St. Louis, who had retired to Palestine, sought in vain to raise up enemies against the mamelukes by entering into relations with the khan of the Mongols, and the leader of the Ismailians. Syria, after having been briefly occupied by Hulagu, who put an end to the sultanates of Aleppo and Damascus (1258), remained permanently, together with Jezireh, in the hands of the mamelukes. The Franks lost successively their remaining possessions and a new dynasty of Abbasid caliphs arose, who for over two centuries exercised no higher function than that of bestowing a sort of religious consecration upon the sovereigns of Egypt. In 1517 the Ottoman Turks, already masters of Constantinople and Asia Minor, exterminated the mamelukes, and extended their authority over all the countries known to-day under the name of Asiatic Turkey.
Situated as they were in the midst of incessant revolutions, and suffering from the onslaught of barbarian races from the north, the Arabs began gradually to disappear; but the great movement they imparted to civilisation has never been lost in Asia, and traces of their beneficent influence are still everywhere apparent. We have seen the Seljuk, Malik Shah, borrow from the school of Baghdad the reforms he introduced into the Persian calendar; before him Mahmud, the Ghaznevid, had called to his councils a universal genius—Albiruni, who exercised a remarkable influence upon the century in which he lived; the Mongul, Hulagu, who could not save from the flames the precious instruments and records that had been the result of years of enlightened research, permitted the celebrated mathematician, Nasir ad-Din Thusi, to build a magnificent observatory at Meraga; and lastly his brother Kublai, when he became emperor of China, carried with him into the celestial empire all the lore and wisdom of the Occident.