by The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire
With their central geographic position and their universalistic religions and commerce, the Muslims formed the pivot of civilization, but in recent centuries the frayed world map had been torn into hundreds of shreds and patches ruled by minor aristocrats, warlords, and bandits in a constantly changing kaleidoscope of cruel conquests, forced marriage alliances, and vicious betrayals. Each area consisted of a handful of constantly changing states with its own regional civilization, but they all lagged behind the Muslims on every measure of development. The Vikings controlled a hodgepodge of territories from America to the Mediterranean; the Turks established numerous dynastic kingdoms in Central Asia and India. Only the Arabs could claim to have a truly international civilization.
Yet, by 1206, the Arabs had begun their global retreat. The Turks pressed in on the Arabs from Central Asia, and although they adopted the Arab religion of Islam, they rejected Arab rule. The Europeans had nearly expelled the Arabs from Iberia, and their Christian crusaders mounted a massive challenge to the heart of Islam in the Holy Land.
The Arabs, with the help of Kurds and others, managed to hold the core of the Muslim lands against the Crusaders, but they had been severely wounded and gravely reduced in power.
At the time of the Mongol khuriltai, the knights from the Fourth Crusade were sailing back to Venice and other European ports, having utterly failed in their quest to destroy Islam but having substituted instead a thorough sacking and decimation of the Orthodox Christians of Byzantium. The Crusaders had desecrated, looted, and burned their way through the oldest centers of European civilization. They placed a prostitute on the throne of the Orthodox Patriarch, pulled the gold off the walls of the churches, pried out the jewels from the covers of ancient manuscripts, and then burned the books of the greatest library in the world. They divided ancient treasures and young virgins, including the nuns, among themselves like so many toys. Having destroyed Byzantium, they would soon begin new purges of Jews and smaller crusades against those Europeans who had not yet converted or who dared follow a different interpretation of Christianity than what was authorized in Rome.
Rival clans constantly ripped apart the social fabric of Japan, Korea, Europe, and South Asia, and society convulsed in spasms of violence as one feudal lord fought another. Secular and religious rulers struggled against one another within the same feudal order that pitted all against all; kidnapping and ransoming seemed to be the main occupation. Muslims pushed against Christians in the West, Hindus and Buddhists in the East, and pagans everywhere. Christians fought everyone, but mostly themselves, as bishops attacked bishops, popes excommunicated kings, kings created antipopes.
China would eventually become the center of world civilization during the Mongol era of history, but until then, China’s role had been as a regional power largely isolated from the mainstream, as dynasties and various-sized kingdoms constantly sparred against one another, rarely allowing a single one to dominate for long. As the Mongols gathered in the north, the heart of the Chinese civilization was a kingdom of about 60 million ruled by the Southern Sung Dynasty from their capital of Hangzhou. In northern China, the Jurched tribe of Manchuria ruled over about 50 million Chinese subjects as the Jin Dynasty. The Silk Route between Persia and China was dominated by the Tangut, relatives of the Tibetans, under the Xia Dynasty, and by the Kara Kitai farther west. Tibet remained an isolated zone, as did many of the small kingdoms and independent tribes of the south. Each of them would soon fall to the Mongols of Genghis Khan.
3
Our Daughters Are Our Shields
THE STEPPE ALONE LACKED THE RESOURCES THAT GENGHIS KHAN needed to keep his followers happy. Now that the people had peace, milk, and meat, they longed for something more: for tangsuqs, those rare trinkets such as gems, golden and silver ornaments, and decorative baubles for their tents, horses, and themselves. In addition to the luster they provided, every item conveyed some spiritual property from its presumed place of origin, and the farther the tangsuq traveled, the stronger this essence, and therefore its beneficial power, became. Seashells emitted the magical sounds of the ocean, gold radiated the warmth of the sun, and silver the cool of the moon. Iridescent peacock feathers reflected the rainbow, and wine instantly released a fog of laughter.
Genghis Khan had united the tribes by charisma and force, but to keep them loyal required more than just a strong army and strategic marriage alliances. To show that the Eternal Blue Sky supported him and blessed him, he needed to bestow new riches on the nation. He had to provide something that they could not make for themselves, to supply things that their old chiefs could not, to bring them into the world market with its constantly changing flow of luxuries and novelties.
The Mongolian Plateau, though the perfect home for herds of horses and roaming goats, had few luxuries to offer; yet it was situated just off the most important trade highway in the world. The Silk Route was so close, but remained apart, beyond the five hundred miles of gravel, rock, and sand that the Mongols called govi and foreigners called the Gobi.
The Mongols found some of the merchandise of urban civilization useless or frivolous. Mongols did not need chopsticks to eat their food when they had fingers, and the porcelains could not survive the rigors of a nomadic lifestyle. With the Mongol preference for the natural flavor of meat, they had no interest in the spices or the sweets that the southerners craved. A Mongol’s scent was a part of personal identity, and perfumes confusingly made everyone smell like flowers and fruits, which proved more appealing to flies and mosquitoes than to other Mongols. If the many manuscripts and religious texts sold in the markets contained anything of value, they needed to be memorized so as not to take up the preciously limited space on the nomads’ carts. Besides, only Hoelun’s Tatar son could read, and he was already quite busy as the supreme judge.
Yet there was much in the markets that enthralled the Mongols. The camel-and goat-wool blankets were so soft and delicate that they seemed woven from feathers. The merchants sold silk that slid along the skin like freshly falling snow, and the textiles were embroidered with brightly colored flowers and birds that looked as though they could suddenly come to life. In small bags of antelope leather, the merchants carried pearls as white as milk, coral as red as the setting sun, and ivory so soft that it seemed edible. The Silk Route brought iron for making knives, pots, and stirrups that never rotted, broke, or decayed. The people of its towns and cities could strike a flint against a steel bar and make sparks fly, and they served drinks in silver bowls that could protect against poison and counteract magic spells.
The merchants from beyond the Gobi sold delicately carved combs for fixing the hair, and they traveled with magic needles that could point out the south or north in the dark or on a day darkened by sandstorms. They played musical instruments with the voices of angels, and they frightened away demons with brass cymbals that sounded like cranes dancing on ice. They blew into horns to call the thunder, and conch shells that could summon the gods. Their medicines were said to restore sight to the blind and make the barren fruitful. The bamboo wood was light enough to float on water, but strong as metal, and light could pass through the beads of glass and colored crystal. Their cosmetics revitalized an aged woman’s beauty, and their potions could return an old man’s virility. Compared to the novelties of the markets, the nomad’s life seemed drab, the wealth in cows and horses appeared trifling, and the herder’s clothes looked coarse and plain.
To obtain the luxury goods of the south, the Mongols needed something to trade. The yaks, cows, sheep, and goats could not make the trek across the Gobi, and the horses and camels could not carry heavy loads of wool or leather. The most valuable products of the north came not from the domesticated animals, but from the wild animals: antelope hides, black and brown sable pelts, tiger and wolf skins, bear claws, and the horns of elk, reindeer, ibex, and wild sheep. The Mongols could also provide hunting hawks, as well as large supplies of feathers from cranes and tundra swans. Even the fur of marmots, squirrels, and do
gs could be traded, and the southern pharmacists sought to harvest body parts of wild animals, from tongue and teeth to tail and testicles, for use in medicines.
Most of these products lay beyond the Mongol steppe world; they came from animals of the distant Amur River in the northeast or the forests around Lake Baikal in the northwest. The Mongols called the northern area Sibr, which later became Siberia, and they referred to the tribes as the Oi-yin Irged, the Forest People, eventually shortened to Oirat. These groups lived in small hunting camps among the trees adjacent to the taiga in the shadow of the Arctic. Because horses could not survive that far north, some of the bands moved on sleds pulled by dogs, and others relied on reindeer. They wore animal skins and furs, ate the wild animals of the forest, and lived in bark tents. Even the rough wool and felt of the steppe was a luxury among the Oirat, while silks and teas remained as exotic to them as bamboo or books.
In 1207, only a year after the founding of the nation, Genghis Khan dispatched his eldest son, Jochi, with an army to Siberia to subdue the northern tribes. The Oirat living along the Shishigt River, west of Lake Hovsgol, became the first to join Genghis Khan. Unlike the herding tribes living on the open steppe, the Oirat lived by hunting in a wooded zone. Prior to Jochi’s campaign, they had not been very active in the steppe wars, but they owed nominal allegiance to a sequence of Genghis Khan’s enemies, including Jamuka, the Merkid, and the Naiman. However, their chief quickly recognized that the Oirat’s future prosperity lay with the Mongols, with whom he eagerly sought an alliance.
Genghis Khan accepted the Oirat and made a proposal of marriage with two of the chief’s sons. Genghis Khan’s daughter Checheyigen married Inalchi. Then Genghis Khan made the alliance deeper by marrying his granddaughter, who was the daughter of Jochi, to the chief’s other son, Torolchi. With the marriage of each woman, Genghis Khan’s nuptial edicts became stronger and more direct in making it clear that she was to rule. His intentions could scarcely have been more precise in the wording he chose at the time of Checheyigen’s marriage: “Because you are the daughter of your Khan father, you are sent to govern the people of the Oirat tribe.” This time he made no mention of a secondary ruler, co-ruler, or another shaft on the cart. She was not simply to govern the Oirat the way that they had been in the past; she would not be a mere substitute for their old khans. “You should organize the Oirat people and control them,” her father demanded. “Your words must show your wisdom.”
“You are going to pitch a tent there,” he told her, “but do not be a stranger in your mother-in-law’s family!” The omission of the name, or any mention of her husband or his father’s lineage, further indicated that not only would the new son-in-law surrender power over the Oirat, but he would not even be living among them in his homeland. He would be removed to follow Genghis Khan and fight with the Mongol army, leaving Checheyigen there among her husband’s female relatives.
As usual in the nuptial edicts, Genghis Khan added some more personal advice. “Be sincere always,” he was quoted as saying. “Maintain your soul as one in the night and the day.” And with fatherly concern he added, “Get up early and go to bed late.”
Checheyigen’s position over the Oirat gave the Mongols control of the northern trade routes all the way into the Arctic. Even with this new source of trade goods, Genghis Khan still needed access into the Silk Route.
The “Silk Route” or “Silk Road” referred to the network of trade connections between the three main civilizations of China, India, and the Mediterranean, with the Muslim countries dominating the center of this intercontinental triangle. The core consisted of some five thousand miles, but the inclusion of alternative, secondary, and connecting routes doubled or tripled the size. In the east, the route began with the ancient Chinese city of Xian, but in the west, where the route fingered out into dozens of streams, almost any major Mediterranean or Indian city could be called the termination point.
Trade routes usually follow the path of least geographic resistance. They move around mountains and deserts when possible. Travelers on the Silk Route had to cross two difficult barriers in western China: the Tianshan Mountains and the treacherous Taklamakan Desert. Farther to the east, they faced two more equally formidable obstacles in the Tibetan Plateau and the Mongolian Plateau, but fortunately for the traders, a narrow strip of lowland called the Gansu Corridor runs between the two, and virtually all trade funneled through this area like water through a canyon. The only place that the Silk Route is actually a single route is the easternmost area of the roughly one thousand miles from Dunhuang into the heartland of China via Xian.
Whoever commanded this passageway held a stranglehold on the entire Silk Route. Through millennia, the three main contenders had been the Chinese on one side and the Turkic and Tibetan tribes on the other. At the time of Genghis Khan’s rise to power in Mongolia, the Tangut occupied the corridor and doggedly defended their control of the lucrative trade routes.
The Tangut, who referred to themselves as the Great White Nation, were essentially a Tibetan people who had come down off their high plateau in the tenth century, giving up nomadic herding to exploit the trade corridor. In contrast to the earlier Central Asian traders such as the Sogdians, the Tangut acquired a heavy overlay of Chinese civilization, as exemplified in their use of their own language written with Chinese characters. They were dedicated Buddhists resisting the press of Islam along the Silk Route, but within Buddhism, they encouraged a wide diversity of theological schools and institutions.
The Tangut recognized that Genghis Khan was not a merchant, but a conqueror seeking to control the trade. As soon as he united the steppe, he dispatched forces south to attack the Tangut cities closest to the Mongol nation. As early as 1205, he had sent small bands of his cavalry south to probe the Tangut defenses. Attacking a walled and heavily fortified Tangut city proved far more difficult than capturing a herder’s camp, but through persistence and trial and error, Genghis Khan managed one small victory after another. Each triumph forced new contributions of camels and merchandise from the Tangut, but it did not produce a constant supply of goods. With each defeat the Tangut earnestly vowed to send more animals and wares in future tribute, but as soon as the Mongols disappeared back north of the Gobi, the defeated cities stopped payment. Genghis Khan’s campaigns, while proving militarily successful and giving his army good practice in laying siege to cities and maneuvering back and forth through the Gobi, were not producing the material results he sought.
Unable to succeed by military force alone, Genghis Khan devised another strategy that depended upon his daughter Alaqai Beki, whom he had promised in marriage to the family of the Onggud leader Ala-Qush. With Alaqai now around sixteen or seventeen years old, he decided to send her to the Onggud.
Alaqai was born to Genghis Khan and Borte around the year 1191, about the time that Borte turned thirty years old. Some scholars believe that her name means “Siberian Marmot,” but others offer a more mysterious origin tied directly to the birth of her father. According to this etymology, the name means “Palm of the Hand,” in reference to some now unknown event at the time of her delivery. Such an origin for the name closely parallels the account of her father’s birth, when Genghis Khan emerged from the womb clutching a small blood clot in the palm of his hand. This was taken as a sign that he would one day rule the world. Whether true or not, the connection of these birth stories for the father and daughter show that some people place her in an important position comparable to his. No such story exists for any other member of the royal family.
Mongol tradition strongly maintains that Borte refused to hand over the rearing of her children to any of the many retainers she acquired as her husband’s power expanded. She and her mother-in-law, Hoelun, are attributed with raising their children, and she, much more than Genghis Khan, instilled in their daughters the duty to serve the nation. Borte came from the Khongirad, and in contrast to the Mongols’ nearly exclusive reliance on force and violence, her tribe had a far more su
btle approach to public life and diplomacy. As Borte’s father explained: the Khongirad did not depend on the strength of their sons; they trusted instead in the beauty and cleverness of their daughters to protect them. He said that their daughters rode on carts pulled by black camels, and that they married powerful men and became queens to negotiate, intercede, and protect them. “From ancient time,” he said, “the Khongirad people have queens as our shields.”
Having grown up in the tribe that expected such a role for its daughters, Borte transmitted those same values and expectations to her female offspring. Her daughters were bred to rule.
Alaqai Beki was the first of her Borijin clan to come off the Mongolian Plateau to impose Mongol rule over the sedentary civilization of China. As she rode down the steep embankment that separated the Mongol steppe world from the agricultural and urban world of the Chinese, she faced more than 100 million people who, through generations of fighting, had come to loathe and fear everything she represented.
The steppe society where Alaqai grew up differed markedly from the land she went to rule. The Onggud lived south of the Gobi on the borderland between the zones of herding nomads and the settled farmers of China. They had trading towns surrounded by high, thick walls. They lived in buildings for part of the year and in felt gers for the other part, and they worshiped in temples. The Onggud formed one of the oldest civilizations of northern Asia.