In Search of Genghis Khan

by Tim Severin

  We had covered between 35 and 40 miles in five hours by the time we reached our evening camp, and as we were making our way the last few miles across an open valley a herd of horses came trotting towards us, curious to see the strangers. They came from a line of gers, which glistened against the distant hillside in the late afternoon sunlight like the white cocoons of silkworms. The herd took us by surprise as they emerged from a dip in the ground led by four or five pure white animals. With the sunlight behind them they seemed from another world, their hooves barely touching the ground, and their tossing manes making iridescent plumes around their heads like the breaking crests of ocean waves backlit by the sun. Riding at a gallop behind them appeared a Mongol girl, the first I had seen working among the horse-herders. She could have been no more than 10 years old, her pigtails were tied up in a pink chiffon scarf, and she rode like a demure angel rounding up the herd to bring them back to her parents.

  After we had made camp, Paul and I rode over to visit the line of gers as the sun was setting. There were six of the felt tents and a seventh was dismantled for repairs. The thick grey blankets of felt for its roof lay folded up on a nearby cart, and what I first mistook for a spare wooden cartwheel was in fact the central domed wheel of the tent roof, an essential part of the ger’s structure. The owner, a leathery herdsman in his 50s, was busy checking over the latticework side wall of his home. The lattice was made of thin strips of wood fastened together where they crossed by tiny thongs of rawhide, so that the whole lattice could be concertinaed in and out like an expanding garden fence. The size of the ger depended on the number of sections of latticework which were joined together end to end to form the circular lower wall. When this lattice wall was ready and its painted wooden door in place, the owner then set up the two slender roof pillars in the middle of the circle and balanced on top of them the central roof wheel. While he held it steady, his family and friends gathered round to insert the long slender roof poles into slots on the central wheel so they radiated out like the spokes of a giant umbrella. The lower ends of the spokes were slipped into leather loops attached to the upper edge of the lattice wall. Next, the ger received its cover. A single layer of canvas was stretched tightly across the roof, followed by thickly padded side curtains which were hung around the lattice sides to make an insulated side wall. Then layer upon layer of shaped felt were spread on the roof, the number and thickness of the layers depending on the season of the year and the need for extra insulation. Finally a covering of white canvas was stretched taut over the top to keep off the rain. All that was left was a small triangle of canvas, controlled by cords from the ground, which could be adjusted to open or close the smoke hole at the top of the ger and let in light and air according to the weather and wind direction.

  It took a family less than two hours to assemble and erect their home and, in Prjevalski’s opinion:

  this habitation is indispensable to the wild life of the nomad. It is quickly taken to pieces and removed from place to place, whilst it is an effectual protection against cold and bad weather. In the severest frost the temperature around the hearth is comfortable. At night the fire is put out, the felt covering drawn over the chimney, and even then, although not warm, the felt yurt [ger] is far more snug than an ordinary tent. In summer the felt is a good non-conductor of heat, and proof against the heaviest rain.

  As with all Mongol gers, the half-erected structure had been set with its door facing south, the lucky direction. Dangling from the latticework was another invocation of good luck - the paws of a freshly killed bear. Mongols are avid hunters. The official estimate is that 50,000 out of a population of just over 2 million go hunting, and their official bag is in excess of 3 million head of game every year, but that is probably an underestimate. Animals are hunted for food, but also because the Mongols believe in the sympathetic transfer of characteristics from animal to man. Eating the flesh of a bear, or keeping its paws as a trophy, will bring courage and good fortune. Some folk-medicine beliefs, as Doc explained them, left little to the imagination. Impotence can be cured by eating the sex organs of deer, and swollen livers, toothache and stomach complaints will be alleviated by eating the gall bladder of the tarbagan or steppe woodchuck. As for chronic indigestion, there is the popular theory that it can be treated by eating the intestines of a wolf on the reasoning that the wolf eats all sorts of carrion yet never suffers from a bad stomach. The most extreme fancy is that human haemorrhoids will be cured by sprinkling food with powdered wolf’s rectum for, according to the same line of thought, the omnivorous wolf is also spared that affliction.

  Belief in these folk-cures is not restricted to the country people. In keeping with his macho hunting spirit, Gerel was keenly hoping we would meet bears on our Hentei ride. It did not matter that the hunting season for bear was over, and the animals were emerging from hibernation with their cubs. Gerel, like many other Mongols, was firmly convinced that the bear’s spleen and liver were cures for many ills including stomach cancer. The rifles that had been carried to the top of Burkhan Khaldun were not just for show, and two days later while Gerel was returning to Ulaan Baatar with our gift horses, he and Bayar shot two bears for their medicinal value, an act which by any standards was wasteful as the animals would soon have been ready to breed again.

  This contrast between the cheerful good nature of our colleagues and their occasional lapses into neo-barbarism was matched by similar clashes of old manners and new technology which sometimes looked very incongruous. Next day another gift-receiving ceremony was arranged at short notice when two of our herder-guides announced they too would like to donate two gift horses to the expedition. Again a fresh batch of local party dignitaries arrived to witness the event. The Party chief of the commune wore a grey office suit and light city shoes, while his deputy, in full Mongolian regalia of del, silk sash and long boots, looked much more at ease. On the other hand both men were displaying large enamel badges showing them to be members in good standing of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, and the badge looked much better on a suit lapel than pinned to the front of a Mongol del. Similarly, most of the participants arrived on horseback, but one family of six, father, mother and four children, all bumped up on a large Czech-made motorcycle painted a vivid yellow, and however strange the machine looked on the open grassland one had to admit that it was a very sensible form of transport for those huge open spaces. Naturally the family posed beside their machine with just as much pride as the herdsmen alongside their favourite horses. And an even more anachronistic moment came when Gerel again issued his bronze medals with their blue silk ribbons after the horse-giving ceremony. These medals were much admired, but the real flurry of excitement was when Gerel produced a Polaroid camera and took pictures of the medallists. The crush that had been admiring the medals was nothing compared to the number of people who clustered around to see how the photographs had turned out, and then showed the pictures to all their friends and relations.

  Next day Paul, Doc and I hurried back by jeep to Ulaan Baatar, for the arats had told us a rumour of a unique birthday party that was to be held that weekend. It was to celebrate the birthday of Genghis Khan, the very first time that such a festival had been permitted in the capital of communist Mongolia. What was even more extraordinary was that the organisers of the festival were a private group and had no official connections with the government, though presumably they must have received permission to hold such a public celebration. The Genghis Khan Society was a very recent creation. It had been founded by a veteran Mongolian journalist, Dojoodorj, a well-known television figure who hosted a weekly travel and interview show. His programme was normally rather bland and safe, but a few weeks previously he had caused a furore by conducting a hostile interview with a retiring cabinet minister of the Communist Party. Now his Society proposed to celebrate the birth of Genghis Khan by calling a public assembly in the main square of Ulaan Baatar. It did not matter that no one knows for certain the precise day of Genghis Khan’s bir
th nor, for that matter, the year in which he was born. One source says he was born in the Year of the Pig, but that could variously have been 1155 or 1167, while other scholars prefer 1162. Such academic precision did not deter the Genghis Khan Society. They arranged for a temporary wooden stage to be erected at one end of the main square. An antiquated public-address system was wired up, and one or two banners depicting the Father of the Nation were hung from the lamp-posts. To give the occasion a touch of glamour an actor from the Mongolian Artists Union was persuaded to come along dressed in medieval stage costume. He had the appropriate clothes of long silk cloak and fur-lined hat because an epic film was already being made about Genghis Khan.

  There was no official publicity or advertising for the Great Birthday Party. People heard about it only by word of mouth, and the event was set for a Sunday afternoon, 27 May, immediately following a sports meeting in the National Stadium, which was sure to attract a large number of spectators, as there was very little other entertainment in Ulaan Baatar on a weekend. To everyone’s astonishment the popular response to the Birthday Party was phenomenal. A crowd estimated at 40,000 people filled almost half of the main square, a feat which the Party machine was able to organise only on the most important official occasions. Also the behaviour of the crowd was like nothing that Ulaan Baatar had witnessed before. Instead of being subdued and serious as at Party rallies, the onlookers at the Birthday Party were good-humoured and non-political. It was much more like a holiday. The spectators came of their own accord, partly out of curiosity, partly to join in if and when they approved. So they began by listening politely to the formal speeches in praise of Genghis Khan, then clapped the succession of Mongol poets who read out their poems in honour of the great hero, and finally were cheering the artistes who entertained them with traditional Mongol song and dance. The afternoon turned into the largest popular carnival that central Ulaan Baatar had ever witnessed. It did not matter that the public-address system was a disaster and ruined the star turn of the live entertainment. The lead singer of Mongolia’s foremost pop group appeared on stage. His long hair hung to his shoulders and he wore a long flowing satin dressing gown, high-heeled cowboy boots with white embroidery, and a huge medallion the size of a dinner plate dangled around his neck. The figure on the medallion was, of course, Genghis Khan, and the refrain of his song was a loud yell of ‘Genghis Khan!!! Genghis Khan!!!’ to the accompaniment of pounding guitars and clashing timpani more usually heard on pop shows. The crowd loved it, even though the singer was only miming to the music and a technical failure meant that the recording played at half speed and produced an appalling flutter. The audience was too good-humoured to let such errors detract from the fun. They had already tested their mettle. A couple of the early speakers completely misread the mood of the throng and, behaving in the Party style, tried to harangue the crowd on politics. They were jeered off the stage, an unheard-of act of lèse-majesté. By the end of the afternoon the success of the event had literally brought tears to the eyes of the hardened journalist who organised it.

  Perhaps heeding the lesson of the great Birthday Party, the committee for Naadam, Mongolia’s National Day celebration, which was held six weeks later, revamped their usual arrangements. They dropped or cut short the customary displays, of massed children’s gymnastics, the military march-past and the tedious speeches by Party luminaries. The Red Flag was abandoned, quite literally. On previous Naadams the Red Flag of communism had flown from a flagstaff in the centre of the national stadium. When I attended the celebrations as a guest of Bayar’s organisation, the Mongolian TV Film Studio, I noticed that on precisely the same spot rose a tall cluster of poles bearing the nine white yak-tail banner which had been the rallying symbol of Genghis Khan’s army, and which symbolised the presence of the ‘Golden Family,’ as his descendants came to be known. And when the contingent of troops from the modern Mongolian army put in their obligatory appearance, it was not in marching ranks of khaki but clattering along on horseback, every soldier dressed up in costume as a trooper of Genghis Khan. This cavalcade trotted rather shakily round the stadium’s running track, several troopers looking decidedly apprehensive, while the crowd in the terraces roared their approval. It was quite unnecessary to swell the din by playing back, as was done, additional recorded cheering through the public-address system, the same ‘Hoooooray! Hoooooray! Hooooooray!’ that we had heard on the peak of Burkhan Khaldun. But some Party habits die hard.

  In fact the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party had hijacked a long-established Mongolian festival. Traditionally Mongol tribesmen marked the highpoint of their brief summer by riding hundreds of miles across country to converge on a meeting ground where they could gossip and feast and compete in the three ‘manly sports’ of archery, wrestling and horse-racing. In a country where the population is so thinly spread, this annual assembly is still very dear to the heart of every Mongol. The medieval get-togethers, or quriltais, of the Mongol chieftains which travellers like Carpini witnessed had evolved from tribal councils when clan-leaders congregated to discuss grievances, pass laws and, if necessary, elect a supreme leader. By the time Genghis Khan and his heirs had established Mongol rule over most of Asia, their grand quriltai was the nearest equivalent to a world ruling council. One imperial quriltai even saved Western Europe from a holocaust. In December 1241, when the apparently unstoppable Mongol armies were poised to invade the West and Mongol patrols had probed as far as the forward defences of Vienna, a grand quriltai was unexpectedly summoned 5,600 miles away in central Mongolia. The Great Khan Ögodei had died and his successor had to be elected from the senior members of the Golden Family. The Mongol generals shelved their war plans, turned their horses and headed back to Mongolia to take part in the political infighting and intrigue which followed.

  A modern Naadam is a faint echo of those extraordinary medieval gatherings but it is still an impressive sight. Naadam assemblies are held all over Mongolia, but they are dwarfed by the great central Naadam which takes place on the open plain on the outskirts of Ulaan Baatar. Most participants arrive on horseback and may have ridden for weeks to get there. Others show up in battered trucks, and a few bring their camels hauling crude wooden carts loaded with their food and chattels for a week of entertaining. To accommodate each new contingent the camp expands in every direction. Day after day more and more gers and tents are set up. In front of each one is a tethering cord like a washing-line stretched between two poles. Tied to each line are a dozen or so horses of the visitors. Plumes of smoke rising from the stove pipes, dust kicked up by hooves, and soon a pale brown fog hangs over the usually deserted plain while pedestrians and horsemen criss-cross between the lines of tents, hail friends, exercise and show off their mounts, or simply wander around to see who has arrived and what is new.

  Despite the name, women participate in two of the three ‘manly sports’ which are the core of Naadam festivities. There are lady archers and girl riders in the horse races. Only wrestling is an all-male preserve, though this was not always the case. Marco Polo records one formidable Mongol lady who amassed a fortune and an enduring reputation by daring all-corners to wrestle. Many men accepted the challenge, but none succeeded in flooring the steppe Amazon, who continued to reign supreme. Every time she won, her opponent forfeited a portion of his flocks and herds.

  The wrestling finals of a modern Naadam are the climax to a long and dedicated professional business. Mongol boys begin to be coached in the techniques of traditional Mongolian wrestling at an age when boys in other cultures might spend their weekend afternoons training for football or tennis. They learn the classic moves and throws, as well as the correct wrestlers’ stance, which is supposed to combine the body posture of a lion with the outstretched wings of the mythical gharial bird in flight, and the slow-motion ‘eagle dance’, arms held high, which the victor performs to celebrate his triumph when he has obliged his opponent to kneel or touch the ground with his elbow. The best young wrestlers are talent-spotted
for special training, and turn semi-professional with their own training camps and workout schedules. The ultimate goal is to be good enough to compete at Naadam in the national stadium in the knock-out competition which starts with an awesome drove of 512 beefy contestants lumbering into the ring dressed in heavy Mongol boots, tight body trunks and short embroidered jackets. It ends with just one champion left on his feet. To the uninitiated it may be tedious to watch the grappling monsters, locked in slow-motion combat. But the finer points are appreciated by the Mongol spectators. They groan, cheer or growl according to the bad luck, the clever twist or an unsporting move. At the end of the contest the victor ludorum is taken on a lap of honour, carried shoulder-high by his adoring fans despite his considerable bulk and - if he has won the competition several times before - receives the title of Titan.

  The archers are much more sedate. Men and women compete in separate classes, but both use exactly the same equipment and technique - the classic double-curved bow of the steppe nomad, the string drawn back with the aid of the Mongol thumb ring. Nowadays a pad of leather, the thumb ring was traditionally carved of stone, and it enables an archer to release the bowstring with a crisp snap more effectively than using the bare fingers. The Naadam targets are wickerwork bangles, set in a row at the far end of the archery field. Each contestant tries to drop his or her arrow precisely on the centre bangle, which is marked with a bright red rag. Success requires strength and skill, and the target is far enough away that the impact point of each arrow is signalled by watching attendants who raise their arms and sing out to indicate the direction of the shot. Today the range is between 180 and 300 feet, the same distance from which a good archer was once expected to land his arrow on the head of a marmot peering out of its hole, killing the animal stone dead. But a stone tablet erected in Genghis Khan’s time records a tremendous shot by a certain Isuke who hit the mark at 360 yards’ distance. When Genghis Khan learned of this remarkable stroke, he decreed the tablet should be erected in its honour.