Day of Empire

by Amy Chua

  In the thirteenth century, the Muslim world was divided. The Seljuk Turks dominated Asia Minor, and there was an Arab caliph in Baghdad. But the sultan of Khwarizm, also a Turk, ruled the largest territory, a great empire stretching from India to the Volga River, including the magnificent cities of Nishapur, Bukhara, and Samarkand. The Muslim lands were the richest in the world, and their civilization in many ways the most advanced. No existing society had a higher literacy rate among the general population, or superior mathematics, linguistics, agronomy, astronomy, literature, and legal traditions. It is not surprising, then, that although the sultan of Khwarizm ostensibly accepted an offer of peace from Genghis Khan, within a year a 450-man Mongol trade delegation was slaughtered in Khwarizm territory. When the news reached Genghis Khan, he dispatched envoys to the sultan, demanding retribution. The sultan responded by killing the chief envoy and sending the others back to Genghis Khan with their faces disfigured. This proved to be a mistake that not only cost the sultan his empire and his life but “laid waste a whole world.”22

  Like the Jurchen emperor, the sultan of Khwarizm did not believe the Mongol forces posed a serious threat. Khwarizm's major cities were powerfully fortified; between the Mongol steppe and Khwarizm's borders were two thousand miles of treacherous mountain and desert terrain, which no army had ever breached. Counterintuitively, Genghis Khan waited until the winter to make the crossing. He knew there would be bone-chilling winds, snow, and icy gorges to contend with. But the Mongols preferred the cold, and a summer crossing of the parched, barren desert would have been deadlier still. To this day, Genghis Khan's march to central Asia, in which tens of thousands of warriors must have died, remains one of the most remarkable military feats in history.

  But for all the tenacity and fortitude of Genghis Khan's men, the Mongols could never have overcome Khwarizm's mighty stone citadels without the great siege engines that Chinese engineers designed and constructed, practically right on the spot. Unlike traditional armies, the Mongol cavalry did not travel with heavy equipment, which would have slowed them down. Instead, they were accompanied by a corps of foreign engineers who simply built whatever instruments of attack were needed, using whatever resources were available. Thus, after their desert crossing, Genghis Khan's men felled the first trees they encountered; out of them the engineers constructed retractable ladders, giant crossbows mounted on wheels, rope-pulled mangonels (single-armed torsion catapults) that hurled stones and flaming liquids, and other sophisticated weapons of siege warfare that “barbarians” were not expected to have.23

  The Khwarizm Empire's main defense lay in the great oasis cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, as well as a chain of smaller strongholds. Farther east they controlled the Persian cities of Nishapur, Tabriz, Qazvin, Hamadan, and Ardabil. One by one these cities collapsed before the Mongol juggernaut. Bukhara, with its awe-inspiring mosques and academies, and supposedly “a wall twelve leagues… in circuit,” was stormed first, then methodically plundered. Next in line was Samarkand, lush with pleasure gardens and protected by an enormous wall with “twelve iron gates flanked by towers,” “[t]wenty armored elephants and one hundred and ten thousand warriors, Turks and Persians.” When the Mongols pulled up with their great fire-spewing machines, the people and army of Samarkand surrendered, terrified by reports of inhuman Mongol cruelty: rape, torture, dismemberment, and mass slaughter.

  There is no question that the Mongols killed enormous numbers and wreaked incalculable destruction. After Genghis Khan's son-in-law was killed in battle at Nishapur, the city's entire population was reportedly wiped out. It was said that the severed heads of men, women, and children rose in three piles sky high and that “not even cats and dogs survived.” Such reports of Mongol savagery were likely exaggerated, but Genghis Khan apparently encouraged their circulation as a form of wartime propaganda. Indeed, the Mongols themselves may have inflated the number of people they killed in order to terrorize their next target population.24

  Although the details of each siege varied, Genghis Khan usually followed the same basic strategy. In central Asia as in northern China, he attacked and burned unfortified villages in the surrounding countryside first, taking captives, slaying many, and generating a flood of panicked refugees, who brought chaos, hunger, and tales of terror to the cities. The besieged citizens were then given a choice. Those who capitulated would be treated with leniency. Those who refused to yield, as at Nishapur, would die terrible deaths.

  Not surprisingly, many civilian populations—for example, those of Bukhara and Samarkand—surrendered to the Mongols, opening the city gates. (It may also have helped that many of Khwarizm's subjects were Persians and Tajiks, with no particular loyalty to their Turkic sultan.) Aristocrats, governors, and resisting soldiers were typically executed. By contrast, religious clerics and personnel were placed under Genghis Khan's protection, and civilians of any skill were actively recruited, whether glassblowers, potters, carpenters, furniture makers, cooks, barbers, jewelers, leather workers, papermakers, dyers, physicians, merchants, or cameleers. Perhaps most important for his rapidly expanding empire, Genghis Khan absorbed Khwarizm's ethnically diverse literati: rabbis, imams, scholars, teachers, judges, and anyone who could read and write in different languages.25

  By 1223, Genghis Khan's conquest of Khwarizm was complete. (The sultan, who fled the empire with Mongol hordes on his heels, is said to have died alone and impoverished on a remote island in the Caspian Sea.) Genghis Khan had once again done the impossible: crossed two thousand miles of glacier and desert, breached impregnable fortifications, crushed an army far larger than his own, and brought one of the greatest, richest, and most glorious civilizations on earth under the thumb of a man who ate yak and slept in a ger.

  Now in his midsixties and ruler of the largest empire on earth, Genghis Khan returned to the Mongolian steppe. He died in 1227, surrounded by family and friends, all his generals still loyal to him. Following Mongol custom, he was given a secret burial in a secret location. (Legend has it that eight hundred horsemen were ordered to trample repeatedly over the area in order to remove any trace of Genghis Khan's grave. The horsemen were then killed by another set of soldiers, who were then slain by others, who were in turn slain as well.) According to Edward Gibbon, Genghis Khan “died in the fullness of years and glory, with his last breath, exhorting and instructing his sons to achieve the conquest of the Chinese empire.”26

  “THE SORROW OF EUROPE”

  Genghis Khan's sons, however, were not up to the job, and their father knew it. In the last years of his life, Genghis Khan had grown increasingly concerned about the preservation of his empire. Although his earliest campaigns were primarily plunder-driven, as an older man he spoke about his desire “to unite the whole world.” “Without the vision of a goal,” he told his sons, “a man cannot manage his own life, much less the lives of others.” Above all, Genghis Khan worried that his sons would fight among themselves, particularly over who would succeed him as Great Khan. His fears proved justified. None of his four sons had his wisdom, shrewdness, or ability to inspire loyalty. The elder two quarreled so bitterly—the second insinuating that the first was a bastard— that in the end, as a compromise, Genghis Khan chose as his heir a third son: the jovial, drink-loving Ogodei.27

  Extravagant and almost pathologically generous, Ogodei began spending the moment he took office. At his inauguration, he reportedly threw open the royal treasury and distributed its contents, including loads of pearls and gems, to his new subjects. He ordered the construction of a new capital with a palace and gardens designed by Chinese architects, decorated by Chinese craftsmen, and walled for the first time in steppe history. Karakorum, the name the capital acquired, means “black stones” or “black walls.” For all its loftiness, the new palace was again principally a warehouse and a residence for craftsmen; the royal family continued to favor their gers. One-third of the capital city was set aside for the corps of foreign administrators—scribes and scholars from every conquered na
tion—who handled communications and essentially ran the empire for the illiterate ruling family. Ogodei also called lavishly for the building of new houses of worship for his diverse subjects, including mosques, churches, and Buddhist and Taoist temples, making simple Karakorum the most religiously pluralist capital in the world.

  Ogodei's city was costly to operate, and his habits even more expensive to maintain. The Mongols themselves, still primarily herders and nomads, produced little of value. Tribute, the empire's sole source of income, had started to dwindle under Ogodei's more relaxed rule. Moreover, Ogodei was not a gifted businessman. In order to lure traders to his remote capital, he paid outrageous prices for goods he had no use for—“ivory tusks, pearls, hunting falcons, golden goblets, jeweled belts, willow whip handles, cheetahs”—then gave these goods away. By 1235, almost all the enormous wealth accumulated by Genghis Khan had been squandered. For the Mongols, there was only one solution: to conquer and plunder new lands.

  To settle on a target, Ogodei convened a khuriltai, where he encountered intense disagreement. Some of the participants wanted to invade India. Others advocated a campaign against the great cities of Baghdad and Damascus. Still others, including Ogodei himself, wanted to take on China's ailing Song Empire, which had staved off Mongol conquest for thirty years. But the most experienced voice was that of the elderly Subodei, one of Genghis Khan's most trusted generals, who had played a key role in every one of the Mongols’ major battlefield victories. Subodei urged the conquest of Europe—a land most of the other Mongols had barely heard of.

  Subodei had accidentally come upon Europe twelve years earlier, when he and another general were pursuing the sultan of Khwarizm. After the sultan's death, Subodei received Genghis Khan's permission to explore the unknown lands north of the Caspian Sea. There he discovered and conquered the Christian kingdom of Georgia, which became a Mongol vassal state. Continuing north, Subodei came to what is now Russia and Ukraine, at that time ruled by rivaling dukes and princes, each with his own fiefdom and army. One by one, the Russian city-states fell as Subodei outmaneuvered their forces and slew their rulers. He was on the verge of crossing the Dnieper River into eastern Europe when he was recalled by Genghis Khan. Subodei now asked the khuriltai of 1235 to approve a campaign in the west, where there were vast pasturelands for the Mongol horses and surely great treasures to be had.28

  Unable to overcome the difference of opinion within the khuriltai, Ogodei made a decision that would probably have horrified his father. Dividing the Mongol army, Ogodei ordered that Europe and China be attacked simultaneously. The campaign against the Song failed, and Ogodei's favorite son died commanding it; the Mongol conquest of China would have to wait another generation. In Europe, however, Subodei was victorious.

  Despite Ogodei's shortcomings, the invasion of Europe in many ways showed the Mongol forces at their most formidable. The main army consisted of 150,000 horsemen, of whom 50,000 were Mongols. Subodei knew and deployed all the ingenious battle tactics that Genghis Khan had perfected over his lifetime. Also in command were two of Genghis Khan's most capable grandsons, Mongke and Batu. Most important, the Mongol army, incorporating the most advanced Islamic and Chinese technology, possessed fearsome weapons unknown in Europe. The Mongols attacked Europe's walled cities not only with catapults and battering rams— familiar to the Europeans—but also with grenades, exploding naphtha, primitive rocket launchers, and smoke bombs spewing chemicals with monstrous smells.

  Russia and eastern Europe fell first. The destruction in 1240 of Kiev, the jewel and religious heart of the Slavic world, sent terrified rumors flying across Europe. The Mongols, it was said, were like a cloud of locusts, and their cavalry included fire-spitting dragons (probably a reference to the Mongol incendiaries). As far away as England, Matthew Paris, a Benedictine monk, recorded in 1240 that “an immense horde of that detestable race of Satan” had ravaged eastern Europe. “They clothe themselves in the skins of bulls, and are armed with iron lances; they are short in stature and thickset, compact in their bodies, and of great strength; invincible in battle, indefatigable in labour; they wear no armour on the back part of their bodies, but are protected by it in front; they drink the blood which flows from their flocks, and consider it a delicacy.”29

  Next, the Mongols poured into Germany, Poland, and Hungary. Their stunning defeat of “the flower” of European knighthood—as many as 100,000 soldiers died—foreshadowed the end of European feudalism. The Mongol assault on Hungary was infamous. According to a contemporaneous account, “The dead fell to the right and to the left; like leaves in winter, the slain bodies of these miserable men were strewn along the whole route; blood flowed like torrents of rain.” There was also hysteria: Accounts of Mongols gobbling up old women and gang-raping Christian virgins—before eating them at banquets—are probably apocryphal.

  Christian Europe responded to the Mongol attacks with a surge of vicious intolerance. Helpless in defeat, and at a loss to explain the sudden emergence of the Mongol hordes, Europe's clerics blamed—of all people—the Jews in their midst. The Mongols, they claimed, were in fact the missing Hebrew tribes from the time of Moses, whom God in vengeance had turned into cruel and irrational beasts. Moreover, these beasts were supported and sponsored by Europe's most influential Jewish leaders, who hoped, along with their Tatar brethren, to take over the world. Ominously, the year 1241 corresponded to the year 5000 in the Jewish calendar—what further proof was needed of “the enormous wickedness of the Jews” and their “hidden treachery and extraordinary deceit”? Preposterous as they were, these theories fueled tragic consequences. In York, Rome, and other major European cities, Christians took out their anger by persecuting their Jewish neighbors, burning their homes and massacring them—practically imitating the Mongols, only in the name of God.

  In the thirteenth century, Christian Europe was fragmented and fanatic, consumed with the Crusades, sectarian rivalry, anti-Semitism, and the persecution of infidels. European division and intolerance worked to the Mongols’ advantage. For all their ruth-lessness in battle, the Mongols were not hampered by religious zeal or bigotry. As European princes were torturing and expelling some of their most skilled non-Christian subjects, the Mongols recruited freely and to tremendous profit from conquered populations, blind to ethnicity or religion. From Europe the Mongols acquired new ranks of scribes, translators, architects, and craftsmen, as well as miners from Saxony who knew how to bring forth unsuspected riches from the Mongolian steppe. When, on the eve of their own defeat, Hapsburg soldiers captured a Mongol officer, they were shocked to discover that he was a brilliant multilingual Englishman who, threatened with excommunication by the Roman Catholic Church, had opted to work for the Mongols. The Hapsburg soldiers killed him.30

  Late in 1241, Ogodei died suddenly, inebriated as usual. Within a few months, his elder brother—the last of Genghis Khan's sons—died as well. Succession problems loomed once more, and Mongke and Batu quickly led their forces out of Europe in order to return to the steppe, bringing to a close the second wave of Mongol conquest. The Mongol Empire now stretched west nearly to Vienna. But it was to grow much vaster still.

  MONGOL WORLD DOMINANCE

  Genghis Khan's grandsons were far abler than his sons. Ogodei left no great heirs. Instead, following a series of lurid palace intrigues, the grandsons who emerged victorious were all from the line of Tuli, Genghis Khan's youngest son. Under the leadership of these new khans—Mongke, Hulegu, Arik Boke, and Khubilai—the third and greatest wave of Mongol conquest swept the earth.

  Mongke, the eldest, was installed as Great Khan in 1251. Shortly afterward, he charged his brother Hulegu with the conquest of the Middle East and his brother Khubilai with the conquest of southern China. Khubilai, who was not an eager warrior, took his time. Aggressive Hulegu did not; over the next seven years his military triumphs in the Muslim world rivaled those of his grandfather, Genghis Khan.

  For all Subodei's hopes, the European campaign had produced only me
ager booty. Europe in the Middle Ages was primitive, undeveloped, and poor compared to the great Islamic and Chinese civilizations. Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo—Hulegu's main targets—were among the richest cities in the world. Baghdad, in particular, was the commercial, artistic, and cultural heart of Islam. With breathtaking palaces, mosques, and synagogues in every corner, along with teeming bazaars and gambling houses, the city of Scheherazade seemed to overflow with gold and treasure.

  Baghdad was also the seat of the Abbasid caliphate, founded five hundred years earlier. The ruling caliph was the thirty-seventh—and arguably feeblest, vainest, and least worthy— successor to the Prophet Muhammad. In what must have seemed an astounding act of hubris, Hulegu issued a summons to the caliph, demanding that he surrender or perish. The caliph responded haughtily, declaring that all of the Islamic world, with God by their side, would rise up to slay the infidels. The caliph was mistaken.

  The Abbasid caliphate was a theocracy, committed to Sunni Islamic orthodoxy. By the mid-thirteenth century, the Abbasid lands were filled with disaffected minorities, including Shiites, Jews, and especially Christians, who were eager to see the overthrow of their Sunni overlords. The Mongols shrewdly exploited these religious and sectarian divisions. Many among Baghdad's significant Shiite minority, most likely including the caliph's own vizier and chief minister, conspired with the Mongols, acting as informants and spies. Thousands of Baghdad's Christians simply joined the Mongol forces.31