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East Meets West Under the Mongols

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East Meets West Under the Mongols Marco Polo’s account is also a East Meets West record of an amazing shopping spree. His description of Tabriz, at under the Mongols that time capital of the Ilkhanid domains, sums up his perspective. Sheila S. Blair He begins with the industriousness of the inhabitants and their major Boston College handicrafts: many kinds of beau- tiful and valuable cloths of silk and Most people think of the Mongols the eastern tributary of the lower gold. The city’s choice location, he only as destroyers, ruthless Volga, first at Old Saray, on the notes, makes it a commercial hub marauders who slaughtered the left bank about seventy-five miles for merchants from Mesopotamia, inhabitants of cities resisting their north of Astrakhan and then from the Gulf, India, and Europe, military advances, barbaric the 1340s from New Saray (Saray especially as it has a great market conquerors who magnified the al-Jadid, modern Tsarev), a further for precious stones. It is, he scale of violence with deadly seventy-five miles upstream. The specifies, a city where merchants mangonels and ratcheted up the Chaghatayids, descended from make large profits. The locals, volume of terror banging on drums Chingis’s second son Chaghatai, however, are good-for-nothing, a as part of their psychological ruled Central Asia from various mixture of classes, ethnicities, and warfare. The Mongols, followers of capitals in Semirechye and religions, including the native the warlord Chingis [Genghis] who Transoxania including the site Muslims who are evil. He ends his amassed the largest contiguous founded by Kebek (r. 1309-26, description with the note that the land empire ever known, were with interruption) near Nakhshab city is surrounded by charming undisputedly deadly and terrifying. known as Karshi (from the Mongol orchards, full of large and excellent But the Mongol conquests in the word for palace). The Ilkhanids, fruits. His record of the city is thus first part of the thirteenth century descended from Hülegü, brother of a brief commercial prospectus. also opened up a commercial the two Great Khans, ruled Trade was not the only nexus across Eurasia, and the western Asia from winter and incentive to travel during this century 1250-1350 when the summer capitals in Azerbaijan and period. So was religion. If Marco Mongols controlled most of Eurasia Iraq. Polo epitomizes the mercantile is often known as the Pax The transcontinental trade that traveler, then the Moroccan Mongolica. In the words of the took place under these various globetrotter Ibn Battuta represents historian Janet Abu-Lughod, it was branches of Mongols is readily the religious one. In 1325, at age the age “before European evident from reports by the spate 21, he set off from his native hegemony,” a period when trade of travelers who crisscrossed Tangier (hence he is sometimes and communication encouraged Eurasia during this period. The referred to as a “tangerine”) on the the sharing of ideas and visual most famous, at least to Western hajj to Mecca. He returned home culture across much of the known eyes, is Marco Polo, the Venetian only in 1349, meanwhile visiting world. merchant who joined his father and Egypt, Syria, Persia, Iraq, East Following the death of Chingis uncle on a trip to China in 1271 Africa, the Yemen, Anatolia, the Khan in 1227, his empire was and spent the next two decades steppes of southern Russia, divided among his family according traveling around the provinces of Constantinople, India, the to the principle of ultimogeniture, China in the service of Qubilai Maldives, Sumatra, and China. succession through the last-born Khan. Marco Polo’s travelogue, Whereas Marco Polo enumerates child. Four major empires were written after he had returned home the goods available in local created. The Great Khans, Möngke and was imprisoned in Genoa with markets, Ibn Batutta sets out the (r. 1251-60) and Qubilai (r. 1260- Rustichello of Pisa, tells of the diverse (and to his eyes, 94), descendants of Chingis’s amazing empire of the Great Khan, sometimes slightly scandalous) youngest son Tolui, ruled Mongolia an urban civilization of dazzling religious activities he encountered and northern China as the Yuan riches and prosperity. This while lodging at local shrines. dynasty from their capitals, first at picaresque travelogue offered an In Delhi, for example, Ibn Karakorum on the upper Orkhon immense body of new geographical Battuta describes the great tank River in Mongolia and later at knowledge to the West and known as Hawz Khass, a reservoir Khanbalik, now Beijing. They were became one of most influential used to collect rainwater for supported by three collateral books of the Middle Ages, the drinking. It served as a gathering branches. The Golden Horde, foremost work in creating an place for musicians. Known as descended from Chingis’s eldest intellectual climate in which Tarab-abad (the city of music), the son Jochi, ruled southern Russia Europeans set out to explore the area included an extensive bazaar, from two capitals on the Akhtuba, non-European world. a congregational mosque, and © 2005 Sheila S. Blair 27 transverse vault was horizontal along its entire length, but during this period builders played with more complex methods. The south iwan in the mosque at Natanz, for example, has a ramping transverse vault in which the springing lines of the vault are not flat but curve upward and parallel the profile of the cross arches. Built in the first decade of the fourteenth century, the mosque presents the earliest extant example of the break-up of the barrel vault in the Mongol period, but contemporary buildings display similar, and soon more elaborate, methods. Such inventiveness was probably developed at constructions no longer extant in the Ilkhanid Fig.1. Delhi, Hawz Hass. Photograph © Sheila S.Blair. All rights reserved. capitals in northwestern Iran and many smaller mosques as well as an Ilkhanid vizier to commemorate then spread southeast to central forty pavilions that served as the tomb of the Suhrawardi shaykh Iran and thence to Central Asia, housing not only for the musicians `Abd al-Samad [Map, p. 26; Fig. where, under the Timurids in the themselves, but also for singing 2]. The complex incorporates a late fourteenth and fifteenth girls who even, to Ibn Batutta’s congregational mosque with the centuries, builders developed the amazement, took part in prayers typical Iranian plan of four iwans decorative possibilities of during Ramadan. The site still and a domed chamber around a transverse vaulting by reducing the exists [Fig. 1], and during the next central courtyard, the mystic’s load-bearing elements and generation under the Tughlughid tomb sur- ruler Firuz Shah (r. 1351-77), it mounted by a was incorporated into a large pyramidal roof, a madrasa, or theological school. The hospice for Sufis complex comprises two long blocks with a splendid of rooms perched along the east tiled façade, and and south sides of the tank, riveted a soaring min- together by the founder’s tomb, a aret. The some- domed square. The two stories what higgledy- contain interlocking blocks of long, piggledy narrow pillared halls and dome arrangement of chambers, with cells on the lower the buildings story for residence and more open suggests that rooms on the upper story for they had to be assembly and teaching. The jammed into reservoir has now dried up, but the whatever land area lives on as one of Delhi’s chic was available Fig. 2. Natanz, Shrine of ‘Abd al-Samad, view from quarters, dotted with boutiques within the town. minaret. Photograph © Sheila S. Blair. All rights and secluded residences. reserved. Yet the inventiveness of the opening the room to increased light As Ibn Battuta’s long chronicle vaulting shows how sophisticated and applied decoration. shows, such shrine centers were the builders of these local shrines common throughout the Islamic were. During this period in Iran, Like the vaulting, the luxury of lands. Many were centered on the builders shifted their attention the furnishings at Natanz bespeaks tomb of a local sufi (mystic) saint. from structure to space, the wealth available to decorate A prime example of the “little cities developing new and ingenious these local shrines. The shaykh’s of God” constructed at the time of methods of breaking up a long and tomb, for example, was crowned Ibn Battuta’s travels is the shrine dark tunnel vault by using a series on the interior by a stunning at Natanz, twenty miles north of of cross arches that are joined by muqarnas, or stalactite, vault [Fig. Isfahan on the slopes of the Karkaz transverse filler vaults. In earlier 3, next page]. Ten tiers of Mountains in central Iran, built by examples, the crown of the muqarnas rise from the piers of the 28 holder. The Mongols had long been insistent on the sacrosanct status of their ambassadors. The Khwarazmshah’s murder of an official envoy, for example, helped precipitate Chingis’s invasion of Transoxania. In order to facilitate communication through the vast empire, in 1234, during the reign of Ögödei, the Mongols set up an official communication system known as the yam. Marco Polo was particularly impressed with the Mongol system of communication and left a long description of it. A system of highways radiated to all provinces from the capital at Khanbalik. Posting stations were spaced Fig. 3. Natanz, Shrine of ‘Abd al-Samad, muqarnas dome over tomb, 1307. Photograph © Sheila S. Blair. All rights reserved. twenty-five miles apart to provide a ready supply of horses. When cruciform room. The first eight are such tiles are now in museum needed, riders, often in teams, composed exclusively of 45° and collections, many identifiable by were dispatched, each equipped 90° pieces, incorporating an eight- the headless birds, defaced by a with a paiza.
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