The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire (11 page)

Compared with the simplicity of the Mongol court or with the courts of her sisters, Al-Altun entered a luxurious setting. With their position along the Silk Route and their small but highly cosmopolitan markets along the oases, the Uighur cities offered connections to major civilizations and had adopted goods, customs, and words from across Eurasia. The Uighur ruler was described as wearing a red robe and a golden crown while presiding at official functions from a golden chair, placed up high on a platform decorated with pearls and jewels.

The cultural contacts show clearly in this description because the platform under the throne came from China, while the Uighur word for crown,
didim
, came from Greek
díadéma
, showing the lingering influence of the Greeks from the invasion of Alexander the Great more than one thousand years earlier.

The cosmopolitan fashions of the Uighur court combined influences from throughout the Mongol empire, including Chinese textiles, Central Asian designs, Mongolian tastes, and Turkic craft ingenuity, in a unique product. Archaeological excavations have uncovered well-preserved textiles in the dry conditions. They reveal luxurious robes with intricate but quite subtle geometric patterns woven into them with golden threads. Simple color combinations, such as gold on yellow contrasted with the brighter colors popular in China as well as in the Muslim world, and the high level of craftsmanship showed a sophisticated craft industry, most likely from within the Uighur nation itself.

The inner lining design of one robe depicted a floral motif framing two rampant lions, each of which had a human head bearing a crown. The twin monarchs appeared identical, without any sign of gender. Just such a robe may have been worn by Al-Altun as she presided over the official ceremonies of daily life, receiving and dispatching envoys to the distant reaches of the Mongol Empire, whose center she controlled.

The abundance of grapes grown in the Uighur oases created a lucrative commerce in raisins and wine. Wine made from grapes developed a higher alcohol level than the fermented beverages to which the Mongols were accustomed. Grapes had to be harvested at the appropriate time, but once they were made into wine, the alcohol could be stored for years and thus consumed without regard to season.

The Mongols already had a mildly alcoholic drink in the form of fermented mare’s milk, known as
airag
, or to other people by the Turkic name of
koumis
. For the traditional Mongols,
airag
had been a seasonal drink of August and September, when the mares produced copious amounts of milk but the colts already could feed themselves
by grazing. The herders milked the animals in a nearly unending routine throughout the day and into the night. They stored the milk in large skins and churned it frequently as it fermented. Within a few days, the
airag
reached the ideal state. Men, in particular, drank it without moderation because it had only a small amount of alcohol and because it would last for only a few months. During the fall months, men who owned enough horses boasted that they lived exclusively on
airag
, supplemented by the meat of the occasional marmot. Because of this particular tradition, no one learned, or needed, moderation. Throwing up and having diarrhea served as emblems of masculine camaraderie in the plentiful months of autumn before the harshness of winter.

The Onggud lands under Alaqai Beki provided Genghis Khan with the base for conquering the many kingdoms of China; the Uighur kingdom tightened his grip on the Silk Route. This control provided the Mongols with a much needed commercial base, and it also gave them some military advantage in controlling the commerce in and out of China. However, China could largely supply its own needs and did not depend heavily on exports, so this control of the Silk Route could inflict only relatively minor damage on the centers of Chinese civilization.

In the spring of 1211, the Year of the Sheep, Genghis Khan gave an unidentified daughter in marriage to Arslan Khan of the Karluk Turks, who had been ruled by the Kara Kita like the Uighurs, but lived farther to the west. Their capital was on the lower Ili River in modern Kazakhstan when Arslan submitted to the Mongols. The name Karluk may have meant “Snow Lords,” in reference to the snowy mountains of their home in the Tianshan. Arslan meant “Lion,” and thus Arslan Khan meant “the Lion King.”

When Arslan Khan married the Mongol princess, Genghis Khan took away his title, saying, “How can he be called Arslan
Khan?”
If he had been allowed to keep the title of
khan
, some of his subjects might have presumed that he outranked his royal Mongol wife or was at least
equal to her. Genghis Khan changed the Karluk leader’s name to Arslan Sartaqtai, meaning “Arslan of the Sart,” a general term used by Mongolians for the people of Central Asia, but which had the connotation of a merchant. Genghis Khan also gave him the new title
guregen
, son-in-law, or prince consort.

In the censorship of the
Secret History
, this daughter’s name disappeared. Some scholars concluded that she was Tolai, a name that formed a euphonious set with Tolui, the youngest son’s name. The Chinese
Yuan Shi
, the history of Mongol rule, compiled by their successors during the Ming Dynasty, mentioned a woman of a similar name, Tore, later being married to Arslan’s son. With the occasional confusion of
r
and
l
sounds in the recording of names, it is quite possible that this was the name of the queen who first married the father and then the son.

Just as Genghis Khan placed Alaqai at the Mongol entry into China, his marriage of his younger daughter to the Karluk placed that area under her control, allowing it to serve as the Mongol gateway to the Muslim lands to the south, to the Turkic steppe tribes of the west, and on into Russia and Europe. Accepting his duty as a
guregen
, Arslan joined Genghis Khan at war while the Mongol princess took up her place in his homeland. Arslan is mentioned as fighting with the Mongol army at the siege of Balkh in Tokharistan (modern Afghanistan) around 1220 and in other cities in 1222–23.

Of all the daughters, Checheyigen had the least prestigious marriage and the hardest life, since the Oirat of the northern forest was the least powerful and least important tribe. Three of her sisters became queens along the Silk Route, ruling over the grand Turkic nations of Onggud, Uighur, and Karluk. They ruled countries with walled cities, ancient histories, written languages, sacred scriptures, brick temples, and commercial and diplomatic relations all around them. They wore garments made from fine camel and goat wool and sometimes imported silks from China and brocades from Persia. They sipped hot tea in the
winter and nibbled on cool melons in the summer. One even had a specialist in making refreshing sherbet drinks.

Checheyigen’s other sisters married into herding tribes of the steppe who were relatives of her mother and her grandmother. Even if they did not have all the luxuries of the Silk Route cities, they had vast herds, and in the summer they drank rich yogurt and bowls of heavy cream, and ate an array of dried and fermented dairy products; in the winter they kept vast stores of frozen beef, mutton, goat, and yak, from which they enjoyed steaming bowls of nourishing hot broth.

Yet Checheyigen maintained such close social ties with the Mongols that the Oirat and the Mongols borrowed heavily from each other’s culture, language, and lifestyle. Through these intermarriages, the Oirat thus became the first nonherding tribe to join Genghis Khan, eventually creating a single nation with two major lineages.

The daughters of Genghis Khan formed a phalanx of shields around their Mongol homeland. They marked the nation’s borders and protected it from the four directions as they ruled the kingdoms of the Onggud, Uighur, Karluk, and Oirat. With his daughters in place as his shields surrounding his new nation, Genghis Khan could now move outward from the Mongol steppe and conquer the world.

Queens at War and Commerce

W
ITH ALL THE SMALLER KINGDOMS SECURELY UNITED
behind him and under the control of his daughters, and with an adequate, if not entirely amicable, alliance with the Tangut in control of the Gansu Corridor of the Silk Route, Genghis Khan could move and challenge one of the larger kingdoms. For the remainder of his life he would pursue two major operations: first, the North China campaign from 1211 to 1215, and then the Central Asian offensive against the Muslims from 1219 to 1224. His daughters played critically important, but different, roles in each of these two massive quests.

In 1211 Genghis Khan attacked the Jurched rulers of North China, but his perfect plan failed almost immediately. As soon as his cavalry became hotly engaged with the Jurched forces, the Onggud erupted. The disgruntled faction suddenly revolted against young Alaqai. The rebels tried to kill her, and although they failed to capture her, they assassinated Ala-Qush and many of the other Mongol sympathizers. Alaqai barely escaped the rebels, but in addition to saving her own life, she managed to take both of her stepsons to the temporary refuge of her father’s army.

While Genghis Khan had fostered a close alliance with a single Onggud clan, the others resented kowtowing to a foreign queen, particularly one from such a wild people as the Mongols. When Genghis Khan’s daughter dismissed the other wives, she also destroyed the power base for their clans. The families of the old wives failed to share
in the prestige and rewards of the new system and turned against her. They did not realize that because Ala-Qush was Genghis Khan’s faithful ally in marriage, killing him constituted one of the gravest crimes against the Mongols.

Only twenty years old, Alaqai Beki faced these enemies at a time when it still remained unclear how successful the Mongol army would be and how powerful her father would become. Although Genghis Khan had made Ala-Qush the ruler of the Onggud, the old elite still favored their traditional alliance with the Jurched rulers of northern China, who had supplied them with a constant flow of silks and trinkets, as well as invited them to feast at grand political events at the imperial court. Those Onggud shared the more general Chinese view of the Mongols as unwashed savages who dressed in ragged wool and the skins of beasts, lived in felt tents, and gorged on unflavored meat boiled in large cauldrons that contained whole animals from the eyeballs to the tail.

When the Onggud revolted, Genghis Khan was campaigning with his army near the modern city of Datong in northern China’s Shanxi Province. His soldiers had passed through Onggud territory on the way to invade China. By installing his daughter as the ruler of the Onggud, he thought that he had securely protected his rear and sides before launching the invasion. The Onggud rebels also understood this strategy, and they saw clearly the danger they posed to him. The bulk of the Mongol army now confronted the Jurched to their south and east and the Onggud to their north and west. If the Onggud rose up in rebellion, they could trap the Mongol forces between the two enemies. At the least, an Onggud rebellion would distract the Mongol forces and thereby relieve pressure on the Jurched.

Genghis Khan would tolerate no such act against his daughter, who ruled in the name of the greater Mongol Empire, nor could he afford to have such a dangerous enemy at his back. He dispatched an army with her to fight the rebels, whom they quickly vanquished.

After the suppression of the Onggud rebels, Genghis Khan favored the same kind of massive retaliation against the Onggud that he had become accustomed to using against the rebellious steppe tribes, such as
the Tatars. The punishment meant killing every rebel and all the males in their family taller than the wheel of a Mongol cart, then redistributing the women and children among the tribes of the Mongol’s loyal allies.

Alaqai prevented the massacre. Instead of condemning the whole nation, she persuaded her father to punish only the specific assassins who had attacked Ala-Qush. Genghis Khan wanted an investigation of the killing of Ala-Qush. “Who killed our
quda
?” he demanded to know, “so that I can extract vengeance.” He demanded that the specific “person who violated his person” be brought to him. Genghis Khan then ordered the execution of the assailant and his family.

The Onggud ranked as possibly the luckiest people who ever rebelled against Genghis Khan, and their good fortune derived exclusively from having Alaqai as their ruler. As the empire grew larger and the army spread thinner and ever farther from home, Genghis Khan could not afford to tolerate any dissent or show any mercy. The Onggud were the only people whom he allowed to continue to exist as a nation after they revolted against him. Alaqai seemed determined to prove that he had not made a mistake in sparing the Onggud; she kept them loyal to the Mongols and integrated them into the heart of Mongol imperial administration.

Alaqai resumed her rule and took her stepson Jingue as her husband. She set about knitting the Onggud society back together again, but clearly within the realm of her father’s growing Mongol Empire. Over the next four years, while her father fought in one city after another across northern China, she ran the Onggud nation. After she had proved her loyalty to the Onggud by protecting them from the wrath of her father, her subjects never again contested her rule.