Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Bookslut | A Trifecta of Eastern Conquest
Bookslut A Trifecta of Eastern Conquest: "April 2006
Elizabeth Kiem
features
A Trifecta of Eastern Conquest
When the Mongol emperor Tamerlane conquered Baghdad in 1401 he commanded that each of his soldiers bring back two heads from the populace and stack them in a pyramid. At the end of the day there were 120 such towers circling the city, each of them swarming with vultures. The Tigris ran red and every house was in ashes.
That�s some shock and awe.
Alexander the Great was in Babylon at the height of his way-B.C. grandeur. He was gentle with the population, unusually so, and so they prostrated themselves at his feet and feted him with their famous whores for a month.
That�s a mission accomplished.
The two great warriors hit Mesopotamia eighteen hundred years apart, but both are equally ancient history to us today. To read of the breadth of their conquests, the savagery of their vengeance and the opulence of their occupations is to realize just how amateurish was our grim little 20th century (not to mention the lackluster first decade of the modern millennium) when it comes to Greatness with a capital G.
Indeed, looked at next to the annals of the ancients, the era of post-industrial progress is a study in shrinkage. Our cities may be sprawling but our borders are puny. A world in which huge plums called Tartary, Anatolia and the Celestial Empire beckoned plunderers has been carved into a thousand dinky nation-states measuring wealth in percentages, not elephants.
We have very large guns, to be sure, but the size of our threats, constricted with sanctions and protocols, are laughable when heard next to the ultimatums of the �Scourge of God,� Tamerlane, who wrote the Khans of Hindustan that if they set any value upon their lives, property and reputation, they will pay me yearly tribute, and"
Elizabeth Kiem
features
A Trifecta of Eastern Conquest
When the Mongol emperor Tamerlane conquered Baghdad in 1401 he commanded that each of his soldiers bring back two heads from the populace and stack them in a pyramid. At the end of the day there were 120 such towers circling the city, each of them swarming with vultures. The Tigris ran red and every house was in ashes.
That�s some shock and awe.
Alexander the Great was in Babylon at the height of his way-B.C. grandeur. He was gentle with the population, unusually so, and so they prostrated themselves at his feet and feted him with their famous whores for a month.
That�s a mission accomplished.
The two great warriors hit Mesopotamia eighteen hundred years apart, but both are equally ancient history to us today. To read of the breadth of their conquests, the savagery of their vengeance and the opulence of their occupations is to realize just how amateurish was our grim little 20th century (not to mention the lackluster first decade of the modern millennium) when it comes to Greatness with a capital G.
Indeed, looked at next to the annals of the ancients, the era of post-industrial progress is a study in shrinkage. Our cities may be sprawling but our borders are puny. A world in which huge plums called Tartary, Anatolia and the Celestial Empire beckoned plunderers has been carved into a thousand dinky nation-states measuring wealth in percentages, not elephants.
We have very large guns, to be sure, but the size of our threats, constricted with sanctions and protocols, are laughable when heard next to the ultimatums of the �Scourge of God,� Tamerlane, who wrote the Khans of Hindustan that if they set any value upon their lives, property and reputation, they will pay me yearly tribute, and"
