by John Man
But why? Young Temujin had no idea, and nor did the later Genghis. Nor, come to that, did his heirs. No one had anything sensible to say on the subject. From this mystery sprang one of the Mongols’ most surprising traits – tolerance, in the sense of an absence of religious bigotry, which we will see in action in due course.
Later, successful conquests inspired a rather less attractive trait – arrogance. True, you have to be strong to begin with. But to be truly successful, Heaven must increase your inborn strength. Then you will be successful in whatever you do. Success proves that Heaven is with you. On the basis of this circular argument, Temujin/Genghis’s heirs acquired a certainty their famous forefather never had. For if you have been appointed by Heaven, then any conquest is by Heaven’s order and Heaven’s will. In a famous letter to the Pope, Genghis’s grandson Guyuk asked in effect, ‘How do you think we achieved all this, except by Heaven’s command? So Heaven must be on our side. That being so, you cannot possibly claim God’s backing. Accept, and submit.’
In the Christian West, there is a traditional belief that God can be influenced by prayer. Even today, church services pray for peace and good health, the implication being that if Christians do not do this, the things they pray for may slip God’s mind. Originally, Tengri was too remote to be influenced. But as conquest succeeded conquest, beliefs changed. If the Mongols were world-rulers, perhaps they had some influence over the deity that backed them. On one occasion Genghis asks Heaven for strength to do what is necessary, namely start a war in risky circumstances. The Persian historian Rashid al-Din, writing in his encyclopaedic Collected Chroniclesfn16 some seventy-five years after Genghis’s death, tells of another occasion when Genghis prayed ‘Oh Eternal Heaven, lend me help from on high and permit that here on earth men, as well as spirits good and bad, assist me.’
The concept of Tengri had an additional subtlety, again deriving from Turkish beliefs. Heaven Above was the more powerful half of a duality, the other, weaker half being the Earth Below, or Mother Earth as the Mongolians called it. It had a name taken from a Turkic source: Etügen, with various spellings.fn17 To be truly truly successful, you need not only Heaven, but Heaven and Earth working together. Naturally, success proved that the Mongols had the backing of both, a belief that was yet to evolve its most outrageous tenet – that the whole world already actually belonged to the Mongols, and that it was their job to make everyone on earth realize this astonishing fact.
fn1 Pedersen et al., see Bibliography.
fn2 The nature of Mongolia’s unity before Genghis created the nation is much debated. In brief, Kabul’s realm was not a state but a unity of clans. He was master of a confederation of chiefdoms.
fn3 When the History was written is much debated by scholars. The arguments are reviewed by Bira, Atwood and de Rachewiltz (see Bibliography).
fn4 Possibly a Tatar, Shigi, who was adopted into Genghis’s family and became head of his bureaucracy. The History was written for Genghis’s heir, Ogedei, almost certainly with his collaboration. The year of composition is much debated. Other Rat years have their supporters. Atwood (2007) favours 1252 on the basis of many anachronisms, de Rachewiltz argues (2008) that the author conflated two years, 1228–9, and the History should be dated 1229, the year of the Ox.
fn5 The simplest of many spellings, among them Kereyid, Kereit and Khereit.
fn6 Vague echoes of this in the west started a rumour that there lived in Central Asia a Christian king referred to as ‘Prester John’, Prester being a contraction of Presbyter (priest). Supposedly Prester John would gallop to the aid of the Christian Crusaders in the Holy Land. It was a disappointment when the ‘Christians’ turned out to be the Mongols.
fn7 Often spelled Tartar in English, because it was confused with Tartarus, a region of Hell. It was then applied to the Mongols as a whole. To Europeans, Mongols were a people from Hell.
fn8 Where this happened is disputed. In 1962, for Genghis’s 800th birthday, the government opted for a site in Dadal, on the basis of not very good evidence. More likely it was near Binder.
fn9 Literally ‘Fatty’, which suggests he was nicknamed for being fat. More likely, he belonged to a sub-clan, the Targut.
fn10 ‘Burkhan’ means ‘sacred’, ‘holy’. ‘Khaldun’ may possibly derive from a word meaning ‘cliff’ or ‘willow’. Frankly, no one knows.
fn11 The arguments are summarized by de Rachewiltz in his Secret History, pp. 229–30. He is (almost) certain that yesterday’s Burkhan Khaldun is today’s Khentii Khan. I’m not so sure (see p. 303).
fn12 The name’s elements are reversed for stylistic reasons. This is verse, after all.
fn13 The Chinese and Mongolians say they are one and the same, but the evidence is lacking. See my Attila, Chapter 2.
fn14 In de Rachewiltz, ‘Heaven, Earth and the Mongols’. see Bibliography.
fn15 Jean-Paul Roux, Tängri.
fn16 Other versions of the name are Compendium of or Collection of Histories.
fn17 Marco Polo mentions this god as Natigay, a corruption of Etügen, though he thought she was male. So did John of Pian di Carpine, who transcribed the name as Itoga.
THE FOUNDER OF HIS NATION
TEMUJIN’S NEXT TASK was to rescue BÖrte. He had no choice: If he accepted her loss, his prestige, such as it was, would plummet, and there would be no chance of ruling anyone, let alone believing that he was under divine protection. He would be destined for nothing but a quick end. He turns to the man he calls ‘father’, Toghril, and is not disappointed.
In return for the black sable coat
We shall crush all the Merkit,
We shall cause your wife Börte to return
For additional help Temujin called on his childhood friend and sworn brother, Jamukha, now head of his own clan. Four divisions – 12,000 men or more – worked their way north over the mountains towards Lake Baikal and approached the tributary of the Selenga, the Khilok, beyond which the Merkits were camped. They crossed by night, each man building a float of reeds and swimming across with a horse. The operation was too huge to achieve total surprise. Huntsmen ranging the Khilok’s further banks saw what was happening and galloped off with a warning. The Merkit fled, scattering in panic down to the Selenga and along its banks.
Amongst those in pursuit of the refugees rode Temujin, calling for Börte. A prized hostage, she was in one of the fleeing carts. She heard the call, jumped down, came running, seized his bridle, and ‘they fell into each other’s arms’. It makes a romantic picture, two teenagers in a moonlight embrace. That was enough for Temujin. ‘I have found what I was looking for,’ he said, and called off the chase.
It was a famous victory, and later The Secret History knew how it had been achieved. Temujin had been backed by his two allies, but there was more, the lesson emphasized by repetition and by verse: ‘with my strength increased by Heaven and Earth’,
Called by Mighty Heaven
Carried through by Mother Earth,
We emptied the breasts of the Merkit people.
The only shadow was that Börte returned pregnant with her firstborn, Jochi. Though Temujin accepted the child as his own, Jochi was stigmatized by his possible illegitimacy, so that when the time came to name a successor he would not be accepted as heir.
For eighteen months after the successful campaign against the Merkit, Temujin’s family lived with Jamukha’s. They were the best of friends, exchanging gifts, feasting together, even sleeping under the same quilt (though this does not imply homosexuality).
But in mid-April, as family groups of Mongols were moving to spring pastures along the Onon River, the two friends were riding along in front of the carts when Jamukha suggested that they should each make his own camp. Temujin paused, puzzled, wondering if Jamukha was suggesting a separation. He asked Hoelun’s advice, but it was Börte who spoke: everyone knew Jamukha tired of things quickly, she said, a stock phrase suggesting that he should not be trusted.
From this hint, suspicion g
rew to a startling conclusion. If the two were not one, then who was the leader? Jamukha was the more influential, but Temujin was not prepared to become a mere follower. In that case, he had to part from his friend. But if they parted, they could not be companions; if not companions, then rivals; if rivals, then enemies, for one or other must surely dominate.
Temujin made his decision, and led his own group onwards, without camping at all, right through the night.
He might have simply marched away into isolation, and remained a footnote of history. But the gamble paid off. By the time the stories were written, there was much to be explained, and The Secret History does so by condensing a drawn-out process into a drama.
At dawn, three brothers and their families, leading members of a minor clan, catch up with Temujin. Then another five appear, then more men, more families of more clans, some breaking from their family groups, all opting for Temujin rather than for Jamukha. They have come because rumours have spread that young Temujin is destined for leadership, and rumour strengthens into hope, hope into prophecy. One man says that he is related to Jamukha and would never have left him, ‘but a heavenly sign appeared before my very eyes, revealing the future to me’. In his vision, a cow butted Jamukha and broke a horn. Then an ox harnessed itself to a tent-cart, a symbol of the whole nation, and headed after Temujin, bringing the nation to him ‘on the wide road’ – the royal road to supreme power. Symbols, portents, signs, dreams, visions and prophecies – all combine to assert one great truth bellowed out by the ox: ‘Together Heaven and Earth have agreed: Temujin shall be the lord of the people!’
And still they come, all pitching their tents nearby, many above Temujin in the family hierarchy, yet all drawn by the feeling that here at last was the man the Mongols needed to restore their lost unity. Three senior relatives choose to serve, and swear an oath to pursue their new khan’s enemies, to bring him the finest women and the best horses, and to hunt for him. If they ever disobey him, let Temujin take all their possessions and ‘cast us out into the wilderness’. One main body of Mongols had their new khan – half a nation, with Jamukha’s people still to be absorbed.
There is a problem. The Secret History slips in a note to say that at this point, after the swearing of the great oath of loyalty, they ‘made Temujin khan, naming him Genghis Khan’. This is probably in the late 1180s. Yet it also says he was named khan later, in a much larger gathering in 1206. What exactly happened, and when? The short answer is that no one knows. It is odd that The Secret History does not tell us. True, it is often shaky on facts, but years are sometimes mentioned. Yet there is no date for something as significant as Temujin being renamed Genghis. Could it be that this was a very private affair, arranged by the family for the family? If so, perhaps the author of The Secret History kept the information private out of respect.
Most authorities nowadays say this event took place in 1189, at Blue Lake, where Temujin’s family had been based. Indeed, if you go there today, you are left almost convinced. It is a beautiful place. The lake is blue if the sky is, and if you see it at the right angle; otherwise it looks brown because it lies in peaty soil. Above it looms a little mountain named Black Heart. When I first visited, in 2003, there was nothing much to mark it out but a shoulder-high pillar with a small bas-relief of Genghis. On Black Heart, white-painted boulders spelled out ‘Genghis Khan’ in the old vertical script. It was silent, beautiful, intimate, a perfect spot for a family to raise herds in secrecy.
On my next visit, six years later, much had changed. Someone had fenced the eastern shore of the lake and built a wooden house. On a flat area along the southern shore stood tourist dachas. The pillar had gone, and in its place was a semicircle of what looked like totem poles ready for some American Indian ritual. The 4-metre fir trunks were capped by portraits of all thirty-four Mongol khans, from Genghis’s father through the emperors who claimed descent from Genghis. They faced inwards to a granite slab sporting a new portrait of Genghis, made of plastic. It was an unsettling combination of tackiness, commercialism and grandeur. Under the portrait ran a caption, carved into the granite in the old vertical script: ‘In the Heaven-sent year 1189 at Black Heart Blue Lake, in the presence of all the Mongol khans, the title of Genghis Khan was awarded.’
Is it true? Perhaps. It’s the perfect spot. Though there is no evidence for the date in The Secret History, from 1189 it refers to him more as Genghis than Temujin.
If the timing is controversial, so is the new name – or title, as it may have been. The Mongols could have chosen any of several available titles. Gur or ‘Universal’ Khan was chosen by Jamukha; Toghril would become the Wang (Chinese for ‘prince’) Khan. But no traditional titles, whether Turkish, Mongol or Chinese, would have seemed appropriate for a man of Temujin’s stature. Something new was called for.
‘Genghis’, whether title or name, was unique. Strangely, no one recorded its origin. Until recently, no one could explain it convincingly, which allowed unlikely theories to multiply. Some claimed it was related to the word for ‘sea’, tengis, for the sea was an object of veneration; or to Tengri. Others say the name was given by a shaman after hearing the cry of a bird. Nothing worked, until a recent suggestion, increasingly accepted by scholars, that Genghis derives from an obsolete Turkish word, chingis, meaning ‘fierce, hard, tough’ – indeed this is its spelling in Mongolia’s Cyrillic script. At the time, the origin must have been self-evident, but it was also perhaps a private, family name, being granted in circumstances that did not filter into the public world of the storytellers. If so, Temujin was proclaimed privately as ‘the Fierce Ruler’.
The Secret History now embarks on the chaotic few years (1190–1206) during which Genghis works his way towards what is generally regarded as the founding of the nation. It is like the emergence of a solar system, with many bodies – Mongols, Tatars, Naiman, Keraits, Taychiuts and Jin – in and out of allegiance, with Jamukha as a sort of planetoid colliding with this one or sticking to that. At one point, Genghis linked with Toghril to destroy the Tatars, killing all the male members of the leading clan who were taller than ‘the linch-pin of a cart’, which meant all but the youngest children. Since this avenged his father’s murder and suited the Jin as well, both Mongolian and Chinese sources provide a date: the Year of the Dog, 1202. In thanks, the Jin commander awarded both Genghis and Toghril honorary titles (this was when Toghril became the wang, the ‘princely’ ruler, mongolized as Ong). Soon afterwards the Mongols and Jin were at each other’s throats again. Several incidents provide lessons in character and leadership.
One constant in the History’s confused account is that Genghis emerges as the true leader, Jamukha as the false one. Once, Jamukha overcame Genghis, who fled to hide on the upper reaches of the River Onon. Jamukha had his captives, ‘the princes of the Chinos [Wolves] boiled alive in 70 cauldrons’. Scholars argue about what this means. Most assume that it refers to the male leaders of a small clan loyal to Genghis, whose legendary totemic forefather had been a wolf, or a leader of that name. Boiling alive was indeed an established form of execution, though it is fair to assume that seventy is not an exact number and simply means ‘many’. In addition, Jamukha cut off the head of an enemy chief and dragged it away tied to his horse’s tail. These two examples of deliberate brutality and humiliation are in implied contrast to Genghis’s style of leadership. If Jamukha, even in victory, is a brutal murderer eager to rule by terror, then Genghis, even in defeat, is the opposite.
But there is another lesson hidden here. Later, Genghis, as national leader, would be a master of terror, unleashing death and destruction in truly horrific ways. So what, one may ask, is wrong with boiling seventy of his colleagues alive and dragging a decapitated head about behind a horse? What’s wrong is that it doesn’t work. Genghis and his gang are not cast down, do not surrender. Just the opposite. The atrocity spurs him to greater efforts to achieve vengeance and victory. Jamukha’s action is that of a poor leader, not because he perpetrates an atrocity,
but because he perpetrates the wrong sort of atrocity. Terror must be applied so that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages – a strategy Genghis would use with appalling effectiveness in China and the world of Islam.
Battle followed battle, alliances were made and betrayed and reformed, leaving Jamukha still at large at the head of an alliance of tribes and Toghril vacillating between friendship and enmity. The Secret History skimps on politics, strategy and military details, but records several examples of the one trait that Temujin valued above all – loyalty, the most fundamental of virtues for life on the steppe.
During one battle with Jamukha’s coalition, Temujin had two narrow escapes, which opened the way for shows of loyalty that bound him and his followers as if with a sacred vow.
At one point in the battle, an arrow just missed Temujin, but pierced his horse’s neck, killing it. After changing mounts, another arrow, a poisoned one, actually hit him, in the neck. In camp that night, with no food or drink to sustain him, he lapsed into unconsciousness. His No. 2, Jelme, sucked the wound clean, then sneaked into Jamukha’s camp and stole some curds. When Temujin came to, Jelme fed him with curds and water. At dawn, as Temujin’s strength returned, he saw that he owed Jelme his life.
Later, with the battle won, old Sorkan-shira himself appeared, along with a companion. Temujin asks if Sorkan by any chance knew who had fired the arrow that killed his horse. It is Sorkan’s companion, Jirko, who speaks up: it was he who fired the arrow. Having almost killed Temujin, he courted instant execution. So he dedicates himself to his leader. If you kill me, he says, I’ll only rot away in a plot of earth the size of your hand; but if you show mercy, I’ll cut through oceans and mountains for you. On other occasions, later in life, Temujin had no time for turncoats. But there is no betrayal involved here. He is swayed by Sorkan’s presence and impressed by Jirko’s honesty and courage. ‘This is a man to have as a companion,’ he says, and renames him on the spot in memory of his deed. ‘He shall be named Jebe [“Arrow-point”] and I will use him as my arrow.’