The Secret History of the Mongol Queens

The Mongols could not cross in the spring because the horses and men were usually too weak to withstand the harsh trip, and the horrific sandstorms of the spring could bury a whole army. Summer was too hot and winter too cold. The fall provided the best weather for travel, but only in years with enough rainfall to supply the minimum needs of grass and water. Even in a good fall season, a miscalculation might see the army severely hampered by an unseasonably late heat wave or, even more likely, an early arrival of winter.

At the end of even the best crossing, the army would be at its weakest and thereby most vulnerable to foreign attack. Crossing in the fall meant that they arrived in the south at the start of winter, a time when Mongols liked to attack, but not an auspicious time for the horses to graze and regain their strength after the hard trek through the Gobi. The army needed a large supply of fresh horses to replace the worn-out ones that would need months to recover, and the men needed food after the deprivations of nearly two months in the desert. While the men and animals recovered, they needed protection from any southern army that might seize this moment to expel them back into the harsh Gobi.

Alaqai overcame each of these obstacles for the Mongol army. By controlling the Onggud lands, she supplied the army with provisions and new horses while protecting it from southern attack. Alaqai’s kingdom was a fortress built in enemy territory.

Because Genghis Khan’s army of about 100,000 soldiers was approximately one-tenth the size of the Jurched’s to the south, he devised a plan that emphasized tactical retreat as much as attack. For such a strategy to succeed, he required a place to which he could withdraw and be guaranteed protection. Alaqai provided that cover for his army. She was both the vanguard of the Mongol army and its security.

Two of Alaqai’s sisters rapidly followed as queens over two other Turkic groups: the Uighurs in what is now the Xinjiang region of western China and the Karluk to the northwest in what is now Kazakhstan. Like soldiers being deployed to the front lines, his daughters were hurriedly assigned to their marriages as Genghis Khan planned a large-scale assault on China.

Genghis Khan’s policy of benign treatment of people who voluntarily joined his empire, plus his harsh treatment of those who resisted, lured many minority groups with a grievance against their rulers to rebel and ask him for help. Despite the strict conditions of military commitment that accompanied membership in the Mongol Empire, Genghis Khan’s cultural and religious tolerance especially attracted people who felt abused by a class of rulers speaking a different language or practicing a different religion than their subjects. The most poignant plea came from the Uighur people, who had originated centuries earlier in the Orkhon River area of central Mongolia but had relocated to the oases of western China in the eighth century.

The Uighurs, many of whom had converted to Islam, had lost their independence to the Kara Kitai under a staunchly Buddhist dynasty, also known as the Western Liao, since they were an offshoot of the Liao Dynasty, which ruled northern China from 926 to 1125. Their Kara Kitai rulers took the region’s wealth to their capital city, Balghasun, on the Chu River to the west of Lake Issyk Kul in modern Kyrgyzstan. In 1209, the Uighurs revolted by killing their local Kara Kitai officials, and the Uighur leader sent a passionate and urgent plea for protection to Genghis Khan. At this time, Genghis Khan was living along the Kherlen River, preparing for the invasion of China. The Uighur leader had the title Idiqut, meaning “Divine Majesty.”

“As if one saw Mother Sun when the clouds disperse,” pleaded the Idiqut’s envoy, according to Mongol history, “as if one came upon the river water when the ice disappears, so I greatly rejoiced when I heard of the fame of Genghis Khan.” The Persian chronicle recorded almost the same words: “It seemed to me as though the sky had been cleared of clouds and the bright sun had come out from behind them and broken up the ice that had frozen on the rivers, and pure clear water could be seen.”

The Idiqut made an exceedingly servile request. “If through your favor,” he said, groveling, “I were to obtain but a ring from your golden belt, but a thread from your crimson coat, I will become your fifth son and will serve you.” The Persian chronicles described the marriage of the Idiqut to Genghis Khan’s daughter Al-Altun as making a slave into a noble.

Twentieth-century Japanese archaeologists working in Gansu Province discovered an inscription in Mongolian and Chinese from the Uighur prince Hindu recounting the history of that family. It gave an additional account of how the Uighur family became quda to Genghis Khan, and in so doing provides a few lost details.