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The Sultan and the Khan
A Novel
“They won't leave a soul alive. . . The slightest resistance—just the caliph's facing them in the field—has condemned us all.” The sentiment in Baghdad expressed by a young Muslim scholar is blunt and accurate. Hulegu Kahn, 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, an exiled slave-soldier named Baybars, a huge blue-eyed, brown-skinned Kipchak Turk, returns to Egypt. Within three years, armies under the command of Baybars and Hulegu Khan will meet in a decisive battle at Ayn Jalut. History will be made as a result of this confrontation between Mamluks (the slave-soldiers of Egypt and Syria) and Mongols. Seventy years after Richard the Lionheart invaded Muslim territory, an even more militarily gifted, ruthless 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 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, as well as through the eyes of two fictional characters, a Muslim scholar from Baghdad, and a Christian adventurer from western Europe who learns that embracing evil in the cause of a greater good is dangerous, and that love is not exclusive to just one religion.