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Article: Did Chinggis Khan have a Jewish teacher? An examination of an early fourteenth-century Arabic text.
- Article from:
- The Journal of the American Oriental Society
- Article date:
- October 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 American Oriental Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The answer to the question posed in the title of this article is no, or rather: no, at least as far as we are aware of at this time. My hope here, however, is not to attract the reader's attention with a catchy but totally hypothetical question whose negative answer is obvious. Rather, I wish to discuss a unique and significant passage in an Arabic text emanating from the Mamluk Sultanate. Somebody in early fourteenth-century Cairo thought that the great founder of the Mongol Empire had indeed, early on in his career, received instruction and advice from a Jew. I intend to analyze this text to see what it says about Muslim perceptions of Chinggis Khan (from about a century ...