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The Golden Whip of Heaven

The Secret History rarely presents the events or thoughts of family members preceding a major conflict; the words simply explode into unforeseen and inexplicable violence. When Temujin was in his early teens he came into conflict with his half brother Begter, Sochigel’s elder son, who was probably only two or three years older than he. The only provocation seemed to be that Begter had snatched a small fish from the hook of Temujin’s fishing line, demonstrating that he was the older, stronger brother and, in the absence of their father, he planned to take charge of the household.

When Temujin complained to his mother, she sided with Begter rather than Temujin. “You have no friend but your shadow,” she admonished her son, “no whip but your horse’s tail.” Tribal tradition dictated that if a woman’s late husband’s brothers refused to marry her, then a son by another wife should do so even if he was much younger. Begter may have been in the process of claiming Hoelun, and this could account for her siding with her stepson against her own son. Whatever the source of the tension, his mother’s scolding only darkened Temujin’s mood and stoked the hatred in his heart.

At some point Temujin decided that he would rid himself of Begter. Once he had made up his mind, it did not take him long to execute his plan. He and his younger brother Khasar stalked Begter as if they were hunting a wild wolf or deer. When they found him sitting on a small hill, they approached him from opposite sides. Begter, who was unarmed, offered no resistance. He repeated the words that Hoelun had spoken, first taunting Temujin for having no friend but his shadow, and no whip but his horse’s tail. Then he pleaded with his brothers, saying that they should fight together against their common enemies and not each other.

Temujin and Khasar each shot arrows and thus killed Begter together. He was the first victim in the rise of Genghis Khan.

When she realized what had happened, Hoelun became enraged. She screamed insults at her son, calling him a tiger, a leopard, a dragon-snake, a wolf, and a dog. “You have destroyed!” she screamed. But despite her anguish and tears, Begter was gone. Temujin remained unmoved, and his younger siblings soon recognized the fate that might await them if they crossed him. Only Khasar, who had participated in the killing, was never afraid of Temujin. Despite the murder, Begter’s full brother Belgutei remained eternally loyal and eventually survived all other members of the family.

During the prior crises in his life—his abandonment, the death of his father, the long struggle to scratch out a living on the desolate mountain—Temujin had been a child forced to react and unable to alter the situation. He had been too young to resist the adult forces around him. Begter’s killing was a turning point. For the first time he had taken fate into his own hands. It was a dramatic demonstration of his toughness and courage, but it came at a cost. It drew the attention of new enemies who recognized that a young man who could kill his own brother might pose a future threat to them as well. The leader of the Tayichiud who had once saved Temujin’s life now felt threatened by him. He said dismissively, referring to Temujin and Khasar, “the chicks are growing wings, the lambs are shedding their fleece, the snotty ones have grown up.” He ordered his men to capture Temujin.¹

Temujin fled from the Tayichiud raiders and took refuge in the forest. Tired and hungry after several days, he thought it would be safe to emerge, imagining that his attackers would have tired of looking for him by now. As he sought to exit the narrow gulley where he had been hiding, he found that a large white rock had fallen into it and barred the way. He tried to move it, but the bushes and trees resisted him. He recognized that these were a divine sign not to leave, but he remained determined to defy his destiny. After nine days without food he knew that his fate would be to die on the mountain an unknown boy unless he was willing to fight the band of well-fed and well-armed men waiting on the other side. “How shall I die without a name?” he asked himself. “I shall go out.”²

Armed with nothing more than the small knife he used to sharpen his arrows, he began slowly cutting through the branches that barred his way until he finally fashioned an opening large enough to escape. There, waiting for him on the other side of the thicket, were the Tayichiud warriors, who “captured him and took him away,” tying him in a cangue like an ox under a yoke.³ Enslaved by his captors, humiliated and at constant risk of death, Temujin endured the worst without losing sight of his single goal: to survive, escape, and make a name for himself.

His chance to escape came a long but unspecified time later, when his captors were drunk in celebration. The cangue to which his head and arms were securely tied was a formidable obstacle designed to prevent any possibility of escape. He turned the obstacle into a weapon, attacking one of his captors with the heavy wooden frame, knocking him out, and then fleeing. Still attached to the cangue, he jumped into a cold river and hid while his captors searched for him. Late at night, with help from a family that had befriended him, he managed to free himself from the cangue, flee from his enemies, and make it back to his family and the safety of Burkhan Khaldun.

As a child, Temujin had seen his mother struggle daily to keep her children alive. From her he had learned that despite the toughest difficulty and most painful tragedy, fate was never wicked or malevolent. It was not a punishment. Fate presented obstacles, but they could be overcome by a strong will. Despite having been kidnapped, widowed, and then abandoned, Hoelun had been determined to prevail and to save her children. This determination had strengthened her courage, her cunning, and ultimately her wisdom. Hoelun had learned from each setback, and Temujin had learned from her.

The Mongols believed that the destiny of each creature was ordained by the sky above. If God did not want humans to strive, he would not have given them the ability to dream as they did. Like other children, Temujin was captive to a destiny that determined when and where he was born, who his parents were, if he was to be rich or poor, and whether he would be short or tall. Fate determined the weather and many other factors over which he exercised no control, but his spirit determined what he could do with these circumstances.

The Mongols said that Mother Earth and Father Sky granted each person a Khiimori, a Windhorse, the spirit of inspiration. Sometimes it galloped along the road ordained by destiny, but sometimes it offered a new challenge and pointed in an unexpected direction. To catch a Windhorse a youth had to chase it barefooted across the frozen earth and endure whatever discomfort nature presented. Although each person had a Windhorse, none but the bravest ever caught it and learned to ride and tame it. While akin to the ancient Greek notion of charisma and the Roman genius, the Windhorse is not wholly external to the person. The power of the spirit grows with repeated good behavior, and it can wither and atrophy for those who act in a manner that is lazy, inappropriate, wicked, or contrary to tradition and good sense.

The Universal Mother was said to have left an umbilical cord of golden light inside the mind of every child, stretching up to the North Star, to which the universe was tied. The cord of light was a golden tether, like the long rope used to prevent cows from wandering while giving them plenty of room to graze. It provided each individual with a direct and personal connection to the sky, giving everyone the means to climb constantly higher in life. As the child grew into a young adult, he retained the power of choice, the unseen golden tie that eternally connects his mind and soul to the Universal Mother.

From a young age Temujin believed he could choose his destiny. He learned that a person could summon the power to overcome even the worst fate. One could accept the drought or search for water. One could succumb to the wolf or confront it. One could cower before enemies or seek to conquer them.⁴ To those who accepted defeat, more defeat would come, for that was what they deserved and the sky grew indifferent to them. To those rare individuals who remained determined to win, more victories would come and with them greater love and reward from the sky. God intended humans to think and not to obey blindly. Much later this way of thinking was reflected on one of the arrow messages the Mongol warriors fired into Baghdad: “If God wanted his will carried out, he would strip the sensible of their senses.”⁵

When riding a horse, steppe nomads used a small riding crop or whip to make their mounts run. It usually consisted of a short wooden handle with a piece of braided rawhide attached to one end, and a leather loop around the other so that it could hang around the wrist of the rider, leaving his hands unencumbered. This whip could be used only behind the rider, on the rump of the horse, and never in front, as striking a horse on the face or neck was a crime punishable by death. Just as the rider of an ordinary horse needed such a whip, the rider of a Windhorse needed a special whip with which to drive away evil spirits and misfortune. The whip was used for speed, but it also symbolized political power and spiritual charisma. A person without a whip was thought to have no direction in life, but with a whip, he could go anywhere and achieve anything.

Temujin knew he needed to find his own whip. His mother’s taunts only deepened his resolve. Without a whip, how could he manage to ride his Windhorse?

According to a Mongol proverb, “knowledge learned while growing up becomes like the morning sun.”⁶ The physical and spiritual training Temujin had acquired in the forests around Burkhan Khaldun was deep, but his mountain refuge had not provided him with a broad knowledge of the world. After nine years in the isolated protection of Burkhan Khaldun, the desire for companionship and urge to confront his destiny drew him out of his secure world. By the age of seventeen, he was ready to leave the mountain and pursue his future, but he never forgot his promise to his beloved Burkhan Khaldun. Over the years, he repeatedly returned to the mountain to contemplate his path and find the solace needed to make difficult decisions and to dream beyond what any steppe boy had ever dreamed.

His first act was to seek out Borte, the girl to whom he had been engaged when he was eight and she was nine, shortly before his father’s murder. Since the moment he first saw her, she was the girl with “light in her face and fire in her eyes.” It did not take him long to find her, and he was pleased to find that she had not yet taken another husband. The Secret History tells us that her parents were happy to see him, but they must have been surprised to discover that this strange young man had not forgotten his commitment to marry her so many years ago. He was not a part of her family, but he joined them for a while and through them, he experienced the family rituals that he had been denied by his clan. Borte would eventually bring Temujin into a larger cultural and spiritual world beyond his mountain refuge.

Accompanied by her mother, Borte came to live with Temujin and his family. He remained among the poorest of the poor, and it must have been difficult for her to accept a husband with no riches, allies, or apparent likelihood of success. For a girl accustomed to the large herds and abundance of steppe life, the semiforested area where Temujin lived must have seemed stark. It had limited grazing grounds, and the family depended primarily on hunting wild animals that were not always plentiful. Life must have been a little lonely for her when it came time for her mother to return home and leave her amid this outcast family of strangers. But Borte proved as loyal to Temujin as he was to her. Their love became one of the binding forces of his life.

Love, or its illusion, has the ability to wipe away years of deprivation and suffering. It can make the heart forget. Through the romantic fog of memory, Temujin and Borte were later remembered by their descendants as beautiful and heroic lovers. Borte was described as bright as the morning rays with phoenix eyes, a nose like polished jade, and lips resembling coral buttons. She was like a goddess of the nine heavens, the mother of a nation.⁷ Temujin had a jadelike face resembling the full moon, with dragon eyes, a nose like a holy mountain, and lips like turquoise. His ears were big, his chest broad, and he smelled like jasmine. From ten paces away, anyone could see that he would rule a dynasty.

A fairy tale could end with the heroes having braved incredible dangers and suffering only to survive and find true love in each other’s arms. However, no such future awaited our heroes. For Temujin and Borte, finding each other and falling in love was only the beginning of their adventure.

Word spread on the steppe that a beautiful girl had joined the small family of outcasts living in the shadow of Burkhan Khaldun. Despite Temujin’s reputation for ruthlessness, his bride stood out as a tempting prize in a society where men were eager to fight over anything, especially control of women. Hoelun’s first husband had belonged to the Merkid, and when some of his relatives heard about Borte, they decided to seize her in revenge for Hoelun’s kidnapping.

A few months after Borte’s arrival, a Merkid raiding party swooped down on the isolated camp. Hoelun rushed to the horses and ordered all of her children, including Temujin, to mount them and flee. Knowing what the Merkid warriors were after, she left behind Sochigel and Borte, and the old woman who had been helping the family shear sheep. Hoelun was above all a mother, and her sole goal was to save her children even if she had to sacrifice her son’s wife. Temujin followed her without thinking of the consequences. At seventeen, he was as much a boy as a man. He had not yet mastered control of his own fate. In his own words, he later admitted, “I was greatly frightened.”⁸ At a younger age, he had been defiant and determined enough to kill his own brother. When he was angry, he had disgusted his mother by killing Begter, but when he was frightened, he instinctively obeyed his mother’s decision to abandon Borte without recognizing the pain of losing her.

The family raced toward Burkhan Khaldun, while Borte and the old woman tried to flee in an oxcart in the opposite direction. Sochigel did not run away; she simply waited. The soldiers seized Sochigel first, flung her over a horse with both feet dangling in the air, and then set off after the other two, who were dashing through the woods, as the axle on their oxcart had broken. It did not take the soldiers long to find them. The capture of the three women diverted the raiding party’s attention long enough for Mother Hoelun to escape with the horses and her children to the mountains.

The Merkid had failed to capture Hoelun or any of her six children, but they were pleased with their bounty and took the three women back to their camp as trophies. They had taken revenge for Yesugei’s stealing of Hoelun from Chiledu, and in Borte they had acquired a prize equal to what they had lost. Borte was given to Chilger, Chiledu’s younger brother.

Temujin realized that the time had come for him to learn to master his emotions, because just as he had killed his brother in anger, now he had deserted his wife in fear. If fear and anger dominated over him, he would forever be a slave to forces beyond his control, but if he could master his emotions and focus his energy, everything would be within his grasp.

However strong, brave, and determined he may have been, Temujin knew that he was no match for a large group of armed men. With no earthly ally and seemingly without hope of retrieving his wife, Temujin turned to prayer. He climbed to the top of Burkhan Khaldun, where he stood to face Mother Sun. He removed his hat, took off his belt, and hung it around his neck in a sign of total submission. With his fist clenched, he beat on his breast and knelt nine times to the Sun. Then he prayed.

At this point Temujin made the first adult decision of his life. He vowed to find his bride. He refused to accept that someone had deprived him of the woman he loved, and he swore to rescue Borte or to die trying. Better to lose his life as a warrior fighting than surrender to a cruel fate.

Until this time, he had relied on the help of one or two people, such as his brother Khasar or Old Man Jarchigudai, but to raid the Merkid and rescue his bride he needed many more allies. Two major tribal groups dominated the steppe: the Kereyid to the west and the Tatars to the east. At various times, the tribes had been united, but the Kereyid had broken away from the Tatars and the two were now sworn enemies.

Since the Tatars had killed his father and been mortal enemies to his clan, Temujin’s only acceptable choice was to renew his family’s commitment to Torghil Ong Khan, the leader of the Kereyid, and beg for help. Although it was an easy choice, it carried profound consequences. The Tatars and Kereyid followed similar ways of life with one major cultural distinction: the Tatars and other eastern tribes looked to China as the appropriate model for civilization, and the Kereyid looked west, wrote with an alphabet of Semitic origin, and had embraced Christianity as their official religion. When Temujin made his choice and cast his lot with the Kereyid, he probably did not know and certainly did not care about this distinction, but in time, it would become a major factor in his life and that of the nation he would create.

Not long after Borte’s abduction, Temujin, Khasar, and their faithful half brother, Belgutei, set off from Burkhan Khaldun, riding past Bogd Khan Mountain to the camp of Ong Khan on the Black Forest of the Tuul River, a little south of the modern Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar. When he reached Ong Khan’s camp, Temujin begged him “to rescue my wife and return her to me.”⁹ Although Ong Khan and his people lived in gers and moved in a nomadic lifestyle, a cultural chasm separated the simple life of Hoelun’s camp from that of the great khan, whose large gers were lined with fur and whose wives dressed in silk. They drank the same fermented mare’s milk, but Ong Khan’s people drank from bowls of silver and rode horses with stirrups of iron. Instead of the simple prayers to Father Sky and Mother Earth, ornately dressed Christian priests chanted “Abui Babui,” the mysterious opening words of the Lord’s Prayer, from their holy books.¹⁰

Temujin’s father had once been of great help to Ong Khan in one of the many internecine struggles within the Kereyid royal family, and he had played a key role in several of the Kereyid campaigns against the Tatars. Realizing the potential value of securing Yesugei’s son as a follower, Ong Khan eagerly agreed to help. “We will crush all the Merkid,” he promised. “We will return your wife. We will bring her back to you!”¹¹

The visit to Ong Khan’s court inspired Temujin and gave him a new confidence. Almost as soon as he summoned the courage to fight, fate suddenly bestowed upon him an unexpected blessing: he found a whip. He was riding back from the old khan’s camp through a narrow pass on the northern side of the Bogd Khan Mountain when he reached a fertile steppe that gently opens on the southern side of the Tuul. Nearly five centuries earlier, this area had formed the far eastern border of the Turkic tribes and marked the spot where they rubbed up against the Tatars and the powerful Chinese civilization to the south. Soon after passing Bogd Khan Mountain, Temujin would have seen a series of increasingly large stones planted in a ceremonial roadway, culminating in two monuments inscribed in Turkic around the year 716.

Oral tradition maintains that it is here, at the political and spiritual birthplace of the great Turkish Empire, that Temujin found a whip lying on the ground on a small hill known as Tsonjin Boldog. For a Mongol, finding a lost animal or object comes with the strict obligation to locate its owner. This would particularly have applied to something as personal and symbolically important as a whip. According to the thirteenth-century Persian historian Juzjani, Genghis Khan’s law specifically stated that for Mongols, “it was impossible for any person to take up a fallen whip from the group except he were the owner of it.”¹² Nevertheless, Temujin picked up the whip and decided it belonged to him. It was his destiny.

This was the moment when Temujin took control of his life. The whip would serve throughout his life as a constant image, not only in the Mongol chronicles but in foreign ones as well. As Juvaini wrote, Temujin “prospered and the stars of his fortune were in the ascent,” and he struck the breath from his enemies “with the whip of calamity and the sword of annihilation.”¹³

Ong Khan agreed to set out from his camp, but he ordered Temujin to recruit another warrior, Jamuka, to join the attack from the east. Jamuka was a distant cousin, and the two had been childhood friends. Jamuka’s family had camped near Temujin’s on the Onon River, and the two boys had frequently played together on the frozen river. Twice they took the oath of eternal friendship, or anda, and became sworn brothers. The first time they sealed the vow by exchanging knucklebones that young boys used to play games and foretell the future. Then, at puberty, when they were becoming hunters, they crossed paths again and remade their vows with an exchange of arrowheads that Jamuka had made from horn and Temujin had made from wood. Now they would come together for the third time in life.

With his newfound confidence, Temujin’s tone changed. When he first approached Ong Khan, he had hesitantly pleaded with the khan to rescue Borte for him, but now he spoke with new confidence and heightened determination. “We are sworn brothers; we are kinsmen of the same liver,” he reminded Jamuka. “But the Merkid have made my bed empty. How can we avenge this injury?”

“It pains my heart and makes my liver hurt to know that your bed has become empty,” Jamuka replied, and he vowed to ride with his warriors to help in the rescue. “We will rescue Borte!”

The Merkid lived beyond the confluence of the Orkhon and Selenge rivers, but because it was not yet winter, when the Mongols most commonly raided, the rivers were not yet frozen. Jamuka offered to make rafts to cross the river and enter Merkid territory. “We will utterly destroy these people. We will kill even their women and children until nothing remains of them.” As he prepared his warriors, he sent another message to Temujin. “I have sprinkled milk on my horse-hair banner; I have beaten the loud drum. I have pulled my arrow on the bowstring. Let us fight to the death.”

Having heard of Borte’s kidnapping and of the preparation for the raid to rescue her, Jarchigudai came looking for Temujin. The old man brought his son Jelme, who was about the same age as Temujin, to serve as his first follower. “Now let Jelme put on your saddle, open your door,” said Jarchigudai according to the Secret History, and he “handed him over to Temujin.”¹⁴ Just as Jarchigudai had been the first person to bring a gift to Temujin after his birth, he now became the first to bring a warrior to serve him in his coming conquests. Soon followers came from many clans, and later two of Jelme’s clan cousins, his “younger brothers” Subodei and Chaurkhan, joined them as well. Although Temujin’s own relatives betrayed him, these men never did. They had a tie much stronger than bone, blood, and flesh. They were united spiritually through Old Jarchigudai and Burkhan Khaldun. Subodei eventually became the conqueror of Russia and much of Eastern Europe. He was the greatest of the Mongol strategists and possibly the greatest military general in history.

Temujin, his brothers, and Jelme converged with the raiding party sent by Jamuka and the warriors of Ong Khan. As they crossed the river, however, some Merkid men fishing and trapping sables spotted them and raced to warn their fellow clansmen. With no time to break camp or recruit assistance, the panicked people bolted in different directions in the middle of the night.

Borte had by then become pregnant, but when the raiding party arrived, they found she had been abandoned to her own resources while her new husband, Chilger, fled in fear. Perhaps he suspected that whoever was coming would want to steal Borte. He lamented at having taken her as his wife. In the words of the Secret History, he was nothing more than a vulture wanting to eat swans and cranes when he should have been eating rats and mice. If he stayed with Borte, now his life would be “worth nothing more than sheep dung,” and if caught he might lose his head.

As the raiders swept through camp, Borte recognized Temujin and fled to him. “In the moonlight, he looked at Borte, and they fell into each other’s arms.”¹⁵

Temujin rescued Borte and the old woman; only Sochigel remained missing. Her son Belgutei raced through the nearly deserted camp searching for her. He heard that she was living in another camp, but when he approached her ger she fled from him “in a ragged sheepskin coat.”¹⁶ She wished to stay with her new husband in her new life and did not want to return to the camp of a man who had killed her elder son. She dashed off into a dense forest while her son shot whistling arrows at any man he could see, screaming, “Bring me my mother!” No one obeyed, and Sochigel disappeared among the trees. Belgutei never saw his mother again.

Temujin had tasted real war for the first time. He was no longer fleeing from attackers as he had so often in his life. Now he was the aggressor. He relished his coming of age as a warrior. Happy not only to have Borte back by his side, but also to find himself with a new father in Ong Khan and a new brother in Jamuka, he celebrated the victory. “Called by Mighty Heaven, carried through by Mother Earth, we emptied the breasts of the Merkid,” he boasted. “We tore their livers to pieces. We emptied their beds. And we exterminated their relatives. Thus we destroyed the Merkid.”¹⁷ Despite the youthful boasting of this novice warrior, most of the Merkid had fled successfully and survived to fight him again in the years ahead.