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.
4
Queens at War and Commerce
WITH 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.