The Secret History of the Mongol Queens

As part of the wedding ceremony, a Mongol bride stood in front of her new ger and put on the boqta, the tall headgear of a queen. She also put on all her jewelry. Before entering the ger, she walked between two large fires that sanctified her so that she might enter her marriage in the purest possible state. The marriage happened without much ceremony, but for eight days afterward, people brought presents to the couple. On the eighth day, the family would host a grand feast. As described by Pétis de la Croix, “These feasts seldom end without some quarrel, because they are too profuse of their liquors.”

The husband had to have a place prepared for his new wife. In one episode in which a khan brought in a new queen for whom he had not yet prepared a home, he sought to bring her to the ger of his senior wife. Out of hospitality for the younger woman, the elder queen did not at first object and she went to sleep, apparently without suspecting that the couple might try to consummate the marriage at that time.

However, during the night the khan became amorous with his bride. The older queen, sleeping nearby, awoke. “How shall I watch you two enjoying each other in bed?” she angrily asked them.

Although it was night, the senior queen ordered them out. “Leave my ger!” Since there was no other ger in the vicinity, the khan and his younger wife had to spend the night outside in the open. The next day, the khan was able to make arrangements to move the young queen in with some of his relatives until he could prepare her a place of her own. In the ger, the wife ruled even if her husband happened to be a khan.

Her first felt home came from her husband’s family, but through the years she would gradually add to it by unrolling the insulating blankets, called the “mother felt,” and pounding in new wool to make a series of fresh coverings, called the “daughter felts.” In this way her hands, her perspiration, and her soul became a part of the felt, and the ger became more and more hers. Eventually, her sheets of daughter felt would help to make new gers for her daughters-in-law; in this way, from generation to generation, the walls of each generation would be made from all the women who had married into the family through all the generations.

During the festivities and business of the summer of 1206, Genghis Khan gave a lengthy speech praising young Altani, who had saved the life of Tolui, and arranged for her marriage to Boroghul, one of the orphans whom his mother had adopted. Of his three brothers, four sons, and four stepbrothers, Genghis Khan singled out only Boroghul as a baatar, or hero. When he was a young warrior of about seventeen years old, Boroghul had rescued Genghis Khan’s third son, Ogodei, from the battlefield, after the prince had been shot and fallen off his horse, passing out from a lack of blood. Despite the close presence of enemies, Boroghul nursed Ogodei through the night, continuously sucking the blood from his neck and thereby preventing infection or blood poisoning. When dawn came, Boroghul loaded Ogodei onto his horse and, holding him tightly, managed to evade enemy patrols, bringing him safely home to his father.

The speech about Altani’s bravery and the shorter mention of Boroghul’s similar courage not only highlighted their status as heroes, but it also gently reminded Genghis Khan’s own sons of their lack of achievement. His sons, even in adulthood, were still the objects of rescue, not the rescuers. They depended on others for heroism that they still had not shown. Sadly for Genghis Khan, they never would.

At the marriage of each of his daughters, Genghis Khan issued a nuptial decree making clear her responsibilities and, more important to everyone else, what her rights and powers would be. He spoke the words directly to his daughter (or in a few later cases had the text read to her on his behalf), but the true audience was not the daughter as much as the people whom she would soon join. He made no such proclamations at the weddings of his sons, and conferred no special powers or responsibilities on them beyond the normal expectations of a husband at marriage. The series of speeches to his daughters, however, provide cogent insight into his thinking and to the role that they would play in the empire. As a hint at just what innovative type of empire he intended to create, he conferred no powers on his sons-in-law in these decrees, and in fact chose not to mention them by name or address any comments to them.

Persian and Chinese chroniclers recorded the speeches for the later marriages, but the speech to his first daughter, Khojin, was apparently lost or possibly censored. One small speech survived from this time, attributed to Genghis Khan at the marriage of Altani. These words reflect his thinking at the time of his first daughter’s marriage, and it is likely that he spoke similar words at her wedding.