In 1240 Prince Avak of Tiflis and his sister Tamara went to give homage at Ogotai’s court, and were met there with kindness. The Grand Khan gave them an order commanding Chormagun to reinstate them and other Georgian princes; a second command was sent also to take from them only the tribute agreed on already. [[177]]When people north of the Euphrates and Tigris had been thinned out sufficiently and enlightened by slaughter, the Mongols turned to take Rūm and subdue it.
Rūm had been ruled for a century and a half by a branch of the Seljuks. Asia Minor was conquered about 1080 by Suleiman Shah, whom his cousin Sultan Melik, Shah of Persia, had sent toward the west with eighty thousand Turkman households to bring down the infidel. Suleiman seized the central provinces of that region from the Byzantine Empire, and made Konia the capital of his newly won kingdom, which was called Rūm in the Orient, but in the west with another vowel, Rome. From that period on, the Turkman swarms which followed the banners of the Seljuks spread over those conquered lands widely. Most places were given them as fiefs, and the Christians of that entire region passed under the yoke of unsparing and insolent nomads.
The Sultan Ghiath ud din Kei Kosru, eighth successor of Suleiman the first conqueror, had ruled over Rūm for five years when in 1243 the Mongols set out to subject it. Chormagun was now dead and Baidju, who succeeded him, had come with an army, in which were Armenian and Georgian contingents, to invest Erzerum where Sinan ud din Yakut was commandant. This Yakut was a freedman of Sultan Kei Kubad, the father of Kei Kosru. At the end of two months the walls were destroyed by twelve catapults; the city was taken by storm, and one day later the citadel met with a similar misfortune. The commandant and also his warriors were put to the sword without exception. Artisans, workmen, desirable women and children were spared to be driven into slavery. When the city had been plundered and ruined the Mongols withdrew to their winter camp on the plain of Mugan.
Mongol warriors were sent in 1244 toward Syria. While they were approaching Malattia, where news of the sack of Cesaraea had spread dismay through every hamlet and corner, the prefect and other officials of the Sultan took during night hours all the silver and gold of the treasury, divided it among themselves and set out to find refuge in Aleppo. At the same time the chief citizens, both Moslem and Christian, tried to save themselves by flight, but these, after journeying one day, were overtaken by Mongols who slaughtered the old men and women; the young of both sexes were spared and driven on into slavery. [[178]]
The Mongols waited not to lay siege to Malattia, they sped forward at command of Noyon Yassaur to Aleppo, demanded a ransom, received it, and vanished. On his way back, Yassaur made a halt at Malattia and feigned an attack on it. The prefect collected much plate, also gold from church pictures, besides other treasures taken from the Nestorian cathedral; the value in all reached forty thousand gold pieces. After receiving this ransom Yassaur continued his march toward the boundary of Persia. Yassaur was the Mongol chief, probably, who in 1244, toward the end of the summer, summoned Bohemond V., Prince of Antioch, to level the walls of his cities, send in all the revenue of his princedom, and give besides three thousand maidens. The prince refused, the Mongol commander refrained from attacking, but later on the Antioch prince furnished tribute to the Mongols.
The Grand Khan’s lieutenant had summoned all sovereigns in Western Asia to obedience. Shihab ud din in 1241 got a letter from an envoy of the Mongols. The letter sent to other princes as well as to him began in this way: “The lieutenant on earth, of the Master of Heaven, commands all the following princes to acknowledge his authority and level their defences;” the names then were given. The prince answered that he was a weak, petty ruler if compared with the sovereigns of Rūm, Syria and Egypt. “Go to them first,” said he, “I will follow their example.”
Hayton, the king of Cilicia, had promised to bring to the Sultan of Rūm a whole corps of Armenians; he delayed marching, however, and awaited developments. The kingdom of Rūm was now subject to Mongols, and Hayton thought it well to win Mongol favor if possible. On securing consent from the chief men of his kingdom he sent envoys in 1244, during spring, with rich presents to Baidju. The envoys turned to Jalal, an Armenian prince then in Katchen, who presented them to Baidju, to Chormagun’s widow, and to Mongol commanders. Baidju asked first that Hayton deliver the wife, daughter and mother of Kei Kosru, who were then in Cilicia. That request made, he took leave of the envoys, and sent with them men of his own to their sovereign. The conditions were grievous to Hayton, but he yielded the women to Baidju’s officials and sent on new envoys. The Mongol commander was satisfied, and concluding an alliance with Hayton, giving him a diploma which affirmed his position as vassal to the Grand Khan. [[179]]The Mongols during 1245 took regions north of Lake Van, among others Khelat, which through an order of Ogotai had been given to Tamara of Georgia. After this they marched into regions between the Euphrates and Tigris, taking Roha, Nisibin and other cities which the people abandoned at approach of the dread enemy. But great summer heat brought down most of their horses, hence the Mongols were forced to withdraw very speedily to save themselves.
Mongol dominion was extending continually. Bedr ud din Lulu the Prince of Mosul declared in a letter to the Prince of Damascus that he had in his own name concluded a treaty by which the inhabitants of Syria would give the Mongols a fixed tribute according to wealth and ability. The tax of the rich would amount to ten dirhems, medium men would pay five, and poor people one dirhem. This letter was published at Damascus, and officials began to collect the taxes decreed by it.
The same year, 1245, news came to Bagdad, by pigeons, that the Mongols had entered Sheherzur, eight days’ travel northward from Bagdad, and sacked the whole city, whose prince, Melik ud din Mohammed, had fled to a stronghold.
The Mongols advancing in 1246 to Yakuba were attacked and driven off by Bagdad troops, and some of them were captured. Baidju did not feel himself master of Georgia while Queen Rusudan remained in Usaneth and refused all submission. In vain did he send her rich presents, and ask for an interview during which she and he might arrange, he declared, an alliance with friendship. The queen would not go from her stronghold, and gave no better answer to a message from Batu, who since Ogotai’s death, in December, 1241, was the first among Jinghis Khan’s grandsons. She sent her son David, however, to Batu as hostage, and placed him under that strong Khan’s protection. Baidju, wrathful at Rusudan’s stubbornness, resolved to give Georgia a ruler subservient to Mongols. Rusudan’s brother, Lasha, had a son born outside wedlock whom the queen had despatched into Rūm when her daughter went thither to marry Kei Kosru. This son of Lasha, named David, was detained for ten years in Cesaraea. Freed now for this special state trick, he was brought to the camp of the Mongols where certain princes proclaimed him, and took the oath of allegiance. Georgian troops and Armenians [[180]]went with David to Mtskhete the seat of the Patriarch, who anointed him.