“I think you just won't find it. They simply do not exist.
All references to the Mongols from Arab sources."
Vitaly (lucul)
Contemporaries about the Mongols. The publication of the material "Persian Sources about the Mongol-Tatars" caused too much heated discussion at "VO", so we will have to start with some "preamble" to the main text.
First of all, suggestions: I am not against "alternative" points of view on the course of history, but let's discuss them in the materials about the Mongols, and not the class belonging of the author of the commentators, as well as their nationality and prospects for the world revolution. There will be an article that "Stalin and Hitler differ in the length of the mustache" - there, please. Second, specifically to the “alternatives”: please do not a priori consider your point of view to be the only correct one, but if you still think that this is exactly the case, but you are not academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences, then give links to the sources of your deep knowledge. Also, please note that non-candidates and doctors of science articles published on popular sites, including "VO", but without references to the literature used in them, are NOT COUNTED. Anyone today can write any fabrications in our country, he has every right to do so, until he is locked up where he should be by the decision of the doctors. But let him show where his ideas came from, because unfounded statements prove nothing to anyone, especially to me, and, moreover, are not needed by anyone. Don't waste your time either from yourself or from others. Further, before you write something, first look at the Internet. Indeed, in him, dear, today there is almost everything you need, even in Russian, not to mention English. Remember that one fool (meaning an ignoramus, of course!) Can ask so many questions that even a hundred wise men will not answer them. Do not be like this … Why, for example, is the epigraph placed here? Yes, simply because its author was sure that Byzantine sources about the Mongols did not exist and that they could not be found. However, they are, and there are many of them. If he wanted to, he could check it out very easily. But he didn't want to. And that is why this material is devoted to the topic of the connection of Byzantium with the Mongols.
Everyone has their own world
Let's start with remembering, realizing or finding out (who did not know before) that all civilizations of the planet Earth, starting from the Stone Age, and even from the Bronze Age and even more so, had the character of global communication. People exchanged goods that were produced thousands of kilometers from the place where they were then found by archaeologists. And in the same way they exchanged ideas. It is not for nothing that researchers of folk epics and legends constantly pay attention to the similarity of their plots and characteristic images. For example, here is what the Persian pahlavan Rustam says about his importance in the Shahnama: “My throne is a saddle, my crown is a helmet, my glory is on the field. What is Shah Kavus? The whole world is my power. " And here are the words of the hero Ilya Muromets: "Drink you, goli, do not be hard, / I will serve as a prince in Kiev in the morning, / And you will be the leaders with me." The emerging written language facilitated this process. The information process has materialized. There were records of trade deals, travel narratives, reports, spy reports …
At the same time, at all times, the question of faith was very acute. People tend to strive for like-mindedness, and even more so they strove for it at a time when it was possible to get it with a blow of the sword. But … the death of people at that time was already perceived (albeit for different reasons) as a tragedy that could have been avoided if they had one "correct faith". For this in the same Middle Ages, everyone aspired to, and, above all, Christians and Muslims. Moreover, it was Prince Vladimir's “choice of faiths” that became the very point of bifurcation that could change the entire course of world history over the last thousand years. I could, but … did not change. Nevertheless, everyone attempted to spread their faith both then and later. And in particular - the papal throne, which, of course, was aware that the newcomers from Asia, who defeated the Christian troops at Legnica, and on the Chaillot river, were pagan polytheists! Well, since they are pagans, then the holy duty of Christians is to direct them on the true path and thus curb them! The correspondence of Pope Gregory IX with the Georgian queen Rusudan is preserved, from which one can clearly see the concern about his Mongol expansion, as it harms primarily the political interests of the popes in the Caucasus. The Pope did not like the claims of Khan Ogedei for world domination, since the Holy See itself was striving for the same! The relations of the nomadic empire of the Mongols with the popes deteriorated even more after the invasion of Hungary, followed by messages to the Western rulers from Khan Guyuk (1246) and Khan Mongke (1251) demanding absolute submission.
Why did the dads dislike the Mongols?
And how could it be otherwise when Mongke Khan openly declared the need to continue Mongol expansion and the expansion of the empire to the West to the "last sea". In the Middle East, this led to the campaign of Khan Hulagu and the destruction of Baghdad, Aleppo and Damascus. He also presented the kingdom of Jerusalem with an ultimatum demanding obedience. Then the Mongols took and destroyed the city of Sidon (February 1260), which clearly showed the Outremer crusaders their strength. All this was immediately reported to Rome in a series of letters, among which the epistle of the Bishop of Bethlehem, Thomas of Anya, is very interesting. Most of all, in the statements of the khan, he was outraged not so much by the demand for submission as by the words about the divine origin of the power of the Mongol kagan.
Did Hulegu want to become a Christian?
However, the papacy would not have been what it was if it had not possessed vast experience in managing the rulers of other countries using a variety of methods. When Hulagu decided to found a new ulus in 1260, this became an innovation that was not provided for by the division of the empire between the sons of Genghis Khan, which was traditional for the Mongol ruling elite, and therefore was not recognized by the Khan of the Golden Horde Berke. Hulagu's relations with the Golden Horde immediately deteriorated due to Hulagu's refusal to give Berke a certain share of taxes from Transcaucasia and Khorasan, so much so that they led to a war between them in 1262. The clash between the Ilkhanat and the Horde was repeated in 1279. And this "stab in the back" for the Hulaguid state was all the more dangerous because at the same time it was conducting active military operations against the Mameluk sultanate of Egypt (1281 and 1299-1303). It is clear that allies were required, who here in the East for Hulegu could only become … Western Europeans! In 1260 -1274 In the Ilkhan camp there was a bishop from Bethlehem, a certain David from Ashbi, and it was he who became the mediator in the Franco-Mongol negotiations. A letter from Hulagu dated 1262 was handed over to the King of France and the Roman Curia. In it, the khan openly declared … his sympathies for Christianity (that's how it even happens!) And offered to coordinate the actions of the Mongol troops against Egypt with the naval expedition of the Western crusaders. Dominican John from Hungary confirmed that Hulagu was baptized, but Pope Urban IV did not really believe this and invited the Patriarch of Jerusalem to check this information and, if possible, find out how missionary activity among the Mongols is possible.
Restoration of the "second Rome"
As for the Byzantine-Mongolian relations known to us, they began to develop little by little from the middle of the XIII century, when the Byzantine Empire, yes, we can say that it no longer existed. But … there was the Trebizond Empire, which tried to establish friendly relations with the Golden Horde and the Hulaguid state. In addition, just in 1261, the Byzantine Empire was restored again, after which it entered into active relations with the Mongols, seeking to confront the dangerous Hulaguids with the Golden Horde and thereby weaken both those and others. The implementation of the eternal principle of "divide and rule" included in practice not only the exchange of embassies and gifts, but also military cooperation, not to mention the popular dynastic marriages at that time and … active correspondence. All this was and is reflected in the documents of both sides, and many of them have survived to our time.
As for the Trebizond Empire, after the defeat of the Seljuk Sultan Giyas ad-Din Key-Khosrov II in the battle with Baiju-noyon at Kose-dag in 1243 (near the city of Sivas in modern Turkey) during the Mongol invasion of Anatolia, she hastened to admit himself a vassal of the Hulaguid state, which immediately opened a direct path for the Mongols to the lands of Asia Minor.
Frightened by a possible attack from the Mongols, the emperor of the Latin Empire, Baldwin II de Courtenay, already in the early 1250s sent his knight Baudouin de Hainaut to the great khan Munch with an ambassador mission. At the same time, an embassy from the emperor of the Nicene Empire, John Vatats, went there, which marked the beginning of diplomatic relations between these two states of the West, and the East under the rule of the Mongol khans.
Byzantium and Mongols
As for Byzantium, there Emperor Michael VIII, immediately after the restoration of the empire in 1263, concluded a peace treaty with the Golden Horde, and two years later he went on to marry his illegitimate daughter (Christian!) Maria Palaeologus to Ilkhan Abak, the ruler Hulaguid state, and concluded a treaty of alliance with him. But, nevertheless, he still could not avoid the invasion of the nomads. The Khan of the Golden Horde, Berke, did not like the alliance between Byzantium and the Hulaguid state, and in response to it in the same 1265 he undertook a joint Mongol-Bulgarian campaign against Byzantium. This attack led to the plundering of Thrace, after which the Mongols invaded the lands of Byzantium several more times. In 1273, Michael VIII, after another attack, decided to give his daughter Euphrosyne Paleologus to the Golden Horde Beklyarbek Nogai as a wife, and … in this way, through his marriage bed, he achieved an alliance from him. And not only the union, but also real military assistance! When in 1273 and 1279 the Bulgarians undertook campaigns against Byzantium, Nogai turned his soldiers against his yesterday's allies. A Mongol detachment of 4,000 soldiers was sent to Constantinople in 1282, when the emperor needed military strength to fight the rebellious despot of Thessaly.
The basis of diplomacy is dynastic marriage
Emperor Andronicus II, who ascended the throne in 1282, continued the policy of his father and did his best to maintain peaceful relations with the Mongol states. Around 1295, he offered Gazan Khan, the ruler of the Hulaguid state, a dynastic marriage in exchange for rendering him in the fight against the Seljuq Turks, who annoyed the Byzantines on the eastern border of the empire. Gazan Khan accepted this offer, and promised military assistance. And although he died in 1304, his successor Oljeitu Khan continued negotiations, and in 1305 he concluded an alliance treaty with Byzantium. Then, in 1308, Oljeitu sent a Mongol army of 30,000 soldiers to Asia Minor and returned Bithynia, which had been captured by the Turks, to Byzantium. Andronicus II also managed to maintain peace with the Golden Horde, for which he gave his two daughters to the khans Tokhta and Uzbek, under whom, by the way, the Golden Horde converted to Islam.
But at the end of the reign of Andronicus II, his relations with the Golden Horde deteriorated sharply. In 1320-1324, the Mongols again invaded Thrace, already in which they once plundered it. And after the death of Ilkhan Abu Said in 1335, Byzantium also lost its main eastern ally in Asia. It got to the point that already in 1341 the Mongols were planning to seize Constantinople, and Emperor Andronicus III had to send an embassy to them with rich gifts, just to prevent their invasion.
The reaction of the papacy
How did the Roman papacy react to all these events? His reaction can be seen from the mentions of possible Mongol aggression, which in the messages of Pope Urban IV become less frequent every year, the last remark refers to May 25, 1263. At the same time, relations with Eastern Christians, for example, with the Armenian Church, improved. There was a resumption of negotiations on the possible conclusion of a union. An important role in the advancement of Catholic missionaries to the East was also played by the trading colonies created by the Genoese in the Crimea. The Mongol khans did not interfere with them, they allowed them to trade, but along with the merchants, monks also penetrated there - the eyes and ears of the papal throne.
Western traders actively penetrated into the Trebizond Empire, subject to the Persian khans, where their activity has been noted since 1280. When they reached the Ilkhanate's capital Tabriz, which became the center of Asian trade after the fall of Baghdad in 1258, they established their trading posts there and established close links by sea with Europe. But they needed somewhere to pray, so they asked permission to build Catholic churches in the lands subject to Mongol rule. That is, papal power began to be present even where the main population professed Islam or Buddhism. For example, Giovanni from Montecorvino managed to build a Catholic church in Beijing next to … the palace of the Great Khan himself. Funds for the construction were used very different, including they were taken from people of a different faith. Thus, the Catholic Archbishop of Fujian, an extremely important center of trade in South China, built a church there in 1313 with funds received from the widow of a certain … Orthodox Armenian merchant.
The activity of the Franciscan monks, who founded their monasteries in the Crimea, in Trebizond, and in Armenia, as well as in the capital of the Ilkhanate, was also of great importance for strengthening ties with the Mongol Empire. They were directly subordinate to the Roman curia, which, although it experienced significant difficulties in communicating "with its people" in such a remote territory from Rome, nevertheless considered their work very important. With the strengthening of missionary work in Asia, Pope Boniface VIII decided to give it a more independent character and in 1300 established the Franciscan diocese in Kaffa, and three years later in Sarai itself. The Vicar of China was also subordinated to the Diocese of Sarai in 1307, created by the labors of the same Franciscan monk Giovanni of Montecorvino. The Dominican Diocese in the new capital of the Ilhanate, Sultania, was created by Pope Giovanni XXII, who favored the Dominicans more than the Franciscans. And again, many of the Catholic missionaries arrived in Asia through Byzantium, and carried out tasks in the East not only of the popes, but also … of the Byzantine emperors.
At Vienne Cathedral (1311 - 1312), the issue of teaching missionaries the local languages in special schools on the territory of the Mongol Empire was specially discussed. Another serious problem was the nomadic way of life of the Mongols proper, their traditional occupations and way of life, which greatly hampered the performance of Catholic rituals, as well as their polygamy, which could not be eradicated. That is why the preaching of Islam found a greater response in their hearts and contributed to their progressive Islamization. By the way, the missionaries reported this to Rome in their secret reports. At the same time, the reaction of the popes to the strengthening of contacts of Byzantium with the Mongols, and with it the Eastern Church, was sharply negative. Before them there was a clear example of the baptism of Rus according to the Greek rite, and the popes did not want a repetition of such a scenario.
In general, the activities of Western missionaries, although they did not give much effect, nevertheless contributed to the growth of the authority of the papacy within the European continent. But the Greek Church has clearly lost this round of opposition to the papacy. Although the papal envoys had only to witness in the end the triumph of Islam among the Asian nomads. A negative consequence of the Franco-Mongol military alliance and the spread of Catholicism in the East was … and the destruction of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291. But if the Persian khans adopted Christianity, then the crusader states would continue to exist in Palestine, and Byzantium would have every chance of further existence. Be that as it may, but all this activity was already useful in that it left us literally mountains of documents stored in libraries and archives of many countries, but mainly in the Vatican Apostolic Library in Rome, where there is a whole department for such documents.
References:
1. Karpov S., History of the Trebizond Empire, St. Petersburg: Aletheia, 2007.
2. Malyshev AB Message of an anonymous minor about the missionary posts of the Franciscans in the Golden Horde in the XIV century. // Archeology of the Eastern European steppe. Interuniversity collection of scientific papers, Vol. 4. Saratov, 2006. S. 183-189.
3. Shishka E. A. Byzantine-Mongol relations in the context of political and military conflicts in the Mongol Empire in the 60s. XIII century // Classical and Byzantine tradition. 2018: collection of materials of the XII scientific conference / otv. ed. N. N. Bolgov. Belgorod, 2018. S. 301-305.
4. Letter from brother Julian about the Mongol war // Historical archive. 1940. Vol. 3. S. 83-90.
5. Plano Carpini J. Del. History of the Mongals // J. Del Plano Carpini. History of the Mongals / G. de Rubruk. Journey to the Eastern Countries / Book of Marco Polo. M.: Thought, 1997.
6. Ata-Melik Juvaini. Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan: the history of the world conqueror / Translated from Mirza Muhammad Qazvini's text into English by J. E. Boyle, with a foreword and bibliography by D. O. Morgan. Translation of the text from English into Russian by E. E. Kharitonova. M.: "Publishing House MAGISTR-PRESS", 2004.
7. Stephen Turnbull. Genghis Khan & the Mongol Conquests 1190-1400 (Essential histories # 57), Osprey, 2003; Stephen Turnbull. Mongol Warrior 1200-1350 (Warrior # 84), Osprey, 2003; Stephen Turnbull. The Mongol Invasions of Japan 1274 and 1281 (Campaign # 217), Osprey, 2010; Stephen Turnbull. The Great Wall of China 221 BC – AD 1644 (Fortress # 57), Osprey, 2007.
8. Heath, Ian. Byzantine Army 1118 - 1461AD. L.: Osprey (Men-at-Arms No. 287), 1995. Rr. 25-35.
