“They won't leave a soul alive. . .
just the caliph putting an army in the field
has
condemned us all.” The sentiment in Baghdad expressed by a young Muslim scholar is blunt and
accurate. Hulegu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, has arrived at the gates
of Baghdad. Mongols threaten to overrun what has been the cultural and
spiritual center of Islam for half a millennium. Genghis Khan and his
successors have overrun much of the Islamic world, substantially
depopulating central Asia in the process. They have overrun Russia, and
much of eastern Europe, devastating eastern Orthodox and Catholic lands
with equal ferocity. No one seems capable of opposing this seemingly
unstoppable tide of history.
Southwest of the coming cataclysm, a
slave-soldier named Baybars, a huge blue-eyed, brown-skinned Kipchak Turk,
schemes to return to Egypt and take power from Qutuz, the man who
killed Baybars’
leader and drove Baybars into exile. But individual
goals melt into the context of the coming confrontation between the Egyptian army and
the Mongol army. They are on a collision course to meet in a decisive battle at Ayn Jalut,
where history will
be made. Seventy years after Richard the Lionheart invaded Muslim territory, an even more
formidable enemy confronts Islam from the opposite direction. And this time
Islam will need to offer a leader with more than the gentle, magnanimous
qualities of Saladin. Baybars and his unlikely Muslim allies will need to counter viciousness with
viciousness to save Islam. And there will be no deals short of surrender
with this enemy.
The Sultan and the Khan is the story of this historic
confrontation, told through the viewpoints of Baybars and Hulegu, and
Hulegu’s general Kitbuqa as well
as through the eyes of two fictional characters, a Muslim scholar from
Baghdad, and a Christian adventurer. Christians from East and
West mix in the story in strange and exotic ways. In these trying times of
casual brutality and swift changes of fortune, characters
face the decision of whether
embracing evil in the cause of a perceived greater good is worth the
price, and learn that love
is not exclusive to just one religion.
