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THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MONGOLS OF ALL TIMES, PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CHINGGIS KHAN TRANSLATED, ANNOTATED, AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY Urgunge Onon LONDON AND NEW YORK First Published in 2001 by RoutledgeCurzon Press 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN This edition published in the Taylor and he persuaded ordinary Chinese to confine their loyalties to their family 1 The word ‘Mongol’ was used as a tribal name until 1206, when Temüjin (Chinggis Qahan) was elevated to Great Qahan. The name then became synonymous with the state until 1271, when the Great Qahan Qubilai introduced the name Yuan Dynasty. Since then, ‘Mongol’ has been used as a general name for the Mongol people. and the emperor. Confucianism spread to the countries of the East that practised settled agriculture, but not to nomadic countries like Mongolia. Temüjin, the personal name of Chinggis Qahan, was born on the sixteenth day of the fourth lunar month in the year 1162 into the family of a tribal leader. Some historians, for example the Persian Rashid al-Din (1247– 1318), who was of Jewish origin, say that Chinggis was born earlier, in 1155, the Year of the Pig. Neither Jews nor Muslims (nor, for that matter, Mongols) like pigs, and many Persians deeply hated the Mongols, who set up a dynasty (the Il-Qahan, which ran from 1265 to 1335), in their country. So it was probably with some satisfaction that Rashid al-Din determined 1155 as the year of birth of the Mongol world-conqueror. Chinggis did, however, die in a Pig Year, 1227. Mongol society developed in three stages. It rose on the basis of a hunting economy in the forest regions to the north of the Mongol heartland. During this period was created the title mergen, meaning ‘a good hunter’ or ‘an intelligent person’. When the Mongols emerged from the forests, they created a new title, ba’atur, or ‘hero’, which shows that the distinct Mongol tribes of the day were at war with one another and were probably engaged in a nomadic way of life. Around the eighth century, two new titles appeared: noyan, meaning ‘lord’, and qan, usually transcribed in English as ‘khan’. In the sixth century, Turkic nomadic tribes, later known as Orkhon Turkish, moved into the territory of present-day Mongolia and ruled the area until the middle of the seventh century, when they were replaced by the Uighurs (who stayed until the eighth and ninth centuries). By the tenth century, the Liao Dynasty (also known as Kitan) was established in the eastern part of the region, present-day Manchuria. The Kitan were in power from 916 to 1119, when they, in turn, were replaced by another nomadic people, the Jin Dynasty, also known as Altan Ulus (1115– 1234). 2 THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS The Mongols were a small nomadic tribe in the area of Ergön 2 and kölen Na’ur. 3 This mongol tribe moved to the Kelüren, 4 Onon, and Tula 5 districts around the years following 970, 6 and was one of the many tribal peoples shifting about nomadically during this period. The people of the felt walled tents were the Tatars, the Onggirads, the Kereyids, the Naimans, the Tayichi’uds, and the Merkids. All these groups spoke a language akin to that of the Mongols, but they were only included in the category of Mongols after they had been conquered by, or pledged alliance to, the Mongol tribe. Chinggis Qahan’s ancestors belonged to the Kiyad group of the Borjigin clan of the Mongol tribe. Tribal feuds and struggles for power continued for many generations among the tribes, while foreign enemies such as the Liao Dynasty and the Jin ruled them from the east. The Tangqut nation (1002–1227) to the south and the Uighurs to the west were awaiting their turn to attack. By the twelfth century, however, the nations surrounding the area of present-day Mongolia were growing weaker; this was especially so of the Jin Dynasty, which was at war with the Song Dynasty of southern China. At the same time the Mongols, along with the other nomadic tribes, were becoming stronger economically through their vast herds of livestock. To enjoy this new prosperity, they sought to put an end to tribal warfare and to live in peace with one another, and at the same time to present a united front to external enemies. Chinggis Qahan, born in 1162, fulfilled a need for his people. The many tribes were strong, but lacked a leader to weld them into one. 2 The Ergüne River. 3 Khölön Buyur Lake. 4 Kherlen. 5 Tu’ula. 6 For this date, see Hua-sai and Dugarjab 1984, p. 271, n. 3. INTRODUCTION 3 Temüjin was first elevated as Chinggis Qahan by his tribe, in 1189, and confirmed as such by all the Mongols in 1206, at a great gathering of Mongol nobles and high- ranking commanders of the Mongol cavalry on the Kelüren River. This gathering marked the unification of the Mongol tribes and the birth of the Mongol military machine, and was the first step towards the creation of a new order on the steppe. Before Chinggis Qahan, the Mongols lacked a sense of their identity as a people. Chinggis’ historic role was to endow them with such a sense. His strong identification with his ancestral homelands, almost akin to modern nationalism, is well illustrated by the following incident. He sent a message to three of his followers who had left him to join one of his Mongol rivals. He told them that they were now on their own, but that they should never let anyone other than a Mongol set up camp at the source of the three rivers, the Kelüren, the Tu’ula, and the Onon. The Mongol tribes professed an ancestral Shamanism; their great deity was the sky, which they worshipped together with the spirits inhabiting the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the water, the trees, and all natural things. As Shamanists, they had no church, nor had they a need for one, since worship was often a matter of immediate communication between the individual and the world of nature; the intermediacy of Shaman priests was an option that Chinggis himself often preferred not to use. For Shamanists, the soul is linked directly to Heaven and the individual is therefore the centre of his own universe. Heaven is nothing more nor less than the consciousness of each one of us. Heaven is our guide; under it we are born free and equal. Chinggis Qahan was never influenced by the passive philosophy of Buddhism or the rigid doctrines of Confucianism, which reduced the universe to the family or the state. The universe to which Chinggis and the Mongols owed allegiance was bound by neither kin nor place. That is why just two million Mongols, with 129,000 cavalrymen, could establish the largest land empire in world history. 4 THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS The other great peoples of Asia—for example, the Indians and the Chinese—were never able to match this achievement. The reason for this failure lies in the Indian and Chinese view of the world, which was more trammelled and restricted than that of the Mongols, who, at the time, lacked even a word for ‘country’. (Ulus, which in those days meant ‘nation’, has since acquired the additional meaning of ‘country’ in modern Mongolian.) As a result, the Mongols came to consider the universe as their ger or tent. The thirteenth-century Mongols represented pastoral civilisation, the eighteenth-century British, oceanic civilisation, and the twentieth-century Americans, scientific civilisation. What motives led them to establish empires? The British and the Americans were seeking to colonise land and space; the Mongols were simply rising to the challenge. ‘If Heaven grants a way,’ Chinggis told his sons, ‘you will embark on campaigns beyond the sea…. Beyond the mountain rocks you will launch campaigns…. Send back news on wings.’ The late Professor Owen Lattimore maintained that Chinggis Qahan was the greatest strategist the world has ever produced. He wrote: ‘As a military genius, able to take over new techniques and improve on them, Chinggis stands above Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Caesar, Attila and Napoleon.’ (More recently, the Washington Post named Chinggis Qahan its Man of the Millennium, describing him as ‘an apostle of extremes who embodies the half-civilised, half-savage duality of the human race’. Tongue-in-cheek, the Post rejected Columbus for the millennial honour as ‘somewhat boring’.) 7 The map below shows the empires of Alexander the Great, Qubilai Qahan (1215–1294), and Napoleon. The Mongol Empire under Qubilai stretched from Java and Korea in the east to Poland in the west, and from the Arctic Ocean in the north to Persia in the south. The Mongols 7 Washington Post, December 31, 1995. INTRODUCTION 5 opened a transcontinental road between East and West along which, for the first time in one thousand years, humans and cultural objects and influences could once again be safely exchanged. They linked Asia and Europe by horse relay stations that shortened the distance between the central places of the two continents. During the Mongols’ Hungarian campaign in March 1242, news of the death of the Second Great Qahan Ögödei took just forty days to get from the Mongol homeland to Budapest, some 4,000 miles away. According to reports, urgent messages could be transmitted by express couriers at a rate of two hundred or more miles a day. In the thirteenth century, the Mongol territories abutted the Jin empire (1115–1234) to the south (including the region later known as Manchuria); China, under the Song Dynasty, lay beyond the Jin. The Jin people, originally 6 THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS nomads, had been heavily influenced by Chinese culture and had come to follow Confucian norms. To the southwest of Mongolia was the Xi Xia Kingdom of the Tanguts. Further west still, around the oases of Central Asia, were the Uighurs, a Turkish people once strong but now in military decline. By the early thirteenth century, fighting between the Jin and the Song had seriously weakened both states. These troubles to the south, and a long period of relative internal peace, had diminished the pressure on the Mongols, who, by the end of the twelfth century, had significantly increased their livestock. To maintain their prosperity (and eventually transform themselves into a world power), they needed dynamic, centralised leadership of the sort that Chinggis Qahan eventually provided. Chinggis was a far-sighted ruler and a born diplomat, who understood the wishes of his people and led them skilfully. Between the start of his ascendancy and his death in 1227, he killed none of the generals with whom he built his empire, not one of whom betrayed him. (In this respect, empire-builders of the twentieth century would have done well to learn from him.) Temüjin emerged from a hard childhood as a natural leader and born diplomat. Though said to be illiterate, 8 he knew instinctively how to deal with other tribal chiefs, and, being a born leader himself, was raised first to the position of a tribal Qan in 1189, and then to the exalted role of Great Qahan of Mongolia in 1206, when he was given the title of Chinggis Qahan. By that time he was married (c. 1178) with a son, Jochi. 9 Chinggis Qahan established his empire and held it together on three vital ties, expressed in the words quda, anda, and nökör. He used these concepts, familiar to the nomad tribes, with enormous skill and foresight as the 8 It is generally assumed that Temüjin was illiterate, but there is no written evidence to prove this assumption. 9 See Onon 1990, p. 72, n. 197. INTRODUCTION 7 means to unite a sprawling and shifting population and create a superb fighting machine. Quda was the tie of marriage. Chinggis Qahan made many skilful marriage alliances, as for instance when he gave one of his daughters to Arslang Qan of the Qarlu’ud because the Qan had submitted to him without a fight. A potential enemy thus became a son-in-law. 10 Anda was the tie of sworn brotherhood, ratified by a valuable gift such as the black sable-skin jacket that Chinggis presented to To’oril Qan of the Kereyid tribe, who was his father’s anda. 11 In this case, too, an unbreakable bond was created that only death could sever. Nökör was the tie of friendship and held Chinggis’ followers to him in a relationship rather like that between Europe’s medieval lord and liegeman. Wielding these three ties, he created a vast network of loyalty and had the confidence of knowing that he could rely on many and farflung tribesmen when he needed their support, held as they all were in the strong web that he had so skilfully woven. Chinggis Qahan also used his intimate knowledge of tribal affairs and his natural flair for diplomacy to manipulate the Mongols under him. For instance, he joined with the Nestorian Önggüds (who lived in the southern part of Ulaanchab League and the northern part of Ikh Juu League of present-day Inner Mongolia) by a marriage alliance. 12 Later, they acted as guides for him when he attacked the Jin Dynasty in 1211. He used the Uighurs in the same way in his attack on the Kara Kitad in 1218. Those same Kara Kitad then acted in their turn as guides for him and his armies when they moved to the Khwarizm 13 area. 10 See Section 235. 11 See Section 104. 12 See Section 202. 13 Kwarizm. 8 THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS Before sending in his army to attack, Chinggis despatched agents to discover everything they could of the political, economic, and military situation of the target people. When he learned of the religious conflict between Buddhists and Muslims in the Qara Kitad region, for example, he instructed his commander-in-chief, Lord Jebe, to proclaim complete religious freedom in 1218. Agents or spies played a vital part in all his wars, and on more than one occasion saved his own life, as when Badai and Kishiliq gave him vital information 14 and when Qoridai of the Gorolas tribe prevented a crisis by providing crucial facts. 15 His spies, it seems, were everywhere—hence Tayan Qahan’s wife’s remark that ‘the Mongols smell bad’. 16 News flowed through four main channels besides spies. These channels were: the Mongolian caravans, always on the move; prisoners-of-war forced to hand over information; others who voluntarily surrendered; and the members of tribes subjugated by those about to be attacked. As a Shamanist who lacked religious fervour and believed in the right to worship freely, in 1218 Chinggis proclaimed to his subjects a policy of religious toleration. He saw the wisdom of allowing religious freedom, recognising what a powerful part of society was its religious belief, as when Teb Tenggeri challenged his authority. 17 The Catholic inquisitors of Europe,’ wrote the historian Gibbon, ‘…might have been confounded by the example of a barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of philosophy and established by his laws a system of pure theism and perfect toleration.’ 18 This policy of toleration and respect for all 14 See Section 169. 15 See Section 141