The Secret History of the Mongols recounts the lineages of the Mongol tribes in the form of a founding myth. The ancestor of the future Great Khan, we are told, was born fatherless from his mother Alan Qo’a, just like Jesus. She said:
Every night, a resplendent yellow man (shira gü’ün) entered by the light of the smoke-hole or the door top of the tent, he rubbed my belly and his radiance penetrated my womb. When he departed, he crept out on a moonbeam or a ray of sun in the guise of a yellow dog (shira noqai) [. . .].
When one understands that, the sign is clear: They are the sons of Heaven (tenggeri-yin kö’üt) [. . .]. When they become the rulers of all, then the common people will understand!1
It may seem awkward to begin an article on quite concrete diplomatic cor-respondence with a mythical tale. But I have chosen to open this study with these quotations because they include two motifs, which occur repeatedly in the diplomatic correspondences addressed to the kings of France and the Supreme Pontiffs. Here we find both the affirmation that the Mongol Khans are the “sons of Heaven” and the invocation of the protection of Heaven, the tenggeri, to submit all the peoples. In the diplomatic correspondence pre-served in Latin, meanwhile, Genghis Khan is often referred to as the “son of God,” in other words the son of the tenggeri.
The objective here is to cast new light on the evolution of the diplomatic exchanges between the Great Khans of Mongolia, and later the Ilkhans of Iran, and the Latin West. It will be seen that the unconditional “non-negotiation”
of the Great Khans gradually evolved under the Ilkhans, in response to politi-cal circumstances, leading them to adopt an apparently more conciliatory
* This chapter is a revised version of a paper published under the title: “De la ‘non négocia-tion’ à l’alliance inaboutie. Réflexions sur la diplomatie entre les Mongols et l’Occident latin,”
in Les relations diplomatiques entre le monde musulman et l’Occident latin, eds. D. Aigle and P. Buresi, special issue, Oriente moderno LXXXVI/1 (2008): 395–436.
1 Secret History § 21. On the development of this legend, see chapter 6.
attitude towards the West. The Ilkhans sought military aid against a common enemy, the Mamluk sultanate of Cairo. But this alliance would never come to fruition, due to the mutual incomprehension of the two parties. A change of mentalities would have been necessary, but this never happened. The Ilkhans’
proposals of alliances with the papacy and the kings of France were, in fact, almost always accompanied by a demand for submission, at least implicitly.
The Mongol rulers considered themselves the most powerful on Earth thanks to the mandate they claimed to have received from Heaven. All peoples, even if they were potential allies, were required to obey them. As for the holders of power in the West, be they the incumbents of the Holy See in Rome or the holders of temporal power, their precondition for any alliance was conversion to Western Christianity, as is evidenced by the numerous letters addressed by the popes to the Ilkhans.
By way of introduction, I will briefly consider diplomatic exchanges in Eurasia prior to the creation of the Mongol empire, pointing to the existence of a continuous tradition. There follows a brief historiographical appraisal of the interest shown by researchers who have studied this correspondence from the eighteenth century on. I will consider the problem posed by the analysis of documents such as these, for most of which we have no originals but only translations and copies. The question of intermediary languages and of the interpreters who were needed to carry out these translations will then be con-sidered. In other words, are these translations reliable? Secondly, on the basis of the analysis of a representative selection of the diplomatic correspondence, I will seek to explain the reasons why this alliance never came to fruition.
Preliminary Reflections on Mongol Diplomacy
The Long Tradition of Diplomatic Exchanges in Eurasia
Pre-Mongol Eurasia had already established norms concerning ambassadors,2 or envoys, to use the term found in medieval Turkic and Mongolian sources.3 This is reflected in a “mirror for princes,” the Qutadgu Bilig, the first narrative text written in Middle Turkic in the eleventh century by Yūsuf Khāṣṣ Ḥājib.
He writes:
2 Denis Sinor, “Diplomatic Practices in Medieval Inner Asia,” in The Islamic World: from Classical to Modern Times. Essays in Honor of Bernard Lewis, eds. C.E. Bosworth, Ch. Issawi and R. Savory (Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1989), 337–355.
3 In Turkic, the term for an envoy is yalavach, see Doerfer IV:106–107. In Mongol it is elchi, see Doerfer II:203–207; commentaries’ Igor de Rachewiltz in Secret History I:446, 636, II:666, 923.
And by means of an envoy many fine things may be accomplished. So the envoy must be intelligent, steady, and wise, and a good interpreter of words. Words are his business: he has to know them inside and out [. . .]. He should know how to draw all sorts of documents; how to read and write; how to listen [. . .]. Finally, he must know all tongues when he opens his mouth to speak, and know all scripts when he takes pen to hand [. . .]. The man sent as envoy must be very virtuous, excelling his adversaries in every kind of negotiation [. . .]. The envoy’s job consists in so much speech: if his words are right, he will reach his goal.4
At the time this was written, ambassadors—as during the period which con-cerns us—were men of great abilities, masters of languages, eloquence and negotiation. Furthermore, respect for the immunity granted to ambassadors was a fundamental in diplomatic relations, and also represents an element of continuity between the pre-Mongol and Mongol periods. The region’s rulers generally respected this immunity, apart from some exceptional cases, which led to terrible reprisals. One such example is the well-known case of the inva-sion of Hungary in 1241, which arose from King Bela IV’s failure to respect the immunity of the Khan’s envoys. This offence was compounded by another
“fault.” He had admitted into his territory the Cumans who had in the mean-time become subjects of the Mongols. The text of the ultimatum intended for Bela IV is addressed to Salvius Salvi, the papal legate in his court.5 It was recorded by the Dominican Julian of Hungary on his return from his mission
“ad Magniam Ungariam” on 21 December 1237.6 The letter was written “in pagan characters and in the Tartar language” (littere autem scripte sunt litteris
4 Yūsuf Khāṣṣ Ḥājib, Wisdom of Royal Glory, chapter 33, 125–127.
5 On this ultimatum, see Denis Sinor, “Un voyageur du treizième siècle: le Dominicain Julien de Hongrie,” BSOAS 14/3 (1952): 589–602. Discussion on the dates of the travel, ibid., 595–
598; “Diplomatic Practices,” 343–344; “Les relations entre les Mongols et l’Europe jusqu’à la mort d’Arghoun et de Bela IV,” Cahiers d’histoire mondiale 3 (1956): 32–43; Jean Richard,
“Ultimatums mongols et textes apocryphes,” 215; Peter Jackson, “World-Conquest and Local Accommodation: Threat and Blandishment in Mongol Diplomacy,” in History and Historiography of Post-Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East: Studies in Honour of John E. Woods, eds. J. Pfeiffer and Sh. A. Quinn, in collaboration with E. Tucker (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 2006), 6–7.
6 Concerning the location of this region, see Denis Sinor, “Autour d’une migration de peuples au Ve siècle,” JA (1946–47): 64–66; “Un voyageur du treizième siècle,” 595–598. See the discus-sion on Magnia Hungarica in ibid., 595–597.
paganis sed lingua tartarica).7 The missionary included a Latin translation of the document in the report he sent to the papal legate. This was the first letter addressed to a Western monarch by the Mongol Khan:
I Chayn,8 messenger of the Heavenly King, to whom he has given the power on Earth (nuntius regis celestis, cui dedit potentiam super terram) to exalt those who submit to him and cast down his adversaries (deprimere adversantes) [. . .], I wonder at you, King of Hungary, that although I have sent you messengers thirty times, you have sent none of them back to me [. . .]. I know that you are a rich and powerful king [. . .]. It is therefore difficult for you to submit to me voluntarily. I have further learned that you keep the Cumans, my slaves (Cumanos servos meos), under your pro-tection. Whence I charge you that hence forward you not keep them with you, and that you nor make me your enemy on their account.9
The identity of the author of this text cannot readily be determined. Denis Sinor considers that it was Batu, the Khan of the Golden Horde,10 while Peter Jackson attributes the ultimatum to the Great Khan Ögödei.11 The Chayn in question declares himself the “messenger of the heavenly king,” that is, king of Eternal Heaven, and says that the latter has given him “power on Earth,” a detail which could mean that the ultimatum was promulgated by Ögödei, but relayed by Batu.
But the identity of the sender is not the most important point here. The let-ter itself bears a message, which preaches the Mongol conception of peace—
assuming that the Latin text is an accurate translation of the Mongolian, as it probably is. As we shall see, Latin translations of the time of the Great Khans of Mongolia appear to be faithful to the Mongolian originals. It would seem
7 Latin texte in H. Dörrie, “Drei Texte zur Geschichte der Ungarn und Mongolen,”
Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen 6 (1956): 178.
8 The Latin Chayn is a corruption of the title Great Khan, see Denis Sinor, “Un voyageur du treizième siècle,” 595.
9 Heinrich Dörrie, “Drei Texte zur Geschichte der Ungarn und Mongolen,” 179. English translation in Denis Sinor, “Diplomatic Practices,” 344; Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410 (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2005), 60–61. This letter was not the first ultimatum sent by a Great Khan; we also have evidence of a letter sent from Ögödei to the Saljuq sultan of Rūm in 1236 which is preserved by Ibn Bībī, see Peter Jackson, “World-Conquest and Local Accommodation,” 6–7.
10 Denis Sinor, “Un voyageur du treizième siècle,” 595.
11 Peter Jackson, “World-Conquest and Local Accommodation,” 6.
that the “language specialists” who acted as intermediaries in making the text accessible to its addressee had a good knowledge of Mongol political culture.
A Brief Historiographical Assessment
This diplomatic correspondence between the Mongols and the Latin West aroused the interest of researchers from an early date. The first oriental-ists to study the letters of the Great Khans passed a stern judgement upon them. Failing to place these documents in their cultural context, Henry Hoyle Howorth (1842–1888), for example, considered them a good example of the intolerable arrogance of the Mongols.12 However, other, earlier scholars, had made better assessments of the letters. Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (1693–
1755), a preacher and church historian, considered the correspondence in his Historia Tartarorum ecclesiastica, published in 1741.13 His object was to study the efforts of the Latin missionaries sent to convert the Mongols and their subject populations. In 1824, Jean-Pierre Abel de Rémusat (1788–1807)14 set about studying this diplomatic correspondence from a cultural perspective.15 He analysed, for example, the Chinese-language seal on a Mongolian-language letter sent by the Ilkhan Arghun to Philip the Fair in 1289. This great orientalist commented on the seal as follows:
The application of these Chinese hieroglyphs over the names of Egypt, Jerusalem and France, translated into Tartar letters, is quite singular and remarkable. Such a juxtaposition speaks to the imagination, and seems to express the new relationships that the Crusades, on one hand, and the conquests of Genghis Khan, on the other, had brought about between the peoples of the two ends of the Earth.16
Rémusat considers that the contacts with the civilization of the Far East had succeeded in releasing Europe from the narrow-mindedness into which it had fallen since the end of the Roman Empire.17 This study paved the way for
12 Eric Voegelin, “The Mongol Orders of Submission,” 384.
13 [Johann Lorenz von Mosheim =] Laurenti Moshemii, Historia Tartarorum ecclesiastica, Helmstadt, 1741.
14 See a biography of Jean-Pierre Abel de Rémusat in “Notice sur les travaux de M. Abel-Rémusat, par M. Landresse,” JA (1834): 205–231; 296–316.
15 Abel-Rémusat, Mémoires sur les Relations politiques des princes chrétiens, et particulièrement des rois de France avec les premiers empereurs Mongols (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1824).
16 Abel-Rémusat, Mémoires, 115.
17 Abel-Rémusat, Mémoires, 156.
Paul Pelliot, who in the early twentieth century produced a number of stud-ies on this diplomatic correspondence and especially on the Dominican and Franciscan missionaries,18 as well as for Jean Richard’s extensive research.19 Despite their interest, and their importance for the subject of this article, I will not consider these works here, as they already form an important part of the secondary corpus on which, in addition to medieval sources, this research is based.
Communication Difficulties: A ‘Scattered Multilingual Corpus’
The Mongol empire included a great many different peoples and ethnicities:
hence the difficulties in communication experienced by embassies. Thomas Allsen, in his introduction to the Eurasian cultural context of the composi-tion in Yemen of the Rasūlid Hexaglot, a multilingual diccomposi-tionary, very rightly remarks that:
Being a language officer in the Mongolian realm was in no sense limiting;
on the contrary, it was a key that opened many doors. Since language learning and language competence was such a political asset.20
We have a number of the diplomatic missives addressed by the Mongol authorities to the popes and to the kings of France Louis IX and Philip the Fair.21 The popes in turn wrote letters to the Mongol rulers, in particular to the
18 Paul Pelliot, Recherches sur les chrétiens d’Asie centrale et d’Extrême-Orient; “Les Mongols et la papauté,” Revue de l’Orient Chrétien XXIII (1922–23): 3–30; XXIV (1924): 225–235;
XXVIII (1931–32): 3–84. References are to the three volumes of the review, rather than to the work of Paul Pelliot which was never completed, see Jean Richard, Au-delà de la Perse et de l’Arménie, 65, n. 17. On these envoys, see also Igor de Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys to the Great Khans.
19 Jean Richard, “Le début des relations entre la papauté et les Mongols de Perse,” JA (1949):
291–297; “Ultimatums mongols et textes apocryphes,” 212–222; “Chrétiens et Mongols au concile: la papauté et les Mongols de Perse dans la seconde moitié du xiiie siècle,” in 1274–
Année charnière–Mutations et continuités. Colloques internationaux du CNRS no 558, Lyon-Paris, 30 septembre–5 octobre 1974 (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1977), 30–44; “La politique orientale de Saint Louis. La croisade de 1248,” in Septième centenaire de Saint Louis. Actes des colloques de Royaumont et de Paris (17–21 mai 1970) (Paris, 1976), 197–207; “D’Älǧigidaï à Ġazan,” 57–69; La papauté et les missions d’Orient au Moyen Âge (XIIIe–XVe siècles);
Au-delà de la Perse.
20 Thomas T. Allsen, The King’s Dictionary, 35.
21 The kings of England attempted a rapprochement with the Ilkhans, but this did not result in any concrete military collaboration, see L. Lockhart, “The Relations Between Edward I and Edward II of England and the Mongol Īlkhāns of Persia,” Iran 6 (1968):
Ilkhans when the latter were seeking to form an alliance with the West.22 It must be noted that in this period, the religious aspect—the attempt to bring the Mongols to the Christian faith—was as important in the papal diplomatic efforts as the political element: the struggle against the mutual enemy, the Mamluks of Egypt who were threatening the last Frankish colonies in Syria and Palestine as well as the Christian kingdom of Cilicia, which was allied to the Mongols.
A first group of letters includes Güyük’s reply to two letters sent by Pope Innocent IV to “the King of the Tartars and his people” after the invasion of Eastern Europe, as well as the text of an edict.23 We also have a letter addressed to Louis IX by the regent Oghul Qaimish, which has been preserved in a frag-mentary state in Jean de Joinville’s Vie de Saint Louis.24 To these texts may be added Möngke’s two letters.25 The king of France was also the addressee of a letter, dated May 1248, forwarded or sent by Eljigidei, Güyük’s representative to the Middle East. These first letters were written between 1246 and 1254. They are repetitive, consisting of straightforward invitations to submit fully and unconditionally to Mongol authority,26 with the exception of Eljigidei’s letter,
23–31; Reuven Amitai, “Edward of England and Abagha Ilkhan. A Reexamination of a Failed Attempt at Mongol-Frankish Cooperation,” in Tolerance and Intolerance. Social Conflict in the Age of the Crusades, eds. M. Gervers and J.M. Powell (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2001), 75–84, notes, 160–163; Denis Sinor, “Les relations entre les Mongols et l’Europe jusqu’à la mort d’Arghoun et de Bela IV,” 52–57; “The Mongols and the Western Europe”; Felicitas Schmieder, Europa und die Fremden. Die Mongolen im Urteil des Abendlandes von 13. bis in das 15. Jahrhundert (Thorbecke: Jan Thorbecke Verlag Sigmaringen, 1994), in particularly 103–105, 108; Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 167–172, 174, 177, 179, 183–184.
22 They also sent letters to the princes and khans see Lupprian, to Sartaq no 39, 209–212; to Berke Khan, no 40, 213–215; to Qubilai, no 47, 237–241 and no 54, 255–257; to Qaidu, no 55, 258–260.
23 In his first letter “Dei patris immensa,” the Pope gives an account of the Christian doctrine, text in Lupprian, no 20, 141–145; in the second “Cum non solum omines,” he threatens the Mongols with divine punishment should they again attack Western Christendom, text ibid., no 21, 146–149. On these papal letters, see Jean Richard, La papauté et les missions d’Orient, 70.
24 Jean de Joinville, 425.
25 Guillemus de Rubruc, Itinerarium, 307–309.
26 On these letters, see Eric Voegelin, “The Mongol Orders of Submission,” 378–413; Jean Richard, “Ultimatums mongols et textes apocryphes,” 212–222; Peter Jackson, “World-Conquest and Local Accommodation,” 3–22.
which I will consider separately.27 A second group of documents consists of the Ilkhans’ letters to Popes Gregory X (1271–76), Honorius IV (1285–87), Nicholas IV (1288–92) and Boniface VIII (1294–1303), and to the kings of France Louis IX and Philip the Fair.28 In these letters, the Mongol sovereigns of Iran seek to establish relations with the Latin West. The first in this series of letters dates to 1262. It was sent by Hülegü two years after the defeat inflicted on a small detachment of Mongol troops by Mamluk forces at ʿAyn Jālūt in Palestine on 3 September 1260.29 The last letter sent by an Ilkhan was addressed by Öljeitü to the king of France Philip the Fair in 1305.30
The vast majority of these diplomatic missives were written in Mongolian,31 but very few originals have come down to us in that language. We have a small number of originals in Mongolian and Latin, as well as two contemporary translations. The letter sent by Güyük to Pope Innocent IV has come down to us thanks to the transmission of a Latin translation, but there also exists a Persian version, preserved in the form of an original document.32 We also have one bilingual letter: on the reverse of the Mongolian text of Öljeitü’s let-ter of 1305, addressed to Philip the Fair, there is a translation into Pisan Italian, which we will return to later. But the vast majority of the texts consist of con-temporary Latin translations (whose Mongolian original have not survived), and of copies transmitted in the accounts of the Franciscan and Dominican missionaries or in chronicles. The original documents are all the more
valu-27 See Paul Pelliot, “Les Mongols et la papauté,” XXVIII, 12–38; Jean Richard, “ D’Älǧigidaï à Ġazan”; Au-delà de la Perse, 159–162; Denise Aigle, “The Letters of Eljigidei, Hülegü and
valu-27 See Paul Pelliot, “Les Mongols et la papauté,” XXVIII, 12–38; Jean Richard, “ D’Älǧigidaï à Ġazan”; Au-delà de la Perse, 159–162; Denise Aigle, “The Letters of Eljigidei, Hülegü and