The Mongol Empire: Genghis Khan, his heirs and the founding of modern China

by John Man

  From the mid-1230s, Ogedei drank himself steadily towards death. A special official was appointed by his staff to count the number of goblets he consumed, in a vain attempt to control his intake. The number went down, apparently, but only because he got himself a bigger goblet.

  In December 1241 the emperor took part in the annual winter hunt, a huge event for which he had built a fence two days’ journey in length to gather wild animals, mainly white-tailed deer and wolves. Then he started a night of heavy drinking, in the company of his favourite Muslim tax farmer, Abd el-Rahman. He died at dawn, on 11 December, aged fifty-five. The Secret History ends a review of Ogedei’s reign with a self-assessment, almost certainly an addition to the text sanctioned, if not dictated, by Ogedei himself. His words were in the style of a shaman rendering respect to an ancestor, detailing his merits and sins as a way of deferring to the spirit of his mighty forebear, the nation’s founder. Having been ‘placed on the great throne’, he had done four good things – attacked China, set up postal-relay stations, dug wells and imposed peace on his people – but there had also been four faults, three of which were an incident of forced marriages en masse, the secret execution of a faithful minister and the building of a wall to make a game reserve, all of which sound more like token crimes than real ones. The fourth and greatest was ‘to let myself be vanquished by wine’. Perhaps that was why, as a form of self-punishment, he had himself buried not with his father on the Mongols’ sacred mountain in northern Mongolia, but on his own private estate in Mongolia’s far west.

  Chucai himself died two years later, some say of a broken heart, aged fifty-four, after almost thirty years of devoted service to an impossible ideal.

  Sorkaktani, already a power in the Mongol heartland, benefited from these upheavals, and learned from them. In 1236, two years after Ogedei finished the conquest of north China, she had asked for part of Hebei province as an ‘appanage’, a personal estate, on the grounds that her husband had conquered it. Owning land as opposed to people was a novelty in Mongolian culture, so Ogedei hesitated, but since – as Rashid al-Din wrote – he ‘used to consult her on all affairs of state and would never disregard her advice’, she got her way, acquiring a foundation for wealth and independence.

  Travelling to Hebei, she and her son, twenty-one-year-old Kublai, would have seen the terrible destruction caused by the Mongol war machine: abandoned farms, overgrown fields, empty villages, refugees. A population of 40 million or so in the early thirteenth century, as recorded by the Jin, had dropped to about 10 million.fn1 The figure is so astonishing that many scholars simply don’t believe it. Perhaps households were broken up. Perhaps millions fled south. In any event, the social consequences of the war were catastrophic.

  Sorkaktani’s place in Hebei province, Zhengding, about 200 kilometres south-west of present-day Beijing, was less damaged than most areas, because it had been granted to a local warlord who had surrendered to Genghis. It was not a place many Mongolians would have bothered with. Famed for its Buddhist temples, pagodas and statues, then and now, it is on the western rim of the great North China Plain, where rich farmland gives way to low hills rolling between river valleys. Sorkaktani spotted a chance to build wealth. She would nurture her estates, woo her tenants by patronizing Buddhism and Daoism, and put the taxes to good use.

  The same year, Kublai received an estate of his own from Ogedei, Xingzhou, 100 kilometres south of his mother’s estate, a region of some 10,000 households. He was too young to be interested in good government, and allowed local officials free rein, with predictable consequences: oppressive taxation, corruption, the flight of the fit and strong, and a dramatic decline in tax revenues. Shocked, Kublai ordered reforms. New officials were drafted, tax laws revised. People returned, teaching Kublai an important lesson about management.

  Kublai had the sense to see that he had a lot to learn. Over the coming years, during which the empire almost tore itself apart, he hired a Brains Trust of half a dozen Chinese advisers, most of whom shared religious and intellectual interests and all of whom were prepared to work with their new overlords, offering guidance in finding their way among China’s three great religious traditions – Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism – and in the hope of moulding the Mongol leaders into good Chinese rulers. This was quite a remarkable step by Kublai, because it was conducted across a linguistic and cultural gulf. He did not speak much Chinese, and very few Chinese spoke Mongol. All communication was through interpreters.

  Among the advisers, three were of particular significance.

  The first was the Buddhist monk Haiyun, who had been famously clever as a child. On the question of happiness and sorrow, he said that at the age of seven, he had read Confucius and found him unhelpful. So he turned to Buddhism, and was ordained at the age of nine. When the Mongols seized Lanzhou, the capital of today’s Gansu province, in 1219, Haiyun, now aged sixteen, was found wandering with his master, quite unconcerned amidst the devastation and looting. A Mongol general asked if they were not afraid of being killed by the troops. On the contrary, Haiyun replied calmly, they relied on the invaders for protection. Impressed, the commandant of north China, Mukhali, brought the pair to the attention of Genghis. The master died soon afterwards, and the pupil rose to become head of several temples, being further promoted by Yelu Chucai. When Kublai met Haiyun in Karakorum in 1242, he asked him which of the Three Teachings – Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism – was the highest. Haiyun replied that Buddhism offered the best guidance for a prince wishing to promote virtue, relieve suffering, resist delusions, accept good advice, shun extravagance and distinguish right from wrong.

  Haiyun introduced Kublai to another monk, Liu Bingzhong, a painter, calligrapher, poet, mathematician; the multi-talented product of the famous Daoist sect Complete Perfection, whose patriarch, Changchun, Genghis had summoned all the way to Afghanistan. Liu later converted to Buddhism, without losing interest in Daoism and Confucianism. While Haiyun returned to run his temple in Beijing, he remained on Kublai’s staff, devoting his life ‘to the ideal of modifying Mongol institutions according to Confucian principles’.fn2

  The third adviser, Yao Shu, had joined Ogedei’s staff in 1235, and was sent with Shigi on raids across the Song frontier, during which he too did his best to modify Mongol brutality. He later helped found a Confucian academy in Beijing. Resenting Mongol administration, he retreated to the country for ten years, until Kublai head-hunted him and invited him to Karakorum in 1251. He became tutor to Kublai’s eight-year-old second son and intended heir, Jingim (Zhenjin in Chinese), and thus one of several Confucian scholars on hand to offer Kublai practical advice.

  Kublai employed other nationalities as well, for he was keen to balance his past and future, local interests and imperial ones. For advice on government, he had his Chinese team. For military matters, he relied on Mongols. For translators and secretaries, Turks. It was a surprisingly large and varied group – some two dozen in all, a shadow cabinet carefully chosen for its political balance, almost as if Kublai was preparing himself for much more than local administration.

  North of the Gobi, there was no agreed successor. Ogedei had designated a favourite grandson, Shiremun, as heir in a fit of pique at his son, Guyuk, but his widow, Toregene, took over the empire and very nearly ruled over its collapse. She ignored her husband’s will and set about getting the throne for Guyuk. He was never going to be popular: in poor health, made worse by drink, moody, suspicious and unsmiling. But Toregene was a determined lady. She won over most of the family with arguments and gifts. Jochi’s son Batu, however, was not persuaded. He refused to come to a khuriltai, the great assembly of princes that would have to elect the next khan, claiming he was suffering from gout. Delays continued for five years, with Toregene constantly shoring up support for her son with intrigues and bribes.

  The dispute threatened to tear the empire apart, with every prince making his own laws, changing the orders of Genghis himself. Genghis Khan’s youngest brother, Temüge,
now well into his seventies, even dared suggest that he, as elder statesman, should be nominated khan without even calling an assembly, a claim for which he would pay in due course. Chaos threatened, until Sorkaktani – who had scrupulously refrained from issuing edicts of her own – came out in support of Guyuk, giving Toregene a slight but significant majority among the princes. She at last arranged the assembly, which convened in the spring of 1245, with the gout-stricken Batu represented by his elder brother.

  This khuriltai was the grandest imperial affair yet. As described by Juvaini, Karakorum became a stage for the display of new-found power and wealth. Nobles by the hundred gathered from every corner of the empire: most of Genghis’s scattered descendants, sons and grandsons, cousins and nephews. They were joined over the course of several weeks by fawning leaders from north China, Korea, Russia, Hungary, Turkestan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Georgia, Syria, even Baghdad, though it was as yet unconquered, arriving to create a satellite city of 2,000 tents. The Italian monk John of Plano Carpini, having just arrived, was busy gathering inside information from long-term residents who spoke Latin and French. The feasting and drinking went on for a week, during which the princes grudgingly offered the throne to Guyuk, who, after three routine refusals, accepted.

  His coronation took place that August near Karakorum. Here the tributes from vassals and the Mongol elite arrived, in 500 cartloads of silks, velvet, brocade, gold, silver and furs, displayed in and around Guyuk’s coronation ord, a huge tent-palace of yellow felt supported by gilded wooden columns. Guyuk was crowned on an ivory throne, inlaid with gold, made by a Russian goldsmith. It was Sorkaktani who oversaw a gigantic pay-off, the treasures being handed out to everyone, from grizzled companions of Genghis himself, down through commanders of 10,000, to platoon chiefs in charge of ten men, from sultans to humble officials, and all their dependants.

  Together, Guyuk and Toregene wrung from the assembled princes a pledge that the throne would remain with Ogedei’s line of descent; this in effect countermanded Genghis’s own will, which specified that if Ogedei’s descendants proved unfit to rule, the princes should choose from other descendants.fn3 Sorkaktani made no attempt to push Mönkhe forward, for these were dangerous times. Genghis’s ageing brother Temüge was put to death for having claimed the throne for himself. Genghis’s brother! Executed! A few years earlier it would have been inconceivable.

  Then scandal threatened to tear the family apart. Toregene had employed a Muslim woman called Fatima, who had been brought as a captive to Karakorum, where she set up trade managing the local prostitutes. Somehow she wormed her way into Toregene’s household and became the queen’s close friend and confidante, a sort of female Rasputin. Knowledge of the queen’s secret views and court intrigues gave her far too much influence. Top people had to grovel their way into her good books, and resented her, praying for a comeuppance. It came soon after Guyuk succeeded, when his brother, Köten, fell ill. Someone suggested that Fatima must have bewitched him. Guyuk tried to reverse the damage. He prised her out of his mother’s control, had her accused and tortured until she confessed, and then consigned her to a dreadful death, conferring upon her the upper-class honour of dying without shedding blood. As Juvaini describes, ‘her upper and lower orifices were sewn up, and she was rolled up in a sheet of felt and thrown into the river.’ Such a conflict between son and mother was no basis for sound rule.

  What, meanwhile, of Batu? He was still advancing slowly across Central Asia with a small army. Guyuk suspected not submission, but an invasion. He mustered his own army and marched westwards, intending a counter-invasion. All this took months, opening a window of opportunity for one of Sorkaktani’s most crucial interventions – a difficult decision, fraught with danger. If she was discovered, all would be lost – her years of waiting, her careful networking, her hopes for her sons. Recalling the ties of brotherhood between her late husband and Batu’s father Jochi, she sent a secret message to Batu warning him of Guyuk’s preparations for war. Batu prepared himself for action – unnecessarily, as it turned out, because in April 1248 the two armies were virtually squaring up along the shores of Lake Balkhash when Guyuk, always sick and now worn out by travel, died, possibly poisoned, possibly in a fight, but most probably from disease.

  Batu, who was content with his own empire in southern Russia, had no interest in promoting himself as the new khan. And he owed Sorkaktani a favour. So he instantly turned his army into a princely assembly and proposed that Sorkaktani’s eldest, Mönkhe, should succeed.

  Back home, Guyuk’s sons were too young to rule, while his widow was overwhelmed by events, closeting herself with shamans. Again, the empire lacked a leader. Local rulers looked after themselves, wringing whatever they could out of their subjects, using the postal-relay system for their own ends. People remembered Genghis’s words: that if Ogedei’s descendants were unsuitable, then the new khan should be chosen from among the offspring of Genghis’s other three sons. Two of them, Jochi (dead for over twenty years) and Chaghadai, had estates so distant that their heirs were out of contention. That left the children of Genghis’s youngest, Tolui, and his widow, Sorkaktani – her four boys, Mönkhe, Kublai, Hulegu and Ariq, all names that dominate most of the rest of this book.

  Now at last Sorkaktani went into battle on her own account. She was in her sixties, and it was her last chance. She had a lot going for her: her own power-base, money, respect, influence. The court was torn apart over the Fatima affair. And she had an advantage in that Guyuk’s offspring were Genghis’s great-grandchildren, whereas her own were his grandchildren, a generation closer to the great man. Mönkhe, almost forty, was well qualified. He had led a Mongol army westwards into Europe, destroying the Hungarians at the Battle of Mohi. And his three younger brothers were also experienced generals. They would be vital when the empire resumed its god-given task of imposing Mongol rule on the world.

  The dispute almost ended in 1250, when rivals came together at Batu’s camp and heard Batu again demand that Mönkhe be elected. But Batu’s camp was not a place for a proper assembly. In the summer of 1251 a second assembly, this one on the traditional site of Avraga, confirmed the choice. As if concluding a presidential election, Mönkhe was all generosity, appeasing and befriending his former opponents and their family. It worked, but not before one of the most destructive and disgraceful events of these violent times.

  The scene is the princely assembly at Avraga. A falconer loses a favourite female camel. He sets out to find it, riding for two or three days here and there. He comes across an army. He notices a wagon full of weapons. He strikes up conversations, and discovers a plot to attack Mönkhe while everyone is feasting. Finding his camel, he gallops back and barges in on the new emperor with the news. A contingent of 3,000 investigates. They find that the rebel army belongs to Guyuk’s son, Shiremun, once favoured as Ogedei’s heir. The leaders are marched into Mönkhe’s presence. After three days of interrogation, Mönkhe concludes they are traitors on the point of rebellion. More arrests follow, and confessions, and exilings, and executions: beheadings, tramplings, suicides. The purge, in late 1251 and early 1252, reached as far afield as Afghanistan and Iraq, all under the grim authority of Mönkhe’s chief judge, Menggeser, who had served with Genghis’s father, with Genghis and with Tolui. It was a terrible blood-letting, with perhaps 300 victims – not many by the standards of mass murders, but these were members of an elite in which everyone knew everyone else.

  Now there was unity again, to seal which there would be a push outwards such as even this empire had never seen before. It would, of course, be a family affair, on a very grand scale. Hulegu would move west across the Islamic world to the Mediterranean. Mönkhe himself and Kublai would undertake the final conquest of the Chinese south, the kingdom of Song. A third advance, a minor one by comparison, would absorb Korea.

  In early 1252, in the middle of her son’s great purge, Sorkaktani, now seventy, died, and was buried in a Christian church way out west, in Zhangye, Gansu province
. Later she became a cult figure, and is still remembered today. She died knowing that her ambitions had been accomplished. Tolui’s line had taken over from Ogedei’s. Her eldest was khan, his two brothers were top generals, the empire was secure, and Genghis’s vision was once again in the process of fulfilment – changes that would in due course bring Kublai to the throne and form the foundations of modern China.

  fn1 It was bad, but perhaps not quite that bad. The numbers, as gathered by the first Mongol census in 1234, derived from the number of households: 7.6 million dropping to 1.7 million. But what was the size of a household? Perhaps, with the disruption of war, individuals survived the destruction of their households. Perhaps a Mongol–Chinese household, swollen by refugees, was larger than a Jin–Chinese household. Perhaps north China was reduced by only – only! – 50 per cent.

  fn2 Hok-Lam Chan, ‘Liu Ping-chung’ in de Rachewiltz, In the Service of the Khan (see Bibliography).