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To: maceng2 who wrote (418865)	11/11/2011 11:18:58 AM
From: Knighty Tin	Respond to of 436258

Actually, a religious war is what ended Mongol expansion to the west. Hulagu Khan, the Il-Khan of Persia, was an animist while his sort of cousin (the Tartars had raped his Great Grandmother, the wife of Ghenis Khan and a baby ensued, his grandfather) Berke Khan of The Golden Horde (a distant relative of mine who misspelled his name, <G>) was a Muslim. When Hulagu took Baghdad, he beheaded the Caliph. Berke protested. When Hulagu invaded Syria, he received troops from Berke's Golden Horde to help him. After taking Aleppo and the submission of Antioch and Damascus, the Golden Horde deserted and went back to Russia. On the way, they attacked Hulagu's holdings. Hulagu had to take most of his Army to fight his cousins. Meanwhile, the Mamelukes of Egypt (slaves who had been defeated by Mongols and sold to the Egyptians) had overthrown the Kurdish monarchy, defeated an invasion by St. Louis of France, gaining a huge ransom for his eventual release, and used Mongol tactics to defeat or bully other crusaders, were ready to take them on. The Mamelukes probably would have had no chance against the Persian/Golden Horde Mongol Army, but this diminished one was ripe for the picking. At the Battle of Ain Jelat, the great Sultan Baibars laid the first major defeat on the Mongols and chased them out of Syria. That victory allowed the Mamelukes to gain morale and wax stronger and stronger. Whenever Hulagu decided to get revenge, Berke would get a letter from Baibars detailing Persian Horde mistreatment of Muslims and he would have to switch a major invasion into a raid or do nothing due to Golden Horde threat. Eventually, after the death of Hulagu, the Persian Horde also went Muslim. But, by then, the Mamelukes were too powerful to defeat decisively. Hulagu's brother, Kublai Khan, was too busy conquering China to help him. The Mamelukes probably saved Europe, too, as Hulagu would also threaten the Golden Horde when they tried to follow up their victories in Poland and Hungary.