The History of China - #209-Mongol 17.1: Rivers of Ink & Blood

Episode Date: February 12, 2021

(NOTE: This is Pt. 1 or 2. The Full Episode & all other bonus content is available via Patreon.com/thehistoryofchina) Mongke has ascended as the Great Khan of the Mongols and set loose his younger brother, Hulegu Ilkhan to bring the Islamic world to heel. The Caliph of the Abbasid Dynasty, al-Mustasim, sits ensconced in his citadel city of Baghdad - the jewel of Islam - and believes that Allah above and his loyal subjects beneath will be more than a match for barbarian hordes. He's about to learn a lesson neither he - nor the world - will ever forget... Time Period Covered: 1258-1259 CE Major Historical Figures: Mongol Empire: Hülegü Ilkhan [ca. 1215-1265] General Kitbukha [d. 1260] General Baiju [1201-1260] Abbasid Caliphate: al-Musta’sim-Billah Abu-Ahmad Abdullah bin al-Mustansir  Billah, 37th Caliph [1213-1258] Governor Shahab al Din Sulaiman shah [d. 1258] Vizier Ibn al Alkami [1197-1258] Major Sources Cited: Al-Din, Rashid. Jami al Tararikh (Compendium of Histories). Al-Din, Rashid (tr. John Andrew Boyle). The Successors of Genghis Khan. Chugtai, Mizra Azeem Baig. “The Fall of Baghdad” in The Annal of Urdu Studies. Daftary, Farhad. The Isma’ilis: Their History and Doctrines. Hillenbrand, Robert. “Propaganda in the Mongol ‘World History’” in British Academy Review, issue 17 (March 2011). Hodgson, M. G. S. “The Isma’ili State” in The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 5: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods. Jamal, Nadia Eboo. Surviving the Mongols: Nizari Quhistani and the Continuity of Ismaili Tradition in Persia. Marozzi, Justin. Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood. Paris, Matthew of (tr. John Allen Giles). Chronica Majora (Matthew Paris’s English History From the Year 1235 to 1273, Volume 1). Saunders, J.J. The History of the Mongol Conquests. van Ruysbroeck, Willem (tr. W. W. Rockhill & Peter Jackson). The journey of William of Rubruck to the eastern parts of the world, 1253-55, as narrated by himself, with two accounts of the earlier journey of John of Pian del Carpine. Wiet, Gaston. Baghdad: Metropolis of the Abbasid Caliphate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the Age of Napoleon. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast. Join me as I examine the life and times of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic characters in modern history.

Look for the Age of Napoleon wherever you find your podcasts. Please note that this episode is marked as part one of an extended version. The full tale is available, along with all of THOC's bonus episodes, via becoming the show's patron for as little as $1 via patreon.com slash thehistoryofchina. Thank you all, and now, enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 209. Mongol 17. Rivers of Ink and Blood.

Blessed be the sight of Baghdad, seat of learning and art. None can point in the world to a city equal to her. Her suburbs vie in beauty with the blue vault of heaven. Her climate and quality equals the life-giving breezes of heaven. Her stones and the brightness rival gems and rubies. Her soil in beneficence has the fragrance of amber. The banks of the Tigris with their beautiful damsels surpass the city of Kulak. The gardens filled with lovely nymphs equal Kashmir, and thousands of gondolas on the water, dance and sparkle like sunbeams in the sky.

The poet Anvari, from the late 12th century. Was Baghdad not the loveliest of cities? A spectacle that held the eye spellbound? Yes, she was all that. But now her beauty is worn away. The north wind of fate has made her a desert. Her people have suffered as so many before. She has become an object of pity to nomad and settler. Oh Baghdad, city of kings, goal of all desires, center of all learning of Islam, paradise on earth, would who sought wealth and gave birth to hope in each merchant's breast tell us, where are they whom once we met among pleasure's flowery roads? Where are the kings shining amidst their trains like brilliant stars? Where are the Qadis, resolving by reason's light the conundrums of the law?

Where are the preachers and poets with their wisdom, speaking harmonious words? Where are your gardens rich in charm, the palaces along the riverbanks and flourishing land? Where are the pavilions I once knew, glittering with jewels? From the blind poet, with the pen name Ali ibn Abi Talib, circa 812 CE. The story city of Baghdad, Madinat al-Salam, the city of peace, stretches far back into time. Though the city bearing its name was officially founded in the 8th century, it was, like so many timeless metropolises, built atop, or in this case adjacent to, the ruins of an even earlier city, Ctesiphon, the ancient capital of both the Parthian and Sasanian Persian empires for more than 800 years,

from the mid-3rd century BCE until the Sasanid defeat by the Arab-Muslim conquest in 651 CE. During the initial phase of the Muslim expansion across Asia Minor, the territories of the former Persian Empire served, as such territories often do for a young, vibrant, and aggressively expansionistic venture startup like the Prophet Muhammad had launched, as a springboard and resource base for, what else, even further expansion. It was both a frontier as well as a bulwark, pushing up against and into that portion of the wide world which the bold, brash Arab Muslims of the Rashidun Caliphate did not yet fully comprehend, much less understand. As time went on, and that initial explosion of conquistador energy gradually settled into something more approaching a stabilized set of borders with its myriad neighbors, the initial Rashidun Caliphate gave way to the power of the Umayyads, who, like their progenitors, largely oriented themselves westward

and centering on the ancestral lands of Muhammad himself. Though the center of the empire was moved out of the vast, shifting wastelands of the Arabian Peninsula, north to the thriving trade nexus of the three worlds, Damascus, the eastern portion of the empire yet remained, at least in the eyes of its Umayyad overlords, largely a backwater. That would all change in the turmoil surrounding the fifth decade of the 700s. The scions of one of Muhammad's youngest uncles, Abbas ibn Abd al-Mutalib, found themselves no longer able to abide the greed and indolence of the self-serving Umayyad caliphs or their underlings. In mid-747, therefore, the not-yet-30-year-old Persian general, Abu Muslim, broke out in

open defiance against the Umayyad Caliph from his region of Khorasan in modern northeasternmost Iran. By the year 750, the war had been successfully concluded, ending with the casting off and expulsion of the Umayyad regime from the majority of the empire and the establishment of the Abbasid Caliphate. This new government, owing to its Persian roots, governed with a much more eastward orientation, rapidly pushing its armies further and deeper into Greater Asia than any Western force had done since the time of Alexander the Great a millennium prior. This eastward expansion would be checked not so long

after, in 751, along the shores of the Talis River, where the black flags of the Abbasids would meet the gold and crimson banners of the likewise expansionistic Tang Dynasty. Though an Abbasid victory, the Caliphate would never again seek to expand itself beyond the bounds of the Oxus River, and instead, once again, at least so far as the East was concerned, busied itself with its own internal affairs. The Abbasid government first seated itself in Kufa in modern Iraq, along the western bank of the Euphrates River. Yet in 762, its second caliph, al-Mansur, who had, as it so happens, seized absolute authority via the assassination of the Abbasid founding general, Abu Muslim, to great uproar and revolt, decided that a new and more

suitable, that is to say, secure, capital was in order. This new imperial seat would be on the western bank of the Tigris River, bounding it securely between the two great waterways of the region, and ringed with a double-layered, circular wall about 2.4 kilometers in diameter of hardened and reinforced clay bricks. Gaston Vier wrote of the construction, quote, 100,000 different workers and artisans came to him, Al-Mansur. The plans were laid out in the month of July of the year 758. It was a round city, the only circular city known in the entire world. The foundations were laid at the moment chosen by the astronomers Naubacht and Mashallah. Arab writers were proud of it, and the following remarks were attributed to Jahiz,

who he then quotes, I have visited the greatest cities amid those that are the most remarkable in architecture and solidarity in the provinces of Syria inner sanctum of the city. The City of Peace, built almost atop the ruins of Ctesiphon, which, as some tales have it, was partially demolished to reuse its ancient materials in the construction of this city between the rivers. The Caliph himself seems to have taken up residence about the year 765, three years into the city's four-year-long major construction process. In any event, the subsequent five centuries of Abbasids ruled from this circular city of peace, Baghdad.

Its name, incidentally, is of pre-Arabic origin, with most scholarly analysis settling on Middle Persian as its origin. Bach refers to God, while dad or tat means conferred or given by. Thus, it is the God-given city. A related term of particular note to any Greco-Persian history fans is the name Mithridates, the Hellenized version of Mithradad, or given by Mithra, or Mer, the Zoroastrian angelic power representing light, covenant, and oath. There is very little argument that during the 8th and 9th centuries,

Baghdad was one of, and perhaps the, high point of human civilization anywhere in the globe, a confluence of Western and Eastern tradition, knowledge, and scholarship. Though the city quickly outgrew its initial dimensions, the round-walled city remained its center point and crown jewel. In the middle of the round city itself sat the Golden Gate Palace. Quote, Over the central part of this building was a green dome about 160 feet high, on top of which was a horseman holding a lamp. It was commonly believed that the statue had magical powers.

Its presence is mysterious, for it is not mentioned after about 758 until it fell during a violent storm in 941. Adjoining the palace was the Cathedral Mosque of the city. Like all else in Baghdad, it was constructed, in the words of the traveling Persian chronicler Ibn Rusti, who visited the great capital in the 10th century, built of fire-baked bricks and plaster, with a teakwood roof painted the color of lapis lazuli, supported by pillars of the same wood. End quote. Continuing the description from Weir, All around the main central square were the houses of Mansur's young children and his personal black slaves,

the treasury, the public kitchens, the arsenal, and the offices of the Ministry of Correspondence and Land Taxes, of the Keeper of the Seal, of Palace Personnel, and of the Finance Ministry. From one end of the city to the other, there were alleys and streets bearing the names of officers, the Caliph's protégés, or even local inhabitants. In each of them dwelled high-ranking officers, in whom the Caliph had a great deal of faith, his most important freedmen, and the public servants who were on call in case of emergency. Solid gates closed off the ends of the streets. Except for the four main avenues, no artery ran to the wall surrounding the main, or palace, square,

since all the other streets and the wall were concentric. End quote. Beyond the great walls of the Circle City, extensive planning and engineering was devoted to ensuring that the city that would surely and quickly spring up and be filled would run smoothly and harmoniously even beyond the circular walls. It would be divided into four roughly symmetrical districts, and each district planned with a central official marketplace. Quote, Much room was to be reserved for streets and alleys for buildings. Avenues were 78 feet wide and streets were 26 feet wide. The number of neighborhood mosques

and baths was to depend on population density. End quote. Unoccupied land was designated to be turned into orchards or farmland to ensure that the city wouldn't become overcrowded. Crops were planned seasonally so that there would be plenty of food year-round. Those facilities, which were known to be overly noisy or unhealthy, such as camel and horse stables, were deliberately set out at the periphery of the city, well away from residential areas. From its very outset, it was understood that the city would certainly grow to sit astride both banks of the Tigris River. As such, a number of floating pontoon bridges were constructed and acted as the coursing nerve system between the two halves of the metropolis. There were likely initially four, which was then reduced to three, the reason for

which is unknown as the sources become rather confused by the time of the fourth bridge's apparent disappearance. Surrounding the city were perhaps one of its most famous features, though. A series of concentric canals, several navigable by even the largest of the many ships and vessels that plied the waters at all times, except during the height of the flooding season. The most important of which went so far as to directly link the Tigris to the nearby Euphrates. All of these did nothing to impede the movement of foot traffic through the districts, as all were spanned by arched pedestrian bridges. The Karkhaya Canal bears special mention as it ran out of the Euphrates and through the southern city, quote, through solidly vaulted underground tunnels with bottoms made of quicklime and carefully laid

bricks. This canal provided water to most of the neighboring streets in winter as well as summer, since a technique had been devised to prevent any halt to the flow, end quote. The Karkhaya Canal, as well as several others of similar construction, fed civilian wells throughout the city. The canals also served, much like the twin rivers they fed from and between, as an indispensable first line of defense of the city in the event of emergency or attack, and their constant maintenance was of paramount importance to the continued success and safety of Baghdad. Initially, the commercial district was located in the circle city itself. Yet, when the Caliph asked a visiting Byzantine ambassador what he thought of the city upon giving him an official tour as of the year 774, the Roman replied, quote, It is certainly a well-planned city, except for one thing. An enemy can cross it at will and without your knowledge. All your secrets will be spread

throughout the world without you being able to hide them, for the markets are inside the city and they are open to everyone. The enemy will enter using business as pretext. Besides, the merchants will travel about and will be able to talk of your most secret affairs. End quote. That was, the tale goes, all it took to convince Al-Mansur to remove all of the marketplaces from the Circle City and relocate them to the southern quarter, which became known as Karkh, meaning fortified. At the entrance of this commercial district stood uncountable shops and stalls of the cloth and clothing that merchants imported from as far off as eastern Persia.

Beyond that, the district quickly turned into a sprawling and labyrinthine bazaar of shops and stands of every ilk and variety, yet each still carefully located along its own fixed street and in a very orderly manner. Certainly, the greatest achievement of Baghdad in its early lifetime was in becoming, within a generation of its founding, one of the premier centers of learning and scholarship anywhere in the world. It reached its apex thanks largely to Al-Mansur's decision to further accelerate the Greco-Arabic translation movement. This was itself made possible thanks to the acquisition of efficient papermaking techniques that were supposedly, at least, captured in the aftermath of the infamous Battle of Talas. As many of the pre-Judean Christian Hellenistic works were being ignored

and allowed to molder and rot, or even actively destroy, across European Christendom. Much of those philosophies, mathematical formulas, and writings would be painstakingly preserved only by the Islamic scholars within the numerous libraries of Baghdad, and then transmitted to the wider Islamic world, and eventually, in due time, even back to Europe itself. Now, if I seem to be taking an inordinate amount of time to describe the ancient shining city of Baghdad, note that that is my intention. I want you to be able to close your eyes and picture it as it was. A living, vibrant city considered by many as the apex of human engineering in its heyday, and commonly referred to in Muslim accountings even centuries afterwards as a place akin to the paradise described within the pages of the Quran itself. in its heyday, and commonly referred to in Muslim accountings even centuries afterwards

as a place akin to the paradise described within the pages of the Quran itself. The entire area was prosperous. Trees, especially palms, brought from Basra were planted, and Baghdad had more palm trees than Basra or Kufa. Magnificent fruit was grown, and there were many orchards and gardens throughout the suburbs. Everything that was manufactured in the other countries was made here, because artisans had emigrated from every point on the horizon. They had come as quickly as they could, from near and far. Indeed, from shortly after its founding until at least the 930s, it stood as the most populous city in the world outside of China, boasting at times between 1.2 to even as much as 2

million residents. As meteoric as the city between the rivers rise was, much like the Abbasid Caliphate itself, in time that newness and vibrance would begin to fade. By the mid-9th century, other competing centers of culture, commerce, and even political power had sprung up across the wider Islamic and Central Asian world. Samarkand, Balkh, and Kiva in Central Asia. Tabriz, Isfahan, and Shiraz across Greater Persia. Even in regions relatively close to the city of peace,

other great cities had taken root and were growing, such as Mosul to the near-direct north, while Aleppo came into a new phase of flowering and prosperity of its own as of 944 as an independent emirate. By the year 1058, war had once again broken out within the Islamic world, with the Abbasids being overthrown and replaced across the region by the Fatimid dynasty. By the early 12th century as well, the Seljuk Turks had claimed much of the east for their own, setting up a rival and hostile empire of their own, further stalling both the city of Baghdad and the waning Abbasid caliphate as a whole. As Justin Marozzi puts it,

Yet the Abbasid intellectual legacy completely transcended these short-term political vicissitudes. he puts it, quote, In both the Arabic world and Europe, it was Arabic texts rather than Greek or Persian manuscripts that they studied. After the brilliant zenith, another Arabic word, of the 8th and 9th centuries, the city steadily lost political and military power and much of its sparkle, if not its cultural prestige. End quote. It was, at least as I see it, a city gently and rather slowly entering a comfortable middle age. Still great and respected worldwide, and with an unimpeachable cultural legacy. It is worthy of love and adoration, and I want you to feel that as well. So that when what comes next descends, we'll all together feel the horror of the blade twisting into its still beating heart.

From Fort Sumter to the Battle of Gettysburg. From the Emancipation Proclamation to Appomattox Courthouse. From the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Compromise of 1877. From Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman to Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, the Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. I'm Rich. And I'm Tracy.

And we're the hosts of a podcast that takes a deep dive into that era when a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. Hulagu Ilkhan and his unstoppable horde of perhaps 150,000 or more had, by the command of his elder brother and sovereign lord of the entire earth, the great Khan Monka, begun his sweep across Central Asia as of 1256. This had begun, as we discussed last episode, with the quote-unquote heretic sect of Nizari Ismailis

across northern Persia that had, in spite of the storied and fearsome reputation that they possessed, found little respite from the Mongol war machine bearing down upon them. Though certain pockets would intransigently hold up in their mountain castles for years yet to come, by 1257 Hulagu had concluded that all major resistance across Khorasan and Persia had been effectively squashed. He therefore now turned his attention to his next target of note, that ancient and storied bastion of the Islamic world, Baghdad, the city of peace. And so, Hulagu Khan would give it the opportunity to live up to its name, lay down its arms, and join freely in submission to the undeniable might of the great Mongol Empire.

He first drafted a warning to the Abbasid leader, warning him that he'd been given reason to take offense at the rather obviously unhelpful nature of Baghdad and its government. Quote, While I was campaigning in Rudbar, I asked for your aid, but you did not send me a single man. It is high time that you learn some manners, lest you wish to lose your sword and scepter. In reply to this, the Caliph Mustasim returned to Hulagu what Gibbon describes as haughty emissaries, who delivered an equally haughty dismissal of this friendly warning.

On the divine decree is founded the throne of the sons of Abbas, and their foes shall surely be destroyed in this world and the next. Who is this Hulagu who dares to rise against them? If he is desirous of peace, let him instantly depart from the sacred territory, and perhaps he may obtain from our clemency the pardon of his fault." This was, as you might well imagine, not exactly the answer that Hulagu had been looking for. But maybe there's been a little misunderstanding. Maybe this Caliph of Baghdad just needed a little bit of extra encouragement. Thus, Hulagu ordered another message drafted to its leader, the 37th, and what would prove final, Abbasid Caliph, that September. This time it was longer, and let's read it in full.

Quote, You, O King, have doubtless learned from men of rank high and low what punishments the Mongol armies have inflicted on the world and its peoples from the time of Genghis Khan to the present day. The humiliation thanks to eternal god of the dynasties of the Khwarazmshahs, the Seljuks, the sovereigns of the Dailong, the Adebeks, and other princes renowned for their grandeur and power. Since the gates of Baghdad are not closed to any of those races, each one of which had established its dominance, how then can entry of this city be forbidden to us, we who possess so many forces and so much power? We have warned you already, and we say to you today, rid yourself of feelings of hatred and hostility. Do not struggle against our standard, because you will only be wasting your time.

Therefore, without revisiting the past, let the Caliph agree to dismantle his city's defenses and fill up the moats. Let him hand over the administration to his son and come in person to us in good time. If, however, he refuses to attend, let him send us his vizier, Suleyman Shah, and the vice-chancellor, so that all can convey our intentions toward him, word for word. If he obeys our order, it will be unworthy of us to display any hatred towards him, and he will remain in possession of his states,

his troops, and his subjects. But if he refuses to listen to our advice, and prefers to follow the path of opposition and war, deploying his forces and naming the battlefield, we are committed and ready to fight against him. And once I leaked my forces to Baghdad in righteous anger, We are committed and ready to fight against him. And once I leave my forces to Baghdad in righteous anger, wherever you are hiding from the highest heavens to the depths of the earth,

I will bring you crashing down from the summit of the sky. Like a lion, I will throw you down to the lowest depths. I will not leave a single person alive in your country. I will turn your city, lands, and empire to flame. If you have a heart to save your head and that of your ancient family, listen carefully to my advice. If you

refuse to accept it, I will show you the meaning of the will of God. Whew! It's never not fun to read an honest-to-God Mongol letter of, hi, how are you, now bow down or I'll kill you all. It's enough to give one chills. Or at least it certainly ought to.

And that's 750 years after the fact. There is, absolutely, a method to this madness of Mongol ambassadorial techniques, and we have discussed it at length before. Still, it does bear briefly repeating. The point of all this is to psych out your enemy so much that they'll just give up without a fight. Because that's ultimately better for you. And them, but mostly you. Wars are costly and time-consuming, and they cost Mongol lives,

no matter how well-conducted they might be. But far better, and ultimately easier, to just very much embody the very yawning maw of hell itself and millions of demons charging forward to rip you apart and devour you whole. And, well, hopefully at least, it won't actually have to come to the slaughter of entire cities, at least not all that often. The key to this gambit working, though, is it must be believable. In order for anyone, much less everyone everywhere, to take it seriously, you have to be willing and able to follow through on that whole yawning mouth of hell itself coming to devour you threat whenever someone decides to test you on it. Let's get now to the already mentioned 37th Caliph of Baghdad, Al-Mustasim Billah Abu Ahmad Abdullah bin Al-Mustansir Billakh, better known as al-Mustasim Bilakh, or just Mustasim, which is what I will

be going with. He had, in classic fashion, been designated as the heir apparent to the caliphate by his father, Caliph al-Mustansir Bilakh, and succeeded to the office upon his father's death as of 1242, at the age of 29 or 30. History and historians have, well, not exactly been very kind to old Mustasim in the intervening centuries, and it's not hard to understand why. 19th and early 20th century scholar Sir Henry Howarth would write of the Caliph that he was in a, quote, state of mental imbecility, end quote, upon Hulagu's arrival at his doorstep. His Scottish contemporary, Sir William Muir, puts it even more bluntly that Mustasim was, quote, a weak and miserly creature in whose improvident hands the caliphate, even in quieter times, would have fared ill, end quote. More

modern judgments have painted him a little better. John Saunders wrote that the caliph was, quote, weak, vain, incompetent, and cowardly, end quote. Moving out of the Western world, Iraqi historian and professor Farouk Omar Fawzi considers Mustasim, quote, a frivolous leader more concerned with the pleasures of his harem and hunting grounds than with the defense of the realm. He blamed the Khalif's notorious miserliness for the disastrous neglect of his army, with soldiers being recruited on at times of external danger and then disbanded to save money, a short-sighted policy that resulted in mass desertions and even defections to the Mongol ranks. In his own mind, however, Mustasim saw himself as a great leader, and indeed world-conqueror in his own right, on the cusp of achieving a level of greatness and

victory across the Muslim world and beyond that the Abbasids hadn't seen in some five centuries. With a sense of vainglorious delusion of grandeur that was characteristic of him as a man and leader, Mustasim reasoned that as the divinely guided caliph of all Islam, he could but snap his fingers and the entire Muslim world would rise and rally to his defense. It was with such a sense of his own God-assured victory that he responded thus to Hulagu Ilkhan as his Mongol army camped at Hamadan, just 260 miles or about 420 kilometers northeast of Baghdad itself. Quote, Oh, young man, barely started on your career, who shows such little desire to live,

who, drunk with happiness and riches of his ten days, believes that you are greater than the whole world, who thinks your orders have the irresistible force of destiny? Why do you ask of me what you have not the slightest chance of obtaining? Do you believe, with your greatest efforts, the strength of your armies and your bravery, you can bring a star tumbling down into your chains? The prince forgets that from the east to the west, all the worshippers of Allah, whether kings or beggars, young or old, are slaves of this court and make up my armies. The moment I give the order to these defenders of my realm to come together, I will begin

by finishing the business in Iran, after which I will continue my march to Turan and will put everyone where he belongs. Certainly the face of the earth will be covered with troubles and disorder, but I am neither eager for vengeance nor hungry for the consideration of men. I do not want my subjects to be the victims of passing armies, above all when I and Hulagu Khan have but one heart and one language. If, like me, you have sown the seed of friendship, why do you talk of dismantling defenses and ramparts? Follow the path of well-being and return to Coruscant. If, however, you want war, do not hesitate and do not have any excuses.

If you have decided to fight, I have millions of cavalry and infantry all ready for war. Who, when the moment for vengeance arrives, will dissolve the waters of the sea? End quote. And I just imagine one of his scribes, who's heard tales of what the Mongols have done before sitting there, jotting this all down and just saying, OK, so Khalif Al-Mustaseem. First off, I love the confidence and those little bits of poetic flair are there. They're certainly creative. Maybe just let me throw in a couple of notes here. Maybe we can ease off on the blustery tone. He's about a month, couple months away. Maybe he's about 150 to 300,000 guys. And

maybe we could just pump the brakes on that kind of victorious chest beating preemptorily. How about instead we offer like an apology for not having sent the aid they requested against the assassins last year and and okay okay okay how about this he's asking that you send some high level emissaries to him as a show of good faith uh that seems like that could easily be done uh we could just make a big show of dismantling some of our outer defenses and you know just wait for all this to kind of blow over rather than you know tweaking his beard hairs i have it on pretty good authority that they really don't like it when you do that so maybe we should stop um also i just want to remind you um

that you've sort of not been paying your soldiers for quite a long time now and they're all still pretty unhappy about that and we've been hearing some pretty worrying grumbling from the barracks as of late. And again, those Mongols are looking pretty darn eager to fight. You know, in fact, I don't know if that's my opinion, but if I were to give it, I think it would just be best if we sort of nominally agree with Hulagu and, you know, submit to him, quote unquote, so that he decides to just pass us on by. And what's that? you know, submit to him, quote unquote, so that he decides to just pass us on by. And oh, what's that? You you've already sent your original reply letter and you made none of my suggested changes. You just sent it as as is.

OK, then. Well, that is certainly a decision that you have made. Just to randomly change the topic, no reason here. Your Eminence, just how exactly many days of vacation time do I have saved up at this point? Because I've actually been thinking about taking a trip, like, tomorrow morning? So, yeah. To add to all this, Mustasim's court itself was deeply divided. Even his own vizier, a Shiite named Ibn al-Alqami, is alleged to have been double-dealing through this whole set of affairs, quote, according to later Sunni writers, quietly encouraging a Mongol assault through back channels with Hulagu, while at the same time reducing the strength and numbers of the Baghdad garrison, end quote. Al-Alqami is purported to have wrote a secret

missive to Hulagu himself, in which he stated, quote, I am willing to help you conquer all of Baghdad on the condition that you remove the caliph of the Muslims, end quote. So Hulagu gets Mustasim's reply while he's still in camp in Hamadan, which is basically telling him to go piss up a rope. And, I mean, of course, it's on. But first, he's going to write a little reply. And it is as follows. Quote. Eternal God has lifted up Genghis Khan and his family in honor.

He has given us an empire of the whole world, from east to west. Every man who has already submitted to us can be sure of keeping his goods, his wife, his children, and his life. He who resists will have nothing. The love of great things, riches, pride, the illusions of fleeting happiness have so completely seduced you that the words of well-intentioned men make no impression upon you, and your ears are closed to the advice And quote. A formal declaration of war in hand, the Mongol emissaries duly made their way to Baghdad and proceeded toward the Caliph's palace to formally deliver it.

They never made it, but were instead mobbed in the streets and, predictably, killed. And there it was. Because there it always seems to be. And seemingly by design. By hook or by crook, you get your foe to do the one thing that you absolutely, positively will not tolerate. Yeah, they killed the Mongol emissaries. The hour of diplomacy was officially over, and now would come the hour of vengeance and wrath. The Mongol armies departed Bukhara. To be continued... the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations, or take a

deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast.