Unable to succeed by military force alone, Genghis Khan devised another strategy that depended upon his daughter Alaqai Beki, whom he had promised in marriage to the family of the Onggud leader Ala-Qush. With Alaqai now around sixteen or seventeen years old, he decided to send her to the Onggud.
Alaqai was born to Genghis Khan and Borte around the year 1191, about the time that Borte turned thirty years old. Some scholars believe that her name means “Siberian Marmot,” but others offer a more mysterious origin tied directly to the birth of her father. According to this etymology, the name means “Palm of the Hand,” in reference to some now unknown event at the time of her delivery. Such an origin for the name closely parallels the account of her father’s birth, when Genghis Khan emerged from the womb clutching a small blood clot in the palm of his hand. This was taken as a sign that he would one day rule the world. Whether true or not, the connection of these birth stories for the father and daughter show that some people place her in an important position comparable to his. No such story exists for any other member of the royal family.
Mongol tradition strongly maintains that Borte refused to hand over the rearing of her children to any of the many retainers she acquired as her husband’s power expanded. She and her mother-in-law, Hoelun, are attributed with raising their children, and she, much more than Genghis Khan, instilled in their daughters the duty to serve the nation. Borte came from the Khongirad, and in contrast to the Mongols’ nearly exclusive reliance on force and violence, her tribe had a far more subtle approach to public life and diplomacy. As Borte’s father explained: the Khongirad did not depend on the strength of their sons; they trusted instead in the beauty and cleverness of their daughters to protect them. He said that their daughters rode on carts pulled by black camels, and that they married powerful men and became queens to negotiate, intercede, and protect them. “From ancient time,” he said, “the Khongirad people have queens as our shields.”
Having grown up in the tribe that expected such a role for its daughters, Borte transmitted those same values and expectations to her female offspring. Her daughters were bred to rule.
Alaqai Beki was the first of her Borijin clan to come off the Mongolian Plateau to impose Mongol rule over the sedentary civilization of China. As she rode down the steep embankment that separated the Mongol steppe world from the agricultural and urban world of the Chinese, she faced more than 100 million people who, through generations of fighting, had come to loathe and fear everything she represented.
The steppe society where Alaqai grew up differed markedly from the land she went to rule. The Onggud lived south of the Gobi on the borderland between the zones of herding nomads and the settled farmers of China. They had trading towns surrounded by high, thick walls. They lived in buildings for part of the year and in felt gers for the other part, and they worshiped in temples. The Onggud formed one of the oldest civilizations of northern Asia.
To remove competition against the rule of his daughters, Genghis Khan not only removed their husbands to his army, he dismissed all their other wives. Only the Mongol wife would preside. If the guregen already had wives, he had to divorce them in order to marry a royal Mongol woman, and once married he could not take another wife without a rarely issued dispensation from the Great Khan.
Divorcing the other wives did not impede the status of their children. Unlike societies that employed baroque procedures for distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate children, the Mongols accepted all children as equal. No child could be born without the consent of the Eternal Blue Sky. No earthly law or custom could presume to declare the child illegitimate.
The wives might be dismissed and their power curtailed, but the children, particularly the sons, could not be easily displaced as future sources of power. In other societies, such heirs and potential rivals faced nearly certain death, but Alaqai Beki took control of her husband’s other children in order to protect them, and to keep them close enough to prevent one from being set up as a rival ruler.
Alaqai Beki took literally the Mongol nation’s first step from its pastoral homeland into what would become one of the greatest conquests in Asian history. In his nuptial edict, her father charged her with an amazing mission. In preparation for the coming invasions, he told her: “You should be determined to become one of my feet.” He left no doubt that this was a major military assignment. She was not there merely to administer, but to rule—thereby beginning the expansion of the Mongols from a tribal nation into a global empire. “When I am going on an expedition, you should be my helper, when I am galloping, you should be my steed!”
Despite her youth, the importance of her mission demanded that Alaqai Beki act on her own young judgment. “No friend is better than your own wise heart!” Genghis Khan told her. He elaborated on this need for self-reliance, despite what complaints she might hear from those around her. “Although there are many things you can rely on, no one is more reliable than yourself,” he explained. She held ultimate power, and therefore, ultimate responsibility. “Although many people can be your helper, no one should be closer to you than your own consciousness.” He warned her to be careful because her survival was of the highest importance. “Although there are many things you should cherish, no one is more valuable than your own life.”
He also gave her more fatherly advice to protect herself and to foster good habits. He stressed the importance of constant learning as the key to being a successful ruler. He told her to be “prudent, steadfast, and courageous.” In perhaps his most important words, he said, “You have to remember life is short, but fame is everlasting!”
No Mongolian description survives of the coronation of the Mongol queens. The only hint comes from foreign accounts that Mongols raised their queens up to office while they were seated on a white felt rug, which would make their installation identical with that of a newly proclaimed khan.
The departure from home was simple for Alaqai and for each sister leaving her mother’s ger for a new life far away. The mother and daughter stood in front of the ger, and the daughter presented first her right cheek and then her left so that her mother might sniff each one in the traditional kiss of the Mongols. This sniff would help the mother to remember the smell of the child until they met again. Sometimes the mother declined to sniff the second cheek, saying, “I will sniff the left one when you return.” So great is the power of words that by saying it and visualizing it happening, the mother hoped to ensure that they would meet again.
When the daughter mounted her horse to ride away, she did not look back at the ger of her past but had to stare straight ahead into the future. Borte, like any Mongol mother, watched her daughter ride away but never shed a tear. A Mongol mother was never supposed to cry in the presence of her child. Of all the fluids from a mother’s body, tears were the most dangerous. The mother’s blood gave life to the infant growing in the womb, and her milk nourished the baby after birth. Her saliva moistened the food that the mother chewed and put into the child’s mouth, and she used her urine to wash and sterilize her offspring’s wounds. The tears of a mother, however, contained dangerous power; no matter how great the pain the mother felt, she could not shed them in the presence of the child for fear of causing future harm.
Instead of crying, the mother performed an ancient ritual of the steppe. She brought out a pail of milk, and as her child rode away, she stood before the door of her ger and threw milk into the air with a tsatsal, a wooden instrument resembling a large perforated spoon. With an upward and outward toss of her right arm, the mother waved the tsatsal and aspersed the milk into the air until her child passed out of her sight. The milk constituted a special prayer, and it carried the hope that the mother could pour out a white road ahead of her child. Because a route made of white stones and sand can reflect the moon and stars, it could be traveled at night as well as day. Particularly for Alaqai passing south across the Gobi, night travel would help her animals not to overheat and would thus require less water. A white road offered freedom, but it also posed far greater danger than the usual black road of day. Because it was traveled in the darkness of night, the white road could easily lead into the land of temptation, error, and sin. By sprinkling the milk, the mother reminded her offspring of their obligation to behave properly.