Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/770

Rh 742 MONGOLS perfect impartiality, Mangu allowed the light of his coun tenance to fall upon the Christians, Mohammedans, and Buddhists among his subjects, although Shamanism was recognized as the state religion. Two years after his accession his court was visited by Rubruquis and other Christian monks, who were hospitably received. The de scription given by Rubruquis of the khakan s palace at Karakorum shows how wide was the interval which sepa rated him from the nomad, tent-living life of his fore fathers. It was &quot;surrounded by brick walls. ... Its southern side had three doors. Its central hall was like a church, and consisted of a nave and two aisles, separated by columns. Here the court sat on great occasions. In front of the throne was placed a silver tree, having at its base four lions, from whose mouths there spouted into four silver basins wine, kumiss, hydromel, and terasine. At the top of the tree a silver angel sounded a trumpet when the reservoirs that supplied the four fountains wanted replenishing.&quot; On his accession complaints reached Mangu that dissensions had broken out in the province of Persia, and he therefore sent a force under the command of his Hulagu. brother Hulagu to punish the Ismailites or Assassins, who were held to be the cause of the disorder. Marching by Samarkand and Kesh, Hulagu crossed the Oxus and advanced by way of Balkh into the province of Kohistan. The terror of the Mongol name induced Rokn al-din, the chief of the Assassins, to deprecate the wrath of Hulagu by offers of submission, and he was so far successful that he was able to purchase a temporary immunity from mas sacre by dismantling fifty of the principal fortresses in Kohistan. But when once the country had thus been left at the mercy of the invaders, their belief in the old saying &quot; Stone dead hath no fellow &quot; sharpened their battle-axes, and, sparing neither man, woman, nor child, they extermin ated the unhappy people. Hulagu then marched across the snowy mountains in the direction of Baghdad. On arriving before the town he demanded its surrender. This being refused, he laid siege to the walls in the usual destruc tive Mongol fashion, and at length, finding resistance hope less, the caliph was induced to give himself up and to open the gates to his enemies. On the 15th of February 1263 the Mongols entered the walls, and, following their in stincts, sacked the city. For seven days it was given up to pillage, fire, and the sword, and the number of killed was said to have reached the enormous sum of 800,000. For the moment the caliph s life was spared, and he was allowed to carry away 100 wives out of 700 who lived in his harem, as being those upon whom &quot; neither the sun nor moon had shone.&quot; But his fate soon overtook him. Accounts differ as to the circumstances of his death, some saying that he was sewn up in a sack and trodden to death by horses, others that he was starved to death. To the Moslem world his loss was a religious catastrophe, as by it Islam lost its spiritual head. While at Baghdad Hulagu gave his astronomer, Nasir al-dm, permission to build an observatory. The town of Maragha was the site chosen, and, under the superintendence of Nasir al-din and four western Asiatic astronomers who were associated with him, a handsome observatory was built, and furnished with &quot; armillary spheres and astrolabes, and with a beautifully- executed terrestrial globe showing the five climates.&quot; One terrible result of the Mongol invasion was a fearful famine, which desolated the provinces of Irak-Arabi, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Rum. But, though the inhabitants starved, the Mongols had strength and energy left to continue their onward march into Syria. Aleppo was stormed and sacked, Damascus surrendered, and Hulagu was meditating the capture of Jerusalem with the object of restoring it to the Christians when he received the news of Mangu s death, and, as in duty bound, at once set out on his return to Mongolia, leaving Kitubuka in command of the Mongol forces in Syria. As a reward for his services, Hulagu received the investiture of his conquests, and established there the empire of the Ilkhans. While Hulagu was prosecuting these conquests in western Asia, Mangu and his next bcother Kublai were pursuing a like course in southern China. Southward they even advanced into Tong-king, and westward they carried their arms over the frontier into Tibet. But in one respect there was a vast difference between the two campaigns. Under the wise command of Kublai all indiscriminate massacres were forbidden, and probably for the first time in Mongol history the inhabitants and garrisons of captured cities were treated with humanity. While carrying on the war in the province of Sze-ch uen Mangu was seized with an attack of dysentery, which proved fatal after a few days illness. His body was carried into Mongolia on the backs of two asses, and, in pursuance of the custom of slaughter ing every one encountered on the way, 20,000 persons were, according to Marco Polo, put to the sword. At the Kuriltai, or assembly of notables, which was held at Shang-tu after the death of Mangu, his brother Ku blai (see KUBLAI KHAN) was elected khakan. For thirty-five years he sat on the Mongol throne, and at his death in 1294, in his seventy-ninth year, he was succeeded by his son Timur Khan, or, as he was otherwise called, Uldsheitu Khan. The reign of this sovereign was chiefly remarkable for the healing of the division which had for thirty years separated the families of Ogdai and Jagatai from that of the ruling khakan. Uldsheitu was succeeded by his nephew Khaissan. In accordance with the usual ceremony, on the election being announced four of the princes of the blood raised the new khakan aloft on a piece of white felt, two others supported him, while a seventh offered him the cup. &quot; Meanwhile, while Shaman offered up prayers for his prosperity and saluted him by the title of Kuluk Khan, carts full of gold pieces and rich tissues were brought out and distributed. So many pearls were spread on the ground that it resembled the sky. The feast lasted a week, during each day of which 40 oxen and 4000 sheep were consumed. Libations of milk from 700 sacred cows and 7000 ewes were sprinkled on the ground.&quot; With that tolerance which so markedly char acterized the Mongols at this period, Kuluk worshipped indiscriminately at the temples of the Chinese Shang-te and before the Buddhist shrines, while at the same time he lent a favourable countenance to John of Montecorvino, who, during the whole of his reign, was archbishop of Peking. Unfortunately the archbishop was not so tolerant as the khakan, and carried on as fierce a dispute with the Nestorian Christians of his day as that which divided the Dominicans and Jesuits in China three centuries later. After a short reign, and at the early age of thirty-one, Kuluk was gathered to his fathers in February 131 1. His nephew and successor, Buyantu, was a man of considerable culture, and substantially patronized Chinese literature. Among other benefits which he conferred on letters, he rescued the celebrated inscription - bearing &quot;stone drums,&quot; which are commonly said to be of the Chow period (B.C. 1122- 255), from the decay and ruin to which they were left by the last emperor of the Kin dynasty, and placed them in the gateway of the temple of Confucius at Peking, where they now stand. After a reign of nine years Buyantu was succeeded by his son Gegen, who perished in 1323 by the knife of an assassin,- the first occasion on which a reigning descendant of Jenghiz Khan thus met his fate. Yissun Timur, who was the next sovereign, devoted himself mainly to the administration of his empire. He divided China, which until that time had been apportioned into twelve provinces, into eighteen provinces, and rearranged the