8. On the childhood and early adulthood of Chinggis Khan, see Paul Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, trans. Thomas Nivison Haining (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 19–31; Michal Biran, Chinggis Khan (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007), esp. 32–40.
9. Larry V. Clark, “The Theme of Revenge in the Secret History of the Mongols,” in Aspects of Altaic Civilization II, ed. Larry Clark and Paul Draghi, 33–57 (Bloomington: Indiana University Asian Studies Research Institute, 1978); Roberte Hamayon, “Mérite de l’offenseur vengeur, plaisir du rival vainqueur,” in La vengeance: Études d’ethnologie, d’histoire et de philosophie, ed. Raymond Verdier (Paris: Cujas, 1980), vol. 2, 116.
10. On the marriage agreement between Yesügei Ba’atur and Dei Sechen, Börte’s father, see Secret History, § 61–66; on the joint Mongol and Kereit military operations against the Merkit to rescue Börte, see Secret History, § 104–113.
11. Golden, “The Türk Imperial Tradition,” 42–44. Bilge Kagan’s quotation is from the Kül Tigin inscription (S4) to (S8), parentheses in original translation, from T. Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), 261–262. The Mongols could not decipher old Turkic, but they had access to Chinese translations. See Juvaynī, Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror, trans. J. A. Boyle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 54–55; Secret History, § 186–187.
12. Secret History, § 186; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 348; Nicola Di Cosmo, “Why Qara Qorum? Climate and Geography in the Early Mongol Empire,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 21 (2014–2015): 67–78.
13. Paul Buell, “Early Mongol Expansion in Western Siberia and Turkestan (1207–1219): A Reconstruction,” Central Asiatic Journal 36, no. 1 / 2 (1992): 1–32, 2, 4. See also Paul Buell, “Sübötei Ba’atur (1176–1248),” in In the Service of the Khan: Eminent Personalities of the Early Mongol-Yüan Period (1200–1300), ed. Igor de Rachewiltz, Chan Hok-lam, Hsiao Ch’i-ch’ing, and Peter W. Geier (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1993), 14–15.
14. The nine tails were and still are the symbol of Mongol unity and, by extension, of the Mongol nation. Secret History, § 202; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 89–909. See also Igor de Rachewiltz, “The Title Činggis Qan / Qayan Reconsidered,” in Gedanke und Wirkung. Festschrift zum 90. Geburstag von Nikolaus Poppe, ed. Walther Heissig and Klaus Sagaster (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1989), 281–298; Biran, Chinggis Khan, 39; Golden, “The Türk Imperial Tradition,” 40–42.
15. Florence Hodous, “The Quriltai as a Legal Institution in the Mongol Empire,” Central Asiatic Journal 56 (2012–2013): 87–102; Ron Sela, Ritual and Authority in Central Asia: The Khan’s Inauguration Ceremony (Bloomington: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 2003); Christopher Atwood, “Chinggis Khan,” in Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire (New York: Facts on File, 2004), 98–99; Lhamsuren Munkh-Erdene, “Where Did the Mongol Empire Come From? Medieval Mongol Ideas of People, State and Empire,” Inner Asia 13, no. 2 (2011): 211–237. The 1206 quriltai was the second enthronement of Temüjin. Twenty years earlier, a small group of followers had elected him khan. Secret History, § 120–126.
16. Skrynnikova, “Relations of Domination and Submission,” 85–104.
17. Secret History, § 154; Skrynnikova, “Relations of Domination and Submission,” 92–93, quoting Rashīd al-Dīn’s Compendium of Chronicles.
18. Although the decimal system assured the largest units could comprise 10,000 men, in practice units usually contained between 6,000 and 8,000 warriors, and sometimes fewer. See Thomas T. Allsen, “Mongol Census Taking in Rus’, 1245–1275,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 5, no. 1 (1981): 32–53, 52; Timothy May, The Mongol Art of War: Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Military System (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2007), 27–41; Buell and Kolbas, “The Ethos of State and Society in the Early Mongol Empire,” 54; and Bryan Miller, “Xiongnu ‘Kings’ and the Political Order of the Steppe Empire,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 57 (2014): 1–43. Miller shows that the Xiongnu were the first to engineer a decimal system for growing and organizing a nomadic empire. There is little written evidence as to how the decimal system functioned among the Xiongnu in regard to spoils redistribution, but it was used for conscription and perhaps also for census-taking.
19. Secret History, § 213, quoted and translated in Buell and Kolbas, “The Ethos of State and Society in the Early Mongol Empire,” 55.
20. Skrynnikova, “Relations of Domination and Submission,” 85–87; Munkh-Erdene, “Where Did the Mongol Empire Come From?” esp. 211–219. The keshig had its origin in both old Turkic military institutions and in the Liao-Khitan ordo, imperial camps housing Liao administrators and guards. The original meaning of keshig is “rotations,” or “shifts.” See Christopher Atwood, “Keshig,” in Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire (New York: Facts on File, 2004), 297–298; Peter Andrews, Felt Tents and Pavilions: The Nomadic Tradition and Its Interaction with Princely Tentage, 2 vols. (London: Melisende, 1999), vol. 1, 281, 312, 324–325; May, The Mongol Art of War, 32–36; Buell and Kolbas, “The Ethos of State and Society in the Early Mongol Empire,” 54.
21. See Buell, “Sübötei Ba’atur,” 13–26.
22. According to Hodous, “The principle function of a quriltai seems to have been in formally granting to a new person or to new decisions.” Hodous, “The Quriltai as a Legal Institution in the Mongol Empire,” 91.
23. Buell, “Early Mongol Expansion,” 5–7; Rachewiltz, The Secret History of the Mongols, 734–735 and 1045–1050 (Appendix 1); Thomas Allsen, “Prelude to the Western Campaigns: Mongol Military Operations in the Volga-Ural Region, 1217–1237,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 3 (1983), 9.
24. In the contemporary sources, there is confusion between the campaigns of 1207–1208 and 1217–1219. Both were directed to the north and northwest and were led by Jochi, Sübötei, and Jebe. See Buell, “Early Mongol Expansion,” 6–8, esp. note 13; Secret History, § 198–200; Christopher Atwood, “Jochi and the Early Western Campaigns,” in How Mongolia Matters: War, Law, and Society, ed. Morris Rossabi (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 39–40, 55 (Appendix).
25. Secret History, § 198.
26. Secret History, § 195, 209. The Secret History indicates that Sübötei and Jebe were appointed as commanders at the quriltai 1206, but this is most likely a mistake.
27. Michal Biran, The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History: Between China and the Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 76.
28. Biran, Qara Khitai, 78–80, 146–153.
29. The Muslim historiography was dominated by the official versions of Juvaynī, The History of the World Conqueror, trans. John Andrew Boyle (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958), 63–74; and Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 228–231. See Biran, Qara Khitai, 80–86, 180–191, 194–196.
30. Biran, Qara Khitai, 82–83, 195–196. The Muslim sources are Juvaynī, The History of the World Conqueror, 65–68, 70–73; and Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 230–231. Chinese sources are listed in Buell, “Sübötei Ba’atur,” 18.
31. Buell, “Early Mongol Expansion,” 10–12; Atwood, “Jochi and the Early Western Campaigns,” 38–45.
32. See Peter Golden, “Imperial Ideology and the Sources of Political Unity amongst the Pre-Činggisid Nomads of Western Eurasia,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 2 (1982): 37–76; Peter Golden, “Cumanica I: The Qipčaqs in Georgia,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 4 (1984): 45–87; Peter Golden, “Cumanica II: The Ölberli (Ölperli): The Fortunes and Misfortunes of an Inner Asian Nomadic Clan,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 6 [1985 (1987)]: 5–29. For a reflection on self-governing peoples fleeing the oppression of state-making projects, see James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), esp. ix–xviii; Allsen, “Prelude to the Western Campaigns,” 6–8.
33. Allsen, “Prelude to the Western Campaigns,” 9; Atwood,
“Jochi and the Early Western Campaigns,” 43–44.
34. On the iron wagons, see Buell, “Sübötei Ba’atur,” 15; Andrews, Felt Tents and Pavilions, vol. 1, 317; and Atwood, “Jochi and the Early Western Campaigns,” 38 n9. On the Battle of Chem River, see Buell, “Early Mongol Expansion,” 10; Buell, “Sübötei Ba’atur,” 15–16; Atwood “Jochi and the Early Western Campaigns,” 38–45. See also Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 53, 227.
35. Biran, Chinggis Khan, 48–49.
36. Secret History, § 249; Biran, Chinggis Khan, 49; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 203, 204, 289–290.
37. Jūzjānī, Tabakāt-i-Nāsirī: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, Including Hindūstān, from A.H. 194 [810 a.d.], to A.H. 658 [1260 a.d.], and the Irruption of the Infidel Mugẖals into Islam, 2 vols. (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1881–1897), vol. 2, 960–965; Secret History, § 250–253; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 213–226; Biran, Chinggis Khan, 50–52.
38. Vasilij V. Bartol’d [W. Barthold], Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928), 393–395; Biran, Chinggis Khan, 51–52.
39. Jūzjānī, Tabakāt-i-Nāsirī, 270–272, 963–966; Bartol’d, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 393–396; and Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 120; Juvaynī, The History of the World Conqueror, 77–81. Buell, “Early Mongol Expansion,” esp. 14–16; and Buell, “Sübötei Ba’atur,” 16–17, put the battle of the Quylï River in 1209–1210. However, Atwood, “Jochi and the Early Western Campaigns,” 45–50, convincingly shows that the battle occurred in 1219, according to available sources. This river may have been located in west-central Kazakhstan.
40. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athīr for the Crusading Period from al-Kāmil fīʾl-taʾrīkh, Part 3: The Years 589–629 / 1193–1231: The Ayyūbids after Saladin and the Mongol Menace, trans. D. S. Richards (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008), 204–205. See also Biran, Qara Khitai, 75–80.
41. Aubin, “Mongolie,” 244; May, The Mongol Art of War, 3, 103–104.
42. Biran, Qara Khitai, 70–74, 77–80.
43. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 205; Juvaynī, The History of the World Conqueror, 77–81. For an overview of divergent sources regarding the Otrar episode, see Bartol’d, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 397–399. On the possible co-occurrence with the Quylï River battle, see Atwood, “Jochi and the Early Western Campaigns,” 48–49.
44. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 205–206.
45. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 206; Bartol’d, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 399.
46. Atwood, “Jochi and the Early Western Campaigns,” 51. On the key role of scouts in Mongol warfare, see Andrews, Felt Tents and Pavilions, vol. 2, 1296. There were originally three tümen in the Westward. The third, led by Toquchar, was recalled for disobeying an order from Chinggis Khan: May, The Mongol Art of War, 95–96.
47. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 210; Juvaynī, The History of the World Conqueror, 142–149; K‘art‘lis c‘xovreba: A History of Georgia, trans. and with commentary by Stephen Jones (Tbilisi: Artanuji, 2014), 321; Vardan Arewelts’i’s Compilation of History, trans. R. Bedrosian (Long Branch, NJ: Sources of the Armenian Tradition, 2007), 84.
48. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 242–243, 359; Juvaynī, The History of the World Conqueror, 83, 86–90; Bartol’d, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 415–416; Allsen, “Prelude to the Western Campaigns,” 11–12; Buell, “Early Mongol Expansion,” 26–27.
49. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 210. There are also reasons to doubt the veracity of this anecdote. See Bartol’d, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 72, 420–421.
50. Jūzjānī, Tabakāt-i-Nāsirī, 976; Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 207–210; Juvaynī, The History of the World Conqueror, 97–109, 115–123; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 245–249.
51. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 253–255; Juvaynī, The History of the World Conqueror, 81–86; Thomas Allsen, “Ever Closer Encounters: The Appropriation of Culture and the Apportionment of Peoples in the Mongol Empire,” Journal of Early Modern History 1, no. 1 (1997): 2–23, 4.
52. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 203.
53. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 211, 215–216; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 249–252.
54. Atwood, “Jochi and the Early Western Campaigns,” 50–54; Juvaynī, The History of the World Conqueror, 123–128; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 254–255; Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 214, 227–228.
55. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 205; Biran, Qara Khitai, 86–87.
56. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 228–229, 305–307; Juvaynī, The History of the World Conqueror, 133–138; Bartol’d, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 437–446. In August 1231, while hiding in a Kurdish village, Jalāl al-Dīn was finally murdered by an anonymous aggressor. John A. Boyle, “Jalāl al-Dīn,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 392–393.
57. Thomas Allsen, “Sharing Out the Empire: Apportioned Lands under the Mongols,” in Nomads in the Sedentary World, ed. Anatoly M. Khazanov and André Wink, 172–190 (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 2001); Secret History, § 260; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 253–254; Atwood, “Jochi and the Early Western Campaigns,” 50–54.
2 • INTO THE WEST
1. Jennifer Holmgren, “Observations on Marriage and Inheritance Practices in Early Mongol and Yuan Society, with Particular Reference to the Levirate,” Journal of Asian History 20, no. 2 (1986): 127–192, 146–151; Christopher Atwood, “Family,” in Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire (New York: Facts on File, 2004), 173–174.
2. ‘Alā’ al-Dīn ‘Atā Malik Juvaynī, Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror, ed. and trans. John Andrew Boyle (1958; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 42–43; Thomas Allsen, “Sharing out the Empire: Apportioned Lands under the Mongols,” in Nomads in the Sedentary World, ed. Anatoly M. Khazanov and André Wink (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 2001), 172–173, 184.
3. Christopher Atwood, “Jochi and the Early Western Campaigns,” in How Mongolia Matters: War, Law, and Society, ed. Morris Rossabi (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 35–38; Mu‘izz al-ansāb. Proslavliaiushchee genealogii, ed. A. K. Muminov, trans. Sh. Kh. Vokhidov (Almaty: Daik-Press, 2006), 38–40; Juvaynī, Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror, 42; Allsen, “Sharing out the Empire,” 172–190; Peter Jackson, “From Ulus to Khanate: The Making of the Mongol States, c. 1220–c. 1290,” in The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy, ed. Reuven Amitai-Preiss and David O. Morgan (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 12–38.
4. Rashīd al-Dīn, Rashiduddin Fazlullah’s-Jami‘u’t-tawarikh. Compendium of Chronicles: A History of the Mongols, trans. Wheeler Thackston (Cambridge, MA: Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, 1998–1999), 281; Thomas Allsen, “Ever Closer Encounters: The Appropriation of Culture and the Apportionment of Peoples in the Mongol Empire,” Journal of Early Modern History 1, no. 1 (1997): 2–23, 4; Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West: 1221–1410 (New York: Pearson / Longman, 2005), 42.
5. Sometimes-conflicting details of Jochi’s keshig appear in The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century, trans. Igor de Rachewiltz (Leiden: Brill, 2004), § 202; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 93, 97, 102, 279; Mu‘izz al-ansāb, 39–40.
6. Grigor of Akanc‘, History of the Nation of the Archers (The Mongols), trans. Robert P. Blake and Richard N. Frye (Cambridge, MA: Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1954), 297, 299. See also Peter Andrews, Felt Tents and Pavilions: The Nomadic Tradition and Its Interaction with Princely Tentage, 2 vols. (London: Melisende, 1999), vol. 2, 1294.
7. Kirakos Gandzakets‘i’s History of the Armenians, trans. Robert Bedrosian (New York: Sources of the Armenian Tradition, 1986), 165–166; The Hundred Years’ Chronicle, K‘art‘lis c‘xovreba: A History of Georgia, trans. Stephen Jones (Tbilisi: Artanuji, 2014), 321; Mamuka Tsurts
umia, “Couched Lance and Mounted Shock Combat in the East: The Georgian Experience,” Journal of Medieval Military History 12 (2014): 81–108.
8. Kirakos Gandzaketsʿi’s History of the Armenians, 166; Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athīr for the Crusading Period from al-Kāmil fīʾl-taʾrīkh, part 3: The Years 589–629 / 1193–1231: The Ayyūbids after Saladin and the Mongol Menace, trans. D. S. Richards (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008), 214–216; Peter Jackson, “The Testimony of the Russian ‘Archbishop’ Peter Concerning the Mongols (1244 / 1255): Precious Intelligence or Timely Disinformation?” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 26, nos. 1–2 (2016): 65–77, 73n46, 74. There is confusion in the sources concerning the Westward’s 1221 and 1222 Caucasus campaigns. See especially Grigor of Akanc‘, History of the Nation of the Archers, chapters 3 and 4; and Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 110.
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