Other Players in the East During the Crusades

I once read a book authored by an Eastern Orthodox Christian. Judging by the author's name I assumed the person was Russian Orthodox. But that's just an assumption and I can't remember the name of the book or the author. It was not a thick history book on Christianity but it was a light 300 or so pages. But it was fascinating to me reading it as the perspective and chosen focuses were so foreign to me coming from a Latin Catholic (aka Roman Catholic), American, and Western cultural rearing and perspective.

It was a world of Christianity outside of "Rome" and Western Protestants and secular atheist Western scholars and critics. All of them only had glasses on that saw the story and history of Christianity confined to a white and Western narrative, mainly between the world of Rome to Northern Europe and then much later into the USA.

It was with this Eastern Orthodox author first walked by imagination into the Eastern world of Nesotorian Christians, the Mongols asking the Pope and Western monarchs for an alliance against the Muslims, and the Christian monk from China the great Khan sent to Rome. And according to that author many of the Mongols top ranks were married to Nesotorian Christian women, and that most the scholars among the Mongols were Nesotorian Christians. I remember him stating they viewed the Nesotorian Christian priests as often frightened but very learned, and viewed their (Mongol) contacts with Catholic priests as often very fearless clergymen.




So, this topic deals with politics, religion, and military.

I will post a few separate posts in the thread. Can't make one huge long post. Of course, a topic like this could probably fill 5 volumes of books which each volume over 1,000 pages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cum_non_solum

Cum non solum was a letter written by Pope Innocent IV to the Mongols on March 13, 1245. In it, Pope Innocent appeals to the Mongols to desist from attacking Christians and other nations, and inquires as to the Mongols' future intentions.[1] Innocent also expresses a desire for peace (possibly unaware that in the Mongol vocabulary, "peace" is a synonym for "subjection").[2]

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"You must say with a sincere heart: "We will be your subjects; we will give you our strength". You must in person come with your kings, all together, without exception, to render us service and pay us homage. Only then will we acknowledge your submission. And if you do not follow the order of God, and go against our orders, we will know you as our enemy."

— Letter from Güyük to Pope Innocent IV, 1246.[6][7]

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Mongol_alliance

Several attempts at a Franco-Mongol alliance against the Islamic caliphates, their common enemy, were made by various leaders among the Frankish Crusaders and the Mongol Empire in the 13th century. Such an alliance might have seemed an obvious choice: the Mongols were already sympathetic to Christianity, given the presence of many influential Nestorian Christians in the Mongol court. The Franks (Western Europeans and those in the Crusader States of the Levant[1]) were open to the idea of support from the East, in part owing to the long-running legend of the mythical Prester John, an Eastern king in a magical kingdom who many believed would one day come to the assistance of the Crusaders in the Holy Land.[2][3] The Franks and Mongols also shared a common enemy in the Muslims. However, despite many messages, gifts, and emissaries over the course of several decades, the often-proposed alliance never came to fruition.[2][4]

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Hulagu (1256–1265)

Hulagu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, was an avowed shamanist, but was nevertheless very tolerant of Christianity. His mother Sorghaghtani Beki, his favorite wife Doquz Khatun, and several of his closest collaborators were Nestorian Christians. One of his most important generals, Kitbuqa, was a Nestorian Christian of the Naiman tribe.[4] Military collaboration between the Mongols and their Christian vassals became substantial in 1258–1260. Hulagu's army, with the forces of his Christian subjects Bohemond VI of Antioch, Hethum I of Armenia, and the Christian Georgians, effectively destroyed two of the most powerful Muslim dynasties of the era: the Abbasids in Baghdad and the Ayyubids in Syria.[15]

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Uploaded on Jan 14, 2011

A story of the greatest conqueror ever in world history and his Mongol Empire that ruled the world a thousand years ago.

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A current Muslim today speaking with passion about the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols.

He speaks at the end of the term "dawah." That basically means "missionary" or "preaching" work by mouth, or piety in behavior and dress. He says the women led the dawah effort. In his way he puts the Musalimah (Muslim woman) at the tip of the spear. But he speaks about the massacre of Muslims at the hands of Mongols as if it happened today. And as if the Muslims were mere innocent victims on the chess board of those regions. If they were or were not I'll leave that up to the individual to discern on their own. But certainly the massacre was horrific and innocent Muslims were killed.





Then we have a rather evil Christian man. His brother was supposedly sexually molested (and became used to it) by the Turkish Sultan as one of the boys in his harem. Dracula fought in the Crusades.


A shorter 14 minute video on him:




A longer 35 minute video about him:

The Nesotorian Christian monk from China that was sent to the Pope and monarchs of France, Italy, and England. When he returned to Baghdad, Iraq (controlled by Mongols at the time) he wrote down what he saw and his impressions. Very interesting too.

The Eastern Orthodox author I read simply stated him as a Nesotorian Chinese monk. But the info I am seeing online is that while he was born and raised in China he was actually ethnically from one of the Turkic Mongolian tribes.

His writings were later translated into English in the 1920s and then published in a book titled: The Monks of Kublai Khan

Here: The Monks of Kublai Khan

THE MONKS OF KUBLAl KHAN
EMPEROR OF CHINA

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Section from the authors of that book on the Christians of Baghdad.

The Monks of Kublai Khan

The religion of Muhammad the Prophet began to decay in Persia, Syria and Palestine, and Eastern Europe as soon as the Mongols began their campaigns in the West. The Mongols destroyed every person and thing that opposed their progress, and they turned the regions over which they passed into wastes; the Muslims suffered greatly as being in Mongol eyes the enemies of God and man. The Christian princes and kings of Eastern Europe, and the Popes of Rome, endeavoured to make treaties and alliances with the Mongols, and sent many Missions to them, but none of these potentates realized that the Mongols only wished to gain possession of Jerusalem because they wanted to destroy the Arabs who were in Syria and in Palestine, and to massacre their Saljuk supporters. When the Mongol Kakhans and Khans saw that there was no military assistance to be gained from Europe, their Christian_ zeal began to abate, and the Western Mongols began to fraternize with Syrian and Egyptian Muslims, and Islam began to make progress among them.

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But when Kublai Khan died in 1294, the Muslims began to rebel against the Mongols, and very soon the Arabs everywhere rose against the Christians. The last of the Il-Khans were lazy and feeble men, and were '-powerless to stay the inroads of the Arabs from the South and West. Churches and monasteries were looted and burnt, and if they escaped this fate they were turned into mosques; the Christians were attacked by Mongols and Arabs alike, and their possessions were carried off, and their houses q~ burnt. The young men were sold as slaves, the 'young women were drafted into harims, and the aged, both male and female, died of disease and starvation in the streets. The. Arabs hated the Mongols both as men and as Christians, and their memories of the atrocities committed at Baghdad by Hulagu, nerved them to fight to the death, sparing none.

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Another source on that translation of that monk from China known as Rabban Bar Sauma.

His comments about what he saw and his impressions of Paris and the Pope in Italy are very interesting. As well as Constantinople.

https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/sauma.html#ch7

Three days later the Cardinals sent and summoned RABBAN SAWMA to their presence. And when he went to them they began to ask him questions, saying, "What is thy quarter of the world, and why has thou come?" And he replied in the selfsame words he had already spoden to them (57). And they said unto him, "Where doth the Catholixus live? And which of the Apostles taught the Gospel in thy quarter of the world ? " And he answered them, saying, "MAR THOMAS, and MAR ADDAI, and MAR MARI taught the Gospel in our quarter of the world, and we hold at the present time the canons [or statutes] which they delivered unto us." The Cardinals said unto him, "Where is the Throne of the Catholicus?" He said to them, "In BAGHDAD." They answered, What position hast thou there?" And he replied, " am a deacon in the Cell of the Catholicus, and the director of the disciples, and the Visitor-General." The Cardinals said, " It is a marvellous thing that thou who art a Christian, and a deacon of the Throne of the Patriarch of the East has come upon an embassy from the king of the Mongols."And RABBAN SAWMA said unto them, "Know ye, O our Fathers, that many of our Fathers have gone into the countries of the Mongols, and Turks, and Chinese and have taught them the Gospel, and at the present time there are many Mongols who are Christians

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THE BELIEF OF RABBAN SAWMA, WHICH THE CARDINALS DEMANDED FROM HIM.

"I believe in One God, hidden, everlasting, without beginning and without (59) end, Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit: Three Persons, coequal and indivisible; among Whom there is none who is first, or last, or young, or old: in Nature they are One, in Persons they are three: the Father is the Begetter, the Son is the Begotten, the Spirit proceedeth.

"In the last time one of the Persons of the Royal Trinity, namely the Son, put on the perfect man, Jesus Christ, from MARY the holy virgin; and was united to Him Personally (parsopaith), and in him saved (or redeemed) the world. In His Divinity He is eternally of the Father; in His humanity He was born [a Being] in time of MARY; the union is inseparable and indivisible for ever; the union is without mingling, and without mixture, and without compaction. The Son of this union is perfect God (60) and perfect man, two Natures (keyanin), and two Persons (kenomin)--one parsopa (. . .)

The Cardinals said unto him, "Doth the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father or from the Son, or is it separate?" RABBAN SAWMA replied...

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Same link as post #4.



Rabban Bar Sauma.

RABBAN SAWMA IN FRANSA OR FRANGESTAN.

Afterwards they went to the country of PARIZ (Paris), to king FRANSIS [i.e. Philippe IV le Bel]. And the king sent out a large company of men to meet them, and they brought them into the city with great honour and ceremony. Now the territories of the French king were in extent more than a month's journey. And the king of France assigned to Rabban Sawma a place wherein to dwell, and three days later sent one of his Amirs to him and summoned him to his presence.

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Now notice what's not being said in the quoted translation below, namely that the Franks (French) of Paris are ignorant, Dark Ages, etc. Rather the tone is one impressed by their level of learning, sophistication, and wealth.

(70) And RABBAN SAWMA and his companions remained for a month of days in this great city of Paris, and they saw everything that was in it. There were in it thirty thousand scholars [i.e. pupils] who were engaged in the study of ecclesiastical books of instruction, that is to say of commentaries and exegesis of all the HolyScriptures, and also of profane learning; and they studied wisdom, that is to say philosophy and [the art of] speaking (rhetoric?), and [the art of] healing, geometry, arithmetic, and the science of the planets and the stars; and they engaged constantly in writing [theses], and all these pupils received money for subsistence from the king. And they also saw one Great Church wherein were the funerary coffers of dead kings, and statues of them in gold and in silver were upon their tombs. And five hundred monks were engaged in performing commemoration services in the burial-place [i.e. mausoleum] of the kings, and they all ate and drank at the expense of the king. And they fasted and prayed continually in the burial-place of those kings. And the crowns of those kings, and their armour (71), and their apparel were laid upon their tombs. In short RABBAN SAWMA and his companions saw everything which was splendid and renowned.

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One last one. A very minor player. At least on the Christian side of events and players. A black African from Ethiopia.

I just came across him doing some googling.

Contemporary portrait of Lebna Dengel by Cristofano dell'Altissimo

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawit_II

Dawit II (Ge'ez: ዳዊት? dāwīt), also known as Wanag Segad (wanag sagad, 'to whom lions bow'), better known by his birth name Lebna Dengel (ልብነ ድንግል Ləbnä Dəngəl; 1501 – September 2, 1540), was nəgusä nägäst (1508–1540) of the Ethiopian Empire. A member of the Solomonic dynasty, he was the son of Emperor Na'od and Queen Na'od Mogasa. The important victory over Adal leader Mahfuz may have given Dawit the appellation Wanag Segad, which is a combination of Ge'ez and Harari terms.[1]

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Transversing the Ethiopian highlands, they did not reach Dawit's camp until October 19 of that year. Francisco Álvares provides us a description of the Emperor:

In age, complexion, and stature, he is a young man, not very black. His complexion might be chestnut or bay, not very dark in colour; he is very much a man of breeding, of middling stature; they said that he was twenty-three years of age, and he looks like that, his face is round, the eyes large, the nose high in the middle, and his beard is beginning to grow. In presence and state he fully looks like the great lord that he is.[2]
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Dawit had ambushed and killed Emir Mahfuz of Adal in 1517. About the same time a Portuguese fleet attacked Zeila, a Muslim stronghold, and burned it. In 1523, Dawit campaigned amongst the Gurage near Lake Zway. Contemporaries concluded that the Muslim threat to Ethiopia was finally over, so when the diplomatic mission from Portugal arrived at last, Dawit denied that Mateus had the authority to negotiate treaties, ignoring Eleni's counsels. After a stay of six years, the Portuguese at last set sail and left a governing class who thought they were securely in control of the situation. As Paul B. Henze notes, "They were mistaken."[3]

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The "Crusades" themselves stretched out centuries longer, and in many different locations, than most anti-Christian historians and critics want to acknowledge. they try to create a story, and limit events and personalities, to those things that advance their prejudice, small minded outlook, and even biased Western perspectives. You don't have to even be anti-Muslim nor pro-Christian to recognize that.

It would be like writing 1,000 years from now about year 2017 with the tensions and conflicts between America-Europe and that of Syria, Iran, much of the Muslim world, but leaving out your history any mention of Russia, China, or Africa.