The Chaliphate - Muir - The Search For Mecca

588 THE CALIFH AN-NASIR [ciiai'. lxxvii.
A.H. 575- not the dagger, were now in favour at the court of I^agdad,
^4°- Yj^g Shah retaliated by having the body of An-Nasir's
Wazir, who died on a campaign against him, exhumed, and
the head stuck up at Khwfirizm. Irritated at this and other
hostile acts, the Caliph showed his vexation by treating
with
indignity the pilgrims who came from the East under the
Khwarizm flag. But beyond such poor revenge, he was
powerless for any open enmity against a Potentate whose
rule stretched unopposed from the Jaxartes to the Persian
Gulf
Khwarizm Mohammad son of Takash, exasperated at these provancVon
" ceedings, now aimed not simply to crush the temporal rule
Bagdad, of the Caliph, but by setting up an anti-Caliph of the
1216-1217
house of 'All, to paralyse his
A.D.
spiritual power as well. A
council of learned doctors, assembled at Khwarizm, accord-
- who
ingly deposed An-Nasir as an assassin and enemy of the
Faith, and nominated a descendant of 'All to the Caliphate,
was prayed for in public and his name struck on
the coinage of the Eastern empire. Following up this
act, Mohammad turned his resistless arms upon Bagdad.
An-Nasir in alarm sent a distinguished envoy to plead his
cause, but he was haughtily rejected, with the assurance
that the conqueror was about to instal the worthier scion
Nasir invites of a worthier house upon his master's throne. On this,
An-Nasir bethought him of an appeal
Khan'^
to Jenghiz Khan, the
rising Mongol chief, to check Mohammad's progress ; and
against the pious reclamations of his court, sent an embassy
to him ;—the Defender of the Faith appealing for help to
the pagan head of a pagan horde! It would have been all
too late, for Mohammad, the Khwarizm Shah, had already
taken Eastern 'Irak and Bagdad lay at his mercy, when, by
the opportune inclemency of an early winter, he was forced
to return to Khorasan. The Caliph soon after found his
diplomacy bearing evil fruit. The steppes of Central Asia
were set in motion by Jenghiz Khan, and his hordes put to
flight the Khwarizm Shah, who died an exile in an island
of the Caspian. But it had been well for the Caliph (as we
shall see) if he had left these Mongol hosts in their native
wilds alone.
Turning now to the Holy Land, we find that Saladin,
ever and again, when hard pressed by the Crusaders