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PART I. It Takes a Hero
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PART I
Tiger Queens of the Silk Route
1206–1241
There is a khan’s daughter
Who steps on in a swinging manner
And has the marks of twenty tigers,
Who steps on in a graceful manner
And has the marks of thirty tigers,
Who steps on in an elegant manner
And has the marks of forty tigers,
Who steps on in a delicate manner
And has the marks of fifty tigers. M ONGOL E PIC POEM
Altan Urug: The Golden Family of Genghis Khan
I
It Takes a Hero
ARENEGADE TATAR WITH THE KNIFE OF VENGEANCE HIDDEN in his clothes slowly crept toward the camp of Genghis Khan’s elderly mother, Hoelun. He sought revenge against Genghis Khan, who had annihilated the ancient Tatar clans, killed many of their warriors, married their women, and adopted their children, even changing their names to make them Mongol.
As a military and political leader with many enemies, Genghis Khan lived in a well-guarded encampment where bodyguards had strict orders to kill anyone who crossed a precise point without permission. Hoelun, however, lived apart in her own camp, and although she now had ten thousand soldiers and their families assigned to her control, at her advanced age she let her youngest son take her part of the army out on missions with her eldest son, the khan, while she stayed home.
Despite her rank, Hoelun’s camp differed little from that of any other Mongol nomad. It consisted of a small collection of gers, the round tent of the steppes, positioned in a straight line with the doors facing south. Often called a “yurt” in the West, the Mongol ger was made of thick layers of felt wool pressed into large blankets, and could be packed up and moved as the seasons changed or as whim dictated.
The clearest sign that this was the imperial camp of the khan’s mother was the presence of Hoelun’s white camel and black cart. Women owned the gers and all the carts, but as befits a nomadic people, a woman was better known by her mode of transportation than by her home. Younger women rode horses; older women drove carts. Unless gravely ill or seriously injured, a man could never ride on a woman’s cart, much less drive it.
Mongol carts of this time consisted of a small wooden bed above the axle and two wheels. Extending from the front were the two long shafts, between which the draft animal pulled the cart. All carts had the same black covering and looked much alike, but a woman showed her individuality in the choice and training of the draft animal. Common women drove a lumbering ox or a woolly yak before their heavily laden carts, but in her older years Hoelun had become fond of a high-stepping white camel to cart her around in the impressive manner appropriate for the mother of the emperor. She was known to travel long distances very quickly and even to travel at night. Since camels of any sort, much less white ones, were not very common north of the Gobi, her camp was easy to find and identify.
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As the Tatar approached the camp, few men could be seen except her guards, Jelme and Jetei. Befitting her status, Hoelun had men rather than dogs to guard the area around her ger, and since her son Genghis Khan had a great fear of dogs, she kept none around to sound the alarm of an intruder. The Tatar waited until an opportune moment when the guards were distracted. The two men intended to butcher a hornless black ox, which they would do by knocking it unconscious with a single ax blow to the middle of the forehead; if that blow did not kill the animal, they plunged the knife into the back of the neck or the throat. Since such a profane act could never be done near an entryway or in the presence of the sun, the guards dragged the beast toward the shadowed north side behind the ger. The ox would be out of sight of the door, but so would they.
As soon as the guards passed out of sight, the would-be assassin headed straight for the door, which consisted of a felt blanket draped over an opening about four feet high. The Tatar raised the flap and entered.
Hoelun had no reason to suspect the cruel intent of the bedraggled young man standing before her, and, although the mother of the most powerful chief on the steppe, she continued to observe the simple traditions of hospitality followed by every nomadic family. Any traveler arriving at her tent could expect hot food and rest before continuing across the steppe. A gentle fire of dried animal dung, the focal point of the ger and the symbol of the family, burned constantly in the center of the open space beneath a smoke hole that also served as the only window in the structure. Milk and water always stood ready, awaiting the arrival of any lost hunters, chilled herders, returning warriors, and other passing strangers in need of food, warmth, or simple human companionship. If no fresh meat was available, dried beef and yak hung in the rafters; by adding these to water, Hoelun could produce a nourishing soup within minutes. She might offer the traveler a bowl of broth or a small snack of sheep tail fat that could be held over the glowing dung to cook. Soup was their staple, and the Mongols rarely added herbs, spices, or flavoring other than trace amounts of salt.
Although her husband had been killed by the Tatars nearly twenty-five years earlier, she would not have been suspicious of this Tatar now. The Tatar tribe had been thoroughly incorporated into the Mongol nation. Genghis Khan had married a Tartar queen and, at her request, had also accepted her elder sister as a wife. In an effort to set a good example for other women of the tribe, Hoelun had adopted a Tatar orphan, raising him to become one of the first people to read and write the Mongolian language, using the recently borrowed Uighur script. He had grown into a respected leader, and, although not a great warrior, he would soon become the supreme judge of the nation.
When the Tatar arrived, Hoelun was alone in the ger with Altani, a girl about ten to fourteen years old. Altani may have been one of Hoelun’s granddaughters, or perhaps an adopted child.
Hoelun and Altani remained on the eastern side of the tent, where women did most of their work and kept their tools. By custom, even the humblest visitor could enter unannounced and sit quietly by the door on the western (the male) side of the ger. The Tatar did precisely that, assuming the place assigned for an ordinary man, servant, beggar, or other humble petitioner.
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The inside of the ger was normally a quiet haven. People whispered. Gestures had to be kept to a minimum in an environment where a simple toss of the hand or flick of the wrist might hit grandmother in the head, knock over a bowl of hot tea, or even bring down a low ceiling rafter or part of the wall. To make the body as small as possible when seated, Mongols rarely stretched out their legs, and never did so in the direction of the fire. A male usually folded one leg under his body and drew the knee of the other leg up to his chest, wrapping his arm around it or even resting his chin on it. Inside the ger, everyone sought to become as unimposing as was practicable.
Even if Hoelun had known that the visitor carried a knife, she would not have been surprised or alarmed. Herders often concealed knives and other tools inside their garments. Men and women wore the same basic clothing, and it was ideal for hiding things. Large leather boots came up to the knees, but they were spacious enough inside to allow for thick strips of winter insulation of fur and felt. The main clothing was the deel: a large tunic coat held in place by a massive leather belt or cloth sash, while a few knotted buttons secured the top over the right breast. The most noted characteristic of Mongol clothing was its bulky size, as it was made for insulation and for comfort when riding in cold weather. The deel was always large enough to enclose a child, a lamb, or anything else requiring protection. Because of the fierce cold, herders packed an assortment of goods inside the deel, such as water canteens and food, to prevent them from freezing.
The sleeves were so large and long that a sword could be easily hidden in one. Because the herders’ hands needed to be free for work, they did not wear gloves; instead they had wide, open sleeves that hung down several inches past the fingertips. While riding horses in the winter, a Mongol pulled the reins up into the sleeve of the coat so as to have warmth without sacrificing the sensitive details of holding the reins firmly against the naked flesh of the fingers.
Hoelun, Altani, and the Tatar would have been dressed nearly identically except for their hair. All the decorative and sexual symbolism of their appearance was concentrated on the head. Women pulled the hair high on their head and packed it with animal fat to prevent lice. To make the forehead appear large, they emphasized it by smearing it with yellow makeup. By contrast, men wore a small clump of bangs in the middle of the forehead directly above the nose. Aside from the bangs, men shaved most of the head except for two large clumps just above each ear. They never cut these tufts, but instead braided them into “horns” that hung down to the shoulders and often grew so long that they had to be looped back over the ear.
The Great Khan’s mother knew how to deal with men and certainly did not fear them; she had already raised ten boys, including the four she had with her husband, two that he had with another wife, plus the four she adopted after becoming a widow. Even now she had two children staying with her, and at least one of her sons or grandsons was probably about the same age as the Tatar who was now within an arm’s reach of her.
In her old age, Hoelun was raising not only Altani but also Tolui, Genghis Khan’s youngest son and her youngest grandson. Tolui had just reached the age when he could run around outside the ger by himself. From the time children could crawl, they needed to be constrained. Infants were held gently and passed constantly from person to person or, when necessary, were tightly tied with a rope to keep them away from the flames of the fire.
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At age four or five, Tolui was now old enough to go near the hearth without injuring himself. As the youngest boy, he enjoyed special privileges and was called otchigen or otgon, “the prince of the fire. ” Because he was the last to leave his mother’s womb, he held the closest connection to the past: In him resided the honor and future of the family. One day he would be charged with caring for his aged parents, and he could inherit their animals and household. In giving him the name Tolui, which referred to the three stones used to make a fire in the center of the ger, his parents clearly stated the boy’s symbolic importance.
Before the soup finished heating, young Tolui threw open the felt flap hanging over the door and dashed into the ger. With the impulsive energy of a four-year-old, he raced inside with no particular purpose and turned to run out again. At this moment, rage stirred inside the Tatar and then erupted. Without warning, and before Tolui could get through the flap a second time, the stranger lunged from his seat, grabbed up Tolui in his arms, and ran out the doorway with him. To rob a family of its youngest son was to deprive it of its heir. In addition to the emotional pain of losing the little Prince of the Fire, such a loss, akin to the departure of his ancestors’ support and the blessing of the sky, carried enough supernatural importance to jeopardize the career of Genghis Khan.
Before the grandmother could scream for help, Altani jumped up and tore out the door behind the kidnapper. She chased after him, and when she drew near, the Tatar pulled out his knife. Tolui struggled to free himself, but to no avail. The assailant sought to turn Tolui slightly in his arms in order to stab the knife into the boy’s jugular vein or heart.
Just as the Tatar had Tolui in position and was ready to thrust in the knife, Altani leapt on him. In the words of the Secret History, “With one hand she seized his plaits” (referring to the large braid over each ear), “and with the other she seized the hand that was drawing the knife. ” She fought to keep the Tatar’s arm down and the weapon away from the boy, and “she pulled it so hard that he dropped the knife. ”
Even after disarming the attacker, Altani clung to him as tightly as he clutched the child, and the Tatar fought to escape her hold. She could not overpower him alone, but because of her weight and tight grip, he could not throw her off to escape with the boy.
Behind the ger, the guards had just slaughtered the ox and commenced butchering it when they heard the screams. Dropping the meat, they ran around the ger toward the sound of the struggle between Altani and the Tatar. The two men reached her, clutching their butchering tools in “their fists red with the animal’s blood. ” The guard with the ax raised it and struck the Tatar. Altani grabbed Tolui and pulled him aside while the two guards finished off his assailant “with ax and knife. ”
Soon after the incident, the guards began to vie over which one of them deserved the credit for having saved the child: the one who knocked the kidnapper unconscious with the ax or the one who cut him open with the knife. With a strong tone of self-congratulation, they wondered aloud: “If we had not been there and if, by running fast and arriving in time, we had not killed him, what would Altani, a woman, have done? ” The attacker “would have harmed the life of the child. ”
Altani heard their boastful talk and objected to their claiming credit for saving Tolui. She demanded recognition for what she had done. “I ran up and caught up with him, seizing his plaits and pulling the hand that was drawing the knife, ” she declared to the men. “If the knife had not dropped, wouldn’t he have done harm to the child’s life before Jetei and Jelme arrived? ”
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Although Jelme and Jetei both received awards and promotions, Genghis Khan made it clear who was the true hero of the episode, and “the chief merit went, by general consent, to Altani. ” Genghis Khan held her up as a model for everyone. In the Mongol perspective, challenges choose us, but we choose how to respond. Destiny brings the opportunities and the misfortunes, and the merit of our lives derives from those unplanned moments.
The Mongols, and certainly Genghis Khan in particular, placed great importance on sudden individual acts of unexpected heroism. Those are the moments that reveal not just the character of the person, but the soul itself. Many people are paralyzed by fear or, equally as debilitating, by indecision. The hero acts, and often fails, but acts nonetheless. Such a person belongs to the spiritual elite of the divinely blessed and heavenly inspired baatar, a person filled with a firm, strong, unyielding spirit. Usually translated simply as “hero, ” the word is much more important in Mongolian, containing an emphasis on the personal will behind the act; the heroes formed an honored group known as the baatuud.
Genghis Khan always sought out the service of the baatar, the hero who acts immediately and decisively without concern for personal benefit or even survival. Unlike the Greek heroes, who were males of superhuman physical strength, the baatar might be male or female, young or old, and frequently, as in this case, only a child. Most important, a baatar might spring from any family, but, in Genghis Khan’s experience, the baatuud rarely came from rich families or aristocratic and powerful clans. He placed such importance on the spirit of the baatuud that he built his military and political system around them. The ideal government for him was rule by these heroic elites, by a true aristocracy of the spirit.
In this regard, Genghis Khan differed remarkably from those around him who believed in a natural aristocracy of birth. These old clans had dominated the steppe tribes for generations and claimed power as a birthright earned by the actions of their ancestors. More than any other barrier, this attitude and the actions derived from it had held Genghis Khan back in life. The aristocracy of birth had been his eternal enemy, and he sought to defeat it through his assembly of heroes: the aristocracy of brave spirits, the baatuud.
All his life, Genghis Khan had been treated as an outsider, as an inferior underling. The Mongols were interlopers onto the steppe. They were hunters from a far northern land of lakes and forests, where they had originally lived in temporary cone-shaped tents made of bark. Over the generations they had gradually moved out of the forests in the area of Mount Burkhan Khaldun at the source of the Onon and Kherlen rivers in the north-central region of modern Mongolia.
When the hunting was bad, they scavenged off the herding tribes, stealing animals, women, and whatever else they could before dashing back to the security of their mountainous hideouts. The older Turkic steppe tribes had herded for many centuries, and they looked down on the primitive Mongols, treating them as vassals and expecting them to bring forest gifts of fur and game. They found the Mongols sometimes useful as warriors to help them in a raid, or to herd their animals, and they sometimes stole women from them. Overall, however, the sophisticated herding tribes of the Tatars, Naiman, and Kereyid despised the Mongols.
With round faces, high cheekbones, and legs markedly bowed from their life on horseback, the Mongols’ appearance set them apart from their Asian neighbors. They had extremely pale skin, kept lubricated by cleaning with animal fat, and had almost no body hair, leading a South Asian chronicler to write that the Mongols “looked like so many white demons. ” From frequent exposure to the bitter cold, their cheeks became so red through the nearly translucent skin that they were described as having “faces like fire. ”
They had wide mouths and large teeth of a uniform size, which, because of the lack of starches in the diet, did not rot or become discolored. Aside from skin color, the most distinctive Mongol trait was the eye shape. Several Chinese commentators remarked on the unusual eyelids of the Mongols, because these nomads did not have a crease or fold. Only late in life, or when they became tired, did a large wrinkle or fold begin to appear in the skin covering the eye. Persian observers referred to the Mongols as having “cat eyes. ” Another Muslim chronicler wrote that “their eyes were so narrow and piercing that they might have bored a hole in a brazen vessel. ”
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Queen Gurbesu of the Christian Naiman tribe to the west summed up the attitude of civilized steppe people toward the Mongols: “The Mongols have always stunk and worn filthy clothes. They live far away; let them stay there. ” Only begrudgingly did she acknowledge some potential use for the Mongol women. “Perhaps we can bring their daughters here, and if they wash their hands we might let them milk our cows and sheep. ”
In this marginal and insignificant tribe, Genghis Khan grew up in an insignificant family of outcasts. He was born the son of a captured woman and was given the name Temujin because his father had recently killed a Tatar warrior by that name. His father belonged to the Borijin clan, and although they had once had an independent khan, they now served as virtual vassals for hire for whoever needed them. Before the boy was nine years old, the Tatars had killed his father, but his own Mongol relatives committed the worst offenses against Temujin’s family. Feeling no responsibility for this captive wife and her brood of children, his uncles seized his dead father’s animals and cast the widow and children out on the steppe to die of hunger and exposure in the brutal winter. When they survived against all odds, young Temujin was captured by the Tayichiud clan, who enslaved him and yoked him to a wooden collar like an ox. After escaping from bondage, he fled to the most isolated place he could find to care for his mother and siblings.
Living as a pariah with three brothers and two half brothers, but only one much younger sister, Temujin grew up surrounded by boys in a household oddly bereft of adult men or girls. From the beginning of his life, Temujin’s male relatives repeatedly failed him and threatened his life at the most critical moments. At age twelve, Temujin so intensely disliked the bullying of his older half brother that he killed him.
Around 1179 he married Borte, a girl from a steppe clan distantly related to his mother, when he was about sixteen and she was seventeen. Although the couple expected to spend their lives together, enemies from the Merkid tribe stormed down on them, kidnapped Borte, and gave her to another man. Desperate to rescue his new wife, Temujin tracked and saved Borte, killing a large number of Merkid in the process, revealing a tenacious spirit and a nearly ruthless willingness to use whatever violence necessary to achieve his goals.
The kidnapping of Borte initiated young Temujin into steppe politics, with its perpetual low-grade hostility interrupted by spasms of amazing violence and destruction. In order to rescue Borte from the Merkid, Temujin made alliances with Ong Khan of the Kereyid tribe, the most powerful steppe chief at the moment, and with his childhood friend Jamuka. With new allies came new enemies, and the boy who had been raised as an outcast on the steppe found himself thrust into the maelstrom of dynastic struggles, clan feuds, and all the desperate treachery of steppe politics.
For the Kereyid, Temujin was, like his father and all men of his Borijin clan, just one more Mongol vassal to be sent out to war when needed and consigned to perform the tasks that were too dangerous or boring. Temujin thought that through his extreme loyalty and his success in battle, he would gain the favor of his overlords.
Traditionally among the steppe nomads, related lineages united to form a clan, and, in turn, several clans united to form a tribe such as the Tatars or the Kereyid, or even a confederacy of tribes such as the Naiman. Although contracting or expanding over time, these unions lasted for generations and sometimes centuries. The Mongols repeatedly sought to unite into a tribe under one khan, but the union always failed. The Mongols were not so much a tribe as a roving set of fractious clans sharing the same language and culture but often fighting one another. Even within the same clan, families often feuded, broke away, and joined rival clans or enemy tribes.
Temujin’s mother was not a Mongol, and his connection to her gave him a perceived opportunity to rise up in the steppe world by negotiating a formal marriage alliance with his mother’s family in the Khongirad clan. Around 1184, when he was about twenty-two years old, Temujin arranged a marriage for Temulun, his only sister, with Botu of the Ikires. Such a marriage alliance would strengthen the tie between the two clans in the traditional way and showed Temujin’s desire to maintain permanent marital alliances, known as quda. Because Temujin was still quite a novice in all respects, it seems likely that his mother, Hoelun, helped arrange this marriage.
Before the marriage, Botu “came as a son-in-law, ” meaning that he came to live with the bride’s family as a form of service to them. According to steppe tradition, a potential groom or engaged boy resided with the family of his intended wife. Similarly, Temujin had been given at age eight to the family of his future wife, Borte, with the expectation that he would learn their ways of doing things, live under their supervision, and care for their animals. The boy had to prove himself as a capable herder, and after learning the basics as a child among his own family, he became an adult man under the watchful eye of his bride’s parents. If the boy proved lazy or unsatisfactory, the family sent him away. If he could not endure the hard work and discipline imposed by his potential father-and mother-in-law, he might run away. If they developed a working relationship, the marriage between the engaged youths would evolve and blossom in its own natural time.
Bride service could sometimes be shortened, or occasionally avoided entirely, if the boy’s family offered animals, usually horses, to the bride’s family. Temujin and his future brother-in-law operated from different premises in arranging the marriage, which became apparent during a casual conversation with another man of Botu’s family. Temujin sought to know more about his future brother-in-law by asking how many horses Botu owned. The man took the question as an opening for a horse negotiation for the marriage in place of service to the bride’s family. He responded that Botu owned thirty horses and that he would give Genghis Khan fifteen of them in exchange for Temulun.
The offer of horses for his sister outraged Temujin, though not entirely for her sake. It showed that the prospective groom did not perceive Temujin as a worthy ally, but merely as a savage Mongol trying to sell his sister for some horses.
“If one is concluding a marriage and discusses value, ” Temujin angrily responded, “then one is acting like a merchant. ” Temujin commenced to lecture the man: “The ancients had a saying: ‘Unity of purpose is a fortune in affliction. ’” He then applied that proverb to the current situation. “If you, the people of the Ikires, follow Botu and serve me faithfully, that will suffice. ” Service always outranked wealth; loyalty always outranked payments. Despite the heated exchange between the young men, the marriage was arranged, possibly through the intercession of Hoelun and her connection to the groom’s family.
With this early negotiation, the young Temujin articulated a firm principle, which he followed throughout his life when dealing with the women of his family: Women could never be traded for animals or property. Once he came to power, he made this personal affirmation into law.
Temujin’s desire to make his mother’s relatives his allies, or possibly even vassals, showed his ambition to rise up in steppe political life. Although only partially successful in making this first alliance, by the summer of 1189, when he was about twenty-seven years old, Temujin had enough support within his small part of the Mongol tribe to be selected as khan, their chieftain. He was still only a minor leader of a small group on the steppe, but henceforth he was known as Genghis Khan, “the Indomitable and Supreme Khan. ” For now, his title seemed excessive for the leader of such a small group, but over the years, he fulfilled its meaning more than anyone probably expected at the time.
As the totemic emblem of his clan, Genghis Khan used the image of the hunting falcon that had been the constant companion of one of his ancestors and had saved his life by capturing prey for him after his brothers abandoned him. The hunting falcons were always female. The female falcon attains a body weight and size 30 percent greater than the male, thus permitting her to capture larger prey and making her a more efficient mother or, in the case of captive falcons, a more valued hunter.
Over the next decade, Genghis Khan concentrated on fighting at the behest of his overlord, Ong Khan of the Kereyid. He repeatedly rescued his patron’s kidnapped family members, avenged insults to the khan’s honor, and struck out at allies who deserted the khan. He was not the best archer on the steppe, the fastest horseman, or the strongest wrestler, yet he proved to be the best warrior. His extreme tenacity, combined with a quick ability to try new tactics, gradually made him the most feared, if not the most respected, leader on the steppe.
Consistently triumphant on the battlefield, Genghis Khan once again sought to translate that success into social advancement for his family through marriage. Around 1201 or 1202, when his eldest son, Jochi, was over twenty and his eldest daughter, Khojin, was about fifteen or sixteen, he felt successful and powerful enough to arrange marriages for them with the family of his lord, Ong Khan. After several decades as loyal allies, Ong Khan and Genghis Khan had recently sworn oaths to each other as father and son. To solidify this relationship, Genghis Khan proposed two marriages to his newly adopted father: “On top of affection let there be more affection. ”
Specifically, Genghis Khan proposed that his eldest son, Jochi, marry Ong Khan’s daughter and, in turn, that his eldest daughter marry Ong Khan’s grandson. Had Genghis Khan merely offered his daughter in marriage, the act would have been seen as homage from a vassal; she would have been a gift. By asking for a set of marriages, Genghis Khan knew that this would be seen as making Mongols equal to Kereyid and himself equal to Ong Khan’s other son.
Understanding the threat this posed to his own position, Ong Khan’s son Senggum, father of the potential groom, objected strenuously. With such a pair of marriages, Genghis Khan would be so closely united with the family of Ong Khan that when the old khan died, Genghis Khan might easily nudge Senggum out of the way and become the new leader.
In a Mongolian ger, the place of honor has always been on the northern side of the tent, directly opposite the doorway. Using the metaphors of the ger, Senggum complained: “If a woman of our clan goes to them, she will stand by the door looking in at the north of the ger. If a woman of their clan comes to us, she will sit in the north of the tent looking toward the door and fire. ” Persuaded by these words, Ong Khan rejected the marriage proposals.
This refusal broke relations between Genghis Khan and his longtime ally and mentor. After years of their working closely together, the old khan would not recognize a Mongol as his son, nor as equal to a Kereyid, no matter how incapable his own flesh and blood had been or how successful and meritorious Genghis Khan was. Yet again, the future conqueror was reminded that however good a warrior he might be and however loyal a vassal, he was only a Mongol in the eyes of his superiors. Now that he was well into his forties, they probably judged him as past his prime. He had done his duty, but the Kereyid could find another, younger replacement just as eager to do their bidding.
The simmering resentment turned to bitter anger, and war quickly broke out between Genghis Khan’s Mongols and the Kereyid. This time, Genghis Khan was losing. Until now his bravery and skill had been exercised under the patronage of the Kereyid, but, left completely to his own devices, he found little support from other tribes. In 1203, the Kereyid routed his Mongols, and he fled with a small remnant to the east of Mongolia. It was the lowest time in the professional life of Genghis Khan. After fighting for almost a quarter of a century, he was a failed and defeated middle-aged man who had dared to rise above his position in life and think himself equal to the noble clans of the steppe. His sworn brother and childhood friend, Jamuka, had long ago turned against him. Many of his relatives had deserted him, and he had lost contact with others in the confusion after his defeat. He had not even been able to make a successful marriage for a single one of his children. His sons offered little assistance, and it now became clear that none was a hero.
During the most severe crises and gravest dangers, Genghis Khan usually fled to Mount Burkhan Khaldun. He felt a strong spiritual connection to the mountain and to its protective spirit. Mongols viewed mountains as males connected to the Eternal Blue Sky; waters were female, the sacred blood of Mother Earth. However, because of the proximity of the Kereyid court and army, Genghis Khan did not feel safe fleeing to Burkhan Khaldun this time. Instead he went far to the east in search of refuge near the Khalkh River.
Genghis Khan had only a small contingent of his army and former followers. The east, however, was the homeland of his mother, and his only sister had married there. In the intervening years, Temulun had died without children, but he hoped it might be possible to negotiate a new marriage for one of his daughters. In desperation, he sought out Terge Emel, one of his mother’s relatives, in an attempt to build an alliance.
Terge Emel had never sided with Genghis Khan in the past and showed no affection for Mongols in general. He had been an ally of Jamuka and seemingly every other rival Genghis Khan had faced. Despite all this earlier antagonism, Genghis Khan believed that the offer of a marriage alliance might persuade Terge Emel to overlook those past differences and now save him.
The proposal would be a gentle plea for peace and cooperation through a marriage, but if that proposition failed, Genghis Khan was prepared to fight to bring his mother’s relations into his fold. “If they do not come and join us of their own accord, ” he explained, in a graphic evocation of the way women gathered fuel to build a fire, “we shall go out, wrap them up like dry horse dung in a skirt and bring them here! ”
“Your daughter looks like a frog, ” Terge Emel said to Genghis Khan, echoing one of the derisive descriptions hurled at the Mongols because of their unusual appearance. “I won’t marry her. ”
Terge Emel’s contempt for Genghis Khan indicates how low the Mongols ranked in the hierarchy of steppe tribes. At this moment, Genghis Khan resembled little more than a petty chief of an insignificant band, unlikely to be known beyond a small circle of enemies who seemed about to extinguish him and his followers forever. Even Terge Emel’s kinship with Genghis Khan was no honor, having happened only because Genghis Khan’s father had kidnapped his wife from her first husband in another tribe. Such a crime hardly constituted an affectionate kinship tie.
Having failed to persuade Terge Emel into a marriage alliance and having little else to lose, Genghis Khan killed him.
In the summer of 1203, after the death of Terge Emel, Genghis Khan wandered with the remnants of his army near a now unknown place in eastern Mongolia that he called Baljuna Waters. With no food left, he and his men had only the muddy water of the lake to sustain them, their single horse having already been eaten.
At this moment of dire physical need and emotional exhaustion, Genghis Khan looked out at the horizon and saw a man coming toward him on a white camel, almost like a hazy mirage breaking through the shimmering summer heat. Behind him came more camels, laden with trade goods, and a flock of sheep. The man was Hassan, a merchant who had crossed the Gobi into Mongolia leading camels and bearing food and merchandise to trade for sable furs and squirrel pelts. He happened to arrive in search of water at just the moment when Genghis Khan’s army seemed threatened with a lingering death by starvation or falling into the hands of his enemies.
Hassan was identified as a member of the Sartaq, a term used by Mongols for both Muslims and merchants, but he came in the employ of a different ethnic group. He had been sent by Ala-Qush, a chief of the Onggud people, a Christian Turkic tribe from six hundred miles south, well beyond the Gobi, which marked the edge of the nomad’s world.
Although the Mongols had nothing to trade at that moment, Hassan offered them sheep to eat and fresh horses in anticipation that he would one day be repaid for his generosity. The arrival of this unexpected aid seemed like divine intervention from the spirit of the lake; Genghis Khan’s men certainly took the appearance of the Onggud and his supply of meat as a sign of heavenly favor on their leader and their undertaking.
The episode of Baljuna Waters marked the last moment of hopelessness for Genghis Khan, the last time that his army was defeated. From that day on, he might have occasional setbacks, but he was forever victorious, always triumphant. He never forgot his gratitude to the spirit of Baljuna, the spirit of the Khalkh River, or his debt to his new allies, the Onggud.
The summer of 1203 marked the turning point for Genghis Khan and the Mongols. They had been saved by a foreign merchant, and, now reinvigorated, they returned toward their homeland, where, by what seemed to the Mongols as divine guidance, people began to flock to Genghis Khan. He and his men had proved their hardiness, their willingness to stare defeat in the eye and still not back down. The people hailed them as a band of heroes.
Suddenly the spirit on the steppe had changed, and new followers also flocked to Genghis Khan. He quickly made his first marriage ally by negotiating an alliance with Ong Khan’s brother Jaka Gambu, who hoped that with Mongol help he might depose his brother and become the khan of the Kereyid. To cement the new union, Genghis Khan accepted Jaka Gambu’s daughter Ibaka as his wife. Jaka Gambu took Genghis Khan’s youngest son, the ten-year-old Tolui, as a husband for his other daughter, Sorkhokhtani, who was several years older.
With his new allies among the rebel faction of the Kereyid and his supplies from the Onggud, Genghis Khan’s fortunes had turned. In the next two years he quickly defeated all steppe opponents, and he was able to give his mother a white camel as a gift, possibly the same one Hassan had ridden to the rescue of the Mongols.
The episode beside the Khalkh River and the Baljuna Waters not only changed Genghis Khan’s political fortunes, it appears to have produced a subtle, yet profound, change in his spirituality. He had spent most of his life in the land of his father, but he had been rescued in the land of his mother. He had spent most of his life relying on the spiritual aid of the male mountain, but it was the female waters that had saved him.
Genghis Khan’s words after this time began to articulate this spiritual duality. According to his new vision, each person’s destiny demanded the dual support of the strength offered by Father Sky and the protection of Mother Earth. Without one, the other was doomed to failure. Genghis Khan described the source of his success as “strength increased by Heaven and Earth. ” As stated in the Secret History, his inspiration and destiny were “called by Mighty Heaven, ” but they were “carried through by Mother Earth. ”
The Sky inspired; the Earth sanctioned. Any person might have inspiration from the Sky and be filled with longing, desire, and ambition, but only the devoted and sustained actions of the Earth could transform those desires and that inspiration into reality. The world is composed of sky or heaven above and water and earth below and the Mongols considered it a grave sin to insult or utter disrespectful words about either the sky or water. We live in the realm of Mother Earth, also sometimes called Dalai Ege, “Mother Sea, ” because her waters give life to the dry bones of the Earth.
Mother Earth provided or prevented success. She controlled the animals that Genghis Khan might find to hunt and eat or that might evade him entirely. She made water available or denied it. Repeatedly in the midst of some venture, Mother Earth saved his life by hiding him in the trees of her forest, in the water of her river, in the boulders on her ground, or in the cover of her darkness.
Whenever a person boasted about his achievements or bragged about his exploits without recognizing the role of Mother Earth in granting that success, it could be said that his mouth made him think that he was better than water. To avoid that characterization, Genghis Khan scrupulously acknowledged the role of both Father Sky and Mother Earth in everything that he accomplished.
The balance of male and female became a guiding principle in Genghis Khan’s political strategy and tactics, as well as in his spiritual worldview. This theology formed the intellectual and religious organization of life based on the religion of Mother Earth and the Eternal Blue Sky. Maintaining the correct balance and mixture of these two forces sustained an individual, a family, and the nation. For Genghis Khan, negotiating the dualism of existence, finding the correct balance, became a lifetime quest.
In honoring the supernatural power of the Earth, and therefore her lakes and rivers, as the source of success, Genghis Khan’s Mongols displayed a strong cultural and spiritual association with the female element of water. Before his nation became renowned as the Mongol Empire, his people were often called “Water Mongols, ” a name that seemed distinctly inappropriate for a people who inhabited an environment as dry as the Mongolian Plateau and situated so far from the ocean. European maps of Asia persistently identified his tribe by the name Water Mongols or its Turkish translation, Suu Mongol. This unusual designation continued to appear on Western maps until late in the seventeenth century, but seemingly without awareness of the name’s connection to the important role that the Mongols ascribed to the female power of water as the life-giving substance of Mother Earth.
Years earlier, when his small tribe chose him to be their leader, Genghis Khan had chosen to receive the honor in a spiritually balanced place between the female Blue Lake and the male Black Heart Mountain. Now he would again choose such a spiritually balanced place where he would ask all the tribes of the steppe to accept him as their supreme ruler.
Rivers and mountains not only had a name and gender, they bore honorific titles as well. Mountains were the bones of the Earth and male, and the highest mountain always had the title of khan. Rivers and lakes that never ran dry bore the title khatun, “queen, ” and the Onon at the birthplace of the Mongols was called mother. Genghis Khan summoned the tribes to meet at the headwaters of the Onon River near Burkhan Khaldun. Here by the father mountain and the mother river, he would create the Mongol Empire.
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