The Effects and Impacts of the Mongol Invasions

[Cetashwayo]

Epistemology Warning: This is really old (I wrote it when I was 16), and synthesizes historical research in a mostly expository manner. Take it with something of a grain of salt.

Hey guys, I really enjoyed writing my stuff on SB, so I might as well transfer my main work on this forum over.

To expand on the Mongol devastation on Central Asia let's examine them in a tad more detail methodically. Central Asia isn't actually an adequate indicator- different areas were hit differently. Let's split it into several regions: Khwarezm, Sohgdia, Farghana & The Syr Darya, and Afghanistan.

1. Khwarezm: Khwarezm was the center of the Khwarezmshahs, a massive Turkic dynasty that had recently defeated the Ghaznavids, Khitay Khanate, and the Abbasids(as well as several Ashraf, such as Hamadan or Kermanshah). Khwarezm is naturally situated in the delta of the Amu Darya, whose long tendrils extend into the Aral sea. The center of this region was Urgench, still a sizable town today, and it was their capital. Multiple agricultural projects were undertaken, as noted by several writers of this era such as Ibn al-Athir. It was, essentially, the epitome of prosperity. The turkic raiders that harried the area were driven off, the empire's resources fueled the expansion of its libraries, and it rose to truly brilliant heights. This changed when the Mongols came.

Being the capital of a rich and wealthy empire, Urgench was hit first, and incredibly hard. It was said that hundreds of thousands of people were killed, but the veracity of this statement is in doubt, considering the entire population of Central Asia probably reached to around 3-4 million people. Nevertheless, immense damage was done to the area. The agricultural systems were completely and utterly wiped out. Salinization took hold, destroying huge amounts of previously fertile land. The Mongols poorly managed this area, and Urgench took on a comparatively small role. The fortresses which had guarded the delta fell into disrepair and multiple Turkic tribes streamed in. This kept the area comparatively undeveloped well into the modern era, when Khiva(further south on the Amu Darya) took a particular interest in it and began developing it. However, the resources of the Emir were quite limited and development never really took off. This area is now a backwater, a relic of a bygone age. Almost nothing of old Urgench survives, New Urgench is a dying town, and the Amu Darya flows into contaminated desert, the Aral sea shrinking back.

2. Soghdia: Soghdia was always the center of Central Asia, both economically and geographically. Resting on fertile soils in the upwaters of the Amu Darya, such places as Bukhara and Samarkand became famed all around Central Asia. Interestingly, Soghdia, regardless of its fame, got hit the least of the many regions of the middle east. While Samarkand and the surrounding area were subjected to raids, its importance(as well as Bukhara's) saved it. Due to it being on the silk road, placed rather conveniently, it was spared Mongol slaughter, but never regained its position as the great pivot upon which Central Asia turned. In time, Bukhara would assume that role, and Herat as well.

3. Farghana and the Syr Darya: This area was the frontier land of Transoxiana. The Syr Darya, being even less fit for farming than the Amu Darya, was thinly settled as one moved into the Kyzl Kum desert. However, along its upper reaches, several cities rose. During the Khwarezemid era, the relative relaxed nature of Khitay raids meant that it was possible for Otrar to develop as the center here. Many traders going to Kokkand or Kashgar found Otrar an almost unquestionable stopping point, as its strong walls and large population could both protect them and supply them. However, as the frontier, once the Khwarezmids collapsed, Otrar was left open to the nomadic tribes.

The Mongols were first, of course. They attacked it with an unrelenting force of many thousands of deadly warriors, pillaging it and(in the beliefs of some Islamic writers, it is likely that this was hyperbole to emphasize the destruction) used its walls to build monuments to the destruction. Otrar eventually recovered its place as a transit under the later Mongol rulers, but was destroyed again by multiple incursions during the instability of the Chagatai Khanate. It never managed to regain its position as a strong city due to the raids which continued until the Junghar invasions of the late 1700s. The Sur Darya remains a sun-beaten backwater, hiding its secrets in the sands of time.

Ferghana had a bit of a more lucky history. Farghana is a nestled valley east of the Syr Darya, where a number of city found a convenient place to set up shop. The southern passes to Kashgar lie here, allowing the traveler to traverse the many mountains blocking his arrival in East Turkestan. Spared the destruction that befell many other cities in the Mongols' way, Kokkand, the main city here, rose greatly in prominence. It was here that Sultan Babar controlled before he invaded India, and his rule(as well as that of Akbar) greatly enriched it. The Junghar invasions damaged it significantly, but it was spared the greatest of the destruction. However, the 19th century saw the decline of Kokkand along with the entire emirate as a whole. The fall of the silk trade, the encroachment of Russia, and the chaos in Afghanistan made it a city barely worth the ground it stood on. An unfortunate victim to stagnation and a position that was once a blessing, but now a curse.

4. Afghanistan: 'Oh, Afghanistan. How you have fallen so! What has happened to cities of Balkh and Kunduz? The gardens of Ghazni and Qandahar? The great palaces of Kabul? You are like a mistress who has lost her lover and weeps for her children.' - Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir, part 3, pg 98. Really, Aghanistan is the saddest of the bunch. Its cities were once claimed to be the most beautiful in the world. Under the Samanids, Ghaznavids, Kwharezemids, braggart princes in Balkh and Kabul alike vied for the largest gardens, the most beautiful cities, and the most wondrous libraries. The cities listed in Ibn al-Athir's passage are the most important, for they are the hardest hit. Balkh deserves special mention, since it was a city that had existed in some continuity since the 6th century BC, but was never resettled after the deprecation of the Mongols. It had a library that rivaled Baghdad, but we know nothing of it, so complete was the destruction the Mongols wrought.

The whole of Afghanistan from the 13th century on is a sorrowful story of destruction and defeat. The Mongols in their first attack mainly swept by the north, destroying the great cities of Balkh, Kunduz, and Herat. Afterwards, the son of the Khwarezmid Shah, Jalal ad-din, attempted to use the area to bolster his efforts in defeating the Mongols. They were largely in vain, as the Afghan tribes were angered at his lack of diplomatic skill, and refused to help him. This led the Mongols to chase him around Iran and eventually defeat him, but that's for later. For now, let's focus on what his arrival did. The Ghaznavids had been largely replaced in this area by local Ashraf who did not pay any attention to the power of the Ghaznavids and the Ghulam on the Gangetic plain. This meant they were awfully unprepared to fight the Mongols. First Ghazni, then Kabul and Qandahar. Herat was sacked in turn and took many decades to regain its position.

The most notable effect was that on Afghan psyche, land use, and urbanization. There had always been herders in Afghanistan, but these herders and rural farmers had generally kept to the fringes, or were relatively weak. Tribal life, while common in remote areas of Afghanistan, was superseded by the Urban centers of civilization in such fertile areas as the Northern plain and Kabul. True wonders were created in this area, and it was acknowledged as the richest area of central asia, challenging even Persia's supremacy. It is estimated that the current urban:rural ratio is less than it was before the Mongols came. That's saying something.

The Mongols destroyed the land routes and urban centers, and the loss of the silk trade forced the urbanites who survived to live off the land. Highly productive land that could have been used for farming was instead used for herding, resulting in the total loss of all fertility in the southwest. Farah and Zaranj, once great leaders of the area of Baluchistan, became little more than little villages, barely etching out a living off the land. The Mongols absolutely destroyed Afghan urban life, and terrified the Afghans. The invasions by Timur, Babur, Nader Shah, the Junghars, and so on, only confirmed their paranoia. It is no wonder that the Taliban are a product of such a culture- it has been suffering post-traumatic stress disorder for several hundred years.

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Since I want to share this as an original thread in the War room, I'm going to, as promised, extend to this to such areas as Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Eastern Anatolia, and Syria. Enjoy.

Iran – Before the Mongol conquests, Iran was undergoing a transition period, a practical mess and a great battleground. Following the fall of the Seljuk Turks, Iran turned into an anarchic battleground for the various ashraf that called it home, weakening Iran's power in the Middle East and reducing its position. With the rise of the Khwarezmid shahs, Iran became a massive battlefield between them and the resurgent Abbasids, who had taken upon themselves to fight the expanding Turkic power. Near Rayy they thought, and according to Ibn al-Athir, the battle was fairly inconclusive. The fighting continued for several years and was a fairly vague recollection, not something very focused on, but in the end, the Khwarezmid proved victorious. Now there was a new period of power and glory brought to the Iranian plateau, but it would not last long.

Rayy, once one of the principal cities of the Middle East and capital of the Seljuq Dynasty was left moribund after the wars of the last 12th century and the anarchy of the early 13th. The invasion of the Khwarezmid dynasty allowed some measure of peace to return, but the old wealth of Rayy was lost and forgotten. Never again would it shine like it did for the Seljuks, and while valuable militarily (lying in a small corridor from western to eastern Iran, pinched in the north by mountains and in the south by desert) it would fade out of existence as time went on. The Mongol arrival did little to help its chances; the inhabitants fled from their dwellings in the villages around they had abandoned the main town due to its control by warlords) and now they disappeared for good. Rayy was left fairly unscathed by the Mongols, but there wasn't much to pillage. It was already, after all, a dying city. Teheran surpassed it, and in 1533, with an Uzbek raid into the area, the finishing of Teheran's walls ended any validity Rayy had for its existence.

Eshafan was a city with much better prospects. Like Rayy it had been the capital of the Seljuq Turks during its long history, but unlike it, grandeur stayed with it after their fall. Becoming one of the most important cities of the Salghurids, a dynasty of Ashraf that managed to outlive the Mongols well into the era of the Timurids, it managed to hold a special significance and was incredibly important for its central position on the plateau. When the Khwarezmids conquered it, it became the natural dual capital of the west, like Urgench in the east. This, however, had some unfortunate consequences for the city.

Due to its important position, it became a prime military target. However, unlike Rayy, it became the center of one of the Middle East's greatest stands against the Mongols until the Mamluks. At first, following the death of the Shah of Khwarizm after the Mongol invasion, it became under the control of his second son. He ruled the area for a few months or so, until the eldest son, Jalal ad-din, thundered into the area after hiding among Afghan tribes. The fight between them was bloodless, as the officers of the younger son's army immediately deserted him for the passionate and charismatic Jalal ad-din, and the younger son resigned himself, allowing himself to assist Jalal in the battle against the Mongols.

Jalal was particularly interesting because he was one of the only people who could confidently take on the Mongols, lose, and come right back up again. He fought them in the Elburz (a mountain range north of Teheran) and lost, only to continue. When the Mongols went back home to decide upon a new Khan, it gave Jalal the breathing room he needed to consolidate, and he didn't skip a beat. He attacked and pillaged Tbilisi, the capital of the Georgians, ending swiftly the carefully constructed hegemony of Queen Tamar (more on that later). He did not stop there, oh no; he then took the fight to the Egyptian dynasty of the Ayyubids and the Sultanate of Rum in Anatolia. There he fought them to a standstill until a battle in the Van region, where he was defeated and his state began to crumble around him.

After that battle, the Ayyubids unfortunately welcomed their own deaths. The battle sufficiently weakened Jalal's army to the point where the Mongols could now confidently go on the offensive, swiping his newly built empire from him and crushing his forces. Eshafan fell to them and they massacred the population. The fall of Jalal ad-din's empire essentially created a corridor for the Mongols so that they could thunder into the near east and Anatolia without much issue. The Ayyubid victory would turn to damage them in a great historical irony, sweeping away their state as they struggled to fight the Mamluks in Egypt.

The fall of Iran was not actually that much damaging to the area as it seemed to be. Although the population fell by a very substantial amount (5 million before and 3.5 million after in some estimates) it wasn't the initial Mongol invasion which caused the real damage to the area. It was the catalyst that the Mongols provided, by opening the floodgates, so to speak, for nomadic invasions. In addition, the Mongol invasion allowed a switch from agrarian to pastoral practices, such as Afghanistan. Iran still had a very important position in the Middle East so it did not turn to rural structures so much as Afghanistan, but it still switched over. This unrelenting pastoralism also took another toll on Iran: It weakened the fertility of the soil. Large amounts of previously fertile land were turned into rough grazing land or semi-desert due to unsustainable herding practices.

Of course, it was not simply the locals which turned to pastoralism. It was during this time that a large amount of tribes came into the Iranian plateau, either piggybacking with the Mongols or being mercenaries called in. While there had been a significant expansion of Turks within the Iranian plateau before, it now exploded into levels never seen before. Due to this, a large amount of Iran's population is now in fact Turkish, such as the Luris or the Qarqai. Like in Central Asia, Turkic tribes managed to expand and take areas formerly held by Iranian landlords, thereby switching the balance in their favor. In Iran, obviously the amount of Persians (speaking of the ethnicity) was far higher, so it was difficult for such a transition to take place. They still took a fairly predominant role in society, however.

Iran would continue to be the base of great empires, but also the subject of massive massacres. The Mongol invasions ushered in a period of instability, as the il-Khans were not the most competent of rulers. Though there were a few, such as Ghazan, who allowed some measure of peace to return to the plateau, it would not know true security until the Safavids in the 16th century took it from the myriad of Turkish rulers disputing it (such as the White Sheep Turks). It was obvious the mark that the Mongols took on the land, but in the words of Ibn al-Athir on the fall of Eshafan: 'She is a strong land, that Iran. She shall survive and emerge stronger than she had been before, for it is her way. Iran does not stop to think of her torture, but continues on into the future.'

Watch this post for updates on Iraq, Georgia, Khorasan (northeastern Iran, I'd like to cover it more detail since I skimped over it in this post) and various other places. If you'd like to ask a question, a comment, a criticism, or whatever, go right ahead. For this I've used mainly the Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir, The Cambridge History of Iran, and a number of other works.

 

[Cetashwayo]

Iraq - Geographically, the area of Iraq is the alluvial plain of the Tigris and Euphrates. It is bounded in the east and north by the Zagros Mountains, to the south by the Persian gulf, and to the west by the Syrian desert. Since historical definitions shifted over time, this will only focus on the area of southern Iraq, as it was traditionally controlled by the Abbasids. Northern Iraq and Syria will be discussed at a later date.

Iraq had always been considered a major pivot of the Middle East. The area was taken from the Sassanids during the Arab invasions, and several major battles were fought here. After the fall of the Persian Empire, several Arab cities were founded in the area, namely Basra and Kufa. Basra became a very important port, while Kufa faded away into the background with the founding of Baghdad. With the fall of the Umayyad Caliphate, Iraq reached the height of its grandeur when the Abbasids constructed Baghdad north of the Sassanid ruins of Ctesiphon. It was from here that one of the largest empires the world had ever known would operate.

Through most of the 9th century, the massive Abbasid empire's goods all flowed into Baghdad. It was estimated that the population of the city itself could have reached up to 1.2 million, making it one of the largest cities in the world at that time. Huge canal works were created in order for more land to be brought under cultivation. It was the great age of Iraq, but unfortunately, it was also the last of its golden days. The very political power that had brought such wealth and power to Iraq had now come to take it away.

The 10th century was a period of incredible instability within the Caliphate. Turkish Viziers slowly took the reins of the Caliphate, diminishing the Caliph's temporal power. The Buyid Empire, a Twelver Emirate based in Fars, invaded and took over the area, beginning a period of feuding within Iraq. Invasions from the neighboring emirates, the Fatimid Caliphate, and others caused Iraq to become fairly unstable politically. The population of Baghdad dropped significantly during this period, and much of the countryside was being slowly abandoned.

The rise of the Seljuks and their fall only accentuated the collapse of Baghdad. It had to, essentially, play second fiddle to The Seljuk Empire, which became the new pivot of the middle eastern economy. Baghdad was still important, but its role was greatly diminished. The Seljuks appointed the Caliph as the Titular ruler of the Abbasids, but it was mainly a traditional gesture rather than an actual granting of power. The 11th century would be like the 10th: decay and political failure to react to a changing situation.

The fall of the Seljuks gave Iraq some breathing room, but just barely. In the late 12th century, a series of powerful Caliphs began to wield power once more, and in order to facilitate their growing interest in power, invading Iran. Not much is known about these invasions. What is known is that the Caliphate took over Hamadan and Kermanshah, two small Ashraf which had broken off from the Seljuks, and began fighting the rising power of Khwarizm.

They lost to Khwarizm, losing their momentum and once again insulating themselves within Iraq. This time was fraught with conflicts that damaged the canals and lowered the population. Still, Baghdad had a formidable population of around 300,000, and the Caliphate as a whole probably had around 1.5 million people, a not-insubstantial number. The damage to the canals, however, sealed the environmental fate of Iraq, causing those remaining to be silted with soil due to lack of maintenance and allowing salinization to take hold, turning areas that were once fertile into brutally hot salt flats.

Over the next few decades, the Mongols sent several detachments to fight the Abbasids. These were defeated several times, but the Abbasids paid tribute to them nonetheless. In 1246, Guyuk Khan demanded that the Abbasid Caliph come and submit himself to his court, but he refused. It is believed that a Mongol commander by the name of Baiju, a good warrior but certainly no silver tongue, had antagonized the Caliph and thus stopped the Mongols from exerting their full authority over them.

The succession of Mongke Khan was to prove the death of the Abbasids. In 1257 the hungry Khan sent his brother, Hulegu to Iran. He sent an ultimatum to the caliph: If he does not assist Hulegu with the destruction of the Nizaris(better known to many as the Hashasheen or Assassins, an Isma'ili sect centered around the fortress of Alamut in Iran), he will attack Baghdad and destroy it outright. It was obvious that this was the prelude to war, so the Caliph relented and when Hulegu moved against the Nizaris, he refused the demand of the Mongol commander.

This was to be the fatal decision of the Caliph. The caliph, one Musta'sim, was not a man of great political skill or power, nor was he a military genius like Jalal ad-din or Baibars. Instead of preparing his forces, he believed that they could easily strike down the forces of Hulegu at the walls of Baghdad. Here the record becomes muddled as to the aspirations and ideas of the Caliph; such an irrational behavior must have had some explanation, but it is lost to time.

The Mongols utterly destroyed the Assassins, smashing their fortress at Alamut and executing their grandmaster. After that, they had no enemies which could challenge them on the route to Baghdad, and they descended upon the city. It was a swift siege, and the unfortunate Caliph had few options. He didn't dare surrender the city, for he knew the Mongols would simply massacre the inhabitants, but he could not fight either. He delayed and attempted to stall the Mongols, but at last, the Noble city of Baghdad fell. What happened next was to scar the Muslim world and alter it completely, and put Iraq on the road towards poverty and obscurity.

The Mongols burst into the city like a raging hurricane, and once they had seized the walls and the Caliph surrendered, they did not stop their killing. Estimates of the murder vary greatly, with numbers as low as 90,000 to as high as one million. Clearly, the latter estimate is false, and was likely fabricated by completely shocked scholars who had not witnessed the events. In reality, the death toll of the city was likely around 150,000. When Hulegu Khan wrote to the King of France to boast of his accomplishments, he wrote of a death toll of 200,000. Generally, the leader of the invading force will exaggerate their accomplishments, so simple logic dictates that Hulegu's number is the highest possible, and that anything higher is an outright fabrication.

The Caliph was killed in a fairly peculiar way. There was an old superstition that one could not spill the blood of the Caliph, so instead of executing him in the usual way, he was rolled up in a carpet and trampled upon by horses until he was dead. Now, with the death of the Caliph, the Mongols set upon destroying the work of centuries. Nowhere was the destruction of cultural artifacts and buildings more thorough than here. It was debauchery on the highest level; centuries of refinement and Islamic culture wiped out by a single army.

Mosques, libraries, and other such buildings were destroyed without issue. Tiles were even ripped out of the walls and looted. The Grand Library of Baghdad, the culmination of centuries of copying Greek works or creating new ones was burnt to the ground and its great trove taken and burnt. Though many accounts claim the Tigris ran black with ink, this is likely an exaggeration, but an apt one.

The aftermath of the massacre was silence. The entire city was almost utterly devastated; those Muslims who did not flee died in the city or lived among scraps. In a twist of fate, the large Nestorian population of the city was spared, and they formed the bulk of the entire city's population for a few years. Though the city was ordered to be rebuilt by Hulegu, it would never go back to its former glory.

Now with the city destroyed, Hulegu went to the countryside and destroyed the canals which had not been damaged by the civil wars before the Mongol invasion. It was said that every stone of every canal was taken and used in other areas, utterly devastating the fragile balance of Mesopotamian agriculture. Thousands of years of digging, re-digging, planning and surveying had come to naught with this destruction. The Muslims that fled to the countryside now found themselves starving and fighting against the farmers for food, accentuating the death toll. All in all, Iraq lost around 1/3 of its population, but unlike areas such as Iran, it didn't get these numbers back until the 19th century, when the Ottomans build sewers for Baghdad and caused it to flourish once more, if only for a short time.

The succeeding centuries for Iraq are unfortunate ones. After the fall of the Abbasids, there was little work done to rebuild any of the canals, due to the constantly shifting owners of the region. The Il-khans succeeded in rebuilding some of Baghdad, but no sooner had their work been completed then the Timurids came into the area and pillaged it once again. Iraq changed hands several times throughout the centuries. After the fall of the Timurids, the poorly developed area came into the hands of the White Sheep Turks, a large dynasty which had originated in the Van region of Anatolia but had spread across most of Western Persia.

The dynasty proved to be unstable and the Safavids (A Shi'a dynasty that conquered Persia) defeated them, taking their land. However, there was a new, powerful player in the area, and they hungered Iraq: The Ottomans. The Safavids fought them several times over the years, but the Ottoman military and power proved superior, and when the Safavids began to slip into decadence and corruption, the Ottomans seized all of Iraq. They held it for several hundred years, and then it was given to the British, and well, the rest is history.

Indeed, Iraq is a region that one must pity. Never particularly blessed by rains or a stable atmosphere, it still managed to create a massively successful civilization multiple times and act as the pivot of an entire religion. In the end, however, Iraq's fragile agricultural system proved its undoing; any enemy that wanted to could destroy the canals, turning the fertile plains into salt flats or blistering desert. Today the scarring still exists: Iraq has never fully recovered from its depredations under the Mongols. It is estimated, even with modern technology, that only 60% of the land that was irrigated under the Abbasids is now irrigated. Much of the land that was irrigated under the Abbasids is now complete desert; the Tigris and Euphrates shift constantly, and make canal work difficult. Only time will tell if one day, perhaps in the future, Iraq will be able to regain its status and rightly call itself part of the 'Fertile Crescent' once more.

 

[Cetashwayo]

Georgia- Today's Georgia is a peculiarity. Bounded to the south and the east by Muslims (and by Muslim areas under Russian control to the north) it seems that such a state could have never developed. However, this state of being for Georgia was not always like this. Georgia was once a powerful kingdom, commanding a massive swath of land in the Caucasus and at one time being the principal Eastern orthodox state in the east. Now, however, that glory is long gone.

To understand the situation of Georgia, it is easier to look back to the 11th century. During this chaotic time, the Georgians fought the invading Seljuk Turks fiercely, but in the aftermath of Manzikert their forces were sorely outnumbered and demoralized and they were crushed, much of Armenia and eastern Georgia falling to the Seljuks. However, most of western Georgia and Akbhazia remained intact, albeit in fragmented kingdoms struggling to pick up the pieces.

The Seljuk Hegemony did not last, however; in the last 1000s a particularly powerful ruler by the name of David IV managed to unite these quarreling kingdoms and take the reins of Georgia. Had the Seljuks had their hands free, they likely would have crushed him as he prepared his troops, but there were far more important matters for them to deal with in the Levant, specifically the crusaders. Thus David IV led a powerful force against them, seizing much of the interior of the Georgian heartland and in 1122 seizing Tbilisi from the Seljuks, and making it his capital. In the following years he reorganized the state and brought in Kipchaks (A Turkic group) and settled them within the depopulated interior to supplement his cavalry. The combined Georgian-Kipchak army became the most powerful military in the entire Caucasus, worrying their Muslim neighbors to the south. Fearing a Georgian crusade, the Ortuqids, a southern Turkish Muslim dynasty declared a Jihad and gathered a sizable amount of men to fight them.

Now, at this point, the numbers become a blabber of nationalist figures. Truly absurd figures of 250,000 have been suggested, but it is more likely that the combined Muslim army was around 20-30,000, with similar, though probably less, for the Georgians. Since Georgia is a relatively obscure area and Muslim sources are lacking, it seems that the only possible fact that can be stated with confidence is that David IV defeated the Muslims. There are hints to an Ortuqid weakening following the failure of the Jihad, hinting that his defeat was particularly crippling. It lessened the load for a time on the Crusader county of Edessa, allowing it to have enough breathing room to start bickering with the Principality of Antioch instead of fighting Muslim raiders.

The succeeding decades were one of progress and unchallenged expansion. The grandson of David IV, George III, brought under his heel most of Armenia, at that time under the control of petty Muslim princes and emirs. Much of this era was one of the consolidation of the Georgian state and the expansion of its culture outwards. The Orthodox state church flourished throughout this era and Georgian culture bloomed. Georgia created its own identity separate of Byzantium's, even challenging it several times on matters of trade or political dominance. Most of the time, however, they worked in tandem to fight the Turks.

The daughter of George III, Tamar, was to be the greatest Georgian ruler to have ever lived. Under her the state reached the epitome of its power and influence, all due to her excellent leadership. In the end, she turned Georgia from a state playing second fiddle to Byzantium to a power that was the strongest in the region and perhaps helped inspire the myths of 'Prestor John' the presumed Orthodox King who was going to assist the crusaders from the east by attacking the Muslims from the other direction.

As a woman, Tamar's early reign was characterized by her challenging the aristocracy who saw her as weak or unfit to rule. Many of them did not trust her regardless of the blessings of her Father and co-regent, George III. The nobles exerted considerable control over her, and since George III had antagonized them during his later reign by refusing to recant his decision to make Tamar the leader of Georgia, they demanded that she replace the chancellor that was loyal to George III with one more amiable to the noble interests. Without much choice in the matter, Tamar grudgingly agreed, entering a period where she had to bow to the concessions of the nobility.

With the death of the chancellor they forced her to appoint, however, Tamar was able to subvert the nobility in a swift move, marrying a loyal noble to cement her position. She made sure that the nobility was now moved from any position of power, and with her little game within Georgia completed, she could now consolidate her forces and look outwards. Her husband, David Soslan, assisted her in these campaigns and allowed her military might to expand with such speed, as he was a competent commander, much more so than those of their Muslim neighbors.

Previously, the dynastic confusion combined with the danger of the post-Seljuk Azeri emirates had stopped the Georgian state from any sort of real, competent expansion, but under Tamar the Georgians were able to advance yet again. Her first targets were the states in eastern Azerbaijian, and she soon challenged them on the field of battle. First the Ildenizids fell to their forces, with their sultan only able to resume his reign a few years later as a pitiless vassal to the dynamic Queen, and then the Shirvanshahs of Baku collapsed under her attacks, sharing the fate of their Ildenizid neighbors.

Though Tamar had expected to end there and leave it at that, an unexpected ally came to assist her in her quest: Two Armenian brothers with great military prowess brought their own personal armies to bear against the Muslims of Armenia, seizing the city of Ani and the Queen allowed them to have it as their personal fief. The brothers had a certain strength and charisma around themselves, and they did not stop there; they took back Dvin, one of the larger cities of Armenia, back in 1203, practically completing the conquest of the land and expanding the Kingdom of Georgia to new heights. It now stretched from the Black sea to the Caspian and controlled both the Armenian highlands and the valleys of Georgia, a task not done by a native ruler since Tigranes.

The expansion of the state did not go unnoticed, however; the Seljuks of Rum, resurgent under their powerful new ruler Suleymanshah II, organized an attack against Tamar, aiming to defeat her and put the Georgians in their place. The new ruler was arrogant, however, and underestimated the intelligence of David Soslan, defeating his forces near Erzurum and shocking the Muslim world. One of the strongest powers in the region had been defeated by an upstart, and a Christian one, no less. From this point on, there were no significant threats to Georgia, as Suleymanshah II died later in 1203.

Georgia was now forced to look to Constantinople now, though, as in the fateful year of 1204 the city of Constantinople fell to a crusader army. Tamar, always eying the land of Trebizond in Pontus as her own, took the opportunity with open arms: She invaded the region to keep it out of the hands of the opportunistic Seljuks, who while in chaos following Suleymanshah's death could still pose a considerable threat to her newly constructed empire. She allowed Alexios Comnenus to set up his state in the area, thereby creating a friendly satellite that she could control and which guarded to route to Imereti, the westernmost Georgian region bordering the black sea.

Tamar's reign was not one of just military conquest: Though exaggerated by 19th century romantics, this was the classical era of Georgia's culture, and the nation thrived as a whole. Feudal restrictions were relaxed in many areas, and where they weren't, the richness of the peasants allowed a fairly un-oppressive and stable atmosphere to develop. With her enemies crushed, Georgia did not need to worry about raiders attacking the border farms and having to develop extensive fortifications around her borders. It was unfortunate that this laxity was to be her downfall in the succeeding years.

Tamar's death in 1213 aroused much sorrow within the Georgian state, but for a time things seemed to be stable. George IV, her son, seemed to be a competent ruler, and for a time it seemed as though Georgia might even organize an expedition to assist the crusaders (adding further credence that the Georgians were partially responsible for the crusader idea of 'Prestor John'). However, this expedition was called off when the Mongols came into view.

The Mongols had come into the area by curiosity: They had been chasing the Shah of Khwarizm, Muhammad II to the Caspian, and upon his ousting, had the consent of Genghis khan to launch a reconnaissance mission into Armenia. At the battle of Khunan in central Armenia, they defeated a surprisingly large Georgian force, severely wounding the Georgian King. However, they did not stay in Georgia, as events to the south demanded their attention. In 1221 they returned to the area in force, attacking the Georgians at the battle of Bardav, but as it had no clear victor, the frustrated Mongols returned to the Caspian and began to pillage the vassals of Georgia as they went, damaging Georgia's position in the area and weakening its ability to fight.

This eventually took them to Alania and the Rus, where they fought against them, defeating them handily. The Georgians were left disoriented and confused, and with the death of Georgia IV in 1223, they had little fight left in them, Rusudan, his weak sister, took to the throne, but was unable to muster any power to fight the Mongols. Indeed, the Georgians didn't even seem to understand who their enemy was: They had assumed they were Christian because they fought Muslims, but later realized that they were in fact Pagans of an origin on the steppe.

Amusingly, the greatest blow to Georgia was not done by the Mongols, but by Jalal ad-din, the aforementioned heir to Khwarizm. In his attempts to flee the Mongols, he saw the weakened Georgians as an excellent target and as a way for him to gain prestige in the Muslim world, thereby having other leaders in the area support him. He defeated the Georgians handily at the Battle of Garni, and took Tbilisi from the Georgians in 1226, massacring the entire population when they refused to convert to Islam. However, Jalal ad-din's attacks raised anger in the Sultanate of Rum, which had been attempting to use Georgia as a screen against the Mongols. Forging an alliance with Georgia, they defeated Jalal in Armenia, and he withdrew for a few months to deal with new Mongol incursions.

The Georgians took this time to take back Tbilisi, but in a twist of fate, were immediately forced to abandon it- they had torched the city when fighting against the garrison occupying it. Jalal returned in force in 1228, defeating the Georgians at Bolnisi before the Seljuks could arrive. Jalal's days were numbered, of course, as both the Mongols and the Seljuks now chased him, and in 1231 a crippling defeat in Turkey destroyed his army and momentum. He fell prey to the Mongols within a few years.

The side effect of the fall of Jalal ad-din was, not surprisingly, that there was no barrier to protect Georgia against them. The Mongols came in 1236, and most of devastated Georgia fell to them. Some nobles persisted, however, including the prince of Samtskhe, a sizable province within southern Georgia. To make an example, he was handily defeated, executed, and his land pillaged. The Queen fled to Kutaisi in western Georgia, but the Mongols, not wanting to over-exert their forces, did not pursue her. Instead, she had to pay an incredible tribute and supply Georgian forces to assist the Mongols.

Throughout the rest of the 13th century, massive amounts of Georgian men were forced to fight for the Mongols at such battles as Ain Jalut, whittling down their number and leaving no native garrisons within Georgia, causing tax revolts and noble rebellion, encouraging heavy handed Mongol retaliation. Georgia was a devastated land demographically, psychologically, and culturally, but during the rise of the Il-khans Georgia was able to regain its independence, and under such leaders as King Georgi IV in the 1330s, but even then it was a shadow of its former self. The west now took the dominant role, with the east being tax-starved and devastated a symbol of the terror of the past.

Unfortunately, Georgia was not quite finished with its dilapidation. The Timurid Empire in the late 1300s utterly devastated the slowly recovering Georgian state, deporting tens of thousands to Persia and Iraq and destroying the Georgian identity after he had defeated it easily in several battles. Timur settled a number of nomadic tribes within Georgia, introducing instability and competition between these tribes and the native Georgians, creating difficulties for any leader who wanted to rebuild it.

Not that any got a chance, however: Georgia was humiliated by the Persians and the Ottomans, and soon became a battleground between these two. It switched hands multiple times until finally the Russians seized it and deposed the royal family, deporting them to various unpleasant destinations. It was under the Russians for over a hundred years and the rest, as we know it, is history.

 

[Cetashwayo]

Levant Part I- The area of Syria and the Levant was a bit more expansive in the Middle Ages than in modern times; Syria encompassed much of south-central Turkey (particularly the areas around Edessa and Alexandretta today). Much like today, however, its boundary was set at approximately the Euphrates River, with its southern border being vague and undefined, stopping at roughly the modern Golan Heights but in some definitions including the Transjordan. The Levant in medieval times generally referred to the Mediterranean coastal strip which enjoyed a mild climate reminiscent of North Africa or Italy. This coastal strip stretched northwards to Antioch, which was often made distinct from outer Syria due to its more Greek heritage and difference in climate.

The area has had a long and important history; straddling the east-west routes for trade and being the main corridor from Egypt to Iraq, the area was hotly contested for thousands of years, the inhabitants often caught in the crossfire. Religion simply added another element to this quarrel, mixing piety with quarrel and turning it into an incredibly important, if poorly populated and impecunious region. It is into this that we dive into, in approximately the year 1150.

At this time the Levant was split between the Crusading states of the west, collectively referred to as Outremer, and a number of Muslim emirates, often confused and feuding, with the exception of one. These were the Zangids, powerful Turkic emirs who had gotten control of Mosul in the 1120s and under their skilled ruler Imam ad-din Zengi, seized control of the county of Edessa. This instigated a second crusade, which ended in immense folly for the crusaders. Before even getting to the holy land, the majority were slaughtered by Turks. The remaining crusaders managed to make it to the Holy land and pushed for a new attack against the Muslims. Instead of attacking Edessa or attempting a siege of Aleppo (a practically impossible task), they attacked the independent Amir of Damascus.

Damascus had previously been a valuable ally to the Kingdom of Jerusalem due to its strategic position which stopped Zengi from surrounding the crusader states. Unfortunately for Jerusalem, the new crusaders did not at all agree with this sort of status quo, putting piety over politics. They lobbied for an invasion of Damascus, an attack that if successful, could theoretically allow them to control one of the richest cities in the Levant as well as trade routes going through the Transjordan. Unfortunately for the Crusaders, they inadvertently spelled their own doom with this invasion.

Imam ad-din Zengi had died in 1146, replaced by his similarly pious son Nur ad-din Zengi. Nur ad-din had an immense advantage over his father in the way that he did not have to worry about Mosul, as it was given to another son. Since he only had to focus on the crusader states, he could devote his full attention to them and conquering Damascus. The city had long resisted Nur ad-din's offers of aid, and for good reason; dependency would prelude conquest, and they would lose their independence. Frustrated and wary of the crusaders, Nur ad-din had to bide his time.

Luckily, he did not have to wait long, as the Crusaders gave him his wish by their siege of Damascus and the weakening of the amirate. Nur ad-din seized his chance and routed the Crusader army, overthrowing the leader of the city soon after and crushing all before him. With southern Syria secured, the Crusaders were almost completely surrounded, and Nur ad-din began a systematic destruction of the holy orders, the most stalwart opposition he faced. Multiple times he routed relief armies from Jerusalem.

A sudden change of events in Egypt, the old decaying husk of the Fatimids, drew his attention. There, a Fatimid Vizier by the name of Shawar had been overthrown by another, Dirgham, and caused much confusion within the Fatimid state. Amalric, King of Jerusalem, low on funds and seeing his chance, invaded the country with the pretext of the Fatimids not paying tribute. The invasion collapsed due to numerous blunders that Amalric made, however, and they were forced to withdraw.

Nur ad-din began to attack the crusaders in Syria in order to distract their attentions, launching an unsuccessful invasion of Tripoli. Shawar, the exiled Vizier of Egypt, pleaded that he restore his leadership, and with his general's encouragement Nur ad-din agreed. Despite an alliance of Fatimid and Crusader, Nur ad-din defeated them and took control of Egypt for Shawar.

The ungrateful Shawar immediately changed sides, helping Amalric and causing Nur ad-din to go into a fury. He launched another invasion of Syria, and with his powerful general Shirkuh was able to seize control of most of Egypt, with Amalric keeping control of Alexandria and the Delta. This did not please Nur ad-din, however, and in 1169 Shirkuh launched another invasion, forcing the crusaders out of Egypt and taking full control of the country.
It was at this time that Shirkuh passed away and the control of the country was passed to his favored Nephew, Salah ad-din, popularly referred to as Saladin in western texts. Saladin began his takeover of the country, silently wiping out the Shi'a aristocracy. There was little lost love between the Fatimids and the people of Egypt, so he did not face opposition. Within a few years, all his possible political opponents had been wiped out, and he could focus on a threat coming at him from a familiar direction.
Nur ad-din had been mobilizing his forces for an attack against Shirkuh and subsequently Saladin because while both had sworn nominal loyalty to him, Nur ad-din was cunning enough to realize that he had blundered and handed Egypt into the hands of a skillful, ambitious general. He wasted no time in preparing for his attack, but the aged man passed away due to a throat infection during the 1170s. With Nur ad-din dead and his domain being torn apart, Saladin took his chance.

As he had cleansed his political opponents, he had built up a powerful military and economic infrastructure capable of challenging his Syrian counterpart. With any chance of invasion out of the way, Saladin set out to fulfill his passed enemy's dream; unite Egypt and Syria as a massive bastion of Islam and a platform from which to cleanse the holy land of the Crusaders.

After a few incidents with the Hashashin, which taught Saladin to wisely stay away from their fortress in Northern Syria, he took control of Aleppo and Damascus and finished off the last of his enemies in Syria. With them out of the way, he could focus on the true prize, the Crusader states. He attacked them several times, but as is well documented, his true invasion began in 1187, when he definitively ended the possibility of real crusader resistance at the Horns of Hattin.

The following years were one of feuding and marked by another crusade. Saladin passed away shortly after it ended, leaving his realm, now known as the Ayyubids(after Saladin's Grandfather, Ayyub) in a state of civil war between several of his sons. After a period of interregnum, al-Afdal, one of his many sons, managed to take control of Egypt, but the situation had gone out any real bearing. The Ayyubids had descended into a quasi-feudal, barely held together confederation of individual holdings held by princes. Saladin had a gratuitous amount of sons, and this led to many of them being in control of small holdings, leading to a strange type of government where every real landholder was related to all the others.

This continued on for some time, with numerous disturbances and confusions being commonplace. However, the general state of things was a slow development of Syria. Due to the decentralization of the realm and the lack of conflict, many areas previously war-torn were allowed to relax, and under the Ayyubids Arabic culture within Syria was allowed to flourish. One Sultan built 37 Madrassahs in Damascus alone, more than the whole of Syria beforehand.

This state of general happiness was not to last, however. As the years went on and al-Kamil, the premier Sultan of the day grew older, the old family ties became strained and weakened. When al-Kamil died in 1238, the entire dynasty was faced with a crisis: Do we continue the old ways of an increasingly distant system of family ties, or do we diversify into something else?

As-Salih had the answer. Overthrowing his brother in 1240 and seizing control of the whole dynasty, he defeated his enemy with a unique mercenary: Mamluks. The Mamluks, mainly Kipchak Turk slaves which he had specially trained for military use, were highly powerful and professional mercenaries who fought mainly from horseback, utterly smashing most opposition. After destroying most of his opposition, As-Salih used his clout and the fact that there was little point to it anymore to destroy the old system of family ties, instead centralizing the country around Cairo and developing Egypt. As-Salih brought a large amount of wealth into Egypt, and greatly expanded the army.

Formerly it had been mishmash of mercenaries and poor levies run by disingenuous Princes who often squabbled with each other, but As-Salih reformed it to be run by his mercenary Mamluks. In addition, as a foreshadowing countermeasure to their power, he brought in a huge amount of Kurds who contributed to perhaps a third of his total army. Crucially, however, they were not his personal guards and he never gave them the same amount of power as he did to the Mamluks.

The time came when the Crusaders, who had gotten a brief respite from Ayyubid invasions by internal squabbling on the side of the Muslims and general lack of organized urge to attack, were once again invaded, and this time would not get a chance to fight back. As-Salih crushed them handily, defeating the people who had once dared to invade Egypt and reverting the unsatisfactory agreement that al-Kamil had signed that allowed the Crusaders a control over Jerusalem if they allowed Muslims to pray and worship there. Done due to al-Kamil's lack of interest in Jerusalem as a whole, its survival of over fifteen years told many things about the lack of organized will to fight on the side of the Ayyubids.

Though this was a great moral victory for Islam, as-Salih would not be left off easy by the crusaders. In 1249 the King of France organized yet another crusade, this time to attack Egypt. They seized Damietta and attacked Mansurah, but were held off by a certain man called Baibars. As-Salih, who had been camping in Mansurah, died because of a botched amputation, leaving his son Turanshah as the Sultan of the whole realm. However, because he was away in Eastern Turkey, the Mamluks took their chance and overthrew the government, taking over Egypt.

The Mamluks were unable to assert their control over the Ayyubids in Syria, leading to the states coexisting in a state of hostility, but neither able to do much to each other. While the Mamluks were able to force out the Crusaders, they lacked the necessary power, logistics, or infrastructure to conquer all of the Ayyubid Syrian state. The Ayyubids, meanwhile, were in disarray due to the loss of Egypt, and had been momentarily confused by a confusing flood of refugees from Iran and Kurdistan. Nevertheless, they seemed ready to fight back against the Mamluks and take back the land which Saladin had originally given to them. Then the Mongols came.

 

[Cetashwayo]

Levant Part 2- The Mongol onslaught upon the Levant and Egypt was one which took some time to materialize. The Mongols did not go directly for Syria, but instead destroyed the assassins and the Abbasids in an aforementioned article. Once they had finished with them, the danger seemed ever-present to the Ayyubids, who were still a confederation of princes, albeit one with a more centralized leadership that they had when Egypt and Syria were united.

The Ayyubid Sultan offered peace and submission to Hulegu Khan. He refused. Thus began the Mongol invasion of Syria. Al-Nasir, the Ayyubid sultan, fortified Aleppo in preparation of the Mongol invasion, but it was of little use, and the city fell. Joining the Mongols were some notably Christian allies; the Cilician Armenians and Antioch, both states under attack from Muslim powers and seeing a last, desperate chance for survival capitalized on the Mongol invasion and joined them to fight the Ayyubid state.

Aleppo's fate needs little guessing. One can only say that it had a similar end as Baghdad. With the fall of Aleppo, only Damascus stood in the way of the Mongol invasion in the Ayyubid lands. Noting its own danger, the citizens of the city drove their sultan from it and opened the gates to the invaders. Christians converted the beautiful Umayyad mosque into a church and paraded throughout it. It was at this time that the Mongols sent a message to terrify the Mamluks at Cairo, who had been watching with an anxious interest at the events until that point.

The Mongol invasion stimulated, in equal terms, worry and opportunity for many of the Mamluks. It was clear that the Mongols were going to attack in force and that no one else had been able to properly stand against them at this point. It is also true that the Mongols were, in a number of words, pillagers and conquerors, and thus any attack against Egypt that was successful would end in catastrophe for the region. There were, however benefits that only a few men, among them Baybars, saw in this.

First of all, the Cicilian Armenians and the Principality of Antioch had hedged their bets with the Mongol invasions. This was a sign of desperation in a time when showing such desperation invited jackals and vultures. Indeed, Armenia had been weakened by the rising power of the Seljuk Turks on their northern border and Antioch's economic and political power ailed with the rest of the crusaders. Should the Mongols be soundly defeated, the end of these states as a threat to Muslim hegemony in the region would be ended.

Such calculations, however, assumed that the Mamluks would come out on top, something that in 1250 seemed hardly possible. A new dynasty composed of the slave soldiers of the previous hardly had as much legitimacy, and the instability of leadership under Qutuz was clear. Still, they had several advantages on their side that many of the former enemies of the Mongols had not possessed. In the first place, theirs was a bloodied and veteran force; many of the men that fought at Ain Jalut had fought ten years earlier forcing the crusaders from Damietta. Among them was Baybars. They also had a legacy of centralized rule established by As-Salih to draw upon, making them far less likely to collapse under the same pressure that made defeating other dynasties such an ease for the Mongols. Finally, the logistics of it endeared itself to the Mamluks. They were fighting on the home ground, in Palestine, where the Mongols could wait months for reinforcement and news. This meant that a Mongol invasion could not be reinforced and resupplied as effectively, a fact that Baybars was sure to utilize. Also important to the Mamluks was their tradition of being a powerful cavalry and infantry force of trained soldiers. Not bogged down in the rivalries which made Khwarizm so much weaker in the face of incursion, they could present a united front and tap into the valuable resource of the Nile in order to bolster their power.

Most important of all, however, was Baibars. Even discounting the intrigues and manipulations which led to his rise to power in a fashion typical of a successful general, he was an excellent commander. He particularly excelled at understanding the needs of logistics, setting up a system of smoke signals and forts with which to better communicate with his troops. However, most of these tactics were later, when he became Sultan and had the resources of the state behind him. Before this, his greatest victory was at Ain Jalut.

The Mongol invasion that ended in that fateful victory had been continuing south after the victory in Damascus; after seizing much of the Transjordan, the Mongols tried and failed to secure alliance with the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which opted instead for cautious neutrality. Though it is not entirely clear why Jerusalem did not side with Antioch, it seems that they decided instead that a more cautious, neutral approach was the better one. Most importantly, they saw the Mongols not as an ally but an immediate threat, a more prudent position than their neighbors in Syria and Cicilia. Even though the Mamluks were a worrying danger, the crusaders had less reason to fear the enemy they knew than the enemy they didn't. In either case, it was decisive as it forced Kitbuqa, the Mongol commander, to take a longer route and allowed Baibars more time to prepare his forces. The crusaders even provided military access to Baibars, allowing him to camp near Acre.

The two forces met at Ain Jalut in Palestine, near the lake of galilee. Baibars had the advantage right away, as when he had been a fugitive many years prior, he had developed knowledge of many of the landforms here. Cautious in his approach and weary of inciting the full wrath of the Mongol cavalry, Baibars employed hit and run tactics upon Kitbuqa for many hours. After growing annoyed and frustrated by the evasive measures, Kitbuqa was lured into, ironically, a feigned retreat, a favored tactic of the Mongols. Baibars, who had conserved his forces and not thrown them into a meat grinder, now unveiled a hidden force which constituted the bulk of his men, and threw them at Kitbuqa, surrounding the Mongol forces. The arrow fire from the mounted Mamluk cavalry wore on Kitbuqa, and his attempts to break out of the pocket were deflected by skilled intervention by reserve Mamluk forces employed by Baibars. When the battle finally ended, most of the Mongol force had been killed or routed. Kitbuqa was dead.

Often, popular historians escalate this as the only battle the Mongols ever lost when a united empire. This is a problematic approach. While the scale of the defeat was much larger than many before, the Mongols had lost some battles before. More important was the implications. There was little chance here of a second invasion force coming; the Mongols in the area had been spent. The loss, however, was humiliating for Hulegu, that is unquestionable. The Mamluks had managed to defeat a large, trained force of Mongols and live to tell the tale, and that was simply untenable. Circumstances, however, turned him away from a campaign of retribution. The Mongol empire had ended as a united entity in the time after Ain Jalut, and harassment by pretenders and new Khans had begun, causing his attention to turn away from the Levant. Though a great victory, Ain Jalut was more important in the time it gave the Mamluks than in the finality of it. Mongol incursions would continue in a greater scale under a new force, the Il-khans, in the 14th century. It was more of a beginning of a greater series of conflicts than an end.

One legacy, however, did end with the Mongol invasions: The Crusader one. Following the battle of Ain Jalut, Qutuz was killed in a conspiracy led by Baibars, and he became the sultan. Harnessing his new wealth, he laid revenge against the Christians who had dared to stand against him. Antioch was ended as a major city. Following the collapse of the anti-Mamluks coalition, the Principality of Antioch had no resource. When Baibars captured it, he was sure to end any prosperity that remained to it. Though Antioch still had a significant population in years after, there was no way for it but down. An era that had begun by the Seleucids had closed with the Mamluks.

He exacted a similar punishment upon the Cilicians. The area was heavily depopulated and many Armenians fled to the surrounding regions, or fought back without success. Though Cilicia would have a large Armenian population until the first world war, it was never in power as it once was and rarely escaped from the watchful eye of the Mamluk empire; the power it had under some rulers in the early 13th century would never be regained.

Most importantly of all, though it would take longer than his lifetime to complete, was the end of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Once Baibars had completed the annihilation of any remaining Ayyubid pretenders and had deflected any further incursions by the Mongols, he turned his eyes to the last remaining, in his eyes, threat to Egypt. The crusaders had inflicted an important psychological wound upon the Mamluks. Baibars had been the commander to turn them back when they landed at Damietta in 1250, and their continued existence was an affront to Islam. The Ayyubids had always feared or ignored the crusaders, preferring to live in peace and not attract the attention of the Europeans. Baibars disagreed with this strategy, deciding that the best way to ensure the Franks wouldn't attack would be to push them back to the sea.

Whenever he, or his successors, captured a Frankish port, they destroyed it completely. The essential idea that if the source of their economic and political success was completely and utterly wiped out, the crusaders would have no way of re-establishing themselves in the Levant; this method was applied to Sidon, Tyre, and a number of other smaller ports. It worked, but in the worst way possible. The Levantine trade had made the crusader states far wealthier than they had been in the 12th century despite their decreased territory and prestige. Acre was a major port, siphoning huge amounts of trade from Genoa and Venice for its own use. The Mamluks decisively ended that practice and destroyed any real trade in the area. It did not fit to their policies of having trade go through Egypt, and Alexandria in particular. The end-result was that Palestine was essentially depopulated and turned into a backwater province. Acre would never again enjoy the prosperity it did and the centers of population once again moved inland, towards Tiberias, Jerusalem, and the hills. Not until today has the area recovered from the Mamluk depredations.

Syria was worse off still. In ancient times and in the early caliphates, Syria was an intensely wealthy and populated land. It hosted a huge variety of different cities and constituted a power base for the Umayyad Empire, as well as the Zengids. The Muslims had, in their apogee, made the Fertile Crescent into a great center of culture, free from the status it had under the Sassanids and Byzantines as a split legacy, constantly being ravaged by the inane and petty wars of those two powers. The Mongol invasion and the Mamluk ascendancy ended that. The bottom fell out of the Syrian trade with the rise of Egypt, and many of the crusader ports in Syria had suffered the same fate as their counterparts in the Levant. In addition to this, the agricultural base had been utterly destroyed. A population of perhaps four million at its greatest had lost almost half that in the thirty years since the arrival of the Mongols in the area.

Worse still, the Mamluks did not improve this. Baibars always treated Syria as a frontier, and it was a warzone between him and the Il-khanate, which would often descend in its raids and invasions from the hills of the western Zagros Mountains, stretching from Iran to Turkey. Over one hundred years of raiding and back and forth between the two powers in the 14th century, as well as the Black Death, meant that Syria would never regain its position as an important center of Islam. Aleppo and Damascus would be important cities, certainly, but as second-rate among the many in the Muslim sphere. The Syrian countryside, too, suffered horribly, as many border areas became centers of nomadic herding as settled farmers fled from a war-torn buffer, drying the soil and destroying the native plant growth. Syria is still recovering, like Iraq, from these problems, made worse by the dichotomy strengthened by the rise of the Alawites of the coastal strip and the inland zone. Here, the echoes of the past are still felt.

There was a winner here, unlike in many other areas, though. Egypt had, for hundreds of years, languished under foreign rulers and while the Fatimids had allowed it to enjoy a brief renaissance, it was not enough for it regain an important position in the world of Islam. The Mamluk period allowed Egypt to mature as a center of Islam. The Mamluks became, without any other claimants, as the holders of the caliphate during a time of turmoil, and for Islam, a light in the darkness. These were centuries in which Cairo and many other Egyptian towns were populated by Madrassas and prosperity graced them. Particularly before the Black Death, Egypt became the axle of Islam, and all others bowed to that primacy. Of course, circumstances during and after that sordid affair began a long decline, but even today Egypt is established as the most important of the Arab powers. The wealth given to it by the Mamluk centralization is still with it today.

The Mongol invasion of Syria and Egypt is the one that is for many the most ingrained in their mind. The Mongols are among the most destructive and terrifying forces known to man; they swept across an entire continent and ended some civilizations. The Egyptian invasion, however, should remind us of their own mortality and some of the positive effects that the Mongol ravages brought unto the world, regardless of the cost. It is easy enough to judge them for what they did wrong, for from Genghis to Kublai one can find many things wrong with the Mongols. It is harder, though, to look at what they did right. As a Historian, objectivity is impossible, but in looking at issues, we must at least pretend to acknowledge both sides, no matter how horrendous one must seem. When we realize that and when we look over these destructions and can garner the positive even from the worst excesses of the Mongols, then we have accomplished a task that many find elusive. That, one could say, is worth praising.

 

[Cetashwayo]

Also you guys are welcome to comment.

 

[EricD]

Fantastic stuff as always Cetashwayo, I foresee a promising future in the academic field of history for you if you so choose to pursue. Thank you so much for posting this gem here.

 

['Rivet]

Just wondering, what are your sources for this specific information? Lectures over the years? Books? Websites?

 

[Cetashwayo]

Just wondering, what are your sources for this specific information? Lectures over the years? Books? Websites?

Click to shrink...

I mainly drew from Ibn al-athir's chroncile. It's a fairly comprehensive and contemporary look at the events of the day from the Muslim side. I also used the Cambridge history of Iran, 'A history of Iraq' by Charles Tripp, From Saladin to the Mongols By R. Stephen Humphreys, and The Crusades by Hans Eberhard Mayer. There are a few works I've taken caveats from, such as The Great Arab conquests as well as the always helpful resource of Encyclopedia Iranica. In addition, I have used The Crusades by Geoffery Hindley for this update, and several papers on the subject, which I unfortunately cannot find at the moment. Encylopedia Iranica is the most easily accessible, being an online resource.

 

[Lore Snuggleton]

Awesome job again, I know this will be beneficial for me in the future.

 

[Rat King]

Fabulous job, Cetashwayo. These are a joy to read.

 

[MobiusOneDT]

I have to say I see a common thread with the fall from grace with a lot of these civilizations: mongols. It seems like a lot of it can be traced back to their raids.

 

[Cetashwayo]

I have to say I see a common thread with the fall from grace with a lot of these civilizations: mongols. It seems like a lot of it can be traced back to their raids.

Click to shrink...

The mongols were a terrible scourge upon Asia, that much is true. Though in some areas they laid portents for the future, such as crippling Hungary, forcing Poland into a more organized unit, and moving the center of Russian civilization from the Dnieper Basin to the Upper Volga.

 

[neolives]

Cetashwayo, again I must praise the effort you've put into these as they are excellent. I have to ask are you a historian of any level or is this just a hobby on your end?

Should you ever have time I would love so see your thoughts on the Mongol invasions into Volga Bulgaria and then the Rurikid Russian principalities. Of course I should probably look it up on my own time, but hear stuff from clearly learned people is always great.

Keep up the good work.

 

[inawarminister]

Damn the Mongols, damn him and his progenies to all times.

Fantastic write-up Cetashwayo, are you interested in creating a fiction set in historical NE soon?

 

[Strypgia]

I really appreciate these wonderful articles, Cetashwayo. I have a BA in History, and am currently sitting in southwest Afghanistan, and I still did not know a good deal of the things you so neatly laid out here. And looking our the edges of our base, it is all too easy to see the scars the Mongols left on this land. It has been centuries, and this place still bears the wounds. The cities are small and of no importance to the wider world, the people are tribal and rural, and the land is still only a shadow of the fertility it must have once had.

 

[MobiusOneDT]

Cetashwayo, would you mind if I linked this to some of my teaches and fellow history majors? I think they would enjoy this!

 

[Cetashwayo]

Cetashwayo, again I must praise the effort you've put into these as they are excellent. I have to ask are you a historian of any level or is this just a hobby on your end?

Should you ever have time I would love so see your thoughts on the Mongol invasions into Volga Bulgaria and then the Rurikid Russian principalities. Of course I should probably look it up on my own time, but hear stuff from clearly learned people is always great.

Keep up the good work.

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I'm a hobbyist; I'm 17.

Thank you. Unfortunately my knowledge base on the Mongol invasions of Europe is A LOT smaller. I might do some more write-ups, but it'll be on other things. I am enjoying invasion series, so maybe on the arab invasions.

I really appreciate these wonderful articles, Cetashwayo. I have a BA in History, and am currently sitting in southwest Afghanistan, and I still did not know a good deal of the things you so neatly laid out here. And looking our the edges of our base, it is all too easy to see the scars the Mongols left on this land. It has been centuries, and this place still bears the wounds. The cities are small and of no importance to the wider world, the people are tribal and rural, and the land is still only a shadow of the fertility it must have once had.

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Indeed. Of course, it's not just the Mongols, but what they did. Afterwards, they destroyed Central Asia's settled lifestyle and allowed large nomadic migrations of groups like Hazara, and Afghanistan became plagued by tribal conflict between groups such as those.

Cetashwayo, would you mind if I linked this to some of my teaches and fellow history majors? I think they would enjoy this!

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As long as you remind them it was written by a 17 year old, not a history professor, and that while I used professional sources it wasn't cited in footnotes, sure.

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

Could you explain more about why the mongol invasion and the destruction of urban centers lead to a switch from agrarianism to pastoralism? I'm not clear on the causal link.

 

[Cetashwayo]

Could you explain more about why the mongol invasion and the destruction of urban centers lead to a switch from agrarianism to pastoralism? I'm not clear on the causal link.

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Oh jesus, I wrote this in like 2012 and transferred it over to SV, I can't remember this shit lol

More seriously, the reason is not so much the urban centers but the agricultural areas around those urban centers. The Mongol invasions moved a lot of pastoralists from the steppe into areas which had traditionally been farmed intensively after they destroyed local agricultural systems. Cities lead into this in that when the city is destroyed, there's nowhere to send the surplus grain from intensive agriculture anyhow and the grain is just going nowhere, really; not that it mattered because there was no situation where the cities were destroyed but the countryside was somehow spared. In areas devastated by the invasions of the Mongols and the Timurids there was a lot of reforestation and migration by steppe peoples into the region because the government was not antipathetic against them as had been the case with most sedentary societies in the region. The mongol invasions also initiated a period of destructive instability that lasted about 250 years in the Middle East with few breaks and a lot of brutal warfare that tended to lessen urbanization and agriculture, both of which required some semblance of stability.

 

[RocketMedic]

Don't forget the knowledge lost. Many of those slaughtered by the Mongols were the educated and intellectual, particularly in Central Asia and Afghanistan. The survivors were almost universally not only ignorant, but proudly so.

 

[Tyrell]

Will you be writing more of these commentaries?
And can we contribute our own?

 

[Cetashwayo]

Will you be writing more of these commentaries?
And can we contribute our own?

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Probably not for a while, I'm a bit busy with my historical quest. I'd prefer if you didn't contribute your own, though, or at least ask me first.