Mongol invasion on the Muslim world

The Mongols entered history as just one among a number of nomad tribes on the steppes of central Asia. The germinate of the Mongols and the beginnings of the Mongol conquests arose out of a dramatic shift from such disunity to unity, and it was achieved done the personality and military skills of one cosmos. In each probability he was born in 1167. He was given the name of Temuchin.The nomad world he entered was a fierce and unforgiving one of rivalry and survival skills. wish well all Mongol children, Temuchin learned to ride with cracking skill and to plough a bow and arrows. After an eventful younger life his thoughts saturnine towards the opportunity of defeating his rivals and taking control of the co-ordinated Mongol tribes. M either days of warfare followed, the decisive victory being Temuchins defeat of the Naimans.In 1206 a grand assembly was called at the opening of the Onon River. A white influence symbolizing the protective spirit of the Mongols was raised. Its nine points represented the newly unified Mongol tribes. The gathering then proclaimed Temuchin as Genghis Khan ( frequent Ruler) (Turnbull, 2003).Before we turn to the Mongols beliefs and their attitudes towards the religions of another(prenominal)s, most general observations are in order. We cannot allow it for granted that the motives for, or indeed character of, conversion in the ordinal century will be identical with those we would recognize todayor certainly those which would meet with the approval of the purist. In particular, such motives superpower engender more to do with political, diplomatic or economic considerations than with inner conviction.We should be wrong to emphasize the individualistic oer against the communal, the internal everywhere against the superficial form of law or cultic practice, and the profoundly personal transformation over against the adoption of additional cultural norms. For instance, the Uighur conversion to Manichaeism in the late eighth century had owed something to economic relations with Sogdian mer warbles, and it has also been calledlike the Khazar afghans adoption of Judaisma declaration of ideological independence. (Jackson, 2001)Like earlier steppe rulers, the Mongol qaans presided over public turns amid representatives of different assents. The impulse behind these events is unclear. In a recent article, Richard Foltz points out that the effect of the whole policy was to make mischief, precisely he stops short of suggesting that the aim was to divide and rule. It has been proposed that a debate took place at the point when the sovereign meditated a change of phantasmal allegiance.There may be some truth in this Juwaynis throwaway of the conversion of the Uighurs some centuries previously, indeed, appears to be based upon the idea that such debates were unceasingly the means of bringing the ruler to a new faith. scarce we cannot deduction the possibility that one purpose was entertainmentth at the public ghostly disputation, in other speech, was the intellectual counterpart of the bloody gladiatorial conflicts which the Mongols staged between captured enemy soldiers (Fiey, 1975).Lastly, the frontiers between different faiths were not impermeable. Shamanism was itself an amalgam, and we occupy no vantage point that enables us to distinguish some pristine model from accretions that might have attached themselves to the Mongols beliefs in the few centuries preceding the rear of Chinggis Khan (Franke, Herbert 1994). A syncretistic approach had long been the hallmark of the nomads spectral beliefs it is reflected in the Secret History of the Mongols, where elements from the mythical history of the earliest Turks, the Khitans and other steppe and forest peoples are appropriated and integrated into the Mongolsown origin myths (Amitai-Preiss, 1996).Intent as the Mongols may have been on sharing the world only with subjects, they were also compelled to care it with a plet hora of spirits, often malevolently inclined and in some(prenominal) case edgeed demons by Western European writers. When Rubrucks little group in 1253 passed through a difficult stretch in the Tarbaghatai range, his guide asked the friars to chant a prayer that would put the demons to flight. Diagnosis of the activity of these invisible powers, and if thinkable their harnessing for good purposes, was the job of the shamans and there is no dearth of testimony that by the middle decades of the thirteenth century Mongol rulers manifested a heavy dependence upon shamans and fortune-tellers.Shamanistic activities are geared to influencing conditions in this life, not to securing an after-life. The Mongols ancestral beliefs and practices and the cracking world religions, in other words, were valid for different spheres hence the spacious policy of the Mongol qacans, to which we shall return (Elias, 1999). So it was not at all incongruous that a Mongol sovereign or prince should make some formal gesture towards, say, Christianity or Islam while continuing to observe the shamanistic practices of his forebears Rubruck saw even those of Mngkes wives who had no knowledge of the Christian faith venerating the cross (Charpentier, 1935).We do not have to see this as some kind of celestial insurance, as if any of the several faiths with which the Mongols were confronted might embody the Truth and so it was advisable to court them all, although the idea finds bridge over in a speech ascribed to Qubilai by Marco Polo. On leaving the encamp of the Mongol prince Sartaq, Rubruck was told, Do not call our master a Christian he is not a Christian he is a Mongol. (Heissig, 1980) Although he goes on to say that they regard the term Christendom as the name of a people (i.e. presumably the Franks of Europe), it is doubtful whether this necessarily supports DeWeeses contention that religion in Inner Asia was a communal affair.It may well have been so but Rubruck (whose interpret er was proverbially inadequate) could easily have misunderstood the land for the warning, and a different explanation comes to mind. We should notice that on several make the Mongol terms for religious specialists seem to have been interpreted as denoting the religious community as a whole. Rubruck, for instance, employs the Mongol word toyin (Chinese daoren, man of the path, i.e. Buddhist priest) as a designation for the Buddhists (idolators) in general (Fennell, 1983). And the function of erken (Christian priest) betrays a similar confusion in the thirteenth-century sources.This might explain the apparent bewilderment of the Qacan Gyg at Innocent IVs request that he become a Christian and the anger in the camp of the Mongol general Baiju over the aforesaid(prenominal) injunction on the part of Ascelin. The Qaan Mngke, too, objected when Rubruck was misrepresented as having called him a toyin. It is possible that with one exception the Mongolian lexicon recognized only religiou s specialists and contained no word for the respective religious community en masse. The exception was the Muslims who confronted Chinggis Khan in the shape of the powerful Khwrazmian Empire.Here cardinal words were available sartacul, employed in the Secret History to designate the Khwrazm-shhs subjects, and dashman (from Iranian dnishmand, literally learned man), which denoted the Muslim religious class. But to the best of our knowledge the language contained no word for Christian or Buddhist, as opposed to erken or toyin for priest/monk. Even in the late thirteenth century Persian authors in the Mongol empire equated Christian (Persian tars) with Uighur on account of the large number of Christians among that people (Allsen, 1994).At what juncture Shamanism merits being called a religion, it is difficult to say. It has been proposed that in any consideration of the religious beliefs and practices of Inner Asian peoples we need to distinguish between popular cultic practicefolk re ligion, as Heissig calls it and what has been termed Tenggerism, centered on the sky-god, i.e. those beliefs and practices associated with a monarchy based on divine sanction. DeWeese is skeptical, and sees the dichotomy as between, not two competing levels of religious thought and ritual, but imperial and domestic styles of evoking essentially the equivalent system of religious values and practices (Amitai, 2001).A clash between the plan steppe emperor and the representative of popular traditions might, nevertheless, provide a framework within which we can locate the downfall of Teb Tenggeri (Kkch), the shaman who had been instrumental in Chinggis Khans enthronement but had then got above himself and was eliminated. Rashd al-Dn seems to suggest that Teb Tenggeri had a following among the ordinary Mongols, who were ready to believe in his spiritual accomplishments. The difficulty with this scenario is that it was Teb Tenggeri who invoked Heavens mandate and Chinggis Khan who di sregarded it (Bundy, 1996).The notion that the earliest thirteenth-century Mongols worshipped the supreme sky-god, Tengri (Tenggeri), has been challenged on the basis of the way in which the term tenggeri is used in the Secret History, the only Mongolian narrative source that has come down to us.But Anatoly Khazanov makes the plausible suggestion that the Mongols were experiencing the pull of monotheism, as Tengri took on more of the attributes of the omnipotent God. Indeed, a shift is visible during the early decades of the conquest period, to judge from the comments of contemporary observers. The Mongols believed in one God, creator of all things visible and invisible, though they did not worship Him, as was fitting, reverencing idols instead. Subsequent observers, at any rate, were ready to class the Mongols as monotheistic.Rubruck assumed that they had acquired monotheism from the Uighurs. You are not a polytheist, Qadi Hamd al-Dn Sbiq Samarqand told Qubilai Qacan during the cl ampdown on Moslem observance in china in the 1280s, because you write the name of the great God at the head of your edicts (yarlighs) (Jackson, 1994). This development, of course, made it easier for representatives of the different confessional groups to claim the Qacan as one of their own.ReferenceAllsen, Thomas T. The Rise of the Mongolian Empire and Mongolian Rule in North China. In CHC. Vol. 6 Alien Regimes and elude States, 9071368, eds. H. Frank and D. Twitchett. Cambridge, 1994, pp. 321413.Amitai, Reuven. The Conversion of Tegder Ilkhan to Islam. JSAI, 25 (2001), pp. 1543.Amitai-Preiss, Reuven. Ghazan, Islam and Mongol Tradition A View from the Mamlk Sultanate. BSOAS, 59 (1996), pp. 110.Bundy, David. 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