The History of China - #221 - Mongol 18: Goliath's Fall

Episode Date: July 30, 2021

Having laid waste to the once glorious city of Baghdad, Hulegu Ilkhan now sets his sights east of the Euphrates, to the fertile lands of Syria and Egypt beyond. But what's to follow will set of a momentous clash in Galilee, at a spring called Ain Jalut, that will shake the very fundaments of history... Time Period Covered: 1258-1260 CE Major Historical Figures: Mongol Empire: Mongke Khaghan Khubilai Ilkhan Ariq Boke Ilkhanate: Hulegu Ilkhan General Baiju General Kitbuqa Ayyubid Dynasty: al-Muzzam Turanshah al-Malik al-Nasir Yusuf al-Aziz al-Zayn al-Hafizi Mamluks: Saif ad-Din Qutuz Baybars al Bunduqdari, "The Great Lord Panther" European Christendom: King Louis IX of France Bohemond V of Antioch Bohemond VI of Antioch King Hethum I of Cilicia Major Sources Cited: Amitai, Reuven. Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk Ilkhanate War, 1260-1281. Amitai, Reuven. “An Exchange of Letters in Arabic Between Abakha Ilkhan and Sultan Baybars (A.H. 667/A.D. 1268-69)” in Central Asiatic Journal, Vol. 38, No. 1. Gillespie, Alexander. Causes of War, Volume II: 1000 CE to 1400 CE. Grousset, René. Empire of the Steppes: A history of Central Asia. Subani, Hamad. The Secret History of Iran. Richard, Jean. The Crusades, C.1071-1291. Runciman, Steven. A History of the Crusades, Volume 3, The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades. Tschanz, David W. “History’s Hinge: ‘Ain Jalut” in Saudi Aramco World. 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. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 221, Mongol 18, Goliath's Fall. From the king of kings of the east and west, the great Khan, to Qutuz the Mamluk, who fled to escape our swords. You should think of what happened to other countries and submit to us. You have heard how we have conquered a vast empire and have purified the earth of the disorders that tainted it. We have conquered vast areas, massacring all the people.

You cannot escape from the terror of our armies. Where can you flee? What road will you use to escape us? Our horses are swift, our arrows sharp, our swords like thunderbolts, our hearts as hard as the mountains, our soldiers as numerous as the sand. Fortresses will not detain us, nor arms stop us. Your prayers to God will not avail against us. We are not moved moved by tears nor touched by lamentations. Only those who beg our protection will be safe. Hasten your reply before the fire of war is kindled. Resist and you will suffer the most terrible of catastrophes. We will shatter your mosques and reveal the weakness of your god, and then we will kill your children and your old men together. At present, you are the only enemy against which we have to march. From a diplomatic missive from Hulgu Khan to Sultan Saif ad-Din Qutuz

of Mamluk Egypt and Syria, circa 1260 CE. We last left off in our tale of the Mongol explosion as of the year 1258, with the brutal conquest and sacking of Baghdad, that jewel of the Islamic world, now left a smoldering ruin astride the twin rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates, saturated with ink and blood. The one in charge of this terrible push into the heart of Southwest Asia was none other than Hulagu, grandson of the great Genghis Khan, and brother of both Kublai in China and the current great Khan himself, Mongke. Under the direct command of this newly elected Kayan, in 1251, Hulugu had led a vast force, perhaps as many as 300,000 soldiers, and recommenced the push toward that long-held Mongol

dream, control over the whole world in fact as well as in pretense. They had, by all accounts, made brutally short work of things. By 1256, they had stormed the remote desert castles of the mysterious assassins of Alamut, all across remote Persia, putting them, almost one and all, to the merciless sword. Even mighty Baghdad had proved to be no more of a barrier to Mongol aggression. Within two weeks of besieging the circle city in 1258, it had fallen into Mongol custody, who had spent the next several weeks thoroughly plundering and burning their possessions while slaughtering the populace in one of the greatest acts of mass slaughter ever seen, to be driven out only when

the overwhelming stench of decay and death became too much for even the hardened Mongol warriors to bear. Following the Ilkhan's departure, the horde pressed on. Hulagu had been given a wide grant of leave by his elder brother to rage as far to the southwest as he thought he'd be able. Though it's unclear if Syria and Egypt were initially stated outright as targets, by the middle of that decade, it had become more than apparent that there was no substantive force capable of preventing the Mongol steamroller from flattening everything from Persia to the Red Sea. From Amitai Ruvan, quote, Hulagu and Manka probably had the vague idea of pushing on to Syria and Egypt all along. This goal would have become

more defined as Hulagu drew closer to the Mediterranean, end quote. Even before the sacking of Baghdad, Hulagu sent an order to his commander of the Mongol forces in Anatolia and Persia, General Baiju, quote, you must set out in order to deliver those countries up to the coast of the Western Sea from the hands of the sons of France and England, end quote. The Mongol expeditionary force, already vast unto itself, also did the typical thing of calling into the fray its allies and vassal states, including both those who had submitted in terror before the might of the horde itself, as well as those who had joined up out of a sense of getting with the winning side,

and thereby being able to pay back long-overdue grudges against bitter enemies. An example of the former being called into this fight were the two sultans of Rum and Tabriz, both Seljuk Turks, while an example of the latter would be the king of Cilicia in Armenia, Hetham I, who, while undoubtedly saving his own kingdom and skin from Mongol aggression by preemptively submitting to the Great Khan as of 1254, as a devout Christian monarch surrounded by Muslim states, also saw the Mongol push into southwestern Asia as a golden opportunity to take bloody revenge against his hated Islamic enemies. This was, after all, lest we forget, smack dab in the

middle of the Crusader period, with Islamo-Christian relations at an all-time low. As we've seen time and time again, one of the Mongols' greatest strengths was its vast intelligence network that gathered any and all information it could about those who were, or might eventually be, foes of Karakorum. You'll recall all the way back in Mongol XII, Subodai and Jeb's Excellent Adventure, that more than 30 years before this point, that first great cavalry raid across the Caucasus and Eastern Europe had encountered Italian and other European merchants on the coasts of the Black Sea. In exchange for dealing with certain commercial foes of their own in the region, the Italian merchants had been only too happy to provide the Mongol scouting force with

maps and further lines of contacts all across both the Near East and Europe itself. Those had almost certainly been carefully cultivated and developed into a secret intelligence network that crisscrossed the continent, reporting everything worth knowing back to the Khans and their trusted lieutenants. As of the 1250s, this meant that Hulagu was surely well apprised of the state of politics in the Levant region, and in particular, its fractious and weakened nature thanks to widespread infighting, the near-perfect mixture for another of the Mongols' favorite tactics, that of divide and conquer. So, let's take a look at the state of affairs of the Near East on the eve of the Mongol push into Syria itself. Less than a decade prior, in 1250, the Sultan of Egypt of the Ayyubids had been deposed and fled in the face of a massive uprising by his own elite guardsmen. This caste, known as the Bahri or the Mamluks, were highly trained and dedicated slaves, often so trusted by their masters that they were thought of more as kinsmen than the owned slaves that they were,

and typically called their owners father rather than master. The Mamluks, whose name means ones who are owned, had been created by Saladin, the son himself of a Kurdish general, around about the year 1174, during his creation of the Ayyubid dynasty that had overthrown the preceding Fatimids across the region. Typically, they were bought as children from among the conquered tribes of Central Asia, quote, promising them security, discipline, and the possibility of great fortunes. Mamluk boys then endured several years of rigorous training in horsemanship and archery. They were used both as royal bodyguards and to offset the dominating influence of the Arab military in the state. Not to be confused with ordinary slaves, the Mamluks were members of an

elite military corps, a kind of proto-foreign legion, or a knighthood of Islam, end quote. And yes, if you're thinking the Unsullied of Astapor in the Game of Thrones series, you're definitely on generally the right track. The Mamluks, however, did not face castration. 1249 had proved to be something of a watershed moment in the relationship between the Mamluks and their Ayyubid overlords, and not in a positive way. Following a disastrous loss to the French armies of Louis IX at Daimisha, resulting in the European capture of the garrison, the Ayyubid prince had disagreed with the decision

reached by the garrison's defenders that had enacted the evacuation of the fort. After executing several of the civilian leaders of Daimeda, the Ayyubid prince fatefully threatened to similarly punish the garrison's defenders for the failure to fight to the last, resulting, rather predictably, in a large-scale mutiny and uprising by those slave soldiers who didn't wish to be executed, thanks very much. Now, this initial uprising did little to dislodge the Ayyubids from their place at the top of the Egyptian social pyramid, and the situation was eventually calmed down with the arrival of the Atabeg al-Asqar, or the commander of the military, who arrived on site and just, you know, told everyone to chill out a minute and take a breath.

Yeah, the prince had been totally uncool, and he understood that, but let's all let bygones be bygones and, you know, get back to work. And it worked. The water flowed out of the bridge. Were the moments. Alas, misfortunes often come in bushels rather than as singles. Shortly thereafter, the Ayyubid prince died and was succeeded by his son called Al-Muzam Turanshah. Though initially, this succession was hailed by the Mamluks, who thought he would confirm their long-standing request for a permanent recognition as the guardians and defenders of Egypt, and their confirmations to administrative posts of higher importance, which they had heretofore been denied because of their status as slaves, pretty quickly that hope turned sour. Turan Shah instead completely snubbed the Mamluks, conspicuously favoring instead a Kurdish force from the upper Mesopotamia known as the Muazzamina,

rather than the primarily Turkic Mamluk contingent called the Salihi. Absolutely fed up with this level of disrespect, a contingent of the Salihi Mamluk forces stealthily inserted themselves into the camp of the newly minted Sultan Turanshah at a place called Fariskur, and assassinated him at a feast on May 2nd, 1250, after less than six months on the throne. Following the murder of Turan Shah, the Ayyubids were forced out of Egypt altogether, but did manage to retain their hold on Greater Syria. The Mamluks, with their unifying foe vanquished, almost immediately disintegrated as a cohesive fighting force into a multitude of hostile factions across the region. All this to say, it got really, really complicated really fast.

The major takeaway for our purposes at the moment, though, should be that the region was divided, locked in a multi-front civil war, already under invasion and partial occupation by Christian Crusader armies from across Europe, and just generally ripe for the plucking by a united and unstoppable Mongol Empire. And the Mongols knew it. Before moving on, one other interesting tidbit about the Mamluks was that their rise to prominence was tied, quite unintentionally, to that initial Mongol raid across Eurasia some three decades before. The Mamluk writer, al-Nuwari, would write of this about a century later, quote, The Mongols fell upon the Kipchaks, and brought upon most of them death, slavery, and captivity. At this time, merchants bought these captives and brought them to the various countries and cities. End quote.

That's to say, the Kipchak Turks sold into slavery in the 1220s would go on to spawn the very force that would stop the Mongol advance in its tracks three decades later. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. Catching up back to our own storylines present, to 1259, Hulagu now pressed onward from the ruins of Baghdad, spreading terror across Levant and subduing all of Mesopotamia east of the Tigris. He and his 300,000 strong army then crossed the Euphrates westward by constructing a vast pontoon bridge and marched into Syria itself. The Ayyubid sultan there, al-Malik al-Nasir Yusuf, sent a message of submission to the Ilkhan, but this was rebuffed by Hulagu. The reason for this refusal was that al-Nasir Yusuf had committed one of the big no-no's of Mongol international relations. No, he hadn't ordered any ambassadors killed, but he had previously

submitted to the Kayanat as of about 1253, but then fatefully refused Hulagu's call to send troops to assist the horde in its conquest of Baghdad. When the call went out, even before Hulagu had crossed the Oxus River into Persia proper in 1256, al-Nasir Yusuf had just flat out ignored the missive, probably hoping that his absence just wouldn't be noticed or that the Mongol push would take far longer and achieve much less conquest than would prove ultimately to be the case. Even more galling to the Ilkhan, though, was that when the reports went out that Hulagu's army had ravaged and conquered all of Persia, Al-Nasir had sent neither congratulations nor gifts, especially irksome since it was well known that Al-Nasir had previously sent such tokens of submission

to General Baiju, who was now Hulagu's subordinate. I mean, it was outright insulting. And yet, when news of the fall of Baghdad was dispatched, al-Nasir Yusuf once again changed course and suddenly was all hugs and kisses with Hulagu once again, sending gifts and congratulations, now that he was basically at his doorstep. Sorry dude, but too little, too late. From Amitai, quote, Al-Nasir's ambivalent policy and his frequent changes of heart were a mixture of his own indecisive nature plus the divided opinion of those around him.

On the one hand, there were the defeatists who counseled a submissive policy to the Mongols. On the other hand, the militant approach was represented by Baybars al-Bundukdari and others, that is, Al-Nasir Yusuf's own contingent of loyal Mamluks, end quote. According to Rashid al-Din, the envoys of al-Nasir arrived at the ruins of Baghdad in late March 1258, to find that the Ilkhan had already abandoned the city and marched his ordo camp into Azerbaijan. Finally tracking the Mongol force down there, they presented the Khan with this message in Arabic, and once translated and read to Hulagu, the Khan ordered a reply drafted. Though we only have Al-Din's own account of the contents of the letter, rather than the document itself, what he tells us is quite consistent with the general tenor and tone of other known Mongol missives. First, Hulagu gave a brief and terse accounting

of his path of destruction across Asia, and the numberless multitudes he had slaughtered, and then how he'd killed the Caliph of Baghdad because of his falsehood. He then demanded a frank answer. Did al-Nasir seek to submit or to resist the will of Hulagu? If he submitted to Mongol authority, he was to demonstrate that resolve by first leveling his own fortresses and then coming to meet with Hulagu in person to offer up his formal submission. To this, al-Nasir made the definitively wrong call. He responded to Hulagu's letter by dispatching his young son, al-Nasir made the definitively wrong call. He responded to Hulagu's letter by dispatching his young son, al-Aziz, along with other high-ranking officials and princes, but did not come personally to the Ilkhan's camp as instructed.

Hulagu immediately pointed out this critical failure to follow instructions, and demanded to know why al-Nasir had stayed away. The excuse offered, that al-Nasir was simply unable to leave Syria for now because of the imminent threat of Frankish invasion from the coast, proved to be some very weak tea for Hulagu to swallow. Though he pretended to accept the answer at the time, and treated the young Prince al-Aziz kindly and as a favored guest, it's clear that he took the failure of al-Nasir as yet another personal slight by the Ayyubid prince. Moreover, he was approached by yet another member of the Syrian diplomatic party, a high-ranking bureaucrat by the name of al-Zayin al-Hafizi, who, in a real grima-worm-tongue maneuver, secretly urged the Ilkhan to invade the Sultanate at once and bring it fully under Mongol domination.

For the time being, however, Hulgu seemed content to just let the game play itself out. He dispatched his envoys back to Al-Nasir Yusuf, once again recounting that it was because of the Caliph of Baghdad's falsehood that he had met his horrible fate, and amending again that the Sultan of Aleppo make haste to come and attend the Ilkhan personally at his ordo, and that if he knew what was good for him, he wouldn't try to delay or obfuscate like last time. A third letter was supposedly written as of late 1259, again from Hulagu to Al-Nasir Yusuf. And I say supposed because, again, we don't have the actual documents, just descriptions of them from various chroniclers and historians, which can vary rather substantially in their details. Again from Amitai, quote, Pretty boilerplate Mongol message. It's impossible to say with any certainty what goes on in the mind of a man put in a situation like that of Al-Nasir Yusuf.

Pretty much all accounts of the man paint him as a wishy-washy coward who had only as much spine as the advisors he listened to on that particular day. Unfortunately for him, Aleppo, and the wider Syrian region as a whole, on that particular day, al-Nasir had turned defiant toward the repeated menace of the altogether too close for comfort Hulagu. He sent off a belligerent answer to the Khan's repeated threatening, emphasizing that Hulagu was an infidel who did not believe in the almighty power of Allah, while al-Nasir was himself devout in the true faith and would be protected. He proclaimed that he was prepared for war. This was, of course, exactly the kind of ill-thought-out slip of the tongue that Hulagu had almost certainly been waiting for. Ready for war, you say? Then war you shall have. When Aleppo received news that the Mongol forces had been spotted advancing towards Syria at the

end of 1259, al-Nasir, realizing all too late the huge mistake he'd just made, sent a desperate plea to Egypt, asking for the help of the Mamluk ruler there, the newly crowned Sultan Qutuz. He then abandoned Aleppo to its fate and proceeded south, away from the inbound Mongol force, to a settlement just north of Damascus called Barza. Beside his own army, he was purportedly joined there by a coalition force of Bedouins, Persians, Kurds, Turkmen, and various other unspecified quote-unquote volunteers. Also, there were the Mamluk forces of a certain al-Malik al-Zahir-Rukin al-Din Baibars al-Bundukhari, commonly just called Baibars, meaning the Great Lord Panther, who was as of yet still in the service of al-Nasir. But al-Nasir's momentary stroke of

suicidal courage proved to be as fleeting as it was stupid, and he wound up quickly turning tail, dissolving his assembled army, and fleeing further southward toward the Egyptian border, where he would eventually be betrayed, taken captive, and delivered to Hulagu along with his son to their own eventual deaths, along with the widespread destruction of his kingdom. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Before getting further into that, there are two other players of note in the Levant region at this time. The first were the various crusader states of the period all up and down the eastern Mediterranean coastline, including the Principality of Antioch and the County of Tripoli to the north, and the Barony of Acre and the so-called Kingdom of Jerusalem further to the south. Antioch was already a known quantity to the Mongols, and its ruler, Bohemond V, had

made his trip to personally pledge fealty to the Great Khan all the way back in 1246. As such, when the Ilkhanate army approached Antioch in 1259, Bohemond V's son and successor, Bohemond VI, went, along with his father-in-law, the same King Hetham of Armenia as mentioned before, to reaffirm their submission to the Ilkhan, or as they typically referred to Hulagu, the King of Kings. They would thereafter adopt a staunchly pro-Mongol policy, since it was obvious that they had chosen the winning side. And even though the Mongols neither offered nor could logistically supply any actual protection from their myriad hostile Muslim neighbors, so what? They were all about to be crushed under Mongol hooves anyway. What would it matter?

Meanwhile, Acre took a much less bold course, as in it chose to sit on the fence about this whole thing and just sort of ride it out. The Europeans who controlled the walled city, themselves of the Knights Hospitalia of the Kingdom of France, were of course all for the mass slaughter of Muslims all across the region, but likewise viewed the mass incursion of the Mongols into their area of operations as not necessarily a positive turn of events for them in the long term. Go figure. The second force of note, as already mentioned, was that of Cilicia, also known as Lesser Armenia, under its staunchly pro-Mongol King Hetham I. Interestingly, it is asserted by the historian and King Hetham's own kinsman,

also named Hetham, that upon King Hetham's own three-year-long trip to Karakorum to personally submit to the rule of the new Great Khan Manka between 1253 and 1256, it had been King Hetham who had personally convinced Manka of the wisdom of invading the Holy Land and liberating it, to be thereafter handed over to Mongol-friendly Christian rulers, such as himself, of course. Amitai notes, however, that this report can be questioned, however, not least because of the historian Hetham's well-known tendency to rewrite history as he would have liked to have seen it. End quote. Hmm. Maybe if Hetham the historian was still alive today, he'd have a hit book series called, like, Killing Baghdad and Killing Aleppo and Killing Cairo or something. 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. The Mongol army, accompanied by contingents of Georgian and Armenian knights and soldiers, and Rumi Seljuk mounted archers, heavy cavalry, and footmen, arrived outside the gates of Aleppo on January 18, 1260. After the customary call for the city to throw open its gates and abjectly surrender, and the defenders' refusal to do so, the city was invested in the by now all too familiar siege operation of the Khanates. Two years prior, it had taken Hulagu's men 13 days to breach and take the city

defenses of Baghdad. Now, at Aleppo, it would require just half that. For six days, Mongol mangonels and catapults pounded the city until its defenses gave out, allowing the entrance of the Mongol armies into the whole of the city, save the citadel, on January 24th. For the following six days, a general massacre of the population was methodically carried out, lasting until the 30th, when it was officially called off by Hulagu. In the course of the sacking, in very unsurprising fashion, King Hetham of Cilicia majored to personally satellite the Great Mosque, while making sure to spare the Jacobite church of the city. The soldiers' holdup within the citadel lasted for almost another month, until February

25th. Until February 25th. They would finally emerge into the bleak winter daylight, no doubt expecting their swift and inevitable slaughter. Quite surprisingly, however, Hulagu allowed the Aleppine soldiers to live, perhaps as some sort of recognition of their unwavering valor and loyalty to their cause, even if it was long lost. We really don't know why he did that. Regardless, the citadel itself was then pulled down brick by brick. Thereafter, King Hetham received as a reward for his service, quote, several districts and castles which the Muslims of Aleppo had once seized from the Armenian kingdom. To Bohemond VI of Antioch, Hulagu gave the lands belonging to the principality of Aleppo, which had been in Muslim hands since the days of Saladin, end quote. The nearby city of Harim surrendered, but was

likewise sacked for having been rather wishy-washy itself in getting around to actually submitting. The other cities of the region, such as Hama and Homs, were thereafter much quicker in offering their submissions and sending forth their leaders to attend to the Ilkhan thereafter. It's also at this point that Hulagu would send forth emissaries to Cairo and its sultan Qutuz to demand his immediate and total surrender or else face the same fate Assyria was currently in the middle of experiencing. Even before the final surrender of Aleppo's citadel in late February of 1260, Hulagu had ordered one of his most trusted and capable generals, the Nestorian Christian Naimon, named Kitbuka, to take his own force of one or possibly two tumens, that is to say 10,000 to 20,000 warriors, and advance south toward the other great Syrian city, Damascus.

As for the Ilkhan himself, he had just received fateful news indeed. Word had arrived at last to the front lines of the west, that far to the southeast, outside the gates of the rebel-held Chinese city of Chongqing, his own eldest brother, the great Khan Mongke, had been felled and subsequently died that previous August. The traditional understanding has been that as per law and tradition, Hulagu, as one of the great lords of the Mongol Empire and progeny of Genghis Khan, was duty-bound to return to Karakoram and participate in the Great Curl Tide that would select the next great leader of the empire. As such, he quit his conquest of Syria, and with 280,000 to 290,000 of his men, began the months-long journey back towards Mongolia. As put by Dan Carlin, the robot had powered down without its brain and everything had come to a halt.

But hang on a second. We've already pretty well established in previous successional disputes that that really wasn't the case for the Mongol Empire. As in the case of Batu and his family feud with that oh-so-brief third great Khan, Glyuk, a high lord of Mongolia was not compelled to drop everything and make for the imperial city. They could, if they so chose, as in the case of Batu, offer up some excuse or another and drag the process out for years if they wanted to. They could also, if they weren't being quite so obstinate, send a family member to act in their stead as the voice of a given family branch. We also know that the Mongols didn't just press

pause on ongoing military operations in an active theater of war and just abscond with a quarter million troops to attend a party back home. No way. There were specific prerogatives that allowed active operations to remain afield indefinitely on a kind of autopilot of previous orders given until a new Great Khan could either confirm them or retask the army. Again, they weren't dropping everything to go attend a big party in the middle of Mongolia. But Hulagu did abandon the front lines and remove the vast majority of his army eastward and out of Syria. That is a fact. So what gives? There are a few plausible explanations. The first explanation that holds water is that news had also arrived with the already brewing factional struggle that would become a civil war between Hulagu's other two

brothers, Kublai and Arik Bok. It's pretty well established that between the two of them, Hulagu rather strongly favored Kublai over baby brother Arik, so it's feasible that he sought to lend his considerable military support to Kublai's cause. Another very plausible theory is that, much as with Batu's pullout of Eastern Europe following the smashing of Hungary and Poland, Hulagu had come to the realization that Syria didn't have enough pastureland and fodder to accommodate 300,000 mounted soldiers for a significant period of time. Quote, the main basis for this suggestion is a letter sent by Hulagu to King Louis IX of France in 1262, in which it is claimed that the

withdrawal of the majority of his forces from Syria was due to the lack of fodder and grazing there. This would seem a reasonable explanation, although a certain amount of caution must be taken with excuses for failure, end quote. Even if we accept this explanation, though, it doesn't explain why he would choose to leave behind such a triflingly small rearguard as a single tumen under the command of Kitbuka. Surely there was sufficient fodder for at least a few more tens of thousands to finish the job. Instead, it was probably a more personal reason than Syria, still largely untouched by Mongol depredations, was simply out of resources. Proceeding from there, we have two rather tantalizing possibilities. The first is that

perhaps in the wake of the news of his brother's death, Hulagu sensed his own position and possessions in Iran to be under a rather immediate threat from his own distant and rather hostile kinsmen. If he was intending to return to Mongolia, he surely would have proceeded further eastward, you know, back toward Mongolia, probably at least as far as Khorasan. Instead, his massive force made straight for Azerbaijan, a relative stones throw away from Syria in terms of getting back to the homeland, and then it just stayed there. The explanation presents itself that Hulagu was concerned over his claims over that territory, which were disputed by the Jurchids of the Golden Horde,

had fallen into peril without the stability of his brother in firm command. The current Khan of the Golden Horde, Berke, may have wished to reassert his own claim over the fertile region while the Borjigians as a whole were distracted and turned inward. Or at least Hulagu may have suspected he might, enough to pull back into a more defensive posture around likely trouble spots. As for the pitifully small force he left to General Ketpuka, the likeliest answer is the simplest one, faulty intelligence.

Quote, Hulagu simply underestimated the numbers, quality, and willpower of his opponents in Egypt. He was perhaps misled here by Syrian captives. Initially, at least, Kitpuka found that he indeed had little to fear from the Syrian defenders and their allies. As of January 31st, al-Nasir Yusuf's tenuous grasp on bravery had given way following reports of the quick and apocalyptic end of Aleppo, and he had fled his position outside of Damascus south toward Gaza, largely disbanding his army in the process. Though he left a rearguard behind,

al-Nasir eventually made for the Egyptian border to seek the protection and support of Sultan Qutuz there. Yet again, though, his spinelessness got the better of him. Fearing the possibility of placing himself into the very hands of his erstwhile enemy, Qutuz, al-Nasir turned about with a small personal guard near the Egyptian border and instead rode out into the desert. Eventually, he and the small entourage still with him made it as far as Birkat al-Zaiza, where he was found and captured by Mongol outriders. Womp womp. As for the rest of his army, it did proceed on to Cairo and was thereafter integrated into the greater Egyptian army. Kitbuka would arrive at Damascus on February 14, 1260, to find it largely

a ghost town. His host had been preceded by imperial envoys, who, themselves finding the city deserted, proceeded to set up and establish nominal Mongol caesareanty over the empty city until their reinforcements arrived. The surrounding townships all around Damascus had wisely decided that this was the moment to declare themselves as subjects of the Khanate of their own volition, and didn't wait until the formal arrival of the war commander. In reaching this decision, they were substantively helped along by the counsel and advice of old Grima Wormtongue himself, that secret pro-Mongol partisan all along, Al-Zayin al-Hafizi. Either just after entering Damascus, or possibly even before arriving, Kitbuka had dispatched a detachment to continue south ahead of his main tumen

to reconnoiter, loot, and of course terrorize the populace of Transjordan and Palestine, hopefully getting them all to surrender before Kitbuka's main force even arrived. Either as a single cohesive force, or rather more likely, smaller separate parties, this vanguard made a substantive sweep across the region, looting and pillaging all across Palestine and Transjordan as far south as Gaza. Hebron, Ascalon, Jerusalem, and Nablus were specific targets in Palestine, and the last target of note was their happening upon the rearguard left behind by al-Nasir Yusuf to slow the Mongol advance down, which was swiftly annihilated, before circling back and returning to Damascus to report their findings as of late March or early April, and of course bringing with them their captured booty, prisoners, and livestock.

As for General Kitbuka himself, at least a general timeline can be established. After only a few days within Damascus, he and the greater bulk of his force departed for the south, setting up camp at Marj Barghouth, a place close enough to the French held enclave of Acre that the Franks sent forth a delegation bearing gifts to dissuade the Mongol force from setting their sights upon it. Shortly thereafter, though, Khedbuka was forced to wheel around and return to Damascus in order to oversee the destruction of a rebellion of the garrison within the city. Such an action, though surely not uncommon among the soldiers of a city once a main occupying force departed, was of course uncommonly foolish. And by April 28th, the citadel was taken

and ordered partially destroyed to dissuade any further attempts by the locals. The next stop would be the township of Baalbek, which had largely surrendered except for, that's right, the garrison. They were swiftly convinced of the error of their ways by a vigorous siege, and after asking for and receiving a guarantee of safety, they surrendered. Once again, the citadel was then ordered ripped down. Next was the fortress of Al-Suwaiba in the Golan region, and then another fortress of Ajlun, which was put to siege, lasting until June 1260. It was then that, lo and behold, who should appear but the Mongol outriders who had stumbled upon al-Nasir Yusuf himself and taken him captive. Al-Nasir was successfully convinced by Kitbukha to entreat the defenders of Ajlun to surrender. This proved a successful conclusion to the siege,

after which al-Nasir was sent off to go meet personally with Hulagu, by that point somewhere east of the Euphrates. By all accounts, he and his son were well-received and well-treated by Hulagu, at least until word of the result of Ain Jalut reached his camp, at which point father and son would both be among the first to feel the Mongol lord's revenge. The specific details of Ketbukha's mission objectives across the region are not precisely known. Again, there is some doubt to be cast on the later explanations of even Hulagu himself in his letter to King Louis IX of France, as the outcome of Ein Jalut may have caused the Ilkhan to creatively reinterpret Kitbuka's intended role and downplay him. Nevertheless, it seems that his primary mission was to essentially act as a guardian of the lands already taken

and generally continue to soften the area up until the main Mongol force inevitably returned to continue the curb stomp. He was also to keep a watchful eye on the Frankish carve-out cities along the coastline, though apparently he was not to attack the Christian holdings unless attacked first, something the Nestorian Kitbuka could be relied on to uphold. And, as per Hulagu's overarching mission, continue the reduction of Ismaili fortresses across northern Syria as part of the Ilkhan's ongoing mandate to destroy all the traitorous assassins everywhere they could be found. Meanwhile, in Egypt, events were coming to a head all their own. From the outset of his still brand new reign, Sultan Qutuz had enacted an unequivocal anti-Mongol policy. That had, in fact, been one of the corner outset of his still brand new reign, Sultan Qutuz had enacted an unequivocal anti-Mongol policy.

That had, in fact, been one of the cornerstones of his justifications for having overthrown the previous sultan and established Mamluk rule, to unite the region against the clear and present danger these eastern invaders posed to the whole Islamic world. Tied to this evident reality as well was a personal thread of story, how true it may have actually been, forever unclear. That Qutuz himself was a descendant of the late, forlorn Shah of Khwarizmiya, ala al-Din Muhammad, who had been so thoroughly ruined by Hulagu's grandfather, Genghis.

Thus, there was also an element of personal family revenge woven into the new Egyptian Sultan's call to arms. The Egyptian Sultanate found its ranks unexpectedly, but welcomely reinforced by a steady trickle of Syrian troops as al-Nasir's own wobbly defenses disintegrated over the winter and spring of 1259-1260, and they fled southward. Though they had only just recently been the bitterest of enemies, the Egyptian Mamluks and the Syrian Ayyubids now put any such petty differences behind them in the face of this monstrously powerful external threat. Leading this contingent of Syrian troops into Egypt, now that al-Nasir had turned tail and vanished back into the desert, never to be seen by his own men again, was the rival Mamluk leader

himself, General Baybars. Quote, Qutuz needed Baybars' leadership abilities and his following of Baris. Baybars had clearly seen that his continued allegiance to al-Nasir Yusuf or any other Ayyubid prince in Syria had little to commend itself, end quote. Baybars had clearly seen that his continued allegiance to al-Nasir Yusuf or any other Ayyubid prince in Syria had little to commend itself. Baybars therefore sent ahead of him a trusted subordinate to Cairo to declare his peaceful intentions and secure Qatuz's guarantee of safe conduct, which was granted. They thereafter proceeded onward from Gaza to Egypt, arriving in early March 1260, just as Palestine was beginning to suffer from the Mongol onslaught. The Mongol ambassadors, bearing their message to the Sultan of Cairo, arrived at the royal court probably at some point near the summer of 1260, and ordered the message as read at the top of the show. In the course of their myriad conquests, the Mongols had learned a little bit about message framing, in that this message to a Muslim leader was couched in Islamic terms and even contained

references and quotes straight from the Quran. Nevertheless, as we saw, its core was the same old Mongol missive as ever. The Great Khan was ordered by God and Heaven itself with the mandate to bring the entire world under Mongol control, and to resist that and even the slightest was tantamount to rebellion against the will of God and would be mercilessly and totally eradicated. Escape was impossible, and even if it were, would only delay the inevitable, and so submit at once or face total annihilation. And just for good measure, there were thrown in a, by this point, expected number of taunts and barbs handcrafted for the intended recipient.

In this case, a line for Coutuz disparaging the origin and rise via assassination of him to power that reads, quote, He is of the race of Mamluks, who fled before our sword into this country, who enjoyed its comforts, and then killed its rulers, end quote. Now, I know I've spoken of this before, but it's worth bringing it up again, because every time we get into one of these diplomatic showdowns between Mongol emissaries and a targeted king, I'm intensely curious as to what must be going on through everyone's heads there. First and foremost, the Mongol emissaries. They've made this journey

into the heart of an enemy nation to stand before its monarch and essentially demand before the entire royal audience that he immediately get down on his knees and like kiss their boots, all while they threaten and insult him and his people. What kind of a person could do that? Do they realize they're basically on a suicide mission, or do they expect to actually walk out from such an encounter? Certainly, they must have known how such missions frequently turned out for the message bearers. And yet, the mindset of the typical Mongol warrior,

or diplomat in this case, since they are kind of one and the same, was a combination of near unbreakable belief in their own invincibility, to the point that even the mention of death was taboo in the ranks. Add to that the certain knowledge that if one should fall in the cause of such a mission of diplomacy, that would only ensure the full devotion of the Mongol Empire to the vengeance of one's murder. So I guess it's sort of win-win? On the other side of the issue, how does one approach this situation as the king receiving the ultimatum? Obviously, you're going to want, very badly, to make these guys suffer for their insolence. And yet, by 1260, you've also heard all the stories and know exactly what happens when Mongol ambassadors are

harmed. It's a pickle, to be sure. In the case of Qutuz, however, he had something of an informational ace in the hole on these arrogant Mongol ambassadors. They did not know, for instance, that Baibars had allied his forces with Cairo, nor that the European Christian world had only recently dramatically shifted its stance regarding the Mongol push westward. Up to this point, the Mongol forces could rather broadly rely on the Christians either being outright allies of their campaigns against the Muslim lands, or else not to actively oppose them. That calculus, however, had changed. Shanz writes, quote, two crusader leaders, John of Beir, the envoy to the Mongols from the French crusader colder still when news reached the Crusaders that another Mongol army had invaded Poland.

Almost simultaneously, William of Rubruck, the envoy to the Mongols from the French Crusader King Louis IX, returned from Mongolia with a complete report. After reading it, Pope Alexander IV sent word throughout Christendom that anyone making an alliance with them would be excommunicated. End quote. With a stroke, the Mongols could no longer count on Christian support or indifference to them. Europe had come around at long last to the realization that these tartars from the east were not what they had long hoped, not some victorious Christian force to sweep the Muslims away, but rather an unrelenting horde that would just as soon plunder and slaughter their lands and people as any other. Nearly simultaneously, Qutuz had learned that the

major portion of Hulagu's army had pulled back eastward out of Syria and back across the Euphrates to who knows where, leaving only a small force behind. As such, Qutuz's reaction to the arrogant Mongol ambassador's demands for his immediate subjugation to their master begins to appear as much less an understandable but foolishly emotional outburst to insult, but a calculated line in the sand. The planets had aligned in his favor in a once-in-an-epoch fashion, and he recognized that this could be his one and only chance of standing his ground against the heretofore unstoppable onslaught.

After conferring with his emirs and officials, Sultan Qutuz made his reply to the Mongol ambassadors. They were one and all cut in half at the waist and then beheaded, with the heads placed on display atop Cairo's Zuwaila Gate. An unmistakable message. Bring it on. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered.

Follow 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. Kuduz and his combined forces of Egyptian regulars, Syrian, Turkmen, Bedouins, and Kurdish refugee soldiers departed Cairo, arriving at a staging area called Salihya, some 120 kilometers northeast of Cairo on July 26th.

Their exact number is unknown, but reasonable estimates place it at maybe 10,000 to 12,000 in total, with a hard core of perhaps 10,000 Egyptian troops, and the other 2,000 being the Irregulars. If we accept this figure, along with the lower estimates of the force numbers left to Ketbuka of a single tomb and of 10,000, then the claims of some of the writers that the Mamluk force at Ain Jalut actually outnumbered the Mongol army they faced becomes possible. Even with such force parity, which he could not have known at the time, Qutuz still had many other difficulties to contend with even before facing off against his Mongol foe.

His princely commanders, the emirs, for instance, were resolutely against the Egyptian army advancing beyond Salihya into Syria to confront Kitbukha's army. It seems that Qutuz understood the folly of his emir's skittishness, in that simply waiting around would weaken his own men's morale and allow the Mongol commander to pick the precise time and nature of their eventual battle. Ultimately, and evidently at his wit's end in trying to cajole his commanders to march out, he's written to have declared to them, I am going to fight the Mongols alone. Publicly shamed by their sultan for such cowardice, the commanders felt compelled to follow him at last. There is at first glance a fair amount of wisdom in the emir's wishes to remain in Egypt, rather than advancing into Syria to confront the Mongol menace. After all, that would mean that they would stay close to their base in lines of

supply, while the Mongols would be forced to make an arduous trek across the desert to engage them, and would therefore be exhausted. Other considerations, however, carried the day in favor of pushing ahead and adopting a more offensive stance. From Amitai, quote, First, Qutuz was aware that only a small part of the Mongol army was now in Syria, and thus he had an opportunity to confront the Mongols with some chance of success. Quds may have been aware of the psychological importance of a victory over the Mongols in strengthening both his own position and the morale of his army.

Second, by moving into Syria, he was seizing the initiative from the Mongols, an important strategic consideration. Third, if he was defeated in Syria, there was a chance that he could withdraw back to Egypt to reorganize. Defeat in Egypt left him without a fallback position. Fourth, Qutuz knew his officers and troops too well. Perhaps he feared that with the approach of the Mongols, many would either be paralyzed by fear or willing to negotiate. Possibly the best way to preempt such defeatist attitudes was to adopt an aggressive mean and to try to inculcate it within his army. End quote. As the Mamluk force

crossed the Isthmus of Suez into Asia Minor, he sent ahead an ambassadorial corps of his own. Not, as one might expect, to the Mongol commander, but rather to a singularly unlikely party, the Christian crusader states of the Mediterranean coast, and specifically the Franks huddled behind the walls of Acre. Although until recently the most mortal of enemies, the appearance of the Mongol armies in the region, and the Europeans' recent realization that they were liable to be just as much targets as anyone else, had again rather radically shifted the entire calculus. Kutuz was not nearly so optimistic as to hope, much less request, that Muslims and Christians could or would fight together against their mutual threat. Rather, his proposal was much

more modest. His emissaries asked simply that the Egyptian army be allowed safe passage across the Frankish-controlled region, and also that they wished for the right to purchase supplies from the city-state's denizens. Though this placed the crusaders in a tricky situation, after all, to assist the Mamluks would be tantamount to openly declaring themselves against the Mongols, yet the idea of maybe, just maybe, getting the drop on the eastern force and removing them from the region was compelling enough that eventually the Knights' hospitalier leadership assented to the Mamluk request. The fact that Kuduz and his 12,000 had arrived and

made camp no more than a day's ride outside the city no doubt helped make up the city's mind in that regard as well, helped the Mamluks and possibly have a problem with the Mongols later, opposed them, and have a definite problem right here and now. At their camp just outside of Acre, Qutuz once again gave a rousing speech to his men, shoring up their quite understandably wavering resolve ahead of the battle to come. Amitai writes that the speech contained, quote, two main motifs. The emirs must fight to protect their families and property,

and by implication, the power they enjoyed in Egypt, and the need to defend Islam against the infidels, end quote. And never you mind who that bread you're eating was bought from. Just don't even think about it. The speech proved effective, and the emirs wept and swore to each other to drive the Mongols out of the country. And so, with that possible problem shored up, Kudu sent Babars ahead of the main force as the commander of the Mamluk vanguard, a clear sign of respect and trust placed in this once bitter foe by the Sultan of Cairo. At this point, the Mongol forces under Kitbuka were on something of a little quasi-vacation.

They'd been allowed to disperse around the fertile Bika Valley of modern eastern Lebanon in order to allow their herds to graze and fatten up for the campaigns to come. It would be here that word reached the Mongol general of the Egyptian move into the Levant, and that they were now poised to move against Kitbuka directly. Wasting no time, the Mongol Tumen was reassembled, and they began marching south to confront this upstart Egyptian force. It isn't certain exactly what went through the mind of Ketbuka, or how he arrived at his ultimate decision. Some chroniclers, especially those written significantly later, speak of the Mongol general's complacency and self-surety of his men's vaunted invincibility.

Other writings, however, and particularly those written by the Mamluk chroniclers who lived far closer in time to the actual events in question, paint a significantly different portrait of the mind of the Mongol commander. Far from smug and assured of his victory to come, they describe Kitbuka as quite unsure about the wisdom of engaging the assembled Egyptian force with his own bare-bones contingent, and that he even contemplated a full withdrawal from Syria rather than roll the dice of open battle. This is, if true, quite comprehensible. Never once had the armies of the Ilkhanate fought a battle against a foe they couldn't simply overwhelm with sheer weight of numbers. The days of Genghis and Subutai pulling off daring victories against

armies many times their own were far in the rearview, and if the lower end of the estimates for Kitpuka's force are taken as accurate, again that is a single tumen of 10,000 bolstered by perhaps 1-2,000 additional Georgian and Armenian knights, as well as local pro-Mongol auxiliaries, then the two enemy armies were quite possibly at force parity as of mid-1260. Nevertheless, despite any doubts he might have had, Kitpuka placed his faith in the irresistible and invincible force of the Khanate's mandate to conquer all, and resolved to ride out and confront the Mamluks directly. The Mongol army would take up position near an all-year spring in the eastern Jizril valley of Galilee,

also known as the Valley of Megiddo. The spring itself is today called Ein Herod, but until the 1920s was known as Ein Jalut. So let's get into these names a little bit more, because they could scarcely be more perfect. First, the valley. Jizril is boring enough in terms of etymology, but some of you, especially those of you at all interested in Christian eschatology, aka the study of the end times, might have recognized that alternate name, Megiddo, because it features rather prominently in the Book of Revelations as Mount Megiddo, or in Hebrew, Har Megiddo, the place of Armageddon, where the penultimate battle between good and evil would eventually take place. But wait, it gets even better, because Ain Jalut means Goliath's Spring, as it was reckoned that it was near there where the famous duel between

David and Goliath took place. So how's that for a funny little coincidence? Those names in particular. Yeah. Weird. So anyways, it's widely accepted that the Mongol force arrived at Ain Jalut first, and decided that it was just swell, since it had plenty of water and grass to graze, offered an excellent vantage point over the entire region, and all in all was just about everything a cavalry-centric military could hope for as a staging ground and or battlefield. Meanwhile, the Mamluk vanguard under Bebar's had made contact with the Mongol outriders and begun skirmishing with them, while sending back reports to the main force of Qutuz that the enemy had been found. The Mamluk army moved out from Acre, toward Galilee,

while Bebar's riders continued to range widely across the region, engaging their Mongol counterparts in continuous but rather inconclusive harassment attacks, involving both advances and retreats in turn by both sides. On September 1st or 2nd, Deibars himself reached Ein Jalut and crested with his outrider force one of its commanding hills, either the Gilboa or the Hill of Moreh. He immediately noticed the main Mongol force encamped at the spring below. They, of course, also noticed him and made directly to engage him, apparently believing that he represented the main body of Egyptian troops. Realizing that he was in a very precarious position, Bevar's beat a hasty retreat,

and once again sent off a messenger to Qutuz, himself still a days' ride away, that he'd found the main Mongol host. The Mamluk army approached through the Jezreel Valley from the northwest, that is the general direction of Acre, and the two forces finally encountered each other somewhere on the plain just to the northwest of Goliath Spring itself. The following dawn of September 3rd, battle would be joined. The lines of combat were apparently rather wide, a necessity given the numbers on each side at 10,000 or more apiece, and that were roughly equal in strength. They were also positioned against each other more or less north to south.

The two forces approached, and the Mongols signaled their own initial attack. The right flank crashed against the Mamluk left with devastating effect, shattering it near completely. Nevertheless, Qutuz was able to rally his troops and lead a counterattack against the Mongols, notably employing, for the very first time in Islamic history, the hand cannons called midfa, which were fired at close range primarily not to cause any physical damage, but to scare the Mongol mounts. This unexpected deployment of firearms and the confusion it caused temporarily succeeded in driving the step-riders back. Again, the Mongols rode against the Mamluk lines in a second charge, and again inflicted heavy losses.

Damaged and close to defeat, the Mamluk forces turned and retreated under the order of Baybars, who prevented it from becoming a rout, nearly all the way back to the spring itself. The Mongol force saw their badly damaged foe turning tail and fleeing, and with their blood up and no doubt tasting victory in the very air itself, relentlessly pursued their enemy toward Ain Jalut. There, the Mamluks rallied and turned back to face the incoming Mongol pursuers and reformed their lines. At the same time, Babar split off with the reserve cavalry and swept back across the foothills out of sight, then turning onto the Mongol flanks to attack again. In a flash of insight and horror, Khedbuka and his Mongol warriors must have had a terrible

realization, that they had just fallen prey to one of their own very favorite battle tactics, the feigned flight. The Mamluks hadn't been routed at all, but had just successfully drawn their foe neck deep into a fatal trap. Unyielding, Ketbuka resolved to simply break his way out of the trap through sheer ferocity and force of arms. He ordered his men to attack with all their might the Mamluk left flank. At first it held, but then it wavered and finally cracked under the sustained Mongol assault. With his caged wolf threatened to tear through the cage itself, Qutuz is written to have ridden at top speed to the lines threatened to disintegrate under Kitpuka's fury, removed his helm and threw it to the ground so that the men would recognize and know who spoke now.

He cried, Pardoned by the commander's bravery, the Mamluks redoubled their fighting resolve and rallied, to be led in a countercharge by Kutuz himself. Still surrounded, Ketbuga and his soldiers fought on as resolutely as one could ever expect. Though some were able to cut their way free of the Mamluk snare, Khitbuga either could not, or simply would not, allow himself to face defeat with anything other than a resolve to see it through to the very end. As his soldiers continued to be cut down by Muslim sword and archery, an arrow at last found the Mongol general's mount, bringing him down.

He was, by that point, according to some tellings at least, almost alone on the battlefield. And he was quickly taken captive and dragged before the victorious Mamluk Sultan Qutuz, who now wanted to do a little victory dance at his defeated enemy. After so many dynasties overthrown, the Sultan mocked the general, I see that you are caught at last.

Kitbuka was having none of it. This is no defeat for us, nor victory for you. When my master, Hulagu Khan, hears of this slave's meaningless death, he shall return to trample everything and everyone from Azerbaijan to Cairo underneath the hooves of Mongol horses. You look down on me now and think yourself great, but I, Kitbuka, have ever faithfully served as slave to the will of my master, whereas you, O slave, killed yours and took his throne. So between us, who truly is the lower?

Now, cut off my head and let us be done with it. Incensed at this final insult, Kutuz granted the Mongol general's request and struck his head from his body, thereafter sending it back to Cairo to be displayed with the others atop the Zawaila Gate. Fighting continued on in the days to follow. Even as their commander had been taken captive and killed, other pockets of Mongol forces reassembled and continued to put up fierce resistance, but the writing was on the wall. Within days of the outcome at Ain Jalut, the once-invincible Mongol Goliath was forced to flee north back to the safety of their ally King Hetham of Cilicia in Armenia.

Very quickly thereafter, anyone who had allied with or benefited from the Mongol captures of Aleppo, Damascus, and the other Mongol-occupied cities, if they were able, beat a hasty retreat as well, while others were caught by angry mobs and robbed and or killed outright for their collaboration. The casualty listings of the battle are rather vague, which is hardly a surprise. Some sources claim that the Mongols were wiped out nearly to the last man, which is rather demonstrably a significant exaggeration. At the other end of the casualty spectrum, estimates put the Mongol dead at as low as just 1,500.

And I say just, but that's still somewhere north of 10% of the entire army, a decimation in the truest sense of the word. For the Mamluks, there's quite simply no figure given for the numbers of soldiers lost, but it was certainly significant. Maybe so close to the Mongols' own numbers that it was deemed too close for comfort and better left unmentioned. In the immediate aftermath of Ain Jalut, Qutuz dispatched Baibars once again to ride north and seek out retreating Mongol forces, again putting lie to the chroniclers claiming that they were all eradicated at the battle. Interestingly enough, it's recorded that among the captives he took were entire groups of Mongol women and children, indicating that Kitpuka's army had been, at least to some degree, campaigning with their families in train. An additional force of some 2,000 fresh Mongol troops were encountered by Baibar's forces as well, apparently dispatched by Hulagu to reinforce Kitbukha's army. And it makes one wonder if,

had that reinforcement arrived even just days earlier, might the whole encounter at Ain Jalut, and therefore world history itself, have played out remarkably differently? Those are the kind of historical counterfactuals that keep history podcasters up at night. Certainly, the leadership, martial prowess, and sheer heroism of both Qutuz and Baibars must be credited for the Mamluk victory at Ain Jalut. From Amitai, quote, It was Qutuz who dragged the recalcitrant emirs out of Egypt, and right up to the battle, he constantly harangued them about the holy war and the need to drive out the Mongols. At the battle itself, he showed himself to be a cool-headed commander, and, if the reports

are to be credited with some truth, he personally led the charge that decided the battle. End quote. I mean, it's a very cinematic Aragorn at the Black Gate of Mordor moment, if ever there was one. He also had the good sense to be able to put his personal feud with Baibars aside and entrust him with leading the vanguard that would prove decisive in both first finding and then entrapping the Mongol army. But it's also noted that among the Mongol army, there was a critical desertion on the eve of battle by one of the auxiliary forces. So too is credit given for the fact that the Mongols and Mamluks fought

in very similar ways. As the Knights of Poland and Hungary had only recently found out to their woe yet again, quote, only an army composed of masses of mounted archers had a chance of standing up to and defeating the Mongols. The reason for the similar fighting techniques of the two armies was the common origin of the troops, the Eurasian steppe, end quote. In the immediate aftermath of the battle, Qutuz dealt with the various local leaders across Syria as the situation and their behavior had merited. To those who had fought with him, even if they'd formerly been Ayyubid, he granted them back their former territories, with the understanding that they now held them at the Sultan of Cairo's pleasure. To those who had rather over-enthusiastically partnered up with the Mongols prior to their expulsion, the fruit of their decision was far more bitter. At least one lost his head after Ein Jalut. Qutuz then proceeded directly for

Damascus, entering and liberating the city within days, and appointing his faithful allies to high positions of power therein, as well as went on to stem the tide of anti-Christian actions against those who had become rather too comfortable in their favored status under First Hulagu and then Ketbuga's pro-Christian, anti-Muslim rule. Once Damascus was taken care of, the greater part of the Mamluk's army made north to free Aleppo. But as for Kutuz himself, he decided it was time for him to return to his seat of power at Cairo. Spitefully though it had been spoken, Ketboga's last words had the ring of terrible truth. It wasn't over, not by any stretch, and the Egyptian victory at Ayn Jalut

would surely only bring down a wrath more terrible than any the Mamluks had ever faced, or indeed could even dream of standing against. Quote, Qutuz's control over much of Syria proper, let alone the border regions, was weak or even non-existent. There were crusader possessions all along the coast and in the north, and Bohemond VI of Antioch Even Aleppo itself remained something of an open question.

Within the city, there were emirs whose loyalties could not be counted upon. And if the question was put to them as to whether they would rather be dominated by Cairo or Karakoram via Maraghe, the Al-Qaeda's then capital in northwestern Iran, well, who could know which they'd wind up choosing when the Mongol hammer dropped? In the afterglow of the victory, General Baibars had asked of Qutuz that his reward be the governorship of Aleppo itself. Fatefully, Qutuz seems to have reneged on an earlier promise to his enemy-turned-ally to grant him the city, a decision he'd quickly come to regret. With their mutual enemy now gone, the far deeper chasm in their relationship that had merely been papered over by their alliance of necessity began to reassert itself, and with a vengeance. Baibars was among those

of Kutuz's inner circle who made their way back to Egypt with the Sultan. En route, a cabal of conspirators, certainly including and probably under the command of Baibars himself, assassinated Qutuz in the desert between al-Arish and Salihiyya. The true circumstance of the murder is, as usual, unclear. But where would we be without the colorful stories and maybes? Shanz puts a likely scenario, quote, When the Mamluk army was only a few days from its triumphal return to Cairo, Baibars went to see Qutuz on the pretense of a matter of state.

Reaching out as if in greeting, he drew a dagger and drove it into Qutuz's heart. Qutuz had ridden out of Cairo to meet the Mongol challenge, but it was Baibars who rode home triumphant as sultan. And to this day, his story can be heard in the shadow plays in the back streets of old Cairo. End quote. The Battle of Ayn Jalut has been seen and understood for ages as one of the turning point battles of all time, all caps, right up there with Marathon, Salamis, or Tour. Certainly, Islamic writers can, and have, touted it as the moment Islam saved both itself and all of Western civilization from the Mongol scourge. It very much is the case that it showed, clearly

and to all who cared to observe, that the Mongols were not, in fact, invincible demons straight from the burning maw of Tartarus itself. They could be defeated. They could be outstrategized. Doom, death, and destruction was not, not necessarily a foregone conclusion before battle had even been joined. And hope can be in itself a powerful strengthening agent. Yet, looking at this victory in the context of wider regional and world history, Ein Gelut had all the makings of being just the first two days for the Spartans at Thermopylae. Glorious, victorious, and incredibly short-lived. Ketbuka's final words had been as much warning as threat, as sincere as it was spiteful. He had every belief and every reason to believe that his master Hulagu would indeed return in short order to reduce the region

to its constituent atomic powder for such an affront as defeating a force under his command and slaying his favorite general. It had taken everything Qutuz and Baibars could muster to squeak a victory out against a single Mongol Tumen. And when Hulagu inevitably returned to the fray, he'd come with a force more than 300 times as large. He would come no longer to conquer, but to lay waste, as his grandfather had done to Khwarizmia before, to make sure that none would even be left alive who so much as remembered the names Kutuz, Baibars, or Ain Jalut. And yet, the inevitable hammer blow never fell. Incomprehensibly, the Mongol force that had appeared from the east, and then just as incomprehensibly vanished again,

would now in equally puzzling fashion simply not return to enact their promised and legendary vengeance. For two entire decades, the East and all its storied wonders and terrors went, at least from the perspective of the West, which waited with bated breath for their civilizational funeral pyre to be lit, went effectively dark. No serious attempt would be made by the Ilkhanate to remove the Mamluks from their power for 21 critical years. Two decades the newly crowned Sultan Baibars would put to maximal use to ensure that his regime would be as ready as it possibly could be to resist. In the grand sweep of history, Ain Jalut would endure as the moment when the Mongols had reached their maximal extent westward, and would thereafter go no further. Of course, this by no means marks the end of the Mongols,

or their history and influence across Eurasia. The Ilkhanate would harry the Dar al-Islam, and the golden horde of the Russian steppes would continue their domination of the north for centuries yet to come. What this does mark, however, and it's very strange to say this, is the point at which I made the decision almost two and a half years ago that this strange, exciting foray into and across the steps on horseback would reach its natural conclusion. Every tale, no matter how epic, must have a conclusion, even though history itself never really does. The moment the Mongol Empire is forced to pull back from its inevitable dominion over the entire world,

and then is never quite able to get its mojo back, is as good a jumping-off point as is likely to exist. Now, this is not to say the adventure is over. Far from it. Now, I'm speaking right now to those of you listening at some point in the future when I've done something like make all the Mongol episodes freely available, and you listen to them all in order and without listening to the main feed first. You want more Mongol? You want to know why they never got back around to wiping Islam off the map? Well, there's a lot more, starting with episode 170. Then there's 16

episodes of the UN Dynasty, plus more stuff in the early Ming episodes. Yeah, there's more. And for everyone else who's all caught up, well, I don't know. I'll have to think of a new bonus series, won't I? I'm open to suggestions. Regardless, I hope that this has been as big an adventure for you to hear and learn about as it has been for me to write and speak about. Now I've got to get back to writing about

the Ming Dynasty treasure fleets, so I'll simply wish you Bayartai, Saragyos, Tangerine Adisal. And as always, thanks for listening. I'm all good to chin-dee-ten. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past.

From a revolution of hope and liberty to the infamous reign of terror, you can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So search for the French Revolution today.