The Secret History of the Mongol Queens

In honoring the supernatural power of the Earth, and therefore her lakes and rivers, as the source of success, Genghis Khan’s Mongols displayed a strong cultural and spiritual association with the female element of water. Before his nation became renowned as the Mongol Empire, his people were often called “Water Mongols,” a name that seemed distinctly inappropriate for a people who inhabited an environment as dry as the Mongolian Plateau and situated so far from the ocean. European maps of Asia persistently identified his tribe by the name Water Mongols or its Turkish translation, Suu Mongol. This unusual designation continued to appear on Western maps until late in the seventeenth century, but seemingly without awareness of the name’s connection to the important role that the Mongols ascribed to the female power of water as the life-giving substance of Mother Earth.

Years earlier, when his small tribe chose him to be their leader, Genghis Khan had chosen to receive the honor in a spiritually balanced place between the female Blue Lake and the male Black Heart Mountain. Now he would again choose such a spiritually balanced place where he would ask all the tribes of the steppe to accept him as their supreme ruler.

Rivers and mountains not only had a name and gender, they bore honorific titles as well. Mountains were the bones of the Earth and male, and the highest mountain always had the title of khan. Rivers and lakes that never ran dry bore the title khatun, “queen,” and the Onon at the birthplace of the Mongols was called mother. Genghis Khan summoned the tribes to meet at the headwaters of the Onon River near Burkhan Khaldun. Here by the father mountain and the mother river, he would create the Mongol Empire.

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The Growling Dragon and the Dancing Peacock

“WILL THEY COME? WILL THEY COME?” For the nomadic tribes of the Mongolian Plateau in the late winter and spring of 1206, that was the big question.

Weary of the constant feuding, bickering, and raiding, Genghis Khan had sent out messengers to convene a khuriltai, a large political meeting or parliament of the steppes, with the purpose of getting allies and potential rivals alike to officially accept his leadership, thus allowing him to proclaim a permanent peace under a new government.

If they came, he would reorganize them into new tribes, issue new laws, and proclaim a new nation. In return, he promised peace among the tribes with greater prosperity and prestige for them all. During more than two decades of fighting, Genghis Khan had tenaciously proved his ability on the battlefield by conquering every tribe on the steppe and destroying their ruling clan, but could he now control them?

No formal vote would be held at the khuriltai; the nomads voted by coming or by not coming. Their arrival constituted an affirmation of support for Genghis Khan and the new government; not coming made them his enemies. Most of the people had fought on his side; some had fought against him. Many had achieved victory with him, and others had been defeated by his Mongol soldiers.

The site for this gathering was chosen with care. He needed a large, wide area with enough water and grass for thousands of animals.

Genghis Khan selected the open steppe between the Onon and Kherlen rivers, south of the sacred mountain Burkhan Khaldun, where he often hid from enemies and found a spiritual refuge. The Mongols inhabited the northern edge of the steppe and the southern side of the more forested hunting areas, and Genghis Khan wanted the meeting to be held in the territory of his birth and the land of his ancestors.

Although the site may have met the specific material requirements, it was a highly unusual place, even a strange one, for the tribes to be asked to gather. No important khuriltai had ever been organized in this area on the mountainous border of the steppe. For thousands of years, back through the great tribal empires of the Turks, Uighurs, and Huns, the focal point of steppe life had been farther to the west near the complex of rivers known as the Orkhon, which formed a more natural crossroads of nomadic routes. From this junction the Huns set out on their treks to distant Europe and India. Here the tribes had always traded foreign goods with the outside world and one another; here they had embraced foreign religions, first Manichaeism and later its twin, Christianity. The tribes along the Orkhon once had small cities, temples, and even a little agriculture. They erected monuments inscribed in Chinese and ancient Turkish nearly five hundred years before the Mongols’ rise to prominence. In his choice of venue, away from the older cultural center, Genghis Khan violated steppe tradition and showed how different he planned the future of the tribes to be.