鲍默《东方教会：亚述基督教图史》第九章：蒙古时期（中英文对照版）

The Period of the Mongols IX

Shamanism and religious syncretism among the

Turko-Mongolian peoples bless mare’s milk with the cross on the altar and all present to drink from it. In this way the Church of the East demonstrated its flexibility in questions of liturgy and its acceptance of inculturation.3 The prince who served as priest was later one of the models for the mythic figure of Prester John.

The Church of the East came into contact with the Turkic and Mongol peoples quite early.1 First towards the end of the fifth or in the sixth century with the White Huns, then less than a century later with some Western Turks; further conversions of Turkic tribes followed in 644 and in the early 780s”, whereupon a small minority of the Uigurs adopted East Syrian Christianity. In 1007 East Syrian missionaries made a real breakthrough with the conversion of the khan of the Keraits and his people. According to the historians Mari ibn Suleiman and Bar Hebraeus, the ruler of the Turks respectively of the Kerait,2 whose homeland stretched from modern central Mongolia to the south into the Gobi Desert, lost his way while hunting in a snowstorm and wandered about in confusion. Then St Sargis appeared to him in a vision and promised to save him, if he would have himself baptized. The rescued khan consulted Nestorian merchants, who were staying in his camp, about this and asked the metropolitan of Merv, Odisho, for baptism. Odisho sent a priest and a deacon, who promptly baptized the khan and 200,000 Turks or Kerait, adapted the fasting regulations to Mongol customs, and allowed the khan to

At that time the Turko-Mongolian peoples worshipped the sky or the god of the sky, called Tengri (for which reason their religion is also called Tengrism) as well as numerous natural phenomena such as mountains and the points of the compass. The shaman – called qam among the Turkic peoples – served as mediator between human beings and the spirits, the personifications of natural phenomena. Although Tengrism also included ideas about the afterlife in the world to come, to which the shamans would lead the soul, the actions of the shamans concentrated on influencing good and evil spirits in coping with everyday life.4 Thus shamanistic Tengrism did not necessarily consider as rivals other religions that were strongly oriented towards the world to come, as long as they avoided absolute religious claims. Religious tolerance was expressly declared in the 1206 law codex of Genghis Khan: ‘All religions shall be respected; none shall be preferred to the others.’5 In the same spirit the Great Khan Möngke (ruled 1251–1259) expressed his view to the Franciscan William of Rubruk (c.1215–1295) on the eve of Pentecost Sunday in

A copper amulet, measuring 5x5 cm, from the Ordos, Inner Mongolia. The amulet is typical of the religious syncretism of the thirteenth/ fourteenth centuries, as it combines symbols from two religions: the Christian cross and the Buddhist swastika. However, since many of these so-called Ordos-crosses were bought in the antique market, they lack stratigraphic context and their provenance remains doubtful. Furthermore, similar looking copper seals have appeared in the art dealers’ market which allegedly stem from Afghanistan and are tentatively attributed to the Bactriana-Margiana Archaeological Complax dating 2300/200-1500 BCE. 53a

1254: ‘We Mongols believe that there is only one God [the sky god Tengri], in whom we live and die, and to him we direct our whole hearts. But, as God gave the hand several fingers, so he gave human beings several ways to achieve blessed- ness.’6 Möngke’s call for tolerance was also based on the fact that the claim to absoluteness is alien to a folk religion tied to a certain people, while it is the basis for universal religions.

But the religious tolerance of Mongol Tengrism ended where the claim to absolutness of mono- theistic religions led to the disparagement of other religions. First, before the start of a great religious disputation, which took place in 1254 in his presence among shamanists, Buddhists, Muslims, Nestorians and Rubruk, Great Khan Möngke had the following rule proclaimed: ‘He [Möngke] orders that, under pain of death, no one shall dare to use quarrelsome or injurious words against the other party.’7 Second, the tolerant spirit of shamanism rejected the accusations that its belief in the spirits was a reprehensible superstition. Thus, in the long term Buddhism, whose popular form showed aspects of polytheism and which had no problem adopting foreign deities into its pantheon, stood closer to the nomadic Mongols than did monotheistic faiths such as Christianity and Islam with their claims to absolutness. On the other hand, over time many of the settled Turkic peoples bowed to the absolute claims of the teachings of Mohammed, which also spread with the help of the sword, and were Islamicized. The lack today of Christian architectural evidence within the geographical area of the Turko-Mongol peoples is explained by the fact that the nomads had mobile tent churches, while the churches of the settled Christians were destroyed by the subsequent Muslim rulers. customs. The ancient Mongol belief in the omnipotent sky god Tengri paved the way for the monotheistic idea of belief in the one God. On the other hand, Christian symbols mutated into protective amulets that were also worn by non-Christians. The best-known examples are the more than 1000 so-called Ordos-crosses that were found in the region of the Öngüt Mongols in the Chinese provinces of Ningxia and Inner Mongolia. About two-thirds of these small metal amulets are really cruciform, but the others are either decorated with other symbols such as swastikas or represent geometric patterns and birds.8

In the case of Christian-Mongolian syncretism, the question arose of how many liturgical compromises could be granted without betraying or at least seriously diluting the essence of the Christian spirit. While belief in the efficacy of amulets was relatively harmless and widespread even within Christian praxis, the matter of lavish burial rituals was more contentious. The 676 synod of Patriarch Giwargis I (in office 661–680) had already condemned the addition of heathen burial rituals to Christian funerals. ‘Christian dead shall be buried in the Christian

Because of the tolerance of the Turko- Mongolian peoples and the flexibility of the Nestorian missionaries, these peoples could accept Christianity without abandoning their

bishop only once every few years or once a decade, it is not surprising that some Turko- Mongol Christians were more closely oriented to their old customs, and Christian doctrine was reduced to a vague concept of the afterlife. not the heathen manner. For it is a heathen custom to shroud the dead in choice, luxurious garments.’9 Nonetheless, Rubruk observed among the Mongols burials that could no longer be reconciled with Christianity. ‘In the case of one who had recently died, I saw that they had hung around the grave, between tall poles, 16 horsehides, four towards each direction of the compass. They also provided mare’s milk to drink and meat to eat, and they declared that he had been baptized.’10 Although the Church of the East used natives to fulfil the functions only of priests and deacons, and bishops came from Mesopotamia or Iran and were correspondingly educated, the enormous distances hindered the maintenance of orthodox rituals. Since individual nomadic tribes were visited by their

Camel caravan in the desert of Khongorin Els, southern Gobi, Mongolia. This desert formed the southern border of the Kerait, the majority of whom were Nestorian.

Nestorian Turkic

and Mongol peoples

The Kerait

The Kerait, who, according to Bar Hebraeus converted around 1007, and became under the leadership of Toghril Khan (r. with interruptions 1165/71–1203) in the late twelfth century the most powerful Mongol people, remained Nestorians,

at least among the nobility. A few rulers, who called themselves Gur Khan, ‘Universal Khan’, adopted Christian names. Thus Toghril’s grandfather was called Marghuz – that is, Mark. At that time Marghuz fought the Tatar people and the northern Chinese empire of the Jin (1115–1234), a people of Manchurian ancestry, for rule over eastern Mongolia. Marghuz fell into the hands of the Tatars, who handed him over to the emperor of the Jin. The emperor mocked the Christian king in an especially cruel fashion, having him nailed with long nails to a wooden donkey – a contemptuous allusion to Palm Sunday.11 Marghuz’s grandson Toghril later avenged his ancestor when, together with his protégé and ally Genghis Khan (whose father Jesügei had also been poisoned by the Tatars in 1176) he destroyed the Tatars in three battles between 1196 and 1202. The nobles were massacred and the common people sold into slavery.12 Khan Marghuz’s son, Toghril’s father, also bore a Christian name, Cyriacus († c. 1165/71), Qurjaquz in Mongolian.13 When Qurjaquz died, Toghril rebelled against his uncle, murdered all his brothers and, thanks to his blood brotherhood with Jesügei, Genghis Khan’s father, established himself as ruler of the Kerait. of his tribe. Thanks to Toghril’s military aid, Temüjin prevailed, after which, in 1185 or 1189, a few Mongol tribes declared him khan.15 When the Naiman people, who were also Nestorian and who lived to the west of the Kerait, drove out Toghril Khan, Genghis Khan showed his gratitude. He conquered the Naiman and in 1196 helped Toghril to regain the throne. Now Toghril Khan was again the most powerful Mongol prince and could hope, with Genghis Khan’s support, to become the acknowledged ruler of all the Mongol peoples. Thus developed the vision of unifying the Turko-Mongol peoples, of whom at least seven were more or less Nestorian, into a Nestorian empire under the leadership of a Christian ruler.16 Since some 30 to 40 per cent of the Turko-Mongols living between Lake Balchasch in eastern Kazakhstan and Manchuria were Nestorian, this idea was entirely conceivable.

The great spread of Christianity among the Turko-Mongol peoples, who lived so far from Baghdad, bears witness to the indomitable and also systematic missionary spirit of the Church of the East. The missionaries, skilled in foreign languages, had not only to convert new believers but also to reinforce Christians in their faith. In this regard the Syriac liturgical language served as the mortar necessary to maintain the unity of the faith community. However, the status of Christianity remained weak, since it did not control a homogeneous region and since the Christian faith remained syncretistic with numerous shamanist beliefs.

It is not widely known that the eventual world conqueror Genghis Khan (c.1167–1227), whose personal name was Temüjin, was for a long time a vassal of the Nestorian Gur Khan Toghril.14 After the Tatars poisoned Temüjin’s father Jesügei and his followers deserted him and his mother, he placed himself under the protection of his father’s former ally, Toghril Khan. At that time the prince’s camp was located south-east of the present capital, Ulan Bator, where magnifi- cently dressed Nestorian priests read the Mass in a tent chapel and on special occasions censed and blessed the Gur Khan in this chapel. Toghril renewed with Temüjin the mutual assistance pact he had concluded with his father and promised to help him win back his position as the chief

That the powerful Toghril Khan provided one of the background figures for the myth of Prester John, the mysterious Christian ruler in the Far East, is revealed by the travel report of Marco Polo, in which he equates the Kerait prince with the presbyter John.17 But Mongolia was too small for the two khans, and in 1203/1204 Genghis Khan overthrew his one-time patron Toghril Khan – the fleeing Toghril was killed by a Naiman.

The Oirat, Merkit and Manchurians

Two years later, in 1206, at an assembly held on the River Onon in eastern Mongolia, Genghis Khan had himself declared Kha Khan, Ruler of all Rulers. Now Genghis Khan dismantled the structures of the traditional tribal relations by dividing the people according to the decimal system into groups of one thousand, made up of members of different tribes and peoples, and assigned their leadership to deserving officers. Thus did Genghis Khan unify the approximately two dozen Turko-Mongol tribes, who numbered about one to 1.5 million people, into the Mongol nation, under the leadership of a military aristo- cracy. By assigning to each group of one thousand and its higher grouping of ten thousand a specific area in which to live, he limited the mobility of the nomads and transformed their innate tendency to move from place to place into an invincible military machine.18 The adherence to a religion, however, which earlier was closely bound up with tribal membership, became in this way a private matter.

To the north of the Keraits lived two additional peoples, among whom Nestorian Christianity was once present. One of these peoples was the Oirat, whose homeland lay south-west of Lake Baikal, who submitted to Genghis Khan in 1208. Two centuries later, with the aid of the Chinese, the Oirats conquered Mongolia in 1434 and broke the hold of Genghis Khan’s descendants on Mongolia.20 The other people was the strongly turkicized Mongol people called the Merkit, who made their home south-east of Lake Baikal. The destiny of Genghis Khan was closely bound up with them, since Temüjin’s mother was a Merkit who had been abducted from a Merkit leader by Jesügei. As revenge, Merkit later abducted Temüjin’s first bride, Börte, whom he was able to win back with the help of Toghril. From then on Genghis Khan considered the Merkit, like the Tatars, to be his arch-enemies. In 1204/1205 he twice defeated the Merkit, who had allied themselves with the likewise Nestorian Naiman, and conquered their fortress Taikal, which lay to the south of the modern city of Ulan Ude. He gave the wife of the Merkit khan’s son, Töregene, to his third-eldest son Ögödei as a wife, who later gave birth to the future Great Khan Güyük. But Güyük was no Christian as two Nestorian messengers had erroneously reported to King Louis IX of France (see p. 213). As the Franciscan John of Plano Carpini (1182–1252), who met Güyük in the autumn of 1246 at Karakorum, reported, the Great Khan was surrounded by Nestorians; a Nestorian tent chapel stood before his yurt.21 In 1205 the majority of the Merkit submitted. A minority, however, moved to the west into the region north of Lake Balchasch in modern Kazakhstan, where Genghis Khan’s most experienced field commander, Sübütai, annihilated them in 1216.22

After his victory over the Kerait, Genghis Khan integrated them into his Mongol tribes. He took as his wife a Nestorian niece of Toghril, Ibaka- Beki, and married her younger sister Bektumish- Beki to his eldest son Jöchi and her youngest sister Sorqaqtani-Beki to his youngest son Tolui (†1232). Thanks to these marital alliances, Christianity gained entrance into the family of the world conqueror. The Nestorian Sorqaqtani (†1252) became the most influential Mongol princess, as she was the mother of the Mongol Great Khan Möngke (ruled 1251–1259), of the Great Khan and later emperor of China Kublai Khan (ruled 1260–1294) and of the Il-Khan of Iran, Hülägü (ruled 1256–1265). Following the death of Great Khan Güyük, she succeeded in mounting a palace coup by supplanting the line of the clan of Ögödei with that of Tolui, which she herself led, thus enabling the election of Möngke.19

Far to the east of Lake Baikal lived a Tungus- Manchurian people, who were also Nestorian.

The Nestorian prince Nayan, who ruled over Manchuria and rebelled against Kublai Khan in 1287, is surprised in bed by the advancing army of Kublai Khan. (Illustrated manuscript of Marco Polo’s Book of the Wonders of the World from 1412. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Ms. fr. 2810, fol. 34. RCC 18438.)

Marco Polo reported that its ruler, Prince Nayan, who was a distant cousin of Kublai Khan, rose up against his uncle, the emperor of China, in 1287. The Nestorian rebel appears to have been so powerful that the 72-year-old Kublai Khan personally set out for Manchuria, which he reached after twenty forced marches. Here he encountered the army of Prince Nayan, whose standard displayed the cross, for ‘Nayan was baptized and bore the cross on his banner. But that did not help him’, as Kublai Khan won victory, took Nayan prisoner, and had him executed.23 Many gravestones preserved in Manchuria testify to the presence of the

Church of the East in a region that lay more than 7000 kilometres, as the crow flies, from the patriarchal see.24

Marco Polo continued: ‘After the defeat the Buddhists and Muslims couldn’t help but mock the Christians on account of the cross on Nayan’s standard: Just look how the cross of your God helped Nayan, a true servant of Christ! [When Kublai Khan learned of this] he sharply rebuked them: The cross properly did not help Nayan, since he was a nefarious traitor who rebelled against his ruler and deserved his fate. The cross of your God did good by not helping him oppose justice.’25 It speaks to the religious tolerance of the Mongols that Kublai Khan, who personally inclined towards Buddhism, did not bear a grudge against the Christians for this betrayal by a Christian vassal.

Kublai Khan’s magnanimity is all the more surprising given that earlier one of the princes

The Öngüt

who was closely associated with the Nestorians had contested his right to the throne. The case concerned his younger brother Arikböge, another son of the Nestorian Sorqaqtani, who Rubruk implied was a Christian.26 Arikböge fought a four-year civil war with the help of a group of powerful Nestorians. Among these were the former imperial chancellor and finance minister of Möngke, Bulgai, as well as Möngke’s chief wife, Kutuktei, whose baptism Rubruk believed he had witnessed.27 When Arikböge surrendered in 1264, Kublai placed him under house arrest until his death in 1266, while he had Bulgai executed.28 Once again the Church of the East suffered the misfortune of being on the side of the loser in a political conflict.

The city walls of Olon Sume-in Tor, Inner Mongolia, China. Olon Sume- in Tor was the capital of the majority Nestorian Öngüt, whose ruling family also belonged to the Church of the East. Since the king was also a bishop, he united secular and spiritual authority. In the 1930s and 1940s archaeologists found in the city many Nestorian gravestones, as well as the badly damaged ruins of a Nestorian church and of the Catholic Cathedral of Montecorvino, built in the Gothic style after 1295.54

With regard to the Turkic people of the Öngüt, the Church of the East stood on the side of the victors. The Öngüt, whose homeland lay on both sides of the great northern bow of the Yellow River in the eastern sections of the present provinces of Inner Mongolia and Ningxia and who were in large part Nestorian, positioned themselves from the very beginning on the side of Genghis Khan. Because they lived between the Great Wall of China and the eastern part of the Gobi Desert, they were of exceptional strategic importance for both the northern Chinese empire of the Jin and the emerging Mongol power, and for this reason the Jin had allied themselves with them as guardians of the Great

and married her young son Poyao Ho to his daughter Alakhai-Beki. After Poyao Ho’s death Alakhai ruled the land with an iron hand, and, as she herself was childless, she married two of her stepsons into the ruling Mongol families: Künbuka with Güyük’s eldest daughter and Aibuka with Kublai Khan’s youngest daughter, and Aibuka’s son Görgüz (George) first with Kublai Khan’s granddaughter and then with the daughter of the crown prince Timur (ruled 1294–1307). No one was bound so closely through marriage with the Mongol imperial house as was the Nestorian ruling family of the Öngüt.30 When the Nestorian monks Rabban Bar Sauma and his student Markos – the future patriarch Mar Yahallaha III (in office 1281–1317) – set off in 1278/1279 from their hermitage near Khan Baliq (Beijing) on a pilgrimage via the land route to Jerusalem, they travelled first to the Öngüt Empire, the homeland of the young Markos. Markos, born in 1245, was the son of the Nestorian archdeacon of the then northern capital of Kwashang (Olon Sume-in Tor), which lay about 130 kilometres north of Hohhot in Inner Mongolia.31 The travel report written in the early fourteenth century by a close friend of the future patriarch maintains: ‘When the people of the city and parents of Rabban Markos heard that these two monks had come, they welcomed them with gladness and delight and they escorted them with great honour to the church. And when the report of the arrival of the two monks reached the rulers Künbuka and Aibuka, they had them brought to their camp’, where they were given lavish gifts.32

The Pagoda of the Complete Huayan Sutra, popularly known as Bei Ta, White Pagoda, built between 983 and 1031, near Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. In the thirteenth/fourteenth centuries, the town predecessing Hohhot belonged to the kingdom of the Öngüt and served at times as the winter residence of the Nestorian king. This accounts for the several Nestorian inscriptions from the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) found inside the Buddhist pagoda.55

Wall. But when war broke out in 1204 between the Mongols of Genghis Khan and the equally powerful Naiman, and the prince of the Naiman asked the Öngüt to attack Genghis Khan from the rear, the Nestorian king Alaquch-tägin decided in favour of Genghis Khan and sent him an envoy named Yuhunan (John), who warned him of the Naiman attack. Alaquch-tägin paid for his changed allegiance with his life, as a few of his chieftains, who would have preferred an alliance with the Naiman, murdered him.29

Aibuka was followed on the Öngüt throne by his son Görgüz, who, as a loyal vassal of the Yuan emperors Kublai Khan and Timur, quelled numerous uprisings. In 1294 Timur granted him the title of prince, and in 1298 he was taken prisoner by the Chagataiid khan Du’a and executed. As prince of a compact, unconquered people, as military commander in a strategically

Seven years later, in the summer of 1211, the Öngüt opened the door to China for the advancing Genghis Khan by allowing him to cross the Great Wall without opposition. Genghis Khan did not forget Alaquch-tägin’s help; he placed his widow on the Öngüt throne

Rome in 1288 about the existence of many Christians among the natives, the pope sent the Franciscan missionary and bishop John of Montecorvino (1247–1328) there around 1291. While the Franciscans Carpini and, to a lesser degree, Rubruk, who had visited the Mongol Empire earlier, were there primarily as diplomatic envoys and refrained from missionary activity, Montecorvino travelled for the sake of missionary work to Khan Baliq, which he reached in 1294.34 He was the first Catholic priest to visit China – exactly 659 years after the Nestorian Alopen. Thus began the tragic spectacle that lasted until the second half of the twentieth century: the Catholic Church advanced into regions with Nestorian Christian populations and there directed their missionary efforts primarily not towards the so-called heathens but rather towards the East Syrians. Instead of supporting the Church of the East that had been established there, the Catholic Church infiltrated the Christian communities by setting up parallel hierarchies based on the argument of universal papal authority. important buffer region between the capital Khan Baliq and the Mongolian heartland, and as son-in-law of two emperors, the Nestorian Görgüz was a powerful and politically influential individual. Marco Polo was also impressed by him: ‘King George is of the lineage of Prester John. It is the custom that these kings always obtain to wife either daughters of the Great Khan or other princesses of his family. The rulers are Christians, but there are also many Idolaters [Buddhists] and Mohammedans. King George is the sixth successor to Prester John.’ Marco Polo further describes how King George, together with one of Kublai’s sons, defeated the rebel Kaidu in a great battle.33 Of course, Marco Polo erred insofar as he traced George back to the Kerait prince Toghril, whom he equated with Prester John, since the two lines were not related to one another.

Colophon of a manuscript written in gold ink on blue-coloured paper. It belongs to an abbreviated Gospel book, based on the Peshitta, and is written in the Syriac language and Nestorian script. The colophon states that the book, measuring 18x13 centimetres and completed in March 1298, was written for ‘Sara, the believer, famous among the queens, sister of the illustrious among the warriors and hero among the combatants, George, the glorious king of the Christians, king of the Öngüt’. The book, written in Mesopotamia, never reached Queen Sara, and was kept until 1950 in the library of the Chaldean archdiocese of Amida (Diyarbakir) and since then in the Vatican Library. (Ms. Vat. Syr. 622, 173 v-174.) 56

The Church of the East got a foretaste of this when Montecorvino courted and soon ‘converted’ to Catholicism the then most powerful Nestorian in China, King George, and had a Catholic church constructed alongside the Nestorian church in Olon Sume. Thanks to George’s protection, he built another church in Beijing in 1299, and a third followed the next year. In a letter to the pope of 8 January 1305 he complained first about ‘the Nestorians, who are Christians in name only’ and who hindered him in his work. Then he boasted that he had baptized 6000 people, and for the school ‘I bought one after the other forty boys, the sons of pagans, and then baptized them’ – a missionary practice still used in the twenty-first century.35 Finally he emphasized the conversion of the Öngüt king: ‘Concerning the good King George, from the school of Nestorian Christians, he was converted by me to the truth

It is an irony of history that the only concrete result of the European journey of Rabban Bar Sauma was the endangering of the position of the Church of the East in China! After Rabban Bar Sauma told Pope Nicolas IV in

of the true Catholic faith. He brought over a great part of his people to the true Catholic faith and built a beautiful church. And this King George departed to the Lord six years ago [1298/1299] as a true Christian. He left a son and heir in the cradle who is nine years old. But King George’s brothers, since they were perfidious persons in the errors of Nestorius, subverted after the king’s death all whom had converted [to Catholicism], leading them back to their former schism. And the son of the aforementioned king [George] bears my name; I hope that he will copy his father’s footsteps.’36 the East Syrians as heretics is evident from, for instance, the report of the archbishop of Sultanyie in Iran, John of Cora. Around 1330 he wrote, ‘He [Archbishop Montecorvino] would have converted the whole country [China] to the Christian and Catholic faith if the Nestorians, false Christians and miscreants, had not hindered him.’ He then described the Nestorians as follows: ‘The Nestorians [are] schismatic Christians. These Nestorians are more than thirty thousand in China and are very rich people. They have very beautiful and orderly churches with crosses and images in honour of God and of the saints.’38 The intra-Christian rivalries did not go unnoticed in China. They put off the Mongol upper classes, while the Chinese regarded both Churches as foreign; the Church of the East was considered Mongol, even if also Asian, but the Catholic Church was seen as the Trojan horse of alien powers.

Nestorian gravestone from Olon Sume, Museum of Beilingmiao, Inner Mongolia, China. The inscription in the Turkish language and Syriac script records the name of the deceased. It reads: ‘This is the grave of Awgin the Priest.’

Pope Clement V (†1314) was delighted and in 1307 named Montecorvino archbishop of Khan Balik, although Khan Balik had been a Nestorian metropolitan see since 1248. At the same time he sent seven bishops, three of whom reached Beijing in 1308.37 With the duplication of the hierarchies, Rome entered into open rivalry with the Church of the East, bringing an abrupt end to the Nestorians’ goodwill towards their European brothers in the faith. That the Catholic missionaries of the time condemned

Montecorvino’s report is historically accurate. After King George’s death the nobility, under the leadership of his brother John, returned to the Church of the East, and his son John, who had

been baptized by Montecorvino, died in 1312 or 1314.39 Soon thereafter the Church began to lose believers among the Öngüt, as in the empire as a whole. As a consequence of a general Chinese influence taking hold in the Mongol ruling class, Christian Öngüt converted to Confucianism, Taoism or Buddhism.40 As in all of China, Christianity disappeared shortly after the fall of the Yuan Dynasty in 1368. Surprisingly, around 1930 among the Mongol tribe of the Erküt, in the region of the Ordos, A. Mostaert encountered religious ideas that clearly accorded with Nestorian Christianity, although the Erküt who were questioned were unaware of this connection.41 the city walls and bearing one or more Maltese crosses attest to the Christian past of Olon Sume. In contrast to the grave markers of Kyrgyzstan, which were unworked but naturally polished river stones or boulders, or the altar-like steles and structures resembling sarcophagus lids found in southern China, those of Olon Sume resembled coffins. On the upper long side they bore short inscriptions in the Turkish language and East Syriac script, and the remaining sides were often adorned with garlands or floral patterns. The discovery of additional dozens of gravestones in several ruins, as much as seventy kilometres from Olon Sume, as well as the widely distributed crosses from the Ordos, indicate that Christianity was at that time widespread among the Öngüt and not restricted merely to the urban nobility.42

Since the Öngüt were in part settled and involved in trade, they built cities, among them the northern capital of Olon Sume-in Tor, the ancient Kwashang, and the southern near present Hohhot. While the latter remained occupied after the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, Olon Sume was abandoned after the repeated destructions by the new dynasty of the Ming (1368–1644), with the exception of a brief resettlement at the end of the sixteenth century. The city centre of Olon Sume, which had been surrounded by a clay wall, is partially preserved as ruins. Within the 960x570-metre-wide and as much as 5-metre-high wall, many large piles of bricks and numerous pieces of green- and yellow-glazed roof tiles lie atop several foundations made of solid stone or brick. Archaeologists have identified the ruins of the royal palace, a Buddhist temple, the great Nestorian church and the Catholic church of Montecorvino, built in 1295, with a cruciform layout and tiles decorated in the Gothic style with a relief pattern of flowers. The poor preservation of the buildings may also be attributed to the fact that the Buddhist monastery of Beling Miao, thirty kilometres away, was constructed out of bricks from Olon Sume. Many stone monoliths found both within the environs of the Nestorian church and outside

The Naiman, Uigurs and Tangut

To the west of the Kerait there stretched from western Mongolia to eastern Kazakhstan the homeland of the Naiman, a confederation of eight Turko-Mongol tribes.43 The Naiman were partly Nestorians, too, although the shamans also exercised great influence among them.44 After the defeat of the Kerait, the Naiman were the sole remaining independent power in Mongolia. Genghis Khan controlled the north-east and the Christian Naiman the south-west. Like a magnet they drew the tribes that had been conquered by Genghis Khan, as long as they had not submitted. The decisive battle took place in 1204 near the future Karakorum, where Genghis Khan destroyed the Naiman army. The prince of the Naiman fell, and only his son Küchlüg could escape. The Mongols went to war against him again 14 years later.

Also among the prisoners was Tatatunga, the Uigur keeper of the seal of the fallen Naiman king, as the Naiman had adopted the Uigur script. The Uigur script had developed out of

Just as he would have a thousand years ago, a Mongolian horseman captures horses with a noose attached to a four-metre-long pole. Central Mongolia belonged to the grazing lands of the Keraites and Naiman, who were, in part, Nestorian. the Sogdian, which, like Syriac, was derived from the Aramaic consonant alphabet. Uigur was originally written horizontally from right to left, but under influence from Chinese it began to be written vertically from top to bottom. Also an influence by the vertical spelling of ancient Syriac is possible, since it was used in the Levant for stone inscriptions and painted labellings on walls.45 Genghis Khan recognized the value of the script and commissioned Tatatunga to use the Uigur alphabet to write in Mongolian. Two years later he ordered him to assist his adoptive son Shigi Khutuku to put in writing the Mongol common law in a Blue Book called köke debter. The new Mongol script was also used to codify the Great Yasa, the secret directives for ruling and conducting war. The adaptation of the Uigur script was further developed by the Tibetan scholar Sakya Pandita, who lived in Karakorum from 1247 to 1251, and it continued to be refined into the eighteenth century. However, the Phagspa script, commissioned by Kublai Khan and created by Sakya Pandita’s nephew Phagspa out of the Tibetan seal script, did not gain acceptance and was used only until the fall of the Yuan Dynasty in 1386.46 A few Nestorian gravestones in the southern Chinese coastal city of Zaitun are inscribed in Phagspa.47 In the seventeenth century the Kalmyk, Buryat and Manchurian scripts were derived from the vertically written Mongol alphabet.

The Turkic Uigurs, who lived south-west of the conquered Naiman in today’s province of Xinjiang and were highly developed culturally,

Outer wall of the princes’ necropolis of the Xi Xia Dynasty (1032–1227) near Yinchüan, Ningxia province, China. Many Nestorian communities lived in the realm of the Tangut until the fourteenth century. were for their part mostly Buddhist, with only minorities of Nestorians and Manichaeans, as well as Muslims in the west. The numerous Uigur Turkic documents found in the Turfan basin attest to the spread of Christianity at that time.48 In light of the relentless advance of the invincible Mongols, the Uigur king Bartchuq, who was a vassal of the Kara Khitai Empire, decided in 1209 voluntarily to place himself under the protection of Genghis Khan, which allowed his mostly settled people and the cities to escape destruction.49 eastern Tibetan people called the Tangut and was in its majority Buddhist, but had large Nestorian and Muslim minorities. Rubruk referred that the Nestorians had no crucifix and described a statue of the archangel Michael,50 while Marco Polo – who, in 1273, encountered Nestorians and churches in several cities of Eastern Turkistan, Tangut and even in Xining, on the border with Tibet – saw in the present city of Zhangye ‘three lovely [Nestorian] churches’.51 The pilgrim monks Rabban Bar Sauma and Rabban Markos travelled to Tangut some five years later. ‘They reached the city of Tangut [today Yinchuan in Ningxia]. When the people heared that Rabban Sauma and Rabban Markos had come in order to go to Jerusalem, they went forth eagerly to meet them, men and women, old and young, for the

A more serious opponent than the Uigur was the empire of Xi Xia, which bordered them to the east and corresponded to the modern provinces of Gansu, Ningxia and the western region of Inner Mongolia. It had been founded by the

Shepherd in western Mongolia, homeland of the formerly Nestorian Naiman. people of Tangut were ardent believers and their minds were pure.’52

After the conquest and plundering of Choresm, Genghis Khan took terrible revenge for this offensive insubordination. In the autumn of 1226 he attacked Xi Xia and defeated the Tangut in several battles. Although Genghis Khan died before the end of the war in 1227, prior to his death he ordered that the Tangut capital be razed to the ground and all its inhabitants massacred – which is what happened. In his excavations of 1908–1909 in Kara Khoto, 630 kilometres north-west of Yinchüan, the Russian scholar P. K. Kozlov discovered several Nestorian manuscript fragments in the Turkish language and Estrangela script, which show that there was an East Syrian community on the Tangut border with Mongolia as well.54

After several Mongol military campaigns between 1205 and 1209 the Tangut king – whose capital near present Yinchüan Genghis Khan could not capture – acknowledged Mongol sovereignty and made a commitment to military aid. But in 1219, when Genghis Khan ordered the Tangut to give him troops for the beginning campaign against Shah Mohammed II of Choresm (†1220/21), whose empire stretched from the Caucasus to India and Samarqand, they did not think to fulfil their obligation to provide assistance. Moreover, the commander-in-chief of Xi Xia, General Asa Gambu, mocked the Mongol ambassadors. ‘If his [Genghis Khan’s] troops do not suffice, he does not deserve to be ruler.’53

The Nestorian Küchlüg and the Turkic tribes of present Kyrgyzstan

Nestorian Christianity were able to expand.

The Nestorian refugee Küchlüg succeeded in winning the favour of the elderly Gur Khan Yelü Zhilugu (ruled 1178–1211), who gave him his Buddhist daughter. But in 1210/1211 the power- hungry Küchlüg overthrew his father-in-law, and ruled over the now weakened empire of Kara Khitai until his death in 1218. The usurper intensified the anti-Islamic policies of his predecessor and forced the Muslims of Kashgar and Khotan to convert to either Nestorianism or Buddhism. He had the contradictory imam of Khotan crucified. When Genghis Khan finally pursued his old enemy Küchlüg in 1218, the Muslims of Kara Khitai rebelled and handed the cities of Balasagun and Kashgar over to the Mongols without a fight. With Küchlüg, who was killed while fleeing, the final independent Nestorian Mongol prince passed away.57

When Genghis Khan conquered the tribal alliance of the Naiman, Küchlüg, son of the fallen king, succeeded in escaping to the west. His odyssey concluded in Balasagun, capital of the Kara Khitai Empire, which lay in the valley of the Chu in the Land of Seven Rivers Semirjetschie, to the east of the modern capital of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek. The rulers there were descendants of the Mongol people of the Khitai, who ruled northern China from 907 to 1125 under the name of the Liao Dynasty. When they were driven out by the Manchurian Jin, a minority of the strongly Chinese-influenced Khitai fled to the west and around 1130 took northern Kyrgyzstan away from the Islamic Karakhanids of Kashgaria. The Kara Khitai then conquered Transoxania and Kashgaria.55 The overwhelming victory of the non-Muslim khan Yelü Dashi (ruled 1130–1143) over the two powerful Muslim rulers Rukn ad-Din Mahmud of Samarqand in 1137 and his feudal lord, the sultan of the Seljuks Sanjar, in 1141 presumably provided fertile ground for the myth of the Christian priest-king John. Around 1145 the historian Otto of Freising (1111–1158) reported that an East Syrian presbyter John defeated Muslim kings in Asia and intended to liberate Palestine. That Yelü Dashi was not Christian but rather Buddhist played no role, since at that time Europe did not know of Buddhism and assumed that the successful enemy of the Muslims must necessarily be a Christian prince.56 Now the possibility appeared to the European princes of winning as an ally in the fight against Islam this mysterious Asian ruler. In fact the rulers of Kara Khitai were unique, in that, for the first time in history, the Islamicization of a society was stopped and for a time held at bay. Although the majority of the Turkic peoples of the Kara Khitai Empire remained Muslim, both Chinese Buddhism and

After Genghis Khan’s death the Land of Seven Rivers came under the control of his second son Chagatai (†1242), who supported the Christians. The regions along the Chu and Talas rivers, however, were involved in power struggles among the Mongols, which led to the decline of trade and agriculture. As a conse-quence of the advancing desertification, arable land became pasture, so a nomadic society replaced the earlier agrarian and urban culture. Then, in 1338 and 1339, the plague brought an end to the Nestorian community of the Chu valley, since it carried off practically all the entire settled population, as one can conclude from the great number of gravestones dating from this time. At the same time the Muslim sultan Ali massacred a Roman Catholic bishop and six missionaries in the region of Almalik.58 The last of the about 650 known Christian gravestones of Kyrgyzstan dates from 1345, the last one of Almalik from 1372.59

That Nestorian Christianity flourished in the Chagatai Khanate – that is, the region ruled by the descendants of Chagatai – is clear from historical travel narratives and archaeological

discoveries. Marco Polo, who erroneously called Chagatai a Christian, told of the Nestorian Christians and their churches in Samarqand, Kashgar and Yarkand.60 In fact, around 1180 Patriarch Elias III (in office 1176–1190) added to the metropolitans of Samarqand and Turkistan a Metropolitan John for Kashgar in the far west of Xinjiang.61 Around 1281 and 1350 Almalik, 500 kilometres north of Kashgar on the River Ili, shared the metropolitan see with Beshbaliq.62 When Rabban Bar Sauma and Rabban Markos visited Kashgar six or seven years after Marco Polo, ‘the city was empty of its inhabitants, because it had been plundered by the enemy’.63 However, in 1340 Kashgar was again cited as a metropolitan see. Additionally, until the twelfth century there were Christian communities in Khotan and Asku.64 As the Portuguese Jesuit Bento de Goes (1562–1607) reported, in 1604 the Muslim ruler of Kashgar was aware that his predecessors had been Christians.65

Nestorian gravestone of a woman, Historical Museum of Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The stone remembers ‘Qushtans, the mother of Ispahsalar’ [Persian army leader] and is dated 1573 of the Seleucian calendar, which corresponds to our year 1261/62. The word Qushtans is not a personal name, but is a Sogdian loan-word meaning ‘female teacher’.57

Most of the archaeological evidence for the spread of Nestorian Christianity in the khanate of Chagatai comes from the Land of Seven Rivers. There are the approximately 610 gravestones, which were found in the late nineteenth century in the Chu valley in the two medieval cemeteries of Karajigak, ten kilometres south-east of Bishkek, and Burana near Tokmak, 62 kilometres east of Bishkek. Unfortunately, nearly 500 gravestones were lost in a museum fire in 1939. A few isolated discoveries followed later in the neighbouring regions of Krasnaja Rejka and Kok-Djar, as well as in Saruu on the south-eastern bank of Lake Issyk-Kul and in the diocesan centre of Almalik, which was the capital of Chagatai and his successors.66 In total 210 to 225 gravestones are still extant.67 The earliest gravestones are dated to the years 1095 and 1115 but they are found in large numbers only beginning with 1250, permitting the conclusion that a small Nestorian community was already flourishing here in the period of the Kara Khitai but was later enlarged due either to missionary activity or to the arrival of Christian settlers. A cross is carved into each gravestone, and many bear inscriptions. These Christians of Turkic descent inscribed their gravestones in the Estrangela script, mostly in the Syriac language

The myth of Prester John and the encounter of Catholic monks with Nestorians in Mongolia and occasionally, in the region of Almalik, in Turkic, which suggests that Syriac was the liturgical language.68

(Opposite bottom) Nestorian gravestone, Toktogul Satulganov Museum, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The gravestone, discovered in 1963 near Saruu on the southern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul, bears a lengthy inscription in the Turkish language and Syriac script, which reads as follows: ‘According to the reckoning of King Alexander, it was in the year 1647 [i.e. 1335], on the fourteenth of December…at the first light of dawn, in the year of the mouse, Khan Jenkshi set himself upon the throne, at the head of the empire [of the territory of the Chagatanids] and prepared for this Alma Khatun a commemoration [?], she was a new bride [?]…this woman fled in the year of the pig…she died at exactly age twenty-six…May a memorial be built to her and may she never be forgotten by her friends.’ 58 The young Nestorian woman, who bore the honorific title ‘khatun’, was the wife of Khan Jenkshi (ruled 1335–1338/1339), who came to power because his predecessor and grandfather Tarmashirin (ruled 1326–1334) converted to Islam, inciting the ire of the nomads around Lake Issyk-Kul. They rebelled and elevated the young Jenkshi as their khan. The memorial to Alma Khatun, who died before 14 December 1335, shows that Nestorian women could still in the fourteenth century gain entry into the ruling family of the Ulus of Chagatai, by means of marriage. Khan Jenkshi supported the Nestorians and the Catholic missionaries and had one of his sons baptized with the name John. After his early death around 1338/ 1339 many Christians of Almalik were massacred by the Muslim Sultan Ali.59

The Mongol campaigns of war and plunder that followed the death of Küchlüg were directed mainly against Muslim states such as Choresm, but the Christian Nestorians suffered severely on account of the terrible fighting. This was all the more so because at the time the Nestorians lived principally in cities; every city that mounted an opposition to the Mongols was levelled and its entire population massacred. The Mongol toleration in religious affairs ceased in times of war, as soon as opposition emerged. In the course of the systematic plundering and destruction of Khorassan and Afghanistan between 1220 and 1222, the following cities were destroyed and their inhabitants murdered: Gurgentch with 1,250,000 dead, Nishapur with 500,000 to 1,500,000 dead, Merv with 700,000 to 1,300,000 dead, Bamyan with 500,000 dead – here the Mongols also killed all dogs and cats – Herat with 1,600,000 dead, Ghazna and Balkh with hundreds of thousands dead each. Samarqand and Bukhara were completely plundered, and the male inhabitants were sacrificed as human shields at the vanguard of the next attack on a city. After each conquest the Mongols left behind piles of debris and fields of corpses; in total the approximately 150,000 Mongol warriors murdered, according to Juvaini, about 6,000,000 people.69 The additional mass deportations, however, encouraged the spread of Islam into west and central China.

The background to the creation of the myth of a powerful Christian priest-king in Asia is formed by the Crusades, which began in 1097 to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims, who were preventing European pilgrims from making their journey. After the establishment of the Frankish earldoms of Edessa and Antioch in 1098 and the rapid conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, Muslim opposition hardened. In 1144 the first Crusader state, the earldom of Edessa, was lost to the ruler of Mosul and Aleppo, Zengi (†1146), which inspired the beleaguered Crusaders to seek out allies. It is no coincidence that, just one year later, the historian Otto von Freising for the first time reported that a virtuous and pious Christian king in Asia had defeated Muslim rulers.70 After von Freising gave a second version of his ‘report’ to Emperor Frederick Barbarossa I in 1157, the forged Letter of Prester John to Emperor Manuel I Komnenos (ruled 1143–1180), commissioned by the imperial chancellor Rainald of Dassel, appeared between 1160 and 1165.71

The material for this was supplied by the Nestorians living in Syria and Palestine, who told the Crusaders about the Christian princes among the Turko-Mongol peoples. Since Prester John was for Europeans an incomprehensible, mythic figure, over a long period of time several real Christian princes served as background figures. Among them were the Kerait prince, not known by name, who professed Christianity in 1007; his later successors Mark, Cyriacus and Toghril Khan; the king of Kara Kithai Yelü Dashi; and Gur Khan Küchlüg.72 Historically verified contact of the Crusaders with the Nestorians occurred between 1217 and 1221, when Bishop Jacob of Vitry (†1240) accompanied the Fifth Crusade to Egypt and met East Syrians in Damietta. In his letters he referred to the Christian subjects

The long-term consequences appear just as dramatic, as the oasis lands of Khorassan and Afghanistan, renowned for their fertility, literally turned to desert. Whole regions were depopulated, the irrigation canals fell into ruin and arable land turned fallow. The deserts found today in Khorassan and Afghanistan are not all natural phenomena but, rather, were created by the hand of man, the consequence of a campaign of nomadic raids of gigantic proportions.

of the priest-king as Nestorians and described a King David, who was a great-grandson of Prester John and had conquered Kashgar, Bukhara and Samarqand. Now Genghis Khan, who had stormed Bukhara and Samarqand in 1220, stood behind the mythical Christian king.73 At first, on account of the innaccurate reports, the Western European princes and the pope could regard the advancing Mongols as potential allies against the Islamic states of the Middle East, but the attacks on the Christian kingdoms and principalities of Georgia in 1221 and Russia in 1223, as well as the destruction between 1237 and 1241 of most of the cities of Russia, the Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia and Dalmatia, taught them better. The Mongols were no pious Christians but rather a warrior people whose army had achieved an incomparably higher level of organization and discipline than had those of Western Europe. Only Ögödei’s death in 1241 saved Western Europe from destruction, since the election of a new great khan required the presence of the leading princes and officers – the Mongolian horsemen disappeared with as much haste as they had burst forth from the barren steppes. In order to salvage the myth of John, the chronicler Alberich of Troisfontaine (†1259) ‘reported’ that King John had been killed in an uprising, which left open the option of looking for his heirs.74 hoped to be able to win the Nestorians back to the ‘true faith’.

Ruin A of the complex of Khukh Burd Süme, central Mongolia. The floorplan of the two-storey building, which rises as high as seven metres, is cruciform. A palace was constructed here in the seventeenth century atop the ruins of an older temple from the eleventh/twelfth centuries.60 Since at that time Buddhism had not yet gained a foothold in Mongolia, and adherents of shamanistic Tengrism erected no permanent sacred buildings, the question arises of whether a Christian-Nestorian shrine was originally found here in the area of the Christian Kerait.

Pope Innocent IV seized the initiative and sent four delegations in rapid succession. While Laurent of Portugal, named in 1245, presumably only got as far as the Mongol encampment on the Caspian Sea, John of Plano Carpini (1182–1252) reached his goal, as he first met Batu (†1255), the khan of the Mongol Golden Horde, whose rule encompassed Russia and the Caucasus, and then late in the summer of 1246 attended the inaugur- ation of Great Khan Güyük at Karakorum. Caprini was surprised not only by the presence of numerous Christians of various confessions in the great khan’s camp but also by the fact that Nestorians held the highest state offices. Among them were the imperial chancellor Chinkai (†1251/1252), who independently ruled northern China, ‘where no edict could be proclaimed without the approval of Chinkai written in Uigur’, and Güyük’s tutor, military commander, and imperial administrator, Qadaq (†1251/1252).75 However, even though Güyük surrounded himself with Nestorian ministers, he never came

Western Europe was aware of the impending danger of the feared Mongols. Although the Mongol princes were not Christians, they had destroyed the powerful Islamic empire of Choresm; additionally, many Christians lived under their rule. The rumour also persisted that the Mongol rulers were prepared to accept the Christian faith. These factors and the loss of Jerusalem again to Islam in 1244 inspired Pope Innocent IV (in office 1243–1254) and King Louis IX of France (ruled 1226–1270) to initiate direct contact with the Mongol great khans, in order to keep them out of Europe and to explore the possibilities of a strategic alliance. The pope also

close to considering being baptized or supporting the Crusaders. To the contrary, his two letters to the pope include barely concealed threats of war: ‘This is a decree to the great pope. You sent us an offer of your submission, which we have accepted. You have said that I should become a trembling Christian, worship God, and become an ascetic. How do you know whom God absolves and whom He shows mercy? From the rising of the sun to its setting, all lands have been made subject to me. Who could do this contrary to the command of God? Thus, if you accept peace, you Pope in person at the head of the monarchs, all of you without exception, must come to tender us service and pay us hommage. But if you should not believe our letters and the command of God, then we shall know for certain that you wish to have war. Only God knows what will happen.’76 Güyük’s reply reveals the limits of the influence of the Nestorian dignitaries, who were evidently well disposed towards their European fellow believers. Güyük’s early death after only two years of rule spared Europe from a third campaign, as his successors Möngke and

Kublai no longer oriented their policies towards the west but rather towards the east.

Less skilful than Carpini were the two Dominicans Ascelin of Cremona and Simon of St Quentin, who spoke before General Baiju in Armenia in 1247. Their arrogant behaviour enraged the commander, who condemned them to death; they owed their reprieve to the arrival of Baiju’s superior, Eljigidei. He sent them back with a letter to the pope and accompanied by the Mongol Nestorian Sarkis. A year later Eljigidei, who was planning an attack on Baghdad for the summer of 1249, sent two Nestorians from northern Iraq, Mark and David, to Cyprus to King Louis IX of France. He offered Louis a military alliance against the Muslim opponents of the Crusaders and asked the pious Christian king to see to the protection of all the Christians living in the Crusaders states, including the Nestorians.77 When the two Nestorians erroneously told Louis that Güyük’s mother Töregene was a Christian, he decided to send the Dominican Andrew de Longjumeau, who had travelled to Tabriz in 1246/1247, to Eljigidei and the Great Khan. When he reached Mongolia in 1250, he met Güyük’s widow Oghul Qimish, who was serving as regent. Her response was cool, as she refused all military alliances and instead demanded tribute.78

Only three stone tortoises, which serve as the bases of steles, recall the one- time capital of the Mongol Empire, Karakorum. The excavations begun by German archaeologists in 2000 have still not found the Nestorian church described by Rubruk.57a

Catholic Europe not only misjudged the Mongol rulers and their policies, it also showed little understanding of its rediscovered sister Churches. In this regard, the Dominicans condemned Princess Sorqaqtani’s Nestorian confessor and long-time representative for Christian affairs, Rabbanata (†1259), whom they met in Tabriz, as ‘a usurer, magician, and heretic doomed to hell’.79 Presumably it was Rabbanata’s support for the East Syrians living in the Crusader states that raised the ire of the Dominicans. During de Longjumeau’s first visit to Tabriz, Rabbanata had given him a letter addressed to the pope, in which he requested

ecumenical unity in prayer and demanded that the Crusaders no longer harass the Nestorians living in the areas under their control.80 Although Catholic Europe appeared before the Mongols as a supplicant, it was unable to overcome its confessional arrogance and prejudices regarding the Oriental Christians. The Armenians, however, acknowledged Rabbanata’s merits without reservation, although they, as Miaphysites, rejected East Syrian Christology. Rabbanata had been sent to the Caucasus and Azerbaijan equipped with wide-ranging authority from Ögödei, in order to prevent the massacre of unarmed Christians of every confession. The Armenian chronicler Kirakos wrote: ‘He established churches in the Muslim cities, where it had until then been forbidden to utter the name of Christ. He built churches, raised crosses, and ordered the holding of worship services with processions, candles, and singing. All the Mongol troops showed him honour.’81 irreparably destroyed the Mongol world empire and saved Islamic Egypt from the fate of Baghdad.

Rubruk stayed with the Mongols for the first half of 1254, first in Möngke’s yurt camp and then in the capital Karakorum. Here the Nestorian clergy received him warmly. ‘The cross raised high with the flag, we proceeded to the church. The Nestorians met us in a procession. Entering the church, we found it prepared for Mass. After it had been celebrated, everyone received communion. They also asked me if I wanted it.’84 The Nestorians not only invited the Catholic Rubruk to the ecumenical communion but also allowed him to use the church so he could baptize three Catholic children. At Easter they then invited all Christians of various confessions – Armenians, Georgians, Melkite Alans, Russians, Hungarians and Western Europeans – to a shared worship service. Nevertheless, in his travel narrative Rubruk made disparaging remarks about the Nestorian priests: they were drunkards, ignorant, corrupt, greedy, at the death of their wives they would remarry, and their bishops would ordain boys as priests.85 He also complained that the Nestorians had removed the crucified figure from a silver cross that had been fashioned by the Karakorum silversmith William for Chancellor Bulgai. However, he acknowledged that at Easter they ‘baptized more than sixty people in very proper form’.86

Despite the rejection of Oghul Qimish, King Louis did not lose heart and sent the Franciscan William of Rubruk to the great khan. In the summer of 1253, in the territory of the Golden Horde near the river Volga, he met the eldest son of Batu Khan, Sartaq, who was a Nestorian. He ruled only briefly, however, from 1255 to 1256, since his Muslim uncle and successor Berke (ruled 1257–1266) had him poisoned.82 Although it escaped Rubruk’s notice that Sartaq was a Christian, he did notice his uncle’s conversion to Islam.83 In this conversion lay the seed of the conflict between the two western Mongol empires: the Golden Horde, which was slowly Islamicized, and the Iranian Il-Khans, who inclined more towards Buddhism and Christianity. Less than four years after taking power, Berke entered into a military alliance with the arch-enemy of the Il-Khans, the Islamic Mamluks of Egypt. Religious convictions were stronger than family and tribal ties, which

To all appearances Rubruk remained in solidarity with the Nestorians. When in 1254 Möngke ordered a great theological disputation at Pentecost between Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and an Uigur Manichaean, the Nestorians chose Rubruk as their spokesman. They presented a united front with the Muslims against the Buddhist by defending the oneness of God. Then the Nestorians debated with the Manichaean and the Muslims. Then, on Pentecost Sunday, Möngke summoned Rubruk and the leading Buddhists and explained to them

Map of East Asia as mural painting in the Sala delle Mappe, also called the Sala dello Scudo, in the Palace of the Doges in Venice, sixteenth century, restored in the eighteenth century. On the map, on which north is below and south above, the old capital of the Mongol Empire, Caracoran (Karakorum), appears in the lower centre and the new capital, Cambalu (Beijing), to the left of it. unthinkable happened. Möngke died, and the Golden Horde threatened the northern border of Iran. Hülägü returned to Iran with most of the troops, and left his Nestorian general Kitbuqa with only a small army. When the Mameluk commander and future Sultan Baibars (r. 1260- 77) of Egypt asked the Crusaders for support against the Mongol invader, the Frankish barons helped Baibars by allowing him free passage through their territory. Baibars, who was originally a Kipchak horse warrior, subsequently defeated the outnumbered Kitbuqa at Ain Jalut near Nazareth and had him beheaded. Baibars ‘thanked’ the Crusaders for their help by seizing most of the coastal cities, such as Jaffa, Caesarea and Antioch. From then on the Mongol Il- Khanate of Iran was on the defensive, and – what his position on religion using the analogy of the five fingers.87

With regard to politics, Rubruk’s mission was a failure, as Möngke’s letter to King Louis reiterated Güyük’s demand: ‘As soon as you [Christian princes] are willing to obey us, send envoys to us. Then we will be certain if you want to have war or peace with us.’88 He made no mention of the French offer of an anti-Muslim alliance. The Mongol armies still appeared unbeatable, and the advance of Hülägü, Möngke’s brother, against the remaining Muslim powers unstoppable. In fact, in 1256/1257 the Mongols stormed and destroyed the fortresses of the feared Assassins and in 1258 conquered Baghdad, after which Damascus fell and the Mongols pushed on to Gaza – but then the

a reversal of fortune – appeared before Western Europeans, scorned just a few years earlier, as supplicants. For the Church of the East, however, the Muslim victory at Ain Jalut had serious long- term consequences.89

The most famous and influential Mongol princess was the niece of the vanquished Kerait king Toghril, Soqaqtani-Beki (†1252), whom Genghis Khan married to his son Tolui, while he married her sister Ibaka-Beki and gave her other sister, Bektumish-Beki, to his son Jöchi. Sorqaqtani not only gave birth to the Great Khan Möngke, Great Khan and Emperor Kublai Khan, his rival Arikböge, and Il-Khan Hülägü, she also was able, after the 1249 death of Great Khan Güyük, who came from the house of Ögödei, to change the succession to the house of her husband Tolui, who had died in 1232 – the house she led. Thus she succeeded in outmanoeuvring Güyük’s widow Oghul Qimish, who was serving as regent and wanted to place her nephew Shiramon on the throne. Before Sorqaqtani, the regent Töregene had already been able to help her son Güyük take the throne.91 In this way the clans of Ögödei, Jöchi and Chagatai were passed over, and Möngke was elected Great Khan in 1251. Almost twenty years earlier, after Tului’s death, Great Khan Ögödei had tried in vain to persuade Sorqaqtani to wed his son Güyük. In 1310, almost sixty years after her death, she was posthumously granted the title of empress, and liturgies according to the East Syrian rite were celebrated in the capital Beijing and in her burial chapel in present-day Zhangye in the province of Gansu.92

Nestorian Mongol princesses and high-ranking Nestorian dignitaries

At the time of the Mongol Great Khans and the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368), the Church of the East found itself in the forecourt of power, so to speak. The goodwill shown towards Christianity rested on three pillars: first, the traditional religious toleration of the Mongol rulers, which benefited all faiths; second, the far-reaching marital alliances established over several generations between the family of Genghis Khan and the Turko-Mongol tribes of Christian faith; and, third, the high educational level of the Nestorians. In particular, the three great khans who succeeded Genghis Khan, Ögödei, Güyük and Möngke, prized the services of Nestorians who could read and write. Under the founder of the Yuan Dynasty, Kublai Khan (ruled 1260–1294), two additional motives emerged for the preference for Nestorians. First, after the conquest of southern China, completed in 1279, Kublai divided society into four social classes: at the top Mongols, then foreigners such as Central Asians and Iranians, third northern Chinese, and finally southern Chinese. In the appointment to high office, the first two classes enjoyed the advantage. The Nestorians, whose numbers were small in comparison to the total population of China, were disproportionately represented in the two upper classes and hardly found at all in the lower classes. Second, the emperor harboured a certain mistrust towards Muslims because the concept of holy war, laid out in the Koran, contradicted the Mongol principle of religious toleration.90

Sorqaqtani was an extraordinary individual, who carefully prepared her sons for their future roles and had great diplomatic skills. The Miaphysite bishop and historian Bar Hebraeus (†1286) wrote of her: ‘This queen raised her sons so well that all the princes marvelled at her power of administration. [She had led the clan of Tolui since 1232.] She was a Christian, sincere and true like [Queen] Helena. A certain poet said, if I were to see a second woman like her, I should say that the race of women was far superior to that of men.’93 It should be added that the social status of women among the Mongols was incomparably better than it was in China, for instance, or

in the Muslim societies. It is a phenomenon observed among many nomadic peoples that the woman is equal to the man in her area of life, and has wide-ranging responsibi-lities not only in household affairs but also in the management of the herds.

Ögödei and that of Tolui, they took the side of Güyük’s widow Oghul Qimish and supported the Ögödei’s clan. But when, thanks to his mother Sorqaqtani, Möngke prevailed, he had both ministers executed in 1251/1252. However, this did not prevent Chinkai’s descendants from holding high state offices during the Yuan Dynasty.96 The Nestorian Bulgai had a similar biography. He served Möngke as finance and interior minister; in the latter function he was responsible for the great khan’s security. The Muslim historian Juvaini reported that Bulgai appeared at the Möngke’s enthronement as the ‘leader of all ministers’ – that is, as prime minister.97 But, like Chinkai and Qadaq, after Möngke’s death he chose the wrong side. He supported the loser Arikböge against his brother Kublai Khan, who had him executed in 1264.

Sorqaqtani’s cousin Dokuz Khatun (†1265), likewise a pious Nestorian, was a still more resolute champion of her religion. Dokuz Khatun was at first like Sorqaqtani married to Genghis Khan’s youngest son, Tului, and after his death she married one of the sons resulting from the marriage of Tului with her cousin, namely Hülägü, the conqueror of Mesopotamia. Dokuz Khatun’s niece, the Nestorian Tuqiti Khatun, also married Hülägü. Dokuz Khatun exercised great influence over her husband and arranged for him to have several churches built, in which the Buddhist Hülägü attended mass. She also saw to it that the discriminatory measures placed on Christians were lifted.94 Her son Abaqa (ruled 1265–1282) also had a Nestorian wife, named Nukdan Khatun, as did his son Arghun (ruled 1284–1291). This wife was Uruk Khatun, who had her son baptized with the name Nicholas, but he converted to Islam for political reasons and ruled under the name Oljaitu (ruled 1304–1316).95

General Kitbuqa, a Nestorian from the tribe of the Naiman or Kerait, also met with a violent death. As Hülägü’s best commander, he participated substantially in the 1258 conquest of Baghdad and the defeat of the powerful Assassin sect. After the conquests of Aleppo and Damascus, Hülägü appointed him governor there. The Christians greeted Kitbuqa and Hülägü as liberators sent by God to free them from six hundred years of Muslim bondage. For the Christians of Mesopotamia and Syria the appearance of the Nestorian General Kitbuqa seemed to herald a new era, in which they would for the first time have equal rights with the Muslims. They secretly hoped that Hülägü, under the influence of his Christian wife Dokuz Khatun, would convert to Christianity. To the oppressed Christians Kitbuqa appeared as a historic St George who stormed in from Asia to liberate and avenge them. They had gratefully noticed that, during the conquest of Baghdad and Aleppo, the Mongols had spared the Christians from the general massacre each time. For a short time there emerged the dream that Christians would rule the Middle East again and

Besides these princesses, the Nestorians Khan Sartaq and King Görgüz of the Öngüt, Nestorian ministers and military commanders also exercised considerable influence. Chief among these were Chinkai, born c.1171, and later Qadaq. Both were, first, long-time commanders under Genghis Khan, after which they served Ögödei and Güyük as ministers. After his military career Chinkai became governor of Altai, then state secretary under Ögödei and chancellor under Güyük, as which he ruled northern China practically independently. Qadaq, for his part, was Güyük’s tutor and rose to become imperial administrator. In the power struggle that broke out after Güyük’s death, between the house of

Mesopotamia for the first time. One can in fact speculate that a triple alliance of the Mongols with the Crusaders and Byzantium might have broken the sole remaining Muslim power, the Mamluks. This in turn might have inspired the Mongol Il-Khans to accept not Islam, which was alien to them, but rather Christianity, which was familiar on account of family relationships. But it worked out differently, as Kitbuqa was decisively defeated on 3 September 1260 at Ain Jalut, after which the victorious Mamluks conquered Damascus and carried out a bloodbath among the Christians as revenge.98 came from the Chu valley in Kyrgyzstan.99 A less militaristic path was chosen by the Nestorian Simeon Rabbanata (†1259), who was first Toghril Khan’s adviser and later provided pastoral guidance to Toghril’s niece Sorqaqtani.100 After 1233 Great Khan Möngke sent him as an authorized representative for Christian affairs to Azerbaijan and Armenia, where he successfully put an end to the murder of unarmed Christians. At the same time he had churches built in the region around Tabriz, which was hostile to Christians, and baptized many Mongols. Rabbanata worked to establish ecumenical dialogue with Rome, but because of the Roman high-handedness and inflexibility these efforts remained unsuccessful.101

The citadel of Aleppo, Syria, fell in 1260 to the Nestorian Mongol general Kitbuqa, whose ruler Hülägü was very well disposed towards the Church of the East. The Christians of Aleppo and Damascus celebrated the Mongols as liberators from the Islamic yoke. The present fortifications date back to the Ayyubid Sultan Zahir Ghazi (ruled 1193–1215); the Mamluks rebuilt them after the destructions of 1260 and 1400 in the years 1292 and 1402. The citadel was damaged in July 2015 during the Syrian Civil War.

Besides Kitbuqa other Nestorian military commanders are known by name, such as, for example, one Giwargis, one Sauma, who died in 1272 and one Yohannan Tegin, all three of whom

Under the dynasty of the Yuan (1271–1368)

Nestorians also occupied high office, although their power was less than that of their forebears who had served the great khans. In China at that time Christians of all confessions were called Yelikewen, the phonetic rendering of the Mongol term Ärkä’ün. This was then connected to the Greek, with the accusative form the Nestorian Mar Sargis was an important participant. He came from Samarqand, and his father and both grandfathers were renowned physicians at the court of the great khan and the imperial family. From 1277 to 1280 or 1282 Mar Sargis served as vice-governor of the strategically important district of Zhenjiang at the juncture of the great canal with the Yangtze. A Chinese chronicle from 1333 reported: ‘One evening in a dream seven gates were opened and two angels addressed him: You must raise seven monasteries. When he awoke, he felt inspired, and then resigned office and devoted himself to building the monasteries.’105 Mar Sargis did have six monasteries constructed in the district of Zhenjiang and another in the port city of Hangzhou.106 In addition, three more Nestorian churches stood north of Zhenjiang in Yangzhou,107 an important river port on the great canal, and a total of six Christian churches were found in the port city of Zaitun, today Quanzhou in the province of Fujian.108 of the nominative

, archon, which means ‘chief’, ‘leader’.102 Thus the Greek term was taken up first by Syriac, after which Nestorian Turko-Mongols adopted it into Uigur and Mongol, and it finally appeared in the vocabulary of Chinese administration.

The most important Nestorian who served the Yuan was the Syrian-born physician and astronomer Ai Xieh (Jesus, 1227–1308). Rabbanata introduced him to Güyük, after which Kublai Khan appointed him head of the office for Western astronomy and medicine. In 1284 Kublai Khan ordered the Nestorian, who was skilled in languages, to serve as translator for a high-ranking delegation to Il-Khan Arghun in Baghdad. From there Ai Xieh took to Pope Honorius IV (in office 1285–1287) a letter, in which the Mongol Il-Khan offered the pope an offensive military alliance against Egypt: ‘The land of Egypt lies between us, we will crush it. We are sending you these messengers and ask you to send an expedition and an army to the land of Egypt. We [will come] from our side and you from yours, so that we will crush them.’103 After his return Kublai named him head of the office for Christian religion in 1291, and in 1297 he was promoted to state minister. He received the posthumous title of a ‘loyal and learned prince of Fulin’. His five Nestorian sons also held high office; however, in 1330 his eldest son Elias was charged with rebellion and sorcery, and beheaded.104

But time worked against the Church of the East, as the Mongol emperors of China, following the death of Kublai Khan in 1294, conformed themselves rather quickly to their Chinese milieu and took increasing attention to its requirements. In 1304 Taoists from Zhenjiang accused the Nestorians in a civil court of converting Taoists south of the Yangtze to Christianity. The verdict favoured the Taoists: ‘Yelikewen are prohibited from usurping precedence in public worship. South of the river [Yangtze] from old times there had only been Buddhism and Taoism, each with its jurisdiction, there had been no Yelikewen besides.’109 The Buddhist clergy of Zhenjiang were also upset about the obvious popularity of the Nestorian monasteries and complained to the central authorities, whereupon in 1311 (or 1309) two imperial decrees were issued. The first ordered: ‘The Yelikewen have taken it to themselves to build Monasteries of the Cross on

As a result of the Mongol conquest of southern China, accomplished between 1276 and 1279, the Church of the East was able to expand into the lower basin of the Yangtze, an expansion in which

land belonging to the [Buddhist] monasteries; let the crosses be torn down and destroyed.’ The second decree added: ‘As for the Monasteries of the Cross, now that [the images] they modelled have been torn down and destroyed, let new images of Buddha be made and the walls painted afresh.’110 Thus did the seven monasteries founded by Mar Sargis pass with time into the hands of the Buddhists.

Asia, no relevant discoveries are known, only a few unverifiable reports from travellers. While it is certainly possible that individual Nestorian traders lived temporarily in South-east Asia, there is no evidence for larger, permanent Christian communities.113

Cross and lotus: a synthesis of Christian and Buddhist symbolism on the eastern coast of China

But the Mongol emperors did not only conform themselves to their cultivated Chinese surroundings. After Timur (ruled 1294–1307), there set in within the imperial family an unprecedented decline, which alternated back and forth between the poles of an unbridled hedonism and a blind devotion to Buddhism. Beguiled by his dissipated life, the last Mongol emperor, Toghan Timur (ruled 1333–1368) looked on idly as rebellions broke out in the south beginning in 1352, after which a Mongol prince from the clan of Ögödei rose up against the emperor, and thus dragged China into civil war – one Mongol army fought against another. Thus it was possible for powerful anti-Mongol movements to drive the Mongols from China and conquer the capital, Khan Baliq, in September 1368. Taking the place of the liberal-minded, cosmopolitan, religiously tolerant Mongols of the Yuan Dynasty was the isolationist and nationalistic dynasty of the Ming. Not only foreign civil servants and soldiers were expelled but also merchants and monks. With the fall of the Mongols Christianity disappeared for a second time from the Middle Kingdom.

The new rulers, the Ming, ordered not only the expulsion of foreign monks but also the destruction of their religious buildings. Thus in 1369 or 1389 in Zaitun, today Quanzhou in Fujian, six Christian churches were razed and the graves of adherents of foreign religions desecrated; the gravestones were used for construction of the city wall. Part of the old city wall was torn down in 1920 and the remainder in 1938. Ancient Muslim and Christian gravestones were found under the rubble. Today this unique collection includes over one hundred Muslim and about forty-five Christian gravestones.114

Under the Yuan Dynasty the city of Zaitun on the Yellow Sea in south-eastern China was the largest port of China. Here in 1292 Marco Polo embarked on his return journey. In this trading metropolis the Chinese met merchants from Burma, Java, Sumatra, Iran, the Middle East and Europe. Among the Christians several confessions were represented, such as Nestorians, Armenians and Catholics. In light of the international character of Zaitun, it is hardly surprising that Christian gravestones have been discovered here, as well as in other southern Chinese cities such as Yangzhou. Some resemble a decorated altar, others the lid of a sarcophagus with a gabled roof, on which is chiselled a cross on a lotus.115 With regard to scripts and languages, six types can be distinguished: 1, Chinese script and language; 2, bilingual in Chinese and Turkic

Did the Church of the East reach Japan or South-east Asia? Much as been speculated about this.111 As far as Japan is concerned, a Mongol steel helmet with a silver cross on its side was found on the western coast.112 However, this discovery does not prove the existence of a Nestorian community, but only that a Christian officer of Kublai Khan lost his life here in the failed second attempt to invade Japan in 1281. As for South-east

language in Syriac script; 3, Syriac script and Turkic language; 4, Phagspa-Mongol script and Chinese language; 5, Uigur script and Turkic language; and 6, Latin. In three Nestorian inscriptions in the Turkic language the formula of the Trinity is written in Syriac.116 Since Turko- Mongol Nestorians generally used the Turkic language, while East Syrian merchants who had travelled by sea favoured Syriac or Arabic, it may be concluded that the majority of the Nestorian community of Zaitun was Turko-Mongols, who functioned there as middlemen. in China also a continual Christian presence from the Tang to the Yuan. The only positive evidence for such continuity is provided by the highly disputed travel report of the Jewish merchant Jacob of Ancona, who is said to have visited Zaitun in 1271 before Marco Polo. According to his narrative, the Nestorian Christians of Zaitun were aware that more than 600 years earlier a ‘certain priest Alofeno [Alopen] of Tatsin’ had come to China. However, the authenticity of the text is highly questionable.119

With regard to the Manichaeans, they survived as a community in a form adapted to Buddhism until shortly after 1600. The only extant Manichaean temple in the world stands on Huo-piao hill in Zaitun. It owes its preserv- ation to a misunderstanding, as the faithful thought that the shrine dedicated to Mo-ni was in fact dedicated to Mu-ni – that is, Buddha Shakyamuni.120 The city of Zaitun, for its part, declined greatly in significance in 1528 when the Ming authorities closed the harbour and concentrated the international sea trade in Guangzhou (Canton).121

The bilingual Chinese–Turkic grave stele is unusual because it was erected for a Nestorian Bishop Mar Solomon, who died in 1313 and who was described as ‘administrator of the Manichaeans and Nestorians in the district of Jiangnan’ – that is, the region south of the Jangtsekiang.117 In light of the thousand-year-old rivalry between Nestorians and Manicheans, it is quite astonishing that a Nestorian bishop also oversaw the Manichaean community. But we find the solution to the puzzle in Marco Polo’s Millione. He reports that around 1292 he and his uncle Maffeo encountered near Fuzhou, some 100 kilometres north of Zaitun, people of an unfamiliar religion. They questioned them and examined their sacred scriptures, which they interpreted as psalters. Thus the Polos identified them as Christians and advised them to have themselves registered as Christians in Beijing, in order to enjoy the privileges accorded to Christians.118 For this reason they were placed under the Nestorian bishop of southern China. Bishop Solomon must have noticed rather quickly, however, that his new charges were not Christians at all but Manichaeans. But as bishop he was also a state employee, and therefore had to oversee the Manichaeans too. In any case, the Manichaeans had succeeded, following the ban of 843, in fleeing not only to Gansu and Turkistan but also to the coastal region of southern China. Thus the question arises, whether there was not

The iconography of the Nestorian gravestones of southern China displays a fascinating synthesis of Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, Iranian and Hellenistic symbols. The cross usually sits on a lotus blossom, which is carried or surrounded by clouds; sometimes two winged angels flank the cross, or a kind of baldachin crowns the cross. The presence of the cross shows that these grave steles were Christian, as Manichaeans would never depict a cross on gravestones. While the bare cross symbolized the resurrection, the Buddhist lotus blossom represents both the rebirth and the purity of the spirit rooted in this life. As J. P. Brereton has shown, the lotus blossom served as a symbol of renewal among the Greeks, Romans and early Christians as well, and thus was used in funerals.122 The cloud is found in both Taoism and Buddhism; it symbolizes the rain that brings fertility, happiness and peace.

In Christianity, however, the cloud heralds the transcendence of God; for instance, Yahweh leads Israel through the desert in the form of a pillar of cloud (Ex 13:21), he appears to Moses on Sinai in a cloud (Ex 24:16; 34:5), and the Son of Man will appear on clouds at the end of time (Mark 13:26). In China the baldachin represents heaven, and in Buddhism it is one of the Eight Lucky Symbols and signifies high status, as well as protection.

Nestorian gravestone from Zaitun (Quanzhou), China. Two angels are carrying a vessel, in whose lotus- shaped upper part is found a cross. Thirteenth/fourteenth centuries, 17.5x74 centimetres.61 (Maritime Museum Quanzhou.)

Nestorian gravestone from (Quanzhou), China. The angel with double wings holds in his folded hands a lotus blossom with a cross. The authenticity of this figure is debated. A nearly identical one was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.62 (Maritime Museum Quanzhou.)

Finally, angels are familiar in several traditions of the Near East. In the earlier texts of the Old Testament, angels appear first as temporary embodiments of a divine revelation. After the Babylonian Exile, under Assyrian-Babylonian or Zoroastrian influence, they became autonomous spiritual intermediaries between God and the world. They serve as messengers of God, protect individuals and peoples, and praise God. Until the late fourth century Christianity rejected the depiction of winged angels, in order to avoid confusion with the numerous pagan winged victory goddesses, geniuses and cupids. Towards the end of the fourth century there appeared on Christian stone sarcophagi portrayals of two winged angels who flanked or supported the cross, the symbol for Christ’s defeat of death. Such flying angels, supporting the cross, are also found on Armenian and Georgian grave steles and on Coptic tympana and lintels. From the standpoint of iconography the proximity to analogous depictions from the Greco-Roman and Sassanian cultures is striking, as the only differences with the Christian portrayals are that the winged Nike figures are female and hold a laurel wreath instead of a cross.123 This motif was also adopted in the Buddhist cave monasteries of eastern Turkistan, in the form of flying wreath bearers in Kyzil and heavenly musicians, the so-called apsara, in Dunhuang. Finally, there is an equally striking resemblance in Zaitun itself, between the depiction of angels in the roof timbers of the Great Hall of the Buddhist Kayuan temple from the later thirteenth century and the reliefs on the twin pagodas there.124 It cannot be determined whether the Buddhist wooden figures influenced the design of the Nestorian gravestones or vice versa. On a couple of the steles of Zaitun the angels have moustaches and Mongol crowns or felt caps, which attests to the iconographic blending of Christian and Mongol traditions.125

Two grave steles of Zaitun are unusual, as both feature an angel with two pairs of wings. On one he sits like a Buddhist bodhisattva in the meditation position beneath a large cross; in his hands he holds a lotus blossom, from which a cross emerges; clouds and garlands surround him.126 The second stele is similar, though the large upper cross is absent, and the angel sits in the ‘European’ style on a cloudbank; the future Buddha Maitreya, however, is also portrayed in this type of sitting position.127 The gravestones of Zaitun bring together in various ways significant iconographic elements of other religions and cultures, which represent inner peace, rein- carnation and the overcoming of death, to create under the sign of the cross a new, richly

and, above all, Hülägü’s Nestorian chief wife Dokuz Khatun, the Christians of Baghdad were spared from the general massacre. As a sign of the esteem he enjoyed, Patriarch Makika received one of the caliphal palaces as his new residence, where he had a church built. In the north, Christians could also hope for a better future, since after the revolt of the majority Muslim city of Mosul in 1260/1261 the Nestorian general Samdaqu recaptured it, after which the Christian Zaki acted as governor.133 The most powerful Christian governor serving the Il-Khans was Mas’ud of Bar Qawta, who ruled Mosul from 1275 to 1277 and from 1284 to 1289. Perhaps he dreamt of building a Christian khanate encompassing north-eastern Mesopotamia, Kurdistan and Azerbaijan.134 symbolic unity.

This Nestorian grave style was also adopted by Catholics at that time. One example is the grave of Bishop Andrea de Perugia, who had joined John of Montecorvino in 1308 at the behest of Pope Clement V and who died in 1332 in Zaitun.128 The other examples were discovered in Yangzhou; they are the Latin-inscribed grave steles of an Italian pair of siblings called de Vilione. The martyrdom of St Catherina, the Madonna and Jesus are engraved on the stele of Catherina (†1342), and scenes from the Last Judgement on that of Antonio (†1344).129 Although Nestorians and Catholics were at that time at odds, they remained connected through the design of their gravestones.

While the Muslims regard the Mongol onslaught as a catastrophe, in which they lost their God-given pre-eminence, it meant for the Christians a providential liberation from the Islamic yoke. Moreover, the notable piety of Princess Dokuz Khatun and the Christian- friendly policies of Hülägü allowed the Nestorians to hope that the new rulers would convert to Christianity. The Armenian historian Stephanos Orbelian even praised Hülägü and Dokuz Khatun as ‘the new Constantine and Helena, the tools for the revenge against the enemies of Christ’.135 The efforts of the Il-Khans136 to form a military alliance with the European powers also motivated them towards policies favouring Christians. In any case, during the first forty years of Il-Khan reign Christians were no longer an oppressed minority but, rather, enjoyed equal rights with other religious groups. However, the Christians failed to see that the Mongol rulers devised their policies on religion according to strategic and political criteria and themselves, with the exception of the last Yuan emperors, separated their personal preferences from their politics. The Syrian Orthodox maphrian of the East (chief metropolitan) Bar Hebraeus (1225/

A final flourishing under the Mon­ gol Il-Khans of Iran

When Great Khan Möngke handed over rule of the only partially conquered Iran to his brother Hülägü in winter 1251-52, he indirectly inaugurated the final period of flourishing of the Church of the East. He ordered him to conquer the remaining Muslim powers of the Middle East, namely the Abbasid caliphs, the sect of the Assassins and the emirs of Syria and Egypt.130 The previous Mongolian incursions since 1235 had only been brutal raids, which also destroyed several Christian monasteries around Mosul.131 Despite the failures in Palestine and Syria, the conquest of Iran succeeded. Between 1256 and 1257 the fortresses of the Assassins south of the Caspian Sea fell or surrendered, which pleased both Muslim rulers and Crusaders, and early in 1258 Baghdad capitulated. Only when the situation became desperate did Caliph al- Mustasim (ruled 1242–1258) ask the Nestorian patriarch Makika II (in office 1257–1265) to negotiate with Hülägü.132 But it was too late. The conquerors invaded the city. Thanks to Makika

The fortress of Alamut, northern Iran, which was destroyed by the Nestorian army commander Kitbuqa in 1256 and was the headquarters of the Assassins – feared equally by Sunni Muslims and Christians – crowns this rock.

1226–1286) described this pragmatic attitude: ‘With the Mongols there is neither slave nor free man, neither believer nor pagan, neither Christian nor Jew; they regard all men as belonging to one and the same stock. All they demand is strenuous service and submission.’137

Azerbaijan after Muslims attacked a procession he was leading.138 Like the Buddhists and the Jews, the Christians of Iran remained dependent on the goodwill of the rulers and were corre-spondingly vulnerable; they were finally a plaything of political interests. The escalating conflict – breaking out into open war on the northern border in 1262 – with the Golden Horde, which had been increasingly Islamicized since Khan Berke (ruled 1257–1266), also represented a latent threat to the Christians of Great Iran.

Already after the deaths of Hülägü and Dokuz Khatun in 1265, however, there were the first signs that the Muslim majority would not accept their loss of status without a fight. When in late 1268 the Nestorian patriarch Mar Dinkha I (in office 1265–1281) wanted to baptize a Muslim, a mob from the city attacked him. He was able to flee to the house of the city governor and historian Ata Malik Juvaini (1226–1283), after which he left Baghdad and set up his residence in the citadel of Arbela. He later fled to Iranian

With regard to individual Il-Khans, Abaqa (ruled 1265–1282) and Arghun (ruled 1284–1291) were well disposed towards the Nestorians, for domestic and foreign political reasons and on account of their Christian wives. This goodwill is evident, for instance, in the fact that both khans

had for their Georgian vassals coins minted bearing the Trinitarian formula ‘In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the only God’ in Arabic, with a cross integrated into the words.139 Under Abaqa the centre of the khanate moved farther to the north. While Hülägü had transferred his capital from Baghdad to Maragha in the south of the Iranian province of Azerbaijan, Abaqa chose Tabriz, which lay still closer to the threatened northern border. After Abaqa ended the war with the Golden Horde and fended off attacks from Transoxania, he turned towards the west. There Sultan Baibars (ruled 1260–1277), the victor at Ain Jalut, had more than once ravaged the Christian Armenian kingdom of Cilicia, which was closely allied with the Il-Khanate. After Abaqa offered Western European rulers a military alliance three times, all in vain, a joint Mongol–Armenian and Georgian army marched into Syria. But the battle against the Mamluks at Homs in 1281 ended in a defeat of the main Mongol army while the Christians who formed the right wing held their ground; soon thereafter Abaqa died.140 Mar Dinkha had used the favourable political circumstances to reorganize and strengthen the Church in Central Asia and China. At the same time he agreed to the offer of reconciliation made by the Miaphysite maphrian Bar Hebraeus, which was to bring an end to the seven-hundred- year-long disputes between the Church of the East and the Syrian Orthodox Church.

Ahmed threw Patriarch Mar Yahballaha III (in office 1281–1317) into prison as revenge after two jealous bishops denounced him as the ringleader of the rebellion that had broken out. The patriarch owed his life and his release to the probably Nestorian mother of the king, Qutui Khatun. The Nestorians and the Mongol nobility, who rejected the forced Islamicization of Iran, initiated by Ahmed, now rallied around Aqaba’s rebellious son Arghun, who in 1284 defeated Ahmed and had him executed. Khan Arghun (ruled 1284–1291) succeeded in damming the flood of Muslim revolts, granting the Church of the East and the Christians a final and brief period of good fortune. Since Mar Yahballaha III, on account of his alleged or actual support for the rebelling party, just barely escaped death, he came to enjoy the friendship and esteem of Arghun. The patriarch transferred his see to Maragha and was able to rebuild the churches destroyed by Ahmed. A contemporary reported: ‘He enjoyed fame and power as no [patriarch] before him. The Mongols, the Il-khan, and his children bare their heads and bend their knees before him. His orders are carried out in the empire, and the Christians are elevated to great

Obverse of a dirham made of silver, which the Il-Khan Arghun (ruled 1284–1291) had minted for his vassal state, Georgia. The Arabic text reads: ‘In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the only God’; a cross is stamped on the lower left. (Private collection.)

The next two years made the Nestorians clearly aware of their vulnerability. Upon his accession to the throne, Abaqa’s brother Taqudar (ruled 1282–1284), who had been baptized with the name Nicholas, declared his conversion to Islam. He took the name Ahmed and began to destroy Buddhist temples and Christian churches or convert them into mosques, whereupon Nestorians and Buddhists appealed to Kublai Khan. Since he was angered and threatened to place sanctions on his nephew Ahmed,

Gate to the shrine of Sheik Adi in Lalish, northern Iraq. As mentioned by Thomas of Marga in the ninth century, Lalish was originally a Nestorian monastery, which was seized around the twelfth century by the Yezidi, the so-called devil- worshippers, and elevated to their chief shrine. To the right of the gate’s arch there crawls a black snake, symbolizing the principle of evil, which has to be appeased. The Yezidi, who developed a highly syncretistic religion, incorporated Manichaean or Zoroastrian ideas, believing that it was more advantageous to appease the nearby Lucifer than serve the distant God.63 honour and power.’141

Despite the favour of the Il-Khan, in 1285 and 1286 ugly anti-Christian rioting broke out in Mosul, suggesting that, without state support, a terrible fate threatened the Christians. Another omen was the persecution of Jews that occurred upon Arghun’s death. The rage of the Muslims was incited by Arghun’s preferential treatment of Christians, Jews and Buddhists in appointments to high office and further inflamed by the strong position of the Jewish finance minister Sa’d ad- Daula. Sa’d was murdered, and the Jews cruelly persecuted. Arghun’s brother and successor Il- Khan Geikhatu (ruled 1291–1295), who personally inclined towards Buddhism, was also favourably disposed towards the Christians. He foundered, however, on the precipitous introduction in 1294 of paper money, in which he followed the example of his uncle Kublai Khan. Since he simultaneously forbade coins, trade collapsed and the cities were abandoned for lack of a food supply. The dis- affected population rallied around Prince Baidu (ruled 1295), who was secretly a Christian.142 But Arghun’s son Ghazan called for a rebellion, in which he was actively supported by the fanatical Muslim Nauruz and Islamic factions. After only six months of rule Baidu was executed, and

Il-Khan Ghazan (ruled 1295–1304), who had converted from Buddhism to Islam, took the throne. The biographer of Mar Yahballah judged the death of Baidu to be ‘the proof that in very truth the abandonment of [the Church by] God had taken place’.143

Ghazan restored him to office. But a few months later Muslim gangs devastated the patriarchal see and the cathedral of Maragha. Nauruz also put back into effect the discriminatory clothing laws, according to which Christians and Jews had to wear a distinctive cloth on their turbans and a special belt.145 Although Ghazan had the powerful Nauruz executed in 1297 and thus eased the situation somewhat, the political and social outlook for Christians had darkened considerably. Nauruz opened for the Christians of Iran and Mesopotamia the doorway to hell, through which Tamerlane would push them.

Now the rage and envy of the Muslims towards the Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Buddhists, which had been building up for decades, was released. Under Nauruz’s leadership churches, synagogues, fire temples and Buddhist shrines were systematically destroyed, and Christian and Buddhist monks were massacred.144 Nauruz had Patriarch Yahballaha III tortured; he was saved from death only by the intervention of the Armenian king Hethum II, after which

The chance for an alliance between the Mongol Il-Khanate and Europe envoy to Western Europe. The monk first met Emperor Andronicus II (ruled 1282–1328) in Constantinople and then embarked for Naples. In Rome, where he saw the Mandylion robbed in 1204 by the Crusaders from Constantinople, Pope Honorius had just died, so the cardinals gathered there received him.150 He explained to them the Asian mission of the Church of the East and that many Mongols, Turkic tribes and Chinese were Christians, among them queens and young princes. With this and subsequent conversations with the newly elected Pope Nicholas IV, he entirely unintentionally awoke the interest of Rome in a mission to China. Rabban Bar Sauma then set out for Paris to visit King Philip the Fair and to Bordeaux to meet King Edward I of England. Although both kings received the Mongol envoy with signs of the greatest respect, they did not want to undertake another crusade, although Arghun had promised that in the case of the conquest of Jerusalem he would have himself baptized there.151

The Armenian king Hethum I (†1269) travelled to Karakorum as early as 1253, in order to recognize Mongol sovereignty. From then on the Christian kingdoms of Armenia and Georgia were the most reliable allies of the Il-Khans. For them the shared military campaign against the Muslim states had the significance of crusades. But the Christian allies were poor in numbers, which is why Hülägü had sought allies in Western Europe after the loss of Syria to the Mamluks and sent a delegation to Pope Urban IV in 1264.146 From then on for forty years the proud Mongols were supplicants before the popes and the European kings; the East, all-powerful just a few years before, sought cooperation from the West. Hülägü’s successor Abaqa undertook further attempts to rekindle the interest in Palestine that had died out in Europe, and he sent delegations in 1267 and 1269. It was incomprehensible to the Mongols that the eighth crusade, led by King Louis IX of France, made its landing in Tunisia instead of Palestine or Syria.147 Nevertheless, in 1274 the Il-Khan dispatched Mongol emissaries to the Second Council of Lyons. Their offer of a military alliance represented one of the final opportunities to save the beleaguered Crusaders. But Pope Gregory X (†1276) equivocated and gave Abaqa a non-committal reply. Additional letters to the pope, to King Edward I of England and to James of Aragon in 1276 and 1277 went unanswered.148

Despite this diplomatic failure, Arghun ordered in 1289 the Genoese Buscarel of Gisolf once more to present to King Philip and King Edward a concrete plan. The letter, written in the Mongol language and Uigur script, referred to Rabban Bar Sauma’s mission and declared: ‘Calling upon heaven, we will begin a campaign in the last winter month of the year of the panther [January 1291] and set up camp before Damascus around the fifteenth day of the first spring month [20 February 1291]. If you [king] send your troops at the stated time, and we, with the help of heaven, defeat these people and conquer Jerusalem, we will hand it over to you. If your troops arrive late, what good will this plan be?’152 Once again no alliance came to pass. In 1290, in light of the indeterminate responses, Arghun undertook a fourth and final attempt and dispatched the Christian officer Zagan. At the same time as Zagan was holding forth in Europe the last Crusader fortress, in Acre, fell to the Mamluks,

After the failed attempt to retake Syria in 1281, Abaqa’s son and successor Arghun began diplomatic efforts. In the first mission to Pope Honorius IV (†1287) in 1285 the Il-Khan sought an offensive military alliance against Egypt, to attack it from both sides.149 Two years later, at the recommendation of Patriarch Mar Yahballaha III, Arghun sent the Nestorian vicar general Rabban Bar Sauma, of Öngüt descent, as an

on 28 May 1291, and thus the last Christian bridgehead in Palestine was lost. The age of the Crusades had finally come to an end.

The 1302 letter of the patriarch of the Church of the East, Mar Yahballaha III (in office 1281–1317), to Pope Boniface VIII. The cruciform, red seal of the patriarch is in the Uigur language and Syriac script. It confirms in the name of the Great Khan Möngke the authority of the patriarch over all Christians and decrees that no Christian may travel to the Great Khan without a letter stamped with the patriarchal seal. (Vatican Secret Archives, A. A. Arm. I-XVIII, 1800, 1.) 64

Although the Christian princes consistently rejected the Mongol offers of alliance, after his unsuccessful delegation of 1299 the Muslim

Il-Khan Ghazan, who was involved in an ongoing border war with the Mamluks, made one last attempt in 1302. He promised Pope Boniface VIII, King Edward I of England and James II of Aragon that in the event of a military alliance against Egypt he would renounce Islam and be baptized.153 This opportunity also passed by untaken, and in 1303 Ghazan suffered a complete defeat at Damascus. In light of the obvious lack of European interest in an anti-Islamic alliance, Ghazan remained a Muslim. The next diplomatic initiative, made by Il-Khan Oljeitu (ruled 1304–1316) in 1305, sought from King Philip the Fair of France no longer an alliance but, instead, just friendly relations.154 And so the window of opportunity for a possible re- Christianization of the region that is now Iran and Iraq closed for ever, sealing the long-term fate of the Christians there.

Rabban Bar Sauma and Rabban Markos – Nestorian ‘Marco Polos’ from Asia

At the same time as the Polos were living in China a Nestorian Öngüt travelled from Beijing to Baghdad, Constantinople, Rome and France, where he met the pope and two kings – he was a kind of Asian Marco Polo in reverse. He was Rabban Bar Sauma, who was born around 1225, the son of Shiban, the Öngüt visitor subordinate to the bishop – living in Khan Baliq.155 Although his parents had him married, ‘he [as a twenty- year-old] cast off the shadows of this world’.156 He received the tonsure from Metropolitan Giwargis and shut himself up in a cell for seven years, after which he moved to a cave near the

Monastery of the Cross in the Fang-shan district south of the capital. After a few years the son of the archdeacon of Olon Sume, whose name was Markos, came to the hermit with the desire to

for he had other plans: ‘This is not the time for a journey to Jerusalem. You have received blessings of all the Houses of God and the relics which are in them. When a man visits them with a pure heart, the service thus paid to them is in no way less than that of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. I have now decided to consecrate Markos metropolitan of Cathai and Ong [which is northern China and the Öngüt]. As for Rabban Bar Sauma, I’m going to make you vicar general, and I’m going to send the two of you back to your own country.’157 He gave to Markos the new name Yahballaha, which means ‘divinely given’. Wars in Central Asia made their return trip impossible, so they waited in a monastery near Mosul. But when Mar Dinkha died soon thereafter, the electing body, acting out of political considerations, chose the Turko-Mongol Yahballaha as the new patriarch. Abaqa confirmed the election and gave him the seal that Great Khan Möngke had granted as a sign of the authority of the patriarchal see. The new patriarch Yahballaha III was installed on 2 November 1281.

Upper section of the front of a Nestorian stone stele in Fang Shan, China. The seven characters state: ‘To proclaim on this stele the imperial edict that this is the Monastery of the Cross.’ At the very top a cross is clearly visible. In the district of Fang Shan, which lies c. fifty kilometres south-west of Beijing, two stone blocks and two large inscribed steles were found in 1919. Both blocks bear a cross on the front, and one features four Syriac inscriptions, as well. One of them quotes Psalm 34:5 from the Peshitta: ‘Look to him and hope in him’.65 The smaller of the two steles dates from 960 and celebrates the reconstruction of the monastery, completed in 952. This new monastery was Buddhist; the religious affiliation of the old one was not given. The larger, 273-centimetre- high stele is inscribed on both sides. The front, dating from 1365, reports on the restoration of the monastery completed in 1357. It states that ‘a long time ago a [Christian?] priest from the western lands came here’ – did that happen during the time of the Tang Dynasty – that is, before 907? In conclusion, the calligraphic inscription praises the wise edict of Emperor Timur (ruled 1333–1368), who enabled the reconstruction of the Nestorian monastery. The back side, from 1382, reports that inhabitants of the surrounding villages had set right the stele, which had fallen down.66

When Arghun asked Mar Yahballaha for a suitable ambassador to Western Europe in 1287, he recommended his one-time companion Rabban Bar Sauma. During his first visit to Rome, the Nestorian vicar general presented the gathering of cardinals with an unimpeachable Dyophysite creed: ‘In His [Christ’s] divinity He is eternally of the Father; in His humanity he was born in time of Mary; the union is inseparable and indivisible for ever. The Son of this union is perfect God and perfect man – two natures and two hypostases in one parsopa.’158 When the cardinals accepted this Christological declaration – although it was heretical in the Catholic context – and sought to question Rabban Sauma about the disputed filioque, he fended them off with the statement: ‘I have come from remote countries neither to discuss nor to instruct in matters of the Faith, but I came that I might make known the words of King [Arghun] and the Catholicos.’159 become a monk. In 1263 Markos was ordained as a monk by Metropolitan Nestorius and lived with his teacher in the hermitage of the cross. Some fifteen years later they departed on a pilgrimage to the graves of the saints and patriarchs in Mesopotamia and to Jerusalem. Following, so to speak, in the footsteps of Marco Polo, they travelled to Tangut, Khotan and Kashgar, later to Talas in the Land of Seven Rivers and to Tus in Khorassan, and then to Maragha to meet Patriarch Dinkha I. They journeyed on and visited the most important monasteries and pilgrimage sites of Mesopotamia, but the dangerous situation on the western border prevented them from reaching their final goal of Jerusalem.

In 1280 Mar Dinkha summoned them to return,

Aerial view of the citadel of Arbil (Arbela), northern Iraq, in which Nestorian refugees and protective troops barricaded themselves from 1297 to 1310.

Half a year later the bitterly disappointed Rabban Bar Sauma returned to Rome, as neither the king of France nor the king of England had shown concrete interest in conquering Jerusalem with the Mongols. Although the newly elected Pope Nicholas IV permitted the Mongol vicar general to participate in all the services of the Holy Week and celebrate a Mass in Rome according to the Nestorian rite, he, too, made no commitment. Rabban Bar Sauma died in 1294 in Baghdad. of power by Ghazan, who commanded the destruction of all non-Muslim houses of worship. The patriarch was imprisoned and tortured, and this time he owed his life to King Hethum II of Armenia, who was then in Maragha. After Mar Yahballaha was permitted to return to his position in 1296, Muslims plundered and destroyed his patriarchal residence and forced him to flee. Simultaneously Nauruz tried, with help from Kurds, to drive the Nestorians out of the fortified citadel of the city of Arbil. When Ghazan deprived the fanatical Nauruz of power, the situation eased somewhat. Now the Il-Khan suggested to the patriarch that the Christians leave the mighty citadel, as well as the city of Arbil, and settle in another location. But Arbil was the last base of the beleaguered Christians.

Mar Yahballaha’s stormy patriarchate was marked by the struggle for the preservation of the Church of the East and for the safety of the Christians. After he avoided death under Il- Khan Ahmed only thanks to the intervention of the mother of the king, Qutui Khatun, a dozen peaceful years went by before the seizure

In his reply the despairing patriarch recounted the places he had been forced to flee, namely Baghdad and Maragha, after which he lamented the fate of other churches: ‘In Tabriz there remains only a flat plot of ground with no building on it; in Hamadan, it is impossible to point the place whereon the monastery and the church stood. There remain now the monastery and the church of Arbil and one hundred souls. Do you wish to scatter them also and to plunder them? What is the good of life to me? Let my lord the king command either that I return to the East, whence I came, or that I go to the country of the Franks and bring my life to an end there.’160 Ghazan relented, and the Nestorians retained their fortress.

Since Ghazan, beginning in 1299, again sought an alliance with Europe, he adopted a more favourable attitude towards the Christians, which allowed Mar Yahballaha to rebuild the cathedral and patriarchal residence of Maragha. With time there even developed a friendly relationship between Ghazan, who consistently promoted the Islamicization of Iran, and the Mongol patriarch, which culminated in the Il-Khan’s visiting Maragha in 1303 and giving him a golden cross containing a splinter from the True Cross. Pope Boniface VIII (in office 1294–1303) had sent it to the Muslim ruler as a token of his respect.161

The three-storey, 51-metre-high mausoleum of Il-Khan Oljaitu (ruled 1304–1316) in Sultaniyeh, Iran. The diameter of the cupola measures 26 metres. Oljaitu, whom Patriarch Mar Yahballaha III had baptized with the name Nicholas, was a stern Muslim and contributed substantially to the decline of the Church of the East.

First, in 1302, he gave to Ghazan’s envoy, the Christian Saad ad-Daula, a letter to Pope Boniface VIII, in which he proposed a rapprochement between the two Churches.163

In this relatively peaceful period the patriarch commissioned the leading theologian of the time, Mar Odisho (†1318), metropolitan of Nisibis and Armenia, to write an easily comprehensible catechism. In 1297/1298 Bishop Ebedjesus, as he was known in the West, produced The Book of Marganitha (The Pearl) on the Truth of Christianity. 162 This and additional works of canon and civil law were declared binding by the Synod of 1318. Ghazan’s diplomatic contact with Europe enabled Mar Yahballaha to take up the initiative of Patriarch Sabrisho V (in office 1226–1256), who in 1247 had proposed unity in prayer to Pope Innocent IV. Political considerations inspired the patriarch to seek a form of union with Rome.

Two years later in Maragha he gave the Dominican Jacob of Arles-sur-Tech a creed written in Arabic for the attention of Pope Benedict XI (in office 1303–1304), which Jacob translated into Latin. A comparison of the two texts shows that Brother Jacob adapted his translation to the expectations of the Catholic Church.164 The Arabic text confirms the Nicene Creed and calls Jesus Christ ‘a complete God and a complete man’. Although the patriarch avoided speaking of two hypostases, he underscored the East Syrian conviction that the divinity of Christ was unaf- fected by the suffering of his humanity on the

cross. The acceptance in the Latin translation of the filioque is not found in the Arabic original. Thus, the patriarch had not abandoned the found- ation of Nestorian orthodoxy. However, he acknowledged the pre-eminence of the pope before all Christian religious leaders and the fact that he ‘[occupies] the See of Peter, of the representative of Jesus Christ for all children of the apostolic church from the Orient to the Occident’.165 Mar Yahballaha’s letter brought no result.

The Nestorian cemetery in Göktepe, district of Urmiah, Iran. The custom in Nestorian and Chaldean cemeteries of adding to the grave the stone figure of a ram goes back to a Mongol tradition. It is also found in old graves in Mongolia and Kazakhstan.67 Presumably this tradition goes back to the ancient Chinese practice of placing in princely graveyards avenues of stone figures, the so-called ‘paths of the soul’. Similar stone figures are found in the Christian cemetery of Khosrow Abad near Delemon, Azerbaijan, and in the Historical Museum of Maragha, both in Iran.

When Oljeitu (ruled 1304–1316) acceded to the throne, Mar Yahballaha was delighted, as he had baptized him with the name Nicholas. But he was disappointed, since the prince had converted to Islam and soon began to persecute the Christians. In 1306 the endangered patriarch sought refuge in the fortress of Arbil, but in early 1310 Mongol troops and Kurds forced him to leave the citadel, whereupon it was conquered after a siege of several months and the Christians were either massacred or sold into slavery.166 Yahballaha fled to Maragha, where he died in 1317. In his 36 years in office the patriarch consecrated 75 bishops and metropolitans and defended to the best of his ability the Christians entrusted to him. But he could not prevent the steady Islamicization of Iran and the long-term decline of his Church in its heartland.

Choban’s overthrow in 1327 the persecutions began again; Mar Yahballaha’s monastery in Maragha was converted into a mosque. The power struggle that broke out after the death of Abu Sa’id and the absence of a central govern- ment further aggravated the situation of the Christians, who now became victims of local warlords and gangs of thieves. For this reason the patriarchal see moved with the officeholder’s residence, wherever he felt safe. This occurred within the triangle formed by Mosul in the south, Lake Urmiah in the east and Lake Van in the west. As a result of these numerous moves, there are hardly any historical documents from the period between 1350 and 1550; in the case of a few patriarchs not even the precise term in office is known. At the same time, the margin-

The ravages of Tamerlane and the retreat to the mountains of Kurdistan

After Yahballaha the bishops elected the metro- politan of the devastated province of Arbil, who took the name Timothy II (in office 1318–1332). Two years earlier the twelve-year-old Abu Sa’id (ruled 1316–1335) had been chosen as the seventh Il-Khan, but power lay with Emir Choban, who protected the Christians. The relatively calm situation enabled Pope John XXII to found the short-lived diocese of Sultaniyeh in 1318. After

alized Nestorians of Mesopotamia left the fertile planes of the Euphrates and the Tigris to relocate in inhospitable Kurdistan and Iranian Azerbaijan. Many converted to Islam. more rarely, to a younger brother. In exceptional cases a child was appointed and a relative such as the mother or an older sister oversaw Church affairs until the designated leader came of age.168 Soon the offices of metropolitan and bishop also became hereditary. Through the heritability of offices the determination of successors was simplified and also better protected from external manipulations. Since these high clerical offices were connected with particular families and sometimes held by family leaders, the organization of the Church became increasingly intertwined with the clan structures of the faithful. True to the old form of organisation, the patriarch was the ecclesiastical and secular authority in one, although he had to share worldly power with the clan leaders and the Muslim Kurdish emirs of his region.

It was Tamerlane (ruled 1370–1405), who was of Turkic descent, who dealt the deathblow to the ravaged Church of the East. The Muslim Tamerlane had the military genius of Genghis Khan and exceeded him in cruelty, as attested to by the infamous skull pyramids he had erected upon the conquest of cities. However, he lacked the religious tolerance of the Mongol great khans, for he profoundly hated Christians and Jews. Thus Tamerlane combined Turko-Mongol lust for conquest with Islamic fanaticism. Beginning around 1370 he expanded his realm across Central Asia, and in 1380 he invaded the former Il-Khanate. Everywhere churches and synagogues were destroyed and Christians and Jews massacred – a genuine holocaust occurred among the Christians and Jews of Asia. Then Tamerlane’s grandson Ulug Beg (viceroy of Transoxania 1409–47, r. 1447–49) exterminated the last remaining Christians of Samarqand.167 Towards the end of the fourteenth century the Church of the East collapsed and virtually disappeared from the region around Baghdad, after it had been extinguished in China, Mongolia, Central Asia and Iran (except for the region around Urmiah). After some eleven centuries of expansion, Christianity shrank back to the land east of the Euphrates, to its geographical origins. The Church survived only in inaccessible Kurdistan, in Iranian Azerbaijan, in Armenia and in Kerala, which escaped Tamerlane’s orgy of destruction for reasons of climate and geography.

In the end, the Church of the East had to organize itself as a people in order to survive. Thus there emerged from the rubble of the erstwhile international Church, which had embraced numerous peoples and races, a regional Church structured according to tribal principles. The presence of the Church of the East became congruent with a certain region and a single people, the Assyrians. Not until half a millennium later could the Church free itself from the chains of a hereditary clergy.

In the fifteenth century the established organization of the Church collapsed, so in 1450 Patriarch Shimun IV Basidi (in office 1437–1497) made the patriarchate hereditary. From then on the office was to be reserved for the Abuna family and passed on from uncle to nephew or,