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If the Cap Fits: Going Mongol in Thirteenth Century Syria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2016

ANGUS STEWART
ANGUS STEWART*
Affiliation:
University of St Andrewsads@st-andrews.ac.uk
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Abstract

Various Near Eastern and European writers of the thirteenth century remarked on the outlandish appearance of the Mongol warriors then rampaging across Eurasia. One aspect of this was their distinctive headgear. From our sources it is clear that Mongol costume could be exploited by non-Mongols in the Near East for a variety of purposes; how these distinctive hats were described, and how contemporary artists depicted them, will also be discussed.

Type
Part II: The Mongol World
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 26 , Issue 1-2 , January 2016 , pp. 137 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2016 

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References

1 Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem (Paris, 1852), p. 271 (n.). This essay grew out of a short section of a longer paper, different versions of which have been given at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the University of Birmingham, the University of Edinburgh and the University of St Andrews. I am grateful for the invaluable assistance and advice provided by many people, notably Reuven Amitai, Robert Bartlett, Carole Hillenbrand, Gyorgy Kara, Timothy May and Michael Talbot (whose translations from Ottoman Turkish were both invaluable and entertaining).

2 al-Athīr, Ibn, al-Kāmil fī’l-taʾrīkh, in Richards, D. S.’ translation in, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athīr for the Crusading Period (3 vols, Aldershot, 2006–8), iii, p. 202Google Scholar.

3 ‘History of the Nation of Archers’, translated by Blake, R. P. and Frye, R. N., Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 12 (1949), pp. 295–297 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 John of Plano Carpini, Ystoria Mongolorum, in ‘Nun of Stanbrook Abbey’ (translation), ‘History of the Mongols’, in The Mongol mission: narratives and letters of the Franciscan missionaries in Mongolia and China in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, (ed.) C. Dawson (London, 1955), p. 16; John of Joinville, Vie de saint Louis, (ed.) and translated by Jacques Monfrin (Paris, 1995), p. 240. On lacking bread as a sign of a backward way of life, see Bartlett, Robert, ‘Illustrating ethnicity in the Middle Ages’, in The Origins of Racism in the West, (ed.) Eliav-Feldon, Miriam, Isaac, Benjamin and Ziegler, Joseph (Cambridge, 2009), p. 154 Google Scholar.

5 For example, John of Joinville's revulsion at the ‘horrible stench’ emanating from the meat leftover bag of a ‘Khwarazmian’: Vie de saint Louis, p. 242. The Mongol eating practices attracted comment from all observers: John of Plano Carpini notes that they would eat any meat, from “dogs, wolves, foxes and horses”, even, in extremis, human flesh; they would eat the afterbirth of mares, and even lice: ‘History of the Mongols’, p. 16. Ibn al-Athīr states that “they eat all animals, even dogs and pigs and others”: Chronicle of Ibn al-Athīr, iii, p. 204.

6 ‘History of the Mongols’, p. 6; cf. William of Rubruck, Itinerarium , in Jackson, Peter’s translation, The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck (London, 1990), p. 88 Google Scholar. On the immediate Western reaction to the Mongol irruption, including a discussion of their place within eschatological theories, see Jackson, Peter, the Mongols and the West (Harlow, 2005), pp. 138–153 Google Scholar.

7 See, eg., Mission of Friar William of Rubruck, pp. 259–260

8 Bartlett, ‘Illustrating ethnicity’, passim, especially pp. 141–145.

9 For a variety of documents on this topic, see Lewis, Bernard, Islam: from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople (2 vols, Oxford, 1987), ii, pp. 217–235 Google Scholar. One extract translated there is from al-Maqrīzī’s Sulūk, recounting how, in the Mamluk Sultanate in 700/1301, Christians were compelled to wear blue turbans and Jews yellow ones, alongside other restrictions: Kitāb al-sulūk li-maʾrifa duwal al-mulūk, (ed.) M. M. Ziyāda and S.ʿA.-F. Āshūr, 4 vols (Cairo, 1934–73), i, pp. 909–913. Another regulation for the clothing of dhimmīs was issued by al-Ṣāliḥ Ayyūb, ruler of Egypt (637–47 ah / 1240–47 ce). For analysis of the sumptuary laws for dhimmīs, see, eg., Fattal, Antoine, Le statut légal des non-musulmans en pays d'Islam (Beirut, 1958), pp. 96–112 Google Scholar, especially pp. 106–107.

10 According to Jirousek, Charlotte, “the earliest ancestors of the Turks wore prominent headgear to mark status and affiliation”: “Ottoman influences in Western dress”, in Ottoman Costumes: From Textile to Identity, (ed.) Faroqhi, Suraiya and Neumann, Christophe K. (Istanbul, 2004), p. 244 Google Scholar. For examples, see, eg. von Le Coq, Albert, Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan, translated by Barwell, Anna (London, 1928)Google Scholar, plates 9–10.

11 On these events and al-Saʿīd Ḥasan, see Amitai-Preiss, Reuven, Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Īlkhānid war, 1260–1281 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 32, 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Dhayl mirʾāt al-zamān fī taʾrīkh al-aʿyān (part ed. in 4 vols, Hyderabad, 1954–61), ii, p. 16. Al-Makīn b. al-ʿAmīd reports some of the charges against al-Saʿīd – wearing Tatar clothes, drinking wine in Ramadan, transgressing the laws of Islam – but does not specifically mention headgear: Kitāb al-majmūʿ al-mubārak, in C. Cahen (ed.), ‘La Chronique des Ayyoubides’, Bulletin d’Études Orientales, XV (1955–57), p. 175.

13 Rawḍ al-zāhir fī sīrat al-Malik al-Ẓāhir, (ed.) ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Khuwayṭir (al-Riyāḍ, 1976), p. 193.

14 Rawḍ al-zāhir, p. 196.

15 While Ibn ʿAbd al-Ẓāhir reports that raids were carried out “continuously, one after another, and from all directions”, the only place mentioned is Marzabān, to the west of the Armenian Catholicos's fortress of Hromkla, on the Euphrates: Rawḍ al-zāhir, p. 196. On Armenian raids in the 1260s, see Amitai-Preiss, Reuven, “In the Aftermath of ʿAyn Jalut; The Beginnings of the Mamlūk-Īlkhānid Cold War”, Al-Masāq: Studia Arabo-Islamica Mediterranea, III (1990), pp. 10–12 Google Scholar; and Canard, M.. “Le royaume d'Arménie-Cilicie et les Mamelouks jusqu'au traité de 1285”, Revue des études arméniennes, IV (1967), pp. 223–227 Google Scholar.

16 For a discussion of the dating for this expedition, see Canard, “Le royaume”, pp. 237–238, n. 81. On this engagement, see also Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks, pp. 131–132; Thorau, Peter, The Lion of Egypt: Sultan Baybars I and the Near East in the Thirteenth Century, translated by Holt, P. M. (London, 1992), pp. 232–233 Google Scholar.

17 Rawḍ al-zāhir, p. 417.

18 Rawḍ al-zāhir, p. 432.

19 Faḍl al-maʾthūr, in Paulina B. Lewicka (ed.), Šāfiʻ ibn ʻAlī's biography of the Mamluk sultan Qalāwūn (Warsaw, 2000), pp. 278–279.

20 al-ʿAynī, Badr al-Dīn Maḥmūd, ʿIqd al-jumān fī taʾrīkh ahl al-zamān, (ed.) Amin, M. M., 4 vols to date (Cairo, 1987–92), iii, pp. 114–115Google Scholar. On these events, see Stewart, Angus, The Armenian Kingdom and the Mamluks (Leiden, 2001), pp. 78–79 Google Scholar.

21 Al-ʿAynī, ‘Iqd al-jumān, iii, pp. 114–115. While not explicitly referring to Mongol hats, another Egyptian historian, Ibn al-Dawādārī, is perhaps also referring to this counter-productive subterfuge when he writes that “Satan suggested their actions to [the Armenians], and they spread out their hopes in the market place of error”: Kanz al-durar wa-jāmiʿ al-ghurar, (ed.) U. Haarmann, viii (Freiburg, 1971), p. 330. Ibn al-Dawādārī includes a passage from the Qur’ān, from sūra viii, 48: “But when the two forces came in sight of each other, he turned on his heels” – see Yusuf Ali, Abdullah (editor and translator), The Holy Qur’ān (London, 1975)Google Scholar. In the Qur’ān, the one turning to flight is Satan, but in the context of Ibn al-Dawādārī’s passage, it is clear that a rather unflattering comparison with King Het‘um is implied.

22 See, e.g., the account of al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, i, p. 783.

23 The singular form s(a)rāqūj is used by al-Yūnīnī, ii, p. 16 (where the editor, in n. 3, glosses the word as ‘Mongol cap’); by al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, i, p. 783; and by Ibn ʿAbd al-Ẓāhir in one instance, Rawḍ al-zāhir, p. 196. In the other cases discussed above, the plural form is used: Rawḍ al-zāhir, pp. 193, 417 (glossed at n. 1 as ‘headgear of the Mongols’), 432; Shāfiʿ b. ʿAlī, Faḍl al-maʾthūr, p. 278; al-ʿAynī, ʿIqd al-jumān, p. 115.

24 Mayer, L. A., Mamluk Costume (Geneva, 1952), pp. 30–31 Google Scholar.

25 Dozy, R. P. A., Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes (Leiden, 1881), i, p. 644 Google Scholar; idem., Dictionnaire détaillé des nom des vêtements chez les arabes (Amsterdam, 1845), p. 379, n. 1, in which to demonstrate its use he includes a passage from the work of al-Nuwayrī which reproduces, with some variation, the last passage from Ibn ʿAbd al-Ẓāhir's Rawḍ discussed above.

26 See, for example, Steingass, F., A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary (London, 1892), pp. 668 Google Scholar (sarāghuj, sarāghoch, sarāghosh, sarāgosh [woman's headdress]; sarāqūch [female head-gear]), 676 (surqūj [plume of feathers as a headdress]); Doerfer, Gerhard, Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen (4 vols, Wiesbaden, 1963–75), iii, pp. 242–243 Google Scholar (sarāġūč, from a proposed Turkish root saraγuč); Ömer Asım Aksoy and Dehri Dilçin (eds), XIII. yüzyıldan beri Türkiye Türkçesiyle yazılmış kitaplardan toplanan taniklariyle tarama sözlüğü (8 vols, Ankara, 1963–77), v, p. 3513 (sorguç, sorkuç, and citing fifteenth- and sixteenth-century texts); Clauson, Gerard, An Etymological Dictionary of pre-thirteenth-century Turkish (Oxford, 1972), p. 848 Google Scholar.

27 The sense of ‘plume’ seems to have inspired Lewicka's interpretation of the word. Glossing Shāfiʿ b. ʿAlī’s use of sarāqūjāt, she suggests it “apparently stands for [the] Tatar horse-tail ensign”. This is a logical interpretation of the text here, with the troops described as having the “emblem [or ‘distinguishing mark’: shiʿār] of the Tatars”. The uses of the word elsewhere – such as for a squad of 150 with sarāqūjāt – suggests headgear is a more likely interpretation: Šāfiʻ ibn ʻAlī's biography, p. 278, n. 2.

28 John of Plano Carpini, ‘History of the Mongols’, pp. 6–8; William of Rubruck, Mission of Friar William, pp. 88–89, and n. 1 for a full list of sources; Grigor Aknerts‘i, ‘History of the Nation of Archers’, p. 295, and p. 385, n. 18.

29 On the boghto / boghtagh and its wider influence, see May, Timothy, The Mongol Conquests in World History (London, 2012), pp. 253–254 Google Scholar; Allsen, Thomas T., Commodity and exchange in the Mongol empire (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 16–18 Google Scholar; Cammann, Schuyler, “Mongol Costume – Historical and Recent”, in Sinor, Denis (ed.), Aspects of Altaic Civilization (Bloomington, 1963), pp. 161–162 Google Scholar.

30 ‘History of the Mongols’, p. 8.

31 Mission of Friar William, p. 87.

32 Schroeder, Eric, “Ahmed Musa and Shams al-Dīn: A Review of Fourteenth Century Painting”, Ars Islamica, VI (1939), pp. 120–121 Google Scholar.

33 Weitzmann, Kurt, “Icon Painting in the Crusader Kingdom”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, XX (1966), p. 63 Google Scholar.

34 Ibid .

35 Folda, Jaroslav, Crusader Art in the Holy Land, from the Third Crusade to the fall of Acre, 1187–1291 (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 320–324 Google Scholar; idem., “The Figural Arts in Crusader Syria and Palestine, 1187–1291: Some New Realities”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, LVIII (2004), pp. 323–329

36 Pace, Valentino, “Italy and the Holy Land: Import Export. I. The Case of Venice”, in The Meeting of Two Worlds: Cultural Exchange between East and West during the Period of the Crusades, (ed.) Goss, Vladimir P. (Kalamazoo, 1986), p. 333 Google Scholar.

37 Der Nersessian, Sirarpie, Miniature Painting in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (2 vols; Washington, 1993), ii Google Scholar, fig. 212.

38 In fact, the relevant label actually states “the T‘at‘ar came today”: while what this might have meant remains unclear, the relationship of the label with these figures makes their identification as Mongols certain. For discussions of this label, see Mutafian, Claude, L'Arménie du Levant (Paris 2013), p. 147 Google Scholar; Narkiss, Bazalel (ed.), Armenian Art Treasures of Jerusalem (Oxford, 1980), p. 52 Google Scholar

39 Jackson, Mongols and the West, pp. 174–177; also, idem., “Hülegü Khan and the Christians: the making of a myth”, in The Experience of Crusading, 2: Defining the Crusader Kingdom, (ed.) Peter Edbury and Jonathan Phillips (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 196–213.

40 Miniature Painting, p. 60.

41 Folda, ‘Figural Arts’, p. 326; Folda, Crusader Art, p. 321; see also Weitzmann, ‘Icon Painting’, p. 63.

42 Presumably these are also the same as the “lightweight summer hats with wide brims; the latter sometimes split at the sides, so the front could be worn down as an eye-shade, or the back down to protect the back of the neck”, described as typical of early Mongol costume by Cammann, ‘Mongol Costume’, p. 160.