Frederick was alarmed by the Mongols’ raid, but their mysterious vanishing allowed him to focus on crusading. Pope Innocent III, having called for crusades in Spain* and Outremer, ordered Frederick to take the Cross, which would distract him from building power in Italy. Frederick prepared to capture Jerusalem on battlefield and in bed: he recruited a German military-religious order, the Teutonic Knights (in return for his assistance in the other crusade against the pagans of Lithuania and Prussia); and he married Yolande, aged thirteen, nominal queen of Jerusalem, which allowed him to call himself king, though Saladin’s grandson actually ruled the city, the Christians just Acre and a strip of coast. Although the queen of Jerusalem died just two years later while giving birth to a son, Frederick prevaricated about leaving for Outremer, outraging Pope Gregory IX, who called him ‘Precursor of the Anti-Christ’ and excommunicated him. In 1228, when he and his Teutonic Knights at last sailed for Acre, the Mongols were again riding westward.
After seven years at war in the east, Genghis headed home, his ambitions still boundless. India was unconquered, as was Song China. Probing Punjab, where the fugitive prince of Khwarizm was lurking, Genghis sent a warning to the paramount ruler in northern India, a former Turkic slave called Iltutmish, who sensibly appeased the Mongol. Islam had dominated northern India since 1192 when a Muslim Afghan warlord had invaded and defeated the Hindu Rajputs, establishing a sultanate based in Delhi. From then until 1857, Muslim kings ruled; until 1947, India was dominated by foreign conquerors.
Recognized as sultan by the caliph of Baghdad, Iltutmish and his Turks pillaged the ‘idolatrous’ Hindu temples and Buddhist stupas. Religions flourish when they are backed by earthly powers: Islam had a champion in the sultans; Buddhism, already undermined in India by the popularity of Tantric Hinduism, never recovered. The Hindu Chola family had dominated southern India and south-east Asia, and as their last great emperor faced disaster, their Indic influence lived on in the crowning glory of the Indosphere. Now a dynamic Buddhist sovereign was building a Khmer empire across south-east Asia that was based at the resplendent capital, Angkor. Jayavarman VII, a contemporary of Genghis, defeated the Hindu Cham kingdom in southern Vietnam and expanded Angkorian influence as far as Myanmar, Malaya and Yunnan (China).
In 1113, an exuberant warrior god-king, Suryavarman II, had seized the Khmer throne by slaughtering much of his family and then routing all contenders, aided by his ally the Chola emperor of India and appeasing the Chinese emperor, to whom he sent delegations. This contemporary of the Crusader kings was a visionary determined to make Angkor a timeless monument to his greatness by adding an array of astonishing monuments, culminating in the five-towered, multiple-courted temple Angkor Wat dedicated to Vishnu.* After his death, the Chams raided up the Mekong and sacked Angkor. As a young prince, Jayavarman VII struck back and in a thirty-seven-year reign established an empire from coast to coast. Embracing Buddhism, adapting the existing Hindu temples of Angkor, he made it into one of the world’s biggest and most beautiful cities, its royal-sacred precinct covering almost 500 acres. Greater Angkor with a population of over a million people stretched over 400 square miles of suburbs, lakes and villages, sustained by sophisticated hydraulic systems of canals and
As Indic culture flourished in Angkor, and Iltutmish was promoting Islam in northern India, Genghis galloped home.
GENGHIS AND FREDERICK: SHOWDOWN AT THE DEATHBED
Genghis travelled back to Mongolia with his grandsons, the fifteen-year-old Möngke and the ten-year-old Kublai. He hunted antelope with them and performed the rite of smearing fat and blood as a coming of age. Both these sons of Tolui would rule as khagans. Genghis worried that ‘After us, our race will wear golden garments, eat sweet food, ride splendid horses, kiss the loveliest women – and forget they owe these things to us!’
There was still much to do. The full conquest of China was not possible without the territory of the Tanguts, who had refused to send troops on the Khwarizmian campaign. ‘While we eat,’ Genghis told his courtiers, ‘let’s talk of how we made them die and destroyed them. That was the end, they are no more.’ Genghis devastated their cities. Yet he saved some rare manuscripts and special medicinal drugs, sometimes holding back on his massacres.
