The holidays are upon us. Thanksgiving is just about over here in the states, which means that the endless parade of mindless consumerism known as the Christmas shopping season is in full swing. You won’t be able to turn on the television or walk into a store without being bombarded with endless advertisements for every new toy and gadget under the sun. In between those are the movies, songs, and TV specials, those treacly, so-sweet-they-might-give-you-diabetes odes to love and togetherness (when they’re not being completely fucking disturbing, that is). This is a time where you’re supposed to feel togetherness with your extended relatives, the same people that you spend the rest of the year avoiding because they might actually be Donald Trump supporters.
The only thing, in my mind, that really brings people together in these cold, wintry days is everyone’s favorite social lubricant: alcohol. Believe it or not, people have been getting drunk as a means of bonding since before we invented less important things like writing or the wheel. Beer was the first, invented more than 7,000 years ago, and used by the ancient Sumerians (living in modern-day Iraq) in religious rituals. For all of recorded history, the devil’s beverage has been used to quell quarrels, begin relationships, and even prevent wars, as when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev got drunk with the prime minister of the former Yugoslavia and ended a crisis that had been brewing for years. But my favorite of all these “happy drunk” stories takes place in 1254, where the Mongols, arguably the most terrifying group of fuckers to ever walk the Earth, helped bring Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism together by getting members of all three faiths completely shitfaced.
What do you think of when you think of Mongols? If you’re like most people, you’ll probably think of the Hollywood version: bloodthirsty barbarians who wander the countryside on, burning and pillaging anything that stands in their way. These guys were horse archers from the Eurasian steps, closely related to the Huns that fucked up the Romans’ shit nearly a thousand years before Genghis Khan’s birth. In fact, you ever see Conan the Barbarian? Schwarzenegger’s most famous quote in that movie is lifted, almost word for word, from a quote attributed to the mighty Khan himself: “The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters.” Not exactly the kind of people you’d invite to go scrapbooking with.
But there was another side to these guys that often gets overlooked when it comes to popular history. For a bunch of so-called barbarians, the Mongols were exceptionally tolerant and weirdly progressive. Yes, they would slaughter millions and often raze entire cities to the ground, but once they conquered a people, they tended to leave them alone. Genghis Khan knew that he couldn’t possibly govern the largest land empire on Earth with an iron fist, so he mostly let people under his domain follow the same traditions and legal customs they had before Mongol rule. Their use of the Silk Road to control trade led to an economic boom in Asia, and their appreciation of art and music led to one of the cultural golden ages in Chinese history.
And nowhere is this more obvious than their treatment or religion. See, the Mongols didn’t follow a traditional religion: they were heavily shamanistic, worshipping the sky and putting a heavy emphasis on man’s relationship with nature. But their empire, from the beginning, incorporated almost all the major religions: Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, and Hindus were all subject to Mongol rule. Eventually, these religions made their way to the ruling class, and by 1254 you had people of every creed chilling out in the palace at the capital, Karakorum.
Because the lines of communication were so tight, word of this eventually spread from Mongolia all the way to Western Europe. The king of France, seeking an opportunity to gain Christian allies and fight against the Muslims in one of their 5 bajillion crusades (seriously, that history is so ridiculous and complicated I will have to write a post about it some day), sent a Franciscan monk named William of Rubruck to Mongolia to try and convince these heathens of the superiority of Jesus Christ above all other false gods.
But when Rubruck finally made the 8,000+ mile journey to Karakorum, he was surprised to find he was far from alone. There was the emperor, Genghis Khan’s grandson Mongke, and there were also many other Christians, from Eastern Europe and even far into East Asia; people who had radically different beliefs from the Roman Catholicism Rubruck had meant to preach. And even worse! There were Muslims in Karakorum! And Buddhist monks! What was the meaning of all this?
Well, Mongke was no Genghis, but he was still kind of a clever dude. He had brought representatives from the three major religions of the Mongolian Empire all together, and their job was to state their case in front of his court. He arranged a grand debate between all the Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists, as a means of establishing which religion would be the official religion of the empire.
But the thing with the Mongols is, as much as they tried to present themselves as an advanced and cultured people, they were still nomadic steppe warriors at heart. So their version of a debate was less like something you’d see on C-SPAN and more like a professional wrestling match. Each side had three judges, although they didn’t judge the match so much as they goaded everyone into being as loud and obnoxious as possible. (No mention as to whether one of the religious leaders grabbed a chair and smashed one of the judges heads with it, but use your imagination, OK?) The audience was cheering and jeering, the great Khan was having a ball, and everyone, and I do mean everyone, was getting completely plastered.
The debate started out innocuously enough. Rubruck started by explaining how there was only one true God, the God of the Hebrew and Christian Bible, and the Nestorians (another branch of Christians who are different from Catholics in that they… never mind, I’ve written a thousand words on this shit, I don’t even care at this point) helped elaborate that. The Muslims agreed but offered their own opinions on subjects like the nature of evil, and the Buddhists argued on the existence of one god over many.
But as the drinks kept coming, the debate got less theological and more, um, fun. The Christians, completely out of rational arguments to make, just started singing hymns. Loudly and (presumably) quite off key. The clerics, who don’t normally sing, joined in by reciting passages from the Quran. And the Buddhist monks, who were probably more confused than anything else, just decided to meditate silently and watch as everyone else made complete jackasses out of themselves. Eventually, everyone was just so wasted they passed out, and so nobody won the great debate and clash of civilizations.
No, instead, something better happened. These three religions, two of which had spent the better part of a millennium killing each other in one bloody crusade after the next, actually started agreeing with each other. According to Rubruck, “They [the Muslims] answered them [the Nestorian Christians]: “We concede your religion is true, and that everything is true that is in the Gospel: so we do not want to argue any point with you.” And they confessed that in all their prayers they besought God to grant them to die as Christians die.” These three entirely different religions found common ground, and they were able to respect each other’s views even when they didn’t necessarily see eye to eye. And it was because of the Mongols – these barbarian, violent warlords who killed millions but somehow were always willing to see things from another way. To quote Rubruck again, “They listen to whatever an ambassador has to say, and always ask if he has more to say“.
I bring this up because in case you haven’t noticed, there is a lot of religious tension in America right now. Islamophobia is rampant in our politics and our media. People are being so blinded by the threat of ISIS and other radical groups that the majority of state governors have said they will not accept Syrian refugees to this country… mostly because they also happen to be Muslim. Now this asshole Donald Trump is saying every Muslim should have to get an ID card, because categorizing an entire group of people and forcing them to have special identification worked so well the last time someone tried it.
Maybe the solution here is simpler than we thought. We can’t always act with fear and hostility. Maybe all we need is to get everyone involved in this ridiculous debate absolutely shitfaced drunk.
marissatheterrible 
fabulous essay
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