Incensed, Qutuz took the bait. He ordered Hülegü’s envoys killed and their heads hanged on Bab Zwayla, one of Cairo’s southern gates. The Mongols now had their justification for war, but the sultan was not about to wait to be attacked. He assembled a sizeable army, not less than ten thousand horsemen, reinforced by Turkmen, Bedouin, and Kurds as well as recruits fleeing Mongol domination. In spring 1260 the Mamluk army entered Palestine. In the process, they crossed territory held by Frankish crusaders, but the Franks allowed them to pass. The Franks had recently clashed with Ked-Buqa’s men, who had retaliated by sacking Sidon. It seems some of the crusaders saw the Mongols as a more immediate threat than the Mamluks. The Frankish leaders of Acre even gave supplies to the Mamluk army.
When the Mamluks entered Palestine from the west, Ked-Buqa was on the eastern side of the Jordan River. Upon learning of the approaching Mamluks, he crossed the river to confront them. He had no choice but to face the Mamluks with only one tümen and less-than-dependable allies. The battle took place in Ayn Jalut, north of Jerusalem, on September 3, 1260. After several hours of fighting, the Mamluks crushed the tümen and killed Ked-Buqa. The Mongols suffered badly from the untimely defection of the Ayyubid prince al-Ashraf Musa, whose troops were supposed to reinforce Ked-Buqa’s left wing but instead departed the battlefield at the very moment the Mongols most needed them. The defeated warriors escaped where they could, with the Mamluk emir Baybars and his horsemen on their tails. Baybars’s men followed Ked-Buqa’s retreating forces up to northern Syria and killed almost all of them.11
News of Ked-Buqa’s defeat spread quickly. Immediately upon learning of the Mamluk victory, Mongols in Damascus, Aleppo, and Hama fled, and soon the Mongols had abandoned the whole of Palestine and Syria. The locals avenged themselves by plundering Mongol camps, chasing and killing runaways, and capturing women and children who had been left behind. Most of Syria was now in the hands of the Mamluk army. It was a resounding defeat, but the Mongols had experienced those before. One of the main motivations of Mongol warfare was, after all, revenge. They always struck back, and they never forgave. From the day the Mamluks marched on Ked-Buqa, they became the blood enemy of the Mongols, who knew they would need to mobilize their full forces to defeat the sultan. When Hülegü returned from the east, he declared the destruction of the Mamluks an absolute priority. But carrying out his wish would not be easy. Not only had he lost one of his most trusted generals, but, as I describe below, the quriltai to elect Möngke’s replacement had spurred Mongol infighting that threatened one of Hülegü’s key support: the partnership with the Jochids.
Asphyxia
Succession struggles engulfed the empire after the death of Great Khan Möngke in August 1259. His brothers Arigh Böke and Qubilai each claimed the mantle of the great khan and organized their own enthronement quriltais. Both enjoyed strong support among the Mongols and their allies. Since neither was willing to withdraw, one would have to defeat the other in battle to claim the throne.12
Berke sided with Arigh Böke. First Berke had a new Bulgar coin minted under Arigh Böke’s name. Then the ruler of the Horde contacted Qubilai’s enemies. In 1260 Berke sent his envoys to the Delhi Sultanate, whose rulers had always refused Mongol’s demands for allegiance. Berke’s support for Arigh Böke put him on a collision course with Hülegü, who backed Qubilai. In 1261 the tension between Berke and Hülegü finally boiled over. For a decade, Hülegü had been slowly making gains at the Horde’s expense, taking territories that Chinggis had set aside for the Jochids. Now Hülegü was trying to take the Jochids’ share of revenues from Iran. With support from Qubilai, Hülegü installed a delegate in Herat, where the taxes and tributes of eastern Iran were centralized before being distributed to the members of the golden lineage. Berke responded by ordering one of his commanders, Negüder, to defend his share. Negüder chased out Hülegü’s men, ensuring that the Jochids would receive their due and that Berke and Hülegü’s cold peace was now a hot war.13
Hülegü accused Berke’s commanders of treachery and witchcraft and began to purge Jochids from the Mongol armies under his command. In particular, Hülegü struck at Tutar, a grandson of Jochi who led a contingent of warriors that operated in Iran under Hülegü’s nominal supervision. Tutar and Hülegü had come to loggerheads over the Herat revenues, and now Hülegü accused Tutar of plotting against him. It is not known if in fact Tutar was planning any foul play, but Hülegü produced what was apparently convincing proof. Berke could not oppose Tutar’s trial and execution. The result was another blood feud, as Tutar’s son Nogay—a seasoned commander close to Berke, who would later become a major figure in Jochid history—never forgot what Hülegü had done to his father.14
After targeting the Jochids, Hülegü attacked other Mongol delegates who had commanded in the Middle East. Hülegü’s goal was not only to curtail the authority of the old delegates but to also inject Toluids into the administration from Afghanistan to Anatolia, at all levels of governance. Carrying out such an effort meant severe internecine warfare. For instance, high on Hülegü’s hit list came Baiju, a respected and experienced warrior of enormous pedigree: he was close kin of Jebe, one of Chinggis’s key generals, and his father had belonged to Chinggis’s keshig. Baiju had also led the first invasion of the Seljuq Sultanate and ruled for ten years over Azerbaijan and Anatolia. Baiju did not support the Jochids, but he also neither respected nor feared Hülegü. What he wanted was to maintain his power and autonomy. Hülegü would not have that; his men killed Baiju, through poisoning or execution. For the first time, the Mongols were conquering at the expense of their own.15
Berke decided to strike back. Although Berke made no formal declaration of war, in the winter of 1261–1262, he and his warriors pushed deep into the Caucasus—former Jochid territory, now under Hülegü’s authority. The Jochid troops crossed the Terek River, advanced along the Caspian coast, and took possession of Derbent and Shirvan. Berke’s aim was to secure access to Tabriz, on the other side of the Caucasus, because the Horde’s elites had strong financial interests in the city. Tabriz was western Iran’s equivalent of Herat: the center of fiscal administration. The Jochids received up to 30 percent of Tabriz’s revenues, making the city a critical pressure point. In addition Berke’s ortaqs, his licensed traders, had trading posts and clients in Tabriz, where they made lucrative transactions in their khan’s name.16
On August 20, 1262, Hülegü left his summer pasture of Ala-dagh, near Van Lake, to confront Berke at Shirvan. It was early in the war season, but the situation required a forceful response. The Jochids had already smashed his vanguard, meeting little or no resistance. Once Hülegü’s forces arrived on the scene, though, fortunes turned quickly. In November his army pushed the Jochids up to Derbent. In December Hülegü himself arrived at Derbent, expelled Berke’s men, and chased them beyond the Terek River.
Hülegü chases Berke, painting from Livre des Merveilles du monde et autres récits (illuminated manuscript, France, c. 1410–1412). The manuscript, concerning relations between Western Europe and Mongol Asia, speaks to Europeans’ interest in and knowledge of Mongol politics. (Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, France / Bridgeman Images)
Berke’s campaign was a failure. Within two years, the Jochids had lost their positions and influence in the Caucasus, Khorasan, the Seljuq Sultanate, and Baghdad. The Jochids also were in a difficult position in Khwarezm. They controlled northern Khwarezm, but the southern part of the region was in the hands of Alghu, the grandson of Chagatay. Alghu was initially appointed the leader of Chagatay’s ulus by Arigh Böke, but in 1262 Alghu switched sides and turned to Qubilai. Alghu expanded the Chagatayids’ territories, incorporating areas that belonged to the Jochids, while progressively taking full control of Bukhara and Samarkand, which had historically been under the joint administration of the Chinggisid houses.
Alghu’s defection from Arigh Böke had serious consequences, as it led to Arigh Böke’s surrender and Qubilai’s victory. If this was not bad enough for t
he Jochids, who had supported Arigh Böke, Hülegü also cancelled the Jochid share that had flowed from Tabriz since the times of Batu and had the Jochid ortaqs expelled from the city. Berke’s military operations also put the Jochid troops under Hülegü’s command in a dangerous position, though Berke managed to extract them. In the summer of 1262, many of these Jochid refugees rallied around Negüder near Ghazni, in Afghanistan, where they fought against other Mongols allied with Hülegü. But Negüder quickly lost ground and then his men. Hülegü seized the moment to appropriate the Jochid tax income sent from Herat.17
Berke’s army retaliated, forcing Hülegü’s men to retreat to Shirvan in January 1263. By spring, the milking season had arrived, and the war was halted. But aggressive diplomacy was in full swing.18 In May Berke sent his first embassy to Cairo to coordinate with the Mamluks against their mutual enemy. Hülegü had transgressed yasa, Berke explained—the sacred law of his own people. “His only aim is to slaughter the human beings with hate,” Berke wrote. The khan asked the Mamluks “to send an armed force in the direction of the Euphrates in order to block Hülegü’s passage.” Unable to defeat Hülegü himself, Berke needed serious help, wherever it came from—even if that meant allying with non-Mongols against Mongols.19
Over the next few decades, the region between the Terek and the Kura rivers would be contested by the descendants of Jochi and Hülegü, but the threat Hülegü posed was not primarily territorial. It was economic. What mattered most to Berke and his shift men was maintaining tribute and trade. Hülegü was systematically severing the routes by which tribute and goods reached the Horde. In doing so, he was cutting off the redistribution system that was the lifeblood of any Mongol regime. If there were no more luxuries to distribute, the fuel of the system would dry up, and the whole society would collapse. Hülegü was strangling the Jochids.
The Mamluk Alliance
The Mamluk Sultanate is an oddity of history: a regime ruled by emancipated slaves. Historically, Islamic armies purchased slave warriors who were called mamluks, the “owned.” The last Ayyubid rulers bought mamluks in large numbers on Seljuq markets, especially in the Anatolian city of Sivas. Most of the slaves were young men born in the northwestern steppe or in the Caucasus. They came through the trade circuit that crossed Crimea, where merchants bought and sold them for textiles and furs. Batu had allowed this old circuit to grow, producing ample tax revenue for the Horde. But Hülegü disrupted the system when he ordered his armies to enter Anatolia and conquer the Seljuq Sultanate.
Movements of the Berke-Hülegü war, 1261–1264.
It wasn’t the first time Mongols had invaded the Seljuq regime. In 1243 the Seljuqs had submitted after defeat at Köse-dag in eastern Anatolia. They were reduced to paying an annual tribute of clothing, horses, and gold. The Jochids considered ‘Izz al-Dīn the sultan, and his people their own. But ‘Izz al-Dīn in fact shared power with his brother Rukn al-Dīn, who had gained the support of the Toluids. In 1256 Hülegü arrived on the scene with the great army, siege engines, carts, and animals. He promptly appropriated the Mughan steppe, the region’s best winter pasture, and ordered Baiju to move deeper into Seljuq lands. Sultan ‘Izz al- Dīn’s immediate reaction was to refuse entry to Baiju’s men, for accepting them would have required relocating his own people. The Seljuqs had paid tribute; they had an agreement with the Mongols, and that agreement did not include allowing an occupation. But ‘Izz al-Dīn could not fight Hülegü or Baiju and had to submit again.20
The colonization of eastern Anatolia was even more significant than the first Mongol campaign against the Seljuqs thirteen years earlier. This time Hülegü’s annexation of the steppe belt from Mughan to Van Lake was definitive. Like the Jochids who made the Qipchaq steppe and the lower Volga their own, Hülegü’s descendants kept this area for their ruler’s horde. Their decision to populate Azerbaijan would also prevent, for nearly a century, any Jochid expansion to the south.21
The defeat of the Seljuqs gained Hülegü a reluctant partner. The Seljuqs participated in his campaign in Syria, culminating in the capture of Aleppo in February 1260. But in September the news of the Mamluk advance on the Syrian border and the Mongol defeat at Ayn Jalut gave ‘Izz al-Dīn hope. He contacted Baybars, the Mamluk sultan, seeking an alliance against Hülegü. Yet it was too late for ‘Izz al-Dīn. The Mongols had forced him to take out loans from their imperial treasury, and they were demanding reimbursement. In April 1261 a large army sent by Hülegü came after ‘Izz al-Dīn. He fled and sought asylum in the empire of Nicaea, one of the successor states that emerged from the dissolution of the Byzantines.22
Michael Palaiologos, the emperor, welcomed his old friend. ‘Izz al-Dīn, whose mother was a Byzantine princess, had good relations with the Byzantine elites and had hosted Michael a few years earlier. In July 1261 the sultan participated in the military operations that allowed the emperor to take back Constantinople from the Latins. At roughly the same time, ‘Izz al-Dīn communicated with Hülegü’s enemies, asking both the Jochids and Mamluks to send him troops. ‘Izz al-Dīn planned to go back to his former capital Konya and restore his power, and he offered to make Baybars the overlord of half of his sultanate. ‘Izz al-Dīn did not offer Berke anything and did not need to, for the sultan was a vassal of the khan by marriage—‘Izz al-Dīn wed a Jochid princess, and his daughter was one of Berke’s secondary wives. The alliance entitled ‘Izz al-Dīn to the Horde’s protection.23
Baybars appreciated the Seljuq sultan’s offer, but what he needed most was manpower to fight both the Crusaders and Hülegü. Only the Jochid khan could provide that: Berke had young men, widely considered superior mounted warriors, from the Qipchaq populations the Mongols had subjugated in the first half of the thirteenth century. But even if Berke agreed to sell the Qipchaqs, it would be hard to get them to Egypt because in 1262–1263 Hülegü’s blockade set in. In the Caucasus, the Jochids could not move beyond the Kura River. Hülegü also installed checkpoints and flooded roads, preventing merchants from entering and leaving the Horde. The only way Jochid goods could escape Hülegü’s blockade was for traders to push through the Black Sea to Constantinople. Given this, the next challenge for Baybars was to secure shipping rights through the Bosporus and Dardanelles, so that the slaves, sold at the old Crimean harbor of Sudak, could reach Egypt. To this end, Baybars concluded an agreement with Michael Palaiologos as soon as Michael had regained Constantinople. Michael agreed to let the sultan’s envoys and merchants pass from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits, and the Byzantines received substantial income from the Mamluk trade in the form of taxes and gifts. In addition, Michael and Baybars opened a route from Alexandria to Constantinople, which allowed the Mamluks to bypass the Seljuq circuits cut off by Hülegü.24
The negotiations between the Jochids and Mamluks were carried out through the mediation of Alan merchants, probably slave traders. Sweetening the pot, in October 1262 Jochid refugees fleeing Hülegü’s armies arrived in Damascus asking for Baybars’s protection. Baybars welcomed them and sent lavish gifts to Berke. A few months later, Berke agreed to a pact with Baybars, ‘Izz al-Dīn, and the Byzantine emperor Michael Palaiologos, along with Michael’s allies the Genoese. The khan promised the Mamluk Sultanate young men from the heartland of the Horde, although they would mostly be tax defaulters, war captives, criminals, and poor workers. The new alliance between Berke and Baybars extended the trade route from Constantinople to the lower Volga, a journey that took two months or more depending on political and weather conditions.
Berke’s decision to side with the Mamluks, the Toluids’ main rivals in the Middle East, had an immediate effect: it stopped Hülegü on the Syrian border. The Mongols never reached the Mediterranean shore. They would have to rely on Greeks, Seljuqs, Armenians, Italians, and other go-betweens to bridge the Black Sea and Levantine coast to Europe. This explains why both Hülegü and Berke would allow a range of small maritime powers to emerge on their European borders. Venetians
and Genoese started to send traders, ship owners, and lawyers to the Horde and to Hülegü’s lands.
Even more significant, the Mongols’ internal strife transformed the geopolitics of Islam, reorienting its Eurasian centers toward Cairo and the lower Volga. In less than a decade, the Mongols had destroyed the Abbasid state, caliphate, lineage, armies, and allies; reduced Baghdad to a small provincial town; and finished the Ayyubids. Suddenly Jochid leaders converted to Islam, provided military manpower to the Mamluks, and adopted Islamic symbols. In the lower Volga, Berke welcomed Muslim elites from everywhere. Before the end of the century, Sarai and Cairo would surpass Baghdad in political importance. By disrupting the dar al-islam, the Abode of Islam, and interfering with what was probably the largest socioeconomic system of the time, the Mongols brought about massive shifts in the Afro-Eurasian balance of power.
In July 1263 Baybars dispatched a new embassy to Berke. But the Mamluk envoys were stopped en route, in Constantinople, on Michael Palaiologos’s authority. Now Michael wanted to slow down the war between Hülegü and the Jochid-Mamluk alliance. Hülegü not only led Mongol armies, controlled Baghdad, Tabriz, and the Seljuqs, but he was also the emperor Michael’s close neighbor—a force to be reckoned with on the Byzantines’ doorstep. Michael had to choose: Would he maintain his promises to the Jochids, or would he break his promises to them to avoid antagonizing Hülegü? Michael chose the latter. He detained Sultan ‘Izz al-Dīn, the Mamluk envoys, and the huge gift package the envoys were carrying to the Jochids. The gifts were worth several thousand dinars (gold coins); holding them outraged both Baybars and Berke.25
The Horde Page 17
