Awaiting the Empire's Ain Jalut

Battle of Ain Jalut on September 3, 1260 was a turning point in the history of the Mongol empire and by extension in the history of the world, a war which effectively drew the boundary of a ruthless empire on the roll and from where on, the only place where the empire could go was inward and back, which marked the end of the aura of invincibility of the Mongol warrior, the first time that they were effectively destroyed and comprehensively defeated in battle.

The Mongols had sacked and brutally depopulated Baghdad in 1258 , a blow from which the country (now Iraq) never really recovered from, and had marched on to Egypt where the Mamluks ruled. The horror of Baghdad had hardened Muslim resolve in Egypt and elsewhere in the Islamic world (especially when Damascus surrendered without a fight). And then at Ain Jalut, came the turning point when a motivated army of people with nothing to lose defeated an Imperial army that was fed on too many stories of its own superiority and invincibility.

All this is old hat, an history lesson, but then history is never as remote as many of us think even when the events talked about are almost a millennium old.

This is precisely the sentiment effectively echoed by Amir Butler in this article “Mongol Invasion of Iraq: Lessons never learned” . The Mongols made human pyramids of humans to exhibit their ferocity and their strength and their superiority. The American soldiers did something similar at Abu Gharib. And the similarities do not end there, starting from the basic premise of a fledgling empire to the tactics involved in subduing a population.

And as far as history tells us, every empire meets its Ain Jalut sooner or later. The world today awaits the next one.