In Search of Genghis Khan

by Tim Severin

  The dead chieftain’s last resting place had been selected with an eye to all that would have been most important in his life. The tomb was placed a little to one side of the broad valley where the south-facing slope gave a commanding view. The grave looked out towards the warmth of the sun, the rich grassland, the nearby source of water, and a great sheltered sweep of the open valley where his tribe could safely graze their horses. It was a magnificent and timeless setting, and I could imagine no finer site for a nomad grave.

  5 - Mountain of the Shaman Spirit

  Gerel’s aim was that we should ride to the summit of Burkhan Khaldun, ‘Mountain of the Shaman Spirit’. Here, according to The Secret History of the Mongols, was the very fountainhead of the Mongol nation, for it was in sight of the mountain that the ultimate forebears of the Great Mongol had started the ancestral line that led to Genghis Khan himself. It is not clear whether these forebears were seen as ancestral totem animals similar to the creature ancestors claimed by many North American Indian tribes, or whether they were real people who merely carried the names of animals. The Secret History calls them the Wolf and the Beautiful Doe, and tells how they arrived from across the sea and settled at the source of the river Onon close by Burkhan Khaldun. There Qo’ai-marael, the Beautiful Doe, gave birth to a son, Batachikhan. His descendants pastured their herds in the meadows of the Hentei and hunted the abundant wild game of the forest-clad slopes of Burkhan Khaldun until in the twenty-first generation a young male child was born. In his right fist the baby held a clot of blood the size of a knuckle bone. It was a magic omen: the infant was the future Genghis Khan.

  The early Mongols lived in a manner so strikingly similar to the much better known Plains Indians of North America that one has the feeling that the extraordinary achievement of Genghis Khan was the equivalent of the Sioux Indians or the Pawnee producing a military genius who went on to conquer every nation from Alaska to Cape Horn, including the Mayans and the Incas, had they been contemporary. In Mongolia, as in the American Great Plains, the indigenous tribes lived in tented camps which they shifted from place to place while they indulged in wife-snatching, belief in dreams, skirmishes between rival groups, shamanism to ecstatic dances, horse-stealing, hunting and clan feuds. Genghis Khan’s father was a clan chief, Yesugei the Brave, whose reputation - the Plains Indians would have considered it a coup - included the abduction of Genghis Khan’s mother Ho’elun just after she had married a man of the Merkid tribe. Yesugei was out hunting with his tame falcon along the banks of the Onon river when he saw Ho’elun being taken in a cart to her new home, escorted by her husband. Yesugei was so attracted by her beauty that he hastily rode back to his felt tent to summon his two brothers, and all three chased away the unlucky Merkid, who had to gallop off for his life. Ho’elun was left weeping so bitterly that, as The Secret History put it, ‘the river Onon churned and the forest echoed to the sound of her loud crying’. Unmoved, Yesugei’s brother roughly told her to cease her wailing and forget her fugitive husband, in the saga’s blunt stanzas:

  The one you embraced

  Has crossed many ridges

  The one you cry for

  Has crossed many waters

  Even if you cry out

  Looking from afar, he will not see you.

  Even if you search for him,

  You will not find his path.

  Calm down.

  Despite this unpromising start Ho’elun adapted well enough to life with Yesugei the Brave, and at regular two-yearly intervals gave him five children - four sons and a daughter. She announced her first pregnancy to Yesugei soon after he had returned from yet another plundering raid on a neighbouring tribal chief, and to commemorate his prowess he decided to give the child the same name as the man he had just despoiled. So the first-born boy child was called Temujin, ‘the Ironsmith’, and when he was 9 years old his father took him to find a future bride amongst his mother’s clan. On the way, however, Yesugei met a man of the Onggirat, a tribe noted for the loveliness of its women. The Onggirat remarked on the intelligent look of the boy and told Yesugei that he had recently dreamed a strange dream in which a white gerfalcon had brought him the sun and moon in its claws. It was an omen, he said, that Yesugei would come to him with his son. The Onggirat had a 10-year-old daughter, Borte, and he asked if Yesugei would come to his tent to meet her. When Yesugei saw the girl, he agreed that she would make a fine daughter-in-law and that she and Temujin should be betrothed. Yesugei then left Temujin with his fiancée’s family so that they could get to know one another better, and rode back towards his own camp. Tired and hungry, he unwisely stopped to share a meal with a rival tribe, the Tatars. They recognised him as an old enemy and, according to The Secret History, mixed poison in his food so that three days later Yesugei struggled back to his own tent, mortally sick. He died after he had identified his killers, and it was a murder which would cost the Tatars their existence. When Temujin was powerful enough, he would launch a campaign to exterminate the Tatars, though by a twist of fate their name would cling to his memory for ever. Carpini and the other European visitors confused the Tatars with the similar-sounding classical name of Tartarus for a region of Hell, and because the Mongols appeared to be devils incarnate transferred the name so that the Mongols came to be known in the west as Tartars. (To add to the irony the Chinese also sometimes used Ta-ta as a description of the Mongols.)

  Yesugei’s death was a catastrophe for his family. Temujin was too young to succeed his father as clan-leader, and the senior women of the clan rejected Ho’elun. When the time came for the spring migration the little band moved off, deliberately leaving Ho’elun behind with her children. A tribal elder who protested at this harsh treatment was speared in the back by one of the new clan-chiefs, and left to die. It was the beginning of the darkest days for Ho’elun and her young family. How she survived is part of the Genghis Khan legend. According to The Secret History the mother and her orphaned children lived like wild creatures along the banks of the Onon. She gathered wild fruit and dug up edible roots to feed them. The children helped by fishing with needles bent into fishhooks and knotting home-made nets to sweep the river for sprats. All the time they nurtured a terrible bitterness against the clan, the Tayichigud, that had abandoned them.

  Reared in the wild, Ho’elun’s children grew up no less savage than their foes. They were joined by two of Yesugei’s sons by a second wife, and the gnawing shortage of food in the little group led to bitter quarrels which culminated in a particularly cold-blooded murder. Temujin and his brother Qasar were furious when their half-brothers snatched away the fish and small birds that they caught, and they eventually decided to do away with their half-brother Bekter. They crept up on Bekter as he was sitting on top of a hill watching over the family’s few remaining horses. Seeing that he was trapped, Bekter coolly dared them to follow up their threats. They riddled him with arrows, even as he sat on the ground.

  Such ruthlessness in the young Temujin must have caught the attention of the Tayichigud. Fearing that he was reaching an age when he might lay claim to his father’s title, they sent men to capture him. While his brothers put up a fierce resistance, Temujin ran away and hid in the thick forests of Burkhan Khaldun. But the Tayichigud were patient. They waited for nine days until hunger forced their quarry to emerge, caught him, and took him back to their camp.

  There Temujin was forced to wear the cangue, or portable stocks, a heavy wooden board which is clamped around the neck like a yoke and has two holes for the hands. It is difficult for the wearer to sit, near-impossible to lie down and sleep. As a prisoner Temujin was passed from tent to tent, forced to spend one night in each, until eventually he got his chance to escape during a feast. Catching his guard by surprise, Temujin swung the cangue so that it hit him in the head, then ran for the river and slipped into the water, using the wooden board as a float to lie with his face just above the surface of the stream. The alarm was raised and the Tayichigud hunted high and low for their captive. Luck
ily the man who spotted Temujin submerged in the river was a sympathiser and, instead of leading the hunt to him, warned Temujin to lie still. Three times the searchers passed by, and each time the same sympathiser warned Temujin to beware. Finally, as darkness fell, the search was suspended and in the night Temujin crept into the tent of his new-found friend, who removed the cangue and gave him a horse and food so he could make good his escape.

  Once more Temujin fled back to the sheltering wilderness of Burkhan Khaldun, where for a time he and his family lived like outlaws, eating marmots and field-mice that they trapped. He managed to contact Borte’s family and his fiancée came to live with him, and as the months passed the young chieftain began to build up a small group of loyal followers as kinsmen and local supporters drifted in to join him. But the Tayichigud had not forgotten him. With the help of the Merkid, still resentful about the abduction of Ho’elun, they launched a surprise raid, hoping to catch Temujin in his camp. Only the warning of an old woman, his mother’s servant, saved him. She dreamed that the earth was shaking, and that this meant soldiers were riding to attack. She alerted the Temujin so that he and most of his followers once again fled into the forests. In their haste they were obliged to leave behind Borte, and the raiders found her hiding in a cartload of wool and carried her off. Borte was recaptured later, but there was a lingering suspicion that her first son, Jochi, had been conceived while she was a captive and was therefore not Genghis Khan’s child.

  However, the Tayichigud failed to take Temujin himself, though three Merkid warriors followed his tracks through the grass as far as Burkhan Khaldun and circled the mountain three times trying to flush him out of the dense undergrowth. Finally the hunters gave up and withdrew. This time Temujin was more cautious about leaving his refuge. He remembered his previous mistake in emerging from the safety of the mountain too soon, and sent men to trail the raiders until they were safely three days’ clear on their homeward route. Only then did he leave the forest and bring the rest of his family down from Burkhan Khaldun, which he announced had saved his life. He vowed that in future he would offer a sacrifice every morning to Burkhan Khaldun and each day pray to the mountain, and his descendants would remember the pledge. He sealed his oath formally by facing the sun, removing his hat, and unwinding his sash which he draped over his neck. Then he knelt nine times to the sun and, striking his breast with his hand, prayed and gave offerings to the mountain.

  The bald smooth summit of Burkhan Khaldun came in sight on the fourth day of our ride. We had been making erratic progress. The first day had proved to be a running-in period, while the second was a helter-skelter attempt to try to catch up our original schedule, delayed by the late arrival of the horses at the rendezvous. So on Day Two we tore along at a great pace for seven hours, still without seeing a living soul, and ending with an hour-long gallop that sorted the riding team into novices and professionals. When we halted, the herdsmen got off their horses as if they had just ridden in from a half-hour jaunt, and the rest of us - Mongol artists, expedition hopefuls, Ariunbold, Paul and myself - slumped to the ground in total exhaustion, grateful to be finished with the pounding agony of the ride.

  We had reached the only permanent buildings we were to see during the entire ride into the Hentei. It was a winter cattle-station built to a Soviet design which had been developed for use in Siberia, though the place could equally have been a very authentic set for a film about the American West. Five small log cabins sheltered behind a wooden stockade, and peering out over the top of the palisade all one could see was the surrounding empty expanse of the broad valley, a line of distant willow bushes that marked a river, and the nearby mountains. A single small gate, which was shut and padlocked at night, led into the compound where a dog on a chain barked angrily at any strangers. One log house was a meeting hall, two were empty storehouses, another a small bunkhouse, and the fifth but was the home of the cattle-station’s only occupant, a toothless old caretaker who was delighted to see us. The cattle had calved earlier in the month and the herds had been driven off to pasture, so he had not expected to see any new faces for a long while. He had nothing to break the long monotony of his existence. He listened to an ancient radio, lived off tea and flat unleavened pancakes made of sugar and flour, and every second day laboriously trundled a dented metal churn in a rickety wheelbarrow for half a mile over the bare ground to fetch water from the river. His life was desolate and isolated and desperately lonely.

  We stayed overnight, leaving our saddles in the meeting hall under display boards exhorting the local work brigade to greater efforts. The wooden boards had the crudely drawn outlines of the five animals essential to the Mongolian pastoral economy - camels, horses, cows, goats and sheep. Alongside each picture was a number showing the present quantity of adult animals, then a number for the target quota, and finally a third number to show how many foals, calves, kids and lambs had been born. We were so far to the north, I noted, that there were only ten camels in the whole cooperative.

  The forward planning which had characterised the campaigns of Genghis Khan was painfully lacking in our little modern expedition. When the Mongol army set out, it had a baggage train that carried stores and equipment for the duration of operations. Months earlier, the army’s route would have been reconnoitred by mounted scouts. Hostile cities had been surveyed by spies disguised as merchants, and paid agents sent ahead to infiltrate the enemy camp and spread discontent and suborn the foreign troops into deserting. By contrast our meagre ration of food ran out while we were in the little stockade, and there were no stores to be found except in the caretaker’s tiny larder. Next, our herder-guides announced that we had ridden the horses too hard on the previous day. We would have to rest them. So all the extra time we had managed to catch up in our whirlwind ride was now discarded. We spent the whole of the third day idling around the stockade while the horses recuperated, and we periodically gazed into the distance, hungrily hoping that we heard the engine of a supply truck arriving. The Mongols were unperturbed. Some of them went off to the river, others just lay indoors and dozed. Only the two doctors found something useful to do. Doc went off to the river with his fishing rod and came back with five fish, each about 3 pounds, with rainbow flanks and bright red flashes. His pony-tailed colleague spent the afternoon treating the aged caretaker with acupuncture, and the old man passed the rest of the day lying in his bunk in semi-darkness, the only points of light being the sharp gleam of silver needles thrust into his face, ear and hand.

  Our badly needed stores finally arrived by lorry the next morning, and it was evident that word had got out among the local arats that we were heading for Burkhan Khaldun to do honour to Genghis Khan. As we rode on, our little column of riders began to lengthen. We were joined by men who had come four or five hours in the saddle and were leading extra horses which they offered to us as remounts. Other arats emerged from the gers we saw along our route, asked where we were going, and promptly abandoned their normal chores to ride along with us. At midday we overtook a very dashing-looking man riding along the track with his two young sons. The father was wearing a scarlet del, a broad-rimmed black hat like a sombrero, and had a polished rifle slung across his back. His sons, aged about 7 and 9, wore purple and green. All three promptly swung in amongst us, adding a burst of colour to our long file of riders as we trotted purposefully along the valley with the dust kicking up around the horses’ hooves.

  Our scarlet-clad herdsman knew the perfect campsite, on a low bluff over the river where we could find many dead willow trees to use as firewood. We must have been about thirty strong when we arrived to find the lorry there ahead of us, and a couple of very threadbare canvas tents already set up. Space inside the tents was very limited, so Paul and I insisted on erecting our own two-man mountain tent, and we woke after another very cold night to find the inside lined with ice crystals which showered down us as we got up. The Mongols laughed and pointed out that their system was better. They had piled the floors of their tents
2 or 3 inches deep with saddle blankets and rugs, then lay down in a great huddle to keep warm as they slept.

  We needed to make an early start, for this was the day we were scheduled to ascend to the 7680-foot high summit of Burkhan Khaldun. In the dawn the leafless bushes of the scrub in the valley floor were white with rime, and a dense mist made ghostly figures of the herdsmen as they went about their early morning tasks of watering and currying the horses. We swallowed the usual unappetising breakfast of watery tea and soggy mutton, and rode off along the narrow bridle-path as the sun began to disperse the mist. The track crossed and recrossed the river; and each time we splashed through a ford and then squelched through bogland followed by more heath. Heavy cross-country vehicles had been before us, for we could see the tyre tracks sunk deep into the mud. The occasional patches of forest had been so badly burned in forest fires that they looked like old photographs of No Man’s Land in the First World War, with the broken limbs and shattered trunks of the trees stark against the bare hillside. Eventually we crossed a ridge and found ourselves looking down into the final valley before the foot of Burkhan Khaldun. The scrub-covered hillside fell away in a steep slope and then came a level expanse of snow and ice still covering the river flats. On the far bank, a little more than 2 miles away, was a remarkable sight.

  In the middle of the wilderness stood a little tented town. There were a number of large tents of military khaki, with high ridge poles and stove pipes sticking out of their roofs, and smoke curling out of the chimneys. Even more striking was a higgledy-piggledy cluster of bright yellow and white ultra-modern nylon tents shaped like igloos, and beyond them half a dozen brand new cross-country vehicles stood parked in a neat line as if in a garage showroom. The vehicles had been polished until they sparkled. The effect of all this modern equipment set down in the middle of the Hentei badlands was that visitors had landed from another planet. We had come across the Gurvan Gol or Three Rivers Expedition, a joint Japanese-Mongol project which was searching for a prize that would shake the world if ever found: the tomb of Genghis Khan.