ABSTRACT
When one of these Mongol princes came entirely under the influence of the Muslim 'Ulama, he would substitute for this tribal system of law the Shari'ah, but such a process was slow in view of the impressive character of the Mongol conquests. The masterful descendants of Chingiz Khan were more ready to put forward descent from this worldconqueror as a justification for their exercise of authority than seek a diploma of investiture from the alleged descendants of that Abbasid Caliph whom their relatives had put to death in 1258. The vastness of the Mongol empire with its admirable administration, that made it possible for travellers to pass with safety from China to the eastern frontier-s of the Byzantine empire, constituted a more -impressive spectacle in the political world than was afforded by the story of the powerless and ineffectual Caliphs during the latter days
But it was another matter when he attempted to impose his authority on independent princes whose geographical position put them at a safer distance from his aggression. In January 1436 Barsbay,
the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt, received an embassy from Shah Rukh, demanding that he should recognize him as his overlord, apply to him for a patent of investiture, strike coins in his name, and have mention made of him in the Khutbah. Barsbay tore in pieces the robe of honour that Shah Rukh had sent, had his envoy cudgelled and thrown into a tank, so that he was in danger of being drowned and nearly died of cold, and sent back a message that he dared Shah Rukh to come in person to Egypt, to avenge the insults paid to his ambassador. At the same time Barsbay wrote to Sultan Murad II, who had received a similar invitation but had treated the matter as a jest, and invited him to join him in an alliance against Shah Rukh. 13 Equally unsuccessful were Shah Rukh's efforts in India; the unfortunate 'Abd ur-Razzaq has left us a vivid account of the miserable failure of his embassy to the Zamorin of Calicut ; 1>1 and if it is true that the insignificant Khi?or Khan of the so-called Sayyid dynasty in Delhi (1414-1421) caused the Khutbah to be read in the name of Shah Rukh, as he had done for his father, Timur, before him,15 then this was an achievement hardly worth boasting of, since Khi~r Khan's authority was confined within a very limited area and indeed barely extended outside the city of Delhi. Shah Rukh himself provided the text of the Khutbah that Khi?or Khan was to have read: '0 God, cause the foundations of the kingdom and of the religion to abide for ever,
But by this period the practice of assuming the title of Khalifah had become too common for any one individual to attempt to revive the associations of universal sovereignty connected with it in the glorious days of the eighth century, least of all a monarch like Shah Rukh, whose kinsmen constantly broke out in revolt against him, and the capital of whose dominions, Samarq and, was in the extreme north-west of the historic Muslim empire. Indeed, so many princes, since the destruction of the Abbasid dynasty of Baghdad in 1258, had adopted the habit of styling themselves Khalifah, that by the reign of Shah Rukh their number had become quite considerable.
