The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire (24 page)

The Choros clan occupied part of the former Onggud territory that had been ruled by Alaqai Beki and then annexed by Khubilai Khan’s Yuan Dynasty. Soon after the fall of the dynasty in 1368, however, soldiers of the new Ming Dynasty burned the Onggud cities and killed or chased away the people. The Onggud nearly lost their tradition of literacy, and the royal family no longer functioned with enough independent power to make its own marriages. The Onggud returned to the countryside as herders while trying to maintain some meager trade that echoed pathetically the lucrative trading empire they had once commanded along the Silk Route. They had declined from the ranks of an ancient Turkic nation under the queen Alaqai Beki to being just one more of the many poor Mongol tribes struggling to survive in the ruins of a glorious, but lost, empire. It was as though the empire and cities had never even existed.

The Uighur still held a geographic base in the oases of China’s western deserts, and although significantly diminished in importance, they survived as an ethnic group. By the time that Manduhai’s father assumed responsibility for the region, the Onggud name was no longer used; the people were lumped together under a variety of other ethnic names, including Oirat and Uighur.

Manduhai’s clan recognized a special spiritual relationship with their founding Mother Tree common to many of the Turkic tribes; the Choros, like the Uighurs, acknowledged no mythological father. For the Mongols, the primary mythological dyad consisted of the Earth Mother and the Sky Father. For Manduhai’s clan, the primary spiritual pair consisted of mother and son, symbolized by the tree and her offspring or the mother wolf who raised an orphan boy.

Manduhai probably had some kinship connection to Samur Gunj, but its importance would be difficult to calculate. Manduhai was only six years old when her father, although he had been appointed by Esen, joined the resistance to Esen and particularly to the policy of exterminating the Borijin. It is not possible to determine if her father and Samur Gunj were actually allied conspirators in their opposition or merely found themselves as common enemies of Esen.

By the time Manduhai was old enough to be aware of what was happening around her, the momentary unity and vitality of the Esen era had ended. Despite her father’s role in overthrowing Esen, neither her father nor any of the other rebels could maintain control of the miniature empire Esen had assembled. Without Esen, the system collapsed back into near anarchy on the steppe.

Even the Mongol chroniclers could not keep up with the comings and goings of episodic claimants to the office of khan. For some years, no khan was mentioned, and then two young boys in succession appeared as khans with the backing of their respective mothers and other unknown players. Both boys, and apparently their mothers as well, were soon killed by rival factions. As with horses lost in a race, there was much dust and hectic movement, but no clear winner. Moreover, it did not matter who held the office because there was no united nation to rule.

During this period of renewed disintegration, fresh predators stalked the outer fringes of the steppe tribe. Just as wolves hunt the old, young, and weak, the foreign predators began circling the wounded Mongols. The new warlords created a base in the oases of the Silk Route to the west of the Gansu Corridor. These warlords bore Muslim names such as Ibrahim, Issama, and Ismayil or Ismail, but such names may have been adopted merely for commercial convenience in dealing with merchants from Muslim countries. Even Esen had once agreed to a nominal conversion to Islam in order to marry the Muslim khan’s sister and had given two sons Muslim names, but Esen never practiced the faith. The significance of the names remains unclear.

The warlords and their warriors included many of the former imperial guards, particularly the Kipchak, but also some of the Asud of Ossetia. Having lost their stronghold on the Mongolian Plateau during the campaigns of Samur’s husband, son, and grandson Esen, they fled south into the more remote areas of the Gobi and into the deserts of northern China. The warlords’ coalitions included large mixtures of a more mysterious group known alternately as Mekrit, Megrin, and Begrin, who appear only fleetingly but at important moments in the chronicles.

This new threat originated in the oases of Turfan and Hami. These two cities operated as trade centers for long-distance caravans along the thin line of oases connecting China with the Middle East and Europe, but in these days, only a trickle of the former trade flowed through. The cities now served as desert hideaways for rebels and bandits rather than crucial chains in a commercial network. Nevertheless, the oases supported a sufficient agricultural population to accommodate a small military force, and the desert around them offered protection from the Ming army or other enemies.

From a base in Turfan, a new warlord named Beg-Arslan sought to move into the vacuum of Mongol politics, replace Esen, and set up a puppet khan. He planned to make his daughter Yeke Qabar-tu into the
khatun
of the Mongols by finding a Borijin heir to make khan, and then marrying her to him. This move would effectively allow Beg-Arslan to run the country as the imperial father-in-law. One obstacle to that plan was Yeke Qabar-tu’s reputation as an unattractive woman. Her name meant “Big Nose,” and for the Mongols, who often referred to themselves with pride as the “No-Nose Mongols,” the prospect of siring a child with Big Nose lacked appeal. Mongols associated such noses with Westerners, mostly Europeans and Muslims, rather than with East Asians. If nothing else, her Mongol name clearly indicated that Yeke Qabar-tu’s origin, and that of her father, lay beyond the Mongol world.

The male descendants of Genghis Khan had dwindled to just a few, primarily ineffective old men, but also a few young boys whose mothers or other relatives claimed that they had been fathered by
Borijin men who had subsequently died. From the contenders, Beg-Arslan selected a modest but tractable man named Manduul, made him Great Khan, and married him to Yeke Qabar-tu sometime between 1463 and 1465.

Despite the ability of warlords to make and unmake the khans and their marriages, they lacked the power to force consummation. The khan did not like Yeke Qabar-tu. He “stayed absent from” her and “did not co-habit with her.” Not surprisingly, Big Nose produced no children. Some chronicles mention that Manduul was sick in the time that he knew her and that was the reason he did not cohabit with her. Although she continued at court as queen, apparently she and the khan avoided each other as much as was practical.

Of seemingly far less importance, around the year 1464, Manduul married Manduhai, who was about sixteen, nearly twenty-five years his junior. There is nothing surprising about the match, since she came from a political family, but what mixture of political and personal preferences underlay the marriage is not clear. Perhaps she was beautiful and appealed to the khan; perhaps he simply wanted a wife who was not a foreigner.

Some chronicles refer to her by the title
khatun
, or “queen,” at this point, but others refer to her merely as a princess, indicating some possible contention or confusion on her initial status at court. Eventually there would be no question about her rank, but it remained ambiguous for her first several years as a wife. She entered quietly. Nothing is mentioned of how she came to be Manduul’s wife, and nothing about her seemed worthy of much attention at the moment. For almost a decade she would have no apparent role to play in political life, but when the moment came, she would seize it and become the most powerful queen in Mongolian history. This child bride would one day lead armies and command a nation, but for now young Manduhai silently watched and learned from everyone around her.

No physical description of Manduhai survives, but as the more beloved wife, Manduhai presumably met some of the simple but precise standards by which Mongols of her era judged beauty. Because the
body was so hidden by heavy layers of clothes, the traits of feminine beauty stressed specific facial qualities. Mongols favored a round face with relatively small features; the ideal beauty had a face shaped like the moon, with very pale skin except for bright red cheeks: the redder, the better.

Manduhai did not find the lavish royal tents waiting for her as they had been for the wives of the Great Khans of the earlier Mongol Empire. These luxurious
gers
of old had been known to accommodate a thousand people, boasting walls lined with silk and fur and furnishings of gold and silver. When those early queens went out on campaigns with their husbands, they traveled in special
gers
permanently erected on large mobile platforms, pulled across the landscape by several dozen oxen. All of these amenities had disappeared with the end of the imperial era, and at the Mongol royal court, Manduhai probably lived a modest but comfortable life comparable to that of her childhood.

Manduhai’s name meant “Rising” or “Ascending” in the sense of the sun rising in the morning, a flag or banner being raised up overhead, or a queen or king being enthroned; in more recent times it has come to mean economic or technological progress. In all senses, it has carried a powerful, awesome, and decidedly sacred connotation. The names Manduul and Manduhai derived from the same root word for ascension, and the similarity of the two could not have been ignored. The marriage match could have been made on the basis of the similarity of names, which may have been interpreted as a sign of their nuptial destiny, or Manduul could have changed or modified his queen’s name to make it more similar to his when they married. Whether merely coincidental or artificially contrived, the similarity would have been viewed as seemly.

Manduul held the title of Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. This title represented a claim to be not merely the ruler of the Mongols, but also the legitimate ruler of China, Korea, Manchuria, and Central Asia,
albeit in exile—though in truth he did not even rule his own household. Beg-Arslan had taken the lesser title of
taishi
, but he operated mostly south of the Gobi, where he could better exploit the richer resources there.

Manduul remained north of the Gobi, although it is not clear if this was his choice of refuge or if Beg-Arslan sent him there to limit his influence. So long as he controlled the trade in and out of Mongolia and maintained access to conscript Mongolian boys as needed for his raids, Beg-Arslan seemed unconcerned with where Manduul stayed, so long as it was out of the way.

In a nomadic society, a herder’s campsite reveals much about that individual’s character and temperament. Choices about fall, winter, spring, and summer camps demonstrate a pattern and a way of thinking. Does the herder care most about what is good for the horses or the cows? Is he inclined to take risks or seek security? Does he prefer the solitude of the Gobi or the fertility of the steppe? Is the herder a loner far from others or a convivial person who wants neighbors?

Although a khan needs to worry about the welfare of the people more than his own herd of animals, his choice of location still reveals his spirit and ambitions. Manduul and Manduhai made their capital camp far away from the centers of action in China and along the Silk Route. They set up their mobile court in an area called Mongke Bulag, a tributary of the Old Orkhon River. The name Mongke Bulag meant “Perpetual Spring” or “Eternal Source,” indicating a constant flow of water throughout the year. The small canyon-valleys with permanent springs offered the basic requirements for a comfortable winter camp, and the surrounding steppe had ample grass in the summer, but also enough wind to keep away mosquitoes. It was good for camels, goats, and cows—especially for horses and sheep—but lacked the elevation necessary to support yaks.

The landscape evoked a pleasant intimate feeling of almost isolated tranquility, and its same small scale indicates that it lacked sufficient grazing for the number of animals needed to support a large army or even a large court of retainers. The location indicates that
Manduul did not have a large army, and he was not trying to assemble one.

Only a few days’ horse ride downstream to the northwest, the much wider pastures of the old imperial area of Karakorum would have offered far more extensive grazing for the horses of a more ambitious khan. By contrast, Mongke Bulag resembled a defensive retreat or possibly a place of forced exile and confinement, providing Manduul with little opportunity to influence trade or diplomacy.

According to most texts, Manduul had no children, and he possibly did not reside in the same
ger
with either Manduhai or Yeke Qabartu. Yet occasionally two women, Borogchin and Esige, are mentioned as daughters of Manduhai. Since they were too old to have been born to Manduhai during her marriage to Manduul, they appear to have been close female relatives of Manduul, possibly daughters from a prior marriage of Manduul, or more likely each was a niece or younger sister who lived with him as a daughter. Soon after the arrival of Manduhai, Borogchin married either Beg-Arslan or his son and went to live with her husband in the south.

The old khan certainly had no sons, but he had two distant male relatives. Each was a rival heir-in-waiting, and each tried to cultivate a close relationship with the old khan in the hope of succeeding him. Just as important, each of the potential heirs needed a close relationship with the queen in order for her to accept him as her next husband in the event of Manduul’s death.

The strongest rival was clearly Une-Bolod, an accomplished warrior and a member of the Borijin clan, albeit through descent from Genghis Khan’s brother Khasar rather than directly from Genghis Khan himself. Such men, however, had held the office in the past. His genealogy may not have been ideal, but it clearly qualified him for the position. Regarding his heritage, he was quoted as saying that what mattered most was that all the members of the family descended from Hoelun’s womb, thereby making his ancestor Khasar and Genghis Khan equal. His most compelling advantage as a potential heir derived from his record of military accomplishments in a time when the Mongols seemed woefully lacking
in the skills for which they had once been so renowned. During the time of Esen’s rule, Une-Bolod had taken refuge on the Onon River out of loyalty to his Borijin clan.