Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (10 page)

Temujin saw clearly how the powerful Jurched kingdom used one border tribe to fight another. One year, they might ally with the Tatars against the Kereyid, but the next year with the Kereyid and Mongols against the Tatars. Today’s allies could be tomorrow’s enemies, as in the case of Jamuka, and a tribe conquered today would have to be conquered again and again in a ceaseless cycle of warfare and feuding. No victory was ever decisive, no peace permanent. This lesson would eventually have a profound effect on the new world Temujin would fashion out of this havoc, but for now the vicissitudes of this particular war had brought an unprecedented number of goods to his people and had improved his standing among them.

Temujin still had a struggle ahead of him against Jamuka for control of the Mongols. The wealth looted from the Tatars attracted more followers; he now began to increase his power over other Mongol lineages and to expand into their territories. He could not expand into the area of the great tribes, but he could push out the smaller ones such as the Jurkin, a small Mongol lineage located immediately to the south of Temujin’s group along the Kherlen River.

When Temujin had agreed to fight the Tatars, he had enlisted the help of his Jurkin relatives, who had initially agreed to join him. But when Temujin was prepared to leave for the campaign, he waited for six days for the Jurkin to arrive, and they never did. Just as with a
khuriltai,
where showing up counted as a vote of support, not showing up to organize raids constituted a vote of no confidence in the raid’s leader—in this case Temujin. Relations between the Jurkin and Temujin’s followers had been strained before. Like almost everyone around them, the Jurkin lineage outranked Temujin’s lineage, and they often treated Temujin and his followers with scorn. One colorful story told in the
Secret History
reveals the animosity that had developed between the groups.

Temujin had invited the Jurkin to a feast, shortly before the Tatar campaign was to begin, but a chaotic brawl erupted when Temujin’s half brother was assaulted in an especially demeaning way. Belgutei was the appointed guardian of the horses for Temujin’s band, and he stood watch over them as the feast got under way. When a man, apparently from the Jurkin group, attempted to steal one of the horses, Belgutei chased him, but was stopped by another Jurkin known as Buri the Wrestler. As a sign that he stood ready to fight Buri, Belgutei pulled the top of his clothing down, leaving most of his upper body exposed. Rather than wrestle Belgutei, as would have been the custom in a disagreement among equals, Buri treated Belgutei with contempt as a lesser by unsheathing his sword and slicing Belgutei across the shoulder with it. To draw blood in this manner, even with just a small cut, constituted a grave insult. Learning of what had taken place outside by the horses, the drunken guests began fighting among themselves. As was customary, they had entered the feast without their weapons; so the guests began throwing the dishes of food at one another, and clubbing each other with the paddles used to stir the fermented mare’s milk that had been consumed in great quantity.

Not only had the Jurkin failed to join Temujin’s force in the fight against the Tatars, they now took advantage of Temujin’s absence by raiding his base camp, killing ten of his followers and stripping the remainder of their clothes and other possessions. So when Temujin sought to expand his territory of rule in the wake of victory against the Tatars, the Jurkin were the first he struck out against. He launched his campaign against them in 1197, and in a testament to his now well-honed skills as a warrior and commander, he easily defeated them. At this point, Temujin instituted the second radical change in ruling style—the first being the appointment of loyal allies as opposed to family members to key positions in his entourage—that would mark his rise to power.

In the long history of steppe warfare, a defeated tribe was looted, some members taken prisoner, and the rest left again to their own devices. Defeated groups regularly reorganized and counterattacked, or broke away and joined rival tribes. In his defeat of the Jurkin, however, Temujin followed a radical new policy that revealed his ambition to fundamentally alter the cycle of attack and counterattack and of making and breaking alliances. He summoned a
khuriltai
of his followers to conduct a public trial of the Jurkin’s aristocratic leaders for having failed to fulfill their promise to join him in war and for having, instead, raided his camp in his absence. Finding them guilty, he had them executed as a lesson about the value of loyalty to allies, but also as a clear warning to the aristocrats of all lineages that they would no longer be entitled to special treatment. He then took the unprecedented step of occupying the Jurkin lands and redistributing the remaining members of their group among the households of his own clan. Though some among both clans apparently interpreted this as the Jurkin being taken as slaves, as would have been more in keeping with steppe custom, according to the account in the
Secret History,
Temujin took them into his tribe not as slaves but as members of the tribe in good standing. He symbolized this by adopting an orphan boy from the Jurkin camp and presenting him to Hoelun to raise in her
ger
not as a slave but as her son. By having his mother adopt the Jurkin boy, as he had her previously adopt one each from the defeated Merkid, Tayichiud, and Tatars, Temujin was accepting the boys as his younger brothers. Whether these adoptions began for sentimental reasons or for political ones, Temujin displayed a keen appreciation of the symbolic significance and practical benefit of such acts in uniting his followers through this usage of fictive kinship. In the same way that he took these children into his own family, he accepted the conquered people into his tribe with the possibility that they would share fairly in the future conquests and prosperity of his army.

In a final display of his new power, Temujin ended the Jurkin episode with a feast for both the victorious Mongols and their newly adopted relatives. For the feast, he summoned Buri the Wrestler, who had cut Belgutei at the feast the year before, and ordered a wrestling match between the two men. No one had ever defeated Buri, but in his fear of Temujin’s wrath, he allowed Belgutei to throw him. Normally, at this point the match would have been finished, but Temujin and Belgutei apparently worked out a different plan. Belgutei seized Buri’s shoulders and mounted his rump like a horse, and upon receiving a signal from Temujin, he plunged his knee into Buri’s back and snapped his spinal cord. Belgutei then dragged Buri’s paralyzed body outside the camp, leaving him to die alone.

Temujin had rid himself of all the leaders of the Jurkin. The messages were clear to all their related clans on the steppe. To those who followed Temujin faithfully, there would be rewards and good treatment. To those who chose to attack him, he would show no mercy.

After defeating the Jurkin, he moved his followers downstream on the Kherlen into their territory. Temujin made his new base camp near the confluence of the smaller Tsenker River with the Kherlen. Eventually, this became his capital known as Avarga, but at this time, it was only a remote camp. The land between two rivers was called
aral,
“island,” in Mongolian. Because the island between the Tsenker and Kherlen Rivers offered a wide open pasture, they called it the Khodoe Aral, which in modern Mongolian means “Country Island” but in classical Mongolian carried the meaning “Barren Island,” and that name is an apt description for this isolated place in the midst of a large, open, and treeless prairie.

Barren as Avarga may have been, it constitutes on a grand scale the steppe herder’s ideal home territory. Herders desire a
ger
that faces south in order to admit the light and warmth of the southern sun through the entryway as well as to prevent the cold northern winds from entering. They want to face water, but not be too close. A thirty-minute walk from the river seems to be the right distance to avoid polluting it with too much human waste. That distance also provides protection from the summer insects and flash floods that sometimes rage along the river plains. In addition to these advantages, Avarga was still close to the place of Temujin’s birth and to the sacred mountain Burkhan Khaldun, which rose about 130 miles upstream at the headwaters of the Kherlen River. Avarga offered all of this, and from 1197 to the end of his life, it served as Temujin’s operations base.

Although Temujin’s followers prospered for four years in their new home as the size of his tribe continued to grow, Jamuka refused to recognize his leadership, and increasingly became the rallying figure for the aristocratic clans who did not like the changes Temujin was bringing to their traditional way of life. In 1201, the Year of the Cock, Jamuka made a play, with their support, for the position of ruler of all the Mongol people. In a challenge to both Temujin and Ong Khan, Jamuka summoned a
khuriltai
that conferred upon him the ancient and honored title of Gur-ka or Gur-khan, which meant chief of all chiefs or khan of all khans. His people swore a new oath of loyalty to him, and to sanctify the oath, they cut up one stallion and one mare in sacrifice.

Jamuka had not chosen the ancient title merely because it was old; he had a more directly sinister motive. The last khan to bear the title of Gur-Khan had been Ong Khan’s uncle, who had ruled the Kereyid people until Ong Khan revolted against him and killed him and his brothers. It was during this revolt that Temujin’s father, Yesugei, became the ally of Ong Khan. By choosing this title, Jamuka was publicly challenging the power of Ong Khan as well as his subordinate, Temujin.

If Jamuka could win this war, he would be the supreme ruler of the central steppe. He had on his side the important and aristocratic clans such as the Tayichiud, to which Temujin’s family had once been subservient and who had enslaved Temujin when he was a boy. The struggle that began to shape up between the two Mongol factions portended to be more than just a series of raids for loot and captives; it would be a death struggle between Jamuka and Temujin for leadership of all the Mongols. As the sponsor for Temujin, Ong Khan organized his warriors and came out to personally lead the campaign against Jamuka.

The primary objective of such campaigns was never to have to actually fight a battle at all but instead to frighten the other side by overwhelming force so that they would flee. To induce this fear, the steppe warriors relied on many tactics. One of those was the display of the Spirit Banners of the opposing leaders and their ancestors. Before battle, the warriors made animal sacrifices before the Spirit Banners as an offering to their guiding spirits and to their ancestors. Such spiritual dramas whipped up emotions and heightened tension. A lineage on one side would find it very difficult to fight if kinsmen on the other side had paraded the Spirit Banner of their common ancestor. That would be tantamount to attacking one’s own grandfather.

The prebattle propaganda also involved shamans with their drums and all their ritual paraphernalia. Before the battle, the rival shamans foretold the future by reading the cracks in the burned shoulder bones of sheep. The presence of a shaman showed that he had forecast victory for his side, and the power of that forecast depended on his past reputation for choosing the winning side. Temujin had already attracted a number of shamans who revealed dreams to him, including one named Teb Tengeri, who would later play an important role. The shamans added to the occasion by climbing up on a promontory to pound their drums and beat magical rocks with which they could summon supporting spirits and control the weather. The objective was to entice warriors on the other side to defect to the superior side or to flee.

When Jamuka pitted his army against the Kereyid, the numerical advantage clearly belonged to Ong Khan and Temujin. The psychological advantage of Temujin’s cadre of respected shamans strengthened his position, especially after a tremendous storm erupted with intense thunder and lightning that both sides attributed to the magic of the shamans. Many of Jamuka’s followers fled in fright, forcing Jamuka to retreat. Ong Khan’s warriors chased after Jamuka and the main part of his army, and he ordered Temujin to follow the Tayichiud as they fled back toward the Onon River, the land where Temujin had grown up and which he knew well.

When Temujin caught up with the Tayichiud, they proved more difficult to defeat than expected. The steppe mode of warfare consisted primarily of shooting arrows at one another from horseback or from fixed positions behind the protection of rocks—or in the case of the wooded Onon area, hastily assembled log barricades. When fighting, the steppe warriors sought to avoid being splattered by blood, so they rarely fought close to one another in hand-to-hand combat. The breath or odor of the enemy carried a part of his soul, and thus warriors sought to avoid the contamination of even smelling their enemy. The attackers swarmed down toward their enemies on horseback, firing arrows rapidly as they approached, then turned and continued firing as they fled. Sometimes the defenders rode out with long poles with which they tried to dismount their opponents and then shoot them as they stumbled back to their feet.

Temujin’s army and the Tayichiud fought all day without either side gaining a clear advantage, though Temujin’s forces apparently instilled the greater fear of defeat in their foes. According to the account in the
Secret History,
late in the day, an arrow pierced Temujin Khan’s neck. As darkness fell, the two opposing armies laid down their arms and made camp close to each other on the same field where they had spent the day fighting. Though this may seem strange, by staying close together during the night, they could more effectively watch each other and prevent a surprise attack.

Though Temujin’s wound was not deep, he lost consciousness after sunset. Such wounds carried a high risk of infection, or possibly poison had been applied to the arrow. His loyal follower Jelme, the next in command, stayed by his side throughout the evening and sucked the blood from the wound. In order to prevent offending the earth by spitting the blood on the ground, Jelme swallowed it. In addition to the religious reasons for his acts, hiding the blood had the practical value of preventing the other warriors from seeing how great the blood loss was. Only when Jelme was too full to swallow any more and the blood began trickling down from his mouth did he begin to spit it onto the ground.