The Mongols turn to Islam (13th-14th centuries)

Part oneFrom the barracks upward

Histories usually tell the story through the khans, but Islam reached the Mongols first through their soldiers. Turkic and Iranian Muslims served in great numbers in the Mongol armies, and the policy of tolerance left room for men to talk about faith in camp. When Batu invaded Hungary in 1241 and 1242, he asked his Muslim soldiers to pray for victory. In 1248 an envoy of the Pope noticed that the call to prayer was made five times a day in the army of a Mongol commander, Baiju.

The Mongols also lived among Muslims now. They ruled Muslim cities, employed Muslim officials and married into Muslim families. Persian and Arab scholars served at court. Sufi sheikhs, respected by the people the Mongols ruled, offered spiritual guidance that the khans valued, and Sufis appear again and again in the stories of Mongol conversion. The historian Peter Jackson warns against calling these conversions shallow or insincere, since nobody is in a position to judge how wholeheartedly a ruler accepted Islam. Many were public and collective, and they gave the Mongols a new identity and new loyalties.

Part twoBerke and the Golden Horde

The first Mongol prince known to become Muslim was Berke, a grandson of Genghis Khan through his eldest son Jochi. He was drawn to Islam early. Around 1233 he sent an embassy to the sultan of Delhi. In about 1251 or 1252, on his way home from the crowning of the Great Khan Mongke, he stopped in Bukhara. There Sheikh Sayf al-Din Bakharzi, a Sufi of the Kubrawi order, taught him the faith and received his public declaration of Islam. Most of his wives, at least three of his brothers and many of his generals followed him. A Christian friar who visited the Mongols in 1253 heard that Berke was a Muslim who allowed no pork in his camp.

Around 1258 Berke became khan of the Golden Horde. He grieved over the killing of the caliph in Baghdad and went to war with Hulagu in 1262, and he became an ally of the Mamluk sultan Baibars. Berke died in 1266 without children. For two generations after him the khans of the Horde swung between Islam and other faiths. Then Özbeg, who ruled from 1313 to 1341, settled the matter. He took Islam through a Sufi sheikh, built a new capital at New Sarai, and from his time every khan of the Golden Horde was a Muslim. The Nogai people of the steppe have a saying that religion has stayed with them since Özbeg. The traveller Ibn Battuta visited his court and counted him among the seven mighty kings of the world.

Part threeGhazan and the Ilkhanate

In Iran the house of Hulagu took longer. Hulagu's son Ahmad Tegüder, who had been baptised as a child, became a Muslim and ruled from 1282, but he was overthrown after two years by his Buddhist brother. Then in 1295 Mahmud Ghazan rose in revolt from his base in Khurasan. A leading commander, Nowruz, promised his support if Ghazan became a Muslim. In June 1295, in the year 694 AH, Ghazan formally accepted Islam with the guidance of Sheikh Sadr al-Din Ibrahim al-Hamuwayni, and thousands of Mongols followed him. He took the title Padishah of Islam and made Islam the religion of the state.

Ghazan still kept parts of Mongol custom beside the Sharia. When he invaded Mamluk Syria in 1299, the scholar Ibn Taymiyya was among the men who faced him at Damascus, and he declared that a ruler who mixed the Yasa, the old Mongol law, with the Sharia could not be counted a true Muslim ruler. Ghazan withdrew from Syria in 1300 and died in 1304. His brother Öljeitü followed him, and Öljeitü's son Abu Sa'id was the first Mongol ruler known to have been raised a Muslim from birth. Abu Sa'id made peace with the Mamluks. When he died in 1335 without an heir, the Ilkhanate broke apart.

Part fourThe khans of Central Asia

The Chagatai khanate of Central Asia had Muslim khans briefly in the thirteenth century, but Islam took firm hold there with Tarmashirin, who became khan in 1331. He made Islam the religion of the dynasty and built mosques and madrasas, and Ibn Battuta met him and thought him as strong a ruler as Özbeg. In the eastern half, known as Moghulistan, the "land of the Mongols", Tughlugh Timur came to power in 1347. The story is told that he had promised a Sufi sheikh he would become a Muslim if he ever ruled. The sheikh died first, but his son came to court and reminded the khan of his promise. Tughlugh Timur kept it, and according to the historian Mirza Haidar Dughlat, 160,000 Mongols accepted Islam with him.

Only the Yuan dynasty of China never had a Muslim ruler. The grandsons of the men who had sacked Baghdad were now building mosques.

From the hadith

'Anas narrated:

"The Messenger of Allah (s.a.w) would often say: Ya Muqallibal-qulub, thabbit qalbi 'ala dinik('O Changer of the Hearts! Strengthen my heart upon Your Religion.)' So I said: 'O Prophet of Allah! We believe in you and what you have come with, but do you fear for us?' He said: 'Yes. Indeed the hearts are between two Fingers of Allah's Fingers, He changes them as He wills.'"

The grandsons of the men who sacked Baghdad were building mosques and madrasas.

WatchThe lecture for this chapter

Lecture Al MuqaddimahHow the Mongols Became Muslim (opens on YouTube)

The mapWhere it happened

• Bukhara
• Sarai
• New Sarai
• Tabriz
• Sultaniyya
• Samarkand
• Almalyk

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter