The Secret History of the Mongol Queens

In contrast to the expansive territorial acquisition favored by prior generations of steppe conquerors, Manduhai pursued a strategy of geographic precision. Better to control the right spot rather than be responsible for conquering, organizing, and running a massive empire of reluctant subjects. Control of the area between the Tuul River and the Orkhon gave her power over central Mongolia; control of Zavkhan gave her power over western Mongolia. Now, rather than trying to conquer and occupy the extensive links of the Silk Route or the vast expanse of China, she sought to conquer just the strategic spot from which to control them.

12

Facing the Wall

MANDUHAI MAY HAVE BEEN THE KHATUN AND BATU Mongke the khan, but by claiming the office of taishi, foreigners such as Ismayil and Beg-Arslan still had a stranglehold on Mongolia by controlling the Gobi and thereby all the trade with China. Not yet strong enough to confront them directly, Manduhai consolidated her authority north of the Gobi. Although she steadily increased her power, ever since Genghis Khan’s conquests more Mongols actually lived south of the Gobi than north. A majority of the Mongols remained loyal to Beg-Arslan and Ismayil rather than to Dayan Khan and Manduhai.

To make Dayan Khan ruler of the whole people, as promised in his title, Manduhai had to win the loyalty of the southern Mongols. Unable at this juncture to mount a military offensive across the Gobi, she chose a more sensible, but still risky, plan. For now, she would let the massive Chinese army contend with Beg-Arslan and his aggression in the hope that they might crush him. The danger, however, was that if the Chinese could not defeat him, Beg-Arslan might emerge with an even stronger claim to being the right ruler for all the Mongols.

Beg-Arslan and Ismayil turned their attention away from Mongolia because the continued crumbling of the Ming defenses presented them with new raiding opportunities. Under Beg-Arslan’s control, the southern Mongol army was gradually nibbling away at the Chinese borders, pushing back the Ming forces. Under its weak and distracted emperor, the Ming Dynasty had become an empire in retreat. Beg-Arslan sensed that he might now make his biggest conquest by challenging the Ming for command of the Gansu Corridor and thereby the doorway into China. To occupy the corridor, he needed to attack the Chinese stronghold at Yinchuan, the main city of modern Ningxia. This was the final place besieged by Genghis Khan back in 1227, and it was near here that he died. Thus, in addition to its tremendous strategic and commercial value for anyone seeking to dominate trade, the whole area had acquired deep symbolic importance in the cultural psyche of the Mongols.

If Beg-Arslan could seize this place so closely associated with the memory of Genghis Khan, he would have all the greater hold on the Mongols serving around him. Manduhai’s claim to legitimacy derived from the blood link of Dayan Khan to Genghis Khan, but if Beg-Arslan controlled such an important site, it would show that Genghis Khan and the Eternal Blue Sky supported him. Victory in battle would always surpass any other type of legitimacy. Beg-Arslan could claim the mandate of Mongol history.

Beg-Arslan’s strongholds at the Turfan and Hami oases were too far out in the desert to function as supply bases for the conquest of Ningxia and control of the Gansu Corridor. He had moved his troops much closer to his target, into a great loop in the Yellow River. The immense river, known to the Mongols as the Black River, to the Turkic people as the Green River, and to most of the world as the Huang Ho or Yellow River, begins its nearly three-thousand-mile journey toward the sea from the Kunlun Mountains in Tibet, flowing north across the Asian continent. Without an obstacle blocking its course, the river could continue northward across Mongolia and Siberia and out to the Arctic, but the giant Gobi and the massive Mongolian Plateau bar its way. The river forms a large loop before turning eastward and heading to the Pacific instead of the Arctic.

The land enclosed by the Great Loop covers about 83,000 square miles, or an area about the same size as the Korean Peninsula. The river provides for agriculture along its sides if irrigated, but the interior area can only support grazing. The topography consists of a plateau that rises up to an average altitude over three thousand feet.