Mongke’s first goal was to strengthen and expand Mongol control in the Islamic lands of southwest Asia. His brother Hulegu took command of a major army. As usual, the army included foreigners, such as Chinese engineers and weapons specialists who manned crude flamethrowers. These weapons fired a chemical called naphtha that was lit and then burned any flammable surface it touched. By this time, the Mongols were also using gunpowder to fire some arrows out of tubes-another technique they learned from the Chinese, and a first crude step on the road to modern rockets.
Hulegu’s army crossed the Oxus River in 1256, and its first targets were the castles of the Ismailis, in parts of what are now Iran and Afghanistan. The Ismailis were extreme Shiites (Shiite is one of the two major groups in Islam; the other is Sunni). The Ismailis followed their own Shiite beliefs, and were viewed as heretic by the Sunnis, whose rulers put them under a death sentence. The Ismailis believed assassination was a legitimate way to defend themselves against this ruling. Other Muslims feared the Ismailis, and one source suggests a Muslim religious leader actually asked the Mongols to attack them. William of Rubruck (c. 1210-c. 1270), a Christian priest who visited Mongol lands, claimed Hulegu’s attack was in response to a failed Ismaili plot to kill the Great Khan.
The grand master, or leader, of the Ismailis was a young man named Rukn-ad-Din (d. c. 1257). Afraid of the Mongols’ might, he surrendered to Hulegu after a short siege and convinced other Ismailis to give up without a fight. Rukn-ad-Din begged Hulegu to spare his life and let him meet Mongke. The Mongol general agreed, but the Great Khan refused to meet Rukn-ad-Din, and his Mongol guards killed Rukn-ad-Din and his family.
World History
