Samarkand Page 5

  CHAPTER 8

  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.

  On the ground, Alp Arslan’s advance was slow. He was weighted down with excess troops, discipline was slipshod and he had to contend with illness and the swamps as well as occasional outbreaks of fierce resistance. One man in particular was making the Sultan’s life hard. He was the commander of a fortress not far from the river. The army could have skirted around it and continued to advance, but its rear would have been less secure, harassments would have continued and in case of difficulty any retreat would have been turned out to be perilous. Alp Arslan thus had given the order to put the fortress out of action ten days earlier and they had made numerous assaults on it.

  The battle was being followed very closely from Samarkand. Every three days a pigeon would arrive, released by the defenders. The message was never an appeal for help. It did not describe the exhaustion of supplies or men, it spoke only of adverse losses and rumours of epidemics rife amongst the besiegers. Overnight the commander of the site, a certain Yussif, originally from Khwarazm, became the hero of Transoxania.

  However, eventually the defenders were overwhelmed, the foundations of the fortress were undermined and the walls scaled. Yussif fought to the last before being wounded and captured. He was led off to the Sultan, who was curious to see close up the cause of his troubles. It was a lean little man, hirsute and dusty, who was marched in front of the Sultan. He held himself upright with his head held high, between two giants who gripped him by the arms. Alp Arslan, for his part, was stretched out on a wooden dais covered with cushions. The two men looked at each other defiantly, then the victor ordered:

  ‘Place four posts in the ground, tie him to them and have him quartered.’

  Yussif looked at the Sultan condescendingly and scornfully, and shouted: ‘Is that the way to punish someone who has fought like a man?’

  Alp Arslan did not reply. He turned his face away. The prisoner added: ‘You, the Effeminate. I am talking to you!’

  The Sultan jumped up, as if stung by a scorpion. He seized his bow which was lying near him, loaded an arrow, and before firing he ordered the guards to release the prisoner as he could not fire on the man without the risk of wounding his own soldiers. In any case, he had nothing to worry about for he had never missed a target.

  Perhaps it was his extreme annoyance, his hurry or the awkwardness of firing at such a short distance but Yussif was still unharmed and the Sultan did not have time to load a second arrow before the prisoner attacked him. Alp Arslan, who could not defend himself while still perched on his pedestal, tried to extricate himself, tripped on a cushion, stumbled and fell to the ground. Yussif was upon him straight away, grasping the knife which he had kept hidden in the folds of his clothing. He had time to stab him in the side before he himself was dispatched by a massive blow. The soldiers set upon his lifeless, mutilated body. His lips, however, still kept the sardonic smile which death had frozen on them. He was avenged and the Sultan was not to outlast him for long.

  Alp Arslan in fact died after four long nights of agony and bitter meditation. His words were recorded in the chronicles of the time: ‘The other day I reviewed my troops from high on a promontory and I felt the earth tremble under their step. I told myself, “I am the master of the world! Who can measure up to me?” For my arrogance and vanity God sent out the most wretched of humans, a prisoner, a condemned man on his way to be executed; he proved himself more powerful than I, he struck me, he knocked me off my throne, he has removed my life.’

  Was it the day after this drama that Omar Khayyam wrote in his book:

  Once in a while a man arises boasting;

  He shows his wealth and cries out, ‘It is I!’

  A day or two his puny matters flourish;

  Then Death appears and cries out, ‘It is I!’

  CHAPTER 9

  It was feast-time in Samarkand and a woman dared to cry – the wife of the triumphant Khan, but she was also above all the daughter of the assassinated Sultan. Naturally her husband had gone to present his condolences. He had ordered the whole harem to wear mourning and had a eunuch who had displayed too much good humour flogged in front of her. However, when he was back in his diwan he did not hesitate to tell all and sundry that ‘God has granted the prayers of the people of Samarkand’.

  It might be supposed that at that time the inhabitants of a city had no reason for preferring one sovereign over the other. However, they said their prayers, for what they really feared was a change of master with his string of massacres and ordeals and the inevitable pillaging and plundering. For the population to wish to be conquered by another, the monarch had to go beyond the limit in submitting them to exorbitant taxes and continuous harassment. This was not the case with Nasr. If he was not the best of princes, he certainly was not the worst. They could live with him and they put their faith in the ability of the Almighty to keep him in check.

  Thus in Samarkand they were celebrating being spared from war. The immense square of Ras al-Tak was overflowing with smoke and noise. Itinerant merchants had erected stalls against every wall, and under every street lamp there was a singing girl or a lute player improvising melodies. Myriad groups were forming and dispersing around the story-tellers, the palm-readers and the snake-charmers. In the centre of the square, on a hastily constructed and shaky rostrum they were holding the traditional contest amongst popular poets who sang praise to the incomparability and invincibility of Samarkand. The public’s judgement was instant. New stars arose and others waned. There were wood fires almost everywhere, as it was December and the nights had already turned cold. In the palace, jars of wine were being emptied and smashed. The Khan was jovial, boisterous and swaggering with drink.

  The next day he had the prayer for the dead recited in the great mosque and then received condolences over the death of his father-in-law. The same people who had rushed over the day before to congratulate him on his victory came back, wearing expressions of mourning to express their sorrow. The qadi, who had recited some appropriate verses and invited Omar to do the same, gave Omar an aside:

  ‘Do not be astonished at anything. Reality has two faces and so do people.’

  That very evening, Abu Taher was summoned by Nasr Khan, who asked him to join the delegation charged with going to pay Samarkand’s homage to the deceased Sultan. Omar had set off too, albeit with a hundred and twenty other people.

  The site of the condolences was an old Seljuk army camp, situated just north of the river. Thousands of tents and yurts were pitched all around, a veritable improvised city where the solemn representatives of Transoxania rubbed shoulders distrustingly with the nomad warriors with long plaited hair who had come to renew their clan’s allegiance. Malikshah, at seventeen, a giant with the face of a child, was wrapped in a flowing karakul coat and sat enthroned on the very dais where his father, Alp Arslan, had fallen. Several steps in front of him stood the Grand Vizir, at fifty-five years old the strongman of the empire, whom Malikshah called ‘father’ as a sign of extreme deference. Nizam al-Mulk, the Order of the Kingdom. Never had a name been more deserved. Every time a visitor of rank approached, the young
sultan gave the Vizir a questioning look. He then gave an imperceptible signal as to whether to receive the visitor warmly or reservedly, serenely or distrustingly, attentively or absently.

  The whole delegation from Samarkand prostrated themselves at the feet of Malikshah who acknowledged them with a condescending nod of the head. Then a number of the notables left the group to make their way toward Nizam. The Vizir was impassive. His colleagues were bustling around him but he looked at them and listened to them without reacting. He should not be thought of as a master of the palace who shouted out his orders. If his influence was ubiquitous, it was because he worked like a puppeteer, who with a discreet touch impressed on others the movements which he desired. His silences were proverbial. It was not rare for a visitor to spend an hour in his presence without any words being exchanged other than the phrases of greeting and parting. He was not visited for his conversation, but so that allegiances could be renewed, suspicions dispelled and oblivion avoided.

  Twelve people from the Samarkand delegation had obtained the privilege of shaking the hand which held the rudder of the empire. Omar followed close behind the qadi Abu Taher who muttered a formula. Nizam nodded and kept his hand in the qadi’s for a few seconds, thereby honouring him. When it was Omar’s turn, the Vizir leant over to his ear and murmured:

  ‘On this day next year, be at Isfahan and we shall speak.’

  Khayyam was not certain that he had heard correctly and he felt a little off-balance. The personage intimidated him, the ceremonies impressed him, the chaos intoxicated him and the wails of the mourners were deafening him. He could no longer trust his senses. He wanted some confirmation that he had heard correctly but he was already being swept along by the flow of people. The Vizir was looking elsewhere and had started to nod his head in silence again.