“It is now time for us to describe how they first burst forth into the [Muslim] lands.”
Now all this was written nearly thirty years before the crowning catastrophe, to wit, the sack of Baghdád and the extinction of the Caliphate, took place; for this happened in February, A.D. 1258, while Ibnu'l-Athír concludes his chronicle with the year A.H. 628 (A.D. 1230-31), and died two years later. Nor did he witness the horrors of which he writes, but only heard them from terrified fugitives, of whose personal narratives he records several under the year with which his chronicle closes.
“Stories have been related to me,” he says, “which the hearer can scarcely credit, as to the terror of them [i.e., the Mongols] which God Almighty cast into men's hearts; so that it is said that a single one of them would enter a village or a quarter wherein were many people, and would continue to slay them one after another, none daring to stretch forth his hand against this horseman. And I have heard that one of them took a man captive, but had not with him any weapon wherewith to kill him; and he said to his prisoner, ‘Lay your head on the ground and do not move’; and he did so, and the Tartar went and fetched his sword and slew him therewith. Another man related to me as follows:—‘I was going,’ said he, ‘with seventeen others along a road, and there met us a Tartar horseman, and bade us bind one another's arms. My companions began to do as he bade them, but I said to them, “He is but one man; wherefore, then, should we not kill him and flee?” They replied, “We are afraid.” I said, “This man intends to kill you immediately; let us therefore rather kill him, that perhaps God may deliver us.” But I swear by God that not one of them dared to do this, so I took a knife and slew him, and we fled and escaped.’ And such occurrences were many.”*
Yáqút al-Ḥamawí the geographer, another eminent contemporary
writer (born A.D. 1178 or 1179, died A.D. 1229), and
a friend of the great historian above cited, has also left us a
picture of the terror inspired by the Mongols, from whose
hands he just succeeded in escaping. Besides occasional references
in his great Geographical Dictionary, the Mu'jamu'l-
“How numerous,” he continues, “were its holy men pre-eminent
for virtue! How many its doctors whose conduct had for motive
the conservation of Islám! The monuments of its science are
inscribed on the rolls of Time; the merits of its authors have
redounded to the advantage of religion and the world, and their
productions have been carried into every country. Not a man of
solid science and sound judgment but emerged like the sun from
that part of the East; not a man of extraordinary merit but took
that country for his settling-place, or longed to go and join its
inhabitants. Every quality truly honourable and not factitious was
to be found amongst them, and in their sayings I was enabled to cull
the roots of every generous impulse. Their children were men,
their youths heroes, and their old men saints; the evidences of their
merit are clear, and the proofs of their glory manifest; and yet,
strange to say, the King who ruled over these provinces (i.e., 'Alá'u'd-
The hateful appearance and disgusting habits of the invaders added to the horror inspired by their unscrupulous perfidy and cold-blooded cruelty. The Arab invasion of Persia no doubt wrought much devastation and caused much suffering, but the Arabs were, in the phrase of their Spanish foes, “knights … and gentlemen, albeit Moors,” and if they destroyed much, they brought much that was noble and admirable in its stead. The Mongols, on the other hand, in the words of d'Ohsson, their admirable historian * (pp. vi-vii of vol. i),—
“surpassing in cruelty the most barbarous people, murdered in cold blood, in the conquered countries, men, women, and children; burned towns and villages; transformed flourishing lands into deserts; and yet were animated neither by hate nor vengeance, for indeed they hardly knew the names of the peoples whom they exterminated. One would suppose that history had exaggerated their atrocities, were not the annals of all countries in agreement on this point. After the conquest, one sees the Mongols treat as slaves the feeble remnant of the conquered nations, and cause to groan under a frightful tyranny those whom the sword had spared. Their government was the triumph of depravity; all that was noble and honourable was abased, while the most corrupt men, attaching themselves to the service of these ferocious masters, obtained, as the price of their vile devotion, riches, honours, and the power to oppress their fellow-countrymen. The history of the Mongols, therefore, stamped with their barbarity, offers only hideous pictures, though, being closely connected with that of several empires, it is necessary for a proper understanding of the great events of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.”
The only virtues which these Mongols or Tartars possessed were those generally called military—to wit, discipline, subordination, and obedience to their superior officers carried to the highest degree. All promotion went by personal merit; failure, disobedience, or incapacity was punished not only by the death of the offender himself, but of his wife and children. The highest officer, if he incurred the anger of his emperor, must submit before all his troops to personal chastisement at the hands of the meanest messenger sent by his master to reprimand him. Yet, though they held life so cheaply, the Mongols rarely had recourse to courage where falsehood and deceit could enable them to gain their ends. If death was the punishment of resistance, it was also in most cases the consequence of surrender. If they spared any of the inhabitants of a town which had surrendered to or been reduced by them, it was either to profit by their skill and craftsmanship or to employ them against their countrymen and co-religionists in the vanguard of their next assault. Droves of wretched and outraged captives accompanied the advancing hordes, and, when the next point of resistance was reached, were first employed to erect the engines of the besiegers, then driven forward at the point of the sword to the breaches effected in the city walls to fill with their bodies moat and trench, and were finally, if they still escaped death, put to the sword to give place to a new batch of victims drawn from the prisoners yielded by the fresh conquest. The cruelty of the Mongols was calculated and deliberate, designed to strike with a paralysis of terror those whom they proposed next to attack, while they deemed it safer to leave behind their advancing hosts smoking ruins and a reeking charnel-house rather than risk any movement of revolt on the part of the miserable survivors of their assault.
To trace in detail the history of the Mongols, or even of
their doings in Persia, is altogether beyond the scope of this
book. Those who desire full information on this matter can
find it either in d'Ohsson's great work or in Sir Henry
Howorth's History of the Mongols. D'Ohsson, in particular,
has made admirable use of the Arabic and Persian authorities,
which he fully describes and criticises on pp. x-lxviii of the
Exposition prefixed to the first volume of his work. The five
most important Muhammadan sources are: (1) The Arabic
Chronicle of Ibnu'l-Athír, already cited; (2) the Arabic Life
of Sulṭán Jalálu'd-Dín Mankobirni, written by his private
secretary, Shihábu'd-Dín Muḥammad an-Nasawí; (3) the
Persian Ta'ríkh-i-fahán-gushá, or History of the World-