#chinggisid

A response to @annedey repeated here in full so it may be easier to read my answer. I don’t understand Tumblr’s formatting when it comes to responses.

The Batu-Guyuk antagonism is one of those things which scholars  always note, but do not tend to actually go into anymore than that. McLynn uses the extensively annotated Secret History of the Mongols by Igor de Rachewiltz, and while I don’t have access to de Rachewiltz’s I thumbed through other sources to see if there was more I could find and I found… not much more.

But I believe I was able to gather some reasons as to why they disliked each other:

Timothy May suggests this had to do with Jochi’s uncertain paternity. Batu, while not Jochi’s eldest son was his most prominent and the chief prince of his Ulus. Thus he ‘inherited’ Jochi’s uncertain lineage, which has been suggested kept Batu and his brothers from ever putting their names in to be Great Khan. The fact that none the less Batu maintained such a high status seemed to aggravate Guyuk. The Secret History of the Mongols, in which this confrontation appears in (where they call each other women etc.) has Buri a major player in this, a close friend of Guyuk. Buri’s grandfather of course was Chagatai, who was famous for his hatred of Jochi, a hatred which got them both removed from the succession to Chinggis. I bet good money that was certainly the reason why Buri disliked Batu, and if Guyuk was a close associate of Buri this was probably a leading factor as well.

Princely arrogance was another strong factor. All of them were princes of an Empire seemed destined to rule the world, already a recipe for a lack of humility. Guyuk, as noted by Rashid al-Din, was an exceptionally arrogant individual even among them, augmented by the fact that his father the Great Khan of this empire (although this did not mean he was the heir of Ogedai: Ogedai’s desired heir was his grandson Shiremun, but the Mongol succession system did not really have ‘heir apparents’ in the same way western Europe did). But Batu was considered the leading prince of the expedition, and the territory they were conquering would certainly go to Batu’s ulus, which must raised the ire of Guyuk: he was essentially fighting to gain territory for a person who he may not have even considered a legitimate Chinggisid.

Past that, the exact origins of the antagonism are unclear. If we look at the Secret History of the Mongols, the implication is that they had often butted heads, likely over minor things, with the occasion McLynn discusses being that Batu began drinking before the others at a feast, thereby signifying his status over the rest (or rather, Guyuk and Buri were taking offence at small little things to make a fuss out of them). Buri was apparently notorious hothead and drunk (big surprise, exactly like Chagatai) which I imagine started off more than few rows between them.

There have been other ‘attempts’ to explain their distaste for each other: Conn Iggulden, who is an author and not an historian, has Guyuk possibly homosexual in his novels and uses that as  an explanation for break between them, but I have seen no historical evidence to suggest this.

Jochi (in Green) and Chagatai having an argument. Jochi was born after his mother Borte’s capture by Merkits, so it was never clear if he was truly Chinggis Khan’s son or not (probably not). His younger brother Chagatai refused to accept Jochi as his brother, and their antagonism grew so heated that Chinggis removed them both from the succession, lest their conflict tear apart the empire. Their younger brother Ogedai instead became Great Khan after Chinggis’ death in 1227.

Video on the sons of Chinggis: www.youtube.com/watch?v=38AzGpxwBEE

Facebook page for the Jackmeister: https://www.facebook.com/TheJackmeister/

The tensions that existed between Turko-Mongolian custom and Islamic law during Temür’s time can be traced back at least to the period of Mongol rule in Iran and Central Asia. In fact, the problematic relationship of the yasa to the Sharia was, in the opinion of Beatrice Manz, one of the great “open questions” that were debated through- out Mongol and post-Mongol history. Since the two socio-religious systems were essentially incompatible, many aspects of the Chinggisid yasa, in its Timurid elaboration, simply continued to coexist alongside the Islamic customs that ruling members of the dynasty espoused in order to cater to their sedentary Muslim subjects.

Muslim jurists and members of the religious intelligentsia were, however, unanimous in calling for the abrogation of the törä and its complete substitution by Islamic law. Without differenting between the törä and the yasa, the Timurid historian Khvandamir referred to them as “the evil yasa” ( yasa-[ yi ] shum) and “the despicable törä” (törä-i mazmum), and Favlullah b. Ruzbihan Khunji, a leading Sunni theologian of the late fifteenth century, complained that, “The limpid water of the commandments of Islam [had] become sullied by the turbidity of the Chinggisid yasa.”57 Temür’s son and eventual successor, Shahrukh (d. 850/1447), supposedly abrogated the törä and abolished the yarghu tribunal in favour of the Sharia. One of his religious advisers, the Hanafite jurist Jalal al-Dan al-Qayini, even provided a date for the event in a book he wrote for him on the principles of Islamic governance:

His Majesty’s correct thinking on the subject of giving currency to the Sharia and reviving the customs of the Sunna has progressed so far at this time that, in Dhu al-Qada 813 (i.e., February–March 1411), he abolished the yarghu court of investigation and the customs of the törä which had been observed by Turko-Mongolian rulers since ancient times.

Assuming the title padshah-i Islam, and asserting the claim to be caliphal leader of the entire Muslim world, Shahrukh sought to establish Islamic doctrinal uniformity through the construction and endowment of a school of law (madrasa) in the capital city, which would ensure the dominant position of the Hanafite and Shafi'ite juridical interpretations. Shahrukh’s Islamicizing policies... were motivated in large part by the growth of heterodox socioreligious movements, such as the cabalistically inspired Hurufiyya, that posed a serious threat to the political stability of the Timurid state at this early stage of its consolidation. Ibn 'Arabshah, however, expressed scepticism about Shahrukh’s abolition of the törä:

It is said that Shahrukh declared the törä and the Chinggisid regulations (al-qawa'd al-Chingizkhaniyya) null and void, and that he ordered that [his followers] should be governed according to the provisions of the Islamic Sharia.1 But I do not believe this to be true, because for them [the törä] is like the Pure Faith [of Islam] and the most genuine of creeds, and if [Shahrukh] were to assemble [all] his march commanders (muraziba) and his high priests (muwabidha)2 in his fortress, shut the gates, and, looking down upon them from on high, propose anything of the sort, they would all rush for the gates like donkeys.

While Ibn 'Arabshah’s sarcastic overstatement needs to be tempered in the light of Shahrukh’s Islamicizing policies, it points not only to the perception on the part of the Muslim religious establishment of the cultural importance of the törä for the military elite on whom Shahrukh was dependent for the maintenance of his rule, but also to the fact that, despite the wishful thinking of Muslim theologians writing for Shahrukh, the törä was far from being abrogated in the Timurid realm.