'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎176v] (357/862)

246 HISTORY
power was such that when the Crusaders had established themselves
in western Syria and at Urfa on the northern fringe of the Jazira
(1097-1100) neither the Sultan nor the Caliph at Baghdad gave any
serious help. It was left to the local dynasts or Atabegs of Mosul,
Zangi (1127-1146), Nur ad Din (1146-1174), and later to their lieu
tenant and successor the Kurd Salahad Din (Saladm, 1169-1183), to
organize Moslem resistance. Saladin, an enthusiastic Sunni, put an
end to the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt and built up an empire which
included Egypt, Syria, and the Tigris valley in northern Iraq.
The Abbasid Caliphate gained a final flicker of reflected glory from
Saladin, and the effective Seljuk kingdom was limited to southern
Iraq, Kurdistan, and Azerbaijan in Persia, when the Caliph Nasir
(1180-1225) foolishly invited in the Turkish dynasty ruling in Khiva,
the Khwarizm Shahs, against the Seljuks. The Seljuks were de
stroyed by Shah Takash in 1194, who took the title of Sultan and
tried to deprive the Caliph of his remaining secular powers in
Baghdad itself. The son of Takash was planning to substitute a
Shia Caliphate for the Abbasid when, about 1220, possibly again on
the invitation of Nasir, the Mongolian hordes of Jenghiz Khan, a
heathen people, entered the empire sixty thousand strong, killing
and destroying. The Mongol invasions put an end to the epoch of
continuous Moslem development. The great Moslem cities of
Transoxiana and eastern Persia were destroyed by Jenghiz, and in
January 1258 his grandson Hulagu Khan appeared before Baghdad.
The city was plundered and burned, though not completely destroyed.
The Caliphate and the Abbasid family were extinguished, except for
one Mustansir who fled to Cairo. There down to 15 1 7 a shadow-
caliphate was maintained by the Egyptian Mamluk dynasty, which
had stopped the Mongolian advance on Syria at the battle of Ain
Jalut (1260).
Non-Moslems under the Caliphate
It was only in Arabia, if at all, that the Moslems offered the con
quered the choice between the Koran and the sword. Mohammed
had bidden the Faithful to ‘make war upon those to whom the Book
(i.e. the Bible) has been given until they pay tribute . . . with humilia
tion’, and the bulk of the inhabitants of Syria and Iraq, the countries
first conquered, were Peoples of the Book, Jews, Christians, and
Sabians. Later the term was extended out of expediency to cover
others such as the Zoroastrians of Persia. Hence the establishment
of the Moslem Empire in Asia did not mean that the peoples of these