When Temüjin and the Mongols took over, the material legacy of the old powers was still strikingly visible. The balbal, stone statues the Türks had built by the hundreds, and the ruins of Uighur cities dotted the valley. The Mongols were impressed by the Gök-Türk monuments. On one of the great square monoliths, the new rulers could still read the advice of Bilge Kagan, one of the last Gök-Türk leaders:
The place from which the tribes can be (best) controlled is the Ötükän mountains. Having stayed in this place, I came to an amicable agreement with the Chinese people. They give (us) gold, silver, and silk in abundance. The words of the Chinese people have always been sweet and the materials of the Chinese people have always been soft.… Having heard these words, you unwise people went close (to the Chinese) and were killed in great numbers. If you go towards those places, O Turkish people, you will die! If you stay in the land of Ötükän, and send caravans from there, you will have no trouble. If you stay at the Ötükän mountains, you will live forever dominating the tribes!11
The political significance of the Orkhon Valley and surrounding Ötükän Mountains overlapped with, and indeed was inseparable from, the area’s spiritual significance. The steppe peoples believed that those who controlled this space were blessed with sülde, the vital force that held peoples together and created empires. When the Mongols took over, they set about performing their own rituals. By appropriating the sacred site of the Xiongnu, Gök-Türks, Uighurs, and Kereit, the Mongols captured their sülde and harnessed it to fuel their expansion.
The Orkhon Valley was not only spiritually and strategically essential; it also held vast economic potential. The area was an amazingly rich grassland and a hub of the horse and cattle trade, with trade routes extending into China and across Central Asia. Given all that it provided, the valley was the perfect location from which to consolidate power. Temüjin established his main winter camp there and, to better solidify his control of the local population, he added another wife to his family—a Kereit princess. Her sisters married his eldest and youngest sons, Jochi and Tolui. Orkhon became a durable headquarters. Three decades after Orkhon’s capture by Temüjin, his third son Ögödei would build a palace there and found Qaraqorum, the capital of the Mongol Empire. Temüjin and his descendants would go even further than Bilge Kagan, who was content to send merchants outward from his protected base. The Mongols would force their powerful neighbors to come to Orkhon, in the heart of the steppe, to trade on the Mongols’ terms.12
But before that, Temüjin would need to bring those powerful neighbors to heel. Even as Temüjin was at war with the Kereit, a coalition of rivals was forming against him. In 1201 Tayang Qan, the Naiman chief, organized an alliance with the Merkit and Mongols opposing Temüjin. These forces threw their weight behind Jamuqa, formerly Temüjin’s anda, and elected him khan. But Temüjin gathered elite warriors and, after some four years of combat, was victorious. The Naiman surrendered in 1204 and were soon followed in surrender by the Merkit. Jamuqa was executed. Like the Kereit, the vanquished Merkit warriors and their families were assimilated, and their leading women were married into Temüjin’s family. Old enemies became Mongols.13
The Birth of the Mongol Ulus
In spring 1206, the Year of the Tiger, an assembly of the Felt-Walled Tents, known as a quriltai, gathered near the sources of the Onon River. The numerous assembly members included chiefs of the Tayichi’ut, Qonggirad, Kereit, Tatars, Merkit, Jadaran, Naiman, Jalayir, and Baya’ud, who were preparing to submit to Temüjin and embrace Mongol leadership. As they collected for the meeting, Temüjin’s standard was hoisted. The standard was a pole with the tails of nine white-haired horses at the top, symbolizing the peace and unity of the Felt-Walled Tents under Mongol rule. The rituals involved in the ceremony were secret and were not officially recorded. According to Rashīd al-Dīn, a Persian historian of the Mongols writing in the early fourteenth century, the creator of Temüjin’s enthronement ritual might have been Teb Tengri, an influential shaman who also suggested Temüjin’s new title. Temüjin was not proclaimed merely khan: he was Chinggis Khan, a term meaning “mighty,” or possibly “universal,” denoting Temüjin’s extraordinary abilities as ruler of all. This was a clear break from recent political practices. Temüjin’s challenger Jamuqa had borne a common Türk title, Gür Khan, and the former Kereit protector had had the appellation Wang Khan, a Chinese title granted by the Jin. Temüjin’s status was meant to be higher than those of Jamuqa and others who had ruled over the disparate nomadic groups. Temüjin’s indigenous title, unheard of in the history of the steppe empires, was a clear message that the Mongols were no one’s subordinates. They were a unified power who understood themselves to occupy the top of the political hierarchy.14
The quriltai marked the birth of the Mongol ulus, a political community in which biological kinship and previous forms of belonging were subordinated to a loyalty that crossed family boundaries. The unifying creed involved acceptance of new rules, new hierarchy, and collective responsibility for the welfare of community members. The new Mongol regime borrowed from the Kereit and the Naiman, absorbing their institutions to create its own. Chinggis Khan molded his keshig, his imperial guard, on the Kereit guard and rewarded his faithful supporters by giving them positions in the keshig and missions to accomplish on behalf of the ulus. He also provided the Mongols with a literate secretariat and asked the Uighur scribe Tatar-Tong’a, who formerly worked for the Naiman’s leader, to educate his sons and create the first Mongolian script, based on the Uighur script. The description of the rewards he bestowed upon his individual companions and the allocation of the imperial positions were later recorded in the Secret History of the Mongols, the earliest official history of the Mongol ulus in the Mongolian language.15
The new regime had two major aims. One was to establish the supremacy of the leader’s family and his lineage. Under Chinggis Khan and his descendants, ruling status could only be inherited; Chinggis’s descendents did not all rule, but only they had the opportunity to serve as sovereign. Thus the new social order would revolve around Chinggis Khan’s father’s line, the Kiyad-Borjigid, renamed the golden lineage. Members of other lineages became bo’ol, politically dependent upon the golden lineage. Attendance at the quriltai was equated with acceptance of this new status. In exchange for subordination, bo’ol received certain benefits, such as a right to a share of war booty. And bo’ol could still build successful carreers as high-ranking army officers and administrators. These advantages explain why several free groups such as the Jalayir and the Baya’ud willingly accepted the subordinate role.
The Kiyad-Borjigid had not always been considered the most prestigious Mongol line, but now all bo’ol had to accept that their own lineages were of lower status than the golden lineage. The supremacy of the golden lineage was rigidly enforced: although bo’ol could marry into the ruling family, Chinggis Khan and his descendents firmly imposed patrilineal inheritance rules to ensure that generations of relatives were barred from the throne. In the new regime, all became subordinate to Chinggis and his direct descendants, even his elder uncles and kinsmen from collateral branches—a clear break from the old order that was based on seniority. The regime still maintained the distinction between aqa and ini, elder and junior status, but only to the extent that this distinction did not interfere with the preeminence of the golden lineage.16
The second goal of the new regime was to integrate new members, expanding the workforce and the army. If the Mongols, like other steppe nomads, did not eliminate their defeated enemies, it was because they needed subjects to serve their economic and military power: absorption of defeated people was the engine of Mongol growth. This was a long-standing practice. After the Tatars were subjugated in 1202, Chinggis Khan announced a vicious regime of tamping down any potential threat from his new subjects. “We shall measure the Tatars against the linchpin of a cart, and kill them to the last one,” he declared, referring to any who were taller than the linchpin, which effectively meant al
l the adult men. “The rest we shall enslave: some here, some there, dividing them among ourselves.” In fact Chinggis Khan did not slaughter every adult man; later sources report that many Tatars were assimilated into the Mongol ulus, becoming part of the imperial elite. As promised, this did involve the division of most Tatar families, the better to ensure their integration as Mongols.17
New warriors—whether Tatar or others—were incorporated into the Mongol army by means of the tümen, the military structure. Long before the Mongols, the Xiongnu and the Türks had engineered the tümen, which involved a census of combat-capable men, conscription of those men, a system for dividing up military units, a table of officer ranks, and a structure for distributing spoils. The tümen was a decimal system; warriors were grouped into nested units of ten thousand, one thousand, one hundred, and ten men, like a set of Russian dolls placed one inside another. Chinggis Khan’s new military units were composed of warriors who did not originally belong to the same clan, a deliberate choice to undermine possible solidarity and rebellion against the regime. All warriors were required to provide their own weapons, horses, and other military equipment. They did not live together but were expected to congregate for expeditions and to fight side by side. High command was entrusted to Chinggis Khan’s closest followers, chosen for their loyalty, bravery, and experience in war.18
The Mongols’ ability to absorb people was the great strength of their military organization. While defeated warriors were incorporated to strengthen the army, other subjugated peoples were distributed within the Mongol society at large, joining families and strengthening the society and economy. The relative ease with which steppe peoples integrated under Mongol rule reflects the similarity of nomads’ lifestyles. All the groups that the Mongols incorporated were mobile and had developed similar strategies for surviving in the harsh environment they shared. What is more, while rejecting Mongol control was perilous, joining the society and furthering its expansion was profitable. Once the incorporated enemies and bo’ol proved their value, they received a share of war spoils. Indeed, having proven their loyalty, they could even restore—to an extent—their distinct oboq within the Mongol ulus. One of the highest rewards for a devoted follower was the right to bring together his scattered clan. Thus when Chinggis Khan’s old comrade and official cook, a member of the Baya’ud, was appointed to the khan’s keshig, the trusted aide said, “If I can choose a reward, my elder brother and younger brother, Baya’ut, are scattered about among all kinds of foreigners. If you are going to reward me, I should collect together my Baya’ut elder and younger brothers.”19
The keshig itself was a key organ of the new regime, a superelite with thousands of members who shaped the first Mongol central government. More than just a guard unit, the keshig was also a tool for consolidating power, establishing loyalty, and carrying out foreign policy. The keshig combined elite fighters, administrators, stewards of the ruling household, and diplomatic hostages—sons of allied foreign elites who were asked to serve the khan and his next of kin for a fixed period. The links the hostages secured between the Mongols and their neighbors were essential to the growth and stability of the empire; in time, foreign contacts would aid the regime’s efforts to negotiate relations with surrounding sedentary powers—the Jin, Tangut, and Song in China and the Uighurs and Qara Khitai in Central Asia.
Meanwhile, Chinggis Khan’s comrades-in-arms and close relatives received key positions in the keshig as night guards, day guards, official cooks, doorkeepers, stewards, grooms, and quiver-bearers—guards who were allowed to keep their bows in the presence of the khan. Beyond the khan’s physical protection, the keshig supplied the mobile court and handled its logistics. Court administrators collaborated with other administrators beyond the keshig, such as tax collectors and the “great judges.” The keshig not only preserved the lives of the khan and his clan but also served to personalize the state under the khan’s leadership by equating the functioning of the court with the functioning of the household and equating loyalty to the regime with loyalty to the leader.20
Another dimension of the keshig’s importance lay in its distinction from the golden lineage. By means of the keshig, Chinggis could welcome his most devoted and talented followers into his inner circle, even as they were excluded from the ruling family. For example, Sübötei, whom Chinggis Khan considered his most able commander, was a keshig member. Sübötei did not belong to the golden lineage, but his loyalty was unquestionable. His ancestors had allied with Chinggis’s in the first half of the twelfth century, and his family followed Temüjin when Temüjin split from Jamuqa. By the time Sübötei was just thirty years old, he had almost fifteen years of combat experience and had personally fought at Temüjin’s side. Chinggis granted Sübötei the official title of ba’atur, meaning brave, a title Chinggis’s own father had held. For men such as Sübötei, who were so valuable to the regime yet could never hold supreme power, a high office in the keshig provided opportunity, prestige, and access to the political center that was otherwise unattainable.21
After 1206 the quriltai became the key governing institution of the Mongol ulus. Mongol political culture was now based on the concentration of power in the hands of members of the golden lineage, and governing would be a collegial process involving extended face-to-face negotiations with elites at these assemblies of the Felt-Walled Tents. This made for a mixed system, one in which the khan made decisions but great assemblies convened to show their support. While we do not know exactly what legal power the assembly exercised during the quriltai, we do know that major decisions were never made without their presence. The entire political elite, including women, was required to attend the quriltai to legitimize the khan’s orders through demonstrations of consensus. By showing up, elites also demonstrated that they belonged in the leading stratum of society. Moreover, the quriltai was the occasion when the khan would distribute positions, rewards, punishments, and missions.22
By incorporating the keshig, the quriltai, the military, familial assimilation, and the complex and interwoven hierarchy of lineages and seniority relations, the regime created a social and political order that was simultaneously novel and traditional, flexible enough to provide opportunities to the non-ruling class and rigid enough to centralize power. By adopting the sites, symbols, rituals, and some governing structures of its predecessors, the regime established continuity that gave subjects a sense of familiarity: the ruling family had changed, but life could continue in a manner normal enough to enable assimilation. Meanwhile, pathways to social advancement encouraged bo’ol to back the regime. At the same time, these strong integrative mechanisms were combined with strict policing of lineage, preventing bo’ol from accessing the supreme office. Social assimilation and total political exclusion were two sides of the same coin.
This nimble structure certainly belies stereotypes of the Mongols as bloodthirsty raiders. Chinggis was not satisfied with defeating enemies; nor were his nomadic predecessors. The Mongols wanted not only victory but also legitimacy. They wanted not just to prove their military bona fides or settle blood feuds but also to govern. They wanted power for themselves but understood that achieving it required a delicate balance in which potential rebellions were suppressed using both incentives and punishments. The name of Chinggis Khan redounds in history not only because he was a great warrior and strategist who commanded loyalty from fellow warriors, but also because he instituted an enduring political order that reshaped the steppe world and, as we will see later, influenced governance and society far beyond the borders he and his successors established.
Yet, for all its success, the new regime fostered intense resentment. Many members of the Felt-Walled Tents did not easily accept their lower status or the destruction of their ancestral oboq. The painful process of unification under Mongol rule continued well beyond 1206, as subject populations rose up to challenge the domination of the golden lineage.
Crushing the Opposition
Chinggis Khan gave his son Joch
i a domain in the westernmost part of the Mongols’ empire, where he was to establish his ulus. But if Jochi was to prove a worthy successor to his father, expanding his domain and subjugating his neighbors on behalf of the Mongol Empire, he would have many challenges to overcome.
Jochi’s ulus bordered the lands of the Hoi-yin Irgen, the Forest Peoples, in southern Siberia. These included the Merkit, who just a few years earlier had joined Tayang Qan’s league in violent opposition to Temüjin. In 1207–1208 Jochi began to subjugate the Forest Peoples, and Chinggis gave them to Jochi as subject peoples. At roughly the same time, the Merkit and Naiman reunited to rebel against Chinggis Khan and Jochi, gathering along the Irtysh River to attack the regime’s positions. At a quriltai, subjects loyal to the khan debated what should be done with the rebels. That the Merkit and Naiman and the Mongols were old adversaries lent a dire cast to the situation. The rebels were not outsiders to be defeated and then assimilated; they had already had their chance to assimilate, and indeed had pledged to assimilate in 1206. Now they were reneging, proving to be blood enemies who would refuse to submit to the Mongols until they had nothing left to fight for. In response the Mongol regime decided it would extend no mercy to the rebel coalition. Jochi was tasked with leading the campaign against them.23
Illustration of a gold bracelet from the Horde (fourteenth century). The inscribed verse, in Persian, contains a common benediction: “May the creator of the world protect the owner of this [bracelet], wherever he may be.”
The Horde Page 5