USA | Allegheny Mountains | Stonycreek Glades | John Croner Sr. | John Croner Jr.

Recently my thoughts turned to my ancestor, John Croner Jr. (Jan. 5, 1779–Dec. 17, 1848), who lived in the Stonycreek Glades just north of the town of Berlin, the Cloaca Maxima of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. According to one history of the Brethren Church in Brothersvalley Township, where the Glades are located, John Croner was a practitioner of herbal medicine:

It was said that he traveled all over the mountains and glades collecting herbs and flowers for his medicines. He was one of the two doctors in the area and was busy all the time in his practice. Not much is known about either Dr. John Groner (old spelling of Croner) or his father Elder John Groner.

While very little is known about Dr. John Groner, we know even less about the elder John Groner (Croner), and what we do know is confusing. Efforts to document his life are complicated by the appearance of what appears to be two different John Croners around this time. According to One Source:

When John Croner was born in 1753, in Pennsylvania, United States, his father, William Croner, was 20 and his mother, Dama Croner, was 18. He married Elizabeth Magdalene Speicher on 3 January 1774, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, British Colonial America. They were the parents of at least 3 sons and 4 daughters. He died on 17 December 1806, in Brothersvalley Township, Somerset, Pennsylvania, United States, at the age of 53.

According to this chronology, however, he would have been only seventeen or eighteen years old when he turned up in the Glades as a settler. This seems unlikely. Five of his children are listed: Barbara Croner (1774–1841); Dr. John Croner (1779–1848; Magdalena Croner 1781–1866); Leah Croner (1783–?); and Abraham Croner (1785–?). Thus according to this source the John Croner named here was the father of Dr. John Croner Jr.

Another genealogical Account maintains, however,  that the elder John Croner was born “about” 1728 in Lancaster County, just west of Philadelphia. This would have put him in his early forties when he settled in the Glades. According to This Version of events he was not married to Elizabeth Magdalene Speicher but to two different women: Elizabeth (born c.1730), last name unknown, and then to Magdalene, last name unknown. It is highly suspicious that the wife of the first John Croner was named Elizabeth Magdalene, while the two wives of the second John Croner were named Elizabeth and Magdalene. In any case, since divorces were frowned upon, if not forbidden, by the Brethren Sect to which the Croners belonged, it seems safe to assume that his first wife Elizabeth mentioned in this account died and John Croner Sr. later married a woman named Magdalene. It is not clear from the account which of this John Croner’s wives was the mother of John Jr., nor how many other children they may have had. Although it would appear that we are dealing with two different John Croners, both are credited with being the father of John Croner Jr. born in 1779, and both reportedly died on Dec. 7, 1806. This leads to the conclusion that the compilers of the genealogies somehow conflated the two John Croners into one.

John Croner Sr., in all likelihood the one born c.1728, arrived in the Glades in either 1770 or 1771, when he was in his early forties. As we have seen the John Croner born in 1753 was married in Lancaster County in eastern Pennsylvania in 1774, further evidence that this was a different person. The second John Croner, probaby the one born c.1728, “built a log house over a small spring,” in the Glades in 1771, according to one account. Another account maintains, however, that an early settler by the name of Francis Philippi actually built the log cabin sometime prior to 1771, and that John Croner Sr. somehow, perhaps by purchase, acquired the dwelling and took up residence in 1771.

Jorg Frantz Phillippi, later Francis Phillippi, was born on October 1, 1729, in Alsace, France. On September 15, 1749,  he arrived in Philadelphia on the ship Phoenix and first settled in Lancaster County, west of Philadelphia. A French citizen when he arrived in the New World, he took an oath to the King of England and by 1753 was serving in the Virginia Militia under George Washington during Washington’s ill-fated march on Fort Pitt (current-day Pittsburgh). His religion is unknown, but he was probably not a Brethren, who were strict pacifists. This would soon get them trouble when they even refused to fight against the British in the Revolutionary War. In 1755 Philippi served as a wagoneer in the army in General Braddock, whose march on Fort Pitt also ended disastrously. Philippi reportedly was shot in the leg and escaped on his own across the mountains into what is now Somerset County. At some point between 1755 and 1771 he built a log cabin in the Glades. Like many who first settled in the Glades, included a contingent of Amish, he eventually moved south to the rich lands bordering the Casselman River, settling in the village of Casselman.  He returned to the bosom of Abraham in 1798 and was buried in New Centerville, four miles north of Casselman village. An inscription on his Tombstone says, “He was the first white man to see Somerset County.” This is almost certainly inaccurate. Hunters, trappers, and traders dealing with the Native population had penetrated into what is now Somerset County during the first half of the eighteenth century, and explorer Christopher Gist had passed through what is now southwestern Somerset County in 1749, the same year Philippi arrived in the New World. He traversed the Stonycreek Glades a year later, in 1750, as is well documented in his Journals.

Tombstone of  Francis Phillippi. An inscription on the tombstone claims: “He was the first white man to see Somerset County.”  

By 1773 the log cabin in which John Croner Sr. lived was also being used as a meeting house for local Brethren. His son, Doctor John Croner, born in 1779, eventually took over the cabin. While living here he also turned it into a doctor’s office. Here he kept the medicinal plants he gathered in the area. The doctor also practiced blood-letting or blood-cupping. The cabin eventually became known as “Old Schweppy.” The word schweppy derives from shreppa, which is turn is a corruption of the German word schröpfen, which means cupping, or drawing of blood through suction over lanced skin. In Pennsylvania Dutch (Dutch being a corruption of Deutsch or German), the language spoken by early German settlers, the standard German ö regularly shifts to e, and so schröpf would naturally become schrep in local speech. The final a in shreppa is a common Pennsylvania Deutsch feminine/neuter noun ending. Eventually shreppa was further corrupted into schweppy. 

An historian who examined the cabin in the late 1950s wrote:

In talking about it (Old Schweppy), there is an air of mystery cast about it. As well as this author can get its meaning, it seems to indicate that it was the doctor’s office or laboratory, or place for operations, or a place for “bleeding” or “blood letting.” It was here where the doctor kept his herbs, etc. The medicine cabinets are still in the walls.

The same historian gives a detailed description of the cabin as it appeared in the 1950s: 

In the] back of the house was the oven that baked the coarse bread. The basement once had a huge fireplace in it. There was an opening to the good spring just outside the wall. The water flowed through the basement. This was for protection against the Indians and wild animals. The wall is high and made of thick stones. The upper wall is logs with wide rough clapboards covering. The main floor is really the second floor with steep steps that indicated that they were once hanging. There on the west wall is the built-in cabinet for the medicine bottles and books and instruments. There are many ancient tools strange to this author. The windows are ancient in design and material. Heavy oak shutters once hung there with rifle loop holes in them. The sleeping loft is most interesting. One enters it from a ladder type stairs, also indicating that it might have been hanging. The steps or ladder was lifted up each night for protection. The interior is dark save for a small window at each end, high in the ends beneath the steep roof. Four candle sconces were in the room, one on each wall. There are flax “Skutching” machines and ancient flax spinning wheels much as they were left a hundred years ago, in the attic.

The cabin still existed as late as 1977, when one Local History claimed it was “the oldest remaining house in Somerset County.” The current owner of the property allowed the cabin to fall into ruins and now no trace of its remains. 

Old Schweppy, as of 1977 “the oldest remaining house in Somerset County.” 

USA | Allegheny Mountains | 9-11 Memorial Bike Trail From Garrett to Berlin

GAPers passing through Garrett may want to check out the beginning of the 21-mile-long 9-11 Memorial Trail from Garrett to the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville. This stretch is part of the larger 1,300-mile September 11th National Memorial Trail network. After crossing the Casselman River Bridge watch for the marked bicycle path to the right on Lafayette Street.

Casselman River looking north from the Casselman River Bridge

Lafayette Street. Just follow the bikes

Downtown Garrett. It gets wild on Saturday nights!

Follow the signs to Water Street and turn left. Continue north through downtown Garrett (don’t blink) on Water Street a little over a mile to the current terminus of the trail, just short of the new Route 219 Overpass.

The current end of the 9-11 bike trail just outside of Garrett

The first section of the proposed trail will follow the roadbed of the old Buffalo Valley Railroad, later known as the Berlin Branch of the B&O Railroad, 8.5 miles to Berlin. The Buffalo Valley Railroad was founded in 1871, the same year the Pittsburgh & Connellsville Railroad reached Garrett, by enterprising businessmen in Berlin and farmers in the Buffalo Valley. The first president of the railroad was Samuel Philson Jr. He was the son of Robert Philson (c. 1759–1831), an immigrant from Ireland who settled in Berlin, where he became a storekeeper. 

Philson was one of the ringleaders of the Whiskey Rebellion (1791–1794), a protest against the tax imposed on whiskey by the federal government in 1791. Farmers in western Pennsylvania had made a business of converting their excess corn, rye, wheat, and barley into whiskey, which was much more easily transportable to eastern markets than the grain itself. Only four bushels of grain could be loaded onto a pack horse, but one horse could carry the whiskey made from twenty-four bushels of grain. Farmers and businessmen in western Pennsylvania viewed the whiskey tax as an assault on their livelihoods and armed protests soon broke out. 

President George Washington dispatched 13,000 federal troops to western Pennsylvania to suppress the rebellion. Washington himself led one of the detachments to Bedford, thirty miles east of Berlin, “down off the mountain,” as locals like to say. Washington then sent Alexander Hamilton—he of the musical Hamilton fame—to Berlin to arrest the instigators of the rebellion. Robert Philson and sixteen others were taken into custody. Philson himself was taken to Philadelphia and tried for treason, reportedly the first time anyone had been tried for treason in the United States. Twelve honest men acquitted him due to lack of evidence and he went on to a distinguished public career. He joined the army and served as a brigadier-general in the War of 1812, was elected to serve one term as a representative in the U.S. Congress, and eventually became an associate judge in Somerset County. 

So why didn’t George Washington himself come to Berlin and arrest Robert Philson? According to local lore word was sent down off the mountain to Bedford that if Washington showed his face in Berlin he would be shot on sight. To this day some people around Berlin like to claim that fancy-pants George Washington was too much of a chicken-shit to show his face in their town and instead sent his henchman Alexander Hamilton to do his dirty work for him. Of course Berlin is notorious for its braggarts, gasbags, and blowhards, so this story may well be apocryphal.

In any case, Robert Philson’s son Samuel became one of the area’s leading businessmen and was instrumental in the creation of the Buffalo Valley Railroad. In 1880 the B&O bought out the Pittsburgh & Connellsville Railroad that ran through Garrett and also acquired the Buffalo Valley Railroad, which then became known as the Berlin Branch of the B&O. Among locals it was affectionately called the Huckleberry Railroad. Huckleberries grew in abundance in the Allegheny Mountains near the headwaters of Buffalo Creek. They were packed into ten to twelve quart pails and transported to Berlin, where they were loaded on the Berlin Branch and sent to various cities on the B&O Railroad. American chestnuts (Castanea dentata), picked by the bushel before the chestnut blight killed almost all chestnut trees in the Alleghenies, were also shipped on the railroad, as were maple syrup and maple sugar. Locals also harvested swamp grass, which was dried and sent to markets on the East Coast, where it was used as a filler to pack fragile objects like glass, china, and crockery. In the late nineteenth century, before the introduction of refrigeration, ice from lakes in the area was also shipped to cities, where it was in high demand. Whiskey and other alcoholic products, including medicinal alcohol, were shipped from distilleries near Berlin, including the famous Franz Distillery, south of Berlin. Farmers in the Buffalo Valley and the surrounding area also sent their milk to a creamery at the terminus of the railroad in Berlin. 

All of these products were soon eclipsed by coal. Numerous mines exploited the fabulously rich coal deposits in the Buffalo Valley. By 1927 one company alone, Consolidation Coal, had shipped 1,271,889 tons of coal from its mines in Goodtown, located on a short spur of the Berlin Branch of the B&O two miles from Berlin. The board of directors of Consolidation Coal included James Roosevelt, the father of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and F.D.R.’s maternal grandfather, Warren Delano II. Thousands of immigrants were brought in to work the mines, resulting in several mining towns in the Buffalo Valley. Locals usually referred to these immigrants as Russians, although very few if any were actually ethnic Russians. Most were Ukrainians, Belorussians, Georgians, and others from the fringes of the rapidly disintegrating Czarist Russian Empire. 

The Berlin Branch of the B&O shut down for good in the 1970s. Its right-of-way sat idle for the next five decades and will now be repurposed as the first section of the 9-11 Memorial Trail. GAPers who want to get a glimpse of the trail can proceed to near the current terminus outside of Garrett and then head up the Buffalo Valley on Fogletown Road. After a mile or so the road passes by the Burkholder Covered Bridge. Built in 1870 the 47-foot-long bridge is one of seven in Somerset County utilizing the one-span Burr-Arch type of construction. The railroad probably made a stop here. 

Burkholder Covered Bridge. The proposed route of the bike trail can be seen on the right

Burkholder Covered Bridge.

Another 1.7 miles up the valley Fogletown Road runs into Owl Hollow Road. On Owl Hollow Road is the Beachdale Crossing, another station stop on the old Buffalo Creek Railroad. Once a community of sorts, it is now best known for the Beachdale Brethren Church. 

Beachdale Brethren Church

The proposed route of the bike trail looking south from the Buffalo Creek Bridge on Owl Hollow Road 

The proposed route of the bike trail looking north from the Buffalo Creek Bridge on Owl Hollow Road 

GAPers can continue on Owl Hollow Road to old Route 219 (the Mason-Dixon Highway) and return to Garrett on the road, or continue north on Route 219 1.8 miles to Pine Hill Road. Turn right and proceed to the old village of Raineytown, named after W. T. Rainey, a coal operator who opened a mine near here.

Route of the proposed bike path looking south from Raineytown. There was once a Native American village to the right of the trail beyond the house. To my knowledge it has never been officially investigated, but numerous artifacts, including arrowheads and hatchet heads, have been found here. Every time the farmer plowed the field where the village was located new artifacts would turn up.

The village itself was established in 1898 and consisted of sixteen or more houses for coal miners. At first the village was called Red Raineytown because all the houses were painted red. The stop here on the Buffalo Valley Railroad was known as the Pine Hill Station, named after the village of Pine Hill about a mile to the south. Local farmers brought their milk here for shipment to a creamery in Berlin. There was a large company store in the village, but it burned down in 1903. In 1921, during the Prohibition Era, authorities raided a still used to make moonshine in the basement of one of the dwellings. Now only two houses remain in Raineytown. 

Route of the proposed bike path looking northeast from Raineytown. Berlin is about two miles from here.

GAPers can return to Garrett via the Mason-Dixon Highway. The truly daring can backtrack .15 of a mile on the Pine Hill Road and then take Weighley Mill Road 1.8 miles to the famously rough and tumble town of Berlin, where, if we are to believe locals, even George Washington feared to tread. The 9-11 Memorial Trail continues from Berlin 12.5 miles to the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville using already existing roads. On September 7, 2024, an organized bike ride took place from Berlin to the Memorial and back, starting at 9:00 a.m. and ending at 2:00 p.m. This is now an annual event. The next “Tour de Trail”, as the event is called—apparently a takeoff on the Tour de France—will take place on Saturday, September 6, 2025.

As of this writing it is not known when the Garrett-Berlin section of the 9-11 Memorial Trail will be completed. 

For more see:

 Wanders on the the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) from Frostburg to Garrett,

Including the GAP Town of Meyersdale and a 

Preview of the 9-11 Memorial Trail from

Garret to to Berlin

U.S.A | Maryland | Pennsylvania | New Book

The 3,294-foot Big Savage Tunnel north of Frostburg closed for the winter on November 30, 2023, and would not reopen until March 28, 2024, thus effectively ending the biking season for through-trips between Cumberland and Pittsburgh. I spent the winter holed up in a hovel in Frostburg, Maryland, which I am using as a base for my wanderings on the GAP. After the November 30 tunnel closing a few brief snow squalls laid down an inch or less of snow that quickly melted and occasionally rain would freeze at the higher altitudes, making the trail treacherous, but other than during these brief episodes the GAP remained open to the tunnel for much of December and early January. In late January and in February a few heavy snowfalls closed the GAP completely. The last big blizzard, which dropped close to six inches of snow, hit just before the Spring Equinox on March 19. It took almost a week for the snow to melt off the GAP north of Frostburg. As soon as the trail was clear I rode up to Big Savage Tunnel . . .  Continued.

Mongolia | In Search of Shambhala: The 1925-1928 Roerich Expedition in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

The 1925-1928 Roerich Expedition, led by artist, mystic, spy, arch-intriguer, and hard-core Aghartian-Shambhalist Nicholas Roerich, was believed by some to be a khora, or circumnavigation, of the legendary kingdom of Shambhala. The Expedition spent seven months in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. Everywhere they turned the Roerichs stumbled upon signs of Shambhala . . . Continued . . .

Mongolia | New Book | Wanders in the Khentii Mountains of Mongolia

 In 1997 I did a ten-day horse trip to the Onon Hot Springs and the beginning of the Onon River in Khentii Aimag, northeast of Ulaanbaatar, as described in my book Wanders in Northern Mongolia. On the return leg of the trip I ascended 7,749-foot Burkhan Khaldun, also known as Khentii Khan Uul, arguably the most sacred mountain in Mongolia. The mountain is mentioned in the Secret History of the Mongols, a thirteenth-century account of the rise of the Mongols under Chingis Khan, and it was here, according to the Secret History, that Temüjin—the future Chingis Khan—hid from the Merkid tribesmen who had kidnapped his wife and wanted to capture him. According to legend, Chingis Khan also came here to pray before embarking on his military campaigns. Later the mountain would be inextricably bound up in the cult of Chingis Khan and also become a pilgrimage site for Buddhists. Still later some would claim that Chingis Khan was born near Burkhan Khaldun and was buried on its summit.

Not long after my trip two Mongolian historians, D. Bazargür and D. Enkhbayar, published a book entitled Chinggis Khaan Atlas. The Atlas contained thirty-seven maps (including insets) depicting in great detail the locations of many places and events mentioned in the Secret History of the Mongols. After I had studied the Atlas in detail and interviewed Bazargür and Enkhbayar I decided that I would return to the Burkhan Khaldun area and visit some of the places shown on the maps.

In the meantime I had made a pilgrimage to 21,778-foot Mount Kailash, the sacred mountain in Tibet worshipped by Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Bönpos (followers of the Bön religion), shamans, and others, and by then also a favorite destination for adventure tourism. No one is allowed to climb to the summit of Mount Kailash, but thousands of people a year circumambulate the mountain via a thirty-two-mile-long path. A pilgrimage circuit of a sacred place like Kailash is known as a khora. Khoras are always done clockwise around the sacred place or object, unless you are a contrarian Bönpo, who do khoras counter-clockwise (I encountered several Bönpos walking counter-clockwise around Mount Kailash). The Kailash khora, the high point of which is the 18,200-foot Drölma Pass, is a strenuous endeavor. The week I was in the Kailash area at least ten people perished while circumambulating the mountain. Several, reportedly, were elderly Hindus from India who may have come here, consciously or unconsciously, to transmigrate at this sacred place. Some hardy Tibetans, however, do the khora in one day. Most people take two or three days (I made it in two and a half days).

Mount Kailash

After returning from Kailash I got the idea of doing a khora around Burkhan Khaldun, which without stretching the imagination too much could be considered Mongolia’s equivalent of Mount Kailash. I would of course not do the khora on foot but by horse, the traditional mode of travel in Mongolia. From what I could determine in Ulaanbaatar from talking to knowledgeable people, including several lamas familiar with sacred mountains, there was no tradition of doing a khora around Burkhan Khaldun. I was assured, however, that there was no law, custom, or tradition forbidding a khora of the mountain. Burkhan Khaldun was within the boundaries of the 4,740 square-mile Khan Khentii Strictly Protected Area, the Mongolian equivalent of a national park, and permits were needed to make extended trips in the area, but these could be easily obtained from the Strictly Protected Area offices in Ulaanbaatar.

I had no sooner decided upon this course of action than I got a call from the translator I had used on my first trip to Burkhan Khaldun. She said that Zevgee, the Kherlen River herdsman from whom I had rented horses and who served as my guide on my first trip, was in town and wanted to talk to me. I met with Zevgee and his wife Tümen-Ölzii at a local pizza parlor. Zevgee wanted to know if I had any more horse trips in mind. By then in his early sixties, Zevgee was semi-retired, having turned over his herds to his sons, and had a lot of free time on his hands. I knew he enjoyed doing horse trips in the Khentii Mountains and I suspected he also needed the extra money from a horse trip to see him through the upcoming winter. I explained to him the khora I had done around Mount Kailash in Tibet and suggested that we do a khora around Burkhan Khaldun by horse. He was of course familiar with the concept of khoras. They are often done around sacred places and objects in Mongolia.

I had been told by several knowledgeable people that in the nineteenth and early twentieth century there was a khora route around Bogd Khan Uul, the huge massif that looms up to the south of Ulaanbaatar, although admittedly I was never able to get details of its exact path. Also, pilgrims would routinely do khoras when visiting Erdene Zuu, the monastery founded in 1685-86 by Avtai Khan (1554–1588), the great-grandfather of Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia (now a museum located on the outskirts of Kharkhorin, in Övörkhangai Aimag). 

Erdene Zuu

First they would circumambulate the wall surrounding the monastery, which measures roughly 1350 feet on each side. Then they would circumambulate the three Zuu Temples at the southwest corner of the monastery complex. Entering the Central Zuu Temple, they would then circumambulate the famous Jowo statue, the centerpiece of the temple, passing behind it via a corridor along the back wall.

Mini-khoras are also often done around ovoos, or stone cairns, that mark passes on highways and other auspicious places. Passing such an ovoo, many drivers will stop and circumambulate it three times. Some drivers, passing an ovoo on a pass, just honk their horns and claim that this counts as a khora

While a khora around an ovoo at a highway pass can be completed in ten or fifteen seconds, some khoras take considerably longer. It has long been believed in esoteric circles that the 1925–28 Roerich Expedition through Inner Asia, led by artist, mystic, spy, arch-intriguer, and hard-core Aghartian-Shambhalist Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947), was actually a khora around the mythical kingdom of Shambhala, believed to be located somewhere in Inner Asia. The expedition began in Srinagar, India, and made a vast clockwise circuit through India, East Turkestan, Russia, Mongolia (passing through Ulaanbaatar), China, Tibet, and back to India. The several books written by the Roerichs about the expedition did not mention that they interrupted the khora by making a side trip to Moscow, where they attempted to enlist the .communist government in a quixotic scheme to establish a new kingdom of Shambhala in Inner Asia. For more see my In Search of Shambhala: The 1925-1928 Roerich Expedition in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

After discussing these various khoras, Zevgee, like my other informants, says he is unaware of any tradition of doing khoras around Burkhan Khaldun. Although born in Bayankhongor Aimag, in southwest Mongolia, he has lived in the upper Kherlen River Valley since his early twenties and is recognized as a fount of local lore. His wife, Tümen-Ölzii, was born and raised in the Kherlen Valley and is also very knowledgeable about local traditions. She too has not heard of any tradition of doing khoras around Burkhan Khaldun. Both concurred, however, that there was no prohibition against it. Zevgee was quite excited about the idea and had mapped out a rough itinerary on a paper napkin even before we finished our pizza . . . Continued.

See more:

Mongolia | Zanabazar | First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia

Zanabazar (1635–1723) was, according to most reckonings, the sixteenth incarnation of Javsandamba. The first incarnation is believed to have appeared around the time of the Buddha. As a small boy he was recognized as the spiritual leader of Mongolia and awarded the title of Bogd Gegeen. He would go on to play a role in the religious and political life of Mongolia analogous to that of the Dalai Lamas of Tibet. Zanabazar built temples and established monasteries, including one at what is now the site of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, and was a polymath who invented new scripts for writing the Mongolian language, designed new clothes for monks, studied the medical properties of hot springs, and much else. He is most famous for his bronze statues which are now the centerpieces of three museums in Ulaanbaatar. “During his lifetime, he was the greatest Buddhist sculptor in Asia,” opines art historian K. Youso about Zanabazar.” Indeed, he is often called the Michelangelo of Mongolia. Zanabazar was the first of Mongolia’s nine Bogd Gegeens. The Ninth Bogd Gegeen transmigrated on March 1, 2012.  During a visit to Mongolia on November 23, 2016, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama announced that the Tenth Bogd Gegeen had been born and that attempts were being made to identify him. Update: The Tenth has now been named. See Tenth Incarnation.

See The Life of Zanabazar

Italy | Venice | Early Life of Enrico Dandolo

There are few greater ironies in History than the fact that the fate of Eastern Christendom should have been sealed—and half of Europe condemned to some five hundred years of Muslim rule—by men who fought under the banner of the Cross. Those men were transported, inspired, encouraged, and ultimately led by Enrico Dandolo in the name of the Venetian Republic; and, just as Venice derived the major advantage from the tragedy, so she and her magnificent old doge must accept the responsibility for the havoc that they have wrought on the world. —Byzantium: The Decline and Fall—John Julius Norwich

Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo (c.1107–1205) was one of the leaders of the Fourth Crusade and the mastermind behind the Sack of Constantinople in 1204. The stated goal of the Fourth Crusade, initiated by Pope Alexander III and launched in 1202, was to recapture the holy city of Jerusalem, which had been seized by the Saladin, the Muslim sultan of Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Palestine, on October 2, 1187, ending nearly of nearly nine decades of occupation by the Occidental Crusaders. By the time the Crusaders reached Constantinople, however, the Venetian continence, led by Enrico Dandolo, was more concerned with collecting the money they claimed was owned to them by Byzantine Emperor Alexios IV (r. August 1203 to January 1204). Relations between the Venetians and the Byzantines quickly deteriorated and outright war soon broke out. On April 3, 1204, the Crusaders attacked the heavily fortified city. Enrico Dandolo himself, probably ninety-seven years old at the time and almost completely blind, led a contingent of troops to the city’s sea walls. Constantinople fell to the Crusaders on April 13. Historian Speros Vryonis describes what happened next:

The Latin soldiery subjected the greatest city in Europe to an indescribable sack. For three days they murdered, raped, looted and destroyed on a scale which even the ancient Vandals and Goths would have found unbelievable. Constantinople had become a veritable museum of ancient and Byzantine art, an emporium of such incredible wealth that the Latins were astounded at the riches they found. Though the Venetians had an appreciation for the art which they discovered (they were themselves semi-Byzantines) and saved much of it, the French and others destroyed indiscriminately, halting to refresh themselves with wine, violation of nuns, and murder of Orthodox clerics. The Crusaders vented their hatred for the Greeks most spectacularly in the desecration of the greatest Church in Christendom. They smashed the silver iconostasis, the icons and the holy books of Hagia Sophia, and seated upon the patriarchal throne a whore who sang coarse songs as they drank wine from the Church’s holy vessels . . . The defeat of Byzantium, already in a state of decline, accelerated political degeneration so that the Byzantines eventually became easy prey to the Turks. The Fourth Crusade and the crusading movement generally thus resulted, ultimately, in the victory of Islam, a result which was of course the exact opposite of its original intention.

Much of the loot seized by Enrico Dandolo and the Venetians during the sack of Constantinople can still be seen in Venice today, including, perhaps most notably, the Four Horses that once stood in the Hippodrome in Constantinople. They are now in the St. Mark’s Basilica Museum. Reproductions of the Horses grace the facade of the Basilica, mute reminders of Enrico Dandolo’s equivocal role in world history.

Wanders in Venice: The Early Life of Enrico Dandolo, Mastermind of the Fourth Crusade and the 1204 Sack of Constantinople traces the rise of the Dandolo Family to prominence in Venice and the life of Enrico Dandolo up until he was appointed Doge in 1192.

Reproductions of The Four Horses that once stood in the Hippodrome in Constantinople. The originals are now in the St. Mark’s Basilica Museum.

Mongolia | False Lama of Mongolia: The Life and Death of Dambijantsan

Who was Dambijantsan?

A Buddhist monk; a freedom fighter for Mongolian independence; the descendant of Amursanaa (1723–1757), the Western Mongol who led the last great uprising against the Qing Dynasty of China; the incarnation of Mahakala, the Buddhist god of war; bandit, torturer, murderer, or evil incarnate? During his lifetime no one was sure who he really was, and even today the controversy about his life continues.

Born in what is now the Republic of Kalmykia, part of the Russian Federation, Dambijantsen traveled throughout Tibet, India, and China before arriving in Mongolia in 1890 where he tossed gold coins to bystanders and announced to one and all that he had come to free Mongolia from the yoke of the Qing Dynasty of China. After disappearing almost twenty years he returned to lead the attack on Khovd City, the last Chinese outpost in Mongolia. Honored by the Eighth Bogd Gegeen, the theocratic leader of Mongolia, for his efforts in achieving Mongolian independence, he went on to establish his own mini-state in western Mongolia, which he hoped to use as a base for establishing a Mongol-led Buddhist khanate in Inner Asia. His dictatorial nature and unbridled sadism soon came to the fore and he was finally arrested and imprisoned in Russia. After the Russian Revolution he returned to Mongolia, gathered new followers around him, and established a stronghold at the nexus of old caravan routes in Gansu Province, China. He robbed caravans, grew opium, and once again dreamed of creating a new Mongolian khanate in Inner Asia. Finally the new Bolshevik government in Mongolia, fearful of his rising power, issued orders for his assassination. Dambijantsan transmigrated in 1922, but in Mongolia legends persist to this day that his spirit still rides on the winds of the Gobi and continues to haunt his former lairs.

For more on Dambijantsan see False Lama of Mongolia: The Life and Death of Dambijantsan. 

Chingis Khan Rides West

See Chingis Khan Rides West

Since the time of the Xiongnu two thousand years ago the nomads of the Mongolian Plateau traditionally looked south toward China for both plunder and trade. In 1215 Chingis Khan turned his attention westward and by 1219 he had decided to invade the Islamic realms of Inner Asia, unleashing a sequence of events that would result in the sack of Baghdad in 1258 by his grandson Khülegü and the fall of the 508 year-old Abbasid Caliphate. The dissolution of the Caliphate by Khülegü dealt a blow to the Islamic world from which some might argue it has never fully recovered. We are still to this day living with the consequences of the Mongol invasion.  

Chingis Khan Rides West examines the motivation behind Chingis Khan’s ride westward to attack the Islamic world and recounts the fall of the great Silk Road cities of Bukhara, Samarkand, Termez, Gurganj, and others.