Did Chinggis Khan Have a Jewish Teacher an Examination of an Early Fourteenth-Century Arabic Text

Did Chinggis Khan Have a Jewish Teacher? An Examination of an Early Fourteenth-CenturyArabic TextAuthor(s): Reuven AmitaiReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 124, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 2004), pp. 691-705Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4132113 .Accessed: 02/02/2012 18:32

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Did Chinggis Khan Have a Jewish Teacher? An Examination of an Early Fourteenth-Century Arabic Text

REUVEN AMITAI HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

In memoriam Hava Lazerus-Yafeh

The answer to the question posed in the title of this article is no, or rather: no, at least as far as we are aware of at this time. My hope here, however, is not to attract the reader's attention with a catchy but totally hypothetical question whose negative answer is obvious. Rather, I wish to discuss a unique and significant passage in an Arabic text emanating from the Mamluk Sultanate. Somebody in early fourteenth-century Cairo thought that the great founder of the Mongol Empire had indeed, early on in his career, received instruction and advice from a Jew. I intend to analyze this text to see what it says about Muslim perceptions of Chinggis Khan (from about a century after his death), as well as attempts to give expression to religious change perhaps among the Mongols of the Ilkhanate (the Mongol state in Iran and the surrounding countries) itself. It will also be interesting and useful to see how this information correlates with our knowledge of Chinggis Khan and his successors. Some or much of the story may be a later fabrication, but it also contains some material which echoes real matters and motifs from earlier and contemporary Mongol history.

The passage in question is found in volume 27 of the encyclopedia by Shihab al-Din Ahmad b. 'Abd al-Wahhdb al-Nuwayri (died 733/1333): Nihdyat al-arab ftlfuniin al-adab ("The Highest Aspiration in the Varieties of Cultures").' Al-Nuwayri, of Egyptian birth, enjoyed a long career as a middle-ranking official in the Mamluk bureaucracy in both Syria and Egypt. It was in the latter that he spent his last years, and there he wrote his magnum opus after his retirement around 1316; 2 this relatively late date will be of some relevance in the following discussion. The Mongols would have loomed large in the consciousness of any civilian official or officer in the Mamluk Sultanate (and even in the minds of the populace at large), since the Ilkhanid Mongols in Iran were its greatest enemies (up to about A.D. 1320), while the Mongols of the Golden Horde (the Mongol state in present-day southern

This is an expanded and revised version of an article published in Hebrew in The Intertwined World of Islam: Essays in Memory of Hava Lazerus-Yafeh, ed. N. Ilan (Jerusalem: Institute of Asian and African Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Ben-Zvi Institute for the Studies of Jewish Communities in the East; The Bialik Institute, 2001), 459-76. Versions of this paper were given at the Institute of Asian and African Studies of the Hebrew Uni- versity and the Oriental Seminar of the University of Bonn. I am grateful for the participants for their many thought- provoking and useful comments and questions.

1. The first volume of this work appeared in Cairo in 1346/1923; the last was published only in 1997. Volume 27 was edited by Said cAshilr, and was published in 1405/1984 by al-Hay'a al-Misriyya al-•Amma li'l-Kitib (Cairo).

2. For his biography and work, see M. Chapoutot-Remadi's article in The Encyclopaedia of Islam (henceforth E2), new ed., 8: 156-60; see also the bibliography of studies on the historian and his work. See also the succinct comments of D. P. Little, "Historiography of the Ayyuibid and Mamlik Epochs," in The Cambridge History of Egypt, vol. 1: Islamic Egypt, 640-1517, ed. C. P. Petry (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998), 430.

Journal of the American Oriental Society 124.4 (2004) 691

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Ukraine and Russia) were important allies.3 Besides a general acquaintance with the Mongols as befitting someone of his class, there are at least two occasions where al- Nuwayri had the opportunity to gain additional, firsthand knowledge of the Mongols and their danger to the Sultanate and its inhabitants: first, he was present at the battle of Marj al- Suffar (south of Damascus) in 1303, where the Mongols were trounced by the Mamluks;4 and second, he made a great effort to convince some officers not to join the governor of Tripoli, Aqqush al-Afram, who was about to desert to the Mongols around 1311.5 To this general knowledge and personal experience, al-Nuwayri has brought a wide reading in the relevant sources, which informed his treatment of the Mongols as a historian.

The Nihdyat al-arab is divided into five funiin (plural of fann, "classes, categories, varieties"). The fifth and largest fann is devoted to history, which is organized by dynasties, the accounts of which are recounted in a more-or-less chronological fashion. It has been noted by several scholars that al-Nuwayri often adopted a flexible approach to the traditional, and usually rigorously applied, annalistic structure. This elasticity of style enabled him to

present to the reader a narrative with a greater sense of continuity than that normally provided by Mamluk chronicles.6 The section on the Mongols, called al-dawla al-jinkizkhdniyya ("the dynasty of Chinggis Khan"), is found on about 120 pages in volume 27 of the printed edition.7 Much attention-about thirty-four pages worth-is paid to Chinggis Khan's rise and subsequent career, particularly (and not surprisingly) to his invasion of the realm of the Khwarazm-Shah in 1219. Almost all of al-Nuwayri's information for this biographical section is garnered from two sources, both of which are well known to modern scholars: al- Munshi al-Nasawi, in his biography of the Khwarazm-Shah Jalal al-Din,8 and Ibn al-Athir in his history al-Kamil ft al-ta'rikh.9 In fact, al-Nuwayri himself, at the beginning of the Mongol sections, states that he has based his account on these two works. 10 He succeeds in creating a coherent narrative by breaking up the information from these sources into rela-

tively small units, and then integrates them into one story, generally summarizing these works and usually citing the authors' names as he goes along. As far as I have been able to ascertain, there are only two passages in the "biography" which are not derived from either

3. On Mamluk relations with the Mongols, particularly the war with the Ilkhanids, see R. Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-ilkhanid War 1260-1281 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995); and "Northern Syria between the Mongols and Mamluks: Political Boundary, Military Frontier and Ethnic Affinity," in Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands c. 700-1700, ed. N. Standen and D. Power (London: MacMillan, 1999), 128-52.

4. Nuwayri, 27: 416. 5. Nuwayri, 32: 187. 6. Chapoutot, Remadi, 159; E. Ashtor, "Some Unpublished Sources for the Bahri Period," in Studies in Islamic

History and Civilization, ed. U. Heyd = Scripta Hierosolymitana 9 (1961): 6; D. P. Little, Introduction to Mamluk

Historiography (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1970), 31; idem, "The Historical and Historiographical Significance of the Detention of Ibn Taymiyya," International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 4 (1973): 315; S. M. Elham, Kitbuga und Lagin, Studien zur Mamlukengeschichte nach Baybars al-Mansiiri und Nuwairi (Freiburg: Klaus Schwarz, 1977), 31.

7. On this section, see R. Amitai, "Al-Nuwayri as a Historian of the Mongols," in The Historiography of Islamic Egypt, ed. H. Kennedy (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 223-36. The passage that is the focus of the present article was first discussed there in a brief manner.

8. Muhammad al-Munshi al-Nasawi, Strat sultan jaldl al-din mankiibirti [= Histoire du Sultan Djelal ed-Din

Mankobirti ], ed. and tr. O. Houdas (Paris: L'Ecole des Langues Orientales Vivantes, 1891-95). For the spelling and pronunciation of this ruler's personal name, see J. A. Boyle, "Djalfl al-Din Khwarazm-Shah," Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2: 392.

9. 'Izz al-Din CAli b. Muhammad Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamilfl al-ta'rikh (Beirut: D!r Sadir, 1385-86/1965-66), 12: 358ff.

10. Nuwayri, 27: 300.

AMITAI: Did Chinggis Khan Have a Jewish Teacher? 693

of the two above-mentioned sources: the first deals with Chinggis Khan's early career, and the second with his death. It is to the former to which most of the following discussion will be devoted. I begin by giving a full translation of this passage:

As for the beginning of Chinggis Khan's career and his rise to power: it is said that he became an ascetic (tazahhada) for a long period, and isolated himself in the mountains. The reason for his asceticism was that he asked one of the Jews: "What gave Misa (Moses), Cisq (Jesus) and Muhammad this exalted position, and spread [their] fame?" The Jew said to him: "Because they loved God and devoted themselves to him,"1 so he rewarded them." Chinggis Khan said: "If I love God and devote myself to him, will he reward me?" [The Jew] said: "Yes, and I tell you more that in our books [it is written] that you [will] have a dynasty (dawla) which will triumph." Chinggis Khan then left his iron workl2 or whatever, and became an ascetic. He left his family and tribe, and stayed up in the mountains, and ate permissible things (mubdhat).13 His fame spread, and a group of his tribe used to come to him on pilgrimage, and he would not speak to them. He signaled them to clap with their hands and they said: "Let's go, let's go, wise man, spin" (yi-allah yd-allah, bakhshil4 dur). They did this, beat time for him, and he danced. This was his habit and way with those who came to visit him. At the same time, he did not obey any religion, and did not belong to any religious community, but just had love for God, as he claimed. He stayed like this as long as God willed it, and this was his beginning.15

The language of this passage is relatively straightforward, and presents few problems. Two expressions, however, call for further comment before proceeding to a discussion of the contents of the text. The first of these is dawla, which has been translated here as "dynasty," harking back to the title of this section: al-dawla al-jinkizkhaniyya mentioned previously. The modern translation of dawla, "state," is less appropriate here. In the late middle ages, this term was usually understood as "[ruling] dynasty," although occasionally "sovereignty" or "power" is possible.16 An additional possibility is an earlier use: "a turn, mutation, change, or vicissitude of time, or fortune from an evil, to a good and happy, state or condition."17 In that sense, it was adopted by the 'Abbasids to signify the change of power, or "revolution" in modern parlance.'s It might here have been understood, at least obliquely, to represent the auspicious changes wrought by Chinggis Khan, his family, and the Mongols in general, which would result in ultimate victory. A final possibility is to render dawla in the sense of "good fortune," equivalent to the Arabic iqbal,19 which is often used to translate the Turkish

11. Or "isolated themselves for his sake" (wa-'nqata'ii ilayhi); E. W. Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon (1863- 93; rpt. Cambridge: Islamic Text Society, 1984), 2: 2990b.

12. On this matter, see below. 13. See further below. 14. On this term, see below. Bakhshi is not clearly read in the text, which has y-kh-sh-y; this is also seen in the

one manuscript which I have been able to inspect (Codex Leiden Or. 2k, fols. 92b-93a). It is tempting to read this initially as yakhshi ("he fears"), but this makes no sense here; in addition, if indeed this was an Arabic verb, the expression yd-alldh yd-alldh, hints at a second-person or even imperative. The initial letter in the manuscript and printed text is thus an error. The scribe probably was not familiar with the word bakhshi, and thus substituted a yd' (p?) for a be' (

.), an easy enough mistake. See also n. 26 below.

15. Nuwayri, 27: 302. 16. See, e.g., Ibn al-Athir, Kamil, 10: 272, where it is applied in this sense to the Crusaders at the end of the

eleventh century. 17. Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, 1: 934c. 18. On this see M. Sharon, Black Banners from the East: The Establishment of the 'Abbasid State (Jerusalem

and Leiden: Magnes Press and E. J. Brill, 1983), 19-27. 19. These two terms are used as equivalents in an inscription from Damascus in 488/1095-96; Repertoire

chronologique d 'pigraphie arabe, ed. E. Combe, J. Sauvaget, and G. Wiet (Cairo: L'Institut Frangais d'Arch6ol- ogie Orientale du Caire, 1931-), 8: 33 (no. 2860).


qut and the Mongolian suu, the heaven-given good fortune which was granted to Chinggis Khan and his family to rule the world.20 None of the above definitions of dawla are impossible here (even "state" would work, albeit anachronistically). It may be that some or even all of these meanings were implied by the author (or his source). But, for simplicity's sake, we will not be amiss by keeping "dynasty."

The second term is bakhshi, which can be translated as a "religious teacher" or "scribe." It has additional meanings of "strolling minstrel," "magician," "shaman" and even "quack doctor."21 Originally, however, it had connotations of a Buddhist lama or scholar. It is im-

portant to note that in the context of the Ilkhanate it is a relatively late term, appearing first in the writings of the Persian historians Rashid al-Din and Wassaf, who both wrote early in the fourteenth century, but applied it mainly to Buddhist lamas.22 On the other hand, Qdshdni (fi. early fourteenth century) in his Ta'rikh-i Uljdytii most surely intends shamans, when

describing as bakhshis the religious figures who call on the Ilkhan 1Ojeitfi (1304-16) to abandon Islam.23 The contemporary Syrian writer al-Birzali (d. 1339) also clearly uses bakhshi in the sense of shaman when he describes the religious figures of the Golden Horde,24 not the least since Buddhism never made inroads there as it did among the

Mongol elite of Ilkhanid Iran.25 Another contemporary, Ibn al-Dawadari (fl. 1338-40), also uses the term for an old (or senior) man who guards or serves the felt idols that the

Mongols worship-in other words a shaman.26 Given the often clear usage of bakhshi for

20. For these terms, see R. Amitai-Preiss, "An Exchange of Letters in Arabic between Abaya Ilkhdn and Sultan

Baybars (A.H. 667 / A.D. 1268-69)," Central Asiatic Journal 38 (1994): 16, 21-23; for qut, see D. DeWeese, Islam- ization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tiikles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tra- dition (University Park, Penn.: State Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 46; for suu, see W. Kotwicz, "Formules initiales des documents mongols aux XIII-e et XIV-e ss.," Rocznik Orjentalistiyczny, 10 (1934): 131-57, esp. 144-47.

21. G. Clauson, An Etymological Dictionary of pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972), 321. See also the extensive discussion in G. Doerfer, Tiirkische und mongolische Elemente in Neupersischen (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1963-75), 2: 271-77 (no. 724).

22. P. Jackson, "Bak•_i," Encyclopaedia Iranica, 3: 535-36, who notes that after Buddhism was suppressed in

the Ilkhanate (ca. 1295), bakhshi meant a scribe of Turkish or Mongol documents, equivalent to bitikchi. 23. Abu al-Qasim Qashani (=Kdshani), Ta'rikh-i Uljdytii, ed. M. Hambly (Tehran: Bungah-i Tarjama wa-

Nashr-i Kitab, A. Sh. 1348/1969), 98-99; cited in Jackson, "Bakli," 536; see also "Dynastic and Political History of the Il-Khans," Cambridge History oflran, vol. 5, ed. J. A. Boyle (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1968), 402.

24. Cited in W. de Tiesenhausen, Recueil de matiriaux relatifs ai l'histoire de la Horde d 'Or, vol. 1 (St. Peters-

burg: L'Imprimerie de L'Acad6mie Imperiale des Sciences, 1884), 173 (s.a. 712/1312-13, when describing the death of the Khan Toqtai). The fifteenth-century historian Taqi al-Din Ahmad b. cAll al-Maqrizi, Kitdb al-suliik li-

ma'rifat duwal al-mulik, ed. M. M. Ziydda and S. 'A.-E CAshur (Cairo: Matba'at Lajnat al-Ta'lif wa'l-Tarjama wa'l-Nashr, 1934-73), 2: 137, briefly mentions this information, albeit s.a. 714/1314-15, probably indirectly based on al-Birzdli or a related source. Mufaddal Ibn Abi al-Fada'il, al-Nahj al-sadid wa'l-durr al-fardfimm ba'd ibn al-

'amid, ed. and tr. E. Blochet as "Histoire des sultans mamlouks" in Patrologia orientalis, vols. 12, 14, 20 (Paris, 1919-28): 735, also appears to be using bakhshi in the same sense. See also the discussion in DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion, 112-13.

25. For Buddhism in the Golden Horde, see DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion, 82, n. 22. See there also for a discussion of the term bakhshi. For Buddhism in the Ilkhanate, see A. S. Melikian-Chirvani, "Buddhism

among Iranian Peoples: Islamic Times ii," Encyclopaedia Iranica, 4: 498. 26. AbO Bakr b. CAbd Allah ibn al-Dawadari, Kanz al-durar wa-jimi' al-ghurar, vol. 7: al-Durar al-matlib fl

akhbdr mulik bani ayyib, ed. S. CA.-F. CAshir (Cairo: Deutsches Archiologisches Institut Kairo, 1392/1972), 233; idem, Durar al-tijdn, published in G. Graf, Die Epitome der Universalchronik Ibn ad-Dawddrisis im Verhiiltnis zur Langfassung (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1990), 69. The former source has bakhshl, while the latter has yakhshi, a further indication that the ba' and the yd' could be confused in transcribing words of Turkish and Mongolian provenance. This strengthens my reading of bakhshi for the y-kh-sh-y given in al-Nuwayri's text cited above. For the years of Ibn al-Dawadari's activities, see the remarks of P. M. Holt in a review published in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 54 (1991): 367.


shaman in contemporary Arabic and Persian works, it seems logical to assume that al- Nuwayri here is referring to a shaman when he uses the term bakhshi. It may well be that historians such as al-Nuwayri knew that Chinggis Khan was unlikely to have met a lama in northwest Mongolia early in his career, and this possibly further strengthens the claim that bakhshi refers here to shaman and not lama.

The main theme of this passage, the Jewish instructor of Chinggis Khan (or rather Temiichin, his given name, since this is early on in his career before he received the title by which he is usually known) and the advice he gave, does not have parallel in any of the sources for early Mongol history known to me. It is conspicuously missing from The Secret History of the Mongols (Mongghol-un niucha tobcha'an), the earliest extant work in Mon- golian (written mostly ca. 1228) which describes the origins of the Mongol empire and its founder.27 It also does not find an echo in the section of Rashid al-Din's magisterial Jami' al-tawarikh devoted to Chinggis Khan, which is based on the now lost Mongolian Altan Debter.28 No hint of a Jewish mentor is found in the concise account regarding Chinggis Khan's rise contained in Juwayni's Ta'rikh-i Jahangusha ("History of the World Con- queror").29 There is no record of it in any other pro-Mongol source known to me.

Some Arabic sources also contain information regarding the origins of the Mongols and Chinggis Khan's role in their rise. The late Ulrich Haarmann drew attention to the long passage by the early fourteenth century Mamluk historian Ibn al-Dawadari in his Kanz al- durar wa-jdmi' al-ghurar devoted to the emergence of the Turks and Mongols.30 That particular account deviates greatly from the narrative presented in the Mongolian and Persian sources mentioned above. Ibn Fadl Allah al-'Umari (d. 1349) also provides some material on Chinggis Khan's origins and life at the beginning of the section devoted to the Mongols in his multi-volume encyclopedia, some of which echoes material in pro-Mongol sources.31 His contemporary and friend, Khalil b. Aybeg al-Safadi (d. 1363), devotes two pages to

27. On this work, see the general discussion in D. Morgan, The Mongols (Oxford: Blackwell's, 1986), 9-14. For an accurate but highly stilted translation, see E W. Cleaves, The Secret History of the Mongols (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1982). A new translation has just been published: I. de Rachewiltz, The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 2 vols.; see 1: xxix- xxxiv, for a discussion of the dating of the work.

28. Rashid al-Din, Jdmi' al-tawarikh, ed. B. Karimi (Teheran: Iqbal, 1338/1959), 1: 240-52; see the translation by W. M. Thackston, Rashiduddin Fazlullah's Jami'u 't-tawarikh: Compendium of Chronicles (Cambridge, Mass.: Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard Univ. 1998-99), 1: 159-65. This section describes the period of twenty-seven years (1167-94, from Chinggis Khan being orphaned until having established himself as one of the main powers in the steppe region north of China. On the Altan Debter 's role as the source for this part of Rashid al-Din's work, see Morgan, The Mongols, 11-12.

29. 'Al al-Din 'Ath Malik Juwayni, Ta'rikh-i Jahdngusha, ed. M. M. Qazwini, E. J. W. "Gibb Memorial Series," 16 (London and Leiden: Luzac & Co. and E. J. Brill, 1912-37), 1: 25-29 = The History of the World Con- queror, tr. J. A. Boyle (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1958), 1: 34-39.

30. Ibn al-Dawhdari, 7: 227-35; cf. Graf, Die Epitome, 66-72 (of Arabic text); U. Haarmann, "Altun HUn und

(ingiz Cgn bei den Agyptischen Mamluken," Der Islam 51 (1974): 1-36; idem, "Turkish Legends in the Popular Historiography of Medieval Egypt," in Proceedings of the Vlth Congress of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 1972 (Stockholm and Leiden:'Almqvist & Wiksell International and E. J. Brill, 1975), 97-107.

31. Ibn Fadl Allah al-CUmari, in Das Mongolische Weltreich: al-'Umaris Darstellung der mongolischen Reiche in seinem Werk Masilik al-absdrfl 'l-mamalik al-amsiir, ed. and tr. K. Lech (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1968), 2-7 (Arabic text).


Chinggis Khan in his biographical compendium, al-Wafi bi'l-wafaydt.32 Recently, Robert Irwin has discussed an account embedded in a lesser-known work by Ibn 'Arabshah (d. 1450), called Fdkihat al-khulaf~ ' wa-mufakahit al-zurafi',33 which more or less parallels the accounts found in those works in Persian.34 In all of these works, there is nothing that hints at a Jewish instructor of Chinggis Khan early (or later, for that matter) in his career.

Given his own background, and the similar interest shown in contemporary Arabic historiography (written both within and outside the Mamluk Sultanate), it should not come as a surprise that al-Nuwayri accords an important place to the account of Chinggis Khan and the Mongols' rise. As noted, some of these works that deal with the rise of the Mongols and specifically Chinggis Khan's career were more in line with pro-Mongol historiography than others. Yet the main point of al-Nuwayri's account, presented above in extenso, i.e., the future conqueror having a Jewish mentor early in his rise to greatness, has no confirmation or echo-even remote-in these Arabic works, and for that matter not in the Persian or Mongolian sources (or any other) with which I am acquainted. This being said, the theme of the Jewish teacher, like many of the other motifs in this passage, is not completely without reason in the present context, an Arabic text from early fourteenth-century Cairo. In the following discussion, I will attempt to find a few parallels and some possible explanations for the presence of these themes.

The obvious place to begin is what has been alluded to repeatedly above: Chinggis Khan's Jewish teacher. Barring the appearance of a new source which confirms this in a cogent way, I assume that there was indeed no Jew, teacher or otherwise, wandering around the steppes and forests of present day northeastern Mongolia in the late twelfth century, before Chinggis Khan's career really took off.35 The story of the Jewish teacher appears to be purely literary invention but the question remains why this idea would find its way into the present text? It is of course possible that the ultimate author of the text, whoever he might be, had created it purely out of his imagination; perhaps a Jew had been singled out as a

32. Salhl al-Din Khalil b. Aybeg al-Safadi, al-Wdfi bi'l-wafaydt, ed. H. Ritter et al. (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1931-), 11: 199-200.

33. Published as Liber Arabicus sive Fructus imperatorum et Jocatio ingeniosorum, ed. G. Freytag (Bonn, 1832). The long section in question is on pp. 227-50.

34. R. Irwin, "What the Partridge Told the Eagle: A Neglected Arabic Source on Chinggis Khan and the Early History of the Mongols," in The Mongol Empire and its Legacy, ed. R. Amitai-Preiss and D. Morgan (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 4-11.

35. In fact, we get the impression that Jews did not figure very highly, if at all, in Chinggis Khan's consciousness. Juwayni, 3: 77 (= tr. Boyle, 2: 599), reports that Rabbis were omitted from the decree issued by him, and reissued by his grandson, the Great Khan Mongke (1251-59), which provided exemptions from taxation for men of religion from among the Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists. There is a little confusion here, since among the Christian holy men, ahbar are mentioned, which is often traslated as "rabbis." However, the fact that the author adds that the omission of their leaders cased much chagrin to the Jews indicates that here rabbis are not intended, and we can accept Boyle's translation of "scholars." See Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, 1: 498. It would appear that the Jews were also not at the forefront of Mingke's thoughts: a Jewish representative was not invited to par- ticipate in the religious debate held at Mingke's court in Qaraqorum in 1254; see B. Z. Kedar, "The Multilateral Disputation at the Court of the Grand Qan Mingke," in H. Lazarus-Yafeh, M. R. Cohen, S. Somekh, and S. H. Griffith, The Majlis: Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), 162-83 (esp. 175-76). As will be seen below, Juwayni-who completed his work in 1260 (see the introduction to Boyle's translation, 1: xxv)-does not mention that any Mongols were converting to Judaism, unlike Islaih and Christianity.


herald of Chinggis Khan's heavenly mandated greatness, since he was a member of the old- est monotheistic community?

It appears unlikely, however, that this aspect of the story appears ex nihilo; rather we may have here an echo of a motif in Arabic literature which describes early Muslim history. The role of the Jews as harbingers, particularly through their scriptures (as also alluded to in al-Nuwayri's text), of Muhammad's prophecy, is well known, and was reconsidered in a

masterly way by the late Hava Lazerus-Yaffe in her Intertwined Worlds.36 Individual Jews, such as 'Abd Allah b. Salam, were said to have joined Islam at the time of Muhammad, admitting that he "was the Prophet predicted in the Torah, and protecting him from the in-

trigues of his co-religionists."37 Another well-known informant about Judaism to the first generation of Muslims was Kalb b. al-Ahbdr, who is noted not only as a source of Jewish and south Arabian lore, but for his general acumen and even ability to predict future events,38 and thus is of some relevance here. In a similar spirit, albeit of a more apocryphal nature, is the story of the ancient Jewish "prince" Buluqya told by al-Tha'labi (d. 1036) in his Qisas al-anbiyi' ("Stories of the Prophets"), who attributes it to the authority of the same 'Abd Allah b. Saldm just mentioned. Buluqya, living in Egypt, discovers in his late father's treasury a box containing a record of Muhammad's future mission. He sets out on a quest to find out more, discovering that Muhammad's prophecy is somewhere in the un- determined future.39 The story in al-Tha'labi's recension may well have been known in both the Mamluk Sultanate and the Ilkhanate in the late thirteenth/early fourteenth century. It is certainly relevant to note that a version appears in the Arabian Nights.40 This latter account may have been circulating at least in Cairo at this time, since it was in Mamluk Cairo that the Arabian Nights received something resembling its final form.41 In short, the theme of the Jewish harbinger was a well-established one in the Islamic world ca. 1300, and most certainly in Cairo.

My intent, of course, is not to investigate Jewish or other influences on early Islam, particularly how individual Jews may have met and influenced Muhammad at different points in his career. This important topic is beyond my expertise, and in any event is not germane to the present discussion.42 Rather, the goal here is to show what ideas or motifs regarding Jewish harbingers of Muhammad and his mission, let alone his teachers, were current in

early Mamluk Cairo and probably elsewhere in the Islamic world at that time. I suggest that the topos of the Jewish harbinger and advisor may have been transferred to the story of

36. H. Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1992), 75-110.

37. J. Horovitz, "cAbd Allah b. Salam," E12, 1: 52a. 38. M. Schmitz, "Ka'b b. al-Ahbar," E12, 4: 316b; Moshe Perlmann, "A Legendary Story of Kacb b. al-Ahbar's

Conversion to Islam," in Joshua Starr Memorial Volume (New York: Conference on Jewish Relations, 1953), 85- 99; idem, "Another Kacb b. al-Ahbdr Story," Jewish Quarterly Review 45 (1954): 48-51.

39. AbOl Ishaq Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Tha'labi, Qisas al-anbiyd' (Cairo: Matba'at al-Halabi wa-Awlddihi, 1340/1922), 246-50; J. Horovitz, "The Origin of the Arabian Nights," Islamic Culture 1 (1927): 52-53.

40. See the general discussion in Perlmann, "A Legendary Story," 88-89 (and n. 9). For the story itself, see Alf layla wa-layla, in Alif [sic] Laila or Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Commonly known as The Arabian Night's Entertainment, ed. W. H. Macnaghten (Calcutta: W. Thacker and Co., 1839-42), 2: 589-618 (nights 486- 98); translation in R. E Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, 2nd ed., ed. L. C. Smothers (London: H. S. Nichols Ltd., 1897), 4: 251-74.

41. Robert Irwin, The Arabian Nights: A Companion (London: Allan Lane, 1994), 42-62. 42. On Muhammad's Jewish teachers, see the classic articles by S. D. Goitein, "Mi hayyu rabbatov hamuvha-

kim shel Muhammad? [Who were the Outstanding Teachers of Muhammad?]," Tarbiz 23 (1953): 146-59; and "Isra'iliyyat," Tarbiz 6 (1936): 89-101.


Chinggis Khan, and might have provided the basis for this aspect of the story presented by al-Nuwayri. Even if the story had its origins from far away, a Cairene audience would have found echoes of it in material known to them, and thus this motif could have been easily accepted by them.

There are two ways, not necessarily contradictory, to look at the passage regarding the three prophets (from the Islamic point of view): Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. The first would be that this is an expression of the equanimity that the Mongols showed to different religions, what some scholars have called "religious tolerance."43 This tolerance, or perhaps indifference, also extended to a certain degree to the Mongols themselves. Both common and noble Mongols were allowed to practice any religion, as expressed by the historian Juwayni (d. 1283):

And he [Chinggis Khan] viewed the Moslems with the eye of respect, so also did he hold the Christians and idolaters in high esteem. As for his children and grandchildren, several of them have chosen a religion according to their inclination, some adopting Islam, others embracing Christianity (ba'di taqlid-i islam kardah wa ba'di millat-i nasdrd giriftah), others selecting idolatry and others again cleaving to the ancient canon of their fathers and forefathers and in- clining to no direction.44

Interestingly enough, this passage is the basis for the text by the encyclopedist Ibn Fadl Allih al-'Umari: "In the Jahangusha [it is written] that there are those [Mongols] who follow the community of Jesus (millat 'isd), those who follow the community of Moses (millat muisd), and those who throw off all beliefs ..."45 The inclusion of the Jewish faith together with

Christianity in the latter passage may only be for the general effect or rhyme; there is no indication in any source known to me that any Mongolian princes actually converted to Ju- daism in Iran or elsewhere. Yet in the present context it may show that Jews and Judaism were somehow connected with the Mongols in the mind of a contemporary (albeit somewhat later) Mamluk writer.

There is, however, another way to look at this information. All three of these religious leaders (Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad) were prophets from a Muslim point of view. Accord- ing to this passage, Chinggis Khan is essentially asking the unnamed Jew how to become a prophet of equal (or greater?) stature. This may sound at first far-fetched, but there is an interesting echo of this claim in the work of the thirteenth-century Syrian chronicler Ibn Wasil, who reports that Chinggis Khan was the prophet of the Mongols.46 This evidence is particularly interesting, since Ibn Wasil, who died in 1298, completed work on his chronicle around 660/1261-62 (although it was continued until 695/1295-96 by his relative, Ibn 'Abd al-Rahman). In other words, information of Chinggis Khan's "prophecy" reached Ibn W~sil long before the conversion of the Mongols, royal and otherwise, towards the end of the cen-

tury. But this perception was not limited to the pre-Islamic history of the Mongols in Iran. The Damascene IHanbali thinker and leader Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), in his famousfatwa

43. See, e.g., the discussion in Morgan, The Mongols, 40-41. Cf. the recent article by Peter Jackson, "The

Mongols and the Faith of the Conquered," in Mongols, Turks and Others: Eurasian Nomads and their Sedentary Neighbors, ed. R. Amitai and Michal Biran (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 245-90.

44. Juwayni, 1: 18-19 = tr. Boyle, 1: 26. 45. Al-cUmari, ed. Lech, 7. For al-cUmari's use of Juwayni's text, see the comments in Lech's introduction,

p. 22. 46. Jamal al-Din Muhammad b. SSlim ibn Wasil, Mufarrij al-kurtib ft akhbar bani ayyab, Ms. Bibliothbque

Nationale ar. 1703, fol. 127r; this passage is found in Qutb al-Din MisS b. Muhammad al-Ytinini, Dhayl mir'dt

al-zaman fi ta'rikh al-a'ydn (Hyderabad: Matba'at Majlis DS'irat al-Mac-rif al-cUthminiyya, 1954-61), 1: 86. Both

sources are cited in Stefen Heidemann, Das Aleppiner Kalifat (A.D. 1261): vom Ende des Kalifates in Bagdad iiber Aleppo zu den Restaurationen in Kairo (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 165.


regarding the Islam of the Ilkhanid Mongols, attributes to them inter alia the belief after their conversion that Chinggis Khan was equal to Muhammad.47 It of course does not necessarily matter if this idea was truly held by the recently converted Mongols or not; here it is significant that in the Mamluk Sultanate it was believed that they did.

Actually, the account of the Mongols' belief in the prophecy of Chinggis Khan may not just have been a perception among Arabic writers in Syria and Egypt. There is at least one indication, albeit problematic, that among the Mongols this belief was also held to some degree or another. The Persian writer Wassif (fl. early fourteenth century), who himself was em- ployed in the Mongols' service, relates the following account: towards the end of the reign of the Ilkhan Arghun (1284-91), his Jewish wazir Sacd al-Dawla suggested to him that the Ilkhan enjoyed the gift of prophecy which he had inherited from Chinggis Khan.48 This may be a calumny intended to besmirch the reputation of the Jewish minister. It may be, on the other hand, that Sacd al-Dawla truly entertained this idea and tried to propagate it with the Ilkhan. In either case, it may reflect beliefs held at some time among the Mongols, that the founder of their empire was indeed a prophet. We may note the interesting parallel with the story related by al-Nuwayri: the prophecy of a Mongol leader is announced by a Jew.

Another prominent theme in al-Nuwayri's passages is the description of young Chinggis Khan as the focus of a shamanistic ritual: encouraged by shouts and clapping by his tribes- men, he dances. He is even called bakhshi, which as seen above can be understood in this context in a general sense of wise man or more specifically as shaman, the holy man of the traditional Mongolian religion. We have then a partial-but accurate as far as it goes-description of a shamanistic ritual, in which the shaman enters a trance to communicate with the world of spirits.49 In fact, there is information in various sources that indeed Chinggis Khan acted in a shamanistic capacity in his struggle for control over the Mongol tribes.50 The Persian writer Jiizjani (d. between 1265-87) gives clear evidence of this: Chinggis Khan went into trances to discern the future and practiced scapulamancy (i.e., the use of burnt shoulder blades of sheep for divinations).51

In al-Nuwayri's text, the Jewish teacher had told his pupil that "in our books [it is written] that you [will] have a dynasty (dawla) which will triumph." The exact meaning of "books" here is unclear, but may refer to the Bible (called in Arabic Tawrdt, literally "Torah") or

47. This fatwa is found in Ibn Taymiyya, Majmtia fatdwd Ibn Taymiyya (Beirut: Ddr al-Kutub al-CIlmiyya, 1408/1987), 4: 280-98; see esp. 286-87, for the passage where the Mongols are reported to compare Muhammad and Chinggis Khan and consider the latter to be a son of god, as Jesus is considered by the Christians. See also the discussion in T. Raff, An Anti-Mongol Fatwa of lbn Taimiya (privately printed, Leiden, 1973), 44-59; R. Amitai- Preiss, "Ghazan, Islam and Mongol Tradition: A View from the Mamluk Sultanate," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 59 (1996): 9-10.

48. Wassdf ['Abd Allih b. Fadl Allah], Ta'rikh-i Wassaf [= Tajziyat al-amsdr wa-tazjiyat al-a'sar] (1269/1852- 53; rpt. Teheran: Ibn Sind, 1338/1959-60), 241; summarized in CA. M. Ayati, Tahrir-i ta'rikh-i Wassaf (Teheran: In- tishdrdt i-Bunyad-i Farhang-i Iran, 1346/1967). See also J. Aubin, "Emirs mongols et vizirs persans dans les remous de l'acculturation," Studia Iranica 15 (Paris: Association pour l'Avancement des Etudes Iraniennes, 1995), 43-44 for a discussion.

49. On Inner Asian shamans in general, and Mongol ones in particular, see Morgan, The Mongols, 41-44; J. A. Boyle, "Turkish and Mongol Shamanism in the Middle Ages," Folklore 83 (1972): 177-93 (rpt. in Boyle, The Mongol World Empire 1206-1370 [London: Variorum Reprints, 1977], art. XXII); M. Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, tr. W. R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994), ch. 1; Caroline Humphrey, "Sha- manic Practices and the State in Northern Asia: Views from the Center and Periphery," in Shamanism, History, and the State, ed. N. Thomas and C. Humphrey (Ann Arbor, 1994), 191-230.

50. P. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, tr. and ed. T. N. Haining (Oxford: Blackwell's, 1991), 55; Morgan, The Mongols, 44; Boyle, "Turkish and Mongol Shamanism," 180-81.

51. Minhhj al-Din Jizjkni, Tabaqdt-i Nasirt, ed. W. Nassau Lees et al. (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1863), 374-74 = Tabakat-i-Niasirt, tr. H. G. Raverty (London: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1881), 2: 1077-79.


perhaps to post-biblical Jewish works, real or imagined. Be that as it may, this passage contains more than a faint echo of the Mongol belief that Chinggis Khan and his family had received a heaven-given mandate to conquer the world, a well-known theme in Mongol history.52 This ideology of Mongol imperialism (and its practical effects) was also well known to the Mamluks.53 In this passage, the Jew is not only an instructor but a harbinger of the greatness of Chinggis Khan and his family; the parallel between Hebrew scriptures predicting Muhammad's mission and Chinggis Khan's victories is striking.

The Islamic connections and allusions to Chinggis Khan's career in the present text con- tinue, and are significant. When Chinggis Khan goes off to devote himself to an ascetic life, it is written that he ate permitted foods-mubdhat. There are two ways to understand this term. On one hand, it may refer to foods permitted by Islam, or slaughtered in a permissible way. This is not as simple as it may at first appear. The accepted manner of slaughter of ani- mals among the Mongols was certainly different than that regulated by Islamic law: the Mon- gols were known to make a cut in the chest of the beast, and pull out the still beating heart,54 while Islamic law mandates a swift cut of the throat with a sharp knife and the draining of the blood.55 This was not merely a manner of custom, and in this realm the Mongols had been known to abandon their usual tolerance. Chaghatai, Chinggis Khan's second son who ruled in Central Asia (d. 1241), and the Great Khan Qubilai (d. 1294) who ruled in China and Mongolia, had both tried to eradicate-at least temporarily-the Muslim method of slaughter in their territories.56 This certainly had been a sore spot in Mongol-Muslim relations, and the anachronistic inclusion of Chinggis Khan's supposed preference of Muslim approved foods may not be coincidental.

An alternative, and perhaps more convincing, way to understand this term is in another sense of permitted food, i.e., that which is not owned by anyone, or is left over from the harvest, and from which people-especially ascetics and sufis-would live.57 This is first an allusion to Chinggis Khan's supposed asceticism (which is mentioned in the passage). It may

52. See Morgan, The Mongols, 14; K. Sagaster, "Herrschaftideologie und Friedensgedanke bei den Mongolen," Central Asiatic Journal 17 (1973): 223-42; I. de Rachewiltz, "Some Remarks on the Ideological Foundations of Chingis Khan's Empire," Papers on Far Eastern History 7 (1973): 21-36; J. M. Smith, Jr., "The Mongols and World Conquest," Mongolica 5 (26): 206-14; R. Amitai-Preiss, "Mongol Imperial Ideology and the Ilkhanid War

against the Mamluks," in The Mongol Empire and its Legacy, 57-72, esp. n. 20 for other scholarly literature on the subject.

53. The Ilkhans made this clear in their correspondence with the Mamluk sultans; see e.g., Amitai-Preiss, "An Exchange of Letters in Arabic."

54. For a brief description of Mongol dietary and slaughtering practices, see P. Jackson and D. Morgan, The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck: His Journey to the Court of the Great Khan Mbngke 1253-1255 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1990), 79-84; al-cUmari, ed. Lech, 8-9; Rashid al-Din, The Successors of Genghis Khan, tr. J. A.

Boyle (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1971), 77-78. 55. For a short but comprehensive discussion of Muslim dietary laws, see A. S. Tritton, "Tacam," Shorter En-

cyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1953), 555-56. 56. For Chaghatai, see the article on him by W. Barthold and J. A. Boyle, in EI2, 2: 2; for Qubilai, see

M. Rossabi, Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1988), 142, 200-201.

57. Several examples of this usage are found in R. Dozy, Suppldment aux dictionnaires arabes (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1881), 1: 126a. An additional and very instructional one is found in Ibn Taghri Birdi, Al-Nujam al-zahira fi mulak misr wa'l-qihira (rpt. [n.d.] of Cairo: Dir al-Kutub al-Misriyya, 1930-56), 2: 32: "In [the year A.H. 158],

Shayb.n al-Ra'i died. He was one of the senior mendicants from among the ascetics and observant people (wa-kadna

min kibir al-fuqahd' min al-zuhhdd wa'l-'ubbad). He was one of the leading people of Damascus, and then left the affairs of this world, and went to Mt. Lebanon, living alone there, and ate the permitted food (wa-akala al- mubaht)." It is unclear whether the term here reflects a second century usage or one of the fifteenth century (or even one between).


also hint at the role that some sufis played in the conversion of the Mongols, although I have suggested elsewhere that the importance of this role should not be exaggerated.58 In any event, Chinggis Khan is subtly given here an additional Muslim patina. This matter will be raised again below.

One further matter calls for attention before turning to the question of the passage's provenance. Al-Nuwayri tells us that Chinggis Khan, having taken the Jewish teacher's advice to heart, "left his iron work or whatever, and became an ascetic." The purported profession of

Chinggis Khan is not germane to our discussion here, but still of interest. This information is found in a wide range of sources, and may be ultimately derived from Chinggis Khan's birth name, Temiichin, which may be literally translated as "blacksmith" (cf. Turkish te- miirchi).59 The "intelligence" regarding Chinggis Khan's supposed profession, however, is found neither in The Secret History of the Mongols, the earliest Mongol source, nor in the

part of Rashid al-Din's work based on the more-or-less coeval Altan Debter. It does, however, appear in the account of William of Rubruck, who traveled to the Great Khan's court in 1253-55, and most probably reflects information that he received from Mongols there or on his trip.60 In the early fourteenth century, there is a similar report by the Armenian Het'um, who was well acquainted with the Mongols of Iran.61 Al-Nuwayri's contemporary compatriots were also aware of this connection: Ibn al-Dawadari calls him Ji[n]kiz Khan Tamurji [sic], translating the last mentioned as al-haddad, "the blacksmith," and provides more information on this appellation.62 Al-Safadi writes that "it was said that he was a blacksmith" (yuqdlu innahu kana haddadan).63 While not exactly a countryman, the contemporary traveller from the Muslim west, Ibn Battilta (who passed through the Mamluk Sultanate), also attributes this profession to him.64

The point of this somewhat discursive discussion on Chinggis Khan's profession is to

emphasize yet again that some of the elements in al-Nuwayri's passage are firmly within the framework of contemporary and even earlier Mongol tradition, with an echo in the Mam- luk Sultanate. We can contrast such elements with the main motif of the story: Chinggis

58. R. Amitai-Preiss, "Sufis and Shamans: Some Remarks on the Islamization of the Mongols in the Ilkhanate," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 42 (1999): 27-46.

59. See the discussion in P. Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo (Paris: L'Imprimerie Nationale, 1959-63), 1: 289-90; Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan, 17 and 225, n. 98, who notes that this belief persisted among certain Mongols up to the modem period. With the exception of the information from Ibn al-Dawddari and al-Safadi, the evidence cited below is derived from these studies. Ratchnevsky (Genghis Khan, 225), however, makes a number of mistakes in this connection. He writes that Jtizjdni (tr. Raverty, 2: 935) reports that Chinggis Khan's father was a blacksmith. The text (ed. Lees, 331), however, only writes that his father was a Tatar named Tamiirchi. This is, of course confused, as Chinggis Khan's father, Yestigei, named his son after a defeated Tatar chief with this name (or rather Temiichin). In any event, there is no basis to suggest that he was a son of a blacksmith. Likewise, Ratchnevsky writes that

al-Nasawi says that he came from a family of blacksmiths. But an examination of this text (ed. Houdas, 4; cited in

Nuwayri, 27: 300), says only that his tribe was called Tamurji, and no further explanation is offered. 60. Jackson and Morgan, Mission of Friar William, 124. 61. Hetcum [Hayton/Hethoum], "La Flor des estories de la Terre d'Orient," in Recueil des historiens des

croisades, documents arm-niens (Paris: L'Imprimerie Nationale, 1869-1906), 2: 148: "... avint que un veillant povre home fevre..." It is interesting that the word fevre was not rendered in the early English translation: Glenn Burger, A Lytell Cronycle: Richard Pynson's Translation (c. 1520) of La Fleur des histoires de la terre d 'Orient (c. 1307) (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1988), 26.

62. Ibn al-Dawadari, 7: 231. 63. Safadi, 11: 199. 64. Muhammada b. <Abd Allah ibn

Batti.ta, Rihla, published in C. Deframery and B. R. Sanguinetti, Voyages

d 'Ibn Batoutah (Paris: L'Imprimerie Nationale, 1853-58), 3: 23 = H. A. R. Gibb (tr.), The Travels ofl Ibn Battuta (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1958-94), 3: 551.


Khan's meeting with the Jew, the ensuing conversion, and subsequent actions. As said before, this information in connection with Chinggis Khan is sui generis, finding no confirmation in the sources written within or outside the Mongol empire, not the least in the Mamluk Sultanate (although, as suggested above, there is an earlier echo in the story of Sald al-Dawla and Arghun). It is to the possible origins of the hard kernel of this story to which I turn now.

A number of possible sources for this story present themselves. The first is that al- Nuwayri himself is its author, who may have penned it in order to liven up his narrative. In favor of this option is the fact that al-Nuwayri does not mention who his source is, as he almost invariably does. Yet on further reflection this possibility seems unlikely. It is true that during this period we can discern the growing literarization (Literarisierung) of Mamluk historiography, to use Ulrich Haarmann's phrase. This means the addition, deliberate or otherwise, of imaginative or lively elements to entertain the reader. Perhaps the most notice- able contemporary practitioner of this style is Ibn al-Dawadari, whose flexible approach to his sources has been noted by scholars.65 Al-Nuwayri, on the other hand, is generally scru- pulous in his citations and rendition of evidence. In the present context, it is worth citing what he writes at the beginning of his section on the Mongols, when describing his sources:

We have [further] transmitted [material] that we have which [al-Nasawi and Ibn al-Athir's] his- tories did not contain, and what was after them, which was transmitted to us by their envoys who arrived at our rulers' court from their direction, and others who came from their land ... 66

The further implications of this evidence will be discussed below. For the present it suffices to note that we have here a good excuse for why the source of the passage in question is unattributed.

It seems unlikely that al-Nuwayri himself fabricated the story. Is it possible that its origins were of local vintage-Cairo-or even from further afield, but within the Sultanate- Syria? It has been seen that various elements of the story appear to have been current in the milieu in which al-Nuwayri lived and worked: the term bakhshi, a Jew (or Jews) as harbinger of a new prophecy, Chinggis Khan's supposed occupation as a blacksmith, and the perception that the Mongols saw him as a prophet. This being said, there is no indication that the main component of the story-Chinggis Khan meeting a Jew and receiving instruction from him-was known in the Mamluk Sultanate previously or during al-Nuwayri's years of activity. It is, however, possible that someone-say, a religious scholar, a bureaucrat, or a Mamluk officer-invented the story, or rather concocted it by mixing the fruits of his own

imagination with elements readily available in the common stock of cultural motifs and

stereotypes, particularly those regarding the Mongols. If this story were indeed mainly of Egyptian (or Syrian) provenance, then it would prob-

ably have dated from before 1320, when peace was finally achieved between the Ilkhan Abli Sacid and Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad. As long as the war was going on with the Mongols

65. On Ibn al-Dawhdiri, see U. Haarmann, Quellenstudien zurfriihen Mamlukenzeit (Freiburg: Klaus Schwarz, 1970), 79, 84, 194; Graf, Epitome, 35; R. Amitai-Preiss, "Mamluk Perceptions of the Mongol-Frankish Rapproche- ment," Mediterranean Historical Review 7 (1992): 62-63. For the matter of literarization, see U. Haarmann, "Au- flasung und Bewahrung der klassischen Formen arabischer Geschichtsschreibung in der Zeit der Mamluker," Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenliindischen Gesellschaft 121 (1971): 46-60.

66. Nuwayri, 27: 300.


(until about 1320), there might have been an attempt to disparage the Mongols' recently adopted Islam,67 as Ibn Taymiyya did in his fatwa mentioned above.68 This negative tendency-from a Mamluk point of view-is seen in al-Nuwayri's story: The portrayal of Chinggis Khan's attempt to put himself on par with Moses, Jesus, and especially Mu- hammad, would certainly arouse negative responses among Muslims. There is, however, a mixed message in the story: Chinggis Khan is portrayed as a proponent of a sort of Mongol "hanifism," i.e., an undefined longing for monotheism before the adoption of Islam. To this

may be added his eating of "permissible things," as understood by Muslims. As the story now stands, it really does not unequivocally fit either the pre- or post-1320 situation in the Mamluk Sultanate. It cannot thus be stated with certitude that it was authored or cobbled

together there. The last alternative is that the story originated further to the east, in the Ilkhanate itself.

Islam had been officially and irrevocably adopted by the ruling elite at the end of the thirteenth century, and there are indications that this religion had also made deep inroads into the Mongol rank-and-file. Yet, as I have attempted to show elsewhere,69 this Islam was a

syncretistic one, and elements of the traditional Mongolian religion and larger world-view re- mained current for some time. Among these was the belief in Chinggis Khan's mission and

greatness,70 the importance of Mongol law-the Yasa-which was attributed to Chinggis Khan, as well as a conviction, albeit increasingly vestigial, that the Mongols had a heaven-

given mission to conquer the world.71 The story recounted by al-Nuwayri fits well into this cultural milieu of transition from one

religious tradition to another. Clear antecedents to the eventual Islamization of the Mongols are found in it: Chinggis Khan follows the path of the great prophets, having listened to the advice of a stereotyped harbinger of religious greatness. Strictly, this would have been anathema from a Muslim point of view, but it is possible that many Mongols in the Ilkhanate

may not have completely internalized this aspect of Islamic dogma. Certainly, it can be shown that the newly converted Mongols were not always paragons of Muslim knowledge or theoretical purity. Thus, in a debate about religion at the Mongol court ca. 709/1309-10, the Mongol Qutlugh-shah is reported to have remarked that in various schools of Islam it is

permitted to marry a daughter or to have "relations with one's mother or sister"; this general held that the proper thing to do was to return to the "traditions and laws" of Chinggis Khan.72 However, in 1300, during the Mongol occupation of Damascus, this same officer told Ibn Taymiyya that Chinggis Khan was king of the entire world, but Muhammad was the seal of the prophets, thus demonstrating some familiarity with basic Muslim ideas.73 Yet, Ibn Tay- miyya tells us, in the above-mentionedfatwa, that the Mongols equated Chinggis Khan with

67. On the conversion of the Mongols in Iran to Islam, see, e.g., Morgan, The Mongols, 160-63; C. Melville, "Padshah-i Islam: The Conversion of Sultan Mahmitd Ghazdn Khan," Pembroke Papers 1 (1990): 159-77; Amitai- Preiss, "Sufis and Shamans," 27-46.

68. See n. 47 above. 69. Amitai-Preiss, "Ghazan, Islam and Mongol Tradition," 1-10. 70. This is given expression in Ghazan's speech in 1300 to the notables of Damascus, which he briefly occupied;

see Rashid al-Din, Jaiimi' al-tawarikh, ed. Karimi, 2: 941 = tr. Thackston, 3: 646. 71. On this see Amitai-Preiss, "Mongol Imperial Ideology," 66-69. 72. Qashani, 98; cited by David Morgan, "The 'Great Yasa of Chingiz Khan' and Mongol Law in the ilkhanate,"

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 49 (1986): 172. The chronology of this event is confused: Qutlugh-shih was killed in the Mongol campaign in Gilhn in 706/1307; see Charles Melville, "The Ilkhin Oljeitti's Conquest of Gilhn (1307): Rumour and Reality," in The Mongol Empire and its Legacy, 73-125.

73. Li Guo, Early Mamluk Syrian Historiography: al-Yiinint's Dhayl Mir'dt al-zaman (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 1:156 (translation); 2:119 (Arabic text).


Muhammad, and that this was one of the main reasons why they were not proper Muslims. Whether Ibn Taymiyya had this on good authority (conversations with senior Mongols during their occupation of Damascus at the beginning of 1300), or had let his enthusiasm for anti- Mongol polemic get the better of him, is unknown; but it is not impossible-given what we know of Islam as understood and practiced at the Ilkhanid court-that the idea of Chinggis Khan's "prophecy" was held by some Mongols after their conversion.

To reinforce the point of Chinggis Khan's incipient monotheism, and even proto-Muslim tendency, we are told that he eats only permitted food. Yet at the same time, clear motifs from the Mongol tradition are brought in: Chinggis Khan was a blacksmith and he possessed shamanic powers. The latter element-as far as I am aware-did not find an earlier echo in the Mamluk Sultanate, thus strengthening the suggestion that the core story at least originated among the Mongols. Perhaps more importantly, we have here a prediction of his family's eventual greatness and victory, which fits the Mongol world-view quite neatly. In short, here the basic Mongol imperial view is seen to correspond in some way to that of Islam and its adoption by the Mongols.

This touches upon the interesting matter of the assimilation of Inner Asian motifs into the Islam practiced by people of Inner Asian nomadic origin, which has been brilliantly analyzed by Devin DeWeese in his book on the conversion of the Golden Horde to Islam and its reflection in the subsequent literatures of various Turkic-speaking peoples in Central Asia.74 In the story presented by al-Nuwayri we also find the integration of two world-views. Ching- gis Khan, who is sympathetically presented (at least from a Mongol point of view), is seen to combine attributes of both shaman and sufi. These are not the same thing, as I have attempted to show elsewhere, but rather two distinct ways of religious intent and experience.75 Here they are united in the personality and deeds of the legendary founder of the Mongol empire, and no contradiction is seen between them. I suggest that for at least some Mongols in the Ilkhanate, this was one way of explaining their adoption of the new religious system. The extent of this synthesis, both in literature and in the religious practice of the Mongols (and their Turkificed descendants) in the Middle East, is a subject on which further research might shed more light.

The story related by al-Nuwayri-at least in its core-could have been brought to the Sultanate by travelers, emissaries, or immigrants (civilian and military) from the Ilkhanate, whose numbers increased after the end of the war in 1320. Al-Nuwayri himself alludes to these unnamed sources, as cited above. It might be mentioned that his younger contemporary, al-'Umari, gives the names of many such informants, who came from the Ilkhanate, in his section on the Mongols.76 The supposition that we have before us a story of relatively late origin, i.e., from after the conversion of the Mongols in the Ilkhanate, is strengthened by the use of the expression bakhshi, a somewhat late term, as seen above. It is possible that the core story was expanded in Cairo, from the stock of stories and topoi about the Mongols (and the Jews) current there.

In short, the passage by al-Nuwayri discussed above may not tell us anything new about late twelfth-century Mongolia, and in fact some of the information contained in it is most probably imaginary. It does, however, inform us about how the Mongols in early fourteenth-

74. DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion. In order to appreciate the full extent of the author's analysis, this entire volume should be read perhaps more than once; but for a short exposition of his view, see pp. 9-14, 51-59.

75. Amitai-Preiss, "Sufis and Shamans." 76. These are listed and discussed by Lech, in the introduction to his edition of al-cUmarI, 29-41.


century Iran were trying to integrate traditional and deeply held attitudes with a new religious world view. In addition, the fact that this story found its way into a contemporary Egyptian encyclopedia-perhaps with some local accretions-shows us several matters: the flow of ideas between two regions, the wide-ranging eye of one particular writer, and the exposure of the reading public in the Mamluk Sultanate to Mongol exotica, hinting at the taste of this audience for such fare.

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Did Chinggis Khan Have a Jewish Teacher an Examination of an Early Fourteenth-Century Arabic Text