TEMÜJIN’S TRIUMPHAL RETURN TO his camp following the conquest of the Naimans took place in the spring of 1206. The Naimans’ defeat meant that he had now fully pacified all of the peoples who built their settlements across the entire Mongolian plateau. He was literally the sole power holder, the sole king, on the plateau.
Soon after his return home, Temüjin set up a great banner with nine white tails—nine being a divine number to the Mongols and white considered an auspicious color—outside their camp on the upper reaches of the Onon River. It was essential to declare to all the peoples scattered across the entire terrain of the Mongolian plateau that he, Temüjin, was now khan of all Mongolia. Of necessity the ceremony was both grand and extremely solemn.
From about one month before this ceremony was carried out, the entire area surrounding the encampment was a scene of unprecedented congestion and disorder. Foodstuffs and other goods sent in on horseback by many peoples for the glorious event were arriving on virtually a daily basis, and laborers sent by these peoples were hard at work building stands for the audience in the broad pasture-land outside the settlement. And for many days prior to the event, women were preparing food. Several dozen cauldrons were lined up in rows, and several dozen racks on which mutton was hanging were built beside them. In addition, an extraordinary number of pots of fermented mare’s milk were all laid out on the ground with a curtain covering them. With the ceremony only a few days off, the settlement was filled with the aromas of fermented mare’s milk and lambs’ fat boiling. Temüjin’s tent was rebuilt so high that it seemed to soar right into the sky, and a window at the top, when looked up at from below, appeared distant and tiny.
The site of the event was to be in front of Temüjin’s new, large tent. The immense banner with nine tails had been installed, and the May wind was gently blowing the white hairs attached to it.
The big day arrived. The several thousand people permitted to participate in the grand ceremony crammed into the open area before the soaring tent. In the stands built on several levels surrounding the ceremonial site, crowds numbering in the tens of thousands gathered from all over the plateau to observe.
At the appointed time, Temüjin assumed his appointed position. At his right side were his mother, Ö’elün, his wife, Börte, and his four children, Jochi, Cha’adai, Ögedei, and Tolui; behind them numerous concubines were arrayed. Only Qulan had been assigned a place in the front row, while Yisügen and Yisüi had been given seats in the rear. The alien foundlings raised by Ö’elün—Shigi Qutuqu, Boroghul, Küchü, and Kököchü—had all grown up into vigorous young men and were lined up in the rear as well.
To Temüjin’s left were his younger siblings, Qasar, Belgütei, Qachi’un, Temüge, and Temülün, and by their side were his high officials, Bo’orchu and Jelme, as well as his commanders, Chimbai, Chila’un, Jebe, Muqali, Sübe’etei, and Qubilai Noyan, and the elderly Münglig and Sorqan Shira.
The great deliberative body comprising the leaders of the various Mongolian peoples—the Quriltai—was convened in an earnest, formal manner. The elders of all these peoples resolved to install Temüjin as ruler of all Mongolia, and at that point a thoroughly unfamiliar name was called out by all the elders:
“Chinggis Khan! Chinggis Khan! Chinggis Khan!”
This was the appellation for the khan or sovereign of Mongolia respectfully being offered to Temüjin. It bore the meaning of a magnificent ruler. From this time forward, all the settlements over the entire Mongolian plateau were united under the name of Mongolia. Chinggis Khan stood up from his seat. Cheers rang out from the site of the ceremony as well as from the assemblage surrounding it.
“Chinggis Khan! Chinggis Khan!”
At the top of their lungs, one and all called out the name of Chinggis Khan. He responded by raising his hand. He was forty-four years old. His hair had already turned half gray, while his mustache and beard remained black. Unlike when he had been a young man, his torso was now corpulent and he showed signs of slowing down.
More than at any time in the past, however, Chinggis Khan’s entire body was full to overflowing with his own vigorous will. Mongolia had now taken on the form of a state. Gradually it was preparing to contest its archrival, the Jin, on the battlefield, something heretofore almost unthinkable, though now not beyond all expectation.
Bathed in the cheering voices of the assembled crowd, Chinggis Khan tried to envision in his own mind the position in which he was now standing. This was not a small piece of territory, from beyond the Altai Mountains all the way to the Xing’an mountain range. From the area around Lake Baikal in the north across the barren terrain of the Gobi Desert to the south, it extended to the Great Wall of China. Nearly two million nomads were scattered over the great expanse of the Mongolian plateau. Representatives of all of its settlements had now gathered here and were hailing him as their khan, their great ruler.
Had he so wished it, Chinggis Khan would have been able to call together all the nomads and cross the Great Wall. Chinggis was coming to believe that he actually would do this. If he was indeed a descendant of the blue wolf, he had to do it.
The sky was wide, blue, and clear. From the moment when Chinggis stood up in response to the cheers of the crowd, the sunlight had gradually begun to grow stronger and sharper. Facing the multitudes over which the commotion was spreading, he attempted to make his first speech as great khan. To quiet the tumult of the crowd, he waved his hand furiously. No matter how hard he waved, though, the excitement continued to hold sway over the throngs of people.
“There was a blue wolf born with a destiny set by heaven. There was a pale doe who came across a great lake in the west. These two creatures mated and gave birth to Batachiqan, ancestor of the Mongols. Mongols are the descendants of the blue wolf. The twenty-one peoples who encamp on the Mongolian plateau have cohered as a single force today around this blue wolf. At your recommendation, I now have acceded to the position of khan. A pack of wolves, we must cross the Xing’an Mountains, the Altai Mountains, Mount Tianshan, and the Qilian Mountains. We must do this to make all the camps on the Mongolian plateau nobler and more respectable. We must make for ourselves richer lives, richer enjoyments, and richer work than we have ever imagined before. If we wish all this for ourselves, can we live in stationary homes and be able to follow the flocks of sheep without moving with them? Your new khan has been authorized to issue to you all manner of orders to achieve this. Have trust in me! Carry out the orders I give, my courageous and fierce wolves of the new Mongolian state!”
Chinggis then ordered the banquet festivities open. Food and drink were brought out not only at the site of the ceremony itself but as far as the gallery around which the crowds thronged. The din of the feast continued day and night. During the daytime, virtually every day, the distinctive martial arts of the twenty-one peoples and numerous lineages were introduced, songs were sung in altogether different melodies and languages, and dances were performed. At nighttime, almost every night, a glowing moon came out. Several dozen bonfires were lit in the open area before Chinggis Khan’s tent, as the drinking and eating continued unabated. People were drunk, people were dancing, and people were singing. The festive mood was unrestrained with no sense of hierarchy among the revelers.
On the third night, Chinggis noticed some old women in shabby clothing dancing with strange hand movements. Their song and dance concerned driving the flocks of sheep, and they repeated it over and over again without becoming weary. Chinggis suddenly realized that the movements were penetrating his own body. The women were poor, unsightly creatures whose appearance in no way resembled the pale doe. His thought was they would have to have more attractive clothing, and far more songs and dances to perform.
Inside his tent, Chinggis continued to be unnerved by the revelry of the festivities. In the midst of it all, he was overcome by an acute sense that Mongol men needed to have ever more intense training like wolves and Mongol women needed to be adorned in finer clothing like does.
On the final day of the long celebratory banquet, Chinggis announced to his subordinates the distribution of rewards about which he had been thinking while the festivities had been under way. On that day Chinggis first ordered that 95 men who had worked with him for many years be named chiefs of 1,000 households. They included Bo’orchu, Münglig, Muqali, Jelme, and Sorqan Shira. It was expected that from these 95 would be selected chiefs of 10,000 households.
When he turned to passing out honors, Chinggis sent attendants to summon to his tent specific individuals certain to be present somewhere across the wide grounds. The first to be so called were Bo’orchu and Muqali. Temüjin grasped Bo’orchu’s hand and said:
“Friend, until this point in time, I have not expressed my thanks to you. You are my oldest friend who has sacrificed everything to work on my behalf.”
He remembered fondly the day when a young Bo’orchu helped him retrieve eight stolen horses.
“Friend, your father, Naqu Bayan, is a wealthy man. You have abandoned the position of heir to a wealthy family and traveled a difficult path with me to this point. Bo’orchu, you shall control 10,000 households in the region of the Altai Mountains.”
This was a gift so generous that Bo’orchu himself was stunned. Chinggis continued:
“Muqali, you shall control 10,000 households in the region of the Xing’an mountain range.”
The young commander remained expressionless and silent in the face of the extraordinary reward given to him. When Chinggis had attacked his relatives Seche Beki and Taichu, a man by the name of Kü’ün U’a came to join Chinggis’s camp along with two young men—one of whom was Muqali. At the time of the attack on the Naimans, he had distinguished himself on the field of battle, but unlike other such young men, he had a sincerity of character that had won the confidence of all the men fighting under him. Chinggis had selected this young commander. While Bo’orchu’s achievements were in the past, in Muqali’s case expectations ran high into the future. Chinggis named the young commander to lead the subsequent attack on the Jin. All Chinggis said was:
“You shall soon lead one million wolves and cross the Great Wall.”
Expressionless, Muqali merely bowed his head.
Third to be called was the old man Qorchi. This old-timer who had once predicted that Temüjin would in future become khan of all Mongolia had not taken part in the fighting, but having been relieved of military duties, he had spent the past ten years in utter idleness. Qorchi had not even been given a seat at the installation ceremony, but had set up a chair before his tent and watched the daily hustle-bustle of the banquet as a bystander.
Qorchi made his way before Chinggis on legs that had in recent years become dangerously infirm.
“Prognosticator Qorchi,” said Chinggis with deep affection. He remembered clearly when this old man—at the most difficult time, when he too had left Jamugha’s camp—stood before him one night with a bright red face. The prophetic words uttered by this old man that night had now come to pass. Chinggis understood full well just how mightily influential on himself Qorchi’s forecast had been.
“At that time, you said that if I were to become khan of all Mongolia, you wanted thirty beautiful women. I shall now fulfill for you that promise. You are an extraordinary, lecherous prognosticator! Go ahead and select for yourself thirty beautiful women.”
Qorchi slowly moved the muscles of his even more deeply wrinkled face and said:
“Qorchi has now grown old. However, with thirty beautiful women, perhaps I shall grow young again.” A quiet smile appeared on his face.
“In addition to thirty women,” said Chinggis, “you shall take control over 10,000 households combining the Chinos, Tö’ölös, and Telenggüd lineages of the Adarkins. And you shall take control over the People of the Forest who live at the delta of the Erdish River.”
Slowly bending his knees, Qorchi sat down on the ground. Suddenly the weight of the people of 10,000 households resting on his slender shoulders left him unable to stand any longer. With help from two assistants on either side, Qorchi lumbered off to his own small tent among the assembled masses of people.
After Qorchi had departed from his presence, Chinggis clarified the nature of Qorchi’s powers further:
“Without Qorchi’s permission, the People of the Forest may not move eastward. In all affairs, they are to consult Qorchi and receive his orders.”
Each time words emerged from Chinggis’s lips, a din went through the multitudes assembled around the ceremonial site. Chinggis’s words spread through the crowd from one person to the next in relay fashion, and cheers and shouts then flowed over the site like rippling waves. The next brave fighter to come before Chinggis Khan was Qubilai Noyan. He was a young, dauntless commander on a par with Jelme, Jebe, and Sübe’etei, and he had never lost a battle.
“Qubilai, you shall take charge of all affairs concerning the army.”
Although thoroughly satisfied by the reward he received, for his part Qubilai wanted to be assigned a more vigorous posting, even if lower in rank, directly linked to fighting. To be sure, his thinking did not at this time go so far as desiring the wildly immense authority to be able to dispatch an army of one million strong to various foreign lands.
“Fight on! Fight on!” murmured this Mongol wolf. He was just over thirty years of age and was a bit dissatisfied as he withdrew from before Chinggis.
Then Jelme came forward. The young man who had descended from Mount Burqan together with his father, carrying a pair of bellows on his shoulders, was nearing fifty years of age. He was a trusted retainer to Chinggis, second only to Bo’orchu.
“Friend,” said Chinggis, “it would take me many days to recount all your meritorious deeds. When I was born, your father presented you to us with swaddling clothes made of wolf’s fur. I should now like to offer you a gift in return. Among all the peoples of the Mongols, if Jelme alone commits offenses nine times, he shall not be punished.”
Chinggis had not yet decided on a position to offer this friend. Were he to give him a large piece of territory or an especially wide range of authority, it seemed too small for Jelme.
“Jelme,” continued Chinggis, “as for the position you shall assume and the range of your powers, let the two of us think about this together.”
At the moment, Jelme would have been satisfied with any reward at all. He wanted to ask for some time off. Although he was of unparalleled strength on the battlefield, his real forte was in handling all the many details of which others were unaware. From early that very morning, Jelme had been concerned with how properly to return all the personal effects borrowed from many peoples for the festivities. In addition, he had to offer an appropriate return gift for all the presents received from these peoples, but no one was using their brain to effect this, and he was becoming somewhat angry about it.
“Jelme,” said Chinggis, and Jelme then jumped up shouting:
“Be careful of fires! Be careful of fires!” Just at that moment, he remembered that he had forgotten to make preparations for the cooks’ handling of their fires.
Next, the seventy-year-old Sorqan Shira stepped forward. When Chinggis had been taken captive by Targhutai, chief of the Tayichi’uds, and attempted to escape, this old man came to his rescue, allowing him to spend a night in his home. At that time, Sorqan Shira was half-naked, churning fermented mare’s milk, but the smell of the mare’s milk was altogether different from that which had for the past few days permeated the banquet. Chinggis recalled the odor from Sorqan Shira’s home, and said while sniffing:
“Sorqan Shira, father of Chimbai and Chila’un, what sort of reward are you hoping for?”
“If I were to be so bold as to speak frankly,” the old man responded, “I’d like to settle down by the Selengge River on Merkid land, not pay rent, and freely use it for pasturage. And if I were to be favored even more, then please, great khan, you do what you think is best. I would be glad to take whatever you deem should come my way.”
“Well then, old man,” said Chinggis, “you shall make your camp at the Selengge River of the Merkids and you shall be free to make it pastureland. You shall be exempt from rent and taxes to graze your herds as you see fit. Like Jelme, you shall not be punished even should you commit nine offenses.”
Chinggis still felt, though, as if he had not given Sorqan Shira quite enough, as he recalled that during his escape when he had hid himself at the water’s edge, Sorqan Shira had purposefully ignored him so as not to attract others’ attention.
“If in the course of battle, you have acquired valuables from the enemy, Sorqan Shira, you may keep all that you have acquired for yourself.”
“Great khan,” said Sorqan Shira, “I hope that I shall live to join the army in battle once again.”
“If you do, I shall accord you special privileges. During the grand hunt at night, you shall be able to keep for yourself all the animals that you kill.”
But Chinggis still felt as though Sorqan Shira had not gotten his due.
“Sorqan Shira, with arrows strapped to you, may you live every evening as a banquet. And, so, my friend Sorqan Shira—”
Sorqan Shira then interrupted Chinggis and said:
“Great khan, this is already too much. What more could I hope for? If there is anything I might wish for, it would be to have the armies of the great khan cross the Great Wall and enter the state of Jin.”
Indicating that there was nothing further that he wished, Sorqan Shira crossed his arms before him and hurriedly withdrew from Chinggis’s presence. Sorqan Shira’s words led Chinggis to think that having put Muqali, the man who was to lead the attacking army against the Jin, in charge of 10,000 households might have been insufficient reward. Chinggis again called for Muqali and said:
“I am giving you the title of prince of the realm. Hereafter, people are to refer to you as Muqali, Prince of the Realm.”
Muqali’s complexion blanched before such a major reward, and he replied that, upon serious reflection about the propriety of his accepting such an honor, he would respond as to whether he could assume this appellation or not.
In this fashion, Chinggis gave out to Chimbai, Chila’un, Jebe, and other meritorious commanders what they were due. Jebe and Sübe’etei, those two intrepid Mongol wolves, became chiefs of 1,000 households. The announcement of rewards continued well into the night, and it was unclear when it would conclude. On another day, he planned to award positions and powers to his younger brothers, his children, and his wives and concubines.
Although the banquet came to an end that day, from the following day announcements continued on a daily basis of the posts that the officers and men of the entire army were to assume. Orders were conveyed with great austerity to the places where all the commanders were arrayed, and Chinggis Khan himself articulated what each of their responsibilities was to be, down to the minutest of details.
The first announcement was that of bodyguards assigned to the tent of Chinggis himself. These watchmen were in principle to be made up of the children of chiefs of 10,000, 1,000, and 100 households. In addition, a path was opened whereby those among the sons of common folk who were especially attractive or talented could join this force.
“Sons of the chiefs of 1,000 households shall come to serve with 10 attendants and one younger brother. Sons of the chiefs of 100 households shall come to serve with five attendants and one younger brother. Sons of chiefs of 10 households shall come to serve with three attendants and one younger brother. Each of these attendants must be selected from distinguished families.”
Chinggis began to work first on organizing the guard at his camp, which was to be responsible to him personally. This personal guard was to comprise bodyguards and archers. Two unknown young men were appointed chiefs of the bodyguards and of the archers. Their names had not yet risen among Chinggis’s troops. At every opportunity, in wartime or peacetime, Chinggis had been keeping a close watch over the actions of these two young men. Then, when he divided his personal guard of 10,000 into 10 units, he appointed a chief bodyguard of each group of 1,000. The majority of these men were the sons of meritorious officers.
Chinggis went on to describe the duties of the bodyguards and the archers on night watch:
—If anyone passes the camp front or back after sundown, they are to be taken in and questioned the next day. With the changing of the guard, the night guards must turn in their identification tallies.
—The night guards shall sleep around the circumference of the camp, and if anyone should enter at night, their heads are to be cut off immediately.
—No one shall sit in a seat above the night guards. No one shall ask the number of night guards. If someone should walk among the night guards, arrest him and tie him up.
—No night guard may leave the camp.
—Any incidents arising among the night guards shall be judged in consultation with Shigi Qutula.
Shigi Qutula was a Tatar orphan raised by Chinggis’s mother, Ö’elün. By his own strange fate, he had grown into a young man with a serenity of mind that, no matter what transpired, remained unruffled. In a position most fitting to him, Chinggis installed this Tatar foundling with a perennially pallid face who was not much liked by others. A fair amount of time went into Chinggis’s announcements on the organization and duties of the personal guard.
To his commanders who heard him, Chinggis Khan that day seemed a thoroughly different man from the Chinggis who, in the chaotic atmosphere at the time of the banquet, had been anxious to reward his men. The expression on his face, the tone of his voice, and the look in his eye were all those of an altogether changed person. Aside from a tiny group of his officers, no one had any idea when Chinggis had thought all of this up. With each passing day, the organization of military and civil administrations of a new Mongolian state was announced by Chinggis Khan himself. He and his top commanders had to stand for lengthy periods of time in the searing summer sun, and his face became deeply sunburned.
One day Qulan said to Chinggis, who had come to her tent:
“Great khan, shouldn’t you soon offer rewards to relatives who share my blood? Even if it’s just a simple stone, until they actually receive it, they can’t properly think of it as their own.”
“You needn’t be concerned,” he replied, smiling, “for soon we shall be dividing up rewards to blood relatives. Every princess will be able to take what she desires. What is it that you would like?”
“I wish for nothing that I do not already have,” Qulan replied. “Are not the states of the Uyghurs, the Jin, and others in your mind now, great khan? I would like to see all those magnificent dreams come true together with you, great khan. When shall you cross the Altai Mountains for the fourth time?”
Chinggis silently stared into Qulan’s face. The pale doe showed off a lithe figure as she stood next to him.
Soon after the founding of the Mongolian state, the most troublesome issue for Chinggis became that of Münglig and his seven sons. Fifteen or sixteen years older than Chinggis, Münglig was now already an old man of some sixty years of age.
He had given Münglig and his sons positions of considerable trust. He had placed Münglig in a post enabling him to sit on the highest council of elders, and his sons had taken up various and sundry positions of importance. Chinggis had invested such trust in them solely out of obligation to Münglig’s father, Charaqa. Chinggis could never forget that, shortly after his father, Yisügei, had died some thirty years earlier, his household had fallen to the depths of misery, and when all the other families separated themselves from him, only one man, old Charaqa, came and gave his life for them. At the time of Charaqa’s death, the young Chinggis was profoundly moved by the singular fidelity of this older man, and throughout the following thirty years the emotions from that time lived on in his heart. In lieu of repaying Charaqa himself, Chinggis was rewarding his son Münglig and Charaqa’s seven grandsons.
As for Münglig himself, Chinggis simply did not trust the man. Unlike Charaqa, he had abandoned Chinggis and his entire family and then had the audacity to return with his seven sons once Chinggis had become a grown man. But Chinggis overlooked all such matters when it came to Münglig and his sons. Whenever he contemplated them, Chinggis forced himself to replace the lot of them in his mind with the faithful Charaqa.
The most difficult thing about Münglig for Chinggis to endure was how intimate he had become with Chinggis’s mother. When their relationship began was unclear, but Münglig had returned to his service at Chinggis’s camp thirteen years ago, and probably it had started sometime soon thereafter. Ö’elün was now in her mid-sixties; thirteen years before, she would have been only fifty or so. For many years she had devoted herself to the painstaking work of raising her own five children, and it was certainly imaginable—and indeed permissible—for her to wish to spend her last years living as a woman again.
Chinggis, however, was unhappy to see Münglig at the tent of his mother. This may have been permissible for her, but not for Münglig. For this reason, he had for many years kept his distance from his mother’s tent.
With Chinggis having adopted this attitude, the relationship between Ö’elün and Münglig was semi-officially recognized, and thus Münglig exercised a certain amount of latent influence. And not only Münglig but his seven sons as well; they hid behind their father’s position, and they gradually began to commit more and more actions of an intolerable nature. Particularly egregious was his eldest son, the shaman priest Teb Tenggeri. This diviner had selected the name Chinggis Khan for Temüjin, and this too helped make Teb Tenggeri more arrogant. Chinggis allowed Teb Tenggeri to freely attend all council meetings as a spokesman for the divine, but the middle-aged soothsayer with his balding pate, dauntless and hawklike eyes, and dark skin manipulated his father’s singular position and his own special privilege as an oracle who could control matters of both religion and politics. He worked diligently and oftentimes with unseemly behavior to extend the influence of his own relatives.
Just as Chinggis did not trust Münglig, he did not trust Teb Tenggeri. However, because Teb Tenggeri’s predictions were uncannily precise, even if he despised the man, he could not expel the oracle whom he represented out of hand.
Toward the end of the summer in the year that Chinggis acceded to the position of khan, an incident came to pass. Teb Tenggeri was waiting upon Chinggis, seeking a private audience.
“I convey to you words from the deity of long life,” he said by way of introduction, in a highly dignified manner. These were to be words that Chinggis could not ignore. His younger brother Qasar, claimed Teb Tenggeri, was plotting to depose Chinggis and become king. Chinggis could simply not believe this.
“Even if these are words of a deity,” he said sternly to this unearthly diviner, “what sort of explanation is there for them? Upon what basis can you make such a claim? Go and ask the deity?”
Teb Tenggeri replied, with a ghastly smile coming over his face:
“The deity says to the great khan to go to Qasar’s tent. The great khan will see something dreadful there.”
Upon hearing this, Chinggis and several of his attendants left their tent and walked the roughly 200 yards to Qasar’s tent. Twilight was just enveloping the neighborhood. There appeared to be some sort of celebration under way at Qasar’s tent, and a banquet begun that day was winding down.
Chinggis stood in a corner of the open space before Qasar’s tent. The people crowding the area were standing and causing a commotion. Many people smelling of alcohol were coming out of the tent and vomiting. At this moment, Chinggis noticed among the people there Qulan, accompanied by several maidservants, emerging from the tent. Although it would not have been unusual for Qasar to invite Qulan to a celebration, in the next instant Chinggis saw Qasar appear at the entrance to his tent, coming after her and trying to take her hand. Qasar was plainly drunk. Qulan tried twice to brush aside his hand, and surrounded by her maidservants, she walked through the crowd over to the opposite corner from where Chinggis was standing.
Chinggis was overcome with rage at Qasar. As Teb Tenggeri had said, he saw something dreadful. And, as Teb Tenggeri said, Qasar seemed clearly to be harboring treasonous intentions.
When he returned to his tent, Chinggis immediately sent troops to seize Qasar. A few minutes later, Chinggis proceeded to Qasar’s tent. Qasar had been stripped of his girdle and sword and stood shackled before his bed. Furious with him, Chinggis could not bring himself to speak. Why was Qasar, who had been at his side since they were children and with whom he had shared every trial, now revolting against him? Chinggis stood silently, unable to decide what to do with his younger brother. Should he banish Qasar, execute him, or lock him in jail?
Just then, the curtain at the entrance to his tent flapped open roughly, and he saw his mother, Ö’elün, enter. She had recently begun to show a rapid physical deterioration, and her gait was precarious, as if she were suffering spasms. Ö’elün’s appearance was for Chinggis a completely unexpected event. Someone, it seemed, had reported the pressing news to her.
Ö’elün walked right over to Qasar, untied the rope binding him, and returned his hat and girdle to him. When she finished, unable to suppress her rage, she sat down on the spot cross-legged. With a scowl on her face, she stared fixedly at Chinggis and said:
“Chinggis Khan, do you want me to expose my withered, drooping breasts to you? Do you want me to again take out these same two breasts from which you drank and Qasar suckled? You murdered your younger brother Begter. Are you now once again about to kill Qasar? Like a dog chewing its afterbirth, a panther rushing into a cliff, a lion unable to stifle its rage, a serpent swallowing animals alive, a large falcon dashing at its own shadow, a churaqa fish swallowing silently, a camel biting at the heel of its colt, a wolf injuring its head and mouth, a mandarin duck eating its young because it cannot keep up with them, a jackal attacking if one moves his sleeping spot, a tiger not hesitating to capture its quarry, and a wolverine rushing off recklessly, are you about to murder Qasar who has for so long served at your side?”
Unthinking, Chinggis took two or three steps back. Old Ö’elün was fuming with anger. His mother’s wrath was greater even than when he had killed Begter, and the words that rushed out of her mouth, as if she were possessed, were more truculent than at that earlier time. Somewhat bewildered, Chinggis stared into his mother’s face. Her visage was like that of a giant serpent that would swallow him, standing before her, alive. She had wailed at the time of the killing of Begter, but now not a single tear was to be seen. Chinggis took another two or three steps back.
“Qasar is free to go,” he asserted. “Qasar shall remain at my side for many years to come.”
Turing his back on his mother and younger brother, Chinggis left the tent. He walked along with a sense of helplessness under the high nocturnal sky inlaid with stars. Getting to the bottom of whether Qasar had harbored rebellious ambitions aside, it was a fact that he had tried to grab Qulan’s hand, and that action alone could not be allowed. However, Chinggis had allowed it. For Ö’elün, who had borne all manner of difficulty in raising them, only for his irreplaceable elderly mother, Chinggis would excuse Qasar’s action.
This was not the reason, though, that Chinggis now felt helpless. It was because his mother’s eyes were those of the doe that seeks to protect her young from predators. For the first time, Chinggis felt that he and Qasar both equally had Ö’elün as their mother, but he also had to recognize that there was something other than Qasar between them. While Qasar was legitimately the son born of Ö’elün and Yisügei, Chinggis was a child born as a result of Ö’elün’s being kidnapped by a Merkid marauder. Of this there was no doubt. Just as Ö’elün despised the Merkid invader who had caused his birth, perhaps she also despised him. It seemed clear to Chinggis that day that she was trying to shield both the secret of his birth and the person of Qasar.
In any event, for his mother’s sake Chinggis abandoned the idea of punishing Qasar. But, inasmuch as he was not going to discipline Qasar, he would now have to exact punishment from Teb Tenggeri, who had jumped to the conclusion, via oracular revelation, that Qasar was a traitor. Chinggis slept not a wink that night because of his mother and the oracle. With the approach of dawn, he made up his mind for his mother’s sake to kill this mouthpiece for the divine.
The next day when he saw Teb Tenggeri, who came to his tent, Chinggis immediately had his guards seize him and turn him over to three strongmen who had earlier received orders to this effect. The strongmen took Teb Tenggeri outside the tent, walked him a short distance, and then quickly broke his back. As soon as they saw that he was dead, they discarded him among the weeds.
An hour later, Chinggis went to the site to see Teb Tenggeri’s corpse. His father and brothers, each accompanied by their minions, had gathered together to take charge of Teb Tenggeri’s remains. Münglig came before Chinggis and said:
“I have been the great khan’s comrade from the earliest days of our Mongolian people, but you have now murdered my eldest son.”
There was a certain echo of haughtiness in his words, conscious as he was of being Ö’elün’s partner.
“Münglig,” roared Chinggis, his voice trembling. “Teb Tenggeri met his end without heaven’s mercy as a sacrifice to the tyrannical behavior of you and your family. Would you all like to join Teb Tenggeri and line up your corpses together?”
In abject fear, Münglig and his sons left Teb Tenggeri where he lay and withdrew. On this occasion as well, Chinggis for his mother’s sake desisted from taking Münglig’s life.
Teb Tenggeri’s body remained on the ground as if he were an immortal spirit, consistent with his shamanistic beliefs. Although people were frightened by the strangeness of this incident, Chinggis didn’t take it to heart. On behalf of his mother, he had saved two people he had been eager to kill. That Teb Tenggeri’s corpse should end up on the ground struck Chinggis as perfectly fine.
Thereafter Chinggis treated Qasar as if nothing had happened. For his part, Qasar resumed his valued position as Chinggis’s right-hand man. The same circumstances prevailed in the case of Münglig. He continued as before, living with Ö’elün, and without any censure whatsoever he retained his privilege of attending meetings of the highest council of elders. With the death of Teb Tenggeri, though, the influence of Münglig and his family members was sharply curtailed, and their high-handed behavior ceased.
The following year, 1207, shortly after the founding of his state, Chinggis Khan set to work thoroughly mopping up surrounding areas in which there were people who had yet to acknowledge his authority.
First, he sent Qubilai Noyan to attack the Qarluqs in the early spring. Although Qubilai was the commander in charge of all military matters, he had specially requested of Chinggis to lead an army on this mission. The chief of the Qarluqs surrendered without a fight, and returning with Qubilai to camp, had an audience with Chinggis. The khan treated him warmly and promised to give him a daughter, a Mongol princess, in marriage when she reached her majority. A girl born to his concubine Yisüi was still only three years of age, making it a bit early to offer her in marriage yet.
Next, there were reports of unrest among the Naimans, and Jebe was sent on an expedition to crush it in the early summer. In half a year’s time, Jebe had wiped them out, and he returned triumphantly in late autumn.
Soon after Jebe’s return to camp, ambassadors from the Uyghurs, who lived in areas peripheral to Mongolian terrain, arrived and swore fealty to Chinggis. As tribute, they offered gold, silver, small and large pearls, silks, brocades, and damask—all highly valued items. Chinggis rewarded the Uyghur chief and promised him Princess Al Altun. She was the daughter of Yisügen and was only a few years old.
In 1208, Chinggis sent his eldest son, Jochi, as commander of an army against the forested region to the north. It was the first military action outside the borders of the state since its founding. If Chinggis were to be prepared for trouble with the Jin to his southeast, where they shared a border now, and if he were to engage the Uyghurs to the southwest in battle, he had first to eliminate any threat from the north. There was no powerful force in the north. A number of backward tribes were scattered in the area around Lake Baikal, and the north was severely cold wasteland where no one could live, Siberian terrain the Mongols had been unable to penetrate.
Jochi was twenty-one years of age. Born to his mother, Börte, for the purpose of enduring all the hardships of the Mongolian people, he had received rigorous training. When rumors of an expedition into Siberia began to spread, Börte asked Chinggis if this task might be given to Jochi for his first leadership role in battle.
“That land is interminable,” said Chinggis. “After crossing Lake Baikal, I don’t know how far one can go.”
“Jochi’s feet are stronger than the hoofs of a mountain goat,” said Börte, raising her head.
“The next battle on Siberian terrain,” said Chinggis, “will not be against other men. More likely it will be against nature.”
“Since he was a baby, Jochi has been raised as a friend of the wind and snow,” replied Börte. “He was not raised inside a tent.”
“But in the next battle, ninety out of a hundred men may not return,” said Chinggis, and with a stern look in her eyes, Börte responded:
“Was not Jochi born to face head on such an austere fate?”
For a moment, Chinggis continued staring at Börte, and eventually he said in a low voice:
“So be it, we’ll send Jochi!”
Chinggis had been thinking that the leader of this battle in Siberia would have to be someone who had at least reached middle age and who could temper severity with leniency, and Jelme would be the perfect choice. Given Börte’s earnest desire, though, Chinggis now made up his mind to give twenty-one-year-old Jochi, his eldest son, the task. Chinggis sensed in Börte’s eyes a sharp look of defiance. She was challenging the father who had never fully believed that Jochi was his own son.
This was the first time Jochi was to be commander of an army. Leading several tens of thousands of wolves, he departed from the great Mongol encampment in early May, a time when the snow was melting in the north. They headed north along a tributary of the Selengge River.
Late that year, Jochi returned victorious. His achievements on the battlefield had been extraordinary. With Quduqa Beki of the Oirats, who first came to surrender before him, as his guide, Jochi went on to conquer in succession the Oirat, Buriat, Barghu, Urasud, Qabqanas, Qangqas, and Tuvan peoples. He then defeated the Kyrgyz, who were the most powerful people in this area, subdued the People of the Forest in the northwest region, and returned with a number of the Kyrgyz leaders. They presented to Chinggis Khan great quantities of large white arctic falcons, white geldings, and black sables. Quduqa Beki of the Oirats came with them.
As sovereign of the Mongolian people, Chinggis issued the following edict according high praise for Jochi’s triumphs:
—Jochi went on an expedition to the barren terrain of the northwest, enduring a long and rocky path. Not harming the local inhabitants nor wounding the geldings, you have conquered the fortunate People of the Forest. As for the people and the land that you conquered, it is altogether fitting that these shall now be yours.
Chinggis had now to recognize something extraordinary that he had failed to notice heretofore about Jochi with the overly slender, rather delicate frame. Chinggis was now fully satisfied that Jochi bore the blood of the Mongolian people and had superbly proven himself a descendant of the blue wolf.
The day his decree hailing Jochi’s accomplishments was announced, Chinggis received in audience the chiefs of the peoples living on the Mongolian periphery who had now become his subordinates. He was in extremely good humor. He proclaimed that day that Quduqa Beki, the first to perform meritorious service among them as reported to the throne by Jochi, would receive Princess Checheyiken, born to one of the khan’s concubines. It was then noted that there was far too great an age difference between the forty-year-old Quduqa Beki and the five-year-old Checheyiken, and Chinggis immediately halted this reward midstream and decided that Checheyiken would instead go to Quduqa Beki’s thirteen-year-old son, Inalchi.
“Quduqa Beki,” proclaimed Chinggis, “tomorrow, be standing on the hillock north of the encampment. At that time, you may take from all of the flocks of sheep as far as the eye can see.”
“Inalchi is my second son,” replied Quduqa Beki. “My eldest son, Törölchi, I left back in our settlement.”
When he heard this, Chinggis said:
“In that case, I shall give Holuiqan, daughter of Jochi, to your eldest son Törölchi.”
When Quduqa Beki of the Oirats withdrew, next to appear was none other than the chief of the Önggüds who had participated in the fighting with them.
“Leader of the Önggüds,” intoned Chinggis, “I shall give to you Princess Alaqai Beki.”
Alaqai Beki had only recently been born to a concubine. Even if they were his own daughters or granddaughters, Chinggis did not have much respect for females. He saw no need whatsoever to keep the infant girl under his own care.
On the occasion of his giving this terrain to Jochi, Chinggis announced that he was also bestowing territory on his close relatives, to whom he had not as yet given anything. To Ö’elün and his youngest brother Temüge, he gave 10,000 people each. In Mongol society, family headship was inherited by the youngest son, meaning that Temüge was to acquire a greater portion than any of his siblings. Ö’elün remained silent, possibly displeased. Although he understood that his mother might have been dissatisfied, Chinggis had no plans to give the woman any more than this.
To his eldest son, Jochi, Chinggis gave 9,000 people; to his next son, Cha’adai, 8,000; to his third son, Ögedei, 5,000; and to his youngest son, Tolui, the same number of 5,000. To his younger brothers, Qasar and Belgütei, he gave 4,000 and 1,500, respectively. Although the rewards to close relatives were rather small, those to Qasar and Belgütei were especially so. As far as Chinggis was concerned, there was no need whatsoever to hurriedly hand over spoils to his family members. He perhaps should have given greater rewards to Qasar and Belgütei. That was all to transpire at a later date. For now, he had simply taken control over the Mongolian plateau as his own domain.
There was, in fact, one further reason for this distribution: a certain distance was beginning to develop between Chinggis and his younger brothers, Qasar and Belgütei. Qasar probably had a different father than Chinggis, and Belgütei clearly had a different mother. All three had endured many difficult years before the Mongols reached their present situation, and all had stood together as one in body and mind against every hardship and suffering.
Until now, Chinggis had thought that his two brothers had a valued and necessary place difficult to fill with anyone else. Now that the Mongols had risen to such prominence with their great state, Chinggis no longer felt that Qasar and Belgütei possessed any such importance. It was different in the cases of Bo’orchu and Jelme. While Qasar lacked the talent to rule over men, his capacity as a distinguished commander on the battlefield could not be denied. Belgütei, though, in the fighting against the Naimans had posted a string of defeats due to imprudence. He not only was incapable of leading his own troops but also lacked certain elements needed in a leader of men.
Chinggis had not forgotten to reward these two men, but in so doing there was a time and method to be selected. He had dreamed that he would give to Qasar the villages off in the unknown west and to Belgütei the unknown grasslands to the north, and then make them each rulers over their respective domains. Chinggis was not in the least moved in this instance by his mother’s dissatisfaction. Ö’elün had thought that she no longer served any need. She would always be with him and with the Mongol people.
As the end of the year approached, Ö’elün suddenly became ill and after three days passed away. She was sixty-six. The funeral was a grand affair. Her corpse was carried on the shoulders of the four foundlings, all of different ethnicities, whom she had raised and who all had grown into splendid adults serving important functions—Kököchü, Küchü, Shigi Qutuqu, and Boroghul—and she was laid to rest at a site with a beautiful view of the slope of Mount Burqan.
When his mother’s body was placed in the grave, Chinggis for the first time wailed. His cries immediately spread to the surrounding peoples. Lamentations were heard from Chinggis’s brothers too, of course, as well as from Börte, Bo’orchu, Jelme, Chimbai, and Chila’un. The two million people of the twenty-one Mongol divisions all spent the next month in mourning.
The greatest thing that Chinggis took from the death of his mother was the thought that the one person who knew the secret of his birth had departed this world. With the passing of the woman who had given birth to him, raised him, and shared all their great hardships, Chinggis suffered as the child with whom she had shared blood; apart from this, though, the person who at least possessed the knowledge to judge whether he was Merkid or Mongol was now gone, and he felt a deep loneliness, as if suddenly abandoned naked on the face of the earth. He hadn’t been able to ferret anything out of Ö’elün, and he had no desire to do so; what was troubling him was the simple fact that the person who held the decisive information was no more.
With the death of his mother, Chinggis felt a certain sense of expansive freedom that he never would have predicted. It was the absence of a person who kept watch on what he was thinking. Chinggis had dreamed until now that he was the legitimate descendant of the blue wolf and the pale doe, but if he tried to believe this, he felt that Ö’elün was somehow always impeding his thoughts. While mourning his mother, Chinggis realized for the first time that he was now free to dream and to believe that he himself was the legitimate heir of the blue wolf—and he was able to enhance this point as self-knowledge.
The great state of Jin was now brought into close-up before Chinggis Khan: as an enemy to be butchered and as spoils to be greedily devoured.
A new year’s banquet was not held in Chinggis’s camp while the mourning continued, and in its stead he summoned on a daily basis his subordinates with many and sundry expressions on their faces. He placed the same issue before each of these trusted men and sought their response. Rarely one to express his own views verbally, Chinggis wanted to hear theirs. The proposition he laid before them was how the Mongols, soon after forming their state, could be put on the path to prosperity.
Over a period of about ten days, Chinggis was able to listen to the opinions of several dozen men and women. He learned the views of important officers such as Bo’orchu, Muqali, and Jelme; the thoughts of the elders of the various lineages; the points of view of youngsters training day and night for battle; and even the ideas of the women who tended the sheep. And in so doing, Chinggis learned that all strata of men and women who formed the Mongolian state, now only shortly after its founding, hoped for a more prosperous life that they might enjoy even more than the one into which they had been born. This aspiration coincided with Chinggis’s own thinking. What the great majority of people reported to their great khan as the means to attain this hoped-for life was an invasion of the neighboring land—that, and a fair distribution of the spoils and tribute acquired through such an invasion.
Among those whom Chinggis queried for their views, two who held positions significantly different from his own were his commander Jebe and his beloved concubine Qulan. An audacious young man who once had taken a shot at Chinggis, Jebe seemed to come up with something, as effortlessly as one would pick up a pebble, of which none of the other Mongols had thought:
“The Mongolian people must abandon their sheep. As long as we keep the sheep, good fortune will never be ours.” Jebe’s words were filled with an almost unimaginable audacity.
“Better land on which to live than the Mongolian plateau,” said Qulan, “without a doubt lies elsewhere. Can we not all leave this place with its ferociously hot summers and equally frigid winters and go there together? Great khan, pitching our tents at the foothills of mountains more beautiful than Mount Burqan and building cities along rivers clearer than the Onon are your affairs.” What Qulan said was not the sort of thing any Mongol had ever mouthed before.
Chinggis understood that, although these two had expressed it differently, they were thinking exactly the same thing. Both were indicating that there was nothing on the ancestral soil of the Mongolian people that boded well for future prosperity. Chinggis would discuss what each had said on another occasion, but when they had finished speaking, he said the same thing to both:
“The Mongols may soon be doing this.”
The only place rich in resources on which the two million Mongols might live, having abandoned their flocks of sheep, was the land of the state of Jin. If they were looking for beautiful mountains and clear streams, the only conceivable place was the Jin.
At the end of the first month of the year, Chinggis addressed the Mongol council of elders and expressed the words of Jebe and Qulan, albeit in altogether different language:
“The mission bequeathed by the heaven of the Mongol people is linked to our age-old enemy, the Jin. Our ancestor Hambaghai Khan was captured by the Tatars, transported to the Jin, and nailed to a wooden donkey. While he was still alive, his skin was peeled off. Both Qabul Khan and Qutula Khan were murdered in plots. We must never forget the bloodstained humiliations experienced throughout Mongol history. I expect that we shall commence our battle against the Jin this spring, and we must eliminate any state that hinders the path of the Mongol armies on their way against the Jin.”
The state that stood in the way of the Mongol armies was the Xixia. Before he launched a decisive battle against the Jin, then, they would have to attack the Xixia. Two years earlier, the Xixia had brought tribute, and they now enjoyed peaceful ties with the Mongols, but Chinggis had never been satisfied with the arrangement. Whether or not he was justified, at some point he would have to take weapons in hand and subjugate, then destroy the Xixia. Those who were anxious about the Mongol posture vis-à-vis the state of Jin would all have to be eliminated.
A small incident took place before the arrival of spring. Qorchi, the elderly, lewd prognosticator who was given control over 10,000 households of people living in the delta of the Erdish River, was apprehended by the people in one of the settlements he ruled. Using the “special privilege” Chinggis had bestowed upon him, Qorchi had gone out hunting for beautiful girls among the local villagers, causing them considerable misery.
To save Qorchi, Chinggis decided to send Quduqa Beki of the Oirats, who had cooperated with Jochi in the previous year’s fighting. Soon after, however, news reached Chinggis that Quduqa Beki had been captured.
To save both Qorchi and Quduqa Beki, Chinggis now decided to dispatch Boroghul with a small detachment of troops. When he was about to set out, Chinggis ordered him to resolve the matter peaceably as best he could, without resorting to violence. If anyone could succeed in this, he thought, Boroghul could. When Chinggis had attacked the traitors Seche Beki and Taichu of the Yürkins, Boroghul had been a five- or six-year-old whom old Qorchi had picked up in the camp, and that youngster had now grown into a strapping youth nearing twenty years of age.
From Boroghul’s perspective, old Qorchi was his benefactor who had selected him, and Chinggis Khan had now presented him with the task of saving his benefactor from peril. It was not only because of this tie between Boroghul and Qorchi but also because Chinggis thought that Boroghul was the right man for the job. The young man had a sweet face like a girl that made a good impression, and he had a native talent in negotiations. He was able to move his counterparts to his own way of thinking without upsetting them, as though they were pieces on a chessboard.
Among the four foundlings raised by Ö’elün, Chinggis was particularly drawn to Boroghul and harbored great expectations for his future. Chinggis thought vaguely that at some future time when he would dispatch an ambassador to a major state, he would probably send Boroghul.
Sending Boroghul to the Erdish River delta, however, turned out to be a major disaster for Chinggis. About a month after leaving the Mongol camp, Boroghul returned as a corpse. Chinggis was appalled to realize that, because of some insignificant complications at the frontier, he had lost an irreplaceably valuable person.
“This was my blunder,” Chinggis said with a sigh. “I should have kept Boroghul well within our encampment until it came time to send him as emissary to the Jin capital.”
A moment later, his entire face flushed crimson, Chinggis screamed out:
“Burn down the entire Erdish River delta, every tree, every blade of grass. Dörbei Doqshin, set an army on the march!”
Dörbei Doqshin was a commander who seemed to have been born to commit mass murder against any group deemed an enemy. After he left a place, it was said, not a tree or a blade of grass could be seen. Bo’orchu and Muqali opposed the sending of Dörbei Doqshin to handle a matter on Mongolian terrain, but Chinggis would not be dissuaded in this.
A month later, Dörbei Doqshin, a small man with pallid skin and reddish-brown hair, returned with old Qorchi and Quduqa Beki. His troops were carrying a bizarre collection of weapons, hatchets, adzes, saws, and chisels among them.
“The People of the Forest are all dead,” reported Dörbei Doqshin. “The trees of the forest have all been turned to ash.”
He had accomplished Chinggis’s orders to the letter.
In early summer, as planned, Chinggis mobilized an army on an immense scale to launch an attack on the Xixia. The Xixia was a state created by the Tangut people of Tibet, who held sway in the area between the Mongols and the Jin. Insofar as the Mongols did not control this area, they were prevented from attacking the Jin. Were they to avoid the Xixia, they would run into the obstacles of the Great Wall and the Xing’an Mountains, and it was virtually impossible for a large army to break through these impediments. The only way to advance a great army against the Jin was to pacify the Xixia and enter within the Great Wall from southern Xixia terrain.
Invading Xixia, though, would be quite an undertaking, for it entailed Mongol armies crossing an immense desert in a march that would require a number of weeks. At the end of May, Chinggis led a massive force of well over 100,000 in crossing the vast wasteland of the Gobi Desert, heading straight for the Xixia capital of Zhongxing. In the desert they met the Xixia army, led by the heir to the Xixia throne of King Li Anquan. For the Mongol soldiers, this was their first battle with a genuinely alien ethnicity.
However, their own relative military superiority was amply apparent. The camels, horses, and troops of the Xixia army were quickly surrounded on all sides by bands of Mongol cavalrymen and stunned by an assault from which they were unable to recover.
Mongol troops repeatedly outstripped the defeated enemy army and continued on toward Zhongxing. En route Chinggis divided his men into three groupings respectively under the command of Jebe, Muqali, and Qubilai Noyan. The ferocious Mongol wolves pressed in on Zhongxing from the north, west, and south, and in short order they had the city surrounded.
Both Chinggis and his subordinates now saw for the first time the great turbid flow of the Yellow River to the west of the city, and also for the first time they saw the Great Wall, which engirded one mountain ridge after another like an iron corridor. The siege lasted half a year, and Chinggis had to lift it early because the Yellow River overflowed its banks. Ultimately, though, a peace was reached with the Xixia ruler and Chinggis compelled him to send tribute; with the ruler’s daughter among them, Chinggis’s forces withdrew.
The expedition against the Xixia bore unexpected fruit for Chinggis. Fearing the power of the Mongols, the Uyghurs who had built a state to the west of the Xixia sent an ambassador bearing tribute to them as well.