Skip to main content

Full text of "Conqueror Of The World"

See other formats 


fin 'If/Inr, ^*-v7 V^k-W 1 'H, ' *>. "> ''t "- ' -fc, r 'ift*>^:' f ^/&/W\\'iyX'/,.~< i *~* W 

^%g, I tefe-XVSN.-*- ^^;^Kfa 

^sS?/ / ) ""fevA'-^/s? :>/&. '-li vMf&H/ffir'?;' 







Wfe/, - - ^''^. :f ?m,^5% '^'~tt''&w#tj\\$zffi f ti^ %,r'''<> ' ''''"* 

Nsx. ^ 
-^^j^^^^j^fe. ^^|^X^ ^iH^.. 



#<$ 



%,'?f^ ! " w%!r ; W:^;^-v:.v::, ^r-T^^'^ 




;>; 



k -boJX^M^ 



^ 



tf^^ 



'tcJlfWtl 



^A 



' 



CARTE DE LA 

MONGOLIE 




ia(Enq 



%j>fl,w 



'j^. 




EcKelIe=l:15.000.000 

100 50 100 200 300 400 500 
KILOMETRES 



*. 



'^ 



'-.,. ^%5^: ; .. ' ^/S'\^ 

^%%^;^;K^ 

%^%^%i^%^% i,,^; 

^N -%i^te 

>/J^>-w ''^^|^r 



^Ts'w^'Chanit- 



3%"S 



^fi^'% 



%^ 



*/)H^ 



;^ 

Ife 



%^ 



^w%S^ 




<&$0&!& 



'W^#fJ,W\tf%l^^ 



r $rai\v%^ 



951.7 G88c 

Grousset 

Conqueror of the world 



67-07558 



MAIN 




JAftLl 1968 



CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 



yft 1 - 

MSI MAY 2 5 " 197,5 
JUL-I51OT 



MAI 



JUL 8 1985 



1986 



JAN 2 W-- 



APR 



Les grands pays muets longuement s'etendront A. de Vigny 



Afl 



AA 
AAA 



RENE GROUSSET 



CONQUEROR 
OF THE WORLD 



Translated from the French by Marian McKellar and Denis Sinor 
With Preface Notes and Bibliography by Denis Sinor 



THE ORION PRESS NEW YORK 1966 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

THIS WORK WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED UNDER THE TITLE 

Le conquer ant du monde, 1944 BY EDITIONS ALBIN MICHEL 

TRANSLATION 1966 BY GROSSMAN PUBLISHERS, INC. 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUE CARD NUMBER: 66-26935 

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



To the memory of 
ANATOLE LEWITZKY, 

attache at the Musee de I'Homme 
-who died for France 
at Mont Valerien 
23 February 1942, 

this book, which owes so much to 
his scholarship and friendship, is 
dedicated. 

R.G. 



A 

AA 



Contents 



Introduction xi 

PART ONE A THE ANCESTORS 

1 The Sons of the Grey Wolf and the Tawny Doe 3 

2 The Heavenly Visitor 7 

3 The Gest of Bodonchar g 

4 Misery and Grandeur of the Nomads 12 

5 Rude Chieftain at the Court of the King of Gold 15 

6 Unquenchable Hatreds: The Death Throes of Ambaqay 18 

7 The Mongol Hercules 21 

PART TWO A CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

1 Yesugei the Brave and Pr ester John 27 

2 Yesugei's Conquest of the Lady Ho'elun 33 

3 Childhood Days of Chingis-khan 36 > 
y 4 Orphans Driven from the Clan 40 

. 5 The Young Chingis-khan Kills His Brother 45 

6 Chingis-khan Pilloried 48 

7 Chingis-khan Escapes JJ 

, 8 The Theft of the Horses 55 

^ 9 Chingis-khan's Marriage 59 

10 The Coat of Black Sables 61 



viii Contents 

IT The Abduction of the Beautiful Borte 64 

12 Chingis-khan Wins Back the Beautiful Borte 68 

13 Convoy in the Night and the Separation of the 

Hordes 75 

14 Chingis-khan, King of the Mongols 79 

15 Prisoners Thrown into Boiling Caldrons 83 

1 6 The Brawl after the Banquet 86 

17 Chingis-khan in the Service of the King of Gold 89 

1 8 Chingis-khan Rids Himself of the Mongol Princes 92 

19 Surprise Assaults in the Mountains 95 

20 Chingis-khan' s Magnanimity 98 

21 The Anti-Caesar Jamuqa and the Battle in the Storm 100 

22 Chingis-khan Wounded; The Devotion of Jelme 103 

23 "The Arrow that Wounded Your Horse, It was I Who 

Shot It!" 106 

24 "If You had Delivered Up Your Master to Me, I Would 

Have Put You to Death." 108 

25 The Extermination of the Tatars no 

26 The Hearts of the Two Tatar Sisters 113 

27 "Our Daughters Are Ladies; Theirs, Serving Women" 

28 Nomads between Sworn Allegiance and Treason 118 

29 The Two Herdsmen Save Chingis-khan 121 

30 The Affray by the Red Willows 123 

31 The Tears of Chingis-khan 126 

32 "We Shall Gather up the Mongols Like Dung-Pats" 128 

33 The Complaint of Chingis-khan 130 

34 The Bitter Water of the Baljuna 134 

35 Night March and Surprise Attack 137 

36 The Fate of the Kereit Princesses 141 

37 "You Have Trampled Underfoot the Head of this 

Dead Man!" 143 

38 "These Evil-smelling Mongols" 145 



Contents ix 

39 En Route for the Khangay Mountains 148 

40 The Dogs of Chingis-khan Eat Human Flesh 152 

41 The Death of Tayang 155 

42 The Advocacy of the Fair Qulan 157 

43 "These Merkits, I Hate Them!" 159 

44 A Note of High Tragedy: Chingis-khan and Jamuqa 162 

45 The "May Field" of 1206 
Proclamation of the Mongol Empire 
Promotions and Citations 1 66 

46 The Old Guard iji 

47 In the Siberian Tayga 173 

48 Priesthood Versus Empire: The Ambitions of the Grand 

Shaman ij6 

49 Chingis-khan Breaks the Back of the Grand Soothsayer 179 

50 On the Approaches to China 182 

51 Vengeance for Ancient Injuries: The War of Chingis-khan 

against the King of Gold 185 

52 The Storming of the Great Wall and the Descent 

into the Great Plain 189 

53 The Mongols Take Peking 194 

54 Chingis-khan 's Meeting with the Chinese Man of 

Letters 198 

55 On the Silk Road: The Uyghurs, Chingis-khan' s Mentors 

in Civilization 200 

56 The Ride of Jebe the Arrow from Mongolia to the 

Pamirs 204 

57 The Massacre of the Caravan 208 

58 Before the Great War: Chingis-khan 's Testament 212 

59 In Moslem Country 216 

60 The Wind of Anger and the Taking of Bukhara 220 

6 1 Toward Samarkand 224 

62 At Urgenj: Attack Through a Town in Flames 227 



x Contents 

63 Manhunt: On the Track of the Sultan 230 

64 The Wind of Anger Blows over Khorassan 234 

65 Storm over Afghanistan 240 

66 From the Destruction of Towns to the Revelation of Urban 

Civ ilization 2 44 

67 Chingis-khan and the Problem of Death: The Summoning 

of the Alchemist 248 

68 To Join Chingis-khan: Across Mongolia in 1221 250 

69 Conversations of Chingis-khan with the Chinese Sage 254 

70 Surfeited with Conquest, the Great Army Returns to Its 

Native Land 261 

71 Persia, the Caucasus and Russia: The Fantastic Ride of 

Jebe the Arrow and Subotei the Bold 264 

72 The Conqueror's Years of Repose 270 

73 Return to China 274 

74 "If It Means My Death I Will Exterminate Them!" 2 78 

75 "My Children, the End Is Near for Me . . " 283 

76 "As a Falcon Soars Circling in the Heavens . . ." 288 

77 Up There, Somewhere in the Forest ... 291 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The front and back endpapers are maps prepared in France 
for Rene Grousset They show the extent of the conquests 
of Chingis-khan. 



Introduction 



The aims of this introduction are as follows: First, I should like to 
introduce Rene Grousset, as many of those who will pursue this book 
and will want to read others written by him, may wish to know some- 
thing about this exceptional historian. Second, I will try to assign a 
place to this biography of Chingis-khan in the whole oeuvre of Grousset. 
Last, I will elaborate on the principles that guided us in preparing the 
English edition of this work. 

Rene Grousset (1885-1952) was a Frenchman. No short sentence could 
characterize him any better, for this one gives the essence of his whole 
being. He was French by birth, by education, by civilization, by convic- 
tion. He was French when in 1915, leading his soldiers to the attack he 
was grievously wounded. He was French in his lucidity, the elegance of 
his style, his deeply felt Christianity, which was Catholic, i.e. universal, 
embracing the whole of humanity. Here lies the solution to the apparent 
puzzle of a man, deeply embedded in the civilization of his own country, 
yet who spent his life trying to understand other civilizations spent his 
life in the service of international understanding in the narrowest sense 
of this word. At a time when it was not as fashionable as it is now, in all 
his works he proclaimed the inherent values of civilizations that differ 
from our own. 1 His first work, a three-volume history of Asia written 
before the First World War and published in 1922, was a pioneer work 

1 Much interesting and often moving information about Grousset, including a 
bibliography, can be found in No. 88-89, Septembre-Octobre 1953 of France-Asie. 
Revue mensuelle de culture et de synthese franco-asiatique, published in Saigon. 



xii Introduction 

in more than one respect, Grousset brought equal understanding to any 
aspect of any of the non-Western civilizations, to the history of the Far 
East (1929), or, more specially, to the history of China (1942), to 
Indian philosophy (1931), to Buddhism (1929), and even to the history 
of Armenia (1948). Grousset's monumental Histoire des croisades et du 
Royaume Franc de Jerusalem, (I-III, 1934-36), and his Uempire du 
Levant, Histoire de la question d' Orient, (2nd ed, 1949), both packed 
with facts, show an unsurpassed mastery of the complicated interaction 
of various civilizations. 

Grousset's approach was not limited to one discipline, his interest was 
not focused on one aspect rather than another of any civilization. His 
integration of art history in the greater stream of history is, in itself, an 
achievement of great importance. 

Grousset had extraordinary gifts alike of analysis and synthesis. In a 
mass of facts he could pick out those that were essential and group them 
in a synthesis that was basically new. He was no compiler in the con- 
ventional meaning of this word. For him "vulgarization" popularizing 
shall we say? did not consist in degrading the results of historical re- 
search to the lowest common intellectual denominator of the reading 
public. For him, it meant the art of presenting the dry facts in a way 
that even the most fastidious reader, even the expert should find therein 
food for thought. Grousset differs vastly from most other scholars who 
attempted great historical syntheses by his almost unbelievable command 
of facts. To be sure, as all of us, he made mistakes, but as a rule, his 
facts were accurate. One may disagree with his interpretation but not 
with the basis on which it rests, Grousset's capacity for work was pro- 
digious but, beyond that, he had a very unusual method of securing 
accurate information: he interrogated his colleagues. In this he was well 
served by the circumstances. It is difficult to recall the splendor that was 
Parisian orientalism in the interwar years. To mention only those who 
are dead now, there were Maspero, Granet, Sylvain Levy, Massignon, 
Masson-Oursel, Przyluski, Hackin and so many others in addition to 
the towering, almost superhuman figure of Paul Pelliot. Collaboration 
between him and Grousset had been very close. There was nothing offi- 
cial about it and the pattern was fairly simple: Grousset asked the ques- 
tions and Pelliot answered them, as he always answered all the questions 
asked him. But Grousset was more assiduous, he asked them more often, 



Introduction xiii 

with greater perspicacity, and he diligently noted down the answers in 
a tiny note-book with a microscopic hand. This note-book all knew it. 
There was no way of avoiding it. At any meeting, any party, any lecture 
Grousset extracted it from his pocket. Even the younger generation, like 
myself, could not escape. I will never forget Grousset in his black jacket 
which he wore with striped trousers appearing, as he invariably did, at 
all the parties, cocktails and other social occasions, smiling, saying kind 
words to everyone and then steering straight to some specialist, with a 
direct, precise question. The answer was immediately noted down and 
Grousset sailed away in search of other facts. ... He never denied 
his indebtedness to others. In Grousset's L } empire mongol, published in 
1941 during the German occupation of France there are scores of refer- 
ences to the opinions of a mysterious G.B. These were those of Willi 
Baruch, then in hiding, whom Grousset, for very good reasons, did not 
wish to name. But he just could not bring himself to omit credit where 
credit was due. 

It seems to have been Grousset's method first to give a general birds- 
eye view of the history of an area and leave the examination of limited 
subjects for later. I have mentioned how he started on his career with a 
history of Asia. L' empire des steppes is not only more mature and better 
documented, but also a work more limited in scope. But once it had 
been written, Grousset embarked on a number of monographs designed 
to give more detailed treatment to some of the subjects covered therein. 
Thus in 1941 he published his U empire mongol, I ere phase, and in 1944, 
Le conquerant du monde, Vie de Gengis-Khan, the English translation 
of which is here presented. 

Grousset was fascinated by "great men." No hero-worshiper, he firmly 
believed as did many other eminent historians that individuals could 
have decisive influence on the course of history. His book Figures de 
proue (1949) is a product of this belief. It is thus not surprising that 
having traced the lines of the history of Central Eurasia in general and 
later of the Mongols in particular, Grousset should have concentrated 
on the life of the man who transformed a little-known, hungry, perse- 
cuted tribe of Central Asia into one of the greatest powers the world 
has ever known. 

As I have said, Grousset's Uempire des steppes is a work of excep- 



xiv Introduction 

tional scope and value. No other work encompasses as accurately as 
much of the multifaceted history of Central Eurasia. But for considera- 
tions of proportion, Mongol history could not receive full treatment 
within the framework of this book. Thus Grousset produced U empire 
mongol, lere phase, one of his weakest works, written in 1939 and 
printed in very difficult circumstances. Grousset was in Paris, occupied 
by the Germans; the book was printed in Toulouse, then still "free- 
zone," with correspondence between the two limited to open postcards 
of a special type. I vividly remember Grousset's anxiety with proofs not 
forthcoming and author's corrections impossible. These and other circum- 
stances may explain the fact that the remarques et references are rele- 
gated to pp. 395-559 with no reference to them in the text an arrange- 
ment which makes the reading of this book an agonizing experience. The 
footnotes in the body of the book together with remarques et references 
constitute about one third of the text. 2 In addition for his U empire 
mongol, Grousset had to rely on the old (1866) Russian translation 
made by Palladius of the Chinese version of the Secret History of the 
Mongols. Grousset knew no Russian, so the original Mongol text reached 
him through three translations. Grousset was very unsatisfied with this 
work. 

For his life of Chingis, Grousset could avail himself of welcome if 
not unexpected help from Erich Haenisch who, in 1941? published his 
complete translation of the Secret History. Herein lies one of the prin- 
cipal merits of Conqueror of the World. None of the previous biographers 
of Chingis and there are many had access to the Secret History which 
remains by far the most authoritative source on the subject. With his 
customary generosity, Grousset wrote an "historical introduction" to the 
French translation of Vladimirtsov's biography of Chingis, 3 published 
four years after Conqueror. This introduction, basically a rehash of an 
article tat actuel des etudes sur I'histoire gengiskhanide (I94i), 4 is 
worth reading as it sheds valuable light on Grousset's sources for his 
own biography and on his method of work. 

2 It should be noted that the "Appendice" pp. 359-390 was not written by Grousset, 
but by Eugene Cavaignac, editor of the Histoire du monde of which this work 
was vol. VIII.3- 

3 No. 39. (Numbers refer to Bibliography). 

4 Bulletin du Comite international des Sciences historiques. No. 46, Juin 1941, 
pp. 22-40. 



Introduction xv 

Conqueror of the World was written for a wide public by an expert in 
Mongol history: herein lies its uniqueness. Whatever the merits of a 
great popularizer, such as Harold Lamb, who did more than anyone 
else to make Chingis's name known to a wider public, his facts cannot 
be trusted. This is not the case of Grousset. Behind each of his sentences, 
however "literary," however evocative, lie years of hard work and a 
thorough knowledge of the smallest details of Mongol history. As his 
biography of Chingis-khan was intended for the non-expert, educated 
public, he did not include in the form of footnotes the whole apparatus 
that would have burdened the text. Even so, here and there, he could 
not resist introducing some remarks for the specialist. 

In his introduction to Vladimirtsov's biography of Chingis, Grousset 
laments the inaccessibility of Juwaini's work the most important Per- 
sian source of Mongol history. Grousset did not live to see the publica- 
tion of Boyle's excellent translation, 5 nor could he make use of the 
material included in the Cheng-wu ts'in-tcheng lu. B But it can be said 
that all this material, known to Grousset only in a fragmentary way, does 
not alter in any substantial way the picture we have of Chingis-khan 
a picture which, in all probability, is almost definitive. This is why, 
twenty years after its publication and for many years to come, Conqueror 
of the World is and will remain the standard work on Chingis. 

The task of the translators was far from easy. Perhaps as much as a 
quarter of the text consists of almost verbatim quotations from the 
sources: Secret History, Juvaini, etc. Instead of translating into English 
quotations embedded in Grousset's text, we rather adopted, where they 
existed, up-to-date, scholarly translations of the sources made directly 
into English by scholars such as Waley, Boyle and Krueger. Such quo- 
tations are always acknowledged but this does not mean that all the 
paraphrases of Grousset were always traced back to their sources. As 
Grousset did not give references, the tracing of all his quotations would 
have involved months of research, with very little benefit to the reader. 
For, as long as they do not lead to the distortion of historical facts, these 
quotations by Grousset are intended to evoke the times rather than to 
give accurate translations of the original. Thus, very often, we simply- 

5 No. 7. 

6 No. 9. 



xvi Introduction 

translated into English Grousset's French eliminating the quotation 
marks where it seemed to us that Grousset's text was more a paraphrase 
than a translation of the text as it is known to us today. In a great num- 
ber of instances Grousset's quotations from the Secret History of the 
Mongols were brought closer to the original, but no claim is made for 
strict philological accuracy. The quotation marks in Grousset's original 
text (with no reference given to the original of the passage quoted) are 
simply meant to make the reader aware of the fact that he is reading 
contemporary evidence and not Grousset's own words. 

All the proper names are given in a transcription that is in conformity 
with English usage. It must, however, be remembered that in a very 
great number of cases we simply do not know what the pronunciation of 
the original was. In spite of vigilant care some inconsistencies may have 
remained in the transcriptions. They are of no consequence, as often one 
is almost tempted to toss a coin to decide on which transcription to 
adopt. As a rule, a conventional anglicized transcription was used 
throughout. The transcription of Chinese names is based on the conven- 
tional Wade system, but many names familiar to the average reader were 
left in the customary form used in newspapers, etc. e.g., Peking. 

The problem was more difficult with names pertaining to the Islamic 
world, but, here again, the reader will have no difficulty in finding, on 
a good map, the place-names mentioned in our text. 

The transcription of the Mongol proper names and other words used 
in the text was anglicized so far as it could be done without completely 
distorting the originals. 

We adopted the form Chingis to transcribe the name of the hero of 
this book. There is a very simple reason for doing so: this is the correct 
form. It has been used quite consistently by experts, past and present, 
writing in English. In recent years, via Hollywood, the spelling Gengis, 
the traditional French form, gained some popularity. We feel it would 
be a pity if it ousted the correct English spelling adopted in this book. 

Many of Grousset's original footnotes have not only lost their useful- 
ness but have become misleading. In some of them he referred to prob- 
lems since solved, in others he quoted publications, or even papers read 
at the Societe asiatique, which since then have been respectively super- 
seded by more detailed works or published in articles. Thus we simply 
deleted those of the footnotes that have become obsolete, brought others 



Introduction xvii 

up to date and, finally, added a few new ones these being marked with 
square brackets. 

It must, however, be said most emphatically, that we have not re- 
written Grousset's work. We assume no responsibility for his views, or 
for the facts he quotes. They are his alone, and so are this work's great 
merits. 

A word of the division of labor between the two of us may not be 
superfluous. The translation as such was done entirely by Marian Mc- 
Kellar; my own contribution was limited to the re-reading of the trans- 
lation, transcription of proper names, etc. For any alterations in Grous- 
set's text such as referred to (changes in footnotes, comparison of Grous- 
set's translations with the originals, etc.) I am solely responsible. 

Extraordinary misfortune presided over the preparation of this Eng- 
lish version. We accepted the assignment when I was still in Cambridge. 
My move to Indiana University not only caused the disruption normally 
connected with a change of residence, but also entailed our having to 
rely on correspondence for the solving of many problems presented by 
the translation. A series of singularly inept typists spoiled two manu- 
scripts, and my very heavy administrative responsibilities prevented me 
from devoting as much time to this work as was needed for a speedy 
publication. All these difficulties were met with an exceptional under- 
standing and patience by the British publishers Oliver and Boyd. The 
reader will judge the quality of Marian McKellar's translation; I would 
simply say that it has been a very real pleasure to work with her. My 
wife Irene made a heroic effort to eradicate most of the mistakes made 
by the typists. Finally, thanks are due to those authors and publishers 
who allowed verbatim quotations to be made from the works on which 
they have the copyright. 

Denis Sinor 
Indiana University 
April 1965 



Part 



The Ancestors 



A 
AA 



1 



The Sons of the Grey Wolf 
and the Tawny Doe 



The setting of this wild story is country flaunting some of the most strik- 
ing contrasts in all Upper Asia. In the north, great mountain chains Al- 
tay, Sayan, Khangay, Yablonovy, Khingan rear their 6,000 feet and 
more: wooded massifs in essence extensions of the immense, impenetra- 
ble Siberian tayga, and still for the most part turning the same front of 
sturdy larches, "patient under the cold," to the flaying north wind, with 
pines on their southern faces. This subalpine flora climbs to 6,300, even 
to 7,300 feet. Below it, cedars carpet humid slopes and valley hollows. 
Below these again come poplars, birches, willows, that then push out 
down along the river courses into the heart of the steppe. 

There is pasture particularly lush pasture way up in the alpine 
zone, at the very foot of the mountains. Then as one moves south, in the 
face of the wind from the Gobi, subalpine meadowland gives way to a 
steppe-type vegetation mainly clematis, liliaceae, absinth, or couch 
grass (this last much appreciated by livestock) according to soil. In 
spring, the steppe stretches as far as the eye can see, one vast carpet of 
green, hymned by every Mongol bard. In June, it is a rash of many- 
colored flowers. Till, come mid- July, a furnace heat shrivels all this vege- 
tation, scorches the plains to a drear, unrelieved yellow. 

So the "smile of the steppe" is short-lived. "Already by October it is 
winter, with swirling snow. By November ice has the water courses pris- 
oner, in a grip not to be released till April." Through these months Mon- 
gol territory is an annex of Siberia. The second fortnight in July, torrid 
heat turns it into an annex of the Asiatic Saharas. "The steppe shimmers 



4 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

in the sun; noon each day breaks into frenzied storm." 1 Temperature 
oscillations are truly formidable: at Ulan Bator, the present Mongolian 
capital, the range is from a winter 45 Fahrenheit to -f 101 Fahren- 
heit in summer. As if that were not enough, mountain and steppe are 
swept regardless of season by winds that can almost lift a rider from his 
saddle. If the Mongols became the iron race of the Ancient World, it was 
because they were forged in the harshest of existences, hammered out by 
their brutal climate on the anvil of their land of sharp excesses, of ex- 
tremes adaptable to only those organisms tough and resilient enough not 
to succumb to them forthwith. Of such caliber were these forest-living 
hunters, these pastoral nomads hunters at the edge of the tayga, herds- 
men on the approaches of the steppe. You can see it to look at them 
men of "basic faces," flat with jutting cheekbones, weathered-complex- 
ioned and eagle-eyed, seemingly iron-chested, massive of torso, knotty of 
trunk, bowlegged from a life constantly in the saddle. The same goes for 
their little shaggy, stunted horses, rough-hewn and resistant as them- 
selves. Here were horse and rider custom-built to brave storms of snow 
or of burning sand, scale the alpine massifs of the north with their un- 
penetrable forests, endure in the south through the waterless wastes of 
the Gobi, pit their speed anywhere against the totem animals of steppe 
and forests, the maral and the wolf. 

The stag and the wolf! They figure in the hundreds, these two, in the 
curious animal-motif bronze plaques or statuettes that from the Minus- 
sinsk region, in the heart of Siberia, to the loop of the Ordos, on the 
Chinese frontier, from perhaps the seventh century B.C. right through 
into the Middle Ages, represent par excellence the art of the peoples of 
Upper Asia, The Mongol legend (like the Turkish, whence it doubtless 
hails) sees in them, indeed, the very ancestors of the race. Forth from 
the legendary cave of Erkene-qon (to be thought of as lying to the north, 
toward the forest-covered mountain chains, since there the Mongols orig- 
inally dwelt, only later moving down out on to the steppe) comes the 
Grey, or rather Grey-Blue Wolf (Bortechino). The great ancestral wolf 
meets his future consort, the Tawny Doe (Qo'a-maral), and the course 
they take together brings them into the heart of what is to be Mongol 
country. From the shores of Lake Baykal for the bard of the Chingis- 

1 Mongolian summer and winter rainfall are violently disproportionate: of the an- 
nual total, 75% falls in summer; the winter figure is 2% to 3%, or even less. 



The Sons of the Wolf and the Doe 5 

khan era, "the sea" (tenggis) they come to settle at the source of the 
river Onon, by the sacred mountain of Burqan-qaldun, by the massif that 
is known today as that of the Kentey. Holy places if ever there were any. 
From out of the thick pine forests at its base the Kentey rears to 9,300 
feet the gneiss and granite blocks of its flat summits and bare cupolas, 
home of the god of the blue sky Koko Tengri supreme deity of the 
Mongols. Here it was, indeed, that Chingis-khan was to come, at crucial 
moments in his career, climbing the sacred mountain to place himself un- 
der the protection of the heavenly powers. 

The Kentey does indeed seem to preside over the destinies of the 
Mongol country, whose two zones it demarcates: to the north of it, as we 
have seen, the forest zone, simply an extension of the tayga, and, south, 
the steppes, heralding the bare expanses of the Gobi. The Onon, by the 
headwaters of which the Wolf and the Doe called a halt, is a river of 
transition, running in its uppermost reaches through the tayga, then 
turning into a typical river of the dry steppe; moving sluggishly over clay 
and sand, now a trickle, now full to overflowing, each bank a border of 
rich pasture. Here in this predestined country the Grey Wolf and the 
Tawny Doe lay together. From their son Batachiqan was to spring the 
family of the Chingisids. 

The genealogy that follows, dry as any in the Bible, yields only names, 
though they are ones that gleam for us sometimes with strangely reflected 
light. There is Yeke-nidii, or "Big-Eye," a sort of Cyclops his story 
otherwise shrouded in obscurity. A few generations down we seem to 
mesh again with reality. Torgholjin the Rich (bay an) sires Dua the 
Blind (soqor), that is, the One-Eyed and Dobun the Sagacious 
(mergen) . It was the latter who was to perpetuate the line. One day when 
the two brothers had climbed Burqan-qaldun Mount Kentey they 
saw, over toward the Tonggelik, a small right-bank tributary of the Or- 
khon, marked on our maps as the Qara, "the black river," a band of 
people on the move. The One-Eyed told his younger brother: "Among 
these people, going before a black chariot, I see a very pretty young 
woman. If she is not already bound over to a husband, I shall ask for 
her, brother Dobun, for you." The young woman was called Alan-qo'a, 
"Alan the fair." She was of good stock, belonging to the forest-dwelling 
tribe of the Qori-Tumet who lived by fur-hunting on the western shore of 
Lake Baykal. Her father, Qorilartay-Mergen, had quarreled with his 



6 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

family, and had left his native forests, with their thickets full of martens, 
and sables, to seek his fortune, also, in the protective shade of Mount 
Burqan-qaldun. This request for his daughter must have come for him as 
a fine opportunity to get himself accepted by the people of this country. 
He gave his consent, and Dobun the Sagacious married Alan the Fair. 



A 
AA 



The Heavenly Visitor 



These traditions are interesting because they confirm that, like the great 
ancestral wolf, the early Mongols were in fact forest-dwelling hunters, 
or, at most, a people of the forest-pasture borderland. Significantly, the 
Mongol bard when he treats of mythical times speaks only of hunting, 
never of stock-raising. So it was with Dobun the Sagacious. After his 
marriage with Alan the Fair, one day when he was out hunting on Mount 
Toghochaq he came on a man of the Uriyangqay tribe who had just 
brought down a three-year-old stag. The man was roasting the entrails 
when Dobun called to him: "Friend," he cried bluntly, "give me some of 
that meat." So commanded, the man obeyed. Life for these savages must 
have been made up of such unwelcome encounters, in which the law of 
the steppe prescribed submission, especially when the newcomer ap- 
peared to have the advantage in both weapons and strength. Keeping for 
himself only breast and hide, the hunter relinquished to Dobun all the 
rest of his kill. 1 

Dobun set off with the bag he had got on such easy terms, and on the 
way met a poor man of the Baya'ut tribe, who was leading his small son 
by the hand. The poor creature could scarcely stand for hunger. "Give 
me some of your game," he beseeched Dobun, "and I will give you my 
son." The bargain seemed a good one. The Sagacious One handed the 
suppliant a haunch of venison, and took the child off to his yurt to be his 
servant. 

1 The first episode in this chapter bears a relation to the Mongol custom known as 
that of the shiralgha, according to which any man, meeting a hunter who had just 
made a kill, might claim a portion, provided the animal had not yet been carved. 
The law of the steppe thus took on the aspect of a gesture of comradeship in a com- 
munity of hunters. Cf. Paul Pelliot, Siroba-siratya, (T'oung-pao, XXXVII, 1944, 
pp. 102-113). 



8 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

It is not impossible that this young man, bought for a portion of veni- 
son, was the ancestor of Chingis-khan. Disturbing things were now in 
fact to happen in the house of Dobun. He had had two children by the 
Fair Alan when he died. Then, after his death, behold the Fair one bore 
three sons more. Seeing which, runs on the Mongol bard ingenuously, the 
two elder sons Dobun's began to murmur: "See, our mother, being 
without a husband, has yet brought into the world these three further 
sons. But in her yurt has been no other man than the Baya'ut. The three 
children might well be his. . . ." 

Such indeed was the very human explanation of these surprising facts. 
But there was a factor such hasty conclusions left out of account: the 
intervention of heaven of the Tengri, in person anxious, as we know 
today, to ensure the ascendancy of the hero. This the dowager Alan 
herself disclosed to her elder sons. One autumn day, she brought them 
together with their three younger brothers at a family festivity (she had 
roasted a yearling lamb). And she explained the mystery she had till 
then kept secret: "Each night, a resplendent being, the color of gold, 
came down through the air hole of my yurt, and he caressed my belly 
and a ray of light from him entered my womb. Then he would depart on 
a moonbeam or a ray of sunlight. He was like a yellow dog. Let us have 
an end, then, my two firstborn, to ill-judged talk. For beyond doubt your 
three brothers are the sons of Tengri himself. Would you speak of them 
as of ordinary mortals?" And, in a cloudy phrase, the great dowager 
prophesied, it seemed, that the children of these children, sons of mira- 
cle, would be one day conquerors of the world. . . . 

At the same time Alan-qo'a had given to each of her sons an arrow, 
and invited him to break it, which all of them did without difficulty. She 
handed them then another five arrows, tied up in a bundle, and the bun- 
dle none of them could break. Now she pointed the moral: "Oh my five 
sons, let division come between you, and you will be broken one after 
another as you broke each separate arrow. Stay but bound together as 
the arrows in the bundle, and who will ever be able to break you?" 



A 
AA 



The Gest of Bodonchar 



After the death of the great dowager, her five sons portioned out among 
themselves her herds the nomad's principal wealth. Or rather, the four 
eldest took almost all for themselves, leaving the youngest, Bodonchar 
the Simple (mungqaq), nothing, "because of his simpleness and weak- 
ness." 

Here begins, in the recital of the Mongol bard, the Gest of Bodonchar 
curious sequel to the tale of the Wolf and the Doe, and that of the 
divine bastardy, bringing us from heaven down to earth to follow the 
wretched life of a marauder of the steppe. Bodonchar the Simple finally 
realized that in the eyes of his family he was of no account. He decided 
to leave them, to strike out for himself. He took a poor horse, "a white 
one with a black blaze, with most of its tail missing, and a scarred back," 
and launched into open country. He did not delude himself that with 
such a nag, miles from anywhere in the steppe, his fate was anything 
but precarious: "If my horse holds out, I shall survive. If not, I perish." 
He traveled down the valley of the Onon. Opposite the island of Baljun- 
Aral ("the miry island"), he built himself a wretched thatch hut. 
Nearby, he saw a female goshawk of the kind that hunts flying almost 
at ground level busy devouring a black chicken of the steppe. "With 
hairs from the mane of his horse he made a noose and captured the 
goshawk." He tamed the bird of prey and trained it to kill small game. In 
the spring, when the wild geese and duck came down in the thousands 
on the waters of the Onon, he starved his goshawk, then sent it among 
them, and for long weeks at a time both of them had meat in abundance. 
When the game did run short, Bodonchar, like Mowgli, joined the packs 
of wolves that drove roe deer, stags, antelopes, or dziggetais to the Onon 



10 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

bank. "He watched the prey that the wolves had driven back and sur- 
rounded on the incline; he shot it with his arrows, and shared it with 
them. What the wolves left made a meal for himself and his goshawk." 

The harsh existence of the Mongol Mowgli was disturbed by fresh 
incomers. A band from the basin of the Tonggelik (undoubtedly, as we 
have seen, the present Qara, tributary of the Orkhon, north of Ulan 
Bator), arrived and halted in the region. The Simple One got on at first 
well enough with them. Each day, after hunting with his goshawk, he 
would come to them to beg mare's milk, which was not withheld. But the 
way of all these folk was withdrawn and wary. Neither Bodonchar nor his 
neighbors asked indiscreet questions about the other's race or origins, and 
at evening he withdrew prudently to his hut. 

Meantime, however, the eldest of Bodonchar's brothers, Buqu-qatagi 
("the powerful stag"), began to make inquiries as to what had become 
of him. From the description given, the people of the neighbor tribe rec- 
ognized their man. "He whom you seek," they said to Buqu, "lives 
beside us. Each day he comes to us to drink mare's milk, but where he 
goes at night we do not know. When the wind blows from the northwest, 
the feathers of the wild geese brought down by his goshawk fly over to 
here like flakes from a snowstorm. But you will not have to wait to see 
him: this is his time." And indeed Bodonchar was even then approach- 
ing. He and Buqu recognized each other, and they went away together 
along the Onon. As they rode, Bodonchar thrice remarked enigmati- 
cally: "It is good that the body should have a head and the suit a collar." 
When his brother asked the meaning of this riddle, he explained: the 
tribe alongside which he had been living made do without chiefs, in a 
state of anarchy: "They make no distinction between head and shoe, all 
are equal." And regardless of the fact that these people, by giving him 
daily milk, had saved his life, Bodonchar, pure steppe brigand, added: 
'Things being thus, it would not be difficult to surprise them and lay hold 
of their goods." Buqu, delighted with this windfall, took the exile back 
with him to the family camp, where the three other brothers likewise 
applauded the idea. All jumped to their horses, and set off at a gallop to 
Bodonchar's hut, Bodonchar in the lead to guide them. On the way, they 
captured a pregnant young woman, whom they forced to tell them more 
about the tribe in question, generically a section of the Jarchi'ut. The 
surprise was complete. "They fell on them," the Mongol bard tells glee- 



The Gest of Bodonchar 11 

fully, "they seized their herds and their provisions, they took their fami- 
lies into slavery." 

The episode shows up these savage mores in their true raw light. 
Bodonchar the Simple, but recently humiliated by his brothers, forced to 
go into exile because of his weakness, is now rehabilitated and honored 
by them, precisely because he has repaid with blackest treachery the too 
trusting hospitality of the Jarchi'ut. More: in the story as the Chingis- 
khanid bard tells it, this deed, at bottom felony, constitutes his main claim 
to glory. A phrase of Bodonchar's own, indeed, focuses for us the ineluc- 
table laws of the life of the steppe, so close to the law of the jungle: "The 
tribe of the Jarchi'ut is easy to strike down because it has no chiefs." 
Chieftains in war, leaders of men, organizers born this was what 
Bodonchar's descendants were to prove themselves, in amazing measure; 
this was to earn them their conquest of the world. To that end, however, 
they had first to do as the dowager Alan had counseled, make one sheaf 
of the Mongol arrows, unite the tribes. 



A 
AA 



Misery and Grandeur of the Nomads 



This reuniting of the tribes, one day to be achieved by Chingis-khan, was 
several times embarked on by his forebears. Several times, it seemed 
indeed to have been acomplished, only shortly after to break up again, 
with a reversion to the old clan fragmentation, the bitter feuds, the an- 
archy and impotence. There could then be no more unhappy situation 
than that of the descendants of the Wolf and the Doe. 

Bodonchar's grandson, Menen-tudun, died while still a comparatively 
young man, leaving his wife Nomolun with seven sons, whom the geneal- 
ogists are at pains to list for us, from the eldest, Qachi-kulug ("Qachi 
the Hero"), to the youngest, Nachin-ba'atur ("Nachin the Brave"). 1 
The forceful Nomolun remained the head of the tribe, personification of 
these qatuns, the Mongol princesses who in times of interregnum laid 
such able, virile hold of the tribal tuq, the flag made of a pole decked 
with stallion or yak tails. About this time, Mongolia experienced a sud- 
den jostling of tribes, caused by an incursion of the Jurchets, a Tunguz 
people from the Manchurian forest, then in another quarter in process of 
making themselves masters of Northern China. The Jurchets attacked 
the Jalair tribe, a group, possibly of Turkish extraction, settled on the 
banks of the Keriilen, and wrought great carnage among them. Seventy 
Jalair families fled in the direction of the upper Onon, toward the grazing 
grounds of the Mongols, then ruled by the dowager Nomolun. Driven by 
hunger, the emigrants came seeking roots in the grassland where the 
Mongols exercised their horses. This Nomolun determined to prevent. 

* According to the Persian historian Rashid-ed-Din, the Lady Nomolun (whom he 
calls Monolun) is Qachi-kiiliig's mother. In the Secret History of the Mongols, 
fl 46, she is Qachi-kiiliig's wife. 



Misery and Grandeur of the Nomads 13 

She drove her chariot against the Jalairs, and, in her anger, wounded 
several. They retaliated by driving off her herds of horses. This was war. 
The sons of Nomohm rushed into the fray without so much as putting on 
their armor of boiled leather. The dowager, anxious now at the turn 
things were taking, commanded her daughters-in-law to take their armor 
to them forthwith, but by the time they reached them with it six of them 
had been slain. Then the Jalairs killed Nomolun herself. Of all the family 
there remained only the seventh son, Nachin the Brave, who had married 
a girl of the country of Barghuchin, and settled there, and a child, Qaydu, 
son of Qachi-kiiliig, offshoot, that is, of the senior branch of the family. 

The land of Barghu, "Barghuchin," where Nachin had married, lay 
along the eastern shore of Lake Baykal, and more specifically the longi- 
tudinal valley of the river of the same name, separated from the lake by a 
coastal range 4,000 to 4,600 feet high, thickly forested. When news 
reached him of the massacre of his family, Nachin set out posthaste from 
Barghu for the familiar territory along the upper Onon. But there was 
nothing to be done. He found only a few aged women the Jalairs had not 
bothered with, and his nephew, the child Qaydu, whom they managed to 
save by hiding him in time behind a pile of firewood or under a milk 
jar. 

Nachin the Brave, man of feeling, burned to avenge his family; good 
Mongol, to snatch back the horses the nomads' primary wealth 
which the aggressors had seized. But he had no horse. Luckily one 
chestnut had escaped from the Jalair camp and made its way back to its 
native ground. Nachin bestrode it and headed toward the enemy yurts, 
by the river Kerulen. "First he met two horsemen, riding a certain space 
apart, each with a falcon or a goshawk at his wrist. The birds of prey he 
recognized at once as having formerly belonged to his brothers." He ac- 
costed the younger of the riders and inquired if he had not seen a brown 
stallion moving eastward at the head of a herd of horses. They entered 
into conversation. Then Nachin, on a bend of a winding path along the 
Keriilen, suddenly stabbed this traveling companion. With astonishing 
coolness, he tied horse and falcon to the corpse, then went calmly toward 
the remaining huntsman. The latter, who from a distance had not been 
able to make out clearly what was happening, asked why the first rider 
stayed lying on the ground so long. Nachin beguiled him with some ex- 
planation or other; then, picking his time, killed this man also. Further 



14 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

on, he saw several hundred horses grazing in a valley, watched over by a 
few youths. No doubt about it: it was his family's herd! He climbed a 
rise, scanned the horizon carefully: not an armed body of any kind. The 
enemy, sure of their victory, had turned attention to their normal affairs 
elsewhere. Nachin swooped down on the young herdsmen, killed them, 
and drove the horses back to the family grazing grounds, making a joyful 
entry with his brothers' falcons at his wrist. But fearing that the Jalairs 
might return to the attack, he gathered his nephew Qaydu and the old 
people, and took them, with stallions, mares, and geldings, back with him 
to his wife's country, to the glades of eastern Baykal, the land of Barghu. 

Qaydu, as we have seen, came of the senior line of the family. When 
he reached man's estate, his uncle Nachin loyally acknowledged him chief 
of the tribes. Qaydu then led his people in a war of revenge on the Jal- 
airs, whom he defeated utterly and forced to pay tribute to him. There is 
reason to believe he set up camp then in the old fatherland, southeast of 
Mount Kentey, by the sacred springs of the Onon and the Kerulen. 

"Families of divers tribes," Chinese annals inform us, "came one after 
another to place themselves under his protection, and the number of his 
subjects mounted daily." This was a paradigm of the nomad ascendancy: 
the prestige of a leader served as rallying point for broken and hungry 
clans, isolated families in search of a protector, adventurers after good 
swordplay, archers anxious to turn bowmanship to account in booty and 
venison. The kingdom founded by Qaydu the first historic Mongol 
kingdom prefigures the Chingiskhanid kingdom to come. Mongol 
bards, Chinese annalists and historians made no mistake. Qaydu is the 
first of his race to whom they accord the title of qan that is, king. Cer- 
tain of them go so far as to dub him qaghan emperor but this is quite 
obviously consecration after the event, as if the titles of the Chingis- 
khanid conquerors must at all costs go back to their far-off ancestor. 

In another aspect, this sudden rise to power of Qaydu, survivor from 
the slaughter of all his family, affords striking illustration of the fragility 
of these nomad empires, and of how a tribe, reduced to nothing by loss 
of its grazing grounds, massacre of its young manhood, and seizure of its 
mares, yet bursts suddenly into new demographic expansion the moment 
hunting and breeding space is not denied it. 

As to dating of these events, this is of course something there can be 
no precision about. Indications are, however, that the happenings just 
outlined bring us into the second third of the twelfth century. 



A 
AA 



Rude Chieftain at the Court 
of the King of Gold 



After Qaydu, the first Mongol khan, the tribes seem to have been appor- 
tioned among his three sons, a measure that cannot but have weakened 
the young royal house. And indeed we hear next to nothing of his suc- 
cessor, his eldest son Bay-shingqor-doqshin, "the Dread Falcon." But 
Bay-shingqor's grandson, the khan Qabul, was a great chief. With him the 
Mongols, whose horizons hitherto have scarcely extended beyond the 
environs of Mount Kentey, make their entry into world politics. They are 
sufficiently a power already for the court of Peking to take notice. 

Peking and Northern China were in the hands at that time of the Jur- 
chets, come down from Manchuria and of Tunguz extraction, near rel- 
atives, that is, of the present-day Manchus. The Jurchet princes, bearing 
the Chinese title of Kin or "Kings of Gold," held sway from the forests 
of the Amur to the approaches of the Yangtze-kiang. They were pressing 
forward toward the Yangtze at the expense of the Chinese empire, re- 
duced by them now to the provinces of Southern China. Wanting to have 
their hands free for this southern activity, they were anxious not to be 
harassed in their rear by the nomads from Mongolia. Did this mustering 
of the Kentey tribes around khan Qabul represent a threat? To satisfy 
himself, the King of Gold invited the Mongol leader to his court, either 
at Peking itself or in one of the royal hunting lodges in Manchuria. 

Qabul conducted himself there like a barbarian indeed. The Jurchets 
themselves, still only at one remove from Manchurian barbarism, with 
the barest veneer of Chinese civilization rubbed off on them, scarcely 
represented refinement. But the manners of this Mongol guest dumb- 
founded them and in particular his gargantuan appetite. Persian histo- 



16 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

nans, it is true, have a curious explanation for this appetite. The barbar- 
ian, a guest among all these fine lords, ill at ease amid all the affluence, 
and suspicious especially of the cunningly concocted dishes, the mysteri- 
ous sweetmeats that might conceal poison, went out at intervals to make 
himself vomit; after which he returned to table and began cheerfully to 
eat and drink once more as if nothing had happened. But the dishes must 
have been particularly tasty, the rice-spirit have flowed particularly 
abundantly, for Qabul, getting drunker than was usual with him, so far 
forgot himself as to clutch at the King of Gold's beard. Told when he had 
sobered up of the crime of lese-majeste he had committed, he asked 
what his punishment should be. The king, however, only laughed either 
he thought a savage could not be expected to know better, or he preferred 
not to incur Mongol hostility at a time when the Jurchets still had the 
Chinese to cope with on the Yangtze. He over-looked QabuTs misde- 
meanor, and sent him back to Mongolia with rich presents, gold, precious 
stones, robes of honor. 

Then, all the same, on reflection, the Jurchets decided that beneath the 
bonhomie, this barbarian they had entertained so lavishly might well be a 
neighbor to be feared. Scarcely had Qabul departed than the King of 
Gold, on the advice of mistrustful counselors, had second thoughts. He 
sent messengers to invite the Mongol to return. The Mongol smelt dan- 
ger, and declined. The envoys then seized him, but "mounted on a grey 
colt" he managed to give them the slip, and, furious at the trap, had a 
bloody end put to the court of Peking's ambassadors. 

These colorful episodes, which found their way through the Mongol 
bards into Persian sources, are corroborated by Chinese annalists; we 
know, in fact, that in 1 139 and again in 1 147, the Kings of Gold were at 
war on their northern frontiers against the Mongols, to whom they had 
finally to cede several frontier districts. Every year from 1148 on, more- 
over, the Peking court sent the tribes an ostensible gift of cattle, sheep, 
and grain in fact a tribute designed to secure peace along the Great 
Khingan marches. More, in a typically Chinese maneuver, the King of 
Gold made appropriate acknowledgment of the enemy leader, dignifying 
him by the imposing title of King of the Mongols, with the reservation 
merely that he affected to treat him as a protege and subordinate. 

Mongol sources tell us nothing about this bargaining. They do, how- 
ever, go on to trace out the line of obscure clan chieftains whose privi- 



At the Court oj the King of Gold 17 

lege it was to be near ancestors of Chingis-khan. Thus we learn that khan 
Qabul left seven sons whose strength and bravery earned them the name 
of Kiyat, which signifies "torrents," and which passed from them on to 
their descendants, who formed a special subdivision of the royal clan of 
the Borjigins. These seven sons recur often in the recitals of the Mongol 
bards, for all these nomads, no matter what state of beggary they might 
be reduced to, clung jealously to their genealogy. They were Okin- 
barqaq, Bartan-ba'atur ("the Brave"), Qutuqtu-munggur, Qutula, 
Qulan ("Dziggetai"), Qada'an, and Todoyen. Yet to none of these was 
it that Qabul transmitted his kingship; it was to his cousin Ambaqay, also 
a grandson of khan Qaydu, and chief of the clan of Taychi'ut. 



A 
AA 



Unquenchable Hatreds: 
The Death Throes of Ambaqay 



The Mongol kingdom was to all appearances at its apogee when deadly 
enmity sprang up suddenly between it and the Tatar people. 

The Mongols, as we have seen, lived their nomadic existence at the 
foot of the Kentey chain, near the springs of the Onon and the Kerulen, 
the twin rivers that flow almost parallel, one north, one south, toward the 
east. The two river valleys, however, soon take on different aspects. The 
Onon, at least on its left bank, which continues skirting the edge of the 
tayga, remains a tumbling mountain forest watercourse. The Kerulen, on 
the other hand, becomes almost at once a river of the steppe, making its 
way with scarcely a gradient to speed it through country flat to the 
horizon, dried up for part of the year, like a ribbon crossing the desert. 
When it reaches Lake Kolen, it is six feet deep at most at midstream, and 
65 to 130 feet across. "A foreigner in transit," it has been called, with no 
relation with the country it passes through. Its valley, six to nine miles 
across, forms a -solitary strip of meadow and willow clumps, with at 
either side of it steppe vegetation taking over, just grass and bushes, 
artemisia, derissus and karagans. Lake Kolen itself, into which the Keru- 
len flows a shrinking lake, marshy-shored is linked only at times of 
high water with the Argun River, by a canal otherwise dry. Another river 
also feeds it, however: the Urshi'un (or Urshun), which serves as outlet 
from another lake, further south, Lake Buyur, itself fed by the Khalkha 
River, which runs down from the wooded slopes of the Great Khingan. 
For the most part it is semi-desert country, with its sprinkling of salty 
marshes and pools. Toward the longitudinal chain of the Khingan, how- 



The Death Throes of Ambaqay 19 

ever, vegetation makes its appearance again, with, shortly, great grasses 
rising shoulder-high, and still green in August. Groves of elms, birches, 
poplars stud the grassland. As for the Great Khingan, with its peaks of six 
thousand feet and more, it is predominantly covered with thick forest, as 
in the Mongol tayga, of larch. 

All this region, from where the Keriilen flows into Lake Kolen to the 
Khingan across the river Urshi'un, was the habitat of the Tatars, a 
people long thought to be of Tunguz extraction, like the Manchus, but in 
fact of purely Mongol stock. An ancient people, even, since mention is 
made of them in the eighth century Turkish inscriptions of the Orkhon. 
Their sorcerers apparently had a reputation, for when the brother-in-law 
of khan Qabul fell ill, a Tatar shaman was called in to treat him. All his 
incantations, however, failed to prevent the sick man's dying, upon 
which the relatives of the deceased accused the shaman of evil intent, 
went after him as he was on his way home and killed him. The Tatars 
were in arms at once to avenge their shaman, while the sons of Qabul 
ranged themselves against them. 

This clash of two peoples of common stock has its special interest. 
What was at issue was who was to take pride of place among the Mongol 
nations: the tribes of Mount Kentey and the upper Onon, or those of the 
lower Keriilen and Lake Buyur a point still unsettled two generations 
later in the time of Chingis-khan, and which it took that leader to decide 
conclusively. For the moment, the dispute merely served the ends of the 
court of Peking and the King of Gold, who saw in it his opportunity to 
set nomad against nomad, and so check their advance. The Mongols 
seeming for the moment the more formidable, the Peking government 
decided in the circumstances to help the Tatars. Tatar and Jurchet, join- 
ing forces, were to put the young Mongol power to cruel testing. 

Did the Mongol khan Ambaqay sense the hatred against his people the 
murder of the shaman had engendered? He may have thought it had all 
died down and the affair been forgotten. He may have thought to break 
up the bundle of the Tatar tribes by contracting an alliance with one of 
them. At all events, he betrothed his daughter to a chief of the Tatar 
group of the Ayri'uts and Buyru'uts, nomads of the river Urshi'un, be- 
tween Lakes Kolen and Buyur. But the hatred had in no whit abated. As 
unsuspecting Ambaqay made his way with his daughter to the country of 
her betrothed, another Tatar tribe, the Jiiyins, seized his person, and 



20 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

carried him off under heavy guard to hand over to the King of Gold. The 
court of Peking must for its part have been nursing real wrath at the 
depredations of the Mongols, for it put the prisoner to a hideous death: 
khan Ambaqay was impaled on a wooden ass. The oldest son of the dead 
khan Qabul, Okin-barqaq, also taken prisoner by the Tatars, was like- 
wise handed over to the King of Gold, and underwent at his command 
the same torture. 

These were atrocities not to be forgotten. Before he died, Ambaqay had 
contrived to send a messenger Balaqachi, of the clan Besiit, the bard 
tells us to Qutula, most forceful of the sons of the dead khan Qabul, as 
well as to his own sons. "I, supreme leader of the Mongol people, have 
been seized by the Tatars even as I took my daughter to them. Let my 
example be a lesson to you. And now, avenge me, if you have to wear 
down your every fingernail straining your bow, nay if you have to shoot 
your ten fingers themselves." And before he died he warned the King of 
Gold that his vengeance would be fearful. And indeed, an unquenchable 
hatred was building up in the hearts of the Mongols a hatred that 
Chingis-khan and his sons were to assuage one day in the blood, first of 
the last Tatar, then of the last of the Kings of Gold. 



A 
AA 



7 



The Mongol Hercules 



After the tortured death of Ambaqay, the Mongols proper and their 
brothers, the Taychi'uts, proceeded to the election of a new khan at an 
assembly at Qorqonaq-jubur, a forest on the banks of the Onon. Qutula 
was chosen, the third son of the dead khan Qabul. The election was the 
occasion for a great celebration, with dancing and feasting. "Beneath the 
thickly leaved trees of Qorqonaq-jubur they danced till their thighs 
were in the ditches, their knees in the dust." And the new khan was fore- 
most in this sacred dance, in the totemic disguise, perhaps, still donned by 
some of the tayga peoples. 

By all accounts of the legends, he was a terrifying creature, this last 
khan before Chingis, a sort of Mongol Hercules, half bestial, half divine. 
Long after his death, bards still sang, awed, of the mighty voice, rolling 
like thunder through the mountain gorges, and the fearsome hands, like 
great bear paws, that could snap a man in half as if he were an arrow. 
"They told how at night in winter he would lie down naked by a fire of 
great trees, and how he would feel neither the sparks nor the brands that 
fell on his body, and take the marks in the morning for insect bites. He 
ate a whole sheep .every day and downed an enormous jar of qumiz, or 
fermented mare's milk." 

Scarcely elevated to the felt carpet of royalty, Qutula set out with his 
brother, Qada'an, to make war on the Tatars, to avenge Ambaqay. 
Thirteen times they did battle with the Tatar chiefs Koton-baraqa and 
Jali-buqa (the Bull) . But despite all their efforts, the Mongol bard has 
sadly to record, they were unable to wreak vengeance on the criminals, 
to deal them the punishment they deserved. From which it is to be 
understood, presumably, that they were unable to bring off any decisive 



22 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

victory. We have no details of these encounters, save that Qutula's 
nephew, Yesiigei-ba'atur Yesiigei the Brave took prisoner several Ta- 
tar chiefs, among them Temiijin-uge and Qori-buqa. We shall see that it 
was to this circumstance that the future Chingis-khan was to owe his 
name. The same fact also enables us to set a rough date for Yesiigei's 
victory over the two Tatar chiefs, in or about 1 166. The first date in this 
history. 

Qutula it would seem pushed his raids not merely into Tatar country, 
but right to the territory of the King of Gold, in all likelihood, that is, 
virtually to present-day Mongolo-Manchurian country. Tradition re- 
counts how once, when on one of his campaigns he had relaxed and 
given himself over to hunting, he was attacked out of the blue by people 
of the tribe of Dorben, in fact a Mongol tribe demonstration of how 
scant was the respect the royal house commanded outside the circle of 
groups with whom the khan was directly connected. Deserted by his fol- 
lowers, Qutula plunged into a marsh, where his horse sank in up to its 
neck. "Standing up on his saddle, he jumped clear of the swampy 
ground. The Dorbens, arriving on the opposite bank, did not trouble to 
pursue him, saying: 'What is a Mongol without his horse?' " Meantime, 
Qutula's servants had spread word that he was dead, and his nephew 
Yesiigei had done as was customary and brought meats to the family to 
eat with them the funeral repast. But Qutula's wife, one of the Mongol 
Amazons who play so recurrent a part in this epic, refused to believe he 
was dead. "How should a warrior whose voice shakes the vault of 
heaven, whose hands are like the hands of a three-year-old bear, fall into 
the clutches of the Dorbens? Believe what I say. I know he will soon 
stand before us." And indeed Qutula, once the Dorbens had made off, 
had calmly retrieved his horse from the swamp by hoisting it up by the 
mane. In the saddle once more, he saw a herd of mares grazing on Dorben 
grassland with a stallion. He jumped astride the stallion, mastered it, 
drove the mares on before him, and arrived so before his yurt just as the 
tears commenced to flow for him. 

But a harsh end was put to such exploits. Mongol tradition tells of 
disaster overtaking the Mongols in a battle near Lake Buyur against the 
combined forces of the Tatars and the King of Gold. Chinese sources 
confirm that in 1161 the latter monarch, determined to put an end once 
and for all to the ravages of the nomads, dispatched an army to Mongo- 



The Mongol Hercules 23 

lia. Peking strategy and Tatar arms would seem together to have been 
too much for the first Mongol kingdom. And indeed, in the next genera- 
tion, Tatars had supplanted Mongols as masters of the eastern Gobi. 
Tatar power was to assume such proportions, in fact, as finally to make 
the Kin sovereign of Peking, the King of Gold himself, uneasy; and it was 
to the consequent about-turn of alliances that Chingis-khan was really to 
owe his first successes. 

We know nothing of the end of khan Qutula, save that he had no 
successor. Of his three sons Jochi, Girma'u, Altan none assumed 
a throne. Nor did Qutula's nephew, Yesiigei-ba'atur, on whom Mongol 
epic did not fail to confer the title of khan, however slight the possi- 
bility that he ever bore it, since he was the father of Chingis-khan. 
Clearly the first Mongol kingdom, broken, how exactly we do not know, 
by the Tatars and the court of Peking, had lapsed again into tribal frag- 
ments. 

With the collapse of the first Mongol kingdom there seems to have set 
in, to judge by all the evidence we possess, utter anarchy, with the disso- 
lution not only of political ties, but only too often of family ones as well. 
The milieu of the first part of the Secret History is that of the Red Indi- 
ans vendettas between tribe and tribe, clan and clan, brigandage a way 
of life, horse stealing, rape, fratricide. "Before your birth," Kokochii was 
to tell the sons of Chingis-khan, "Mongolia was full of trouble. Every- 
where tribe was at war with tribe. There was safety nowhere." 



Part 




Conqueror of the World 



A 
AA 



1 



Yesiigei the Brave and Prester John 



Few men have had bestowed on them by history greater posthumous 
renown than Yesugei the Brave (ba'atur) : he was the father of Chingis- 
khan, and his son's fame was reflected back on him. But his life was a 
hard one. He was born into the dark days of Mongol history, when the 
first kingdom founded by his family was disintegrating in face of con- 
certed attack from the Tatars and the court of Peking. It seems never to 
have occurred to him to assert his claim to the title of khan borne by his 
uncle Qutula. He remained simply a chieftain of a subclan, the subclan 
(yasun) of the Kiyats, subdivision in turn of the clan (oboq) of the 
Borjigins. For all that, it would be wrong to dismiss him as playing an 
insignificant role. In the war his people waged with the Tatars, and in 
which they were for the most part the losers, he scored apparently his 
measure of personal success, defeating, as we have seen, two enemy 
chieftains; a victory gratifying enough for him to commemorate it by 
calling his eldest son after one of the losers: Temujin. 

It was Yesugei moreover and this is a fact too often lost sight of 
who laid the foundations of Chingiskhanid political ascendancy by se- 
curing for his house the Kereit alliance, without which, as we shall see 
later, the career of Chingis-khan could never have been. 

The Kereits are one of the most mysterious peoples in history. They 
were by origin Turco-Mongol so much is sure: but how far predomi- 
nantly one or the other we have no means of telling. They make to all 
intents and purposes their first appearance in the chronicles only in the 
generation before Chingis-khan, and step forthwith into a leading role. It 
is the endlessly recurring pattern of these empires of the steppe, raised in 
a matter of a year or two to crumble as precipitately. 



28 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

Even the extent of the territory they were wont to range is in doubt. 
A number of passages in the Secret History do tell us, however, that 
their kinds camped frequently along the River Tula, in the vicinity of 
the Black Forest (Qara-tun), a wooded massif which may be that of 
Bogdo-ula, lying south of that river and what is today the town of Ulan 
Bator. Another reference in the same text gives as their western frontier 
a River Nekiin, which has been taken as the present-day Nariin which 
runs down from the Khangay mountains toward the Gobi, southwest of 
Qaraqorum. The Persian historian Rashid ed-Din also seems to set them 
a limit about here, at the mountains of Qaraqorum; that is, at the Khan- 
gay massif, by the headwaters of the Orkhon. Elsewhere, Rashid ed-Din 
speaks of them as pursuing their nomad paths eastward right to the 
sources of the Onon and Keriilen, into the country, that is, of the Mon- 
gols proper, and southeast across the Gobi, as far as the Great Wall of 
China. 

The Kereit country, in so far as we may thus delineate it, was domi- 
nated to the northwest by the last eastern escarpments of the Khangay 
mountains, whose peaks, near the source of the Orkhon, went up to 
11,000 feet. Mount Bogdo-ula, ''the Holy Mountain," similarly domi- 
nated the next section, the left bank of the Tula. "First sight of the 
mountains," writes Grenard, "tells the traveler here is the demarcation 
line between two quite distinct zones: northward, mountain forest and 
meadow; to the south, steppe and the Gobi; no gradual modulation blurs 
the contrast southern flank, bare rock, northern, from 5,600 feet all 
the way to the 8,300 feet summit, dense forest, pine, birch, aspen, to this 
day religion-protected in its profusion." 

To the south, the Kereit country extended into the Gobi. Southwest, 
there lies in between the last eastern outposts of the Khangay and their 
Altay counterparts a "desert gulf," a projection of the Gobi, alive only 
where six rivers flow north to south, fed by the Khangay. "They flow 
swiftly, over stony beds grooved in flat valleys, from the Baydarik to the 
Onghin. They finish up in salt lakes, lodged in the depression that follows 
the northern foot of the Altay, bordered by reeds and sand-growing sak- 
sauls and tamarisks, In autumn and winter the most easterly, the Onghin, 
peters out in the plain before it ever gets to Lake Ulan, leaving the lat- 
ter's red clay basin dry. Lake Orok, into which the Tuin flows, can in 
some years be forded. The Boum-tsaghan, further west, is stabler, but its 



Yesugei the Brave and Prester John 29 

waters are almost saturated with salt and sulphur." It is the same in the 
east, south of Ulan Bator and the Tula, where the desert is broken only 
by one or two short-lived streams. 

After that comes the Gobi proper, the flat expanse where "gravel, sand 
and clay make a surface hard and even as that of a race track, with the 
occasional variation of small dunes or rocky patches." Travelers have 
often been moved to try their hand at describing these lone desert wastes, 
stretching as far as the eye can see, their only vegetation one or two grey- 
ish dwarf irises, kharmyk or budargan, or rare clumps of derissus "dull- 
leaved, with twigs hard as wire." Only the saksaul, "a shrub with leafless 
branches, and a trunk sometimes a foot wide, standing up to ten or thir- 
teen feet high," breaks with the occasional thicket the. expanse of sand. 
Inhospitable country if ever there was such, with animals glad to come 
where they may find wretched grass, "yellow by July and scarcely distin- 
guishable from the brownish waste." Yet these desert grazing places are 
usually frequent enough to keep caravans alive. 

Such was the domain of the Kereits. Poor as it might seem, it yet gave 
them control of a great part of the Gobi, this "dry sea," as the Chinese 
called it, that was so important politically since its tracks were the link 
between the Mongol steppe and China. The upper Tula basin, moreover, 
with its rich grasslands, constituted not only a summering place where 
the Kereits could recuperate, but a natural geographical center, well 
placed for control of western Mongolia, inhabited, as we shall see, by 
the Nayman Turks, and eastern Mongolia, where the Mongols proper, 
the ancestors of Chingis-khan, were struggling for supremacy with the 
Tatars. 

In virtue, doubtless, of this situation, the Kereits seem to have aspired 
to authority over both the Gobi and the Mongol steppe. And indeed in 
our view they had not inconsiderable claims to such a role. While they 
cannot be said to have been more civilized than their neighbors (the lives 
of their sovereigns will betray some singularly murky passages), it is 
noteworthy that through their role of warders of the Gobi they received 
the Christian message. If we are to believe the Syrian chronicler Bar 
Hebraeus, they were converted shortly after the year 1000. One of their 
kings had got lost in the desert. At his last gasp, he was saved by the 
miraculous appearance of Saint Sergius. Touched by grace, and at the 
instigation of Christian merchants then passing through his kingdom, he 



30 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

sent to the Nestorian Metropolitan of Merv, in Khorassan, Ebed-jesu, 
with a request that priests should come to baptize himself and his people. 
A letter from Ebed-jesu to the Nestorian Patriarch of Baghdad, John VI 
dated 1009 and quoted by Bar Hebraeus, states that nomads were then 
baptized with their king to the number of 200,000. 

All hinges here on whether the name Kereit was not interpolated by 
Bar Hebraeus after the event to please the Chingiskhanid princes, who, 
as we shall see, counted Kereit princes among their ancestors. Even if 
this were so, however, the fact remains that in the twelfth century the 
Kereits had embraced Christianity, specifically the Nestorian Christianity 
which had its Patriarch in Iraq, at Seleucia-Baghdad, and numbered 
prosperous communities in the east Iranian province of Khorassan or in 
Transoxania, toward Samarkand. And the test in question is certainly 
accurate when it assigns origins in that region to the Khorassani or Sogh- 
dian caravaneers who, on one of their trading trips across the Gobi, con- 
verted the Kereit king. No less certain is it that at the end of the twelfth 
century the Kereit khans were Nestorian Christians by father-to-son 
transmission. Whence the legend, propagated by Marco Polo, of "Prester 
John," although this personage has been subsequently identified (arbi- 
trarily) with the Negus of Ethiopia. At all events, Kereit Nestorianism is 
destined to play a considerable part in this story: it was through it, as we 
shall see, that Christianity was to become one of the official religions of 
the Chingiskhanid empire. 

Kereit aspirations to hegemony in Mongolia are plain from the texts. 
Two generations before the time of Chingis-khan, we learn of their khan 
making war on the Tatars of the eastern Gobi, who, as we have seen, 
received support from the King of Gold in Peking. This khan had the 
double name of Marghuz Buyruq, the first part of which is none other 
than the Christian name Mark, quite common among the Nestorians of 
Upper Asia. He was taken prisoner by the Tatars, and handed over by 
them to the representatives of the King of Gold. The latter put him to the 
same ignominious torture as they had earlier the other Mongol princes : 
they had him nailed or impaled on a wooden ass. His widow, the fair 
Qutuqtay-Irikchi, resolved to avenge him. She pretended to come to 
terms with circumstance, and presented herself gallantly to do her hom- 
age to the chief of the Tatars, bringing with her as her gift one hundred 
leather jars, ostensibly containing qumit, the fermented mare's milk that 



Yesugei the Brave and Prester John 31 

was the nomads' favorite drink. In fact, each jar contained a warrior. In 
the midst of the feast given by the Tatar chief for his visitor, the hundred 
Kereit soldiers burst from their concealment and slew the enemy prince 
and a great number of his followers. Arabian Nights, Mongol style, 

Marghuz left two sons: Qurjaquz, that is to say Cyriac (again a Chris- 
tian name), and Gur-khan, of whom the first succeeded him. Qurjaquz 
seems to have been another to have a troubled reign: he came very near 
to being dethroned by the Tatars, and was only saved by the intervention 
of his neighbors to the west, the Naymans. 1 His eldest son Toghril 
"the Goshawk" plays a major part in this story. He was Marco Polo's 
"Prester John," protector of Chingis-khan in his early days. In fact, it 
must be admitted this representative of Upper Asian Nestorian Christi- 
anity made his way to the throne by methods that could scarcely have 
been less Christian. At their father's death, he put to death two of his 
brothers who might have disputed his accession to power. A third 
brother, Erke-qara, whom he aimed to dispose of likewise, escaped to 
the Naymans. 

The Naymans, who thus make their second appearance in this story, 
dwelt, as we shall see more fully later, in western Mongolia west of the 
Khangay, namely in the Kobdo lakes region, the Mongol Altay, and the 
valleys of the Black Irtysh and the Imil, in Tarbagatay. 2 Their khan 
Inanch-bilge a redoubtable man of whom it was said no enemy had 
seen his back, or his horse's croup gave hospitality to the exiled Kereit 
princes, Toghril's brothers. He apparently extended aid also to Toghril's 
uncle, Gur-khan, likewise in revolt against Toghril, who headed the in- 
surrection. Gur-khan drove Toghril from the Kereit throne and forced 
him to flee with the last hundred still loyal to him to the river Selenga, 
towards the gorges of the Qara'un mountains. Masters here were the 

1 The Persian historian Rashid ed-Din reports that Qurjaquz had married the sister 
of the Nayman king. It was because of this relationship that the Naymans inter- 
vened to save him from the Tatars (probably around 1140). At their victory, the 
Tatars had taken prisoner Qurjaquz's son, the young Toghril, then a boy of thirteen, 
and they put him to herding camels. Toghril managed to escape, not without his 
quota of camels. Cf. Pelliot, No. 40, p. 68. 

2 We know from the Persian historian Rashid ed-Din that in the first half of the 
twelfth century the Naymans were headed by the clan Betekin (M. Pelliot's recon- 
struction). It was a Betekin prince who had, about 1140, saved the Kereit king 
Qurjaquz. Then the Betekins lost their pre-eminence among the Naymans, and the 
royal title passed to another house, that of the Kuchugurs. Cf. Pelliot, ibid., p. 41. 



32 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

Merkits, Mongol forest-dwelling tribes. To establish good relations, 
Toghril offered his daughter Huja'ur to their king Toqto'a. But he does 
not seem to have received from them any effective aid. 

As a last resort, he went to Yesiigei (re-enter the hero of our 
chapter) and beseeched his assistance: "Help me to wrest my people 
from the clutches of my uncle Gur-khan." "Since you thus implore me," 
Yesugei answered, "I will take my two Taychfut warriors, Qunan and 
Bagaji, and together we will give you back your people." So saying, he 
mustered his men, set out to attack Gur-khan over toward Qurban-telesiit, 
and forced him to flee to the Tanguts, in what is today the Chinese 
province of Kansu. 

Yesugei the Brave's decisive intervention had thus re-established Togh- 
ril on the Kereit throne. In the Black Forest of the Tula they swore eternal 
friendship. "In memory of the service you have rendered me," Toghril 
declared, "my gratitude shall be manifested to your children and to your 
children's children, may the high heavens (de'ere tenggeri) and the 
earth be my witness." Weighty words, by which Toghril and Yesugei 
became brothers by oath, and which would in the future assure to Yesii- 
gei's son ToghriTs protection. 

The whole of the first part of the reign of Chingis-khan, up to 1203, was 
to be dominated by the memory of the "oath of the Black Forest." 



A 
AA 



Yesugei's Conquest 
of the Lady Ho'eliin 



Yesugei's union with the woman who was to be the mother of Chingis- 
khan is told by the Mongol bard pithily and extraordinarily baldly. No 
episode conveys more vividly the primitiveness of life at this period. 

Yesiigei was hunting with falcons on the banks of the Onon when he 
saw coming from the direction of the river a noble Mongol of the Merkit 
tribe called Yeke-Chiledii. The latter had just taken to wife a girl of the 
clan of the Olqunu'ut, a division of the Onggirat tribe, nomads from near 
where the River Khalkha joined Lake Buyur, in eastern Mongolia. Yeke- 
Chiledii was bringing back his young bride, who was called Ho'eliin a 
name we are to meet many times in the course of this story. To the 
couple's great misfortune, they were seen by Yesiigei. Yesiigei certainly 
had good eyes: he saw that the young woman was very beautiful. He 
hastened to his yurt and came back reinforced by his two brothers, 
Nekiin-tayshi and Daritay. Seeing them coming towards him, Chiledii 
took fright. Whipping up his horse a chestnut charger, the bard notes 
conscientiously he fled toward a nearby hill, the three brothers after him 
at a gallop. As, having rounded an abutment of the mountain, he turned 
back to his wife Ho'eliin in her chariot, she, being a woman of sense, said 
practically: "Have you taken a look at these men? They seem to me 
scarcely to bode us good. Apparently they are out to kill you. If you can 
get away alive, you will not want for maidens perched on wagon seats, or 
women even in the black wagons . . . She whom you choose you give 
my name, call her Ho'eliin in memory of me. Save your life! Escape! Yet 
take this, that you may have my perfume also to remember me 



34 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

by, . . ." With which she pulled off her shift and threw it at him. He 
jumped from his horse and seized it. Already the three brothers were 
coining around the mountain and were almost upon him. He brought his 
whip down on his charger, and made off at full gallop up the Onon val- 
ley. The three brothers hurled themselves in pursuit. They crossed seven 
hills without being able to catch him; then they returned to the wagon. 
Yesiigei claimed the fair Ho'eliin and brought her triumphantly home. 
The bard shows him rejoicing in his conquest and driving the wagon 
himself, while his brother Nekun-tayshi went before to show the way and 
the third member of the party, Daritay, rode by the shafts. 

But poor Ho'eliin in the wagon moaned and lamented: "My husband 
who till now had never exposed a hair of his head to the wind! He who in 
the steppe had never known hunger! Now as he fled galloping his two 
plaits were beating in the wind, on his back, then on his chest. That he 
should be brought to that!" "So she spoke," the bard goes on, "and the 
echo of her lament troubled the waves of the Onon and set the trees of 
the forest agroan." But the youngest brother of her ravisher, Daritay, who 
was riding alongside the wagon, told the poor young woman mockingly: 
"The man you want to hold again in your arms is already far off, and in 
his flight he must have already crossed not a few rivers. You do no good 
weeping, he will not turn round, and you will not see him again. You 
would not even be able to pick up his traces. Come, be quiet." So he 
advised her to make the best of circumstances. And indeed she followed 
Yesiigei to his yurt, and from that day forward, as a woman of sense, 
devoted herself entirely to him. 

This famous episode is highly informative. It tells us that the exogamy 
the Mongols made a family rule only too often drove them, when they 
wanted a wife, to resort to kidnaping, which perpetuated war among the 
tribes. Between the Merkits and the Mongols of the upper Onon, woman- 
snatching was to go on endlessly, till an unassuageable hatred built up 
and, transmitted from generation to generation, led eventually to one of 
the two groups being exterminated. Here also is one more proof of the 
anarchy the tribes had relapsed into, following the collapse of the first 
Mongol royalty, an anarchy affecting not merely the political frame- 
work but all social relationships. And indeed, we shall see that when the 
order of Chingis-khan was established in Mongolia, the exogamy rule 
whereby a Mongol must find a wife outside his own tribe proved observ- 



Yesiigei f s Conquest of Lady Hd'elun 35 

able by way of peaceable negotiation, with no need to resort to kid- 
naping. 

Lastly, this quaint little drama the Mongol bard has staged for us 
acquaints us forthwith with the character of the lady Ho'eliin: a dutiful 
woman, surely, loving her first husband and even in love with him, as 
she shows by her touching sorrow as he disappears over the horizon, and 
the spontaneous gesture of the very personal souvenir she bequeaths 
him; but at the same time a realist with feet on the ground, knowing when 
circumstances have the whip hand, and unprevaricating, as when, out of 
tenderness for her husband, she consoles him for what he is losing and 
urges him to save his life. Once she has entered the house of Yesiigei she 
will attach herself to him with the same unswerving loyalty; and likewise 
to her new family, who later, when they fall on evil days, when Yesiigei is 
no longer there, will look to her for, and find, virile direction. Who can 
say, even, whether without a mother of such simple rectitude, of such 
energy, of such realism and practicality, the career of Chingis-khan could 
have been what it was? 



A 
AA 



Childhood Days of Chingis-khan 



According to the findings of M. Pelliot (1939) , the eldest son of Yesiigei 
and the lady Ho'eliin, the future Chingis-khan, was born in the Year of 
the Pig, 1 1 67.* His family were encamped at the time at Deli'iin-boldaq, 
close, that is, to the lone hill (boldaq) of Deli'iin, on the right bank of 
the Onon. The infant came into the world clutching in his right hand a 
clot of blood the size of a knucklebone. His father named him Temujin, 
to commemorate his capture, about the time of the child's birth, of the 
Tatar chief Temujin-uge. As to the etymology of this name, it seems that 
the interpretation of it as "Blacksmith," from the Turco-Mongol root 
lemur, "iron," is phonetically correct. Chance, though triumphs of his 
father's, dictated that the future "Conqueror of the World" should be 
marked out as it were by name as the man of iron whose work it was to 
be to forge a new Asia. After him, Yesiigei and Ho'eliin had three more 
sons: Jochi-Qasar, Qachi'un, and Temiige, the last designated otchigin, 
literally "prince of the hearth," that is, the youngest. They had also a 
daughter, Temuliin. By another woman called, perhaps, according to 
Pelliot's last researches (1941), Sochigil Yesiigei had two other sons, 
Bekter and Belgiitei. 

The chronicles are not as informative as they might be about the phy- 
sique of Chingis-khan. They do say the child had eyes of fire and a singu- 
lar light in his face, perhaps a reminder of the Spirit of Light that had 
once overshadowed his mythical ancestor Alan-qo'a. As an adult, he was 
notable for his height, the sturdiness of his frame, his wide forehead, a 
relatively long beard (long at least by Mongol standards), and finally his 
"cat's eyes." These cat's eyes, which have been taken to be grey-green, 

1 Concerning the exact date of Chingis-khan's birth, see pp. 281-88 of No. 18. 



Childhood Days of Chingis-khan 37 

have greatly intrigued commentators. Could the future Chingis-khan be "of 
Turkized Aryan race," like the peasants of Kashgaria? But the author for 
one has personally numbered among his close feline acquaintances cats 
whose eyes were brownish-yellow, and in any case the Mongol bards 
have too carefully recorded the genealogy of their hero for there to be 
any doubt about his Altaic origins. 

Betrothal must have been customary at a very early age in Mongolia. 
Temlijin was only nine (bringing us to 1 176) when his father Yesiigei set 
forth with him to find a fiancee. Yesiigei intended to go first to the rela- 
tives of his wife Ho'eliin, the Onggirats of the Olqunu'ut clan, whom he 
expected to find roaming, as we have seen, in eastern Mongolia, near 
Lake Buyur. On the way, father and son made a halt at the camp of an- 
other Onggirat chief, named Deisechen (the Wise), between Mounts 
Chekcher and Chiqurqu, identified respectively by Professor Haenisch as 
the modern Altan-nomor and Dulan-khora, on the west bank of the River 
Urchun, between Lake Kolen and Lake Buyur. Deisechen inquired the 
reason for their journey. Yesiigei told him he was seeking a betrothed 
for his son in the Onggirat country. The questioner was interested. 
"Your son," Deisechen told him, "has fire in his glance and a glowing 
countenance. Now, friend Yesiigei, last night I had a strange dream. A 
white falcon, with the sun and the moon in its claws, came down from 
heaven and perched on my hand. It was a fine omen, as I understand 
now that you come to us with your son with you. My dream was to 
announce that you came, you of the clan Kiyat, as bearers of good for- 
tune." 

Deisechen was not called "the Wise" for nothing. The Onggirats were 
famous for the beauty of their daughters, but politically, they were a 
minor tribe: they were not in the same class as the Kiyats, the royal clan 
par excellence. They were flattered, then, when, by what seems to have 
been a tradition, the men of the royal clan came to them for their wives. 
Or so Deisechen gives to understand in his words to Yesiigei: "We are 
celebrated for the beauty of our daughters and our nieces, but we have 
never sought to turn this to the advantage of our people. When there has 
come over from you a new khan, we have hastened to set in one of our 
big qasaq wagons one of our fine-faced girls, with a dark grey camel in 
the shafts, which we put to a spanking pace, and she has gone to you to 
take her place as a wife on the royal throne beside your khans." The 
whole passage seems to indicate that in the Mongol practice of exogamy 



38 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

there was particular jus connubii between the clan of the Borjigin and the 
Onggirats. 

The verse leads up to Deisechen's final suggestion: "Friend Yesugei, 
let us go to my yurt. I have a daughter, already growing up. Come and see 
her!" Yesugei followed his host into his thick felt tent. He must have sat 
in the seat of honor, beside the master of the house, in the center of the 
tent, or rather, near the fire that took up the center. At the back, to the 
right, the lady of the house would be sitting, with the children. Among 
these would be thoroughly alive already, it may be imagined, to what 
was happening the young Borte, whose name, we have already learned, 
also means grey-blue. Yesugei looked at the little girl, and his heart was 
satisfied. She was indeed very pretty. The bard even takes care to say of 
her what he has just said of Temiijin: she, also, had fire in her glance and 
a face that shone. Incidentally, she was ten, one year older than Temiijin. 

Next morning, Yesugei made the formal request for her in marriage. 
His host was a sagacious man who knew that one must neither be too 
coy nor give consent too soon. And Borte, even though the Mongols mar- 
ried young, was only a little girl. Deisechen, after a generality or two ("it 
is the lot of girls to be born in the paternal yurt, but not their destiny to 
grow old there"), made a waiting-period suggestion: "It is agreed, I shall 
give you my daughter. But, when you go, leave your son with me as a son- 
in-law" (more precisely, as a son-in-law-to-be; one might almost say, as 
an "apprentice son-in-law"). Yesugei agreed to do this, but adding a rider 
to his consent that, referring to the future Chingis-khan, comes as 
something of a surprise: "So be it, I will leave my son with you. But you 
should know he is afraid of dogs. Friend, see that dogs are not allowed to 
frighten him!" In fairness to the young Temiijin (and, affianced as he 
was, he was after all only nine), it should be added that the great Mon- 
gol dogs, black and bristly, are particularly formidable. The Roerich 
mission reports that only a few decades ago, in the town of Urga, now 
Ulan-Bator, strays attacked people on foot, and even on horseback, and 
one night made a meal of a sentry. 

These recommendations made, Yesugei, leaving his son to serve his 
apprenticeship with Deisechen, mounted and set off for home. On the 
way, he met a group of Tatars gathered for a banquet on the Yellow 
Steppe (Shira-ke'er) near the Mount Chekcher that Haenisch, as already 
mentioned, identifies with Mount Dulan-khora, between Lake Buyur and 



Childhood Days of Chingis-khan 39 

the inflow of the Keriilen into Lake Kolen. Thirsty, he sat down beside 
them, and asked them for a drink. He had rashly forgotten the old hate 
of the Tatars for his house. Now, they had recognized him: "But it is 
Yesiigei the Kiyat coming to us" Yesugei, who in former warring had led 
so many raids on their encampments. The time of vengeance had come, 
fate had delivered him into their hands. They mixed poison in his food, a 
poison of the slow-acting kind. It was only when he was once more on 
his way that Yesiigei felt the first effects. Three days later, when he 
reached his yurt, his condition was so much worse as to leave him in no 
doubt what had happened to him. Yesiigei the Brave was going to die, 
"Yesiigei the Brave was entering the death throes." He called out: "Who is 
beside me?" Monglik, son of the old man Charaqa, of the Qongqotat tribe, 
answered: "I am here, oh Yesiigei." Then the dying man made his last 
dispositions: "Monglik, my child, listen: my children are still young. 
When I had left my son Temiijin over there as betrothed, and while I was 
returning here, I was poisoned by the Tatars. I feel my strength ebb. 
. . . What is to become of my children and all those I leave behind, 
my young brothers, my widow, my sisters-in-law? This is anguish. . . . 
Monglik, my child, go at once quickly and bring back my son Temiijin!" 
And with these words, he died. 2 

The dramatic death of Yesiigei, the anguished fears and recommenda- 
tions of the dying man for his family this is the opening chapter of the 
personal history of Temiijin, of the future Chingis-khan. Something of 
the Mongol chronicler's indrawn breath still communicates itself to the 
reader here. They were grim conditions indeed attached to the future 
world conqueror's apprenticeship to life! We know the savagely fierce 
ways of the Mongolian forest and steppe, the life of ambush, treason, 
abduction, and killing, with the manhunt as frequent as hunting for the 
maral or the dziggetai a milieu we have already compared to the 
American prairie in the days of the scalp hunters. Into this iron society 
the young Temiijin was cast, bereft of paternal protection, a fatherless 
boy of nine. 

By Pelliot's calculations, this was in 1 176. 

2 Monglik, whom we shall meet again later, must have been young enough himself, 
since a little further on (K 204) the Secret History assures us, doubtless with 
some literary license, that he was born about the same time as. Chingis-khan and 
that they grew up together. 



A 
AA 



Orphans Driven from the Clan 



Monglik did at once as he was charged by the dying Yesiigei. He went 
into the Onggirat country, to Deisechen, to bring back the young Temii- 
jin. But with the prudence of the prairie hunter, he was careful not to tell 
his host of the catastrophe that had befallen his tribe. Who knew whether 
Deisechen, if he learned that the Kiyat chief was dead, might not seize 
the child as a slave? So Monglik used subterfuge. "Your brother Yesii- 
gei," he told the Onggirat, "cannot get used to being without Temujin. 
His heart is wrung when he thinks of him." Deisechen found this quite 
natural. "If Yesiigei's heart is sore for Temujin, take him to him; then, 
when he has seen him, bring him back soon." 

And Monglik took the young Temujin from Buyurnor to the upper 
Onon, to the yurt where Yesiigei had just died, and his widow, the lady 
Ho'eliin, had assumed control 

But it was not long before the situation worsened for Ho'eliin and her 
children. Yesiigei, toward the end of his life, had contrived by his pres- 
tige to bring together under his authority, grouped around the subclan of 
the Kiyats, a certain number of consanguineous clans. The Taychi'ut 
princes, notably, his cousins, had, as we have seen, accepted him as 
leader in war and in the hunt. It was a typical instance of the duration-of- 
life grouping that would take place around the man of strength and capac- 
ity, it being in the clan's interests, for raiding as for larger-scale battle, to 
place themselves under an experienced leader. When the leader died, 
however, the grouping broke up. This is what happened at the death of 
Yesiigei. The Taychi'ut chiefs now wanted to assume again the authority 
that had once briefly been theirs with Ambaqay, last but one of the khans 
of the Mongols. In the face of their pretensions, what could the family of 



Orphans Driven -from the Clan 41 

Yesiigei do, decapitated by the death of its chief and with for representa- 
tive a child of nine? Brutally, matters were brought to a head. 

It was in spring. The widows of khan Ambaqay, the two Taychi'ut 
princesses Orbey and Soqatay, had come to the place of consecration to 
make the ritual offerings to the ancestral spirits. The ceremony over, 
those present shared among themselves the proffered meats. Now Orbey 
and Soqatay had deliberately omitted to invite the widow of Yesiigei, the 
dowager Ho'eliin. Ho'eliin came nevertheless, but she arrived late for the 
sacrifice, and sat down a latecomer also to the ceremonial meal. This, as 
we know, was a strong woman, positive, possessed of singular drive, in 
spirit a chief. Chief of the subclan of the Kiyats was what she now was, in 
the stead and place of her husband, in the name of her still minor sons, 
and it was not her intention to have her rights laid down for her. With 
the two Taychi'ut dowagers, she took a tone of great hauteur, and went 
in forthwith to the attack, threatening them: "Now Yesiigei the Brave is 
dead, you think all is permitted you. Do you then imagine his children 
will not grow up? And that you will not when that time comes have to 
cower to their anger? Sharing the meat and drink of the sacrifice, would 
you leave me out? When you had eaten, would you prepare to strike 
camp without awakening me?" 

It is quite clear that in the framework of the shamanist beliefs of the 
time, exclusion of Ho'eliin from the sacrificial communion, from the con- 
suming of the meats offered to the ancestors, would have had social re- 
sults of a most serious order. Apart from the personal insult an act of 
such discourtesy was in itself, its effect would have been practically to 
banish the heirs of Yesiigei from the community of the clan Borjigin, to 
make the widow and her children veritable outcasts. 

Ho'eliin had thought she could intimidate the two other dowagers. But 
the young widow had miscalculated. Whatever her assertions, a dead 
Yesiigei and the young children impressed no one any more. The two old 
women rounded on her in a wave of unleashed smarting feminine spite: 
"So you were not invited to the feast? Is it not a habit of yours to invite 
yourself, and to serve yourself liberally? And then when you oh yes, 
you give invitations; only at your table one does not get a bite to eat!" 
Venomous barbs of malevolent old women in the smoke-thick atmos- 
phere of a Mongol yurt, clustered around the best-looking part of mutton 



42 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

nothing could convey more vividly the beggared life of all these mon- 

archs of the steppe. 

Then the Taychi'ut princesses held long council together. When they 
broke up, the order was given: "Strike camp and let the widow and her 
children look after themselves! Away, let us leave them to their fate." 
And so it was. Next morning, the two Taychi'ut chiefs, Tarqutay-Qiriltuq 
and Todoen-Girte, made off with their people down the Onon valley. 
"Mother Ho'eliin" was left helpless with her fatherless children. One for- 
mer faithful follower of Yesiigei alone tried to help her. He was of the 
Qongqotat tribe, the old man (ebiigen) Charaqa, father of that Monglik 
whom Yesiigei had charged with his wishes as he lay dying. Running 
after the Taychi'uts, Charaqa tried to persuade them to change their 
minds, to stay with the great widow. But Todoen-Girte told him the break 
was final: "The deep water is dry, the brilliant stone is split." Did the old 
man, in his loyalty, insist too much? Anyway the Taychi'uts booed him 
out, and as he turned to go he got a lance wound deep in his spine. He 
came home dying to his yurt. Temiijin came to his couchside. The old 
man had still strength enough to tell his master's son the outcome of his 
gesture: "They want to lead away out of your reach all these people your 
noble father once united under his command. I tried to stop them, and 
see what they have done to me!" Tears were hot on the boy's cheeks as he 
left the yurt where this man the last defender of his cause lay dying 
for him. This visit to the deathbed of his old retainer was, for this child of 
nine, his first action as a chief. He served his apprenticeship in a society 
of iron, and his every political act was to bear the mark of the harshness 
of the lessons he there received. But let us not forget these tears Temiijin 
shed by the deathbed of Charaqa; that, disconcertingly, our first glimpse 
of the personality of the future Chingis-khan is a reaction of affection and 
human tenderness. 

Meanwhile Ho'eliin his mother did not give way to despair. Abandoned 
with her children, betrayed by all those she might have counted on, this 
courageous woman took magnificent action. She seized the tuq, the yak 
or stallion-tail standard that was the banner of the clan, mounted a 
horse, galloped after the departed tribes, and brought half of them to a 
halt. For a moment it seemed her courage, and the memory of Yesiigei, 
might prevail over Taychi'ut enmity. Picture the tribes on the march with 
their wagons, horsemen, beasts, and the great widow overhauling them at 



Orphans Driven from the Clan 43 

the gallop, waving her tuq, and haranguing the "deserters," reminding 
them of the oath they swore in former days to Yesligei the Brave. Imag- 
ine the waverings in the column of marchers, the uncertainty in minds 
confronted with the call to duty, the objurgations of Ho'eltin, and com- 
mitments made the night before to the new Taychi'ut chiefs. In the end it 
was they who triumphed. Those of the clans Ho'eliin had managed mo- 
mentarily to move or intimidate turned from her once more to follow 
Tarqutay-Qiriltuq and Todoen-Girte. And all this people, once the peo- 
ple of Yesiigei the Brave, disappeared along the Onon, and Ho'eliin and 
her family were left alone in the deserted camp. Besides her four sons 
Temiijin, Jochi-Qasar, Qachi'un, and Temiige and her daughter 
Temiiliin, there were Bekter and Belgiitei, the two sons Yesiigei had had 
by a second wife. 

She was to look after all alike. It is now that "Mother Ho'elun," as the 
Mongol bard henceforth calls her, shows herself at her true stature. 
Think for one moment of the situation of this widow and seven children, 
abandoned by all their followers, cast down overnight from the life of 
horde chieftains to the existence of the shunned and outlawed, lost be- 
tween forest and steppe, in this harsh country of the upper Onon. Far 
from despairing, this valiant woman, summoning all her resources, 
showed her right to that other title the bard bestows on her, Ho'eliin the 
Wise (mergen). First she had to see the children did not die of hunger. 
For that she resorted to the harvesting of the primitive, simply gathering. 
"Her hat pulled firmly on and tied tight on her head, she worked from 
top to bottom the banks of the Onon, plucking wild sorb apples and 
berries." In Transbaykalia there are in fact to be found in the woods and 
up to the alpine zone sorbs, bilberry and whortleberry bushes, bearing 
fruit with which, at the right season, the outcasts could cheat their hun- 
ger. Juniper branch in hand, Ho'eliin prised up edible roots. These she 
gave her sons to eat, and garlic and onions. They themselves, as soon as 
they were a little older, began to help. They made hooks with points and 
fished from the bank of the Onon, bringing in sometimes only paltry 
small fish, but sometimes also shadows, fish not unlike salmon, which are 
quite numerous in the rivers of Transbaykalia. They also used nets, and 
brought the catch to their mother. 

So life for the outcast family went on. The clans who had abandoned 
them on the shores of the upper Onon counted apparently on their per- 



44 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

ishing, left to their own devices, of poverty and hunger. In that unrelent- 
ing climate, in that society of iron ruthlessness, how should the widow 
and children do otherwise? Yet they survived because they were them- 
selves of iron race. 

The very games of these children were games of hunting or of war. 
Temujin made friends with a young boy of the region, Jamuqa, of the 
Mongol tribe of the Jajirats. "He was eleven when Jamuqa gave him as a 
present," the Chingiskhanid epic carefully recounts, "a roe deer's knuck- 
lebone. Temujin for his part gave Jamuqa a similar toy in copper, and 
with these they played together on the ice of the Onon." When it was 
spring, they practiced archery together with little wooden bows. Jamuqa 
had made himself sounding arrows with the ends of a young bullock's 
horns, while Temujin sharpened arrows in cypress or jumper, and the two 
children would take turns with each other with these "toys." 

Suddenly among the outcasts there broke out a savage family drama. 



A 
AA 



The Young Chingis-khan 
Kills His Brother 



The young men of the wild that Temiijin and his brothers had become 
had the brusque reactions to be expected of youths reared as they had 
been. They had also the domestic jealousies, the sly fraternal rancors, 
nourished in isolation and poverty. The jealousies had an extra edge in 
that Yestigei's children came, as we have seen, of two different mothers: 
on the one hand the four sons of the Lady Ho'eliin, of whom the eldest 
was Temiijin, and on the other the two sons of the second wife Sochigil, 
namely Bekter and Belgtitei. Between these two groups of adolescents 
rivalry was not slow to manifest itself. The Mongol epic's bald telling of 
the tale, and the backdrop of the action's desolate setting, makes it all 
read for us like one of those scenes from life in Siberia in certain Russian 
novels. 

One day when Temiijin, his younger brother Qasar, and their two half 
brothers Bekter and Belgiitei were sitting on the bank of the river fishing, 
they caught a little fish a little beauty, shining all over and, suddenly, 
quarreled over who should have it, Temiijin and Qasar against Bekter 
and Belgiitei. The two latter were stronger and they appropriated the fish. 
Back at the yurt, Temiijin and Qasar came complaining to their mother: 
"A shining fish bit at the hook, but Bekter and Belgiitei have taken it 

<^^MO*MMMI - - S*w0lf 

away from us!" Greatly to their surprise, no doubtrtSelady Ho'eliin, far 
from taking their part, defended against her own sons those of the sec- 
ond wife. She was the woman-leader, who thought only of the interest 
of the clan: "Let matters be! How can you fight like this, between 
brothers?" She reminded them of their isolation as outlaws: "Your only 



46 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

companions are your shadows!" She recalled the duty of vendetta that 
lay upon them: "You must have one thought only: how to avenge the 
injury done to you by the brothers Taychi'ut. Would you show your- 
selves as disunited as were once the five sons of the fair Alan?" 

But Temiijin and Qasar were unconvinced. For Bekter was making a 
habit of this. Already, a little while back, he had snatched a lark from 
them, a lark that their arrows had brought down. "Yesterday it was a 
lark, now it is a fish. We cannot go on living with him!" And with this, 
angry, full of hate, they flung aside the carpet that served as the yurt 
door, and rushed out. 

And the drama moved fast to climax among these adolescents in 
whom their life of hardship had developed all the passions of grown men. 
Bekter was sitting on a knoll, whence he guarded his family's horses, 
nine beasts, among them a fine gelding, silver-grey. Like two redskins in 
a tale of the Far West, Temiijin and Qasar made their plan. Temiijin 
came up behind, Qasar in front. Both crept through the grass on all 
fours, as hunters do who do not want to alert game too soon. The game 
was their half brother Bekter, still sitting on his knoll, unsuspecting. 
He became aware of them only when they were drawing their bows, 
taking aim. He tried to calm them by recalling, as their mother Ho'eliin 
had done a moment ago, their solidarity in face of a common enemy, the 
Taychi'uts: "Instead of killing each other, we should be carrying out our 
vendetta on them. The humiliation they put us to is still not avenged. 
Why do you treat me like an eyelash in the eye, a splinter in the 
mouth?" Then, as they stood inexorable, arrows at the ready, he made a 
last plea: "Do not put out my hearth's flame, do not kill my little brother 
Belgiitei!" Then he awaited death, seated cross-legged on top of the hill. 
Temiijin and Qasar, adjusting their arrows, took aim, "as at a target," 
one from the front, one from behind. They shot him down and went 
away, their deed done. 

When the two young murderers returned to the yurt, their mother 
Ho'eliin, simply from their sinister expressions, understood what had 
happened. Furiously, she raged at them. "Murderers! One of you 
[Temiijin] came into the world clutching a clot of black blood! The 
other is like the savage Qasar dog whose name he bears. You are like the 
#<2/<2/i-tiger that jumps down from a rock, like the lion that cannot con- 
trol its fury, like a giant snake that wants to swallow its prey alive, like 



Chingis-khan Kills His Brother 47 

the falcon that swoops on its own shadow, like the pike that, silently, 
swallows up the other fish, like a male camel that bites its own colt in the 
heel, like a wolf that attacks under cover of the storm, like a wild duck 
that devours its own brood when it cannot follow it, like a jackal that, as 
soon as it can move, fights for its lair, like a tiger that carries off its 
victim, like a wild beast that charges blindly. Yet save for your shadow 
you have no companions, save for your horses' tails you have no whip. 
The outrage the Taychi'ut committed against us, you cannot even avenge 
it!" 

"Thus the great dowager upbraided her sons, quoting them maxims of 
time past and the words of the ancients." Meantime Temiijin, having 
killed the only one of his brothers who dared stand up to him, was now, 
young as he was, chief of his clan. 



A 
AA 



Chingis-khan Pilloried 



Mother Ho'eliin holding up before her sons the threat of the Taychi'uts 
was indulging in no mere empty rhetoric. That sword indeed hung con- 
tinually over them, as events were not to be slow to bring home. 

The Taychi'ut chief Tarqutay-Qiriltuq, the same, it will be remem- 
bered, who had caused the widow and children of Yesiigei to be aban- 
doned to their fate, was anxious to find out now what had happened to 
the outcast family. Doubtless he regretted not having made an end of 
them while they were so young. "The evil brood must be able to fly by 
now. They were children, still dribbling. They must have grown 
up. . . ." Obscurely, he sensed a threat. Grown men, the sons of 
Yesiigei the Brave and the indomitable dowager would not fail to avenge 
with Taychi'ut blood the injuries done them. Possible revenge must be 
nipped in the bud by seizing while there was still time the whole 
brood. The Taychi'ut chief set out then at the head of his horsemen for 
the pastures where Mother Ho'eliin and her children led their wretched 
lives. 

At the sight of them, the great widow and the youths at once grasped 
their peril. They fled in terror to the thickest part of the nearby forest, and 
took refuge behind a hastily built barricade of trunks and branches. 
Belgiitei cut trees to strengthen the entrenchment, while Qasar, who was 
showing himself already the skillful archer we are to know later, engaged 
the assailants in an exchange of arrows. The two younger brothers, 
Qachi'un and Temiige, and their little sister Temuliin, had hidden in a 
crevice in the rock. 

While arrows sped from both sides, the Taychi'ut chiefs shouted what 
they wanted: "It is your eldest brother, it is Temiijin we want. We wish 
the rest of you no harm!" By taking Temujin, they thought they would 



Chingis-khan Pilloried 49 

decapitate the clan. Hearing this, Temiijin's mother and brothers put him 
on a horse and told him to flee. 

Temujin fled into the forest that covered this corner of the upper 
Onon, among the cedars of the humid slopes, the larch trees and pines of 
the higher reaches. But the Taychi'uts saw him and the manhunt began. 
He plunged into the thickest part of the forest, at the top of Mount 
Tergiine. The Taychi'uts did not attempt to penetrate so far, but threw a 
net of sentries around the forest, sure that fatigue and hunger would de- 
liver the fugitive to them. For three days and three nights Temujin lay 
low among the thickets. Then finally he decided to try a breakout. As he 
was going down toward the edge of the forest, leading his horse, the 
animal's saddle slipped around. He turned, examined the straps: chest 
harness and girth were both well done up, yet the saddle had worked 
loose and fallen. Finding no explanation, the hero decided this must be a 
sign from heaven: the Koko Mongke Tengri, the Eternal Blue Sky, which 
watched over his race, forbade him to go further. He turned about, went 
back into the wood, and stayed there another three days and three nights. 
At the end of that time, driven no doubt by hunger, he made another 
move to come out, but at the moment he was about to leave the under- 
wood an enormous rock, white a rock as big as a yurt, the bard tells 
us came loose from the mountain and rolled to his feet where it 
blocked the way. This time, there could be no doubt: the Eternal Sky 
had forbidden him to go farther. A second time he retraced his steps, and 
held out another three days and nights in the forest. 

But the ninth day his strength was exhausted, for during all this time 
he had had nothing to eat, save probably a few wild berries. Death with- 
out glory awaited him, and he chose rather to make his bid. Resolutely, 
he worked around the white rock that blocked his way, cutting away the 
branches around it with his archer's knife the knife he used to sharpen 
arrows. The moment, leading his horse, he had stepped past the rock, 
Taychi'uts men stationed there surged up on all sides and threw them- 
selves on him. On the instant he was a prisoner. 

Yet, perhaps out of a last feeling of respect to the memory of Yesugei 
the Brave, the Taychi'ut chief Tarqutay-Qiriltuq did not have Temujin 
executed. He was to confess later that he had thought of doing so, but an 
invincible force had held him back. 1 He contented himself with putting a 

1 Undoubtedly there were also between them memories of the former life of the 
tribe together, when Yesiigei was alive. "When Temujin, was little, as he had been 



50 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

cangue around his neck and placing him in turn in charge of the guards 
of different ayil, the encampments of yurts constituting the nomads' 
various tribal villages. 

left alone in the camp (perhaps while Yesiigei was away fighting), I would go to 
look for him, and as he had eyes of fire and a face of light, and as he was atten- 
tive, I became fond of teaching him, like a horse of two or three years." So Tar- 
qutay-Qiriltuq was to say later. And even if these are simple euphemisms to re- 
count how later he led the child captive with a cangue around his neck in truth 
a somewhat rude education it must be said that when all was said and done, he 
spared his life. (Secret History, para. 149, No. 25, p. 50.) 



A 
AA 



Chingis-khan Escapes 



How long did the young Temujin live thus a prisoner, trailing his weary 
days, with a cangue around Ms neck, from yurt to yurt, forever under 
guard as the heir, the possible avenger, of an enemy clan? His captors 
were certainly not contemplating freeing him, when he had an opportu- 
nity to attempt an escape. 

It was the beginning of summer. The Taychi'uts were holding a cere- 
monial feast on the banks of the Onon. They were to hold festival all 
day, then break up at sunset. The prisoner had been placed in the charge 
of a young man who was something of a weakling. Temujin noticed it. He 
had soon taken the measure of his escort's strength. Like the youth of the 
wilds he was, full of cunning and quick decision, he made his plans. He 
waited till at nightfall the Taychi'uts, full of qumiz, had retired to their 
yurts. Then he turned on his guard, and using his cangue as a weapon, 
brought it down so heavily on his head that it laid the young man out on 
the floor. Then he took to his heels. But where was he to go? Try to hide 
in the woods along the Onon banks? They would surely track him down. 
Resolutely, he plunged into the river, probably among the reeds at the 
edge, letting only his face show above water. The wooden cangue, still 
fastened to his neck, now served as a buoy. 

Meantime his guard, coming to, had sounded the alarm. The Tay- 
chi'uts mustered and organized a systematic beating of the woods and 
the riverbank. The trees stood out in the moonlight, one could see be- 
tween them as if it were day. Suddenly one of the pursuers caught sight 
of Temujin where he lay absolutely still in the river. By good fortune, this 
man, a certain Sorqan-shira, did not belong to the Taychi'ut tribe, but to 
that of the Suldus, mere payers of tribute to the Taychi'uts. He bore the 



52 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

fugitive none of the bitter hatred of the people of Tarqutay-Qiriltuq. 
When, moving along, he saw Temiijin's desperate young face at the 
water's surface., he whispered, in pity, and low enough for Temlijin alone 
to hear him: "It is for your far-seeing intelligence, for the fire in your 
eyes, for the light in your countenance, that the brothers of Taychi'ut 
hound you. Do not move. I shall not denounce you." And he kept on his 
way. 

Meantime the Taychi'uts went stubbornly on beating the riverbanL 
Sorqan-shira persuaded them first to work the parts around the tracks that 
led to the yurts. As soon as they had moved off a little, he warned 
Temiijin: "They will come back, with fangs sharpened. Not a movement! 
Careful!" And, sure enough, the patrol returned, ready to embark again 
on a systematic search of the whole area. Not without courage, though 
without overstepping the limits of prudence, Sorqan-shira continued to 
dissuade them. "You let him escape in full daylight. And now you think 
you are going to recapture him in the middle of the night! Come back as 
soon as it is light, and we shall not fail to catch him. Where can a boy get 
to, after all, with a cangue around his neck?" Once he was alone, the 
excellent man, leaning over the bank, told Temiijin what was happening: 
"They are gone now till tomorrow morning! Now, quickly, make your 
way back to your mother. Whatever happens, above all never tell anyone 
you have seen me!" 

An ordinary youth would have done as he was bid, without ado. 
Temiijin decided there was more to be made of this stroke of fortune. The 
Taychi'uts had gone away. He considered: in his time as a prisoner, he 
had been handed over for guard to many heads of yurts. In none had he 
been treated with so much kindness as in that of Sorqan-shira. Taking 
pity on him, Sorqan-shira's two sons, Chimbay and Chila'un, had loosed 
him at night from the terrible cangue, to let him sleep. And, today, 
Sorqan-shira had discovered him and had not given him up. Perhaps they 
would get him away? His mind made up, he went downriver along the 
Onon, looking for the yurt of Sorqan-shira. He recognized it by a famil- 
iar sound: the beating of the churns, which went on into the early hours of 
the morning, churning cream for butter. With this to guide him, he found 
the yurt, and, resolutely, presented himself. 

Sorqan-shira might have just saved the young fugitive; he was furious, 
for all that, at this uncalled-for appearance, which, if it were to be dis- 



Chingis-khan Escapes 53 

covered, could mean his execution as an accomplice. His welcome was 
accordingly chilly: "Did I not tell you to return to your mpfher? What 
are you doing here?" But his two sons, Chimbay and Chila'un, inter- 
vened for the wanted man: "When a bird escapes from its cage and takes 
refuge in a bush, the bush saves its life. How can you treat thus one who 
seeks refuge with us?" And without waiting for their father's answer, 
they set Temiijin free from his cangue, and, to be rid of it without trace, 
threw it on the fire. Behind their yurt was a wagon full of wool. They hid 
him in it, bidding their younger sister, Qada'an, watch over him, without 
breathing a word to anyone. 

For the danger was not over; far from it! After searching in vain for 
three days, the Taychi'uts, convinced someone must have hidden the fu- 
gitive, turned to visiting the juris. At Sorqan-shira's, they searched the 
whole place, in the wagons, under the beds. Seeing the wagon where 
Temiijin crouched, they began systematically unloading the wool that 
concealed him. They were nearly to the bottom when Sorqan-shira, who 
stood looking on, to all appearances quite calm (his life was in the bal- 
ance, and he knew it), contrived once again to stop an operation in time. 
In a tone of total unconcern, he pointed out that the search was ridicu- 
lous: "In this heat, who could hide for any length of time at all in a 
cartful of wool and not suffocate?" The argument had its effect, the 
Taychi'uts left, but Sorqan-shira, who had given himself up for lost, 
made haste to get rid of Temiijin: "You have all but had me swept away 
in the storm like a handful of ashes! Now, away, this minute, back to 
your mother!" He gave the young man a sterile mare, straw-yellow with 
a white muzzle, had a lamb roasted for him, filled him two leather bot- 
tles, or rather two gourds, of mare's milk. He gave him also a bow with 
two arrows, but, notes the epic, neither saddle nor flint. Thus equipped, 
he dispatched him, and must only have breathed freely again when the 
mare's gallop faded over the horizon. 

Temiijin was lucky to meet no enemy. He came without inci- 
dent to the place where he and his brothers had withdrawn when the 
Taychi'uts came behind their branch barricade. His family had left the 
place, naturally, but he could make out their tracks in the grass, going 
down toward the Onon. He followed them to the junction of the River 
Kimurqa. Thence they led downstream. Finally, he came on those he 
sought not far from there, near the hill of Qorchuqi. 



54 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

The Mongol epic passes over what must have been the joy of these 
outcasts at the return of the young chief they had believed lost. Shortly 
after, the whole family moved off for a camp near the Blue Lake (Koko- 
na'ur) , at the site of the Qara-Jiriigen, in the upper Sangghur River val- 
ley, within the Giirelgii mountains which project from the Burqan-qaldun 
massif, that is to say, from the Kentey. In other words, they left the basin 
of the upper Onon for that of the upper Keriilen, of which the Sangghur is 
one of the first left-bank tributaries. But the life of the banished family 
continued to be one of dire hardship; they were reduced to eating the 
rodents of the steppe, like the tarbaqan or tarbuq, the meadow marmot, 
still hunted with dogs in the burrows of the region. 1 

1 Bouillane de Lacoste, Au pays sacre des anciens Turcs et Mongols, p. 159. 



A 
AA 



8 



The Theft of the Horses 



The ray of light in Temiijin's fortunes was his horses. One day when 
eight of them, among them a silver-grey gelding, of celebrated role in this 
history, were grazing in front of the yurt, they were swept off by raiders 
from the steppe. Temiijin and his brothers had to stand by, powerless, 
and watch the theft, for the only remaining horse, a brown charger, had 
been taken by Belgiitei, out hunting marmots in the steppe. They made a 
vain dash in pursuit on foot: it was of course hopeless to overtake the 
marauders. Toward evening, at sunset, Belgiitei came home at last, lead- 
ing the brown horse, the animal so laden with marmots that its burden 
swayed. 

When Belgiitei heard of the disaster for such it was: eight out of nine 
horses gone, for these unhappy people, was quite simply ruin, irreparable 
he was going on forthwith himself in pursuit, but Qasar protested: 
"You will not succeed, let me go!" But it was Temiijin who as young 
chief took the decision: "Neither of you will succeed. It is I who am 
going after them!" He jumped astride the brown charger and sped into 
the grasslands following the tracks of the stolen herd. 

He rode for two days and two nights. At the end of the third night, in 
the light of dawn, he saw a young boy with a group of horses, milking the 
mares. He asked him about the stolen chargers. The boy answered that 
he had indeed seen during the night, shortly before sunrise, people pass- 
ing who drove before them eight horses, one of them a silver-grey geld- 
ing. 

The boy's name was Bo'orchu. He was the only son of the Mongol 
Naqu bayan Naqu the Rich of the tribe of the Arulats. He was frank 
and full of liveliness and he was at once attracted to Temiijin: "Friend 



56 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

(ndkor)" he declared, "I see you are in trouble. I offer you my friend- 
ship and help." He suggested, indeed, that he should guide Temujin in the 
direction the robbers had taken with the horses. The brown horse 
Temujin was riding was exhausted. Bo'orchu gave him instead of it a 
fresh mount a white charger with a black stripe on its back. He himself 
took a particularly fast cream-colored horse. Clearly, if he had consulted 
his father the latter would have prevented him getting drawn into such an 
enterprise out of mere chivalry for a stranger. But Bo'orchu took care 
not to reappear at his yurt. He did not even take back the milk, but left 
the leather pails, full as they were, in mid-pasture. The two jumped into 
the saddle and made off after the thieves. 

For two days, they scanned the horizon of the steppe in vain. On the 
evening of the third day, as the sun went down behind a hill, they de- 
scried a small herd grouped around a camp, doubtless with wagons dis- 
posed Mongol-fashion to form an enclosure. There were the eight stolen 
horses among them the silver-grey gelding not on the move, but graz- 
ing! Temujin at once instructed his young companion: "Do not move 
from here, friend! I am going to drive the horses out of the park." But the 
excellent Bo'orchu intended to share the risks of his friend: "I came to 
help you. Why should I stay here doing nothing?" They went together 
into the park, rounded up the eight chargers, and made off with them 
into the plain. The robbers, naturally, as soon as they realized what was 
happening, hurled themselves full gallop after them. One warrior, on a 
white horse, drew ahead of the group and was already brandishing a 
lasso: "Friend," cried Bo'orchu to Temujin, "quick, pass me a bow and 
arrow. I want to draw on that man!" "I do not want you to be wounded 
because of me," the young hero replied. "It is for me to challenge him!" 
He turned and, bow taut, took aim at the man on the white horse. The 
latter halted, and, on his side, threatened Temujin with his lasso. Mean- 
time the others of the pursuing party had come up with their comrade, 
and things might well perhaps have taken a critical turn for Temujin, if 
darkness falling had not prevented combat. Not daring to risk a manhunt 
in the growing obscurity, over the immensity of the steppe, the pursuers 
turned about. Temujin and Bo'orchu, who for their part knew their way, 
galloped three days and three nights till they arrived at Bo'orchu's yurt. 

There, Temiijin thanked Bo'orchu with great warmth: "Friend, how, 
without your help, should I ever have found my horses again? We shall 



The Theft of the Horses 57 

share them: how many do you want?" The magnanimous Bo'orchu 
would have none of them; what he had done, he had done out of sympa- 
thy with the young chief: "If I joined in your quest, it was because I saw 
you in trouble and wished to help you recover what was yours. How 
should I now take a part of your herd? My father is called Naqu the Rich 
and I am his only son. That patrimony is enough for me. I will accept 
nothing from you!" Together they made toward the yurt of Naqu. He 
was weeping over the disappearance of his son. At the sight of him he 
had thought lost, he wept again, but tears of joy. After which he had for 
Bo'orchu, for the anxiety he had caused him, a sharp reprimand. But he 
did not forget his guest: he had roasted a suckling lamb, which he gave 
Temiijin as provision for the last part of his journey. And for the rest 
before Temiijin set out again, he gave his blessing to the friendship 
his son and the young chief had formed: "Keep always the same faith 
with one another," he said to Bo'orchu and Temiijin. "Let no angry word 
ever come between you!" The friendship was to endure, indeed, as long 
as the two men lived. 

Taking farewell of his two friends, Temiijin, driving his horses before 
him, took once more the road to the family encampment. Another ride of 
three days and three nights brought him at last to his own people on the 
banks of the River Sangghur. Uneasy as his absence first drew out, his 
mother Ho'eliin and his brothers, beginning with Qasar, had by now 
reached a state little short of anguish. And here now he came, safe and 
sound, and bringing with him the eight horses his valor had recovered. 
Joy and confidence reigned again in the little band. 

These were the modest debuts, similar to those of every young man of 
the steppe, of one who was one day to be Conqueror of the World: an 
adventure that almost turned out badly, or at least almost ended in per- 
petual captivity, but from which he escaped by audacity and sang-froid; 
then a theft of horses that he succeeded in recapturing, by dint, again, of 
decisiveness and determination. What is striking in the two cases is the 
attraction he has for all who come in contact with him, the respect ac- 
corded him, young as he still is, as the natural due of a powerful person- 
ality. Remember the words of Sorqan-shira, when he saw him surfacing 
between eddies in the moonlit waters of the Onon: it was because he had 
been as if fascinated by the power in the eyes of this youth, bespeaking 
already the soul of a chief, that Sorqan-shira, at the risk of Ms own life, 



58 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

saved the hunted boy. And then we have the young Bo'orchu, at the first 
meeting making himself over to Temujin, linking their fortunes for all 
time. He also found irresistible "the unwithstandable light of those 
falcon's eyes." 

And we shall see successively, and in mounting tempo, clans and 
tribes, peoples and kingdoms, pledge themselves to him, won by his gifts 
of command, his senses of equity, his gratitude for services rendered. 
His affection for his friends of the early days, like Bo'orchu, was to be 
proverbial. A code of great tents, where loyalty to friends was matched 
only by the ferocity shown to enemies. 



A 
AA 



Chingis-khan's Marriage 



Temiijin had sufficiently redeemed Ms fortunes to think of marriage. He 
did not forget that at the age of nine he had been bethrothed by his father 
to Borte, daughter of the Onggirat chief Deisechen. The girl, even at that 
time, already stood out among the "fine-cheeked" Onggirat girls with 
the dazzling faces, sought after in marriage by the chiefs of the Mongol 
clans. She must now be grown up, and the time was come for marriage, 
provided Deisechen was still of the same mind. Temiijin, anxious to have 
things settled, took his young brother Belgiitei and with him made his 
way down the valley of the Keriilen towards the Onggirat country. 

Deisechen was camping still in the same region as formerly, between 
the Chekcher and the Chiqurqu mountains; that is, between the inflow of 
the Kertilen to Lake Kiilen and the River Urshi'un that runs into the 
same lake. He gave the young man the warmest of welcomes: "I knew 
the Taychi'uts were out against you, and I was greatly anxious for you. 
But you have come back!" Perhaps he had felt remorse for having let 
him depart on that earlier occasion, alone and so young amid so many 
dangers. Perhaps also he was thinking to -himself that, considering he was 
his son-in-law-to-be, he had done little enough to help him through the 
years of hardship. At all events, seeing him now grown and strong, 
he hesitated not at all in giving him in marriage the beautiful Borte. He 
then accompanied the young couple up as far as Uraq-chol, on the lower 
Keriilen. And his wife, Shotan, Borte's mother, came with her daughter 
all the way to the encampment of Temiijin's family, by the River Sang- 
ghur and Mount Giirelgii. Before she left, she made a present to Temii- 
jin's mother, the lady Ho'eliin, of a magnificent coat of black sables. We 
shall see that the young chief was not long in turning this to sound diplo- 
matic account. 



60 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

Temiijin, now wed, turned to increasing his military strength. As a 
start he called on his friend Bo'orchu: he sent Belgutei to fetch him. 
Bo'orchu once again did not stop to tell his father. He jumped on a 
horse a brown horse with a slightly arched back made a roll on the 
saddle of his cloak of grey felt, and came in immediate response to his 
young chief's summons. 

He was one day to be first "marshal" of the "great army" that was to 
take shape up there, on the faryga-grassland border. 

In this epic, Borte, Temiijin's new wife, was to have her part to play, 
She was to be for him a pillar of strength. First and foremost for a 
Mongol the essential she bore him four sturdy sons: Jochi, Jaghatay, 
Ogodei, and Toluy. But she also proved for the hero a sagacious counse- 
lor, whose advice he heeded. At the decisive moments, when the future 
Chingis-khan hesitated over which path to take, it was Borte's ideas that 
prevailed. And behind these ideas lay both drive and foresight. Borte, for 
the rest, always enjoyed great prestige in the eyes of her redoubtable hus- 
band. To be sure, like all Mongol chiefs, he had no hesitation, later, in 
taking secondary wives, whom as occasion arose he would take with him 
on his far-flung campaigns, while Borte stayed in Mongolia. But only 
the children of Borte were to share in the paternal inheritance. Borte 
alone ranked above all others, men or women. The respect her 
husband invariably showed her was unaffected even when she was 
carried off by Merkit bands and, nine months after, returned pregnant 
and bore a son. This unfortunate episode Chingis-khan chose not even 
to inquire into. Borte remained after it, as before, the highly esteemed 
"lady" (qaturi), the conqueror's partner in the triumph of this prodigious 
epic, 1 

1 [Concerning a fifth son of Chingis by a secondary wife (a Nayman woman), 
named Jiirchedei, who apparently died about 1213-14, Cf. Pelliot, No. 10, p. 923.] 



A 
AA 



10 



The Coat of Black Sables 



Temiijin's marriage marked for him the end of the years of trial. He had 
eluded the Taychi'uts; he had established himself as the up and coming 
younger man beginning to be feared or sought after in the region; he 
could think now of renewing old alliances. 

Yestigei, Temiijin's father, had formerly, it will be remembered, helped 
to re-establish on the throne one of the most powerful kings of the 
steppe, Toghril, king of the Kereits, that people of uncertain origins who 
led a nomadic existence around the upper Tula. Temiijin was now firmly 
enough in a saddle to be able, without importuning Toghril, to remind 
him of these earlier events. He did so, naturally, with all the modesty 
befitting one whose position was but briefly re-established, but also with 
a dignity befitting one of his lineage. With his two brothers Qasar and 
Belglitei, he set out on horseback for the Black Forest (Qara-tun) on the 
banks of the River Tula, where Toghril lived. Their road, from the source 
of the Keriilen, where the hero's family was then encamped, to the 
upper Tula, is one of those the most often described in Mongol itiner- 
aries. A grass landscape, particularly picturesque in the spring, "when 
the lush grass is bespangled with the bright yellow of crucifers and but- 
tercup, the mauve of the tufts of thyme, the violet of iris, the pure white 
of stellaria or the pale velvet of edelweiss." Winding through this steppe 
runs the Tula, its course marked by a double row of poplars and willows. 
Northward, on the horizon, rise the tormented granite contours of the 
Kentey. To the south, the rounded breasts of the foothills stretch in a 
chain toward the Gobi. To the west, the range of Bogdo-ula, dividing the 
Keriilen basin from that of the Tula, is covered, from 5,800 to 8,300 
feet, with a dense forest of conifers, birches, and aspen, safeguarded by 



62 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

religion as the dwelling of the spirits. Lower and middle slopes bear the 
Transbaykalian pines after which this forest is named, whose clearings 
served as royal residence for the sovereign of the Kereits. 

It was indeed at the verge of one of these forests of the Ulan Bator 
region the Black Forest, of frequent mention in this story that the 
Kereit king Toghril was encamped. Introducing himself, Temiijin with 
his first words renewed the links of the past: "Formerly you and my 
father made yourselves brothers in oath [anda]. Now, therefore, you are 
as my father." And in support of his sentiments the young chief proffered 
to the Kereit king a singularly acceptable gift: the coat of black sables 
that had been his wife's family's wedding present. 

Toghril, flattered by this tribute, assured him of his support in re- 
establishing his father's kingdom. "Your people, who have left you, I will 
bring them back to you. Your people, who are scattered, I will bring 
them together again for you." This was a solemn pact by which the Kereit 
sovereign took under his protection the son of his former anda, and by 
which Temiijin formally acknowledged himself client and even vassal of 
Toghril, a most important pact, which was to hold until 1203. Over all 
that period Kereit support was to enable the future Chingis-khan, as 
their chief had promised, to triumph over the greater part of the ancient 
Mongol tribes. Reciprocally, the loyalty of Temiijin to his suzerain was 
to guarantee the latter against all revolt or aggression. 

Indeed, this pact concluded, Temiijin found his position remarkably 
strengthened. It was not necessary for him to make the overtures to strike 
up or renew invaluable friendships. He had scarcely returned from 
Kereit country to his Biirgi encampments near the source of the Keriilen 
before his nascent reputation began to bring him adherents. Thus there 
arrived from the region of the Burqan-qaldun that is, from the Kentey 
mountains a member of the Uriyangqay tribe, the old man Jarchi'uday, 
"with his smith's bellows on his shoulders." The detail is interesting, 
since from earliest times these populations of the Altay, whether of the 
Mongolian side or the Siberian, have been reputed experts in metallurgy. 
In prehistoric days, it was probably the ancient metallurgists of the re- 
gion of Minussinsk, in Siberia, who taught China the use of bronze, and 
later, in the sixth century A.D., the ancient Turks of the Orkhon were 
equally celebrated as smiths. 1 Jarchi'uday, the aged smith, came down 

i [Denis Sinor, "The Historical Role of the Turk Empire," Journal of World His- 
tory, Vol. I, 1953, pp. 423-340 



The Coat of Black Sables 63 

from the sacred mountain of Burqan-qaldun armed with the ancient se- 
crets that made sword edge and arrow point sure instruments to their pur- 
pose. Furthermore, he brought leading him by the hand to Chingis-khan 
his young son Jelme. And the good old man said: "When you were born 
near the Deli'iin hill (Deli'iin-boldaq) , on the banks of the Onon, I was 
there, O Temiijin. I offered you then a couch of sable fur. I offered you 
also my son Jelme as servant, but he himself was then too small, and I 
took him away with me. But now here he is. It is he who will saddle your 
horse and who will open the door of your yurt" 

We shall see with what magnificent fidelity Jelme was henceforth to 
serve his master, and with what affectionate gratitude the future Chingis- 
khan rewarded him. 



A 
AA 



11 



The Abduction of the Beautiful Borte 



Temiijin had re-formed his clan. He had obtained the protection of the 
powerful king of the Kereits. After so many years of hardship, the future 
seemed to smile upon him. But these empires of the steppe were curi- 
ously unstable. Just when the young chief thought his fortunes assured, 
all was suddenly thrown once more into jeopardy. 

Temiijin was still camped by the Biirgi, near the source of the Keriilen, 
with his young wife, the beautiful Borte. They cannot long have been 
married. One morning, in the first glimmerings of dawn, a woman in the 
service of Mother Ho'elun, old Qo'aqchin, heard, putting her ear to the 
ground, the sound of a band of galloping horsemen approaching. She 
jumped to her feet, calling Ho'eliin, wakening all the yurt: "Mother, 
Mother, quickly, up! The ground shakes. It is like thunder. It is perhaps 
the terrible Taychi'uts!" Ho'eliin commanded her sons to be roused, and 
herself rose in haste. In an instant the whole clan was up. Only just in 
time. The enemy came on like a whirlwind. It was not this time the Tay- 
chi'uts, as old Qo'aqchin had thought, but the Merkits, a Mongol tribe of 
the southern Baykal region, three hundred of whose horsemen hoped to 
take the sons of Yesiigei by surprise. There were bitter enmities between 
them, an old vendetta to settle: had not Yesiigei, in former times, once 
snatched from a Merkit the lady Ho'eliin? The Merkits thought to avenge 
themselves by carrying off their enemies' women, and first and foremost 
the young wife of Temiijin. 

The latter and this is beautifully illustrative of milieu and time 
seems there and then to have resigned himself quite coolly to his misfor- 
tune. Or so the Mongol epic makes no bones about giving us to under- 
stand. Despite his increased resources, Temiijin still possessed only nine 



The Abduction of Beautiful Bdrte 65 

horses. He, his mother Ho'eliin, his brothers Qasar, Qachi'un, Temiige 
and Belgiitei, his two followers, Bo'orchu and Jelme, each bestrode one. 
Ho'eliin took the little Temiiliin, Temiijin's young sister, up before her. 
The group took a lead horse in case of emergency, and there was no 
mount for the beautiful Borte, for Temiijin's own wife, whom he aban- 
doned without a qualm. Left behind likewise was the second wife of 
Yesiigei, Belgiitei's mother. 

While Temujin and his family fled galloping on their chargers towards 
the massif of Burqan-qaldun, the present-day Kentey, poor Borte made 
her efforts to escape the enemy. Her old servant, the valiant Qo'aqchin, 
hid her in a black wagon, to which she harnessed a speckled ox, and 
drove her as far as she could, up the bank of the little River Tenggeli. 
But dawn began to light the valley. To the wagon came a Merkit party 
who questioned Qo'aqchin. She told them that she had come to work at 
Temiijin's camp for the sheepshearing, and was now on her way home. 
The Merkits for their part asked if Temujin was still at his yurt, and how 
far they were from this. She simply gave the direction of the yurt from 
which Temujin and his followers had fled. The Merkits went on their 
way, and the old woman, desperately, flogged the oxen to get away as 
fast as she could. But now the wagon axle broke. There was nothing for 
Qo'aqchin and Borte but to go on on foot, under cover of the woods that 
bordered the Tenggeli. But before they had set out, the Merkits returned. 
They had found in the yurt, naturally, none of the chiefs of the clan, only 
women and children, among them the mother of Belgiitei whom they had 
seized and whom one of them now had across his saddle bow. More 
suspicious than at the first encounter, they wanted to know what was in 
the wagon. In vain Qo'aqchin, with her fine sang-froid, assured them it 
was only a load of wool. They were not satisfied. The oldest of the 
Merkit horsemen ordered the younger men to dismount and search the 
vehicle: it did not take them long to find poor Borte. They seized her and 
Qo'aqchin, hoisted them on their horses, and set off again at a gallop in 
pursuit of Temujin, whose tracks, clearly visible in the grass now that it 
was daylight, led them toward Mount Burqan-qaldun. Coming to the 
foot of the mountain, they circled it three times without finding where 
Temujin had plunged into the underwood. The approaches to the moun- 
tain were indeed barred by marshes and dense thickets. The Merkits 
tried in vain for a way through, then became discouraged and gave up. 



66 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

But out of a curious spirit of revenge they gave Borte to one of their 
number, Chilger-boko CMger the Athlete because this warrior was 
the young brother of Yeke-Chiledii, from whom Yesiigei had once 
snatched his wife, the lady Ho'eliin. So the vendettas were perpetuated, 
tribe to tribe, with their train, for every generation, of abductions and 
brutal amours. 

Meantime Temiijin, in the mountain thickets where he had made him- 
self a hut of elm and willow branches, waited on events. Had the Merkits 
gone home or had they mounted some kind of ambush in the vicinity? He 
sent out Belgiitei, Bo'orchu, and Jelme to reconnoiter, and they searched 
the country over a wide area for three days without coming on an enemy. 
Reassured, he came down then from Burqan-qaldun, not forgetting to 
give thanks first to the divinity of the mountains. Striking his breast, he 
cried to the sky: "Thanks to the weasel's ear and fox's eye of old 
Qo'aqchin, I have escaped with my life, I have been able to slip with my 
horse along the paths of deer and elk. I have been greatly 'afraid. But 
Burqan-qaldun has saved me: each morning henceforth, therefore, will I 
honor him with offerings, each day address prayers to him; and, after 
me, my children and my grandchildren shall remember and do likewise." 
So he spoke, and, following Mongol custom, turned to face the sun, took 
his belt up to hang around his neck, uncovered his head, struck his 
breast, genuflected nine times, and poured a libation. 

Here is one of the characteristic ceremonies of primitive Mongol reli- 
gion. The homage paid Burqan-qaldun was part of the cult the Altaic 
peoples addressed to the divinities of the mountain tops by which the 
ancient Turks of the seventh century, for instance, had worshiped the 
forest-covered mountain of Otiiken, apparently identifiable with a peak of 
the Khangay. The offerings to the sun (narari) are part of the more 
general cult of the Tengri, or, to keep the ritual Mongol formula, the 
Koko Mongke Tengri, the "Eternal Blue Sky," the Mongol's supreme 
deity. The offerings in question consisted basically in libations of qumiz, 
the fermented mare's milk that was the pastoral nomad's favorite drink. 
The genuflections or prostrations, finally, in series of nine, form part of 
Mongol ritual, and also protocol, figuring in both the cult of the gods and 
in monarchic ceremonial. 

If we are to go by the very shocking account in the Mongol epic, 
Temiijin appears to have accommodated himself with some equanimity 



The Abduction of Beautiful Borte 67 

to the abduction of his young wife. He had preferred to see her carried 
off rather than jeopardize his personal safety by giving up his lead horse. 
And in fact his calculations had been sound, Borte's capture having un- 
doubtedly delayed the aggressors and given the Mongol chief time to 
reach the shelter of Burqan-qaldun. The words of his mother Ho'eliin in 
analogous circumstances come to mind: "If you can get away alive, you 
will not want for maidens perched on wagon seats, or women even in the 
black wagons." 

Notwithstanding this scarcely chivalrous philosophy, Temiijin had 
not forgotten the beautiful Borte. He was in no sense resigned to losing 
her for ever. So as soon as he took reassurance from the departure of the 
Merkits, he drew up his plan of campaign to get her back. Did he know 
that, as we have seen, his young wife had been handed over to one of the 
Merkit chiefs, to Chilger the Athlete, and shared his yurt? If he learned 
of it, the sting of the news can but have revived his desire. It should be 
remembered that Borte was still a very young woman, that she had not 
yet borne him a child, and that the loving of these two had been too 
brutally cut short for Temiijin to feel anything now but bitter regret at 
losing her. Possibly also he reproached himself with having so readily 
sacrificed her instead of taking her with the rest of his family, on the lead 
horse. 



A 
AA 



12 



Chingis-khan Wins Back the 
Beautiful Borte 



To win back the beautiful Borte, Temiijin thought at once to beg the 
assistance of the Kereit king Toghril, of whom he had but lately ac- 
knowledged himself the client and adoptive son. With his brothers Qasar 
and Belgiitei he set out then for the Black Forest country, on the Tula, 
where Toghril lived. 

The request he made in his circumstances is precisely the one a young 
baron of twelfth-century Western Europe would in similar plight have 
brought to the feet of his suzerain: "Behold three Merkit tribes fell on us 
suddenly and carried off our wives and children. O khan, my father, 
help us, we beseech you, to deliver them!" And Toghril on his side an- 
swered as would have one of our feudal kings: "I have not forgotten the 
services rendered me by Yesiigei your father. Moreover, the aid you ask 
of me today, did I not already promise it to you the day you came with 
your offering of black sable furs? Remember my words. Your wife Borte 
shall be restored to you, come all the Merkit tribes at once against us!" 

War on the Merkits was in fact a considerable undertaking. They were 
a group of tribes of Mongol stock who dwelt on the border of the steppe 
and the Siberian tayga, in the northern basin of the Selenga. There were 
three principal tribes: the Uduyit-Merkits, the Uwas-Merkits, and the 
Qa'at-Merkits. The first, under their chief Toqto'a-beki, were camping at 
that time at Bu'ura-ke'er, that is, in the "steppe of male camels," which 
Haenisch locates toward the lower Uda, east of Verkhne-udinsk. The 
Uwas-Merkits, under chief Dayir-usun, were camping at Talqun Island, 
at the forked confluence of the Orkhon and the Selenga. The Qa'at- 



Chingis-khan Wins Beautiful Borte 69 

Merkits, lastly, under the command of Qa'atay-darmala, were over to- 
ward Qaraji-ke'er, another steppe of the region. These were the wooded 
steppes of Transbaykalia, with alternating grassland and pine, the latter 
thickly undergrown with rhododendrons and orchids. Then, moving 
north, the forests stretched ever denser, birches and larches predominat- 
ing, to the chains of mountains separating this region from the southern 
shores of Lake Baykal, mountains with peaks rising to 6,600 feet, mark- 
ing the start of the true Siberian tayga. 

Before embarking on war with the Merkits, the Kereit khan called on 
a third ally, Jamuqa, chief of the Mongol tribe of the Jajirats, or Jad- 
arans. Jamuqa, it will be remembered, was the former childhood friend 
of Temiijin, and both continued to think of themselves as brothers. The 
title "brothers by oath" (anda) had in Mongol society real validity, im- 
posing duties on the two warriors who had thus designated themselves, 
just as did the title of "father" (echige) Temiijin gave the Kereit khan. 

While Temiijin was setting about rebuilding the strength of his clan, 
Jamuqa also had become a chief, and even probably a more powerful 
one, since he commanded a whole tribe. Toghril had good reasons, there- 
fore, when he suggested Temiijin ask his childhood friend to take part 
in their enterprise. "Send a message to your young brother Jamuqa." 
Jamuqa was encamped at that time near the river Qorqonaq, one of the 
tributaries of the Onon, probably the present-day Kurkhu, or, less prob- 
ably, the Kirkun, farther to the northeast. Toghril promised Temiijin to 
start off with 20,000 Kereits, who would form the right wing of the 
army. "Little brother" Jamuqa should bring a like number of warriors to 
form the left wing which shows that the young Jajirat khan had under 
him, as already suggested, a quite considerable grouping of clans. To- 
ghril left it to Jamuqa to decide where they should join forces. 

Acting on Toghril's advice, Temiijin sent his brothers Qasar and 
Belgiitei to Jamuqa to tell him: "The Merkits have cast me into afflic- 
tion. They have carried off my wife: my bed is now deserted. The half of 
my breast has been snatched from me. Are we not, you and I, of the same 
lineage? Shall we not avenge this injury?" To which message Jamuqa 
returned the reply of the chivalrous knight: "I had learned that the bed 
of my friend Temiijin was deserted, that the half of his breast had been 
snatched from him, and my heart [literally: my liver] has been grieved. 
We shall therefore crush the three Merkit tribes, and set free our lady 



70 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

Borte!" And the Mongol epic, in best Homeric vein, here has Jamuqa 
(and also Toghril) breathe out fiery threats against the two enemy 
chiefs, Toqto'a "who will take fright simply at the beating of the felt 
saddles, thinking he hears already the sound of our drums," Dayir-usun, 
"who will panic merely at the sound of our quivers." 

Jamuqa outlined to Temiijin's two envoys the plan of operation. He 
had been finding out how things stood. The three Merkit tribes, come 
together briefly for the carrying off of Borte, had gone their separate 
ways again. Leaving aside for the present the Uwas-Merkits, encamped, 
as stated, at the confluence of the Orkhon and Selenga rivers, the allies 
would concentrate their attentions on the Uduyit-Merkits, the principal 
tribe, then under their chief Toqto'a in the lower Uda valley. Toghril, 
Temiijin, and Jamuqa himself, marching south to north, would make a 
raft crossing of the River Kilko, the Khilok of our modern atlases; then 
they would fall on Toqto'a "as through the airhole of his yurt; they 
would throw down his yurt's master pole." 1 

Before Qasar and Belgiitei remounted, Jamuqa charged them again to 
assure "his friend Temiijin" and "his elder brother Toghril" of his com- 
plete dedication to their enterprise: "I have consecrated [to the Spirits] 
my standard of yak tails seen from afar. I have had sounded my drum of 
black bull hide. I have put on my leather armor, mounted my black 
charger, seized my lance and my curved saber, notched my arrows of 
peachwood. With the Merkits it is now war to the death!" 

The plan of campaign drawn up by Jamuqa, as set forth by the Mon- 
gol bard, was precisely mapped out. Toghril, with the Kereit army, set- 
ting out from his Black Forest camping ground, near the present-day 
Ulan Bator, was to join Temiijin below Mount Burqan-qaldun the 
present-day Kentey and both were to move on to the steppe of Boto- 
qan-bo'ordji, to the headwaters of the Onon; while Jamuqa himself made 
his way up the actual Onon valley to meet them there and join forces. 
This was by any standard a major operation, if what was involved was 
indeed, as the Mongol bard says, the assembling, without alerting the 
enemy, of some 40,000 horsemen, maneuvering through a series of cols, 
in this high "region of springs" on the northeast slopes of the Kentey. In 

1 The supporting beam that among the Mongols had a sacred character, or, if the 
Mongol yurt of the twelfth century was like those of today, the internal framework 
of wooden shafts over which the felt carpets were spread. 



Chingis-khan Wins Beautiful Borte 71 

accordance with Jamuqa's directions, khan Toghril advanced with 
10,000 Kereits to Mount Burqan-qaldun, toward the settlement of the 
Biirgi-ergi, near the source of the Kerulen. Temujin, who was camped at 
Biirgi-ergi, made way for him and moved up toward the Tana, a tributary 
stream of the Kerulen, at the foot of the pine- and larch-covered Kentey. 
The two forces (ToghriTs reinforced by 10,000 more mounted Kereits 
under his young brother Jaqa-gambu) actually joined up at Ayil-qara- 
qana, near the stream Kimurqa, apparently one of the sources of the 
Onon, in the mountain still known today as Kiimur, a northeast spur of 
the Kentey. 

Temiijin, Toghril, and Jaqa-gambu came then to Botoqan-bo'ordji, the 
appointed general assembly point, which lay quite close, also by the 
headwaters of the Onon. There they found Jamuqa, who had been wait- 
ing there three days and whose patience had worn thin. He greeted them 
tartly: "Did we not agree that through the unleashed elements, through 
the worst of snowstorms even, we should be punctual at the rendezvous? 
Is the word of a Mongol, or is it not, his bond? He who failed to keep a 
pact used to be driven out from among us. Yet this is what we have just 
done ourselves!" Toghril agreed civilly that he and Temujin deserved a 
reproof. Jamuqa in fact, at this point, from the role he plays in the cam- 
paign and from the tone he takes, not only is dominant partner in the 
"brother" relationship with Temujin, but with his Jajirats commands suf- 
ficient force to assert authority over the khan of the Kereits himself. 

From Botoqan-bo'orji the allies moved north across what is now the 
Russian frontier. Crossing the Kiimiir mountain chain, they made their 
way probably down the Menja valley into the basin of the River Chikoyi, 
whence, via the cols of the Malkhan mountains, they pushed on into the 
heart of Merkit territory, into the valley of the Kilko River, now known 
as the Khilok, which they crossed on rafts, east of Kiakhta and Troicko- 
cawsk. Spilling like a waterspout onto the steppe of Bu'ura (Bu'ura- 
ke'er), which has been sited in the Uda basin wooded steppe, in that 
case they fell at dead of night on the camp of Toqto'a-beki, chief of the 
Uduyit-Merkits, and seized the women and the children. They had even 
hoped to surprise Toqto'a asleep, buf fishers on the Kilko and sable 
hunters who had been out setting their traps had had tune to give the 
alarm at the last minute in the darkness. Toqto'a-beki and the chief of 
the Uwas-Merkits, Dayir-usun, were thus just able to get away in time, 



72 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

making off, with a handful of their followers, down the valley of the 
Selenga into Barghuchin country, to the eastern shore, that is, of Lake 
Baykal. They escaped, but only by abandoning everything, yurts, fami- 
lies, domestic tools, provisions. They made their way through the Sibe- 
rian tayga into the valley of the Barghuchin, which runs down parallel 
toward the lake "toward the sea," as the Mongols say level with the 
bay of the same name. 

Meantime, in the turmoil of the night attack, the Mongol horsemen 
galloped on the heels of fugitives, grabbed left and right captives and 
booty. But Temiijin, heedless of the battle, thought only of the wife he 
loved. Amid the cries of terror and death, he called desperately for 
Borte. At that moment, he came on a pack of fugitives, and one of them 
was Borte and Borte, caught up in the rout of her kidnapers suddenly 
recognized her husband's voice. Quivering, she jumped from the wagon 
that was carrying her away, and with old Qo'aqchin ran in the direction 
of his voice. A moment and she was there before him. "She seized the 
rein of his horse. The moon shone full. Temiijin recognized her. They 
threw themselves into each other's arms." Temiijin sent word at once to 
khan Toghril and his "brother" Jamuqa: "She whom I sought, she whom 

1 grieved for, I have found. We wish to go no further tonight, but to 
camp here." 

Clearly, the future Chingis-khan did not hold against Borte her forced 
cohabitation with a Merkit chief; nor does this seem to have caused 
Borte herself any embarrassment. And she could scarcely feel her place 
insecure in the heart and passions of a hero who, to win her back, had 
turned Mongolia upside down, formed a coalition of kings, and mobilized 
over 40,000 men. But from her time among the Merkits, Borte returned 
on the verge of becoming a mother: almost immediately on her return 
to the Chingiskhanid yurt, she gave birth there to a boy Jochi. The 
child was to rank officially as Temiijin's eldest son, but the gossip could 
never be killed that said he was, rather, the work of Chilger-boko. 2 

It will be remembered, indeed, that during her captivity the beautiful 
Borte was assigned to Chilger-boko Chilger the Athlete younger 

2 Whatever the case, the conqueror seems never to have shown ill-will toward Borte 
over this delicate matter. There is the point, of course, that any ill temper on his 
part would have been somewhat illogical, since on the day of the Merkit incursion 
he had flatly abandoned the young woman. 



Chingis-khan Wins Beautiful Borte 73 

brother of the Uduyit-Merkit chief Toqto'a-beki. The Chingiskhanid epic 
tells of the terror of the Mongol Paris at the return of the outraged hus- 
band. "The black crow should eat bits of skin. Nevertheless it covets 
wild geese, swans and herons. So I, Chilger, despite my inferior station, I 
desired the noble, the holy Borte, and I have brought misfortune on my 
people!" And to save his life, "which was not worth a sheep's dropping," 
he went into hiding "in the obscure gorges of the mountain," probably in 
the chain of the Ulan-burgassu, which looks down from 5,600 feet on 
the valley of the Uda and the eastern shore of Lake Baykal. 

In revenge, Temiijin and his allies seized Qa'atay-darmala, chief of the 
Qa'at-Merkit tribe. He was put in a cangue, and forced to act as guide 
for the army back to Burqan-qaldun. 

Borte, however, was not the only princess of Temiijin's family the 
Merkits had carried off. They had seized also the former second wife of 
Yesiigei, Sochigil, mother of Belgiitei. Learning that his mother was in 
one of the yurts of what had been the Merkit camp, Belgiitei set out to 
find her. But the former second wife had a noble souL As Belgiitei en- 
tered by the right-hand door of her yurt, she made a precipitous exit by 
the left, clad in a tattered sheepskin tunic. "Did I not have it predicted to 
me our sons should one day become great princes? How should I, who 
have had here to lie with a common Merkit, dare to show myself again 
before my sons?" With these words she fled into the thickest part of the 
forest, and all attempts to find her failed. Belgiitei vented his grief on the 
Merkit prisoners or fugitives: he brought down with arrows all of them 
he saw, crying: "Bring me back my mother!" As for those of the Merkits 
who had lately taken part in the kidnaping of Borte and the pursuit of 
Temiijin to Mount Burqan-qaldun there were 300 of them, we are told 
the Mongol epic declares they were all ruthlessly exterminated "with 
their children and their children's children," and that no more remained 
of them than of "dust scattered in the wind." The wives and daughters of 
the vanquished the victors took as concubines, as many as they wanted; 
boys and small girls became servants, "to open and shut the door of the 
yurt." 

We shall see, however, that, whatever the Mongol epic claims, the 
Merkit people were far from being exterminated. Toqto'a-beki and his 
followers, when they had recuperated in the inaccessible forests of Bar- 
ghuchin, in the Transbaykalian tayga, were to make many comebacks to 



74 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

dispute the Mongol steppe with Chingis-khan, and take part in coalitions 
against him. But of these seizings of women, repeated generation by gen- 
eration, was bora a hatred nothing could extinguish and nothing end, 
short of the utter extermination of one of the two tribal groupings. 

The Mongol empire was established only by dint of prior massacre of 
half the Mongol tribes. 

The massacres had their delightful incidentals. Found in the Uduyit- 
Merkit camp was a child of five named Guchu, shining-eyed, wide awake, 
in a sable bonnet, with doeskin boots and a garment of otterskin. They 
made a present of him to Temiijin's mother, the dowager Ho'eliin, who 
adopted him. 

Temujin, who owed to "the khan his father" Toghril and his "brother" 
Jamuqa the deliverance of Borte, gave them magnificent thanks. He ren- 
dered thanks too to the Tengri, the sky-god of the Turco-Mongols, and 
to the "earth mother" (eke-otuken) who had helped him to take revenge 
on the Merkits, "to empty their heart and pull apart their liver." Then the 
allies split up. If the steppe of Bu'ura-ke'er, where they had thus taken 
Toqto'a by surprise in the night, was in fact, as Haenisch maintains, the 
region east of the present-day Verkhne-udinsk, 3 Temujin, Toghril, and 
Jamuqa presumably went on to drive the third Merkit tribe, the Uwas- 
Merkits, from the peninsula formed by the confluence of the Orkhon and 
the Selenga ("Talqun island, Talqun-aral"), since this was where the 
army disbanded. 

3 [Today the town is called Ulan-Ude. It is the capital city of the Buryat ASSR.J 



A 
AA 



13 



Convoy in the Night and the 
Separation of the Hordes 



So the allies, having achieved their purpose, separated. That is to say, the 
Kereit khan Toghril returned to his normal camping grounds in the 
Black Forest, on the upper Tula, but Temujin and Jamuqa stayed to- 
gether. They set up camp in Qorqonaq-jubur, a wooded part near the 

Onon. 

The warfare waged together against the Merkit people had renewed 
between these two men the ties of their childhood friendship. They en- 
joyed themselves talking over their memories, how they played with 
knucklebones on the banks of the Onon and exchanged their little arrows. 
Now both were chiefs. It was Temujin who was of nobler blood, as a 
descendant of the former royal family, but undoubtedly at this time 
Jamuqa wielded the greater power, as is evident from his role of com- 
mander in chief in the campaign against the Merkits. But their relation- 
ship was at all events one of complete, unreserved friendship: were they 
not anda, brothers by oath, called on by this sworn fraternal obligation 
to help each other in all things? They exchanged their booty. Temujin 
gave Jamuqa a belt of gold taken from Toqto'a, and Toqto'a's horse, a 
mare with black mane and tail, and Jamuqa gave Temiijin the gold belt 
of the other Merkit chief, Dayir-usun, and the latter's mare, a steed white 
as a sheep. In Qorqonaq-jubur, under a bushy tree perhaps the same 
age-old sacred tree in whose shade the last Mongol khan Qutula had 
been proclaimed under the steep rock of Quldaqar, they sealed then- 
pact of alliance with a great feast. They danced under the tree as the khan 
Qutula had danced, and at night they slept under the same covering. This 
close union lasted a year and a half. 



76 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

Temiijin and Jamuqa in fact and the setting of Qorqonaq-jubur is 
significant in this respect, since it was there the last khan of the former 
Mongol royal house had celebrated his accession Temiijin and Jamuqa, 
after their victory over the Merkits, were resuscitating the monarchy. But 
they were resuscitating it in the guise of a dyarchy, the title anda by 
which they called one another conferring on their alliance the sacred 
character of a fraternal bond. But dyarchies, by definition, are unstable. 
When Temiijin and Jamuqa danced under the sacred tree of Qorqonaq 
the dance of the earlier king, were they not mindful of the magic signifi- 
cance of such a rite, the consecration, as it were, it undoubtedly implied? 
If Temiijin had forgotten, one of his followers, Muqali, was to take it 
upon himself to remind him of it one day. We are shortly to see the two 
allies who danced there that day both striving to recreate the empire of 
the steppe, but as rivals. 

How did the break come about between Temiijin and Jamuqa? We 
have to do our own interpreting here of the strange account in the epic. It 
was the first month of spring. The two sworn brothers had just broken 
camp to move off, as all nomads do at this transhumance season, in 
search of fresh grazing for their herds. They rode together side by side 
at the head of the wagons carrying the dismantled yurts and the women 
and children. The herds came on behind, kept in line by the files of 
horsemen. On the way, Jamuqa voiced thoughts of his, of how "camp 
pitched on the slopes of the mountain gave the herders of horses what they 
wanted, while halt called on the banks of the river meant the herders of 
sheep were better off." The Mongols, like all primitives, fell readily into 
expression by image and enigma. Temiijin, not seeing the drift of Ja- 
muqa's words, stayed silent. Then he stopped, letting the wagons pass, 
to ask the advice of his mother, Ho'eliin, whose long experience might be 
able to guide him in the circumstances. But before Ho'elun had time to 
answer, Temiijin's wife, the lady Borte, came out with her opinion. 
"Anda Jamuqa has always been reputed fickle. Now here he is tiring of 
us. The words he has just uttered are certainly intended to apply to us. 
Let us not camp with him this evening; let us divide from his convoy and 
put a distance between us during the night." 

We come here on one of the curious sides of the future Chingis-khan's 
character. At the principal junctures of his life, when a major decision 
must be taken today in his relations with his ally Jamuqa, tomorrow in 



Convoy and Separation of the Hordes 77 

his relations with the grand shaman he is to show himself hesitant, 
almost timorous, and it is his wife Borte who makes the decision in his 
place. For when Borte advises, he acts on her advice forthwith, there and 
then committing his fortunes to the path she directs. The Mongol tribes, 
as we have seen, were groping confusedly after unity, Jamuqa and Te- 
miijin were both intent on making the most of this trend. The question 
was which of them should be the real beneficiary. This without doubt the 
perspicacious Borte had grasped, and she intended her husband should 
have his hands free again as soon as possible for uninhibited pushing of 
his own chances. 

At nightfall, then, Temujin's convoy, instead of camping as usual, con- 
tinued on its way. He came in this way on a third tribe on the move, none 
other than that of the Taychi'uts, his old enemies. Wakened suddenly in 
alarm, and thinking this was a nocturnal attack, the Taychi'uts, in the 
general confusion, struck camp in haste and, in the darkness, made to 
join Jamuqa. They left behind a little boy, Kokochii, whom mother Ho'- 
eliin (of the decidedly strongly developed maternal instinct) adopted on 
the spot. 

All night, Temiijin pushed on. When day broke, the count could be 
taken of who had followed the young chief and who remained with Ja- 
muqa. From the lists given in the Chingiskhanid epic as full as those of 
the Iliad it emerges that the division of the followers between the two 
rivals, effected as it was in darkness and somewhat hastily, had produced 
unexpected schisms within a tribe, even sometimes within a clan. Omens, 
of course, abounded in favor of one and the other party. We are in full 
shaman milieu, where nothing is ever done without the sorcerer having 
his say, even if it comes after the event. Thus Qorchi, of the Mongol 
tribe of the Ba'arins, came to declare to Temxijin that a revelation from 
heaven had prevented him from following Jamuqa: he had seen in a 
dream a cow white as snow striking at Jamuqa's ywrt-wagon till it broke 
one of its horns: "and it bellowed till Jamuqa had to give it back its lost 
horn and it struck the ground with its hoof." Then came a white bull, 
without horns, which bore a great tent stake and followed in the path of 
Temiijin's wagon bellowing: "Heaven and Earth have decided that the 
empire [ulus] should be Temujin's; see, I bring it to him!" 

But the holy man, even as he declared he had with his very eyes seen 
this brilliant augury, also, like a true shaman, demanded his reward: "If 



78 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

you become master of the empire, what will you give me?" And as Te- 
miijin promised to make him chief (nay an) over 10,000 men, Qorchi, 
aside from his magic powers a gay dog, apparently, put in a request as 
well for thirty concubines, with the right to select them from among the 
prettiest girls in the country. He also tried, lastly, to get Temiijin to ap- 
point him shaman-counselor, which would have assured him a prominent 
seat at the councils of the future Mongol empire. We shall meet other 
holy men coveting the same position, with a like eye to the advantages of 
a "spiritual ascendancy" over the new monarchy. 

The clans who had opted for Temiijin, in the disorder and uncertainty 
of the nocturnal break with Jamuqa, were now joined by others, rallying 
to his banner after careful weighing of the situation. Particularly valu- 
able was the allegiance of Mongol princes of royal blood, and so closely 
related to Temiijin: his paternal uncle Daritay, his first cousin Quchar, 
son of his other uncle Nekiin-tayshi; then of other more distant relatives, 
on the one hand Seche-beki and Taychu, chiefs of the Jiirkin or Yiirkin 
clan, on the other Altan, a most important ally, because he was the son 
of the last Mongol khan Qutula. All had left Jamuqa after the initial 
break and come to join Temiijin, who was encamped for the moment at 
Ayil-qaraqana ("the camp of brushwood"), near the stream Kimurqa 
which we look for near what is now Mount Kiimiir, at the sources of the 
Onon. So reinforced, Temiijin moved camp into the upper Keriilen val- 
ley. He installed himself there at the site of Qara-Jiriigen, on the little 
River Sangghur, first left-bank tributary of the Keriilen, on the slopes of 
Mount Giirelgii, near a pool here called the Blue Lake (Koko-na'ur). 

Here came to pass the decisive event in his career: his peers proposed 
to nominate him king. 



A 
AA 



14 



Chingis-khan, King of the Mongols 



Since the disasters that had ended the reign of khan Qutula, there had 
been no Mongol monarchy. Altan, Qutula's son, had claimed no royal 
prerogative. But toward the end of the twelfth century it was apparent 
that the Mongol tribes, regathering strength despite the fratricidal dis- 
pute between Temiijin and the Taychi'uts, were feeling unity again. 
The question was, as we have already seen, around whom the unity should 
re-form. First in line of potential pretenders was Prince Altan, son of the 
last khan, Qutula. After him, other grandsons of one of the previous 
khans might enter the lists, and among these was Temiijin, but also on a 
par with him were his cousins, the Jiirkin princes Seche-beki and Taychu. 
Lastly there was Temujin's own paternal uncle Daritay. 

Now it was precisely these same princes, Altan, Seche-beki, Taychu, 
and Daritay, who decided to elect Temiijin to kingship, to revive for him 
the title of khan, in abeyance since the death of Qutula. Did they really 
intend to set a master over themselves? Definitely not, as events were to 
prove. But feeling the necessity of a war leader, at least for the duration 
of a common expedition, they thought the son of Yesiigei would fill the 
role. Doubtless they had hesitated a moment between him and Jamuqa, 
whom, indeed, they had at first followed, at the time of the dividing of 
the tribes, in preference to Temiijin. But Jamuqa was not of royal line: 
the genealogies, always so well kept up in the princely yurts, traced the 
origin of his house to a concubine of the Mongol ancestor Bodonchar, 
but a concubine already pregnant by a foreigner. And indeed Jamuqa, 
despite his brilliant qualities, was to prove himself inconstant, false, 
pointlessly cruel, dangerous even to his friends. Temiijin, on the other 
hand, apart from his princely origins, was always to display sound com- 



80 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

mon sense, a remarkable balance, an innate instinct for government, and, 
in relations with his allies, a courtesy that, even in a lord clad in animal 
hides, proclaimed the man of breeding. It was to him then that his cous- 
ins the other Mongol princes, disenchanted doubtless with Jamuqa, 
turned for a king. 

The terms in which they made their proposal to him are char- 
acteristic: "We wish to elect you khan. When you are khan we will ride 
in the forefront for you against the enemy. The most beautiful women we 
capture, we will bring to the royal tent [ordo-ger]. The fine-legged 
horses, we will lead to you at the trot. When we hunt wild beasts in a 
half-circle on the steppe, it will be toward you that we shall drive 
them. If on the day of battle we obey not your commands, strip us of 
possessions and families, strike off our black heads to the ground. If in 
the day of peace we fail to keep faith, drive us out far from our kin into 
the desert!" Pronouncing these oaths and imprecations, they raised 
Temujin on the carpet of felt and proclaimed him king under the name, 
or rather the title, of Chingis-khan. 

The title has had etymological connections advanced for it with an 
idea of strength, whence it would convey the notion of a monarch who is 
"unshakable," or, as another version has it, "inflexible"; and also with the 
concept of a universal sovereignty implicit in, literally, "oceanic." Cer- 
tainly, the name now for the first time hailed out there in some remote 
grazing ground of the upper Keriilen, sometime in the closing years of the 
twelfth century, was soon to be common currency, the subject of Mongol 
acclaim and non-Mongol malediction throughout the ancient world, and 
subsequently to come down to us across the centuries. 

The text of the Mongol princes' electoral address to Chingis-khan 
makes it clear they thought only to choose themselves a leader in war and 
the hunt, for raiding and rounding up game, not in the least to appoint 
themselves a master. The seriousness with which the new sovereign at 
once set about organizing his nomad kingdom should have been a warn- 
ing to them. First he created a certain number of dignitaries, the "bearers 
of quivers" (qorchin), all chosen from warriors devoted to him body and 
soul. Over them, he set his two faithful adjutants par excellence, Bo'or- 
chu and Jelme: "When I had no companion," he told them, "but my 
shadow, you made yourselves like my shadow, you gave me peace of 
mind. You who have been at my side from the beginning, be now above 



Chingis-khan, King of the Mongols 81 

all others." Another of his lieutenants, Siibotei, who was later to prove 
himself the greatest strategist of the Mongol epic, promised Chingis-khan 
"to watch over his possessions with the vigilance of the rat, to increase 
them with the diligence of the crow, to protect his master like a blanket 
or a felt door-curtain." To all, Chingis-khan declared: "Oh you who have 
left Jamuqa to join me, you shall be, if Heaven and Earth confirm' me in 
my power, the seniors of my followers, the elders of my empire, my 
happy companions in good fortune." And he invested each of them with 
the office he planned for him in the government of the world. 

How would the other nomad kings receive the Chingis-khan's eleva- 
tion? The main thing was for him to secure the allegiance of the Kereit 
king Toghril he had formerly acknowledged his suzerain. Chingis-khan 
sent Daqay and Siikegei as ambassadors to him. If the Kereit khan had 
taken amiss his vassal's increase in power, in all probability the new 
Mongol royalty's lease of life would have been short. Happily, Toghril, 
although they had waited till after the fact to consult him, declared himself 
greatly pleased. "You have raised to the khanate my son Temiijin? Excel- 
lent! How have the Mongols lived till now without khans?" And he ad- 
jured them always to be faithful to him they had elected. 

A more delicate problem was posed by relations with Jamuqa. To- 
ward his former anda, it must be admitted the Chingis-khan had at bot- 
tom behaved somewhat ill. On the strength of a quite gratuitous interpre- 
tation of an obscure remark, he had, without warning, broken a sworn 
friendship. Worse still, he had enticed away his followers. Chingis-khan, 
who for the time being wished to avoid creating ill will, charged 
Arqay-qasar and Chaqurqan to go and tell Jamuqa of his accession. Curi- 
ously, Jamuqa, whether out of vestigial friendship for his childhood 
companion, or because he also at this point wished to avoid an open 
break, laid all the blame on the two great electors of the new khan, the 
princes Altan and Quchar. In fact, Altan and Quchar had tipped the 
scales by abandoning Jamuqa's party, to which they had at first adhered. 
Further, according to the Mongol epic it was they who, by their in- 
triguing, had provoked the break between the two former anda: "Instead 
of seeking to divide us," Jamuqa declared, "why did you not elect khan 
Temiijin while he and I were living together? In electing him now what 
have your motives been?" And subtly perhaps perfidiously Jamuqa, 
now that the election was a fait accompli, urged the princes Altan and 



82 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

Quchar to hold true to the oath they had sworn, to serve his anda with 
unfaltering loyalty. 

These were words of prophetic irony, since no prophet was needed to 
foresee harmony would not reign long between the new Chingis-khan and 
the other princes of the blood who had made him king. 



A 
AA 



15 



Prisoners Thrown into Boiling Caldrons 



This correctness of Jamuqa's attitude to Chingis-khan's election proves 
that the two men, despite the break that had taken place, were yet still 
unwilling actually to do each other harm. The irreparable breach was to 
come between them through the actions of others, specifically of, on the 
one hand, Taychar, Jamuqa's younger brother, and, on the other, Jochi- 
darmala, of the Jalair tribe, one of the vassals of Chingis-khan. Taychar 
was camped near the Olegei spring, under Mount Jelama, in the 
region of the upper Keriilen. Jochi-darmala was roaming in the district of 
Sa'ari Ke'er, "the donkeyback steppe." Taychar seized Jochi-darmala's 
herd of horses. Jochi-darmala set out alone to find his horses (his people 
being too scared to go with him). One steppe bandit, now, against an- 
other. Bent low, almost lying along his horse's mane, a man rides out at 
dead of night. He edges in toward the enemy camp, and watches till he 
sees the stealer of his horses. A whine, and Taychar falls, an arrow 
through his spine. Jochi-darmala takes his horses back to his grazing 
grounds. 

It was war. Resolved to avenge his brother, Jamuqa mustered the peo- 
ple of his tribe the Jajirats, or Jadarans and their federates (giving 
him up to 30,000 men), and set out across the Ala'ut-turqa'ut moun- 
tains to surprise Chingis-khan. 

Chingis-khan was then camped before Mount Giirelgu, in the upper 
valley, that is, of the River Sangghur, where his people likewise some 
30,000 men were split up among thirty groups of wagons and yurts. 
Very fortunately for him, news of the enemy's coming was brought him 
in time by two Mongols of the Ikires tribe, Miilke-totaq and Borolday. 
Battle was joined at Dalan-baljut ("the seventy marshes"), which Mon- 



84 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

gol scholars place near the sources of the Onon. Chingis-khan got the 
worst of it. He had to retreat toward the col of Jerene, also in the Onon 
basin. Jamuqa did not dare follow him, but wreaked savage vengeance 
on Chingis-khan supporters, the chiefs of the tribe of the Ne'iids, or Chi- 
nos (the "Wolves"), who fell into his hands: before turning back to his 
encampment, he had them boiled in seventy caldrons, an old torture from 
the "Warring States" period of ancient China. Chagha'anuwa, one of the 
Ne'iid chiefs, had particularly incurred Jamuqa's hatred when he deserted 
him to range himself among the first with Chingis-khan, at the division 
of the tribes. Jamuqa cut off his head, hung it from his horse's tail, and 
rode off dragging his sinister trophy after him. 

Later, Persian tradition, retaining only a confused memory of all these 
horrors, reversed the deeds and gestures of the participants. Its version 
has it that in the battle of the Seventy Marshes Chingis-khan was the 
victor, and that it was he who had had the vanquished boiled in the 
seventy fateful caldrons. But it is indeed at Jamuqa's door these needless 
atrocities are to be laid, for they were what alienated sympathies from 
him, and brought the defeated Chingis-khan gains more valuable than 
victory, fresh recruits. Thus Jamuqa now forfeited to Chingis-khan two 
important Mongol chiefs, and with them their tribes: Jiirchedei, of the 
Uru'uts, and Quyildar, of the Mangghuts. Prized converts, for in the 
hour of danger we shall see the admirable devotion of these two men to 
the hero's cause and person. At about the same time, the latter was re- 
joined also by his father's former friend, Monglik. This return spoke vol- 
umes. It must have occasioned the conqueror particular, if ironic, satis- 
faction, Monglik, indeed, it will be remembered, had been Yestigei's 
trusted aide. It was he the latter had charged, as he lay dying, to fetch 
home the future Chingis-khan. Regardless of this trust, the man had 
shrugged off any obligations as a guardian, had indeed evidently aban- 
doned mother and child to their destruction. But yesterday, when the 
break came between Chingis-khan and Jamuqa, he had followed Jamuqa. 
Today here he was, he and his seven sons, returning. Such action on the 
part of so prudent a trimmer of sails proved that decidedly the wind was 
setting in Chingis-khan's favor. The hero, who knew how to let legitimate 
grievances lie when political interest required it, feted all these new ad- 
herents, and his old followers, at a great forest banquet by the Onon. 

If professions of allegiance flowed in now to Chingis-khan, it was be- 



Prisoners Thrown into Boiling Caldrons 85 

cause he was emerging already as the strong man it is safer to have as a 
protector than an enemy. It was also strange as it may seem because 
his rule had a quality of order, of moderation, of morality, almost of 
humanity, that his rivals' lacked. When hungry clans, who wavered be- 
tween him and other chiefs, asked him to be allowed to participate in 
some great hunting roundup (for the life of these nomads always alter- 
nated between feasts and famine), he welcomed them courteously, and 
assigned to them more than their share of the game brought down. A 
politic generosity, certainly, aimed at creating popularity for himself 
among the tribes, increasing the number of his vassals. And it succeeded. 
From tribe to tribe the comparisons were passed of the scrupulous keep- 
ing of faith of the young khan, his generosity, his firm yet liberal exercise 
of royal power, with the brutal tyranny, the veerings of temper, the cruel- 
ties, of other contenders. "This lord Temiijin would take the garment 
from off his back to give it to you. He would get down from his horse 
and offer it to you. This is really a man fit to possess a country, able to 
feed his warriors, keep his house in good order." So the talk went in the 
steppe, at evening, in the felt tents, and men took him to their hearts, with 
a sincerity they were to prove when the testing time came. 



A 
AA 



16 



The Brawl after the Banquet 



But if the young royal authority of Chingis-khan earned the respect of 
the tribes by its equity and wisdom, the new master nevertheless thought 
in terms of strict obedience. The other Mongol princes who had elected 
him were clearly under the impression that they had appointed simply a 
commander in war, to preside over a grouping that was in its nonmili- 
tary aspects more or less nominal. Their error was quickly made plain to 
them. 

The first disagreement occurred at the banquet held in the forest of the 
Onon to celebrate the rallying of Monglik and the other dissidents. As 
the chief guests were having set before them jugs of qwniz, two dowagers 
of the Jiirkin clan, the ladies Qorijin and Qu'urchin, complained sharply 
at being served after the lady Ebegei, a mere "second wife" of Seche- 
beki, chief of that clan. And in their indignation they struck at the cook, 
Shiki'ur. The latter, shedding tears of humiliation, cried that never in the 
lifetime of Yesiigei, Chingis-khan's father, would he have been treated 
thus. This was to reproach Chingis-khan himself with weakness. Mutual 
confidence was at the best of times never overmuch in evidence at these 
primitive eating and drinking bouts. Chingis-khan had charged his 
brother Belgiitei to keep an eye on his own followers' horses. An impor- 
tant chief, Buri-boko, had been given the same assignment with regard to 
the Jiirkin horses. Now Belgiitei surprised someone from the Jiirkin party 
stealing a bridle from the Chingiskhanid equipment. Buri-boko came to 
the assistance of his comrade. He and Belgiitei grappled swiftly. Biiri- 
boko's saber gashed Belgiitei's right shoulder. Belgiitei for his part let the 
blood flow without making too much of the matter: naturally easygoing, 
he wanted to hush up the incident. 



The Brawl after the Banquet 87 

But Chingis-khan, sitting in the shade of a tree, a little apart from the 
other merrymakers, had seen it all. He bore down on them, furious. His 
prestige was at issue, and the affair took on a serious aspect, for the 
Jurkin princes, whose people comported themselves so insolently, repre- 
sented the senior branch of the Mongol royal house. Their arrogance 
smacked of challenging the new khan's fresh-minted royal stature, of 
aspersions on the right of the junior branch. "What!" he cried to his 
brother Belgiitei. "Shall we endure this?" The good Belgtitei tried to calm 
him. "The wound was not serious. Now they have come to you, do not 
go and quarrel with them again because of me!" But Chingis-khan would 
have none of it. His prestige was involved! With branches from the trees, 
the batons they used to churn the butter, they fell on the Jiirkins, "they 
beat them up." The two Jurkin dowagers who had been the first cause of 
the dispute were apprehended. Once he had taught the offenders their 
lesson, however, Chingis-khan asked nothing better than reconciliation, 
and straightway set free the two ill-tempered old women. 

The authority of Chingis-khan benefited not long after this from mis- 
fortunes befalling his suzerain, the Kereit king Toghril. 

Toghril, despite his house's Nestorian Christianity and his own trans- 
lation into the famous, even legendary "Prester John," was an extremely 
bad kinsman. He was responsible, we know, for the death of several of his 
brothers. Only two had escaped his treachery, Jaqa-gambu and Erke- 
qara. Fearing for his life too, Erke-qara took refuge in western Mongolia, 
over by the Great Altay, with the Naymans. The Nayman king, Inanch- 
bilge, took up his cause; he drove out Toghril and set Erke-qara on the 
Kereit throne. Toghril went into exile in Turkestan, with the powerful 
king or gur-khan of the Qara-kitays, whose capital, Balasaghun, rose in 
the plain of Chu, west of Issyq-koL But less than a year after, the gur- 
khan expelled him, and Toghril found himself forced to wander wretch- 
edly in the Gobi, on the borders of the Uyghur and Tangut territories. 
Such was his plight that he was reduced to living on the milk of five goats 
and quantities of blood he took from a camel. In this pitiable condition, 
riding a blind horse a brown horse with a black mane, we learn from our 
herders' epic, where chargers ever rate equal concern with men he had 
come to Lake Giise'ur, one of the small lakes of the Gobi, between the 
Kansu or Ordos and the upper Keriilen, when he received a message by 
word of mouth from Chingis-khan. Stirred by pity, the Mongol khan sent 



88 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

two emissaries, Tarqay-ba'atur and Siikegei, with an invitation to come to 
hirn. Toghril came with all speed. Chingis-khan was camping at that time 
at Biirgi-ergi, on the banks of the upper Keriilen or the Sangghur, near 
the source of the two rivers. He came as far as Lake Giise'iir to meet the 
exile. Toghril confessed himself in the last stages of exhaustion, dying of 
hunger and fatigue. Chingis-khan installed him in the circle of wagons and 
tents that was his nomad capital, levied contributions in kind for his guest 
from the Mongols, furnished him with provisions and let him regain his 
strength; then, moving to winter quarters at Quba-qaya still near the 
sources of the Keriilen he took Toghril with him. 

The following autumn (1197), Chingis-khan made an expedition 
against the Merkits and defeated them at Muruche-se'iil near Mount Qa- 
diqliq. Their chief, Toqto'a, fled once again in the direction of Barghu- 
chin, on the eastern shore of Lake Baykal. Chingis-khan seized his yurts, 
his provisions, his horses, and made a present of them all to Toghril. In 
1198, the latter was once more restored to leadership of the Kereit 
people. 

These events produced an appreciable shift in relations between 
Chingis-khan and Toghril. Chingis-khan continued indeed to style him- 
self the latter's vassal, and to call him "father-khan;" but as his rescuer 
and restorer, he treated him now as an equal. 



A 
AA 



17 



Chingis-khan in the Service of 
the King of Gold 



And now, Chingis-khan benefited from an unexpected reversing of Chi- 
nese policy in Upper Asia. 

It will be remembered that the first Mongol royal house had been 
overthrown by a coalition of the Tatars, nomads of similarly Mongol 
extraction who roamed the edges of Manchuria, and the "King of Gold," 
the Kin sovereign of Peking. 1 But the Tatars, whom the court of Peking 
had made use of to lay low Chingis-khan's predecessors, were not long in 
becoming thorns themselves in their protectors' flesh. And then Peking, 
in one of the somersaults it had a habit of executing in its relations with 
the nomad world, turned to make common cause against them with 
Chingis-khan and the Kereits. 

A Kin army, commanded by Prince Wan-yen Siang, had attacked the 
Tatars from the southeast. Under their chief Megiijin-se'iiltii, the latter 
were falling back with their herds towards the Ulja, a river flowing into 
Lake Biirun-torchi, between the Keriilen and the Onon so drawing near 
the territory of Chingis-khan. The latter jumped at the opportunity to 
settle old scores with these enemy relatives. He harangued his followers, 
reminded them of how these Tatars had handed over his relatives Amba- 
qay and Okin-barqaq, delivering them into the shame and lingering 
agony of death on the wooden ass. True, the actual martyring of the two 
Mongols had been the work strictly of the Kin, to whom the Tatars had 
sold them. But since here was an opportunity for vengeance on the Ta- 
tars with the aid of the rulers of Peking, let a start be made with them. And 
1 [The Jurchet dynasty of the Kin ruled over China from 1 115 to 1260.] 



90 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

indeed, without going back to these old memories, Chingis-khan had his 
own father Yesiigei the Brave to avenge, treacherously poisoned by the 
Tatars at their board. 'The Tatar people are our enemies. They caused 
our fathers' deaths. Here we have our chance to trap them in a vise!" 

Their attack on the Tatars was to be a frontal one, down the Ulja 
valley, while the Kin army came up in pursuit from the southeast, Chin- 
gis-khan duly invited his allies the Kereits to join in. The Kereit king 
Toghril accepted willingly: he also had old scores to settle, for his grand- 
father Marghuz Buyruq, taken prisoner by the Tatars, had died an igno- 
minious death. In three days he had mustered his army and joined Chin- 
gis-khan. 

The two also invited the Jurkin chiefs Seche-beki and Taychu to par- 
ticipate, but the latter had not forgotten the unfortunate incidents of the 
Onon banquet. For six days they were waited for in vain. Then To- 
ghril and Chingis-khan set out without them down the valley of the Ulja. 
The Tatar chief had barricaded himself behind an abatis of trees after 
the fashion of the forest tribes. Chingis-khan and Toghril forced his lair 
as hunters do their quarry's, killed him, and seized as booty his bed set 
with gold and pearls. 

The Kin general Wan-yen Siang, delighted with his allies' victory, con- 
ferred on Toghril the title of wang, the Chinese term for "king." This 
word, pronounced ong in Mongol, was combined with the title khan, 
which Toghril already bore, to give the name Ong-khan, by which the 
Kereit sovereign will hereafter be referred to. Chingis-khan the court of 
Peking honored with a much more modest title, proving that for the Chi- 
nese the Kereits were still the most important tribe in Mongolia. Both 
leaders were for the rest warmly congratulated by the Kin representa- 
tive: u By attacking the Tatars from the rear, by killing their chief, you 
have greatly served the King of Gold, and he will manifest his gratitude." 
Such words clearly class Chingis-khan as well as the new Ong-khan as 
modest federates in the service of the King of Gold, chiefs of savage 
tribes the court of Peking kept happy with titles and trinkets. 

Chingis-khan and the Ong-khan paid themselves out of the booty 
from the Tatars, and it was loaded with spoils that they reached their 
respective yurts again. In his share, Chingis-khan had a little boy found 
abandoned in the Tatar camp, a child with a gold ring in his nose and a 
coat of damask lined with sable. He was given to mother Ho'eliin, who 



In the Service of the King of Gold 91 

adopted him: "He must be the son of some high personage. He will 
become so with us!" She named him Shigi-qutuqu and declared he 
should be her sixth child. Chingis-khan was also to grow deeply attached 
to this young brother by adoption; how deeply, he was to show a few 
years later. One day when his people were moving camp in their nomad 
fashion in severe cold and deep snow, a herd of deer made off from near 
their path. "Shigi-qutuqu, who was now about fifteen years old, told the 
noyan Kiichugiir, who had charge of him, that he would like to go after 
the animals, who were slowed down by the snow. He was given permis- 
sion, and went off. In the evening, when they halted, Chingis-khan 
asked after Qutuqu. He was told he had gone off deer hunting. 'The child 
will die of cold!' he exclaimed in a rage. And he was so angry with 
Kuchiigiir he struck him with a wagon shaft. But young Qutuqu came 
home, announcing that of thirty deer he had brought down twenty-seven. 
This youthful feat pleased Chingis-khan greatly. He sent to fetch the 
game, which were there indeed, stretched in the snow." 



A 
AA 



18 



Chingis-khan Rids Himself 
of the Mongol Princes 



After his victory over the Tatars, Chingis-khan had returned to his en- 
campment at Lake Qariltu, on the banks of the upper Keriilen. There 
news awaited him that filled him with surprise and indignation. While 
he was away, the Jiirkins, taking advantage of his absence, had thrown 
themselves on the people he had left behind, had robbed them, stripped 
of their clothes some fifty men, and killed ten of them. Chingis-khan was 
seized by fury. At the famous banquet on the Onon, the Jiirkins had 
struck his cook, Shiki'iir, and wounded in the shoulder his brother Belgii- 
tei. Pressed to join in the "national" expedition against the Tatars, they 
had become evasive. Their failing in this respect had been the more crim- 
inal in that Okin-barqaq, the Jiirkin chiefs Seche-beki and Taychu's own 
grandfather, had perished at Tatar hands. And now it transpired that 
these same Jiirkins, not content to shirk their military duty, had de- 
scended in pillage on the yurts of the khan, entrusted to old men and 
children during the holy war! It was the last straw! Chingis-khan 
marched against the Jiirkins, came up with them at Dolo'an Boldaq 
("the Seven Hills"), near Kodo'e-aral, on the lower Keriilen, and took 
them prisoner. Seche-beki and Taychu managed to make off with a few 
followers toward the Pass of Telegetii, but Chingis-khan overtook and re- 
captured them. He had them brought before him. He reminded them of 
their military oath. They acknowledged they had betrayed it, that they 
should be treated accordingly, and they "held out their necks." Their 
heads rolled on the ground. 
The execution of the Jiirkin princes must have made a sharp impres- 



Chingis-khan Rids Himself of the Princes 93 

sion on the tribes. Among the descendants of the glorious khan Qabul, 
they represented the senior line, Chingis-khan only one among junior 
ones. As eldest son of Qabul, their ancestor Okin-barqaq had had time, 
at the sharing of the ulus* to choose the most valiant warriors, the most 
infallible archers, and it was from this elite the Jiirkins were descended. 
Now Chingis-khan had struck off the heads of their princes and subordi- 
nated their people. The proudest in origin of the clans had had to bow. 
The chief, once grudgingly elected by his peers to preside over a loose 
confederation of tribes in occasional joint hunting or raiding expeditions, 
had emerged as a relentless master, exacting from his subjects absolute 
obedience. 

The Jiirkin chiefs put down, Chingis-khan turned his anger on another 
Mongol prince, likewise descended from the hero Qabul, but belonging 
to the third branch: Biiri-boko. Buri-boko (Biiri "the Athlete") had once, 
it will be remembered, shown signal want of respect for Chingis-khan by 
wounding his brother Belgtitei during the banquet on the Onon which 
had ended in a general brawl between the Jiirkins and the followers of 
the khan. Chingis-khan had seemed for the moment to forget the offense, 
but he was biding his time. He used Belgiitei to pay off the debt. One day, 
as if for amusement, he commanded Belgiitei and Biiri-boko to wrestle 
before him. Biiri-boko, as his name indicates, was of Herculean strength, 
and in the normal course of things would have had an easy victory. But 
intimidated by the presence of the khan, he held himself back from exert- 
ing his full strength, was careful with Belgiitei, and pretended to be over- 
thrown by him. Belgiitei, seizing him by the shoulders, jumped on his 
back. This was just what Chingis-khan had been waiting for. He gave 
Belgiitei a prearranged sign he bit his lower lip. Belgiitei at once ex- 
ploited his advantage; immobilizing his adversary one knee on the 
wretch's back, hands gripping his nape he broke his back. "Then he 
dragged the body outside, threw it on the ground and went away." 

The other side of the coin was Chingis-khan's inspiring fanatical devo- 
tion. Among the former clients of the Jiirkins was a Jalair warrior 
named Gu'iin-u'a. He came to present to Chingis-khan his two sons, Mu- 
qali and Buqa: "Let them serve as footmen before your threshold. If 
they abandon the service of your door, break their heels and pluck out 
their livers!" Gu'iin's two brothers, Chila'un-qaychi and Jebke, also ded- 
1 Ulus is a technical term for a land (and people) received as patrimony. 



94 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

icated themselves to Chingis-khan. It was a family of heroes that thus 
entered his service. Muqali, notably, was one day to conquer for him 
Northern China. Jebke had found abandoned in the Jiirkin camp a small 
boy, Boroqul. He presented him to mother Ho'eliin, who adopted him. 
The great dowager had thus acquired through the hazards of war four 
adoptive sons: Kuchu the Merkit, Kokochii the Besiit, Shigi-qutuqu the 
Tatar, and Boroqul the Jiirkin. The excellent woman brought them up 
with diligence, "watching over them in the daytime with her eyes, at 
night with her ears." They too we shall find among the most devoted of 
the Conqueror's followers. 



A 
AA 



19 



Surprise Assaults in the Mountains 



The kingship of Chingis-khan, consolidated by the execution of his re- 
fractory cousins, daily took more substantial shape. Re-established by 
his aid, his erstwhile suzerain, the Ong-khan of the Kereits whom he 
continued to address ceremoniously as "father" remained his loyal 
ally, or at least appeared such. About 1199, the two launched an expedi- 
tion together against the other great people of Upper Mongolia, the Nay- 
mans. 

The Naymans, it will be remembered, were probably of Turkish de- 
scent and inhabited Western Mongolia. "They inhabited the Great Altay, 
from the country in which later the town of Qaraqorum arose to the 
upper Irtysh. They spread as far as Kereit country, and Kirghiz country 
and Uyghur country." That is to say the ensemble of territories com- 
prised today in the administrative area of Kobdo, Tarbagatay, and 
Dzungaria. Since the death of their king Inanch-bilge they had split up 
between the two sons of that prince, Tayang Tay-Buqa and Buyruq. 1 
The two brothers had quarreled over possession of a former concubine 
of their father's. Tayang, we are told, ruled the clans of the plain and 
Buyruq those of the mountain. Chingis-khan and the Ong-khan, for the 
moment letting Tayang be, attacked Buyruq. 

Buyruq was on the banks of the Soghoq, which is the upper part of the 
River Kobdo, on the northeast slope of the "Great Mountain" (Ulugh- 
tagh), 2 that is, of the Mongol Altay. Chingis-khan and the Kereit king, 
crossing the Khangay range, moved, it would seem, into the region of the 

1 [The Tayang is also called Torluq in the Secret History, H 198.] 

2 [This Turkish name, in the text of the Mongol Secret History, tends to confirm us 
in our assumption that the Naymans were Turkish in origin, not Mongol.] 



96 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

lakes, along a route perhaps not far off that taken by the Bouillane de 
Lacoste expedition. 3 This is wild country where grassland alternates 
with wastes of grey stone. Only the valley bottoms and the sides of the 
Kobdo River have the shade of clusters of birches and giant poplars. 
Buyruq, not feeling strong, abandoned the area and took refuge in the 
Altay. At the foot of the Altay, one of his lieutenants, Yedi-tubluq, ap- 
parently commanding his rear guard, was overtaken by the Mongol ad- 
vance party: his saddle girths gave way and he was captured before he 
could reach the mountain. Taking nearby cols at 1,000 feet, passable 
from July to October only, Chingis-khan and his allies set out to cross 
the Altay, its basalt and porphyry ridge "like a jagged wall, with sharp, 
crumbling points," overhung by forty-five glaciers. Thence they came 
down on the south side into the valley of the Urungu, bordered with 
willow thickets, "into the country of Qumshigir." They came on the 
enemy near Lake Kizil-bash, the Ulungur as it is called today: a salt lake, 
circled by bare yellow hills. In this desert-like country Buyruq was 
crushed by Chingis-khan. The Nayman chief fled to the Siberian frontier, 
to the Kemkemjiuts of the upper lenissei, in what is now the Tuvin 
region. 

Chingis-khan and the Ong-khan, their victory won, took the road 
home. Their route, between the north slope of the Altay and the southern 
slope of the Khangay, led through the valley of the Baydaraq, the Bay- 
darik of our maps, whose swift waters run down through the wild gorges 
of the Khangay, to end in the south in a salt lake, surrounded by 
reeds and sand with saksauls and tamarisks. Now one of the Nayman 
chiefs, the valiant Kokse'ii-sabraq, had stationed himself in one of the 
Baydaraq passes, intending to dispute the allies' passage. The two armies 
took up battle positions, but, as night was falling, Chingis-khan and the 
Ong-khan postponed combat till next day. 

Then something extraordinary came to pass. In the middle of the night 
the Ong-khan, after lighting his fires to mislead all concerned, without a 
word to his ally, made off with all his force up the Qarase'iil valley, 
leaving Chingis-khan alone to face whatever the Naymans had in store 
for him. 

What had happened, and what lay behind such a betrayal? The insti- 
gator was apparently the Jajirat chief Jamuqa, Chingis-khan's erstwhile 
3 [Bouillane de Lacoste, op. dt., p. 4.] 



Surprise Assaults in the Mountains 97 

"brother by adoption," become now his greatest enemy. Jamuqa indeed 
had followed the Ong-khan on this expedition. Riding at his side on the 
return journey, he had succeeded in arousing mistrust in the easily 
swayed soul of the Kereit sovereign. He insinuated that Chingis-khan 
had always kept up secret relations with the Naymans: "Even now he is 
not following you [perhaps there was a gap between the marching allies]. 
I, O khan, am like the white-plumaged bird, that, in winter as in summer, 
dwells in the north. My anda Temiijin is like the bird of passage, the lark 
or the wild goose, that, when the cold comes, takes wing for the sunny 
lands of the south. He must have gone back to the Naymans to tender his 
submission to them." Tradition has it that, like the ancient chorus, a 
Kereit noble, Giirin-ba'atur, protested in the name of loyalty: "How can 
you utter such calumnies of your anda?" 

Meantime, Chingis-khan, who suspected nothing, spent the night pre- 
paring for combat. At dawn, he saw that the Ong-khan had deserted him. 
He realized the extreme seriousness of his position: "These people have 
left us here like burnt meats!" Swiftly, he made off in his turn, reaching, 
by an appreciable loop northward, on the other side of the Khangay, the 
valley of the Eder, and so securing his return unhindered to the Sa'ari 
Ke'er steppe "the donkeyback steppe" whence he had a few months 
before set out to war. 

It was the Ong-khan who made a bad bargain by his treachery. He 
was withdrawing toward his usual encampments on the upper Tula when 
he was thrown back by the Nayman chief Kokse'ii-sabraq. The latter 
surprised the Kereits at the pass of Telegetii (Telegetii-amasar) one of 
the passes of the Khangay chain and captured a great number of them, 
with their animals and their provisions. The senggiim Nilqa, son of the 
Ong-khan, saw his wife and children fall into the hands of the enemy. 
The Ong-khan's fortunes went so badly that two important hostages he 
had in his train, the sons of the Merkit chief Toqto'a, escaped, and, 
making off down the Selenga, went to rejoin their father by Lake Baykal. 



A 
AA 



20 



Chingis-khan's Magnanimity 



In these straits, the Ong-khan was reduced to imploring aid from the 
same Chingis-khan he had a few days before so utterly betrayed. The 
Conqueror might at will have had his revenge, or, at the least, made 
Toghril pay dear for his help. He behaved, on the contrary, with remark- 
able magnanimity. Receiving the Ong-khan's entreaty, he sent to his aid 
his "four heroes": Bo'orchu, Muqali, Boroqul, and Chila'un. They were 
only just in time. In the meantime, the Nayman chief Kokse'ii-sabraq, 
having taken his loot off to a safe place, had returned to the attack 
against the Kereit senggum, and was now making furious onslaughts on 
him in the district of Hula'anqut. Already two of the principal Kereit 
commanders, Teginquri and Itiirgen-yudaqu, had been killed. The 
senggurrfs horse had had its thigh run through, and he was about to be 
taken. It was at this juncture that Chingis-khan's four lieutenants swept 
in, at full gallop. To the first of these, the faithful Bo'orchu, Chingis- 
khan had entrusted a steed beyond compare, "Grey-ear" (Chiki-boro), 
whose mane had just to be stroked gently with the whip for him to fly 
like the wind. In the battle Bo'orchu gave Grey-ear to the unhorsed 
senggum, but the latter did not know the trick of stroking the mane, and 
the noble animal refused to budge. At last Bo'orchu remembered the 
instructions he had from his master, and gave Grey-ear "Chingis-khan's 
caress," and the charger rushed against the foe. The Nayman force took 
fright, and the Kereit king recovered all his men and all his goods, 

The Ong-khan was magnificent in his thanks to his savior: "Once be- 
fore, Yesiigei the Brave gave me back my kingdom, and now behold his 
son has saved me once again." He called on the Tengri and the goddess 
Earth to witness his gratitude. He wanted also to reward Bo'orchu. It 



Chingis-khan 3 s Magnanimity 99 

was a day when the fearless noyan was on guard over Chingis-khan, but 
the Conqueror bade him go to receive the reward for his services to the 
Kereit sovereign. The Ong-khan presented Bo'orchu with a robe of 
honor, and, furthermore, ten cups of gold. Bo'orchu, returning with these 
treasures, came to kneel before Chingis-khan and reproach himself, as 
with a crime, for having neglected, even for an instant, the service of his 
king to go to be laden with gifts by a foreign prince. Such was the abso- 
lute devotion the Conqueror inspired. 



AA 

21 



The Anti-Caesar Jamuqa and the 

Battle in the Storm 



It might seem that Chingis-khan, victorious over the Naymans and but- 
tressed by the alliance of the Kereit sovereign he had just saved, was on 
the eve of imposing his rule on the divers peoples of what is now Upper 
Mongolia. In reality, the hour of his final triumph was not yet quite at 
hand. Even among the Mongol tribes proper there was so far from being 
unanimity in his favor that a group of them soon set up an anti-Caesar 
rival to him in the person of his enemy, the Jajirat chief Jamuqa. 

A curious personality was this Jamuqa, once the "brother by adoption" 
of Chingis-khan, now his worst adversary. All the chronicles point to the 
unstable, plotting, treacherous character of the man, his searing projects, 
his sudden disastrous fallings-short. It was he, we have seen, who had all 
but brought about a break between Chingis-khan and the Kereit Ong- 
khan. Now that, in spite of him, the Ong-khan and Chingis-khan were 
reconciled, he organized against them a veritable coalition of the tribes, 
a coalition that included the majority of the Mongol peoples with the 
exception of the immediate adherents of Chingis-khan. To it rallied all 
the Conqueror's old enemies: the Tatars of the lower Keriilen, the Merk- 
its of the lower Selenga, the Taychi'uts of the lower Onon; then the forest- 
dwelling Oyrats of the western shores of Lake Baykal and a great num- 
ber of lesser tribes revolving in the orbit of these others, notably the 
Qatagins, the Salji'uts, the Dorbens, the Ikires, the Qorolas, even the 
Onggirats of Buyur, the tribe of Chingis-khan's own parents-in-law. 
From western Mongolia the Naymans, or at least a section of the Nay- 
mans, came to join the league. Jamuqa was joined at the head of the 



Jamuqa and Battle in the Storm 101 

movement by other former enemies of Chingis-khan: Toqto'a-beki, chief 
of the Merkits, Tarqutay-Qiriltuq, chief of the Taychi'uts, Qutuqa-beki, 
chief of the Oyrats, and lastly the Nayman Buyruq of the but recent trial 
of strength. 

As the list shows, this was a confederation with support from every 
quarter of Mongolia, comprising as it did at once the Tatars of eastern 
Mongolia, from the flank of the Khingan, the Oyrats of the northern 
tayga, and the Naymans of the great Altay, The year was 1201. The 
tribes gathered near the source of the Olqui, whence they moved into the 
valley of the Argun. Where the little river Kan flowed into the Argun, 1 
they proclaimed Jamuqa king with the title gur-khan. The election was to 
the accompaniment of religious ceremonies according to shamanist rit- 
ual. The chiefs of the confederates sacrificed a stallion and a mare. They 
bound themselves by a great oath: "May he among us who defects be 
cast down like this earth, cut in pieces like these trees!" and they crum- 
bled earth into the river and slashed off branches with saber cuts. Then 
they made ready to surprise Chingis-khan. 

But the secret was badly kept. One of the Qorolas tribe, named Qori- 
day, hastened to warn Chingis-khan, who was at Giirelgu, by the sources 
of the Keriilen, at the foot of the massif of Burqan-qaldun. Qoriday went 
at the gallop, on a swift horse. At nightfall, he came on a Taychi'ut camp 
with people of his own tribe. From them he got a change of horse, set out 
again, then almost fell foul of a troop of confederates carrying a white 
tent to the new gur-khan. By good fortune he escaped them, and came 
safe and sound to Chingis-khan. 

Chingis-khan sent at once for help to the Kereit Ong-khan. The latter 
came to join his ally, and together they went down the Keriilen valley. 
Chingis-khan sent ahead as scouts his two cousins, the princes Altan and 
Quchar, and his uncle Daritay, while the Ong-khan similarly commis- 
sioned his son the senggum, his brother Jaqa-gambu, and his lieutenant 
Bilge-beki. So traveling they came to the region of Mounts Chiqurqu and 
Chekcher and the district Koyten, south of the debouching of the Keriilen 
into Lake Kolen, between that lake and Lake Buyur. The Kolen, marshy- 
shored, is linked at high water with the Argun by a canal for the most 
part dry. The enemy came up the Argun valley. Heading them were the 

1 Long. H9E, lat. 50N. The Kan (or Gan) is a small eastern tributary of the 
Argun. 



102 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

principals of the coalition: the Taychfut prince A'uchu-ba'atur, the 
Nayman chief Buyruq, Qutu, son of the Merkit chief Toqto'a, the Oyrat 
chief Qutuqa, aU grouped round the anti-Caesar Jamuqa. As they came 
fanning out on to the plain of Lake Kolen, night was falling. Amid the 
cries of the advance guards, battle was put off till morning. 

At daybreak, Buyruq and Qutuqa-beki, who were shamans, by their 
spellmaking, "pronouncing incantations and throwing stones into the 
water," produced a storm of rain and snow, intended to blind Chingis- 
khan. But, the Tengri aiding, the storm turned against the coalition. The 
air grew thick, and the supporters of Jamuqa, assailed at once by Chingis- 
khan and the anger of heaven, numb with cold, lost their footing. Men 
and beasts went hurtling in the murk to the foot of precipices. Those not 
killed outright were frozen stiff in the fiercely whirling snow. 

Beaten, the coalition scattered. The Naymans took the road once 
more for the Great Altay, the Oyrats for their Baykalian forests, the 
Merkits for the lower Selenga, the Taychi'uts for the lower Onon. Ja- 
muqa regained his camps by the Argun. Steppe bandit that he was, he 
did not hesitate to take advantage of the misfortune of his allies the 
very men who had proclaimed him gur-khan to pillage them, senseless 
conduct that finally lost him the last of his followers, and put conclusive 
end to his ephemeral kingship. 2 

2 I20I-O2. 



A 
AA 



22 



Chingis-khan Wounded: 
The Devotion of Jelme 



Chingis-khan and the Ong-khan, after their joint victory, had split up. 
The Ong-khan had descended the Argun valley in pursuit of Jamuqa, 
while Chingis-khan went to throw back the Taychi'uts in the valley of the 
Onon. The Taychi'ut chiefs A'uchu-ba'atur and Qodun-orchang waited 
for him on the other side of the river. They battled fiercely till evening, 
an indecisive bout, following which, as night fell, the two armies bivou- 
acked face to face. 

Chingis-khan had been wounded in the neck by an arrow. The vein 
was touched, and he could not staunch the bleeding. In pain as he was, 
he stayed with the fighting to the end. When night finally came, he col- 
lapsed, exhausted. He had with him the loyal Jelme, of the tribe of the 
Urangquats, forest hunters of the Siberian tayga. 1 Jelme did all that 
could be done then for the wounded man. In the manner of the Mongol 
"doctors," he sucked the clotted blood from the wound, till his own 
mouth was all stained with it. Then he crouched down beside him and 
watched over him, for he was the only one with whom Chingis-khan, this 
terrible night, would trust himself. "Till midnight, he sucked the wound 
thus for fear the wound might be poisoned. About midnight, Chingis- 
khan came to himself and said: The blood has clotted at last. I am 

1 The Urangquats, Rashid ed-Din records, live in immense forests. They do not 
have tents, have no livestock, live by hunting and profess great contempt for pas- 
toral peoples. For shelter they use only cabins made of branches and covered with 
birchbark. In winter, they hunt over the snow, tying to their feet small planks they 
call chana, and holding in the hand a stick they plunge into the snow as a boat- 
man plunges, his pole into the water. 



104 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

thirsty.' " Jelme took off his headgear, his boots, his coat and jacket, 
then, clad only in his shoes, made coolly toward the enemy lines. Then 
he groped among the Taychi'ut wagons, in search of mare's milk, favor- 
ite drink of the nomads: in vain. The Taychi'uts, in fact, on their hasty 
march, had set loose their mares, without bothering to milk them. But 
finally he found in a wagon a bucket of sour milk. He grabbed it, and 
was lucky enough to get back with it unseen: the Tengri was watching 
over him! Then he added water to the curds, and gave his master to 
drink. 

After three draughts, Chingis-khan murmured: "My eyes begin to see 
clearly." He spoke and sat up. Day was indeed beginning to dawn. The 
wounded man noticed, in the place where he had been lying, a pool of 
blood. He asked what it was. Jelme explained to him what had hap- 
pened, how he had sucked the blood from the wound, then how he had 
gone, naked, to steal from the enemy the bucket of sour milk. "And if 
the enemy had caught you," asked Chingis-khan, "what would you have 
said?" "I had thought it out," answered the imperturbable Jelme. "I 
should have passed myself off as a deserter; I would have made out that 
you had meant to kill me, that you had stripped me of all my clothes but 
my shoes, and that in that state I had escaped. They would have believed 
me, looked after me, given me something to wear. Then I should have 
found a way to jump on a horse and gallop back here. That was what I 
was thinking, while I was looking for a drink to assuage the thirst of my 
master, he who is more to me than the apple of my eye." 

Chingis-khan was moved by such devotion. "Before," he murmured, 
"when the Merkits had me surrounded on Mount Burqan-qaldun, you 
saved my life for a first time. Now you have restored me to life, by 
sucking my wound, and you have been, at the risk of your life, to fetch 
drink from an enemy camp to assuage the torment of my thirst. What 
you have done, I shall never forget!" With the simple grandeur of the 
exchange a breath of nobility wafts through this ferocious tale. 

When it was fully light, it was seen that the enemy cavalry had dis- 
banded, abandoning the rank and file. Chingis-khan, despite his wound, 
mounted and rode to round up and rally to himself all these men. Now 
he saw on a crop of rock a woman, dressed in white, weeping, who called 
on him loudly. It was the lady Qada'an, daughter of the Sorqan-shira 
who once in his childhood, when he had been wearing the cangue among 



Chingis-khan Wounded: Devotion of Jelme 105 

the Taychi'uts, had saved his life. She called on him now for help, for 
Chingis-khan's warriors had seized her husband, and were taking him 
away to cut his throat. At her cry, Chingis-khan came to her at a gallop. 
He jumped down and clasped her in his arms. But, alas, he came too 
late: her husband had been butchered. Having rallied all these folk to his 
banner, Chingis-khan pitched camp for the night with his army. Full of 
compassion, he had Qada'an sit by his side. Next morning, Qada'an's 
father came to him, Sorqan-shira himself. "In the old days," Chingis- 
khan said to him, "you and your sons freed me from my cangue, my log 
of infamy. Then, you saved me. But since, why wait so long to join 
me?" "In my heart," the old man answered, "I was already your fol- 
lower. But if I had joined you sooner, the Taychi'ut chiefs would have 
massacred my wife and children, seized my herds and my possessions. 
... It is only now that we can at last come to join you." And Chingis- 
khan agreed that he had been wise. 



A 
AA 



23 



"The Arrow that Wounded Your 
Horse, It Was I Who Shot It!" 



At the same time as Sorqan-shira, there came to Chingis-khan another 
new recruit, a young man, this time, named Jirqo-aday. He was of the 
Besiit clan, a sept of the Taychi'uts. At the battle of Koyten, he had 
wounded with an arrow in the collarbone the war horse of Chingis-khan, 
a splendid brown creature with a white muzzle. Or rather, as, after the 
battle of Koyten, he was hiding with other Taychi'ut warriors to escape 
the victors, he happened to be caught up in Chingis-khan's hunt and 
enclosed by the circle of beaters. The Conqueror, seeing him, wanted to 
hunt him down, but Bo'orchu asked to be allowed the honor of pitting 
himself against so illustrious a fighter. For this sort of "archers' joust," 
Chingis-khan lent Bo'orchu his famous roan horse with the white muz- 
zle. Bo'orchu let fly first, and missed Jirqo-aday. The latter's arrow, 
better aimed, found his adversary's horse, and then Jirqo-aday made 
off. at a gallop. But now, without resources, he came to offer his serv- 
ices to the khan. The eagle eye of the Conqueror probed into his very en- 
trails: "Who was it, after the Koyten day, wounded my war horse?" 
Jirqo-aday answered: "That arrow that wounded your horse, it was I, in 
the mountain, who shot it. The khan may punish me by killing me forth- 
with. My blood would stain but a little patch of earth, no bigger than the 
palm of a hand. But if you have mercy on me, I shall go at your behest to 
attack all your enemies. For you, I will cross the deepest torrents, I will 
split the rocks." The answer pleased Chingis-khan. "Ordinarily, a de- 
feated foe takes good care not to boast of the damage he may have done 
you. But this boy, on the contrary, confesses it frankly. Let him be one 



"It was I Who Shot It!" 107 

of our companions: he has the mettle! He has been called till now Jirqo- 
aday. In memory of the arrow which wounded my horse, he shall be 
called henceforth Jebe ["The Arrow"], and he shall be himself as my war 
horse! Jebe, ride at my side!" 

Thus it was that Jebe the Taychi'ut became the hero's companion. The 
name Chingis-khan gave him the young captain was to make immortal. 
In all the Mongol epic few were to become as famous as Jebe, who 
conquered for his master Semirechie and Kashgharia, and vanquished 
Persians, Georgians, and Russians. 



A 
AA 



24 



"If You Had Delivered up Your 

Master to Me, I Would 

Have Put You to Death." 



The Taychi'uts were thoroughly broken. It was this Mongol tribe, closely 
related to Chingis-khan's own, and formerly, moreover, subject to his 
father, that by its dissidence had made the hero's youth one of such 
hardship and uphill struggle. Now, he brought it by force to his heel. The 
Taychi'ut princes A'uchu-ba'atur, Qodun-orchang, Qudu'udar he put 
to death, with their children and their children's children, "and all their 
race was scattered as ashes." Their people he took to pass the winter 
with him in the district of Quba-qaya, near the sources of the Keriilen. 
Nevertheless perhaps the most important of the Taychi'ut chiefs, Tar- 
qutay-Qiriltuq, Chingis-khan's old enemy, persecutor of his childhood, 
the man who had once made him wear the cangue, had managed to hide 
in the woods. Three of his household Shirgiietii, of the Ba'arin tribe, 
and his sons, Alaq and Nayaqa took advantage of his weakness to be- 
tray his trust and take him prisoner. They hoisted him into a wagon and 
set out to deliver him to Chingis-khan. At that moment, the sons and 
brothers of Tarqutay-qiriltuq appeared, intending to set him free. Before 
they got to him, Shirgiietii climbed into the wagon, and, bending over his 
prisoner, drew his saber: "Your kinsmen are coming to save you. 
Whether I kill you or spare you it will make no difference, I shall be 
executed for having betrayed your trust. I might as well slice off your 
head!" He had his saber raised. Tarqutay-qiriltuq shouted with all his 
lungs to his sons to stop: "If you come closer, he will kill me. Turn 



"I Would Have Put You to Death." 109 

away, if you value my life! . . ." He preferred to be handed over to 
Chingis-khan, telling himself he could touch the hero's heart with certain 
memories: in times of yore doubtless in Yestigei's lifetime it had 
been he, Tarqutay-qiriltuq, who had "taught the young Temujin like a 
young two- or three-year-old colt." "Temujin has not forgotten: for sure, 
he will not kill me!" 

Shirgiietii, free of his pursuers, had gone on his way with his prisoner 
to Chingis-khan. His son Nayaqa, with more insight, made him see he 
was misjudging the nature of the Conqueror. The latter, it was known, 
had a horror of traitors. What he would say at sight of them could be 
forecast in advance: "These men have turned their hands against their 
rightful lord. What trust is to be placed in them? We cannot admit them 
to our company. There is nothing to be done but put them to death!" The 
words thus attributed to Chingis-khan were so much in line with what 
was known of his character that old Shirguetii set his captive free on the 
instant. After which he came with his two sons to join Chingis-khan: 
"We had taken prisoner Tarqutay-qiriltuq to give him up to you, but we 
could not bring ourself to betray one who was our rightful lord. We set 
him free, therefore, and came alone to profess our loyalty to you!" The 
hero congratulated them: "You did well. If you had delivered up your 
master, I would have put you to death." Learning that the decision was 
due to the advice of the young Nayaqa, he praised the latter in particular. 
Nayaqa was later to become his trusted delegate in private missions of 
the most delicate kind. 

Flashes of nobility like this are legion in the story of the Mongol con- 
queror. 



A 
AA 



25 



The Extermination of the Tatars 



Chingis-khan, in bringing to heel the Taychi'ut clans, had avenged 
wrongs done to himself. To avenge those done to his family, he had now 
to exterminate the Tatars, murderers of his ancestors, murderers of his 
own father Yesiigei. 

The Tatars, enemy-kin, as we have explained, to the Chingiskhanids, 
of the same pure Mongol stock, were divided into several tribes who 
wandered from near the lower Keriilen, and Lakes Kolen and Buyur, 
over as far as the Great Khingan, the range demarcating Mongolia and 
Manchuria. Chingis-khan, with the aid of the Kereit Ong-khan and the 
Peking King of Gold, had once already defeated them. He had also en- 
countered them in every coalition formed against him, and they had been 
defeated by him then with their allies. Now in 1202 he was of a mind 
to finish things once and for all with these eternal enemies. To do so he 
no longer needed allies; his own strength now sufficed. And it was a fight 
now to the death. 

The decisive battle took place in the spring of 1202 in the area of 
Dalan-nemiirges ("the Seventy Felt Cloaks"), which has been sited near 
the inflow of the River Khalkha to Lake Buyur. Chingis-khan had forbid- 
den his troops to take booty of any kind till victory was complete: there 
would be all the time they wanted afterward to share out the enemies' 
goods. If the first assault was thrown back, they must, at whatever cost, 
return to the attack. "Who does not do so, will be executed." The Tatars 
were utterly crushed. Proceeding at once to one of those enveloping 
movements that were to make Mongol tactics famous, Chingis-khan sur- 
rounded the vanquished enemy near the Rivers Olqui and Shiliigeljit, 
which run down from Mount Soyulzi, in the Khingan chain, to peter out 



The Extermination of the Tatars 111 

in the Gobi. The four Tatar tribes Chaghan-Tatars, Alchi-Tatars, Du- 
ta'ut-Tatars, and Aluqay-Tatars were annihilated, chiefs and subjects. 
But a serious breech of discipline had occurred. Contrary to the orders 
of Chingis-khan, his uncle, the vociferous Daritay, his first cousin Qu- 
char and Prince Altan had turned to looting for their own benefit with- 
out waiting till the conclusion of operations and the general sharing out 
of booty. Evidently, they considered themselves, by reason of their birth, 
exempt from the prohibition of yassaq Chingis-khan had issued. 1 But 
precisely by reason of that it was vital that they should be made an 
example of, for indiscipline in such high quarters was likely to be conta- 
gious. Moreover, insubordination on the part of Altan might have partic- 
ularly dangerous implications: was he not the son of the last Mongol 
khan, Qutula? Was this deliberate flouting not perhaps the prelude to 
rebellion in the offing? Inexorably, Chingis-khan had rounded up and 
confiscated the cattle the three princes of the blood had appropriated. 
Thus he re-established discipline, but neither Altan nor Quchar, nor even 
Daritay, ever forgave him this affront. Bitterly nursing their grievance, 
they were to carry on ceaseless stealthy agitation against the khan, till 
the day when they defected and went to fight against him in the ranks of 

jfteJCere^^ -^ " ~" "7~""> 

It remained to deal with the many Tatar prisoners. In this too Chingis4 
khan was relentless. He called his own followers to secret council, in ^ 
yurt, to take a decision. They pronounced categorically: "The Tatars 
caused the death of our fathers and forefathers. They shall be sacrifice^ 
in vengeance for our forefathers and our fathepf-^^a^^ 
ev$ry male standing higher than a JftggSSJ^H ^ e rest we w ^" ^ e 
slaves ofr~~But on emerging from the council Chingis-khan's half 
brother, Belgiitei, was unwise enough to let one of the Tatar prisoners, 
Cheren the Great (Yeke-Cheren), know the decision. Warning thus 
given them, the Tatars threw up the best defenses they were able. This 
was in the foothills of the Khingans, where the valleys are carpeted with 
grasses growing breast-high, easy concealment for a fugitive. This dense 
grass is furthermore studded with elms and willows, and groves of birch 

i It will be remembered that Quchar was the son of Nekiin-tayshi, himself brother 
of Yesiigei and Daritay. Altan, as already stated, was the son of khan Qutula, who 
was the brother of Bartan-ba'atur, the same who was himself Chmgis-khan's own 
grandfather. See the genealogical tree at the end of the book. 



112 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

and poplar grow halfway down the slopes. With wagons and tree cuttings 
it is easy to improvise barricades. The Mongols had to beat down this 
last-ditch resistance, and they lost a lot of men doing it. Then began the 
extermination of the Tatar male population, a methodical extermination, 
Mongol fashion. But even this slaughter was not one-sided, for the Ta- 
tars, knowing what awaited them, had hidden knives in their sleeves: 
before they died, many of them dispatched their executioners "to serve as 
a grave pillow." 

Chingis-khan, furious with Belgiitei for this indiscretion of his that had 
been the cause of such heavy losses, forbade him henceforth to attend 
council. Significantly, he extended the same prohibition to his uncle Da- 
ritay, whose attitude was becoming more and more suspect. 



A 
AA 



26 



The Hearts of the Two Tatar Sisters 



In his share of the booty, Chingis-khan accorded himself the fair Yisii- 
gen, daughter of the Tatar chief Yeke-Cheren. The story declares he felt 
much love for her. But the young woman was not jealous, or, at least, 
had a highly developed sense of family, for, the very evening of their 
union, as soon as she had assured herself of her master's heart, she told 
him that she had an elder sister, Yisiii, whose beauty was no less worthy 
of a king. "She was just now on the point of being married. But in the 
upheaval now, who knows where she may be!" "If she is as beautiful as 
you say," said Chingis-khan, "I will have them look for her. But if she is 
found, will you be willing to share with her your place beside me?" The 
good Yisiigen having given her assurance, a search was made, and Yisiii 
was eventually found in a forest, where she was hiding with her be- 
trothed. The latter took flight, and Yisiii was brought back to the khan, 
who married her as he had married her sister. Yisiigen, as soon as she 
saw her elder sister, had risen to give up to her the place she occupied in 
the hierarchy of royal wives, to take of her own accord a lower one. 
(Travelers in the East have described for us these hierarchical tiers of 
queens around the Mongol khans.) This good understanding greatly 
pleased Chingis-khan, who made no secret of the satisfaction it gave 
him. 

The Tatars exterminated or made slaves, Chingis-khan held a great 
open-air banquet. He seated himself between his two new wives, Yisiii 
and Yisiigen, and was drinking with them when he suddenly noticed 
Yisiii tremble. He suspected something and ordered Bo'orchu and Mu- 
qali to have lined up all the males present, tribe by tribe, and satisfy 
themselves as to their identity. At the end of the examination, there was 



114 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

one unknown whom none of the Mongol tribes recognized as belonging 
to them. He was a young man, fit and handsome-looking. Questioned, he 
confessed he was Yistii's betrothed. He had returned and slipped in 
among the crowd to see his beloved again, thinking himself safe among 
so many. Alas, Chingis-khan was not one to make light of such matters, 
the less so in that he was himself greatly enamored of his new wife. 
"Why," he said, "does this boy come wandering here? Certainly to spy 
on us! There is one way to deal with him as we dealt with his country- 
men: cut him down before my eyes!" There and then, they cut off his 
head. 

Nevertheless, his war with the Tatars almost cost CMngis-khan dear. 
After disaster overtook this people, one of their warriors, Qargil-shira, 
had managed to escape the general massacre, but, driven by hunger, he 
came back to wander around the Mongol camp. He finally presented him- 
self as a supplicant at the yurt of the lady Ho'eliin, mother of Chingis- 
khan, begging for alms. The dowager was goodhearted: "Since you ask 
alms/ 5 she said, "come and sit here,*' and she sat him in a corner of the 
yurt, behind the door. A little later, Chingis-khan's youngest son, Toluy, 
who was only about five years old at the time, 1 came in, then turned 
about and ran for the door. At that moment, Qargil-shira rose, seized 
him by the arm, and carried him off. He had his knife out ready to cut 
his throat. Ho'eliin screamed. She and one of her friends, the lady Al- 
tani, threw themselves after the kidnapper. Altani caught up with him, 
grabbed him with one hand by the braids of his hair and with the other 
twisted his wrist, the one holding the knife, so that he dropped it. Near 
the yurt at the time were two of Chingis-khan's officers, Jelme and Jetei, 
slaughtering a young bullock. At Altani's cries, they ran, ax in hand, 
their fists still red with the blood of the beast, hurled themselves on Qar- 
gil-shira, and stretched him out stone dead. 

Elimination of the Tatars gave Chingis-khan control of eastern Mongo- 
lia, while the Kereits and Naymans ruled respectively over central and 
western Mongolia. A measure of the advantage he was to derive from 
the extermination of the Tatars is that it was in the former Tatar country 
that he was to take refuge the f ollowing year, when, after quarreling with 

1 He was to die at the age of 39 in 1232. The extermination of the Tatars, then, 
according to the Secret History, would have taken place about 1198, but the other 
sources give 1202. 



The Hearts of Two Tatar Sisters 115 

the Kereits, he had to abandon to them his territory on the upper Kerii- 
len. If in 1203 the Tatars had been still a force to reckon with, the hero 
would have found himself caught between his hereditary enemies and the 
Ong-khan, and would certainly have been crushed. 

The Tatars' elimination thus reversed the balance of powers in Mon- 
golia in favor of Chingis-khan, to the detriment of the Kereit Ong-khan. 
It did not take Chingis-khan long to become more peremptory in his 
dealings with the Ong-khan, or the Ong-khan to conceive a mounting dis- 
trust of Chingis-khan. Matters moved to a head. 



A 
AA 



27 



"Our Daughters Are Ladies; 
Theirs, Serving Women" 



The break between the Mongol conqueror and the "khan his father," as 
he called the Ongkhan of the Kereits, has all the pattern of a classical 
tragedy, a mounting tension, clear-drawn characters. Chingis-khan was 
loyal to the end, or at least punctilious in outward loyalist allegiance to 
the "khan his father," albeit with a weather eye open for backslidings or 
even treachery on the Ong-khan's part. Indeed, the Ong-khan had on 
several occasions repaid his services in coin of the blackest ingratitude. 
When the Ong-khan, dethroned by his own brothers, was wandering 
wretchedly in the wastes of the Gobi, not only had Chingis-khan taken 
him in and re-established him, but he had made over to him all the 
booty from the Merkits of the lower Selenga. The Ong-khan, when on 
another occasion he pillaged the Merkits, 1 had on the contrary kept all 
for himself. Worst of all, in their joint campaign against the Naymans he 
had deserted Chingis-khan under cover of darkness, on the eve of a bat- 
tle. It is true that when Chingis-khan had the magnanimity, after that, to 
save him from these same Naymans, the Kereit sovereign's better feel- 
ings seemed once again to come uppermost. At bottom, this weak char- 
acter was swayed utterly by whomever he had been listening to last. A 
short while since, his son the senggum Nilqa, who hated Chingis-khan, 
and the dangerous Jamuqa, who counseled the senggum, had talked him 
into the blackest of treacheries against the Mongol conqueror. Now this 

1 He forced the Merkit chief Toqto'a-beki to flee to the bank of Barghuchin, east- 
ern shore of Lake Baykal, killed Togus-beki, captured his two daughters, Qutuqtay 
and Chala'un, and two other of his sons, Qodu and Chila'un, with a great number 
of his people. 



"Our Daughters Are Ladies; Theirs, Servants" 117 

same Ong-khan, touched by the magnanimity of Chingis-khan who had 
just come to his rescue a second time, hovered on the brink of the oppo- 
site extreme: he all but disinherited his own son in favor of Chingis-khan. 
"I am getting old," he said to himself. "If I go to heaven, who will rule 
over my people? My younger brother Jaqa-gambu is without capacity, I 
have only the one son, the senggum, and he is a nonentity. I shall adopt 
Temiijin as my eldest son, then I shall be able to grow old in peace!" 

Steps were taken. The Ong-khan held a meeting with Chingis-khan in 
the Black Forest, on the banks of the Tula, and there solemnly named 
him his adoptive son. For a long time, indeed, in memory of Yesiigei who 
had been the Ong-khan's adoptive brother (anda), Chingis-khan had ad- 
dressed the Ong-khan as father (echige), that is to say, practically, as 
suzerain. But this time it seems that as well as the tie of vassalhood 
implicit in the term so far as Chingis-khan was concerned, there was now 
a new overtone setting him in a new relationship. Oaths were exchanged. 
"In war, we shall lead the attack together. In the hunt, we shall lead the 
beat side by side. If a serpent tries to insinuate itself between us to inject 
between us distrust and division, we shall afford no purchase for its sting, 
but will believe only what we have said to each other, in all frankness." 

To seal this pact, Chingis-khan would have liked to obtain for his 
eldest son Jochi the youngest daughter of the senggum, Cha'ur-beki. He 
offered in return a princess of his house, Qojin-beki, for Tusaqa, the 
senggum's son. But the senggum could obviously not be expected to view 
with favor the understandings just arrived at. If his father treated Chingis- 
khan as his adoptive son, this could only be at the expense of the legiti- 
mate heir. He felt himself being maneuvered out of his inheritance. The 
senggum refused outright therefore to assent to plans for the double mar- 
riage: "A daughter of our house," he declared proudly, "going to live 
with them, would set her eyes on the place of honor even if she had to 
stand at the door of the yurt, while one of their daughters, coming to live 
with us, even though she be given the place of honor, would keep watch- 
ing the door," an image making the Kereit princesses out respectable 
qatuns, the Mongol princesses parvenus, and the projected union a mis- 
alliance. 

This refusal stung Chingis-khan deeply. From this day on, the filial 
sentiment he seems long to have felt for the Ong-khan gave way to an ill- 
concealed rancor. 



A 
AA 



28 



Nomads between Sworn 
Allegiance and Treason 



The cooling of relations that now set in was turned to account by Ja- 
muqa, erstwhile chosen brother of Chingis-khan, now his worst enemy, 
the anti-Caesar manque who, having failed miserably in his bid for the 
throne, was but the more jealous of his successful rival. Jamuqa at once 
saw the advantage he could derive from events. In the spring of 1203 he 
came to confer with the senggum, and also with the Mongol princes Altan 
and Quchar, who were firmly resolved to betray Chingis-khan to his ene- 
mies. 

The surreptitious council took place in the region of Berke^elet 
("sands of weariness") near Mount Chekcher, sited usually south of 
where the Keriilen flows into Lake Kolen, a region where steppe modu- 
lates into desert, with a sparse vegetation of derissus and karagans. The 
meeting place was chosen undoubtedly at the request of the princes Al- 
tan and Quchar, and to avoid alerting either Chingis-khan or even the 
Ong-khan in their respective encampments around, probably, the upper 
Keriilen and the upper Tula. 

Here, tongues were unleashed to vent accumulated hatreds. Jamuqa, 
to fan these, accused Chingis-khan of being closely in touch with the 
Naymans, the Kereits' hereditary enemies: "He calls himself the son of 
Ong-khan, and see how he behaves!" Jamuqa succeeded particularly in 
rousing the senggiim with warnings that on the death of the Ong-khan 
Chingis-khan might try to seize the Kereit throne: "If you do not act 
against this peril in time, what will become of you afterward? As for me, 
if you march against Temiijin, you have my word I will attack him on the 



Nomads between Allegiance and Treason 119 

flank." The dissident Mongol princes Allan and Quchar were no less 
vehement: "We will kill for you the sons of mother Ho'elun! We will 
leave their bodies lying in the steppe!" 

Emboldened by this encouragement, the senggiim sent emissaries to 
his father to bring him round to his way of thinking. He reproached the 
old man with being deaf and blind to the ambitious designs of Chingis- 
khan, and proposed a sharp attack be mounted against the latter. But the 
Ong-khan showed a lively repugnance at the idea of betraying his oaths: 
"How can you plan such things against my son Temiijin? He has always 
helped us. He has even in the past saved me. Why all these slanders 
against him? If we break our words to him, the Tengri cannot protect us. 
And Jamuqa is anyway inconstant and a trifler; he speaks cleverly, but 
his word is worthless." 

The senggiim refused to be discouraged. He went himself to his father 
and brought his major argument to bear: "While you are still alive, be- 
hold how little consideration Temiijin has for us. Is he likely, later, to 
leave me to claim my inheritance, this Kereit kingdom your father Qur- 
jaquz labored so greatly to establish?" This time again the Ong-khan 
refused to consent to a break. Above all else he confessed his unwilling- 
ness to involve himself in the formidable hazards of such a war: "My 
beard is already white and I want to finish my days in peace. But you 
do not obey me." The senggum went out in a rage "shutting the door 
sharply after him." In face of this anger, the old monarch yielded. 
He called back his son, and, weary of conflict, finished by giving the 
agreement asked of him, though insisting the rash young man must take 
responsibility himself for the breaking of the oath and the consequences: 
"If you think you can succeed, do as you have resolved, but do it your- 
self, and above all see that I incur no unpleasantness! But I doubt if the 
Tengri will favor you." 

The senggum asked nothing better. Already his allies, foremost of them 
Jamuqa, had been to set fire to Chingis-khan's grazing grounds. This 
brushwood fire however was not yet a final precipitation of hostilities. 
The senggum had in mind, in fact, to take his enemy prisoner unawares. 
He thought he had found the way when in this same spring of 1203 he 
pretended to consent to the marriages earlier proposed by Chingis-khan; 
so inveigling the latter into attending a festive gathering to mark the 
compact, which was simply a trap. Chingis-khan, unsuspicious, set out 



120 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

with ten of his people. On the way, he stopped to pass the night in the 
yurt of the old man Monglik, who had been, it will be remembered, the 
trusted confidant of his father. The prudent Monglik showed him how 
unwise he was being: "When you asked for your son their daughter 
Cha'ur-beki, these people began by disdaining the union. And now they 
talk of a banquet for the betrothal? After such insolence, they give you 
the young woman? It looks to me highly suspicious! My son, decline the 
invitation! You have only to make the excuse that it is springtime, your 
horses are thin, they need to stay on the grazing ground, and say that you 
will come when they have had time to fatten." 

Chingis-khan found this sound advice. He turned back, contenting 
himself with sending on in his place, to make his excuses to the Ong- 
khan, two of his followers, Buqatay and Kiratay. When he saw these two 
arrive instead of the hero, the senggum knew his feint had been seen 
through. 



A 
AA 



29 



The Two Herdsmen Save Chingis-khan 



The trap having failed, the senggum, who had finally been given carte 
blanche by his father, resolved to have recourse to surprise attack. Chin- 
gis-khan, assailed without warning out of the blue, would be encircled, 
put off balance for defense, surprised and slaughtered. 

The council of war, consisting of the principal Kereit chiefs, which 
had come to this decision, had resolved to keep it strictly secret. It was 
evening. Next morning, the army would move off. Returning to his yurt, 
one of the Kereit chiefs, Yeke-Cheren, told his wife and son: "Tomorrow 
morning, at dawn, we are leaving to surprise Temiijin!" "Be quiet," an- 
swered his wife. "Suppose somebody heard you! They might think you 
were being serious!" Just at that moment, a servant called Baday, whose 
task was to watch the horses at pasture, was coming up to the yurt with 
mare's milk. He heard his master's words, and hastened with his news to 
his friend, Kishlik, also a horseherd. Kishlik went to listen in turn. What 
he heard froze him in terror. Yeke-Cheren was talking to his son Narin- 
keyen. As he sharpened his arrows, the latter remarked that if anyone 
overheard them, he must have his tongue cut out. A little while after, this 
same Narin-keyen ordered Kishlik to fetch from the grazing ground two 
of his best horses, "the white horse Merkitei and the brown with the 
white muzzle," adding that he had to be in the saddle before dawn. 

Kishlik returned to Baday. "I have checked what you said. It is true. 
Let us go to warn Chingis-khan!" As soon as darkness fell, they killed 
and roasted a lamb, jumped into the saddle, and plunged into the night. 

Before dawn, they reached Chingis-khan's camp, demanded to be 
taken at once to his yurt, and reported their news: "Alert, khan! Your 
camp is to be encircled and yourself taken prisoner!" There and then, in 



122 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

the darkness, Chingis-khan gave his orders to the trusted men of his 
entourage. He woke his people, had everyone on his feet, and, abandon- 
ing everything that could weigh him down, part of his utensils, his scanty 
nomad's household goods, he fled at once eastward, making for the for- 
mer Tatar territory, that is, for the basin of the River Khalkha and the 
foothills of the Grand Khingan. 



A 
AA 



30 



The Affray by the Red Willows 



Reaching Mount Mao-iindiir, Chingis-khan left there a rear guard under 
the command of the faithful Jelme, of the.Urangquat tribe, in whom he 
had full confidence. He himself continued his retreat east. Next day, in 
the afternoon, they halted near the sands of Qalaqaljit-elet, and had 
something to eat'. They were now in the Khalkha river region, a zone of 
transition, cut into on the west by salt marshes and patches of desert, 
where the sands of the Gobi reach into the grassland. Far to the east the 
grassland begins again, getting thicker and lusher as it approaches the 
Khingan, while a little farther on, clumps of willow and elm, then of 
poplars and birches, herald the great forest that covers the inclines of the 
Khingan and the line of its crest on the horizon. Only the "powdering of 
sand," carried by the wind across the grasslands and even up on to the 
slopes, recalls the persistent presence of the desert to the southeast. 

The army had not finished its meal when two horseherders of the 
Mongol chief Alchiday, Chigiday and Yadir, came up at a gallop. They 
brought the alarm: while they were grazing their horses in the new grass, 
they had seen in the distance a cloud of dust approaching, in front of the 
Mao-iindiir mountains, along the site of the Red Willows (Hula'un- 
burqat) : "No doubt about it, it is the enemy." 

Chingis-khan thought so also. He had the horses brought in and or- 
dered his men into the saddle. In the first rank of his followers rode the 
two tribes of the Uru'uts and the Mangghuts, counted among the proud- 
est of the Mongol tribes, and whose chiefs were descended from the same 
mythical ancestors as himself. 1 The enemy the Kereit army was now in 
sight were taking up battle order also. The Ong-khan asked Jamuqa: 
1 From Nachin-ba'atur. 



124 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

"Who are all the best warriors who surround Temiijin?" "They are the 
Uru'uts and the Mangghuts preparing for the fray. When they encircle 
the enemy their line never breaks; in their speedy retreats, their ranks 
stay intact. From their tenderest years they are trained to handling of 
saber and lance. For their banners, they have the tails of piebald yaks. 
Let us be wary of them!" The Ong-khan decided to match against them 
an elite, the Jirgin tribe, commanded by Qaday: "and behind the Jirgins 
shall come the Tiimen-Tubegens under Achiq-shirun, and behind the Tii- 
men-Tubegens the Olon-dongqayts, then Prince Qori-shilemiin at the 
head of a thousand royal guards, then myself, the Ong-khan, with the 
main part of the army!" 

At this point, a curious episode. The Ong-khan offered to Jamuqa 
command of the army, and Jamuqa declined it. Evidence of modesty on 
the part of Jamuqa, conscious of having never in the past succeeded in 
defeating Chingis-khan? Or did the Ong-khan's oSer cause his ally to 
have doubts on the score of the Kereit army? Jamuqa ought surely to 
have accepted with joy the offer made him. It was he who was the insti- 
gator of this war, he who had long intrigued to set the former allies at 
odds. But such was the instability of this strange character that his 
thoughts were turning already to a reshuffling of alliances. Intelligence 
officers in our outposts in Africa know these sudden sharp veerings no- 
mads are prone to. Jamuqa was telling himself, perhaps, that the Ong- 
khan was for him but a casual ally, while by the old Mongol cus- 
tomary law Chingis-khan, notwithstanding the present dispute, remained 
Ms "brother by alliance," the anda with whom nothing could destroy his 
ancient pact. Moved by this curious fidelity to their childhood memories, 
he sent word then to Chingis-khan of the dispositions of the enemy army 
and the plan of attack: "0 my anda, be not afraid, but be on your 
guard!" 

On his side, Chingis-khan had disposed his forces for the battle, not 
without noting the enemy's numerical superiority (the defection of his 
uncle Daritay and the Mongol princes Altan and Quchar cannot have 
failed to weaken his hand considerably). He turned first to old Jiirchedei, 
chief of the Uru'uts. "Uncle Jiirchedei, what do you think? I am thinking 
of giving you the advance guard." Jiirchedei, stroking his horse's mane 
with his whip, was about to answer when Quyildar-sechen, chief of the 
Mangghuts, broke in: "It is for me to lead the first attack!" And he 



The Affray by the Red Willows 125 

declared he would plant his tuq, his yak-tail standard, on the heights 
behind the enemy. To drive home his resolve to conquer or die, he asked 
that his orphans be looked after on his death. Jiirchedei retorted: 
"Under the eyes of Chingis-khan we shall lead the attack together." At 
their command Uru'uts and Mangghuts drew themselves up in battle 
array. They had scarcely formed ranks when the enemy, the Jirgins at 
their head, attacked. 

It was one of the direst battles of the time. In face of the charging 
Jirgins, the Uru'uts and Mangghuts countercharged. They forced the Jir- 
gins to give way, they drove after them in hot pursuit. But as they did so 
they were themselves charged by Achiq-shirun of the Tiimen-Tiibegens. 
Achiq-shirun, making for Quyildar, struck him a blow so terrible it 
knocked him from his horse. The Mangghuts, turning back, rushed to 
surround Quyildar to protect him. Jiirchedei for his part then headed a 
fresh charge that drove back the Tiimen-Tiibegens. As he was carrying all 
before him, another part of the Kereit army, the Olon-Dongqayts, threw 
itself against him, but he brushed it off in its turn. Then the thousand 
men of the Kereit royal bodyguard were seen to get under way, led by 
Qori-shilemiin. But these also Jiirchedei threw back. 

Was the Kereit army, numerically superior, having the advantage of 
attack, nevertheless to fail? The Kereit crown prince, the senggum, boiled 
with impatience. It was he who had wanted this attack, he who had 
forced the decision from his hesitating father, the Ong-khan. And now 
every charge his warriors made was brought up short against the wall of 
these men of iron. Without a word to his father, he placed himself at the 
head of his last squadrons and threw himself into the battle, but an arrow 
pierced his cheek an arrow shot, it is said, by Jiirchedei himself and 
he fell from his horse. The entire Kereit army massed to surround and 
protect him. 



A 
AA 



31 



The Tears of Chingis-khan 



The sun was setting behind the hills. The Mongols turned about. They 
could say theirs was the victory, but the day had been desperately hard- 
fought, and their losses were scarcely less than the Kereits'. 

Among the Mongol chiefs, the heroic Quyildar was seriously 
wounded. Advancing dark and the exhaustion of both armies halted the 
combat. For the rest, Chingis-khan was under no illusions. With charac- 
teristically dispassionate decision, he abandoned the battlefield to the 
enemy and took advantage of the dark to get away. Some distance off, he 
called a halt. 

That was a terrible night. The Mongols spent it in ranks, sleeping by 
their horses, reins in hand, ready to be in the saddle at the first alert. A 
night of anguish, for Chingis-khan did not know exactly what his losses 
were, even among those nearest to him. At first light he counted his 
followers. Three names were not answered to: Boroqul and Bo'orchu, 
his dearest comrades, Ogodei, his favorite son. This was a cruel loss. He 
struck his breast, raised his eyes to heaven. "Together they lived. To- 
gether they died." Or, in another version: "With Ogodei my two faithful 
ones stayed out there. Dead or alive, they could not leave . . ." 1 As he 
finished his words, a man was seen coming in the early light. It was 
Bo'orchu. At sight of him Chingis-khan, striking his breast again, gave 
thanks to the eternal Tengri. Bo'orchu explained what had happened to 
him: "In the attack, my horse was wounded by an arrow and fell. I ran 
away on foot. At that moment the Kereits turned to defend their 

1 [This passage is based on the account given in paragraphs 172-73 of the Secret 
History. Grousset's translation is incorrect, but as it does not affect the story I left 
it uncorrected J 



The Tears of Chingis-khan 127 

wounded senggum. I saw a pack horse with a load that had slipped 
round. I cut off its load, jumped on it, headed in your tracks, and here I 
am!" 

A few moments later a second horseman was seen approaching. Behind 
him hung the legs of another man. Drawing nearer, the two thus sharing 
a mount turned out to be Ogodei and Boroqul. Boroqul rode behind 
clutching Ogodei who had an arrow wound in the neck. Boroqul's mouth 
was still red with blood, for he had, in accordance with Mongol medical 
custom, carefully sucked the young man's wound. At this sight, Chingis- 
khan's heart tightened, and they saw the man of iron shed tears. 

They learned what had happened. The wound Ogodei had received had 
pierced a neck vein. With the pain, the young prince had fallen from his 
horse. Boroqul had at once got down to protect and attend to him. He 
had spent the night at his side, busy sucking the clotted blood from the 
wound. In the morning, Ogodei could still not hold himself in the saddle. 
Boroqul had therefore hoisted him on to his own horse, then had 
mounted behind him, twining his arms around him to hold him there, and 
thus they had returned. Chingis-khan had a big fire lit and cauterized his 
son's wound. A cup of qumiz completed the young man's recovery. 



A 
AA 



32 



"We Shall Gather up the Mongols 

Like Dung-pats." 



All in all the battle had been inconclusive. The Kereits had certainly had 
a tough time. According to Boroqul, from the dust cloud he had seen in 
the distance, they could be taken to be moving along Mount Mao-iindiir, 
in the direction of the Red Willows (Hula'un-burqat) . Chingis-khan 
prepared himself for any eventuality: "If they come, we will face them. 
If we are borne down, we will re-form and attack again." Anything but 
reassured, he backed up the Olqui and Shiliigeljit valleys and camped in 
the district of Dalan-nemiirges, by our reckoning on the western slope 
of Mounts Obolo-khabala and Soyulzi, that is, on the western slope of 
the Great Khingan. Thus he found himself at bay at the very eastern 
limit of Mongolia, almost driven from Mongol country, on the brink of 
flight into exile and of taking sanctuary in Manchuria, property of the 
King of Gold in Peking. As he drew nearer the Great Khingan, away 
from the glum steppes of the lower Keriilen and the Buyurnor, he did 
come first on rich pastures, then forests, increasingly thick, that spread 
along the foot of the chain. Here his horses could build up resistance 
worn down by the forced marches of the withdrawal. 

On their side, the Kereits had seen their surprise attack fail, and they 
had to think of new plans. At this stage, there came to Chingis-khan 
Qada'an-daldurqan, of the tribe of the Targhuts. He had left wife and 
children to come to join the Mongol hero. He had curious things to tell 
them of morale in the Kereit camp: the Ong-khan was reproaching the 
senggtim with having drawn him into an unholy war against a former 
ally, and already regarded the senggum's cheek wound as punishment. 



Shall Gather Mongols Like Dung-Pats" 129 



His lieutenant, Achiq-shirun, comforted him as best he could: "O khan, 
formerly, when you had no son and wanted one, we made incantations 
and spells that your wish might be granted. Now that you have a son, we 
are resolved to defend him." Achiq-shirun also pointed out to the Ong~ 
khan that a considerable proportion of the Mongol tribes the greater 
proportion, he maintained were fighting under Altan, Quchar, and Ja- 
muqa, alongside the Kereits. "As to those of the Mongols who have 
stayed with Temiijin, their plight is such that they have now but one horse 
to each rider, no lead horses or pack animals, and that instead of tents all 
they have for shelter is the trees of the forest" the last detail of partic- 
ular interest since it proves that Chingis-khan, driven from the Mongol 
steppe, had in fact been reduced to refuge in the verges of the great 
woods of the Khingan. "If they dare no longer march against us," the 
fiery Achiq-shirun said finally, "we shall march on them, and we shall 
gather them up like dung-pats." 1 

Not greatly comforted by these communications, Chingis-khan left the 
district of Dalan-nemiirges, moving down the valley of the Khalkha, 
which flows from Mounts Obolo-khabala and Aruto-laku toward Buyur. 
At this point he called the roll of his army. He had only two thousand six 
hundred men left. He took thirteen hundred down the left bank of the 
Khalkha, sending the other thirteen hundred, including the Uru'uts and 
Mangghuts, down the right. During this march, they made hunting forays 
to provision themselves. The chief of the Mangghuts, the fiery Quyildar, 
whose wound was not yet healed, insisted, despite Chingis-khan's adjur- 
ings to prudence, on taking part in the hunting. His wound reopened and 
he died. Chingis-khan buried his faithful servant on the slopes of Mount 
Orno'u. 

In this region, near the inflow of the Khalka to Lake Buyur, lived the 
Mongol tribe of the Onggirats or Qonggirats, under its chiefs Terge and 
Amel. This was the tribe, it will be remembered, of the lady Borte, wife 
of the Conqueror. Chingis-khan sent Jiirchedei to recall the old ties of 
kinship: "If the Onggirats still remember our alliance, let them submit. If 
they show themselves hostile, we attack!" Whether the name of the beau- 
tiful Borte worked on them, or whether they considered themselves too 
weak to stand up to Chingis-khan, they made their submission unresist- 
ingly, and allowed him to recoup his strength among them. 
1 [These were used as fuel by the Mongols.] 



A 
AA 



33 



The Complaint of Chingis-khan 



From here, Chingis-khan went to set up his tents on the banks of the 
little River Tongge, probably between the Buyur and Lake Kolen (little 
Dalay-nor). His horses completed their recovery in these grasslands with 
their willow groves, watered by underground springs. "I camp east of the 
Tongge. The grass is lush and our horses have developed their muscles 
again." From here he sent to the Ong-khan, and to the senggum, to 
Jamuqa, to Altan, and to Quchar, two of his henchmen, Arqay-qasar 
and Siikegei-je'iin, with a message, or rather, writing being unknown in 
this society, with a recital for them, in verse, listing his grievances. 

"The Complaint of Chingis-khan," as it has been called, turns out, 
under its guise of honor, emotion, old affection restrained with difficulty, 
to be a most adroit political manifesto: "O khan, my father," runs the 
hero's message to the Kereit king, "why were you angered against me 
and why did you make me afraid? The seat where I was wont to sit has 
been cut down; the smoke of my hearth has been scattered. . . - 1 Was it 
a stranger who incited you against me? Remember what we agreed once 
at the Red Hills (Hula'a-no'ut bolda'ut), near Mount Jorqalqun: that, 
even if a serpent sought to poison our relations, we would afford his sting 
no purchase, we would believe nothing of his insinuations without a 
frank and loyal explanation between you and me. If the wagon lose one 
of its two shafts, the ox can no longer pull it. If it lose one of its wheels, 
it can go no further. Was I not one of the two shafts, one of the two 
wheels of your wagon?" 

Then, Chingis-khan enumerated all the services that his father Yesiigei 

1 [Grousset gives a free translation of para. 177 of the Secret History. The smoke 
that is scattered has risen through the smokehole of the yurt.} 



The Complaint of Chingis-khan 131 

and he himself had rendered the Kereit sovereign, recounted here in this 
history. He did not spare the Ong-khan reminder of his cruelty, when he 
put to death his own two brothers Tay-Temiir and Buqa-Temiir, causing 
his uncle Gur-khan to drive him from the throne, where it had taken Yesii- 
gei's intervention to re-establish him. Then later, the Ong-khan had been 
driven out once again by another of his brothers, Erke-qara, whose death 
he had previously tried to bring about like the others', and this time it 
was Chingis-khan himself who had re-established him. Chingis-khan re- 
minded him also, in the same tone of saddened friendship, of how the 
Ong-khan had deserted him during the campaign against the Naymans, 
at dead of night, in the presence of the enemy, on the eve of a battle; 
which had not prevented the Mongol hero from magnanimously saving 
the same Ong-khan, victim of his own perfidy. Finally, Chingis-khan 
claimed credit for having brought to heel at the time of their joint cam- 
paigns, and, as he put it, on the Kereit sovereign's behalf, the other Mon- 
gol tribes. "O khan, my father, I flew like a young falcon over Mount 
Chiqurqu, I crossed the Buyurnor, I took for you the blue-footed, grey- 
feathered cranes, the Dorbens and the Tatars; I passed beyond Lake 
Kolen, I took for you the light blue cranes with dark blue feet, the Qata- 
gins, the SaljTuts, the Onggirats, and I gave them to you." Chingis-khan 
implied that when he was the Kereit king's vassal, all exercise of his 
sway was for him but the extension of that of the Ong-khan, his suzerain. 

In this same message, Chingis-khan reproached his former anda Ja- 
muqa with having, by his persistent jealousy, his intrigues and slander- 
ings, sown discord between himself and the Ong-khan. "As you had 
failed to defeat me directly, you worked to alienate him from me." And 
this pleasant recollection: "In the old days, the first to get up in the 
morning was allowed to drink mare's milk from the blue cup of the khan 
our father [the Ong-khan]. Because I was always the first up, and al- 
ways drank first, you began to be jealous of me. Today you drink alone 
from our father's blue cup" a subtle image, alluding clearly to the fact 
that Jamuqa sought to oust Chingis-khan as adoptive son of the Kereit 
sovereign. 

Alton and Quchar, the Mongol princes who had deserted him for the 
Kereits, Chingis-khan reminded that he had only earlier let himself be 
proclaimed khan because they themselves (who surely had better claims 
to the throne) had refused the honor and elected him instead: "Quchar, 



132 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

they wanted once to proclaim you khan, as the son of Nekiin-tayshi, and 
it was you who refused. Alton, they wanted you, too, to rule us, as your 
father, khan Qutula, ruled, and you also declined. I myself, who am of no 
lesser breeding, as the grandson of the Ba'atur Bartan, I begged you in 
vain to accept the kingship, and it was on your withdrawal that I was 
raised to it." Chingis-khan recalled then to the two princes who had de- 
serted him, after being his chief electors, the duties of a subject to his 
elected khan. "If it had been one of you two who was elected khan, the 
fair-faced girls, the fine-legged horses I won in battle, I should loyally 
have brought to you. The wild animals of the steppe or the wild animals 
of the mountains I killed in hunting forays, of these I should have offered 
you the finest portions!" Finally, he sought to reawaken in his two 
cousins the sense of Mongol solidarity in defense of the ancestral terri- 
tory, at the headwaters of the Tula, Onon, and Keriilen. "Let not others 
ensconce themselves at the springs of the Three Rivers." 

To the son of the Ong-khan, the senggiim, heir presumptive to the Ke- 
reit throne, Chingis-khan's message was this: "I also am the son of your 
father. There is this difference, that I am a son who was born to him 
clothed, while you were born to him quite naked, but the king our father 
had for us both the same affection. Fearful that I should insinuate myself 
between you and him, you conceived hate for me." Continuing on the 
same note, Chingis-khan invited the senggiim to cease harassing with 
their quarrel the old age of the khan "their father." He insinuated further 
that the senggiim was contemplating making himself king while the Ong- 
khan still lived, in other words, dethroning his father. 

The various messages amount to diplomatic maneuvering of consum- 
mate artistry. The Mongol hero talks the right language, hits on the right 
argument, for every member of the coalition. With the Ong-khan, he 
grounds himself on loyalty, speaks as the faithful vassal, the adoptive 
son who has not deserved the unjust disgrace he has been cast into, and 
is hurt above all in his "filial" love. At the same time, he seeks to sow 
mistrust between the old man and his legal heir, the senggiim, implied to 
be nurturing plans for patricide. The Mongol princes gone over to the 
Ong-khan he shames by making them feel traitors to their forebears and 
people, pressing them discreetly to rally again to the standard to drive 
the Kereits from the fatherland. Under cover of the most irreproachable 
loyalty, the most touching good faith, enough insinuations are made to 
make breakup of the enemy coalition an eventual certainty. 



The Complaint of Chingis-khan 133 

In fact, he all but achieved his end there and then. On hearing the 
message, still so full of filial affection, of his "son" Chingis-khan, the 
Kereit Ong-khan was seized with remorse: "In truth, the saying is true, 
that one ought never to be separated from one's son." "His heart was 
wrung." He cried: "If I harbor ever again the slightest ill thought about 
my son Temujin, may all my blood be shed as this blood is shed!" And, 
suiting his action to his words, he seized the knife he used for sharpening 
arrows, made a cut in his little finger, and filled with his blood a cornet of 
birchbark to go with the envoys to Chingis-khan. 

But the senggum, evidently furious at Chingis-khan's insinuations, 
killed what might have been reconciliation. "He calls you khan and fa- 
ther, but he makes no bones about calling you also your own brothers' 
executioner!" And beside himself, the senggum demanded war without 
mercy: "Let Bilge-beki and Todoyen raise the tuq. Let the horses be put 
to the best grazing that they may be ready for battle. No more hesitat- 
ing!" The senggum would seem even to have gone on to utter, as in 
classical tragedy, the rash words that committed him to fate: "Let the 
outcome of war decide. He who is the victor shall be supreme khan and 
shall take to himself the ulus of the vanquished!" 



A 
AA 



34 



The Bitter Water of the Baljuna 



Of the two messengers sent by Chingis-khan to the enemy coalition, one, 
Siikegei-je'iin, whose wife and children were with the enemy, did not care 
to return to his master. The other, Arqay-qasar, set forth again and car- 
ried back to the Mongol hero the answer, or rather the various answers, 
to his offers of peace. 

On receiving these, Chingis-khan withdrew to the north. He set up 
camp on the shores of a small lake known as Baljuna (the "muddy" 
lake), to be found between the Onon and the Ingoda, toward the basin 
of the River Aga, or possibly farther east, between the northern bank of 
the Argun and Lake Tarei. To the northwest lay wooded steppe, the soil 
clay and sand, with an abundance of clematis and hemerocallis, broken 
by birch and willow; eastward, toward the undrained lakes of Tarei, ran 
steppe with absinth and solonchak. The lake of Baljuna was at this time 
of year almost dry. Chingis-khan if we may believe later Persian tradi- 
tion was at one point reduced to drinking water pressed out from the 
mud. "Moved by the loyalty of those who had not left him in his distress, 
he promised them, hands clasped and eyes raised to heaven, that hence- 
forth he would share with them the sweet and the bitter, asking that, if he 
went back on his word, he might become as the muddy water of the 
Baljuna. As he spoke, he drank of this water, and passed the cup to his 
officers, who swore in their turn never to leave him. These companions 
of Chingis-khan were known afterwards as the Baljunians, and were rec- 
ompensed munificently for their loyal adherence." x 

Chingis-khan, there should be no glossing over the fact, was now at 
bay on the extreme northeastern limit of the Mongol domain, on the 
1 [On the whole episode see Francis Woodman Cleaves, No. 39.] 



The Bitter Water of the Baljuna 135 

verge of the tayga inhabited by the Tunguz peoples. Nevertheless, things 
for him were now slowly on the mend, while his enemies' affairs were 
taking a turn for the worse. Indeed, the coalition around the Ong-khan 
was beginning to break up. The nomads were capable of uniting in some 
temporary vendetta, where there promised to be spoils, under a war chief 
designated for the purpose. But in the absence of a completely excep- 
tional individual, a leader of men of the stuff of a Chingis-khan, they 
fretted to take off into freedom again once vendetta had had its fling, and 
the more so when an adversary's resilience postponed the day of pillage 
indefinitely and made chances of booty dubious. Each had now but one 
wish: to leave the unlucky chief who had not succeeded in leading his 
confederates to victory. The process has been seen at work already as the 
seasonal leagues that had been mounted earlier against Chingis-khan 
and against the Ong-khan by the friends of Jamuqa disbanded. Now, it 
was Jamuqa and the other Mongol dissidents who had had enough of the 
authority of the Ong-khan. Among the dissatisfied was Daritay, uncle of 
Chingis-khan, who was beginning to regret having deserted his nephew; 
and the legitimate "pretenders," Altan and Quchar, as weU as the eternal 
intriguer, Jamuqa himself. With them it was a case of all authority being 
irksome: "Let us seize the Ong-khan in a coup by night," they plotted, 
"and let us be kings ourselves, with no more bowing either to the Kereits' 
authority or to Temiijin's." But the Ong-khan, warned of the plot, antici- 
pated them, and they were only just in time to escape. Jamuqa, Altan, 
and Quchar took refuge with the Naymans, in western Mongolia. Dari- 
tay, on the contrary, resolved to throw himself on the mercy of Chingis- 
khan. The latter pardoned him without any kind of reservations, for so 
far as we know no misunderstanding ever arose subsequently between 
uncle and nephew. About the same time, Cho'os-chagan, chief of the 
Mongol tribe of the Qorolas, rallied spontaneously to Chingis-khan. 

Shortly after this there came to the Baljuna a Moslem trader named 
Hassan, who after a period in Onglit country (on the limes of the Chinese 
province of Shan-si), had pushed on to the River Argun. He had with 
him a white camel, which he doubtless rode, and a herd of a thousand 
sheep. He had come down the upper Argun valley after sable fur and 
squirrel hide, both skins to be had in abundance on the threshold of the 
Transbaykalian tayga. He had made a detour to water his beasts at the 
lake of Baljuna when he met Chingis-khan, and the two men seem to 



136 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

have struck up a friendship. Indeed, three Moslems, the same Hassan, 
Ja'far-khodja and Danishmendhajib, were from now on to rank among 
the trusty "Baljunians." 

More welcome still for Chingis-khan was the arrival on the Baljuna of 
his own brother, Jochi-Qasar. Had he been earlier taken prisoner by the 
Kereits, or had he, like so many others, gone over to them? We do not 
know. What is certain is that, anxious to rejoin Chingis-khan, he escaped 
their surveillance, leaving among them, in a highly precarious situation, 
his wife and his three sons, Yegti, Yesiingge, and Tuqu. With a handful of 
companions he set out to look for Chingis-khan in the region toward the 
Qaraun-chidun mountains, lying, we take it, near the Boroshchovoks, 
whose chain, partly cedar- and larch-covered, divides the Onon basin 
from that of the Ingoda. Not finding him, he wandered wretchedly in 
these wild mountains, "reduced to eating the leather of his harness and 
his bow strings." After cruel hardship, he finally managed to find Chingis- 
khan on the Baljuna. The hero rejoiced greatly at his return. And it was 
now that the two brothers hatched the plot a somewhat treacherous 
one, it must be confessed that was to be the Kereit Ong-khan's down- 
fall. 



A 
AA 



35 



Night March and Surprise Attack 



On the advice of Chingis-khan, Qasar sent to the Ong-khan two envoys, 
Qali'undar and Chaqurqan, charged with falsehood for the Kereit sover- 
eign. "O khan, my father," Qasar's message ran, "I have sought every- 
where my brother Temiijin, but I have been able to find no trace of him. I 
have called him and my call has remained without an echo. At night, I 
have for my only shelter the stars, for my only pillow the bare earth. My 
wife and my children are in the hands of the khan my father. If you give 
me assurance of safety and encouragement, I will return to you again." 
These lying words were to lull the Ong-khan's vigilance, for Chingis- 
khan informed the two messengers, who really were to act as spies, that 
the Mongol army would follow in their wake. He fixed a point where 
they should meet him again, at Arqal-geiigi, on the lower Keriilen, and 
told them to come there, their message delivered, armed with all the 
information they could lay hold of. 

So it was done. Chingis-khan, moving with his entire army, came 
down from the Baljuna into the valley of the lower Keriilen, where he 
stationed himself at Arqal-geiigi. Qali'undar and Chaqurqan, going some 
days' march ahead of him, came to the Ong-khan, and delivered their 
message from Qasar. The Ong-khan, convinced that Chingis-khan had 
disappeared and suspecting nothing, had had set up his royal yurt "all of 
gold" and was holding a banquet. He welcomed the two envoys, believed 
the protestations of Qasar, and assured him of a good welcome. "Let 
him come without fear! I will send my assurance to him as guarantee, by 
my messenger, Itiirgen." As token of reconciliation and pardon, he ap- 
parently charged Itiirgen to take to Qasar (as once before to Chingis- 
khan) a little of his blood in an oxhorn. Itiirgen, armed with these in- 



138 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

structions, set out to go to Qasar. Qali'undar and Chaqurqan traveled 
with him. 

It was essential that Itiirgen, as they approached Arqal-geugi, should 
not perceive that Chingis-khan's army was drawn up there, or rather, 
that he should not perceive it until it was too late, when he no longer had 
time to go back to rouse the Kereit camp. What did in fact happen? 
According to one version, Qali'undar, watching the horizon, was first to 
see the tuq, the banner of Chingis-khan. Fearing Itiirgen might see it also 
and make a sudden break, Qali'undar dismounted, pretending that his 
horse had something sharp embedded in its hoof, and asking the Kereit 
to hold the hoof while he extracted the foreign body, which gave him his 
opportunity to overpower the poor man. The Secret History tells a more 
exciting story: as they drew near Arqal-geiigi, Itiirgen had seen quite 
clearly the army of Chingis-khan. He turned sharply about, and made off 
as fast as his horse would carry him. Qali'undar, who had a fast mount, 
managed to overtake and pass him, but did not like to risk hand-to-hand 
combat with him and simply barred his way. Meantime Chaqurqan, 
bringing up the rear, let fly an arrow which struck Itiirgen's horse in the 
hindquarters. The animal fell, and they made Itiirgen a prisoner. They 
took him to Chingis-khan, who left it to Qasar to decide what was to be 
done with him. Qasar, a man who liked to get things over with, killed him 
on the spot. 

Then and there, Qali'undar and Chaqurqan made their report to the 
Conqueror: the Ong-khan, all unsuspecting, was banqueting without a 
qualm of uneasiness; the thing to do was to take him by surprise forth- 
with. Chingis-khan agreed, and straightway issued his orders. The Mon- 
gol army sprang to horse and rode all night, Jiirchedei and Arqay heading 
the advance party. The Kereits were camped at the exit from the pass of 
Jer-qabchiqay, by the heights of Chekche'er (Chekche'er-ondur). They 
were taken completely off their guard. Nevertheless, they put up a fierce 
defense. For three days and three nights they fought back. But they were 
completely surrounded, and had finally to lay down their arms, save for a 
handful of men who, with the Ong-khan and the senggum, had managed 
to escape under cover of darkness. 

Clearly Chingis-khan's victory was due to precisely planned tactics: 
after an approach by night kept carefully secret, the sharp onslaught with 
effect of total surprise; then the encircling of the enemy caught in a 



Night March and Surprise Attack 139 

narrow pass, in a sort of mousetrap. It was the first of the great victories 
of Chingis-khan, but also without a doubt of all of them the most deci- 
sive, for it was with this one that he established definitively his authority 
among the nomads. 

The first of his followers Chingis-khan thought to reward after the 
victory were the two horseherds Baday and Kishlik, who at the outset 
had saved his life with their forewarning of the Kereit surprise attack. 
The Mongol hero thanked them magnificently. He gave them the royal 
yurt of the Ong-khan with all that was in it: cups and dishes of gold, 
and the royal servants, who belonged to the Kereit class or tribe of the 
Ongqojit. In addition they received, with the title of tarkhan, the priv- 
ilege of "quiver bearers," and also the privilege of "drinking from the 
cup," involving, it may be, the right to have their own guard of "quiver 
bearers," to bear their own arms at royal banquets, and to have each 
his drinking vessel for himself. Finally another no less coveted favor 
Baday and Kishlik were given the right to keep for themselves, in 
the hunt and at war, all the game they were able to bring down, all 
the booty they were able to seize, a particularly enviable privilege, since, 
with such very rare exceptions, all booty and all game had to be put 
into the general "board," to be apportioned out then to all and sundry 
by the khan or his generals. What heightened the value of these re- 
wards still further was the magnificent citation with which the Con- 
queror accompanied them: "Baday and Kishlik, it is they who have 
saved my life! It is thanks to them, that, under the protection of the 
eternal Tengri, I have succeeded in crushing the Kereits and establishing 
my rule. I wish my successors, so long as their race retains the throne 
and down to the furthest generation, never to forget the services these 
two men have rendered me!" 

The Mongol hero knew the way to men's undying devotion. 

The Kereits had defended themselves valiantly. Now they rallied 
honorably to Chingis-khan. The attitude of one of their officers, Qadaq- 
ba'atur, of the Jirgin tribe, is characteristic. Brought before the Con- 
queror, after his people's surrender, he declared: "For three days 
and three nights, I fought. How should I have abandoned him who 
was my lawful sovereign? I held out as long as I was able, to allow 
him to save his life and escape. Now, if it is your will, I shall die. 
But if you are merciful to me, I will vow you my strength and I 



140 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

will serve you faithfully." Chingis-khan honored nothing so much as 
faithfulness and loyalty, even in an enemy: "The soldier who thinks of 
saving his life instead of serving his lawful master is not a man," he 
declared. "He alone is a man who shows himself faithful." And, praising 
highly the attitude of Qadaq-ba'atur, he accorded him mercy. As to the 
duties he assigned him, they are proof once again of the Conqueror's 
generosity. It will be remembered that in the first battle against the Ke- 
reits, one of Chingis-khan's best commanders, Quyildar, chief of the 
Manggut tribe, had received a wound from which he died shortly after- 
ward. Chingis-khan did not forget his heroic lieutenant's widow and chil- 
dren. He appointed to their service Qadaq-ba'atur and a hundred other 
prisoners of the same Jirgin tribe. "And let the children of Qadaq serve 
those of Quyildar, and the children of their children until the furthest 
generation!" A hundred other Jirgins were assigned in like manner to the 
Mongol chief Tarqay-ba'atur, of the tribe of the Suldus. And the other 
Kereit tribes, Dongqayts, Tumen-Tubegens, etc., were similarly appor- 
tioned out among Mongol chiefs. 

With the mass of the Kereit people, then, Chingis-khan took his pre- 
cautions. He aimed to dissolve them as a political unit, to merge them 
into the Mongol nation, and he distributed the families as groups of serv- 
ants or clients among the Mongol clans. At the same time, these meas- 
ures appear to have been tempered in practice by considerable humanity, 
bora of memories of an old comradeship in arms. In fact, numerous 
Kereits were later to hold positions of importance in the Mongol army 
and administration. Reflecting on the fate of the Tatars, and even, a little 
later, of the Naymans, the Kereits must be admitted to have been dealt 
with in their misfortune relatively lightly. 



A 
AA 



36 



The Fate of the Kereit Princesses 



There were doubtless contributory reasons for this attitude. One of the 
Kereit princes, Jaqa-gambu, the Ong-khan's own brother, had always 
been on terms of personal friendship with Chingis-khan. In earlier days 
he had once left his brother to join the Mongol hero a first time in an 
expedition against the Merkits. 1 And Jaqa-gambu had never been able to 
forget that the Ong-khan had put to death their other brothers. There had 
been a series of insurrection episodes. On one occasion he had with sev- 
eral Kereit nobles El-qutur, Qulbari, Alin-tayshi headed a veritable 
conspiracy against the Ong-khan: the plot discovered, he had had to take 
refuge among the Naymans. 2 On the Kereits' submission, therefore, Chin- 
gis-khan accorded him particularly favorable treatment. He left him au- 
thority over the section of the Kereit people ranking as his subjects. A 
double family union cemented this arrangement. Jaqa-gambu had two 
daughters, Ibaqa-beki and Sorghaqtani. Chingis-khan took Ibaqa-beki 
for himself and gave Sorghaqtani to his youngest son, Prince Toluy. It 
should be said at once that Jaqa-gambu did not long rest content with 
this regime of favor. He conspired later against Chingis-khan, and be- 
came an insurrectionary once more. The faithful Jiirchedei was assigned 
to put an end to his activities, and lured him into a trap and captured 
him. 

As for Jaqa-gambu's daughter, the Princess Ibaqa whom Chingis-khan 
had taken to wife, he did not keep her with him, but made a present of 
her to Jiirchedei, with as little ado as if he were handing over to him 
some prize beast. He had indeed had it suggested to him by the spirits 

1 Secret History, fl 150. 

2 Op. cit., H 152. 



142 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

themselves that he thus dispose of her. One night as he lay beside poor 
Ibaqa, his sleep was troubled by a terrible nightmare. He saw in this a 
warning from heaven. On awakening, he told the young woman that he 
had always been well pleased with her, but that in the dream he had just 
had the Tengri had commanded him to give her up to another, and he 
begged her not to hold it against him. And he called out to know who 
was the officer of the watch at the door of his yurt. Jiirchedei for it was 
he who was on guard duty acknowledged the call. Chingis-khan or- 
dered him to come in, and told him that he gave him in marriage the 
Princess Ibaqa. As Jiirchedei stood dumfounded, he assured him he 
was speaking seriously, then, turning to the princess, made her his formal 
acknowledgment that she had ever been above reproach in conduct, 
cleanliness, and beauty, and presented to her the ordu, the palace of 
tents she lived in, with the servants, effects, the studs and herds associ- 
ated with it. He asked only to keep for himself half of the two hundred 
young serving-women she had received as dowry. Her dowry had also 
included two cooks, Ashiq-temiir and Alshiq. They must have been very 
good cooks, for Chingis-khan further asked Ibaqa if he might keep Ashiq- 
temiir. 

Ibaqa's sister, on the other hand, Princess Sorghaqtani, was as wife of 
Toluy, the Conqueror's son, to remain one of the Chingiskhanid family. 
Her intelligence, her adroitness, her tact, and her political sense destined 
her to play a major role in its affairs, and, fifty years later, to determine 
the final orientation of the Mongol empire: she was to be the mother of 
the great khans Mongke and Qubilay, and of the khan of Persia, Hiilegii. 
As a devout Nestorian, she was also an influential protector of the Chris- 
tian Churches. The popularity Christianity was long to enjoy in the Mon- 
gol empire, in China and Persia as in Central Asia, sprang in large part 
from the offices in this respect of the empresses of Kereit stock. 



A 
AA 



37 



"You Have Trampled Underfoot the 
Head of this Dead Man!" 



After his victory, Chingis-khan went to pass the winter (of 1203-04) 
near Mount Abji'a-kodeger, over toward the "steppe of the camel" (Te- 
meen Ke'er), which has been sited in eastern Mongolia, between the 
mouth of the Keriilen and the River Khalkha. 

In the meantime, the Kereit sovereign, the unfortunate Ong-khan, and 
his son the senggum, had met with the sorriest of ends. In the three-day 
battle in which their army had been reduced to surrender, they had suc- 
ceeded in escaping before their people's capitulation. The Ong-khan, rid- 
ing right across Mongolia, east to west, came to the banks of the River 
Nekiin (Nekunusun), which divided Kereit from Nayman country, and 
is perhaps the Neriin of our maps; a fast-flowing watercourse running 
north to south down from the Khangay, to peter out on the threshold of 
the Gobi in a salt lake surrounded by reeds, and sands with saksauls 
and tamarisks. The Ong-khan, almost dead of thirst, came down to drink 
right to the river bed. He found there a Nayman guard post, commanded 
by an officer named Qori-siibechi, This man arrested the fugitive. The 
Ong-khan told him his identity, but Qori-siibechi, not believing him and 
taking him for some brigand of the steppe, looked no further into the 
matter and put him to death. 

Meantime, word of a stranger claiming to be the Kereit Ong-khan 
having been executed spread among the Naymans. The Nayman king, 
Tayang, wished to find out for certain what had happened. His curiosity 
was shared by the Nayman Princess Giirbesii, according to some texts 
Tayang's mother, to others, his wife, probably in fact one of his father's 



144 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

wives, now "honorary queen" in the household of the new sovereign; a 
woman notable, at all events, for her sagacity, and who seems to have 
enjoyed great prestige among the Nayman chiefs. When it was estab- 
lished that the fugitive the frontier guards had executed was indeed the 
Ong-khan, she showed signs of great distress: "He was a great king. Let 
his head be brought to us. If it is really that of the Ong-khan, we will 
offer sacrifices to it." Tayang, for his part, found Qori-subechi gravely at 
fault in his death-dealing: "Why kill this great king, this old man? He 
should have been brought to me alive!" And he ordered the head to be 
set in silver and displayed enthroned on white felt. Giirbesii had drinks 
brought forth as for the royal banquets, had fitting airs played on the 
lute, and, seizing a cup, offered libations to the head. The head then 
smiled or sneered, In the smile, at all events, Tayang saw an insult or 
an ill omen. He threw the head to the ground and crushed it with his 
heel. The best of Tayang's commanders, the valiant Kokse'li-sabraq, at 
sight of this sacrilege, was seized with terror: "You have trampled 
underfoot the head of this king! Hear how the dogs howl warning of swift- 
arriving misfortune, imminent catastrophe!" 

The senggum, for his part, placing doubtless scant reliance on Nay- 
man generosity, had preferred to plunge southwest into the sandy, stony 
wastes of the Gobi, the Mongol name for which was Choi. There he led a 
precarious existence, moving from one water source to the next, and 
living by hunting. One day when he had dismounted to lie in wait for a 
herd of wild horses "to be seen from afar, up and harassed by gadflies" 
his groom Kokochii, weary of this life of hardship, seized his horse and 
rode off to join Chingis-khan. In vain Kokochii's wife tried to recall Mm 
to his obligations toward the senggum. Kokochii came to Chingis-khan 
and sought favor for having thus come over. But the Mongol Conqueror, 
when he heard the story, was violently angry: "This man has abandoned 
in the desert his lawful master. How could one trust him?" And he had 
the disloyal groom's head cut off, at the same time giving orders for 
his wife to be rewarded. As for the senggiim, somehow he reached 
the boundaries of the Tangut kingdom, or Si-Hia, of the Chinese prov- 
ince, that is, of Kansu, toward the Etsin-gol, where he lived some time by 
brigandry. The Tanguts finally driving him away, he carried his brigand 
activities farther west, into Uyghur territory, toward the oasis of Kucha, 
and here the inhabitants killed him. So perished the last heir to the Kereit 
throne. 



A 
AA 



38 



"These Evil-smelling Mongols" 



With his annexing of Kereit country Chingis-khan was now master of 
central, as well as eastern, Mongolia. There remained western Mongolia, 
dominated by the Naymans from the chain of the Khangay to the Jun- 
garia, its center the Mongol Altay and the upper Irtysh. The Naymans, 
passive spectators of the crushing of the Kereits, were now to take their 
turn. 

The Nayman king, Tayang, ruled precariously, enjoying none of the 
prestige that had accrued to his father, Inanch-bilge. In his reproaches to 
him for his treatment of the head of the Kereit Ong-khan, his own offi- 
cer, Kokse'ii-sabraq, drew bitter attention to the disparity. He recalled 
the words once uttered by Inanch-bilge: "My wife is young and I am old. 
My son is a weak youth. Has he it in him to impose his authority on my 
people and guard them from danger?" And Kokse'ii-sabraq did not at- 
tempt to hide the opinion the Nayman officers held of their present ruler, 
"whose talent was only for falconry, or big hunting forays." 

Tayang, whatever his reputed inadequacy, had sensed the threat in the 
growing power of Chingis-khan: "In heaven there can be a sun and a 
moon. On earth there can be only one khan!" And he resolved, while 
there was yet time, to put down Chingis-khan. The prudent Queen Giir- 
besii strove to dissuade him from such a project. Not that she had any 
regard for the Mongols. She thought them savages: "These evil-smelling 
Mongols, with their black-looking clothes it is fortunate for us they live 
some way away. May they keep their distance! We could fetch in their 
noblest girls, to milk our cows and ewes. Yet even for that they would 
have to be taught to wash their hands!" This was the scorn of the Nayman 
Turks, with the civilization that had rubbed off on them from their con- 
tact with the Uyghurs they were already some of them Nestorians for 



146 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

the savages of the upper Keriilen; but also the sound promptings of a 
farseeing woman all the more fearful of seeing her country bring down 
on itself invasion by these hordes. 

Tayang nevertheless made his preparations for war. He boasted that 
he would himself invade the territory of the Mongols and "seize their 
quivers!" And, seeking allies, he sent an envoy named Torbitash to the 
Ongiits, a people, like the Naymans, of Turkish extraction, and also like- 
wise Nestorians, established north of the Great Wall of China, in the 
region of Kuei-hua-ch'eng and Suei-yiian, to the north of the present Chi- 
nese province of Shan-si. He declared to the Ongiit chief his intention of 
attacking the Mongols, and asked the latter to take them in the rear from 
the south, or, to use the bard's figure, to be "his right hand." Now, Ala- 
qush-tegin, notwithstanding the ties both of Turkish blood and of Chris- 
tian faith that might have been expected to link him in fellow feeling with 
the Naymans, felt a greater inclination toward Chingis-khan. He at once 
sent off an envoy to him, a man called Yoqanan, or John that is, by a 
Christian name to warn the Mongol hero of Tayang's intentions: "Be- 
ware! Tayang is about to attack you. He boasts he will seize your quiv- 
ers. He asked me to be his right hand. I have refused, but be on your 
guard!" 

Chingis-khan, when this warning reached him, was in eastern Mongo- 
lia, in the Steppe of the Camel (Temeen Ke'er), near TUlkinche'iit, where 
he had organized a great hunting expedition. There in the hunting field 
they held council. Most of the generals pointed out it was in spring 
that at this time of year the horses were too thin for campaigning, and 
that a war expedition would have to be held over into the summer and 
autumn of, to be precise, I204. 1 But the youngest brother of Chingis- 
khan, Temiige-otchigin, declared for immediate action. "The horses are 
thin? What is this excuse? For a first answer, mine are fat. How can we 
do nothing when we are brought such news?" He insisted they must not 
allow the Naymans the advantage of surprise: "It will be said of us: 

1 "The Mongols leave their encampments at the end of May and come down then 
into the plains, where the good, thick grass lets the herds, make good, gradually, 
the almost total fast of the six months' off season. All along the riverbanks (of the 
Tula) we come on countless herds of horses, pitiably thin. These poor animals go 
head drooping, eyes dead, with hollowed flanks; all look wretched, and the young 
beasts have none of the gay, springy gait we are accustomed to in ours at home." 
Bouillane de Lacoste, Au pays sacre des anciens Turcs, p. 27. 



"These Evil-smelling Mongols" 147 

TBehold, they who took Tayang,' and we shall be held in great honor!" 2 
Belgiitei, Chingis-khan's half brother, supported him: "The Naymans 
have boasted they will seize our quivers and arrows. Can any man 
worthy of the name let pass such an affront? They speak presumptuous 
words, but it is for us to prove them false, for us to strip them of their 
arms!" And he pictured the rich spoils awaiting the Mongol army; the 
great herds of horses in the Nayman country, the royal yurt of Tayang, 
that the enemy would have to leave behind when they fled to mountain 
and forest: "At our approach, their tribes will scurry to the tops of their 
mountains. To horse! It is the only answer!" 

Chingis-khan approved this ardor. "With such men about me, how 
should I doubt of victory?" He interrupted the hunt, and set off from 
Abji'a-kodeger for the escarpments of Keltegei, near Orno'u, on the river 
Khalkha, where he called a halt to carry out a reorganization of his army, 
and in particular of his guard. 

2 These words are attributed by Rashid ed-Din not to Temiige but to Daritay, 
Chingis-khan's uncle. 



A 
AA 



39 



En Route for the Khangay Mountains 



Clearly Chingis-khan, though he had approved his brothers' counsels of 
attack, took his tune. It was not until early summer, when his horses had 
had time to build themselves up, that he embarked on his campaign. The 
sixteenth day of the first month of summer it was "the Year of the 
Rat" 1204 at full moon, he offered solemn sacrifice to the tuq, to the 
standard of his family, the white standard of nine tails, a pole decorated 
with horsehair black hair from the tails of bay horses, Mongol tradi- 
tion specifies. A vital ceremony, the shamanist peoples believed, for the 
standard was the dwelling place of the Sulde, the protector-spirit of the 
clan, who was solemnly invoked for the conduct of war. 

Then the army moved on again, up the Keriilen valley. Riding ever 
westward, with Jebe and Qubilay ahead as advance guard, it must have 
crossed from the upper Keriilen region into that of the upper Tula, to- 
ward the upper Orkhon and the eastern foothills of the Khangay. It came 
thus to the "donkeyback steppe" (Sa'ari Ke'er). The hilly appearance of 
the country is more than once remarked on by the explorer Bouillane de 
Lacoste, who followed a similar route, and at just about the same time of 
year, around mid- June, when spring is still in evidence, at least so long as 
the traveler's road borders the upper Tula. "This immense prairie has 
not the desolate look one expects," writes Commander de Lacoste; "the 
grass is thick and studded with flowers. With the bright yellow of cruci- 
fers and buttercups, the mauve of thyme, scabious or iris, there mingles 
here and there the pure white of stellaria and the pale velvet of the edel- 
weiss. The medley of colors is truly a joy to the eye." From south of the 
Tula to southeast of the Orkhon stretch in series the rounded hills which 
have given Sa'ari Ke'er its name. "One sees nothing in any direction but 



En Route for the Khangay Mountains 149 

endless undulations, uniformly yellow," Lacoste goes on to write on June 
21 ; "the soil is sandy; a short grass, half withered, grows in places." 
Farther on, to the west, is "yellow steppe, scarcely undulating, with here 
and there a dried-up salt lake [this is on June 25] making a great white 
patch that sparkles in the sun." Then, up at the level of the present Bud- 
dhist monastery of Doltzegen, come lines of bare hills, then again more 
undulating country, sand hills, high dunes with a scattering of bushes, 
and finally the first foothills of the Khangay barring the way to the upper 
Orkhon. 

The "donkeyback steppe" behind them, the Mongol army saw the Nay- 
man lookouts stationed high in the Khangay. While the Mongols were 
making their way to the Orkhon, the Nayman king, Tayang, had indeed 
advanced with all his forces from the region of the Altay to the Khangay 
massif, where he had set up his camp. The Naymans were at first full of 
confidence. They captured a Mongol horse that was in a bad state, and 
inferred from this that all the enemy horses were played out. They may 
not have been all that wide of the mark: to cross Mongolia, from the 
Khalkha to the Khangay, was something of an endurance test. Further- 
more, Chingis-khan's army might well turn out to be outnumbered by the 
Naymans, who had been swelled by reinforcements in the shape of all 
the Conqueror's old enemies: Toqto'a-beki, chief of the Merkits, Alin- 
tayshi with a number of unsubdued Kereits, Qutuqa-beki, chief of the 
Oyrats, the indiarubber Jamuqa, and with them the remnants of the 
Dorbens, the Tatars, the Qatagins, the Salji'uts, all the vanquished of 
recent wars, all Chingis-khan's implacable, irreducible foes, with their 
ranks closed behind Tayang in this hour of decision. 

In this situation, and while the main bulk of the Mongol army was 
halted at Sa'ari Ke'er, one of Chingis-khan's commanders, Doday-cherbi, 
urged him to caution. "We are few in number, and, as well, tired from our 
long march. Let us camp here, in the steppe of Sa'ari Ke'er, and graze 
our horses till they have regained their strength. Then, to hoodwink the 
enemy, let us light five fires to a man. So far as that goes, the Naymans 
are many, we know. But it is said their khan is a weakling who has never 
left his yurt. Our fires will mislead him as to our numbers. Then, as soon 
as our horses are fit again, we will overcome their outposts, throw them 
back on the main body of their army, and take advantage of the resulting 
confusion to pitch in to wholesale battle." 



150 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

Chingis-khan approved this ruse, which turned out to be excellent. At 
sight of the countless fires that at nightfall sprang into life all over the 
vast steppe, the Nayman sentries up in their Khangay fastnesses whis- 
pered, appalled: "Who spoke of the Mongols being few? They have more 
campfires than there are stars in the sky." Tayang was camped in the 
Khangay near the River Qachir. Impressed by the reports of his advance 
posts, he passed them on to his son Kiichliig, advising him to temporize, 
even to make a strategic retreat. "It was claimed the Mongol horses 
would be played out, but they have more campfires than there are stars. 
Fighting with them will be terrible. They are such hardened warriors, 
they see a charge bear down on them without blinking an eyelid; you can 
pierce their cheeks and make their blood flow in streams, and they do not 
flinch. Is it wise to engage with them now? We should do better to with- 
draw in good order behind the Altay. Our horses are in good shape. Theirs 
will be brought to the last stage of exhaustion following us, and then we 
will fall on them." 

* It was sound advice enough, but it was not to the hearer's liking. Ta- 
yang's own son, his heir, the Prince Kiichlug ("the strong"), cried shame 
on what he called his father's cowardice: "Tayang is afraid like a woman! 
What is this about the numbers of the Mongols? The greater part of them 
has anyway lined up in our own ranks, with Jamuqa. But my father has 
never been to war. He has never ventured farther than a pregnant woman 
when she must urinate, or a steer grown fat as a wheel!" Tayang, bit- 
terly, retorted: "Kiichliig is a youth full of conceit of himself. Let us hope 
that in the hour of combat, when death is at his elbow, this fine courage 
does not fade away!" But now Qori-siibechi, one of Tayang's principal 
commanders, threw in his insults: "Your father, Inanch-bilge, in the 
hour of combat, never showed the enemy his soldiers' backs or his 
horses' quarters. And you, you are already afraid? If we had known you 
were so cowardly, we would rather have given command of the army, 
though she is but a woman, to the Princess Giirbesii! What a misfortune 
that Kokse'li-sabraq is too old! For you, weak Tayang, you are running 
away!" With which he shook his quiver, seized his horse, and was off. 

Tayang had to give way: "Every life must end in death, every body is 
condemned to suffering. It is the fate of all men. Since destiny will have it 
so, let us fight!" He left his Qachir camp, went down the River Tamir as 
far as the Orkhon, which he crossed, and came to the eastern slope of 



En Route for the Khangay Mountains 151 

Mount Naqu, which apparently corresponds to the Mount Namogo of 
our maps, or rather one of the neighboring escarpments, north of Qara- 
qorum and Kosho-tsaydam. 1 The Naymans had thus reached the site of 
Chakirma'ut when Chingis-khan's lookouts saw them and gave the 
alarm. 

1 Probably opposite the junction of the Tamir and the Orkhon. Cf. the map in 
Bouillane de Lacoste, Au pays sacre des anciens Turcs, p. 54. 



A 
AA 



40 



The Dogs of Chingis-khan 
Eat Human Flesh 



Chingis-khan drove off at once the Nayman scouts, drew up his army in 
battle array, and decided on his combat plans. The Mongol tactical 
specifications have in this case come down to us: we know that the order 
of march was to be "as thick grass," that the troops were then to take up 
the "lake" formation, and that they were to attack "drill-wise." * Chingis- 
khan himself took command of the advance guard, entrusting the center 
to his brother Qasar and the reserve cavalry to his other brother Temiige. 
The Naymans, however, their high-flown resolution to take the offensive 
proving short-lived, were already falling back from the Chakirma'ut po- 
sition, and re-forming before the rocks of Naqu, Mongol advance parties 
harassing them as they went. 

Tayang watched with anxiety these skirmishes, so disadvantageous for 
him, taking place before general action was engaged. Beside him stood 
Jamuqa, former "brother by adoption" of Chingis-khan, now his most 
consistent enemy. The Mongol epic has here a magnificent poem, in 
which the Nayman sovereign questions Jamuqa about the different 
bodies of the enemy army to be seen deploying on the plain. "Who are 
these," Tayang asks, "who pursue our advance guard as wolves pursue 
sheep right to their fold?" "These," Jamuqa answers, "are the four dogs 
of my anda Temiijin. They feed on human flesh and are tethered with an 
iron chain. They have foreheads of brass, their jaws are like scissors, 
their tongues like piercing awls, their hearts are iron, their whipping tails, 
swords. They feed on dew. Running, they ride on the back of the wind, 
i [Mongol military terms, the exact meaning of which are unknown.] 



The Dogs Eat Human Flesh 153 

In the day of battles, they devour enemy flesh. Behold, they are now 
unleashed, and they slobber at the mouth in glee. These four dogs are 
Jebe and Qubilay, Jelme and Siibotei." At his words Tayang shudders. 
He gives the order to fall back on both sides of the mountain, the Mon- 
gols on his tracks, "bounding in delight," as they seek to encircle his 
army. 

At this sight, Tayang, in the epic, questions Jamuqa again: "And who 
are these people who rush to encircle us, like foals let out in the morning, 
full of mare's milk and gamboling around their dams?" "They," Jamuqa 
replies, "are the tribes of the Uru'uts and the Mangghuts. They hunt 
down like game warriors armed with saber and spear, they seize from 
them their bloody weapons, they throw them down and cut their throats, 
they carry off their remains!" Tayang orders further retreat up the moun- 
tain slopes. Then, halting, he questions Jamuqa yet again: "And who is 
this man one sees behind them, like a hungry eagle, fretting to swoop on 
his prey?" "That," Jamuqa answers, "is my anda Temiijin. All his body 
is cast in brass, forged in iron, without a chink an awl-point could pierce. 
Do you see him, taking off toward you, like a hungry vulture? You 
boasted once that if the Mongols dared come before you, there would 
remain of them not the skin of a lamb's hoof. Now, look!" 

Tayang at this withdraws farther still up the mountain. He goes on 
questioning Jamuqa. "And who is this other chief coming against us 
down there?" "It is one of the sons of mother Ho'eliin, reared on human 
flesh. His body is three fathoms long. He eats a three-year-old beast at a 
sitting. He wears triple armor. He can swallow a man whole, with his 
quiver, without choking, without losing his appetite. When rage takes 
him, and he lets fly his invincible arrows, he transfixes at one shot not ten 
but twenty men on the other side of the mountain. His arrows can find 
the foe at nine hundred fathoms. He is a being more than human, he was 
born from a dragon. That is Jochi-Qasar!" Tayang, in terror, retreats still 
higher up the mountain. At this point he questions Jamuqa yet once 
more about a last Mongol chief he has just seen enter the fray: "That," 
is the answer, "is the youngest son of mother Ho'eliin, Otchigin. They 
call him lazy, for he likes to go to bed early and rise late. But in the hour 
of battle he is never tardy!" This time Tayang in panic retreats to the 
very mountaintop. 

What was going on in Jamuqa's head? Was this the primitive, shifty 



154 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

nomad soul, sensing that the Nayman cause was lost and already at 
work on schemes of rapprochement with Chingis-khan? Had some mem- 
ory of their old friendship genuinely welled up in the man? Whatever the 
motive, Jamuqa deserted the Nayman army, and sent a messenger to the 
Conqueror lodging his claim to Mongol credit for it. "Tayang," his mes- 
sage ran, "terror-stricken at the account I have given him of your army, 
is in retreat to the mountain. His soldiers have no more heart for battle. 
As for me, I am abandoning them. Let my anda take measures accord- 
ingly!" 



A 
AA 



41 



The Death of Tayang 



It was evening. Chingis-khan had to put off further action till next day, 
but before night fell he was able to encircle Mount Naqu with his army. 
The Naymans tried to use the darkness to disengage and slip away over 
the mountain, but in vain. "They stumbled in the dark, fell from rocks; 
their bodies smashed at the foot of the precipices; the corpses piled up 
there, one upon another like felled trees." 

Next morning, battle began again. The Mongol army hurtled to the 
attack on the Nayman positions. Tayang was seriously wounded. Qori- 
slibechi and his last faithful retainers struggled in vain to get him back 
into the field: the unfortunate Nayman king's wounds would not let him 
move. Vainly Qori-siibechi shouted to him that his wives and the Lady 
Giirbesii, above all, had adorned themselves in his honor and come forth 
to see him fight. Tayang was dying. Then Qori-siibechi said to the other 
warriors: "He has no more strength ever to rise again. Before he dies, let 
us return to the fray, that with his last glances he may see us dying 
valiant deaths." They went down and fought to the end. Chingis-khan, 
seeing their desperate courage, would fain have spared their lives, but 
they refused to surrender, and all died weapon in hand. The Conqueror, 
for whom the fighting man's loyalty to his chief was the supreme virtue, 
paid public tribute to their bravery. As for Kiichliig, Tayang's son, he 
had managed to get away, and had reached the valley of the Tamir, 
which, after a space of marshy grassland and bog, narrows rapidly, great 
granite promontories turning it into a series of larch-covered passes. The 
Nayman prince tried to make a hideout of this easily defended valley, 
but his Mongol pursuers were too close for him, and he had to take flight 
again. 



756 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

Chingis-khan brought the Nayman country to submission as far as the 
Altay foothills. The Nayman queen Giirbesu, who was among the pris- 
oners, was brought before the Conqueror. He reproached her with the 
contempt she had formerly shown for the Mongols: "Did you not call us 
evil- smelling?" But he took her into his household. Tayang's guardian of 
the seal, or chancellor, an Uyghur named (in Chinese transcription) T'a- 
t'a-t'ong-a, taken prisoner with his retainers, passed into Chingis-khan's 
service. Sole escapers from Mongol domination were those who had fled 
with Kiichlug and the clans, similarly in flight, of his uncle Buyruq. 

The dissident Mongol tribes who had followed Jamuqa, namely the 
Jadarans or Jarjirats, Qatagins, Salji'uts, Dorbens, the last Taychi'uts 
and the Onggirats, made their submission to Chingis-khan. Jamuqa, thus 
abandoned by them, found himself reduced, like Kiichlug and Buyruq, to 
the wretched existence of the outcast. 



A 
AA 



42 



The Advocacy of the Fair Qulan 



The Merkit chief Toqto'a, who had to the end supported the Naymans, 
had escaped the disaster that overtook them. In the autumn of that same 
year, 1204, Chingis-khan set forth in pursuit of this chief, and defeated 
him near the Qaradal-huja'ur spring. The great bulk of the Merkit peo- 
ple, driven back into the "donkeyback steppe" (Sa'ari Ke'er), came 
under the Conqueror's yoke. But this time once again Toqto'a contrived 
to escape, with his sons Qodu and Chila'un and a few followers. They 
went to join the Nayman exiles Ktichliig and Buyruq, still holding out on 
the borders of Mongolia. Qodu's wives, the Lady Tugay and the Lady 
Toregene, fell to Chingis-khan: he gave Toregene to his third son, Prince 
Ogodei. 

One of the Merkit tribes, a subsidiary one, the Uwas-Merkits, decided 
they had fought enough. Their chief, Dayir-usun, refusing to involve 
himself further in the destinies of Toqto'a, called a halt at the banks of 
the River Tar; resolved to find a way into the good graces of Chingis- 
khan, he decided to offer the latter his daughter, the fair Qulan. On his 
way, he met Nayaqa, one of Chingis-khan's officers, of the Ba'arin tribe, 
who undertook to guide them to his master: "The country is infested 
with brigands. If you go on your way alone, you will be killed, and your 
daughter might meet with disagreeable adventures." Out of prudence, be- 
fore setting out, Nayaqa kept the young woman and her father three days 
with him. Then he set out again and brought them safe and sound to 
Chingis-khan, but when they arrived the Conqueror, finding the delay sus- 
picious and persuaded that Nayaqa had abused Qulan, considered having 
him executed. In vain Nayaqa protested: "I have never thought but to 
serve the khan loyally. The girls fair of face and the horses fine of leg 



755 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

that I took among the vanquished, I have always brought to him. If ever 
I have done otherwise, let him kill me!" As torture loomed for the unfor- 
tunate man, the fair Qulan intervened, swearing that he was innocent, 
and that, if it had not been for his three days' and three nights' conceal- 
ing of her, she would assuredly have fallen into the hands of bandits. 
"And indeed," this sensible young woman added, "you have only to test 
my virginity: I am still, by the will of the Tengri, as my father and 
mother made me." The test was made most conscientiously, the bard 
assures us and the results were entirely satisfactory. Chingis-khan, his 
mind set at rest, honored Qulan with all his love (as will be seen, she was 
one of his favorite wives, so much so as to be chosen to accompany him 
on his great Transoxania expedition) . As for Nayaqa, he restored him to 
his position of trust, and even made public acknowledgment of his qual- 
ity : "He is a fellow one may be sure of. He may be entrusted with impor- 
tant matters." 



A 
AA 



43 



"These Merkits, I Hate Them!" 



But Chingis-khan was not finished with the Merkits. After the submis- 
sion of most of their clans, he had enrolled them in his army and charged 
them with guarding the baggage. But just as soon as his back was turned, 
they rifled what had been entrusted to their care, then turned rebels once 
again. They went off to barricade themselves in the mountains and for- 
ests of their country, toward the lower Selenga, south of Lake Baykal. 
The Uwas-Merkits entrenched themselves in the gorges of Quru-qabchal, 
the Uduyit-Merkits barricaded themselves in the "stronghold" known as 
"the summit hideout," Tayqal-qorqa, in a forest-dwellers' fortress of 
felled trees. Chingis-khan sent off to rout them out Chimbay, son of 
Sorqan-shira, who did so with troops of the left wing. To have done once 
and for all with these men of the woods, Chingis-khan ordered them to 
be completely dispersed. 

Meantime, the Merkit chief Toqto'a and his sons, separated from the 
main body of their people, were wandering as we have said with the 
Nayman Prince Kiichliig near the western borders of Mongolia. Chingis- 
khan, setting out apace in pursuit of them, had arrived at the foot of the 
Mongol Altay, where he took up winter quarters (the winter of 1204- 
05). The war shifted now toward the massif of Ulandaban and Tabyn- 
ula, which, with its 13,000 foot peaks, links the Mongol Altay and the 
Russian Altay. On the eastern slope rises the River Kobdo which waters 
the lake region; on the western, the Bukhtarma, tributary of the upper 
Irtysh. A wild region, poorish in the north, toward Kobdo, where it sup- 
ports only larches, and these only in the 7,500-8,000 feet band, but to- 
ward the south of which the forest spreads down to 3300 feet or there- 
abouts, with cedar, aspen, willow, and pine. It was in the shelter of this 



160 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

imposing barrier, on the banks of the Bukhtarma, in the present-day 
Russian province of Semipalatinsk, halfway between the town of that 
name and the small market center of Altaysk, that Toqto'a and Kiichliig 
had collected what remained of their forces. In the spring of 1205 
Chingis-khan arrived to hunt them out. Toqto'a was killed by a stray 
arrow. His sons, having no time to gather up his body, cut off his head 
"out of respect" to carry it away with them and pay it the last honors. 
Merkit and Nayman bands fled southwest. A great number of them 
drowned trying to cross the Irtysh, swollen at this season by the first 
melting of the snows. The survivors broke up. Kiichlug, crownless heir to 
the Nayman kings, went due south, across the Zungar steppe. He 
crossed the T'ien-chans, made his way along the borders of the Uyghur 
country on the Kucha side, crossed the Qarluq country, the present-day 
Semirechie, southeast of Lake Balkhash, and so came at last to the 
Qara-khitay empire, east of Issyq-kol, in what is now Russian Turkestan, 
where an unexpected future awaited him. 

As for the Merkit princes, Qodu, Qal, and Chila'un, they also made 
their way to the edge of the Uyghur country, in the hope, probably, of 
making themselves masters of the fertile Uyghur oases, Beshbaliq, 
Turfan, Quarashahr, and Kucha. But the Uyghur king, the iduq-qut Bar- 
chuq, drove them off. The last Merkit bands, under Qodu, came back to 
the steppes north of Lake Balkhash, the former Qanqli country, where 
they roamed wretchedly for another ten years or so between the basin of 
the Imil and the Tarbagatay as far as the Steppe of Hunger. 

One day in 1217, according to some of our sources Chingis-khan 
was to remember these last survivors of an enemy race. He ordered his 
best strategist, Siibotei, to bring them to heel. "After their defeat," he 
told Siibotei, "they ran away like wild horses with the lasso already 
round their necks, like stags with an arrow already in them. Catch them 
again. If they take flight skyward like birds, turn into a falcon and take 
them in mid-air. If they burrow into the ground like marmots, become a 
pick and dig them up. If they turn fish and take to the sea, become a net. 
To get to them, you will have to go through high mountain passes, cross 
wide rivers. Remembering the distance, eke out your provisions. Be 
careful not to be too hard on your horses. On the way you will see a lot 
of game. Do not let your men amuse themselves at will riding their 
horses hard hunting it; make beating forays only as often as is needed to 



"These Merkits, I Hate Them!" 161 

supplement your stores, otherwise, before you have reached the enemy, 
your horses will be played out. See that the cruppers are not attached to 
the saddle and that bridles are not used. The mouths of the horses must 
be left free. If you give these orders, how can the men go at a gallop?" 
Then, the curious avowal that shows how bitter a memory had stayed 
with the khan of those grievous times of his youth: "These Merkits, I 
hate them, and have done so for a long, long time! I remember the day I 
had taken refuge on Mount Burqan-qaldun, and to take me they sur- 
rounded the mountain approaches. I was still so young, I was so afraid. 
. . . Today I have sworn to get them. However long it takes to hunt 
them down, however far they must be followed, I will have them! My 
thoughts go with you and may the supreme Tengri protect you!" For 
crossing the Altay and the Tarbagatay, Chingis-khan gave Siibotei "iron- 
framed wagons" (temur-tergen) , specially built to withstand jolting in 
the gorges. Thus equipped, Siibotei carried out his orders. From the 
River Jam, to the Tarbagatay, to the northern bank of the Chu, in the 
Steppe of Hunger, west of the Balkhash, he gave chase to the last of 
the Merkits, and exterminated them. 

This persisting hatred of the Conqueror's for the enemy Mongol tribe 
is to be noted. It had more than one root. It was the old hostility of the 
son of nomads for the "men of the woods," of the herdsman of the steppe 
for the trappers of the tayga. It was a personal bitterness also let it not be 
forgotten against those who had once carried off his wife, and whom he 
had perhaps to thank, alas, for the birth of his eldest child, Jochi. It so 
happened, indeed, that when the youngest of the Uduyut-Merkit princes, 
Qultuqan-mergen, was taken prisoner by the Mongols, he was brought 
before Jochi. Qultuqan-mergen was a remarkable archer. His skill and 
his youth interested Jochi, who, taking a liking to him, asked for mercy 
for him from Chingis-khan. But the Conqueror was inflexible. The last of 
the Merkit princes must perish as all his family. 

Pure Mongol stock as they were, the Merkits had ranged themselves 
with the unassimilable elements incapable of entering into the formation 
of the new unified Mongol nation. 



A 
AA 



44 



A Note of High Tragedy: 
Chingis-khan and Jamuqa 



Following the crushing of the Naymans, their ally Jamuqa, Chingis- 
khan's personal antagonist, the old Mongol anti-Caesar, having lost all 
his following, had been reduced to the life of an outcast. With his five 
last remaining companions, he had taken refuge in the "Tangnu moun- 
tains," that is to say in the Tangnu range, with its 6,600 to 9,600 feet- 
high cols and ever-snowy peaks. The outcast was here at the very limit of 
his native country: the Tangnu mountains mark the dividing line be- 
tween the "dry, pale steppe," characteristic of the Kobdo lake region, 
and the dense Siberian forest, the tayga of the upper lenissei. It is hunt- 
ing country par excellence: its forests of cedar, larch, white pine, and 
alder house a numerous fauna, the Wapiti stag of Siberia meeting its 
Mongol maral counterpart, the musk fallow deer of the far north, the 
wild ram or argali of the steppe. Reduced to living by hunting and 
chance, the exile was eking out here a highly precarious living, when the 
drama broke that was to decide his future: one day when he had just 
killed and roasted a wild ram, and was eating it, his five companions, 
weary of this life of hardship, threw themselves on him, bound him, and 
brought him to Chingis-khan. 

The prisoner had doubtless no illusions as to the fate awaiting him. 
Nevertheless, it was as a king that he addressed Chingis-khan. First he 
demanded punishments for his treacherous subjects, the traitors who had 
given him up: "Like a base black crow attacking a great wild duck, so 
these vile slaves have dared to raise their hand against their overlord. Oh 
khan, my anda, how should you take them into your service?" Chingis- 



A Note of High Tragedy 163 

khan, as we know, held traitors the vilest of the vile, and if there was a 
principle he cherished, it was soldierly loyalty. Almost certainly he also 
still harbored at heart an obscure affection for his one-time youthful 
playfellow. His first act then was to accede to this. "How is it possible," 
he cried, "to let men who have betrayed their rightful chief go on living? 
Such people should be exterminated, with their children and their chil- 
dren's children!" And he had the five traitors' heads cut off under 
Jamuqa's eyes. 

He did more. With the magnanimity that was so characteristic of him, 
he offered Jamuqa pardon for all his sins, Plottings, betrayals, and the 
ever-active enmity that had made the Jajirat chief the moving spirit of 
successive coalitions against him the Mongol hero was prepared to for- 
get all. He wished to remember only their youthful friendship, the cam- 
paigns they had fought together, that one in particular, doubtless, in 
which, when they were still both young men, Jamuqa had helped him re- 
cover the beautiful Borte. With restrained emotion, he called up these 
memories, and in his greatness of soul invited the defeated foe to a re- 
newal of their former friendship. "Before, we were closely united, insep- 
arable as two shafts of the same wagon. And then, one day, you deserted 
me. But now you have come back. Let us be united as before. Let us live 
again together side by side. We had forgotten the memories of our youth, 
let us bring them to life again. Since that time, you had cut yourself off 
from me, but you were still my anda, my adoptive brother. When we met 
face to face in the field of battle, I know that grief gripped your heart. 
And indeed, in the battle against the Kereits, in the sands of Qalaqaljit, 
did you not send me warning of the enemy's intentions? You did there a 
service I do not forget. Nor do I forget, either, that before the battle 
against the Naymans, with your words vaunting my strength, you sowed 
fear in the hearts of their leaders." 

Jamuqa's response to Chingis-khan's offer was a refusal of truly noble 
dignity. "In times of yore, when we were young, when we became anda, 
by the stream of Qorqonaq, we shared our meals, we said to each other 
words never to be forgotten, we slept at each other's side. Then came 
men who with artful argument set us against each other, and we hurled at 
each other words of insult. But when I remembered the oaths we had 
once sworn, I flushed red in shame, and I had not the courage to come to 
meet you again, to look in the face of the anda of magnanimous heart. 



164 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

And now lo, behold, in his mercy my anda proposes I should become 
once more his companion. But when I had a right to be at his side, I 
could not hold there. Today, oh my anda, you have united under you all 
the peoples round about. Heaven has chosen you for the throne of em- 
pire. Now that the world is yours, what use would a companion such as I 
be to you? Comradeship is something there could never again be between 
us. I should be like a louse in your jacket-collar, a thorn in your trousers. 
Because of me you would never sleep quietly. I have been unfaithful to 
my anda, and from break of day to sunset there is no one not aware of 
what I have done. You, my anda, you are a hero. Your mother is full of 
wisdom. Your brothers are fuU of ability. The seventy-three fine men 
who form your entourage serve you as so many loyal steeds. How infe- 
rior I am to you, oh my anda! A child still, I was abandoned by both 
father and mother; brothers I have none, and my companions have not 
been true to me. Heaven has bestowed its favor on my anda, who has 
surpassed me in all things. Now, oh my anda, you must be rid of me 
promptly, that your heart may be at peace. But if you decide I am to die, 
I must die without my blood flowing. On that condition, if you bury me 
near here on some height, my spirit will watch from afar over your 
grandchildren's grandchildren, and protect them forever. I was of 
noble, illustrious line, and if I am defeated, it is by an anda of yet more 
illustrious birth. Remember my words. And now, work your will quickly 
with me!" 

Chingis-khan, when they told him these words, answered in deep sad- 
ness. "My anda Jamuqa has always gone away from us. Yet, I know of 
no harm he has ever thought to do my person. He is a man greatly expe- 
rienced, of whom one might still learn much. But he is weary of life." 
Then, after this tribute paid to old memories, after he had tried and failed 
to save the erstwhile companion of his youth, Chingis-khan accepted the 
situation, the refusal of his offer, and the politician I was about to say, 
the scrupulous jurist took over: "A man like Jamuqa, such a man can- 
not be put to death without valid cause. But since he wants to die, I have 
found the indictment. Once, after Taychar stole Jochi-darmala's horses, 
we fought against each other, Jamuqa and I, at Dalan-baljut; he drove 
me in flight to the gorge of Jerene, and greatly frightened me. Today 
again I wanted him to become my companion, and he has turned away. 
I wanted to spare his life and he has refused. Let it be done as he wishes! 



A Note of High Tragedy 165 

Put him to death without shedding his blood. Do not leave his corpse 
lying, but bury it with honor." 

So it was done. The former Mongol anti-Caesar, the man who for a 
moment once set the fortunes of Chingis-khan in the balance, was buried 
with honorable ceremony on a height whence his spirit, according to the 
beliefs of the Altaic shamans, would keep watch over the descendants of 
his conqueror. 

Such is the tradition set down in contemporary sources. Legend, how- 
ever, is not content with this melancholy denouement. There Jamuqa has 
a more dramatic end. The story runs that Chingis-khan, not wishing his 
former anda to die at his orders, handed him over to his nephew Al- 
chiday-noyan, and that at Alchiday's hands he died a ghastly death. "It 
is said that he ordered his limbs to be chopped off one by one, and that 
Jamuqa declared this was just, because this was how he himself would 
have treated his enemies if fate had delivered them to him. He hastened 
execution of the cruel sentence, proffering his joints himself to the execu- 
tioner's sword." 



A 
AA 



45 



The "May Field" of 1206 

Proclamation of the Mongol Empire 

Promotions and Citations 



One or two cases of insignificant and peripheral dissidence apart, Chingis- 
khan was now master of all Mongolia. At this point he decided to have 
his accession renewed or confirmed by all the tribes. In the spring of 
1206 he summoned for the purpose at the headwaters of the Onon a great 
quriltay or general assembly. He hoisted the white standard with its nine 
horsetails, the banner of the new Mongol empire, and had conferred on 
himself, a second time, the title of khan. The shaman Kokochii, or, as he 
preferred to be called, the Teb-Tenggeri, "the Very-Celestial," set the 
seal of his sanction on the proclamation. The power of Chingis-khan 
indeed corresponded to the will of Heaven; the Eternal Blue Heaven, 
supreme divinity of the ancient Turks and the ancient Mongols, had des- 
ignated the new sovereign its representative upon earth. The latter's title 
reflected this consecration: he was "khan by the strength of the Eternal 
Heaven." 

This "coronation" was followed by a series of promotions of gen- 
erals, with magnificent citations recalling their exploits. A noble emu- 
lation worked in these heroes. Fearing to have pleased the master less 
than Muqali or Bo'orchu, Shigi-qutuqu, the abandoned child, long ago 
adopted by mother Ho'eliin, recalled his devotion: "Have I been less 
devoted than another? From childhood, I have grown up at your thresh- 
old, and I have had no thought but for you. You have let me sleep at 
your feet, you have treated me as your youngest brother. What shall you 



The "May Field" of 1206 Proclamation 167 

give me now as a mark of your favor?" And Chingis-khan replied to 
Shigi-qutuqu: "Yes, I consider you as my sixth brother! While, with the 
aid of the Eternal Heaven, I was establishing my authority over all the 
tribes who live in tents of felt, you have been as my ears and eyes. 
Today, I charge you to take all these tribes, to count them out and to 
apportion them. Let none go against your decisions!" Shigi-qutuqu was 
in effect established in the office of grand judge: "Lay bare and punish 
all cases of fraud or theft. Those who have deserved to pay a penalty, 
mete them out their punishment!" Shigi-qutuqu's decisions were to be 
entered in "blue books" (or "in blue writing on white paper"), and these 
were to form a compilation of laws. "It is my wish," Chingis-khan said, 
"that unto my furthest descendants nothing be altered of dispositions 
made by Shigi-qutuqu at my orders and entered in the Blue Books!" 

Chingis-khan had royal thanks for "father" Monglik for having once 
saved him from walking straight into a trap set by the Kereits, when the 
future Conqueror of the World had been on the point "of throwing him- 
self into a red-hot brazier, into an abyss of swirling water." Bo'orchu he 
sang the praises of at length, enumerating all the proofs he had given of 
devotion from the pursuit of the horse-stealers at the beginning of this 
story onwards. He recalled how that day Bo'orchu, still in his teens and 
prompted by an immediate sympathy, had left all to follow him. "To the 
comrade who asked your aid, you gave it unhesitatingly. . . . Your fa- 
ther was Naqu the Rich. You were his only son. You knew nothing of me 
yet on the instant you abandoned everything to follow me. . . . Later, 
during the campaign against the Tatars, at Dalan-nemiirges, in the night, 
in torrents of rain, you sheltered me as I slept under your cloak of felt, 
and you stayed without moving thus till dawn, for fear of waking me. O 
Bor'orchu, O Muqali, you have helped me to the throne, because you 
have always given me good counsel, encouraging me when I was right, 
holding me back when I was wrong." And he had them sit on raised 
seats, above all the others. 

Later, Mongol legend was not to rest content with the simple grandeur 
of this. It added romantic details, which by the seventeenth century have 
found their way into the account of the historian Sagang-sechen, himself 
a descendant of Chingis-khan. When he comes to the general distribution 
of rewards, at his great assembly of 1206, Chingis-khan pretends to for- 
get, alone of his supporters, Bo'orchu. When evening comes, the Em- 



168 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

press Borte reproaches the Conqueror for this: "Is not Bo'orchu your 
lifelong servant, the friend of your youth, the tried companion of your 
darkest hours?" "I only seemed to forget him," answers Chingis-khan, 
"to confound those who envy him, for I am sure that, even in this mo- 
ment when Bo'orchu may believe himself passed over, he still speaks 
good of me!" And Chingis-khan there and then sends a spy to hear what 
is being said in Bo'orchu's tent. What is being said? The warrior's wife is 
complaining of the khan's ingratitude. And Bo'orchu counters: "It is not 
for reward I serve the khan. If he left me to die of hunger, I should 
continue to serve him with all my strength. May the khan's house of gold 
last for ever, that is all the reward I need!" Chingis-khan, to whom the 
words are reported, next day reassembles the quriltay, and his gratitude 
breaks forth in a magnificent gesture: "Oh my Bo'orchu, you who in the 
days of danger were my faithful companion, you whose heart never 
knew fear, you, my comrade when death stared us in the face in the 
battle, you to whom death or life was indifferent, let none here dare be 
jealous of you. Hear, you my princes and my nobles, hear, oh my people, 
and be witness, he it is I raise above all!" 

Turning then to Muqali, Chingis-khan reminds him how once, at 
Qorqonaq-jubur, under the great tree by which khan Qutula had liked to 
dance, he, inspired by heaven, had prophesied the grandeur of the future 
conqueror. Chingis-khan will reward him presently with the title (taken 
from the Chinese) of qu-yang, meaning prince, "with the command of 
the left wing as far as the Qaraun-chidun mountains." 

Another Mongol chief, Qorchi, of the Ba'arins, had also, in Chingis- 
khan's early days, prophesied his greatness to come, but, as a provident 
soothsayer, he had secured a promise, if events turned out as he foretold, 
of a harem of thirty pretty girls. Chingis-khan let him choose the thirty 
fairest of the defeated tribes. By way of more serious preferment, he was 
appointed to rule, in the northwest marches, the "forest-dwelling na- 
tions," that is the people of the Siberian tayga as far as the upper Irtysh 
area. 

Jxirchedei's great deeds were not forgotten. He was the recipient of 
Chingis-khan's public congratulations for having, at the battle of Qala- 
qaljit-elet, when the victory lay yet in the balance, put abrupt end to the 
enemy's attack by, with his own hand, wounding the Kereit senggum: "If 
your arrow, that day, had not struck the senggum in the cheek, what 



The "May Field" of 2206 Proclamation 169 

would have happened to us? It was from that moment that, by the will of 
the Eternal Heaven, the gateway to the empire opened before me!" 
Chingis-khan had no less praise for the pillar of strength the unshakable 
Jurchedei had been for him in the retreat to the Khalkha, and again in the 
decisive battle with the Kereits. "During the retreat," he told him mag- 
nificently, "you protected me like a high mountain; in the hour of the 
battle you were for me a shield." In supreme sign of imperial gratitude, 
Jurchedei, as already recounted, was presented with one of Chingis- 
khan's own wives, the Kereit princess Ibaqa-beki: "I give her to you in 
recognition of the services you rendered me when you helped me bring to 
heel the dissident tribes, reunite the scattered tribes." 

The Conqueror did not forget praises for his four "fierce dogs," Qu- 
bilay, Jelme, Jebe, and Siibotei. "For me you have broken the necks of 
the strong and broken the backs of the athletic. When the order: Tor- 
ward' sounded, you clove rocks and stemmed the wild torrent. In the 
day of battle, with such men before me," cried Chingis-khan, "I could 
rest assured!" And the citations continued, each receiving his word of 
reward. Now Qunan, of the tribe of the Geniges, "vigilant as the male 
wolf by night, as the black crow by day." He, and Kokochos, Degei, and 
"grandfather" Usun were saluted too for having faithfully informed their 
master of what they saw and heard. Now the loyal Jelme, brought by his 
father when still a child to be page to the future Chingis-khan, to keep 
guard over the entry to the royal y urt. "When I was born, my father had 
given me a bed of sable. Jelme and I were born about the same time. 
Together, we grew up. . . ." Now Onggiir, for whom Chingis-khan had 
this tribute: "You, Onggiir, with your Besi'uts and Baya'uts, you have 
protected me as a living hedge. You did not stray in the thick mist, you 
did not fail in the fray. In the rain you got soaked to the skin with me, in 
the bitter cold you shivered with me." His reward was freedom to reas- 
semble under his own banner his scattered tribe, the Baya'uts. 

Chingis-khan had a particularly affectionate word for the four "found- 
lings" adopted by "mother Ho'eltin": Shigi-qutuqu, Boroqul, Giichii, 
and Kokochii. "You lay, abandoned; in the enemy camp; my mother 
picked you up, she set you on your feet, took you under her protection 
and raised you as her own children. Taking you by the neck and hoisting 
you by the shoulders, she has made men of you. For us, her own chil- 
dren, you have become companions as inseparable as our shadows.'' 



770 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

And the Conqueror declared to these young "adopted brothers" that they 
had already repaid in loyalty and devotion the care that had been taken 
of them. "You, Boroqul, have been for me so attentive a companion that 
never, whether riding in the dark, in teeming rain, or encamped face to 
face with the enemy, have you failed to have food for me. . . ," Chingis- 
khan recalled also how two of his sons, Toluy and Ogodei, had been 
saved, the first by Boroqul's wife, from the hands of a Tatar assassin, the 
second by Boroqul himself in the first battle against the Kereits. "I owe 
him the lives of two of my sons. He has indeed redeemed the debt he 
owed my mother!" 

In this time of triumph the hero did not forget those who, in the dark 
days, had died in his cause, like Quyildar and Chaghan-qo'a. "My friend 
Quyildar served me unto death. Chaghan-qo'a was killed by Jamuqa as he 
fought in my service. It is my will that their children and the children of 
their children, to the furthest generation, receive the aid the just due of 
the orphaned!" The son of Chaghan-qo'a, further, Narin-Toghril, re- 
ceived the right to reassemble his tribe, that of the Neguses. Lastly, 
Chingis-khan gave proof of particular affection for Sorqan-shira, who, it 
will be remembered, in the days of his youth had freed him from his 
cangue and saved him from the vengeance of the Taychi'uts. "That serv- 
ice, I have never forgotten. I think of it at night, in my dreams. In the 
daytime, the memory of it is always there in my breast. It is true, after- 
ward you tarried a little before you left the Taychi'uts to join me. . . . 
But today I will grant you whatever you ask of me." Sorqan-shira asked 
for grazing grounds, exempt from dues, in the former Merkit country, 
around the River Selenga. On his two sons, Chila'un and Chimbay, was 
conferred the privilege of keeping for themselves in the hunt and in war 
all the game they could bring down, and all the booty they could seize. 

So the Conqueror of the World, in these triumphant days of the spring 
of 1206, in the region of the upper Onon where he had been born, in this 
country of grassland and forest hymned by the Mongol bards, reviewed 
with emotion the hard vicissitudes of his youth, and associated magnifi- 
cently with him in his triumph those who had been his comrades in arms. 



A 
AA 



46 



The Old Guard 



Then came the reorganization of the Imperial Guard. "Before," said 
Chingis-khan, "I had only a bodyguard of seventy for the daytime and 
eighty for the night watches. Now that by the will of Eternal Heaven I 
rule over all the Empire, the guard force must be enlarged to ten thou- 
sand warriors, recruited among the sons of the decurions, centurions, 
and myriachs." This elite body, held to a rigorous discipline, received 
special privileges: a mere rank and file member of the bodyguard took 
precedence over a chiliarch. Every member of the force was specially 
picked by the khan himself. They justified the confidence he placed in 
them. Haranguing them one day, Chingis-khan was to cry, in the mag- 
nificent rhetoric transcribed by the Mongol bard: "Oh, my trusty guards, 
grown white in my service! It is you who, in dark nights as in starlit ones, 
in snowstorm, in driving rain or intolerable cold, have kept watch round 
my yurt with its willow wattle and let me sleep in peace! When the enemy 
prowled about us, you were there watchful around my yurt, never closing 
your eyes, at the ready at the least rustle of a quiver! Thanks to you, I 
have reached supreme power!" And he conferred on their various regi- 
ments grand titles, that, as later in the Napoleonic army, fired their pride, 
and inspired them to noble emulation. The seventy bodyguards keeping 
the day watches under Ogole-cherbi received the name "The Great Day- 
guards." The elite warriors commanded by Arqay-qasar were designated 
the "Old Braves." The archers of Yisiin-te'e and Bugiday became the 
"Great Quiver Bearers." 

This debt of gratitude to the Old Guard Chingis-khan intended should 
be binding also on his successors: "If they are true to my instructions, 
they will take as good care of you as I myself, they will hold you the 
good spirits of the Empire!" 



A 
AA 



47 



In the Siberian Tayga 



From the Khingan to the Altay, all the nomads of Upper Mongolia, 
"all those who dwell in yurts of felt," now formed but one army, under 
one flag. The great sedentary empires, in China, in Iran, were to have the 
fact sharply brought home to them. But before launching southward in 
conquest of the lands of civilization, the master of the steppes, the em- 
peror of the nomads, wanted to secure the obedience of the forest 
hunters of the far north, in the Siberian tayga. Though in part of pure 
Mongol stock, these forest dwellers led, by the very nature of their habi- 
tat, a life in many respects peculiarly their own. "They do not live, like 
the other Mongols, in felt tents," writes a Persian historian, "they keep 
no herds, but live by hunting in their immense forests, and profess a 
great contempt for the pastoral peoples. All they have for shelter are 
cabins made of branches and covered with birchbark. In winter, they 
hunt over the snow by tying boards to their feet, and holding in their 
hand a stake they drive into the snow, as a boatman plunges his pole into 
the water." 

Most considerable among these forest Mongol tribes were the Oyrats, 
who lived west of Lake Baykal, and to whom were attached the Buy- 
rats, still a flourishing people today. The country, watered by the upper 
sections of the Rivers Lena and Angara, and the latter's southern tribu- 
taries (Belaya, Oka), is, except for the grassy steppe of Balagan, but one 
immense forest, of birch, poplar, and aspen, cedar, larch, and pine, 
thickly undergrown with mosses, rhododendrons, lichens. The fauna 
numbers elk and maral stag and wild reindeer, the red wolf, and the 
furred animals, bear, sable, ermine, marten, squirrel profitable trading 
material for these hunting tribes. The Oyrats had joined in the old coali- 



174 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

tions against Chingis-khan. Nevertheless, when the latter sent his eldest 
son Jochi to subject all these forest dwellers "as far as the country of 
Sibir," the Oyrat chief Qutuqa-beki came spontaneously to offer his sub- 
mission. He agreed even to act as guide to the imperial army. Jochi came 
thus to the district of Shiqshit, where "the ten thousand Oyrats" made 
their act of vassalhood. 

Jochi then moved west, toward the country of the then Kirghiz, now 
the Tubas, Turkish tribes who lived in the region of the upper lenissei, 
between Mounts Sayan and Tannu-ula. A wild region and one that, "ex- 
cept for the undulating steppe south of the Ulu-Kem and the lower 
Kemchik, is covered with mountains, shrouded in snow from the month 
of August." Huntsman's country also, with the forests of cedar, larch, 
white pine, and birch sheltering the Wapiti stag, the musk deer, sable, 
ermine, otter, and beaver. The ancient Kirghiz, like their descendants, 
the present-day Tubas or Soyots, had since very early times domesticated 
the wild reindeer, which supplied them with clothing, as birchbark sup- 
plied covering for their huts. These Turkish forest dwellers no more 
offered to resist the army of Jochi than had their Oyrat and Buyrat 
neighbors. Their princes, Yedi-inal, Aldi'er, and Orebek-tegin, came 
proffering tribute to Jochi of white falcons, white horses, and black 
sables. Turning homeward, his mission completed, Jochi took all these 
chiefs with him. The Conqueror welcomed especially warmly the Oyrat 
chief Qutuqa-beki, who had been first to make his submission; in token 
of his gratitude he gave in marriage princesses of his house to Qutuqa's 
two sons, Inalchi and Torelchi: to the first, the Princess Checheigen, to 
the second, the Princess Qoluyqan, daughter of Prince Toluy. 1 This 
"policy of marriages" set the final seal on the submission of the forest 
dwellers to the nomad emperor. 

There was, it is true, still one tribe among these forest dwellers unsub- 
jected: the Tiimets "the twenty Tiimets" who lived perhaps in the 
wooded ranges of the Irkul among the headwaters of the Oka, perhaps 
north of the Oyrats, near where Oka and Sima meet, between the Oka 
and the Ija to the northeast of the Balagan steppe. All that is certain is 
that they dwelt in mountainous country, and in the depth of the Siberian 
tayga. "Save along the paths habitually trodden," writes Grenard, "the 
tayga is scarcely less difficult to traverse than equatorial forest. Often 
one has to take to the axe, especially where fallen trunks lie masked by 
1 It will be remembered that Toluy was the fourth son of Chingis-khan. 



In the Siberian Tayga 175 

high grass and dense thickets of yellow acacia and wild currant. No 
heights to be seen from afar beneath the coating of forest; valley and 
stream to the eye indistinguishable; no point of orientation. Tales are told 
of hunting parties lost for ever in this fearful solitary expanse." 

Chingis-khan sent out his faithful Boroqul to subject the Tiimets. 
These men of the woods were ruled by the widow of their last chief, the 
Lady Botoqi-tarqun ("the fat lady"), not, it seemed, formidable oppo- 
sition. Boroqul, unapprehensive, rode at the head of his advance party. 
One evening, as he was making his way thus in the dusk along a path, 
deep in thick forest, he was ambushed and killed. When Chingis-khan 
learned of the death of his adoptive brother, he was seized with rage. He 
wanted to set forth himself to avenge him. Bo'orchu and Muqali dis- 
suaded him, and he confided the punitive expedition to Dorbey-doqshin, 
of the tribe of the Dorbets. Dorbey took his force in most orderly array 
to the edge of the enemy tayga; there he resorted to ruse; he made as if to 
enter the paths and passes he might normally be expected to take, then 
switched his route sharply and took to what was no more than a track 
trodden by animals. With axes, his men hacked a way along it, and in 
this way he came without an alarm being given to the top of a mountain 
perhaps in the Karagasses whence through a gap in the trees he 
could see below him perhaps by the Uda, toward the present-day 
Nizhne-Udinsk the Tiimet people. The Tiimets, indeed, all unsuspect- 
ing, had gathered for a banquet. Dorbey swooped down and had no diffi- 
culty in getting the better of them. 

The coup was all the more fortunate in that the Tiimets had not 
only killed Boroqul, they had also captured the Mongol general Qorchi- 
noyan, and, as well, the Oyrat prince Qutuqa-beki, come over as we have 
seen into the service of Chingis-khan. Qorchi had indeed been taken in 
rather remarkable circumstances. It will be remembered that Chingis- 
khan had authorized him to choose himself a harem of the thirty fairest 
women of the tribes. Armed with the authorization, he had come merrily 
to exercise his right among the Tiimet maidens, but they had had other 
ideas, and the ravisher had been thrown into chains. The Mongol army, 
naturally, set him free. Chingis-khan made up to him for his captivity by 
giving him his thirty pretty Tiimet girls. Qutuqa he treated even better: 
he gave him the Tiimet queen herself, "the fat lady" Botoqi-tarqun. But 
he also sacrificed a hundred Tiimet warriors to the memory of him who 
had suffered misfortune, Boroqul. 



A 
AA 



48 



Priesthood Versus Empire: 
The Ambitions of the Grand Shaman 



Chingis-khan, having joined under his rule the pastoral nomads of the 
steppe and the forest hunters of the tayga, was lord of all Mongolia. It 
was an outcome he owed undoubtedly to his personal qualities and those 
of his followers: as the saying went later, "the Empire was founded from 
the saddle." Nevertheless and the proof is in the predictions the Mongol 
bard finds room for hi his story a contributory factor had been the 
good offices of certain of the soothsayers, or shamans, who, in the days 
before the advent of Buddhism, had so great an influence over the minds 
of the Altaic peoples. 

Among these shamans, the most influential was Kokochii, son of 
Monglik. We have seen the part played in the youth of Chingis-khan by 
Monglik, who was of the tribe of the Qongqotats. It was Monglik who 
had been charged by the dying Yesiigei to fetch back the young Temiijin 
from among the Onggirats, and who had succeeded in the task. Later, it 
is true, he appears somewhat basely to have abandoned the child, and 
rallied but tardily to the Chingiskhanid cause. But equally is it true that 
he had a second time saved the life of the Conqueror, when he prevented 
his walking blindly into a Kereit trap. Now, in virtue of his eminent 
services, he had a place of prominence in his master's council. The pres- 
tige of his family was the greater in that the fourth of his seven sons, 
Kokochii, passed for the most formidable soothsayer of the day. 

The supernatural "powers" of Kokochii were indeed considerable. 
The designation Teb-Tenggeri, "the Most Celestial," customarily coupled 
with his name, reflects the respect he was held in: was it not said that on 



The Ambitions of the Grand Shaman 177 

his dapple-grey horse he went secretly to heaven to converse face to face 
with the divinity? He had played an important part in the great assembly 
of 1206 which had sanctioned Chingis-khan's elevation to the head of 
the Mongol empire. It was he, the Persian authors tell us, who had on 
that occasion confirmed in the name of the Tengri, the "sky-god," the 
imperial title assumed by Temiijin of "Chingis-khan." It is clear that the 
Conqueror, whether out of appreciation of his service or awe of his 
magic powers, went to some pains to be tactful in his dealings with him, 
and was ready up to a point, as we shall see, to fall in with him. But this 
state of affairs was not without its disadvantages. The influential position 
the soothsayer now found himself in puffed him up with presumption. He 
assumed the right to discuss anything and everything with Chingis-khan, 
to argue points with him, in a manner overstepping all bounds. Con- 
vinced it was he who had brought about the new khan's accession, that it 
was to his incantations that the master owed the throne, he was not far 
from thinking himself his equal. Strong by virtue of having six brothers 
at his back, he became daily more overweening. 

One day, the seven brothers got together and had the audacity to beat 
up Qasar, Chingis-khan's own brother Qasar, invincible athlete, invin- 
cible archer an incident effectively demonstrating that the soothsayer's 
magic powers could intimidate even the imperial family. 1 Qasar, instead 
of taking his own revenge, came and cast himself on his knees before 
Chingis-khan to complain of his attackers: but the Conqueror displayed 
an irritation that ill concealed his embarrassment. "Were you not said to 
be invincible? And now you have let yourself be vanquished?" At such a 
welcome, tears sprang to Qasar's eyes. Without a word, he got up and 
went out. He was furious. For three days, he stayed away. 

But matters did not rest there. The wily Kokochii came to Chingis- 
khan to sow suspicion in his mind about his younger brother. "A heav- 
enly messenger came," he declared, "and, in the name of the Eternal 
Tengri, made this prophecy to me: Chingis-khan shall have the Empire. 
Then the same spirit came and spoke the same of Qasar. If you do not 
strike before Qasar, there is no knowing what may happen. . . ." 

These treacherous insinuations made a strong impression on Chingis- 
khan. Persuaded that Qasar was out to supplant him and that Heaven 

1 Qasar was so strong, according to tradition, that he could break a man in two 
like a wooden arrow. 



178 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

had sent him warning, he mounted his horse that very night, went to his 
brother and arrested him. Two faithful retainers of Qasar, 2 however, 
sped to warn mother Ho'eliin of what was happening. The latter wasted 
not a minute. That same night, she harnessed a white camel to her wagon 
and took to the road. At dawn, she drew up before Chingis-khan's yurt. 
Qasar, hands bound, stripped of hat and belt, stood before the Con- 
queror, who was harshly interrogating him as to his supposed plotting. 
At the sight of his mother, her face a fury, bursting all unexpectedly into 
his yurt, Chingis-khan was thrown completely out of countenance and 
even frightened. The old woman went straight to Qasar, untied his bonds 
with her own hands, gave him back hat and belt. Then, unable to restrain 
her indignation, she sat down on the ground, cross-legged; she tore open 
her bodice, tumbled out her withered breasts, that hung to her knees. "Be- 
hold," she cried, "the breasts that suckled you. What crime has Qasar 
committed, that you would destroy your own flesh? When you were little, 
Temujin would suckle one of my breasts, Qachi'un and Temuge would 
suckle the other, but only Qasar had the vitality to suckle both and re- 
lieve me of my milk. Temiijin's portion has been brain and ability, to 
Qasar fell strength and skill with the bow. 3 His arrows cast fear into the 
hearts of your enemies and brought them under your yoke. And now that 
all are subjected to you, you wish to see him no more!" 

She spoke, and Chingis-khan was troubled. "My mother," he con- 
fessed, "makes me afraid; I feel ashamed in front of her. Let us 
go." And unable to meet the eyes of the great dowager, he went out, 
indeed, frightened and ashamed. He left Qasar at liberty and dared take 
no other action against his person. Yet the soothsayer's calumnies never 
faded from the Conqueror's mind. Without saying anything to his 
mother, he stripped Qasar of the greater part of all he held, leaving him 
only fourteen hundred subjects. When Ho'eliin learned of it, it was an- 
other blow to the heart, and from that day, says the bard, her strength 
ebbed rapidly. 

2 Namely Giichii and one bearing the same name as the shaman, Kokochii. 

3 The skill of Qasar was proverbial. One day, Sogang-sechen recounts, Chingis- 
khan asked him to shoot a vulture. "Where do you want me to strike him?" asked 
the infallible archer. "In the head, between the yellow and black stripes," the Con- 
queror specified." Qasar let fly. The bird fell. They checked. The arrow had entered 
at that exact point. [This is a very free translation. Cf. a more precise version on 
pp. 66-7 of No. 33.] 



A 
AA 



49 



Chingis-khan Breaks the Back of the 

Grand Soothsayer 



Kokochii had, in fact, succeeded in bringing about the ruin of Chingis- 
khan's most important brother, and dividing the imperial family. Quite 
clearly, the Conqueror kept peace with him because he feared him. The 
"spiritual" power of the dangerous shaman was taking increasingly firm 
hold, and as a corollary his temporal prestige was mounting. Many were 
the subjects of Chingis-khan who joined the circle of Kokochii. Unmis- 
takable indication of the trend, even clients of Temiige-otchigin, Chingis- 
khan's youngest brother, left his service to go over to the soothsayer. 
Temiige charged one of his officers, Soqor, to go and bring back his men. 
Kokochii beat Soqor, tied a saddle on his back, and sent him back thus 
accoutered to Temiige. Next day Temiige went in person to demand resti- 
tution of his people, but the shaman and his six brothers surrounded 
him, threateningly, and forced him to go on his knees and ask their par- 
don. Then they sent him home, without, of course, handing over a single 
one of his men. 

The following morning, before Chingis-khan was up, Temiige was in 
his tent, and on his knees at the foot of the bed, telling in tears of his 
humiliation. Chingis-khan heard him in silence, still paralyzed, it would 
seem, by fear of the redoubtable soothsayer. It was his wife, Borte, who 
spurred him to action. Sitting up in bed, covering her breast with the 
bedcover, she cried to Chingis-khan: "How can this be that Kokochii and 
his brothers are free to commit such insolence? Not long ago they beat 
Qasar. Now they have forced Temiige to his knees before them! What a 
pass have we come to? You yet live, and hands dare to be raised against 



180 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

your brothers that are like pines or cypresses. What is to happen when 
your body, majestic as the trunk of a vast tree, slopes toward the tomb? 
What will become of your people that are like grass swayed by the wind, 
like a bird's song? Can you believe my poor children will then be able to 
rule? How can you look on impassive while your brother is treated 
thus?" And she broke down sobbing. 

That clear-cut picture struck Chingis-khan. The future of his dynasty 
was at stake. On the instant, his superstitious fears vanished. He was 
again the man of action, the statesman they recognized. "When Kokochu 
comes here today," he said laconicaUy to Temiige, "do as you like with 
him!" 

Temiige had no need of more explicit instructions. He left and went to 
lay his plans with three men known to be mighty wrestlers. Not long 
after, Monglik and his seven sons came to visit Chingis-khan in his yurt. 
Kokochu had scarcely sat down when Temiige had him by the collar. 
"Yesterday," he shouted at him, "you forced me to ask pardon of you. 
Now today let us see who is stronger!" And he dragged him toward the 
door. Kokochu struggled. They grappled. In the scuffle, Kokochii's cap 
rolled before the hearth. His father Monglik, divining how things would 
go, caught it up, kissed it, and thrust it in his breast. Chingis-khan or- 
dered the adversaries to leave, to go make their trial of strength else- 
where than in his presence. But the three athletes, primed by Temiige, 
were ready in front of the imperial yurt. Kokochu had scarcely stepped 
out when they fell on him, dragged him away a little, and broke his back. 
They threw the corpse in a corner, "near the wagon stand." 

Temiige, his coup carried out, returned to Chingis-khan in his yurt and 
gave a version of his own of what had happened. "I wanted to pit myself 
against Kokochu, but instead of squaring up to me, he lay down and got 
out of it. An odd way to behave!" 

Father Monglik straightway understood what had happened. He dis- 
solved into tears, with: "From the first day, oh khan, I have been your 
companion. . . ." But his six surviving sons displayed less resignation. 
They barred the door and surrounded the emperor threateningly. They 
had already dared to lay hands on him, pulling at his sleeves. Chingis- 
khan, seeing in what danger he stood, pulled violently away: "Stand off! 
Make way for me! Let me leave!" And, shaking them off, he did in fact 
get out of the yurt, calling for help. Quiver bearers and the day watch 



Chingis-khan Breaks a Back 181 

bounded forward and surrounded him, throwing a rampart around him 
with their bodies. 

Having ascertained that the soothsayer was really and truly dead, 
Chingis-khan had the body carried to a tent, the door of which was then 
shut, and likewise the ventilation opening, while guards were posted all 
around it. The third day, at dusk, the ventilation hole opened "and the 
corpse came out through it of itself," the Mongol bard affirms. 

Chingis-khan issued an official version of the miracle. "Kokochii beat 
and slandered my brothers; accordingly the Tengri, withdrawing its pro- 
tection from him, has taken his life as now his body." But with Monglik, 
the master was roundly frank. "You reared your sons ill. They wanted to 
make themselves my equals, and Kokochii has brought misfortune on 
himself. ... I should have had you all suffer the same fate as Allan, 
and Quchar, and Jamuqa!" Monglik and his six surviving sons quaked. 
Then Chingis-khan seemed to relent a little: born statesman, he was too 
much the politician to make a practice of useless executions, particularly 
of people hitherto so closely associated with his house. He had every 
intention of remembering the promises of immunity he had not long 
since made the Monglik family. His word was sacred, as he was at pains 
himself to remind the accused: "He who gives his word in the morning 
and breaks it at evening is a man without honor. Accordingly, I grant 
you your pardon, and still my rage. But if you had but known how to 
hold that violent temperament in check, who knows to what heights the 
children of father Monglik might have risen!" 

The Conqueror was free now to show clemency: the summary execu- 
tion of the shaman Kokochii had dealt Qongqotat prestige its death blow. 
They play no further part in this story. 

Freed of the dangerous Kokochii, Chingis-khan looked for a grand 
shaman who would cause him no anxiety. He found one in Usun, an 
elderly representative of the clan of the Ba'arins. "According to our tra- 
ditions," he said, "the beki [the ancient title of the grand shamans] 
takes precedence over all the dignitaries. Old Usun shall be beki! He 
shall be dressed in white, he shall ride a white horse, he shall sit in the 
place of honor, he shall be surrounded by the respect of all, and he shall 
choose for our enterprises the favorable years and position of the moon." 



A 
AA 



50 



On the Approaches to China 



Chingis-khan, having stamped out the last lingering notions of rebellion 
among the tribes, was master of the immense area that today constitutes 
Outer Mongolia. Pastoral nomads of the steppe and forest, hunters of the 
tayga, henceforth acknowledged the one master: himself; the one ban- 
ner: the tuq, the pole with nine horsetails, in which dwelt the Guardian 
Spirit of the Army. The Conqueror now took all these tribes he had 
united as one people, and hurled them against the world of China. 

China, indeed, was in truth a world comprising no less than three 
states within itself. Of these three, one only, that of Southern China, 
ruled by the national Sung. dynasty, could claim to be purely Chinese. 
Northern China was divided into two "barbarian" dominions, of unequal 
size. The greater part had been for a century in the hands of a people of 
Tunguz stock, forefathers of the modern Manchus, and hailing, in fact, 
from Manchuria. This people, the Jurchets, was ruled by a dynasty 
whose kings had taken the Chinese name of Kin, which literally trans- 
lated means "the Kings of Gold." From their capital at Peking the Kings 
of Gold reigned over the richest provinces of the Yellow River from the 
loess terraces of Shen-si and Shan-si to the alluvial Great Plain of the 
seaboard. The only regions not controlled by them in the interior were 
the March of the Northwest, since become known as Kansu, the Alashan 
steppe and the Ordos steppe in the great bend of the Yellow River, the 
last two areas forming part not, in fact, of China proper, but of what we 
should today term Inner Mongolia. Kansu, Alashan, and the Ordos 
country had fallen two centuries before to a people of Tibetan affinities, 
the Tanguts, who had founded there a kingdom more or less sinized, 
known by the Chinese name of Hsi-hsia. 



On the Approaches to China 183 

It was against this kingdom of the Tanguts, or Hsi-hsia, that Chingis- 
khan directed the first of his attacks on China. Three times, in 1205, 
1207, and 1209, he ravaged the country. 

From the upper Tula, the heart of Mongol country, to Ning-hsia, the 
Tangut capital, there runs still today a track straight north-south, clear 
across the Gobi. The Gobi, indeed, particularly at this part, has never 
constituted an obstacle. "Gravel, sand and clay there make a surface 
hard and level as a race track," wrote Grenard. "Greyish dwarf iris, 
kharmyk, budargan, chance their arm in these arid plains. Here and there, 
very thin surface layers support a scant grass that is yellow from July on 
and scarcely distinguishable in the brownish expanse. In the full light of 
day all is pallid, drained of color, enveloped in a shroud of fine dust. 
Only in the early morning, the sky has gradations, moving through 
shades of blue steadily deepening into the mist of distance; and different 
hues can be distinguished in the ochre plain, marked here and there by 
the sharp shadows of a rock, of a group of tents, of a herd of horse or 
antelope, of a caravan skirting a hill, its leader in a high hat walking 
alone out in front with a rolling gait in his great boots. These vast 
stretches are easily traversed, practicable everywhere for horses, camels, 
wagons. There are few days the traveler does not come on grass and 
water for his beasts. In the center, there is an unwatered stretch of over 
seven hundred kilometers, but it is only necessary to dig, here two or 
three feet, there six or nine, to come on underground supplies." 

Almost yearly, in autumn, "the time when the horses are fat," the 
Mongol horsemen, making their way without difficulty across these soli- 
tary expanses, came raiding the present-day Kansu. As they came on them 
fresh from the desert, the oases of the province must have appeared to 
the nomads of undreamed-of attractiveness and wealth; set in their sur- 
roundings of willow and poplar, orchards and meadows, fields of corn and 
millet. Further to the east, the Mongols made acquaintance with the Yel- 
low River, the more impressive here in that in the immense curve it de- 
scribes to enclose the Ordos steppe "it wanders in the empty expanse like 
a stranger lost in a hostile country." The Ordos plateau is, in fact, "but a 
piece of Mongolia," cut off from the rest of the steppes by the bend of 
the great river. Dunes of yellow sand and clay-salt plains; grasslands 
studded with fresh-water lakes or salt pools, bushy vegetation so many 
features already familiar to the Mongols. The Tangut capital, the pres- 



184 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

ent-day Ning-hsia, lying on the river, between the Ordos and Alashan 
steppes, is an oasis under cultivation since remote antiquity, developed 
by the Chinese and irrigated by them by means of a skillfully designed 
network of artificial canals. It was an important commercial center: 
Marco Polo speaks of its camel-hair textiles and their export. Chingis- 
khan here for the first time came up against settled civilization. Ning-hsia 
was moreover a fortress-city, Chinese style, and the nomad army, all 
horsemen, was incapable of laying proper siege to it. It had not the war 
machines. Chingis-khan in an inspiration of genius had the idea of 
taking Ning-hsia by diverting the course of the Yellow River. But, here 
again, the Mongol army had not the engineers, and his plan failed. 

The Tanguts nevertheless were at the end of their tether. The oases of 
Kansu, which were the heart of their kingdom, lived only by trade, as 
caravan stops on the great transcontinental route from China to Iran, the 
ancient Silk Road. The fighting, cutting their trade lines, was ruining 
them. The king resolved to accept Mongol suzerainty. In the same year, 
1209, he gave one of his daughters to Chingis-khan in marriage (the 
Mongols found Tangut maidens particularly attractive), and paid over a 
tribute notable for the inclusion in it of considerable numbers of camels, 
the white camels of Kansu held by Marco Polo to be the finest in Central 
Asia. 



A 
AA 



51 



Vengeance for Ancient Injuries: 
The War of Chingis-khan 
Against the King of Gold 



Chingis-khan now had suzerainty, then, over the Tangut kingdom, over 
the modern Chinese province of Kansu, that is, and the Ordos and Ala- 
shan steppes. But this whole country amounts in fact to no more than a 
border area, lying almost outside Chinese territory proper. To win a real 
foothold in China, the Mongols had to attack the Kin, the "King of 
Gold" in Peking. 

This was no small undertaking for the nomads, for the Kin kingdom, 
which comprised, with the exception of Kansu and the Ordos, the whole 
Yellow River basin, was one of the most powerful states of the period. 
Its masters, the old Jurchets, sinized as they were, yet retained on Chi- 
nese soil the warrior qualities of their ancestors, the Tunguz forest hunt- 
ers. These they could back, after a century of settlement in China, with 
all the resources of a thousand-year-old civilization. And here again, to 
an even greater extent than with the Tanguts, the nomads from Mongolia 
were to be faced with fortifications, a war of sieges for which they were 
totally unprepared. The Great Wall, moreover, with its flanking bastions, 
made, east to west, an almost unbroken defense line for the Kin king- 
dom. 

But Chingis-khan, politician even more than soldier, had in this con- 
nection assured himself of help from precious allies. North of the Great 
Wall, the steppes of what is now Inner Mongolia were inhabited by a 
Turkish people, half sedentary, half nomad, the Ongiits, of special inter- 



186 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

est for us in that they professed Nestorian Christianity. 1 Here the Mon- 
gols were doubly at ease. The country, first of all, was strangely like their 
own: "Not a tree; grassy steppe stretching to infinity, with rivers running 
to brackish lakes. Grass country, as opposed to what the Chinese call 
corn country; the traveler moves through frightening solitude, till he 
comes on ten to twenty tents with camels and ponies grazing by them in 
the hundreds, and sheep and long-haired goats in thousands." And then 
Chingis-khan had long-standing ties of friendship with the Ongiit Turks 
who had made the area theirs. Their chief, Alaqush-tegin, had in 1204 
done him most signal service by refusing to range himself against him 
with the coalition instigated by the Naymans, and by warning him of 
it. Chingis-khan had shown his gratitude by numbering Alaqush-tegin 
among the high dignitaries of his empire at the assembly at 1206. More: 
the Conqueror was to give his own daguhter Alaqa-beki in marriage to 
one of Alaqush-tegin's successors, and this was to be but the first of a 
series of such unions between the imperial Chingiskhanid house and the 
royal Ongiit one, contracted throughout the thirteenth century. 

This marriage policy secured Chingis-khan considerable advantages. 
The Ongtits, by their geographical position, by the ancient treaties that 
bound them to the King of Gold, were in the eyes of the latter guardians 
of the Chinese limes, sentinels beyond the wall. In allying them to him, 
Chingis-khan dismantled in advance the enemy defenses, and, without a 
blow struck, extended his empire to the very foot of the famous line of 
fortification. 

By 1207, his plans here were sufficiently well advanced for him to 
take a high line with the court of Peking. An ambassador had just arrived 
to advise him of the death of the reigning sovereign and the accession of 
a new King of Gold, a communication of some importance, since legally 
the Mongol khan was still vassal to the Kins. Apparently somewhat 
abstractedly, the Conqueror asked the ambassador: "Who is the new 
sovereign?" "The Prince of Wei" was the answer. "I imagined," Chingis- 
khan then cried, "the King of Gold must be an eminent personage, desig- 
nated by Heaven. How can an imbecile like the Prince of Wei perform 
such a role?" With which he spat toward the south (the direction of the 
Kin kingdom), mounted his horse and rode off, leaving the ambassadors 
dumfounded. 
1 [On Christianity in Central Asia, cf. Nos. 66 and 67.] 



Chingis-khan against the King of Gold 187 

Between the Mongols and the Kings of Gold of Peking lay a trench of 
blood, and, worse, inexpiable wrongs. No one, in the Mongol yurts, had 
forgotten the old affronts, the national khans ignominiously tortured by 
the Peking court, Khan Ambaqay, Prince Okin-barqaq, nailed or im- 
paled like common malefactors on the wooden ass. These were deaths 
that cried out for vengeance, and now that unity of the tribes was accom- 
plished, the hour was at hand for the King of Gold to suffer his exemplary 
punishment. 

In March 1211, accordingly, Chingis-khan mustered a great force in 
eastern Mongolia, on the banks of the Keriilen, to begin the attack on the 
Kins. His most distant vassals came to do him homage there, notably the 
Turkish princes of the west, Barchuq, king or iduq-qut of the Uyghurs, 
who ruled over the oases of Turfan, Qarashahr, and Kucha, and Arslan, 
king of Qarluq, from Semirechie, south of Lake Balkash. For this expe- 
dition against the King of Gold, the Conqueror prepared as for a na- 
tional war, a holy war. In this spirit he made a pilgrimage to solicit the 
aid of the Eternal Tengri on one of the sacred mountains in Mongol 
country, probably Burqan-qaldun. Observing the ritual, he uncovered, 
threw his belt on his shoulders, beat the ground three times with his 
forehead. "O Eternal Tengri, I have taken up arms to avenge the blood of 
my uncles Okin-barqaq and Ambaqay, put by the Kings of Gold to 
ignominious death. If you approve my action, lend me the succor of your 
arm, let men and spirits join here below to aid me." 

And the Great War began. The Mongol army, boasting only horse- 
men, however, and being as yet unacquainted with the skills of engineer- 
ing and incapable of mounting any systematic siege, marked time for a 
long while beneath the bastions of the Great Wall. The years 1211 and 
12 1 2 went by and they had taken only minor outposts. This was more- 
over rugged, tortuous country, descending in steps from the Gobi plateau 
to the Gulf of Pechili, but with the "descent" cut across by a series of 
ranges running southwest-northeast and ending in so many fractures, 
these ranges forming as it were the bars of a grille, the famous "grille of 
Peking." The Great Wall runs through these jagged, naked mountains, 
from the Gulf of Pechili to the YeUow River, flanked, at intervals, by a 
series of fortresses such as Hsiian-hua, northwest of Peking, and Ta- 
t'ung, in northern Shan-si. No matter for surprise, then, that, instead of 
resounding triumphs, the Conqueror chalked up here at first only plod- 



188 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

ding, hard-won minor gains. He did in fact have his victories, like that of 
February-March 1211 on Mount Ye-hu, between Peking and Kalgan. 
Nine years later the monk Ch'ang-ch'un found the ground there still 
strewn with white bones. 

All the same, the Mongol conquest was still marking time in the fron- 
tier zone when the spring of 1212 brought Chingis-khan a stroke of polit- 
ical good fortune. Before it came into the power of the Tunguz Kings of 
Gold, Peking had been for two centuries in the hands of another barbar- 
ian people, the Khitay, whom the ancestors of the Kings of Gold had 
dispossessed. These Khitay belonged to a different race: while the Kins or 
Kings of Gold were of Manchu stock, the Khitay were rather relatives of 
the Mongols. Unlike the subjects of Chingis-khan, it is true, they had, in 
three centuries of life in Chinese territory, become almost completely 
sinized. They cherished nevertheless memories of their former glory, and 
doubtless a desire for revenge on their conquerors, the Kings of Gold. 
And indeed, in the spring of 1212, one of their princes, Ye-lii Liu-ko, 
revolted against the King of Gold, gathered the people of his race, and 
came over to the Mongols. The Khitays' country of origin was in the 
region of Liao-yang, in the south of what is now Manchuria. Chingis- 
khan, quick to exploit the revolt, sent his lieutenant Jebe, "the Arrow," 
there with a task force. Jebe met with a reverse at first beneath the walls 
of Liao-yang; he pretended then to retreat, went to ground in the vicin- 
ity, returned to take the place in a surprise attack. Ye-lii Liu-ko could 
proclaim himself king of the Khitay under the suzerainty of Chingis- 
khan. 



A 
AA 



52 



The Storming of the Great Wall and 
the Descent into the Great Plain 



Genius is long patience. After two years' stubborn struggling, Chingis- 
khan at last, in the summer of 1213, brought off decisive successes. 

He had to seize control of the historic Kalgan-Peking road that runs 
from level to level, pass to pass, between Inner Mongolia and the Great 
Plain of Eastern China. In July-August 1213, Chingis-khan succeeded in 
taking the first fortress-city on this road, Hsiian-hua, that, from the pla- 
teau whipped by the "yellow wind," where it is set surrounded by vol- 
canic heights, controls the rugged, precipitous region between the outer 
works of the Great Wall and the Wall proper. Further to the southeast, 
along the same road, was the fortified town of Pau-an. Toluy, the Con- 
queror's youngest son, scaled the fortifications at the head of the attack- 
ing wave. The next town is Huai-lai. Here Chingis-khan scored a great 
victory over the Kins, and wrought such carnage among their troops that 
the ground for some ten miles around was for years still strewn with 
human bones. Southwest of Huai-lai was the entrance to the pass of Chii- 
yung-kuan or Nan-k'ou, a wild, gloomy gorge, over seventeen miles long, 
overhung by precipitous heights, and reinforced by a whole system of 
fortifications commanding the descent of the Great Wall toward Peking. 
The Kins were solidly entrenched here. The Mongol general Jebe, sent 
on with an advance guard, advanced as far as the entrance to the pass, 
then, using the old nomad tactical trick, pretended to make a hasty re- 
treat toward Hsiian-hua. As he expected, the Kins were unguarded 
enough to launch in pursuit of him. When he had lured them far enough 
from their positions, he turned about suddenly and charged them. Be- 



190 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

hind him, the whole Mongol army, commanded by Chingis-khan in per- 
son, charged too. From Huai-lai to Nan-k'ou they made a clean sweep of 
the passes, "The enemy corpses were piled up like felled trees." Chingis- 
khan came and set up his camp at Lung-hu-t'ai, "the plateau of dragons 
and tigers," at the entrance to the plain. Now there lay before him the 
Great Plain of eastern China, stretching in all its five hundred miles and 
more of cultivation from Peking to Nanking. And right beside him, 
scarcely eighteen miles off, rose the towers and palaces of the capital of 
the Kings of Gold, the present-day Peking. 

Meantime, other Mongol detachments had gained control of the two 
other access routes to Chinese territory: taking in the northeast the for- 
tress of Ku-pei-k'ou, commanding the principal pass in the descent from 
Jehol to Peking; in the northwest Ta-t'ung, military stronghold set be- 
tween the two lines of the Great Wall, and dominating and defending 
from 4,300 feet the province of Shan-si. 

At Ta-t'ung the Mongols found old friends who had suffered in their 
cause: the Ongiit princes. The Ongtit Prince Alaqush-tegin, who had 
formerly rendered such service to Chingis-khan in warning him of the 
Nayman threat, had been killed by the anti-Mongol faction. His widow 
and son had then taken refuge at Ta-t'ung. The Mongol victory released 
them, and Chingis-khan received them and overwhelmed them with fa- 
vors. He would shortly give to one of the Ongiit princes, the young Ne- 
giidei, one of his granddaughters, daughter of his fourth son, Toluy. As 
we shall see, he was also to give to another Ongiit prince his own daugh- 
ter, the wise and courageous Princess Alaqa. 

Thus the Conqueror of the World, at the very moment when he towered 
most terribly for the enemies of his people, showed the sons of friends 
fallen in his cause the most touching, paternal affection. 

The Mongol victories had had their repercussions at the court of Pe- 
king. One of the Kin generals, Hu-sha-hu, killed his master, the King of 
Gold Wei-shao, and set in his place another member of the royal family, 
who became King Hsiian-tsung (August-September 1213). Taking ad- 
vantage of the disarray caused by this revolution, Chingis-khan that au- 
tumn launched a great offensive into the heart of the Kin kingdom. He 
had divided his forces into three armies, and never was a plan of cam- 
paign so clearly conceived or more systematically executed. 

Chingis-khan, who was accompanied by his youngest son Toluy, him- 



The Storming of the Great Wall 191 

self took command of the army of the center, which was to invade the 
Great Plain. Others would have thought to take Peking by storm. With 
his sturdy common sense, he turned down the idea; the city was too 
strongly fortified and the Mongols not equipped for such a siege. He 
contented himself with masking it by a curtain of troops, and set off with 
his horsemen southward. 

Imagine the astonishment of all these nomads, herders of the steppe or 
forest trappers, at the prospect that now opened before them. Away to 
infinity, from the walls of Peking to the Yellow River, stretched the 
Great Plain with its yellow-brown fields, where, for thousands of years, 
every inch of earth had been jealously cultivated by the same race of 
patient laborers, where farms and villages gave way to farms and vil- 
lages, where fields of rice alternated with fields of millet, fields of kau- 
liang with fields of maize. Through orchard and harvest the troop of 
horses drove, burning farm and mill, trampling the crop. Barely a half- 
score of fortress-towns, strong behind their walls, held out against them. 
All the smaller towns they sacked, from Pau-ting, southwest of Peking, 
to Wei-hui, in north Honan. From Peking, the Conqueror had covered 
north to south more than three hundred miles, and he checked only be- 
cause he was coming here to the Yellow River, wide as a sea inlet, and 
impassable for his horsemen. 

But he did not limit his ride to Hopei. To the southeast, he made right 
across the fertile plain of Shantung, and took its principal city, Tsi-nan. 
At Tsi-nan the Mongol conqueror must have seen what a great Chinese 
city was in the thirteenth century, for the Shantung metropolis was al- 
ready famous for its fine spurting fountains, its lake full of giant lotuses, 
the great trees of its parks, its "Mountain of the Thousand Buddhas" 
with statues going back to the seventh century, and for the luxury silk 
manufactures that were the basis of its extensive trade. Leaving on his 
east the sacred massif of T'ai-shan, Chingis-khan drove on to Lan-shan, 
latitude 35 North, at the extreme southern limit of Shantung province, 
on the threshold of the zone of inundated land and polders, through 
which, from 1194 to 1853, the Yellow River made its way to the sea. 
There, as in Ho-pei, the government of Peking had ordered the peasants 
to take refuge in the walled towns. But the Mongols, following a cruel 
practice they were later to adopt again in Iran, set their prisoners to work 
in siege operations and with them the local rural population. They 



192 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

pushed them to the fore as they attacked the fortified towns. The be- 
leaguered defenders, recognizing their unfortunate countrymen at the 
head of the assault columns, were reluctant to use their arms. Except for 
the really impregnable fortresses, all the cities succumbed one after an- 
other. Chingis-khan returned to the Wall with vast quantities of booty in 
gold, in silver, in luxury silks, in livestock and horses, not to mention the 
sad trains of chained youths and maidens. 

While the Conqueror sacked the Great Plain, his three eldest sons, 
Jochi, Jaghatay, and Ogodei, were heading a second force, "the right 
wing," the sources term it, since the Mongols were in line facing south. 
This army went down the western strip of Ho-pei, via Pan-ting and Shun- 
to, and drove on to near Huai-k'ing, in the part of Honan north of the 
Yellow River; then crossing the last southern foothills of the T'ai-hangs, 
it mounted the vast yellow-earth plateau that constitutes the old agricul- 
tural province of Shan-si. 

The three Chingiskhanid princes thus entered the loess terraces of 
Shan-si from the southeast. They came to the basin of the Fen, the north- 
to-south course of which cuts the province in two. Moving up the longi- 
tudinal furrow of the river, they seized the principal towns strung out 
along its banks or in the vicinity: P'ing-yang, Fen-chen, and Hsin-chou. 
They also took, despite the system of fortifications and moats that had 
repelled so many assaults in the times of the old Chinese wars, the me- 
tropolis of the province, T'ai-yuan, a city wealthy indeed, as we know 
from Marco Polo and other thirteenth-century writers, as a center of 
both metallurgy and viticulture. The ease with which these places were 
captured shows the extent to which Mongol strategy had disconcerted 
the defenders. The latter had been expecting an attack from the north, 
and were taken completely by surprise when they saw the nomad horse- 
men bearing down from the south. Having sacked the towns, destroyed 
the farms, massacred the peasantry, fired the crops, the three Chingis- 
khanid princes made their way via Tai-chou and Ta-t'ung back to the 
Great Wall, to deposit their booty safely beyond the bounds of settled 
civilization, at the edge of the steppes, among their friends the Ongiits. 

Chingis-khan had entrusted a third force of horsemen to his brother 
Qasar. Setting out, likewise, from near Peking, Qasar followed the coast 
northwest along the Yung-p'ing shelf. He subjected as he passed through 
it the country between the Pass of Shan-hai-kuan and Jehol, then went to 



The Storming of the Great Wall 193 

do the same for the birthplace of the first Kings of Gold, the former 
Jiirchets, that is to say upper Manchuria, in the region of the Rivers 
Nonni and Sungari as far as the Amur. 

In April 1214, Chingis-khan brought his forces together again before 
Peking. His generals wanted to attack the city outright. More alive than 
they to the deficiencies of the Mongol poliorcetics, he disagreed. On the 
contrary, he sent a messenger to the King of Gold in Peking with a peace 
proposal: "All your provinces north of the Yellow River are in my 
hands. You have only Peking left. It is heaven who has reduced you to 
this state of impotence, but if I pressed you harder, who knows if it 
would approve? I am of a mind, then, to withdraw. Can you let me have 
the wherewithal to appease the wrath of my generals against you?" 

The unfortunate King of Gold offered anything he wanted: gold, sil- 
ver, silks the three words recur like a refrain when settled folk are seek- 
ing to appease the nomads. He offered also five hundred youths, five 
hundred young girls, three thousand horses, and, for the bed of Chingis- 
khan, a princess of the blood, Princess Ch'i-kuo. The court of Peking 
thought for the moment it had averted disaster when the Conqueror, 
having deigned to accept these presents, recrossed the Great Wall by the 
pass of Chii-yung-kuan on his way back to Mongolia. 



A 
AA 



53 



The Mongols Take Peking 



In reality the King of Gold can have had no illusions. The peace so 
dearly bought was no more than a respite. Now that the Mongols had 
learned how to force the bastions of the Great Wall, they might at any 
moment return: Peking was too near the steppe. In June 1214 he accord- 
ingly gave up residence in the city, and retired behind the barrier of the 
Yellow River, to K'ai-feng, in Honan. His departure, however, was con- 
sidered by his own subjects a desertion. On the way a part of his army 
mutinied, turned back northward, and went to place themselves at the 
disposal of the Mongols. 

Chingis-khan did not let slip such an opportunity. In March 1215 he 
dispatched his officer Muqali with orders to lay siege to Peking. Just as 
the Conqueror had been against attacking the great city the year before 
when it had its full complement of defenders, so now he scarcely hesi- 
tated to embark on its blockade once he knew dissension was afoot 
among the enemy and part of the garrison had been withdrawn. A qual- 
ity of his character comes out here. With his sturdy common sense, he 
never fails to draw the line between possible and impossible, to attempt 
only that which is strictly within his means. And this time again his judg- 
ment was sound. In a Peking abandoned by its king, the generals the 
latter had left there were now demoralized. One of them, Wan-yen Fu- 
hing, committed suicide in his despair. Another fled, taking his men with 
him. After his departure, the Mongols, led in fact by an enemy general 
who had come over to them, the deserter Ming Ngan, entered Peking 
(May 1215). 

The Peking of the Kings of Gold was far from the size of the present 
city. It corresponded only to the present "Chinese town," or "outer 



The Mongols Take Peking 195 

town," the southern sector, that is, of the Peking of today. It was never- 
theless one of the greatest metropolises of its time, with its twenty-six- 
mile enclosure, flanked by twelve gates, and its four distinct "towns" that 
the Mongols had to take separately, one after the other. Besides the pal- 
ace of the ICings of Gold, which must have stood somewhere near the 
present Temple of Heaven, there was a Summer Palace, which has been 
sited over toward the present White Pagoda (Pai-t'a), near the "upper 
lake" of the modern "Imperial City." Around this summer residence, the 
area occupied today by the Inner City (the old "Tatar town") was then 
an immense park laid out for the delight of the King of Gold. 

All this was razed. The carnage was what was to be expected. The 
Mongols set fire to the imperial palace, which burned for over a month. 
Chingis-khan, who to escape the heat of the Chinese summer had retired 
behind the Great Wall to near Lake Dolon-nor, did not even deign to 
inspect his conquest. Like all the Mongols, he had no conception of an 
urban economy, and, at least at this stage in his life, had doubtless no 
notion one might do otherwise with a conquered city than destroy it. He 
did however send three of his officers. Onggur, Arqay-qasar, and 
Shigi-qutuqu, to collect the "treasure of the Kings of Gold" gold, sil- 
ver, precious stones, luxury silks. A Kin officer, named Qada, who had 
made his peace with the Mongols in time, had charge of these riches. 
He presented himself before the three emissaries, duly armed with offer- 
ings for them of personal booty, to win their favor, in the shape of bales 
of those gold-embroidered silks that, at the end of the century, were to be 
so much admired by Marco Polo. Onggiir and Arqay allowed them- 
selves to be tempted, but Shigi-qutuqu proved incorruptible. "Before," 
he answered Qada, "all these treasures belonged to the King of Gold. 
Henceforth, they belong, like Peking itself, to Chingis-khan. How can 
you dispose of articles that are his? Do you dare to offer them to us? I 
will have none of them!" When they were back again before the Con- 
queror, the latter, who knew men, asked them point blank what Qada 
had offered them. Told what had passed, he severely reprimanded Ong- 
giir and Arqay, and rewarded Shigi-qutuqu with one of those magnificent 
encomiums he had the secret of: "You know your duty and you are 
true!" 

Chingis-khan sought fully to exploit the fall of Peking by surprising 
the King of Gold's new capital, the town of K'ai-feng, in Honan. K'ai- 



196 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

feng was shielded by the course of the Yellow River, which the Mongol 
horsemen could not so much as contemplate crossing. They bypassed it 
and attacked Honan from the west, the Shen-si side. In the winter of 
1216-17 the Mongol general Samuqa-ba'atur, moving down from Shen-si 
where he had sacked the ancient city of Hsi-ngan, "the Chinese Rome," 
came to attack the fortress of T'ung-kuan, which, set at the junction of 
the Wei with the Yellow River, south of the great elbow of the river, in a 
valley narrow as a gorge between the same river and the Hua-shan 
mountains, bars an invader's entry to Honan. Perceiving that the place 
was too strong for him, Samuqa moved a little farther south, toward the 
mountains. Eastward, the valley of the Yellow River, still as narrow as 
ever, was defended by the town of Lo-yang, our Ho-nan-fu. This Samuqa 
likewise left alone, continuing southward, through the Sung-shan moun- 
tains, whose steep heights and precipices presented great obstacles for 
his horsemen. He took, in this region, Ju-chou, south of Lo-yang, and 
came out eventually into the great agricultural plain of loess and alluvial 
soil that stretches south of K'ai-feng. The plan was well conceived and 
well executed. It failed, nevertheless, because the enemy had had time to 
mass around the town infinitely superior forces. Samuqa was only two 
and a half miles from K'ai-feng when he had to resign himself to retreat. 
By good fortune, the cold season falling early and with particular sever- 
ity that year let him cross back to the other side of the Yellow River over 
the ice, and make his way north unimpeded. 

About this time, as it happened, Chingis-khan lost interest somewhat 
in operations in China. Content to have driven the King of Gold south 
across the Yellow River, he made no further serious attempt to hunt him 
down there. Even north of the river, with the exception of the region 
around Peking that the Mongols kept a firm grip on, he tended to look 
on his Chinese possessions as little more than a kind of no-man's land, a 
zone of pillage for the troops he had left there. This attitude sprang in 
part from the Mongols' incomprehension of the urban habitat. The 
towns they captured, they then abandoned after thorough pillaging; the 
King of Gold moved in again when they had gone, and the next year they 
were back where they had started. In September 1218, Chingis-khan, 
becoming aware, doubtless, of the lack of consequence in these opera- 
tions, appointed to direct activities in China one of his best generals, 
Muqali the Jalair, conferring on him a seal of gold and the princely title 



The Mongols Take Peking 197 

of go-ong, from the Chinese kuo-wang, "king of the country." Muqali 
grasped that for such a war of sieges, Chinese style, he must adopt Chi- 
nese methods, and in the first instance recruit an infantry of Chinese 
auxiliaries, even an "artillery" of native ballistarii. Tenaciously, for five 
years, he worked at the systematic occupation of towns, and when he 
died at his task, worn out, in April 1223, he had again practically driven 
back the King of Gold within the province of Honan. 



A 
AA 



54 



Chingis-khan's Meeting with the 
Chinese Man of Letters 



The forces of Chingis-khan in Northern China had at first done little but 
destroy. They were simply steppe herdsmen or forest trappers, and civili- 
zation was something they did not know existed. But Chingis-khan had 
now just encountered civilization, in the person of a Chinese nobleman 
taken at the fall of Peking. It was an encounter to have consequences so 
important for the destiny of the Mongol empire it deserves attention. 

The nobleman was called Ye-lii Ch'u-ts'ai. 1 He was of the former 
royal house of the Khitay, kin to the Mongols, that had ruled in Peking 
in the tenth and eleventh centuries. His forbears, dispossessed in 1 122 by 
the Kings of Gold, had rallied to their conquerors and had served them 
loyally. Ye-lii Ch'u-ts'ai himself had been counselor to the last King of 
Gold. It will be remembered that Chingis-khan had shrewdly presented 
himself to the Khitay as an avenger, and that a group of them had then, 
at his call, revolted against the King of Gold. Deliberately, when Ye-lii 
Ch'u-ts'ai was brought before him, he took the same line: "The house of 
Khitay and that of the Kings of Gold have always been enemies. I have 
avenged you!" "My grandfather, my father, and I myself," came Ye-lii 
Ch'u-ts'ai's reply, "have been subjects and servants of the King of Gold. 
I should be guilty of deception if I had harbored thoughts hostile to my 
recent sovereign." We know how high a value the Mongol conqueror set 
on dynastic loyalty, even in an enemy. The answer of Ye-lii Ch'u-ts'ai 
was particularly pleasing to him. The man pleased him too, with his 

1 [For more information on this important personage cf. vol. I, pp. 9-24 of No. 13. 
Ttis was probably Grousset's source for what follows.] 



The Chinese Man of Letters 199 

height, his long beard, the impressive sound his voice had. Lastly, Ye-lii 
Ch'u-ts'ai was an accomplished astrologer. Chingis-khan attached him to 
his nomad court and was thereafter never without him. Before every 
expedition the Khitay minister had to consult the fates by examination of 
the cracks in a sheep's shoulder blades, the standard Mongol divination 
procedure. 

But Ye-lii Ch'u-ts'ai was not merely a soothsayer as commonly under- 
stood in his place and time. He was a great Chinese scholar full of wis- 
dom and humanity. He made noble use of the favor he found with 
Chingis-khan. While the other officers of the Conqueror thought only of 
pillage, he was content to appropriate from among the loot a few Chinese 
books, or medicinal drugs, with which it fell to him to save countless 
lives, in the epidemics bred from so many charnel houses. Through him, 
the influence of a centuries-old civilization began to make itself felt at the 
Chingiskhanid court. Discreetly, because he had the confidence of the 
master and used it only for good, he came to be able, as we shall see, to 
get barbarous orders retracted. He was to show the nomad conqueror 
that rather than ruining crops and massacring peasants, it would be in his 
own greater interest to obtain from them payment of a regular tax; that 
rather than destroying the urban agglomerations and looting the wealth 
that accumulated there, it would be more intelligent to preserve for the 
benefit of the empire the actual source of that wealth. The day was to 
come when he would dare to declare outright to Chingis-khan's son that 
the empire that had been "won from the saddle" could no longer be 
"ruled from the saddle." There was in him the stuff of a statesman, and it 
is to Chingis-khan's outstanding merit to have so quickly discerned and 
harkened to it: and this despite the cultural gap that yawned between the 
chief clothed in animal hides and the former counselor to the court of 
Peking. 

Alexander the Great took with him on his campaigns the philosopher 
Callisthenes, nephew and disciple of Aristotle, but he ordered his death. 
Chingis-khan, who boasted certainly none of the Macedonian's culture, 
never swerved in his affection for his Chinese literatus* 



A 
AA 



55 



On the Silk Road: The Uyghurs, 

Chingis-khan's Mentors 

in Civilization 



The empire of Chingis-khan now embraced, as well as the Mongol 
steppe zone and the wooded mountains that bordered it on the north, 
part of northern China. His attention was to turn now to central Asia. 

Central Asia, in the strict sense of the term, namely what is now Chi- 
nese Turkestan, is a region in process of "Saharification," its north a 
stony or salt-clay desert, an extension of the Gobi, its south given over to 
the immense sands of the Taklamakan. The Tarim, which runs west to 
east through the middle of these wastes, is a dying river that its tribu- 
taries now fail to join, or join only when already exhausted, and which is 
itself almost dried up by the time it comes to its indeterminate end in the 
marshes of Lobnor. But the twofold arc of the T'ien-shan mountains in 
the north, the Pamir in the west and the Altyn-tagh in the north, sur- 
round it with a zone of grassland, and even, in the case of the T'ien-shan 
and the Pamir, with forest-covered massifs. The rivers that run down 
from these ranges, before they come to peter out in the sands, in their 
upper reaches water a certain number of surprisingly fertile oases. These 
oases Turfan, Qarashahr, Kucha, and Aqsu in the north, Cherchen, 
Keriya, Khotan, and Yarkand in the south lie around the periphery in 
two arcs that meet in the west at the oasis of Kashghar. They are so 
many centers of intensive agriculture, gardened rather than cultivated, 
with maize and wheat fields, fruit trees and vines famous in history (a 
town in the neighboring region was to be called "Apple Orchard"). The 



The Uyghurs, Mentors in Civilization 201 

hard-working inhabitants, though their language since the ninth and 
tenth centuries has been Turkic, are still peasants of Indo-European 
stock, brothers to today's Persians. 

These agricultural, even market-gardening, oases were at the same 
time caravan stages of major importance for trade. Through them passed 
the ancient Silk Road that linked across the desert wastes the worlds of 
China and Iran, the Moslem world and Europe. The Alexandrian geog- 
raphers of Ptolemaic times, Chinese Buddhist pilgrims of the early Mid- 
dle Ages, Marco Polo at the end of the thirteenth century, all have left 
their descriptions of this famous road, the northern branch of which ran 
through Turfan, Qarashahr, Kucha, and Aqsu, the southern through 
Lobnor, Khotan, and Yarkand, the two meeting at Kashghar. From 
Kashghar the road ran over the passes of Alay and Transalay, north of 
Pamir, to come down again westward toward the agricultural plain of 
Ferghana, Samarkand, and Transoxania, the Moslem world. And a little 
farther to the northwest the wooded chain of the T'ien-shan, level with 
tJch-Turfan, between Aqsu and Kashghar, affords passage through its 
pine forests to another historic route, the one that leads down again to 
the Issyq-kol, "the hot lake," the waters of which, even though close by 
formidable glaciers, never freeze. Here again, another world begins, for 
west of the lake rises the River Chu, that after watering the fertile agri- 
cultural plain of Frunze, runs to ground in the "white sands" (aq-qum) 
over toward the Aral and the steppes of Sibero-Turkestan. 

Dominion over this vast region, at the beginning of Chingis-khan's 
reign, was shared by two tribes of equal interest to the historian, the 
Uyghurs and the Qara-khitays. 

The oases of the northeast Beshbaliq (Dzimsa) , Turfan, Qarashahr, 
and Kucha belonged to the Uyghur Turks, the earliest civilized of the 
peoples of Turkic race. Having taken to settled living in the ninth cen- 
tury, the Uyghurs, some of whom were Buddhist, some Nestorian Chris- 
tians, had evolved their own alphabet, based on Syriac, and later to 
serve, as we shall see, as protytype for the Mongol alphabet. They had 
made of their Turkic dialect a literary language: Uyghur literature has 
bequeathed, especially in the Buddhist domain, works of interest, some 
translated from Sanskrit. 

Thus, the Uyghurs acted for the other Turco-Mongol peoples as their 
mentors in civilization. It was to them the tribes of the northern steppes 



202 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

came for the few scholars, the few scribes, they needed for their embry- 
onic chancelleries. Over a great part of Upper Asia, Uyghur Turkic, the 
Uyghur alphabet, had become the language and script of the administra- 
tion. Chingis-khan, when he wiped out the kingdom of the Naymans in 
1204, found there, it will be remembered, an Uyghur scribe named T'a- 
t'a-t'ong-a, armed with a seal of gold. The Conqueror asked the meaning 
of this mysterious object. "Each time," answered Ta-t'a-t'ong-a, "that my 
master wished to levy silver or corn, or commission one of his subjects to 
do something, he marked his orders with this seal, to show their authen- 
ticity." In short, the Uyghur scribe was the Naymans' chancellor. Chingis- 
khan appointed him to perform the same functions in his service, and 
from that day official acts of the new Mongol empire began to be set 
down in Uyghur Turkic. Chingis-khan went further. Himself all his life 
illiterate, he insisted his four sons learn the Uyghur writing. He charged 
T'a-t'a-t'ong-a to teach them. Another scholar, Chinqay, by birth a Ke- 
reit but of Uyghur education, shared with Ta'-t'a-t'ong-a the task of or- 
ganizing the Chingiskhanid chancellery, and it was in fact "prothono- 
tary" or chancellor that he was called by western travelers. Already in 
the lifetime of the Conqueror, the nomad court had its quota of the 
"Uyghur offices" that were to assume such importance under his succes- 
sors. 

At this time the Uyghur kingdom, whose kings resided at Beshbaliq, 
that is, Dzimsa, in the northeast of the T'ien-shan, and bore the title iduq- 
qut ("Holy Majesty"), was ruled by a prince named Barchuq, evidently 
a person of astute perception. When the tribes of Mongolia united under 
the Chingiskhanid banner, Barchuq grasped at once the epoch-making 
character of the event. While others hemmed and hawed, he acted, and 
sent two messengers to bear to Chingis-khan his compliments. "It is with 
joy I have learned of the glory of my Lord Chingis-khan. The clouds 
have made way for the sun, the river is freed from the ice. Grant me your 
favor and I will dedicate my strength to you, I shall be as a fifth son to 
you!" On receiving a gracious reply from the Conqueror, the iduq-qut 
Barchuq, in the spring of 1211, betook himself to him in person. As 
token of his vassalhood he brought lavish tribute: gold, silver, precious 
stones, silks, damask, brocades, all the treasures of the ancient Silk Road 
the Uyghurs had piloted caravans over for four centuries. Chingis-khan 
was charmed with the eagerness of these overtures. He can scarcely have 



The Uyghurs, Mentors in Civilization 203 

failed to be flattered also, for, all unlettered as he was, we know the 
prestige Uyghur culture enjoyed in his nomad background. He welcomed 
his visitor with especial warmth, and promised him the hand of the Mon- 
gol Princess Al-altun. 

The two men must have parted well content with each other. Master 
of the Silk Road or at least of that road's northern section, the Uyghur 
prince had secured the goodwill of the immense nomad empire that had 
just come into being to the north, in the world of the steppe. And 
through the homage of the Uyghur, Chingis-khan had acquired control of 
that same Silk Road, axis of intercontinental relations. Let it not be 
thought the Mongol conqueror was too unsophisticated to attach impor- 
tance to such questions. What we shall see of his attitude in the affair of 
the caravans of Khwarezm shows that, on the contrary, questions of 
trade were in his eyes of capital importance. 



A 
AA 



56 



The Ride of Jebe the Arrow from 
Mongolia to the Pamirs 



The house that shared with the Uyghurs dominance of central Asia was 
that of the Qara-Khitays, the "black Khitays." 

They were a branch of those Khitays, racially related to the Mongols, 
who had ruled from 936 to 1122 in Peking, where they had been pro- 
foundly sinized. 1 The founder of the Qara-Khitays, when he was driven 
from Peking by the Kings of Gold, had come to try his fortunes west of 
the T'ien-shan (1128). Though of Chinese education, he had secured 
recognition of his authority by the Turkic peoples of the region, both 
those part "pagan," part Nestorian, part Islamized, of the "Country of 
the Seven Rivers," our Semirechie or Jeti-su, and those, almost all Mos- 
lem, of Kashghar, Yarkand, and Khotan. The Qara-Khitay empire thus 
founded had lasted from about 1128 to 1211. Its sovereigns bore the 
imperial title gur-khan, and their capital was the city of Balasaghun on 
the Chu, near the present-day Frunze. 

But about the lime Chingis-khan embarked on his conquest of North 
China, the Qara-Khitay empire had suffered a catastrophic upheaval. Its 
last sovereign, Ye-lii Che-lu-ku, had in 1208 given asylum to the famous 
Kuchllig, heir to the Nayman throne, driven out, as we have seen, by the 
Mongols. Not only did he receive the exile, he made him his son-in-law. 
He was ill repaid. Kuchlug, in 121 1, revolted against him, took him pris- 
oner, and seized power, then the throne. Now this wild Turk, descendant 

1 [The Khitays ruled over China under the dynastic title Liao, and gave to China its 
medieval name "Cathay." For further information on the history of this very in- 
teresting word cf. pp. 216-9 of No. 18.] 



The Ride o] Jebe the Arrow 205 

of the nomads of the Altay, had none of the qualities required to rule the 
already largely settled Turks of Issyq-kol, the peaceable agricultural 
population of Kashghar. To force the Kashgharian oases to accept his 
authority, he systematically, for two or three years, had his horsemen lay 
waste the harvest. Half shamanist, half Nestorian, as was commonly the 
case with the Naymans, and having thereto added marriage to a Bud- 
dhist Qara-Khitay princess, he took it into his head to persecute Islam, 
the majority religion in the country. He went so far as to crucify the chief 
of the imams of Khotan. Thus far had he alienated the sympathies of his 
subjects, when he went to war with the terrible Mongols. 

The war was moreover at his instigation. 

Among former vassals of the Qara-Khitay empire were two Turkic 
chiefs, Arslan ("the Lion"), king of the Qarluq, who inhabited the 
"Country of the Seven Rivers," and Buzar, king of Almaliq ("the Apple 
Orchard"), near what is now Khuldja, on the upper Hi. In 1211 these 
two princes, sensing the way the wind was blowing, had, like their neigh- 
bors the Uyghurs, transferred their homage to Chingis-khan. The appear- 
ance, to the north of Semirechie, of a Mongol division under "the great 
warrior Qubilay" had been the last spur required to effect Arslan's con- 
version: there and then, he had gone with Qubilay to Chingis-khan to 
make his act of allegiance. Buzar sent his son. Kuchliig would have been 
wise to turn a blind eye to these defections, to let Chingis-khan forget 
him. But he nursed an implacable hatred for the Mongols. He had for- 
gotten neither his father killed at the battle of Mount Naqu nor the par- 
tial massacre of his people. It was the king of Almaliq, Buzar, he at- 
tacked first. Taking him by surprise as he was hunting, he had him put to 
death, but he could not take Almaliq. Buzar's widow effectively defended 
it, and their son Suqnaq-tegin went for aid to Chingis-khan. 2 

Chingis-khan, in 1211, had certainly not viewed with any favorable 
eye the passing of the former Qara-Khitay empire, the greater part of 
eastern Turkestan, into the hands of the last of the Nayman princes, son 
of an enemy race, himself a personal enemy of the Conqueror. The mur- 
der of the prince of Almaliq was a last straw, and precipitated Kiichliig's 
chastisement. 

Chingis-khan entrusted vengeance to the speediest of his generals, 

2 This Suqnaq-tegin was later to marry a granddaughter of Chingis-khan, the 
daughter of his eldest son Jochi. 



206 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

whom he had himself surnamed Jebe, "the Arrow." This was in 1218. 
What route did Jebe take? What direction did he attack from? We do not 
even know where Kiichliig may have been as he awaited the final blow. It 
seems, however, that the Mongol horse made their way into Kiichliig's 
country from that of the Uyghurs through the T'ien-chan. Farther west, 
they could make use of Almaliq as a base, near the present-day Khuldja, 
on the upper Ili. In this prosperous "Apple Orchard," with Chingis-khan's 
loyal adherent King Suqnaq-tegin, they could recoup their strength at 
ease. From there, the Mongols had only to go down the valley of the Ili 
which widened out before them, an immense undulating plain, "mingling 
hummocks of sand with the verdure of reeds, grasses, and elm woods," 
and they were in the Land of the Seven Rivers, Jeti-su or Semirechie, the 
loess fields of which, wherever they are irrigated, yield an abundance of 
cereals, linen, flax, and early fruits and vegetables. The inhabitants, ter- 
rorized by Kiichliig, seem to have welcomed these terrible Mongols, else- 
where dreaded as a scourge from heaven, here greeted as liberators. 
Things went apparently the same way even west of Issyq-kol, where 
Balasaghun, capital of the former Qara-Khitay gur-khans, opened its 
gates without demur. The Mongols, charmed by the fruitfulness of the 
district, named it Go-baligh, "the pretty town." 

And Kiichliig? Having so long provoked the Mongols, at their arrival 
he had taken flight. Dismayed by the invasion, he did not even attempt to 
defend Kashghar where the population, Moslem to a man, was intrinsi- 
cally hostile to him, but plunged behind Kashghar into the mountains, in 
the direction of the 26,000-foot-high Mustagh massif, that dominates the 
approaches to the Pamirs. It was indeed in the Pamirs, on the "Roof of the 
World," that he thought to take refuge. But the Mongol horsemen, hot in 
pursuit of him, trailed him like a hunted animal. Among the precipices 
and sheer passes, in the silence of the alpine grass and the rarefied air of 
the high plateau, at the foot of the giant glaciers, the fantastic chase was 
played to its finish. The hunted prince had reached the high valley of 
Sary-kol, 10,000 feet up, when the Mongol vanguard overtook and be- 
headed him. 

The main body of Mongol horsemen must have entered Kashghar just 
after Kiichliig had fled the town. Cleverly, Jebe, adopting exactly the re- 
verse policy to Kiichliig's, forbade all pillage, an order that thanks to the 
strict Mongol discipline was obeyed absolutely. He did more. He put an 



The Ride of Jebe the Arrow 207 

end to the measures of persecution against Islam, and formally author- 
ized practice of the religion. The inhabitants, the vast majority of them 
here in Kashghar, as in Yarkand and Khotan, Moselms, here likewise 
welcomed the Mongols as liberators. Rallying to them, the Kashghari 
peasants slaughtered the soldiers of Kuchliig who had taken refuge in 
their houses. 

In a matter of weeks, Jebe had conquered the whole former Qara- 
Khitay empire, all eastern Turkestan. Chingis-khan feared lest his officer, 
inflated by such success, should have thoughts of secession. In his first 
message to him he warned him not to succumb to the pride that had been 
the ruin successively of the Kereit Ong-khan, the Nayman Tayang, and, 
now, Kuchliig. He did not know Jebe. The latter's loyalty to his master 
was unshakable. It was not carving out a kingdom for himself he was 
concerned with. It was something quite different, redeeming an injury he 
had once done Chingis-khan. It will be remembered that in the days 
before he had joined him, he had with an arrow struck down one of the 
Conqueror's horses, a magnificent brown animal with a white muzzle, of 
which the master had been especially fond. Chingis-khan had borne him 
no grudge, for he had raised his former foe to be commander of his 
army. But Jebe was still full of remorse, and, when he had subjected 
eastern Turkestan, he hastened to requisition a thousand horses with 
white muzzles, just like the one he had brought down, "to offer them to 
the Emperor." 



A 
AA 



57 



The Massacre of the Caravan 



To the west of Semirechie and Kashgharia, now part of the Chingis- 
khanid domain, began a new world and a new civilization, the Moslem 
world, the Arabo-Persian civilization. The Mongol conqueror was now 
the neighbor of the empire of the shahs or sultans of Khwarezm. 

This empire, which had been formed by a Turkish Moslem dynasty, 
originating from the former Khwarezm, today the country of Khiwa, 
south of the Aral sea, took in our Russian Turkestan, the greater part of 
our Afghanistan, and our Iran. It was an empire, in fact, of fairly recent 
date: the then ruling sovereign, the Sultan Mohammed (1200-20) had 
barely completed his last conquests when he came into conflict with the 
Mongols. 

Chingis-khan had always wished to maintain good relations with the 
Khwarezmians. In 1216, receiving near Peking an ambassador from Sul- 
tan Mohammed, he had declared his conviction that the Mongol empire 
and the Khwarezmian, having quite distinct spheres of action the one 
in eastern, the other in western, Asia should live in peace and foster 
commercial exchange between them. But the subjects of the sultan, the 
rich merchants of Bukhara and Samarkand, considered the Mongols bar- 
barians and made no secret of the fact. Three of these merchants came 
to Mongolia with a caravan laden with silks and cottons. One of them, 
brought to Chingis-khan, asked for the materials a price so clearly exor- 
bitant that the Conqueror realized the trader thought to make a monkey 
of an ignorant barbarian. "Lo," he cried, "the man thinks we have never 
seen anything so beautiful!" He first undeceived his visitor by having 
brought forth for him to see the marvelous Chinese stuffs received as 
tribute from the King of Gold. After which he let the good man be de- 



The Massacre of the Caravan 209 

spoiled of all his merchandise. The two other caravaneers, now more cir- 
cumspect, declined to set a price on their materials themselves: they en- 
trusted this to the khan's generosity. The latter indeed made them gener- 
ous payment, and the first of the three as well. He had "new tents of 
white felt" put up for their use, and entertained them particularly well. 

At the same time, Chingis-khan, in response to the Khwarezm sultan's 
embassy, sent to him three envoys whom he took care to choose from 
among Khwarezmian subjects in Mongolia: Mahmud of Khwarezm, 'Ali- 
Khoja of Bukhara, and Yusuf Kanka of Otrar. Among the presents they 
were charged to deliver to the sultan were an enormous gold nugget, gold 
ingots, objects of jade, ivory, and lengths of immensely valuable "wool" 
spun from the hair of white camels. The Sultan Mohammed received this 
embassy in the spring of 1218, probably at Bukhara. 

A frankly pacific message accompanied the gifts: "I know your power 
and the vast extent of your empire," the Mongol emperor sent word to 
the master of Transoxania and Iran. "I have the greatest desire to live in 
peace with you. I shall look on you as my son. For your part, you are not 
unaware that I have conquered North China and subjected all the tribes 
of the north. You know that my country is an ant heap of warriors, a 
mine of silver, and that I have no need to covet other dominions. We 
have an equal interest in fostering trade between our subjects." 

Sultan Mohammed found himself in a quandary. By calling him his 
son, Chingis-khan classed him outright as his vassal. On the other hand, 
the conquests of the Mongol frightened the Moslem prince. One night, he 
sent secretly for one of Chingis-khan's envoys, Mahmud, whom he 
knew to be Khwarezmian-born, and taking off a bracelet of precious 
stone and presenting it to him, adjured him to speak the truth: "Tam- 
ghach [North China], is it true that the khan has conquered it?" And 
again: "This reprobate who dares to call me son, who is he, what are the 
numbers of his troops?" His alarm grew visibly. For the moment, he 
judged it wise to send back Chingis-khan's three envoys with friendly 
answers. 

Shortly after, Chingis-khan decided to take active steps to implement 
the program he had held out, and to send out to the Khwarezmian 
empire a great trading caravan, with, we are told, five hundred camels, 
laden with treasures of all kinds: gold, silver, Chinese silk, camel-hair 
materials, furs of beaver and sable. Those in charge of the caravan had 



210 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

been chosen, again, from among Moslem residents: 'Omar-Khoja of 
Otrar, Hammal of Maragha, Fakhr ed-Din Dizaki of Bukhara, etc. 
Chingis-khan sent with them a personal representative, a Mongol named 
Uquna. He had further required each of the princes of his family, tlu 
nobles (noyats), and the military chiefs to send with the caravan an 
agent, carrying cash with which to purchase Khwarezmian luxury prod- 
ucts. His desire to intensify trade between eastern Asia and the Moslem 
world is patent. 

The great caravan moved without incident across Upper Asia. It 
reached the Khwarezmian frontier at Otrar, on the mid-Sir-darya. There, 
the Khwarezmian governor Inalchiq Qadir-khan seized it: the treasures 
were looted and all who traveled with them about a hundred people, at 
least were put to death, including Uquna, Chingis-khan's personal rep- 
resentative. 

Chingis-khan was angry. He had sincerely wished to establish peaceful 
relations, ties of steady trade, with the Moslem world, and this was the 
response! He was cut so deep he could not hold back his tears. We have 
seen how high a value he set on correctness in political dealings, on 
faithfulness to alliances and pacts as on faithfulness to a leader. And 
now his caravaneers, Ms ambassador, had been massacred in contempt 
of all law between peoples. It was he, the nomad clad in felt and animal 
hides, who found himself the defender of sworn faith, of respect for trad- 
ing agreements, and the representatives of Turko-Persian civilization, of 
Islamic society, who behaved as barbarians. Once more, as on the eve of 
the campaign against the King of Gold, as before every grave decision 
of his career, he mounted one of the Mongol holy mountains, bared his 
head, threw his belt on his shoulders, and nine times beat his forehead 
before the Eternal Heaven, before the Mongke Tengri, supreme god of 
the nomads, to implore strength to avenge the wrong done him. And 
indeed his earlier goodwill, his desire for economic collaboration with 
the Khwarezmians, were to turn to relentless hate. 

But and it illustrates his self-control whatever his anger, he wished 
to have right completely and unanswerably on his side. Possibly the gov- 
ernor of Otrar had acted unknown to his master? Chingis-khan sent one 
more embassy then to the sultan of Khwarezm, consisting of a Moslem, 
Ibn-Kafraj Boghra, and two Mongols, with an offer of peace if he would 
consent to hand over the culprit, Inalchiq. Not only did the sultan refuse 



The Massacre of the Caravan 211 

to make the extradition, but he had Ibn-Kafraj put to death and no 
lesser affront sent the other two envoys back with their heads shaved. 

The die was cast. The Mongol world and the Moslem world the two 
halves of Asia were now at war. 

Whatever atrocities the Mongols subsequently committed in the 
course of this war, be it not forgotten it was righteous anger that sparked 
in Chingis-khan's heart at the massacre of his caravaneers and the unpro- 
voked murder of his ambassador. 



A 
AA 



58 

Before the Great War: 
Chingis-khan's Testament 



With the Khwarezm campaign there opens a new phase in the life of the 
Conqueror. Hitherto he had scarcely gone beyond his native Mongolia, 
for the Peking region where he had done battle is but an extension of the 
Mongol steppe. Now, as he crossed into the territory of Islam, he was 
stepping into a world unknown. The power of the sultans of Khwarezm, 
masters of Turkestan, of Afghanistan, and of Persia, appeared formi- 
dable, and, in fact, their armies were undoubtedly numerically superior to 
Chingis-khan's. 

A kind of uneasiness, that the Mongol bard communicates to us, was 
ill concealed even in the Conqueror's immediate entourage. The fair 
Yisiii, one of his favorite wives, made herself the mouthpiece of the gen- 
eral disquiet. With the frankness only a favorite can permit herself, she 
pointed out to him the need to settle before they set out the question of 
the succession. "The khan is going out to cross by lofty passes great 
mountain ranges, he will cross vast rivers, he will lead far-flung expedi- 
tions, he will decide the destinies of many peoples. But every creature is 
mortal, every being short-lived. If your body, like to a great tree, one day 
leans toward the earth, what will become of your peoples, like to hemp 
stems or bird flight? Of your four noble sons, which do you appoint your 
heir? This question that I ask you, your sons, your brothers, your sub- 
jects are asking themselves also. We need to know your will. . . ." 

These words made Chingis-khan thoughtful. Far from being angry, he 
was appreciative of Yisiii's courage: "You are only a woman, and you 
have just spoken wise words to me, words that neither my brothers, nor 



Chingis-khan 3 s Testament 213 

my sons, nor Bo'orchu nor Muqali have ever dared say to me. Yes, I was 
omitting to think about that, as if I myself had succeeded peacefully to 
my predecessors, or as if I were never going to die. . . ." And there and 
then he turned questioningly to his eldest son Jochi: "You are the eldest. 
It is for you to speak!" But Jochi kept silence, or rather, before he could 
open his mouth, his brother Jaghatay, who hated him, broke in to bring 
brutally into the open what everyone there was doubtless thinking: "You 
turn to Jochi," he cried at his father; "is it he you want to name as your 
successor?" And, not mincing his words, he reminded him that Jochi's 
birth was more than doubtful. Was Jochi son of Chingis-khan or of the 
Merkit warrior who had carried off his mother? "He is simply a bastard 
picked up in Merkit country. Should we let him take the throne?" Jochi, 
bounding up at the insult, seized him by the collar. "Our father," he 
shouted, "has never made any difference between us, and you, you dare 
to treat me thus! By what right? What qualities have you, what have you 
ever done, that would make you superior to me? You are superior only 
in your unlikability and stunted mind!" And he challenged him to a kind 
of trial before God. "If you beat me with the bow, I will cut off my 
thumb. If you beat me wrestling, I will not rise from where I have fallen! 
But let our father decide: it is for us only to obey." 

Squaring up to each other, they were already half at grips. Bo'orchu 
and Muqali rushed in and separated them. Chingis-khan preserved a bit- 
ter silence. Kokochii, one of the old servants of the Conqueror, finally 
found the right words: "Why this violence, oh Jaghatay? Before you 
were born, the Mongol world was all trouble, everywhere there was war 
between tribes, no one dared take his rest, each made off with what was 
his neighbor's, the world was in turmoil, rape and murder were on every 
side." An only too realistic picture of the anarchy that had reigned 
among the Mongols before the establishment of Chingiskhanid order, 
an anarchy sufficient to permit the empress Borte's abduction by the 
Merkits. Speaking of Borte, the old warrior found moving words to 
touch Jaghatay and his brothers: he recalled "the heart, tender as butter, 
of their saintly mother, her soul pure as milk." "Are you not all issued 
from her entrails, have you forgotten the warmth of her breast? In speak- 
ing as you do, Jaghatay, you smirch the honor of your mother, you revile 
and slander her!" And he recalled the years of hardship: "In that time 
your father founded the Empire. He shed his blood in streams. For pil- 



214 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

low he had his sleeve. He had his saliva to quench his thirst, his gums to 
appease his hunger, and in Ms daily struggles sweat streamed from his 
brow to the soles of his feet. Your mother shared his trials. She denied 
her own mouth food to feed you. Carrying you round her neck, she had 
but one thought: to make you men, Such she was, who reared you till 
you reached the soldiers' shoulders and the horses' croup. Our saintly 
empress, her heart is pure as the sun and like a lake!" 

Chingis-khan, emerging finally from his silence, called Jaghatay to or- 
der: "How can you speak thus of your brother Jochi? Is he not the eldest 
of my sons? In the future I forbid you to speak such words!" At the 
paternal reprimand, Jaghatay retracted: "Jochi and I," he said to his 
father, "are your two eldest sons. Together we will prove our devotion to 
you. That one of us who fails his duty, may the other cut him down with 
an ax! If one of us is tardy, may the other split his heels!" And to solve 
the impasse, he proposed that he and Jochi should alike stand down in 
favor of their brother Ogodei third of Chingis-khan' s sons known for 
his good sense and generosity: "He is a youth of deliberation, we would 
gladly obey him.. Let him stay close to your side to learn how to be 
khan." 

Jochi supported the suggestion, notwithstanding its transference of the 
right of seniority from himself to the younger Ogodei. The uncertainty 
that still hung about his birth made it difficult for him to take any other 
attitude. For the rest Chmgis-khan, with his forthright good sense, was 
anxious to forestall any future disagreement between the brothers. "You 
should not live side by side. The motherland is vast, rivers and streams 
many. I will divide up the Empire in such a way that you have each your 
separate governments, and, for your tribes, clearly marked ofi grazing 
grounds." 

Then Chingis-khan gave the floor to Ogodei, who had just heard him- 
self named heir-presumptive. Ogodei was in fact the son he liked best, 
and the one, too, who most resembled him. He had the soundness, the 
sturdy good sense of his father, with less genius, doubtless, and, in com- 
pensation, more bonhomie, an easy temper, a childlike generosity with 
which a penchant for drinking (but this was a vice common to all the 
Mongols) was not perhaps entirely unconnected. He answered simply 
that since he could not refuse the honor offered him, he would do his best 
to justify it by his zeal. Toluy, youngest of the Conqueror's four sons, 



Chingis-khan's Testament 215 

promised in his turn always loyally to support Ogodei: "If he forgets 
something, I shall be there to remind him; if he falls asleep, I shall wake 
him. I shall be like the whip of his horse. In long campaigns as in sudden 
scrimmage, I shall fight at his side!" 

These problems of succession settled, and all eventualities thus pro- 
vided for in case of misfortune, Chingis-khan set forth to conquer the 
Moslem empire. 



A 
AA 



59 



In Moslem Country 



The Mongol army mustered in the summer of 1219 on the southern 
slope of the Altay, near the sources of the Irtysh and the Urungu. A 
grandiose setting, well befitting the human tempest gathering there. To 
the north, the jagged, sharp-peaked barrier of the Altay, covered, from 
3,300 to 8,000 feet, in splendid forest, mingling Siberian larch and Pien- 
chan pine, to say nothing of cedar, aspen, poplar, and willow. Below this, 
the lush pasturage grazed over today by Torghut herds. Running down 
from the Altay, rushing, waterfall-broken streams "cast their dark blue 
waters amid the damp green of forests and fields." Of them is born the 
Irtysh, its deep, limpid waters making at once westward, toward Siberia. 
Farther south, the Urungu runs a parallel course, albeit one taking it 
soon, with its bordering willow clumps, into a zone of hills bare of vege- 
tation, heralding the desert of Dzungaria. From here, taking the valley of 
the Emil, at the foot of the Tarbagatay, then the "gate of Dzungaria" 
between the Balyk and the Dzungar Ala-tau, the Mongol army moved 
down into the low-lying plain of Semirechie or Jeti-su, "the Country of 
the Seven Rivers." 

This was territory of the Qarluq Turks, whose king, it will be remem- 
bered, was Chingis-khan's vassal. When the Mongol army came to Qaya- 
lik, an area between what are now the towns of Lepsinsk and Kopal, it 
was joined by Arslan, Also to Qayalik came two other of the Mongol 
emperor's vassals, the iduq-qut Barchuq, king of the Uyghurs, bringing 
with him from the region of Turfan a contingent of ten thousand men, 
and Suqnaq-tegin, prince of Almaliq, near present-day Khuldja. The Mon- 
gol army must have numbered at this point between a hundred and fifty 
and two hundred thousand men. Chingis-khan had left behind in Mongo- 



In Moslem Country 217 

lia, as "keeper of the hearth," his youngest brother, Temiige. Foreseeing 
a long absence, he had brought with him, to charm away the vexations of 
the campaign, one of his second wives, the fair Qulan. The reconnais- 
sance forces were entrusted to generals whose worth had been proven in 
the recent wars: Jebe, "the Arrow," led the foremost advance guard, 
followed, at intervals, by Siibotei and then Toquchar. 

In the face of the Mongol threat, the Sultan Mohammed, not knowing 
where the attack would be made, had apportioned the main part of his 
army among the principal fortresses covering his frontiers in the north, 
along the line of the Sir-darya, and east, toward the Ferghana gap. The 
rest was distributed among the garrisons of Transoxania, such as Bu- 
khara and Samarkand, or of Khwarezm proper, such as Urgenj near 
Khiwa. The effect of this dispersion was to let the Khwarezmian army, 
over-all numerically superior, be outnumbered at any given point. 

The Sir-darya, the course of which formed the Khwarezmian empire's 
northern boundary, is a great river more than 1,750 miles long, carrying, 
below Khojend, when the water is low, from November to March, 
13*630 cubic feet, and when it is high, in about June, 47,420 cubic feet. 
After it leaves what is now the town of Turkestan, it turns into a real 
desert river, with the desert already bordering it on the southern bank 
from there on lying on both sides. It was just about here that in the 
autumn of 1219 Chingis-khan made his attack. Coming from Semi- 
rechie, he must have ridden between the Alexander and the Qara-tau 
mountains, through the pass of Aulie-Ata; he appeared with all his army 
before the town of Otrar, on the northern bank of the river, some fifty 
miles to the south of the present Turkestan. He left there a division com- 
manded by two of his own sons, Jaghatay and Ogodei, supported by the 
iduq-qut Barchuq, king of the Uyghurs. Otrar was only to be taken after 
long siege, for the governor was still the same Inalchiq who the year 
before had slaughtered the caravan sent by Chingis-khan; knowing he 
could expect no mercy, he put up the defense of despair. When the town 
fell, he held out another month in the citadel "Borne down upon from 
all sides, he retreated to a terraced roof, followed by two soldiers he soon 
saw die at his side. Out of arrows, he went on hurling bricks that the 
women handed him from the tops of the walls. At last, overwhelmed by 
numbers, after fighting like a maniac, he was taken, bound, and led be- 
fore Chingis-khan. In vengeance for the death of the men of the caravan 



218 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

who had died victims of his cupidity, the Conqueror ordered molten sil- 
ver to be poured into his eyes and ears." 

A second Mongol division, under Prince Jochi, Chingis-khan's eldest 
son, descended the left bank of the Sir-darya and camped before Sigh- 
naq, opposite the present-day Turkestan. Jochi sent the Moslem Hasan- 
haji with an invitation to the townspeople to open their gates. Without 
waiting to hear the message, the inhabitants, calling on the name of 
Allah, put him to death. Jochi at once gave the order to attack, and to 
press on regardless until the place was taken. "Fresh troops relieved 
those who were tired. After seven days' daily onslaught the Mongols 
entered Sighnaq and slaughtered all the inhabitants." Pushing on, Jochi 
appeared before Jend, near what is now Perovsk. "The inhabitants 
trusted to the height of their walls, but soon their confidence gave way to 
consternation. The Mongols, setting up their ladders, scaled the walls 
and entered the town on all sides." As the inhabitants of Jend had not 
defended themselves, Jochi spared their lives, but he forced them to let 
their town be pillaged for seven days. He left there as governor a Moslem 
caravaneer who had been taken into his father's service, 'Ali-Khoja of 
Bukhara. 

While Chingis-khan's eldest son was thus bringing to heel the commu- 
nities of the lower Sir-darya, a Mongol detachment of five thousand men, 
under Alaq-noyan, Siiketii-cherbi, and Taqay, was pushing into the upper 
part of the river valley, and attacking Benaket, west of Tashkent. This 
town was defended by Turkish mercenaries, of the Qanqli tribe, who 
after three days asked to surrender. "The Mongol commander promised 
them their lives, but when they had given themselves up and the Benaket 
population had been driven from the town, the mercenaries were segre- 
gated from the citizens and killed by saber or arrow. The craftsmen were 
then apportioned among the Mongol companies, and young men carried 
off en masse to be used in the siege of other towns." 

Continuing up the Sir-darya valley, this division appeared before 
Khojend, at the gates of Ferghana. The governor, one of the most fa- 
mous of the Turkish paladins of the time, Timur-melik, "the Iron King," 
withdrew with a thousand picked men into a fortress in the middle of the 
river. Faced with this determination, the besiegers sent for a reinforce- 
ment of twenty thousand Mongols and fifty thousand prisoners. "The 
latter, divided up into squads and companies and commanded by Mon- 



In Moslem Country 219 

gol officers, were set to bring stones from a mountain twelve miles away 
and cast them in the river. On his side, Timur-melik had had built twelve 
great boats with decks (the Sir-darya at Khojend is 450 feet across). 
Each day, several of these boats made toward the shores and riddled the 
besieging army with arrows." At last, at the end of his resources, Timur- 
melik managed to escape with his followers in his fleet down the Sir- 
darya, breaking a chain thrown across the river at Benaket. Farther 
down, however, by lend, Prince Jochi had barred the way again, this 
tune with a pontoon bridge. Before he reached this block, the Iron King 
landed on the left bank, and made off at full gallop across the Red Sands 
(Qyzil-qum) , where attempts to catch him failed. 

The episode proves the Khwarezmian armies had no lack of valor. But 
they were badly commanded, and, as already pointed out, their dispersal 
among the different strong points condemned them in advance. 



A 
AA 



60 



The Wind of Anger and the 
Taking of Bukhara 



Meantime Chingis-khan was active. While his sons and officers were tak- 
ing one after another the towns on the Sir-darya, he, with his youngest 
son Toluy and the main body of the army, had driven from Otrar toward 
the valley of the Zerafshan that is the heart of ancient Transoxania. 
Moving along the southeast of the Red Sands, the Mongol advance 
guard, under Dayir-ba'atur, reached the small town of Nur-Ata. They 
came at night. The Mongols crossed the gardens that surrounded the 
place, and in the morning were there before the town. The inhabitants 
were so far from suspecting their approach they took their patrols for a 
friendly caravan. Without a hope of defending themselves, they opened 
their gates to Subotei. "They came out themselves, bringing only their 
agricultural tools and their livestock, after which the Mongols pillaged 
the houses. Beyond this, Chingis-khan was satisfied with a payment of 
1,500 dinars, a sum equivalent to the usual tax payment under the 
Khwarezmian regime." In February 1220 Chingis-khan came to Bu- 
khara. 

This was one of the great cities of Islam. It had three parts: the cita- 
del, nearly a mile around, the city proper, or shahristan, and the suburb 
or rabad. Contrary to the arrangement in most of the other towns, the 
citadel lay not inside the city, but outside. The city, built on a raised 
section, in the center of the present town, was enclosed by a wall which 
had seven gates, evocatively named Gate of the Bazaar, Gate of the 
Spice Merchant, Gate of Iron, etc. Famous mosques drew the faithful: the 
cathedral mosque, rebuilt in 1121, the Friday mosque, likewise a century 



The Taking oj Bukhara 221 

old, the mosque of the Syrians. The suburb itself was surrounded by a 
second wall, with eleven gates. The principal streets of the town were 
paved with stone, in Islamic country a highly distinctive feature. Numer- 
ous ariqs or derivation canals led off from the Zerafshan served the town 
and its outskirts. The chief of these was known, very aptly in this dry 
country, as Rud-i-zar, "the River Bearer of Gold." An expertly main- 
tained system of locks and reservoirs effected distribution of the water. 
On the outskirts, the canals irrigated innumerable gardens with a profu- 
sion of pleasure pavilions that testified to the wealth of the oasis. This 
wealth derived largely from flourishing industry, notably from the fa- 
mous "Bukhara carpets." Between the citadel and the Friday mosque 
was a great textile factory (kargah), the products of which were ex- 
ported as far away as Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor. The Bukhara ba- 
zaars were equally famous for their copper goods, notably their fine 
lamps. 

When Chingis-khan arrived there, the garrison of Bukhara numbered 
between 20,000 and 30,000 Turkish mercenaries. The Conqueror in- 
vested the town completely, then attacked it without pause for three 
days. According to their usual practice, the Mongols pushed to the fore- 
front of the attacking ranks captives they had taken among the popula- 
tion round about. The third day, the chiefs of the Turkish garrison, 
among them a certain Inanch-khan Ogul, losing confidence, agreed to 
make a general sortie during the night, to force the blockade and escape. 
Their plan almost succeeded, but the Mongols recovered themselves, 
made off after them, and caught up with them on the banks of the Sir- 
darya: most of the escapers were killed. 

Abandoned by their defenders, the townspeople decided on surrender. 
A deputation of imams and prominent citizens came to bring Chingis- 
khan the town's capitulation. The Mongols entered Bukhara between the 
tenth and sixteenth of February 1220. Four hundred Turkish horsemen 
still held out in the citadel. "The Mongols proclaimed that all the inhab- 
itants of Bukhara capable of bearing arms should present themselves on 
pain of death to fill in the moats of the citadel. . . . Then they set up 
catapults. When these machines had made breaches in the wall, the 
Mongols went into the fortress and left not a man alive." 

After the taking of the citadel, the inhabitants were told to leave the 
town taking nothing with them but the clothes on their backs. The town 



222 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

evacuated, the Mongols set to systematically to pillage it, killing all those 
who in spite of the order had stayed behind. The imam 'All Zandi, seeing 
the Korans trampled by the Mongol horses, voiced his grief to another 
Moslem personage, Rukn ed-Din Imamzada. "Be silent," the latter an- 
swered him. "It is the wind of God's omnipotence that bloweth, and we 
have no power to speak." 1 

Later popular imagination was to return to this conception. One ro- 
manticized account places it in the mouth of Chingis-khan himself. As he 
entered the town, the Conqueror is said to have ridden his horse into the 
cathedral mosque. "He asked if it was the Sultan's palace. He was told it 
was the house of Allah. He dismounted before the mihrab, mounted two 
or three steps of the minbar, and declared loudly: "The countryside is 
empty of fodder. Feed the horses." 2 People went to look for corn in the 
shops of the town. The cases containing the Korans were brought by the 
Mongols into the mosque courtyard to serve as feeding troughs, and the 
sacred books of the Moslems were trodden underfoot by the horses. The 
barbarians set down their jars of wine in the middle of the mosque, and 
brought in the singing girls of the town. They themselves sang till the 
walls resounded, and while they gave themselves over to celebration and 
debauch, the leading citizens, the doctors of the law, the leaders of reli- 
gion, had to obey them as slaves and tend their horses. Then Chingis- 
khan made his way to the Place of Prayer (near the gate of Ibrahim), 
where on solemn occasions the inhabitants assembled to pray together. 
At his orders they had been assembled there. "He went up into the min- 
bar and asked who were the richest persons in all this crowd. Two hun- 
dred and eighty were pointed out to him, of whom ninety were foreign 
merchants. He had them come forward and addressed them. Recapitulat- 
ing the hostile acts that had forced him to take up arms against their 
sultan, he went on: C O people, know that you have committed great sins, 
and that the great ones among you have committed these sins. If you ask 
me what proof I have for these words, I say it is because I am the pun- 
ishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not 
have sent a punishment like me upon you.' When he had finished speak- 
ing in this strain, he continued his discourse with words of admonition, 
saying, There is no need to declare your property that is on the face of 

1 [A. J. Boyle's translation of Juvaini. Cf. No. 7, p. 104.] 

2 [Op. cit., p. 105.] 



The Taking of Bukhara 223 

the earth; tell me of that which is in the belly of the earth.' Then he asked 
them who were their men of authority; and each man indicated his own 
people. To each of them he assigned a Mongol or Turk as basqaq in 
order that the soldiers might not molest them and, although not subject- 
ing them to disgrace or humiliation, they began to exact money from 
these men; and when they delivered it up they did not torment them by 
excessive punishment or demanding what was beyond then: power to 
pay." 3 

This, Juvaini's colorful, dramatized sequence, is not in the accounts of 
the other historians. What is certain is that grievous things took place. 
"It was a day of horror," wrote Ibn al-Athir, "there was nothing to be 
heard but the sobbing of men, women, and children torn apart forever, 
the Mongol troops sharing out the population. The barbarians did vio- 
lence to the modesty of the women under the eyes of all their unfortunate 
menfolk, who in their powerlessness could only weep. Not a few chose 
death as preferable to the sight of these horrors. Among these were the 
qadi Sadr ed-Din-Khan, Rukn ed-Din Imamzada, and his son, who, 
forced to look on at the dishonoring of their women, provoked their own 
deaths by fighting." At the height of the pillage, a fire broke out that con- 
sumed most of the town (it was built of wood), with the exception of 
brick structures such as the cathedral mosque and one or two palaces. 

s [Op. cit.] 



A 
AA 



61 



Toward Samarkand 



Chingis-khan left "the smoking ruins of Bukhara" to march on Samar- 
kand. He moved up the Zerafshan valley, all country houses, gardens, 
orchards, fine meadows, watered by many canals. Two forts alone Da- 
busiya and Sar-i-Pul attempted resistance. He left detachments to take 
them, and continued on his way, accompanied by a vast train of citizens 
of captured towns or peasants of regions he had passed through, whom 
the Mongol horsemen drove before them to serve in the coming sieges: 
any who could no longer keep up with the horses were promptly killed. 
Samarkand lies four and a half miles south of the Zerafshan. Numer- 
ous canals (ariq), running off from the river, ensure the loess of the 
oasis its fertility, which contrasts sharply with the aridity, the bareness, 
of the countryside around. As all Transoxanian towns, Samarkand was 
made up of three parts, ranged here south to north. In the south, the 
citadel (quhandriz)> then the town proper (shahristan) , then, lastly, the 
suburb (rob ad). The thirteenth-century shahristan stood on the site of 
Afrasiyab, north of the present town. The town was surrounded by a 
wide wall pierced by four gates, including, on the east, the China gate, its 
name recalling the ancient relations of Transoxania with the Silk Road> 
and, on the south, the Greater Gate (Bab kish), near which lay the ba- 
zaar quarter notably the metalworkers' section the caravansaries and 
the warehouses. This was the most populous quarter, but the whole com- 
munity numbered some five hundred thousand inhabitants. Despite the 
crowding of the workers' quarters and the bazaar, Samarkand was very 
much spread out, a great deal of space being given to gardens, with every 
house of any size set in its own. The many irrigation canals had made 
possible indeed considerable horticultural development. "The delights of 
Samarkand," as one came on it out of the desert, lay above all in its 



Toward Samarkand 225 

flowers, and in the charm of its canals, its ponds and fountains. Arab 
geographers have praise also for its monuments, notably the cathedral- 
mosque, the ruins of which have been found by Barthold to the west of 
the citadel, in the Afrasiyab quarter. 

The looms of Samarkand were famous throughout the Orient. They 
produced the famous silver-lame fabrics of Samarkand (simghuns) , and 
also tents used by caravans all over central Asia. The metalworkers' 
quarter exported vases in copper and cups of marvelous elegance; the 
saddlers' quarter, harnesses vied for from Kashghar to Shiraz. Another 
specialty of Samarkand workshops was rag paper, the technique of mak- 
ing which had been learned from the Chinese in the eighth century, and 
which took the place, in the Moslem countries, of papyrus and parchment. 
Samarkand further exported silks and cottons and even garden produce: 
"Samarkand melons, in lead boxes packed in snow, were sold as far 
away as Baghdad." 

Such was the great city Chingis-khan, in this month of May 1220, 
came to lay siege to. The sultan of Khwarezm had left there a garrison of 
some fifty thousand Turks commanded by his uncle Tughay-khan. The 
fortifications of the wall, and especially those of the citadel, had been 
repaired and increased. The Conqueror accordingly acted circumspectly. 
He was rejoined near the town by the three other sections of his army, 
who, the conquest of Transoxania behind them, brought him enormous 
contingents of prisoners to serve in his siege operations. Thus his sons 
Jaghatay and Ogodei, who had just taken Otrar, drove before them peo- 
ple of the middle Sir-darya. All the captives were divided into groups of 
ten, each group bearing a standard, as if these were Mongol warriors, a 
trick to deceive the defenders as to the strength (in any case in itself very 
considerable) of the besieging army. 

Chingis-khan, who had set up his headquarters in the Blue Palace 
(Kok-seray), in the suburb, spent two preliminary days making a per- 
sonal inspection of the place and examining its fortifications. The third 
day he gave his troops the order to move in, pushing before them the 
unfortunate prisoners disguised as soldiers. The townsmen Tajiks, for 
the most part came out to fight. The Mongols, adopting their usual 
tactics, withdrew, and lured into an ambush this improvised militia, foot 
soldiers that their cavalry had no difficulty cutting to pieces: nearly fifty 
thousand Samarkandis died. 

This defeat sapped the defenders' courage. The Qanqli mercenaries, 



226 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

who made up the greater part of the garrison, thought that, as Turks, 
they would be treated by the Mongols as compatriots. The fifth day of 
the siege, they presented themselves at the Mongol camp, complete with 
baggage and families, Tughay-khan at their head. Deserted by the garri- 
son, the townsfolk could only surrender in their turn. The qadi and the 
sheikh-ul-islam came to Chingis-khan with a message to that effect. They 
took back satisfactory guarantees enough, and opened the gates. The 
Mongols made their entry into Samarkand by the northwest gate, the 
"Prayer Gate," on March 17, 1220. They proceeded at once to demolish 
the ramparts. As always in such cases, the inhabitants were made to 
evacuate the town, so that the Mongols might pillage more freely. Chingis- 
khan had given safeguards not only to the qadi and the sheikh-ul-islam, 
but also to other doctors of the law and members of the Moslem priest- 
hood, to a total of several thousand. These were scrupulously respected. 
The citadel still held out. The Mongols began by cutting off its water 
supply by blocking the canal serving it. Half the defenders about a 
thousand men succeeded in making their escape during the night. The 
rest gathered in the cathedral mosque for a last desperate resistance. All 
were killed, "to the last man," and the mosque burned down. 

As for the Turkish mercenaries who had given themselves up in the 
first instance, they had miscalculated. We know how great a horror 
Chingis-khan had of treason. He had all put to death, thirty thousand of 
them, including their chief, Tughay. The townspeople, mainly Tajiks, 
were better treated. Doubtless Chingis-khan respected these citizens for 
their courage and their loyalty to their prince. He contented himself with 
commandeering the craftsmen, in all thirty thousand, whom he appor- 
tioned among the ordus of his sons, his wives, and his high officers. An 
equal number of men were requisitioned for military tasks. There re- 
mained some fifty thousand prisoners. These Chingis-khan allowed to 
buy back their freedom for 200,000 dinars. 



A 
AA 



62 

At Urgenj: Attack Through a 
Town in Flames 



The Mongols had a great deal more difficulty in taking the capital of 
Khwarezm proper, the town of Urgenj, the former Gurganj. 

Urgenj lay near the delta of the Amu-darya on the Aral Sea, some 
ninety miles northwest of Khiwa. Here also a system of ariqs, or deriva- 
tion canals, carefully maintained, assured the fertility of the oasis in a 
region disputed by marsh and sand. The town was famous in the thir- 
teenth century for its silk manufactures, and also as a trading center and 
caravan stage a role that had brought it considerable wealth. The Turk- 
ish garrison were resolved to fight to the end. Their attitude was shared 
by the civilian population, profoundly attached to the Khwarezmian dy- 
nasty. 

Chingis-khan sent against Urgenj a powerful army, commanded by 
three of his sons, Jochi, Jaghatay, and Ogodei, backed by veteran gen- 
erals such as Bo'orchu, Tolun-cherbi, and Qada'an, in all, apparently, 
some fifty thousand men. Jochi tried to persuade the inhabitants to sur- 
render without a fight. "He sent word to them that his father had granted 
him Khwarezm proper as his domain, that he wanted to preserve its capi- 
tal intact, that it would pain him to see it destroyed, and that he was 
giving proof already of his good intentions in treating with care the gar- 
dens and suburbs." But his invitation had no success. 

Since the countryside, all marsh or sands, furnished no stones for pro- 
jectiles, the Mongols cut down the mulberry trees of the town outskirts 
and hacked these into shape to fill the bill. Then, they made the prisoners 
fill in the moat, an operation completed in ten days. As soon as this had 



228 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

been done they began to mine the walls, but after that they had still then 
to conquer the town quarter by quarter, or rather street by street. In this 
new kind of war for them, they used pails of petroleum with which they 
set fire to the houses. But the town was cut in two by the Amu-darya. 
Three thousand Mongols hurled themselves on the bridge spanning the 
river. They were repulsed, and died to a man, which did not fail to raise 
the spirits of the defenders. 

Behind the Mongol failure lay the poor relations between Jochi and 
Jaghatay. The two brothers, as has been seen, detested each other. On 
the eve of the expedition's setting forth, they had only just been pre- 
vented from flying at each other's throats. The siege of Urgenj revived 
their quarrel. Jochi, who knew that the town would form part of his 
portion, sought, as we have seen, to spare it damage. Jaghatay re- 
proached him violently for this. The discipline of the troops suffered 
from their ill feeling. They finally took their grievances to their father. 
Chingis-khan, greatly displeased with them, answered by placing them 
both under the authority of their brother Ogodei, a measure in line with 
the recent decision about the succession. The Conqueror did the right 
thing. "Ogodei contrived by his gentle reasoning to restore harmony be- 
tween the two brothers, and by his severity to restore the troops to the 
discipline that made them invincible." 

The attack was resumed. Hell raged. Women, children, old men, 
knowing they could now expect no mercy, threw themselves into the de- 
fense and never drew breath. The Mongols went on bombarding the 
houses, now so many fortresses, with vessels of flaming petroleum. In the 
light of the fires, the attackers advanced in waves over piles of horrify- 
ingly burned corpses. At last, after seven days, the defenders, at bay in 
the last three districts still surviving the flames, sent the fagih 'AH ed-Din 
Khayyati to beseech Jochi's mercy. "Show us your mercy having shown 
us your fury!" But Jochi was now exasperated by the losses inflicted on 
his army: "How can they speak thus, when it is their fury that has killed 
so many of my soldiers! It is for us now in our turn to show them our 
anger!" He made the whole population go out into the plain. The young 
women and children were taken as slaves. The craftsmen were set aside 
to be deported to Mongolia, to serve the khan. The entire remainder of 
the masculine population was divided up among the Mongol companies 
and ruthlessly slaughtered by arrow and scimitar. As a finishing touch the 



At Urgenj: Attack Through Flames 229 

Mongols breached the dykes containing the waters of the Amu-darya, 
and submerged the town (April 1221 ). 

If we are to believe the Mongol epic, Chingis-khan was highly dissatis- 
fied at the lack of dispatch with which his sons (Jochi in particular) had 
gone about their taking of the town. And to add insult to injury, they had 
shared out among the three of them prisoners and spoils, without reserv- 
ing for their father his lion's share. 

When, the town finally taken, they waited on him, he refused for three 
days to give them audience. His old companions, Bo'orchu and Shigi- 
qutuqu, had to intervene in their favor: 'The taking of Urgenj has in- 
creased our power. The Sart 1 is defeated, your great army rejoices. Why, 

khan, are you still angry? Your sons have acknowledged their fault 
and are full of repentance. Show clemency, and pardon them." Chingis- 
khan then allowed himself to be mollified a little, and received the three 
princes, but not without delivering himself of a severe reprimand. As 
they stood before him not daring to move, the sweat of fear on their 
foreheads, the three "quiver bearers," Qongqay, Qongtaqar, and Chor- 
maghan, interceded in their turn: "As young hawks about to be trained 
for hunting, the three princes came out to learn the trade of war. Why do 
you reprimand them in this way on their return? From the rising to the 
setting sun we have a world of enemies. Unleash us your savage Tibetan 
dogs, and with the aid of Heaven and the goddess Earth we shall van- 
quish these peoples, we shall bring you back gold and silver and silks and 
riches, and we will conquer for you populations and towns. Do you wish 
us to go to attack the Khalif of Baghdad?" These words finally appeased 
the Conqueror. In fact, only Jaghatay and Ogodei had rejoined their 
father, and their relations with him were ever after perfectly affectionate. 
Jochi, after the fall of Urgenj, stayed on in that region and the steppes of 
the present-day Kazakstan that constituted his territory. He lived there 
apart, taking no further hand in the war, and his relations with Chingis- 
khan grew, as we shall see, steadily cooler. 

1 [Central Asian name for Moslems.] 



A 
AA 



63 



Manhunt: On the Track of the Sultan 



While his empire crumbled, Sultan Mohammed of Khwarezm, aghast at 
the catastrophe his ill faith and arrogance had so deliberately provoked, 
and veering between the wildest boasting and total prostration, had first 
not reacted at all, then fled south of the Amu-darya, toward Balkh. 
Thence, he reached eastern Khorassan, sought refuge there at Nishapur, 
and finally, more and more terrified, scurried to Qazwin, in the northeast 
of Iraq-'Ajemi, at the opposite end of his domains. 

But Chingis-khan pursued him with relentless hate, born of the slaugh- 
ter of his envoy, that day when the Mongol caravan was sacked at Otrar. 
"Wherever he betakes himself," he declared to the qadi Wahid ed-Din 
Bujhenji, "I will rout him out. I will devastate any country that gives him 
refuge!" He unleashed in pursuit of the fugitive his two best officers, Jebe 
and Siibotei, and also Toquchar, bidding them take twenty thousand of 
his horses. And the epic hunt was on. 

Jebe and Siibotei crossed the Amu-darya north of Balkh. Up here, the 
width of the river varies greatly: at the chalk barrier of Kelif, it narrows 
from 5,000 feet to 1,500 feet. The two Mongol generals came to the 
other bank, in any case, without bridge or ferry, doubtless in the manner 
described by Piano Carpini: the soldiers rolled effects and equipment in 
leather bundles that floated like leather bottles, which they then attached 
to the tails of their horses and clung on to as the horses swam across. 

Landing on the southern bank of the Amu-darya, Jebe and Siibotei 
were in what is now Afghan Turkestan, in the vicinity of Balkh. The 
dignitaries of the town sent a delegation to them with gifts. The two 
generals had orders from Chingis-khan not to hold up their pursuit tak- 
ing towns, but make capturing the sultan their absolute priority. Faithful 



Manhunt: On the Track of the Sultan 231 

to their instructions, they declared themselves content with the protesta- 
tions of friendship of the people of Balkh, and pressed on westward to- 
ward the Persian province of Khorassan, where they had been advised 
the sultan was to be found. Their colleague Toquchar, however, failed to 
resist the temptation of pillage. He was relying doubtless on his personal 
position, having married a daughter of Chingis-khan. But the Conqueror 
was not to be trifled with in matters of discipline. He spoke of nothing 
less than of having his son-in-law beheaded, and at all events relieved 
him of his command. 

Meanwhile, Jebe, covering in a few days over 430 miles, had arrived 
before Nishapur. He sent for the local authorities and handed them a 
proclamation from Chingis-khan, in Uyghur script, very expressive of the 
Conqueror's state of mind. "Commanders, important men, people," ran 
this document, "know that God [the Tengri] has given me from east to 
west, the empire of the world. Whoever shall submit shall be spared, but 
woe to those who resist: they will be slaughtered, with their wives, chil- 
dren, and all their dependents." Despite the threatening terms of this, the 
Mongol general did not break his march to attack the town. The other 
great city of Khorassan, lying a little farther east, was Tus, near what is 
now Meshed, on the Kashaf-rud, "the River of Turtles." It also was 
served by a system of irrigation canals, assuring the fertility of its fruit 
trees. Arab geographers speak of its manufactures (its striped textiles 
were famous) and its turquoise mines. Siibotei here again asked only a 
purely formal submission to be on his way, but the magistrates making 
him an insolent reply, he went into the town without any great diffi- 
culty, apparently and proceeded with the regulation massacre. 

Jebe and he set out again at once, ever fiercely determined to come on 
traces of the sultan. Acting on information received, they followed the 
track that, still, today, serves nothern Khorassan, north of the great salt 
desert, by Sebzevar, Shahrud, and Damghan, whence it runs on to Iraq- 
'Ajemi, and through Semnan to the present-day Teheran. The towns that 
offered resistance, such as Damghan and Semnan, were sacked by 
Siibotei, who, from Semnan, marched directly on Ray, while Jebe made a 
detour by Mazenderan, where he sacked Amol. The two generals joined 
up before Ray. Since they left Nishapur, they had come over 430 miles. 

Ray, the former Rhages, five miles southeast of our Teheran, was the 
greatest town of Persian Iraq. It exported all over the East its silk mate- 



232 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

rials and its magnificent polychrome ceramic ware, decorated with ex- 
quisite miniatures. The Mongols, swooping in a surprise attack, killed 
many people in the outskirts; in the town itself the qadi tried to parley 
with them, but could not prevent their sacking the bazaar and killing 
many there. But here again the Mongols did not tarry. They had just 
learned that the sultan, still fleeing before them, was now in the north- 
west, at Resht, on the shores of the Caspian, in the province of Ghilan. 

Their information was correct. But at the news of the sack of Ray, the 
sultan, instead of assembling the few hundred thousand troops the Persian 
provinces offered to put at his disposal, once again lost his head. Such 
indeed was the terror the Mongols inspired that part of his men deserted 
him. He rushed from Resht to Qazwin, where one of his sons had mus- 
tered a force of thirty thousand. With this, it would still have been possi- 
ble for him to harass the Mongols, who moved scouring the country in 
isolated detachments, but once again the "Mongol terror" operated, and 
far from attempting to surprise his enemies it was he who, near Qarun, 
was all but taken by surprise by them. His horse was hit by arrows and 
he himself barely escaped. Thinking then to take refuge in Baghdad, he 
galloped to Hamadan with the fearsome Mongol horsemen ever on his 
tail, and indeed, in the suburbs of that town, actually skirmished with 
their troops, but without their recognizing him. Now he had once again 
changed his mind, and was trying to head back to the Caspian. This 
sharp switch of direction threw Jebe and Siibotei for a while off his track. 
He was thus able to reach the shore of the Mazenderan. But the Mongols 
had already picked up the trail again. Their advance guard was almost on 
him. He had just time to throw himself into a boat and gain the open sea 
under a volley of arrows. He took refuge on the little island of Abeskun, 
near the mouth of the Gurgan, west of Astrabad. Here the erstwhile po- 
tentate of Islam, one-time sultan of Turkestan, Afghanistan, and Persia, 
died of despair and exhaustion in January 1221. 

The man who had dared defy Chingis-khan, had massacred his cara- 
vaneers and refused satisfaction, was no more. The mission with which 
the Conqueror had charged Jebe and Siibotei was accomplished. If they 
had not been able to take the sultan alive, they had harried him like a 
hunted animal till he dropped, finished. They, on the contrary, despite 
their fantastic chase since crossing the Amu-darya they had traveled at 
the gallop over a thousand miles were as fresh as the day they set out. 



Manhunt: On the Track of the Sultan 233 

And, their task accomplished, Chingis-khan immediately assigned them 
another: to press on, in an immense reconnaissance sortie, around the 
Caspian Sea, across northwest Persia, the Caucasus, and Southern Rus- 
sia. 

We shall tell the story later of this unbelievable ride. Meantime, we 
have to retrace our steps to accompany the Conqueror of the World 
across the Afghan mountains. The Chingis-khan of this campaign, seen, 
as just now at Bukhara and Samarkand, through Arabo-Persian sources, 
comes across, it must be confessed, somewhat differently from the hero 
of the coverage of the first part of his life in the Mongol epics. This is the 
difference in sources at work, of course, Arab and Persian annalists 
being unable to forget the depredations wrought on the lands of Islam by 
the man they looked on as the Attila of the Moslem world. But there is 
more to it than that. The Chingis-khan of the Mongol bard's portrayal is 
not indeed belied. The Mongol hero remains the same demigod, gener- 
ous, magnanimous, and great, moderate in all things, balanced, rooted hi 
common sense, human, in a word, even humane, that he has ever been. 
He has taken up arms only in the justest of causes, because the Khwarez- 
mians have massacred his caravans and slain his ambassadors. But this 
righteous war the Mongols have been driven to, they fight it Mongol 
style, as the nomads they are, and also as the half-savages of remote 
steppe or tayga. There is no contradiction here. Chingis-khan continues 
to show himself personally the equal of the greatest of the "makers of 
history;" it is not his fault if the Mongol Alexander commands troops of 
the approximate level of cultural development of redskins of the seven- 
teenth-century American prairie. 

Which courtesies having been observed in respect to strict historical 
objectivity, let us make no bones about our horror at the appalling 
butchery. Lock, stock, and barrel need we say it? we are with the 
Arabo-Persian civilization that the barbarians set out and failed, heaven 
be praised to annihilate. 



A 
AA 



64 



The Wind of Anger Blows 
over Khorassan 



After the taking of Samarkand, Chingis-khan passed the heat of the 
summer of 1220 south of that town ? at Nasaf, the present-day Qarshi, 
which is indeed, at that season, the most pleasant place to be in Trans- 
oxania. The oasis, well sheltered by the Hissar mountains, has, compared 
to Samarkand, the advantage of foliage and shade, and its magnificent 
gardens surpass those of the Transoxanian capital. In these grasslands, 
the Conqueror let his horses recuperate, weary after so long continually 
on the move. In the autumn, he moved towards the Amu-darya and came 
to lay siege to the town on the northern bank of the river, opposite Balkh, 
Tennez or Tirmihd. "The high officials having refused to open the gates, 
the town was carried by storm the eleventh day. All the inhabitants were 
forced to come out, and were divided up among the Mongol companies 
to be slaughtered. One old woman, just about to receive the fatal blow, 
cried out that, if they did not kill her, she would give a fine pearl. They 
asked her for it. She replied that she had swallowed it. At once they slit 
open her stomach, and pulled out, in fact, several pearls. Thinking others 
might perhaps have swallowed pearls, Chingis-khan gave the order to slit 
open all the dead." I 

Meantime, as we have seen, the wings of the Mongol army were on the 
move harrying the enemy everywhere; in Khwarezm, Jochi, Jaghatay, 
and Ogodei were taking Urgenj; in Persia, Jebe and Siibotei were hunting 
to his death the defeated sultan. Chingis-khan, who from the banks of 
the Amu-darya directed operations over-all, spent the winter of 1220-21 
1 [A paraphrase of Juvaini's account. Cf. No. 7, p. 129.] 



The Wind of Anger over Khorassan 235 

upriver from Qarshi, at Sali-Saray. It was not until the spring of 1221 
that he crossed the river near Balkh and embarked on decisive conquest 
of Afghan Turkestan, the ancient Bactria, of which Balkh was the capi- 
tal, then on conquest, or rather, destruction, of Khorassan. 

Balkh, once Bactria, has always tempted conquerors. An oasis of irri- 
gation in the midst of desert steppe, it had hitherto survived all invasions 
behind its wall of beaten earth, seven and a half miles around. As al- 
ready recounted, Jebe and Siibotei, who had made an earlier appearance 
before the town, had been content with a purely formal submission. At 
the approach of Chingis-khan, the prominent citizens came to do hom- 
age to him. But then the Mongol sovereign, fearing the town might be- 
come a rallying point for his enemies, ordered all its inhabitants to come 
forth, ostensibly to be counted, and massacred them. The fortresses of the 
region that attempted resistance were taken one after the other, always 
by the same method, of making a bevy of prisoners fight in the front 
ranks, those who hung back being killed. 

Meantime, Chingis-khan had sent his fourth son, Toluy, to conquer, 
or complete the conquest of, Khorassan. Jebe and Siibotei, who had rid- 
den across the country the previous year, had here also merely extracted 
nominal submissions. This time, the conquest was really driven home. 

Khorassan, the name of which, in Persian, signifies "the East" (of 
Persia), is a long strip of steppe scattered with oases, watered by streams 
running down from the ranges of Paropanisad, Pusht-i-Koh, and Bi- 
nalud, that then promptly lose themselves in the great desert that, there 
as elsewhere, gnaws at all the interior of the plateau of Iran. Cultivation, 
that is, is possible there only by dint of unremitting work maintaining the 
irrigation canals, and defending against the encroaching steppe the gar- 
dens, orchards, vineyards, the corn, rice and barley fields, the screens of 
elm and poplar, that constitute "the smile of Khorassan." By the period 
of our story, long centuries of patient toiling had secured the country 
wealth, and out of the soil of this material prosperity had blossomed the 
flower of Persian culture. Near Tus was born the Homer of Persia, 
the immortal Firdusi, author of the epic of the Shahnameh; Tus was 
the birthplace also of the philosopher Ghazali, "the Moslem Pascal"; 
Nishapur nurtured the poet Omar Khayyam, whose pessimistic sensual- 
ism is clothed in all the grace of oriental lyricism. 

With the advent of Prince Toluy and his nomad warriors in these priv- 



256 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

ileged oases there ensued one of the most grievous dramas in human his- 
tory: destruction of a culture, and with it destruction of the oases them- 
selves, "the death of the earth." 

The first town to suffer the blow was Nisa, near Ashkabad. This, too, 
was an oasis possessed of the supreme treasure: ample water, and, in 
consequence, much verdure and many gardens (it crouched at the north- 
ern edge of the Kopet-dagh range, whence flowed many streams). "The 
ten gates of the town were drowned in foliage," which to the traveler 
fresh from the sinister Black Sands (Qara-qum) of Turkmenistan, must 
have seemed "a contrast virtually miraculous." Toluy sent against Nisa a 
force of ten thousand Mongols, under Toquchar, Chingis-khan's son-in- 
law, now restored to favor. By this time the Mongols, the sieges of so 
many towns behind them, had made astonishing progress in the art of 
this kind of warfare, especially in ballistics. "Against the walls of Nisa, 
Toquchar brought into action a battery of twenty catapults worked by 
captives and conscripts. These unfortunates were also made to advance 
the battering rams, those who hung back being slain. After two weeks' 
unremitting attack, the engines having made a wide breach, the Mongols 
made themselves, during the night, masters of the wall. At dawn, they 
entered the town and drove out the inhabitants. When the latter were all 
in the plain, they ordered them to tie themselves together with their 
hands behind their backs. The unfortunates obeyed without thinking 
what they were doing. If they had scattered and fled to the mountains 
close by, most of them would have escaped. When they were tied, the 
Mongols surrounded them and shot them down with arrows, men, 
women, and children indiscriminately. The number of the dead was 
about seventy thousand." 

Toquchar then moved on Nishapur. This was one of the finest towns 
in Persia, the capital of the province of Khorassan, then at the height of 
its prosperity. From the River Sanghawar, which flows down the range of 
Binalud, to the north of the town, the beneficent water was channeled by 
twelve canals, and worked, the Arab geographers affirm, twelve mills. 
"Not only all the gardens, but also most of the houses, had abundant 
provision of water." The fields of the oasis yielded rice and cereals, the 
outskirts were famous for their turquoise mines. Politically, lastly, 
Nishapur still remembered the time not long ago when it had been one of 
the capitals of Iran under the great Seljuq sultans. 



The Wind of Anger over Khorassan 237 

Jebe, a few months earlier, had confined himself to "lecturing" the 
town. Toquchar attempted to storm it, but he was killed in the third day 
of the attack by an arrow from the ramparts (November 1220). The 
general who succeeded him, judging that he had not sufficient strength to 
take the town, withdrew, deferring vengeance. In the meantime, he di- 
vided his troops into two parts. With one he marched on Sebzevar, a 
town some sixty-two miles to the west of Nishapur, took it in three days, 
and slew the entire population, seventy thousand persons. The other di- 
vision made toward Tus and took the fortresses of the area, putting all 
the inhabitants to the sword. 

Toluy himself did not enter the fray till the beginning of the following 
year. He moved at first on Merv, the great oasis of the lower Murghab. 
The industrial and commercial activity of this town explained the impor- 
tant role it had played politically in the preceding century as capital of 
the Seljuq sultan Sanjar. The oasis was celebrated for fine cotton which 
it exported, unworked or woven; and for the attention given to sericul- 
ture, with the export both of raw silk and silk textiles. The weavers' 
quarter, and those of the coppersmiths and potters, were ports of call for 
caravans from all over the Middle East. One of the marvels of the town 
was the mausoleum of Sanjar, the great turquoise blue cupola of which 
could be seen a day's march away. 

Toluy arrived before Merv with an army of seventy thousand men, in 
part made up of conscripts from the conquered territories. Two sallies by 
the defenders having failed, they offered their surrender (February 25, 
1221). Toluy ordered the inhabitants to come out from Merv, with the 
most precious of their possessions. Seated in the plain, on a gilded seat, 
he first had brought before him the soldiers of the garrison, and saw 
them beheaded. Then it was the turn of the civilian population. Men, 
women, and children were separated. The air rang with their sobs and 
lamentations. These unfortunate people were apportioned among the 
troops and almost all slaughtered. Only four hundred craftsmen were 
spared, and a certain number of children of both sexes, intended as 
slaves. The two hundred richest of the citizens, merchants or owners of 
land, were tortured until they declared where they had hidden their treas- 
ure. 

The Mongols destroyed the dam on the Murghab that assured the irri- 
gation round about, and the flourishing oasis reverted to desert. Of the 



238 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

former city of the Arabian Nights, there remained only a few mounds 
where the palaces had stood, enormous piles of glazed bricks, and the 
ruins of the brick wall and towers of the "Fortress of the Sultan" (Sultan- 
qal'a) . Sole memorial more or less intact to a glorious past, the mosque 
of Sandar was left raising its stripped dome to heaven. 

From Merv, Toluy passed to Nishapur, twelve days' march away. The 
young Chingiskhanid burned to avenge the death of his brother-in-law 
Toquchar, slain by the inhabitants five months before. The latter, aware 
that they could expect no mercy, had done their utmost to reinforce their 
walls. "Their ramparts were furbished with three thousand ballistas or 
machines for hurling lances, and three hundred catapults. The Mongols 
made no less substantial preparations. They brought up three thousand 
ballistas, three hundred catapults, seven hundred machines for throwing 
burning naphtha, four thousand ladders, and two thousand five hundred 
charges of stone." Confronted with such "artillery," the defenders soon 
lost heart: a delegation came to Toluy imploring mercy. The latter re- 
fused all compromise and ordered the attack. Battle was waged all day 
and all night. At morning, the moats were filled in, the wall was breached 
in seventy places, and ten thousand Mongols had scaled it. On every side 
the troops of Toluy pushed into the town, and streets and houses were 
for the rest of the day so many battlefields. On Saturday, April 10, 
1221, Nishapur was completely in the hands of the Mongols. 

Toquchar's widow, daughter of Chingis-khan, then made her solemn 
entry into the town with an escort of ten thousand men "who slaughtered 
indiscriminately all they saw." The carnage went on for four days. Even 
dogs and cats were killed. Toluy had heard that when Merv was sacked, 
many of the inhabitants saved their lives by lying down among the dead. 
To make quite sure this time he ordered decapitation of all the corpses. 
Pyramids of heads were built of different "materials": pyramids of men's 
heads, of women's, of children's. . . . "The destruction of the town 
went on for two weeks." Toluy left alive only, as was his custom, the 
principal skilled craftsmen four hundred of them to deport for work 
in Mongolia. 

The daughter of the Conqueror could leave Nishapur her soul at 
peace, Toquchar had been avenged. 

From Nishapur, Toluy moved southeast south of the chain of Paro- 
pamisus to lay siege to the town of Herat, another oasis amid the 



The Wind of Anger over Khorassan 239 

steppes and deserts, or rather center of the line of oases running along 
125 miles of the valley of the Herirud: "The villages succeed one an- 
other each side of the mountains, surrounded by corn fields, vineyards, 
orchards; here and there, the Aleppo pine and the elm lend variety to the 
landscape; along the rivers, poplars grow in veritable woods." The Mon- 
gols sent into Herat with a summons to surrender. The governor exe- 
cuted their messenger, and for eight days the town held out against all 
assaults. But the same governor having been killed, the Iranian burgesses 
offered to surrender on condition their lives were spared. Toluy promised 
this and kept his word. He contented himself with massacring the Turk- 
ish soldiers of the garrison, twelve thousand men. Then he set out to 
rejoin Chingis-khan under the walls of Talaqan. 



A 
AA 



65 



Storm over Afghanistan 



After taking Balkh and Talaqan, Chingis-khan had gone off to spend the 
summer of 1221 in the mountains of Bactria. Then he moved southward 
and crossed the high mountain barrier that runs almost unbroken east to 
west from the Hindu-kush to the Paropanisads to divide the former Bac- 
tria from central Afghanistan. At the heart of this mountain network, 
just where on the north the Paropamisus joins the Hindu-kush, while on 
the south this chain is continued by that of Koh-i-baba, the town of 
Bamiyan held a position of major strategic importance. Places charged 
with history, starting from the high cliff honeycombed with the former 
Buddhist grottoes, whose giant statues, 116 to 176 feet high, looked 
out as they had done for almost ten centuries over the fresh valley of 
the Bamiyan, with its water courses, its tilled fields, its clumps of poplar 
and willow. Opposite the Buddhist cliff, on the plateau of Shar-i-golgola, 
rose "like a solitary sentinel" the thirteenth-century Moslem citadel. 

No fortress was to cost the Conqueror more dear. One of his grand- 
sons whom he greatly loved, Miitiigen, son of Jaghatay, was killed by a 
defender's arrow. Impatient to avenge him, Chingis-khan ordered the 
attack. He took part himself, "bareheaded," a later chronicle was to 
declare. His troops, fired by his anger, took the fortress by scaling the 
walls. He ordered that every living thing, man or beast, should be killed, 
the child slain in its mother's womb; that no booty should be taken, 
everything should be inexorably destroyed, so that, after this day of 
death, no creature should ever again inhabit the place, which became 
known as the "Town Accursed." His orders were carried out to the letter, 
and the desolation of Shar-i-golgola today still bears witness to the Con- 
queror's grief and anger. "On the drear, deserted hillside," writes M. 



Storm over Afghanistan 241 

Dollot, "nothing has changed since those tragic days. I climbed the diffi- 
cult path to the top between the ruins, among which still rise a few 
stretches of keep wall, last remaining trace of the citadel, simple mud 
walling that seven centuries of the inclemencies of this climate have not 
reduced. In the grim chaos one catches the sparkle, among the pebbles 
once incorporated in the buildings and the homely bits of earthenware, 
of fragments of glazed faience bearing the decorative motifs of Persian 
ceramic ware." 

The siege of Bamiyan has an epilogue, an episode vividly characteris- 
tic of the Mongol Conqueror. "When the young Mutugen was killed, his 
father Jaghatay was not there. He returned when they were demolishing 
Bamiyan. Chingis-khan ordered Miitiigen's death to be hidden from him. 
A pretext was accordingly found to account to Jaghatay for the young 
prince's absence. A few days later Chingis-khan, at table with his three 
sons, Jaghatay, Ogodei, and Toluy, flew into a pretended rage with them, 
accusing them of no longer being obedient to his commands, and, as he 
spoke, gazed fixedly at Jaghatay. Affeared, Jaghatay went on his knees 
and protested that he would die rather than disobey his father. Chingis- 
khan accused him in the same fashion several times, and asked him 
finally: 'But do you speak the truth? Would you keep your word?' If I 
fail to do so/ cried Jaghatay, 'may I die!' 'Well,' Chingis-khan replied, 
'your son Mutugen has been killed, and I forbid you to show any sign of 
grief.' Struck as by a thunderbolt, Jaghatay yet had the strength to hold 
back his tears, but after the meal he went out to give way a moment to 
his grief." 

Meantime, the fugitive heir to the former Khwarezmian empire, 
Prince Jalal ed-Din, had found sanctuary about ninety miles to the 
southeast of Bamiyan at Ghazni, a veritable eagle's nest, a spur of rock, 
rising in solitary isolation from the high steppe of the Ghilzai country 
that is dominated to the north, at 7,600 feet, by a new tangle of moun- 
tains running to the Koh-i-baba horizon line. At Ghazni, Jalal ed-Din 
rallied an army of ten thousand horsemen, Turkish mercenaries and na- 
tive Afghans. A Mongol detachment that was laying siege to a fortress in 
the nearby mountains was cut to pieces with the loss of a thousand men. 

Chingis-khan, learning of the reappearance of Jalal ed-Din, had sent a 
reconnaissance force out in this direction of between thirty and forty-five 
thousand men, under the command of his adoptive brother, Shigi- 



242 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

qutuqu. The clash came near Parvan not, probably, the present town in 
the Pandshu valley, north of Kabul, but an older site of similar name at 
the headwaters of the Lugar, south of the Afghan capital. Battle was 
waged all day without any decisive result, and, toward night, the two 
armies retired each to its own camp. During the night Shigi-qutuqu, to 
make the enemy believe he had received reinforcements, ordered each 
Mongol horseman to set a felt dummy on his lead horse. This stratagem 
almost succeeded, for next day Jalal ed-Din's officers, seeing the Mongol 
cavalry mustered for the fray in a double line, thought other detachments 
had joined up with it, and spoke of retreat. But Jalal ed-Din stood firm. 
He had his horsemen dismount, and each man tie his horse's reins to his 
belt, then he awaited, impassively, the Mongol attack. 

And battle recommenced. The Mongol cavalry charged, but was met 
by a cloud of arrows that drove it back to re-form. A second charge was 
on the point of breaking the enemy lines, when Jalal ed-Din sounded a 
trumpet. All his troops remounted, and, exploiting their numerical supe- 
riority, hurled themselves on the Mongols with great shouts, extending 
their line to encircle them. "Shigi-qutuqu had urged his side not to lose 
sight of his tuq, his standard, but, seeing themselves surrounded, they 
fled in disorder, and the plain being cut across with gullies and their 
horses falling into these, they were sabered by the better-mounted horse- 
men of Jalal ed-Din, so that the greater part of the Mongol army was 
destroyed." The victors distinguished themselves by atrocities crueler 
even than the armies of Chingis-khan could be accused of. One of the 
ways they amused themselves was hammering nails into the Mongol pris- 
oners' ears. 

Parvan had seen the invincible Mongols put to flight. Was the charm 
broken? Chingis-khan, on hearing of his officer's defeat, displayed the 
self-control that was one of the secrets of his genius. He declared calmly 
that Shigi-qutuqu, spoiled by victory hitherto, should profit by his les- 
son. But he acted promptly. He made at once for Ghazni, with such 
speed his troops had for two days no time to cook their rations. Reach- 
ing the battlefield, he had Shigi-qutuqu explain to him the disposition of 
the two armies. He found fault with the measures he had taken, re- 
proached him with not having dictated a better site for the battle, and, 
despite his affection for him, declared him responsible for the defeat. 

But Chingis-khan arrived at Ghazni to find Jalal ed-Din departed. The 



Storm over Afghanistan 243 

latter's troops, in fact, after their unexpected victory at Parvan, had dis- 
persed on account of a misunderstanding between Afghans and Turks. 
Jalal ed-Din, knowing he could not defend Ghazni against the great Mon- 
gol army, had made for the Indo-Afghan frontier to take refuge in the 
Punjab. Chingis-khan, forcing his marches again, came up with him in 
the middle of the night on the banks of the Indus as the Khwarezmian 
prince was making his preparations to cross in the morning (November 
24, 1221). "The little army of Jalal ed-Din was at once surrounded by 
the Mongol forces in a semicircle several lines deep with each of its ends 
on the Indus. At daybreak, the signal was given to attack. The Mongols 
bore down on the enemy troops, drove in on them and cut to pieces the 
two wings. Jalal ed-Din was left in the center with seven hundred men 
and fought the fight of the desperate. The half-circle of the Mongols 
closed in steadily on him, but, curiously, without shooting at him: 
Chingis-khan wanted to take him alive. The Khwarezmian prince fought 
till midday. At last, seeing that he could not pierce the enemy lines, he 
jumped on a fresh horse, and, to get himself clearance, made a last furi- 
ous charge; the Mongols drew back just a little. It was what he wanted. 
Turning at once, he galloped to the Indus, jumped his horse into it 
from a height of twenty feet, and, shield on back, standard in hand, 
swam across. At this Chingis-khan ran to the bank. He stopped his 
troops who wanted to plunge into the water after Jalal ed-Din, and, 
pointing out the latter to his sons, told them this was a man on whom 
they should model themselves." 

Notwithstanding this display of generosity, or rather of chivalrous ad- 
miration, toward the one adversary in this campaign who had stood up 
to him, Chingis-khan so far as Jalal ed-Din's followers were concerned 
made no departure from his usual harshness. He riddled with arrows 
those of the prince's soldiers who had thrown themselves in the river 
after him, and meted out a like fate to the rest of his army that had stayed 
on the bank. Jalal ed-Din's two sons, who had fallen into Mongol hands, 
were ruthlessly executed. 



A 
AA 



66 



From the Destruction of Towns to the 
Revelation of Urban Civilization 



Chingis-khan did not pursue on to Indian soil the heir to the Khwarez- 
mian throne. Not until the following year did a Mongol detachment, 
under Balanoyan, of the Jalairs, make an incursion on the eastern bank 
of the Indus, near Multan. This was a simple reconnaissance raid, of no 
serious military significance. The heat of the Punjab summer, hard on 
these folk of the Mongol steppe or Siberian tayga, was enough to make 
them raise the siege of Multan. They contented themselves with looting 
in the provinces of Multan and Lahore, and returned to join the main 
army in Afghanistan. 

On the other hand, Chingis-khan made his vengeance felt on those 
unfortunate Afghan or Khorassanian towns that had associated them- 
selves, in whatever degree, with the attempted counterattack of Jalal ed- 
Din. In the spring of 1222, Ogodei went to punish Ghazni, which might 
serve as base for a renewed offensive if the exiled prince came back. He 
brought the inhabitants out on the pretext of counting them, then 
slaughtered them to a man, with the exception of the skilled craftsmen 
who, as usual, were taken to practice their trade in Mongolia. Ghazni 
was systematically razed. 

Then the Mongols turned to Herat. At the news of the victory of Jalal 
ed-Din at Parvan, the inhabitants of Herat had revolted against Mongol 
overlordship. Chingis-khan sent against them an army commanded by 
Eljigidei, with additional reinforcements of some fifty thousand men of 
the neighboring militias, conscripted for the siege. The defenders, know- 
ing they could hope for no mercy, vigorously repelled the first assaults. 



The Revelation of Urban Civilization 245 

Then dissension arose among them, and Eljigidei profited by it to take 
the place (June 14, 1222). The entire population was put to the sword. 
"The Mongols did nothing for a week but kill, pillage, burn and demol- 
ish." When the Mongol army had gone, those of the inhabitants who had 
managed to survive the slaughter, hidden in the gorges and caves round 
about, returned to the ruins. The Mongols, who suspected this would 
happen, shortly afterward sent a squad of horsemen to Herat to extermi- 
nate these "returning ones." 

At Merv, the sacking of the town by Toluy, systematic as it had 
seemed, had left certain quarters standing. Moreover, so fertile was the 
valley of the Murghab that after Toluy's departure the site had been 
rapidly peopled again. The news of the Battle of Parvan caused an ex- 
plosion of joy among these unfortunate folk. They also believed that the 
hour of Khwarezmian revenge was come. Aided by former officers of 
Jalal ed-Din, they hastily rebuilt the wall, and the dam on the Murghab 
that assured the town water. The prefect the Mongols had left there (a 
Persian) was of course put to death. But here also in its own good time 
Mongol vengeance struck. A force of five thousand, under Dorbey, mas- 
sacred the entire population and razed the last vestiges to rubble. The 
town of Balkh likewise was visited by a second and more total devasta- 
tion, a new and more wholesale massacre. 

Afghanistan, like Khorassan, was beyond participation now in any 
revolt. Towns were destroyed from pinnacle to cellar, as by an earth- 
quake. Dams were similarly destroyed, irrigation channels cut and 
turned to swamp, seed burned, fruit trees sawn-off stumps. The screens of 
trees that had stood between the crops and invasion by the desert sands 
were down. The handiwork of thousands of years was leveled to steppe 
again; orchards were laid defenseless to the driving, all-penetrating sand- 
storms from steppe or desert. These oases of the singing names, in which 
had arisen the cities of the Arabian Nights, flower of the delicately 
wrought Arabo-Persian civilization, marvels of the ancient Orient, were 
nothing now but arid steppe, this by the nomads' aid making all once 
again its own. This was indeed, as after some cosmic catastrophe, "the 
death of the earth," and eastern Iran was never wholly to recover. 

In the autumn of 1222, Chingis-khan, turning his back on these re- 
gions now forever laid waste, recrossed the Amu-darya and returned 
again to Transoxania, country relatively spared by comparison with 



246 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

Khorassan. As he passed through Bukhara, he had the curiosity to have 
outlined to him the Moslem religion. A strange idea, it might seem, for a 
man at whose hands Islam had just suffered one of the most dire cata- 
clysms in history. But Chingis-khan had never had the intention, or even 
the sense, of making war on Islam. As he saw it, as his soldiers saw it, he 
was punishing the Khwarezmians for the slaughter of his caravan and his 
ambassadors, chastising them for this crime against what we would call 
the freedom of trade, a violation of the law between nations. In the 
course of operations, he had punished them also for the deaths of his son- 
in-law and his favorite grandson. He had punished them after the Mon- 
gol fashion, which was primitive, after the only fashion known to his 
Mongols, the soldiery of a primitive people. Hence the astonishing con- 
trast we have so continually stressed, between the horrifying butchery 
perpetrated by Chingis-khan's soldiers and the basic moderation, the 
rooted morality, the generosity within his own circle, of the Conqueror. 

Now, then, he wished to learn about Islam. He caused to be ex- 
pounded to him the principles of the Koran. He found them good, the 
Allah of the "believers" differing in fact, at bottom, not so very pro- 
foundly from the Turco-Mongol Tengri. He criticized the pilgrimage to 
Mecca, however, "seeing that the Tengri is everywhere." At Samarkand, 
he ordered the Koranic prayer, the khotba, to be said in his name, since 
he had taken the Sultan Mohammed's place as sovereign. Islam thus 
became one of his state religions, on a par with the shamanism of the 
Mongol sorcerers or the Nestorian Christianity of his Kereit daughter- 
in-law. The man whom the Islamic world, in horror at the destruction of 
Khorassan and Afghanistan, called now only "the Reprobate" or "the 
Accursed," proposed to be looked on by his new Moslem subjects as a 
sort of emperor of Islam and lawful sultan. He had, it is true, destroyed 
with what root and branch fervor! the urban civilization of Khoras- 
san: but that did not mean he was sworn enemy to the regime of cities as 
such; the less so indeed in that he even now grasped in fact only imper- 
fectly what this was, and had at first simply not conceived of it at all. He 
asked only to be instructed. 

And indeed two Moslems who had come to Khwarezm from Urgenj, 
two Transoxanian Turks, products of the settled civilization, scholarly, 
Iranized men of law and government in the old Arabo-Persian tradition, 
Mahmud Yalavach and his son Mas'ud Yalavach, came forward as in- 



The Revelation of Urban Civilization 247 

structors prepared "to teach him the meaning of the towns" for which 
read: the advantages inherent in urban agglomeration from the point of 
view of a nomad conqueror, and how to administer them so as to derive 
full benefit. The lesson interested him greatly we have seen how one of 
his great qualities was this ability to listen and he there and then took 
the two Moslems into his service. With acumen, he appointed them to 
administer, in conjunction with the darughas or Mongol prefects, the old 
cities of the two Turkestans, Bukhara, Samarkand, Kashghar, and Kho- 
tan. 

The task thus assigned to the two Moslem men of learning marks a 
major juncture in the life of the Mongol conqueror: the point at which 
the nomad chief, hitherto completely ignorant of the conditions of urban 
civilization, begins to adapt himself to the consequences of his victory, to 
go to school with the old civilized empires of which he is now unex- 
pectedly the heir, and of which he is to become, by force of circum- 
stance, the perpetuator. 

His friendship for the Chinese philosopher Ch'ang-ch'un is another, 
no less remarkable, aspect of his character, and, if one may put it so, of 
the trueness of his cultural ear. 



A 
AA 



67 



Chingis-khan and the 

Problem of Death: 

The Summoning of the Alchemist 



We have seen Chingis-khan, on the eve of his great expedition against 
the Khwarezmian empire, envisage the possibility of his death and the 
terms of his testament, though at the time he was still in full health and 
vigor. This idea of death seems, from that moment on, to have haunted 
him. In China he had heard tell of the "elixir of perpetual life," that 
mysterious draught the secret of which the Taoist thaumaturges pos- 
sessed, and by which the lives of initiates might be indefinitely pro- 
longed. Just at this, Chingis-khan's, time, also, North China was full of 
the extraordinary saintliness of a Taoist monk called K'ien Ch'ang- 
ch'un. Resolved to attach to his service so renowned a personage 
whom he thought of doubtless as a kind of superior shaman the Con- 
queror in 1219 sent for him to come to him at his camp, then in Nayman 
country. 

In reality, Ch'ang-ch'un was something quite other than a common 
soothsayer. He was a thinker and a poet. Alchemical prescriptions in 
ancient Taoism were adjuncts of a philosophical system of astonishing 
power, a body of meditative metaphysical tradition of rarely equaled 
range and elevation. 

"There was something formless yet complete," declares the Book of 
Lao-tzu, the Bible of the doctrine, "that existed before heaven and earth; 
without sound, without substance, dependent on nothing, unchanging, all 
pervading, unfailing. One may think of it as the mother of all things 



Chingis-khan and the Problem of Death 249 

under heaven. Its true name we do not know; 'Way' is the by-name that 
we give it. Were I forced to say to what class of things it belongs I should 
call it Great." I The sage who, by meditation, has become one with it, 
has associated himself with the unnamed force that moves the worlds. 
He has made himself one with the universe. "Let the thunderbolt crash 
from the mountains, the hurricane tear up the ocean, the sage does not 
become anxious. He rides on the air and the clouds, bestrides the sun 
and the moon, he soars beyond space." 

For Ch'ang-ch'un, of course, such images were self-evidently sym- 
bolic. For our good Mongols, however, as they heard tell of them, here 
were literal signs of those magic "powers" to which they sought the key. 
Chingis-khan was already, as his Persian historian was to write, "the 
Conqueror of the World." Now he would conquer the ancient secrets that 
would bend to his will the forces of heaven. And accordingly he sent for 
Ch'ang-ch'un. 

i [Arthur Waley's translation of Chapter XXV, on p. 174 of The Way and its 
Power, A Study of the Tao te Ching and its Place in Chinese Thought. (Grove 
Press, New York n.d.)] 



A 
AA 



68 



To Join Chingis-khan: 
Across Mongolia in 1221 



The Taoist philosopher was seventy-two. Despite his age, he did not hes- 
itate. When the Mongol officers appointed to organize the journey wished 
him to travel, however, with a convoy of women intended for the pleas- 
ures of Chingis-khan, he found the company inappropriate and refused 
point-blank. "I am a mere mountain savage. But I am not to be expected 
to travel with harem girls." 1 His stipulation was complied with. 

In March 1221 Ch'ang-ch'un left the province of Peking and plunged 
into the steppes of what is now Inner Mongolia by the route that runs 
along the western promontories of the Great Khingan from the Dolon- 
nor to Lake Buyur. This is more or less desert steppe, with poor grass 
and just a thin scattering of elm thickets, country unchanged in appear- 
ance since the description in the life of our traveler: "In the far distance 
on every side we could see smoke rising from groups of black wagons 
and white tents. The owners move from place to place in search of water 
and pasturing-grounds. The country is here flat, marshy, and quite un- 
wooded. Whichever way one looks, there is nothing to be seen but dark 
clouds and pale grass." 2 Moving always directly north, the caravan 
came, a little east of Lake Buyur, to the River Khalkha beside which 
Chingis-khan, ten years before, had fought the Kereits. It was a sandy 
river, its waters reaching only to the horses' girths, its banks willow- 
covered. On April 24, the monk and his companions reached the camp, 

1 [No, 12, p. 54. All the passages so marked and taken from Ch'ang-ch'un's work 
are reproduced here in Arthur Waley's translation.] 

2 [Op. cit., p. 64.] 



Across Mongolia in 1221 251 

near the north bank of the Khalkha, of Temiige, Chingis-khan's youngest 
brother, entrusted by him with government in Mongolia. "By now the ice 
was beginning to melt and there was a faint touch of color in the grass. 
When we arrived a marriage was being celebrated in the camp. From five 
hundred li around the headmen of the tribes had come, with presents of 
mares' milk, to join in the feast. The black wagons and felt tents stood in 
rows; there must have been several thousand of them." 3 On April 30, 
Ch'ang-ch'un was presented to Temiige, who put a hundred horses and 
oxen at his disposal for the journey to Chingis-khan, in Afghanistan. 

It may seem strange that, to go from Peking to Afghanistan, the Chi- 
nese monk should have had to make this vast and laborious circuit. 
Would it not have been infinitely more direct to follow the caravan trail 
from the Tarim basin, the ancient Silk Road, through the Tangut country 
of Kansu, then the Uyghur country of Turfan and Kucha? But while the 
iduq~qut of the Uyghurs fought in the Mongol armies, the Tanguts had 
recently fallen out with Chingis-khan, to whom they had refused to send 
their military contingents. So our traveler was obliged to traverse the 
whole of the Mongol country to reach eastern Iran. He made his way up 
the Keriilen valley, Chingis-khan's birthplace, and thence to the Tula, 
former territory of the Kereit Ong-khan. The account of his journey 
notes the characteristics of the Mongol climate, very cold in the morning, 
hot, by this season, in the late afternoon, and the charm of the flowers 
then dotting the gramineal carpet of the steppe. Moving along the south- 
ern foothills of the Kentey the Mongols' sacred mountain the cara- 
van passed into the valley of the upper Tula and its tributary, the Kha- 
ruka, which gave on to the upper Orkhon. This was the heart of Mongol 
country. "The people live in black wagons and white tents; they are all 
herdsmen and hunters. Their clothes are made of hides and fur; they 
live on meat and curdled milk. The men wear their hair in two plaits that 
hang behind the ears. The married women wear a head-dress of birch- 
bark, some two feet high. This they generally cover with a black woolen 
stuff; but some of the richer women use red silk. The end [of this head- 
dress] is like a duck." 4 The Mongols, the account adds, could not write; 
all was done by verbal covenant, reinforced, if need be, by notches on 
planks. "They are obedient to orders and unfailing in their performance 

3 [Op. cit., pp. 64-5.] 

4 [Op. cit., p. 67.] 



252 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

of a promise" 5 high testimony indeed to the power of yassaq, the disci- 
pline Chingis-khan had established in all the domains, and which con- 
trasted so markedly with the anarchy earlier prevailing. 

The Chinese traveler now found himself in the Khangay mountains. 
His biographer notes in passing the beauty of these precipitous peaks, 
"thickly wooded with pines and firs, so lofty as to defy the clouds and 
hide the sun," 6 in country snow-covered six months of the year. The 
caravan crossed the upper Orkhon, then the Borgatay River, skirted 
Lake Chagan-po, and, crossing the Chagan-olon on July 19, came to the 
ordu, the palace of tents in which the wives of Chingis-khan awaited the 
hero's return. On the morning of July 29, the Chinese traveler and his 
companions left the ordu, setting out southwest, toward the former Nay- 
man country. On August 14, southwest of what is now Uliassutay, south 
of the Dzapkhunghol, they passed close by a town in which Chinqay, 
Chingis-khan's chancellor, had set up grain stores and a colony of Chi- 
nese craftsmen and art workers deported to these mountains. The Con- 
queror had also left there two concubines of the King of Gold, taken at 
the fall of Peking. All these exiles welcomed the Chinese monk with tears 
of joy. 

Chancellor Chinqay had been charged to tell our monk how eagerly 
Chingis-khan awaited his coming. To speed the progress of the caravan, 
he joined it. They were now in the wild tortuous region between the 
Khangay and the Altay. "Most of the mountains had snow at their 
peaks; lower down were often tumuli, and climbing to the grave-mound 
on the top of one of these were found remains of offerings to the Spir- 
its." 7 The passes of the Nayman country were so difficult, and Chingis- 
khan had professed himself so impatient to welcome the Taoist monk, 
that the caravan abandoned a great many of the wagons to continue the 
journey on horseback. These mountains were haunted by demons. The 
Chinese were told that "once not far from here the King of the Nayman 
tribe was also bewitched by a mountain spirit, the creature inducing him 
to part with his choicest provisions." 8 

On September 2 they reached the northeast slope of the Altay. 

5 [Op. dt., pp. 67-8.] 

6 [Op. cit., p. 69.] 

7 [Op. cit., p. 71-2.] 

8 [Op. cit., p. 76.] 



Across Mongolia in 1221 253 

To cross the Altay range, there was but one narrow trail once blazed 
by Ogodei. And on this the escort had alternately to push the wagon up 
the inclines and hold them back going down. "We thus proceeded four 
stages and negotiated five successive ranges and came out at last on the 
south side of the mountains." 9 Once on the southern slope of the last 
range, the caravan came down doubtless by the col of Dabistan-daban 
into the valley of the Bulgun, which is one of the sources of the 
Urungu, or, to be more precise, a little east of it, into the valley of the 
little Narun. They then crossed a desert of sand dunes, also haunted by 
demons, which were scared away by daubing the horses' heads with 
blood. To the south, they could see rising, in an unreal line of silver, the 
first foothills of the T'ien-chans. 

At the end of September, the caravan reached the Uyghur town of 
Beshbaliq, the present-day Dzimsa, about eighteen miles east of what is 
now Urumchi. Uyghur prince, populace, Buddhist monks, others, all 
came to greet the famous Chinese monk. After so much journeying 
through mountains and desert, these Uyghur oases, patiently fertilized by 
their ingenious irrigation channels, seemed to the travelers a paradise. At 
Jambaliq, Ch'ang-ch'un was feasted on a terrace with excellent wine and 
delicious melons. It was the last Buddhist town. West of it Moslem coun- 
try began. Passing along the edge of the Dzungaria Desert, the travelers 
came to the beautiful Lake Sairam, its waters reflecting the peaks of the 
T'ien-shans with their thick forests of birch and pine. Chingis-khan's sec- 
ond son, Jaghatay, had in 1219 made a way here through the mountains, 
between the lake and the valley of the Ili, by the pass of Talki, throwing 
wooden bridges across the torrents with their boiling waterfalls. These 
bridges were wide enough for two wagons to cross on them abreast. 
South of the Talki, the caravan went down into the valley of the Ili, with 
its meadows and mulberry and jujube trees. 

3 [Op. cit.] 



A 
AA 



69 



Conversations of Chingis-khan 
with the Chinese Sage 



On October 14, 1221, the Ch'ang-ch'un caravan came to the town of 
Almaliq, near the present-day Khuldja, in the heart of the beautiful val- 
ley of the Ili. The local prince came to meet the travelers with the Mon- 
gol darugha or prefect. The caravan here completed the restoration of its 
strength. The country was famous for its fruit (Almaliq means in Turk- 
ish "the Apple Orchard"). Our travelers' account sings the praises of the 
irrigation works which made the whole district a veritable garden, and of 
the famous cotton plantations. 

Continuing in line westward, the caravan passed in the second fort- 
night in October through the fertile region of the sources of the Chu, the 
Talas, and their tributaries, and, by way of Chimkent and Tashkent, 
came to the Sir-darya which it crossed on November 22. On the other 
side, they were in Transoxania. On December 3, Ch'ang-ch'un arrived at 
Samarkand. By agreement with the Mongol authorities, he passed here 
the rest of the winter: Chingis-khan, busy putting an end to the last re- 
volts in the Afghan towns, had more pressing concerns than the philoso- 
pher. In mid-April of the following year his thoughts turned again to 
Ch'ang-ch'un and he sent him a message: "Adept! You have spared 
yourself no pains in coming to me across hill and stream, all the way 
from the lands of sunrise. Now I am on my way home and am impatient 
to hear your teaching. I hope you are not too tired to come and meet 
me." 1 Ch'ang-ch'un set out at once. He went through the Iron Gates, 
crossed the Oxus, passed through Balkh and came at last on May 15, 
1222, to the camp of Chingis-khan. 
i [No. 7, pp. 97-8.] 



Conversations with the Chinese Sage 255 

The Conqueror had the wannest of welcomes for the monk come so 
far to bring him the words of wisdom. He was flattered, too, for Ch'ang- 
ch'un, invited on earlier occasions, in China itself, to the court of the 
King of k Gold or that of the emperor of Hang-chou, had declined to go: 
"Other rulers summoned you, but you would not go to them. And now 
you have come ten thousand Us to see me. I take this as a high compli- 
ment." 2 Ch'ang-ch'un answered: "That I, a hermit of the mountains, 
should come at your Majesty's bidding was the will of Heaven." Chingis- 
khan invited him to be seated, and at once put the question: "Adept, 
what medicine of long life have you brought me from afar?" Honestly, 
the monk answered him, not as alchemist or thaumaturge, but as a phi- 
losopher: "I have means of protecting life, but no elixir that will prolong 
it." 3 

Chingis-khan was, we may be certain, profoundly disappointed. His 
whole object, we know, in having had the Chinese monk come all this 
immense way to him, had been to learn from him this purported Taoist 
masters' secret, of a mysterious draught that would let him cheat death 
forever. Nevertheless and here we get an authentic glimpse of his self- 
mastery, of the nobility of character, the natural generosity that, in this 
semi-barbarian chieftain, bespeaks the man of breeding he betrayed no 
dissatisfaction, but, on the contrary, congratulated Ch'ang-ch'un for his 
frankness and sincerity. He conferred on the excellent monk a title of 
honor and had two tents set up for him not far from the imperial tent. 

But it must be admitted that, if Chingis-khan betrayed no disappoint- 
ment in the Chinese sage, if he showed him but greater esteem, soon 
indeed conceived an affection for him, he no longer manifested the same 
eagerness for conversations that tended now to the philosophic, and of 
which truth to tell, highly intelligent as he was, he could make not a 
great deal. . . . And the Conqueror was engaged in his final wiping-out 
of last pockets of resistance in Afghanistan and Khorassan in the final 
destruction, alas, of those countries. Ch'ang-ch'un, whose place was em- 
phatically not among such horrors, asked his permission to return to wait 
for him at Samarkand. Chingis-khan gave it, together with instructions 
for him to be especially well treated. The Mongol governor of Samar- 
kand, a Khitay named Ye-lii A-hai, welcomed him accordingly with 
much care for his comfort; we know he presented him with a melon field. 

2 [No. 12, p. ioo.] 

3 [Op. cit., p. i or.] 



256 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

At Samarkand, the Chinese Taoist, who seems to have been one of the 
most inquiring minds of his time, made friends with the Moslem scholars 
of the country, the danishmands, as they were called. 

In September of this year 1222, Chingis-khan, who had put his end to 
the Afghan insurrections, sent for Ch'ang-ch'un to be with him again. 
The monk arrived on September 28 at the imperial camp, south of 
Balkh, at the foot of the Hindu-kush. Ch'ang-ch'un with the independ- 
ence of character that was the mark of the Taoist sages, explained firmly 
that in China the masters of his religion were privileged not to kneel in 
prostration before sovereigns, and that all that was required of them was 
to bow their heads, with clasped hands. Chingis-khan accepted with a 
good grace this mark of philosophic independence. It is piquant to see 
the barbarian conqueror here proving himself once again more liberal 
than Alexander the Great: it was, it will be remembered, for having 
refused to "adore" the Macedonian by Asiatic-style prostration that the 
philosopher Callisthenes, nephew of Aristotle, had been disgraced and 
finally executed. Wishing, on the contrary, to honor his guest, Chingis- 
khan courteously offered him qumiz, but Ch'ang-ch'un, for religious rea- 
sons, firmly declined to drink of it. Ch } ang-ch'un was next invited to dine 
daily with the Conqueror. This invitation in turn he declined, stating, with 
the same philosophic dignity, that solitude better befitted a man such as 
himself than the tumult of the camps. Again Chingis-khan had heart and 
intelligence enough to respect his preferences. 

Ch'ang-ch'un nevertheless followed the nomad court when in the au- 
tumn of 1222 it began its return north. On the way, Chingis-khan had 
brought to his friend the philosopher grape and melon juice, and other 
delicacies. On October 21, between the Amu-darya and Samarkand, he 
had a tent made ready to have Taoism expounded to him. The chancellor 
Chinqay was present and the Khitay Ye-lii A-hai interpreted. The em- 
peror was greatly edified and the sage's words charmed his heart. On 
October 25, a fine night, the 'colloquy was continued. The Conqueror 
was so impressed by Ch'ang-ch'un's teaching that he ordered the latter's 
words to be set down in Chinese and Uyghur. What his informant re- 
vealed to him must have been the maxims of Lao-tzu and Lieh-tzu, the 
two legendary founders of Taoism of the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., 
or perhaps the words of Chuang-tzu, the third of the great sages, a con- 
temporary of Aristotle. Perhaps the Conqueror heard recited the famous 



Conversations with the Chinese Sage 257 

invocation in the Book of Lao-tzu of the unnamed Force that animates 
and moves the worlds: 4 

The largest square has no corners, 

The greatest vessel takes the longest to finish, 

Great music has the faintest notes, 

The Great Form is without shape. 

Perhaps the master taught his imperial disciple the asceticism of the Book 
of Lieh-tzu: "My heart is concentrated, my body dispersed. All my sen- 
sations are become alike. I no longer feel what my body is held up by or 
my feet rest on. At the will of the wind I go east and west like a dried-up 
leaf, so that in the end I know not whether it is the wind carries me or I 
the wind." 

On that beautiful night of October 25, 1222, by Samarkand, perhaps 
the anchorite repeated to the Conqueror the charming, profound image 
of Chuang-tzu: "How to know whether the self is what we call the self? 
Once I, Chuang-tzu, dreamt that I was a butterfly, a butterfly fluttering, 
and I was happy. I did not know I was Chuang-tzu. Suddenly I woke up 
and I was myself, the real Chuang-tzu. And I no longer knew whether I 
was Chuang-tzu dreaming that he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming 
that it was Chuang-tzu." Perhaps the two speakers recalled the Shake- 
speare-like scene in which Lieh-tzu, showing a skull picked up by the 
roadside, murmurs, the Chinese Hamlet: "This skull and I know that 
there is really no life, really no death." Perhaps, finally, the Chinese phi- 
losopher initiated the Mongol emperor into the Platonic myth of the 
great celestial bird, as it is recounted at the beginning of the Book of 
Chuang-tzu: "The great bird mounts on the wind to a height of ninety 
thousand Us. Looking down from up there in the blue, are these horses 
he sees, galloping? Is it primordial matter flying in a dust of atoms? Are 
they the breaths that give birth to beings? Is the blue the sky itself or but 
the color of infinite distance?" 

No doubt but that such words, blurred as their metaphysical import 
may have been for him, made on the Conqueror a profound impression. 
When, on November io, 5 the monk presented himself before him again, 

4 [Arthur Waley's translation, The Way and its Power, p. 193.! 

5 [In fact it was November 5. In this description Grousset wandered very far from 
his original source. Cf. No. 12, pp. 13-14.] 



258 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

Chingis-khan, who lived still in a mental climate of esotericism and 
magic, asked if he ought not to ask others present to withdraw. Ch'ang- 
ch'un dissuaded him. "The wild man of the mountains," he answered, 
referring to himself, "has dedicated himself for a long time to the seeking 
of the Tao and the life of solitude. In the camp of Your Majesty I hear 
only tumult and cannot collect myself. I beg the favor to be allowed to 
return home." Graciously, Chingis-khan once again gave his consent. 
Ch'ang-ch'un distributed what he had among the poor of Samarkand 
God knows what destitution the town harbored since its storming two 
years before and was preparing to set out for China, when rain and 
snow beginning to fall brought home to him how difficult it would be at 
this season to cross the T'ien-shans. Chingis-khan took advantage of it to 
ask him affectionately to put off his departure: "I am myself on my way 
to the east. Will you not travel with me? My sons," he said, "are soon ar- 
riving. There are still one or two points in your previous discourses which 
are not clear to me. When they have been explained, you may start on 
your journey." 6 

The monk, then, in view of the unfavorableness of the season and to 
please the Conqueror who showed him so much affection, spent the win- 
ter of 1222-23 at ^e latter's side, in Transoxania. On March 10, in the 
region of Tashkent, on a hunting expedition, Chingis-khan, chasing a 
wounded boar, 7 fell from his horse. The raging boar turned, and for a 
moment the Conqueror was in danger. Ch'ang-ch'un took the opportu- 
nity to point out to him the unwiseness of hunting at his age, making 
what was a point of pure Taoist doctrine: "His fall, the Master pointed 
out, had been a warning, just as the failure of the boar to advance and 
gore him had been due to the intervention of heaven. 1 know well,' 
replied the Emperor, 'that your advice is sound indeed. But alas we 
Mongols are brought up from childhood to shoot arrows and ride. Such a 
habit is not easy to lay aside.' " 

On April 8, 1223, Ch'ang-ch'un finally took his leave of Chingis-khan. 
The latter, as a farewell present, gave him a decree bearing the imperial 
seal, exempting from tax the masters of Taoism. He sent one of his offi- 
cers to accompany the sage. 

6 [No. 12, p. 117.] 

T [Grousset's original French text has ours, i.e. bear. He probably relied on an 
English source (Waley or Bretschneider) and must have misread his own notes. 
Ch'ang-ch'un speaks of a "boar." Cf. No. 7, p. 118.] 



Conversations with the Chinese Sage 259 

Ch'ang-ch'un made his way back by the Chu, the III, and Almaliq. He 
recrossed the desert of Dzungaria, its landscape of dunes yearly altering 
with the sandstorms not without spirit intervention, so the inhabitants 
told him. He threaded once more, in the opposite direction, the pass of 
Dabistan-daban or another further east; then, over the waterless, barren 
Gobi, avoiding the hostile Tangut, he took again the direct road to 
China. A last stage through the Ongtit country of Kuku-khoto, and he 
reached the Chinese province of Shan-si in July 1223. He was to die four 
years later, in 1227. 

The interest and sympathy evinced by Chingis-khan in respect of Chi- 
nese Taoism stirred great hopes in Taoist breasts in China. For proof we 
have a stele engraved in 1219, two years, that is, before the Conqueror's 
meeting with Ch'ang-ch'un, but composed at the instigation of the monk 
who then accompanied the latter to Afghanistan. The stele, which has 
Chingis-khan speaking, presents a curious picture of him, a perfect em- 
bodiment of the Taoist ideal. "Heaven," the Conqueror is made to say, 
"has wearied of the sentiments of arrogance and luxury carried to their 
extreme in China. I, I live in the wild region of the North, where covet- 
ousness cannot arise. I return to simplicity, I turn again to purity, I ob- 
serve moderation [all ideals of the Taoist good life]. In the clothes I 
wear or the meats I eat, I have the same rags and the same food as 
cowherd or groom in the stables. I have for the common people the 
solicitude I would have for a little child, and the soldiers I treat as my 
brothers. Present at a hundred battles, I have ever ridden personally in 
the forefront. In the space of seven years I have accomplished a great 
work, and in the six directions of space all is subject to a single law." 

Doubtless we have in this famous text the habitual phraseology of the 
Taoist philosophers. The last phrase is indeed copied from the bulletins 
of victory of the former Chinese emperors, but it is difficult not to see in 
it also a reflection of the character of the Mongol chief, or at any rate the 
image of himself he projected among his contemporaries. 

It is interesting to compare the respectful attention with which Chingis- 
khan listened to the counsels of wisdom of the Taoist monk, and the 
horror in which he held the spinners of rhetoric and phrasemakers. 
Showing a steadfast disdain for the pomposities of Persian or Chinese 
protocol, he adjured the princes of his family to do likewise. "The 
princes of the blood called him by his own name Temiijin and in 
official documents issued by him, his name was accompanied by no hon- 



260 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

orific title." He had taken into his service for his correspondence in Per- 
sian or Arabic one of the former secretaries of the Sultan Mohammed of 
Khwarezm. He instructed this secretary one day to draft a threatening 
letter to the atabeg of Mossul. The scribe, Persian fashion, wound the 
threat round with so many flowers of rhetoric that Chingis-khan was in 
two minds whether he was being made mock of. And as he took mocking 
ill, he forthwith had the overpompous writer executed. 



A 
AA 



70 



Surfeited with Conquest, the Great 
Army Returns to Its Native Land 



Chingis-khan, as we have seen, had spent in the province of Samarkand 
the winter of 1222-23. When, in the spring of 1223, he left this country 
to cross back to the northern bank of the Sir-darya, into the region of 
Tashkent, he gave orders that as the army marched out, the mother of 
the late Sultan Mohammed, the proud Turkhan-khatun, and with her the 
wives and all the relatives of the dead sovereign the Mongols had taken 
prisoner, "should line the roadside and cry aloud, with long wailing lam- 
entations, their farewells to the former Khwarezmian empire," 

The episode fits with the answer Chingis-khan had once made his 
friend Bo'orchu concerning "the greatest pleasure of man." "It is," 
the good Bo'orchu had declared, "to go hunting on a day in springtime, 
mounted on a fine horse, hawk or falcon at wrist, and see one's prey 
brought down." "No," the Conqueror answered, "the greatest delight 
for man, is to inflict defeat on his enemies, to drive them before him, to 
see those dear to them with their faces bathed in tears, to bestride their 
horses, to crush in his arms their daughters and wives." 

Now, all the enemies of the Mongol chief were brought low. He passed 
the spring of 1223 north of Sir-darya. In the valley of the Chirchik, a 
small northern tributary of the river, south of Tashkent, he held a sol- 
emn "court," seated on a throne of gold, among his followers, noyats, 
and ba'atuts; 1 then, through that spring and into the summer of 1223, he 
disported himself in great hunting forays over the steppes of Qulan- 
bashi, in the region, that is, of what are now Aulie-Ata and Frunze, 
1 Mongol honorific titles. 



262 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

south of the upper Chu and north of the Alexander mountains. His 
youngest son Toluy was still with him. Jaghatay and Ogodei, who had 
spent the winter hunting in the region of Bukhara, whence they sent him 
each week fifty loads of game, had now also rejoined him. As for the 
eldest of his sons, Jochi, he had stayed further north, toward the steppes 
of the lower Chu, but by his orders an immense quantity of game, espe- 
cially wild asses, was driven down into the neighborhood of Qulan-bashi, 
where the Conqueror could hunt his fill. "After Chingis-khan, his sol- 
diers amused themselves shooting at these animals which were so tired 
by long traveling they could be taken in the hand. When everyone tired 
of this sport, the wild asses remaining were set free, but before unloosing 
them their captors made their personal marks on their coats." 

Then, by short stages, the Great Army that now knew no more ene- 
mies took its way again north. Two of the Conqueror's grandsons, Qu- 
bilay and Hiilegii, both sons of Toluy the future emperor of China and 
the future khan of Persia came to meet him by the River Imil, at Tar- 
bagatay. Qubilay, then eleven, had killed a hare on the way; Hiilegii, 
nine, had brought down a stag, and as it was the custom of the Mongols 
to rub a child's middle finger with meat and fat the first time he went 
hunting, Chingis-khan himself performed this office this "consecra- 
tion" for his two grandsons. The Conqueror then spent the summer of 
1224 on the banks of the upper Irtysh or Black Irtysh. He lingered a 
long while in Nayman country, and it was not until the spring of 1225 
that he came again to his camping grounds in the Black Forest on the 
banks of the Tula. He had been away six years. 

Of the return of the Conqueror to his native land, Mongol legend has 
more to say than history. Sogang-sechen, in the seventeenth century, re- 
corded traditions having to do with action taken by the Empress Borte. 
Throughout his six years' campaigning, Chingis-khan had had with him 
only one of his secondary wives, his Merkit favorite, the fair Qulan, 
"Madam Wild Ass." Borte, though she was not jealous, finally, tradition 
would have it, decided the absence was lasting too long. She is said to 
have pretended to fear harm might come to a Mongolia left without de- 
fenders. "The eagle," she sent word to Chingis-khan, "makes its nest at 
the top of a high tree, but while it lingers abroad, much lower birds may 
come and devour its eggs or its eaglets." Chingis-khan made up his mind 
then to return to Mongolia, not without a certain unease as to how Borte 



The Great Army Returns 263 

would greet him. ... He hastened to her, to make sure of her inten- 
tions. But Borte, levelheaded woman that she was, hastened to make it 
clear she found her husband's conduct quite natural: "On the reedy- 
shored lake, there are many wild geese and swans. The master may take 
at his will. Among the tribes there are many girls and young women. It is 
for the master at his pleasure to indicate the favored ones he chooses. He 
may take a new wife, he may saddle a steed till now unbroken." At 
which the hero, reassurred, stepped again into his ordu? 

Vanity of human grandeur! Four centuries after the Hero's death this 
domestic contretemps probably fictitious is all his descendants recall 
of the prodigious campaign that had placed at his feet the greatest empire 
of the Moslem world. 

2 [In this passage Grousset follows the original text of Sogang-sechen very loosely. 
He bases his version on I. J. Schmidt's old translation (No. 32), omits certain lines 
and adapts the text to his own needs. The original Mongol text is written in alliterat- 
ing verse of considerable beauty. For a more accurate translation of the original 
cf. John R. Krueger, No. 33, p. 52.] 



A 
AA 



71 



Persia, the Caucasus and Russia: 

The Fantastic Ride of Jebe the 

Arrow and Subotei the Bold 



Before setting out with Chingis-khan on his last incursion into China, we 
have to switch back to his two officers, Jebe and Subotei, pounding 
through northwest Persia, the Caucasus, and southern Russia. This their 
fantastic reconnaissance ride did more perhaps than even the massive ex- 
peditions the Conqueror led in person, to establish the legend of the 
ubiquity, the invincibility of the Mongol horsemen. 

We have seen how Jebe and Subotei, the Mongol army's two best 
strategists, had been dispatched with twenty thousand horsemen in pur- 
suit of the Sultan Mohammed of Khwarezm through Iran. Level with 
Hamadan, the sultan had slipped through their clutches to die on an 
islet in the Caspian. Realizing this shifted their sights for them, they 
continued their ride east, but now as a reconnaissance sortie for the ben- 
efit of future Mongol expeditions. 

As they rode, they extracted ransom from towns that submitted, 
sacked any that resisted. Thus they took by storm the important Persian 
city of Qazwin, eighty-seven miles west of the present Teheran, a town 
famous for its carpets and as warehouse for the silks of Ghilan. "The 
inhabitants fought back in the streets, knife in hand, killing many Mon- 
gols, but their desperate resistance could not fend off a general massacre 
in which there perished more than forty thousand people." 

From here, Jebe and Subotei galloped over the high steppes that con- 
stitute the greater part of northwest Persia, and drove into the province 



Persia, the Caucasus and Russia 265 

of Azerbaijan a province always wealthy by reason of the irrigation 
oases studding it at its center, chief among them Tabriz, and also of the 
double forest strip bordering it on the east, towards Ardebil, in the direc- 
tion of the Caspian, and on the west, towards Urmiya, in the direction of 
Kurdistan. The Mongols made straight for Tabriz, a fine town set in a 
well-watered alluvial plain, healthy of climate, surrounded by gardens. 
The Turkish governor or atabeg of Azerbaijan, Ozbeg, who lived in 
Tabriz, bought their agreement to leave him in peace with a heavy pay- 
ment of silver, apparel, and horses. 

Jebe and Siibotei went then to take up winter quarters (for the winter 
of 1220-21) on the shores of the Caspian, near the mouths of the Arax 
and the Kura. They built up the strength of their horses in the steppes of 
Moghan, where January is a particularly mild month, with vegetation 
already sprouting. But they did not stay long there. January-February 
1 22 1 saw them moving up the Kura valley and into Georgia, a Christian 
kingdom, then at the height of its power. To protect Tiflis, the brilliant 
Georgian cavalry, with King George III at its head, came out to meet 
them. The encounter took place in the plain of Khunan, near where the 
River Berduj, known also as the Borchala or Debeda, joins the Kura, 
south of Tiflis. In the early stages of the action, the Mongols, as their 
custom was, let their opponents exhaust themselves in fruitless attacks, 
then attacked suddenly themselves and cut them in pieces. In this lovely 
Georgian countryside, with its rich crops, its pretty villages full of an- 
cient churches, the destruction they wrought was terrible, but too hasty 
really to ruin the country. 

In the spring, Jebe and Stibotei moved down again into Persia, into the 
province of Azerbaijan, to attack Maragha. This was one of the finest 
cities of the region, with famous orchards and innumerable gardens, shel- 
tered behind screens of poplars, walnuts, and willows. As usual, the 
Mongols pushed to the forefront of the assault Moslem inhabitants of the 
surrounding country, killing those who held back. On March 30 they 
took the town, slaughtered the population and burned all they could not 
carry away. 

The two Mongol captains then remembered that the year before they 
had contented themselves with extracting a ransom from Ramadan. 
The town was surely prosperous with its gardens and fountains, its 
meadows and screens of willows watered by streams bounding down 



266 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

from the Elvend. They went back there again, and, when the townspeo- 
ple refused to pay a second ransom, laid siege to the place. The inhabit- 
ants put up a good defense: this rich Persian bourgeoisie, knowing it 
could expect no mercy, showed the courage of despair. The day of the 
final assault, they fought it out street by street, knife in hand. Of course, 
the Mongols responded with wholesale massacre, and fired the city. 
From here, Jebe and Siibotei made their way back in the autumn of 122 1 
to Georgia. Siibotei lured the Georgian cavalry into an ambush where 
Jebe awaited them. Once more the Georgians were cut to pieces. 

The two Mongol captains then conceived a plan of singular audacity. 
From the pillaged Transcaucasia they resolved to press on, with their 
twenty thousand horsemen, into that unknown world: Europe. By the 
Pass of Derbend, the "gateway" between the ranges of Daghestan, last 
foothills of the Caucasus barrier, and the shore of the Caspian, they 
moved into the steppes watered by the Terek, the Kuma, and their tribu- 
taries, which merge northward into the immensity of the steppes of Rus- 
sia: "grey steppes" to the northwest, domain of horse and sheep raising, 
stretching the length of the northern coast of the Black Sea, from the foot 
of the Caucasus and the Kuban basin to the mouth of the Danube; 
"white steppe" to the northeast, covering the depression of the salt 
marshes around the Caspian. 

Here the Mongols felt at home. Out of their element in the countries 
of long agricultural tradition, in Iran or China, here they found again the 
unbounded horizons of their native territory, immense stretching plains, 
scorching or freezing by turns as the steppe they came from, grasslands 
unending where their horses might recoup their strength. But as they 
emerged from the Caucasus passes, just as they reached the open steppe, 
a combined force fell on them of the different peoples of the country: a 
coalition of the mountain folk of the Caucasus, Lesghiens, and Cherk- 
esses, the Alans or Ases, an ancient people of Iranian-Scythian stock, 
Orthodox Christians, who dwelt in the steppes of the Terek and Kuma, 
and lastly the Qipchaqs or Comans, Turkish tribes still "pagan" not 
turned Moslem, that is who led a nomad existence in the south Russian 
steppe, from the lower Danube to the Volga. Together these represented 
a sizable force. Jebe and Siibotei were nimble enough to split it by per- 
suading the Qipchaqs to desert. Were these latter not, like them, Turko- 
Mongols, leading the same life of the nomad stock raiser? Why were they 



Persia, the Caucasus and Russia 267 

joining forces with their natural enemies, Christian or Moslem, against 
their brothers of Upper Asia? The two Mongol leaders knew how to 
reinforce these ethnic arguments with a more persuasive one: the Qip- 
chaqs saw tangible return for their neutrality, in the shape of a share of 
Mongol booty. Left on their own, the Alans and the mountain peoples 
were defeated. Which accomplished, Jebe and Siibotei turned again, nat- 
urally, on the Qipchaqs, hastened in pursuit of them, cut them to pieces, 
and retrieved with interest all the booty they had paid over. 

The land of Russia, then divided into a great many principalities, ex- 
tended southward very little beyond Kharkov and Kiev, or at most 
Kanev. The Russian princes, who had found little to be happy about in 
having as neighbors the incessantly pillaging Qipchaqs, were aloof from 
the fray, and it was unlikely Jebe and Siibotei would want to come prob- 
ing after them into their dark country or the depths of their forest clear- 
ings. But the most powerful of these princes, the Grand Duke of Susdal 
and of Vladimir, northeast of Moscow, had married the daughter of a 
Qipchaq chief. Thanks to these family ties, the Qipchaqs contrived to 
secure the intervention of the three nearest Russian princes, of Kiev, of 
Chernigov, and of Galich. The three princes having joined forces on the 
Dnieper, Jebe and Siibotei sent ten envoys to them with proposals for 
keeping the peace. The Russians, the envoys said, should take the excel- 
lent opportunity to have their revenge for the former ravages of the Qip- 
chaqs. They had only to ally against them with the Mongols, with whom 
they would share the booty. Even from the religious point of view, the 
Mongols should be preferable to them as allies, as worshipers of a single 
god, rather than the idolatrous Qipchaqs. Was the reference in this last 
argument to the Mongol Sky-god, the Tengri, or to Nestorian beliefs? 
Whichever was the case, the Russians, far from entertaining the sugges- 
tions, put the envoys to death. By such action four years before had the 
Sultan of Khwarezm brought the thunder down about his empire. 

The Russian army, eighty thousand strong it is said, moved down the 
Dnieper valley opposite what is now Alexandrovsk. Advantage at first 
was with the Russians. In fact, Jebe and Siibotei were making a stra- 
tegic withdrawal intended to tire the Ukranian cavalry and draw it 
into some trap. Nine days the Russians pursued the Mongols. Suddenly, 
by the Kalka, Kalak, or Kalmius, a little coastal river that runs into the 
Sea of Azov near Mariupol, Jebe and Siibotei checked and turned. The 



268 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

Russians, taken by surprise by this volte-face, put themselves at a further 
disadvantage through poor co-ordination. The Prince of Galich, then the 
contingents of Chernigov, and likewise the Qipchaq auxiliaries, charged 
without giving those of Kiev time to fall in with their move. Jebe and 
Subotei, fighting on ground they had apparently deliberately picked for 
the confrontation, threw them into disarray, and the Prince of Galich fled 
(May 31, 1222). The Prince of Kiev, Mstislav Romanovich, whose 
force was still intact, drew back into his fortified camp, where he held 
out for three days, then opened negotiations, and offered a price for his 
safe passage home that the Mongols accepted. But they had not forgot- 
ten the murder of their envoys. When they had the prince at their mercy, 
they put him to death and slaughtered his men. For the record: he was 
suffocated under planks or carpets, a death the Russian chroniclers do 
not fail to wax indignant over, but which, among the Mongols, neverthe- 
less represented a death "of honor," reserved for royal personages whose 
blood, out of respect, they did not want to shed. 

After this resounding success, Jebe and Subotei might have been ex- 
pected to drive against the Russians in Kiev and Chernigov. They did 
not. Satisfied with the lesson they had inflicted, they were content to de- 
stroy a few Russian towns on the Russo-Coman frontier. A Mongol de- 
tachment crossed into the Crimea, a country then enriched by trade with 
Genoa and Venice. The principal port of the region was Soldaia, the 
present-day Sudak, where the Genoese came to ship the furs of the north, 
squirrel and black fox, and the slaves of both sexes they exported as- far 
afield as Egypt. The Mongols sacked this trade center, and this was, for 
the time being, their one act of hostility to the "Latin" world. 

At the end of 1222, Jebe and Subotei sallied northeast to attack the 
"Bulgars of the Kama." This people, Turkish in origin, Moslem by 
creed, inhabited the forest zone of what is now the country of Kazan, 
near the junction of the Kama with the upper Volga, where they grew 
rich exporting to Persia and Khwarezm the products of the north, furs, 
wax, and honey. At the approach of the Mongols, the Bulgars ran to 
arms, but they were drawn into an ambush, surrounded, and slaughtered 
in great numbers. And now Jebe and Subotei began thinking of return to 
Asia. They crossed the lower Volga, the Ural, finally subjugated east of 
this river the Qangli, nomad Turks living in the region of the present-day 
Uralsk and Aktyubinsk; then, by the Emil, in the Tarbagatay, they re- 
turned to Mongolia. 



Persia, the Caucasus and Russia 269 

Chingis-khan might well be pleased with them. In the course of their 
immense reconnaissance they had covered, as the crow flies, over five 
thousand miles, they had vanquished Persians, Caucasians, Turks, and 
Russians, and above all they brought back invaluable information as to 
the weaknesses of the countries they had traveled. It was knowledge 
Siibotei was to draw on again when, twenty years later, the sons of 
Chingis-khan charged him to conquer Europe. 1 

i [This statement is misleading. The 1237-42 European campaign of the Mongols 
stood under the commandment of Baru.] 



A 
AA 



72 



The Conqueror's Years of Repose 



While his two faithful officers carried out this trial run for his successors' 
conquest of Russia, Chingis-khan had made his way back by short stages 
to Mongolia from Turkestan. As we have seen, he was back on the Tula, 
in the region of what is now Ulan Bator, in the autumn of 1225. 

These were the Conqueror's years of relaxation. His writ ran from 
Samarkand to Peking. On the never static frontiers of the immense em- 
pire, loyal generals warred for him against the last Khwarezmians or last 
Kings of Gold. He who had had such difficult beginnings could now have 
a mind at ease about the creation he had wrought. And not yet an old 
man he was still only fifty-eight he could contemplate a period of 
relative repose. Or so at least his distant descendant, the Mongol histo- 
rian Sogang-sechen, was to have it four centuries later. He shows us the 
Conqueror filled one day, as he stood looking over some green meadows, 
with a strange melancholy, a desire for quietness inexplicable in this man 
of iron. "Behold," the Ordos writer has Chingis-khan say, "behold a fair 
place for gatherings of tranquil people, a fine grazing ground for stags 
and roe deer, an old man's perfect haven of repose." 

In fact, the relaxations Chingis-khan favored had certainly nothing 
about them of this Buddhist pastoral aura. We know what they were. 
First and foremost came hunting the gigantic expeditions we have seen 
him making in 1223 in the Tashkent region, which gave him still some- 
thing of the taste of war. Then also he liked gaming and of course drink- 
ing. 

Chingis-khan's round of pleasures is evoked in the account of the Chi- 
nese Chao Hung, Hang-chou's ambassador to the Mongol officer 
Muqali. One day, Muqali sent for the ambassador and asked him: 



The Conqueror's Years of Repose 271 

"We played ball today. Why did you not come?" The Chinese answered 
that, not having been specially invited, he had not presumed to join in 
the game. To which Muqali replied with jovial friendliness: "Since you 
have been in our empire, I have thought of you as one of my intimates. 
Whenever there is a feast, or a game, or a hunting expedition, I mean 
you to come and amuse yourself with us without waiting for an invita- 
tion." Laughing, he then made the ambassador drink, by way of penalty, 
six large cups of wine, and let him depart that evening only in a state of 
total inebriation. Muqali had indeed conceived a real affection for 
this Chinese who in the war the Sung court was waging on its own ac- 
count with the King of Gold had displayed such remarkable strategic 
capacities. When the time came for the ambassador to take his leave, the 
Mongol chief gave orders for him to be treated right up to the end with 
especial care for his comfort: "Stay several days in each important town. 
Let him be served the fullest-bodied wines, the most scented tea, the 
tastiest dishes. In his honor, let handsome youths excel themselves on the 
flute, sweet-faced young women musicians make their instruments re- 
sound." x 

The last detail should not surprise us. We know, in fact, that Muqali 
took with him on his campaigns a score or so accomplished female musi- 
cians. The Chinese diplomats have high praise for his taste in women. 
"When the ambassador presented himself before the Mongol captain," 
notes one of them, "he was invited, the introductions protocol required 
completed, to sit down and drink some wine in company with one of the 
wives of Muqali and eight of his concubines who were present at the 
feast. The whiteness of face of these women is dazzling, and their appear- 
ance highly attractive. Four of them are Kin princesses, the other four 
Tatar women. They are very beautiful and the general loves them 
greatly." 

The supreme delight of these feasts was of course the drinking. Chin- 
gis-khan declared that it was seemly to get drunk only up to three times a 
month; he added that it would be preferable, clearly, to make it only 
twice or even only once. "It would be even perfectly good never to get 
drunk. But where is the man who could observe such a rule of conduct?" 

1 [The whole episode is reported in almost identical words by Grousset on pp. 522- 
523 of No. 35, where he ascribes the words to Chingis. The story is probably 
apocryphal, cf. No. 36, vol. V, p. 148.! 



272 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

We have already stressed the curious contrast between the horrors 
perpetrated by the Mongol armies and the bonhomie of the Conqueror's 
relationships with his own circle. Nay, odd as the expressions may seem 
used of a barbarian, Chingis-khan gave proof when occasion arose of a 
nobility of soul, a gentlemanly chivalry, quite unlooked-for in his milieu. 

One of his former vassals, the Khitay chief Ye-lii Liu-ko, who had 
been able to re-establish, with Mongol aid, a little principality in Liao- 
Tung, in the south of Manchuria, died in 1220. Chingis-khan was then in 
Transoxania. The widow, the lady Yao-li-szu, assumed the regency, by 
consent of Prince Temiige-otchigin, brother of the Conqueror, charged 
by the latter in his absence to administer Mongolia. On Chingis-khan's 
return, she came with her sons to the imperial ordu. "When she appeared 
before her suzerain, she went on her knees according to etiquette. Chin- 
gis-khan welcomed her with particular distinction and did her the honor 
the most sought after to 'proffer her the cup.' " She proposed that 
the Khitay kingdom should go to the late king's eldest son, a young man 
who had accompanied Chingis-khan in the war in Khwarezm and with 
whom he had been well pleased. Chingis-khan gave his consent to the 
regent's wishes, and greatly praised her wisdom and fairness. "When she 
took her leave, he gave her nine Chinese prisoners, nine valuable horses, 
nine ingots of silver, nine lengths of silk, nine precious jewels" (the num- 
ber nine was sacred for the Mongols). As for the young Khitay prince, 
he rewarded him no less magnificently for his services. "Your father," he 
told him, "once placed you in my keeping as pledge of his loyalty. I 
always acted toward him as if he had been my younger brother and I 
love you as a son. Command my troops [in Liao-Tung] with my brother 
Belgiitei and live together in close unity." 

Chingis-khan showed a like generosity to the heir of the Ongiit 
princes, the Nestorian Christian Po-yao-ho. This young man he was only 
seventeen had also been with him on the Khwarezm campaign. On 
their return Chiagis-khan gave him in marriage his own daughter, the 
wise Alaghay-beki. Po-yao-ho and Alaghay reigned peaceably together 
in the hereditary domain in the region of Kuei-hua-ch'eng, in the north- 
west Shan-si over the Turko-Ongiit people so interesting to us by reason 
of their loyalty to the Nestorian faith. The couple were to have no chil- 
dren, but Alaghay, like her father a forceful personality, was also great- 
hearted. She brought up "as if they were her own," the sons her husband 



The Conqueror's Years of Repose 273 

had by a concubine, and prepared them for kingship. These adopted sons 
of the valiant qatun Alaghay were in their turn to marry Chingiskhanid 
princesses and perpetuate the close alliance of the two houses, the alli- 
ance that brought Christianity to the very steps of the Mongol throne. 



A 
AA 



73 



Return to China 



Chingis-khan's rest on his return to Mongolia did not last the year. Once 
more, events in China claimed his attention. 

Since his departure, the struggle against the King of Gold had gone on 
without pause. His officer Muqali, whom he had left in charge, had a 
difficult task. A noble figure, and all in all a likable one, this Mongol 
warrior, his master's companion in the early days of obscurity, was now 
raised by the Conqueror to the highest eminence. Chingis-khan, to assure 
his officer authority over the Chinese population, had indeed conferred 
on him, as we have seen, the royal title of go-ong or, in Chinese, kuo- 
wang, king of the country. Living himself on practically nothing, like all 
the Mongol generals, Muqali when the prestige of the "Banner" was 
involved knew how to cut the figure of a king. Generals of contingents 
sent by vassal princes to serve in his command were required on arrival 
to walk holding his horse's rein as their lords held the rein of the horse 
of Chingis-khan. Yet like the master he served, he also know how to 
listen, and was far from deaf to the counsels of civilization. One of the 
captains of the King of Gold come over into the Mongols' service one 
day proffered some courageous observations on the barbarity with which 
their troops behaved in conquered country. "He explained to Muqali 
that, in the interests of the very success of Mongol conquest, it was im- 
portant to calm populations already subjected and inspire confidence in 
those not yet so." Far from being angry, Muqali saw that the point was 
a good one. "He gave orders immediately that plundering should cease 
and captives be released. The strict discipline he thereafter enforced in 
his army in this respect greatly furthered the subjection of the country." 

This humanization of the war was in fact good policy. Muqali at the 



Return to China 275 

same time made a change in the character of Mongol conquest, which 
had hitherto gone no further than horseback raids, destruction, and 
slaughter, not followed up by any effective occupation. Effective occupa- 
tion of conquered territory now became with him a definite objective. To 
this end, he employed an increasing number of Chinese, Khitays, and 
even Jiirchets who had rallied to his side, who could remedy the deficien- 
cies the Mongols were most constantly aware of, by providing them with 
infantry and siege engines. Several generals of the King of Gold who had 
come over to the Mongols were of service to him here: Ming Ngan, for 
instance, Chang-chou, and the already mentioned Shi T'ien-yi. Those 
who had come over brought others. This was the case with Ming Ngan 
and Chang-chou. The former, who had come over several years earlier, 
took the latter prisoner when his horse was brought down at the height of 
a battle. "Whoever fell into the hands of the Mongols must make sub- 
mission to Chingis-khan or resign himself to death. Chang-chou never- 
theless refused to bow the knee before the Chinghiskanid general, saying 
that he was of equal rank in the armies of the King of Gold and that he 
would not humiliate himself to save his life." Nobly and cleverly 
Ming Ngan respected his courage and set him free. He also however then 
made arrangements to hold Chang-chou's parents as hostages. "Chang- 
chou hesitated a long while between filial piety and his duty to his sover- 
eign," and, as he was a good Chinese, filial piety won: he brought him- 
self to pay homage to Chingis-khan, and was at once appointed to a 
command under Muqali. 

Desperate fighting went on in fact unremittingly. The armies of the 
King of Gold, who had previously defended for more than five years the 
approaches to Peking, showed more stubborn still from where they had 
fallen back to in Honan, behind the barrier of the Yellow River. In seven 
years (1217-23), Muqali had little by little driven them back into this 
province, but only by bitter effort, most districts having been conquered, 
lost again, and then again reconquered, several times. As early as 1217, 
in the south of what is now Ho-pei, the Mongol general had taken the 
important town of Ta-ming, which controlled the approaches to the 
Great Plain, but cannot have been able to hold it, since he had to capture 
it again in 1220. In 1218 he took, or rather, retook from the King of 
Gold the capitals of Shan-si, Tai-yuan, and P'ing-yang, and in 1220 that 
of Shan-tong, the present Tsi-nan. In 1222, we find him holding the an- 



276 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

cient capital of Shen-si, Ch'ang-ngan or Si-ngan-fu. In 1223, he had 
just snatched from the King of Gold the important P'u-cheu or Ho- 
chong, in the southwest corner of Shan-si, in the bend of the Yellow River, 
when he died, exhausted. Feeling his end at hand, he told his younger 
brother who had hastened to his side: "Forty years I have made war to 
serve the khan my master in his great enterprises, and I have never 
spared myself. My only regret, in my dying hour, is not to have been able 
to take K'ai-feng to offer it to him. Try to take it." So he spoke, and 
died. He was only fifty-four (April 1223 ) . 

Even as the court of K'ai-feng put up its desperate defense, it also had 
its feelers out for peace. As early as August 1220 the King of Gold had 
sent an ambassador to Chingis-khan Wu-ku-sun Chung-tuan, vice pres- 
ident of the Court of Rites in an effort to move him to consider terms. 
The Conqueror was then deep in the "West," in Afghanistan. The am- 
bassador came to him via the Ili, in the autumn of 1221. To the request 
to conclude peace, Chingis-khan replied: "I earlier asked your master to 
give up to me all territory north of the Yellow River and to be content to 
keep for himself the district south of it, with the simple title of king 
[wang]. This was the condition on which I was prepared to suspend 
hostilities, but now Muqali has conquered all the territory I claimed 
then, and you have no choice but to sue for peace." Wu-ku-sun implored 
him to have pity on the King of Gold. Chingis-khan answered: "Only in 
view of the distance you have traveled yourself to come here, I show 
leniency to you personally. Here is my decision. The country north of the 
Yellow River is now in my hands, but your master controls still a few 
places to the west of T'ung-kuan [in Shen-si]. He must deliver them up 
to me!" There was nothing for the ambassador but to bring back these 
conditions. The court of K'ai-feng dared not accept: the fortresses around 
T'ung-kuan constituted as a glance at the map will confirm the only 
defense of Honan on the west, and to relinquish them would have been 
for the King of Gold to hand over the keys of his kingdom. Right up to 
1227, nevertheless, the King went on unremittingly attempting to ap- 
pease the inflexible Conqueror by protestations of vassalhood. 

In 1 21 6, one of the King of Gold's generals named P'u-hsien Wan-nu 
had taken advantage of the general disorder to carve for himself in the 
former Jurchet country, in southern Manchuria, a kingdom of his own, 
which he called by the Chinese name "the kingdom of Tung-hsia." In 
1 22 1, this individual had sent his conciliatory ambassador to Chingis- 



Return to China 277 

khan in Transoxania or Afghanistan. But the Mongols could not leave 
long in existence this sprig of an enemy tree: between 1224 and 1227 
"Tung-hsia" disappeared from the map. 

What irked Chingis-khan, even more than the last-ditch resistance of 
the King of Gold, was the defection of the Tanguts, of the "kingdom of 
Hsi-hsia," as it was called. 

As we know, the Tanguts, a people of Tibetan affinities partly sini- 
zed (they had even invented a script for their own use with characters 
derived from the Chinese), had been for two centuries masters of the 
Chinese province of Kansu, and of the steppes of the Ordos and the 
Alashan. After several campaigns, Chingis-khan had in 1209 forced 
their king to acknowledge himself a vassal. But the relation thus estab- 
lished required the vassal, in time of war, to furnish his contingent for 
the suzerain. When, in 1219, the Conqueror was making ready for his 
expedition against the Sultan of Khwarezm, he sent accordingly for the 
auxiliaries owed him by the Tangut sovereign: "You have promised to 
be my right hand. Now, I have broken with the Sarta'ul [the Sultan of 
Khwarezm] and I am setting out to war. Set out to war with me, be my 
right hand!" But the Tangut sovereign was dominated, it appears, by an 
all-powerful minister, who hated the Mongols. This minister Asha- 
gambu himself, before his master had had time to say where he stood, 
gave Chingis-khan's request the most insolent of answers: "If Chingis- 
khan has not sufficient forces to do for himself what he proposes, why 
does he assume the role of emperor?" And with final presumptuousness 
he refused to dispatch any contingent. 

Such a refusal, at such a moment, had stung Chingis-khan deep. This 
was insolence of a kind he was not accustomed to overlook. But the 
campaign against the Sultan of Khwarezm had been decided on, the 
measures required for it had in fact already been taken. It was impossi- 
ble, without completely upsetting these arrangements, to mount a puni- 
tive expedition against the Tanguts. He had had therefore, so far as the 
latter were concerned, to contain himself for the time being. But it had 
been only for the time being, as he had himself declared: "If by the 
protection of the eternal Tengri I return victorious, Khwarezm obedi- 
ent to my reins of gold, then the hour of vengeance will strike for the 
Tanguts!" 

And now he was back, the Khwarezm empire in its length and breadth 
in ruins, and the vengeance hour was come. 



A 
AA 



74 



If It Means My Death I Will 
Exterminate Them!" 



Chingis-khan set out against the Tanguts in the spring of I226. 1 Two of 
his sons, Ogodei and Toluy, went with him. And as on his campaign 
against the Sultan of Khwarezm he had taken one of his secondary wives, 
the Lady Qulan, he took as companion on this new expedition his Tatar 
favorite, the Lady YesiiL 

The campaign began inauspiciously. The invasion army was crossing 
Alashan, a desert "esplanade," broken by long sand dunes, with a nar- 
row fringe of oases and grassland, dominated on the east by a chain of 
mountains rising to 10,000 feet and more, the wooded slopes of which 
are the haunt of the wild ass and the musk stag. Chingis-khan, despite 
the exhortings to prudence he had heard from the Chinese sage, plunged 
with his usual enthusiasm into the pleasures of the chase. A band of wild 
asses, driven from the bushes by the beaters, ran out in front of him. His 
horse a reddish animal reared and threw Mm. 

When the Conqueror was picked up, he complained of sharp internal 
pains. They pitched camp on the spot, at Cho'orqat Next morning, 
Chingis-khan's companion, the lady Yesiii, called the princes and princi- 
pal lords to tell them he had passed a troubled night, with a high fever. 
One of the assembled generals, Tolun-cherbi, of the Qongqotat tribe, at 
once suggested they defer the expedition. "The Tanguts are a sedentary 
people, with walled towns and fixed camps. They will not pick up and 
carry away their towns. When we come back, they will still be there." 

1 [A more detailed but still not very well documented description of this campaign 
can be found in No. 42.] 



"7 Will Exterminate Them!" 279 

Tolun-cherbi counseled, then, a return to Mongolia, there to await 
Chingis-khan's recovery before re-embarking on the campaign. 

All the princes and all the Mongol lords approved his suggestion, but 
Chingis-khan would hear none of it: "If we withdraw, the Tanguts will 
not fail to claim that it was because courage failed us. Let us send them 
first a messenger and wait here for their answer." So it was done. What 
amounted to an ultimatum was sent to the Tangut sovereign: "You had 
sworn to be my right hand. When I set out to war against the Moslems, I 
reminded you of your commitment, but you were untrue to your word, 
you did not send me your contingent. Indeed, instead you sent insulting 
word to me. I postponed my vengeance, but the hour is come. I come to 
settle your account!" Receiving this ominous message, the Tangut king 
was irresolute: "The insults, it was not I pronounced them." But the ill- 
sent minister Asha-gambu took full responsibility for that old defiance: 
"The mockery, yes, it was I who spoke it. Now, if the Mongols want to 
fight, let them come into Alashan where I have my camp with my yurts 
and my camels and their loads, and we will measure our strengths. If 
they must have gold, silver, silk, other treasures, let them come and get 
them from our towns, from Eriqaya and Erije'ii," that is, from Ning-hsia 
and Liang-chou. 

Such a gauntlet Chingis-khan, fevered as he was still, in pain still from 
the fall from his horse, was adamant they were not going to leave even 
temporarily lying. "After such words, we can no longer draw back. If it 
means my death, I will take them at their word, I will go to them!" And 
he bound himself by a great oath, calling to witness his decision the 
Eternal Heaven, supreme god of the Mongols. 

The Mongol army in March 1226 advanced on the Tangut kingdom 
by way of the Etzin-gol, a river rising from the Nanshan mountains and 
flowing south to north into the Gobi, where it peters out, it and its thin 
strip of vegetation reeds, tamaris, and toghraq in a desert of stones 
and sand. The Mongols took the town of Etzina which stands guard in 
the north, at the edge of the Gobi, over the entry to the valley. Country 
famous, writes Marco Polo, for the quality of its camels, sought after for 
Gobi caravans, and also of its gerfalcons, used in great hunts. Moving up 
the valley, the Mongols came into the "Kansu corridor," a band of loess 
running southeast-northwest, on the northern edge of the Nanshans, be- 
tween this range and the Gobi, and fertilized in places by rivers running 



280 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

down from the mountains to form the Etzin-gol. The oases thus strung 
along it, the most considerable Kan-chou and Su-chou, are surrounded 
by screens of willow and poplar, by gardens and even meadows, by corn 
and millet fields, that make them places of delight for caravans arriving 
from the desert. From earliest days, indeed, Kan-chou and Su-chou were 
famous as caravan cities, termini of the routes of central Asia, "ports" of 
the Silk Road. Trade, as Marco Polo attests, had given rise there to a 
flourishing Nestorian Christian community among the preponderantly 
Buddhist population. Marco Polo, some forty-seven years later, was to 
note in Kan-chou marvelous Buddhist statues in Buddhist monasteries, 
whose rule had his admiration, and the existence of three Nestorian 
churches. In the summer of 1226, the Mongols seized both these towns, 
while Chingis-khan, who found heat debilitating, went to camp in the 
nearby perpetually snow-capped mountains. In the autumn, the Mongols, 
driving eastward, took possession of Liang-chou, and came to the Yel- 
low River at Ying-li ? some sixty-two miles south of Ning-hsia, the enemy 
capital. 

In this country of caravan-stage oases, the depradations of the Mon- 
gols were, as usual, ghastly. "To escape the Mongol sword, the inhabit- 
ants in vain hid in the mountains in the west in the Richthofens, in the 
east on Alashan and Lo-chan or, if that were not possible, in caves. 
Scarcely one or two in a hundred succeeded. The fields were covered 
with human bones." The Mongol bard specifies that Chingis-khan, fol- 
lowing up the Tangut chief Asha-gambu's defiant challenge, defeated him 
and forced him to take refuge in the Alashan mountains. "He seized 
from him his tents, his treasure-laden camels, all his people, till all this 
was scattered as so much ash. Tanguts of an age to bear arms he had 
slaughtered, the lords being first to die." He had issued standing orders 
unleashing his soldiers to savage as they wished a people he considered 
had faults to answer for: "As many Tanguts as you can take are yours to 
do as you please with!" 

The Mongol generals were right behind Chingis-khan in this. Sons of 
tayga or steppe, understanding only the life of hunter or shepherd, it was 
beyond them to imagine what useful purpose these agricultural popula- 
tions they had conquered might serve, or this tilled land they were annex- 
ing. Better to kill off all these useless folk who could neither tend a herd 
nor travel with them on their nomad migrations, better burn the harvest 



"/ Will Exterminate Them!" 281 

as they were destroying the towns, let the land lie untilled and be re- 
stored to its dignity as steppe. The policy was quite seriously considered: 
"Chingis-khan's generals pointed out to him that his Chinese subjects 
were of no possible use to him, and that it would be better to slay them 
down to the last inhabitant, and so at least have the benefit of the soil 
which would be converted to grazing." The terrifying program was on 
the point of being adopted when one man weighed in against it with 
everything he knew: Ye-lii Ch'u-ts'ai, the Khitay scholar, the conquered 
Chinese "counselor." He cried out against this barbarian proposal. He 
recounted the advantages to be derived from the fertile countryside and 
its hard-working inhabitants. He showed how by making reasonable dues 
payable on land, tariffs on merchandise, taxes on wine, vinegar, salt, 
iron, and the produce of waters and mountains, they could garner some 
five hundred thousand ounces of silver, eighty thousand lengths of silk, 
four hundred thousand sacks of grain, and declared his astonishment 
that the settled peoples could still despite all this be accounted useless. 

What in Chingis-khan could be counted on to prevail was his intelli- 
gence and sturdy good sense. He committed or allowed to be committed 
terrible atrocities because in the Mongol ambiance of his day there was 
no notion war might be fought otherwise, as there was no conception of a 
way of life other than the nomadic, the lands of the settled communities 
being looked on as no more than raiding grounds, good for pillage and 
man-hunting. From the moment someone explained to him that matters 
were not thus, the Conqueror asked nothing better than to reap the fruits 
of knowledge. Then and there he asked Ye-lii Ch'u-ts'ai to draw up a 
plan for regular administration of the settled lands, with fixed taxes in 
short, with all his Chinese counselor had just told him of. 

While Chingis-khan was making his systematic conquest of Tangut 
territory, his third son, Ogodei, accompanied by the Mongol general 
Chaghan, had, in this same year of 1226, led a mounted raiding force 
across the states of the King of Gold. Riding down the Wei valley to Hsi- 
ngan-fu, he made his way thence into the heart of Honan, to right under 
the walls of K'ai-feng. The Conqueror's hatred of these accursed 
Jiirchets was fueled by memories as vivid as ever of the injuries they had 
once done him: "These people of the Kings of Gold, it was they who 
brought our fathers to their death. Share them out among you. Make 
their sons your servants to carry your falcons. Let your wives make the 



252 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

fairest of their daughters sewing maids to wash and mend your clothes!" 
Nevertheless, the King of Gold sent embassy after embassy to seek 
peace. The one dispatched to Chingis-khan in June-July 1227 met, ap- 
parently, with a kinder reception than its predecessors. The Conqueror, 
increasingly a sick man since his hunting accident, seems then, according 
to the Chinese chroniclers, to have shown an unexpected desire for 
peace. He is said to have told his entourage that already the preceding 
winter, "when the Five Planets were in conjunction/' he had vowed to 
himself he would put an end to the massacre and pillage, and that now 
the time was come to realize his desire. The presents the King of Gold 
sent as tribute were also not without their effect in disposing the terrible 
Mongols to be charitable. Among these were some great pearls that 
Chingis-khan ordered to be distributed among those of his officers who 
wore ear pendants. To be among the recipients, every one of them at 
once had his ears pierced. 



A 
AA 



75 



"My Children, 
the End Is Near for Me . . ." * 



The year 1227 was dawning, the last year of Chingis-khan's life. Toward 
the end of 1226 between November 21 and December 21 he had laid 
siege to the town of Ling-chou (or Ling-wu), the Mongol chroniclers' 
Dormegei, lying some eighteen miles from Ning-hsia, the Tangut capital, 
but with the Yellow River between. The Tangut sovereign sent out a 
relieving army from Ning-hsia to try to raise the siege. Chingis-khan 
came out to meet this force in a plain studded by pools left by flooding of 
the river, and at this time of year frozen over. Once again, the Tanguts 
suffered crushing defeat. The Mongols took and sacked Ling-wu. 

It remained to take the capital itself, the city of Ning-hsia, or, as it is 
called in the Mongol chronicles, Eriqaya, Marco Polo's Egrigaia. Stand- 
ing four miles or thereabouts back from the Yellow River, in a part 
where the Great Wall takes to the latter's right bank instead of its left, 
Ning-hsia nevertheless lives by the river. Its waters are brought to it 
piecemeal through a complex network of diversions and artificial canals 
which dates back to the beginning of the Christian era, and testifies to the 
science of the ancient Chinese engineers who contrived thus to transform 
into a fertile oasis a tongue of land between two deserts. Ning-hsia was 
also, as has been seen, an industrial and commercial center of great im- 
portance, famous especially for its cloths of white camel hair, declared 
by Marco Polo "the finest in the world." Commercial activity at Ning- 
hsia was attested by the existence of a rich Nestorian community, with 
three churches, within the preponderantly Buddhist population. 
1 [On the last campaign and the death of Chingis see No. 43.] 



284 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

Chingis-khan, at the beginning of 1227, threw a contingent around 
Ning-hsia to blockade the city. He himself, with another division, 
went off to conquer the upper basin of the Yellow River, where he at- 
tacked first, in February, the town of Ho-chou, sixty miles southwest of 
Lan-chou. This is forbidding country. On the Sino-Tibetan border, the 
river's course is simply a series of canyons carving their way sixteen 
hundred feet deep through loess or granite and zigzagging in the depths 
of steppe valleys through marshes and torrents. Farther to the west, 
around Hsi-ning, toward the Koko-na'ur the "blue lake" that here marks 
the frontier of Chinese and Tibetan territory the country is wilder still, 
with plateaus 6,600 to 10,000 feet above sea level, slashed with gorges 
and divided up by the southern foothills of the Nanshans. The Hsi-ning 
market there commands the caravan route that climbs toward the high 
Tibetan plateaus and Lhasa. 

In March 1227, Chingis-khan pushed on to Hsi-ning and captured it. 
In April, he moved across from the western limits of Kansu to that prov- 
ince's eastern frontiers, by the Lin-pan-shan mountains, source of the 
Ching-ho River that flows southwest toward the Wei valley and the rich 
plain of Ch'ang-un. He spent the rest of the spring in this district, around 
Lung-to, by the headwaters of the Ching-ho. At the end of May or in the 
first two weeks of June he went to take up summer quarters in the Lin- 
pan-shans, which, rising in places to ten thousand feet, offered him ref- 
uge from the heat. Then he came down some thirty-seven miles farther 
south, in the district of Ch'ing-shui, where the last outlying southern Lin- 
pan-shan foothills overhang the upper valley of the Wei. The Conqueror, 
who, it seems, had never fully recovered from his accident the year be- 
fore, was feeling himself borne down by an increasing weariness. Under 
no illusions about his condition, he called the more insistently on his 
officers to press on with the siege of the Tangut capital, Ning-hsia. 

Ning-hsia's defenders were at the end of their tether, but the Tangut 
king, Li Hsien, who had stayed with them, still sought to gain time. He 
asked for a stay of a month to surrender the town. The same month, in 
about the first fortnight of June, he resigned himself to capitulation. He 
came in great pomp to the Mongol camp with magnificent gifts the 
Chingiskhanid bard lists admiringly: images of Buddhas resplendent 
with gold, cups and bowls of gold and silver, youths and maidens, horses 
and camels, all in multiples of nine, in accordance with Mongol protocol. 



"The End Is Near for Me . . ." 255 

But notwithstanding the somewhat belated tribute and despite his profes- 
sion of submission, Li Hsien did not obtain from Chingis-khau the audi- 
ence he sought, or at least, he was permitted only to make obeisance to 
the Conqueror "through a closed door." In fact, even this meeting must 
have been faked: Chingis-khan, now seriously ill, was undoubtedly not 
present at the audience he was supposed to have given the defeated king. 
Not that the latter's fortunes fared any the better in consequence. The 
Conqueror had already given orders to Tolun-cherbi to put to death the 
last Tangut sovereign, orders that we may imagine were executed with 
blithe dispatch. 

While his generals were taking the enemy capital, in the mountains of 
eastern Kansu, the Conqueror of the world was living his last weeks on 
earth. The time had come for him to think seriously of his successor. 
Among his sons the eldest, Jochi if he was indeed his son, and most 
men doubted it had never, it seems, been for him the object of more 
than constrained affection. Of latter years, moreover, Jochi had behaved 
strangely. After the destruction of the Khwarezmian empire, instead of 
rejoining his father in the spring of 1223, when he was making his great 
hunting expeditions north of Tashkent, he stayed sullenly away in his 
province in the Sibero-Turkestan steppes, and he had not put in an ap- 
pearance since. Hurt by the unvoiced imputation of bastardy he sensed 
around him, angered perhaps also at having his younger brother Ogodei 
set above him, was he contemplating secession? Chingis-khan had for a 
moment suspected this might be the case, and it is said that in this same 
year, 1227, father had had in mind a punitive expedition against son; 
but it was soon learned that Jochi's non-response to paternal invitations 
had been due to illness: the "eldest son" had died in his province north 
of the Aral in or about February 1227. 

Of the hero's three surviving sons, Jaghatay was away, commanding a 
reserve army. "Warned by a dream," Chingis-khan summoned his two 
other sons, Ogodei and Toluy, who were campaigning in the area. First 
asking the officers who filled his yurt to step aside a moment, he made to 
these two princes (ever, indeed, his two favorite sons) his last recom- 
mendations: "My children," he told them, "the end is near for me. Aided 
by the Eternal Heaven, I have conquered for you an empire so vast, that 
from its center to its bounds is a year's riding. If you would retain it, hold 
together, act in unison against your enemies, concert to further the for- 



256 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

tunes of your followers. One of you must occupy the throne. Ogodei shall 
be my successor. Respect this choice after my death, and let Jaghatay, 
who is not here, make no trouble." 

His sickness gaining on him, his mind ran on the war against the King 
of Gold. For if the fall of the Tangut capital was no longer more than a 
matter of days, the King of Gold, the Mongols' hereditary enemy, still 
held his stronghold retreat of Honan, with at its center the great capital 
K'ai-feng, seemingly impregnable. The thoughts of the dying man were 
on this the unfinished part of his handiwork, and he confided to his 
son Toluy how he might complete it. "The best of the King of Gold's 
troops," he told him, "are manning the fortress of T'ung-kuan [which 
controlled access to Honan from Shen-si], Now, this fortress has the pro- 
tection on the south of steep mountains, and on the north, of the Yellow 
River. It is difficult to rush the enemy there. You must ask the Chinese of 
the Sung empire to be allowed to pass through their territory; as they too 
are enemies of the King of Gold, they will consent. Then our army will 
make its way through that territory to south Honan, and from there drive 
directly on K'ai-feng. The King of Gold will be forced to call to his aid 
the troops massed on the Pass of T'ung-kuan, but they will arrive too 
late, worn out by the long march, and it will be easy to defeat them." 

So the great Mongol even on his deathbed outlined for his sons and 
generals a last plan of campaign one they executed in fact under Tbluy 
six years later. The fall of K'ai-feng to the Mongols in May 1233 was in 
a very real sense the inflexible Emperor's personal, if posthumous, vic- 
tory. 

The dying Conqueror was intent also on exacting his full tithe of 
vengeance this too posthumously from the last Tanguts. Their capi- 
tal, Ning-hsia, was falling, but the thought rankled that by bringing him 
to make war in the state of health he was in, these recalcitrant vassals 
had led him to his death. He gave orders therefore to exterminate all the 
defenders of Ning-hsia, men and women, "fathers and mothers," to the 
last generation. After his death, at the offering of the funeral sacrifices to 
his corpse, it was to be announced to him these were his last instruc- 
tions that he was truly avenged, that the Tangut kingdom had been 
wiped from the face of the earth: "During my repast, declare to me: to 
the last man they have been exterminated! The khan has annihilated 
their race!" The Conqueror of the world had for his funeral rites the 



"The End Is Near for Me . . ." 287 

massacre of an entire people. The elimination cannot, however, have 
been quite total, since a considerable number of Tangut subjects were 
allotted to the Lady Yesui who had accompanied her master in the last 
campaign. 

Chingis-khan had an affectionate word for the faithful Tolun-cherbi, 
who the year before, after his fall from his horse, had tried to persuade 
him to defer the expedition. "It was you, Tolun, who after my hunting 
accident at Arbuqu were concerned about my condition, you who 
wanted me to get proper care taken in time. ... I did not listen to you, 

1 came to punish the Tanguts for their venomous words. ... All the 
king of the Tanguts has brought us, his movable palace, his dishes of gold 
and silver, take it, I give it to you." 

Perhaps, in the final hour, the Conqueror reflected with the melan- 
choly attributed to him by a chronicler: "My descendants will go clothed 
in gold-embroidered stuffs; they will feed on the choicest meats, they will 
bestride superb steeds and press in their arms the most beautiful of 
young women. And they will have forgotten to whom they owe all 
that. . . ." 

Chingis-khan died on August 18, I227, 2 near Chung-shui, north of the 
River Wei, in the mountains of eastern Kansu, where he had gone to 
have cooler air, at least, about him in his pain. He was barely sixty. 

2 [This is the date given by Juvaini. According to Chinese sources the day of Chingis' 
death was August 23, whereas Rashid ed-Din has August 28. The problem is dis- 
cussed at length by Pelliot, No. 18, pp. 3<>5-9-] 



A 
AA 



76 



As a Falcon Soars Circling 
in the Heavens . . ." 



The last journey of him who had been Conqueror of the world, from 
Kansu to the sacred mountain of Kentey, has been made the theme of 
one of the most magnificent poems in Mongol literature a poem already 
crystallized in its essentials in the first hah of the seventeeth century, 
since we find it in both the Golden History, the Altan-Tobchi, of 1604, 
and in Sogang-sechen, of about 1662. The khan has just died. His body 
is laid in a wagon to be brought back to the homeland. Amid the lamen- 
tations of the army, one of the Mongol generals, Kelegiitei, also known 
as Kiliigen, addresses the dead man: "Have you gone, my Lord, soaring 
like a falcon? Have you gone, my Lord, becoming ill [because] of a 
creaking wagon? Have you in truth abandoned, my Lord, your own wife 
and sons? Have you in truth left behind, my Lord, your own massed 
subject peoples? Did you get lost, my Lord, like a chattering falcon? Did 
you fly in the wind like the gently waving grass? At your age of sixty-six, 
did you, my Lord, Arise to render happiness to your nine-colored peo- 
ples?" x 

Amid the lamentations, the funeral chariot has moved off, but sud- 
denly the wheels sink bogged in the clayey soil. The strongest horses and 
the crowd around strive in vain to free it from the mud; they cannot 
budge it. Then Kiliigen the Valiant calls again on the soul of Chingis- 
khan: "My heavenly Boghda Lord, Lion of Men, Bora with a destiny 
from Eternal Blue Heaven! Have you reached the point of completely 
abandoning all your extensive and great people, in your elevated re- 
birth? Your wife whom you met and with whom you multiplied, your 
1 [Translation by John R. Krueger, No. 33, p. 71.] 



"As a Falcon Soars in the Heavens . . " 289 

evenly established kingdom, your administration arranged as you de- 
sired, your people united by the myriads, they are here. Your queen 
whom you met and greatly loved, your golden yurt, palace and dwelling, 
your realm established in purity, your people, gathered and amiable, 
they are here. The land you have ridden upon, the water you washed in, 
your subject Mongol people, vast as growing things, your many function- 
aries, princes, and ministers, your camp where you were born, Deli'un- 
boldaq on the Onon, they are here. Your [banner] of protective- 
genius, made from the forelocks of bay stallions, your tambourines, 
cymbals, trumpets, flutes, piccolos, your golden ywrZ-palace, where are 
gathered all things discussed, your throne, where you became king on the 
Island of Kodege in the Keriilen, they are here. Your queen, wise Borte 
Jiisin, met before accomplishing, your great fortunate camping-grounds, 
Burqatu Qan, your two intimate comrades, Bogharji and Muqali, your 
realm and administration, established in entirety, they are here. Your 
wife, Queen Qulan, met by means of magic [lit., transformation], your 
violins (qughur), flutes (cughur) and others, your music and song, your 
two beauteous queens, Yisiii and Yisugen, your golden palace home 
wherein all is assembled, they are here. Because the Qaraghun Qan 
[mountain chain] is warm, because the subject Tanguts are many, be- 
cause Queen Gorbeljin is beautiful, have you, in truth, abandoned your 
old Mongols, my Lord? Although for your warm golden life there be no 
protection, bringing your illumined origen [i.e., body] like a jade jewel, 
should we not display [it] to your wife Queen Borte Jiisin, should we 
not gratify your whole great people?" 2 

At these words the wagon, till now immovable, moves forward, and 
the funeral cortege takes the road for Upper Mongolia. 

The news of Chingis-khan's death was for some time kept a secret: it 
was important it should not be noised abroad among enemy peoples or 
ones too recently conquered until appropriate precautions had been 
taken. The escort accordingly slew as they went any more or less suspect 
stranger who had the misfortune to cross the path of the bier. This was 
also an old Altaic custom, thought of as ensuring servitors for the dead 
man in the hereafter. As they slew the travelers they encountered, so did 
they their horses and oxen: "Go to serve our master the khan in the 
hereafter!" 

The news was made public that Chingis-khan was dead only when the 

2 [Op. cit, p. 71-72.] 



290 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

funeral cortege reached the great imperial encampment at the headwa- 
ters of the Keriilen. The Conqueror's mortal remains lay in turn in the 
ordus that is, in the felt palaces of each of his principal wives, whither, 
at the invitation of Toluy, princes, princesses of the blood and war chiefs 
hastened from every quarter of the empire to pay him their last tribute in 
long lamentation. Those from farthest off were three months on the way. 



A 
AA 



77 



Up There, Somewhere in the Forest . 



When the "wailing" was finished, when all the Mongols had filed past the 
coffin of the man who had given them "empire over the world," Chingis- 
khan was buried. The site of his grave he had chosen himself, on the 
flank of one of the heights of the Burqan-qaldun massif, the present-day 
Kentey. It was the sacred mountain of the ancient Mongols, the same 
that in the testing days of the hero's youth had saved his life with the 
shelter it offered him in its impenetrable thickets, and to which at each 
point of vital decision, at new departures in his life, at the outset of his 
great campaigns, he had come to invoke the supreme god of the Mon- 
gols, the Eternal Blue Heaven, that dwells among the holy springs of its 
summits. Thence flowed "the Three Rivers" Onon, Keriilen, and Tula 
that watered the ancestral grazing grounds. "Hunting one day in these 
parts, Chingis-khan had lain down to rest a moment under the leafiness 
of a great tree standing by itself. He passed some moments in a kind of a 
dream, and said, as he rose, that at his death this was where he wished to 
be buried." 

The funeral rites over, the place became taboo, and the forest was left 
to cover it over to hide the spot. The tree at the foot of which he had 
asked to lie became one among others, and there is nothing today to 
show where the grave was. 

It is under this mantle of cedars, pines, and larch trees that the Con- 
queror sleeps his last sleep. On the one hand, toward the Far North, 
stretches the immensity of the Siberian tayga, impenetrable forest, for 
two thirds of the year fast in the grip of snow and ice. On the other, to 
the south, the Mongol steppe unfurls to the horizon, its expanses 
studded, in spring, with all the flowers of the meadow, but merging, still 



292 CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD 

further south, into the immense sands of the Gobi. Aloft, a few great wing- 
beats sending it gliding zone to zone, "the golden-eyed black eagle, 
prince of the Mongol sky," very symbol of the career of the Hero, ranger 
from the forest of the Baykal to the Indus, from the Aral steppe to the 
Great Plain of China. 

Other conquerors' slumbers stand to be disturbed forever by the hosts 
gravitating to their tomb to ponder their destiny. Chingis-khan rests in 
peace on his mountainside, inaccessible and known to none, protected, 
hidden, possessed again entirely by the Mongol land with which he is one 
forever. 



Bibliographical note by Denis Sinor 

on works dealing with 

Mongol history of the I3th-I5th centuries 



Abbreviations used: 

A.K.D.M.Abhandlungen fur die Kunde des Morgenkndes. Published by 

the Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft, 
AM. Asia Major. A pre-war periodical published in Germany, 
B.S.O.A.S Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. London 

University. 

7. A. Journal asiatique. Published by the Societe asiatique in Paris, 
J.R.A.S. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 
HJ.A.S. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 
M.S.O.S.O.S. Mitteilungen des Seminars fur Orientalische Sprachen. Ost- 

asiatische Studien. Pre-war periodical published in Berlin. 
O.ZOstasiatische Zeitschrift. Pre-war periodical published in Germany. 
T.PT'oung Pao. Periodical published in Leiden. 



One would like to be able to recommend a really modern and scholarly his- 
tory of the Mongols. Unfortunately no such work exists and the material has 
to be collected from a great many books and monographs, not to mention 
the sources themselves which, very often, are not available in translation. 
Students of Mongol history should remember that no original contribution 
to the subject can be made without at least a good reading knowledge of 
several foreign languages. 

It is hoped that the following indications will facilitate further study and 
may also, perhaps, be of some help to librarians anxious to build up a small 



294 Bibliography 

nucleus of a library destined to help general historians who, in growing 
numbers, realise the importance of the Mongol impact on world history. 

For further study I can do no better than to recommend [i] DENIS SINOR, 
Introduction d I' etude de I'Eurasie Centrale, Wiesbaden, 1963, an annotated 
bibliography with several hundred entries on the Mongols. 

[2] HENRY H. HOWORTH, History of the Mongols from the $th to the igih 
century, I-IV, 5 vols., London, 1876-88, with "Supplement and Indices," pub- 
lished in 1927, is a poor compilation, now completely outdated. Infinitely 
superior to this work, and still useful, is [3] C. D'OHSSON, Histoire des Mon- 
gols depuis Tchinguiz khan jusqu'a Timour bey ou Tamerlan, I-IV, La Haye- 
Amsterdam, 1834-5. The relevant chapters of [4] RENE GROUSSET, L' empire 
des steppes, Paris, 1939, constitute perhaps the best concise history available 
on the Mongols. A useful concise survey, [5] BERTOLD SPULER, The Muslim 
World; II. The Mongol period, Leiden, 1960, 125 pp., does not cover Mongol 
history in the Far East. 

Whenever possible the sources should be consulted. Some of them are 
available in translations. 

An excellent guide to the Persian sources is [6] EDWARD G. BROWNE, A 
literary history of Persia; III. The Tartar dominion (1265-1502), Cambridge, 
1928, 586 pp. We are fortunate in having an excellent translation of Juvaini's 
work written in 1260: [j] JOHN ANDREW BOYLE, The history of the world- 
conqueror by 'Ala-ad-Din 'A fa-Malik Juvaini, /-//, Manchester, 1958, XLV -f 
763 pp. The passages relating the life of Chingis-khan are translated from 
Rashid ed-Din's chronicle in [8] A. A. SEMENOV O. I. SMIRNOV B. I. 
PANKRATOV, Rasid-ad-Din. Sbornik letopisej, 1.2, Moskva-Leningrad, 1952, 
3 14 pp. 

Only a small fraction of the Chinese sources is available in translation. 
Directly relevant to the subject of this book is [9] PAUL PELLIOT Louis 
HAMBIS, Histoire des campagnes de Gengis khan. Cheng-wou ts'in-tcheng 
km, I, out of print, Leiden 1951, XXVII + 485 pp. On the same work: 
[10] PAUL PELLIOT, Sur un passage du Cheng-wou ts'ing-tcheng lou, Sup- 
plementary Vol. I of the Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology 
of the Academia Sinica, Peiping, 1934, pp. 907-38. Also [n] F. E. A. 
KRAUSE, Cingis Han. Geschichte seines Lebens nach den chinesischen Reichs- 
annalen, Heidelberg, 1922, in pp. A very important source, extensively 
used by Grousset, has been beautifully translated by [12] ARTHUR WALEY, 
The travels of an Alchemist: The journey of the Taoist Ch'ang-ch'un from 
China to the Hindukush at the summons of Chingiz khan. Recorded by 
his disciple Chih-ch'ang, London, 1931, XI + 166 pp. Much reliable in- 
formation based directly on the sources can be found in [13] E. BRET- 
SCHNEIDER, Mediaeval researches from Eastern Asiatic sources: Fragments 



Bibliography 295 

towards the knowledge of the geography and history of Central and Western 
Asia from the i$th to the ijth century, I-II, London 1910, 334 + 352 pp. 

The works of the European travellers to the Mongols, and particularly 
those of the Franciscans Piano Carpini and Rubruck and of Marco Polo, 
are available in scores of translations. For the former I would recommend 
that made by an anonymous "Nun of Stanbrook Abbey" and edited by [14] 
CHRISTOPHER DAWSON, The Mongol Mission: Narratives and letters of the 
Franciscan missionaries in Mongolia and China in the thirteenth and four- 
teenth centuries, London and New York, 1955, 246 pp. The comments are 
more useful in [15] WOODVILLE ROCKHILL, The Journeys of William of 
Rubruck and John of Plan de Carpine to Tartary in the i$th century, London 
1900, 304 pp. The original Latin texts are available in [16] ANASTASIUS 
VAN DEN WYNGAERT, Sinica Franciscana I: Itinera et relationes Fratrum 
Minorum saeculi XIII et XIV, Quaracchi-Firenze, 1929, CXVIII + 637 pp. 

Many of the translations of Marco Polo's work are carelessly done for 
commercial purposes. For the purposes of research [ij] A. C. MOULE 
PAUL PELLIOT, Marco Polo: The Description of the World, I-II, London 
1938, 595+ 131 pp. should be used. The translation is the work of A. C. 
Moule. Paul Pelliot's contribution appeared posthumously under the title 
[18] Notes on Marco Polo, I-II, Paris, 1959-64, a commentary prepared 
with unparalleled wealth of knowledge. A critical edition of the original: 
[19] LUIGI FOSCOLO BENEDETTO, Marco Polo: II Milione, Firenze, 1928, 
5 + CCXXXI + 281 pp. For general background reading I should like to 
recommend the entertaining and scholarly work of [20] LEONARDO OLSCHKI, 
Marco Polo's Asia: An introduction to his "Description of the World" 
called "II Milione;' University of California Press, 1960, 459 PP- The 
translation and the commentaries by Moule and Pelliot replace those of 
[21] SIR HENRY YULE, The book of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian concern- 
ing the kingdoms and marvels of the East, I-II, 3rd ed. revised by HENRI 
CORDIER, London 1903, 462 -f 662 pp. still worth reading. 

Armenian and Syriac sources are made available in the following publi- 
cations: [22] ROBERT P. BLAKE RICHARD N. FRYE, History of the Nation 
of the Archers (The Mongols) by Grigor of Akanc', hitherto ascribed to 
Mayak* the Monk, H.J.A.S. XII, 1949, PP- 269-399, [23] F. E. A. KRAUSE, 
Das Mongolenreich nach der Darstellung des Armeniers Haithon, OZ. VIII, 
1919-20, pp. 238-67; [24] SIR E. A. WALLIS BUDGE, The monks of Kublai 
Khan Emperor of China, or the history of the life and travels of Rabban 
Sdwma envoy and plenipotentiary of the Mongol khans to the kings of 
Europe, and Markos who as Mar Yahballahd HI became Patriarch of the 
Nestorian Church in Asia, London, 1928, 335 pp. 

Mongol sources are of capital importance, and Groussefs The Conqueror 



296 Bibliography 

of the World is in no small measure based on the text of a Mongol chronicle 
entitled The Secret History of the Mongols. Written around the middle of the 
thirteenth century, the work has come down in Chinese transcription. No 
English translation of this capital work exists. A reasonably reliable German 
translation was made by the scholar who did most to decipher this document, 
[25] ERICH HAENISCH, Die Geheime Geschichte der Mongolen. Aus einer 
mongolischen Niederschrift des Jahres 1240 von der Insel Kode'e in Keluren 
Fluss, erstmalig ubersetzt und erlautert, 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1948, 196 pp. A 
posthumously published and incomplete translation into French: [26] PAUL 
PELLIOT, Histoire secrete des Mongols. Restitution du texte mongol et tra- 
duction frangaise des chapitres I a VI, Paris, 1949, 196 pp. Also: [27] S.A. 
KOZIN, Sokrovennoe skazanie. Mongol'skaja khronika 1240 g.pod nazvaniem 
Mong7ol-un ni7uca tobciyan. Juan' cao bi &'. Mongol'skij obydennyj iz- 
bornik, 7, all published Moskva-Leningrad, 1941, 619 pp. 

From among the scores of articles written on the Secret History, I shall 
quote [28] WILLIAM HUNG, The transmission of the book known as The 
Secret History of the Mongols, HJ.A.S. XIV, 1951, pp. 433-92; [29] AN- 
TOINE MOSTAERT, Sur quelques passages de 1'Histoire secrete des Mongols, 
/-///, published in vols. XIII-XV of the HJ.A.S. and as a separate book, 
Cambridge, Mass., 1953, 407 pp.; [30] ARTHUR WALEY, Notes on the Yuan- 
ch'ao pi-shih, B.S.O.A.S. XXIII, 1960, pp. 523-29. 

Mongol civilization as reflected in the Secret History is the subject of [31] 
PAVEL POUCHA, Die Geheime Geschichte der Mongolen als Geschichtsquelle 
und Literaturdenkmal. Ein Beitrag zu ihrer Erklarung, Prague, 1956, 247 pp. 

The seventeenth-century Mongol chronicle written by the Ordos Prince 
Sagang Sechen is a valuable source for later Mongol history. Grousset made 
use of it to enliven his presentation of the Chingiskhanid period. The first edi- 
tion of the text and also its first and hitherto only complete translation were 
the works of [32] I. J. SCHMIDT, Geschichte der Ost-Mongolen und ihres Fur- 
stenhauses, verfasst von Ssanang Ssetsen Chungtaidschi der Ordus, St. Peters- 
burg-Leipzig, 1829, XXIV + 509 pp. In recent years several new versions of 
the original were published. Making use of these variants, JOHN R. KRUEGER 
published a new translation of the first four chapters, "From the Creation 
of the World to the Death of Genghis Khan (1227)," under the title [33] 
Sagang Sechen, Prince of the Ordos Mongols: The Bejewelled Summary of 
the Origin of Khans, (Qad-un undusiin-u Erdeni-yin Tobci), A History of 
the Eastern Mongols to 1662, Pt. I, Publications of the Mongolia Society, 
Occasional Papers No. 2, Bloomington, 1964, 72 pp. Care must be taken, as 
the identity of the translator does not appear on the title-page. Many of the 
passages translated appear also in the more accessible publication [34] JOHN 



Bibliography 297 

R. KRUEGER, Poetical passages in the Erdeni-yin tobci, 's-Gravenhage, 1961, 
23 1 pp. 

There exists no up-to-date, authoritative account of early Mongol history. 
In the introduction to this volume, I have already pointed out the short- 
comings of [557 RENE GROUSSET, V empire mongol (Ire phase), Paris, 
1941, 584 pp. Perhaps the hest documented survey of Chingiskhanid his- 
tory is included in the fourth and fifth volumes of [37] OTTO FRANKE, 
Geschichte des chinesischen Reiches, l-V, Berlin, 1930-52. The best biog- 
raphy of Chingis is the one we here present in an English translation. There 
is also the fine but somewhat out-of-date work of B. JA. VLADIMIRTSOV, orig- 
inally written in Russian. An English translation [37] The Life of Chingis- 
khan, London, 1930, 169 pp., and a French version [38] Gengis-khan, Paris, 
1948, 158 pp., made this work more widely known in the west 

The following monographs most of them highly technical will provide 
additional information on some aspects of Chingiskhanid history: [39] 
FRANCIS WOODMAN CLEAVES, The historicity of the Baljuna covenant, 
HJ.A.S. XVIII, 1955, pp. 357-421; [40] PAUL PELLIOT, Une tribu meconnue 
des Naiman: les Bdtakin, TP. XXXVII, 1943, pp. 35-71; [41] H. DES- 
MOND MARTIN, The rise of Chingis khan and his conquest of North China, 
Baltimore, 1950, 360 pp.; [42] The Mongol wars with Hsi Hsia (1205-27), 
J.R.A.S. 1942, pp. 195-228; [43] E. HAENISCH, Die letzten Feldziige Cingis 
Khan's und seln Tod, nach der ostasiatischen Uberlieferung, A.M. IX, 1933, 
pp. 503-51. These, and all the other publications of Cleaves and Pelliot, are 
products of scholarship at its best. They should be studied with great care 
also because they show clearly the research techniques to be employed in the 
study of Mongol history. 

On the social organization of the Mongols, there is the classic [44] B. JA. 
VLADIMIRTSOV, Le regime social des Mongols: Le feodalisme nomade, Paris, 
1948, XVIII + 291 pp., translation of a Russian original published in 1934. 
On Mongol law in general: [45] VALENTIN A. RIASANOVSKY, Fundamental 
principles of Mongol law, first published in Tientsin 1937, now available as 
vol. 43 of Indiana University Publications, Uralic and Altaic Series, Bloom- 
ington, 1965, 343 pp. On the legal position of hunting: [46] ERICH HAENISCH, 
Die Jagdgesetze im Mongolischen Ostreich, Ostasiatische Studien, Berlin, 
1959, pp. 85-93. On Mongol administration: [47] FRANCIS WOODMAN 
CLEAVES, A chancellery practice of the Mongols in the thirteenth and four- 
teenth century, H. J.A.S. XIV, 1951, pp. 493-526; [48] H. F, SCHURMANN, 
Mongolian tributary practices of the i^ih century, HJ.A.S. XIX, 1956, pp. 
304-89. 

Much valuable information concerning the archaeological remains of the 



295 Bibliography 

Mongol Empire in Mongolia can be gleaned from [49] Drevnemongol' skie 
goroda, S. V. KISELEV, ed., Moskva, 1965, 370 pp. 

On the Mongols in Iran we are lucky to have fine syntheses. [50] BERTOLD 
SPULER, Die Mongolen in Iran: Politik, Verwaltung und Kultur der Ilchanzeit 
1220-1350, Leipzig, 1939, 533 pp., with ample and intelligent bibliography, 
is the best introduction to the subject. On the economic aspects: [51] I. P. 
PETRUSEVSKIJ, Zemledelie i agrarnye otno$enija v Irane XIII-XIV vv., 
Moskva-Leningrad, 1960, 492 pp. 

On the Mongols in Russia, the so-called Golden Horde, one can consult 
[527 GEORGE VERNADSKY, The Mongols and Russia, Yale University Press, 
1953, 462 pp., stronger on the Russian than on the Mongol aspect of history; 
[jj7 B. D. GREKOV A. Ju. JAKUBOVSKIJ, Zolotaja Orda i ee padenie, 
Moskva-Leningrad, 1950, 473 pp.; or best of all 547 BERTOLD SPULER, 
Die Goldene Horde: Die Mongolen in Russland 1223-1502, Leipzig, 1943, 
556 pp., the reading of which should be supplemented by constant recourse 
to /557 P AUL PELLIOT, Notes sur I'histoire de la Horde d'Or, Paris, 1950, 
292 pp. 

There is no up-to-date treatment of the Mongol invasion of Hungary. The 
most detailed account remains 1 56] G- STRAKOSCH-GRASSMANN, Der Einfall 
der Mongolen in Mitteleuropa in den Jahren 1241 und 1242, Innsbruck, 1893, 
227 pp. antiquated and difficult to find. [57] EMMA LEDERER, Tatarskoe 
naSestvie na Vengriju i svjazi s mezdunarodnymi sobytijami epokhy, Acta 
Historica Academiae Scientiarium Hungaricae II, 1953, pp. 1-45, contains 
some useful material but its Stalinist bias makes it almost unpalatable. 

A short survey of the relations between the Mongols and Europe by [58] 
DENIS SINOR, Les relations entre les Mongols et I'Europe jusqu'a la mort 
cTArghoun et de Bela IV, Journal of World History III, 1956, pp. 39-62, may 
serve as a starting point for further reading. [59] GIOVANNI SORANZO, // 
Papato, I'Europa cristiana e i Tartan: Un secolo di penetrazione occidentale 
in Asia, Milano, 1930, 624 pp., is a convenient but not always reliable and 
somewhat unimaginative synthesis. A splendid study by [60] PAUL PELLIOT, 
Les Mongols et la Papaute, Revue de 1'Orient Chretien XXIII, 1922, pp. 
3-30; XXIV, 1924, pp. 225-335; XXVIII, 1931, pp. 3-84, would tax the 
intellectual endurance of almost any one. Other studies include: [61] ERIC 
VOEGELIN, The Mongol orders of submission to European powers, 1245- 
1253, Byzantion XV, 1940-1, pp. 378-413; [627 E. TISSERANT, Une lettre 
de nikhan de Perse Abaga adressee en 1268 au Pape Clement IV, Melanges 
Lefort = Museon LDC, 1946, pp. 547-56; /637 JEAN RICHARD, Le debut des 
relations entre la Papaute et les Mongols de Perse, J.A. 1949, pp. 291-97. 

The commentaries on some of the basic documents pertaining to Mongolo- 



Bibliography 299 

European relations are mostly linguistic. The principal editions are by AN- 
TOINE MOSTAERT and FRANCIS WOODMAN CLEAVES, [64] Les lettres de 1289 
et 1305 des ilkhans Aryun et Oljeitu a Philippe le Bel, Harvard Yenching 
Institute, Scripta Mongolica Monograph Series I, 1962, 104 pp. -f 12 plates, 
[65] Trois documents mongols des Archives Secretes Vaticanes, HJ.A.S. 

xv, 1952, pp. 419-506. 

On the spread of Christianity, and particularly of Nestorianism, in the 
Mongol Empire one should consult the fine studies of JEAN DAUVILLIER, 
[66] Les provinces chaldeennes "de I'exterieur" au Moyen Age, Melanges 
Cavallera, Toulouse, 1948, pp. 261-316 and [67] Byzantins d'Asie Centrale 
et d' Extreme Orient au Moyen Age, Revue des etudes byzantines XI, 1953, 
pp. 62-87. Also the relevant chapters of [68] A. C. MOULE, Christians in 
China before the year 1550, London, 1930, 293 pp. 

Two beautifully produced volumes published in Italy, viz. [69] Nel VII 
Centenario della Nascita de Marco Polo, Venezia, 1955, 325 pp., and [70] 
Oriente Poliano, Roma, 1957, 235 pp., contain some fine articles on East- 
West relations during the Mongol epoch. A charming and erudite book on 
the same topic: [71] LEONARDO OLSCHKI, Guillaume Boucher: A French 
artist at the court of the khans, Baltimore, 1946, 125 pp. 

No comprehensive and detailed work exists on the history of the Mongols 
in China although, quite obviously, works on Chinese or Far Eastern history 
devote some space to the period. The best presentation is that by OTTO 
FRANKE referred to above (No. 36). A concise synopsis by [72] F. E. A. 
KRAUSE, Die Epoche der Mongolen, ein Kapitel aus der Geschichte und 
Kultur Asiens, M.S.O.S.O.S. XXVI-XXVII, 1924, pp. 1-60, is particularly 
useful because it gives the Chinese characters of the proper names used. 
HERBERT FRANKE has produced two fine monographs, viz. [73] Geld und 
Wirtschaft in China unter der Mongolenherrschaft: Beitr'dge zur Win- 
schaftsgeschichte der Yuan-Zeit, Leipzig, 1949, 171 pp., and [74] Beitrdge zur 
kulturgeschichte Chinas unter der Mongolenherrschaft (Das Shan-ku sin- 
hua des Yang Yu), A.K.D.M. XXXII, 2, 1956, VI + 160 pp. On the famous 
postal-system of the Mongols: [75] PETER OLBRICHT, Das Postwesen in 
China unter der Mongolenherrschaft im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden, 
1954, in p. 

Also: /"/5J H. F. SCHURMANN, Economic structure of the Yuan dynasty: 
Translation of chapters 93 and 94 of the Yuan-shih } Harvard Yenching 
Institute Studies 16, 1956, 266 pp.; Louis HAMBIS, [77] Le chapitre CV1I 
du Yuan che: Les genealogies imperiales mongoles dans Fhistoire officielle 
de la dynastie mongole, with ample notes by Paul Pelliot, T.P. supplement 
to vol. XXXVIII, 1945, XII + 184 pp., [78] Le chapitre CVllI du Yuan 



300 Bibliography 

che: Les fiefs attribute aux membres de la famille imperials et aux ministres 
de la cour mongole d'apres I'histoire chinoise offidelle de la dynastie mon- 
gole, I, all published Leiden, 1954, XV + 191 pp.; l?9] PAUL RATCHNEVSKY, 
Un code des Yuan, Paris, 1937* XCIX + 348 pp., translates chapters 102 
and 103 of the Yuan-shih dealing with Mongol law. 




This book was set on the linotype in Times Roman. 

A compact type with small, sharply cut serifs, 

it was originally designed for newspaper work. 

The display types are Times Roman and Weiss initials series II. 

Composed, printed and bound by H. Wolff Book Manufacturing 

Company, Inc., New York. 
Designed by Jacqueline Schuman. 





<k <n\^ > ' 

v --v'^" 

>^^7^'' , ot 

y$**7? 'I ,, tt'.kjf /' 

- >fe^" * i^M. ; J ../ 

IT - '- '"^ ' 

H 



& 



TURKESTAN 



Echelle-i: 15.000.000 

100 53 100 200 300 400 500 



KILOMETRES 



60? E.de Greenwich A 



80? 




114127