The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire Read Online Free

without concern for personalbenefit or even survival. Unlike the Greek heroes, who were males of superhuman physical strength, the
baatar
might be male or female, young or old, and frequently, as in this case, only a child. Most important, a
baatar
might spring from any family, but, in Genghis Khan’s experience, the
baatuud
rarely came from rich families or aristocratic and powerful clans. He placed such importance on the spirit of the
baatuud
that he built his military and political system around them. The ideal government for him was rule by these heroic elites, by a true aristocracy of the spirit.
    In this regard, Genghis Khan differed remarkably from those around him who believed in a natural aristocracy of birth. These old clans had dominated the steppe tribes for generations and claimed power as a birthright earned by the actions of their ancestors. More than any other barrier, this attitude and the actions derived from it had held Genghis Khan back in life. The aristocracy of birth had been his eternal enemy, and he sought to defeat it through his assembly of heroes: the aristocracy of brave spirits, the
baatuud
.
    All his life, Genghis Khan had been treated as an outsider, as an inferior underling. The Mongols were interlopers onto the steppe. They were hunters from a far northern land of lakes and forests, where they had originally lived in temporary cone-shaped tents made of bark. Over the generations they had gradually moved out of the forests in the area of Mount Burkhan Khaldun at the source of the Onon and Kherlen rivers in the north-central region of modern Mongolia.
    When the hunting was bad, they scavenged off the herding tribes, stealing animals, women, and whatever else they could before dashing back to the security of their mountainous hideouts. The older Turkic steppe tribes had herded for many centuries, and they looked down on the primitive Mongols, treating them as vassals and expecting them to bring forest gifts of fur and game. They found the Mongols sometimes useful as warriors to help them in a raid, or to herd their animals, and they sometimes stole women from them. Overall, however, the sophisticatedherding tribes of the Tatars, Naiman, and Kereyid despised the Mongols.
    With round faces, high cheekbones, and legs markedly bowed from their life on horseback, the Mongols’ appearance set them apart from their Asian neighbors. They had extremely pale skin, kept lubricated by cleaning with animal fat, and had almost no body hair, leading a South Asian chronicler to write that the Mongols “looked like so many white demons.” From frequent exposure to the bitter cold, their cheeks became so red through the nearly translucent skin that they were described as having “faces like fire.”
    They had wide mouths and large teeth of a uniform size, which, because of the lack of starches in the diet, did not rot or become discolored. Aside from skin color, the most distinctive Mongol trait was the eye shape. Several Chinese commentators remarked on the unusual eyelids of the Mongols, because these nomads did not have a crease or fold. Only late in life, or when they became tired, did a large wrinkle or fold begin to appear in the skin covering the eye. Persian observers referred to the Mongols as having “cat eyes.” Another Muslim chronicler wrote that “their eyes were so narrow and piercing that they might have bored a hole in a brazen vessel.”
    Queen Gurbesu of the Christian Naiman tribe to the west summed up the attitude of civilized steppe people toward the Mongols: “The Mongols have always stunk and worn filthy clothes. They live far away; let them stay there.” Only begrudgingly did she acknowledge some potential use for the Mongol women. “Perhaps we can bring their daughters here, and if they wash their hands we might let them milk our cows and sheep.”
    In this marginal and insignificant tribe, Genghis Khan grew up in an insignificant family of outcasts. He was born the son of a