In Search of Genghis Khan

by Tim Severin

  His strategy was down-to-earth. Here was no empty Party theorist. His somon, he explained, could never be anything but an agricultural zone. It spanned all four types of Mongolian terrain - Gobi, valley, steppe and mountain - but it had no mineral wealth, and the climate placed a strict limit on the numbers of cattle it could sustain. In winter the temperature fell to minus 40 degrees, but luckily the snow was seldom more than 16 inches thick. If it was deeper, then the cattle could not reach the pasture underneath and there were severe cattle losses. The most the arats could hope for would be a few small factories to process their own foodstuffs, but our friend did not want to see them give up their herding and move away to Ulaan Baatar. Their lives, he felt, were much richer and freer in the countryside. The single greatest improvement he would wish them was somehow to bring electricity to the ordinary herdsmen so they could watch television and begin to understand the outside world. Already a few of the wealthier arats had bought Japanese portable generators, and in the south of the somon, in the Gobi region, there were pioneer experiments with small windmill generators for individual gers. It seemed a modest enough ambition.

  The Chief Councillor made us welcome that evening in the official guesthouse, a government ger pitched in the centre of the little town. There we had the luxury of beds, clean towels and a table. Before toasting the future of Mongolia in arkhi, he dipped the tip of the third finger of his right hand into the drink three times. Once he flicked a small drop of the alcohol away in the air, once towards the hearth, and once to the ground. It was a ritual gesture we had seen many times, the customary offering to the spirits of sky, fire and earth. But he explained two extra details: the third finger was employed because it was the cleanest and least-used finger on the hand; and folklore said it was a test for poison in the cup. The poison would burn the fingertip.

  The take-off of the ‘Bee’ was delayed next morning while we waited for a motorcycle dispatch rider to bring the late results from the outlying polling stations. ‘How did you get on in the election?’ I asked our host as he waited with us in the shadow of the venerable biplane. Above our heads the Mongol pilot was casually leaning out of the cockpit window, looking like a prosperous market gardener in his greenhouse. ‘I was elected’, he replied. ‘In this somon the Party polled eighty-five per cent of the vote.’

  12 - The Sage

  Before Carpini and Rubruck ever set foot in Central Asia, another priest had already made the long and uncomfortable journey across Mongolia. But he came from the opposite direction - from the east.

  Ch’ang Ch’un, Taoist Master of the ‘Golden Lotus’ school, was the living embodiment of that famous stereotype: the venerable oriental sage. His wisdom was so renowned that in 1219 he received an invitation from Genghis Khan requesting that he come to Mongolia. Genghis Khan wrote to say that he had heard of Ch’ang Ch’un’s sanctity and erudition, and wished to consult the learned master on some unspecified but very important subject. To escort the Taoist scholar across the Gobi Desert he had dispatched an adjutant and a special guard of twenty men, and issued a gold paiza so that all men would treat the Taoist Master as if he were the emperor himself. Ch’ang Ch’un was then 71 years old and had retired to a life of quiet contemplation at a retreat in the mountains of Shantung province. Indeed he had been considered a sage for so long that Sun Hsi, the Taoist monk who published Ch’ang Ch’un’s story, was astonished to learn that the old man was still alive. As Sun Hsi put it in his introduction, he had thought that Ch’ang Ch’un must have ‘long ago soared up to heaven, and after his transformation lived in the company of the clouds in the high spheres of the universe.’ When the admirer actually met the Master, he was even more effusive. When Ch’ang Ch’un sat, he said, ‘his position was immovable, like a dead body. When he stood upright he resembled a tree. His movements were like the thunder, and he walked like the wind ... There was no book he had not read.’ (Medieval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources, E. Bretschneider, London 1988.)

  Ch’ang Ch’un hesitated. He had already turned down similar invitations to visit the court of the Sung, the native Chinese dynasty still ruling south China from Hangchow. With good reason he feared that the 700-mile journey to Mongolia would be too much of an ordeal, and then there was the awkward matter of Genghis Khan’s young women. The same caravan that he was to join was bringing back several young Chinese women destined for Genghis Khan’s royal harem, and Ch’ang Ch’un felt it was not fitting that he should travel in the company of these girls. He sent back a prevaricating reply. But Genghis Khan was not a man to be put off. His secretariat firmly repeated the summons, and presumably the girls went by another caravan, because in February 1221 Ch’ang Ch’un set out on the ‘Journey of Ten Thousand Li’ as his amanuensis and disciple Li Chih-ch’ang called it, and thereby provided us with a unique eyewitness account of what Central Asia was like immediately following the most traumatic phase of the Mongol conquests - the complete overthrow and subjection of the empire of Khwarazm, the most splendid Islamic power in Central Asia, whose lands included all the great oasis cities of Transoxiana as well as what would now be Turkmenistan, Kirghizia, Uzbekistan in the Soviet Union, and part of northern Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.

  Travelling sometimes by cart, sometimes on horseback, the little group of Chinamen - Ch’ang Ch’un, his nineteen disciples, and their Mongol escort - plodded off first across the Inner Gobi, where they passed across a great battlefield strewn with human bones. It was the spot where Genghis Khan had annihilated the hapless Chinese army sent to block his first thrust into China in 1211. Ice was still covering the lakes when they reached the clustered black carts and white tents of the camp of Temuge-otchigin, Genghis Khan’s youngest brother. There on the great grassland they witnessed a Mongol wedding where the noblemen rode in with their gifts of mare’s milk, and their ladies wore pointed headdresses so tall that they had to walk backwards, stooping, as they entered the -doors of their felt tents. There, too, they heard the unwelcome news that Genghis Khan was far in the west campaigning against the Khwarazm Shah Muhammad II. It meant that they would have to travel on for perhaps another 3000 miles to reach the ‘Universal Ruler.’

  Leaving Temuge-otchigin’s camp the Mongol guides took their charges along virtually the same route that Paul and I were to travel seven centuries later, following the courses of the Kerulen and the upper Orhon rivers and wending their way through the Hangay mountains. They travelled at the same time of year and their reactions were much the same. They found the weather bitterly cold, and commented on the wild onions, the grave mounds and the traces of sacrifices to the spirits, presumably obos, which they came across in the high passes. The grandeur of the Hangay mountains made a very powerful impression on them:

  In the valleys splendid pine trees were growing, more than a hundred feet in height. The mountains stretched to the west in a continuous chain, all covered with tall pine trees. We were five or six days travelling in these mountains, the road winding round the peaks. It was magnificent scenery, the slopes of the rocks covered with noble forests, with the river gliding through the depths below. On level places pines and birches were growing together. Then we ascended a high mountain which resembled a large rainbow, overlooking an abyss of several thousand feet deep. It was dreadful to look down to the lake in the depth.

  Their path now veered south to cross the Altai mountains, where they saw evidence of an army’s passing: an astonishing supply road cut through these desolate mountains by Genghis Khan’s engineers. The army had gone through two years previously, accompanied by 10,000 Chinese artificers and engineers equipped with all their machines of siege warfare. The excruciating labour needed to haul all their equipment through the mountains can be imagined from the fact that the hundred Mongol riders escorting Ch’ang Ch’un and his disciples had to heave their carts up the stony paths using ropes attached to their horses, and then fasten drags on the wheel to prevent them running away downhill. Worse was to come: the little caravan crossed a vast s
tony plain littered with black rocks which brought them to the edge of the Great Sandy Desert. There, said Li Chih-ch’ang, neither man nor beast could travel in the heat of the day, for the sun killed all living creatures. So they began the march in the evening, after their Mongol guides had rubbed blood on the horses’ heads to keep away the desert goblins which they believed would seize them in the dark, and travelled all through the night in order to reach the first oasis town by noon. The largest sand-dunes, said the Chinaman, ‘seemed to swim like big ships in the midst of waves’, and the exhausted bullocks could go no further. They were abandoned by the roadside, and henceforth horses, six at a time, pulled each cart.

  On the frontier of what had once been the kingdom of the Khwarazm Shah they again saw evidence of Mongol military efficiency. Coming to the Sairam Lake they found forty-eight bridges had been constructed to carry the siege train through a land of snow-peaked mountains and deep ravines. Each bridge was wide enough so that two carts could pass side by side loaded with the machines for hurling rocks and giant arrows, flame-throwers, and cannon designed to fire stone cannonballs which Genghis Khan unleashed on the subjects of the Shah.

  The cities of Transoxiana had never expected to face anything like this onslaught of advanced oriental war technology. Worse, their overlord made the fatal mistake of trusting to their fortifications. The vainglorious Sultan Muhammad II, Shah of Khwarazm, liked to compare himself to Alexander the Great, even adding the name ‘Iskander’ to his coinage, and he commanded an army three times the size of the Mongol invasion force. But he took no counteroffensive action and scattered his forces disastrously. His 300,000 troops, mostly mercenaries from Turkish-speaking tribes, had been distributed among the great cities - Urgendj, Merv, Bukhara, Samarkand, Balkh - and they closed the gates and waited for the Mongols to beat in vain against their fortifications. Almost contemptuously, Genghis Khan split his army into four sections, and selected a target for each. The first objective was the frontier city of Otrar, which he selected for particular vengeance. In 1218 the governor of Otrar, a man called Inalchuq, had arrested a caravan of 450 men and 500 camels arriving out of Mongolia. Inalchuq may have been no more than an official brigand or, as he later claimed to his overlord Muhammad II, he genuinely suspected that the caravan included Mongol spies on reconnaissance for Genghis Khan. In any event he decided that all the men on the caravan should be killed, including one who was an official Mongol ambassador, and then the caravan’s valuables were sold on the open market. Muhammad Shah did not stop him.

  If this was not enough to bring down Genghis Khan’s wrath, Muhammad Shah then flouted the diplomatic status of the three-man delegation which Genghis Khan promptly sent from Mongolia to protest about the Otrar outrage. One delegate was beheaded, and the other two men were sent back to Mongolia with their beards shaved off, an open insult.

  After such provocation, the citizens of Otrar knew they could expect little mercy from the Mongols and put up a despairing resistance. The Mongols, initially commanded by two of Genghis’s sons, Chagatai and Ögodei, made no effort to disabuse them of their eventual fate. When part of the garrison left the city to plead for clemency, the Mongols lined them up and executed them on the spot. Otrar was to hold out for five months, and the citadel under the personal command of the doomed governor managed to resist for a full month after the main town had gone down. But in the end Inalchuq was taken alive as Genghis Khan had ordered and, according to the Muslim historian Nasawi, the avaricious ex-governor was put death by molten silver being poured into his eyes and ears.

  Genghis Khan, meanwhile, had switched his lethal attention to the far bigger and richer target of Samarkand. It was the largest and most splendid city of the entire region, and its population must have been close to half a million. Muhammad II had recently made it his capital, and ordered that a new wall should be built to protect its lush oasis. To complete such a grandiose scheme, the wall would have needed to be 50 miles long. But although the taxes were raised to pay for it, nothing had been done by the time the Mongol army arrived, and the invaders quickly showed that they had fine-tuned the techniques of siege warfare.

  For a start, the citizens of Samarkand were duped and dispirited by thinking that the city had been surrounded by enormous numbers of the enemy. Genghis Khan had brought along all his prisoners to increase the apparent size of his forces, and made them set up camp in military formations as if they were part of the main army. He also called in his reserves, placed a blocking force to fend off any rescue attempts sent by Muhammad Shah, who had cravenly abandoned his capital, and made a personal reconnaissance of the defences. The wretched prisoners were then used as human shields in a direct assault, pushed ahead of the Mongols to soak up arrow fire and projectiles hurled from the walls. The Chinese-directed cannon bombardment must have sapped the faith of the defence in their city walls because on the third day of the siege the greater part of Samarkand’s garrison troops launched a mass sortie. Genghis Khan promptly employed the classic Mongol technique of withdraw-and-ambush. The Mongol cavalry fell back, luring on the Turkish garrison troops until they were clear of the city walls and had entered the hollow square of the Mongol killing formation. Then the Mongol cavalry wheeled their horses and began the slaughter. Half the garrison, about 50,000 men, lost their lives. Forty-eight hours later the city surrendered, leaving only a couple of thousand diehards to shut themselves in the citadel and continue their defiance. Genghis Khan’s officers barely paused to accept the surrender of the main garrison. They closed on the citadel and quickly overran it. A thousand defenders broke through the Mongol noose and escaped, but the rest were dead. From start to finish the siege of Samarkand had taken Genghis Khan’s war machine just five days.

  It took longer to organise the pillage. Genghis Khan loathed turncoats, so the 30,000 or so Turkish mercenary troops who had volunteered to desert the Shah were lined up and killed in batches. Then the entire civilian population of Samarkand was moved outside the city walls so that the city could be looted more efficiently. The population was graded like cattle at market. Craftsmen, artisans and those with technical skills were deported to Mongolia to work there. Men of military age were assigned to the ‘human shield’. The old and infirm were left to fend for themselves. When Ch’ang Ch’un reached Samarkand a year later, only a quarter of the population had seen fit to reoccupy their former homes; Samarkand had had its heart torn out. (1)

  The rapid fall of Samarkand exposed to Genghis Khan just how fragile was Muhammad Shah’s grip on his sprawling realm. The Mongol Great Khan realised that the Khwarazm Shandom was not just ripe for plunder, but much of it could be incorporated into a Mongol empire. So he sent his sons rampaging up and down the land in command of Mongol field armies to impress the natives with the fact that they were now subject to Genghis Khan and his family. All cities were fair targets for pillage, but if circumstances allowed they were to be preserved as future Mongol possessions. As the months passed, a pattern of Mongol behaviour began to emerge. The luckiest cities and towns were those where a Mongol flying column simply did not have the time to stop for more than a day or so. If food and supplies were produced immediately, such places got away with no more than a quick trawl of the best booty. Less fortunate were those places which, as the Mongols approached in less of a hurry, surrendered as soon as a Mongol envoy demanded their submission. In such cases, as at Samarkand, the population was ordered to leave so that the plundering could be done undisturbed. This might take a week or more and then the people went back to their houses and continued their lives under a Mongol-appointed governor, impoverished but thankful to be alive. However, if a city rejected a Mongol demand for capitulation, it was attacked without compunction. Most of the garrison could expect to be killed, and a brutal sack followed. The standard selection of useful prisoners was sent to Mongolia, and the rest enslaved or left to rebuild their lives in what was left of their homes.

  The most savage treatment of all was the result of three conditions: no c
ity could expect a shred of mercy if its citizens dared to kill the Mongol envoy sent to demand its surrender, if it rebelled after initial submission, or, worst of all, if a member of Genghis Khan’s immediate family was killed during the fighting. The great Afghan city of Herat was treated quite leniently when its governor submitted in advance to Genghis Khan early in his campaign of 1220. Some of the garrison had threatened to put up a fight and were executed, but the majority of the citizenry was left undisturbed. Six months later, however, Herat unwisely rebelled after a local Mongol force suffered a temporary defeat. The punishment the Mongol general meted out was calamitous. As soon as he had retaken the city, he gave instructions that every single one of its citizens should be beheaded. It took seven days of butchery to lop off all the heads of everyone who could be found. The Mongol army then rode off, and a miserable handful of Herat’s survivors crept out of the ruins to bury their dead. They had been tricked. The Mongols sent back a punishment brigade which suddenly swooped in, herded together the survivors, and hacked off their heads as well.