prelims.094 02/02/2007 5:26 PM Page i MAKERS of the MUSLIM WORLD Chinggis Khan prelims.094 02/02/2007 5:26 PM Page iv CHINGGIS KHAN A Oneworld Book Published by Oneworld Publications 2007 Copyright © Michal Biran 2007 All rights reserved Copyright under Berne Convention ACIP record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN-10: 1–85168–502–2 ISBN-13: 978–1–85168–502–8 Typeset by Jayvee, Trivandrum, India Printed and bound by XXX Oneworld Publications 185 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7AR England www.oneworld-publications.com NL08 Learn more about Oneworld. Join our mailing list to find out about our latest titles and special offers at: www.oneworld-publications.com/newsletter.htm prelims.094 02/02/2007 5:26 PM Page v CONTENTS List of Maps,Figures and Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix INTRODUCTION:WHY CHINGGIS? 1 1: ASIA,THE STEPPE AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD ON THE EVE OF THE MONGOLS 6 2: TEMÜJIN’S MONGOLIA 27 3: WORLD CONQUEST: HOW DID HE DO IT? 47 4: THE CHINGGISID LEGACY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD 74 5: FROM THE ACCURSED TO THE REVERED FATHER AND BACK: CHANGING IMAGES OF CHINGGIS KHAN IN THE MUSLIM WORLD 108 6: APPROPRIATING CHINGGIS: A COMPARATIVE APPROACH 137 Selected Bibliography 163 Index 174 v prelims.094 02/02/2007 5:26 PM Page vii LIST OF MAPS, FIGURES AND ILLUSTRATIONS MAPS Map 1 The Mongol Empire by the Time of the Death of Chinggis Khan and in the Height of Its Expansion 4–5 Map 2 Asia before Chinggis Khan 24 Map 3 Chinggis Khan’s Campaigns of Conquest 48 Map 4 The Four Mongol Khanates ca. 1290 80 Map 5 Asia in the Mid-Seventeenth Century:The Chinggisid Legacy (with Qing expansion in the Eighteenth Century) 103 FIGURES Figure 1 The Genealogy of Chinggis Khan 30 Figure 2 Main Descendants of Chinggis Khan 77 ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Chinggis Khan dividing his empire among his sons, leaf from Rashid al-Din’s Jami’al-tawarikh,Moghul India,reign of Akbar (1556–1605).The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Francis M.Weld,1948 (48.144) 124 2. Mongolian Stamps Commemorating the 750th anniver- sary of the Secret History of the Mongols, 1990 144 3. Chinggis Khan’s mausoleum in Inner Mongolia, China (photograph: Michal Biran) 150 vii prelims.094 02/02/2007 5:26 PM Page ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank Patricia Crone, both for asking me to write this book and for her sharp editorial comments.My biggest debt is to my quriltai of experts, comprised of Tom Allsen,Reuven Amitai and David Morgan.Each of them read through the whole text and enriched it with many valuable comments, suggestions, and more idiomatic English, thereby greatly contributing to the book’s final shape. I am also indebted to my colleague and friend Yuri Pines, my student Shay Shir, and my father Uzi Pumpian, who read the entire manuscript in the role of mythical general readers. Thanks are also due to Samuel N. Eisenstadt, Anatoly M. Khazanov and Ron Sela who commented on various chapters. Many people helped me by suggesting,gathering and processing ref- erences. They include, apart from most of the above-mentioned, Manduhai Buyandelgeriyn, Yoav Di Kapua, Roy Fischel, Vincent Fourniau, Andrei Gomulin, Ziv Halevi, Sophia Katz, Fumihiko Kobayashi, Nimrod Luz,Timothy May, Hyunhee Park,Yael Sheinfeld, Gideon Shelach and Anke von Kugelagen. I am especially grateful to Maria Ivanics, who allowed me to use her translation of the Daftar Chingiz namah prior to its publication, and to Eyal Ginio for his expert and patient help with Ottoman texts. I also thank Tammar Sopher for producing the maps; Zeev Stossel for technical help; and the Metropolitan Museum for their permission to reproduce an illustration of Chinggis dividing his empire among his sons from a sixteenth- century Moghul manuscript of Rashid al-Din’s Jami’ al-tawarikh [1948 (48.144)].Thanks go also to the students in my Mongol and Central Asian seminars at the Hebrew University. All my friends suffered from my obsession with Chinggis Khan,but I would like to especially thank Nurit Stadler who sacrificed many coffee- breaks for discussing points, arcane and otherwise, in the Great Khan’s ix prelims.094 02/02/2007 5:26 PM Page x x CHINGGIS KHAN biography.Lastly,I am also indebted to my sons,Yotam and Itamar,who already know about Chinggis Khan much more than is healthy for children of their age. This book was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 818/03). intro.094 02/02/2007 4:18 PM Page 1 INTRODUCTION: WHY CHINGGIS? What event or occurrence has been more notable than the beginning of the rule of Chinggis Khan, that it should be considered a new era? Rashid al-Din [d. 1318], ed. Karı¯mı¯1959: 1:16, cited in Morgan 1988: 51 Chinggis Khan was not a Muslim.Why,then, should he be included in a series entitled the Makers of the MuslimWorld ? The answer is simple:Chinggis Khan is included in this series because he and his heirs made a real difference in the history of the Islamic world, as the above quotation from the greatest historian of the Mongol era clearly suggests.What is less obvious is the nature of this difference. On the one hand, Chinggis Khan slaughtered many believers, pillaged their riches and inflicted upon them an unprecedented disaster, so that he came to be seen as the arch-enemy of Islam.On top of this,his grandson’s demolition of Baghdad is often seen as the end of medieval Islamic civil- ization, which thereafter lost its leading position in world history and began to lag behind the West.This memory of the Mongol legacy is still widespread, especially in the Arab world, and was recently invoked by Saddam Hussein who, on the eve of the American invasion of Baghdad in 2003, depicted the U.S. government as the modern Mongols. In the Turco-Iranian world,on the other hand,Chinggis Khan also became the revered father of,and a source of political legitimacy for,several Muslim dynasties, especially after the conversion to Islam of the Mongols in Iran and, later, in southern Russia and Central Asia. Chinggis’s descendants ruled over significant parts of the Muslim world up to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,and he was therefore given a place in the pantheon of Muslim heroic figures.Thus Chinggis’s biography became an integral part of Muslim historiography, and the political and religious needs of 1 intro.094 02/02/2007 4:18 PM Page 2 2 CHINGGIS KHAN Chinggisid and even some non-Chinggisid rulers therefore influenced the way Chinggis Khan has come to be depicted in different Muslim con- texts.Moreover,institutions and concepts of legitimation ascribed to the Great Khan were instrumental in shaping much of the late medieval and early modern world, in the Abode of Islam and beyond, and the intellec- tual horizons, political boundaries, and ethnic composition of the post- thirteenth-century Muslim world were deeply affected by Chinggisid rule. Chinggis Khan therefore was not only a destructive force in the Islamic world but also a constructive influence, whose legacy survived, especially in Central Asia, long after his death and well into the modern era. This perspective is also the answer to another obvious question: why another book on Chinggis Khan? There is no dearth of books dedicated to the great conqueror, recently crowned by The Washington Post as the man of the (second) millennium, and several recent books provide a more positive and complex picture of him than in the past (e.g. Weatherford 2004; Lane 2004).Yet a book concentrating on his role in the Muslim world has not yet been written. Even those who stress Chinggis Khan’s role in the shaping of the modern world emphasize the connections between Europe and China, marginalizing his impact on the Muslim world. Moreover, unlike many other biographies of Chinggis Khan, this book, though written mainly for a general audi- ence, is based on close reading in a vast array of primary sources from the Islamic world and beyond;it also incorporates the recent upsurge of new and innovative research on the Mongol Empire. The volume starts with a short description of steppe society and the political situation in Asia and the world of Islam before the rise of Chinggis Khan. The second chapter reviews the society in which Temüjin, the future Chinggis Khan, was born and rose to prominence, tracing his career until he was enthroned as Chinggis Khan in the assem- bly (quriltai) of 1206.The third chapter analyses his conquests,with spe- cial emphasis on his invasion of the Muslim world and its implications, and tries to explain the factors behind the overwhelming success of these conquests.The fourth chapter summarizes the major effects of the Chinggisid enterprise on the Muslim world,stressing the persistence of Chinggis’s descendants as rulers of Muslim states and their contribution intro.094 02/02/2007 4:18 PM Page 3 INTRODUCTION 3 to the broadening of the horizons of the Muslims and to the further expansion of the world of Islam. It also reviews the legacy of Mongol statecraft, emphasizing the role of Chinggisid institutions, especially concepts of legitimation and law in the Turco-Iranian world, as well as the Mongol impact on ethnic and geopolitical changes in the Muslim world.The fifth chapter discusses the different images of Chinggis Khan in various Muslim contexts. It looks at how Chinggis’s new role as a founding father of Muslim dynasties, and originator of the political and social order for which they stood, required a reshaping of his biography in different Muslim contexts in the centuries following his death, and how the rise of nationalism marginalized his role in Muslim history and brought him back into the position of an accursed enemy.