THE MONGOLS IN THE LEVANT. THEIR DEFEAT BY KUTUZ
THE EGYPTIAN (1260 A. D.)
The first effect of the
Mongol conquest of Central Asia was to drive their
victims, the Charismians (themselves no puny
warriors), in roving hordes into Asia Minor and
Syria. They were alike terrible to Christians and to
Moslems. In 1244 the Latins of the Palestinian coasts
and the Emir of Emesa (an uncouth alliance) tried, to
face an equally curious combination of Egyptians and
Charismians at Gaza. The Latin-Moslem army was
routed. Their foes between them overran Syria, but
presently they quarreled. The Egyptians now made
common cause with the Islamic Syrians and the
Charismians were chased northward.
The real danger to the Levant, of being submerged
in a deluge from Inner Asia, came a little later. Fortunately
for the Syrians the successors of Genghis devoted
their main energies for some time to the conquest of
Russia and to invasions of Poland and Hungary,6 as
well as to a more complete subversion of China,
but after 1250 came the crisis. This time it was not
the victims of the Mongols but the Mongols themselves
who pressed westward from conquered Persia. How Hulagu,
brother of the High Khan, Mangu, took and treated
Bagdad in 1258 has already been stated (see p.
157). The next step obviously was to invade Syria,
and the Levant saw at last those terrible horsemen
who seemed about to conquer the world; "stout
and thickset, with high, broad shoulders and squat
figures, swarthy and ugly, with short broad noses and
pointed projected chins." Compared with
Mohammedanized Turks, they were repulsive savages. It
was much the same kind of a crisis as when German and
Roman united to turn back Attila's Huns — the
common enemy to all upstanding men.
"Fifty thousand persons" are said to
have been slain in cold blood when Aleppo fell to the
Mongols. In Damascus the pagan conquerors destroyed
churches and mosques with pitiless impartiality. They
reckoned on taking Egypt as their next spoil, but the
"Mamluk" dynasts there were of hardy stuff.
Hulagu,
a really superior general, was obliged to return
eastward to crush a revolt. His lieutenants who
continued the campaign were less competent. In 1260
A. D. at Ain Jalut, near to old Nazareth, the
Egyptian Sultan Kutuz met the Mongols in decisive
battle. For once the Turanian hordes were vanquished.
They were soon swept out of Syria, before they could
work irreparable mischief in the Levant. From this
time onward the inevitable dissensions among the
Mongol Khans were their enemies' best allies. The Far
East and Central Asia were to be afflicted by the
hordes for long, but after a little they ceased to be
a menace to Western Asia. Like the ancient Scythians
of Old Testament days, these terrible folk whose
"quiver was an open sepulcher," who
"laid waste cities without inhabitant,"
practically disappeared until their temporary return
a century and a half later under that heir of the
spirit of Genghis—Timur the
Tartar.
A Short History Of The Near East; From
The Founding Of Constantinople (330 A.D. To 1922) by
William Stearns Davis, Ph.D. Professor Of History In
The University of Minnesota The Macmillan Company
1922