Mideast Divisions before the coming of Genghis Khan

The Seljuk Turks had been distributing territory among their sons and had been losing control of it to various upstarts, Saladin among them, so that by 1190 Seljuk dynastic rule was limited to Asia Minor.

Saladin bequeathed his empire to his sons. Following his death in 1193, one son, al-Afdal, inherited rule over Damascus. Another, al-Aziz, inherited rule over Egypt. A third, al-Zahir, inherited rule over Aleppo (in northeast Syria). And they squabbled. Each attempted to surround himself with larger Mamluk warrior retinue.

The Mamluks were trained warriors, the Samurai of the Mideast, who had begun as child slaves, selected for military training and given a special status as warriors.

By 1200, Salidin's brother, al-Adil, had moved against his squabbling nephews and secured control over the whole of what had been Saladin's empire. He killed or imprisoned his brothers and nephews during his takeover. And with each victory he collected the Mamluks of his defeated kin, acquiring for himself a Mamluk retinue of considerable size. And with his Mamluk armies he rule Egypt, through Palestine to Syria and the coastal region of Arabia along the Red Sea, including Medina. In the coming decades, Al-Adil died in 1218 at an advanced age, followed by division and family feuding, with Mamluk governing regions of the empire semi-autonomously, with newly acquired Turkish hereditary titles -- atabeg.

Meanwhile, most of what today is Iran had come under the rule of the Khwarezmid dynasty. Its territory extended to the east beyond Samarkand and just short of Kabul. It was a dynasty founded by Anush Tigin Gharchai, a former slave of the Seljuk sultans, who had been appointed as a governor for the Seljuks. His son, Qutb ud-Din Muhammad I, became the first hereditary Shah of Khwarezm. His son, Ala ad-Din Muhammad II, ruling from the year 1200, conquered more of what had been Seljuk empire and proclaimed himself Shah (king). In 1212 he extended his rule farther, beyond Samarkand and almost to Kabul.

It was Ala ad-Din Muhammad II whose rudeness toward Genghis Khan's emissaries that brought Genghis Khan and his army to the region.

Village and Town Politics

Amid the instabilities of authoritarian dynastic rule, people in villages and towns held on to relationships that provided some social order -- and disorder when disputes arose. There were neighborhoods according to religious sect and sometimes occupation, but not economic class as would develop in the West.

Some belonged to Sufi brotherhoods, which provided a governance of sorts. And there was the local ulama -- arbiters of Islamic law, while police powers, the power to use force of violence, remained with the practitioners of violence working for the sultan.

There were local struggles for control of judicial offices and teaching positions and battle with rival schools over doctrine, prestige and control of the streets that could take place without sultan or military intervention. Local societies had its ulama and sufi who were the teachers exemplars and leaders of the community. Islam was a part of what made numerous people a social community. And it provided a sense of community that transcended locality. There were associations of scholars and teachers and students adhering to codes of law that had developed by discussion and debate from centuries before. There were ideological fraternities that extended beyond sultanates to the broader world of Islam. As the scholar Ira M. Lapidus writes, "Muslim communal loyalties were factional and parochial at the local level, but cosmopolitan and universal at the international level."