Nomads on ponies vs. slaves in horses.

• Author: Smith, John Masson, Jr.
• Position: Mamluk-Ilkhanid War - Book review

In 1256, a large reinforcement increased the Mongol presence in the Middle East to 150,000 troops, at least, accompanied by women and children (perhaps another 600,000) and herds (at least 15 million animals) - a population about equal to that of Chinggis Khan's homeland. (Simultaneously, an even larger Mongol force attacked southern China; such were the military resources of the Mongol Empire.) Thereupon, the Mongols destroyed the strongholds and state of the Assassins, who had defied or imperiled all previous Middle Eastern powers since the eleventh century. Next, the Mongols seized Baghdad, killed the caliph and essentially terminated the caliphate, the sometime and still theoretically ruling institution of the Muslim world. Then, in 1259, the Mongols sent an army of (nominally) 60,000 cavalry - over one-third of their Middle Eastern strength - against Syria. Aleppo was taken by force; the other cities, Homs, Hama, and Damascus, surrendered; and the various rulers and armies of Syria fled, joined, or were taken by the Mongols. Mongol units moved into Palestine and as far as the frontier of Egypt. So far, ordinary episodes in the extraordinary record of Mongol warfare.

But then, in the spring of 1260, most of the Mongols withdrew from Syria, leaving an occupying force of one tumen (a unit nominally of 10,000 men). That summer, the Egyptian Mamluk army engaged this unit at Ayn Jalut in Palestine and, fighting on advantageous terms, as the Mamluks saw it (more on this later), defeated and drove them from the Levant. The victory, while immensely heartening for the Muslims, was by no means conclusive. The defeated Mongol commander, 'Ketbugha, stated the position to his Mamluk captors - according to the Mongols' Persian historian, Rashid al-Din - as follows (in my paraphrase): "You've got me, but there are 300,000 more like me." For the next six decades the Mamluks had to prepare and maintain a defense against the possibility - and on one occasion the actuality - of another gargantuan invasion.

Dr. Amitai-Preiss' fine study helps us understand the Mamluks' unlikely success in this daunting project, and in doing so, fills a significant gap in the scholarship on the Middle East of the thirteenth century. General histories of the Mamluks, Crusades, and Middle Eastern Mongols have not given close consideration to the wars of the Mongols and Mamluks, yet these determined the outcomes of Mamluk and Crusader history, and provide unique insight into Mongol society. Mongols and Mamluks also enlarges and improves on previous specialized discussions of the subject,(1) providing not only a detailed presentation of information from the sources, and reconstruction of a coherent story from their varied accounts, but analyses of the source materials to amplify his reconstruction. As the author puts it, this is "narrative history interspersed with chapters of a monographic nature."

An introduction discusses the scholarship and sources, two chapters then treat Mongol expansion and the rise of the Mamluks to power in Egypt, the Mongols' invasion of Syria, and their defeat by the Mamluks at Ayn Jalut. The third and fourth chapters describe the Mamluks' mobilization of internal and external resources: establishment of control over Syria, sponsorship of a renewed caliphate, enlistment of Beduin and Turkmen, enlargement and improvement of the Mamluk regular army, diplomatic and commercial engagement with the Mongol Golden Horde and Byzantium (the source and transit route, respectively, of slaves for the Mamluk army) - as well as the hostilities between the Mongols of the Middle East and the Golden Horde, and the attempts at cooperation between the Middle Eastern Mongols and the Crusaders. Narrative history resumes in the fifth chapter, on the border wars in Syria during 1262-77, and, after a special treatment of espionage in chapter 6, continues with Baybars' invasion of Mongol/Seljuq Anatolia (chapter 7), the death of Baybars and his "posthumous victory" at the 1281 battle of Homs (chapter 8), which is as far as Dr. Amitai-Preiss follows the story in this volume. The ninth chapter discusses frontier defense, commerce and other traffic in general terms, drawing on details from chapter 5. Finally, chapter 10 considers the military methods of the Mamluks and Mongols, logistics, and the "dynamics" of the war: the Mongols' dedication to world-conquest and the Mamluks' stubborn and ultimately successful resistance.

The old explanation of the Mamluks' success gave them far superior numbers: 120,000 against 10,000 Mongols in the battle at Ayn Jalut, for instance. But these long odds derived from mistranslation; the source claimed only 12,000 Mamluks. The Mongol army in the Middle East, with some 150,000 regulars and at least an equal number of auxiliaries from the Mongols' subject peoples (making up Ketbugha's 300,000), in fact greatly outnumbered the Mamluks. In Mongols and Mamluks, after a thorough and skillful exploitation of the Mamluk sources and an able if less exhaustive use of those favoring the Mongols, Dr. Amitai-Preiss attributes the effectiveness of Mamluk resistance to their morale and determination, the leadership of Baybars, the failure of Mongol-Crusader cooperation, enlargement of the Mamluk army, and the distraction of the Mongols by internecine wars.

The Mamluks' morale, their disciplined desperation, certainly helped them win at Ayn Jalut and in the other hard-fought struggles covered in Dr. Amitai-Preiss' book. From 1259, when Qutuz, the Mamluk ruler, expressed his defiance by executing Mongol envoys, the Mamluks knew that they had their backs to the wall, that they were fighting for their "home territory, for their [Muslim] religion, their kingdom and their lives." In the battles of 1260, 1277 and 1281, therefore, the Mamluks persevered as the Mongols defeated elements of their army in the initial fighting; they rejected the conventional expedient of rapid flight, and finally prevailed.

Baybars' leadership had many aspects. He gained power by murdering his commanding officer and sovereign, Qutuz, the hero of Ayn Jalut. He then improved his public image and provided the Mamluks with a mission by reestablishing the caliphate in the person of a fugitive Abbasid from Baghdad, and accepting from him the title "Associate of the Commander of the Faithful" and the duty of carrying on jihad against the infidel Mongols and Crusaders. This accomplished, Baybars sent the caliph, or let him go, to his death invading Mongol Iraq - with an army of only four hundred men! Both the caliph and Baybars may have thought that the Mongols had withdrawn from Iraq as they had previously from Syria (more on this below), but Baybars had political and military motives for murder: a caliph, and a brave and active one at that, might not make a comfortable colleague in government - Baybars kept his next caliph mostly out of the way. And even a pin-prick attack on Iraq could win time for Baybars to build up Mamluk defenses.

As general, Baybars led his army out of Egypt into Syria almost every year of his reign, ostensibly, sometimes actually, to defend it against a Mongol incursion; usually, however, to seize Crusader fortresses or lay waste to Cilician Armenia, ally of the Crusaders and Mongols. These campaigns forestalled cooperation between the Mongols and the Crusaders, a factor that seems of less importance than Dr. Amitai-Preiss attributes to it, considering that before the Mongols' overtures to the west finally brought a Mongol advance from Anatolia in (inconsequential) coordination with a Crusader landing at Acre in 1271, Baybars had already reduced the Crusaders to a toe-hold on the Levant coast. He had taken Caesarea, Haifa, and Arsuf (1264-65), Safad (1266), Jaffa and Beaufort (1268), and the major strongholds of the Crusading Orders, Chastel Blanc, Crac des Chevaliers, Gibelacar (1270); besides devastating Cilician Armenia (1266) and overwhelming the county of Antioch (1268). In his fifties and the last year of his life, 1277, Baybars even took the offensive against the Mongols, leading an invasion of Anatolia, destroying a Mongol army and occupying - briefly - the chief city of the Mongols' vassal Seljuq dynasty. The force he had recruited, trained, and exercised then went on to inflict on the Mongols the major defeat of 1281, with which Dr. Amitai-Preiss' story ends.

Baybars also created communications systems (a pony express, fire and smoke signals, and a pigeon-post), an espionage apparatus, and a program of fortification. This last involved demolishing strongholds and cities on the Levant coast to deny the Crusaders defensible places they might seize from the sea. In the zones adjacent to the Mongols, Cilician Armenia, Antioch, and even Aleppo, the Mamluks reduced populations by devastation or neglect, and urged or forced those remaining in northern Syria to flee whenever Mongols approached. (The Mamluks probably wanted no one, by inclination or compulsion, to provide invading Mongols with allies or "arrow-fodder.") Baybars also strengthened castles in the interior and built up two powerful fortresses, al-Bira and al-Rahba, on the Mongol frontier of Syria. These fortresses served as lookouts against Mongol attack, as bases for Mamluk or Mamluk-sponsored raids into Mongol territory, and as intelligence-gathering centers; they also attracted several...