8

Guardians of the Flame

History shows repeatedly that one person, no matter how strong or dedicated, cannot exercise total control. Often rulers rely on their family to extend their reach, suspicious of all outsiders, but having been betrayed repeatedly by his relatives, Genghis Khan turned instead to a small circle of close companions known as the Nokor (Nökör). The Nokor were mostly men he had known before the founding of the nation whose loyalty had proven unshakable. They usually came from lower-ranking clans and had joined him at a young age, sometimes with the consent of their families, but some had run away from home to join him, proving that their loyalty to him was greater than to their families. Like self-made men in many societies, they honored achievement and disparaged birth and nobility. They owed their success to bravery, discipline, and total commitment to their fellow warriors and to Genghis Khan.

The Nokor became intimate companions, closer than family. “You are my strength,” Genghis Khan told them. He knew that they were the ones who had helped him in the decades-long struggle to obtain power and create a new nation. “Lying down around my tent under the stars at night, you made sure that I slept peacefully,” he said. “You never rested and stood at my side in the swirl of snow and the cold of rain.”¹

Throughout his career, Genghis Khan took new men of exceptional qualities, including former enemies, into his inner circle. Some were selected in highly unusual ways. During one battle, an enemy warrior shot Genghis Khan’s horse through the neck. Genghis Khan survived and won the battle, and demanded of the captured soldiers, “Who shot an arrow and severed the neck bone of my tawny horse with the white mouth?” One man stepped forward and confessed to the killing, fully expecting that he would be executed “and left to rot.”

Instead, Genghis Khan honored him as a brave hero, rewarded him, and explained that most defeated warriors concealed their prior actions and held their tongues out of fear. This man was brave enough to tell the truth. “He is a man to have as a companion.”² Thereafter, he called him Jebe, the name of the particular type of arrow he had used to kill the horse, and asked him to “keep by my side.” Jebe, proud of his new name, became one of the great Mongol generals.

In time Genghis Khan formed a group known as the Nine Companions. They included his trusted friends Jelme and Subodei of the Uriyankhai, Jebe, and Khubilai Noyan, who together were known as the Four Dogs. They swore their loyalty to Genghis Khan and never wavered. Subodei promised to be as diligent as a rat or crow in getting whatever his lord needed. “I will cover you like a felt blanket; I will shelter you from the wind,” he vowed.³ Genghis Khan honored their loyalty above all else. He rarely took credit for anything and even went so far as to lavish praise on others for his own achievements, great and small. He said of Subodei and Jelme, “When I said to go there, you crushed stones to get there. When I said to attack, you split open the rocks, shattered the shining stones, and parted the deep waters.”⁴

Subodei became his greatest general, but Genghis Khan’s closest spiritual bond was with Old Jarchigudai’s son Jelme. Later in life, looking back on his youth, Genghis Khan said that Jelme had appeared at precisely the moment “when Heaven and Earth increased my strength and took me into their protection.”⁵ He described Jelme as sharing in his divine mission. He quoted from the ancient sayings, and speaking directly to Jelme in a public assembly, he said, “[You] brought peace to my mind,” and, “You brought peace to my heart.” The two men remained exceptionally close. Jelme seemed to materialize unexpectedly when the greatest dangers confronted Genghis Khan or those whom he loved.

Jelme saved his life several times and helped to save the life of his grandson Tolui. On one occasion after an arrow wounded Genghis Khan in the neck and he had been unable to stop the bleeding by pressing on the wound, Jelme stayed with him on the battlefield and constantly sucked the blood from his neck throughout the night. Another time, in an effort to get food for his master, Jelme walked naked into the enemy camp undetected, an ability frequently attributed to those with supernatural powers.

On another occasion, according to a chronicle known as The Golden Summary of Genghis Khan, Jelme accompanied Genghis Khan and a few of his companions on a hunt to the Ongi River in the north Gobi. While riding monotonously through the river gorge, the “repetitive bobbing” of the horses lulled Genghis Khan into a dream. He saw the Tayichiud, the great enemies of his childhood, coming to attack, and when he awoke, he saw a military detachment approaching them in the distance. Jelme climbed to the top of the gorge and, “beckoning from the top of a high ridge,” called in a fog that settled over the gorge.⁶

Jelme maintained a post right outside Genghis Khan’s door and served as his most loyal guardian. With hundreds of guards around the perimeter of the khan’s residence, there was little chance that an intruder could reach the entrance, but the doorway carried a special spiritual meaning. Whoever stepped on the wooden threshold of the door was deemed to have trampled on the heart of the entire lineage, disgracing both the ancestors and the generations waiting to be born. Protecting the entrance implied a spiritual responsibility. Jelme was stationed on the right side, a special place of honor symbolizing the spiritual protection of the imperial lineage.

Hoelun had accused Genghis of having “no friend but your shadow, no whip but a horse’s tail.” Perhaps because of this maternal taunt Genghis Khan designated Boorchu, one of his earliest followers, as his shadow and Jelme as his whip.⁷ Jelme’s unique role in the life of Genghis Khan was similar to the role that Old Man Jarchigudai had played in the life of young Temujin.

He singled him out as oljetu khutukhtu, “fortunate and blessed,”⁸ a phrase used primarily to indicate the spiritually powerful forest people. Both words later became popular names for Mongol rulers in Persia, Russia, and China. Genghis Khan later took Jelme’s son and gave him the distinctive title of “Great Quiver Bearer.”⁹

In addition to the Four Dogs, another four companions became known as the Four Horses. These included Boorchu, who as a boy had been the first to leave his family and join Temujin; Muhali, who eventually led the campaigns in northern China; Boroqul, who once saved the life of Genghis Khan’s son Ogodei in battle, but was destined to be the first to die in a treacherous fight against Botohui-tarhun, queen of the Tumat, in the area between lakes Baikal and Hovsgol; and Chilaun, who served faithfully but with less acclaim than the others. Together the Nine Companions (Genghis Khan himself was the ninth) stood at the apex of the empire, in command of the army, government, and nation.

For some of these men, such as Muhali, who was born a slave, the rise in social status was incredible and something that would have been nearly impossible for them to achieve on their own. Muhali was destined to become the military ruler of all of northern China, but he never forgot or hid his humble origin. He even named his son Bol, meaning “slave.”

Genghis Khan was the supreme ruler of his nation, surrounded by eight companions, the Four Dogs and the Four Horses. These men, his generals and commanders, did not camp regularly with him. They were usually out with the army on campaigns, guarding the borders and overseeing the most distant parts of his territory. Normally, Genghis Khan traveled with only one of his four wives, and she ran the ordu.¹⁰ The other wives would be encamped in more distant territories, each with her own court, responsible for overseeing the people and ensuring the continuity of government in her area during Genghis Khan’s absence.

The ordu in the main camp was encircled by and separate from the Left Wing and the Right Wing; it formed a distinct area known as the gol, or center. This inner circle of guards and companions was always at the center, whether in camp, on the move, or in battle. Wherever Genghis Khan was by day or night, they surrounded him. Few people, even his highest ministers, could enter this area without permission, and an elite corps of warriors carefully and constantly guarded it. They were the Keshig—literally the Chosen Ones, or Sacred Guardians—who protected the nation.¹¹ More than bodyguards, they formed the most powerful body within the government. Their job was not temporary: they were Genghis Khan’s companions for life.

Marco Polo referred to this elite guard as Questian, a name close to Equestrian, an order of aristocratic mounted knights in the Roman Empire. Because of this similarity between the Latin and Mongolian names, he described the Mongol Keshig as “the Faithful Knights of the Lord.”¹² The Chinese envoy from the Sung emperor marveled at their total devotion to the khan. He wrote that the Keshig attributed all good things to him, and would often be heard saying “thanks to the Eternal Sky and spiritual blessing of the khan,” and “if my khan sends me into the fire or into the water, I will go for him.”¹³

Genghis Khan specified that his guards had to be imbued with the highest physical and spiritual qualities. He insisted that they have a good appearance and be wise, skilled, and spiritually strong. He chose the Keshig himself and sometimes rewarded men who least expected it. The Keshig numbered 150 in 1202, but inclusion of Ong Khan’s bodyguards expanded it to about 1,000. After 1206, with the official founding of the Mongol nation, Genghis Khan increased them to 10,000. By this time, most of them were bodyguards, servants, and administrators, but the inner core from his earlier days remained the elite within the elite.

Within the group a strict hierarchy prevailed, and yet each person shared equally in the responsibilities of the group. The officers were expected to be the bravest and hardest working of all the men. Because protecting Genghis Khan was their most important function, even the commanders had to stand guard on their day or night shift like every other warrior in the Keshig.

In order to uphold the law and to maintain the mystique of the elite court, fraternization outside the Keshig, even with family members, was discouraged, and when on duty totally forbidden. Most members of the Keshig were illiterate, and no written messages were used inside the group. “Explaining by teeth and mouth,” Genghis said, according to the Secret History, “we shall believe.”¹⁴ Despite the strict restraints on nearly every aspect of Keshig life, he encouraged them to find fulfillment within the group and to enjoy life with one another. “In deeds of familiar life and laughing together,” he told them, “be friendly, like the lazy black two year old bull.”¹⁵

The Keshig constituted the highest power in the government. Despite the fact that he had adopted a written language for legal and judicial matters, Genghis Khan forbade his army to write things down. Information and messages had to be transmitted and stored orally, so that they could not end up in enemy hands. A Chinese observer noted with amazement that in the entire Mongol army of 100,000 men there was not a single slip of paper with any writing on it.¹⁶ Writing was strictly for legal affairs and civil administration, but no written order could become official until it was stamped and dated with the permission and name of the Keshig officer in charge of that shift.

Although it was the administrative hub of the nation, the Keshig operated much like an extended household. Ever mindful that the Tatars had killed his father by feeding him poisoned food, Genghis Khan charged his inner guards with preparing what he ate and drank and guarding the pots and dishes from which he ate. They carefully monitored the serving boys and girls who came and went, oversaw the fermentation of airag, and supervised the distribution of alcohol, a substance that grew increasingly problematic as the empire expanded. Genghis Khan saw the unlimited use of alcohol as a threat not just to the individual but to the whole nation. “Wine is an enemy,” warned the author of Wisdom of Royal Glory, the handbook for Turkic rulers. “While princes of the world enjoy sweet wine, their lands and subjects suffer bitter ills.”¹⁷

Traditionally the Mongols fermented mare and camel milk in the fall when milk was most widely available. The supply of milk regulated the amount of drinking, and when the cows dried up in the winter, the herders no longer had milk with which to ferment alcohol until the following fall. With merchant contacts and invasions of new countries, however, the Mongols found a seemingly inexhaustible source of alcohol made not merely from milk but also from grapes, rice, honey, and other exotic sources. Instead of an outright prohibition against these many forms of intoxication, Genghis Khan sought to instill moderation in the army, the people, and his family by teaching them the dangers of alcohol. In this area, he had little success, and it seems that in time all four of his sons as well as other descendants suffered from severe alcoholism.

The powers of the Keshig extended far beyond control of the camp, alcohol, and food. They enjoyed the right to go more or less wherever they pleased, and all people had an obligation to supply them with horses, food, or whatever they might require without explanation. No one could quarrel with them or question them, and they outranked other soldiers in the army, including unit commanders. They could go after anyone who raised a spear against them, and then they would kill them, “strip them of their bloody clothes and take their valuables.”¹⁸ Despite their special powers, the warriors of the Keshig lived and died by an exceptionally harsh and unyielding code. A guardian who did wrong was not merely violating a law; he was betraying a moral principle. Such an act threatened the identity and spiritual power of the entire group.

In general, Genghis Khan did not distinguish between degrees of crime when punishing his subjects; stealing a horse or telling a lie was no different from murder or betraying one’s family, in his view. He did not establish gradations of offenses; all crimes were equally wrong. To commit one such crime was to violate the moral principles of life. The person who would lie or commit adultery would surely steal or kill. Such people should not live in society, and thus the punishment, regardless of the infraction, was usually death. His rules were even harsher for those close to him. A guard who fell asleep on duty, the thief who took a horse, a subject who rebelled against his khan deserved equal punishment because they had all proven themselves unreliable and unworthy and could not be trusted members of society. Despite the fact that death was the prescribed penalty for virtually every crime, in practice Genghis Khan recognized that everyone was guilty of a crime at some time in his life. He usually showed mercy for the first few infractions and mostly executed habitual offenders.

Genghis Khan frequently instructed his men in the precise duties and characteristics expected of members of his elite force. His teachings revealed much about his personal view of life and what had propelled him to such a high level of success and power. He emphasized the necessity of steadfast determination and decisive action. In any crucial matter, action mattered above thought. The time for consideration was before an action was taken, but once it was decided and done, thought had to be pushed aside. Determination and will were paramount in Genghis Khan’s view. If there was a pass that others said was too high and impossible to cross, “it is only necessary to wish to cross it and already you have passed through.” If there was a river that could not be crossed, “do not think of how to cross it,” he warned. “You must only want to cross it and you will pass through!”¹⁹ Success always waits on the other side of the impossible obstacle. If something bad happens, you can find a way out.²⁰

Such words from a lesser man might have seemed a hollow form of idealism or empty rhetoric, but Genghis Khan demonstrated their truth repeatedly by achieving seemingly impossible tasks. For the men of the Keshig and his other warriors, their first duty to one another was ferocity in battle. He charged them to be as fast as the falcon, as precise as the hawk, as hungry as the tiger, as fierce as the wolf, and, by night, as invisible as the crow. The important aspect of any deed or action is not intention but successful completion. No matter how good the plans, how strong the desire, how great the effort, in the end, success alone matters. Many “made an oath,” he said to one of his followers in praise, but you “carried out the task.” Such determined effort, without regard to the hazards, can change fate itself, Genghis Khan believed. Because of your actions, he said of his faithful followers, “the door was opened and Eternal Heaven gave me the reins.”²¹ Heaven does not need prayers, offerings, and chanting; it needs action.

In organizing his government, Genghis Khan relied on steppe tradition, common sense, and his own innovative genius for combining the best of the old and new. He had not read any of the many Turkic books on statecraft and certainly not the works of Greek philosophy; yet the ideas from both had penetrated the steppe via the Manichaeans and Uighurs.

The Keshig combined elements of the Chosen Ones, the magi or bogu of Manichaeism, and the Guardians of Plato’s Republic. Plato described the Guardians as “warrior athletes” who would “take care of themselves and of the whole state.” The rulers should take their soldiers, live separately with them, “and contain nothing private, or individual.”²² The role of the guardians was to “preserve us against foreign enemies and maintain peace among our citizens at home.”²³ He described them as “noble youth very like a well-bred dog in respect of guarding and watching . . . quick to see, and swift to overtake the enemy when they see him; and strong too.”²⁴ Plato compared the guardians to “watchdogs of the herd.”²⁵ They must be “wide-awake dogs, and must also be inured to all changes of food and climate.” Like Homer, Plato claimed that true warriors should avoid vegetables and live primarily on meat.²⁶

Plato’s words echoed poetically and far more graphically in the Secret History, where Jamuka described the men around Genghis Khan as his dogs “with foreheads of hard copper and chisels for snouts, awls for tongues, and hearts of iron.” These dogs charge forward “feeding on dew and riding the wind, and on days of battle they eat human flesh.”²⁷ Jamuka singled out the Uriyankhai men—Jelme, Subodei, and the archer Jelme of the Besud clan—as the fiercest of these dogs of war.

Their training consisted of constant physical exercise. Plato too had stressed the importance of physical training for the body and music for the soul.²⁸ He explained that “musical training is a more potent instrument than any other because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.”²⁹ As the soldiers were forbidden to write down messages, Genghis Khan required his men to learn the discipline of musical rhythm and harmony in a practical way. They had to memorize detailed songs of the laws of the nation and the army, and musical formulas for making message songs. His men had to be able to repeat verbatim long texts, and to do this they had to be able to use preformed song formats into which a new message could be fit. Similarly, Plato said of the ideal guardians that they had to study music in “the essential forms, in all their combinations, and recognize them and their images wherever they are found.”³⁰

Although Genghis Khan’s Keshig was made up primarily of soldiers, they played an important spiritual role in his court and shared in the divine mandate of their leader. They also shared the power and rewards of their achievements. Under no other circumstances could men of such humble birth have risen to power within the steppe tribal aristocracy, much less over foreign nations.

Members of the Keshig maintained a direct and personal connection to the divine through their proximity to Genghis Khan. They required no sacred books, priests, or magic to intervene in worldly affairs. They followed the code of right behavior simply because it was right. The Mongols believed that everyone had an innate inclination to self-preservation and comfort, but each person also had an innate attraction to honor and correct behavior. They were free to decide for themselves which of these instincts they would allow to dominate. For his inner circle, Genghis Khan selected people who chose the path of honor. For a person to achieve this moral discipline, a spiritual disposition was essential.

The inner sanctum controlled by the Keshig was the sacred center of the empire. Foreigners could never sleep there. Before entering the presence of the khan, they and their gifts had to be purified by fire. “When we were to be introduced at his court,” wrote Friar Carpini of his arrival at the Mongol camp in 1246, “we were informed that it was previously necessary for us to pass between two fires.” This requirement extended to their religious paraphernalia, including Bibles, letters from the pope, and crosses. “We refused at first, but were told there was no danger,” he explained. “The fire would remove all evil.”³¹ Carpini obeyed the order. “Having kindled two fires at a convenient distance, they fix two spears in the earth, one near each fire, stretching a cord between the tops of these spears, and about the cord they hang some rags of buckram [felt], under which cord, and between which fires, all the men, and beasts, and houses must pass; and all the while, a woman stands on each side, sprinkling water on the passengers, and reciting certain verses.”³²

The area was so sacred that even when the camp moved, the space it had occupied remained taboo. For months or years, no person dared cross it or enter it until all traces of Genghis Khan’s camp and fire had disappeared.

Genghis Khan flung a veil of mystery around himself and his inner court. This secrecy extended to all religious activities. Unlike kings and emperors who publicly displayed their religion and flaunted their personal piety, he permitted only rare public glimpses into his spiritual practices. He believed that knowledge was precious, to be shared only when necessary and even then cautiously. Of all forms of knowledge, that about heaven and the supernatural world was the most precious and therefore the most secret. Sharing it would dilute it, and revealing it to foreigners and strangers posed an extreme danger.

Because of the constant concealment, some otherwise reputable observers asserted that the Mongols lacked an organized spiritual life. “There is no religion or worship among them,” wrote a perplexed Armenian chronicler in the thirteenth century, “but they frequently call on the name of God in all matters. We do not know, nor do they, if this is to thank the God of Being or some other thing that they call God.”³³ The Mongols “know nothing of eternal life or perpetual damnation,” claimed Friar Carpini. “They believe, however, that after death they live in another world, that flocks multiply, that they shall eat and drink and do other things which living men do in this world.”³⁴ “Formerly the Mongols had no literature and no Religion of their own,” wrote Bar Hebraeus, “but they knew one God, the Creator of the Universe, and some of them confessed that heaven was God, and they called it so.”³⁵ The Arab writer al-Nuwayri recorded a similar sentiment, saying that the Mongols “did not obey any religion, and did not belong to any religious community, but just had love for God.”³⁶

Law and religion were generally intertwined at this time; most societies attributed a divine origin for their laws. But the Mongols “differ from all the nations in the world,” wrote the Dominican monk Riccoldo da Monte di Croce in his Liber Peregrinacionis. He had been sent as a missionary to convert the Mongol Christians to Catholicism and allegiance to the pope, but he failed in his mission. He wrote Liber Peregrinacionis as a guide for future missionaries in the hope that they might have more success. “They do not boast of having any law warranted by God, as many other nations falsely do, but simply by some instinct or movement of nature, say that there is something sovereign above all things of this world, and that that is God.”³⁷

The claim that Mongols lacked a religion irritated Genghis Khan’s descendant Injannasi. Writing much later in the nineteenth century, he explained in The Blue Chronicle that observers dismissed Mongol theology as primitive or nonexistent. “Those who think that no Mongolian words express deep and profound concepts are like one who bathes himself on the bank of an ocean and thinks the sea is shallow.”³⁸

Religion provided a major source of political strength and enabled Genghis Khan to maintain the support and morale of his troops, but in protecting the privacy of his spiritual life, he prevented others from stealing or limiting his power. Not having participated in the ceremonies of his tribe as a child, he pursued religion in his personally unique way while incorporating elements from many sources. The ever-insightful Juvaini wrote that Genghis Khan invented himself, “without the toil of pursuing records or the trouble of conforming to tradition.” His achievements in life arose as “the products of his own understanding and the compilation of his own intellect.”³⁹ Not only did he conquer on the battlefield, but he administered law and justice derived from his belief in the power of heaven. “In accordance and agreement with his own mind he established a rule for every occasion and a regulation for every circumstance; while for every crime he fixed a penalty.”⁴⁰

Even his enemies and those who hated him believed that such incredible success by a man with no formal training was a miracle of God. With a small army, carrying no supplies, he “reduced and subjugated the lords of the horizons from the East unto the West,” wrote Juvaini.⁴¹ Although a devout Muslim throughout his life, Juvaini wrote that Allah had chosen Genghis Khan, a non-Muslim, for a unique mission on Earth. “God-Almighty in wisdom and intelligence distinguished Genghis Khan from all his coevals and in alertness of mind and absoluteness of power exalted him above all the kings of the world.”⁴²

Genghis Khan closed the entire area around Burkhan Khaldun and the headwaters of the Onon and Kherlen rivers. Only members of the royal family and his closest associates could go to the mountain, while common people and foreigners were prohibited from passing within sight of it. As long as he lived close to the sacred mountain, he cultivated a spiritual relationship with the landscape and sky, but as his conquests took him farther afield for increasingly long periods, he had to find a different means to connect with God. Given his life as a nomadic warrior, his religion needed to be portable and easily adapted to new places. It could not be centered on buildings and could not depend on statues, bells, or other large ritual objects that were impractical to transport. His religion needed to remain agile, durable, and practical.

Traditional Mongol religious practice focused on the fire in the center of the ger to which family members, usually the mother, made daily offerings of fat in the belief that the spirits of the family, past and future, resided in the fire. Royal camps of previous khans worshipped the fire as a symbol of the royal family, but Genghis Khan did not follow this tradition. His fire was the place where the men around him worshipped. Because they belonged to different lineages, their worship of the fire in the army camp expanded from honoring one lineage to honoring them all. It became a way to worship the nation and thereby to cement their bond and unity. Under Genghis Khan, the fireplace in the center of the ger became the focus for this cult of the state. It symbolized the law and the moral authority of the army and the nation.

In the family home, women held responsibility for most rituals, such as starting the fire in the prescribed way and extinguishing it respectfully when the camp moved. They honored everyday objects such as the milk pail used to sprinkle libations to the sun and the cardinal directions each day. Male rituals centered on objects from their daily domain of herding, hunting, and fighting, such as horses, weapons, and the accoutrements of military life. Bows, arrows, and saddles belonged to a particular man, but the drums and banners of Genghis Khan’s army belonged to all warriors collectively and in time came to symbolize the whole group. The Keshig kept a close eye on these sacred objects, principally the drum and banner. The care of and responsibility for these items remained the duty of his elite soldiers; no priest or shaman had power over them.

Old Jarchigudai first came to Temujin with his drum strapped to his back, and the drum was the ritual center of his spiritual life. Beating the drum carried messages to heaven and brought back messages as well. It spoke with the voice of heaven on Earth and the voice of humanity in heaven. This spiritual attachment to the drum increased its efficacy in battle. The effect can be felt in the words of an observer of the Mongol army invading China: “the sound of drums rose to heaven and on every side could be seen smoke and dust.”⁴³ Injannasi wrote that “at the first sound of the drum, the spirits of the men are aroused and they will charge with great energy.” Often the Mongols began the battle in silence to make the drums more frightening to the enemy when they suddenly sounded later in the battle. “We beat our drums at the time when the enemy’s spirit is exhausted; this is how we were victorious.”⁴⁴

At home on Burkhan Khaldun, Genghis Khan spoke to the earth through the trees, particularly to trees that stood alone, rose above the others, had an unusual shape, or stood in an unusual spot. He prayed to the tree, hung strips of cloth on it, offered gifts and sacrifices, and sometimes sang and danced around it. The drum could easily be carried everywhere the army went, but the tree could not. Instead, the Mongols carried a spirit banner, a long pole or spear at the top of which was attached horsehair. They honored this spirit banner, worshipped it, and sacrificed to it. Their secret rituals had the banner of Genghis Khan at their center. Wherever it stood became the center of the Mongol Empire and thus the center of the Earth.

There is no record of Genghis Khan’s taking anyone with him when he wanted to commune with the Eternal Blue Sky or perform a private spiritual ceremony. He listened to his heart for inspiration and then told people what he had heard. A record of his prayers did not survive, but some echo can be heard in a more recent shamanic ritual prayer from the area:

We play on the rays of the sun

We ride on the rays of the moon

We rise into the heavens

We descend onto the hills.⁴⁵

The tasks of assembling warriors as disciplined as the Mongols and fashioning an elite fighting force as loyal as the Keshig took decades of effort. Many mistakes occurred along the way, and it was not until he was in his late forties that, having defeated every foe on the steppe and learned his most important lessons through failures as well as triumphs, Genghis Khan was ready to set out against the world. By then he had united all the nomadic tribes solidly behind him and extinguished any possible dissent from within their ranks. With a united Mongol nation and thoroughly experienced and loyal warriors, the time had come to focus his elite fighting force on more distant horizons.

Before setting out to battle, the Mongols sprinkled a milk libation on their banners. The words used by Genghis Khan’s men are not known, but at one such ceremony, the words of Jamuka had been recorded. “I have made offerings to my standard that waves in the wind, and held it high overhead for all men to see. I have beaten my ox-hide drum and made it sound like a thousand men charging. I have mounted my warhorse with the black stripe down its back. I have laced up my breastplate of leather. I have raised my sword from its sheath. I have placed on my bowstring an arrow I have marked with my enemy’s name. Let us all die together fighting.”⁴⁶