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Hūlāko enjoys a special precedence among the
bloodthirsty butchers of history, who filled up the earth with dead corpses
leaving behind them destruction beyond redemption. Proceeding from his
homeland towards Muslim nations, this Mongol leader covered a long distance
marked with numerous, hideous acts of killing, treachery, torture of both
Sunnites and Shiites, until it was his unspeakable tragedy; the fall of
Baghdad, whose victims were reported to amount 800.000.
Hūlāko hated Muslims. His hatred was
constantly nourished by his wife Tuquz Khātūn’s extreme antipathy against
Muslims and encouragement to get back at them. She was a Nestorian
Christian. Nestorianism is an old Christian doctrine that appeared in Syria.
It was named after Bishop Nestorius, who rejected the belief in the Trinity
(the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit). He argued against the divinity
of Jesus Christ since God does not transfigurate in a human body. God
appears through Christ as the sun appears through a small window, or the
engraving appears on a ring. Nonetheless, the appearance of the sun through
the small window does not make it a sun, nor the engraving on the ring is
rendered a ring. Needless to say, the Christian sects denounced Nestorius.
He was condemned by the Council of
Ephesus to be stripped of his episcopal dignity and removed from the college
of priests in 431. From that time on, the Nestorian
doctrines were renounced by most Christian sects.
Let us contemplate this icon of
Tuquz Khātūn, who encouraged her husband the butcher to slaughter the
Muslims and to favor the Christians, depicting her in the form of a Saint!
Hūlāko the Butcher is represented alongside as a saint too. Today, this icon
is held in one of the monasteries of al-Šām.
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