The habits and customs of the Mongols, disgusting in themselves, were in several respects especially repugnant to Muhammadan feeling. They were ready to eat not only things unclean in Islám, but things essentially loathsome, rats, cats, dogs, and even worse: “Cibi eorum,” says Jean de Plan Carpin, “sunt omnia quœ mandi possunt; vidimus eos etiam pediculos manducare.” * Not only did they dislike washing themselves: they made it a penal offence, nay, even a capital offence, to wash hands or garments in running water. It was also a capital offence with them to kill animals by cutting their throats, the only way in which, according to the Muhammadans, they can be lawfully killed when intended for food; instead of this it was their practice to cut open the body, and, inserting the hand, to squeeze or tear out the heart. * In general they were, however, tolerant to the verge of latitudinarianism in matters of religion, and accorded certain privileges, such as exemption from taxes, to the ministers of all creeds, as well as to physicians and certain other classes of men. With Chingíz Khán, indeed, it was a political principle to favour all religions equally, but to give his adhesion to none; and Qubiláy Khán (A.D. 1257-94) was the first of his house to adopt a definite creed, to wit, Buddhism; while Taqúdar (Aḥmad) Khán (A.D. 1282-84) and Gházán Khán (A.D. 1295-1304) were the first to embrace Islám, in which religion the successors of the latter in Persia continued. Thus were the aims of the Christians, who had great hopes of winning the Mongols to their faith and dealing a death-blow to Islám, frustrated; and the most permanent and precious fruits of the various Christian missions sent to the Mongol Court of Qaráqorum are the valuable records of their travels and experiences left by Jean de Plan Carpin (Planocarpini), Rubruquis (Guillaume de Ruysbroek), and other monks and priests, who bravely faced a thousand dangers and hardships in the hopes of winning so great a victory for their Church. Yet it was some time before the Christian potentates of Europe realised that the great Khán of the Tartars, who continued from time to time to address to them letters in the Mongol language and Úyghúr script, was no longer to be regarded as a possible convert to Christianity, as clearly appears from a letter addressed to Uljáytú Khudá-banda by Edward II., dated from Northampton on October 16, 1307. * Yet, apart from mere political rapprochements between the Mongols and the potentates of Europe, which aimed at combined action against the Muslims, the support of the Armenians, and the recovery of the Holy Land from the Muhammadan dominion, certain tribes belonging to the Mongol confederation, such as the Keraites, actually professed Christianity, certain princesses of the blood-royal, such as Úrúk Khátún, were apparently genuinely attached to that religion, * and two of the Íl-Kháns of Persia, Taqúdar Aḥmad and Uljáytú Khudá-banda, both in later days vehement professors and supporters of the Muhammadan doctrine, were actually baptized in infancy, in each case under the name of Nicolas.*

Infinitely destructive and disastrous as it was to life, learning, and civilisation, and especially to the Arabian culture, which, as we have already seen, maintained itself with such extraordinary vitality in Persia for six centuries, long after the wave of Arab conquest had utterly subsided, the Mongol invasion did, perhaps, contain some quickening elements, and the Mongol character, for all its reckless ferocity, some potentialities of good. One of its few good effects was the extraordinary intermixture of remote peoples, resulting in a refreshing of somewhat stagnant mental reser­voirs, which it brought about. In Europe it was a cause, if not the chief cause, of the Renaissance, for it thrust the Ottoman Turks out of the obscurity of Khurásán into the prominence of Constantinople, and was thus ultimately responsible for the destruction of the Byzantine Empire and the dispersion of the Greeks and their treasures into Europe. It also, by the breaking down of a hundred frontiers and the absorption of dozens of States, great and small, enabled travellers like Marco Polo to make known to Europe the wonders, hitherto so jealously guarded, of nearly the whole of Asia. And within Asia it brought together, first in con­flict and then in consultation, Persians and Arabs with Chinese and Tibetans, * and confronted, on terms of equality which had not existed for five or six centuries, the doctors of Islám with Christian monks, Buddhist lamas, Mongol bakhshís or medicine-men, and the representatives of other religions and sects.

Of course, matters were very much improved when Hulágú Khán's successors in Persia abandoned their heathen super­stitions and embraced the religion of Islám, which soon resulted in their alienation from their pagan kinsmen of Qaráqorum and their identification with, and final absorption into, the conquered people over which they ruled. But even Hulágú Khán, the destroyer of Baghdád and deadly foe of Islám, was the patron of two of the greatest Persian writers of this period, the astronomer Naṣíru'd-Dín of Ṭús and the historian 'Aṭá Malik of Juwayn, author of the Ta'ríkh-i-fahán-gushá , or “History of the Conqueror of the World,” i.e., Chingíz Khán. Two other historians, 'Abdu'lláh b. Faḍlu'lláh of Shíráz, better known as Waṣṣáf-i-Ḥaḍrat, and the Wazír Rashídu'd-Dín Faḍlu'lláh, both of whom flourished in the reign of Gházán Khán (A.D. 1295-1304), must cer­tainly be ranked amongst the greatest of those who have written in the Persian language on this important branch of knowledge. Persian literature, indeed, in the narrower sense of that term, can hardly be said to have suffered permanently from the Mongol Invasion, since three of the greatest and most famous poets of Persia, Sa'dí of Shíráz, Farídu'd-Dín 'Aṭṭár, and Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí were contemporary with it, and many other most famous poets were subsequent to it; but the destruction of Baghdád as the metropolis of Islám, and its reduction to the rank of a provincial town, struck a fatal blow at the semblance of unity which had hitherto subsisted amongst the Muhammadan nations, and at the prestige and status in Persia of the Arabic language, which, hitherto the chief vehicle of all culture, henceforth becomes practically the language of the theologians and philosophers only, so that after the close of the thirteenth century we shall relatively seldom have occasion to speak of Arabic works produced in Persia.

We must now proceed to consider, in broad outlines only, the several periods of Mongol ascendancy in Persia, which may be said to extend from the first invasion of that country by Chingíz Khán in A.D. 1219 to the death of Abú Sa'íd Khán in A.D. 1335, to which succeeded half a century of anarchy, culminating in another Tartar invasion, that of Tímúr-i-Lang, or “Lame Tímúr,” better known in Europe as Tamerlane (A.D. 1380-1400). This last event, which forms the transition to what may fairly be called the history of Modern Persia, lies outside the scope of this volume, which only extends to the Mongol period properly so called; and it is only mentioned here as a landmark which the reader should keep in view.

The first period of Mongol ascendancy may be called, in Stanley Lane-Poole's nomenclature, that of the Great Kháns (Chingíz, Ogotáy, Kuyúk, and Mangú, A.D. 1206-57), during which the whole empire conquered by the Mongols was ruled from Qaráqorum by lieutenants or pro-consuls directly appointed from the Mongol metropolis. At the great quriltáy held in A.D. 1251, at the beginning of Mangú's reign, two expeditions were resolved on, each of which was entrusted to one of Chingíz Khán's grandsons, both brothers of the reigning emperor Mangú, namely, the expedition against China, directed by Qubiláy Khán; and that against Persia, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor, directed by Hulágú Khán.

The second period, which may be called that of the heathen Íl-Kháns, or hereditary viceroys of Persia and Western Asia, begins with the arrival of Hulágú Khán on the hither side of the Oxus in January, 1256, and ends with the killing of Baydú on October 5, 1295. During this period Islám was gradually regaining strength, and fighting with ever-increasing success the battle against Buddhism and Christianity, while the bonds uniting the Persian Íl-Kháns with the Mongols of the “mother country” were undergoing gradual dissolution. It is worth noticing, as illustrating the gradual change of religious feeling amongst the Mongol settlers in Persia, that, while the violent death of Aḥmad Taqúdar in August, 1283, was, in part at least, caused by his zeal for Islám, * the equally violent death of Baydú twelve years later was largely due to his dislike of that religion and his predilection for Chris­tianity; * while the first act of his successor, Gházán, was to make public profession of the Muhammadan faith, and to destroy the Christian churches and Buddhist temples which had been erected in Persia. At a later date (A.D. 1300) he even ordered that all the bakhshís, or Mongol priests, resident in Persia should either sincerely embrace Islám or else leave the country, on pain of death. * Yet on the accession of Gházán Khán in A.D. 1295 the heathen and anti-Muslim faction of the Mongol nobles and generals, disgusted at his zeal for Islám, formed a conspiracy to dethrone him which was quenched in their blood. * Ten years later, when Islám was thoroughly re-established as the dominant religion in Persia, we find some of the Mongol princesses and nobles endeavour­ing to induce Uljáytú Khudá-banda to renounce the Muham­madan faith and return to the religion of his ancestors, but of course without success; * and this appears to be the last manifestation in Persia of Mongol paganism, which in earlier days showed itself in such revolting forms as the sacri­fice of girls chosen for their extreme beauty to the manes of deceased Mongol emperors, and the wholesale murder of all persons met by the funeral cortège, lest the news of the death should become known before it was officially proclaimed.*