IN THE SUMMER OF 1218, Chinggis placed Jebe in command of an army of 20,000 men and had him march on the kingdom of Kara Khitai. The divination performed by Yelü Chucai with a ram’s scapula at the time of his first audience with Chinggis, indicating that there would be war drums in the southwest, was now becoming reality. The objective of invading Kara Khitai was to bring down the Naiman King Küchülüg, and by taking over his territory, establish a border with the state of Khorazm, with its highly esteemed culture. Chinggis maintained friendly relations and a high volume of trade with Khorazm, and in so doing he sought to acquire many things theretofore unknown to him.
When Jebe invaded Kara Khitai, he immediately announced that there would be freedom of religion and freed the adherents of Islam who had suffered under Küchülüg. Muslims rose in rebellion at numerous sites and saw Jebe as their ally. Jebe defeated the forces of Küchülüg at many places and captured the walled cities of Hami, Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan. He pursued Küchülüg himself, who fled as far as the Pamir plateau, where he was attacked by local people and killed. Jebe sent his head back to the great khan along with 1,000 horses raised by the people of the region.
The pacification of Kara Khitai was accomplished at great speed; in the space of roughly three months, Jebe had brought under Mongol rule an immense state that spread north and south across Tianshan. In the fighting, the Mongols formed two huge wings to the left and right of the army’s main body. Led by Muqali and Jebe, a thorough mopping up was under way.
Chinggis issued a proclamation for his distinguished commander Jebe that both recognized his stunning accomplishment and warned him against being overly boastful about it.
Although the invasion and capture of Kara Khitai were effected to promote trade with the great unknown kingdom of Khorazm, Chinggis acquired something else of enormous importance. Altogether new agricultural and industrial technologies, which even the state of Jin had lacked, now streamed onto the Mongolian plateau, like water running to lower ground. Fruits, carpets, wines, and numerous handicraft products, the likes of which the Mongols had never seen before, crossed the wastelands and the Gobi Desert, arriving daily on the plateau.
Chinggis Khan was now autocrat over an immense stretch of territory. He resolved to send his first caravan to Khorazm and to enlist caravan members from among his relatives. In short order one or two candidates from his own family and from among his commanders stepped forward, and a company of 450 men was organized. There was some concern that every member of the company should be a Muslim.
The caravan set out from Chinggis’s camp, and when it reached Otrar on the banks of the Syr Darya, they were arrested by Ghayir Khan, the officer left in charge of the region, and all the merchandise they had brought along was plundered. Ghayir Khan then reported to Muhammad, shah of Khorazm, that the caravan was all Mongol spies and that he had executed all 450 of them.
Chinggis was completely unprepared when he learned this news, and it gave rise to a fierce antipathy in him for this large, unknown land. The goodwill he had shown toward Khorazm was now completely turned to enmity.
The land of Khorazm was entirely unfamiliar to Chinggis, to Yelü Chucai, and to many of his staff members in terms of both the conditions prevailing there and the sensibilities of the people. With the small amount of information gleaned from caravans, they knew that it was a large Muslim state with phenomenal wealth. What sort of state organization and what level of armed forces it possessed were unknown. Chinggis consulted Yelü Chucai about sending troops against Khorazm in retaliation.
“What we know about Khorazm,” said Yelü Chucai, “is that it is unified by the Muslim faith and that large groups of Muslims make up the state. Religion is the steel that binds them together, but the Mongols have nothing comparable to this. Judging by the goods that the caravans have brought, their cultural level is unfathomably high. Might it make more sense to postpone the dispatching of troops?”
Chinggis also consulted with the older leaders, Qasar and Jelme, but neither agreed with the idea of sending troops.
“All we know about Khorazm,” said Qasar, “is that their soldiers wear steel armor. Compared to our leather armor, it’s difficult to immediately say which is better or worse, but clearly our weapons cannot penetrate their armor. One thing’s for sure: fighting with them will take on an altogether new form, unknown to us so far.”
“It seems to me that Khorazm is like the great sea,” continued Jelme. “For caravans from Khorazm come speaking all manner of languages and practicing all sorts of customs. The only thing they share is the Islamic faith. It strikes me that the great khan ought not toss crack Mongol troops into a bottomless ocean.”
Chinggis went on to consult with many of his other commanders, but in everyone’s estimation Khorazm seemed to be an eerie religious state whose actual form remained largely unclear. No one thought it a good idea to act aggressively and send troops.
Finally, Chinggis summoned Jochi to his tent. When he appeared before Chinggis, Jochi immediately said:
“Why should I fear an attack on Khorazm?”
Chinggis had not decided on that course of action, and when he proceeded to consult with Jochi, the latter replied:
“Because a peak is high, can Mongol wolves not dash over it? Because a valley is deep, can we not make our way through it? Great khan, make me and tens of thousands of troops under my command dash over that peak and cut through that valley.”
Looking into Jochi’s eyes, Chinggis did not feel that he was for certain a Mongol blue wolf.
“They say that Khorazm is like a great sea,” said Chinggis. “If you destroy one state, another will appear. Although I am prepared to lose Jochi and those under your command, I am concerned that I would have to throw all of Mongolia into the great sea.”
“Is this not what all Mongol soldiers were born fated to do?” answered Jochi. “The great khan did not wish that, as a result of the conquest of Kara Khitai, we would have an enemy, but we Borjigins have always had enemies, from the time our grandfathers and great-grandfathers were born until we die. Having enemies is what makes us Borjigins. Blue wolves must have enemies. A wolf with no enemies is not a true wolf. Because of frauds like Yelü Chucai, the great khan is on the verge of implanting us with the spirit of the Khitans. Now is the time to get rid of Yelü Chucai and take your revenge instead. Fill the lives of the Mongol people with battle, as our ancestors did.”
“Young Mongol wolf.” Chinggis opened his mouth quietly to speak, having listened silently to Jochi’s words. “Are you suggesting that I have ceased to be a wolf? When we come up with a plan for dealing with Khorazm, I shall give you the glory of leading the attack, and the main body of my troops will step over your corpse and march on.”
After he dismissed Jochi, Chinggis’s attitude began to improve greatly. Although he had no desire to accept his eldest son’s proposal as offered, for the first time in a while he was inspired by the spirit of invasion and attack his son elicited.
Chinggis once again solicited the opinion of his wife, Börte, in her tent. A year his senior, she now had white hair and a portly torso, and was a venerable woman covered with precious stones. Her movements had slowed with age, and the glitter in her eye had dimmed with each passing year.
Börte had only rarely spoken over the previous four or five years, but when asked by Chinggis about the advisability of invading Khorazm, she said with a light smile:
“Send the army, if the great khan so wishes. Don’t move the army, if the great khan does not so wish it. The great khan has managed affairs these few years without consulting my views.”
“It may transpire that every Mongol soldier will be wounded,” replied Chinggis. “Is that acceptable?”
“Great khan,” said Börte with a smile, “when have you ever been so covetous? Other than your now aging wife, what sort of subordinates have you had?”
Listening to his wife speak, Chinggis realized that this was precisely the issue: she was not terribly satisfied with their present circumstances, in which they wanted for nothing. For Chinggis this was bizarre, beyond the bounds of ordinary understanding. As he was steadily rising to be ruler of a great state, Börte was gradually being buried in a deep snow of dissatisfaction with her surroundings. The reason was not clearly identifiable, and Chinggis left Börte with a feeling of profound frustration.
For the last opinion, Chinggis visited Qulan’s tent. Unlike Börte, Qulan was a woman still in her prime. Her face still shone with limitless radiance, and she carried herself with the dignity of the most beloved consort of the ruler.
“The great khan,” said Qulan, a charming smile lighting up her face, “has the love and affection of 3,000 widows focused on himself, and that is still not enough. Will you now mount the princesses of Khorazm on elephants and bring them to your tent?”
Whenever he came before Qulan, Chinggis felt as if enveloped in a sweet luxuriousness, and in the reflection of her radiance, he felt himself exposed to stunning ideas. This, however, by no means meant that Chinggis trusted the beauty and lustrousness that Qulan possessed.
Although they had not spoken of it since he had entrusted their beloved son Kölgen to Sorqan Shira, she had, it would seem, not forgotten this incident. Qulan often softly criticized the fact that Chinggis had numerous concubines, but it never harmed her pride in the least, because she believed in her heart of hearts that the leader of the Mongolian people loved her more than all the others. When Chinggis asked her in all seriousness for her views on attacking Khorazm, Qulan advised him with an enthusiasm greater than that of anyone he had thus far consulted to send an armed expedition.
“The great khan must attack Khorazm,” she said, “for Khorazm is far wealthier than Mongolia and far more advanced. The fruits of such a battle will be immense, and the fighting will be equally intense. Cast all of the Mongolian people into the crucible of war. I for one would like to live with the great khan on the field of battle in that foreign land.
“Take away everything I have. Precious stones, beautiful clothing, all my extravagant personal effects—take it all away from me. Then see to it that I am always in the midst of war cries. Amid the sharp reverberations of arrows, I shall make sure of only one thing with the great khan and wish to speak of only one topic.
“I may have taken the great khan to task in the past for his many concubines. I may have demanded treasures and land of the great khan in the past. Not once did I ever believe that all of this stuff in my tent surrounding me was really mine. I was merely borrowing it to adorn myself. When I abandon this tent, these things here will cease to belong to me.
“Great khan, see to it that I am with you in the fierce battles to come with Khorazm. Give me the opportunity to say just one thing.”
“What is that one thing you wish to speak with me about?” asked Chinggis, thinking it all a bit strange.
“It is something that can only be spoken of at the time. At that time, heaven will reside in my body and instruct me as to what to say.”
These were the divergent—similar, though dissimilar—words elicited from Jochi, Börte, and Qulan concerning Chinggis’s decision about sending an expedition against Khorazm.
Although he was resolved to go to war, his plan did not take shape immediately. He had to treat the appeal of Yelü Chucai and many other commanders opposing such a war with respect, and he had to take their views into account, albeit in an utterly different form from the ways they were articulated to him: in military movements against this unknown religious state.
Chinggis revealed his battle plans to no one and worked extremely hard to gather, by every means at his disposal, information about the state of Khorazm. He traveled around the settlements on the Mongolian plateau, working to drum up morale among the troops who would be under his command.
At the end of 1218, Chinggis convened the Quriltai, the Mongolian council of elders, and for the first time consulted with his close relatives, high officials, and senior advisors concerning the attack on Khorazm. It was less a consultation than an announcement; Chinggis declared his plan unilaterally at this time and had those present at the meeting approve it. It was decided further that, while Chinggis was at the front, in his stead his younger brother Temüge would rule over domestic affairs. All of Chinggis’s relatives, as well as his high officials and senior advisors, were to depart for the war, and of all his concubines, only Qulan was permitted to join him on the march. Yelü Chucai was also ordered to follow the army to battle.
A messenger was immediately sent to Xixia, now a subservient state of the Mongols, to join the battle. Xixia, however, unexpectedly refused to dispatch relief troops. This led Chinggis to realize that Xixia saw Khorazm as bigger and stronger than the Mongols and were avoiding antagonizing the state of Khorazm.
Chinggis led a force of 200,000 men in the spring of 1219 from his camp in the foothills of Mount Burqan. It was movement on a grand scale of wolf packs dressed in armor. The troops crossed the Altai Mountains at the height of summer, marched west to the plains and mountainous regions in the northern foothills of Tianshan, made their way to the Chui River, and camped there. Inasmuch as he had no idea how strong Khorazm was militarily, Chinggis decided to wait for his opponents to move first. From summer through fall, he and his entire armed forces engaged in massive-scale hunting expeditions over the course of weeks. To keep his troops in readiness, as well as to keep the horses trained for battle and to acquire fresh provisions, hunting was a necessity for the units of Mongol troops.
At the same time, Chinggis was devoting himself to gathering reports on domestic affairs within Khorazm. He was able to glean that it was an amalgam of numerous ethnicities, which, of course, meant that it possessed many weak points as well. The weakest element was the fact that, in preparing to face the Mongols, Khorazm had amassed a force of 400,000, but it lacked a single superior leader who exercised control over this army made up of many different ethnic groups. Although Muhammad, shah of Khorazm, was the ruler of a Muslim sphere, he could not serve as the man in charge of a large military force. The army was spread among several dozen walled towns dotting a massive expanse of terrain. They filled up all of these walled sites and adopted a strategy from the start of evading open-field warfare with mounted troops and long lances, which was the Mongols’ great strength.
In mid-autumn, Chinggis abruptly discontinued the hunting and issued orders to his entire army for the invasion of the borders of the northwestern state of Khorazm. The Syr Darya, which starts in the Tianshan mountain range and empties into the Aral Sea, cut off the forward movement of the Mongol armed forces, and all along it fortresses had been placed here and there. Before they advanced farther, Chinggis divided his entire army into four units. He put his eldest son, Jochi, in charge of the first army and sent him toward the lower reaches of the Syr Darya, and he entrusted the second army to his second son, Cha’adai, and his third son, Ögedei, and decided that they should lead their forces to attack and capture Otrar along the middle reaches of the Syr Darya. The third army he placed in the hands of three young commanders, Alaq, Soqtuu, and Taghai, and he ordered them to pacify the upper reaches of the Syr Darya. Tolui, his fourth son, was placed in command of the fourth army, and he decided that this force would cross the Syr Darya and attack Bukhara, a major stronghold of distant Khorazm’s army.
Chinggis made it clear to the warriors under his command that this fight was to crush the entire army of Khorazm and to continue until its sovereign, Muhammad, was put to death. His extremely rigid orders were that those who surrendered would be allowed to live, but all who resisted—be they soldiers or civilians—were to be massacred. In Chinggis’s mind, this was a war in which all Mongolian strength was invested, on which he was staking the very existence of his people.
As he had when he waged war against the state of Jin, Chinggis gathered all of his relatives and high officials at his tent and held a send-off feast as if it were the last time they would see one another. At the time of the Jin invasion, this had taken place at his tent in the foothills of Mount Burqan, but now it was being held at his tent in the wilderness on foreign terrain, some ten days away from the Erdish River.
On this occasion, Chinggis announced who among his four sons was to assume the position of sovereign, should he die. This was, to be sure, the most important matter of concern not only for these four sons but also for all of his ministers and senior advisors, and all the officers and soldiers of the Mongolian people as a whole. In everyone’s estimation, Chinggis loved his youngest son, Tolui, most. From time immemorial, the Mongolian people had practiced a system of ultimogeniture, so Tolui was due to inherit Chinggis’s own personal property, but Chinggis’s love for Tolui did not derive from a special relationship the two men shared.
Chinggis profoundly admired Tolui’s bravery and his brilliant flash on the battlefield. In every expedition to date, Chinggis had placed himself in the same unit as Tolui. While this indicated that he was a supporter of the youngest son, it was not that alone that sealed the case, because he was pleased as well by the manner in which Tolui deployed his forces and the way they fought. There was something deeply refreshing about a twenty-six-year-old commander in whom Chinggis found so many admirable qualities.
All those in attendance thought that Chinggis would either name his eldest son, Jochi, by virtue of his glorious military exploits, about which there was no debate whatsoever, or Tolui, who had earned his deepest love. The name that emerged from Chinggis’s mouth, however, was altogether different.
“Ögedei.”
Everyone heard the name of Chinggis’s third son. The moment they heard it, everyone doubted their own ears. Before long, though, they perforce learned that their ears had not failed them.
“Jochi, what do you think?” said Chinggis. “Speak!”
“I have no objection whatsoever,” he replied, “to Ögedei’s name being put forward. Together with my younger brothers Cha’adai and Tolui, we shall work to help Ögedei. It is splendid that Ögedei shall be heir to our father, the great khan.”
With a pallid expression, Jochi had responded with few words.
“Cha’adai, what do you think? Speak!”
“Just as Jochi has put it,” he replied, “together with my brothers, I shall work to assist my father as long as he lives and to assist Ögedei after Father passes away. Should any man defy us, we shall strike out and kill him. Should any man flee, we shall track him down and thrust daggers at him from behind. Ögedei is the most gentle and sincere of the brothers. Ögedei has the talents best suited to being ruler of all Mongolia. It is altogether fitting, then, that Ögedei receive the position of heir to the great khan.”
There was far more fervent emotion in Cha’adai’s words than in those of Jochi.
“Tolui, what do you think? Speak!” Chinggis fixed his gaze on his youngest son.
“Standing before my elder brother whom Father has named,” he answered, “should he forget something, I shall remind him. When he is asleep, I shall shake him to wake up. We shall march off together to the battlefield, always to be the whip of pacification. I shall never be absent from troop deployment, marching on every lengthy expedition and fighting in every severe battle.”
After nodding his head in satisfaction, Chinggis finally said:
“Ögedei, do you have anything to say? If so, speak!”
Understandably, Ögedei could not hide his excitement, but as was his wont, he quietly composed himself and replied:
“Do I have anything to say? Just that whenever Father has orders, I obey whatever they may be. I would just fear that my own children may be weak and unable to accede to the position of great khan.”
All in attendance were hushed, listening to this exchange between Chinggis and his four sons, but by the time they finished speaking, everyone was beginning to come to the view that Chinggis’s designation had been a wise one. Although all present had only just became aware of this selection, it now appeared to them that there was no better person than Ögedei to lead all the Mongolian people as their sovereign after Chinggis.
Ögedei lacked the kind of ferocity that each of his three brothers possessed; he was a gentle man by nature, a deeply kind man, a man who took responsibility for everything, never resorting to trickery or artifice. He was a modest man who did not stand out among his brothers, but by the same token, when he made up his mind, he dauntlessly moved to action with alacrity. This was a strength befitting the successor to the great khan, in which he excelled everyone.
When it was clear that no one harbored any objection to his choice, Chinggis said:
“The land before us is expansive without limit, the rivers flow to infinitude, and the fields of grass continue without end. The dwelling places that I shall divide among Jochi, Cha’adai, and Tolui will thus be immense.”
Only Jochi’s pale mien would always remain in Chinggis’s eyes. The bravest commander among the Mongolian people, Jochi was a warrior with a will of steel who never flinched in the face of imminent death, a man who amazed even Chinggis himself. He had no peer among the entire Mongolian nation when it came to carrying out great deeds. In fact, Chinggis had vacillated about who should be his successor, Ögedei or Jochi. Who was more suitable was a subtle issue, extremely difficult to resolve. Ultimately, he selected Ögedei. That Jochi’s face had paled at the news was not altogether unexpected to Chinggis.
Chinggis and all those before him raised their wine cups to the coming desperate battle. For everyone but Jochi, it was a gesture of parting perhaps to an unknown fate, but for Jochi it bore a somewhat different meaning. It seemed to Chinggis that for Jochi this was a moment of estrangement. Chinggis had thought about this a great deal. Had something unusual occurred, it would not have been unexpected. He forcibly pushed the thought aside as insignificant. In his mind, he called out to Jochi:
“‘Guest’ of the Borjigin, you still haven’t proven yourself to be a true descendant of the blue wolf, just as I haven’t. Go off now! Take a path of great difficulty far, far away. You must fight and win innumerable, fierce battles, just as I must. Jochi, if you are indeed a shining Mongol wolf, you must seize your dwelling place by force with your own strength.”
Chinggis then saw Jochi, who had walked over and was standing before him. He raised his wine cup to his son and said simply:
“I have heard that there is a poisonous scorpion along the lower reaches of the Syr Darya. Be mindful of that!”
“Yes, my father and great khan.”
Staring back at Chinggis without defiance, Jochi replied with few words of his own in an emphatic tone of voice.
The four Mongol units descended upon the Syr Darya at approximately the same time. Jochi’s forces set their sights on the city of Jand, the armies of Cha’adai and Ögedei laid siege to Otrar, and the soldiers under Alaq, Soqtuu, and Taghai moved toward Fanakat.
Chinggis and Tolui led the main army and pitched camp on the Syr Darya, and soon news of victories repeatedly reached them from their various military units. They crossed the river with the entire army and headed for the city of Bukhara, deep within Khorazm’s terrain, precisely as planned. With the main army advancing toward Bukhara, communications between the main force of the enemy and the fortresses along the Syr Darya were naturally severed.
Chinggis marched over the desert and the plains region for over a month. Eventually reaching the city of Zarnuq, Chinggis sent a messenger who called out at the city gate:
“As sons of heaven, we are defenders of the Muslim people. By order of the great khan of the Mongols, we are here now to save you. The great Mongolian army presses upon your gate. Should you so much as resist even slightly, we shall without a moment’s notice destroy your strongholds and homes. If you surrender, you shall escape with your lives and property.”
The city dwellers immediately came out. Only the young men were commandeered into the Mongolian military, while the others were allowed to return to their homes.
Plundering the city lasted for three days. All items of importance were confiscated by the troops. When the fortress strongholds were destroyed, Mongol soldiers set off on a dangerous route toward the city of Nur. Over a month later they reached the walled settlement, and Chinggis had them promptly open the city gates, bring the residents outside the walls, and plunder the city over the course of several days.
Although Chinggis forbid his men from injuring the city folk, the pillage was thorough. As a result, foodstuffs had to be secured, and the most valuable possessions—as the natural right of the victors—had to be transformed into a part of Mongolian national strength.
Mongol cavalry units greeted the new year of 1220 while en route to Bukhara. When they reached the outskirts of the city in the first month of the year, they camped by the banks of the Sughd River. Around them stretched extraordinarily fertile fields. After allowing his forces sufficient respite, Chinggis had his immense army surround the city. Within the walls was a besieged army of 20,000 that did not respond to the advice to surrender, and a fierce battle attacking and defending the city ensued over the following days.
One night, the besieged troops suddenly flung open the city gates and launched an attack. They broke through the Mongol encirclement and escaped in the direction of the Amu Darya. Chinggis had his men pursue them as far as the Amu Darya and slaughtered every one of them. The riverbed was filled with corpses, the river’s surge turned red from all the blood. For the first time, the soldiers under Chinggis’s command witnessed such a great flow of blood, which made them maniacal.
The following day Chinggis entered the city through the main gate. Shops, temples, and homes filled the interior and bespoke, at a glance, a city of great wealth. Men and women of various ethnicities crowded around him through the streets and neighborhoods. Four hundred soldiers who had not attempted to surrender remained within. When he entered the city gate, Chinggis quickly gave orders to attack the interior, and the moat soon filled up with city dwellers holding weapons.
It took the Mongol soldiers 12 days to bring down the 400 enemy troops. Many Mongols died, as did many urbanites who were chased away. With catapults and batteries, they finally broke through the city walls, and Mongol soldiers poured in.
After capturing Bukhara, Chinggis expelled the residents from the city with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Mongol troops then proceeded to enter the city and plunder it as they pleased. Anyone who failed to comply with this decree and hid something was summarily executed. Of the city dwellers assembled at a site outside the walls now, the women were divided up among the troops. All the virgins were taken off. The men were compelled to admit where they had secreted possessions, all of which were confiscated, and then were drafted into the Mongolian army.
When Chinggis departed from Bukhara, he issued orders to have the vacant city set afire and reduced to ashes. By this example, Chinggis indicated what fate awaited a city that moved in any fashion to treat him as their enemy.
As Bukhara was engulfed in flames, Chinggis set off with his men in the direction of Samarkand, a city even greater in size than Bukhara. They marched for five days, during which time the Mongol soldiers, already baptized in blood and cruelty, were transformed into wild animals with glaring eyes. They differed from wild beasts only insofar as their advance was held in check by strict military discipline. When the blue moon appeared each night, the marching soldiers cast black shadows on the desert hillocks. During this harsh forced march, many of the numerous young men with blue eyes whom they had brought along with them from Bukhara collapsed en route, and all those who collapsed were killed on the spot.
After they had marched over desert, wasteland, and rocky hills for several days, the city of Samarkand on the low ground below their line of vision suddenly loomed before them. Even in the eyes of crazed Mongol troops, Samarkand was more beautiful than they had ever imagined. The area outside the city walls was lush with an unbroken view of fruit trees and flowering plants. The groves of fruit trees continued all along the banks of the Sughd River that flowed around the city. This immense metropolis nestled in such beautiful natural surroundings was encircled by a stone wall several levels thick, which had been specifically reinforced to withstand an impending attack by Mongol forces.
Before Chinggis pressed the assault on Samarkand, he sent two detachments to two cities that lay between Bukhara and Samarkand. While the main force of his army camped at the Sughd River, news of the capture of these two walled towns arrived.
Garrison troops were stationed on all four sides of Samarkand, led by the finest commanders in Khorazm’s army. Chinggis did not begin the assault precipitously but refined the attack strategy while in camp. Soon after he arrived at the banks of the Sughd River, three units that had earlier gone to capture fortresses along the Syr Darya completed their mission, and after several days arrived to join forces with his main army. First came the unit under Jochi’s command. About six months after setting out, Jochi had captured the city of Sïqnaq, plundered three other nearby cities, taken the city of Jand, and placed the lower reaches of the Syr Darya under his control. All those who fought against the Mongol forces were put to death, the greatest number in the city of Sïqnaq, where the majority of the residents were butchered by Mongol soldiers.
About ten days after Jochi’s unit arrived, that of Cha’adai and Ögedei appeared. They had received orders to attack and take Otrar because Chinggis’s earlier delegation seeking amity had been slaughtered, the immediate cause of the present war. After fighting for five months, Mongol troops took the city, and after another month of fierce fighting within the city walls, they quelled it. Half of the residents were executed, and the remaining half escorted under guard to Samarkand together with the lord of the city, Ghayir Khan. Chinggis would not meet him and simply ordered his execution. Shackled, Ghayir Khan saw at his side a silver bar melting and boiling hot. He asked a soldier what he was planning to do with it. “We’re going to pour it in your eyes and ears,” replied the soldier. And indeed, Ghayir Khan met his end in this fashion.
Another 10 days later, the units under the three young commanders arrived. They comprised a force of only 5,000, but all were dauntingly courageous. They had quickly captured the city of Fanakat, expelled the residents, and put all the troops holding weapons to death. They then had moved upstream along the Syr Darya and attacked the fortress of Khojend that had been constructed in the river. A long battle ensued with the garrison commander, Temür Malik, and ultimately they attacked the city with war boats. The sole error committed by these units was to allow Temür Malik to escape.
The numerous captured troops and voluminous plunder were brought into each unit’s ranks. Hence, one now saw soldiers of many different ethnicities at the Mongol encampment by the Sughd River. The Mongols thus first became aware at this time of the multitude of different peoples in the world.
When the three units came together, Chinggis organized them into two brigades to pursue Muhammad, shah of Khorazm, who had promptly abandoned Samarkand and disappeared in the direction of the Amu Darya. One brigade was to be led by Jebe and the other by Sübe’etei. Chinggis issued the following orders to these two commanders, in whom he invested the greatest of trust:
“Like two arrows shot from this starting point, your two brigades will each set out from here and proceed in two directions. Your task is the same. Seize Muhammad’s unit, hem them in, and exterminate them. Should you see that they have large numbers of troops, then avoid a clash and link up with an allied force. If they retreat, do not even stop to catch your breath but attack. A city that submits will be allowed to do so, but all resisters must be mercilessly annihilated.”
Soon that very day, two large brigades departed camp. At a distance of about half a mile from Samarkand, the two files of troops split apart like two arrows.
The attack on Samarkand began at the end of the third month of the year. Chinggis stood at the head of troops of different ethnicities who had come along from a variety of locales, and he saw to it that they followed behind the Mongol infantry. Khorazm’s army fought largely in cities. The majority of its garrison troops were Qangli, of Turkic origin, while others, a minority, were Persians. After a fierce battle lasting seven days, Chinggis took control of the city except for its innermost area, and he succeeded in getting the Qangli troops who had surrendered out of the city. The attack on the inner city commenced on all sides. It was set aflame, and 1,000 Persian troops fighting to the bitter end were all butchered.
This battle was extremely chaotic, and numerous Samarkand residents burned to death in the fire. Thirty thousand noncombatant Qangli who had surrendered were also massacred in one night.
The night that Samarkand burned was like a scene from a dream for Chinggis. Orange flames singed the jet-black sky, and all manner of human screams filled the night for what seemed like a hideously long stretch of time. When the white rays of dawn began to float onto the horizon, Chinggis could see that only those people blessed with good fortune who had gathered in certain places outside the city walls had survived the inferno. There were 30,000 laborers carrying the tools of their trades, 51,000 captives, a small number of women, and 20 elephants.
Having reduced Samarkand to ashes, Chinggis moved to a site between it and the city of Nakhshab, where he stayed from spring through summer. He had to allow his men and horses a rest until the autumn period of fighting arrived. The encampment was on an ideal site for grazing the horses.
All cities located north of the Amu Darya were now in Chinggis’s hands. Unlike during times of war, Chinggis strictly forbade his Mongol troops from injuring or plundering the local populace. The troops loitering about, like devils looking for blood and women and valuables, gradually reverted once again to human beings. At the same time, green grass was growing on land that had been soaked in quantities of blood, and cities that had been destroyed were slowly coming back to life. Even in places that seemed to have been permanently transformed into uninhabited ruins, people began returning as if unaware and picking up their lives again.
Chinggis sent Mongol officers to such cities, and as a basis for observation, had them establish a political system run by present inhabitants selected from the Muslims. He placed occupying forces at sites where there was the least danger to public order. Then they built wide roads to facilitate movement of large military units between cities. In the expansive lands between the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya, there were grasslands and desert, and laborers from the resident populace being guided by Mongol troops were visible everywhere.
During this time, a succession of messengers, like fiends with bodies drenched in blood, came from the expeditionary units under Jebe and Sübe’etei. They had taken the city of Balkh, which had not resisted, with injury to no one there, whereas in the city of Zava, which had resisted, every single resident was slaughtered. One by one, the units attacked and captured all of the cities until they came to Nishapur, the central base of operations for Khorazm. A place that did not resist the Mongols was left as is, but if it resisted even a bit, it was reduced to ashes. Mongol troops entered the city of Nishapur without bloodshed at the beginning of the sixth month of the year. The two units pursued Muhammad, who left and headed for a succession of cities along the coast of the Caspian Sea, and nothing was heard from him thereafter. In the capture of Muhammad’s armies, the two Mongol units had the mission of hunting down Muhammad himself wherever the trail led them.
When the period of pasturage from spring to autumn came to a close, Chinggis learned that Muhammad’s heir, Jalal al-Din, had established his base in Khorazm’s capital of Urganch. He placed his three sons Jochi, Cha’adai, and Ögedei at the head of a great army and dispatched them to attack and take it.
The walled city of Urganch was a large metropolis built to span the Amu Darya where it spilled into the Aral Sea. Mongol soldiers attempted to destroy the bridges connecting the two districts of the city, but this resulted in 3,000 deaths of their own and failure. Defense of the city was firm and garrison troop morale high. The siege lasted for six months, and they were unable to bring the city down. Every time the Mongols launched an attack against the city, it resulted in numerous deaths on their side.
Realizing that the number of dead and wounded was needlessly high and that the reason they had been unable to attain a swift victory was the antagonism between his two sons Jochi and Cha’adai, Chinggis issued orders that Ögedei was to take over command of the army. Not unexpectedly, Ögedei tried to reach an understanding between his two elder brothers, and he then set off to attack the capital of Khorazm. The resistance within the city was fierce, and to take one section of it, they literally built a mountain of corpses. In the fourth month of 1221, Mongol troops seized full control over Urganch. Of the residents and soldiers, only 100,000 craftsmen were absorbed into the Mongol army, and everyone else was put to death. Although Mongol troop strength stood at 50,000, every soldier had to kill 24 members of this alien people. In body and spirit, the troops were literally dyed red in all the blood.
When this great slaughter was over, the Mongol army destroyed the dikes on the Amu Darya, causing an inundation of water into the city piled high with dead bodies that washed away all the homes and possessions there. Because of the length of this brutal war, everything in the city was drenched in blood, and the Mongol troops could not bring themselves to plunder it. They had, however, been unable to capture the brave leader of the enemy, Jalal al-Din.
After receiving news of the capture of Urganch, Chinggis made camp in the grassland region along the banks of the Amu Darya. After a six-month absence, Cha’adai and Ögedei returned to Chinggis’s camp, but after the occupation of Urganch, Jochi separated from his two brothers and led his own military unit north to the Syr Darya to pacify that region. This action went beyond Chinggis’s orders. When he heard reports from Cha’adai and Ögedei, Chinggis felt a rage burning within, but he said nothing and showed nothing on his face. While Jochi’s action was reproachable for going beyond his orders, the strategy he adopted was wise, and had Jochi not done this, Chinggis would have had to order someone else to do so. For this reason, Chinggis forced himself to swallow his anger.
Chinggis now gave his troops—whose numbers had swelled several dozen times with numerous soldiers of different ethnicities—a respite in camp to enjoy life as normal men. He deprived his youngest son, Tolui, of a rest, though, and sent him deep into Khorazm’s terrain to track down Jalal al-Din.
At the end of summer, Chinggis again moved his military operations to cities along the northern bank of the Amu Darya, capturing a few walled settlements and placing his headquarters at a pastureland by the river. Following Jalal al-Din’s footsteps, Tolui seized a number of cities at which the former had been based, but he was unable to capture him. Shigi Qutuqu, the foundling raised by Ö’elün, had fought against Jalal al-Din at Parvan and lost. This was a terribly hard blow to the Mongol troops on expedition. Shigi Qutuqu returned to Chinggis’s base, having lost the majority of the men under his command. He awaited judgment as the man responsible for this defeat. Chinggis, though, did not blame him:
“Shigi Qutuqu, you have become accustomed to always winning. You now know the severities of fate. Make good use of this first taste of defeat!”
That was all the great khan said. He wasn’t shielding Shigi Qutuqu, just demonstrating respect for his mother, Ö’elün, who had raised him.
Soon after Shigi Qutuqu’s defeat, Chinggis learned that Muhammad, who had escaped in the second month of the year to a small isolated island in the Caspian Sea, died there of illness. Jebe and Sübe’etei, who had been sent to capture him, now found the object of their mission gone and sent a messenger to the camp of the great khan. They were seeking his approval to take up a new task and march off in that direction. They hoped to be able to cross the Caucasus Mountains with their armies.
These two exceptional Mongol commanders could not think of camping their troops in the area straddling the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea until permission arrived from Chinggis. The messenger returned, but Chinggis could not imagine that he caught up with them.
They had not forgotten that Chinggis had sent them off with orders to advance like two arrows. Two arrows shot out of a bow must cut straight through the air until they hit the ground. Although he had been angry at Jochi, Chinggis showed not the least unhappiness with Jebe and Sübe’etei, although they had similarly acted beyond their orders.
When early that winter Chinggis received a report that Jalal al-Din had appeared with a great army in the Kashmir region, he personally led an army riding over a long distance in the direction of Kashmir. En route he captured a string of cities, and in every case he used the same tactic: in cities that did not resist, all of their troops were assimilated into his forces unharmed; in those that resisted, every person and building was completely destroyed. In the fighting, they faced numerous difficulties. Mongol soldiers surrounded the city of Bāmiyān in the heart of the Hindukush Mountains, and in the combat one of Cha’adai’s sons was killed by a stray arrow. Chinggis deeply loved this grandson of his who died in battle, and his orders for the seizure of Bāmiyān were extremely severe.
“Attack, attack, and destroy—and don’t leave a single tree or blade of grass standing! This city will remain uninhabited for the next hundred years!”
Chinggis thus forbid plundering anything whatsoever from this city. It eventually fell, all of its people perished, and the city disappeared from the face of the earth without a trace.
Cha’adai did not know of his son’s death, and when he returned from another battle to his father’s camp, Chinggis, his face crimson with rage, asked him in harsh words:
“Will you follow my orders?”
Stunned, Cha’adai replied: “I would choose death before repudiating the orders of the great khan, my father.”
Chinggis listened and then continued: “Listen, Cha’adai. Your son died in the fighting. I forbid you to grieve.”
Thus, Cha’adai was unable to lament the death of his beloved son before the great khan.
Chinggis then went on to India in pursuit of Jalal al-Din, shifted the scene of fighting a number of times, and eventually captured his troops on the banks of the Indus River. Able to restore Shigi Qutuqu’s honor for his earlier defeat, Chinggis himself stood at the head of his entire armed forces. At the end of his tether after a fierce fight and exhausted, Jalal al-Din leaped with his horse from a 20-foot precipice, and with his shield on his back and bearing a flag in his hand, attempted to cross the great river. Mongol troops showered him from behind with innumerable arrows, but Chinggis, demonstrating esteem for this courageous enemy commander, called a halt to them.
Chinggis found himself camped early in the year 1222 in the northern foothills of the Hindukush Mountains, covered in a thick snow. He dispatched his commanders to cities within Jalal al-Din’s sphere of influence with orders to mop them up completely. Cities south of the Amu Darya that had until then not been laid waste in warfare were one after the next subjected to Mongol attacks and the majority of their populations slaughtered. Messengers bearing news of bloody victories from military contingents on various fronts were arriving in camp almost daily, and one day early in the fourth month of the year a visitor with a somewhat different complexion also appeared. This was the Daoist priest Changchun (1148–1227), who had traveled, at Chinggis’s invitation, the great distance from Shandong province in eastern China.
Just a year earlier, Chinggis had learned the name of this Daoist master, a man with the highest authority within the Daoist world who had gathered around him a number of followers. Chinggis had Yelü Chucai draft an edict summoning him, and then with a twenty-man escort, he sent Liu Zhonglu as a messenger to Changchun’s home. The main reason Chinggis wished to meet Changchun was to ask him about techniques for attaining immortality. At some point in the helter-skelter of war, Chinggis had turned sixty years of age, and he was becoming aware of his own declining physical strength.
No sooner had he welcomed this guest from afar than Chinggis summoned him to his tent. The great khan watched as the old man with bent back, enfeebled by age, merely stooped forward, not bowing down, and then, with arms folded, approached the khan.
“You responded to my summons from a distant land,” said Chinggis through an interpreter. “And having acceded to my request, you have traveled thousands of li in coming here. I am extremely pleased.”
“I received your decree and came,” replied the old man. “This is all in accordance with the will of heaven.”
Changchun did not actually see Chinggis’s face. As if there was, in fact, no one standing before him, the short elderly man cast his unfocused gaze at a point in space.
“Perfected one who has come from afar, do you possess any kind of elixir for longevity? If you do, can you provide it to me?”
“I do have a way of protecting life, but no elixir to extend it.”
Chinggis watched the old man’s mouth move and heard the words emerge from it, but there was no emotion whatsoever in his expression.
“Is there then really no medicine for immortality?” asked Chinggis again, this time in a louder voice.
“I do have a way of protecting life,” said the old man again in precisely the same words, “but no medicine for prolonging life.”
Although he felt somewhat betrayed, Chinggis thought it was certainly good to have summoned this old man. Their conversation was carried on entirely through an interpreter, but there was nonetheless a certain freshness to their exchange of words. For Chinggis it was the first time in quite a long while that he had met anyone who did not take his every word as a direct order.
“The people call the Daoist master a celestial being. Do you call yourself that?”
“That is merely something other people say of me. I cannot vouch for that which is given to me.”
Master Changchun said nothing beyond replying to queries addressed to him by Chinggis.
For the next two or three days, a number of poems written by Changchun over the course of the long voyage to the Mongol camp were offered to the great khan in Liu Zhonglu’s transcription. These poems spoke of Samarkand, Luntai, various settlements in the desert, and many other places. Chinggis gave them to Yelü Chucai and asked him for the poems he’d written while accompanying the army, so they could be given to Changchun. Chinggis thought that although one was young and one old, these two extraordinary individuals in whom he placed such trust certainly seemed to have reached a mutual understanding.
Several days later, Chinggis attempted to ask Changchun what he thought of the quality of Yelü Chucai’s poems. The Daoist master answered that they were fine specimens, but when asked if he might like to meet the man, he replied that he had no special desire to do so. Finding this suspicious, Chinggis summoned Yelü Chucai and asked him the very same question. The young man with the full beard responded in his always resonant voice full of pride:
“I think these are excellent poems. But why must I meet this old man?”
“Hmm, Changchun replied in the same manner about you,” said Chinggis with a smile.
He nonetheless could not understand why these two men had no interest in meeting each other. When he mentioned the point to Yelü Chucai, the latter replied:
“Probably the master looked down on the fact that, while I follow the great khan’s armies and am always by his side, I do nothing for the great khan.”
“But why do you have no curiosity about the Daoist master?” asked Chinggis.
“Because, despite the fact that the Daoist master traveled an immense distance to come to the great khan’s camp, there’s not a thing he can do for the great khan.”
“What do you mean by ‘a thing’?” asked Chinggis.
“I am making sure that the name of the great khan will not be erased from history in the future,” answered Yelü Chucai, “and he can do nothing to help me.”
Chinggis’s expression quickly hardened as he said:
“Why do you say that my name may be erased? My name and that of the Mongols are indestructible in the realm of history.”
Betraying not the least timidity, the young man responded:
“I believe, unfortunately, that the name of the great khan will not be preserved in history, for the great khan’s subordinates have committed untold acts of butchery.”
When he heard this, Chinggis’s expression changed, and trembling with rage, he stood up. He walked into the adjoining room but soon returned and said in utter seriousness:
“I should have you put to death for this, but any punishment would be too light for what you have just said. Until I can come up with an appropriate punishment, I shall desist from having you executed.”
Then he blurted out with a smile: “You really can be terribly rude!”
Yelü Chucai’s words had left no significant unpleasantness for Chinggis, but in any case he did not intend to punish this young man of whom he was so fond.
Several days later, he again summoned Yelü Chucai and said to him:
“I shall soon learn the Way from the Daoist master. You will serve me at that time.”
This may in fact have been his punishment. As unofficial emissaries, Dian Zhenhai, Liu Zhonglu, and Alixian took down the words of the Daoist master. As official representatives, three court attendants did the same. Yelü Chucai was under orders to be in attendance at this meeting as well.
However, Chinggis’s plan to place these two extraordinary, defiant intellectuals together had to be put off for six months because of a sudden Uyghur uprising. To crush it, Chinggis mobilized his own army, and he fixed the day to listen to Daoist master Changchun speak of the Way to a propitious date in the tenth month of the year, some six months away. Changchun requested to spend the time until then in Samarkand, and he moved with a guard of over 1,000 cavalry to that lovely city to the north some 20 days’ journey away, which was now recovering from the depredations of war.
When Chinggis set out at the head of an army unit, neither Changchun nor Yelü Chucai was there. Numerous Uyghurs lived in the cities of Khorazm, and no small rebellion led by them could cover its own traces. For Chinggis, those who so much as harbored the idea of rebelling against him had to be eradicated from the earth, as one pulls grass out by its roots. The city of Herat was attacked by one of Chinggis’s commanders, its walls burned to the ground, and all of its residents massacred. The city of Merv came under attack a second time, and only a handful of its residents survived.
It was early summer when Chinggis’s forces attacked the city of Ghazna. He was looking for a new camp to escape the summer heat of the Hindukush. A messenger arrived at his new tent from the two units under Jebe and Sübe’etei, with whom contact had for a time been severed. He reported to Chinggis:
—The two army units circled around the southern shore of the Caspian Sea and crossed the Caucasus Mountains. They defeated the allied armed forces of the Kipchaks, the Aas, and the Rus, advanced farther west, and were about to enter Bulghar.
The messenger was reporting on the movements of the expeditionary army six months previous. About one month later, separate messengers arrived from each of the army units.
—We have defeated the Bulghar army everywhere, destroyed their cities, and turned to take the road into Russia.
This particular messenger was able to arrive comparatively quickly, and thus was reporting on military actions of only three months earlier.
The tracks taken by his two units seemed even to Chinggis to bear something of a dubious, almost haunting aspect. This was no longer the will of Chinggis but the wills of Jebe and Sübe’etei being carried out. Like arrows that had to continue cutting through the air until they fell to the ground, the two Mongol wolves had perforce to chase after the enemy, as if this were the ultimate will of their people. There was no respite from this and hence no end. They simply continued running until they expired.
According to the messenger’s report, the operations of the two army units were like a fire burning over a prairie. After they passed through, nothing remained. Cities that resisted were turned completely into ruins, with no city walls, streets, people, or even trees and shrubs remaining intact. Iraq Ajemi, Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Georgia, Syria, Armenia, Kipchak, and Bulghar were all territories over which the blue wolves passed, and all of their important cities were sacrificed to plunder and slaughter.
On the day he received the messengers from Jebe and Sübe’etei, Chinggis twice sensed the impossibility of forestalling their movements on his own. It seemed to him that he could only assist them. By contrast, he had not even received a report from his eldest son, Jochi, who had marched north from the Syr Darya. Chinggis issued an edict congratulating his two commanders Jebe and Sübe’etei for their exploits on the battlefield. To Jochi he issued orders to complete his campaign on the Kipchak plain with alacrity, head north of the Black and Caspian seas, subjugate the peoples living there, and then join up with the forces of Jebe and Sübe’etei.
A messenger arrived regularly every few weeks from Muqali, who was continuing with the overwhelming task of pacifying the state of Jin. Although this campaign had no conspicuous developments, Muqali worked vigorously to conquer the northern portion of Jin. The cities in this area had come under Mongol dominion and then reverted to the Jin after Chinggis’s withdrawal. The present attack on these strongholds was being carried out by Muqali’s forces alone. Chinggis issued a respectfully worded edict of appreciation to Muqali for his efforts every time a messenger reported his accomplishments in camp.
At the end of the eighth month of the year, Daoist master Changchun returned to Chinggis’s camp from Samarkand. Chinggis, though, had decided to lead his entire army to the north and had moved in that direction. On the way toward Samarkand, the propitious day in the tenth month came on which it had been agreed he would listen to Changchun discourse on the Way. On this day, Chinggis had a splendid curtain installed, abstained from contact with women, and adorned his room with lustrous candlelight.
Although Chinggis had Yelü Chucai serve him on this occasion, Chucai and Changchun merely bowed silently to each other and did not exchange a single word. Three or four days later, Chinggis again invited Changchun to speak about the Way. On this occasion as well, Yelü Chucai was in attendance, and again the two men said not a word to each other.
“The Way gives birth to heaven and nurtures the earth. The sun and the moon, the stars in the sky, demons and goblins, men and animals—all come from the Way. Some men know the greatness of the Way and some do not. The Way first spawns the creation of heaven and earth and only then gives birth to mankind. Only when men were born did the light of the divine shine forth and move as if in flight. For food they ate everything alive. With the passage of time, their bodies became heavy, and the light of the divine flickered out. This is because their passions grew deeper.
“Originally, the great khan was a celestial being. Heaven is using the great khan to defeat tyrannical, violent men. When you overcome these grave difficulties and accomplish this task, the great khan will perforce ascend to heaven and become a celestial being once again. While you remain on earth, your tone of voice must drop, your appetites must diminish, you must restrain from slaughter, and you must peacefully protect your body. If you do all these things, long life will naturally reside in the great khan’s body.
“The divine is pure. He who follows the Way and obtains it will act with prudence and discretion day and night. If you act with goodness and pursue the Way, you shall rise to the level of heaven and become a saint.
“The way for the great khan to train is to promote secret charities without and strengthen the mind within. Having compassion toward the people, protecting the lives of the masses, and bringing a great peace to the world are to be your external practices; protecting the divine is your internal practice.”
These words poured forth from Daoist Master Changchun. Chinggis listened attentively to the master’s words from start to finish on these two occasions, but both times when “great khan” came dashing out of Changchun’s mouth, frequently he felt he was being cut short. For what Chinggis was actually doing was entirely in contravention of the Way. Yet the time spent listening to Master Changchun was quiet, austere time such as Chinggis had to this point never experienced. Although punctuated by the sounds of cracking whips outside, listening to these words of the Daoist master was by no means unpleasant.
Chinggis pitched camp outside Samarkand and did not enter the city. The area in and around the city had already revived completely from the conflagrations of war, and all manner of peoples lived there, pursuing their lives in a peaceful manner. The majority of residents were Uyghurs, and above them Han, Khitans, and Tanguts employed a great number of Uyghurs. Among the local officials were numerous Turks, Iranians, Arabs, and countless others with eyes of differing shades. And walking amid all these different peoples were Mongol soldiers.
Mongol troops, whether high or low in status, all enjoyed a luxurious life, frequenting restaurants and drinking establishments with women of different ethnic backgrounds and walking among the orchards on the outskirts of the city. Although corpses had been strewn all over this city and hell fires had been lapping at its buildings, after only two years, one could not even imagine those bygone days, looking at the prosperity of the city now.
Among the cities of Khorazm that the Mongols had attacked, Samarkand was the first to return to peace, and with the passage of a few more years, all the cities of Khorazm would follow this path. And not only Khorazm, for all the states of the Caspian and Black Sea regions, as yet unknown to Chinggis, which had been conquered by Jebe and Sübe’etei, would follow a similar pattern. In this sense Samarkand proved to be a model for many other cities in the future.
For some reason, though, Chinggis had no interest whatsoever in entering the revived Samarkand. There was a grand detached palace with luxurious pavilions and gardens that had been prepared for him, and if he had so desired, he could have released peacocks and elephants brought there from other conquered states. All of the officers and troops of his military units hoped to go into Samarkand, but Chinggis was resistant to doing so.
Chinggis pitched his camp at a site two days away from Samarkand and remained there until the eleventh month of the year. At that time, he announced that they would again move south for the winter months. As he had done since his youth, as his ancestors for countless generations had done, they had to fold up hundreds of tents, form themselves into large groups, and move, following the flocks with the seasons.
Chinggis decided that they would spend the winter at Buya Katur, in the mountains of northwestern India near the Indus River valley. Several days after he arrived at the new camp, Chinggis’s third son Ögedei, his entire body reeking from the stench of blood, came with his Mongol troops, who had spent many years in open warfare and who had eyes like those of wild animals, mountains of plunder, and Indian captives in a number roughly equal to that of his own troops. The Indians wore white cloths around their heads, so when seen from afar, Ögedei’s soldiers had appeared like troops with snow upon their heads.
When the New Year’s festivities for 1223 came to an end, Chinggis announced the return of military units to Khorazm, as they had expected. He was unable to have peace of mind unless he was back on the field of battle, or failing that, moving with his yurt.
The Mongol base camp and with it the principal military units once again marched through mountainous and desert regions toward Samarkand. Without entering the city, they moved the great distance to the upstream area of the Syr Darya and there pitched camp. While on this march, Chinggis listened on several occasions to Changchun discourse on the Way. Some of it he understood and some he did not, but he clearly enjoyed listening to Changchun speak on the subject.
While in camp on the bank of the Syr Darya, Chinggis often passed the time hunting. On one occasion, when he was in the midst of a hunt and in his last spurt in the attack on a group of raging wild boars that had run amok, he fell from his horse. Although he suffered no painful injuries, he could scarcely believe that he had actually fallen off a horse. At that point in time, Changchun said to him:
“The great khan has already reached an advanced age. The great khan’s fall was an exhortation from heaven. That the wild boars did not attack the great khan was a result of divine protection. Should you not reduce the number of hunts?”
For Chinggis, tumbling from his horse was a great blow. He had no choice but to follow Changchun’s words. Shortly after this incident, Changchun sought Chinggis’s permission to return home.
“Three full years have now passed since I left my home village by the sea. Originally, I responded to the great khan’s summons for a three-year period. The heaven-ordained time for my return has now arrived.”
Changchun had already asked twice for permission to return home, but Chinggis had not allowed it. Now, however, when he heard the Daoist master say that the “heaven-ordained time had arrived,” he saw no reason to detain him any longer.
Early in the third month of the year, Changchun left Chinggis’s camp, with Alixian as imperially designated emissary and Menggutai, Hela, and Bahai, among others, as vice-emissaries. Chinggis had a Mongol battalion guard Changchun on his journey to the east.
Soon after the Daoist master’s departure, Chinggis personally sensed a great change of heart. The desire to return to the foothills of Mount Burqan suddenly began to burn fiercely in his breast. He revealed this desire first to Qulan. Although five years had passed since they had left his home, Qulan had remained at his side the entire time.
“Should it be the wish of the great khan,” she said, “how could anyone oppose you?”
“Don’t you find the Mongolian plateau to your taste?” he asked.
“Why, do I have my own taste? My mind has always been one with that of the great khan. Even when the great khan lies in this very bed with concubines of other hair colors, my mind is one with that of the great khan.”
Qulan’s health had suffered while living on foreign soil for so long and always serving at Chinggis’s side, and she had for the past two years not shared a bed with him. Although she had once had a stout and radiant body, Qulan had grown emaciated, completely unlike her former self. Her skin, though, retained its tenacious luster like alabaster, and her eyes were even colder than before. Her grace, which was difficult to ignore, appeared along the lines of her tense cheeks, so that one could not say that her personal appearance had declined to any degree whatsoever.
“If the great khan so desires, who am I to interpose an objection? Were I, however, to describe my own self-serving wish—” Qulan cut off her words midstream and stared directly at Chinggis.
“What?” he asked. “If you had a wish, what would it be?”
“I have heard that on the other side of the Himalayas there is a great and as yet unconquered kingdom. It is a hot land in which immense elephants live. It is the land where Buddhism arose, where men wear white turbans on their heads, and where women cover their heads in white cloth. It is a bit strange to me that the great khan does not want to bring this land under his dominion. What’s more, they say it is a strong land with a mighty army that holds untold wealth.”
“Perhaps I do not fully understand you, Qulan. You do not want the land on the far side of the Himalayas, but you do seem to want the ferocious battle that will ensue there.”
“To be sure,” replied Qulan, “I have lived together with the great khan through great difficulties. Neither a khan who would be king nor a khan who would sit upon a gem-bedecked chair in the Jade Palace did I wish to be with at all. Great khan, there is no task too difficult for you. Mongol troops now ride freely over the whole world. If there were a task that the great khan found difficult, then it might be crossing the Himalayas, traversing the Indus River, and confronting in battle large herds of elephants covering the surface of the earth, shaking as they came, and the soldiers guarding them.”
“Qulan, would your health be able to endure this? The Indus River is immense, and the snow covering the Himalayan peaks continues without end.”
“Great khan, was not the river to which we abandoned our son Kölgen greater than the Indus? And greater than the expanses of snow on the peaks of the Himalayas? I have gone as far as throwing Kölgen into it. I have no fear whatsoever about throwing my own life in.”
Chinggis remained silent for a moment, but eventually he said:
“Fine, I shall grant your wish. You shall be with me when we invade India.”
Chinggis thus decided to adopt Qulan’s idea, which had gotten under his skin in a manner altogether different from the words of Daoist master Changchun or Yelü Chucai. The desire to return home disappeared for a time from Chinggis’s mind, and in its stead a violent urge filled his entire body.
Chinggis felt compelled to follow Qulan’s suggestion because he knew that she wished to give up her own young life to his hegemonic conquests. Although she did wish to see Mount Burqan, Qulan had no desire for a triumphal return there. That was something for Börte and the various descendants to whom she had given birth. Qulan sought to invest the meaning of her life as a concubine in an altogether different place.
Chinggis soon set to work on preparations to invade India again. His plan, though, could not soon be realized. Cha’adai and Ögedei had left Chinggis’s main camp the previous year in the region near Bukhara and were carrying out a separate strategy. Chinggis had had to send a messenger to tell them to return posthaste to the encampment along the Syr Darya. Messengers were also sent to his eldest son, Jochi, on the Kipchak plain and to the base of Jebe and Sübe’etei, the two leaders of the possessed Mongol wolf pack, ordering them all to return.
Cha’adai and Ögedei arrived within about three weeks with their forces, but the return of the detachments under Jochi, Jebe, and Sübe’etei, located far away, required considerably more time. Chinggis set summer for Jochi’s return and the end of autumn for Jebe and Sübe’etei’s.
Chinggis spent the summer season hunting in the mountainous region to the north. This was needed both for the continued training of his troops and to keep up morale. At summer’s end, he again moved camp to the bank of the Syr Darya. One day a messenger from Jochi arrived to report that not a single wild animal was left on the Kipchak plain and he was pursuing them farther upstream on the Syr Darya as a memento for the great khan.
Although he had not seen or held Jochi’s gift in his hands, Chinggis was extremely pleased. Half a month prior to the predetermined day, Chinggis dispatched about 30,000 troops to the upper reaches of the Syr Darya to receive Jochi’s present. In early autumn they had hunted wild boar, horses, oxen, deer, and all manner of other animals in fields by the Syr Darya. There was a herd of several hundred head of wild animals and a large drove of wild rabbits filling the fields like ground beetles, making an extraordinary sound. Chinggis was duly stunned as never before by Jochi’s performance, ranging over thousands of miles.
Hunting was unfolding on a grand scale heretofore unknown, a virtually daily war between man and beast across the upper reaches of the Syr Darya. When the hunt was over, though, neither Jochi nor any of his men were to be seen. Two messengers arrived to report that Jochi had fallen ill during the hunt and had withdrawn to his Kipchak camp. Chinggis immediately dispatched a messenger with orders for Jochi to return to base camp despite his illness. Chinggis now became furious that, in spite of such stark instructions, not one man had returned to service.
That autumn Chinggis received news that Muqali, commander of the expeditionary army against the state of Jin, had died unexpectedly at the age of fifty-three. Chinggis felt as though his own right arm had been suddenly torn off. Having given over responsibility for pacifying the Jin to Muqali, Chinggis had not had to be the least bit concerned on that front, and he had been free to devote his energies to the attack on Khorazm. His dismay was thus great.
He had his entire army fall in line by their barracks and there announced Muqali’s death. He ordered all officers and men to observe one month’s mourning:
“Commander Muqali, in whom I held the greatest trust, has died. Had he had but six months more, Muqali might have been able to replace the Jin with his own kingdom.”
Unable to speak further, Chinggis stepped down from the podium. He had planned to praise Muqali’s achievements, but he felt as though these great deeds could not be sufficiently esteemed in words. That day Chinggis summoned only commanders Bo’orchu and Jelme to his tent, and together they grieved over Muqali’s death. The import of this was that he and Bo’orchu and Jelme were the only men who appreciated how great and fine a man Muqali had been.
At sixty-one, Bo’orchu was the same age as Chinggis; Jelme was sixty-four. Two years earlier, Jelme had become paralyzed through half of his body, and his speech was not at all clear. Bo’orchu had been sick since the previous spring, his spirit weakened as well. As he stood before Chinggis now, tears welled up in both of his eyes.
When Chinggis said that they were ultimately the only ones who knew of Muqali’s greatness and after them it would all be buried and gone, Jelme waved his hand furiously as if to disagree and said something, but neither Chinggis nor Bo’orchu could understand him clearly. Several times, Chinggis held his ear close to Jelme’s mouth, and finally he was able to comprehend what Jelme was trying to say:
“No, it’s not just the three of us. Muqali’s greatness is known to everyone in the state of Jin.”
Late that year, messengers from Jebe and Sübe’etei arrived at Chinggis’s camp near Samarkand.
“The two army units have invaded Russia, dealt a crushing blow to the allied princes of Russia at the Kalka River, turned southern Russia into a battlefield with fire and flowing blood, appeared at the Dnieper River, and then ridden on farther to the coast of the Azov Sea.”
While clearly Mongol soldiers themselves, the messengers had an odd appearance. They were wearing narrow pants clinging tightly to their legs and neckerchiefs around their heads. Wine and extraordinary items made of glass were to be found in their saddlebags. Several dozen crosses taken in plunder were attached to their saddles. They merely reported on the movement of troops but had no response at all to Chinggis’s orders for those troops to return to camp.