The Criminal History of Mankind by Colin Wilson

Genghis was still capturing and burning Tangut towns in 1227 when he began to feel ill and, with the instinct of a nomad, realised that death was near. A hunting accident in the previous year had weakened him; now, with typical Right Man logic, he blamed the Tanguts for bringing him on a punitive expedition when he was less than fully recovered and so causing his death. He was besieging the capital, Ninghsia, and gave orders that by way of punishment every human being should be exterminated ‘so that men of the future will say: the Khan has annihilated their race’. And then, not a moment too soon for the good of the human race, this remarkable monster died, in August 1227, at the age of sixty.

Yet it has to be acknowledged that, by the standards of his time, Genghis Khan was by no means a mere homicidal maniac. As a human being, he possessed many excellent, even lovable, qualities. He was like Aksakov’s uncle – mentioned in an earlier chapter: ‘And this noble, magnanimous, often self-restrained man – whose character presented an image of the loftiest human nature – was subject to fits of rage in which he was capable of the most barbarous cruelty.’ This could have been written about Genghis Khan.

The explanation, clearly, is that he was a man of quite exceptional dominance – several degrees above the rest of the ‘dominant five per cent’ – who happened to find an ideal field for his self-expression. Mongolia was ready for a man who could bring unity; and once unity was achieved, Genghis Khan became subject to the ‘law of expansion’ which controls all newly-triumphant nations. They cannot suddenly cease to grow and conquer. He had to lead his people towards delights that they had always wanted – in this case, endless sex and plunder. His success, fortunately, was enough to satisfy both his people and his own immense craving for power. And within the limitations of his rapacious ego and his innate barbarism, he showed a considerable capacity for personal evolution. There seem to be very few cases in which he failed to live up to his own strict code of barbarian honour.

This stands out by contrast to the behaviour of his generals (of whom four were his sons). When an army under his fourth son Toluy broke into Nisa, in Khorassan (with the use of immense Chinese catapults), they ordered all the inhabitants to go outside the city walls and tie themselves together with their hands behind their backs; then the Mongols surrounded them and massacred them with arrows – if they had scattered for the hills, most would have escaped. When Merv fell, Toluy had all the inhabitants beheaded as he watched, and had two hundred merchants tortured until they revealed where they had hidden their treasures. But Toluy was told later that some people in Merv had escaped death by lying down among the dead; so when Naishapur – home of Omar Khayyam – fell he ordered all corpses to be decapitated, and three pyramids of heads were built up – one of men, one of women, one of children. This strikes us as sick sadism, and no excuses about ‘barbarism’ can deodorise from it the smell of evil. Jebe the Arrow, although less murderous, was equally free from scruples. He had been sent on a kind of reconnaissance expedition into the Caucasus and Russia. This was certainly no part of the Kharismian Empire, but he burned towns, and depopulated those that resisted just as the Mongols had in Turkestan. In the steppes to the north of the Caspian, he was attacked by a coalition army of mountain people of three different races. One of these groups, the Kipchaks, were Turkish nomads, and Jebe managed to buy them off with large quantities of plunder and with persuasive words about nomad brotherhood. Then when he had defeated the other two tribes he pursued the Kipchaks, massacred them and took everything back. Later, he defeated a Russian army of eight thousand in the Dnieper valley near present day Alexandrovsk. One Russian prince managed to withdraw to his fortified camp and made terms for a safe passage home. The Mongols agreed – then massacred them. It is unlikely that Genghis Khan’s strict code of barbarian morality would have allowed him any of these betrayals.

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The Mongol Empire continued to expand for another half century after the death of Genghis Khan – under his sons and grandsons – and even then took another century to fall apart; but the remainder of this story must be told in summary.

Genghis Khan’s eldest son Jochi had died of natural causes six months before his father; it was the third son, Ogodai, who was elected khan. He immediately pursued his father’s war with the Golden Emperor, and persuaded the southern Sung emperor – who had lost his northern provinces to the Golden emperors – to become his ally. The ‘Golden’ (Chin) were subdued in 1234, whereupon the Mongols, with their usual lack of loyalty, went to war against the Sung. Other Mongols set about the conquest of Russia; Kiev was destroyed in 1240; the Mongols poured into Poland, encountered an army of Germans and Poles at Liegnitz, and wiped them out. Fortunately, they found the woods and mountains of Lower Silesia unattractive – they preferred the open steppe. (It was just as well they were not tempted to push on another hundred miles into Germany: they might have found the countryside beyond the Moldau or the Elbe altogether more to their taste.) So they retraced their steps over the Carpathians and into Hungary, where they slaughtered the Magyars (who had been raiding Europe since the time of Charlemagne).

Meanwhile, in Asia, Ogodai had died in 1241, and Genghis Khan’s grandson Mangu became khan. He went on fighting the unfortunate Sung and ordered his brother Hulagu, west to attack the cities of Islam. The reason for this was not any rebellion of their Persian subjects, but Mangu’s nervousness about the sinister descendants of Hasan bin Sabah, the order of Assassins.

It seems to have come about in this way. When the Kadi of Qazvin came to pay his respects to the new khan in his capital Karakoram, he was wearing a shirt of mail; he explained that he had to wear it all the time and told the story of the assassins, now led by an Imam called Rukn al-Din. He probably emphasised the power held by this relatively small sect through the fear it inspired and pointed out that the khan himself was undoubtedly on their list. When Ismaili ambassadors came to present themselves at the khan’s court, they were turned away, and the khan probably felt the danger was getting closer (although, of course, Ismailis were not necessarily assassins). The khan redoubled his guard, which seems to suggest he was now losing sleep and brooding on stories of the assassins’ ability to creep under doors and down air vents. This is why, in 1256, Hulagu was ordered to go and stamp out the menace.

The assassins had a series of impregnable castles, and might have been in a good position to hold out indefinitely, as they had against the Seljuks. But their new Imam Rukn al-Din was a pacifist. He made a submissive reply to Hulagu’s demand that he destroy his own castles, and even sent his seven-year-old son as a hostage. Fortunately, Hulagu returned the boy; for this demand to offer their necks to the Mongols had the assassins understandably worried. Hulagu prepared to attack the castle in which Rukn was staying, and Rukn hastily made his submission. Hulagu received his treasures condescendingly, but treated Rukn well and gave him a hundred white camels and a beautiful Mongolian girl for his bed. He needed Rukn to help him subdue the other castles without bloodshed. And this is precisely what the new Imam did. A whole string of forts surrendered, including – finally – the Eagle’s Nest itself, at Alamut. The Mongols burned it; they would probably never have entered as besiegers.

Now that the Mongols no longer needed Rukn, his family was murdered. Rukn himself managed to buy a little more time by asking permission to go and present himself to the khan at Karakorum; but Mangu refused to receive him and he was murdered on the way back, he and his followers being ‘kicked to a pulp’ according to the Arab chronicler Juvaini.

So the assassins had finally ceased to exist in Persia, as they already had in Egypt, where the sultan Baybars had annihilated them. It was the price the Old Man of the Mountain paid for his terrorist methods.

Hulagu, who seemed to be as stupidly sadistic as most of the Mongol conquerors, now marched on Baghdad, held by Mustasim, last of the Abbasid Caliphs. They reached there in January 1258 and laid siege to the great city of al-Mansur and Haroun al-Raschid. After a few weeks, Mustasim begged for mercy. It could easily have been granted – Baghdad had committed no wrong against the Mongol khan. But Hulagu must have been disappointed at the tame surrender of the assassin strongholds; possibly his men were growing restive for a little rape. He stormed the city and ordered a total massacre. It was probably one of the largest the Mongols had ever undertaken. So Baghdad, the most beautiful and exciting city since Byzantium and Alexandria, was left a smoking ruin full of corpses. The sultan himself was trampled to death by horses. Hulagu surveyed his work with satisfaction, and prepared for new conquest.