Central Asia in World History

by Golden, Peter B.

  The Jin dynasty (1115–1234), centered in northern China and Manchuria, arose from the Jurchens, Manchurian hunters and fishermen, who also farmed and raised livestock. Former subjects and now masters of the Liao realm, they dominated the eastern end of the steppe whose inhabitants called the Jin Emperor Altan Khan (“Golden Khan,” Golden Khan; jin in Chinese means “gold”). The Jin had difficulties in controlling the restless tribes of Mongolia. They constantly monitored them, seeking to keep them off balance by promoting internal conflict. The Mongols swept them all away.

  The Mongols were one of a number of tribal unions inhabiting Mongolia and adjoining areas in the late twelfth century. Some were steppe nomads, others were hunting and fishing forest folk. Some spanned both worlds. The Mongols, organized in lineages and clans, were centered on the Onan and Kerülen rivers. The historian ‘Atâ Malik Juvainî, who came from an eastern Iranian family that previously served the Khwârazmshâhs but had entered Mongol service, describes the Mongols before the rise of Chinggis Khan as lacking a ruler, disunited, and constantly fighting one another. “Some of them regarded robbery and violence, immorality and debauchery as deeds of manliness and excellence.” They dressed in the “skins of dogs and mice” which, together with “other dead things” and koumiss, formed their diet. A great man among them was one who had iron stirrups. Such were their “luxuries.”2 The Jin took what they wished from them.

  North of the Mongols were the politically fragmented Naiman extending to the Irtysh River in Siberia. Under Uighur influence, Nestorian Christianity had made some headway among them. South of the Mongols were the Tatars, long-time foes—an enmity that the Jin encouraged. The politically ambitious Kereits (in Mongolian Kereyid), led by To’oril, west of the Mongols in the Orkhon and Selenge region, had friendly links with them. Some of them were Nestorian Christians. Less friendly were the Merkit (or Mergid) on the lower Selenge and south of the Baikal region. North and east of them were the Oirats (or Oyirad) and other Mongolic forest folk.

  The Tatars, often proxies of the Jin, were politically dominant and their name was frequently used to denote all of these peoples. Mongol unification began with Qaidu, probably in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. The Secret History of the Mongols, an anonymous Mongol work of the thirteenth century, reports that Qaidu’s grandson, Qabul, “ruled over all the Mongols”3 and was their first khan. When Jin attempts to subordinate him failed, they invited Qabul to a banquet. Fearing poisoned food, he secretly regurgitated everything he ate. The Jin were amazed and then angered when he defiantly tweaked the beard of Altan Khan.4 Relations worsened when the Jin helped the Tatars to capture Ambaghai Khan, Qabul’s successor. He was subjected to a gruesome death, nailed to some kind of torture device, around 1160. Ensuing Mongol struggles with the Tatars were largely unsuccessful, and the Mongols were soon fighting among themselves.

  Qara Khitai clothing, especially battle dress, with its Northern Chinese and Manchurian influences, seems to have been distinct from that of their Central Asian neighbors. Qara Khitai weaponry, at least what is known of it, does not appear to differ considerably from the lances, bows and arrows, and iron and leather armor used by their Central Asian contemporaries. This depiction of a Qara Khitai comes from an early seventeenth-century Chinese book of illustrations and may be fanciful. Picture of a “black” Ch’i-tan, preserved in the Ming work, San-ts’ai T’u-hui, in Karl A. Wittfogel and Feng Chia-Sheng, History of Chinese Society, Liao (907–1125), Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, vol. 36, 1946, page 625.

  This was the strife-torn world in which Chinggis Khan was born sometime in the mid-1160s. Mongol tradition says that he was born “clutching in his right hand a clot of blood the size of a knucklebone,”5 an omen of things to come. His family claimed descent from the legendary Alan-Qo’a, a widow who miraculously became pregnant when a “resplendent yellow man entered by the light of the smoke-hole or the door top of the tent” in which she slept, rubbed her belly and having entered her womb “crept out on a moonbeam or a ray of sun in the guise of a yellow dog.”6 Qabul Khan was a sixth-generation descendant of Alan Qo’a. His grandson was Yisügei, who named his son Temüjin (blacksmith) in honor of a slain Tatar foe. Temüjin, who became Chinggis Khan, came from a family with a high sociopolitical standing. At the age of nine, he was engaged to Börte, a ten-year-old of the Qonggirad, and left with his future in-laws in keeping with Mongol custom. Yisügei cautioned that his son, who in adulthood would be called “Conqueror of the World,” was afraid of dogs and asked that care be taken in that regard.

  After Yisügei was fatally poisoned by vengeful Tatars in 1175, his family was abandoned by the other clans. Temüjin returned home. His mother Hö’elün fed her children on “crab apples and bird cherries . . . wild garlic and . . . wild onion” and chided them for bickering among themselves, saying “we have no friend but our shadow.”7 The future ruler had an impoverished, but adventure-filled youth, living by his wits—and often as a brigand and horse thief. As a youngster, he and his brother Qasar coolly killed an older half-brother, Bekter, in a dispute arising over captured game.

  Temüjin’s success as a warlord and adroit politician brought him a following of ambitious young men. These nökürs (boon companions), who gave up clan and tribal loyalties, formed the core of his military retinue, providing the future generals and administrators of the Mongol empire. Temüjin’s alliance with the Kereit leader, To’oril, his father’s former anda (sworn blood brother, a very important relationship in Mongolian society), raised his visibility as a young man of promise. An important victory in 1184 by Temüjin, his anda Jamuqa, and the Kereits, over the Merkits who had kidnapped his wife Börte, gained him more followers. By 1189, some Mongol factions recognized him as khan. In 1196, allied with the Kereits and the Jin who had turned against their former allies, he defeated his old foes, the Tatars. The Jin, still attempting to stoke rivalries among the Mongolian tribes, honored To’oril with the title Ong Khan. In 1202, Temüjin decimated the Tatars, enslaving those whom he permitted to survive. He then destroyed his anda Jamuqa and To’oril. Temüjin prized loyalty, but he removed anyone who blocked his path to dominion. In 1206, a quriltai (assembly) elected him Chinggis Khan, a title that probably meant “universal emperor.”

  This portrait of the great conqueror Chinggis Khan, painted when he was in his sixties, shows him in simple attire. In a letter to a Chinese scholar, he claimed that he wore the clothing of a simple nomadic herdsman, showed concern for his troops as if they were his “brothers,” and ate the same food. National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China

  The drive to unify the Mongols and other nomads of the eastern steppes was a reaction to Jin manipulations of local Mongol politics and a growing engagement with the outside world. Chinggis was not the only man in Mongolia with royal ambitions. He was simply better able to capitalize on his foes’ divisions. He was also lucky, having several times escaped captivity or the plots of his enemies through a convenient turn of fortune. He not only acknowledged his luck, but advertised it as a sign of divine favor. Like the Türks before him and drawing on the same steppe imperial tradition, Chinggis and his successors would claim the mandate of heaven. Subsequently, Muslims saw him as the “Scourge of God,” a notion his propagandists were only too happy to encourage.

  The name “Mongol” now spread as a political name to the various peoples of Mongolia that Chinggis had conquered. In the Muslim lands and Europe, however, people would call them “Tatars.” Even today, the name “Tatar” lives on as the name of peoples who are overwhelmingly of Turkic origin, but were part of the Mongol Empire. This new realm was centered in the old “holy” grounds of the Türks in Mongolia. The choice was hardly accidental, as this was sacred territory to the nomads, the seat of previous empires. Chinggis and his successors, while employing familiar symbols of power and sovereignty in the steppe, such as possessing “holy” grounds, assuming venerable imperial titles (khan or qaghan), and proclaim
ing a law code for the realm, also broke with earlier patterns. Chinggis splintered the tribes, knowing how destabilizing they could be to his imperial enterprise, and demanded that loyalty to him replace the bonds of tribe, clan, or family. He reorganized them into the familiar military units of 10, 100, 1000, and 10,000 (the tümen), but shorn of tribal affiliations—a standing professional army loyal only to him and his house.

  Without the prospect of continuing gain, nomad-warriors would soon abandon a warlord. To retain followers, the successful state-builder had to lead them to further military success—and booty. Chinggis prepared a program of conquest. The Siberian forest and forest-steppe peoples (Kyrgyz, Oirat) and the Önggüt Turks in the Gobi quickly submitted. The Tanguts became tributaries in 1209. In that same year, Barchuq, ruler of the Tarim Basin Uighurs, cast off Qara Khitai overlordship and in 1211 formally swore allegiance to Chinggis Khan, who rewarded him with a royal princess as bride and deemed him his “fifth son.” Chinggis made use of the now largely settled Uighurs, effective intermediaries between the steppe and sedentary worlds, who became his bureaucrats. The Mongols adopted the Uighur alphabet, still used in Inner Mongolia today.

  The Mongol assault on the Jin began in 1211, and by 1215 they had taken one of their capital cities, Zhongdu (now Beijing). Jin resistance continued, and operations in Manchuria expanded into Koryo, the Korean kingdom, whose pacification took fifty-eight years. The main focus of Mongol attention, however, was Qara Khitai and Khwarazmian Central Asia. Güchülük, a Naiman prince defeated at the hands of the Mongols in 1208, had taken refuge with the Qara Khitai. Gathering up Naiman and Merkit refugees (also opponents of Chinggis Khan), he exploited the uneasy Khwarazmian-Qara Khitai relationship, posing as ally of one or the other.

  Güchülük married Qûnqû, the daughter of the Gür Khan Zhilugu; she was a strong-willed woman who fell madly in love with the Naiman adventurer at first sight. Zhilugu indulged his daughter and permitted their marriage three days later. This would have fatal consequences. Exploiting a Khwarazmian victory over a Qara Khitai army, Güchülük captured Zhilugu and seized control of the state in 1211. He allowed his father-in-law to remain as titular ruler, but he and his Naimans now held effective power.8 When Zhilugu died in 1213, Güchülük proclaimed himself Gür Khan. The local Muslim population, facing demands that they convert to either Christianity or Buddhism favored by Güchülük, grew restive.

  The Mongol whirlwind was about to sweep into western Turkestan. While Khwarazm and the Mongols exchanged embassies, covertly seeking information about each other, Chinggis decided to crush Güchülük. He attacked the Merkits again and invaded the Qara Khitai lands from 1216 to 1218. Güchülük perished. Merkit refugees retreated to the Qïpchaq lands, but they and the Naiman no longer presented a military threat.

  As the Mongols pressed on the Khwarazmian borders, fears heightened. Muhammad Khwârazmshâh’s Qïpchaq kinsman massacred a Mongol trading party. The causes of this senseless provocation, which occurred not long after the Mongol ambassadors had signed a peace treaty, have long baffled historians. A Mongol delegation demanding justice for the victims and compensation for their goods was also put to the sword. The now inevitable war commenced in 1219, and Muhammad’s armies simply melted away. He fled and ended his days hiding on an island in the Caspian. Meanwhile, Bukhara and Samarkand, both pillaged, fell in 1220. Thirty thousand craftsmen from the latter were handed out to Chinggis Khan’s sons and relatives as booty. A survivor from Bukhara reported that the Mongols “came, they sapped, they burnt, they slew, they plundered and they departed.”9 Central Asia was now under Mongol rule.

  Eastern Iran fell next, and the Mongols probed Transcaucasia and the western steppes in force. They defeated the Qïpchaqs, the only remaining nomadic force capable of resistance, along with their allies from Orthodox Christian Rus’ (the ancestral core of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus’) in May 1223. On their return east, the Mongols, laden with booty, dealt the Volga Bulghars a glancing blow. The Rus’ were stupefied by the suddenness of the attack. Clergymen pronounced it a punishment from God. The Mongols, having familiarized themselves with the region, would return. Chinggis Khan’s oldest son, Jochi, was entrusted with this mission.

  Chinggis now turned to unfinished business on his immediate borders. His armies subjugated the Tanguts in 1226–27, but in the course of the campaign the aging conqueror fell ill. He died in August 1227. His oldest son, Jochi, had predeceased by several months. Chinggis, although inclined towards his youngest son, Tolui, bypassed him and his second son, Chaghadai, selecting his third son, the amiable Ögödei, as his successor. The quriltai of 1229 reaffirmed his choice. Ögödei, although known for his qualities of justice, intelligence, and judgment, was overly fond of drink. Tolui, in keeping with nomadic tradition as youngest son, the odchigin (prince of the hearth), received his father’s ancestral lands, personal possessions, and the largest allotment of troops, some 101,000. All of his sons concurred.10

  In principle, the Great Qaghan was the first among equals. Each brother received an ulus, literally a “nation, state, people,” in essence a state within the larger, still unified Yeke Mongghol Ulus (Great Mongol State), and military forces. The initial borders of each ulus were not always clearly defined, nor did they together comprise all the conquered territories.11 Following nomadic tradition, the oldest son received the most distant of his father’s holdings. Jochi’s sons, led by Batu and Orda, held the western frontier: the Qïpchaq steppe (part of which remained to be conquered), western Siberia, adjoining areas, and anything to the west that the Mongols could take. Batu established his capital, Saray, near modern Astrakhan on the lower Volga. Chaghadai, the abrasive and punctilious keeper of the Yasa, the Mongol law code established by Chinggis, initially received much of the former Qara Khitai realm, eventually holding most of eastern and western Turkestan. Ögödei at first had lands in Jungaria (northern Xinjiang), southern Siberia, and territory extending into the Irtysh region. Later, he would have central Mongolia, where he built the imperial capital Qaraqorum in 1235.

  The quriltais of 1229 and 1235 charted future conquests. By 1241, the Mongols had subjugated the Qïpchaqs and the Rus’ principalities. The conquest of the Qïpchaq steppe brought large numbers of Turkic nomads under Chinggisid rule. They became a major part of the “Mongol” or “Tatar” forces that swept across Eurasia. The Mongols also gained control of virtually all of the horsepower of Central Asia, which meant almost half of the world’s horses.12 This gave them a tremendous military advantage. Severe climate conditions also contributed to Mongol success. Unusual periods of cold, heavy rains, hail, and strong winds in the 1220s and 1230s in North Asia and extending into Russia, precipitated perhaps by volcanic eruptions, may have played havoc with crops and undermined the local economies.

  Mongol invasions in 1241 briefly brought Poland and Hungary under Chinggisid control. A mixed force of some 20,000 Polish and German knights led by Duke Henry the Pious of Silesia was defeated on April 9. The victors collected nine sacks of ears, and Duke Henry’s head was paraded atop a spear. The death of Ögödei (probably from alcoholism) and political tension in Qaraqorum cut short consolidation of their westernmost conquests. The Mongols withdrew; Poland and Hungary breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  Operations directed at the Middle East had begun in 1230. The Mongols swept across Iran and Transcaucasia. Kirakos Gandzakets’i, an Armenian historian, compared the Mongols to “clouds of locusts . . . the entire country was filled with corpses of the dead and there were no people to bury them.”13 The Seljuks of Asia Minor succumbed in 1243 at the Battle of Köse Dağ in northeast Turkey. Iran and Asia Minor were now largely under Mongol rule. The Toluids under Möngke, who had replaced the Ögödeids as Great Qaghans in an intra-Chinggisid power struggle, continued the expansion. In 1253, Möngke dispatched his brother Hülegü to the Middle East to complete Chinggisid conquests there. The ‘Abbâsid caliphate fell in 1258. In Baghdad some 200,000, according to Hülegü’s own estimate, peris
hed. The Mongols, mindful of the old steppe tradition of not allowing royal blood to touch the earth, rolled up the last ‘Abbâsid caliph, al-Musta’sim, in a clothing sack and trampled him to death.14

  A power struggle between his brothers Qubilai and Ariq Böke following Möngke’s death halted Hülegü’s further advance. He turned eastward with a substantial portion of his army, leaving his remaining forces to move against the Mamlûks, slave-soldiers of largely Qïpchaq origin, who had taken power in Egypt and Syria in 1250. The Mamlûks defeated an invading Mongol force in the Galilee in 1260, marking the end of the Mongol advance in the Near East. Iran, Iraq, and much of Asia Minor were theirs. An uneasy border was established in Syria. Abu Shâma, an Arab commentator on these events, wryly noted that “to everything there is a pest of its own kind.”15 Only fellow Central Asians, the Mamlûks, could stop the Mongols.

  In East Asia, Qubilai, Möngke’s brother and successor as Great Qaghan, built a new capital (Chinese: Dadu, Mongol: Daidu, Turkic: Khan Baliq, “Khan’s City”) modern Beijing, adopted the Chinese dynastic name Yuan, and completed the conquest of China by 1279. Qubilai also launched attacks on Japan from Korea, which had been finally subjugated in 1270. These naval expeditions of 1274 and 1281 were destroyed by typhoon storms that the Japanese called Kamikaze (divine wind).

  Distance and the growth of diverging family and local interests created ever-widening fissures in Mongol unity. Jochi had fourteen sons, Chaghadai eight, Ögödei seven, Tolui ten. The succeeding generations were equally prolific. Each expected his share. Strains within the Chinggisid “golden family” (altan urugh) quickly arose. Möngke had purged many Ögödeids and Chaghadaids, accusing them of plotting to seize power. Although the Jochid Batu helped to engineer the transfer of power to Möngke, the Jochid-Toluid alliance fell apart by the early 1260s as the Batuids and Hülegüids fought over Transcaucasia. The Jochids formed an entente with the Mamlûks, most of whom were Qipchaqs from Jochid-ruled lands, against their kinsmen in Iran.