History is like a maze. Its paths twist and break off; leave one and you are bound to land on another. For anyone who decides to investigate it in detail, death is the only respite. These thoughts went through our master’s mind as he made ready to study the general history of the Mongols and that of the king, Timur, in particular, all with the goal of gathering and sifting information, then writing a narrative in accordance with the intellectual demands of living history.
Preparation implies reading books and documents about Tatar tribes and peoples. Whenever the events involved approached the present day or were in some way relevant to it, there was also a need to resort to oral testimony (and its verification). For that very reason, ‘Abd al-Rahman made a point of listening carefully to reliable personnel in the sultan’s retinue and holders of positions involving pen and sword. His regular visits to the Mountain Palace and certain departments in the Ablaq Palace served to convince him that the majority of people were acutely aware of the Tatar threat; the vaguely looming quality of current information about Timur was merely the calm before the storm.
‘Abd al-Rahman’s own misgivings found a reflection in the expression on Sultan Barquq’s face and the tone of voice he used: “I’ve summoned you here, great judge, to seek your opinion about a request that Bayazid, the Ottoman warrior, has sent to the ‘Abbasi caliph who, as you know, lives within our dominions, namely that the caliph dub him ‘Sultan of the Byzantines.’ That way, he will be strengthened in his dealings with the Christians in his own lands and against the tyrant, Timur — may God eradicate him!”
Our mufti, ‘Abd al-Rahman, could not help recalling the things he had already heard about the terrible letter Timur Lang had sent to Barquq, a letter so terrible that Sudun, his viceroy, had felt unable to read it out. The letter demanded that Barquq surrender; should he refuse to step down, Timur would eliminate his entire dynasty and descendants.
“I am currently preoccupied, my lord,” the master told Barquq, “with an investigation of Tatar history, the very people your ancestors defeated at the battle of ‘Ayn Jalut in 658 I will present the results of my research just as soon as it is completed. Meanwhile, with regard to a fatwa concerning Bayazid’s request to be called ‘Sultan of the Byzantines,’ I can reply in the affirmative and confirm that it is in full conformity with shari‘a law. The only people who could object to such a decision would be those who might wish to cause a rift between you and your natural ally, thus sowing dissension among Muslims as they confront enemies and tyrants.”
Barquq gestured to his interlocutor to approach. He patted him on the shoulder as a sign of his pleasure and approval and then urged him to proceed with his research as quickly as possible. With that he allowed him to leave.
In mid-795, word began to arrive about Timur’s activities; this time, the Tatar hurricane seemed much closer than before. Oral and written accounts harped on the fact that he had managed to gain absolute power after killing Qamar al-Din, the ruler who had opposed him. His raids had now added Isfahan, ‘Iraq, Persia, and Kirman to his dominions. But the news that hit Cairo hardest was that Timur had entered Baghdad where his armies had wreaked total havoc on the city’s people and cultural treasures. In spring of the following year, Ahmad ibn ‘Uways the Il-Khan, the former ruler of Baghdad, fled from the city to Barquq’s Egypt and begged him for help in expelling the Tatars from his kingdom. Barquq rushed to prepare an armed force to set out and confront the invaders. Meanwhile, cities like Tikrit, Diyarbakr, and Raha were all falling like ripe fruit to Timur’s army.
What is it, one wonders, that gives the Mongols their overwhelming ability to crush whole armies and take over countries with such devastating force?
The first idea to strike the master was that, from a theoretical point of view, their sense of group solidarity was by far the most vigorous and powerful in this era, but to that he added an additional factor, namely that Timur was an extraordinarily brilliant strategist. All the information he had collected about this warrior confirmed that the secret of his continuing series of victories almost certainly lay in the way he planned his campaigns and chose his battlegrounds on the basis of geographical know-how and political espionage. Furthermore, he was a past master at using scare tactics and psychological warfare, making sure that rumors were continually circulating about the overwhelming force he possessed. This phenomenon was responsible for the rampant paranoia about his destructive instincts among the weaker elements in each kingdom. Horror stories were continually being relayed to political centers by post and columns of fugitives and runaways. A stream of news now arrived to confirm Ibn Khaldun’s hunches and suppositions. Barquq reinforced his army with various contingents of mercenaries, but preferred to set up camp in Damascus rather than go out to meet the enemy. Timur decided to postpone the confrontation and to leave the Mamluks hanging around in a state of full alert; they would hear news about the terrible fate of people in Byzantium, Armenia, and the Kurdish fortresses. At the end of the war that never happened, the Mongols decided to leave Baghdad, and their commander returned to his bases in Qarabaq. Ibn ‘Uways entered his king’s capital with some Mamluk troops, and the sultan himself returned to Egypt neither victorious nor defeated. Only one year went by before yet more disturbing news circulated among government officials, to the effect that Timur had killed the most dangerous of his family rivals, Tughtumish. With that, everyone started arguing in secret and in the open about the possible reappearance of the Mongol menace.
For a while, news of Timur disappeared, but his gruesome image still managed to cast a dark shadow over minds and councils. Whether occasions were public or official, the talk was always of his atrocities, his diabolical cleverness, and his cruelty. In the al-Muqattam Citadel, the Sarghitmishiya College, the Hammam al-Sufiya, and other places, ‘Abd al-Rahman would listen to the talk with a critical ear. Even though he attributed a lot of the sentiments to ignorance and lively imagination, he still came to the conclusion that Timur was indeed the clearest possible case of a powerful tyrant, not only because he managed to keep his reputation firmly in place but also because he was extremely successful at keeping everyone so scared out of their wits that they thought about nothing else. With these conclusions in mind, ‘Abd al-Rahman came to believe deep down that Barquq had actually been very happy that his encounter with Timur had not taken place. He was even more grateful that the tyrant had not put in an appearance while he — Barquq — was up to his neck putting out the fires of rebellion started by al-Nasiri and Mintash.
At this particular moment everything that was happening served as a prompt, goading the master historian to blow the dust off the parlous discipline of historiography and sharpen his wits in order to better understand the present and contemplate the future. He decided that, as long as he possessed sufficient bodily health and patience, he should accept the challenge. The decision coincided with the completion of a project whereby he had reread the last part of The Beginning and Ending of Ibn al-Kathir, part five of Goal of Desire by al-Nuwayri, and the third part of the History of Abu al Fida’, along with certain biographies and the Mamluk chronicles of Baybars, al-Mansuri, Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahir, Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, Ibn Daqman al-Misri, and others. As a result, he felt able to devote his entire attention to histories of the Tatars and Mongols, a subject where he felt his knowledge was particularly lacking. But man does not always get what he wants. In the process of trying to focus entirely on the major topic of the hour and the fin de siècle catastrophe, ‘Abd al-Rahman found himself facing all kinds of difficulties in obtaining the necessary materials and finding the time to read them. This was particularly the case with letters and documents from the sultan which Sudun, his viceroy and a dogged foe of ‘Abd al-Rahman, did everything he could to prevent him from reading. This lack of access to documents became much worse when Bata the dawadar was appointed viceroy in Damascus and then died there. There were also problems with languages: the most important sources on Tatar history were in Turkish, Mongolian, and Persian. Had ‘Abd al-Rahman not been of such an advanced age, most of these difficulties could have been dealt with fairly easily. As it was, he managed through various convoluted methods to get hold of copies of the letters of both Bayazid and Timur to Barquq and of two works in Persian, Yazadi’s biography of Timur, the Book of Victories, and the history of Ghazan Khan by the Il-Khan historian, Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali al-Azdi. Beyond that, he commissioned his bookseller in Khan al-Khalili, his students, and his distinguished Turkish colleagues to get him the major source-works on the subject. As days and nights passed, ‘Abd al-Rahman began to realize that the process of gaining any kind of mastery of Mongol history was like plunging into an endless swamp. There were countless tribes and peoples, their lineages were a complete jumble, and their lands were remote and impenetrable. The whole thing made him dizzy and gave him a bad headache. In his spare moments he would draw diagrams to illustrate this or that family tree; he would also use scraps of papers to make lists of famous names, places, countries, dynasties, and tribes. As all this became almost a habit, he realized he was involved in a world where names and things were utterly strange from every point of view. This was a world where the only way of getting to the bottom of things was to devote oneself entirely to detailed research. All of which demanded of ‘Abd al-Rahman something he no longer had at his disposal, namely energy, passion, and enthusiasm. For that reason, the pages he wrote on the Mongols were bound to be at the very least modest, and on occasion weak and confused.