Read Online The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire by Jack Weatherford - Free Book Online
Authors: Jack Weatherford
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them and pulled them up by their heels to teach them to walk.” It took the effort of a mother to transform boys into men. She “stretched them by the shoulders to pull them up to become men. She pulled them by their necks. She pulled them up to the height of other men. She did these things because she was the mother with a heart as bright as the sun and as wide as a lake.”
Outlawing the sale or barter of women marked Genghis Khan’s first important departure from tribal practices regarding marriage, and gradually through a series of such changes he transformed the social position of his daughters, and thereby of all women, within his burgeoning empire. His laws regarding women did not spring from an ideological position or special spiritual revelation so much as from personal experience and the practical needs of running a harmonious society. The natural accord between male and female, the sky and the earth, the sun and the moon had a practical application in the relations of men and women in the family and in society.
Genghis Khan was certainly ambitious and had much larger desires in the world than merely uniting the warring tribes of the steppe. Yet, in order to expand his empire, he needed someone to rule the newly conquered people. He had to leave someone in charge. Ideally, he would have had a stable of talented sons and given each one of them a newly conquered country to govern, but his sons were simply not capable. Without competent sons, he could leave a general in charge, but Genghis Khan had been betrayed too many times by men inside and outside his family. He probably knew well the result of Alexander the Great’s overreliance on his generals, who subsequently divided the empire among themselves as soon as their leader died.
The women around Genghis Khan motivated him, and he constantly strove to make them happy. “My wives, daughters-in-law, and daughters are as colorful and radiant as red fire,” he said. “It is my sole purpose to make their mouths as sweet as sugar by favor, to bedeck them in garments spun with gold, to mount them upon fleet-footed steeds, to have them drink sweet, clear water, to provide their animals with grassy meadows, and to have all harmful brambles and thorns cleared from the roads and paths upon which they travel, and not to allow weeds and thorns to grow in their pastures.”
Genghis Khan’s mother and wives were too old to take command of these new nations and to enjoy the full benefits of what he had to offer, but he had a new generation of women who seemed as capable as the previous one. After uniting the steppe, Genghis Khan turned his attention to foreign nations, and now women assumed a far more important role in building the empire abroad. At least three daughters had been married to closely related clans, and those marriages had helped to solidify bonds within the newly formed Mongol nation; however, now four other daughters faced a far more challenging task beyond the Mongol world, in the lands of neighboring countries.
By the end of the summer of 1206, Genghis Khan had transformed the steppe tribes into a nation, or perhaps more precisely into a large army with a small mobile country attached. Normally, at the end of a large steppe conference, the various tribes would return to their way of life with little real change in the daily routines, but after the
khuriltai
of 1206, Genghis Khan prepared them to move out and conquer the world. Now that all the steppe tribes acknowledged him as their khan, he was ready to begin his next and greatest phase of life by turning the Mongol nation into an engine of conquest. In the coming twenty years, Genghis Khan and his Mongol army conquered and ruled the largest empire in history. In these two decades they would acquire far more people and territory than the Romans, Persians, Greeks, or Chinese had been able to do in centuries of sustained effort.
How could he take such a tiny nation of 1 million people with 100,000
Outlawing the sale or barter of women marked Genghis Khan’s first important departure from tribal practices regarding marriage, and gradually through a series of such changes he transformed the social position of his daughters, and thereby of all women, within his burgeoning empire. His laws regarding women did not spring from an ideological position or special spiritual revelation so much as from personal experience and the practical needs of running a harmonious society. The natural accord between male and female, the sky and the earth, the sun and the moon had a practical application in the relations of men and women in the family and in society.
Genghis Khan was certainly ambitious and had much larger desires in the world than merely uniting the warring tribes of the steppe. Yet, in order to expand his empire, he needed someone to rule the newly conquered people. He had to leave someone in charge. Ideally, he would have had a stable of talented sons and given each one of them a newly conquered country to govern, but his sons were simply not capable. Without competent sons, he could leave a general in charge, but Genghis Khan had been betrayed too many times by men inside and outside his family. He probably knew well the result of Alexander the Great’s overreliance on his generals, who subsequently divided the empire among themselves as soon as their leader died.
The women around Genghis Khan motivated him, and he constantly strove to make them happy. “My wives, daughters-in-law, and daughters are as colorful and radiant as red fire,” he said. “It is my sole purpose to make their mouths as sweet as sugar by favor, to bedeck them in garments spun with gold, to mount them upon fleet-footed steeds, to have them drink sweet, clear water, to provide their animals with grassy meadows, and to have all harmful brambles and thorns cleared from the roads and paths upon which they travel, and not to allow weeds and thorns to grow in their pastures.”
Genghis Khan’s mother and wives were too old to take command of these new nations and to enjoy the full benefits of what he had to offer, but he had a new generation of women who seemed as capable as the previous one. After uniting the steppe, Genghis Khan turned his attention to foreign nations, and now women assumed a far more important role in building the empire abroad. At least three daughters had been married to closely related clans, and those marriages had helped to solidify bonds within the newly formed Mongol nation; however, now four other daughters faced a far more challenging task beyond the Mongol world, in the lands of neighboring countries.
By the end of the summer of 1206, Genghis Khan had transformed the steppe tribes into a nation, or perhaps more precisely into a large army with a small mobile country attached. Normally, at the end of a large steppe conference, the various tribes would return to their way of life with little real change in the daily routines, but after the
khuriltai
of 1206, Genghis Khan prepared them to move out and conquer the world. Now that all the steppe tribes acknowledged him as their khan, he was ready to begin his next and greatest phase of life by turning the Mongol nation into an engine of conquest. In the coming twenty years, Genghis Khan and his Mongol army conquered and ruled the largest empire in history. In these two decades they would acquire far more people and territory than the Romans, Persians, Greeks, or Chinese had been able to do in centuries of sustained effort.
How could he take such a tiny nation of 1 million people with 100,000
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