The World полностью

The Polos invested in jewels then crossed the Black Sea, going straight to Sarai, capital of Berke, khan of the Golden Horde, brother of Batu, to whom they ‘gave freely of all their jewels’. The Polos always thought big and went to the top: Berke ‘directed that they should receive double the value of the jewels’. The Polos must have been charmers, for wherever they went grizzled khans welcomed them. Berke even appointed them as his fixers.

In 1252 Berke converted to Islam – the first of the family to do so – and was disgusted by cousin Hulagu’s butchery at Baghdad: ‘He must pay for killing the caliph.’ The Golden clan was turning on itself. Three of his family were killed by Hulagu – ‘Mongols killed by Mongol swords’. They clashed in the Caucasus; yet, even when the khans fought, a Mongolsphere – every bit as influential and pervasive as the power of the Angloworld of the last two centuries – extended from Korea to Novgorod for 200 years. In 1262, Berke allied with Hulagu’s chief enemy Baibars, not without reflecting that ‘If we’d been united, we’d have conquered the whole world.’

If there ever was a Pax Mongolica, it was sporadic, as the Polos found. ‘The roads being rendered unsafe, the brothers couldn’t return’ to Venice, and were stranded for three years in Bukhara, learning Mongolian, before charming an envoy of Hulagu on his way to Kublai – who, he explained, was fascinated by Europe and Christianity. After all, his mother was Christian. The Polos joined the caravan.

* In 1212, Innocent encouraged the three Christian potentates, Alfonso VIII of Castile, Sancho VII of Navarre and Pedro II of Aragon, to unite to fight the Berber rulers of al-Andalus. At Las Navas de Tolosa, the Christians routed them, trapping Caliph al-Nasir, who ran for his life but fell into a trench. Ferried back to Marrakesh, he died of his wounds. The Berbers’ victorious aura was broken: Yusuf II was gored while playing with one of his pet cows – not a death fit for a caliph. Several Islamic cities fell to Alfonso, who boasted that at Ubeda he had killed 60,000 Muslims, men, women and children, a crime worse than Jerusalem in 1099. His grandson Fernando III mopped up Cordoba and Seville. By the time of his death, Granada was the last Islamic kingdom in Spain.

* By some calculations, it is the largest religious building in world history and is certainly the biggest Hindu temple ever built. Five-towered (in honour of the five peaks of the mythical Mount Meru), built around courtyards, it remains a wonder to behold, decorated with over a thousand bare-breasted dancing girls, goblins and yogis, lions and elephants, its friezes depicting Suryavarman himself along with war elephants and his court of Brahmins and courtiers bearing palanquins and parasols.

* Gregory IX created the Papal Inquisition to prevent local rulers or mobs taking on supposed heretics without papal supervision. He burned copies of the Jewish Talmud and ordered that all Jews should be regarded as perpetuam servitus judaeorum – in servitude until Judgement Day.

* Frederick’s third wife was Isabella, daughter of the late King John of England. As part of an alliance with her young brother Henry III against France, Frederick married her in 1235. The emperor was often away fighting for years on end, leaving Isabella sometimes pregnant and always guarded by African eunuchs. She corresponded with Henry III while Frederick continued to enjoy his big love affair with his Sicilian mistress Bianca Lancia, with whom he had children, and his Arab harem. The English empress of Germany, queen of Sicily and Jerusalem, died in childbirth like his second wife, aged only twenty-five. Frederick later married Bianca on her deathbed. In this period, German sovereigns were elected as king of Germany but only enjoyed the title Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation or Caesar (kaiser in German) if they were crowned by the pope. Their heir was entitled king of the Romans.

* Probably named Robert, it is plausible that the Englishman was the chaplain of the barons who in 1215 had rebelled against King John and who forced him to concede a charter of noble privileges, Magna Carta. Taking service on the continent he had been captured by Batu Khan, whom he served for twenty years – one of those characters whose bizarre trajectory illustrates the surprising flows of history.

* Novgorod, founded by the Rurikovichi or other Nordic trader-raiders, had developed into an oligarchical republic, not dissimilar to Venice and Genoa. Ruling from the Baltic to the Urals, its exact constitution is unclear but there was an assembly – the Veche – that elected a leader known as the posadnik who ruled somehow with a council of grandees and the archbishop, who in turn often chose a Rurikovich prince to lead the republic when it was in peril. It proves there were traditions in medieval Russia other than autocracy.