The Mongols were known for unleashing a series of unrelenting horrors upon the Islamic world,
from the catastrophic destruction of the Khwarezmian Empire to the sack of Baghdad.
No shortage of Islamic authors over the thirteenth century called the Mongols a punishment sent
by God for their sins.
Yet, many of the Mongols in the west of the empire before the end of the thirteenth century
converted to Islam, and in time some of the heirs of Chinggis Khan held the sharia over
the yassa.
In today’s episode of our series on the Mongols, we explore why so many Mongols chose
to convert to Islam.
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The Mongolian interaction with Islam began in the twelfth century as Islamic merchants
brought valued goods such as textiles or metal tools in exchange for furs and animals.
At least two Muslims, Hasan and Ja’far Khoja, were among Chinggis Khan’s close allies
during his escape to lake Baljuna, where they swore loyalty to him.
As Chinggis Khan expanded the Mongol Empire, initially Muslims found little reason to lament
it.
Muslim merchants continued to serve in prominent roles, acting as emissaries and spies on behalf
of the Khan, who rewarded them and encouraged them to make the difficult journey to Mongolia.
When Chinggis Khan’s great general Jebe Noyan entered the Tarim Basin in 1218 pursuing
their fleeing foe Kuchlug, he proclaimed that all those who willingly submitted were free
to worship as they chose.
The region swiftly threw out Kuchlug’s garrisons and accepted Mongol rule, not as conquerors
but liberators.
The next stage of Mongol expansion was not so well received.
The highly destructive conquest of the Khwarezmian Empire resulted in the deaths of millions
across what is now Uzbekistan through eastern Iran and Afghanistan.
Though most of Iran submitted peacefully to the Mongol Noyan Chormaqun over the 1230s,
with the arrival of Hulegu in the 1250s a new wave of massacres were unleashed, culminating
in the sack of Baghdad in 1258 and death of the ‘Abbasid Caliph, an immense blow the
psyche of the ummah.
At the end of the 1250s, it seemed that soon the whole of the Muslim world would become
the subject of the Grand Khan.
The initial period after the Mongol conquest was, for many Muslims, not easier.
Claims of Mongol religious toleration have been greatly over-exaggerated and coloured
by our modern perception of the term.
While it is true that the Mongols generally did not persecute on the basis of religion,
the Mongols did persecute specific beliefs they saw as contrary to steppe custom and
the laws of Chinggis Khan, the great Yassa.
These infractions, such as halal slaughter or washing of dirty things in running water,
resulted in Mongol oppression.
Both Chinggis Khan’s son Chagatai in the 1230s and Khubilai Khan in the 1280s forbade
halal slaughter on pain of death.
A Khwarezmian refugee to the Delhi Sultanate writing around 1260, Juzjani, wrote of his
sincere belief that Chagatai and other members of the Mongol leadership intended a genocide
of the Muslims.
Why did Islam succeed in converting the Mongols of western Asia, after such a low point?
It was a matter of proximity.
The majority of the population in the major centers in the Golden Horde, Ilkhanate, and
Chagatai Khanate were Muslims, ensuring that not only could Sufis and others proselytize
to the Mongol leadership, but also their military.
Efforts by Buddhists or various Christian representatives, be they Catholic, Syriac
or Nestorian, lacked comparable resources, and their efforts were generally restricted
to attempting to convert the highest-ranking Mongols.
While this brought them some influence, in contrast to the image in most historical narrative
sources monarchs tended to convert once enough of their followers had done so for it to be
a sound decision for their legitimacy.
More Mongols simply had closer proximity to Muslim populations than they ever did Christian
or Buddhist, leading to a more thorough conversion than any Franciscan friar could ever accomplish.
Similar proximity prompted the slow sinicization of the Mongols in Yuan China.
The Mongols also found Muslims very useful.
Islamic craftsmen, administrators, and healers were quickly spread across the Mongol Empire,
accompanying every Khan and Noyan on campaigns and in their camps.
In short order they commanded armies, often of their own locally raised forces, to fight
for the khans.
The various Islamic peoples of Central Asia, be they Turkic or Iranic, provided a plethora
of skills and manpower the Mongols lacked.
By the reign of Ogedai, Muslims were many of the highest-ranking members of the bureaucracy.
Mahmud Yalavach, his son Mas’ud Beg, and ‘Abd al-Rahman, served as heads of the Branch
Secretariats the Mongols established to govern Central Asia and China.
These men were answerable only to the Great Khan.
The presence of many Islamic jurists in Chinggisid courts is well attested, and a merchant with
fiscal ability could be richly rewarded in lucrative ortogh arrangements with Mongol
princes.
The Mongol search for skills they saw as useful particularly rewarded Muslims with aptitude
in alchemy and astrology.
The Khans of the Ilkhanate spent considerable sums on alchemists who claimed to be able
to produce gold or prolong life, much to the chagrin of the Ilkhanate’s viziers.
Astrologists who could determine the future also received great rewards, for the Mongols
put great stock in this.
The duties of Mongol shamans fell to influencing events within the current life, rather than
with the next level of existence.
Thus, for the Mongols, it was useful to accumulate holy men to interact with the supernatural
beyond what their own shamans could.
It also explains why, once they did convert, the Mongols continued to commune with shamans,
which makes it difficult for many to accept their conversions as sincere.
As historians like Devin DeWeese or Peter Jackson have argued though, we cannot gauge
the authenticity of any Mongol conversion as our vantage point centuries later, and
the nature of our sources leaves us unable to determine the conviction of each convert.
The Mongols actively selected aspects of sedentary societies which benefitted themselves and
therefore could choose to profess Islam while continually observing shamanic practices and
standard cultural actions.
The conversions of the Mongols and their servants began in the 1240s.
One of the first prominent figures to convert was not a Mongol, but an Uyghur named Korguz,
Ogedai’s appointment to head the Secretariat of Western Asia.
One of the most powerful officials in the empire, Korguz’s conversion from Buddhism
to Islam at the start of the 1240s marked the highest-profile convert yet in the Mongol
government.
According to Juvaini, Batu, while preparing for the confrontation with the Hungarians
at Mohi in 1241, ascended a hill to pray to Eternal Blue Heaven, and asked the Muslims
in his army to pray for victory as well.
It is unclear if they were Muslim troops raised from Central Asia and the steppe or Mongol
converts.
One of the main units in Mongol expansion and consolidation was the tamma, a garrison
force permanently stationed in a region made up of nomadic and sedentary troops.
The Mongols in a tamma were forbidden to bring their families with them.
Separated from their homeland, families, and shamans, and taking new wives who were generally
Muslims, these Mongols were thus removed from the infrastructure that encouraged the maintenance
of their traditional religion and made them more susceptible to conversion.
This can best be observed in the case of tammchi Baiju, stationed in the Caucasus and Anatolia
from the early 1240s until the 1260s.
Over roughly twenty years he appears in a variety of historical accounts which demonstrate
not only the presence of many Muslims in his camp, as advisers, administrators, and Sufis
but also the gradual conversion of his men.
By the end of his life, Baiju became a Muslim and asked to be washed and buried in Muslim
fashion on his death.
Perhaps the most famous convert was Berke Khan, known for his war against his cousin
Hulegu over the Caucasus.
Conflicting accounts are given for his conversion: either he was raised a Muslim or converted
in the 1240s through the efforts of the Sufi Shaykh Sayf al-Din Bakharzi.
Certainly, by the 1250s, Berke was a Muslim as multiple independent sources attest to
his adherence, though Mamluk embassies indicate that Berke continued to dress and wear his
hair in the distinctive Mongolian style rather than don Islamic clothing.
While Berke’s war with Hulegu is often portrayed as his anger over the death of the Caliph,
it seems this was a secondary concern to him.
His own letters to Sultan Baybars blame the conflict on Hulegu’s infringement of the
Yassa by failing to send Berke loot from Baghdad and Iraq or consult with him.
The fact that war began three years after Baghdad’s fall, and that Hulegu occupied
Jochid territory in northern Iran and the Caucasus after Mongke’s death, suggests
that Berke’s immediate concerns were more strategic than spiritual.
Islam for the early converts like Berke was not a change of identity, but an acceptance
alongside their existing beliefs and incorporated into a Chinggisid worldview.
Almost certainly Berke, like his Islamic successors, continued to consult with shamans and the
Yassa, yet never felt disloyal to the sharia.
While Berke’s conversion was accompanied by some of his brothers and commanders, there
was no immediate Islamization of the emerging Golden Horde.
Only at the start of the 1280s did both westernmost khanates of the Mongol Empire have Muslim
rulers: Töde-Möngke [r.1280-1287] in the Golden Horde, and Tegüder [r.1282-1284] in
the Ilkhanate.
Once more, the sources hint that shaykhs and Sufis were behind the conversion of both men,
and continued to be held in great esteem in their courts.
For the Ilkhan Tegüder, who upon his enthronement went by the name of Sultan Ahmad, we have
a variety of sources that describe his commitment to Islam, which vary widely and demonstrate
why many doubt the authenticity of the early conversions.
In a letter Tegüder sent to the Mamluk Sultan Qalawun, Tegüder spoke of establishing sharia
law in the Ilkhanate and that their shared religion made it easier for the Mamluks to
submit to him.
Cilician Armenian writers like Het’um of Corycus and Step’annos Orbelian generally
portray Tegüder as a prosecutor of Christians.
Yet at the same time, the Syriac churchman Bar Hebraeus wrote of Tegüder as a friend
to Christians, an upholder of religious toleration who exempted them from taxation and allowed
Hebraeus to build a new church, while the Mamluks were largely skeptical of his conversion.
Taking the throne in 1295, the Ilkhan Ghazan portrayed himself as the first true Muslim
Ilkhan.
For this reason, the Islam of two of his predecessors, Tegüder and Baidu, was denigrated in official
accounts from his reign, predominately the great work of his vizier Rashid al-Din.
Ghazan only came to Islam a few weeks before his enthronement, urged to convert by his
commander Nawruz Noyan and the Shaykh Sadr al-Din al-Hamuwayi during his rebellion against
Ilkhan Baidu.
While his biographer Rashid al-Din portrays Ghazan’s conversion as causing his commanders
and soldiers to follow suit, it seems almost certain that it was in fact the opposite,
and that by converting Ghazan hoped to gain the wavering support of Baidu’s Muslim followers,
which quickly happened.
Upon becoming Ilkhan, on the instigation of his zealous general Nawruz, Ghazan ordered
the destruction of Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, and Zoroastrian centers in Muslim cities in
his empire and imposed the jizya.
However, these harsh measures were quickly rescinded with Nawruz’s downfall in 1297,
though Buddhists did not return to the prominence they had previously enjoyed.
Ghazan before the end of the 1290s donned a turban and even declared jihad against the
Mamluks.
Yet his efforts did not convince everyone.
Outside of Damascus in 1300, the great Mamluk jurist Ibn Taymiyya accused both Ghazan and
his vizier, the Jewish convert to Islam Rashid al-Din, of being false Muslims, and that Ghazan
continued to worship Chinggis Khan in place of sharia.
The life of Ghazan’s brother and successor Oljeitu is the most extreme example of a Mongol
prince’s flexible approach to religion.
His father Arghun had the young Oljeitu baptized a Nestorian Christian and given the name of
Nicholas.
As a teen, he converted to Buddhism, taking the name of Oljeitu.
Under the influence of a wife, he converted to Sunni Islam and became Muhammad Khudabanda.
First attached to the Sunni school of Hanafism, then to Shafi’ism, frustration with fighting
between them drove him back to Buddhism before in 1309 choosing Shi’a Islam.
A number of sources offer explanations for what drove Oljeitu to become a Shi’a, generally
focusing on how advisers, scholars, and emirs in his court convinced him of its merits.
In some accounts, Oljeitu converted back to Sunni Islam shortly before his death in 1316.
Following Ghazan’s reign [1295-1304] the Ilkhanate is considered an Islamic state,
with the majority of its army and upper echelons Muslim The process was slower in the Golden
Horde and Chagatai Khanate.
In the Golden Horde, it took until the reign of Özbeg Khan [r.1313-1341], who seems to
have converted shortly after his accession to gain the support of influential noyans
within the Horde.
In legendary accounts, Özbeg was converted by a Sufi named Baba Tükles, who proved the
veracity of his religion by passing unscathed through an oven wearing nothing but chain
maille, while the shaman he challenged was burnt to death.
However, Baba Tükles does not appear in sources until centuries after Özbeg’s death, though
likely he was influenced by Sufis and jurists in his entourage.
To cement his reign and religion, Özbeg ordered the executions of over a hundred Chinggisid
princes and noyans, larger than purges carried out by other prominent converts, such as Ghazan
in the Ilkhanate and Tughluq Temur in the eastern Chagatai Khanate.
Özbeg’s violent efforts succeeded in permanently making the Jochids Muslims.
Still, in policy Özbeg, Ghazan and Oljeitu largely matched their forebears in providing
taxation exemptions, favours, and other privileges to Christians, especially Franciscan missionaries,
though on a lesser scale than earlier in the thirteenth century.
Their successors, Özbeg’s son Janibeg and Oljeitu’s son Abu Sa’id, proved less welcoming,
as even Christians found their privileges revoked.
Janibeg ordered his men to dress in the fashion of Muslims, while Abu Sa’id sought to become
the protector of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, one year even sending an elephant
there for inexplicable reasons.
Still, these monarchs showed themselves to continue in their traditions, such as acts
of levirate marriage, marrying their father’s wives, something forbidden by their new religion.
Islam proved an aspect of these monarch’s identities, but it took many generations in
Iran for all elements of Mongol culture and Chinggisid ideology to be driven out, and
in the steppes the process, it can be argued, never truly fully replaced the memory of the
house of Chinggis Khan.
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