utal Turkish
yoke, it was presently exposed to even more terrible misfortunes. These
misfortunes were also of Turanian origin. Toward the close of the
twelfth century the eastern branches of the Turanian race were welded
into a temporary unity by the genius of a mighty chieftain named Jenghiz
Khan. Taking the sinister title of "The Inflexible Emperor," this
arch-savage started out to loot the world. He first overran northern
China, which he hideously ravaged, then turned his devastating course
toward the west. Such was the rise of the terrible "Mongols," whose name
still stinks in the nostrils of civilized mankind. Carrying with them
skilled Chinese engineers using gunpowder for the reduction of fortified
cities, Jenghiz Khan and his mounted hosts proved everywhere
irresistible. The Mongols were the most appalling barbarians whom the
world has ever seen. Their object was not conquest for settlement, not
even loot, but in great part a sheer satanic lust for blood and
destruction. They revelled in butchering whole populations, destroying
cities, laying waste countrysides--and then passing on to fresh fields.

Jenghiz Khan died after a few years of his westward progress, but his
successors continued his work with unabated zeal. Both Christendom and
Islam were smitten by the Mongol scourge. All eastern Europe was ravaged
and re-barbarized, the Russians showing ugly traces of the Mongol
imprint to this day. But the woes of Christendom were as nothing to the
woes of Islam. The Mongols never penetrated beyond Poland, and western
Europe, the seat of Western civilization, was left unscathed. Not so
Islam. Pouring down from the north-east, the Mongol hosts whirled like a
cyclone over the Moslem world from India to Egypt, pillaging, murdering,
and destroying. The nascent civilization of mediaeval Persia, just
struggling into the light beneath the incubus of Turkish harryings, was
stamped flat under the Mongol hoofs, and the Mongols then proceeded to
deal with the Moslem culture-centre--Bagdad. Bagdad had declined
considerably from the gorgeous days of Haroun-al-Rashid, with its
legendary million souls. However, it was still a great city, the seat of
the caliphate and the unquestioned centre of Saracenic civilization. The
Mongols stormed it (A.D. 1258), butchered its entire population, and
literally wiped Bagdad off the face of the earth. And even this was not
the worst. Bagdad was the capital of Mesopotamia. This "Land between the