In Search of Genghis Khan

by Tim Severin

  The next day’s riding took us through countryside more spectacular than anything we had seen before. The views were positively Alpine, but so unspoiled as to appear as the Swiss or Austrian highlands must have looked 1000 years ago. Once again the hillsides continued smothered with wild flowers from one slope to the next, so that in the space of a mile we would pass from an area that was purple, to a slope which might be yellow, and then to a third hillside white with so many edelweiss that it appeared from a distance that it had snowed in the afternoon. The flowers came in every shape, from tall spiked columns to tiny blossoms as small as forget-me-nots. For six hours we rode on a flowery tapestry except where our horses had to thread their way around the debris of an ancient lava flow that had oozed down the valley and congealed, leaving a jumbled moonscape of dark brown rocks.

  A small lake had ponded up behind the lava flow and here we stopped for our noonday break. A group of four gers had been placed close to the water’s edge, and the Drunk led us eagerly towards them, knowing the hospitality we could expect. The welcome would be the same at nearly every ger throughout our summer ride: we would enter, nibble a little food, and drink vast quantities of mare’s milk and alcohol. Gone were the hungry days of boiled mutton and cold thin tea, for now we were in the brief season of high summer when the flocks and herds were giving ample milk, and the Mongol diet was virtually pure milk. To turn away a stranger at such a time of richness was unthinkable. Hospitality was given, and taken, for granted. My own inclination was to hover outside and wait to be invited into a ger, but our Mongol companions did not even pause for an instant. They would ride straight to the tether line between its two poles, tie up their horses, stroll over to the largest and most important ger, push open the door and walk in as if it were their own home.

  The scene inside was always the same. A metal stove, about half the height and the same shape as an oil barrel, stood directly in front of the door with its metal chimney rising up through the smoke hole in the apex of the felt tent. Three or more iron bedsteads were arranged in a semi-circle around the back and sides of the ger, and the spaces between them were filled with chests of drawers usually painted orange and decorated with flowery bands. The host’s seat was at the furthest point away from the door, and his most senior guest would be placed on his right while the other guests either sat on the beds or made themselves comfortable on the ground within reach of a low table that was set before the host. On the table there was always a dish ready and waiting, piled with sugar lumps, hard biscuits and dried curd. Usually as we arrived the wife would already be stoking the fire to boil up milk and water for salt tea, but ayrag, mare’s milk, was what our companions wanted, gallons of it. ‘Mares’s milk is all they care about,’ Rubruck had written tersely, (he called it ‘Cosmos’ from the Turkish name for mare’s milk, ‘qumiz’) and it became clear how the Mongols had earned themselves the nickname ‘the drinkers of mare’s milk’. The quantities of ayrag which our companions consumed were almost beyond belief. It was not unusual to see them drink 17 to 20 pints in a day, and as social etiquette expected every visitor to drink three bowls of milk before leaving the ger neither Paul nor I escaped the orgy of milk consumption. The ayrag was kept ready, either in a barrel or usually in a leather sack hanging on a frame just inside the door. It was not drunk fresh but half-fermented, so that it had a sour and sometimes slightly fizzy taste. At intervals the woman of the house would take the wooden paddle whose handle stuck out from the milk bag and beat air into the brew with a hollow squelching sound to aid the souring process.

  Nothing had changed since Rubruck’s day. Mare’s milk, he noted ‘is made in the following way’:

  They stretch above the ground a long rope attached to two stakes stuck in the soil, and about the third hour [nine o’clock] tether to the rope the foals of the mares they intend to milk. Then the mares stand beside their foals and let themselves be milked peacefully. In the event of any of them proving intractable, one man takes the foal and puts it underneath her to let it suck a little, and then withdraws it while the milker takes it place.

  So having collected a great quantity of milk, which when it is fresh is as sweet as cow’s milk, they pour it into a large skin or bag, and set about churning it with a club which is made for this purpose, as thick at the lower end as a man’s head and hollowed out. As they stir it rapidly, it begins to bubble like new wine and turn sour or ferment, and they keep churning it until they extract the butter.

  Next they taste it, and when it is moderately pungent they drink it. While one is drinking it, it stings the tongue like wine from unripe grapes, but after one has finished drinking it leaves on the tongue a taste of milk of almonds. It produces a very agreeable sensation inside and even intoxicates those with no strong head; it also markedly brings on urination.

  Rubruck’s two theories, that drinking ayrag ‘markedly brings on urination’ and also makes you drunk, are still heard from both Mongols and foreigners. But both ideas, from my own observation, are only partly true. The main reason for the large output of urine must simply be the stupendous quantity of mare’s milk that is consumed. It was hardly surprising that as our little group rode from ger to ger, stopping at each felt tent for every man to drink another three or four bowls of liquid, 5 or 6 pints at a session, the herdsmen were obliged frequently to empty their bladders as they rode on to the next ger. The ayrag may have been diuretic, but it was the sheer volume which mattered. Nor, as far as I could tell, was ayrag noticeably intoxicating. Sour mare’s milk may perhaps be mildly alcoholic, but it would take so long to drink the necessary amount of ayrag that any intoxication would be slow and feeble. We were consuming gallons of milk day after day on our ride and did not feel inebriated. Just an hour’s riding in the fresh air would soon sober up any drinker, though perhaps to drink a similar quantity and not take any exercise might produce a state of inertia and drowsiness.

  Yet the Mongols do have a ferocious reputation as habitual drunkards, whether they were humble herdsmen or Great Khans, and this notoriety has a very long history. The tales range from sad descriptions of alcohol-sodden beggars crawling through the streets of 19th-century Urga, to the last Khutukhtu, Jebtsundamba, who was drunk for a week at a time, to the Khakhan Ögodei who, so the story runs, became so addicted to alcohol that his brother Chaghatai warned him that unless he cut down his daily intake he would kill himself. Chastened, the Khan swore that he would halve the number of goblets of strong drink he drank, and even agreed to have a servant keep a check on the number of drinks he took every day. But he promptly doubled the size of the royal goblet. Knowing the childlike deviousness of country Mongols, the story has a certain ring of truth. His good intentions did not stop Ögodei dying of alcoholism, as did his successor as Khakhan, Güyük.

  Oddly, few commentators seem to have taken much note that the Mongols do have ready access to a source of alcohol, easily derived from milk, which they consume with gusto. This alcohol is far more likely to have been the reason for their reputation as dipsomaniacs. Rubruck reported that a clear and ‘really potent’ drink he called ‘black cosmos’ was reserved for the wealthy Mongols. He believed it was made by churning mare’s milk until it was free of all solids, but it was almost certainly the tipple that modern Mongols call shimiin arkhi - ‘essence or steam arkhi’ - to distinguish it from commercially made vodka, which is also called arkhi. In the countryside we found nearly every family making it by simple distillation of milk boiled in an open bowl on the iron stove. A large tube, often no more than a plastic drum with the ends cut off, is placed upright in the bubbling milk, and the top end closed with a bowl of water, which is kept cool by constant ladling. The vapour rising from the steaming milk condenses against the bottom of the water bowl and dribbles back, to drip into a small jug suspended in the centre of the tube. Any type of milk can be used in this simple pot-still - variously we drank shimiin arkhi made from milk of camel, yak-cow, goat and mare (each has its own reputation: the best is said to be from cow�
�s milk, the strongest from mare’s milk. Camel and goat’s milk arkhi were described to me as ‘sweet and sliding down easily’) - and the liquor may be distilled a second time to increase its strength. Colourless and refreshing, shimiin arkhi seemed to be about as strong as sherry or another fortified wine. Two or three small bowls should be enough to mellow a normal drinker, and any more soon produces real intoxication. For country Mongols the drink is cheap, enticing and available in virtually unlimited amounts. Seventeen pints of milk will produce almost a tumbler full of arkhi. And when a guest has drunk his obligatory three bowls of sour mare’s milk, it is considered polite to top it off with a draught or two of shimiin arkhi. Of course, our singing companion the Drunk would happily quaff a pint at a session.

  His drunkenness drew no disapproval. The arats were very tolerant of such behaviour. They saw nothing wrong in intoxication and during that particular midday halt our visit was interrupted by a very obvious drunkard who threw open the door of the ger, tripped over the threshold and lurched into our circle. He was too inebriated to stand, and sat down clumsily on the ground, sweating heavily and peering at the newcomers, and breaking directly into the conversation. Everyone listened to him patiently and answered his questions, even when he repeated them three or four times. No one tried to silence him or to bundle him out. ‘He’s still drunk from the night before’, Doc told me quietly. ‘It seems that he and his friends have regular drinking sessions and spend most of their time intoxicated.’ Our own Drunk had found a kindred soul. When we left the ger and continued on our way, he was missing. He had been lured to another ger to join a second bout of arkhi drinking, and it was another half-hour before he came galloping up in our tracks, visibly the worse for wear. ‘He’s got no need to worry’, said the Doc, ‘a Mongol herdsman stays in the saddle drunk or sober, and his horse will not care. It’s quite normal for two Mongols to ride back ten miles to their own ger after an evening drinking session with their neighbours, clinging to one another for support and singing loudly while their horses trot along side by side, through the darkness, quite unconcerned.’

  Poor Doc was having a wretched time. He was determined to travel with us as our interpreter, and he was by far the best-qualified man for the job. But he was a city dweller by habit and preference, and an ungainly rider. So he was suffering more than anyone else from saddle sores, weariness and all the aches and discomforts of cross-country travel and camping rough. Worst of all, his chronic hay fever was getting really acute, a terrible affliction in such a pollen-rich landscape. All day long his eyes streamed with tears. He blew mournfully on a succession of huge handkerchiefs, and his nose had swollen until it was a bulbous raw blob. It was impossible not to pity and admire him at the same time. His enthusiasm never diminished and he was generous with his ample knowledge of Mongol lore. To try to protect his tortured nose he wore a white hospital face mask as he rode, and this, together with his grey felt stetson hat, made him look like some unsuccessful outlaw from the old West.

  By now our numbers had stabilised to the official travelling team - Gerel we would not see again until we returned to Ulaan Baatar, so that left Ariunbold, who had reappeared, presumably after giving an interview to the journalist from Tass, Bayar, Delger, Doc, Paul and myself, and the two guides for that sector - the Drunk and the Quiet Man. Once again, Ariunbold seemed unable to mix in with the rest of the team and kept off to one side. This, if anything, was relief, as the rest of us got on with the humdrum tasks of saddling horses, making camp, cooking food and so forth. Our five gift horses were looking very lacklustre. We seldom rode them or even used them as pack-animals in case we overtaxed them. ‘Make sure that we always ride the herdsmens’ horses,’ Ariunbold ordered cynically. ‘If their horses get sick, that is not our problem.’ So Delger drove our sorry little gang of gift horses along in a sluggish group, shouting and whistling and prodding them with a long slender goad he had cut from a forest branch. I was beginning to doubt whether, even unridden, the animals would last the distance. They were aged and sickly, and the worst of them were really so awful that it was difficult to believe that they would stand the pace.

  The land was steadily rising as we penetrated deeper into the Hangay massif, the peaks around us reaching as high as 9000 feet. We spent the night beside another lake, this time camped on the broad sweep of a magnificent grassy slope that looked southward over the water where flocks of wild ducks were feeding. They belonged to the large rust-brown and white species which the Mongols call ‘lama ducks’ from their colour, and which they refuse to hunt, saying it would bring bad luck to kill them. At the previous somon centre we had been given another sacrificial sheep, and still had half the carcass with us, dripping blood from its gunny sack on the pack-pony. Now we cooked it in the usual boiling pot. We had no firewood for the portable stove so the Drunk leaped into the saddle and galloped off to a distant ger, returning with a sack of firewood across his saddle-bow. He had found new friends, and soon afterwards disappeared to them for yet another arkhi session. Bayar, whose cheerfulness and field-craft were proving more and more an asset, had taken over the role of cook. Ariunbold had gone to lie down in the tent, leaving the rest of us to summon him when the meal was ready.

  Paul and I were nursing hopes of a new and succulent dish. With Doc we had been amusing ourselves by gathering the wild mushrooms which we had seen during the afternoon’s ride. It was typical of Mongolia’s burst of summer fertility that the crop of mushrooms was more bountiful than any I had seen in another country. Ordinary field mushrooms sprouted by the hundreds in untouched rings, and the individual specimens could be enormous, sometimes 15 inches in diameter. The puffball mushrooms were solid meaty globes, and there was a variety of small bright red mushroom that looked as if it lacked only a garden gnome. Our Mongol colleagues ignored all of them and were positively shocked when I plucked and nibbled one raw. But Doc pointed out which varieties were edible, and we had collected 11 or 12 pounds of prime mushrooms and waited for Bayar to do them justice. We should have known better. When the water was boiling, he just tossed them in to stew. Our Mongol guides even went so far as to avoid eating them, fishing them out of the bowl with expressions of distaste. I was reminded of Prjevalski’s remark that when his Mongol guides saw him eating roast duck, they were very nearly sick.

  Sitting quietly in the battered tent after supper that evening, I wondered at how little Rubruck or Carpini would have found that was different from their day. Bayar was in one corner, noisily demolishing the fat tail of the sheep. He would thrust a large portion of the tail into his mouth and carve off a gobbet with his knife, narrowly avoiding nicking his snub nose. Then he would chew away with gusto, glancing over at us with twinkling eyes, the fat sliding down his chin and the sounds of small bones crunching between his strong teeth. Doc lay in a semi-coma, having swallowed so many anti-histamine tablets that he was sound asleep and could not be roused. Ariunbold was polishing his personal silver bowl; Delger mending harness; the Quiet Man was just sitting quietly watching. Looking up as the moon rose in a cloudless sky, there were so many holes in the threadbare canvas of the old tent - the fancy blue Japanese version had long ago been abandoned - it seemed that there were twice as many stars in the sky as usual.

  The wild Hangay scenery hid an occasional surprise. Next morning I deliberately lagged behind to do some filming with the lightweight film camera I carried in my saddle-bag, and let the main group ride ahead around the soggy margin of the lake. Spurring to catch up, I rode my horse in their wake through a shallow. But the bog was not as substantial as I or the horse thought, and without a guide to warn me I galloped straight into a giant mud hole. The horse stepped as if on air, flailed with its legs a half-second, then tilted forward, and the next moment was submerged at a 45 degree angle, its head buried past its ears in gluey mud. I tugged the poor creature out before it suffocated and rode on with a plimsoll line of slime until I could clean up the unlucky animal in a stream. I did not need to hurry. My colleagues had alr
eady found another little group of gers and were having a late breakfast. Here, at last, Mongol cuisine had a happy surprise. In addition to the usual three bowls of sour ayrag, the deadly shimiin arkhi and bone-hard lumps of dried curd, we were offered plates heaped with clotted cream. Paul and I fell upon the treat in ecstasy, using our fingers to scoop up great dripping lumps. Bayar probably thought we were as uncouth as he had appeared to us eating his sheeptail fat.

  The surge of nature’s fruitfulness during the brief Mongolian summer had given me a fresh way of looking at why the Mongols had failed to sustain the heartland of the empire that Genghis Khan founded. Scholars have long held that the collapse of the great empires which the Central Asian nomads imposed on the settled lands of their perimeter was caused in part by the weakening of their warrior spirit. It was said that when the nomads lost touch with their harsh home base in the steppes, they became softened by the easier life in the settled lands and soon were ripe to be overthrown and ejected. By extension, it has also been mooted that if the Mongols or any other nomad society had maintained their rigorous way of life, they would have survived in power far longer. But now, seeing the vital importance of the brief summer to nomad life in the steppe, it became obvious that the Mongols had no choice. If the Mongol, or any other nomad people, mustered and sent out an army beyond its territory in summer - the normal time for campaigning - they stripped their homeland of the essential workforce at the most vital season of the year. The steppe nomads needed to use the brief summer to raise the young foals and calves, gather the milk products, store food and prepare for the long winter months. If the menfolk were away fighting a war at this time, the work was not done adequately and, in time, the nomads would find it difficult to return to their homeland and survive the winter. In short, the Mongol campaign of expansion under Genghis Khan was a one-way commitment. By the time they had successfully conquered the surrounding territories, it was very difficult for them to return home because their nomad economy had been interrupted. Sustaining life in the harsh mid-continent did not, in effect, allow time for making war.