Hulagu demanded that Egypt surrender, but on 11 August 1259, far away to the east, Möngke, who was accompanying Kublai in the war against Song China, died of dysentery. Hulagu moved back into Iran, leaving Kitbuqa in charge. Franks clashed with the Mongols, who favoured the Orthodox or Nestorians instead of the Catholics, while the Egyptians beheaded Hulagu’s envoys. Kitbuqa could not ignore such a slight. The Egyptians marched to stop him.
The new Egyptian rulers were tough soldiers who had started as slaves – Mamluks. They were Russians and Turks, Georgians and Circassians, blue-eyed blonds being specially prized, stolen or bought from their villages, sold in the Genoan slave markets of Crimea and bought by Saladin and his family. Converted to Islam, trained as soldiers and then manumitted, they became ferocious paladins, united by Islamic fervour and esprit de corps, who dominated then destroyed the Saladin dynasty.
Their rise was accelerated by a new crusade. In 1249, Louis IX of France landed with an army that nearly conquered a chaotic Egypt, which was saved only by a blond Turkish Mamluk of Pantagruelian proportions with one blue eye, one totally white, named Baibars. A junta of Mamluk amirs murdered the young sultan and replaced the Saladin family* as Baibars advanced against the thinly spread Mongols. At Ain Julut (Goliath’s Spring) near Nablus, Baibars’s 15,000 Mamluks, on bigger warhorses than the Mongols, ambushed Kitbuqa’s forces, who fought to the last man. ‘It’s here that I must die,’ the marshal said. ‘Some soldier will reach the khan and tell him Kitbuqa refused to retreat. Happy life to the khan!’ When finally his horse was brought down, he was taken before the Mamluks.
‘After overthrowing so many dynasties,’ teased the Mamluks, ‘look at you now!’
‘Don’t be intoxicated by a moment’s success,’ replied Kitbuqa, the conqueror of Iran and Iraq unexpectedly defeated by ex-slaves. ‘When the news of my death reaches the khan, Egypt will be crushed beneath Mongol hooves.’ As the sword swung, he ended with ‘I was the khan’s slave. I am not – like you – the murderer of my master.’
Baibars – who called himself the Panther, leaving his insignia all over the region – made himself sultan. Gleefully bloodthirsty and demonically energetic, he campaigned for seventeen years, holding the Mongols at bay, darting down the Nile against the Nubian kingdom of Makuria, then launching an onslaught against all Christians, taking Caesarea and Jaffa, then in 1268 storming Antioch, seat of the Hautevilles. He wrote to Bohemond le Beau, ‘You’d have seen your knights prostrate beneath horses’ hooves, your houses stormed by pillagers, your wealth weighted by the quintal, your girls sold four at a time and bought for a dinar of your own money!’ In 1277, while poisoning an enemy, Baibars absent-mindedly swallowed the wrong glass, an occupational hazard for those who become blasé about murdering guests. He was succeeded by a veteran amir, Qalawun, who with his sons and grandsons conquered Israel and Syria* while the Mongols were busy in China.
When Möngke died, Kublai, laying siege to Wuchow, raced northwards to his summer palace Xanadu (Shangdu) and proclaimed himself khagan, brushing off the challenge of his youngest brother, Ariq-boga. Kublai abandoned Karakorum to found a new winter capital known as Dadu in Chinese (Great Capital) or Khanbalic in Mongolian (Khan’s City; later Beijing), which he had designed by an Arab architect, Iktiyar al-Din. Its only surviving building, the White Pagoda, was the work of Arniko, a Nepalese. Dadu was thus a carefully created Chinese city built for a Mongol by an Arab and a Nepalese.
Encouraged by his influential favourite wife, Chabi,* the Buddhist Kublai tolerated all. ‘I’m interested not in the stones that make the bridge,’ he said, ‘but in the arch that supports it.’ He protected Buddhists. Speaking Chinese, he was keen to advertise his Mandate of Heaven and raise Chinese taxes, recruiting a Golden Lotus Advisory Group – a think tank of Chinese advisers.
He was still a Mongol, often reclining in a
In 1264, Kublai would receive Niccolò and Maffeo Polo, two young Venetian merchants specializing in Constantinopolitan trade. Their expertise was jewellery and their biggest client would be Kublai.
KUBLAI AND THE POLO BROTHERS
In 1259, leaving Niccolò’s pregnant wife behind in Venice, the Polos arrived in Constantinople, which had been dominated by Venice ever since Dandalo’s conquest but would not be so for much longer. They left just as it was about to fall.*
