Samarkand (6 page)

The Caliph’s emissary was first of all received by the Vizir who confronted him with these words:

‘The Sultan’s patience is running out and he is harassing me. I am happy that you at last have arrived with a reply.’

‘You will be less happy when you hear it: the Prince of Believers begs you to excuse him for not being able to accede to the
demand which has been put to him.’

The Vizir did not seem particularly concerned. He continued to finger his jade worry-beads.

‘And so,’ he said, ‘you are going to walk down this corridor and go through that tall doorway and announce to the master of
Iraq, Fars, Khorassan and Azerbaijan, to the conqueror of Asia, the sword who defends the true Religion, to the protector
of the Abbassid throne: “No, the Caliph will not give you his daughter!” Very well. This guard will show you the way.’

The latter presented himself and the emissary arose to follow him, when the Vizir added innocuously:

‘I assume, wise man that you are, that you have paid your debts, shared out your fortune among your sons and married off all
your daughters!’

The emissary sat back down, suddenly exhausted.

‘What do you advise me to do?’

‘Did the Caliph give you no other directive, no other way of settling affairs?’

‘He told me that if there was really no way of escaping from this marriage, he wished for three hundred thousand gold dinars
as compensation.’

‘There we have already a better way of proceeding. However, I do not think it is reasonable for him to ask for compensation
after
all that the Sultan has done for the Caliph, after he had brought him back to the city whence the Shiites had chased him,
after he had restored to him his wealth and his territory. We could reach the same result without offending Tughrul Beg. You
will tell him that the Caliph offers him his daughter’s hand, and I, for my part, will make use of the moment of intense satisfaction
to suggest that he gives a gift of dinars commensurate to such a personage.’

That was what happened. The Sultan, in a state of excitement, put together a great convoy comprising the Vizir, several princes,
dozens of officers and dignitaries, and aged female relatives with hundreds of guards and slaves who carried to Baghdad for
him presents of great value – camphor, myrrh, brocade and boxes full of gems as well as a hundred thousand pieces of gold.

The Caliph held an audience for the principal members of the delegation and exchanged polite but amorphous greetings. Then,
during his talk with the Sultan’s Vizir, he told him bluntly that the marriage did not have his consent and that if they tried
to coerce him he would leave Baghdad.

‘If that is the stance of the Prince of Believers, why did he propose an arrangement in dinars?’

‘I could not simply turn him down with a single “no”. I hoped that the Sultan would understand by my attitude that he could
not obtain such a sacrifice from me. I can tell you that no other Sultans, be they Turks or Persians, have ever demanded such
a thing from a Caliph. I must defend my honour!’

‘Several months ago, when I felt that your response might be negative, I tried to prepare the Sultan. I explained to him that
no one before him had ever dared to formulate such a request, that it was untraditional and that people would be surprised.
I could never dare to repeat what he replied to me.’

‘Speak. Fear not!’

‘May the Prince of Believers excuse me, for those words can never cross my lips.’

The Caliph lost his patience.

‘Speak, I order you. Hide nothing!’

‘The Sultan started by insulting me and accusing me of siding
with the Prince of Believers against him … He threatened to have me put in irons …’

The Vizir stuttered deliberately.

‘Get to the point. Tell me what Tughrul Beg said?’

‘The Sultan yelled: “What a strange clan those Abbassids are! Their ancestors conquered the best half of the world, they built
the most flourishing cities and just look at them today! I take their empire and they put up with that. I take their capital
and they are happy, they shower me with presents and the Prince of Believers says to me, ‘I give you all the lands which God
has given to me and I place in your hands all the believers whose fate He has entrusted to me.’ He begs me to put his palace,
his person and his harem under my protection. However, if I ask for his daughter, he rises up and wishes to defend his honour.
Is the only territory for which the Sultan is ready to fight the thighs of a virgin?”’

The Caliph choked and could not utter a word. The Vizir made the most of this to conclude the message.

‘The Sultan added, “Go and tell them that I will take that girl the way I took this empire, the way I took Baghdad!”’

Jahan recounted in great detail, and with a guilty pleasure, the matrimonial heartbreaks of the great people of the world;
having given up reprimanding her, Omar was now lapping up her stories. When she mischievously threatened to be quiet, he begged
her to continue, backing this up with caresses, even though he knew perfectly well how the story ended.

The Prince of Believers therefore resigned himself to saying ‘yes’, but he had death in his soul. As soon as he received the
Caliph’s response, Tughrul set out for Baghdad, and even before reaching the city, he sent his Vizir on ahead as a scout,
so impatient was he to see what arrangements had already been planned for the marriage.

Arriving at the Caliph’s palace, the emissary heard it plainly stated that the marriage contract could be signed, but the
union of the two spouses was out of the question, ‘as the honour of the alliance was the crucial point and not the match of
the couple’.

The Vizir was exasperated, but he controlled himself.

‘Knowing Tughrul Beg as I do,’ he explained, ‘I can assure you beyond all measure of doubt that the importance he gives to
the union is in no way secondary.’

In fact, in order to emphasize how ardent his desire was, the Sultan did not hesitate to place his troops in a state of alert,
to place Baghdad under close control and to surround the Caliph’s palace.
The Caliph had to back down and the ‘union’ took place. The Princess sat on a gold-carpeted bed. Tughrul Beg entered the room
and kissed the ground in front of her. ‘Then he honoured her,’ the chronicles confirm, ‘while she did not remove the veil from
her face, say a word or give heed to his presence.’ He would come to see her every day with valuable presents and he honoured
her every day, but not once did she let him see her face. A number of people awaited him as he left after every ‘meeting’,
for he was in such good humour that he granted all their requests and gave presents out recklessly.

No child was born of this marriage of decadence and arrogance. Tughrul died six months later. It was generally known that
he had been sterile, having repudiated his two first wives and accused them of the ill from which he suffered. With his string
of women, wives and slaves he should have faced up to the fact that if there was any fault it was his. Astrologers, healers
and shaman had been consulted and prescribed that he swallow the foreskin of a newly circumcised infant at full moon. But
this had no result and he had to resign himself to the truth. However, in order to prevent this infirmity lowering his prestige
amongst his men, he forged himself a solid reputation as an insatiable lover, dragging behind him for even the shortest move
of the court an amply furnished harem. His performance was a required subject of conversation amongst his entourage and it
was not rare that officers and even foreign visitors would ask after his prowess and, after lauding his nocturnal energy,
they would ask him for his recipes and elixirs.

Sayyida thus became a widow. Her golden bed was empty but she did not think to complain. The void in power seemed more serious.
The empire had just been born, and, even if it bore the name of its nebulous Seljuk ancestor, its real founder was Tughrul.
Was his disappearance without issue now going to plunge the Orient into anarchy? Brothers, nephews and cousins were legion
and the Turks did not recognize any birthright or law of succession.

Very quickly, however, a man managed to impose himself: Alp Arslan, son of Tchagri. Within a few months he came to prevail
over the members of the clan, massacring some and buying the allegiance of others. He would soon appear to his subjects as
a great
sovereign who was firm and just, but he was nevertheless to be dogged by a rumour, nurtured by his rivals. Whereas the sterile
Tughrul was accredited with unbounded virility, Alp Arslan, the father of nine children, by reason of his behaviour and rumours
attached to him, acquired the image of a man for whom the other sex held little attraction. His enemies nicknamed him ‘the
Effeminate’ and his courtiers avoided mentioning such an embarrassing subject in their conversation. It was this reputation,
merited or not, which was to cause his downfall and prematurely interrupt a career which at first had seemed so brilliant.

Jahan and Omar did not yet know this. At the time they were chatting away in the belvedere in Abu Taher’s garden, Alp Arslan
was at thirty-eight years old the most powerful man on earth. His empire extended from Kabul to the Mediterranean, his power
was undivided and his army faithful. As Vizir he had the most able statesman of his time, Nizam al-Mulk. Moreover, in the
little village of Manzikart in Anatolia, Alp Arslan had just won a resounding victory over the Byzantine empire whose army
had been shattered and the emperor captured. Preachers in all the mosques lauded his exploits and told how, at the hour of
battle, he had dressed himself in a white shroud and perfumed himself with embalmer’s herbs, how with his own hands he had
plaited his horse’s tail and surprised Russian scouts sent by the Byzantines who were at the perimeters of his camp and had
their noses sliced off but also how he gave the imprisoned Emperor back his liberty.

Doubtless it was a great moment for Islam, but it was a subject of grave concern for Samarkand. Alp Arslan had always coveted
the city and in the past had even sought to seize it. Only his conflict with the Byzantines had constrained him to conclude
a truce between the two dynasties which had been sealed by matrimonial alliances: Malikshah the oldest son of the Sultan had
obtained the hand of Terken Khatun, sister of Nasr Khan; the Khan himself had married the daughter of Alp Arslan.

However, no one was fooled by these arrangements. Ever since he had learnt of his brother-in-law’s victory over the Christians,
the master of Samarkand had been fearing the worst for his city. He was not wrong and events started to move apace.

Two hundred thousand Seljuk cavalrymen were preparing to cross ‘the river’, which at that time was named the Jayhun, which
the ancients had called the Oxus and which was later to become the Amu Darya. It took twenty days until the last soldier had
crossed it on a tottery pontoon bridge.

The throne room at Samarkand was often full, but as quiet as the house of a deceased person. The Khan himself seemed subdued
by the ordeal and had neither fits of temper nor outbursts of shouting. His courtiers seemed overwhelmed. His haughtiness
reassured them even if they were victim to it. His calmness unsettled them and they felt that he had resigned himself to his
fate. They judged him to be a defeated man and gave thought to their own safety. Should they flee now, wait around or pray?

Twice a day the Khan would arise followed by his retinue and would go off to inspect a mulberry patch or be acclaimed by his
soldiers or the populace. During one of these rounds some young townspeople attempted to approach the monarch. Held at a distance
by the guards, they yelled out that they were ready to fight alongside the soldiers and to die in defence of the city, the
Khan and the dynasty. Far from rejoicing at their initiative, the sovereign was irritated, broke off his visit to retrace
his steps and ordered the soldiers to disperse them roughly.

When he was back in the palace, he addressed his soldiers:

‘When my grandfather, may God preserve in us the memory of his wisdom, wished to capture the city of Balkh, the inhabitants
took up arms in the absence of their sovereign and killed a large number of our soldiers, forcing our army to retreat. My
grandfather then wrote a letter to Mahmoud, the master of Balkh, in which he rebuked him: ‘I most ardently desire our troops
to clash, may God grant victory to whom he wishes, but where will we end up if the common people start meddling in our quarrels?’
Mahmoud sided with him and punished his subjects, forbidding them to carry arms. He fined them great amounts of gold to make
up for the destruction the clashes had caused. What was true for the people of Balkh was even more so for those of Samarkand
who are by nature rebellious.
I would rather betake myself to Alp Arslan alone and unarmed than owe my safety to the citizenry.’

The officers all fell in with his view. They promised to repress any popular zeal, renewed their oaths of allegiance and swore
to fight like wounded wildcats. These were not just words. The Transoxanian troops were no less brave than those of the Seljuks.
Alp Arslan had only the advantage of numbers and age. Not his age, that is, but that of his dynasty. He belonged to the second
generation which was still animated by the ambition of empire-builders. Nasr was the fifth of his line and much more desirous
of enjoying his acquisitions than of expansion.

During this whole period of agitation, Khayyam wanted to stay well away from the city. Naturally he could not refrain from
putting in a brief appearance at court or at the
qadi’s
palace from time to time without seeming to desert them in their ordeal. However, most often he would stay shut up in his
belvedere, immersed in his works or in his secret book whose pages he was furiously blackening as if the war only existed
in the detached wisdom which was inspired in him.

Only Jahan brought him back to the reality of the drama happening around them. Every evening she would bring him the latest
news from the front and report the moods of the palace to which he would listen without obvious enthusiasm.