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BERKE KHAN AND SULTAN BAYBARS: THE DEBATE OVER CONVERSION TO ISLAM
Marie Favereau
Oxford University Оксфорд, Великобритания Marie.favereau@history. ox.ac.uk
Abstract. In the thirteenth century the Mongols annihilated the rulers of the most important Islamic dynasties to establish a new order based on their imperial legitimacy. The Qara-Khitai, Khwarazmshahs, Seljuqs, Ayyubids, and Abbasids were destroyed, which created a power vacuum with significant political legacies to claim. After the death of the great khan Mongke in 1259, the underlying tensions among the descendants of Chinggis Khan turned into open conflicts. Berke, the first Muslim khan of the Mongol empire and one of the founding rulers of the Golden Horde, seized the opportunity to claim the Islamic leadership. At roughly the same time the Mamluks defeated the Mongols at the Battle of Ayn Jalut (3rd October 1260) and Baybars proved to be a viable challenger at the head of the umma. Between November 1261 and October 1262, Baybars entrusted his first letter for Berke to Allan merchants. The sultan congratulated the khan on his recent conversion to Islam and exhorted him to fight Hulegu. The war against a common enemy and the defense of Islam were the two reasons offered to justify the establishment of an alliance between the Mamluks and the Jochids. And yet, as this paper will show, Baybars and Berke also competed against one another to take the lead of the Islamic world.
Keywords: Golden Horde, Tatar History, Islam, conversion, Mamluk Sultanate, Diplomacy.
For citation: Favereau M. Berke Khan and Sultan Baybars: The Debate over Conversion to Islam. Tyurkologicheskie issledovaniya = Turkological Studies. 2019; 2(3): 7-13.
After the Mongols conquered Baghdad and murdered the Abbasid caliph in 1258, this highly symbolic institution collapsed. For the first time since the advent of Islam, the Muslim world lacked leadership in its historical core area [3, p. 1-25; 6; 7, p. 1-26]. The Mongols not only attacked the caliphate; they annihilated the rulers of the most important Islamic dynasties to establish a new order based on their imperial legitimacy. The Abbasids, Ayyubids, Seljuqs, Qara-Khitai and Khwarezmshahs were destroyed, which created a power vacuum with significant political legacies to claim. Berke (1257-1267), the first Muslim khan of the Mongol empire and one of the founders of the Golden Horde, seized the opportunity to claim the Islamic leadership. After the death of the great khan Mongke in 1259, the underlying tensions among the descendants of Chinggis Khan turned into open conflicts. Qubilai (1260-1294), the new great khan, and Hulegu, his brother, had
led successful conquests East and West. The Toluids directly supervised the new conquered territories and created an overarching central secretariat [17, p. 121-234]. Immediately, the new conquests brought limitation to the Jochids' expansion and projected dominions. Hulegu's armies took position in Khorasan, Georgia, Iraq, Syria, and east Anatolia, threatening the Jochids on their southern borders. In 12601261 the tension grew among the Mongol leaders. Accusing Berke's commanders of treachery and witchcraft, Hulegu began to purge the Jochids from the Mongol armies [4; 15].
On the 3rd October 1260, the Mamluks defeated the Mongols at the Battle of Ayn Jalut and Baybars proved to be a viable challenger at the head of the umma [3, p. 26-48]. Between November 1261 and October 1262, Baybars entrusted his first letter for Berke to Allan merchants. The sultan congratulated the khan on his recent conversion to Islam and exhorted him to fight Hulegu. The war against a common enemy and the defense of Islam were the two reasons offered to justify the establishment of an alliance between the Mamluks and the Jochids [19, p. 42-52; 15, p. 235-238; 3, p. 78-86; 7, p. 50-58; 12, p. 331-333; 13]. And yet, Baybars and Berke also competed against one another to take the lead of the Islamic world.
The Toluid-Jochid War
During the winter 1261-1262, Khan Berke broke with the Mongol empire by declaring war on Hulegu. But Berke's military attacks were only part of a larger strategy. He also sent his envoys to the ruler of the Delhi Sultanate who refused to pledge allegiance to the great khan Qubilai and he wrote to General Neguder, head of the Jochid contingent in eastern Iran, to protect Jochid interests in Khorasan [4, p. 79-82; 15, p. 239-244]. Berke and his followers maintained their control on the Crimean peninsula but had lost the market beyond it as the Seljuq sultanate was in the hands of their Mongol enemies. They were blocked in the Caucasus as well and could not access the trade centers of Tabriz and Baghdad. Local and long-distance merchants could not get into the Horde. Commercial isolation was part of the Toluids' strategy against the Jochids; opening routes with controlling posts and flooded passages were, thus, crucial to the ulus of Jochi. The only way to penetrate the blockade was to push through the Black Sea to Constantinople and from there to the Mediterranean and further to Egypt [10; 8, p. 241-248]. In 12621263, the khan Berke, therefore, entered into an agreement with the Mamluk sultan and the Byzantine emperor.
The Mamluk-Byzantine-Jochid agreement
The Byzantine emperor agreed to let envoys and merchants sent by the khan and the sultan pass the strait of the Bosphorus and ship goods and slaves. The Mamluks had the same enemy as the Jochids and the same problem: they needed to bypass the Seljuq markets where slaves were sent from Crimea. The sultan needed manpower for his armies to fight both the crusaders and the Mongols. Berke agreed to sell young nomads from the heartland of the Horde to the Mamluks. These young men, widely considered superior mounted warriors, were part of the Qipchaq populations the Mongols subjugated in the first half of the thirteenth century. In exchange for selling them off as military slaves, Berke demanded the Mamluks to support the
Seljuq sultan Izz al-Din - who had taken refuge at the Byzantine court - and to attack Hulegu's positions on the Syrian border. Finally the first alliance between the Mamluks and the Jochids established the trade route Cairo-lower Volga, a travel that took approximately two months [12, p. 334-335; 13].
Individual Conversion vs. Collective Conversion
The first agreement between the Mamluks and the Jochids was not only about military coordination; rulers' legitimacy and reputation mattered as well. Berke khan and Sultan Baybars needed each other, as they had a common enemy, but they were also Islamic leaders in competition.
A: Baybars' Conversion
In his al-Rawd al-zahir ft strat al-malik al-Zahir, Ibn Abd al-Zahir includes the reconstructed texts of the letters Baybars sent to Berke. In his first message, the sultan congratulated the khan on his recent conversion to Islam and urged him to fight Hulegu in the name of jihad. The sultan acted as a "senior in islam" and his other letters were pieces of advice on how to be a true Muslim leader. Obviously, the sultan placed himself above the khan because he was the first who converted: he was, then, a teenager; while, when Berke announced his conversion, he was in his forties. Scholarship has established that the notion of precedence in Islam is crucial since the formative period of the dar al-islam. Precedence and excellence in Islam were key aspects in the islamicate discourse about legitimate leadership and it developed through the manaqib literature - a genre that directly inspired Ibn Abd al-Zahir in his royal biography of Baybars [18, p. 46-64; 14; 1; 2].
B: Berke's Conversion
Berke's conversion had a great impact in his own time. Indeed, he was the first Mongol ruler to become sultan. The Mamluks had nothing to do with his decision. His spiritual influence came from the Khwarazm where he received his religious education. His mentor was the sufi sheikh Sayf ad-din Baharzi, from Bukhara. According to Juzjani, Berke was raised a Muslim [16, p. 1292-1293; 9, p. 83-86]. His so-called conversion when he was elected khan was a significant act of politics: a new symbolic allegiance and a change of orientation. He broke with the great Mongol empire, where he was an outsider, and he entered the umma to be a leader. In his first letter to Baybars, Berke said that he converted along with his four brothers [11]. In his second letter to the Mamluk sultan, Berke listed the most important people who had seceded from the Mongol empire to shape a new political community [18, p. 77, 98-99; 5, p. 82-84]:
'We have all converted to Islam, tribes, clans, individuals, soldiers, big and small people, namely: our younger and elder brothers with their sons; the descendants of Buda Kur, with his children and the people who lives in his household; Pulad Kykajas, Janshunuk, and all those who live in their lands; Qudaq, Qarachar, Tanishbuga, Shiramun, Buz Baki, Mingqadur with his armies and servants; Beg Qadaq Bainal, Tukuz Ogul, Qutluq Timur, Ajji (Ayachi) with his children, Durbay and the tumen that was sent to the conquest of the Khorasan; as well as all those who were with Baiju, such as Bainal noyan and Aykaku'.
Among the key figures mentioned here were the people of Baiju - the leader of the conquests in the Seljuq lands whom Hulegu sent to death because he was too powerful; and the Khorasani contingent that joined Neguder. Thus Berke's allies mentioned in this list were the Mongol delegates who commanded in the region (Iran, Azerbaijan, Anatolia) before Hulegu arrived. By naming all these important peoples, Berke not only show he had strong allies, but also that his personal conversion led to a collective conversion.
In the debate about precedence and excellence in Islam, the key criterion was not only precedence in conversion, but also the way the conversion was made, the social status of the one who converted, and his moral excellence. Thus, the public conversion of a male adult could be more valued than the conversion of a child or a teenager because the impact on the umma and on the outside world was much higher; especially if the leader's conversion came with the collective conversion of his family and companions. And this is precisely how we should interpret the khan's answer to the Mamluk sultan.
According to Berke's letter, Islam was a shared religious and political choice. Not only the khan claimed to be a Muslim but the khatuns, noyans, keshig elders, and qarachu in power. Performed publically, the conversion founded a new social pact. Islam became a source of collective identity that could grow next to the Mongol imperial laws. The Jochids and their people have found a way to bypass the power of the great khans and to compensate for their loss of status within the golden lineage; they did not rely anymore on the Toluids for their political economy, nor for their legitimacy. Islam offered them a rich pool of new symbols and rituals that they could add to the old ones. Berke became sultan and remained khan; he governed in accordance with the yasa, Chinggis Khan's rules, and promoted the shari'a, the sacred law of the Muslims.
The qadis, muftis, and shaykhs who lived at the jochid khan's court developed their own theories on legitimacy and leadership which were different from the Mamluks' ideological constructions. Yet, the Mamluks had a huge advantage: they controlled the access to the pilgrimage and the holy places. Therefore, in exchange for selling some of his subjects as military slaves, Berke demanded the Mamluks to recognize him as supreme sultan by the new Abbasid caliph, hosted in Cairo, and grant free access to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. From this time onwards, the Jochids were allowed to send their people to the Hedjaz to make hajj. The institution of the caliph remained important as a nominal guide for the Sunni believers, but the institution of the hajj was even more important [13].
Concluding Remarks
The decades 1240-1260 saw the formation of an autonomous political body in the Jochid Horde. It has started under Batu and came to maturity under Berke. The collective conversion sealed the alliance of the nomadic elites under the leadership of the khan allied with the non-Toluid commanders of the western wing. At the end of Berke's rule the Jochid political body became independent from the Central power that the Toluids now dominated. Simultaneous conversions to Islam have turned the ulus of Jochi into a new, stronger, community. The ritual of collective conversion performed when a new khan ascended the throne might have occurred several times in the Golden Horde. At least we know it had happened under Tode
Mongke as well (1280-1287) [9, p. 83-89]. The khans' close relatives converted, along with the ulus begs and their households, including servants and dependent people. It was a social pact of allegiance between the ulus and its new ruler. The islamization of the Jochids played a key role in the Tatar community building because it was a process of gaining collective self-identity, and because it had strong political implications at the global level such as the long-term relations between the Golden Horde and the Mamluk Sultanate.
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About the author: Marie Favereau, PhD (History), Research Associate, ERC "Nomadic Empires" Faculty of History, Oxford University, е-mail: Marie.favereau@ history.ox.ac.uk
Received April 15, 2019.
Accepted for publication May 13, 2019.
БЕРКЕ ХАН И СУЛТАН БЕЙБАРС: СПОРЫ О ПЕРЕХОДЕ В ИСЛАМ
Мари Фаверо Думенжу
Оксфордский университет Оксфорд, Великобритания marie.favereau@history. ox.ac.uk
Резюме. В XIII веке монголы уничтожили правителей наиболее важных исламских династий, чтобы установить новый порядок, основанный на их имперской легитимности. Кара-Хитаи, Хоразмшахи, Сельджукиды, Айюбиды и Аббасиды были уничтожены, что создало вакуум власти. После смерти великого хана Мункэ в 1259 году напряженность в отношениях между потомками Чингис-хана переросла в открытый конфликт. Берке, первый мусульманский хан Монгольской империи и один из основателей Золотой Орды, воспользовался возможностью претендовать на лидерство в исламском мире. Примерно в то же время мамлюки разбили монголов в битве при Айн-Джалуте (3 октября 1260 года), и Бейбарс оказался сильным соперником в борьбе за лидерство в мусульманской умме. Между ноябрем 1261 и октябрем 1262 года Бейбарс отправил свое первое письмо адресованное Берке через аланских купцов. Султан поздравил хана с его недавним обращением в ислам и призвал его к борьбе с Хулагу. Война против общего врага и защита ислама стали причинами оправдания создания альянса между Мамлюками и Джучидами. И все же, как будет показано в этой статье, Бейбарс и Берке также конкурировали друг с другом за лидерство в исламском мире.
Ключевые слова: Золотая Орда, история татар, ислам, обращение в ислам, Мамлюкский султанат, дипломатия.
Для цитирования: Favereau M. Berke Khan and Sultan Baybars: The Debate over Conversion to Islam. Тюркологические исследования. 2019; 2(3): 7-13.
Сведения об авторе: Мари Фаверо Думенжу, Ph.D. (история), научный сотрудник, Оксфордский университет, исторический факультет (OX1 2RL, ул. Георгия, Оксфорд, Великобритания); университет Сорбонна - Париж IV (75005, ул. Виктор Кузин, 1, Париж, Франция), е-mail: Marie.favereau@history. ox.ac.uk
Дата поступления материала 15.04.2019.
Принят к публикации 13.05.2019.
