Chapter 10: The World Becomes “The World,” 1000-1300 CE
Chapter Summary
At the beginning of the new millennium, four distinct cultural and political regions dominated the Afro-Eurasian world: Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and European. Two main trends characterized this period: a maritime revolution that increased interregional commercial contact and the sharpening of cultural, religious, and political distinctions in the Afro-Eurasian world. Although isolated from these main trends, societies in the Americas underwent a similar process of increased interregional contact. In the thirteenth century, nomadic Mongol invaders conquered a large part of Afro-Eurasia, capping this era of interregional contact with a short-lived layer of political integration.
A Globe of Regional Worlds
The period from 1000 to 1300 witnessed tremendous population growth, increasing cross-cultural contact, interregional trade, and the creation of strong militarized states. These trends affected populations around the globe. At the end of the period, however, regions and states had not become more alike as a result of increased contact, growing trade, and common political experiences. In fact, the sense of difference and apartness became more deeply ingrained in each region’s culture, leading toward a sense of distinct cultural identities such as “Europe” or “China” and bringing the world closer to contemporary regional identities.
Commercial Connections
Trade began to grow faster in this period. Increased trade across regions led to cross-cultural contact and continued population growth. Increased trade and population growth brought about commercial cities that served as centers of long-distance trade. Trade grew as a result of earlier developments in agriculture and commerce as well as inventions and improvements in areas such as shipbuilding.
REVOLUTIONS AT SEA
Long-distance trade increasingly took place over sea routes rather than land routes from 1000 to 1300. Several technological improvements and commercial changes helped make sea routes safer and more profitable than land routes. For example, Chinese sailors began using the needle compass to help them navigate during cloudy weather and on the open seas. Use of the compass soon spread through Southeast Asia and India. The long-term shift toward sea routes and away from land routes brought new connections between regions as well as new divisions.
COMMERCIAL CONTACTS
Changes in world agriculture during this period were also gradual and built on developments from earlier periods. Before the year 1000, farmers had invested in and explored longterm irrigation projects, improvements in grain crops, new grasses for fodder, and planting in new regions. These developments helped to create surpluses of staple goods such as rice, linen, and cotton textiles. These goods were increasingly transported long distances in ships, since they offered greater capacity than land caravans and lower operating costs. Ships could also carry large, heavy, fragile items for trade.
GLOBAL COMMERCIAL HUBS
Commercial cities, or entrepôts, developed as a result of long-distance maritime trade. Three places served as major centers or anchorages of maritime trade: Cairo-Fustat in the west; Quanzhou in the east; and Quilon in the Indian peninsula. In each case, the city benefited from powerful rulers who took steps to facilitate trade in order to profit from it.
THE EGYPTIAN ANCHORAGE
Cairo and Alexandria served as the center of trade between Europe and the Indian Ocean. Trading firms in these cities formed around families, each practicing its own religion. Trade between the firms thus brought trade across religions. Firms in Cairo and Alexandria traded luxury items such as silks; local Mediterranean goods such as olive oil; staples and raw materials such as timber; and novelty items such as paper and books. Islamic leaders in the area protected merchants with regular convoys and permitted Muslim merchants to form partnerships so that loans and investments would remain profitable without violating Islamic law.
THE ANCHORAGE OF QUANZHOU
In Quanzhou, the Song government created offices that served in effect as a customs agency, charging taxes and overseeing and protecting merchants, ships, cargo, and sailors. Both Chinese and foreign traders and sailors sought protection from a local goddess and participated in an annual ritual led by the governor of Quanzhou to summon favorable winds. Sailors leaving Quanzhou and arriving there used large flat-bottomed ships called junks. These ships were large enough to carry as many as 500 sailors. Foreign traders at Quanzhou included Arabs, Persians, Jews, and Indians. Foreign merchant families sometimes stayed in Quanzhou for long periods. They lived throughout the city and practiced their own religions.
THE TIP OF INDIA
In south India, the Chola dynasty supported and protected maritime trade around the southwest coast of India and eastward as far as the Melakan Strait. The southwest coast, especially Quilon, became a center of trade between China and the Mediterranean. Luxury items of all kinds were traded east and west, including silks, horses, spices, and textiles. Merchant families settling in trading hubs like Quilon often had commercial and family ties in other hubs as well, helping them reach across cultures.
Regions Together, Regions Apart
Long-distance trade brought peoples and cultures into contact with more intensity than ever before. In large commercial cities, traders crossed cultural and religious boundaries on a regular basis to complete their transactions, creating economic and political organizations that accommodated the commercial needs of different regions—in effect, bringing the world closer together. Yet this closer contact also highlighted the differences between cultures and regions.
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA COMES TOGETHER
Beginning around 1000 CE, economic and cultural contacts with outside areas spread through sub-Saharan Africa. In earlier periods, geographic barriers had deterred interregional trade. During this period, long-distance and interregional trade brought cultural, religious, and economic exchanges with other regions within Africa and other parts of the world.
WEST AFRICA AND MANDE-SPEAKING PEOPLES
A mobile, adaptable group who spoke similar languages and shared a culture, created trading networks that linked far-flung regions, and dominated West Africa. The Mande-speaking people formed different types of governments and societies in the different regions of West Africa, including small-scale societies, centralized governments, and sacred kingships. The Mande established trading routes and trading centers through the interior to the Atlantic and controlled much of the trade across the Sahara. The Sahara trade featured coveted items such as salt, as well as gold and slaves.
THE EMPIRE OF MALI
The Empire of Mali, founded by Mande-speaking groups, flourished from the first half of the twelfth century until the fifteenth. Known for its wealth and for rulers like Mansa Musa, the Islamic empire included two of the largest cities in West Africa: Jenne and Timbuktu. Both were thriving commercial entrepôts serving interregional trade routes. Timbuktu was also a religious and intellectual center for Muslim scholars.
EAST AFRICA AND THE INDIAN OCEAN
Cities in eastern and southern Africa became central parts of the Indian Ocean trade. Swahili merchants in cities like Kilwa and Mogadishu traded goods from the African interior for goods from the Arabian peninsula and the west coast of India. Gold mined in the East African highlands by the Shona people offered the most attractive profits for Swahili merchants. The island of Madagascar was also a key commercial hub in the Indian Ocean trade. Its location off East Africa brought multiple cultures and economies into contact from around the Indian Ocean, bringing to Madagascar a fusion of cultures as well as commerce.
THE TRANS-SAHARAN AND INDIAN OCEAN SLAVE TRADE
Slaves were a valuable and significant part of the interregional trade across the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, with millions of Africans traded during this period. Slavery in the world of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean differed from the type of slavery prevalent through the Americas a few centuries later. The Quran taught that slaves should be treated with kindness and generosity. Slaves were assigned to a variety of roles, including service in the military, working as sailors or domestic servants, serving as concubines to rulers, and in certain cultures working as plantation laborers. Although slavery was common, local and regional economies were not founded on its basis.
ISLAM IN A TIME OF INSTABILITY
The Islamic empire during this period also experienced greater prosperity based on interregional trade. Indeed, Muslim merchants centered in the Islamic Middle East helped to establish the region as another “core” region in the world. The region’s wealth increasingly came from the expanding Afro-Eurasian trade networks. These commercial networks provided a path for converting local urban and peasant populations in the region to Islam. Sufi orders helped bring together local religious traditions and the new faith, making Islam more adaptable as it grew. Yet the growth of Islam did not bring local populations together under a common ruler. Instead, the Islamic region was subject to a series of defeats by outsiders.
AFRO-EURASIAN MERCHANTS
Long-distance merchants from diverse ethnic backgrounds established large commercial networks. These networks often centered in Southwest Asia due to its location at the center of Afro-Eurasia. Muslim long-distance merchants relied on a shared Islamic culture, Arabic language, and Islamic law to help them negotiate trade arrangements that reached across ethnic lines or regions. Trade arrangements were based on contracts, partnerships, and other commercial structures that were enforced through local religious courts. Because these trade arrangements were so vital to conducting long-distance trade, those who violated agreements were severely punished by the merchant community.
DIVERSITY AND UNIFORMITY IN ISLAM
The Islamic empire in this period was characterized by acceptance of religious minorities as long as the minorities accepted Islam’s ultimate political rule through payment of a special tax and respect for Islamic rulers. Religious minorities could practice their own religions, settle their own disputes, and participate in the economy. Religious diversity existed even within Islam, as seen in the Sufi brotherhoods that flourished in this period. This general tolerance helped accommodate traders from around the world who sought to establish business networks in the Islamic empire. Religious tensions arose within the Islamic empire at times, especially with the Christian minorities in the frontier areas as European Christians at times pressed against Muslim borders.
POLITICAL INTEGRATION AND DISINTEGRATION 1050–1300 CE
During the period from 1050 to 1300, no single ethnic or political group was strong enough to hold sway over the Islamic core area. Shiite strongholds in Egypt and Baghdad fell to Sunni Muslims. In the east, the old Abbasid empire was in the hands of a series of caliphs without real political or religious influence. The center was led by non-Arabs. The west was ruled by Arabs, but non-Arab Berbers represented an important minority. The Islamic faith was expanding both within this region and outside its borders, but politics were fractured within the Islamic core.
WHAT IS ISLAM?
The period from 1000 to 1300 was critical to the evolution of Islam. By 1300, Islam was no longer a religion of Arab desert nomads, and Arabic was no longer its only language. Jerusalem and Baghdad were no longer its only cultural capitals. The Sufi brotherhoods helped convert urban populations and peasants throughout Afro-Eurasia. Important Islamic cities and universities developed in several areas, where Muslims worshiped in Persian and Turkish, although Arabic remained the dominant language of Islam. This heterogeneity within Islam reflected the ability of the Sufi brotherhoods to reach out to ordinary people in the cities and rural areas. The ulama spoke to the educated and scholarly classes through the sharia. By 1300, Islam had become the people’s faith.
India Up for Grabs
India’s location at the crossroads of interregional commercial routes led to tremendous cultural diversity within the context of Hinduism. Similar to the Islamic core, however, there was little political integration within India. With the second largest population in Afro-Eurasia and a prosperous economy, India was divided into areas controlled by local rajas. When Islamic Turks invaded from the north around 1000, the rajas could not resist. The Turkish invaders relied on the local rajas, who forged alliances with Brahman groups, giving them land in return for recognition of the rajas’ ancestry and status. These alliances benefited both the Brahmanic groups and the rajas, increasing their agricultural income and providing for support for Sanskrit culture by the rajas.
INVASIONS AND CONSOLIDATIONS
Turkish invasions continued through the eleventh and twelfth centuries, gradually overcoming the local rulers and divided kingdoms all the way to the lower Ganges valley. Turkish warlords generally practiced tolerance of existing political structures and cultural diversity. They also brought Turkish customs and built Islamic mosques and libraries in the conquered areas. In northern India, the powerful Turkish Muslim regime (called the Delhi Sultanate) devoted its attention to political integration and the rich agriculture of the region, allowing commercial life on the coast to develop autonomously. As a result, Persian traders settled near modern-day Bombay, and Arab traders dominated the Malabar coast to the south.
WHAT IS INDIA?
India’s cultural development during this period continued the pattern of assimilation and diversity that had characterized earlier periods. Turkish Muslim invaders from the north cooperated with Indian political leaders, accepting cultural diversity as long as local populations paid their taxes. However, the Turks continued to practice Islam, retained their distinctive style of dress, and employed Persian as the language of the court and administration. Hindu subjects continued to practice the Hindu faith, followed caste regulations, and spoke local languages. Turkish sultans erected fortresses and palaces in Delhi built by local workers and foreign artisans. These palaces and fortresses became prosperous cities. As they completed these buildings, local workers and foreign artisans learned techniques and crafts from each other, leading to continued cultural blending. Hinduism and Islam flourished under the Turkish sultans, while Buddhism gradually diminished. Muslim sultans granted lands to Islamic scholars and Sufi saints, just as the Hindu rajas had granted lands to Brahman groups. Muslim scholars and saints attracted followers, and Islam spread throughout Delhi. Hinduism had already absorbed many Buddhist beliefs and practices. With the arrival of more Turkish invaders in the thirteenth century, many Buddhist scholars left Delhi and settled in Tibet. Buddhist followers in India, left with a Muslim regime and little spiritual leadership, gradually turned to Hinduism or converted to Islam.
Song China
With the end of the Tang dynasty in 907, China splintered into regional kingdoms. After decades of fragmentation, the Song dynasty reunified China by conquering all seven major regions by 1000, beginning three centuries of Song rule. The Song government enjoyed prosperity and stability within most of the empire, maintaining China’s role as the driving force behind Afro-Eurasian economic growth during this period. However, the Song dynasty continually faced encroachments and invasions from the north, losing control of northern China in 1127 and then losing its southern base to the Mongols in 1276.
A CHINESE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION
The prosperity of the Song period was founded on improvements in agriculture, especially the use of the iron plow. With iron plows and farm animals, new areas could be cultivated and crop production, particularly rice, soared. More food was then available to feed a growing population. Other improvements and inventions of the Song period included the development of gunpowder, canons, and other explosive devices; lighter, stronger porcelains; and increased production of clothing and crafts. In order to trade all these manufactured goods and agricultural products, merchants needed access to large amounts of currency. The Song government significantly increased its production of metal currency, but demand still outpaced supply, contributing to increased demand for gold from East Africa. Soon merchants began to use printed paper certificates to promise payments. The use of paper currency spread, replacing coins by the thirteenth century. The Song government also depended on paper currency, and when it needed more funds, the government printed more money. This habit contributed to spiraling inflation, which eventually destabilized the Song government.
NEW ELITES
During the Song period, civilian values increasingly dominated society. These values were reflected in the classic texts of Confucianism that candidates for civil service studied. The Song dynasty continued to administer civil service examinations, with the emperor serving as the final examiner. The civil officials who passed the exams took an oath of allegiance to the Song emperor. They became the new ruling elite, replacing the hereditary ruling class of aristocratic families from earlier periods. As a result, Song society was governed by a new class of scholar-officials who formed the central bureaucracy.
NEGOTIATING WITH NEIGHBORS
The Song dynasty, located in the core of greater China, faced continual pressures from nomadic societies located on its northern borders. These nomadic societies adapted Chinese military techniques and inventions, often using them successfully against Song armies on the borders. Song emperors negotiated peace terms with gifts and generous trade agreements. When the government spent its money negotiating peace terms, Song officials simply printed more paper money. As runaway inflation inevitably developed, economic instability combined with military weakness, increasing the vulnerability of the Song government.
WHAT IS CHINA?
Constant contacts with outsiders ended up strengthening the difference that the Han Chinese felt. The Han’s northern homeland fell to nomadic societies during this period. As the Han were driven southward, they became more conscious of differences between their own social values and traditions and the values and traditions of outsiders. The Han considered themselves the true Chinese, with a society based on farming, education, and literacy, and living according to traditional civilian values. The Han called outsiders “barbarians” who lived in nomadic warrior societies, creating stereotypes that persisted despite long periods of peaceful coexistence and interchange. China’s print culture expanded rapidly during this period, easily surpassing the print resources of other Afro-Eurasian societies. The Song government published books, medical texts, and calendars. Private publishers printed Confucian classics, histories, and other literature used in the civil service examinations, as well as Buddhist publications. China’s print culture spread to Korea, where movable metal type was developed in 1234.
China’s Neighbors, 1000–1300
China’s wealth and large population meant that its cultural and economic influence extended across Afro-Eurasia and was especially strong among its neighbors. Local elites in Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asian states bought luxury items from Chinese merchants, selling staple goods to Chinese cities along the coast. Along with the commercial goods, local elites acquired a taste for Chinese religion, technology, and culture.
THE RISE OF WARRIORS IN JAPAN
With China’s increasing economic and political strength, neighboring states faced a choice: they could overcome internal divisions and build solid governments to preserve some autonomy, or they could maintain weak or fractured systems and risk Chinese cultural and economic domination. In Japan, multiple sources of power existed in an atmosphere of intrigue. In the capital city, court nobles began claiming that they were the sacred emperor’s protector, ruling in his name. Then warrior factions began adopting the same role, seizing the emperor’s throne as a symbol of his power and calling themselves the emperor’s protector. Outside the capital, large private estates held sway with over half of Japan’s rice land in the hands of large estates by 1100. Wealth, influence, and power shifted to the provinces under the protection of trained warriors, expert horsemen who defended private estates. These local warriors, called shoguns, helped to bridge the divide between the aristocracy in the capital and the landowners of the provinces. Shoguns and the aristocracy formed alliances by any way necessary to gain power. The Kamakura shoguns finally brought more stability to Japan through a system of alliances with local officials and military commanders. The Kamakura, “protectors” of the emperor in the capital city, established alliances strong enough to protect Japan from Mongol invasion in the late thirteenth century. The system of shogunate military government under the figurehead of the emperor remained intact until 1868.
THE CULTURAL MOSAIC OF SOUTHEAST ASIA
Southeast Asia resembled India in the sense of serving as a crossroads of trade routes across Afro-Eurasia. Like the commercial cities on the Indian coast, trading ports and busy harbors in Southeast Asia brought together merchants and sailors from China, India, the Islamic empire, and local polities. Merchants and sailors spent several months at ports such as Melaka, selling their goods and buying a new cargo while waiting for seasonal shifts in the monsoon winds. In contrast to India, the population of Southeast Asia remained relatively low, and the area retained much of its island culture. Some groups on the Southeast Asian mainland flourished as a result of contact and trade with China and India. The Thai, Vietnamese, and Burmese peoples developed large populations. The Cambodian, Burmese, and Thai peoples established powerful polities along mainland river basins. Several Buddhist kingdoms developed between China and India. Each group showed the cultural and economic reach of China and India in its particular blend of local traditions with outside influences. The temples of Angkor in the Khmer empire exemplify the influence of Indian culture on a bordering state.
Christian Europe
A different culture began to develop in the area known as Europe, occupying the far western corner of the Eurasian land mass. Relatively underpopulated in comparison to India and China, Europe experienced rapid population growth in the period up to the early fourteenth century. In the absence of a large unifying empire, politics in this area became increasingly localized, even as a “European” identity began to take shape.
A WORLD OF KNIGHTS
A warrior class or aristocracy emerged with increased power in the aftermath of the collapse of the Carolingian empire and Viking invasions in northern Europe. This warrior aristocracy succeeded in subjugating the peasantry, creating a system known as ”feudalism,” where they controlled peasants’ lives and labor. Rapid population growth helped northern Europe emerge from the shadows of the Mediterranean world, while a transformation in agricultural productivity brought this region into the world of global trade.
EASTERN EUROPE
The large, open spaces of eastern Europe provided a haven for peasants seeking to escape feudalism. Local elites wishing to adopt the lifestyles of their western European counterparts were able to attract peasant migrants with the promise of greater freedoms than they had in the west.
THE RUSSIAN LANDS
Farther to the east, the vast lands of Russia served as the border between Europe and the steppes of Afro-Eurasia. The city of Kiev emerged as a commercial crossroads that looked southward to Byzantium for religious, political, and cultural inspiration. To the north and northeast, smaller replicas of Kiev served as commercial oases and outposts of Orthodox Christianity.
WHAT IS CHRISTIAN EUROPE?
Between 1000 and 1300, European Christianity was transformed from a religion of monks to a mass faith. Churches became an integral part of the numerous villages that were founded as part of the internal colonization of western Europe. The clergy was given jurisdiction over areas such as marriage and divorce that were previously considered to be private, family matters.Through the efforts of men like Francis of Assisi, Christian practices came to be seen as part of daily life.
UNIVERSITIES AND INTELLECTUALS
Universities emerged as the center where communities of scholars could advance learning in relative freedom from the interference of secular or religious authorities. In cities like Paris, universities became centers for the absorption and discussion of Arab learning. Scholars also endeavored to provide intellectual support for the idea of Christianity as a dominant religion. Based on a thriving Christianity, by 1300, Europe had greater cultural unity than before, even as it became a more intolerant place for non-Christians.
TRADERS AND WARRIORS
Led by the powerful trading hubs of Venice and Genoa, western European commercial activity reached outward to the Mediterranean and beyond. This brought them into conflict with long-established but declining powers such as the Byzantine Empire. Genoese sailors were particularly active in linking the Mediterranean with European Atlantic ports as far north as Flanders, and in mapping the West African coast.
CRUSADERS
The first of four “crusades” began in 1095 with an appeal to warrior nobles from Pope Urban II to free Jerusalem from Muslim rule. Although highly publicized in the West, the Crusades had little impact on the Muslim Middle East. The Frankish kingdoms in the area were only temporary. Crusaders captured Jerusalem and established the Kingdom of Jerusalem, but in 1187, Christian armies were decisively defeated by Saladin’s troops. Of more lasting importance was the deterioration of living conditions for the numerous non- Western Christians living in areas like Egypt and Syria. Ironically, Constantinople was among the victims of the crusades, as the city was sacked and captured by Frankish armies in 1204. Christian expansionism was more successful in other areas. In Spain the northern Christian kingdoms gradually pushed back the frontiers of Muslim Spain, capturing Toledo in 1061 and Seville in 1248. Sicily, a wealthy and strategic island, was captured from the Muslims in 1091. These events were more decisive than the Crusades in tilting the balance of power between Christians and Muslims in the Mediterranean world.
The Americas
The Americas remained isolated from the communications revolution that altered the Afro-Eurasian world in these centuries. However, internal changes in the fields of commerce and communication had a similar impact, bringing various people of the Americas into closer contact.
ANDEAN STATES
South America’s first empire, the Chimu Empire, developed in the eleventh century along the Moche Valley near the Pacific Ocean in modern-day Peru. The Chimu incorporated various ecological zones to create a commercialized agricultural state that survived until the Inca conquest in the 1460s. Advanced irrigation systems, maintained by a well-trained bureaucracy, allowed the Chimu to create a series of oases along the arid Pacific coast. At the center of the empire was the sprawling walled city of Chan Chan with a population of about thirty thousand people, featuring opulent palaces and treasure houses for cloth and objects of silver and gold. Another powerful urban state, Tiwanaku, developed in the arid Andean highlands near the shores of Lake Titicaca. Less powerful and wealthy than the Chimu Empire, Tiwanaku relied on long-distance trade between the highlands, low-lying semitropical valleys, and the Pacific coast.
NORTH AMERICAN CONNECTIONS
In Mesoamerica, the Toltecs filled the vacuum left by the fall of Teotihuacán in the valley of Central Mexico. Drawing from a base of refugees and migrant farmers, the Toltecs relied on the valley’s rich agricultural production, while maintaining existing trade routes that reached out to the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific Ocean, and the Central American lowlands. The Toltec capital of Tula grew rapidly as a commercial, political, and ceremonial center, reaching a population of 60,000 at the peak of its power. Influences of previous Mesoamerican civilizations were evident in the city’s impressive architecture and monumental public works. Farther to the north, other smaller urban trading hubs developed in North America. The largest of these hubs was in Cahokia, best known for its large earth mounds that served as places of spiritual worship. Located along the Mississippi River, Cahokia became a center for regional and long-distance trade, drawing goods from the Appalachian Mountains, the Gulf of Mexico, and the upper Great Lakes. Cahokia’s success placed great stress on its environment, and by 1350 the city had declined and almost disappeared.
The Mongol Transformation of Afro-Eurasia
Maritime commerce greatly transformed the Afro-Eurasian world during these centuries. But the next major transformation was initiated by nomadic conquerors from the inner regions of Afro-Eurasia—the Mongols. Beginning in 1206, Chinggis Khan and his descendants led a series of conquests that brought China, Korea, Central Asia, Persia, the caliphate of Baghdad, and the Russian principalities under direct or indirect rule by Mongols.
MONGOLS IN CHINA
The Mongol conquest of China was begun by Chinggis Khan and completed decades later by his grandson, Kubilai. The north fell quickly, but the conquest of southern China was not completed until 1280. The Mongol conquests particularly impacted northern China, which saw a significant decline in population and economic production. Kubilai established the Yuan dynasty and ruled China from his new capital in Dadu (present-day Beijing). The Mongols also conquered Korea, but two naval invasions of Japan were unsuccessful. The Mongols did not destroy urbanized Chinese ways. Instead a new heterogeneous elite of diverse Afro-Eurasian peoples superimposed itself on Han Chinese elites.
MONGOL REVERBERATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
Aftershocks of the Mongol conquest of China were felt throughout Southeast Asia. As part of the attempt to conquer southern reaches of the Song state, Mongol armies conquered the states of Dali and Pyu in neighboring Yunnan and Burma. Territories that had enjoyed autonomy from earlier Chinese dynasties were annexed to China by new Mongol rulers. A failed naval expedition to Java marked the limits of Mongol expansion.
THE FALL OF BAGHDAD
The Mongol attack on the Islamic world was led by Hulagu Khan, another grandson of Chinggis Khan. The great prize was the city of Baghdad, even if its power over the Islamic world had greatly declined. An army of 200,000 captured the city with little difficulty, but exercised great ruthlessness. Contemporary accounts describe a massacre of immense proportions. Mongol armies rolled farther west into Syria until stopped by Egyptian Mamluk forces in 1261.
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