Authors: Jack Weatherford
Marco Polo wrote that these people called themselves Ung, which is the singular form of the name Onggud. He, however, preferred to
call them by their more official designation as the Tenduc, his rendering in Latin letters of the title of Tiande Jun, referring to the militarized border zone where they lived. After the travels of Marco Polo, the Onggud became known in the West as the Tenduc. As Dutch map-makers began to chart the most distant parts of the Asian interior, they consistently used this name, giving the tribe a prominent position located in various places from the Pacific Coast to the Arctic Sea.
Through contacts with the civilizations of China and the Silk Route, the Onggud developed an early tradition of literacy long before the Mongols and most of the other steppe tribes. Depending upon the political climate and the changing weather patterns, they sometimes farmed and other times herded. They lived in settled communities and occasionally built cities, but then returned to nomadic life when necessary or advantageous. The combination of agricultural and herding lifestyles provided the materials for their most desired trade goods. They manufactured and marketed camlet, a luxuriously soft fabric made from a combination of fine camel hair from the steppe and silk from China in the south.
Onggud leaders exercised a special skill for detecting and befriending the next rising power on the steppe. The success of their leaders derived from their demonstrated ability to make themselves useful enough that each new dynasty needed their immediate assistance against the steppe tribes. At no time did the Onggud skill in picking the future power become more obvious, or more advantageous to them, than when they allied with the rising conqueror Genghis Khan and his Mongols. Yet the decision lacked unanimity, and Onggud opinion divided sharply between those who favored the new alliance and those who wanted to preserve their older relationship with the richer and far better established Jin Dynasty of the Jurched.
The movement of Alaqai Beki off the Mongolian Plateau began Genghis Khan’s expansion into the vast civilizations and kingdoms south of the Gobi. Cities and kingdoms stretched out in a seemingly infinite array before the Mongols: the Jurched kingdom with its millions of Chinese peasants and craftsmen; the small but productive
kingdoms of Korea; the exotic and mystic land of Tibet; the degenerate but luxurious miniature Song Empire of South China, the isolated and varied kingdoms of Yunnan, and still more whose names and people remained completely unknown to the Mongols.
Before the Mongols could taste the wealth of any of these distant lands, they needed a beachhead to the south of the Gobi. The Gobi loomed like a large ocean of rock and gravel protecting the southern kingdoms from the northern tribes. Under good conditions, crossing the Gobi required six weeks, but they had to be very carefully chosen weeks. A small error could easily lead to the death of hundreds of warriors and horses.
The Mongols could not cross in the spring because the horses and men were usually too weak to withstand the harsh trip, and the horrific sandstorms of the spring could bury a whole army. Summer was too hot and winter too cold. The fall provided the best weather for travel, but only in years with enough rainfall to supply the minimum needs of grass and water. Even in a good fall season, a miscalculation might see the army severely hampered by an unseasonably late heat wave or, even more likely, an early arrival of winter.
At the end of even the best crossing, the army would be at its weakest and thereby most vulnerable to foreign attack. Crossing in the fall meant that they arrived in the south at the start of winter, a time when Mongols liked to attack, but not an auspicious time for the horses to graze and regain their strength after the hard trek through the Gobi. The army needed a large supply of fresh horses to replace the worn-out ones that would need months to recover, and the men needed food after the deprivations of nearly two months in the desert. While the men and animals recovered, they needed protection from any southern army that might seize this moment to expel them back into the harsh Gobi.
Alaqai overcame each of these obstacles for the Mongol army. By controlling the Onggud lands, she supplied the army with provisions and new horses while protecting it from southern attack. Alaqai’s kingdom was a fortress built in enemy territory.
Because Genghis Khan’s army of about 100,000 soldiers was approximately one-tenth the size of the Jurched’s to the south, he devised a plan that emphasized tactical retreat as much as attack. For such a strategy to succeed, he required a place to which he could withdraw and be guaranteed protection. Alaqai provided that cover for his army. She was both the vanguard of the Mongol army and its security.
Two of Alaqai’s sisters rapidly followed as queens over two other Turkic groups: the Uighurs in what is now the Xinjiang region of western China and the Karluk to the northwest in what is now Kazakhstan. Like soldiers being deployed to the front lines, his daughters were hurriedly assigned to their marriages as Genghis Khan planned a large-scale assault on China.
Genghis Khan’s policy of benign treatment of people who voluntarily joined his empire, plus his harsh treatment of those who resisted, lured many minority groups with a grievance against their rulers to rebel and ask him for help. Despite the strict conditions of military commitment that accompanied membership in the Mongol Empire, Genghis Khan’s cultural and religious tolerance especially attracted people who felt abused by a class of rulers speaking a different language or practicing a different religion than their subjects. The most poignant plea came from the Uighur people, who had originated centuries earlier in the Orkhon River area of central Mongolia but had relocated to the oases of western China in the eighth century.
The Uighurs, many of whom had converted to Islam, had lost their independence to the Kara Kitai under a staunchly Buddhist dynasty, also known as the Western Liao, since they were an offshoot of the Liao Dynasty, which ruled northern China from 926 to 1125. Their Kara Kitai rulers took the region’s wealth to their capital city, Balghasun, on the Chu River to the west of Lake Issyk Kul in modern Kyrgyzstan. In 1209, the Uighurs revolted by killing their local Kara Kitai officials, and the Uighur leader sent a passionate and urgent plea for protection to Genghis Khan. At this time, Genghis Khan was living
along the Kherlen River, preparing for the invasion of China. The Uighur leader had the title
Idiqut
, meaning “Divine Majesty.”
“As if one saw Mother Sun when the clouds disperse,” pleaded the Idiqut’s envoy, according to Mongol history, “as if one came upon the river water when the ice disappears, so I greatly rejoiced when I heard of the fame of Genghis Khan.” The Persian chronicle recorded almost the same words: “It seemed to me as though the sky had been cleared of clouds and the bright sun had come out from behind them and broken up the ice that had frozen on the rivers, and pure clear water could be seen.”
The Idiqut made an exceedingly servile request. “If through your favor,” he said, groveling, “I were to obtain but a ring from your golden belt, but a thread from your crimson coat, I will become your fifth son and will serve you.” The Persian chronicles described the marriage of the Idiqut to Genghis Khan’s daughter Al-Altun as making a slave into a noble.
Twentieth-century Japanese archaeologists working in Gansu Province discovered an inscription in Mongolian and Chinese from the Uighur prince Hindu recounting the history of that family. It gave an additional account of how the Uighur family became
quda
to Genghis Khan, and in so doing provides a few lost details.
“Whereas, by the Protection of Eternal Heaven,” began the inscription, “the Sovereign of the Great Mongol Empire had been predestined to unite all nations … in accordance with the Will of Heaven, had gone campaigning, executing the great work … [and] assembling the nations, the Idiqut of the Uighurs submitted with the people of his realm … under Fortunate Genghis Khan.”
The request to become a fifth son betrayed the true aspiration of the Uighur leader; thus Genghis Khan sent word for the Idiqut to come in person. He came, bringing tribute of “gold, silver, small and big pearls, silks, brocades, damasks, and satins.” In addition to these precious items, he brought gifts of symbolic meaning for the Mongol royal family, which he sought to join through marriage. He brought black sable furs, the gift that Borte had brought with her to Genghis
Khan when they first married, and which he subsequently used to make his first ally, Ong Khan. The Uighur Idiqut also brought white gyrfalcons and white geldings.
Genghis Khan accepted him since he came voluntarily and without a Mongol invasion, “by submitting gracefully without causing the men of the Fortunate Genghis Khan to suffer and without causing his horses to sweat,” according to the inscription. The Idiqut served Genghis Khan faithfully, fighting honorably in several campaigns against the Tangut and Muslims. According to the inscription about him, “He rendered service in gratitude to the Emperor, punishing deeds which were harmful to the Empire; he performed ones which were useful.”
Unlike the accounts of Alaqai Beki’s court, we lack direct reports of how Al-Altun ran the Uighur kingdom; however, the surviving information points to a role similar to that of her sister Alaqai. The bilingual Chinese and Mongolian inscription of Prince Hindu describes the Uighur leader as the one who “protects and defends the state and wards off invasion” for Genghis Khan, and as the barrier “to ward off and repel evil enemies.” The words echo literally the words of the
Secret History
in describing the role of the women of Genghis Khan’s family: They are the shields to defend the empire.
Genghis Khan dispatched his daughter Al-Altun to the Uighurs with a clear message. He told her that, as a Mongol queen, he gave her three husbands. Her nation was her first husband. Her second husband was her own reputation. In third place came the earthly man to whom she was married. Of the three, he wanted it clear that her priority was to her duty and her nation. “If you can take your nation as your husband and serve him very carefully, you will earn your reputation.” If she maintained these priorities, her relations with her flesh-and-blood physical husband would find their own place. “If you can take your reputation as your husband and carefully protect it,” her father explained, “how can the husband who has married you ever forsake you?”
As with all of Genghis Khan’s daughters, it is difficult to know if the name we have for Al-Altun was her birth name or a new name-title, of the kind Genghis Khan often gave his men. Al-Altun, especially
in some of the varied spellings such as Il-qaltun, Il-khaltun, and Il-galtun, appears to be a title. The Mongolian term
il
designated a subordinate people. In the time of Genghis Khan’s grandsons, the Mongols in Persia and Iraq took the name Il-Khanate, meaning “Vice-Khanate,” and the ruler became known as the Il-Khan, or “Viceroy.” Al-Altun seems to be a predecessor to that title, meaning “Vice-Royalty.” The recording of so many of the daughters with names or titles beginning with
Al
further indicates the possibility that several of them were new but related name-titles of this order.
In ruling the Uighur, Al-Altun performed an important function similar to that of Alaqai in the Onggud territory and equally important for the next stage of empire. The Uighurs occupied a series of oases in the desert—including their capital at Besh Baliq, meaning “Five Cities,” northeast of modern Urumqi in western China—as well as the oasis settlement of Turfan, protected by its heavily fortified military base of Gaochang, surrounded by an earthen wall nearly forty feet thick and three miles in circumference. Another wall in the inner core of the city protected the ruler and his military retinue.
The settlements such as Hami and Turfan, scattered far apart across the vast deserts of the Silk Route, formed literal oases of civilization supplying a variety of delicacies from melons and raisins to alcohol. Turfan consisted of a large depression covering an area of about five thousand square miles in one of the most inhospitable places on earth. In the middle of the Eurasian continent, it lay as far from the ocean as any place could be. With two thousand miles separating Turfan from the Pacific Ocean, and much of that desert, the oasis lay much too far away for the Chinese officials to control. At an average altitude of 262 feet below sea level, with some places more than 500 feet below sea level, daily temperatures rose to above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer and fell to well below freezing in the winter. With almost no measurable rainfall, Turfan constituted a virtual Death Valley that sustained life only because farmers managed to irrigate it with underground water.
Over the generations, the inhabitants of this isolated spot found
ways to access snow melting off nearby mountains, which they directed through a system of deeply dug irrigation channels. Under normal circumstances, the high daily temperatures, dry air, and relentless sun would have caused irrigation ditches to quickly run dry. Known as
karez
, and similar to the
qanat
system of Central Asia, Turfan’s irrigation tunnels kept the water from evaporating and carried it wherever it was needed.
A Chinese description of the settlement at Turfan by an earlier Sung envoy in 982 probably applied equally to all the oasis settlements of the Uighur territory: “The area has no rain or snow and is extremely hot, and when the hottest season arrives the inhabitants all move into caves dug in the earth … Their houses are covered with white clay, and water from Jinling, Golden Mountain, flows through them and is circulated through the capital city to water the gardens and turn mills. The area produces the five cereal grains, but it lacks buckwheat. The nobles eat horse-meat and the common people eat goat or fowl.” The report then described the people as “fond of archery and riding.” The women “wear oiled caps…. They are fond of excursions and always take along musical instruments.”
The Uighur aristocracy maintained the nomadic lifestyle with large herds of horses. They summered in their yurts in the Tianshan Mountains and moved back to the oasis cities for cooler months. The peasants under their command stayed in the oases to cultivate melons, fertilizing them with cow dung and covering them with mats at crucial times to protect them from the powerful sun or extreme evaporation from the soil.