Did Chinggis Khan have a Jewish teacher? An examination of an early fourteenth-century Arabic text.

• Author: Amitai, Reuven

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-Wahhab al-Nuwayri (died 733/1333): Nihayat al-arab fi funun al-adab ("The Highest Aspiration in the Varieties of Cultures"). (1) 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 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 Nihayat al-arab is divided into five funun (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-jinkizkhaniyya ("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 fi 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 relatively 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 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 Musa (Moses), 'Isa (Jesus) and Muhammad this exalted position, and spread [their] fame?" The Jew said to him: "Because they loved God and devoted themselves to him, (11) 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 work (12) or whatever, and became an ascetic. He left his family and tribe, and stayed up in the mountains, and ate permissible things (mubahat). (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" (ya-allah ya-allah, bakhshi (14) 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. (18) 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 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 important 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, Qashani (fl. early fourteenth century) in his Ta'rikh-i Uljaytu most surely intends shamans, when describing as bakhshis the religious figures who call on the Ilkhan Oljeitu (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 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 Temuchin, 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...