‘I could not simply turn him down with a single “no”. I hoped that the Sultan would understand by my attitude that he could not obtain such a sacrifice from me. I can tell you that no other Sultans, be they Turks or Persians, have ever demanded such a thing from a Caliph. I must defend my honour!’
‘Several months ago, when I felt that your response might be negative, I tried to prepare the Sultan. I explained to him that no one before him had ever dared to formulate such a request, that it was untraditional and that people would be surprised. I could never dare to repeat what he replied to me.’
‘Speak. Fear not!’
‘May the Prince of Believers excuse me, for those words can never cross my lips.’
The Caliph lost his patience.
‘Speak, I order you. Hide nothing!’
‘The Sultan started by insulting me and accusing me of siding with the Prince of Believers against him … He threatened to have me put in irons …’
The Vizir stuttered deliberately.
‘Get to the point. Tell me what Tughrul Beg said?’
‘The Sultan yelled: “What a strange clan those Abbassids are! Their ancestors conquered the best half of the world, they built the most flourishing cities and just look at them today! I take their empire and they put up with that. I take their capital and they are happy, they shower me with presents and the Prince of Believers says to me, ‘I give you all the lands which God has given to me and I place in your hands all the believers whose fate He has entrusted to me.’ He begs me to put his palace, his person and his harem under my protection. However, if I ask for his daughter, he rises up and wishes to defend his honour. Is the only territory for which the Sultan is ready to fight the thighs of a virgin?”’
The Caliph choked and could not utter a word. The Vizir made the most of this to conclude the message.
‘The Sultan added, “Go and tell them that I will take that girl the way I took this empire, the way I took Baghdad!”’
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.