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Adh-Dhahabī's “Ta'rīkh al-islām” as an Authority on the Mongol Invasion of the Caliphate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Joseph de Somogyi
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Extract

Scarcely ever has Islām experienced more tragical times and more hardships than during the Mongol invasion in the course of the thirteenth century a.d. With the despite of the nomads, practitioners of the open-air life, for sedentary occupations, the people of Jengis Khān turned against and mercilessly destroyed the towns and works of civilization everywhere. Their disastrous campaign was only facilitated by the decomposition of the political unity of Islām at that time. In Baghdād the 'Abbāsid caliphate still subsisted, but its splendour was on the wane; to the west of Baghdād, in Egypt, Palestine, and a part of Syria, the Ayyūbids reigned, and in Asia Minor the Seljūqs, while to the east of Baghdād the Turkish princes from Khiva had, a rather insecure hold on the vast stretch of the Khwārizmian empire from the Ganges to the Tigris and from Turkestān to the Indian Ocean. This state of affairs was inviting to an enterprising invader of the sort of Jengis Khān who, in 1218, crushed the Khwārizmian empire, while his grandson, Hūlāghū Khān, put an end to the 'Abbāsid caliphate in 1258. The western provinces of Islām, including Egypt, were, however, spared from the devastating fury of the Mongols by the Mamlūk Sulṭān's victory over Ketbogha, Hūlāghū's general, at 'Ayn Jālūt, Palestine, in 1260. When in 1299–1301 his grandson Qāzān failed in conquering Syria Islām was definitely safe from further Mongol attacks.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 68 , Issue 4 , October 1936 , pp. 595 - 604
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1936

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References

page 596 note 1 See my paper, “Ein arabisches Kompendium der Weltgeschichte. Das Kitāb duwal al-islām des aḏ-Ḏahabī,” Islamica, Leipzig, 1932, pp. 334–353Google Scholar.

page 596 note 2 See my paper, “The Ta'rīkh al-islām of adh-Dhahabī,” JRAS., 1932, pp. 815–855.

page 597 note 1 Edited by White, J., Abdollatiphi Historiae Aegypti compendium, Oxford, 1800Google Scholar, and by de Sacy, S., Relation de l'Égypte par Abdallaṭīf, Paris, 1810Google Scholar.

page 597 note 2 Edited separately by Mousley, J., Abdollatif Bagdadensis Vita, auctore Ibn abi Osaiba, Oxford, 1808Google Scholar. See pp. 50–64 for the list of his works.

page 597 note 3 Ibid., p. 56.

page 597 note 4 We have no reference to such a report in the biography of him in al-Kutubī's Fawāt al-wafayāt, vol. ii, pp. 7–8, and none even in adh-Dhahabī's biography of him in the Ta'rīkh al-islām, MS. of the Bodleian Library, Cat. i, 654, fols. 76–77b.

page 597 note 5 In Mousley, p. 6.

page 597 note 6 Ibid., p. 34.

page 598 note 1 Ibid., p. 36. Dairki is given as Déberki by S. de Sacy, op. cit., p. 470. Thus also in Ibn abi Useibia, ed. Müller, A., Königsberg, 1884, vol. ii, p. 207Google Scholar.

page 598 note 2 See Barthold, W. in Enc. Isl., vol. ii, p. 1009Google Scholar, and also the description of Kimākh, in Manger, S. H., La vie de Tamerlan par Ibn Arabšāh, Leeuwarden, 1767–1772, vol. ii, p. 202Google Scholar.

page 598 note 3 The first part of the report is in the MS. of the British Museum, No. 1640, from fol. 173, 1. 21, to fol. 173b, 1. 18.

page 599 note 1 For the similar Chinese conception of the Tatars see d'Ohsson, C., Histoire des Mongols, 2nd ed., La Haye et Amsterdam, 1837–1852, vol. i, p. 93Google Scholar.

page 599 note 2 Tangut is, according to Yāqūt (ed. Wüstenfeld, F., vol. v, p. 880), “a town in Shāsh beyond (the river) Sayḥūn”Google Scholar; according to Qazwīnī, Ḥamdallāh, Nuzhat al-qulūb, ed. Le Strange, G., Persian text, p. 257Google Scholar, it is also “a country comprising many countries of the Fifth Zone, and called Qāshīn by the Mongols.”

page 600 note 1 See the MS. of the British Museum, No. 1640, from fol. 190b, 1. 6, to fol. 192, 1. 16.

page 600 note 2 See Ibn al-Athīr, vol. xii, pp. 251 and 327–8, and also d'Ohsson, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 216–352.

page 600 note 3 For a detailed record of this event see Ibn al-Athīr, vol. xii, pp. 270–1, under the significant title Ḥāditha gkarība lam yūjad mithluhā, and Brosset, F., Histoire de la Géorgie, St. Pétersbourg, 1849–1857, vol. i, p. 495Google Scholar; it is also related by adh-Dhahabī in the narrative of the year a.h. 621: see the MS. of the Bodleian Library, Cat., vol. i, No. 654, fols. 1b–2.

page 601 note 1 Al-malāḥida being a name of the Dahrīs, this passage refers to the environs of Alamūt and other fortresses of the Assassins in Irān.

page 602 note 1 See the MS. of the Bodleian Library, Cat. i, 654, fols. 7b–8b.

page 602 note 2 See the MS. of the British Museum, No. 1640, fol. 182, 1. 14.

page 602 note 3 See the MS. of the Bodleian Library, Cat. i, 654, fols. 248–250, under the title Kā'inat Baghdād.

page 602 note 4 Ibid., fol. 249b, 1. 3.

page 602 note 5 For its text and English translation see my paper “A qaṣīda on the Destruction of Baghdād by the Mongols,” BSOS., 1933, pp. 41–8.

page 602 note 6 See the MS. of the Bodleian Library, Cat. i, 654, fols. 252–5, and also the narrative of Ṣārimaddīn Üzbek ibn 'Abdallāh edited and translated by Vida, G. Levi della in his paper “L'invasione dei Tartari in Siria nel 1260 nei ricordi di un testimonio oculare,” Orientalia, nova series, vol. iv (Roma, 1935), pp. 353–376Google Scholar.

page 603 note 1 See the MS. of the Bodleian Library, Cat. i, 656, fol. 57b.

page 603 note 2 Ibid., fols. 60b–61.

page 603 note 3 See the MS. of the British Museum Or. 1540, fols. 123–134.

page 603 note 4 See Quatremère, , Histoire des Sultans Mamloucks, Paris, 1837–1841, vol. ii, part ii, from p. 147Google Scholar onwards; d'Ohsson, op. cit., vol. iv, from p. 212 onwards; Howorth, , History of the Mongols, London, 1876, vol. iii, from p. 429Google Scholar onwards, where also Persian authors are quoted.

page 603 note 5 See the MS. of the British Museum Or. 1540, fol. 124, 1. 13.