The Horde
Page 6
Path of the Merkit and Naiman rebels after their defeat by the Mongols.
With the aid of the Oyirad, a group of Forest Peoples with long-standing ties to the steppe nomads, the Mongol forces rushed to the Irtysh River and fell on the rebels. Chinggis himself commanded forces and fought on the battlefield, as reported in the Secret History. In the course of open battle, the Merkit chief Toqto’a beki was killed by an arrow. The rebels then fled, most of them drowning as they desperately tried to cross the wide Irtysh. Once on the other side, the survivors split. The Naiman fled westward, seeking asylum in the lands of the Qara Khitai. The Merkit fled even farther west; they had no other choice, as the eastern and southern routes would lead them to the heart of the Mongol power, and to the north lay nothing but the depths of the Siberian plain. As Toqto’a beki had died in battle, his sons “could not bury him, nor could they take his body away.” So they cut off his head and took it with them.24
The Mongols made their Merkit prisoners pay for the uprising by reducing them to slavery and dispersing their families. In a decree, Chinggis made clear that the Merkit had betrayed him: “I had said that they be kept together as one tribe, but these same people have now revolted,” he noted. He thus ordered that the captives be parceled out and “distributed here and there down to the last one.” Nor was Chinggis content to allow Naiman and Merkit fugitives to escape after they had been defeated: he ordered his riders to pursue them deep into Central Asia. The Felt-Walled Tents needed to learn not only that revolt would lead to total dissolution through forced assimilation of the offending bloodline but also that secession would be punished by death.25
The pursuit of the last rebels was a major military operation. The Secret History reports that Chinggis Khan selected from among his many generals four commanders to lead the hunt: “These four hounds [have] chisels for snouts and awls for tongues. With hearts of iron and whips for swords, eating the dew and riding the wind, they go. On killing days they eat the flesh of men. On fighting days they take men’s flesh as their provisions.… You asked who these dogs are. They are Jebe and Qubilai, Jelme and Sübedei.” Trained for special missions, the four commanders knew how to lead their men on long-distance raids. They could fight in open battle or bring down targets one by one. Sübötei was chosen to go after the Merkit and Jebe was put in charge of the Naiman hunt.26
The revenge operation against the Naiman and Merkit would have enormous, and perhaps unintended, geopolitical consequences. Chinggis Khan set out to settle a blood feud by defeating those who had provide disloyal. But in the process, he wound up upsetting the balance of power with the Mongols’ western neighbors, the Qara Khitai and the Qipchaqs, as the Naiman fled into the Qara Khitai’s protection and the Merkit into the Qipchaqs’.
The Mongols knew that Güchülüq, son of the last Naiman ruler, had found refuge at the Qara Khitai court after Chinggis had subdued the Naiman in 1204. The surviving Naiman rebels were sure to seek refuge with Güchülüq and his Qara Khitai protectors. Also known as the Western Liao Empire, the Qara Khitai ruled a huge swath of Central Asia and had old ties with the Naiman, who were their eastern neighbors. Güchülüq rapidly adopted Qara Khitai titles and ways of life and married into the family of the gür khan, gaining access to the inner circle of power.27
Gür Khan Zhilugu had his own reasons for hosting the Naiman chief. In contrast to Chinggis Khan, who implemented the tümen system, the Qara Khitai ruler relied on mercenary armies, which could abandon their patron and even shift into the service of the enemy if they were not paid in a timely manner. Seizing an opportunity, Güchülüq offered to gather his scattered people and place a contingent of hardened Naiman warriors at Zhilugu’s service. This was much-needed support for the gür khan: he faced a potential Mongol threat and, as the Buddhist leader of largely Muslim subjects, a skeptical internal population given to rebellion. But the acceptance of Güchülüq proved to be a deal with the devil, as the Naiman chief sought power for himself. He attracted refugees fleeing the Mongols and even Zhilugu’s mercenaries. By 1211 Güchülüq had amassed an army 8,000-strong. He ambushed his protector, deposed him, and kept him as captive. Zhilugu died two years later in Güchülüq’s custody.28
Güchülüq wanted to be the new gür khan, but both the Qara Khitai elite and their subjects considered him an outsider. The sedentary Muslim population was especially unwilling to support Güchülüq. The problem was not just that Güchülüq wasn’t Muslim—a nomad born into Nestorian Christianity, he had converted to Buddhism when he married into the Qara Khitai ruling family—the source of tension lay in Güchülüq’s policies. In predominantly Muslim cities such as Kashgar, Almaliq, Khotan, and others, Güchülüq had allowed his troops to plunder and destroy harvests. He had also forced the Kashgarians to host and sustain his non-Muslim troops, which led to bloody frictions within the city. According to Muslim-authored sources, Güchülüq forced Muslims to wear Khitan clothes—which meant behaving like “idolaters,” as the Persian historian Juvaynī put it—and prohibited them from expressing their faith in public.29
But while it is clear that Güchülüq mistreated some of his Muslim subjects, it is less clear that he systematically rejected their right to practice their faith. These allegations came from authors with an agenda of their own: writing after the Naiman had been deposed, they hoped to secure the favor of new leaders by celebrating them as liberators. Those leaders were Mongols. In 1218 Jebe’s Mongol forces arrived and began clashing with Güchülüq’s. As Jebe took over Qara Khitai towns, he promised the Muslims toleration and religious freedom—the usual characteristics of Mongol government. The reassuring Jebe won support from local Muslim authorities and Qara Khitai officials such as Isma‘īl, the commissioner in the city of Kāsān. Isma‘īl turned his support to the Mongols and led Jebe’s troops to Kashgar, where Güchülüq had retreated. As the Mongols approached, Güchülüq fled southward. The Mongols pursued him for months, finally catching him in the Badakhshan Mountains of northeastern Afghanistan. Isma‘īl struck the final blow, killing Güchülüq and chopping off his head. The commissioner-turned-Mongol-warrior hammered a pike into his trophy and paraded it along the streets of Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan. Muslim sources claim that the Mongols were welcomed in these cities, hailed as saviors. Yet Chinese sources report that the city dwellers only resigned themselves to Mongol power when they saw Güchülüq’s head. One way or the other, the Qara Khitai dominions passed into Mongol hands, and the Naiman power ceased to exist.30
As for the Merkit, after the Irtysh River disaster, the survivors found their way to Uighur country. But, having already sided with Chinggis Khan, the Uighurs turned the Merkit away. The Merkit then migrated some three thousand miles westward, seeking refuge beyond Chinggis Khan’s sphere of influence. They found hospitality in lands the Mongols had never entered, in the region between the Ural and Volga rivers. This region belonged to the Qangli, an eastern branch of the Qipchaqs.31
The Qipchaq peoples had come from the east. Initially, the various migrants had little in common except their flight: escaping the wars that swept over northern China when the Jin came to power, successive waves of Qipchaqs arrived on the banks of the Ural River in the twelfth century. Over the years, the contingents of wandering peoples coalesced in the immense steppe belt extending toward Hungary, where they created an intricate social and political community. They had no supreme ruler, but they did have seasoned warriors, trained in diplomacy and deeply enmeshed in the politics of their neighbors. Women of the Qipchaq elite often married Russian, Hungarian, Georgian, and Bulgarian princes. Men offered cavalry services to rulers spanning from Caucasian Georgia to India. Some historians have described the Qipchaqs as stateless, but it would be fairer to call them state-avoidant. The Qipchaqs escaped oppressive empires and their appetites for slaves, conscripts, and taxes. Possessing an army likely more numerous than Chinggis’s—and equally skilled at mounted archery—the Qipchaqs were the lords of the western steppe.32
When the Mer
kit rebels came seeking refuge, they were welcomed by the Ölberli, the dominant clan of Qipchaq nomads in the Volga-Ural area. The Mongols soon learned what had happened and sent a messenger demanding that the Ölberli turn over the fugitives. But the Ölberli were not cowed. After all, this was probably their first encounter with the Mongols, so they had no reason to fear and no reason to submit. The Ölberli chief answered that he had offered the Merkit hospitality and would not go back on his word. For the Ölberli, the Merkit warriors were highly valued as auxiliary forces ready to serve, much as the rescued Naiman had been for the Qara Khitai.33
Chinggis Khan dispatched Sübötei, his most able and loyal commander, who had special carts with iron-shod wheels built to withstand the rocky terrain. Sübötei’s archers converged with a vanguard commanded by the Mongol Toquchar, on the western border. The combined forces of Sübötei and Toquchar defeated the Merkit in battle at the Chem River, in the western part of present-day Kazakhstan, most likely in 1217 or 1218. As the high commander, Jochi dealt the final blow by ordering the slaughter of the eldest son of Toqto’a beki, the Merkit chief who had been killed years before at Irtysh. Some Merkit survived, but they would never again exist as a people.
Now the Ölberli Qipchaqs knew what the Mongols were capable of. Did they also know that, in the Mongol conception of foreign relations, the protectors of the rebels became enemies? The Mongols’ feud with the Merkit would soon be extended to the Merkits’ protectors: the Mongols would track the Qipchaqs with the goal of killing their leaders, an important episode I detail in chapter 2.34 For now, though, let us turn back east, to China, where Chinggis Khan was prosecuting another war even as he was mopping up the last of the Merkit and Naiman rebels.
On to China
In 1209 Chinggis invaded the empire of the Tangut, also known as the Xi Xia, a Tibetan-Burmese people who ruled what is today northwestern China. The Tangut became Mongol targets for several reasons. First, they controlled the trade routes and networks of the so-called Silk Road, which the Mongols wanted to monopolize. Second, the Tangut had welcomed the son of the Kereit ruler Wang Khan when the Mongols removed him from the Orkhon Valley: protecting a Mongol enemy made them blood rivals. And finally, the Tangut were allied with the Jin, the Mongols’ sometimes enemies, sometimes allies, and always rivals. Defeating the Tangut would deprive the Jin of a buffer between themselves and the Mongols and cut off Tangut aid in advance of a war.35
In April 1210, after almost a year of fighting, the Tangut gave in. They were not conquered, though, and were not absorbed into the Mongol ulus. They provided the Mongols with a huge tribute paid in woollen and satin textiles, camels, and falcons. The Tangut also agreed to end their relations with the Jin and to establish a military alliance with the Mongols. As it turned out, the Tangut would prove unreliable partners—indeed, a nightmare for the Mongols. The final defeat of the Tangut would take many years more and require the bloodiest campaign of Chinggis Khan’s career, as I discuss in chapter 2.36 In 1210–1211, though, what Chinggis needed were allies, not conquests, because the Jin, in China, were reemerging as a serious and immediate threat. They had regrouped after a war against the southern empire of the Song and a period of internal struggles. The new Jin ruler sent envoys to Chinggis Khan demanding tribute. The Jin were activating their traditional steppe policy: divide and rule. In particular, the Jin sought repeatedly to corrupt the nomads’ alliances by bribing their partners, in hopes of destroying any unity that accrued among the Felt-Walled Tents under Chinggis Khan.
In 1211 Chinggis launched his first great onslaught on northern China. Jebe and Sübötei assisted him. Chinggis’s sons also took part: Jochi, Chagatay, and Ögödei led the right wing. Another commander, Muqali, led the left wing. After the Mongols passed the fortified border, the Onggut, nomads dwelling on the Chinese frontier, rallied behind them. The Mongols came close to the Jin’s capital, Zhongdu, near modern-day Beijing, but then left unexpectedly. In the fall of 1212, only a few months later, they returned. When the Jin offered peace, Chinggis promptly accepted in order to spare his troops having to besiege the capital. The Jin paid tribute in gold, silk, and horses, and offered Chinggis Khan a Jin princess for a wife. But soon the Mongols realized they had been tricked. The Jin had moved their seat of government from Zhongdu to Kaifeng, on the Yellow River. In May 1215 the Mongols stormed Zhongdu. It was the first time Chinggis Khan had attempted to lay siege to such a large and fortified city. After eight months—possibly longer, according to some sources—the Mongols won the decisive, bloody battle and captured the city.37
At the same time he was besieging Zhongdu, Chinggis Khan pushed other troops to the east, where the Jin had moved their capital. He also recruited Chinese defectors from the northeast, including generals, administrators, and siege engineers. The Khitan people in Manchuria also joined his ranks in large numbers. The Khitan resented the Jin, who had supplanted their forefathers, the once powerful Liao. (The Khitan were Liao descendents who had stayed in place after the defeat. Those who left for Central Asia built the Qara Khitai Empire.) In 1216 the worn-out Jin seemed close to surrender. Chinggis Khan entrusted his commander Muqali to stay and pacify the region, while the khan left for his homeland. His goal was to economically integrate China, Mongolia, and Central Asia, and he was well on his way.38
The City Became a Deserted Ruin
By the close of the 1220s, political life on the Central Asian steppe had changed dramatically. Uighurs, Qarluqs, and other local Turkic powers had rallied behind the Mongols. The Naiman, Merkit, and Qara Khitai had been destroyed. And there was clearly more to come: the Mongols were engaged in repeated operations beyond their ancestral lands and showed no signs of letting up. Leaders of neighboring territories were under extreme pressure either to preemptively submit to the Mongols or to cast their lot against Chinggis, his sons, and his generals.
Among those feeling the pressure was Muhammad, shah of the Khwarezmian Empire, whose territory to the west of the Mongols occupied portions of present-day Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. Muhammad’s capital, Urgench, was located in an oasis on the southern coastline of the Aral Sea. Shortly after Jochi and Sübötei’s decisive victory over the Merkit, Muhammad made his decision. After a few years of relative peace with Chinggis Khan, backed by a trade agreement, Muhammad attacked in 1219. He launched the operation across his northern border, where his scout troops fell on a Mongol camp on the Quylï River. The camp belonged to Jochi’s warriors, who were resting after the campaign against the Merkit and the Naiman. Muhammad’s troops struck the camp while Jochi’s men were away, killing or capturing women and children and taking large amounts of booty. The Mongol warriors returned, contained the attack, and then withdrew at nightfall. The Mongol warriors had no order from Chinggis Khan to battle; they were only a small contingent. Yet they had checked the Khwarezmian army.39 Although the Mongols initially retreated, war with the Mongols would prove a disastrous error for Muhammad.
Why would Muhammad take on such a powerful enemy? Most basically, because he was no less ambitious than Chinggis Khan, and because he thought he would win. Muhammad was a fighting sultan who had for twenty years expanded his control over cities and lands at the expense of the Qara Khitai. Well before the Mongols had become involved with the Qara Khitai, Muhammad was already meddling in their affairs. Some reported that he made a deal with Güchülüq the Naiman to break the Qara Khitai gür khan, in hopes of appropriating Qara Khitai territories. And Muhammad’s troops conquered the Qara Khitai cities of Bukhara and Samarkand in 1207–1210.
In Islamic sources, Muhammad looks less like a conqueror in his own right and more like a weakling who poked a Mongol hornet’s nest. “The cause of these Tatars,” the contemporary historian Ibn al-Athīr wrote, referring in fact to the Mongols, “only prospered because of a lack of a strong defender.” Ibn al-Athīr accused Muhammad of having enfeebled his people by eliminating other princes and sultans, leaving himself the only one who could mobilize troops against
the Mongols. The truth, however, was that Muhammad had built up a huge empire with a large army and a constellation of walled cities built to endure powerful attacks. The trouble was that, unlike the Mongols, Muhammad invested little in administration. His regime also lacked a proper system of communication; there was nothing like the Mongol yam, the messenger network that enabled centralized control of far-flung administrators, official traders, and armies. (I describe the yam in detail in chapter 3.) And while Muhammad technically commanded a large force, his soldiers were mercenaries. Both poor communication and the fighters’ independence led to a lack of cohesion among Muhammad’s Khwarezmian troops.40
Still, this army, or a version of it, had served Muhammad well. But when it came to the Mongols, he underestimated his foe. The Mongol army was smaller, but it was far more organized and capable, and it was especially well-placed to undermine Muhammad’s defensive advantages: Mongol warriors were trained and equipped for mobility, whether on road or off, which proved essential when they had to cross rivers and penetrate mountains en route to Muhammad’s strongholds. And, above all, the Mongols knew how to assault a fortified place. During the long and bloody contest with the Jin, they had mastered a range of siege techniques. Chinggis had recruited Chinese artillery corps equipped with stone catapults, which were more powerful and precise than the torsion siege engines and counterweight trebuchets known in Western Europe. The Mongols had also mastered the use of Chinese gunpowder for incendiary missiles and other explosives. After Zhongdu, even the massive mud-brick walls of Muhammad’s fortresses failed to intimidate.41
There was a lot Muhammad could not have known about the Mongol military when he ordered the raid on Jochi’s camp. But he probably should have known more than he did. His first mistake was to blithely ignore the Mongol forces mounting so nearby, as Güchülüq the Naiman was amassing his own troops in Qara Khitai territory. Muhammad and the people around him appreciated that the Mongols were able warriors, but he did not see them as a direct threat and believed he could resist them even if the Qara Khitai fell. Instead of focusing on the Mongols, Muhammad busied himself with what he thought were more urgent matters. He chose to take advantage of the Qara Khitai’s internal weakness by pursuing the conquests of Bukhara and Samarkand. But while doing so satisfied Muhammad’s expansionist interests, the conquests also put him on a collision course with the Mongols. With the Qara Khitai dismantled by the Khwarezmians from the west and the Mongols from the east, Muhammad found himself sharing a border with Chinggis Khan.42