Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [138]
AS AHMAD SOLIDIFIED his power, rumors circulated at court that he wanted even more. Everywhere Ahmad looked, he saw enemies, and he dealt with them all. With slight exaggeration, Marco insists that “whenever he [Ahmad] wished to put anyone whom he hated to death, whether justly or unjustly, he went to the khan and said to him, ‘So-and-so deserves death because he has offended your Majesty in this manner.’ Then the khan said, ‘Do what pleases you.’ And immediately he had the man put to death.”
In reality, Ahmad’s machinations were more subtle. For example, when Bayan, the Mongol commander, arrived home in victory, local officials attempted to give him a jade belt buckle from the Song to commemorate his triumph. In a gracious gesture of modesty, Bayan declined the gift, saying he could take nothing personally from the Song.
Displaying a talent for subversion, Ahmad falsely accused the honorable general of stealing a jade cup, and ordered an investigation. So deeply was Kublai in Ahmad’s thrall that the emperor blindly ordered an inquisition. Despite Ahmad’s scheming, Bayan escaped conviction, although a cloud of suspicion hung over him because the cup itself could not be located. Ahmad tried again to neutralize his potential rival by claiming that Bayan had needlessly massacred Song soldiers. He was no more successful in this attempt than in his previous campaign of slander, but with each charge leveled against him, Bayan the war hero lost stature at court until he no longer posed a serious threat to Ahmad.
Ahmad was more ruthless with other critics. Ts’ui Pin, the Chinese leader of an anti-Ahmad group, complained that Ahmad had established unnecessary government agencies to give his many relatives lucrative and influential government jobs, despite his pledge not to engage in nepotism. For a brief time, Ts’ui Pin had his way, and he forced Ahmad’s relatives—even his son Husain—off the government payroll. But Ahmad then arranged for Ts’ui Pin to be investigated. An inquiry concluded that Ts’ui Pin and two other conspirators had stolen grain from the government and cast unauthorized bronze seals to enhance their own power. In 1280, they were found guilty; all three were executed.
By then, Husain had returned to his former government post, established a new government bureaucracy himself, and doubled taxes in the wealthy Quinsai region. Ostensibly, the taxes financed distant Mongol military campaigns against Burma, Japan, and Java. All the while, he fended off charges of greed and indifference by claiming that local officials engaged in corrupt reporting and outright theft of grain supplies.
Throughout these controversies, Ahmad enjoyed the naïve trust of Kublai Khan, as always more interested in glorious military conquests and sensual indulgence than in the minutiae of finance and administration.
AFTER BAYAN’S DEATH the jade cup in question surfaced, proving his innocence. A chastened Kublai Khan realized how close to complete defeat Bayan had come at Ahmad’s hands, with the khan himself an unwitting accomplice. But Kublai Khan did nothing to restrain Ahmad’s reign of political terror.
IN CONTRAST, Kublai Khan’s son and heir apparent, Chinkim, loathed Ahmad with a passion. Of all his adversaries, Ahmad feared only Chinkim, who was spared the rigged inquisitions that brought down others. He was frequently on record denouncing the Muslim financial mastermind. Chinkim spoke not only for himself but also for the Chinese scholars and courtiers hovering around the khan; indeed, as time passed, he became strikingly sinicized, speaking Chinese and wearing traditional Chinese clothing. One of his closest