In Search of Genghis Khan

by Tim Severin

  After my first visit as a tour guide I went back twice more to Ulaan Baatar, in October 1989 and then in April the following year, each time trying to pin down a firm commitment for the expedition schedule and hoping to give some definite shape to Ariunbold’s wishful but rather vague ideas. His partnership with Gerel seemed a promising combination. The one was the bureaucrat who could look after the administration, while Gerel was the field man who should be able to organise the practical aspects of their ambitious scheme. I had the impression - wrongly as it turned out - that they had a long experience of working together. In fact they had shared only a few short hunting trips.

  It was Gerel who came up with the very good suggestion of making a trial ride in the spring, before the main expedition began in July. It seemed an excellent idea. It would give me a chance to see how my Mongol colleagues got on, and it would provide them with an opportunity to assess the Mongol volunteers who had put their names forward for the main expedition. Gerel had prepared two oval plaques in bronze, each about 12 inches across, which he wanted to place in the Hentei mountains, the very centre of Genghis Khan’s ancestral lands. Our trial expedition would ride into these mountains, which were still semi-wilderness, and put the plaques in position. One plaque showed Genghis Khan as a handsome man in his late 20s at the time when he was first acknowledged as the leader of his own war band. The other was based on a famous portrait of Genghis Khan which is held in the Imperial Museum in Taiwan. Drawn by a Chinese court artist a generation after Genghis Khan’s death, it seeks to show the man who was the ancestor of a new imperial Chinese dynasty, the Yuan, at a time when Genghis Khan was a much older man and the Mongol armies had overrun north China and taken Peking. The Chinese artist had no model to work from, so he had instinctively turned Genghis into a Chinese monarch, giving him almond eyes, a soft mouth, smooth face and a long, wispy beard. The result is that he looks more like a model Confucian prince than a self-made warlord from the steppes.

  Both plaques were lying flat on a stained and tattered tarpaulin, with Gerel crouching over them, as we assembled for the trial expedition in May, seven months after my first visit to Ulaan Baatar. Gerel was carefully gluing the bronzes to marble slabs shaped like small gravestones which would be erected at the selected sites. Each marble slab had been carved with a suitable inscription written in vertical lines of the elegant Mongol script and picked out in red ink. The writing itself was a direct legacy of the genius of Genghis Khan, and a sign of changing times in modern Mongolia. Until the rise of Genghis Khan the Mongols either did not possess a written language or had no real use for one. So Genghis Khan ordered his bureaucracy to work with an ancient script used by a Central Asian people called the Uighurs, and this lettering became the official script for administrating his huge empire. (1) It survived in general use in Mongolia for more than 700 years until, in 1941, it came under official Communist Party displeasure. A Party committee decided that their national form of writing was archaic and backward. So a law was passed that it was to be phased out and replaced by the ‘modern’ Cyrillic writing used by the Russian advisers. All Mongols were to be retrained in the use of Cyrillic writing, and schools would no longer teach Mongol script. The Second World War delayed the implementation of this short-sighted reform until 1945, when it soon began to have the unforeseen result of damaging the Mongol language. Many sounds and nuances in spoken Mongol could not be properly represented in Cyrillic, so spoken Mongol began to be stilted and simplified in order to fit the strait-jacket of the new writing. Mongols who were proud of their traditions began to look wistfully across the border to the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia where, ironically, the Mongol script had been retained among the native Mongol population. Now, forty-five years on, that misguided policy had been reversed. The authorities in Ulaan Baatar had just announced that Mongol script was to be revived as part of the new liberalisation programme. There were plans, as yet unclear, to make it once again the official national script, though no one knew how much it would cost to restore. By one estimate the price of replacing all the government typewriters would exceed the total Civil Service budget for two years. On Gerel’s Genghis Khan plaques, of course, the alien Cyrillic script would have been unthinkable.

  The quotations that Gerel had selected for his inscriptions were taken from what is the Bible for all those who study the life-story of Genghis Khan. No one knows exactly who composed the original text, or why, but The Secret History of the Mongols ranks as one of the most remarkable documents in Central Asian literature and is perhaps the most unusual written chronicle produced by nomads.

  The splendidly named Archimandrite Palladius, a scholar-priest attached to the Russian religious mission in Peking, caused a sensation when he announced in 1866 that he had come across a hitherto unknown work in the Chinese archives which described the career of Genghis Khan through the eyes of a Mongol. Palladius’ discovery sent shock-waves through the serene world of Oriental scholarship. Until then everyone had accepted that the limitation of studying nomad cultures is that nomads do not leave any written records. Moreover, the nature of their shifting lifestyle means that they rarely build up much in the way of an archaeological legacy. Yet the saga that Palladius now published was nothing less than an account, composed shortly after Genghis Khan’s lifetime, which purported to describe the origins of the Mongols and gave an account of the birth, rise and incredible career of the greatest Mongol of them all.

  Palladius’ news was just the start. Over the next decade other versions and fragments of The Secret History began to surface in China, in both private libraries and the official archives. It seemed that for centuries Chinese scholars had known of the existence of this unique document but paid it little attention. It was, after all, a saga about the barbarian Mongols and not about China, the centre of civilisation. The Secret History itself posed exquisite riddles that still have not been solved to everyone’s satisfaction. They mainly spring from the fact that although the original version was composed in the Mongol language, the surviving examples were written by Chinese scribes who did not use Mongol script. Instead they tried to match the Mongol sounds by using Chinese characters phonetically. The Chinese scribes did their best, and even provided a glossary of the meaning of some of the more abstruse Mongol words, for it seems that the text was used as a training manual for Chinese interpreters and translators trying to learn Mongol. But inevitably the Chinese intermediaries clouded the saga with obscurities, and the original Mongol version has never been found. At least one of the priceless Chinese copies disappeared in the upheaval of the Chinese Civil War, and it has taken Orientalists more than a century to try to reconstruct the original Mongol version, though there are still many ambiguities.

  It is generally agreed that The Secret History of the Mongols was meant to provide Genghis Khan’s descendants with an official account of the origins of their illustrious forebear, and there is a theory that it came to be called ‘Secret’ because only members of the imperial line were allowed to read it. Others claim it was ‘secret’ simply because it was so little circulated. Whatever the truth, The Secret History has the echo of a tribal bard speaking over the campfire as he tells the creation legends of his people and the rise of the man that all Mongols still consider the Father of the Nation.

  Gerel and Ariunbold had arranged our rendezvous at a place they said was mentioned in The Secret History, on the bank of a small lake, Blue Lake, some 190 miles to the north-east of Ulaan Baatar. Although it was late May, the long Mongolian winter had not yet relaxed its grip. The sedge down by the shore crackled with frost, flocks of crows cawed in bare trees, and the surface of the little lake, no more than half a mile across, was three-quarters covered by a sheet of melting ice. Patches of frozen snow lay in the shaded hollows, and the grass on the slope of the steep hill which rose on the far side of the lake was seared brown. The slope of the hill was disfigured with an ugly slogan, laid out in stones, which praised the victory of the Soviet October Revolution. This was
ironic, as we were there to celebrate the very reverse of that Soviet victory: it was at this spot that we would leave the first of Gerel’s plaques. This commemorated the momentous day when a handful of insignificant Mongol tribesmen gathered together some 800 years ago to swear allegiance to a 28-year-old Mongol named Temujin. The pledge of fealty was both allegorical and very homespun. One man promised to be his new leader’s cook, another to be his archer, a third would be his chief shepherd and look after his flocks, a fourth would work as his cowherd, a fifth maintain his carts. Several were sworn in as personal bodyguards. One man vowed, in the archaic poetry of The Secret History, that:

  Becoming a rat,

  I shall gather with others

  Becoming a black crow

  Whatever is outside

  I would like to scoop up with the others

  Becoming a covering of felt,

  I will try to cover over [you] with the others,

  Becoming a wind break of felt,

  I will try to cover over [you] with the others.’ (2)

  Within twenty years the names of that rag-tag little gang would terrify most of Asia. Temujin would have changed his name to Genghis Khan, and his loyal ‘rat’ had become the cavalry general Sübodei, whom Liddell Hart so admired, and who would eventually leave as his epitaph that he had ‘conquered 32 nations and won 65 pitched battles.’

  In May 1990, however, a dozen Mongols were standing around, watching Gerel’s efforts with his bronze plaques, and it took me a little time to realise that our trial ride was to be accompanied by a group of professional artists as well as two expedition volunteers. The latter were recognisable by the fact that they were dressed up in a sort of expedition uniform of brand-new dark maroon dels and heavy felt boots with unsullied embroidery down the side. They were hoping to be selected for the ride to France, and - with Ariunbold still copying my original expedition proposal - they were a doctor and a veterinary surgeon. The doctor was a rather shy young man who, surprisingly for a Mongol, sported a trendy ponytail hairstyle. His companion, the middle-aged vet, looked positively like Samson. He was barrel-chested and had a splendid craggy face. Also, he affected a wide leather body-belt like that worn by weightlifters, and on his head wore a traditional Mongol pointed hat that he covered, disconcertingly, with a plastic shopping bag whenever it rained. As it turned out, he was a sham. He loved to preen himself, and his girth was the result of gluttony. Over the next few days he spent most of his time hovering by the camp-fire, waiting to snap up second and third helpings of food. As for his veterinary skills, it turned out that the local horse-herders knew more about the care and management of livestock than he did. He was not to be selected. Nor did the doctor prove to be any more suitable, though he was quiet and likeable and he made every effort to help out whenever he could. His incurable disadvantage was that he was one of the few Mongols I ever saw who was actually ungainly in the saddle, and he never learned to ride with any degree of self-confidence. He either joggled along in acute discomfort or, if his horse shied, fell off. Everyone felt sorry for him, including the artists, who were oil-painters, sculptors, water-colourists and included several very competent riders. They all belonged to the Mongolian Artists’ Union, and my guess was that they had been invited by Gerel to join the trial ride because their presence gave it a semi-official status as a ‘union project’ and, equally important, they would share the cost of hiring the horses and guides we required to enter the mountains. Obviously nothing like this expedition had been attempted before in Mongolia, and we needed to comply with the administrative mind-set of the country.

  I also noted at once that decision-making among Mongols was a group activity. The day’s programme, the number of horses, the route, the fit of the saddles, every single subject was being argued backward and forward by everyone, whether or not they had any expertise. Contributors wandered up to deliver their opinions and then left the discussion to go back to their other activity - the contemporary Mongol preoccupation with mending worn tyres. We had arrived at the rendezvous after a six-hour drive from Ulaan Baatar, crossing an undulating landscape of low hills. Our transport was a motley collection of jeeps and cross-country vehicles which had been begged and borrowed from various state organisations and cooperatives. The vehicles were kept running by a process cheerfully called ‘Mongolisation’, which described the salvage and modification of any spare part from whatever source. Thus a jeep was likely to have the cracked windshield taken from a similar vehicle which had been destroyed in a wreck, the back axle from a different casualty which was probably a different model, and the gearbox salvaged from a small car. Minor items like lights and mirrors, if they were there at all, were attached with lengths of string or wire. Inevitably these hybrid vehicles could be kept running only with frequent halts for repairs, and their tyres were in a permanent state of decay. The dilapidated state of the vehicles underscored just how difficult it was to organise an expedition in a society where no one had any access to reliable equipment. It was all too apparent that Mongolia lay at the very furthest end of a long line of supply which originated somewhere in the USSR. Any equipment which was imported was, as often as not, a Soviet cast-off. Nor was the life expectancy of the vehicles helped by the fact that Mongolia still had virtually no paved roads. Vehicles travelled from one place to the next simply by following the wheel ruts of previous travellers across the open steppe, through the passes, or into the river fords. There were no bridges. When the wheel ruts became too deep, a driver was free to veer off and pick out a new line over the terrain. The result was a severe rattling for every vehicle and its occupants, and an ecological eyesore. A braided network of road-scars multiplied in all directions, and the surface of the land was cut to shreds.

  Ariunbold had located an interpreter, Dr Boshigt, who was precisely the sort of unlikely contrast that I was to encounter again and again in modern Mongolia. As a physician he had been trained as a cardiac specialist but did not practise medicine in a country desperately short of doctors. As a free-thinker he lived in a totalitarian state, and as a man who dreamed of becoming a successful politician he went off fishing during the crucial run-up to the first free elections. Like all educated Mongols, ‘Doc’ spoke fluent Russian - a compulsory school subject and the medium for all further education - but he also had a very good command of English and had taught himself French and German as well. Because he had done his medical training in Budapest he spoke fluent Hungarian, and after a spell at a Stockholm hospital could manage a little Swedish. He liked horses but loathed riding, and he suffered acutely from hay fever, a major affliction in a country where the summer pollen count must be amongst the highest in the world. Yet Doc never gave up. His name meant ‘Fundamental’ and he was to accompany all my travels and prove indispensable. He was kind-hearted, determined, loved animals, and was exceedingly well informed. As he never went anywhere without his collapsible fishing rod, he was also to provide the best chance of improving what turned out to be a very limited diet.

  Two other members made up the core of our trial-ride team. Paul Harris had come with me to take the stills photos of our travels. An Englishman in his early 30s, Paul was working as a professional photographer in London and had come on a photo-assignment to my home village in Ireland where I met him. Later, when I wrote to ask if he knew anyone who might like to go on an expedition to Mongolia, he promptly took up the invitation himself since his main interest was in outdoor photography and he had wanderlust. I had no doubts that Paul would prove to be a good companion. He had been on climbing expeditions in South America and Nepal and was enthusiastic and adaptable. Above all, he was dedicated to doing the best job possible even when it meant getting up well before dawn to be in the best position and catch the best light for his photographs.

  Bayar, on the other hand, had been assigned to help me make the documentary film of our journey in the role of second cameraman. Bayar was an employee of the Mongolian TV Film Studio, a very ambitiously named organisation which operated
from a shabby building in the shadow of Ulaan Baatar’s enormous television mast. At some time in the past the Mongolian Film Studio must have been an important organisation, churning out Eastern bloc-style newsreels and short documentaries, but no more. As elsewhere, news film had been surpassed by video, and the Film Studio was very much in eclipse, leaving a few veteran camera operators and sound-recordists to struggle with their antique equipment while all the funds and glamour had passed to their colleagues equipped with video cameras. Bayar was rooted firmly in the old tradition of cameramen. The son of a herdsman, he had been sent to the Moscow Film School to attend the shortened form of film course designed to train cameramen from ‘friendly socialist countries’ and, on his return, had been assigned to the Mongolian TV Film Studio where he had laboured for twenty years. He was small, neat and lively, and had an impish sense of humour. Paul and I found it almost incredible when we discovered that Bayar was a grandfather. It did not seem possible for someone so boyish.

  He arrived at our rendezvous burdened with a battered film camera that must have been at least thirty years old and which made a low grumbling sound as it ran. Bayar mounted this antique on a stout wooden tripod of equal vintage, and swivelled his peaked leather cap back to front before he peered through the viewfinder. As he wore breeches and long black leather boots he looked like a refugee from a Twenties Hollywood film set. His camerawork left something to be desired - the film-changing bag he used was full of dust and hair, and he casually wrapped the exposed reels in tattered black paper bags instead storing them in tins - but his vivacious approach to our work was a terrific bonus. As he had grown up in the countryside, he could handle horses and run a camp as well as anyone in the group, and on the trial ride he impressed me hugely by slinging his bulky camera, all knobs and metal corners, in a thin canvas sack on his back. It was not the recommended method, but in Mongolia a padded camera-case was not available. With every step of the horse the awkward camera bumped and banged against his ribs and must have been excruciating. Yet, whenever you caught his eye, Bayar invariably responded with a cheeky wink and a broad grin. It was singularly appropriate that his name meant ‘Happy’.