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The Persian Government, locked in a suicidal struggle with Rome, was powerless to make good the damage, and the shock of the Arab invasion made it irreparable . Under the Abbasid Caliphs of Bagdad the rest of the country preserved its prosperity, but in the thirteenth century Hulaku the Mongol finished the work of the floods, and under Ottoman dominion the Sawâd has not recovered.
This they accomplished by basing the new script upon Mongol, which had been invented in 1269, by Baschpa, or 'Phagspa, a Tibetan lama, acting under the direction of Kublai Khan. Baschpa had based his script upon the written language of the Ouigours, who were descendants of the Hsiung-nu, or Huns.
Kublai took his station in a large wooden castle, borne on the backs of four elephants, whose bodies were protected with coverings of thick leather hardened by fire, over which were spread housings of cloth of gold. His army was disposed in three grand divisions, each division consisting of ten battalions of horsemen each ten thousand strong, and armed with the great Mongol bow.
Loobitsan had never seen Peking and was anxious to go. When General Hsu Shu-tseng made his coup d'état in November, 1919, Mr. Larsen and Loobitsan came to the capital as representatives of the Hutukhtu, and one day, as my wife was stepping into a millinery shop on Rue Marco Polo, she met him dressed in all his Mongol splendor.
The first Ming emperor had taken care to make his court resemble the court of the Mongol rulers, but on the whole had exercised relative economy. This made the reign of Yung-lo the most magnificent period of the Ming epoch, but beneath the surface decay had begun.
The house where I was so kindly entertained was the home of a rich Mongol trader, a man of many deeds and few words. It was built around a large courtyard enclosed in a strong stockade some twelve feet high, the buildings forming part of the enclosing wall. On the long side of the court was a roofed-over space where carts and horses and fuel were kept.
It must not be supposed from this that Kublai's authority had vanished or become effete. It was absolutely supreme over all declared enemies, but below the surface was seething an amount of popular hostility and discontent ominous to the longevity of the Mongol dynasty.
War was now inevitable. Kublai massed 25,000 Mongol braves in Korea, supplemented them with 15,000 Korean troops, and embarking them in a flotilla of 900 vessels manned by 8000 Koreans, launched this paltry army against Japan in November, 1274. The armada began by attacking Tsushima and Iki, islands lying in the strait that separates the Korean peninsula from Japan.
This was soon left without inhabitants, for the Mongol is a nomad who cannot live in artificial cities. The plain is his house and the world his town. For a time this town witnessed battles between the Chinese and the troops of Jenghiz Khan but afterwards it was forgotten.
We conversed as before, going through English, French, Russian, Mongol, and Chinese, and after dinner smoked our pipes and cigars. The sargoochay had a pipe with a slender bowl that could be taken out for reloading, like the shell of a Remington rifle. A single whiff served to exhaust it, and the smoke passing through water became purified.
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