Jack Weatherford

by The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire

  Throughout their reign, as on this awkward inaugural day, they frequently benefited from the underestimation of their abilities by those who struggled against them. In the world where physical strength and mastery of the horse and bow seemed to be all that really mattered, no one seemed to anticipate the advantages of patient intelligence, careful planning, and consistency of action. Neither Manduhai nor Batu Mongke possessed the physical strength of even a lowly soldier in their army, and yet they had some form of charisma that must have come as a direct gift from the sky.

  Henceforth the chronicles no longer referred to Manduhai as Manduhai Gunj or Lady Manduhai; instead she was clearly the queen, Manduhai Khatun.

  She proclaimed this unlikely candidate as the Great Khan of the Yeke Monghol Ulus, the twenty-seventh successor to Genghis Khan, and the ruler of all the lands and peoples within the world ocean. In keeping with Mongol imperial tradition, she had already picked out an auspicious title that resonated with meaning on many symbolic levels. She bestowed upon Batu Mongke the title Dayan Khan. Believing in the power that sounds have to make ideas and wishes into reality, she had chosen a name with deep meanings for both the Mongols and the Chinese. When heard with the Mongolian ear, the name meant the “Whole Khan,” or the “Khan of the Whole,” a title that stressed unity, the most elusive yet necessary of goals for survival of the steppe tribes. Her choice of title clearly asserted her goal to overcome the divisions by clan and locality. She would unite them, and he would be the khan of all Mongols. In particular, the title showed her rejection of the taishi’s claim to rule over the Oirat of western Mongolia. Dayan Khan would rule the north and the south, the east and the west. He was the Whole Khan.

  As if the Mongol claim was not sufficiently presumptuous or excessively ambitious, the same sounds of the Dayan Khan title carried a more ominous meaning when heard with a Chinese ear. To them it meant the “Great Yuan,” reasserting loudly and clearly the Mongol claim to be recognized as the rightful rulers of China and the loyal heirs of the old Yuan Dynasty.

  His new title could easily provoke the highly sensitive and insecure Ming court to send out an army to avenge the affront to its honor and inflict some horrifying form of public execution. For a less serious offense, the earlier Jin Dynasty had seized one of Dayan Khan’s ancestors in the twelfth century and nailed him onto a wooden contraption in order to force his submission, a goal that he denied them throughout the agonizing crucifixion. If the Chinese captured the new young khan, they could easily do far worse to force him to give up his title, resign his office, and surrender all control of his dynasty to the Ming emperor.

  Manduhai’s arrogance at giving him the title Dayan irritated the Ming officials, but they could only respond with symbols since they lacked the resources to impose their will militarily. The Ming chose to fight words with words and titles with titles. They refused the words Dayan Khan, and instead they conferred upon the boy a far lesser status in their own records. They ignored both his barbarian name and his presumptuous title and mockingly referred to him as Xiao wang zi (Hsiao-wang-tzu), the “Little King” or “Little Prince.” Chinese chroniclers had occasionally used that title in earlier records, particularly when an underage boy sat on the throne, but for Dayan Khan, they used the title throughout his reign. This contention over the khan’s title plagued Mongol-Ming relations through the reign of Dayan Khan.

  Despite giving the young boy the title that staked a claim to rule all of China for the Mongols, Manduhai pursued a specific policy that showed no plan to invade or conquer China, much less to rule it. She seems to have learned from the earlier experiences of the steppe tribe, mostly notably of Genghis Khan, that the strategy of fighting, conquering, and then administering so large an empire cost the Mongols far more than they gained.

  The failed efforts of her predecessors, such as Esen, her husband’s great-grandfather, had shown that the Mongols lacked the military strength to conquer the massive armies and fortified cities of China. Although Genghis Khan had used firepower very effectively in his time, the advancement in firearms had negated the Mongols’ most important asset, their ability to use bows and arrows very effectively from horseback. No matter how well trained and extensively practiced, a warrior with a bow and arrow could not compete with cannons and firearms. Ultimately, gunpowder favored the sedentary civilizations over the nomadic.

  Rather than conquering the Chinese, Manduhai seemed clear in her actions that she wanted to utilize Chinese production to the benefit of her people. She sought to trade with the Chinese where possible, but to raid them when trade failed. Either through trading or raiding, she showed clear determination to get what she needed.

  Among the Mongols, not everyone accepted the khan, newly proclaimed at the Shrine of the First Queen. Some thought such an act should be taken at the Shrine of Genghis Khan, who had founded the dynasty and the nation. With so many irregularities accompanying the ordination of this young man as khan, anyone who wanted to find a reason not to support him could certainly do so.

  After the installation of Dayan Khan, Manduhai returned with the boy to her royal camp. Like all Mongol capitals, hers moved constantly throughout her life according to the seasons, the changing weather, and the needs of the time. Her summer camp moved around the fertile steppes and returned frequently to the Kherlen River, but as important as that area was for the history of the Mongols and the Borijin clan, it was not her home. Manduhai Khatun and Dayan Khan were ultimately people of the drier steppe. The softly rolling hills, vast stretches of green pasture, and above all the trees of the northern steppe remained alien to her.

  She was a woman of the open land, where the eye would never be blocked by mountain or tree and where nature yielded a more sparing but highly appreciated life than in the luxuriant extravagance of the green steppe. Her home was a rocky but firm soil. The pebbles, sand, and gravel might shift underfoot, but they provided a secure base on which to stand or build a ger. The ground never rotted, and even in winter the soil was too dry to freeze as it did in the steppes and forests of the north.

  For people of the Gobi the sight of standing water in a lake or flowing water in a river seemed unusual and slightly unnatural. Water belonged in the clouds above, and when it fell to earth, it immediately made its way down into the sand, where it waited to be dug out when needed. Just as the grassy steppe of the north had more grass than the animals could eat at once, the rivers and lakes had more water than they could drink.

  In the winter, Manduhai moved her capital down the Ongi River into the edge of the Gobi. The Ongi was the only river that flowed south into the Gobi, and it had long been a major route connecting Karakorum with the old empire in China. The Ongi had water for only a few months of the year, in the summer when the snow in the mountains melted and the spring rains combined to create this small river. Occasionally, it carried enough water to make a small lake called Ulaan Nuur, but usually the empty lake bed and the river stood dry.

  Of course, even when the water ceased to flow aboveground, moisture still seeped below the surface. It occasionally bubbled up to form a spring, or one could dig a short way into the light soil and quickly find water. The backdrop of mountains on the northern side offered some protection from the winds blowing directly from the Arctic. The drier conditions prevented blizzards except in the most exceptional of years.

  In changing her capital camp from the more isolated place she had inhabited with Manduul Khan, Manduhai made a break with the past. Whether intentionally signaling her plans or merely following her own preferences, the move south and out into an open area closer to a trade route indicated a new engagement with the world. She herself probably did not yet know the precise nature of the new policies she would pursue, but she certainly knew that they would be different from the past. Perhaps she would expand Mongol commercial participation in the Silk Route; she might confront the Muslim warlords or even the Ming Court. Or, she might do all of those things.

  Manduhai Khatun and Dayan Khan wen
t to their new camp to enjoy it for a short while and to give the boy a little time to adjust to her and the new people around him. He needed to become comfortable with them because she was about to take him to war. As a khan, even as a little boy, war would be his profession, and it could never be too soon to begin learning it.

  With a Great Khan at her side, her newly found firmness and strength, Manduhai was ready to set out on her white road of life.

  11

  Winning the War and Raising a Husband

  VOWS, PRAYERS, AND RITUALS BEFORE A SHRINE ADDED much needed sacred legitimacy to Dayan Khan’s rule, but without force of arms, they amounted to empty gestures and wasted breath. Only after demonstrating that she had the skill to win, as well as the supernatural blessing to do so, could Manduhai hope to rule the Mongols. She had enemies on every side, and she needed to choose her first battle carefully. She had to confront each enemy, but she had to confront each in its own due time. Manduhai needed to manage the flow of conflicts by deciding when and where to fight and not allowing others to force her into a war for which she was not prepared or stood little chance of winning.

  The enemies she faced after proclaiming Batu Mongke as Dayan Khan were the same who had vied for control over her before she made the proclamation. The Ming Dynasty to the southeast, although weakening, still presented a major threat to the Mongols and claimed the right to rule over them. The Muslim warlords of the Silk Route, fractious and quarrelsome as ever, continued to grow in power in the southwest and still sought to control the Mongols by controlling their khans.

  Throughout their history, the steppe tribes had periodically experienced population and military pressure from both China and the Turks, but for thousands of years, the way west remained open as the escape valve. The Slavic people had never been able to close that valve or resist the Asian tribes’ thrust toward Europe. In the fifteenth century, however, for the first time, Ivan III managed to close it and even reverse the pressure by pushing some of the Mongols back toward their homeland. By 1470 when Manduhai installed Dayan Khan in office, Mongolia had effectively been sealed shut. The Siberian Arctic to the north prevented movement in that direction, and the Chinese Ming, the Muslim states of Central Asia, and the Slavic Russians of the West sealed off the Mongolian Plateau on every side.

  Manduhai’s first, and possibly most strategically important, victory came without a battle. She managed to prevent a failed suitor from becoming an enemy. Une-Bolod, the descendant of Khasar and the general under her husband Manduul, remained loyal. She had rejected his marriage proposal, but he recognized the legitimacy of her insistence that all Mongols should rally behind the boy khan.

  By remaining loyal to her, and thereby to the descendant of Genghis Khan, he stood next in line to inherit the office of Great Khan and to marry her if anything should happen to the sickly child. Considering Dayan Khan’s condition, caused by his mistreatment as an infant and then the injuries from the fall into the stream while being brought to Manduhai, such an untimely death must have seemed quite possible.

  Manduhai had pressed a legalistic case for installing the boy on the throne, but the same logic and adherence to Genghis Khan’s law would force her to accept Une-Bolod next. In the absence of the boy, all the same arguments would support him, and by remaining loyal to her and the boy now, he prepared the way for a legal succession in the future.

  Similarly, if Manduhai should be killed in battle or be incapacitated in any way, Une-Bolod stood as next in line to become regent for the boy. By remaining loyal to both Manduhai and Dayan Khan, Une-Bolod would already be well positioned in the middle of the camp, and if anything happened to either the queen or the khan, he would assume power. He would not need to rally an army and descend on the royal camp; he and his warriors would already be in place.

  Manduhai’s power base was in the central Mongolian steppe, a well-watered land good for animals and easily traversed. By having Une-Bolod’s loyalty, she had no worry about the immediate eastern area, since he controlled it. The Siberian tribes to the north had never posed much of a threat to the steppe people. The western tribes offered her the least support, but her most dreaded enemies lay to the south, across the Gobi—the Ming in the southeast and the warlords in the southwest.

  Manduhai decided to confront her enemies at home first, before looking south, by strengthening her western flank. After consolidating her rule over the Mongols and attaining a firm grip on the whole of the Mongolian Plateau, she might consider leaving home to confront her southern rivals, but she could not do so with the possibility of resistance or revolt at her back.

  Western Mongolia was home to a variety of tribes, independent clans, and factions in shifting alliances. They were Mongols with a mixture of Turkic steppe tribes as well as Siberian forest tribes in a constantly changing array of ethnic, clan, and geographic names. Groups could be referred to by the name of their individual clans, lineages, or tribes. Or they could be referred to by the name of a dominant group in their area, as well as by a geographic feature of the area. As the people moved from one area to another or as one lineage rose and fell in local prominence, the identification might change.

  A more diverse assortment of tribes lived in the west than in the more homogenous east. The topography and microenvironments of the Altai Mountains and adjacent steppes offered sustenance for a larger variety of animals than eastern Mongolia. Camel herders lived in the southern deserts. Herders of goats, sheep, cows, and yaks occupied the mountain areas, and reindeer herders lived in the north. All the herders kept horses if the animals could survive, but if not, they rode camels, yaks, oxen, and reindeer.

  Through the centuries, the area attracted a variety of ethnic groups from other places as well. When Islam first spread into Central Asia, many Christian tribes sought refuge here, as well as some Buddhists and Manicheans. Later, Muslims joined them, sometimes as traders, but often fleeing from their own political and schismatic struggles.

  Stretching back more than a thousand years, to the time of the Huns and then to the eighth-century Turkic empires, the Mongol state always had its base in the center between the Tuul and Orkhon rivers. The Mongols had strengthened their hold on this area, in part by moving other steppe tribes into the west along the Altai Mountains to serve as a buffer against the unknown but threatening forces of Muslim Central Asia, the Europeans, and the Mongols’ steppe neighbors.

  Through the centuries, the Oirat, called Kalmyk by the Muslims and Russians, had spread out of their original forest home in Siberia; by the time of Manduhai’s reign, their name had expanded into a generic term encompassing all the western Mongol and Turkic tribes around the Altai Mountains. Since the time of Genghis Khan’s daughter Checheyigen, the Oirat, as a son-in-law nation, usually had a female of the Borijin clan come to marry their leader. Over time, the leader of the Oirat came to be known as the taishi, while the title khan was reserved primarily for the Borijin leaders. For a while, the joint titles and the marriage alliance kept the two parts of the Mongol nation closely connected.

  When the Mongols weakened in the time of Elbeg Khan, both the Ming court and the Silk Route warlords tried to separate the eastern and western Mongols and play them off each other. Both foreign powers sought to promote the Oirat as a separate nation, apart from the Mongols in the east, with equal leaders deserving of their own titles.

  As the Ming Dynasty declined in vigor and the ties with western Mongolia became harder to maintain, the warlords of the Silk Route began pursuing the same strategy of dividing eastern and western Mongols, and they had more success. Until the time of Esen, the taishi was a western Mongol and lived among the people over whom he ruled. After Esen’s assassination, the Turkic warlords such as Beg-Arslan and Ismayil claimed the title and the right to rule the Oirat, although they preferred to stay close to their trade oasis cities along the Silk Route and to control the Oirat indirectly from a distance. As long as the taishi kept trade goods coming into the Oirat territory, no one seemed to mind.
>
  Manduhai had to retake control of the Oirat, unite the Mongols, and thereby deprive Ismayil, and the future warlords, of the title or power to rule over the Oirat. She did not yet have an army large enough to cross the desert and conquer the oases of the Silk Route where the warlords held their power base and where large segments of the Oirat lived. But she was ready to challenge Beg-Arslan and Ismayil for command over the Oirat living north of the Gobi. Even if she could not conquer them completely, she needed to neutralize the warlords’ ability to use the Oirat against her.

  In preparation for the first major campaign, Manduhai sent a train of ox carts laden with equipment and provisions with an infantry escort to guard them. She and the main army would leave later and pass by the infantry and supply carts. The organization of the army showed clearly that Manduhai’s plans for making war reached a much higher state of forethought and execution than the usual raids that had characterized much of steppe warfare over the previous two centuries. In an organization uncharacteristic of steppe leaders, she used infantry and cavalry as well as the caravan of supply carts; her army more closely resembled that of a sedentary state than that of a nomadic one.

  Three days later, the young queen was ready to depart. The chronicles all agree that she fixed her hair to accommodate her quiver. The hairstyle of noble married women of that era precluded fighting or any other manual endeavor. She removed the headdress of peace and put on her helmet for war.