The Turco-Mongol Invasions and the Lords of Armenia in the 13 ...

and were especially inimical toward the Christiana* .
Yet in 1258, during the siege of Baghdad, the Mongols
encouraged the Christians In their army brutally to
exterminate the city's Muslim population. But in
retaliation for the Caucasian rebellion of 1259-61,
Mongols destroyed churches and the Georgian kat'oiikosate
itself, and the emir Arghun (himself a Muslim) had the
Christian prince Hasan Jalal tortured" to death for
2
failure to apostasize . Clearly, Mongols adroitly
used the Christians in Muslim areas and the Muslins in
Christian Caucasia for espionage and maintenance of terror.
With the Increasing Islamization of the Mongols,
their policy changed. Once again, as had happened during
the invasions of the Saljuqa and the Khwarazmians,
fanatical Islam was wed to the nomads' lust for booty.
?rom toward the end of the 13th century to beyond the end
of the 14th century, anti-Christian persecutions prevailed
almost uninterruptedly. What earlier had been punishment
meted out to an occasionally recalcitrant naxarar became
the generalized fate of all Christians refusing to convert.
Nomads of all kinds of backgrounds,circulating in different
—
M p. 313* "...zi Sotoveal er ^wr ars erikays i qarsjx*
ew i_ tackac ork aoxnay gorcein ggorc xakut'ean ew t snamik
eln afawel k 'HatoneTc^''. ^^ ---
2 KG pp. 390-91.
208