Jack Weatherford

by The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire

  By taking off her queenly headdress, known as the boqta, she removed virtually the only piece of clothing that separated a man from a woman. The boqta ranks as one of the most ostentatious headdresses of history, but it had been highly treasured by noble Mongol women since the founding of the empire. The head structure of willow branches, covered with green felt, rose in a narrow column three to four feet high, gradually changing from a round base to a square top. A variety of decorative items such as peacock or mallard feathers adorned the top with a loose attachment that kept them upright but allowed them to flutter high above the woman’s head. The higher the rank, the more elaborate the boqta, and as queen, Manduhai would have worn a highly elaborate one. She would have worn her hair in a knot underneath a hood that helped to balance the boqta. The contraption struck many foreign visitors as odd, but the Mongol Empire had enjoyed such prestige that medieval women as far away as Europe imitated it with the hennin, a large cone-shaped headdress that sat toward the back of the head rather than rising straight up from it as among the Mongols. With no good source of peacock feathers, European noblewomen generally substituted gauzy streamers flowing in the wind at the top.

  As in many martial cultures, the bow and arrow served not only as a major weapon in war but also as a major political and martial symbol. For the Mongols, hanging up the bow and arrow in the ger symbolized peace, and taking them down symbolized war. Even a young boy such as Dayan Khan could have easily taken down the bow and quiver of arrows and strapped them on to symbolically lead the army. By stressing that Manduhai did it, the chronicles show clearly that she personally commanded the army.

  As described in the Altan Tobci, “Queen Manduhai the Good, like the great khans of former times, set out on campaign.”

  She did not, however, leave the boy behind. He was the khan, and he would accompany her army whether he was yet capable or not. In the words of the Altan Tobci, she put the young khan “in a box and set out.” Other sources described the container as a leather case, a woven basket, or a wooden box strapped to a horse.

  When moving from camp to camp, Mongol parents often put young children in a specially made box without a top that they tied to the side of a camel’s two humps. From this secure place the children could be easily moved and kept out of the way, and they could often be seen with their heads poking out of such boxes as they bounced along on the camel.

  By age seven, however, Dayan Khan certainly should have been able to ride a horse with some degree of mastery. Children began riding at age three or four, and by age five, many of them, both boys and girls, were able to engage in grueling races of more than fifteen miles. Particularly since the boy now occupied the highest office in the Mongol world, it seems odd that he would not be riding a horse. At the same time, the chronicles mention that his box was carried by a horse, and not a camel; horses are not used as pack animals, so the choice of animal indicates an unusual situation.

  The young khan possibly still suffered from the ailments of his earlier childhood, and perhaps he could not ride. Several times in his life he had accidents falling from a horse, and therefore Manduhai seemed to be taking no chance of having the young khan injured as she went off to battle. Because she led the troops in his name, his presence, in some form or other, was vital to the legitimacy and success of the campaign. For generations, the men who held the title of Great Khan had rarely ventured forth on a real military campaign, but Manduhai was showing that although he might be a crippled boy, he was still the khan and would go with her into battle. Her leadership and his bravery inspired others to follow her as well.

  The Mongol armies at the time of Manduhai still utilized the left-right organization of Genghis Khan. Whether in camp or on the battlefield, the leader remained always at the center of the army, surrounded by several concentric circles of protectors. The main detachment then spread out as two large wings from the center. Even when moving across the countryside, the army moved in this spread-out formation rather than in the single-file formation of most batallions. In this way, the Mongol army was constantly in formation to move into battle.

  In some armies, the commander rode at the front of the troops. But in the wing formation, with the commander in the center, the two wings moved out somewhat ahead of the leader. From this position at the rear, the commander could see the entire army and be in a much better position to make decisions and give orders. The commander could call for a large number of battle formations to be used in attack, and these could be changed frequently in a cascade of attacks that confused the enemy.

  At the beginning of the Mongol Empire, uninformed opponents sometimes mocked even Genghis Khan as a coward for staying behind the front line in battle, but the effectiveness of the Mongol strategy proved itself not only in their consistent victories, but also in the rare loss of life of their commanders. Despite her untraditional approach to organizing her army, Manduhai knew better than to depart from this proven military formation. She took her position at the center of the army.

  A herd of horses can move only as quickly as its smallest and youngest members can run. Horses can outrun most dangers, but wolves are swift, nimble, and wily. The wolf pack cannot threaten the strong stallion, who can attack with his hooves and severely injure or kill an adult wolf, but because there is only one such stallion, he poses little threat to the pack as a whole. To protect the vulnerable foals and colts, the females herd them into a tight circle that the mares then surround in a tight fortification, thereby forming a wall of hooves against the attackers. Thus fortified, the mares easily beat off with their hooves any wolf that may nip at them, but the horses remain rigidly in place until the wolves move on toward easier prey. The lone mature stallion circles around almost helplessly as a sentry, lunging ineffectively at the wolves that easily jump out of his range.

  From thousands of years together on the steppe, the two animals know each other’s threats and each other’s defenses. The wolves stand little chance of breaking the mares’ defense, but sometimes they can lure out an overconfident and easily provoked young male that lacks the instinct or experience of the females. Such an untested male will strike out against a wolf that then lures him toward the rest of the wolves, which are hiding in ambush. They race out, attack the startled young male, and rip his flesh apart.

  Manduhai already knew the lesson of the mares, but now she needed to learn from the wolf. She could already protect and guard, but Manduhai needed to learn to hunt, stalk, retreat, lure, attack, and win. She first sought to lure out her enemies from their protected stronghold and confront them in the place of her choosing.

  Manduhai carefully selected the battle zone. She led her army toward the large open area west of the Khangai Mountains and east of the Altai. Whoever controlled this area, now mostly located in the modern Mongolian province of Zavkhan, had the best position for controlling the west. Because the area comprised the large open steppe, it was the best place in the west for horse herds. The numerous small rivers of the area drained the ice that melted from the mountains, and abundant meandering streams provided adequate moisture for what would otherwise be too dry a zone for extensive herding. The places without such moisture became sandy deserts, giving the large area a highly varied landscape, with patches of drifting sand dunes and verdant pastures adjacent to the many streams.

  The combination of ample water and extensive grass made for fertile grazing in an otherwise arid west. Whoever controlled this central area would have the largest herds of horses in the area, and thereby food and transportation for the largest army. They would be able to dominate the entire area from central Mongolia to the Kazakh steppes. For these practical reasons, Qaidu Khan and his daughter Khutulun came to the same area for their major confrontation with the armies of their Mongol cousins in the Yuan Dynasty, and it was here that Qaidu Khan died.

  Zavkhan lay north across the Gobi from the oasis where Ismayil had his stronghold, and it was difficult for him to cross such a vast, dry expanse with a large army. For hi
m to make a campaign so far away from his base would have attracted the attention of the Ming army along the Chinese frontier, and they might have seized the oases that they claimed, but which he controlled. If he lost control over the oases, he would also have lost control of the Silk Route. He would have been left without a military or a commercial base.

  Because he could not send in a large force to protect his claim on the Oirat territory, Ismayil sought to govern the Oirat by controlling their access to Chinese and Middle Eastern trade goods. Manduhai had no such material incentive with which to entice the Oirat. Nevertheless, from the time of Genghis Khan’s daughter Checheyigen, the Mongols and the Oirat had maintained close social and marriage ties. Manduhai came from the Choros clan of the Oirat, as did Dayan Khan’s great-grandfather Esen. In addition, many of Dayan Khan’s female ancestors had been Oirat of different clans.

  The chronicles do not explain how Manduhai chose the area or how she came to have the strategic knowledge that she exhibited consistently throughout her military career. Did she know about the battles of Qaidu Khan and Khutulun? Had she learned about the techniques of Genghis Khan? Did she follow the direction of her best general, Une-Bolod? Or did she merely possess some kind of born genius for strategic thinking?

  Manduhai’s expedition of conquest resulted in a number of moderately sized skirmishes, but few large battles. She found little opposition in the west. She came with the true khan, the descendant of Genghis Khan; even the most ardent supporter of the taishi knew that the Great Khan outranked him and that it was to the Great Khan that they owed their ultimate allegiance. Some of the Oirat sided with Manduhai from the start, and others eventually came to her side.

  In the midst of one of the battles, Manduhai’s helmet slipped. This was her first military campaign, and she may not yet have been accustomed to the battlefield. Since craftsmen usually made helmets to fit men, her helmet likely was large on her head and insecure. The displaced helmet dangled briefly from her neck before falling away completely and landing in the dirt.

  For any warrior, much less for a commander, only the loss of the horse would be more dangerous than the loss of the helmet. Without it, her head immediately became an open target for any Oirat who wanted to shoot her or attack her with a sword. But for her or one of her underlings to dismount to retrieve the helmet would be to face the even more dangerous prospect of being trampled under the hooves of either the enemy or her own soldiers.

  An Oirat warrior was the first to notice the unfortunate loss. “The Queen has no helmet,” he called out. Such a cry almost certainly seemed like an invitation to mob her like wolves on a wounded deer, but instead of taking advantage of her unexpected vulnerability, the Oirat soldier shouted for someone to “bring another.” When it appeared obvious that no one had a spare helmet to offer, he removed his own helmet in the midst of the battle and presented it to her. The chronicles do not name the Oirat who, quite probably, saved her life; they only specify his ethnicity. She possibly had a contingent of Oirat fighting with her, or he could have been a chivalrous enemy warrior. No matter whether he had already joined Manduhai’s side or fought against her in the skirmish, the record of the incident showed the level of respect she maintained among the Oirat.

  Manduhai cleverly managed to turn the loss of her helmet to her advantage. The headgear of a person is so closely associated with the soul and its heavenly protection, since the sky is seen as the hat of the Earth, that Mongols sometimes deliberately discard a hat as a way of changing that fate and striving for a new one. Realizing that the sight of the commander losing her helmet could frighten her followers enough to cause them to flee from the battle, Manduhai dashed forward even more boldly and fiercely, determined to demonstrate that her change of headdress promised certain victory. In the words of the Altan Tobci, her enemy reportedly swarmed at her as thick as a cloud of dust, but she fell upon them and “destroyed them entirely, and annihilated them.” She took prisoners beyond counting, and she killed their leaders who had been disloyal to her and Dayan Khan.

  Victory was often marked by imposition of some relatively unimportant but symbolically meaningful laws on the defeated. The Yellow Chronicle of the Oirat (Shira Tughuji) listed several such punitive laws issued by Manduhai after her victory. She limited the crest on the Oirat helmets to a length of two fingers. They could not call any ger in their land an ordon, the Mongol word for palace; and when in the presence of khans, they had to sit on their knees.

  The text also mentions a law that the Oirat could no longer eat with a knife but instead had to gnaw their meat. Such a law probably never existed, but Manduhai may have confiscated their knives as a security measure, thereby temporarily depriving them of knives for eating meat until they were again allowed to acquire them.

  Manduhai had reunited the Mongols, and she now controlled the strategic area of Zavkhan, necessary to assert her power over the west. Without that control, she would face the dangers posed by a rebel tribe, foreign warlords, or even the possibility of wealthy merchants luring her followers away. Une-Bolod gave her control of the east, and now she had added control of the west.

  In addition to its strategic importance, the western campaign against the Oirat was a notable propaganda victory, demonstrating that Manduhai had the blessing of the Shrine of the First Queen and the Eternal Blue Sky. Manduhai showed that she was in control of her country. The khan may have been a small boy in a box, but her strength and determination inspired confidence. For the first time in more than a century, a united and strong central government had control of Mongolia. Manduhai had succeeded in uniting western and eastern Mongolia under the Borijin clan for the first time since Elbeg Khan’s fateful encounter with the rabbit in 1399, nearly a century earlier.

  Going to war in a basket box may have been an odd way for the young Dayan Khan to grow up, but after the trauma of his earliest years, Manduhai provided the boy with a stable and secure, albeit unusual, childhood. For much of the prior centuries, the domineering warlords had kept a sequence of boy khans as prisoners, whom they exploited, abused, and humiliated. The warlords certainly showed no interest in educating or preparing these boys for leadership because they would never lead. No one expected any of the boys to live to become a fully functioning adult, much less the ruling khan. At most, a boy might be required to reproduce a male heir before being dispatched, or some other male relatives could be substituted as khan or as progenitor.

  From the start, Manduhai’s actions made clear that she planned for Dayan Khan to rule. He would be a fully functioning and ruling khan, not a figurehead. Manduhai could easily have left him under the charge of nurses or have built a small, isolated camp for him in one of the many canyons of the Gobi or the Altai Mountains. She could have sent him to live in the remote steppe where she had lived with her first husband, Manduul. Instead, they bore the campaign hardships together. Although we have no quotes from him at this time in his life, he well might have said the same words that Genghis Khan said to one of his most loyal followers: “When it was wet, we bore the wet together, when it was cold, we bore the cold together.”

  Manduhai seemed determined not to repeat the painful mistake of Genghis Khan, who had been a genius in war, politics, and governing but had failed as a father, particularly to his sons. They grew up fearful of him, but undisciplined. They were rowdy and drunken, more intent on hunting, racing, gambling, and womanizing than on learning how to rule. Genghis Khan’s shortcomings as a father, in the end, helped bring down his empire and thus undid his lifetime of work.

  Manduhai did not have the luxury or the problems of so many extra sons. She had but this one boy, and she was determined to make him into a leader in war and in peace.

  She kept him constantly close to her and guarded and sheltered him without delegating that responsibility to anyone. In the words of the The Jewel Translucent, Manduhai “protected her jewel-like son.” She sought divine blessings for him, and “she truthfully and strongly prayed” to the Eternal Blue Sky
: “Lord Tengri, you must watch out for sinful and evil-thinking people!” Constantly but “fearfully she watched over and kept safe her important son.” Through her actions she saved the lineage of Genghis Khan, or in the more ornate phrasing of the Buddhist chroniclers, she facilitated “the spreading of the wish-granting, jewel-like Borijin Golden Clan.” In this way, “by protecting the infallible Dayan Khan, she lit the Borijin hearth fire.”

  Manduhai may have united the Mongols under Dayan Khan, but she had not lessened the threat from the enemies outside Mongolia. The Ming Dynasty in China, to the southeast of Mongolia, and the warlords of the Silk Route to the southwest each claimed the right to rule the Mongols, and each eagerly sought to exercise that right. Whoever controlled the Mongols had access to the richest supply of horses anywhere on Earth. For the merchants of the oases, such a treasure promised infinite riches in trade. For the Ming military, access to the horses would provide them with the basis for a larger and more powerful cavalry.

  Manduhai’s western campaign captured the attention of both rivals. They welcomed the increased turbulence in the Mongol steppes, but the victory of Manduhai and her success at uniting the fractious eastern and western Mongols created a new source of concern for them. Both the warlords and the Chinese still smarted from the pains inflicted on them and the capture of their leaders when Esen nearly united the Mongols. Both wanted to avoid a repeat of those episodes.

  While strengthening military control over the Mongols, Manduhai’s victories jeopardized existing commercial links. Mongolia had no need to be united if the result was to be left alone in isolation without trade and commerce. Unlike the first Mongols, who only needed a few trade goods such as metal, Mongols of the fifteenth century required commodities from cloth and incense to tea and medicines. The political turmoil and social upheaval since the fall of the Mongol Empire had done nothing to lessen Mongol appetites for the variety of goods they had learned about during the empire’s height.