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By Root 1967 0

in disarray, had already collapsed three decades earlier. By contrast, the Mongols who ruled central Asia undertook a series of bloody new conquests in the late fourteenth century, eventually founding the Mughal Empire, which governed India until the British took over in the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, the Mongols of Russia, known as the Golden Horde, lost their power and territory gradually, breaking into smaller and smaller hordes over four centuries.

But throughout the Mongol-dominated lands, the decline of the empire was marked by one consistent feature: a stark turn toward intolerance, especially religious intolerance, both officially and among the general Mongol population. For a variety of reasons—most saliently, the spread of the bubonic plague, which killed seventy-five million people, extinguished international trade, and effectively cut off the four Mongol khanates from one another—the Mongol rulers of the fourteenth century aligned themselves with powerful religious factions within their territory. Abandoning the principles of religious freedom established by Genghis Khan, they embarked on paths of zealotry, scapegoating, and, in some cases, mass murder.

Within each khanate, the details of intolerance differed. The Mongols of Russia were the first to convert to Islam. They soon joined the Egyptian Mamluks in their holy war against Christendom, at several points even attacking their fellow Mongols in Persia, who for their part were increasingly oppressing their Muslim subjects. Then, in 1295, Ghazan, the Mongol khan of Persia, also converted to Islam, the religion of most of his subjects. Unfortunately, one of Ghazan's most influential advisors was Nawruz, a Muslim general and fanatical bigot.

Nawruz purged the Ilkhanate of Buddhism, destroying its temples and statues and forcing its adherents—only a tiny, mainly Mongol minority—to convert to Islam. Jews and Christians were ordered to wear special clothing so that Muslim mobs could harass and assault them. Religious riots broke out; churches were sacked and Christians arrested, beaten, or killed. Even shamanism, the original religion of the Mongols, was harshly suppressed. Nawruz eventually lost favor with Ghazan, who had the general cut in half. But the Mongols of Persia still ruled in the name of Islam, and religious strife continued to debilitate the Ilkhanate until it ultimately collapsed in 1335.45

In China, Khubilai Khan's descendants, surrounded by rising popular discontent, decided that they had weakened themselves by becoming “too Chinese.” Members of the imperial court recounted dreams in which Genghis Khan urged them to rule the Chinese more harshly. Whatever the cause, the late Yuan emperors increasingly defined themselves against their Chinese subjects, isolating themselves, stressing their Mongol identity, and rejecting the Chinese language and culture. Traditional Chinese storytelling and Chinese opera, once vigorously promoted by Khubilai, were prohibited. As in the other khanates, the Mongol rulers renounced their predecessors’ religious neutrality. But in China, it was Buddhism, in its mystical Tibetan, Tantric form, that was elevated above all other religions.

The last decades of Mongol rule in China were sordid and chaotic. Rumors began circulating throughout the country that behind the palace walls the Mongol rulers were plotting to exterminate Chinese children and participating in bizarre sexual rituals. The latter rumor was at least partly true. At the urging of the Tibetan clergy, the Mongol ruling family engaged in lurid sexual dances, supposedly part of the path to Tantric enlightenment. Outside the Forbidden City, paranoia and xenophobia mounted. Along with other foreigners of influence, Tibetan monks, who received glaring imperial privileges, became objects of popular hatred. In 1333, Toghon Temur, a boy of thirteen, ascended the Mongol throne. Around the same time, the bubonic plague struck China, leaving 90 percent of the population dead in Hebei province. By 1351, as much as two-thirds of China's entire population had died.