Mamluk beacons and crop-burnings (al-manawir wa-l-muhriqat)

Al-Qalqashandi devotes the fourth bab of the conclusion of Subh al-a'sha to the beacons (manawir) and the crop-burnings (muhriqat), two of the Mamluk state's means of meeting the Mongols of the Iranian realm; most of it he quotes from Ibn Fadl Allah al-Umari's al-Ta'rif and then comments on. ¹

The manawir are "places for raising fire by night and smoke by day". The author of al-Ta'rif says that when the realm of Iran was in the hands of Hulagu and his Mongols, and war ran between them and this kingdom, high places were set on mountain tops or tall buildings where fire was lit at night and smoke raised by day to warn of a Mongol attack, stretching from the furthest frontiers of Islam such as al-Bira and al-Rahba to the sultan's seat at the Citadel, so that whatever happened on the Euphrates in the morning was known by nightfall. ¹ Each fire or smoke had "signs" by which differences in the sighting of the enemy were told, now by number and now otherwise; each beacon had watchmen and lookouts on fixed pay. ¹

He records that at Ana, a town of that realm, beacons were kept by a group of well-wishers under some other pretext, the townspeople covering for them out of love for the rulers of Egypt. ¹ He then lists the chain of beacons from Wadi al-Haykal, al-Qanatir, Qubaqib, al-Sukhna, Arak, Palmyra, al-Qaryatayn and Thaniyyat al-Uqab to the Bride's minaret at Damascus, then around Damascus to Ajlun, Baysan, Jenin and Qaqun, as far as the heights of the hill of Gaza, "after which there is no beacon, and news of the Mongols travels only by wing and by barid". ²

He reports that the beacons were neglected once "God made peace between the two parties", becoming "traces that have faded". Al-Qalqashandi adds that these beacons were taken from the kings of India, having read that there are beacons on high mountains in their lands whose fire is seen from even further, and judges that whoever first arranged them "brought a royal wisdom", since the barid is the fastest bearer of news, the pigeon faster than the barid, and the beacons faster than the pigeon: "consider that the first word of news on the Euphrates appears in Egypt within a day and a night". ³

The muhriqat were places along the eastern frontier inside the realm of Hulagu's house, to which men were sent to burn the crops, among them places in the land of Mosul and of Sinjar. The reason, he quotes, is that the Mongols brought no fodder for their horses but relied on what the land grew, so that once the crops of these fertile lands were burned they were too weak to invade. ⁴ The method was for the men to hide with friendly informants in mountain caves and valley beds, wait for a day of high wind, tie fire to the tails of wild foxes and release starved hunting dogs after them. ⁴