Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance/Evidence/Shell Kinney Sources Table

PHG's response to Sylvia Schein

Response by PHG. I re-read the article, and I think the interpretation should be more subtle than that. Sylvia Schein nowhere says that "The Mongols did not capture Jerusalem". She actually says that:

"Many Christians laboured under the impression that the Holy Land, including with the Holy Sepulchre, were conquered by the Mongol khan Ghazan from the Moslems and handed over to the Christians. Actually the alleged recovery of the Holy Land never happened."

I think she denies that the "recovery" by the Christians took place (it is why she uses the word "recovery", "the act of regaining or saving something lost" [1], which could only refer to the Christians, not the Mongols), not the conquest by the Mongols itself. Further in the text she describes the incident as an "ephemeral event" (meaning "short in duration", not "inexistent") (p.808). She also says that:

"for a brief period, some four months in all, the Mongol Il-Khan was de facto the lord of the Holy Land" (p.810).

She also quotes numerous contemporary sources (Muslim, Armenian, Christian) which describe the capture of Jerusalem. I think it is quite unfair to represent Schein's article as a denial that Jerusalem was taken by the Mongols: for her it is visibly rather an "ephemeral" event or a "non-event", but not something that undoubtedly never happened. In a later work, Schein actually writes in her 1991 book, that the conquest of Jerusalem by the Mongols was "confirmed" because they are documented to have removed the Golden Gate of the Temple of Jerusalem in 1300, to have it transferred to Damascus:

"The conquest of Jerusalem by the Mongols was confirmed by Niccolo of Poggibonsi who noted (Libro d'Oltramare 1346-1350, ed. P. B. Bagatti (Jerusalem 1945), 53, 92) that the Mongols removed a gate from the Dome of the Rock and had it transferred to Damascus. (Schein, 1991, p. 163).

And I am not alone: this is also the understanding of some historians: in The Crusaders and the Crusader States, Andrew Jotischky used Schein's 1979 article and later 1991 book to state, "after a brief and largely symbolic occupation of Jerusalem, Ghazan withdrew to Persia" (Jotischky, The Crusaders and the Crusader States, p. 249). PHG (talk) 21:33, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Second response to Sylvia Schein

Untrue.

• The "numerous contemporary sources" are not hard to find. She references or quotes at least 3 Muslim sources, 1 Armenian source, and dozens of Christian sources.
• You're saying a footnote is "not something Schein said"??. As as far as I know, footnotes are written by the authors themselves, they are indeed part of their writing.

Double silver dirham of Ghazan (from my collection).The Mongols were Muslim by 1300. The coin reads: "There is no God but Allah, Muhammed is His Prophet".

• Schein in her last book Gateway to the Heavenly City: Crusader Jerusalem and the Catholic West (1099-1187) published in 2005, when she states on page 157 "Earthly Jerusalem, ruled by the Moslems (except for the short period of 1229-1244), was to loom large in all types of medieval apocalypticism." only makes a general and undetailed statement about the history of Jerusalem. She does not discuss the Mongol issue in detail. I believe this statement is too broad and general to have any relevance to her other precise discussions of the Mongol capture of Jerusalem. You might even remember that the Mongols were Muslims at this point (Ghazan had converted in 1295, followed by most Il-Khan Mongols), so that the sentence you are giving is actually not in contradiction to the Mongol capture of Jerusalem 1300. PHG (talk) 06:42, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

PHG's response to Jackson p173-174

Response by PHG. Twice does Jackson mentions the capture of Jerusalem in a factual manner (p.172-173 hereunder) without explicity discounting it, although I agree he mentions it in a paragraph about rumours, but in both cases it is quite doubtfull that the rumours refer to the capture of Jerusalem itself. In another paragraph, he also mentions that the WHOLE of Palestine and Syria was wide open to the Mongols in 1299/1300, before their withdrawal in February 1300 and the re-occupation of the land by the Mamluks, a statement fully indicative of the capture of Jerusalem. (p.170, hereunder). Afaik, Jackson nowhere denies the capture of Jerusalem. To the contrary, his statements are all indicative that he considers the capture of Jerusalem as facts, just as many other historians. He also unambiguously writes that Jerusalem was raided by the Mongols in 1260 (p.116), so he does state that the Mongols preyed on Jerusalem on one occasion at least. (User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version)#The fate of Jerusalem in 1300). PHG (talk) 21:42, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

PHG's response to Jackson p172, 179

Response by PHG. This is highly inexact. Jackson had a chapter entitled "AN ALLY AGAINST ISLAM: THE MONGOLS IN THE NEAR EAST" and goes into a detailed discussion the instances of cooperation between the Crusaders and the Mongols, before concluding that the alliance led nowhere. He does no deny that agreements occured and that there were cases of collaboration as a result:

• In 1260, "Prince Bohemond VI, perhaps under the influence of his father-in-law King Het'um of Lesser Armenia, waited upon Hulegu in person and was allowed to reach a settlement that covered his county of Tripoli as well. He participated in the Mongol campaign against Ba'labakk, which he hoped to obtain from Hulegu, and may have ridden into Damascus with the Mongol army. (...) Mongol overlordship brought certain benefits in its wake. His [Bohemond VI] conciliatory attitude towards the Mongols had incurred a ban of excomunication by the Papal legate Thomas Agni di Lentino." (Jackson, "The Mongols and the West", p.117). PHG (talk) 06:06, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
• "Not until Clement IV’s pontificate (1265-8), it seems, did the Curia begin to entertain the possibility that the Ilkhan might serve as an ally against Baybars", p.166
• In 1267, the Pope agrees in principle to combined actions: “The Pope for his part had to tell the Ilkhan in 1267 that he would notify him of the timetable [for the next Crusade] once he had consulted the various monarchs” (p.180)
• In 1271 “Only the English contingent, under the Lord Edward (the future Edward I), sailed on from Tunis and made contact with the Mongols. In September 1271, Abaqa asked Edward to coordinate his activities with those of the Mongol general Samaghar, whom he was sending against the Mamluks. (…) The Sultan was able to prevent any junction of his enemies. (…) Edward’s simultaneous attack on Qaqun was a feeble affair.” (p.167)
• From 1273, Jackson also mentions the alliance of the Byzantines with the Mongols: “From 1273 Michael allied with Noghai, giving him an illegitimate daughter in marriage and using him as a means of putting pressure on Bulgaria when its king menaced the empire’s northern frontier in 1273 and 1279. When Michael died in 1282, he had just welcomed in Constantinople a band of Mongol auxiliaries whom Noghai had sent to assist him against the despot of Thessaly” (p.203)
• In 1281 “Both Bohemond VII of Tripoli and King Hugh III of Cyprus were urged to join forces with the Mongols. But Hugh’s arrival was delayed, and the new Sultan Qalawun was able to position his army between Mongke Temur and the Franks on the coast. It seems that some Hospitallers from Margat (Marqab) participated in the campaign.” (p.168)
• In 1288 the Mongol ambassador Rabban Sawma received promisses of Western support (although not concrete) to the Mongols: he “left only with many assurances of support and no promisses of concrete assistance” (p.169)
• In 1291, concrete combined actions took place, as “a contingent of 800 Genoese arrived, whom he [Arghun] employed in 1290 in building ships at Baghdad with a view to harassing Egyptian commerce at the southern approaches to the Red Sea.” (p.169)
• In 1299: “The king of Cyprus made some attempts to mount combined operations in harmony with the Mongol's movements. In the Autumn of 1299, he sent two galleys to occupy Botrun and to rebuild the fortress of Nephin, while a larger fleet of 16 galleys made what amounted to no more than a demonstration at Rosetta and outside the harbour of Alexandria before touching briefly at Acre, Tortosa and Maraclea. More serious was the expedition led in 1300, in response to another appeal by Ghazan, by the king’s brother Amaury, titular Lord of Tyre and Constable of the Kingdom of Jerusalem – the first attempt since 1291 to restore the Latin settlement in the Holy Land and to coordinate military activity with the Ilkhan’s forces. The Templar Jacques de Molay seems to have been particularly enthusiastic about the campaigns.” (p.171)
• "In many respects, the Mongol occupation of Syria in 1299-1300 represents the high water-mark of Mongol-Latin relations" (p.172)
• This continued to some extent until 1405: “In the Near East, Temur’s death only a few years previously, in 1405, marked the passing of the last “Tartar” sovereign who was widely regarded in the West as a potential, or even real, ally against the Muslim powers, the Mamluks and the Ottomans” (p.3)

Jackson generally describes the relations between the Mongols and the Crusaders as cordial but abortive: “The more cordial, though abortive, diplomatic relations between the Ilkhans on the one hand and the Papacy and Western monarchs on the other” (p.3), and stresses the ultimate defeat of all these efforts. PHG (talk) 21:49, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

PHG's response to Grousset

Viam agnoscere veritatis is the name of the letter brought back from the Pope by the Mongol envoys Aïbeg and Serkis. The letter and the envoys are connected by Roux, among others. Runciman, p. 259, Wilkinson (Intercivilizational Dialogues lecture), Grousset, p. 523 do not give the name "Viam agnoscere veritatis" but still do discuss that letter carried by the two Mongol envoys. I believe this is enough ground to mention them in this article. PHG (talk) 21:59, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

PHG's response to Tyerman

Here is the exact text: Christopher Tyerman, in God's War: A New History of the Crusades, does mention the existence of "The Mongol alliance", although he specifies that in the end it led nowhere,("The Mongol alliance, despite six further embassies to the west between 1276 and 1291, led nowhere" p.816) and turned out to be a "false hope for Outremer as for the rest of Christendom." (pp. 798-799) There is a big difference between something that that did not happen (as you claim), and something that did happen but "led nowhere", as Tyerman writes. You are distorting what he actually writes. Tyerman further describes successes and failures of this alliance from 1248 to 1291, with Louis IX's early attempts at capturing "the chimera of a Franco-Mongol anti-Islamic alliance", Bohemond VI's alliance with the Mongols and their joint victories, and Edward's largely unsuccessful attempts. Tyerman does indeed talk about the alliance, but insists that it was eventually a resounding failure.PHG (talk) 22:01, 26 February 2008 (UTC)