Nassir sent words of peace to his enemy, but those words had no influence, and the march continued. Nassir strove to strengthen Bagdad and defend it, while Mohammed was writing diplomas, which turned Arabian Irak, that whole land of which Bagdad was the capital, into military fiefs and tax-paying districts.
The Shah’s vanguard, fifteen thousand strong, advanced toward Heulvan by the way of the mountains, and was followed soon by a second division of the same strength. Though the time was early autumn, snow fell for twenty days in succession, the largest tents were buried under it; men and horses died in great numbers, both when they were marching through those mountains and when they halted. A retreat was commanded at last when advance was impossible. Turks and Kurds then attacked the retreating forces so savagely that the ruin of the army was well nigh total. This was attributed by Sunnite belief to Divine anger for that impious attack on the person of the Kalif.
The reports of Mongol movements alarmed the Shah greatly and he hastened homeward, first to Nishapur, and later on to [[99]]Bukhara, where he received the first envoys from Jinghis Khan, his new neighbor.
It is well to go back to the time when the Shah chose a new Kalif from among the descendants of Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Mohammed. In the Moslem world there are seventy-three or more sects, varying in size and degree of importance, but the two great divisions of Islam are the Sunnite and Shiite, which differ mainly on the succession. Among Sunnites the succession was from Abbas, the uncle of Mohammed the Prophet of Islam; that is the succession which took place in history. Among Shiites the succession which, as they think, should have taken place, but which did not, was that through Ali, the husband of Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed.
The Shiites of Persia thought that the day of justice had come after six centuries of abasement and waiting, and that the headship of Islam would be theirs through the accession of Ali ul Muluk of Termed to the Kalifat. In their eyes the Kwaresmian Shah had become an agent of Allah, a sacred person. His act created an immense effect throughout Persia, and certainly no less in the capital of Islam at Bagdad, where the Kalif Nassir called a council at once to find means of defence against so dreadful an enemy as Shah Mohammed. After long discussion, one sage among those assembled declared that Jinghis Khan, whose fame was sounding then throughout Western Asia, was the man to bring the raging Shah to his senses.
The Kalif, greatly pleased with this statement, resolved to send an envoy, but the journey was perilous, since every road to the Mongols lay through Shah Mohammed’s dominions. Should the envoy be taken and his message read, the Shah, roused by resentment and anger, would spare no man involved in the plot, least of all Kalif Nassir and his servants. To avoid this chance, they shaved the envoy’s head and wrote out, or branded, his commission upon it. His skull was then covered with paint, or a mixture of some kind. The entire message to Jinghis was fixed well in the mind of the envoy, and he set out on his journey.
After four months of hard traveling he reached Mongol headquarters, delivered his message in words, and was admitted soon after to the Khan of the Mongols in secret. The envoy’s head was shorn a second time and the credentials traced with fire on his [[100]]crown became visible. There was branded in also an invitation to invade the Kwaresmian Empire, and destroy the reigning dynasty.
Jinghis meditated over this invitation. The thought of conquering a new Empire did not leave him, but as he had spoken not long before with its ruler in friendship, he waited till a reason to justify attack should present itself.
In 1216–17 in Bukhara, as mentioned already, Shah Mohammed received three envoys from Jinghis; these men brought ingots of silver, musk, jade and costly white robes of camels’ hair, all creations and products of Central Asia, sent as presents to the Kwaresmian sovereign. “The great Khan has charged us,” said the envoys, “to give this message: ‘I salute thee! I know thy power and the great extent of thy Empire. Thy reign is over a large part of the earth’s surface. I have the greatest wish to live in peace with thee; I look on thee as my most cherished son. Thou art aware that I have subdued China, and brought all Turk nations north of it to obedience. Thou knowest that my country is swarming with warriors; that it is a mine of wealth, and that I have no need to covet lands of other sovereigns. I and thou have an equal interest in favoring commerce between our subjects.’ ”
This message was in fact a demand on Mohammed to declare himself a vassal, since various degrees of relationship were used among rulers in Asia to denote corresponding degrees of submission.