To: Sun Tzu who wrote (223090 ) 3/8/2007 1:38:03 PM From: Nadine Carroll Read Replies (1) | Respond to The Mogul dynasty came from conquest. The Moguls were of Mongol/Turkik descent. The Mongols were definitely crueler than other peoples, cf. Tamerlane:It was the Timur the Lame (known in the Europe as Tamerlane), whose "descent from Chinggis Khan," as Jack Weatherford says, was based "flimsy evidence,"[1] who gave the Mongols the bad reputation that has come down to us. Virtually nothing good can be said of Timur's conquests, and this fact has obscured the contributions of the Mongol Empire. While Timur tortured unmercifully and sacked cities indiscriminately, Chinggis Khan abolished torture and formed alliances with people who did not resist him. As an orthodox Muslim, Timur thought that the Delhi Sultans had been very lax in enforcing Islamic law against Hindus and other non-Muslims. Just before his devastating attack on Delhi in 1398, he ordered that Muslim and Hindu prisoners be separated and then declared that "every man who had infidel prisoners was to put them to death." [2] An estimated 100,000 Hindu prisoners were liquidated in one day. In addition to proposing the first concept of secular international law, the Mongols generally allowed complete religious freedom in the first hundred years. Followers of Ong Khan, the adopted father of Chinggis Khan, were Nestorian Christians, and these Kereyid Mongols easily assimilated Jesus as healer and shaman into their traditional beliefs. Chinggis' four sons married Kereyid Christian women and there were many Christians among their descendents. Even with this preference for Christianity, Ogodei Khan, Chinggis' son, allowed Daoist and Buddhist temples, mosques, as well as churches to be built at his capital at Karakorum. Weatherford contends that Karakorum, only one stone turtle is left after Ming troops destroyed the city in 1380, "was probably the most religiously open and tolerant city in the world at that time."[3] No court in Asia would exceed this religious tolerance except for possibly that of Akbar the Great, the truly exceptional Mughal emperor who welcomed all religions to his court and engaged their sages and theologians in friendly debate class.uidaho.edu
