IN EARLY 1224, CHINGGIS ANNOUNCED to his entire army his plan to launch an attack against India. The grand design was to traverse either the Hindukush or the Qara-Qorum range, enter India, conquer the major Indian strongholds, and when the fighting came to an end, attempt to return to the Mongolian plateau by way of Tibet. Neither Chinggis nor any of his commanders could surmise how many months or years it might take to achieve these ends.
When the forthcoming battle was announced, a number of army units began to organize themselves into heavy and light units. Numerous captives of many different ethnicities were ordered to work from morning till night for a month to turn unhulled rice into polished rice and to repair armor. To cross over great mountain ranges and immense rivers, Mongol soldiers had to work daily at new exercises involving the felling of trees, fording of rivers, and building of bridges.
In early spring the Mongol forces divided into several units and set out from the Syr Darya camp. Prior to departure, Chinggis sent couriers to Jebe and Sübe’etei, who had not followed his orders and were marching far away on foreign terrain, and to his eldest son, Jochi, who had similarly ignored his orders and remained on the Kipchak plain. The task of these couriers was to inform them all of the new battle plans and to convey orders to the effect that they should bring whatever fighting they were presently pursuing to a close and return home.
After the Mongol armies had marched for over a month, they could see in the distance the apex of the Qara-Qorum Mountains, like the blade of a saw, which they would have to traverse. After roughly another month or more, they pushed their way through the mountains. These rugged mountains soared into the sky, and dense forests grew luxuriantly around them. When the soldiers had crossed these endless forests, they came to snow-capped peaks, and after they had crossed the peaks, more densely wooded areas obstructed the view of their objective. In only a short period of time, men and horses alike were thoroughly exhausted.
While the troops were camped in a small village in the mountains, Qulan passed away. Chinggis knew full well when they left the banks of the Syr Darya that she did not have long to live. When he received news that Qulan’s condition had become grave, Chinggis visited her yurt. She lay with her thin, waxen, almost transparent arms and legs spread across her bed. As he approached, she opened her closed eyes as if she had been waiting for this moment. Her eyes struck Chinggis as much larger than he remembered. Although there was a fire burning inside the yurt, the cold of the dead of winter filled the air. Qulan was near death. A low, clear sound resembling nothing like a human voice emanated from her lips:
“Under the ice.”
After she had said this, a faint smile floated over her face as she tried to reach her hand in Chinggis’s direction. The hand, though, had to abandon its effort midway. Chinggis swallowed and then watched as this woman, whom he had loved more than any other and who had given him her love in a way no other woman had ever expressed it, was about to breathe her last before his eyes.
Qulan’s last words, “under the ice,” seemed to Chinggis to mean the site she wished for her burial. As he had once forbidden his son Cha’adai from mourning his own son’s death, Chinggis would not allow himself now to mourn the passing of Qulan. He had so ordered himself days and weeks prior to her actual death.
Soon thereafter Qulan stopped breathing, and when her death was announced by a Persian doctor, Chinggis left her yurt. Inasmuch as he forbid himself from mourning, it would not do for him to show sadness at her death. He would carry out her funeral and have her remains buried beneath the glacial ice. This would be the final act he performed for his beloved who had now departed. He decided that night to have an altar erected in her yurt, convey the news of her death to his top commanders, and have them attend at the ceremony bidding her farewell.
That ceremony was carried out in the cold, when it seemed as if dawn itself was frozen. Before the night had given way to light, the coffin had been removed from the campsite. Some thirty commanders who had known her well carried the coffin in turns, with roughly an equal number of soldiers joining in the funeral procession. That day the procession passed through low, densely grown shrubbery, and gradually by nightfall they reached a desolate ravine shut off by snow and ice, where one could not see a single tree or blade of grass.
The following day soldiers found several dozen cracks in the ice over the ravine, and this information was reported to Chinggis. Chinggis inspected every one of them himself and selected the largest rent in the ice for Qulan’s grave. Tilting it to the right and left, four young Uyghurs slowly lowered her coffin to a considerable depth in the frost. When the cord they were using to hold and lower the coffin ran out, the young men opened their hands in which they had been holding it. Did the coffin stop somewhere on the way down, or did it sink to some unknown depth? They heard a single cold, grating, metallic sound and nothing thereafter.
With the coffin now under the ice, the entire party, fearing a change of weather, immediately left the grave site. About halfway back on their return, they completed their nonstop descent of the mountain as the wind began howling.
Despite the ban he placed on himself from mourning Qulan’s death, Chinggis could do nothing about the blow he felt in his heart. As they marched through mountainous terrain that would continue for an indefinite period of time, Chinggis no longer understood why they were invading India. The invasion had been planned at the suggestion of Qulan, and from his perspective, he set out with a desire to find for her a place to die.
Chinggis had no choice but to station troops in the village where Qulan died for a month to carry out the appropriate religious rituals for his beloved concubine. During that time, he had a most extraordinary dream. It took place at daybreak, and in it Chinggis saw a deerlike animal appear at his bedside. At first he thought it was a deer, but on close inspection he saw that it was not, as its tail resembled that of a horse, its hair was green in color, its head had a single horn, and it spoke human language. As the animal bent its forelegs and sat down by Chinggis’s bedside, out of the blue it said to him: “You must lose no time getting your army together and return to your own land.” Having spoken, the animal stood up and left the tent. Although it was clearly a dream, the genuineness of the animal’s deportment and the way it entered and left his tent made it seem very real.
The following day, Chinggis summoned Yelü Chucai and asked him what the dream might have meant.
“The animal,” replied Chucai, “is known as a jiaoduan in Chinese, and it is conversant in all languages. It ordinarily appears in a chaotic period full of the horror of bloodshed. The jiaoduan probably appeared before the great khan at the will of heaven.”
Chinggis’s usual practice was not to take Yelü Chucai at his word. He listened silently to what this young man of learning whom he so liked had to say, but never simply accepted what he heard. This occasion was different.
“Then,” said the great khan, “we shall obey the words of the jiaoduan.”
The light in the jiaoduan’s pupils seemed to Chinggis to resemble the light in Qulan’s eyes. Perhaps, he thought, Qulan had transformed into the animal known as the jiaoduan and come explicitly to warn him.
That very day orders were issued to form up ranks in the army, and two days later the Mongolian military units set their sights on Peshawar. All of his commanders had understood that the invasion of India would be a fight that would require great effort and bring few results. Therefore, a change in plans was met happily by all.
Chinggis went through Peshawar, crossed the Khyber Pass, and pitched camp for the summer at Baghlan. While encamped there, he came to the firm decision to return his entire army to the Mongolian plateau. Once before Chinggis had made such a mental decision, but it had been cut short by the Indian campaign. Since breaking camp at Mount Burqan in the spring of 1219, Chinggis had spent five years treading over foreign soil. It was time now to enable his men who had been fighting throughout these years to set foot on their native land and to give solace to their rough and hardened minds.
At the end of the summer, Chinggis set off from Baghlan in a northerly direction. His aim was to assemble his troops at Samarkand and from there begin a proper march back home. When passing near the city of Bukhara en route earlier, he had learned of the rebellious sentiments of the populace there. Chinggis sent a military unit in to slaughter them. The troops forded the Amu Darya several times and entered Bukhara, the first city in the state of Khorazm that Chinggis had had burned to the ground to show that any hostile actions against his army would incur serious consequences. The great majority of the men had been murdered, and those who survived had been drafted into his army. All of the virgins had been abducted, and the city, emptied of its people, had been set ablaze and literally reduced to ashes.
In the more than four years since then, Bukhara, just like Samarkand, was beginning to form into a new city and prospering. Just as before, people thronged it, and all manner of men and women were buying and selling goods, calling out, eating, and moving around in all directions. Only the ruins of the former city walls encircling it remained now, as remnants from a nightmare of several days’ duration.
The large Mongol unit took a long time to march straight through the city from south to north. There was no look of fear on the faces of the inhabitants. There was no expression of warm greeting to the Mongols either. Most faces betrayed no emotion at all. As had been the case in Samarkand, Bukhara had now become home to a wide mixture of ethnic groups. These included Han Chinese, Khitans, Tanguts, Turks, Persians, and Arabs, and mixed in among them all was a small number of occupying Mongol soldiers.
In Chinggis’s eyes, even the Mongol soldiers—his subordinates, to be sure—bore exactly the same expression, inasmuch as they were now mixed with these many different ethnicities. There was no hint of exuberance in welcoming their own kinsmen, just apathy. Chinggis was thus unable to feel the least sense of victory here. These thronging young men and women were not a conquered people. They were neither enemy nor ally. Should he feel concerned in the least that they were a threat to his life, every one of them would instantly turn into his enemy. Chinggis realized that, even with a great massacre, there were some things that he had been unable to change. Killing a large number of people to no purpose and destroying a walled city merely scattered unhappiness and sorrow.
Chinggis and his troops marched another five days from Bukhara to Samarkand. He planned to spend the winter there and the following spring proceed to the Mongolian plateau. Thus, the four winter months they were to stay became in effect the last Mongol military encampment in the state of Khorazm. In fact, it was less than an encampment, for only a small number of troops could actually be placed within the city. The residents overflowed and lived in close proximity to their neighbors, with the population now several times more numerous than before the great massacre. There was simply not enough room for the Mongol armies.
A number of units set up camps in the areas adjacent to the city. The soldiers, both Mongols and those from many foreign lands who had been taken captive, went into the city when they had free time. With its throngs of people and resultant chaos, Samarkand was like a beehive of activity.
During this period, Chinggis only rarely set foot in Samarkand. Whenever there were banquets, he held them in his tent, and whenever he wanted to see shows, acrobatic performances, or theatrics, the performers were summoned to him. Next to his own camp, Cha’adai, Ögedei, Tolui, Qasar, Belgütei, and others pitched tents, but he never put in an appearance there. Only once, though, on a whim he made a round of inspection of them all.
In every tent, Chinggis saw spectacles he could scarcely believe. Although their living quarters were shaped like yurts, firm buildings constructed on the inside with brick and stone had been built, with fancy stoves, luxurious beds, and magnificent chairs and tables for visitors. Amid this stunning furniture were bottles of wine and crystal glasses. Some had green grass plots inside and beds of flowers blooming everywhere. In addition, numerous ponds had been built with spouting water.
All these furnishings and conveniences were not mere ornamentation—the continual coming and going of guests had made them almost necessities. The officers were paying frequent calls on one another and often received wealthy guests from other ethnic groups. This trend was not only apparent among his top commanders; even the clothing and possessions of ordinary soldiers had changed. It had become all the rage among the troops to play strange songs on bizarre instruments.
Chinggis, though, said nothing faultfinding about any of this. He had instructed himself to remain silent on this score. It seemed to him a dream come true that he had given to all Mongol men and women such a life for their relatives. Chinggis recalled that when he had assumed the position of great khan and the ceremony of several days’ duration was carried out, he felt deep emotion watching in front of his own tent a group of filthily attired old women dancing to a simple step and repeating the same tune over and over. At that time, he vowed to relieve the Mongol people of such sadness and poverty so they might contemplate enriching their lives. Was this, in fact, what he was now witnessing? This transformation had affected the conquering officers and troops and was undoubtedly happening in the tents by Mount Burqan as well. The lives of the women and old folks who had been left behind had undoubtedly changed to an unrecognizable degree. Wasn’t this, after all, what he had been seeking all along?
The evening he walked around to the camps of his kinsmen, Chinggis recalled that he had chosen to live in the dark Mongol-style camp as of old because he so liked it. But he couldn’t force anyone else to do so. Nor could he blame the others who did not share his views or his desired lifestyle. Chinggis sternly instructed himself to this effect, but even as he thought about it, he could not in his heart of hearts acquiesce in this incomprehensible behavior. That night he did not return to his sleeping quarters until late and thought about his beloved Qulan. For the first time since her death, he was overcome with a profound sadness that she was no longer alive, a sadness that tore into his heart. Qulan who had sought to share all of his hardships with him, Qulan who had so admirably been able to bear his having relinquished their son, Kölgen, to the nameless masses, this Qulan had been extremely rare and precious to Chinggis.
On another occasion, Chinggis made an inspection of the city of Samarkand. The Mongol soldiers he saw there did not understand what it meant to be a Mongol, insofar as they made no attempt to be attentive to it. Some wore Persian garb, while others decorated their bodies with Turkish objects.
That day Chinggis went to inspect a shop making military clothing and weaponry that had been set up in a corner of the city, but at the shoemaker’s shop there he found the long shoes worn by Turks. The young officer serving as Chinggis’s guide explained proudly that these were both beautiful to the eye and comfortable to wear on the march—and they were durable. Chinggis merely nodded and listened that day, but in his heart he wondered if anyone wearing such shoes was really a Mongol soldier. Was it conceivable that a wolf of the Borjigin lineage would ever don such footwear? Could they even fit on the paws of the wolf packs as they ran over snowy plains, crossed mountains, and raced across ravines? Although he wanted to say all this, he persevered quietly.
When he returned to his tent that day, Chinggis again thought about Qulan. It was strange that he should have remembered her under these circumstances.
Since stationing troops at Samarkand, Chinggis had sent messengers any number of times to the quarters of his commanders Jebe and Sübe’etei and to his eldest son, Jochi, to convey orders for them to return immediately to Samarkand. Whether the dispatched messengers had reached their objectives or not, not one of them had returned. Every time the messagers would set off and then all news of them vanished.
Late in the year, after nearly a year’s passage of time, a messenger returned from Jebe and Sübe’etei. On this occasion, it was not just a messenger but a unit comprised of 100 Mongol soldiers and 500 non-Mongols bearing large quantities of booty to be delivered to Chinggis’s camp. There was a mountain of valuable items: weapons, furnishings, art objects, and religious sculptures. Several hundred camels came laden to great heights with all this plunder. After affording them two days to recuperate, Chinggis had a group of the soldiers return to their bases to inform Jebe and Sübe’etei, their commanders, of the orders to congregate at Samarkand. Chinggis also saw to it that all the presents from Jebe and Sübe’etei were soon transported to the camp in the foothills of Mount Burqan.
When the end of 1224 drew close, the messenger Chinggis had earlier dispatched returned with a single soldier from Jochi’s camp on the Kipchak plain. The latter offered the following message from Jochi: “For the past three years Jochi has been ill and unable to take part in long marches. He cannot return home with Chinggis; however, he shall return to the land of the Mongolian plateau at the first possible opportunity—please accept this explanation.”
Chinggis felt violent anger at hearing this. He had sent out countless messengers, but no news whatsoever had been forthcoming until eventually this answer arrived—he was behaving as if he’d severed all ties to the Mongolian people. When an expeditionary army was to withdraw together, what did it mean for a single person to remain behind? That very day Chinggis sent a messenger out from Samarkand with orders to Jochi:
—No matter what, the entire army must assemble immediately in Samarkand.
The year 1225 began, and Chinggis planned new year’s festivities with his commanders and decided that they would set out from Samarkand late in the fourth month to return home. He also decided to keep it a secret from the officers and men until the first week of that month.
Early the previous month, Chinggis had unexpectedly received news that Jebe and Sübe’etei’s units were on their way to Samarkand. After the first messenger arrived, messengers began coming on a daily basis with information on these units’ movements. These reports seemed to indicate that, since the time when these two units set out from the city to track down Muhammad, they had multiplied their strength several times. Two units comprised of Bulgarians and Russians had been completely integrated into the Mongol fighting brigades.
The day that Jebe and Sübe’etei returned to Samarkand after cutting off their four-year campaign, Chinggis had his entire army arrayed before the city gate to greet them. The advance forces of the returning army had followed the course of the Sughd River flowing to the north of the city and appeared first. They approached the city in a long procession and situated themselves in a corner of the prearranged open area. By the time all the troops had taken up positions in this area, a considerable amount of time had elapsed.
Although Bo’orchu and two or three other commanders first approached the returning army, eventually a band of a dozen or more men from that army headed in Chinggis’s direction. Chinggis was overjoyed to greet his two commanders whom he had not seen for so long and strode over to them himself. When he met the band of returnees coming toward him, he stopped, as did they. One commander from this group approached him with a calm gait. It was Sübe’etei.
Sübe’etei appeared to Chinggis as if he had grown much larger. He was just over fifty years of age but showed no weariness from the campaign at all, if anything seeming younger and more fearless than before. Sübe’etei briefly reported their return. The names of a number of lands and a number of mountain ranges, as well as rivers and lakes, all passed his lips, but the great majority of these were new to Chinggis.
Chinggis was satisfied. He was waiting for the appearance of one other, Jebe. But for some reason, no matter how long they waited, Jebe did not appear. He was not among the group standing a short way away.
Chinggis was about to ask about Jebe, but he oddly felt himself extremely ill at ease. Still standing right before him, Sübe’etei remained silent. What had happened to Jebe? Why is this commander with the head like the tip of an arrow not appearing before me? Staring hard at Sübe’etei with a stern face, Chinggis suddenly moved away from where they had been standing. I’ll go find him myself, he thought.
Chinggis walked by himself among the countless troops packed together. When he strode before them, the soldiers tightened up their formations at the orders of their leaders. Chinggis walked among the narrow defiles between the units. What had happened to Jebe? That youngster, Jebe, many years ago with a single arrow broke the jawbone of my yellow war horse and injured me in the neck.
Chinggis marched on. His piercing eyes wide open, he headed toward more troops. If Jebe was there, he had to show himself. The arrow, the arrowhead. But Jebe did not appear. Chinggis now took in what he had never seen before, units of non-Mongol soldiers, one after the next. There was one unit with shockingly white faces and another with black. Different orders rang out, all manner of military formations, and Chinggis for the first time saw it all with his own eyes.
Having given up on finding Jebe himself, Chinggis returned to his earlier position, where Sübe’etei was still standing like a post, and stopping right in front of Sübe’etei, he said:
“Did Jebe die of illness or on the field of battle?” His voice bore a snapping, fierce tone.
“Jebe died neither on the battlefield nor of illness,” replied Sübe’etei, also with a fierce tone. “He died after using up the years allotted to him. He breathed his last in a village to the southwest of the Sea of Aral. He now rests on the back of a hillside by that village.”
After he had replied, perspiration began pouring off Sübe’etei’s head. One sharp arrow had spent its allotted years and broken in two. Chinggis nodded and forced himself not to grieve for Jebe. If he could bear the passing of Qulan, then he had to endure the passing of Jebe as well.
At the end of the fourth month, the entire army set out from Samarkand. Chinggis waited until the very day of departure for Jochi’s return, but his forces never arrived. Having dispatched any number of messengers to the Kipchak plain, he once again did so, with orders this time to meet up with the main army in the coming year at Buqa-Sökekü on Naiman terrain.
On the day before leaving Samarkand, Chinggis had the empress dowager of Muhammad, once ruler of this land, and her ladies-in-waiting, as captured hostages, line up on the city ramparts and bid the state of Khorazm farewell. Carrying them off with him to the Mongolian plain, he had no desire ever to return to this place again.
From spring to summer and on to autumn, the immense Mongol army big enough to cover the surface of the earth slowly moved back toward its homeland. They passed numerous towns and cities where they had once shed much blood with their own hands. They would camp at certain sites for a few days and pass through others without stopping. They crossed the Syr Darya and many of its tributaries. They skillfully built bridges with techniques unknown to them four years earlier, and over countless bridges their long ranks marched for days with no end in sight. Troops from every ethnic group had been assimilated into their military files.
At the beginning of autumn, Mongol forces reached the Chui River, where the units camped for a short while before continuing on. The Chui River was different in color from the Syr Darya or the Amu Darya they had crossed so many times. Those rivers flowed west into the Sea of Aral. The Chui River flowed far to the north, no one knew whence. By mid-autumn, the armies crossed the Altai Mountains.
When the Mongol forces arrived at the Emil River, the old frontier between the Naiman and Uyghur peoples, Chinggis met a unit of 1,000 men who had come from the camp to greet him. Among the welcoming party were his son Tolui and the young faces of Chinggis’s grandsons, eleven-year-old Qubilai and nine-year-old Hülegü. Chinggis planned a hunt for these imperial grandchildren. It was their first hunt, and Chinggis himself thus carried out for them the inauguration ceremony for their participation. In a custom aimed at bringing them good fortune, his old, large hands grasped meat and fat, and he rubbed the tender, sproutlike middle fingers of the two boys.
Looking at the faces of Khubilai and Hülegü with throngs of men and women waiting on them, Chinggis could not but think of Kölgen, who was being raised as the son of some unknown Mongol family. Kölgen, who was abandoned without a trace by the late Sorqan Shira at the time of the second Mongol invasion of the state of Jin in 1213, would now be seventeen years old, if he was still living. And a fine soldier he would have been.
Chinggis, though, never regretted giving Kölgen over to a cruel fate. Kölgen, I shall never rub your middle finger with meat and fat. You can do it yourself. No one did it to me. If you have the strength, you must live by your own might—just as I have done.
When Chinggis looked at Qubilai and Hülegü, his face with its large ears, penetrating eyes, tight lips, and white beard filled with tranquility and calm. When he thought about Kölgen, the expression on his face ran to extremes of severity. In the same manner, his heart now was filled with love, but the expression on his face was altogether different.
On the Buqa-Sökekü plain, about two days’ journey from the banks of the Emil River, Chinggis held a banquet of thanks for his entire army for all the hard work over many years on foreign terrain. They were now standing on a section of the Mongolian plateau. The banquet lasted for several days on a grand scale. Virtually every day, his three sons Cha’adai, Ögedei, and Tolui, his three younger brothers Qasar, Belgütei, and Qachi’un, and his commanders Bo’orchu, Jelme, Sübe’etei, Qubilai Noyan, Chimbai, and Chila’un all gathered at Chinggis’s tent and drank wine together while inhaling the aroma of their native soil. Absent were commanders Muqali and Jebe and his son Jochi.
When he left Samarkand, Chinggis had dispatched a messenger to Jochi with orders to meet at the site of their present festivities, but as before, he had no response. Aside from this one incident, Chinggis had been completely satisfied with Jochi. The banquet was now reaching boisterous proportions. It was intended to be a party after which they would not bring back to their home tents the bloody stench of the battlefield. All violent and bloodthirsty behavior was to be dispensed with here.
Troops of many different ethnicities from across the wide expanse of Central Asia were getting drunk, yelling, singing, and dancing. And the revelry continued day and night. Children of mixed blood formed groups, several dozen each, and put on entertainment with women, their mothers, who had attached themselves to certain lineages. One Kankali woman with mixed blood from an altogether different ethnicity was dancing by herself. Her dance under the moonlight struck everyone as mysterious and beautiful, as her stout body, unlike that of any Mongol woman, swayed and trembled.
“I alone,” said Chinggis, joking, “have the characteristics necessary to be greeted by women on the Mongolian plateau.”
He alone was wearing Mongolian clothing and shoes, and he alone knew what it meant to live according to Mongolian custom. Even old-timers Bo’orchu and Jelme had discarded their military garb and were attired in clothing from Khorazm sewn with gold and silver thread.
When the great banquet came to a close, the Mongol military units moved gradually from the northern foothills of the Altai Mountains toward the heart of the Mongolian plateau. The scenery of their home terrain, which they had not seen for some time, suffused the hearts of the Mongol officers and troops.
Chinggis did not have his eye set on the camp at the foot of Mount Burqan. In every settlement en route, they were given a grand welcome, and Chinggis would stop at each for several or more days. He rewarded the troops native to each settlement by demobilizing them and allowing them to remain there with their families.
In early winter the Mongol military units reached the camp at the Tula River next to the camp by Mount Burqan, which was now the effective political and economic center of the Mongolian state. Once a Kereyid settlement, this place was unforgettable for Chinggis, despite his best efforts—the site of the Black Forest where To’oril Khan had once held authority. After a fierce battle lasting three days and three nights, they had defeated To’oril Khan here, and he remembered that battle as if it had been fought the day before. When he thought about it, he realized that over twenty years had since passed.
Chinggis set up camp here and demobilized on a huge scale all units except for his personal guard, enabling them all to return to their respective settlements. Chinggis remained for the next three weeks, walking around the Black Forest redolent with memories for him and carrying on hunts by the Tula River. Knowing that a grave had never been established for To’oril Khan, his onetime friend and later enemy, Chinggis had a stone monument placed at the site where he had lost his life, north of the Black Forest. The inscription read in Uyghur script: LORD OF THE BLACK FOREST, HERE RESTS THE INDOMITABLE SOUL OF TO’ORIL KHAN.
Once the stele for To’oril Khan had been erected, Chinggis held a grand memorial service for him. To’oril Khan had been his benefactor, and in the extremely difficult days of Chinggis’s youth, he had been able to escape persecution by the Tayichi’uds and somehow carry on protecting the Borjigin banner primarily because of To’oril Khan’s assistance. It was he who had forged the alliance with Jamugha and he who later worked with Chinggis to bring Jamugha down.
In the end, Chinggis met To’oril Khan in mortal combat and defeated him, but Chinggis felt no pain about this whatsoever. Fate had made it inevitable that he and To’oril Khan would meet in battle, and it was a principle of nature that one of them would have to win. If the dead are mindful, then To’oril Khan would have understood all this well, and he, more than anyone else, would undoubtedly have been happy at the triumphal return of Chinggis and his men from foreign terrain.
Although Chinggis never developed a liking for Jamugha, he admired the skinny old man’s intrepid spirit. But at no time in his battles against Khorazm did Chinggis ever feel confronted by an opponent as strong as To’oril Khan.
From the Black Forest by the shores of the Tula River to the Borjigin settlement in the foothills of Mount Burqan, they marched so slowly that it took three or four days to cover this short distance. Chinggis, though, was in no hurry. Time and again, he was urged by one or another of his commanders to have his palanquin move on farther east, but he did not respond.
“If I die, I shall rest here,” he replied on one such occasion. “Why do I need to rush while I am still living?”
After he had thus spoken, no one made any further suggestions of this sort.
Chinggis had not seen his wife, Börte. Insofar as she herself had not come to the Black Forest to greet him, Chinggis was not overly interested in continuing on to the camp by Mount Burqan to see her. Börte might have asked: “The entire army has returned, but why has only Jochi not done so as well?”
In this matter, Chinggis lacked the confidence that she would understand the words he would use. Even as truth, they would undoubtedly be unacceptable to her. Chinggis waited for Jochi at the settlement by the Tula River. Clearly, the fact that Jochi had not been selected as his successor was a concern for Börte, and the fact that Jochi alone had not returned would surely give her cause to believe that something untoward had arisen in the relationship between Chinggis and Jochi.
For his part Chinggis was not interested in quarreling any further with Börte. If possible, he would wait for Jochi without seeing her. He wished to avoid as best he could any ill feeling between himself and her. Messengers arrived in his camp from every direction on a daily basis. Although he hoped that each new one would be from Jochi, he was disappointed every time.
Although he was waiting for Jochi to make contact, there were limits. Ultimately, Chinggis had to make his triumphal return to the homeland of his people. When he broke camp by the banks of the Tula River, he announced that he had given up on Jochi’s return and would now advance with his palanquin to his home by Mount Burqan. With numerous Borjigin banners enveloping his retinue, a long array of his personal guard, foot soldiers, cavalry, and pure Borjigin officers and troops, the true descendants of the blue wolf, marched upstream following the course of the river.
In the afternoon of the third day, the form of a mountain so dear to his heart came in view: Mount Burqan, where the spirits of his people rested. That afternoon, the troops reached the upper reaches of the Kherlen River and continued farther against the course of the river. They reached the Borjigin camp at nightfall, when the western sky was burning bright crimson and the magnificent evening glow was visible in a corner of the sky. Börte, attended by countless ladies-in-waiting and personal guards, greeted Chinggis at the entrance to the settlement. She was now sixty-four years of age. Her legs had grown corpulent and made it difficult for her to walk. She actually was transported to the spot seated in a chair.
When he came before her, she stood up slowly from the chair. Her pure white hair, like a snow-capped peak, retained a distinctive brilliance, just as when she was young. Her facial expression remained unchanged. With the weight of the muscles in her relaxed face, it seemed to tremble a bit. Chinggis saw large ruby earrings dangling from Börte’s ears and a large jasper necklace around her neck. He only noticed the chair in which she was sitting when she stood up; it was inlaid all over with fine precious gems, stunningly radiant to the eye.
“Great khan,” said Börte, and nothing more. She relaxed after a difficult breath and then regulated her breathing in order to speak further:
“What a great day today is. It is both the day of the great khan’s victorious return home and the day on which news of the Mongol guest has become known.”
Börte still was referring to Jochi as the “Mongol guest,” as his name denoted in their language, and not as “your son.” Chinggis had no idea what she meant by news of Jochi arriving. He paid no attention to her now, though, as throngs of people from the settlement crowded around when he entered.
The following day, Chinggis hosted a dinner at his tent for Börte, Cha’adai, Ögedei, Tolui, and all their children. He had already met Tolui’s sons, Qubilai and Hülegü, but his now more than twenty grandchildren had grown so much he could hardly recognize them. On this occasion he tried to confirm with Börte her words from the previous day about Jochi.
Because of her breathlessness, Börte summed up briefly what she wanted to say. It had been reported to her a year or so earlier that Jochi had not returned to camp, and countless rumors were flying as to why. Although Börte was much pained by all this, the previous day a traveling merchant from Khorazm conveyed to her the news that Jochi was still alive and well and enjoying his hunting on the Kipchak plain.
When he heard this, Chinggis felt the blood draining from his head. If this rumor were true, he was thinking, then Jochi’s actions were impermissible. In solicitude to his aging wife, Chinggis did not allow the anger to show on his face, but when the dinner ended that evening, he immediately ordered one of his guards to find the traveling merchant whom Börte had met.
Several days later a middle-aged Persian was brought to Chinggis’s tent. When he met the man, Chinggis grilled him fiercely. He was able to learn that Jochi had established a position for himself as sovereign of the Kipchak plain, and while living as its ruler, he was hosting hunts and continuing to train his troops.
Chinggis was burning with anger such as he had never felt in his entire life, for numerous messengers had been sent, but Jochi had ignored them all; and Jochi had paid no attention to his orders as great khan. In consideration of Börte, Chinggis continued waiting daily for contact from Jochi. He was also indignant at having his paternal worry completely betrayed. Anyone at all who violated his orders had to be executed. The fate endured by many cities of Khorazm that harbored rebelliousness would have to be that of Jochi as well.
Within 10 days’ time, the Mongolian plateau was again seized with an uproarious atmosphere. Soldiers from all the settlements converged on the camp in the foothills of Mount Burqan. With 300,000 troops under them, Cha’adai and Ögedei were given command of a Kipchak expeditionary army.
When the force against Jochi set out, that alone did not calm Chinggis’s worries. Before long he mobilized troops a second time. He placed Tolui in command and joined the army himself. This second force, though, did not set off immediately, because Bo’orchu and Jelme opposed Chinggis’s mission against Jochi. But Chinggis would not be dissuaded from his plan. No one was able to placate the great khan’s anger. Because of Jochi, the Mongolian plateau was once again empty.
Chinggis had no intention of showing Jochi the least mercy. He and his entire military unit would have to be slaughtered and the Kipchak plain transformed into a desolate wilderness of rubble and stones. His anger would never subside until these tasks had been achieved. If he failed to act in this manner, then he would have failed to show proper authority over the numerous foreign peoples as well as the officers and men of his own Mongolian state. Chinggis did not see Börte. He left camp with Tolui and moved to a Kereyid settlement. Numerous men and horses had already taken the field in an area of the Black Forest by the banks of the Tula River.
Two or three days after Chinggis pitched camp in the Kereyid settlement, a dispatch courier arrived with news from the units under the command of Cha’adai and Ögedei. He was accompanied by another messenger from the Kipchak plain. Both men were wearing a black belt around their waist, a sign that they were in mourning. They were escorted into Chinggis’s tent.
—Prince Jochi has been in bed sick for the past three years, but in the eighth month of 1225 his illness took a serious turn, and he passed away in a settlement north of the Caspian Sea on the Kipchak plain. It was his dying will that in the coming spring his entire military force and his remains return to camp.
Once the messenger from the Kipchak plain conveyed this report, Chinggis just stared blankly at him. The messenger from Cha’adai and Ögedei, confirming the veracity of this communication, reported that Jochi had died after a long period of illness; early in the fall of 1223, when they had rounded up the wild animals from the Kipchak area by the Syr Darya, Jochi was already ill and could not take part, but, conscious of Chinggis’s concerns, he had concealed his illness at the time.
Chinggis ordered the messengers to take a respite and then sealed himself up in his room by himself. He was profoundly irritated with his own gullibility for believing the groundless report of the traveling merchant. All alone, Chinggis was overcome by an intense fit of lamentation. He had been able to forbid himself from grieving at the deaths of Qulan and Jebe, but when he learned that Jochi had been so long bedridden with illness and then died far from home, Chinggis simply could no longer bear the sadness of his son’s death. Tears flowed from the large eyes with which he had overpowered everyone who faced him, fell to his pale cheeks covered with brown spots, and soaked the white whiskers covering his jaw. A low moan like that of a wild beast came from Chinggis’s throat in bits and snatches as he walked back and forth in his quarters.
Stopping himself from crying, Chinggis called out for a guard and ordered that no one was to approach his room. If someone were to see him there, he would be taken out and promptly executed. The guard accepted the order respectfully and departed. Once alone again, Chinggis burst into tears. As if rocked by a tidal wave, the old Mongol sovereign resigned himself to the great sorrow overpowering him.
Chinggis now knew. He had loved Jochi more than anyone else. Like Chinggis himself, Jochi was born of the womb of a ravaged mother, and he shared the fate of that young man to prove that he was a descendant of the Mongol blue wolf. Chinggis loved him more than anyone.
The next day Chinggis issued a proclamation announcing the death of Jochi:
—Prince Jochi died in a corner of the Kipchak plain. It was by the shores of the sea where in antiquity the blue wolf and the pale doe, ancestors of the Mongolian people and born by order of heaven, came. It is now called the Caspian Sea. Prince Jochi was courageous by nature. He faced many battles and was always a model for Mongol officers and troops alike. He attacked and conquered 90 citadels, 200 cities, and the state of Jin; he defeated Khorazm and established the Kipchak kingdom, becoming its first sovereign, north of the Aral, Caspian, and Black seas. May Jochi’s descendants long rule over the Kipchak kingdom. May the armies that followed him maintain the conquering exploits of their founder on the plain.
Using the expression “Kipchak kingdom” was the only reward Chinggis could give Jochi at this point. The edict was drafted by Yelü Chucai.
Chinggis then issued a proclamation to Börte expressing grief at the death of her son:
—Empress Börte, I offer my condolences on the death of Prince Jochi, the son you bore and nurtured. It is something you and I both shall mourn. Jochi was, just as his name indicates, a guest. He was a guest bequeathed to the Borjigin lineage from heaven. He has now returned to heaven.
Several days later Chinggis began to overcome his grief. When he regained his composure, he called a meeting with his officers to plan an attack on Xixia. He issued orders to all military units to mobilize for the invasion, and he instructed the units under the command of Cha’adai and Ögedei already on the field in Khorazm to advance immediately on Xixia.
The attack on Xixia was to be a decisive battle for three reasons. First, when the Mongols attempted to invade Khorazm, the Xixia king had refused to come to their aid, and punishment had not yet been administered; second, although the assault on the state of Jin after the death of Muqali was a task Chinggis felt he had to carry out, the thorough subjugation of Xixia took priority; and third, the blow Chinggis suffered from the death of Jochi could not be healed except through the launching of a great military campaign. Chinggis hoped to fill the remaining years of his life with the dust of battles attacking Xixia and Jin. He had not yet definitively proved to himself that he was a descendant of the Mongol blue wolf. Like Jochi and Jebe and, to be sure, Qulan, his life had to be enveloped by the battlefield. To that end, Chinggis had to make himself into the blue wolf itself.
As all Mongol military units were to join in the attack on Xixia, they broke camp by the Tula River in late 1225, only some ten days after the proclamation on Jochi’s death had been issued.
The first month of 1226 found the Mongol armies on the great wastelands of the Gobi Desert. It was still the mourning period for Prince Jochi, necessitating cancellation of new year’s festivities. The troops all prayed to the eastern sky, and that day they marched southward all day long through a cold, blowing wind mixed with sand. The march was more difficult than any the Mongol units had experienced before. From the middle of the month they were assaulted daily by a driving snow, and the number of men and horses felled or smitten by frostbite increased steadily.
In the middle of the second month of the year, the Mongol units finally reached Xixia territory. Chinggis waited for the arrival of the forces under Cha’adai and Ögedei. They merged and set off with a strategy to invade Xixia on all fronts. Fighting began immediately in an area of northern Xixia. From spring through summer, numerous northern cities, beginning with Heishuicheng, fell into Mongol hands one after the next.
Chinggis regrouped all of his units at the Hunchui Mountains, endured a period of ferocious heat, and then launched another campaign in the autumn. In short order, they attacked Ganzhou and Suzhou [not the homophonous city in the lower Yangzi River delta region] and then advanced to take Liangzhou and Lingzhou. In this campaign as earlier, Chinggis completely mopped up all those cities that opposed his forces. After Mongol units passed through such places, only corpses covering the emptied cities and fields remained behind.
In the second month of the following year, 1227, Mongol forces pressed in on the capital at Ningxia. Chinggis had one unit split off and surround the capital, and he himself led another to cross the Yellow River. Once they crossed the river, the movements of the Mongol unit were just like that of a band of devils. Coming and going like the wind, they sacked Jishizhou, Lintaofu, Taozhou, Hezhou, Xining, and Xindufu. They butchered the resident populations, destroyed the city walls, and burned down the cities.
In the fifth month of the year, Chinggis built his base camp at Longde to the west of Pingliangfu and sent emissaries to the court of the state of Jin, demanding its surrender. Having completed the subjugation of Xixia beyond the capital at Ningxia, he was now ready for the invasion of Jin at any moment. While in camp he received a delegation of surrender from Li Xian, ruler of Xixia, who was in Ningxia. Li Xian sought an extension of one month’s time to turn over his city to the Mongols, and Chinggis allowed it.
While awaiting the capitulation of Ningxia, Chinggis worked out the grand scheme for the invasion of Jin. He realized that he himself would now have to take up the task of subjugating Jin, which his late friend and colleague Muqali had sadly not lived to see through to fruition.
In the seventh month, Chinggis received in camp an emissary from the Jin emperor bearing items of tribute. Most extraordinary among these gifts was a great tub brimming with innumerable precious stones. Chinggis, though, was looking not for precious stones but for the Jin territory, which had once fallen under the hoofs of Mongol horses. Chinggis divided up most of the gems among his officers and threw the rest on the ground. For some reason, there appeared to be several thousand precious stones abandoned by Chinggis. What had at some point been only a few dozen stones in the tub now seemed virtually numberless, and they seemed to cover the entire area of the courtyard of the base camp.
Chinggis covered his eyes with his hands and after a moment pulled his hands away. The gems were still there spread over the earth. He summoned one of his guards and asked if gems were in fact covering the ground. The man quickly replied in the negative, and Chinggis then realized that he had fallen terribly ill. About a month earlier he had experienced a similar phenomenon on the Yellow River plain. At that time it wasn’t gems but human bones. The skeletons of twenty or thirty Xixia soldiers killed in the fighting the previous year appeared in Chinggis’s eyes to be innumerable human bones covering the plain.
That night Chinggis called to his tent Ögedei and Tolui and told them that his remaining days were few. When he died, he instructed them, they should save the mourning period until the entire army returned home. That night Chinggis retired to his sick bed.
In a few days the illness took a sharp turn for the worse. In dim consciousness, Chinggis called out the name “Jochi,” his departed son.
When he realized that Jochi was already dead, he called out the name “Qulan,” his late beloved concubine.
When he realized that his beloved was lying in a box beneath a glacier that covered a ravine in the high mountains of the Hindukush, he called out the name “Muqali.”
Next, he called out the name “Jebe.” All the people he wanted to see were dead. Other than Qulan’s, all of their graves were unknown to him, and he could no longer picture them in his mind’s eye.
Finally, he called out the name “Tolui.” Tolui immediately replied, and at last Chinggis had come to the name of someone not dead.
“The best troops of Jin,” he told Tolui, “are massed at Tongguan. Tongguan has a line of mountains to its south and a large river to its north. You should be able to break through quickly. Once you have invaded Jin, go on and take the road toward the state of Song. Send troops to Tangzhou and Dengzhou in southern Henan province and attack the capital at Kaifeng all at once. It is a thousand li after you leave Tongguan, and you will have no reinforcements from there. Tolui, you must do as I say.”
Once he had conveyed to Tolui his dying will for the invasion of the state of Jin, he closed his eyes. A short while later, he said to no one in particular:
“If Xixia does not offer up their city by the promised deadline, move ahead with an all-out attack, kill the Xixia ruler, and massacre every one of Ningxia’s residents.”
Some thirty minutes later, Chinggis breathed his last.
The ruler of Xixia did in fact break his promise to Chinggis, and when the time for capitulation came, he did not relinquish the city of Ningxia. A huge Mongol army pressed in on the city, attacked from all four sides, and brought it down. Li Xian was brought out and put to death, as were the great majority of the residents. About a month later, all Mongol units massed on the banks of the Yellow River, abandoned the front, and returned to the Mongolian plateau. As had been decided earlier, Ögedei took control over the entire army. Chinggis’s death was known to only a small number of central commanders and was not revealed to the troops.
Braving the great heat, the Mongol units crossed Xixia terrain and emerged on the Gobi Desert, and then they headed due north for Mount Burqan, the source of the Onon and Kherlen rivers. They marched quietly. A coffin was laid out among the troops, borne aloft by a dozen or more soldiers. Although everyone knew that the remains of someone important were in the coffin, no one thought they could be Chinggis’s.
Just before this unit set out, they killed every one of the villagers who had seen them on the march. Young, old, male, and female, all met the same fate. Rumors of this spread rapidly, and soon no one appeared where this unit marched. Even when they cut through a village, it was completely emptied out.
The troops bearing Chinggis’s remains reached the Borjigin camp at the end of the ninth month. At the entrance to the camp, Tolui announced to all the troops for the first time that Chinggis had died. The evening the units broke up and pitched camp nearby, but other than the sound of horses’ hoofs and soldiers’ feet, not a human voice was heard. Chinggis’s coffin was placed inside Börte’s camp, and only the highest officers served at its side throughout the night. Under the night sky like a thick carpet studded with countless stars, the Borjigin camp did not, as it had in the past, bring numerous people together to spend a quiet night with innumerable troop tents spread out.
The day after Chinggis’s coffin was placed before Börte’s yurt, it was moved to the tent of Yisüi, then in succession, day by day, to Yisügen’s, to Jin Princess Hadun’s, and then to the tents of some dozen or more important concubines. Finally, it was placed in Chinggis’s own yurt.
At the announcement of his death, people from all the settlements on the Mongolian plateau gathered, and they kept coming for two or three months. As a result, the Borjigin settlement was filled with men and women of all ages for a long period of mourning. After half a year’s time, Chinggis’s remains were buried in a corner of the great forest in the mountains by Mount Burqan. On the day of his interment, a fierce wind lashed the whole area of Mount Burqan, and the woods surrounding his grave made a rumbling sound as they shook in the wind. For a time, the funeral ceremony had to be postponed.
The woods in which Chinggis was buried grew luxuriantly over the next two or three years, becoming a dense forest. Before two or three decades had passed, no one could say any longer with any surety where Chinggis’s grave was located. He lived for sixty-five years, and his rule lasted for twenty-two.