Note 669 — Chapter VI · (continued 2)

Holagú was the grandson of Jengish khan. Born in 1127 A. D., Jengish khan, in the first moiety of the thirteenth century, came with six hundred thousand Tartars from the high lands between China, Siberia, and the Caspian sea, to act his formidable part in the Southern countries, already deluged with blood by the unceasing wars of the Arabs, Persians, and Turks. The dominion of the Seljuk dynasty, torn asunder by the dissensions of their members, during forty years after Sinjar, their Sultan, last mentioned in the Dabistán (p. 440), terminated with Toghrul the Third, in 1193 A. D.; there remained still a vigorous branch of it in Jelál-eddin, sultan of Khorazm, who retired before the great conqueror towards India; he was overthrown in a great battle on the Indus, in 1222 A. D. Jengishkhan died in 1227, after having made a division of his immense empire: he gave the kingdoms of Khorassan and Kabul to his fourth son, Tuli khan, who died soon after his father, leaving four sons, the two eldest of whom were the above mentioned Maikú kán (Mangu khán), and Holagú khán. The former ruled in Tartary, the second proceeded to the conquest of Persia and the empire of the khalifs. It was necessary first to subdue the Ismâilahs.

Rukn-eddin, according to Mirkhond, offered submission to Holagú: it was by accident that an action took place between the Ismâilahs and the troops sent by Holagú to take possession of Alamút. Rukn-eddin, after some delay, during which he had taken his residence in the fort Maimun-diz, surrendered his person to Holagú, who had come to besiege it. With Rukn-eddin was the celebrated astronomer Nassir-eddin Túsí, who acted as ambassador and mediator; but seeing the ruin of the Ismâilahs, not, as he pretended, in the position of the heavenly bodies, but in the circumstances, he is accused of betraying his master and delivering him into the hands of the conqueror. More than forty castles, full of the Molhuds’ treasures, were destroyed in a short time; among the last were Lamsir and Alamút; the inhabitants of the latter hesitated to surrender, not being able to separate themselves at once from their accustomed glory and independence, whilst their sovereign acted as an instrument in the hands of the conquerors for delivering up his own subjects, having lost, with his good fortune, all firmness and nobleness of mind.

One of the forts only remained: it was Kirdcoh. The feeble Rukn-eddin, on his way to Mangu khan, could not prevail upon himself to give it up, and instead of ordering the garrison to surrender, as he had promised, he sent them word to resist. Proceeding towards Tartary, he was put to death by the officers of his escort, who probably had received orders to that effect from Mangú khán. A death-mandate was also executed upon Rukn-eddin’s sons, daughters, relatives, servants, and other followers all over the country; thousands of the Ismâilahs fell under the sword of the Tartars. Holagú completed the conquest of this powerful sect, which had been formidable in Asia during one hundred and sixty-six years, in the year of the Hejira 654, A. D. 1256.

But the Ismâilahs did not cease to exist in Persia, where, even in our days, some remains of them are to be found. We read in the Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay (vol. II. pp. 281-294), that the parents of a Muhammed Mahdi, claiming descent from Ali, were inhabitants of Júnpúr, a town near Benares. He was born in the year of the Hejira 847 (A. D. 1443), declared himself a Mahdi, in Hejira 903 (A. D. 1491), first in Mecca, and then in Western India, in Guzerat, and Ajmír; and died in Hejira 910 (A. D. 1504), in Furuh, a city of Khorassan, not without leaving many followers, communities of whom remain, even in our days, most numerous in Sind, Guzerat, and the Deccan.

Halagú, after the overthrow of the Ismâilahs, marched towards Baghdád, it is said, at the instigation of Nassir-eddin. The celebrated seat of the khalifs was taken and destroyed in the year of the Hejira 656 (A. D. 1258), without the required efforts to defend it having been made by the thirty-seventh and last khalif of the Abbasides. This inglorious prince, fallen into the hands of his barbarous enemies, met with a cruel death, being packed up in a piece of felt, and dragged through the streets of his capital. With him perished the khalifate, a dominion once the most powerful and absolute of the world. It began with Abu Bekr in the eleventh year of the Hejira (A. D. 632), and lasted 645 lunar, or 625 solar years, during 520 of which it remained in the house of the Abbasides. The khalifate of the Fatimites in Egypt had ceased to exist in the year of the Hejirah 567 (A. D. 1171). All attempts to raise another khalifate in Asia and Africa had but a short and confined success, or none at all.