Soc DigestHow Three Christian Mongolian Women of the 13th Century Shaped Modern Civilizations

by Fr. Dale A. Johnson

 

Women were instrumental in the development of a Syriac-based Christianity briefly through Asia and eventually Europe. Three sisters married into the clan of Genghis Khan as a strategic result of military victory by Genghis Khan over a troublesome Keraite tribe who had been baptized in mass. The tribal leader Togrul Wang Khan was killed in an epic battle between the tribes. His brother sued for peace by offering Genghis three daughters. For the next 100 years Christianity in the language and words of Jesus shone forth as a bright flame of truth in the heart of Asia because of the faithfulness of these women.

The Karaites were originally a collection of schismatic Jewish sects that had little in common except a rejection of the Rabbinic Oral Tradition that formed the basis for the Talmud. They had little cohesion or widespread adherence until the rise of Anan ben David, who declared himself Exilarch in 760 AD. Anan taught that each individual could use simple rules of reason to derive the Law directly from the text of the Torah. Anan's movement (called Ananism) brought various subsects together and eventually was supplanted by Karaism, which differed from Anan's teachings in many respects but still held him in high regard. One of the subsects drifted east into the environs of Central Asia. Over time they lost their specific cultural memory, although they knew themselves to be Semitic. When they were exposed to Syriac-based Christianity through the Assyrian Church of the East, they recognized the Semitic features of its linguistic and cultural forms embedded in the liturgy and prayers and converted in mass. According to one story, Mar Sergius appeared before one of their tribal leaders lost on a hunting trip and in a vision and encouraged him to convert. 

There seems to be some truth to the substance of this account for two reasons. We have record in the year 1009 AD that an Assyrian Patriarch sent priests to baptize the Kerites of central Asia. Secondly we see a reference to Mar Sargis in a Sogdian/Nestorian document from the 11th or 12th century connecting Mar Sergius to these Syriac-Christian converts.

Although pockets of Keraites existed in Lithuania, Egypt, Anatolia, the far eastern tribes lost contact with Asia Minor and the Roman provinces. It was these tribes who converted two hundred years before the rise of the Mongolian Empire of the 13th and 14 centuries. Priests and deacons, forever anonymous, taught these Keraite people to read and write, including women, and it is through their faithful work that the daughters of the Wang Khan clan were prepared to shape civilizations yet undreamed.

While the marriages of the three sisters was a political and military strategy and at some level a cynical but practical attempt to control a region The sons of these women would cause the spread of Syriac based Christianity over a region larger than the Holy Roman and Byzantine Empires combined. Both in number and land mass it was many times larger stretching from Russia to India and Indonisia, from Syria to Korea. Even though there is some question about the depth of commitment by the husbands, most of whom practiced a form of shamanism (a Mongolian word), the sons of the husbands were impacted by the wives. Genghis Khan was married to Ibake-beki. The elder son of Genghis was married to Bektutmish, and his favored fourth son, Tolui, was married to the most famous and influencial of the three sisters, Sorkaktani. Sorkaktani produced three Mongolian emperors: Monke (d. 1259), Hulagu (d. 1265), and Kublai Khan (d.1294). Sorkaktani often travelled with the Mongolian armies. Most notable is her visible devotion as she brought along a portable chapel. One could say that the Mongolian armies marched to the songs and prayers of Syriac. Sorkaktani’s alcoholic husband died young in 1232 AD. Although offered marriage to others clan relatives, she diplomatically refused to remarry and concentrated on the Christian education of her sons. 

A near contemporary of Sorkaktani was Bar Hebraeus who was perhaps the last great intellectual of medieval Syriac Chrisitianity. What Mor Ephrem was to the golden age of Syriac Christianity, Bar Hebraeus was to the revival of Syriac Christianity in the silver age of Syriac history. We know from Bar Hebraeus that he considered Sorkaktani as the mother of Asia Christianity. At first this seems strange that a West Syrian clergyman would praise an East Syrian woman. But it turns out that the father of Bar Hebraeus was a court physician to Kublai Khan. As a favor and gift to his father, Kublai send Bar Hebraeus to Antioch and paid for his education.

No doubt as a child Bar Hebraeus heard first hand accounts about the Mongolian family of Emperors and especially about the mother of his benefactor, Sorkaktani. Bar Hebraeus shaped the cultural, linguistic, and scientific world of his day which provided by a confluence of events a basis for the European Renaissance and through his translations the rediscovery of Aristotle and Greek science that formed the bedrock of Western civilization. We could say that the Mongolian Empire, forged in the crucible of war and Syriac based religion was responsible for the early cultural, scientific, and religious seeds of our modern world today. The reshaping of Asia and Asia Minor created the conditions for the end of the Dark Ages in Europe and the beginning of the modern era in human history. European Crusaders eventually returned to their homelands defeated repeatedly after the time of Saladin and absorbed the writings of Bar Hebraeus, Ibn Sina, and the genius of Asian intellectuals who flourished under the protection of the Khan and the faith of Christian women who valued education based on literary sources and embedded values of Syriac Christianity.

The failure of the Crusades caused the Roman Catholic Church to seek alliances in the Far East. A military theory began to evolve in the 13th century that contemplated squeezing the Islamic Middle East between the western forces of Europe and the Far Eastern forces of Mongolia and China. Pope Innocent IV sent the first emissary to appeal to the Khans of Mongolia. First to be sent was an overweight Father John of Plano Carpini, a direct disciple of St Francis. He attended the enthronement of Kuyuk Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan’s third son, Orgetai. Syriac songs swirled out of the chapel tent in front of the royal tent of Kuyuk Khan. He sent Father John of Plano to the royal court of his grand-father only to be sent back to his Pope with a discouraging message demanding that the Pope bow to the Christian powers of Mongolia. 


Seven years later William of Rubruck (1253) was sent by another Pope. This happened 20 years before the father and uncle of Marco Polo among others traveled to the Far East.


Missionary diplomats entered the Mongolian lands with their bigotry and stupefying sense of Christian tribalism. They saw a form of Christianity superior to their own but could not accept the evidence. William of Rubruck especially could not accept that the Christianity of Mongolia and China was Apostolic and Antiochian based on terms of episcopacy and origin. He wrote horrible things about these Syriac Christians accusing them of polygamy, drunkenness, simony, and sorcery. Not a good way to win the hearts and minds of royalty, many of them Christian sons of faithful Mongolian queens.


In the end, William of Rubruck got what he wanted. William of Rubruck returned to the West leading the forces of Genghis Khan grandson, Hulagu to Bagdad and later Damascus in an attempt to combine the forces of Latin and Mongolian Christianity against the Moslems (Mamluks).


When the Mongol troops of Hulagu Khan sacked Baghdad in 1258 and advanced towards Syria , Mamluk Emir Baibars left Damascus to Cairo out of fear of the advancing Mongol hoardes. He was welcomed by Sultan Qutuz. After taking Damascus, Hulagu demanded that Qutuz surrender Egypt but Qutuz had Hulegu's diplomatic envoys killed and, with Baibars' help, mobilized his troops. Although Hulegu had to leave for the East when great Khan Möngke died in action against the Southern Song, he left his lieutenant, the Christian Kitbuqa, in charge. Qutuz drew the Mongol army into an ambush near the Orontes River, routed them at the Battle of Ain Jalut and captured and executed Kitbuqa.


The opposing forces met at Ain Jalut on September 3, both sides numbering about 20,000 men. The Mamluks drew out the Mongol cavalry with a feigned retreat, but were almost overwhelmed by the savage Mongol attack. Qutuz rallied his troops for a successful counterattack, along with cavalry reserves hidden in the nearby valleys. The Mongols were forced to retreat, and Kitbuqa was captured and executed. Mamluk heavy cavalrymen were clearly able to beat the Mongols in close combat, something that no one had previously done.


The Battle of Ain Jalut is notable for being the earliest known battle where explosive hand cannons (midfa in Arabic) were used. These explosive cannons were employed by the Mamluk Egyptians in order to frighten the Mongol horses and cavalry and cause disorder in their ranks. The explosive gunpowder compositions of these cannons were later described in Arabic chemical and military manuals in the early 14th century.


On the way back to Cairo after the victory at Ain Jalut, Qutuz was assassinated by several emirs in a conspiracy led by Baibars. Baibars became the new Sultan. His successors would go on to capture the last of the Crusader states in Palestine by 1291. The Mongols were again beaten at the First Battle of Homs less than a year later, and completely expelled from Syria.


This ended and defeated the military theory of combining western and far eastern forces in an attempt to overthrown the Muslim forces occupying Jerusalem and the dreams of Latin Crusaders. Much of the fault for the defeat of the Mongols in the Holy land can be attributed to the Latin Crusaders who were holding onto a thin line of fortifications on the sea coast. When Hulagu left Damascus after his victory and quickly returned to Mongolia to attend the funeral of his uncle he took with him the bulk of his army. The remaining Mongol army went on a drunken rampage in Damascus. It was the month of Ramadan and this Christian army of the East flaunted their debauchery before the Muslims. The Latin Christians turned against this Mongol hoard and sided with the Muslims in the battle of Ain Jalut and defeated an army severely reduced in numbers. 


The death in the family of Khans led to a series of catastrophies that changed history. If Hulagu had defeated the Mamluk army and marched into Egypt, Christianity may have triumphed in the Middle East and Sorkaktani may have truly become the mother of Asian Christianity. This was the second time a death in the family of Khan altered the face of history. The Khans had advanced through Russia and were on the verge of conquering Europe when two Khans, Batu and Kuyuk died within the space of two years and threw royal succession into a battle for power. The conquest of Europe was forgotten and attention was turned to family quarrels.
The defeat of the Mongols by Egyptian Mamluks signaled the end of the Mongolian Empire. The military defeat in Ain Julat may be been one of the most decisive battles in the history of Asian religion. A domino effect initiated by military defeat followed by inter-family rivalry over royal succession and ultimately the conversion of some of the grandsons of Genghis Khan to Islam and Buddhism spelled the end Syriac Christianity in Asia. The Latin Crusaders contributed to the collapse of Christianity in Asia and yet unwittingly benefited from the intellectual treasures of Bar Hebraeus and others that were passed onto the West initiating an intellectual Renaissance. 
Sorkaktani and her sisters realized part of their dream to evangelize the world for Christ but in ways they could have hardly imagined.


Notes:


1. Much of this material comes from the writings of Samuel Hugh Moffet in his history of Christianity in Asia, Vol.. I, Harper Press, 1992. For further and more detailed information see his chapter 18 on The Mongols and the Recovery of Asian Christianity, Chapter 19 on the Mongols and the Church in Persia, and Chapter 20 on Christianity in Mongol China.


2. The document specifically relating to the Mar Sargis reference see: http://www.bbaw.de/forschung/turfanforschung/dta/n/images/n394side1total.jpg
3. For further study on the documents of Turfan relating to Christianity in Mongolia and China along the Silk Road see: http://www.bbaw.de/