The Blackberry Walk

Despite a lifelong love of history, I have up to this point studied little on the Mongols. They have their place in the historical narrative: the great flood of horsemen, riders of the apocalypse, a kind of sea peoples ending the Mediaeval status quo of Asia. The advanced Arab nations never recovered. China too would be brought to its knees. But never had I looked deeply into this steppe deluge. That was until the airing of current hit anime Tenmaku no Jaadugar. Now, after each episode, I'm looking up new information about Mongol civilisation, Mongol power structures, Mongol history, Mongol everything, it's fascinating. The anime follows the power struggle following Genghis Khan's death, and the many actors vying for power within the Mongol court. You can tell much love for Mongol history was put into the work, the history shown appears spot on, with a great attention to detail, save the more unsavoury details which would be better omitted for sake of tone. And through my Claude binge, I've discovered a document quite fascinating. But first, a brief history. After Genghis' conquest, his domain was split amongst his children, but with one Great Khan to rule over them all. It was Ögedei Khan who succeeded Genghis as Great Khan; but upon his death there was a power struggle which was won by Ögedei’s widow Töregene under a regency until her son Güyük was old enough to come to the throne. In Europe, Batu Khan, a grandson of Ghengis, was Khan of the Golden Horde who were laying waste to Eastern Europe. First Russia, where the many principalities of the Rus were razed, Ryazan, Vladimir, Moscow (then, quite small), and finally Kiev, the grand capital of the Rus, ending the Viking-founded Kievan Rus. Then, Batu Khan rode through Poland, razing Sandomierz – now only a small town – and then the Polish capital, Krakow; this was followed by a razing of both Pest, and then Buda in Hungary, before in 1242 Batu withdrew on news of Ögedei's death. This was a blow for European prestige, a blow for Christendom. Western Christendom had been used to fighting Islamic foes, not Tengrist Mongol foes all mounted on horseback. The papacy at this hour had never been so powerful. Pope Innocent IV, successor to the infamous 'God will know his own' Pope Innocent III, was pontiff, and in the face of this Mongol attack on the Catholic East sent a letter to the Great Khan Güyük. The Pope sent first a page outlining God, Christ, His nature, and His life, and succeeds this with the following page, written in copperplate Latin on vellum:

Seeing that not only men but even irrational animals, nay, the very elements which go to make up the world machine, are united by a certain innate law after the manner of the celestial spirits, all of which God the Creator has divided into choirs in the enduring stability of peaceful order, it is not without cause that we are driven to express in strong terms our amazement that you, as we have heard, have invaded many countries belonging both to Christians and to others and are laying them waste in a horrible desolation, and with a fury still unabated you do not cease from stretching out your destroying hand to more distant lands, but, breaking the bond of natural ties, sparing neither sex nor age, you rage against all indiscriminately with the sword of chastisement. We, therefore, following the example of the King of Peace, and desiring that all men should live united in concord in the fear of God, do admonish, beg and earnestly beseech all of you that for the future you desist entirely from assaults of this kind and especially from the persecution of Christians, and that after so many and such grievous offenses you conciliate by a fitting penance the wrath of Divine Majesty, which without doubt you have seriously aroused by such provocation; nor should you be emboldened to commit further savagery by the fact that when the sword of your might has raged against other men Almighty God has up to the present allowed various nations to fall before your face; for sometimes He refrains from chastising the proud in this world for the moment, for this reason, that if they neglect to humble themselves of their own accord He may not only no longer put off the punishment of their wickedness in this life but may also take greater vengeance in the world to come.

The Pope's intention is clear: appeal to Christ as Lord of peace, and show how the cruelty of killing in the manner the Mongols do is bound to catch up with them, if not in this life then in the next. The attempt to convert the Mongols was not a mere papal fantasy. Since the 10th century A.D., there had been Nestorian Christians throughout Mongolia, like Sorghaghtani Beki, wife of Tolui Khan and mother to future Great Khans Möngke and Kublai. Sorghaghtani was a Keraite noblewoman, the Keraites being a once rival Mongol Khanate, then, upon defeat, ally to Genghis Khan, who converted to Nestorian Christianity in the 11th century A.D.¹ This correspondence marked the beginning of a period wherein the papacy attempted to convert the Mongols. What they saw in the Great Khan was a potential ally against the Islamic nations, a friend to crusader states; and for the next 50 years, Franciscan missions were sent to Mongolia to attempt to convert Mongols to the Catholic faith. The Catholics in their wisdom, failed to recognise the Nestorian Christians living there as real Christians, albeit Christians who looked to the Patriarchate of Babylon (strictly Ctesiphon, and later Baghdad), not Rome, and managed to make enemies of them. It didn't help that the Babylonian Catholics were permissive of syncretism in a way the Roman Catholics – especially post the Gregorian reforms – were not. Mongol Nestorian Christianity being as it was on the outskirts, was stewed with Tengrism and any number of beliefs, as we will see in Güyük Khan's response which will be quoted in full.²

We, by the power of the Eternal God, the Oceanic Khan of the great Mongol Ulus—our command. If this reaches peoples who have made their submission, let them respect and stand in awe of it. This is a directive in the [Muslim] tongue sent to the great Pope; may he may take note and comprehend it, what has been written. The petition of the assembly convened in the lands of the Emperor [seeking our support], has been heard from your emissaries. If bearer of this petition reaches you with his own report, you, who are the great Pope, together with all the Princes, must come in person to serve us. At that time, I shall make known all the commands of the Yasa. Further, you have also said that there would be an advantage for me in accepting baptism. You have imparted this to me, and sent a request to this effect. This your appeal, I have not understood. Furthermore, you have sent the following message: "You have conquered all the lands of the Hungarians and other Christians. This seems strange to me. Tell me what was their crime" I have also not understood this message of yours. Chinggis Khan and the Great Khan Ögedey have both transmitted the order of the Eternal God that the all the world should be subordinated to the Mongols to be taken note of. But they disregarded God’s order to such an extent that those mentioned by you even held a great council, and they behaved arrogantly in refusing, and they killed our messengers and envoys. Thus the Eternal God Himself has killed and exterminated the people in those countries. How could anybody, without God’s order, merely from his own strength, kill and plunder? And when you go on to say, “I am a Christian, I honor God.” How do you think you know whom God will absolve and in whose favor He will exercise His mercy? How do you think you know that you dare to express such an opinion? Through the power of God, all empires from the rising of the sun to its setting have been given to us and we own them. How could anyone achieve anything except by God’s order? Now, however, you must say with a sincere heart: “We shall be obedient, we, too, make our strength available. You personally, at the head of the Kings, you shall come, one and all, to pay homage to me and to serve me. Then we shall take note of your submission. If, however, you do not accept God’s order and act against our command, we shall know that you are our enemies. This is what we make known to you. If you act against it, how then can we know what will happen? Only God knows.

To use a modern phrase, Güyük Khan absolutely frame mogs Pope Innocent IV. The power, authority, and sheer faith with he writes beams through the page. He has the upper-hand in diplomacy, naturally; but to read the Pope's words and reconstrue them as a request to submit the papacy to Mongol rule, and carry the college of cardinals to the Mongolian steppe, is nothing short of incredible. Such a request was never made of the Babylonian Patriarchate upon the fall of Baghdad. The ripe fruit, one might think, of the temporal ambitions of the papacy, and the original fib of the Donation of Constantine. What I find most fascinating is the rival understandings of God, since the Mongols use the phrase 'God' often, and not out of mimicry. Both the Great Khan and the Pope talk about God throughout their letters, but understand God differently. The Christian understanding – three persons of one nature – I'm sure, dear reader, you'll be familiar with; but the Mongol understanding of Tengri is quite different. From what I've gathered, Tengri is somewhere on the spectrum between Islam's Allah and the Chinese Mandate of Heaven. Tengri is the wide open sky: for the most part impersonal and distant, but all-powerful and governing fate. The Christian sees God's judgement as a kind of marshmallow test. For those unaware, the marshmallow test is where you leave a child alone with a marshmallow and tell him not to eat it, since if he restrains himself, in ten minutes he'll receive another. The Christian, I believe, sees the marshmallow of the moment as the many temptations of life, to receive the reward found in heaven; that is the Christian's fate. And we see this in the Pope's account, that if the Great Khan isn't humbled in this life, he will be humbled in the world to come. The Mongols see fate differently. To them, Tengri is fate determined in the now. To Güyük Khan, the Eternal God, the Tengri, has already expressed his will, his fate, through what has occurred. Everything under the wide open sky will belong to the descendants of Genghis Khan. After all, in Güyük Khan’s understanding, 'How could anybody, without God’s order, merely from his own strength, kill and plunder?' As was previously noted, the Latins got off lightly. Güyük Khan soon died, and Batu Khan left Europe to attend to the succession crisis, encouraging the Latins to see this as a chance to make friends with the Mongols. One such hopeful was William of Rubruck, a friar who travelled to the court of Möngke Khan in 1254 A.D. There, he participated in an interfaith debate between Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists, the Khan interested in finding an element of truth. According to the Rubruck’s account, the Christians and Muslims ganged up on the Buddhist in proving there was one God until the Buddhist went silent. The part which interests me, though, is a later event Rubruck recalls in his last audience with the Great Khan.

After that he began confiding to me his creed: "We Mo'al," he said, "believe that there is only one God, by whom we live and by whom we die, and for whom we have an upright heart." Then I said: "May it be so, for without His grace this cannot be." He asked what I had said; the interpreter told him. Then he added: "But as God gives us the different fingers of the hand, so he gives to men divers ways [J: several paths]. God gives you the Scriptures, and you Christians keep them not. You do not find (in them, for example) that one should find fault with another [J: abuse another], do you?" "No, my lord," I said; "but I told you from the first that I did not want to wrangle with anyone." "I do not intend to say it," he said, "for you [J: I am not referring to you]. Likewise you do not find that a man should depart from justice for money." "No, my lord," I said. "And truly I came not to these parts to obtain money; on the contrary I have refused what has been offered me." And there was a secretary present, who bore witness that I refused an iascot and silken cloths. "I dare not say it," he said, "for you. God gave you therefore the Scriptures, and you do not keep them; He gave us diviners, we do what they tell us, and we live in peace."

What I see in this quote is a kind of Perennialism, later championed in the 20th century by figures like Guénon. As with Guénon, the many spiritual traditions of the world are but different routes up the same jewelled mountains. Compared with the simpler syncretism of Rome, where the pantheon of gods obtains a few more figures and a few more pseudonyms, the Mongol syncretism here involves a recognition of a God possessing divine simplicity which has both been understood differently in the cultures He’s touched, and one who’s given different dispensations: to one, Scripture, and to another, Diviners, as the Khan relays. I see this same sentiment in Güyük Khan’s original letter. Not a modernist’s cynicism that sees all syncretism as pointing to secular political diplomacy, but the syncretism which develops as people attempt to understand the divine, reckoning with the panoply of faith, belief, and practice, a globe-trotting – or perhaps globe-stampeding – empire will come across. For present in the letters exchanged in 1246 is both a debate on peace, and also a theological dispute on the nature of the divine. Christianity would not go onto become the dominant religion on the Mongols. In the West, many Khanates converted to Islam, and in the East, Kublai Khan converted to Tibetan Buddhism – a strain quite unlike the Buddhism of the North China they had conquered. And in the end, Pope Innocent IV was right: the Mongols would be humbled in time, today reduced to a neutered Chinese puppet state. The wide open sky and his mandate given to Genghis have abandoned his descendants. 1. The history of Nestorian Christianity in the far East is fascinating. We imagine this area of the world untouched by Christianity, but this is far from the truth. I thoroughly recommend this lecture by historian Philip Jenkins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVxq13lQESY. 2. Güyük Khan's response was written in Persian script. Mongol script was only invented later, under Kublai Khan's patronage.