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

captured woman and was given the name Temujin because his father had recently killed a Tatar warrior by that name. His father belonged to the Borijin clan, and although they had once had an independent khan, they now served as virtual vassals for hire for whoever needed them. Before the boy was nine years old, the Tatars had killed his father, buthis own Mongol relatives committed the worst offenses against Temujin’s family. Feeling no responsibility for this captive wife and her brood of children, his uncles seized his dead father’s animals and cast the widow and children out on the steppe to die of hunger and exposure in the brutal winter. When they survived against all odds, young Temujin was captured by the Tayichiud clan, who enslaved him and yoked him to a wooden collar like an ox. After escaping from bondage, he fled to the most isolated place he could find to care for his mother and siblings.
    Living as a pariah with three brothers and two half brothers, but only one much younger sister, Temujin grew up surrounded by boys in a household oddly bereft of adult men or girls. From the beginning of his life, Temujin’s male relatives repeatedly failed him and threatened his life at the most critical moments. At age twelve, Temujin so intensely disliked the bullying of his older half brother that he killed him.
    Around 1179 he married Borte, a girl from a steppe clan distantly related to his mother, when he was about sixteen and she was seventeen. Although the couple expected to spend their lives together, enemies from the Merkid tribe stormed down on them, kidnapped Borte, and gave her to another man. Desperate to rescue his new wife, Temujin tracked and saved Borte, killing a large number of Merkid in the process, revealing a tenacious spirit and a nearly ruthless willingness to use whatever violence necessary to achieve his goals.
    The kidnapping of Borte initiated young Temujin into steppe politics, with its perpetual low-grade hostility interrupted by spasms of amazing violence and destruction. In order to rescue Borte from the Merkid, Temujin made alliances with Ong Khan of the Kereyid tribe, the most powerful steppe chief at the moment, and with his childhood friend Jamuka. With new allies came new enemies, and the boy who had been raised as an outcast on the steppe found himself thrust into the maelstrom of dynastic struggles, clan feuds, and all the desperate treachery of steppe politics.
    For the Kereyid, Temujin was, like his father and all men of hisBorijin clan, just one more Mongol vassal to be sent out to war when needed and consigned to perform the tasks that were too dangerous or boring. Temujin thought that through his extreme loyalty and his success in battle, he would gain the favor of his overlords.
    Traditionally among the steppe nomads, related lineages united to form a clan, and, in turn, several clans united to form a tribe such as the Tatars or the Kereyid, or even a confederacy of tribes such as the Naiman. Although contracting or expanding over time, these unions lasted for generations and sometimes centuries. The Mongols repeatedly sought to unite into a tribe under one khan, but the union always failed. The Mongols were not so much a tribe as a roving set of fractious clans sharing the same language and culture but often fighting one another. Even within the same clan, families often feuded, broke away, and joined rival clans or enemy tribes.
    Temujin’s mother was not a Mongol, and his connection to her gave him a perceived opportunity to rise up in the steppe world by negotiating a formal marriage alliance with his mother’s family in the Khongirad clan. Around 1184, when he was about twenty-two years old, Temujin arranged a marriage for Temulun, his only sister, with Botu of the Ikires. Such a marriage alliance would strengthen the tie between the two clans in the traditional way and showed Temujin’s desire to maintain permanent marital alliances, known as
quda
. Because Temujin was