Swords From the East (80 page)

And when his grandchildren came out of Central Asia about twentythree centuries later, our ancestors called them servants of Antichrist, and spawn of Gog and Magog, and "Tatars." And our ancestors ran away from them. And, though there were many Nestorian Christians among the Mongols and they seemed really eager to claim the European Christians as brothers of a sort, the Pope and all would have nothing to do with them. So our Tokharian's great-grandchildren became either Muhammadan or Buddhist.

Enough of this! But you can see why it's illogical to say, as Legendre hints, that Genghis Khan and his Mongols were "white" men, and, because of that, victorious conquerors. They were victorious because they were good fighters, and had remarkable leaders.

It's like Prester John. Our medieval ancestors believed from var ions tales that an enormously wealthy Christian monarch ruled in Central Asia, a white man.

The fact of it was that Wang Khan, one of the Keraits (Krits, hence "Christians"), ruled that part of Central Asia, that he was a TurkoMongol who wandered about in barbaric splendor and some of his family were Nestorian Christians, and a large part of his people likewise.

So Genghis Khan was a Turko-Mongol nomad, whose ancestors probably were Aryan two thousand years before, who had red hair. He wasn't a white man in the sense that St. Louis of France, who lived about the same generation, was a white man. He was Genghis Khan, and a wonder at that.

To yawp that Genghis Khan was a white man, whose children were bastardized by negro captives, and produced the Mongols of today, is simply the bunk.

As an afterthought, on the Seller-Legendre, yellow race, descent of Mongols matter-the most important point was left out of my letter. The most important ethnological point, dating back a couple of thousand years. That is, the Mongol-Tatar tribes are not wholly of Turkish extraction. It follows, that they are not wholly of Indo- Scythian descent.

I have a lot of respect for the German, Professor Friedrich Hirth. This is what he says of the people between the Sea of Aral and Korea: "The Huns should be looked upon as a political and not a racial union. The Huns proper, as the dominant race (about 300 AD) were probably of Turkish extraction. So were the Hiung-nu, their predecessors in the east." (Note the Hiung-nu-Wu-sun, Yue-chi, etc., are the chaps that had Aryan forefathers, maybe.) "But the Hiung-nu as a political power comprised ancestors of the races which we now separate from them as being of Mongol and Tungusic extraction."

All of which simply means that the Huns who wandered over into Europe were part of a confederacy of Central Asia tribes that were variously descended-part Indo-Scythian, part Turkish, part aboriginal Siberian.

Now, glancing at a book written by d'Ohsson, who was an authority on the Mongols in his day, we find this: "There were three distinct races, Turks, Mongol-Tatars, and Tungusis, or Tchortes (Devils)."

This is encouraging, because it fits with what a lot of modern ethnologists say that there are three different races, the Turks of Central Asia, the Mongol-Manchu tribes north and west of China proper, and the Esquimaux tribes up under the Arctic circle.

Everyone disagrees heartily as to whether the American Indian is descended from the Esquimaux (as the Lap and Finn are) or from the Mongol-Tatar-Tungusi-Manchu layer, a little way south of the Arctic regions. I asked an ethnologist out here from whom the Mongol- Tatar-Manchu-Tungusi chaps were descended, and he said, "From the Chinese, of course." No one knows where the Chinese came from. So there we are! Authorities say so many different things about the ancestry of the Central Asia people before 200-300 AD that a modern story-teller like myself can't summarize their opinions.

The legends of Central Asia, the Prester John mystery, the White Huns, the sand-buried ruins of the Gobi, the unknown Tokharoi and their language, the remnants of Alexander's Greeks, the Aryans tucked away in the mountains here and there, the red-haired conqueror, Genghis Khan, all these are intensely interesting to us today and we are just beginning to get at the facts behind them. It's the greatest treasure house of the world, and that's why men like Stein, Sven Hedin, Koslof, Hoernle, Andrews, Osborne, Huntington, etc., are devoting their lives to the exploration of Central Asia. The secrets hidden away there loom gigantic.

But as to the S.-Legendre (as quoted in the Dearborn Independent) line of argument that there never was a yellow race, and that the armies of Genghis Khan conquered most of the world because they were white men, well, I pass the yellow race on to ethnologists. As to Genghis Khan, it's not often that a serious-minded fiction writer can say to a scientist, "You're drawing on your imagination, old chap."

There was, among Genghis Khan's horde, a kind of affinity for Christians. Remember that after the generation of St. Thomas and St. Andrew, many early Christians penetrated Central Asia. They were Nestorians, mostly, and built churches all the way into Sinkiang in China. Among such tribes as the Keraits, the Christians were very numerous-hence the Prester John legend.

In the day of Genghis Khan these Nestorian Christians, the tribesmen of the Gobi region, had almost forgotten ritual and reading, but clung to the symbol of the Cross, and to semi-barbaric prayers. They were probably better Christians than most of us in America today.

Anyway, the Mongols were, literally, death to Muhammadans. But they dealt, for them, leniently with the semi- Christian Georgians of the Caucasus and really spared the Armenians. Marco Polo and the first Jesuits were kindly received at "Kambalu" Khan-Valigh-King's City, and Kublai Khan is said to have been half- Christian in his ideals. The Nestorian churches still existed. Hulagu, the Mongol prince who conquered Bagdad, wiped out the Assassins, etc., and protected the Christians in his province. (I've read a contemporary Muhammadan account that complains of how the "cursed Nazarenes" put on their best garments, men, women, and children, and paraded the streets openly, with songs, on the day that Hulagu issued his decree. Also, this Mongol threw open the Sepulcher to Christians. His wife was one. His successor, Abaka, was also.

At this time the Mongols in the Syria sector sent several letters to St. Louis, the Pope, etc., urging that the Franks and Mongols unite in driving the Moslems out of Syria and Egypt. But the Christians were too busy scrapping among themselves. And when the Mongol khans requested priests from Europe, two or three barefoot Jesuits were sent, brave men, but lacking authority, prestige, or presence. By degrees the Mongols in Asia were converted to Buddhism, in Persia, the Black Sea region, etc., to Muhammadanism.

So much for lost opportunity and the narrow-mindedness of our medieval European princes and Popes. We've sent enough missionaries since into all Asia and accomplished infinitely less than could have been accomplished then.

Harold Lamb (1892-1962) was born in Alpine, New Jersey, the son of Eliza Rollinson and Frederick Lamb, a renowned stained-glass designer, painter, and writer. Lamb later described himself as having been born with damaged eyes, ears, and speech, adding that by adulthood these problems had mostly righted themselves. He was never very comfortable in crowds or cities, and found school "a torment." He had two main refuges when growing up-his grandfather's library and the outdoors. Lamb loved tennis and played the game well into his later years.

Lamb attended Columbia, where he first dug into the histories of Eastern civilizations, ever after his lifelong fascination. He served briefly in World War I as an infantryman but saw no action. In 1917 he married Ruth Barbour, and by all accounts their marriage was a long and happy one. They had two children, Frederick and Cary. Arthur Sullivan Hoffman, the chief editor of Adventure magazine, recognized Lamb's storytelling skills and encouraged him to write about the subjects he most loved. For the next twenty years or so, historical fiction set in the remote East flowed from Lamb's pen, and he quickly became one of Adventure's most popular writers. Lamb did not stop with fiction, however, and soon began to draft biographies and screenplays. By the time the pulp magazine market dried up, Lamb was an established and recognized historian, and for the rest of his life he produced respected biographies and histories, earning numerous awards, including one from the Persian government for his two-volume history of the Crusades.

Lamb knew many languages: by his own account, French, Latin, ancient Persian, some Arabic, a smattering of Turkish, a bit of ManchuTatar, and medieval Ukrainian. He traveled throughout Asia, visiting most of the places he wrote about, and during World War II he was on covert assignment overseas for the U.S. government. He is remembered today both for his scholarly histories and for his swashbuckling tales of daring Cossacks and crusaders. "Life is good, after all," Lamb once wrote, "when a man can go where he wants to, and write about what he likes best."

The following stories were originally published in Adventure magazine: "The House of the Strongest," November 20, 1921; "The Gate in the Sky," February 20, 1922; "The Wolf-Chaser," April 30, 1922; "The Net," June 10, 1922; "The Road of the Giants," August 30, 1922; "The Three Palladins," July 30, 1923 (part 1), August 1o, 1923 (part 2), and August 20, 1923 (part 3 ); "The Book of the Tiger: The Warrior," June 23, 1926; "The Book of the Tiger: The Emperor," July 8, 1926.

The following stories were originally published in Collier's magazine: "Azadi's Jest," November ii, 1933; "Sleeping Lion," November 27, 1937.

*The best of Lamb's contemporary fiction is probably his short novel Marching Sands, which has been reprinted several times.

*His outline and the aborted draft of the story can be found in Lord of Samarcand and Other Adventure Tales of the Old Orient (Bison Books, 2005.

*A European.

*Christians.

*The great court, Peking.

*About a hundred and forty miles.

*Kerait or Krit is the Mongol version of the word Christian.

*Thousand.

*The mirages of the western Gobi proved as much of a mystery to other explorers, among them Marco Polo, as to Mingan.

*The range now called the Thian Shan-a spur of the Himalayas.

`The Himalayas.

*The first crusade reached Jerusalem in Io99, and in the time of the last Prester John, Richard of England, called the Lion Heart, had failed, through no fault of his own, in his long conflict with Saladin, the Turkish sultan. The letters of Prester John were forwarded to the Pope, and resulted in the journey of various priests into Cathay, but by then Prester John and his kingdom of Tangut were no more than a legend in the Mongol empire.

*The new empire of the Mongols extended to what is now Tibet, and to Russian Turkestan.

*Torguts.

*The northern lights.

*About fifteen thousand men.

*A platform in a tree from which to shoot game.

*The colored flames that are often seen in the are of the northern lights.

*The transcriber wishes to acknowledge his complete indebtedness to the translation of Dr. Leyden and Mr. Erskine, from which the following narrative is taken-also to the excellent commentary of Dr. Stanley Lane-Poole, entitled "Babar."

*Tamerlane.

*Beg is a title of rank, corresponding to "knight." Amir may be rendered as "duke" or "earl." Mirza after a name signifies prince of a reigning family. Khan is the northern equivalent among Moghuls and Uzbeks of mirza, but most often means nothing but a trace of hereditary nobility.

*Babar has no word of reproach for his brother. Jahangir lacked his brother's impetuous courage, and allowed himself to become the tool of Babar's enemies more than once.

`Alexander the Great.

*It must be remembered that Babar was at this time only a boy of fourteen.

`The Uzbeks had been summoned to aid Samarkand some two years ago. Shaibani Khan was one of the most brilliant chieftains of Asia, and he needed no urging to come down from his deserts to the rich cities of the Moghuls.

The Uzbeks were Turks and Tatars, savage men and dour fighters. They were part of the tide that has always flowed down from the steppes of high Asia into the fertile valleys of the south.