The Secret History of the Mongol Queens

With their central geographic position and their universalistic religions and commerce, the Muslims formed the pivot of civilization, but in recent centuries the frayed world map had been torn into hundreds of shreds and patches ruled by minor aristocrats, warlords, and bandits in a constantly changing kaleidoscope of cruel conquests, forced marriage alliances, and vicious betrayals. Each area consisted of a handful of constantly changing states with its own regional civilization, but they all lagged behind the Muslims on every measure of development. The Vikings controlled a hodgepodge of territories from America to the Mediterranean; the Turks established numerous dynastic kingdoms in Central Asia and India. Only the Arabs could claim to have a truly international civilization.

Yet, by 1206, the Arabs had begun their global retreat. The Turks pressed in on the Arabs from Central Asia, and although they adopted the Arab religion of Islam, they rejected Arab rule. The Europeans had nearly expelled the Arabs from Iberia, and their Christian crusaders mounted a massive challenge to the heart of Islam in the Holy Land.

The Arabs, with the help of Kurds and others, managed to hold the core of the Muslim lands against the Crusaders, but they had been severely wounded and gravely reduced in power.

At the time of the Mongol khuriltai, the knights from the Fourth Crusade were sailing back to Venice and other European ports, having utterly failed in their quest to destroy Islam but having substituted instead a thorough sacking and decimation of the Orthodox Christians of Byzantium. The Crusaders had desecrated, looted, and burned their way through the oldest centers of European civilization. They placed a prostitute on the throne of the Orthodox Patriarch, pulled the gold off the walls of the churches, pried out the jewels from the covers of ancient manuscripts, and then burned the books of the greatest library in the world. They divided ancient treasures and young virgins, including the nuns, among themselves like so many toys. Having destroyed Byzantium, they would soon begin new purges of Jews and smaller crusades against those Europeans who had not yet converted or who dared follow a different interpretation of Christianity than what was authorized in Rome.

Rival clans constantly ripped apart the social fabric of Japan, Korea, Europe, and South Asia, and society convulsed in spasms of violence as one feudal lord fought another. Secular and religious rulers struggled against one another within the same feudal order that pitted all against all; kidnapping and ransoming seemed to be the main occupation. Muslims pushed against Christians in the West, Hindus and Buddhists in the East, and pagans everywhere. Christians fought everyone, but mostly themselves, as bishops attacked bishops, popes excommunicated kings, kings created antipopes.

China would eventually become the center of world civilization during the Mongol era of history, but until then, China’s role had been as a regional power largely isolated from the mainstream, as dynasties and various-sized kingdoms constantly sparred against one another, rarely allowing a single one to dominate for long. As the Mongols gathered in the north, the heart of the Chinese civilization was a kingdom of about 60 million ruled by the Southern Sung Dynasty from their capital of Hangzhou. In northern China, the Jurched tribe of Manchuria ruled over about 50 million Chinese subjects as the Jin Dynasty. The Silk Route between Persia and China was dominated by the Tangut, relatives of the Tibetans, under the Xia Dynasty, and by the Kara Kitai farther west. Tibet remained an isolated zone, as did many of the small kingdoms and independent tribes of the south. Each of them would soon fall to the Mongols of Genghis Khan.

3

Our Daughters Are Our Shields

THE STEPPE ALONE LACKED THE RESOURCES THAT GENGHIS KHAN needed to keep his followers happy. Now that the people had peace, milk, and meat, they longed for something more: for tangsuqs, those rare trinkets such as gems, golden and silver ornaments, and decorative baubles for their tents, horses, and themselves. In addition to the luster they provided, every item conveyed some spiritual property from its presumed place of origin, and the farther the tangsuq traveled, the stronger this essence, and therefore its beneficial power, became. Seashells emitted the magical sounds of the ocean, gold radiated the warmth of the sun, and silver the cool of the moon. Iridescent peacock feathers reflected the rainbow, and wine instantly released a fog of laughter.