The shamans came beating their drums and twirling wildly so that the long ribbons attached to their clothes seemed to lift them off the ground and made them appear to be flying in the wind. Young boys came with their heads freshly shaved for the summer and riding the finest horses, which they planned to race in the summer games that would celebrate the new nation. The girls came with pails of milk into which they dipped a long stick to throw milk into the air. Old men came with their magical rocks that they could clap together and control the weather, ushering in the ideal mixture of sun and occasional rain.
Perhaps weary from generations of feuding and anxious for peace, or perhaps just fearful of the power of Genghis Khan if they rejected him yet again, the leaders of virtually every tribe on the Mongolian Plateau arrived. They came as Tatars, Naiman, Merkid, Jurkin, Kereyid, and dozens of other names, but all those ancient and exalted designations would now be abandoned if they chose to become vassals of Genghis Khan. From this summer forward, they would all be a part of the nation that they had despised, derided, and scorned for so long: Mongol.
The people celebrated with great feasts of meat, an endless supply of fermented milk, and the usual Mongol sports of horse racing, archery, and wrestling. As the people amused themselves, Genghis Khan attended to the deadly serious business of organizing his army into the supreme weapon with which he would conquer the world. He created the new law and established a supreme judge to preside over its implementation. He rewarded his friends, allies, brothers, mother, and even strangers who had performed outstanding services for him.
Oddly, one of the first pressing pieces of business was a divorce, and even stranger was the reluctance with which Genghis Khan felt compelled to make it. His former ally Jaka Gambu had perceived Genghis Khan as the means by which he, Jaka Gambu, would replace his brother Ong Khan as the supreme leader on the steppe. Although he had married his daughter Ibaka to Genghis Khan, Jaka Gambu had no intention of sharing power, and after the defeat of Ong Khan, the two allies quickly turned against each other. The marriage had been made for political reasons, and when Jaka Gambu betrayed the Mongols, Genghis Khan’s marriage with the rebel’s daughter needed to be broken for political reasons.
In separating from her, Genghis Khan made one of the most emotional statements recorded in his life when he said, “You have entered into my heart and limbs.” He had to divorce her to show that even the Great Khan obeyed the laws and yielded his personal desires to the needs of the state. “I did not say that you have a bad character,” he explained to her, nor that “in looks and appearance you are ugly.” He made the best possible marriage he could for her outside of his family by marrying her to one of his top generals and closest friends. “I present you to Jurchedei in deference to the great principle.” To show the sincerity of his words and his high regard for her, he allowed her to keep her rank as queen, and he ordered his family to always honor her fully as a queen, as though she were still married to him. He ordered that even after his death they should treat her as his queen so they would remember that they, as he, must obey the law. “In the future, when my descendants sit on our throne, mindful of the principle regarding services that have thus been rendered, they should not disobey my words.” As a further kindness toward Ibaka and her sister Sorkhokhtani, he allowed the latter to remain married to young Tolui, a decision that would later have dramatic consequences for the imperial dynasty.
Having punished one rival, Genghis Khan set about rewarding those who had been most loyal to him. His most pressing task as the new ruler of all the tribes was to divide up all the conquered lands and assign rulers to them. He did not give these lands to his sons or his generals; he gave all of them to his wives.
Each wife would rule her own territory and manage her own independent ordo, “court” (sometimes written as ordu). Borte Khatun received most of the Kherlen River, much of which had once belonged to the Tatars, with her ordo at Khodoe Aral near the Avarga stream that had formerly been held by the Jurkin clan. Khulan Khatun received the Khentii Mountains around Mount Burkhan Khaldun, which was the Mongol homeland. Yesui Khatun received the Tuul River, including the summer ordo of the Kereyid ruler, Ong Khan. Her elder sister, Yesugen Khatun, received the Khangai Mountains, which had been the territory of the Naiman.
Genghis Khan handed over the already conquered territories to his wives because now he was about to begin a new round of conquests, and for this he needed a new set of allies. A major part of the work that summer consisted in granting new marriages, ratifying marriages that had already been agreed to, and formally sanctifying some that had already occurred. He had won the wars by fighting, but now Genghis Khan sought to ensure peace through a thick network of marriage alliances. Traditionally, steppe khans took a wife from each of their vassal clans, but Genghis Khan never had more than four wives at a time. Borte always remained the chief one, and her children assumed precedence over all others.
Rather than taking a large number of wives, Genghis Khan sought to make marriage alliances for his children instead. Having twice failed to negotiate new alliances through marriages to his eldest son and daughter, he returned to a safer option. He negotiated another union with an already trusted ally, Botu of the Ikires, who had married Genghis Khan’s sister, Temulun. Genghis Khan arranged for his eldest daughter, Khojin, to marry Botu.
This time Genghis Khan had no trouble negotiating marriages for his sons and daughters. He married three of his daughters to Mongols in the traditional system of qudas, marriage alliances. The three grooms were related to his mother, Hoelun, and his wife Borte. In addition to Khojin, a daughter married a relative of his wife Borte, and his fifth daughter, Tumelun, married another of his mother’s relatives, though this marriage caused some confusion for chroniclers because of the similarity of her name to Genghis Khan’s sister, Temulun.
Most of the participants in the khuriltai of 1206 came from the steppes, but a few delegations from the world beyond also participated; among these were Genghis Khan’s newfound allies, the Onggud. The fortuitous meeting with the merchant Hassan at Baljuna had evidently made as deep an impression on the Onggud as it had on Genghis Khan, because some of them also became his followers. The decisive test for this impromptu alliance between the Mongols and the Onggud had come in 1205, two years after the Baljuna rescue. After rallying his followers to defeat the Tatars and the Kereyid, Genghis Khan faced only a single powerful confederation left on the steppes, the Naiman. The Naiman leader dispatched envoys to Ala-Qush, an Onggud leader, to woo him away from Genghis Khan and join them in a war against the upstart Mongols. Such an alliance might have been able to crush the newly emerging nation from opposite sides, or at least keep it from expanding further. Ala-Qush not only rejected the Naiman offer of an alliance but sent envoys to warn Genghis Khan of a planned Naiman trap.
According to tradition, when the Onggud envoys approached the camp of Genghis Khan, they brought with them a gift from civilization; this time it was wine made from grapes, a commodity previously unknown to the Mongols, but one destined to have a major impact on them and the success of their world empire. In recognition of their unique relationship, Genghis Khan agreed to a future marriage between his daughter Alaqai Beki and the son of Ala-Qush of the Onggud.