The Secret History of the Mongol Queens

Through the installation of his three daughters as queens along the Silk Route, Genghis Khan controlled the territory and the fragile commercial links connecting China with the Muslim countries. With his invasion into Central Asia in 1219, Genghis Khan began a new phase of not merely capturing the trade links, but expanding them deep into the manufacturing heart of the Middle East. Just as his conquests of China started the process of taking over Chinese manufacturing industries, his armies targeted the craft centers of the Muslim world, thereby expanding control to the two major terminuses of the Silk Route.

Throughout Genghis Khan’s career, the roles played by his sons remained fairly limited and stagnant, but the role of his daughters continued to develop as they matured and their experience expanded. The conquest of varied new countries and ecological zones constantly brought new military and administrative demands on the Mongols.

It was difficult for the Chinese to understand the role of Genghis Khan’s daughters, though their power evoked a puzzled respect, but the Persian encounter with another daughter produced bewilderment, at best, and otherwise disgust and horror. The Chinese scorned the behavior of Mongol women as contrary to sophisticated etiquette, but the Muslims condemned them as immoral affronts to religion and, perhaps more presciently, as threats to civilization.

Although Genghis Khan lost many sons-in-law in battle, such a loss at the hands of rebels usually provoked a particularly vicious response. The fortunate fate of the Onggud rebels contrasted markedly with the fate of the rebellious citizens of Nishapur, who killed another son-in-law ten years later at a time when Genghis Khan’s bloody Central Asian campaign was at its height but its ultimate victory not yet certain.

Located in what is today eastern Iran, Nishapur ranked among the primary cities of Khorasan at the time of the Mongol invasion. Khorasan, though dominated by Persian culture, was actually a part of the Turkic empire of Khwarizm, including what are now Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. Located near rich turquoise mines, Nishapur was the source of the iconic blue-green color that symbolized Persian culture. The city produced the beautifully glazed porcelains that epitomized the art and technology of the era. The most beloved of all Persian poets, Omar Khayyam, was born there in 1048 and was buried there; through his verses, he cloaked the city and Persian literature in a nearly magical aura of beauty sculpted in words. The city of turquoise, poetry, and ceramics exemplified the highest level of Persian civilization, and its destruction by an army under the leadership of a pagan princess marked the ultimate insult against all Islam. In the eyes of the Muslim world, this event came to symbolize the whole of the Mongol era.

The story was first offered in detail in the chronicle of the Persian writer Juvaini, the most accurate and informed of the Muslim historians despite his being active in the political life of the Mongols and therefore a highly partisan chronicler. Juvaini participated in many of the events and situations that he described, and he talked to the witnesses, many of whom he knew intimately.

When the Mongols captured Khwarizm’s main cities of Bukhara, Samarkand, and its capital, Urgench, the sultan of Khwarizm fled to Nishapur; but instead of preparing for war, he wallowed in wine and debauchery. “He recognized no business but merrymaking,” as Juvaini wrote. “Because of arranging the jewels of women he could not concern himself with the training of men, and whilst pulling down the garments of his wives he neglected to remove the confusion in important affairs.” The sultan and his servants gave in to drinking and feasting, so that when the Mongols approached, he was totally drunk and his servants had to throw cold water on his head to rouse him. He abandoned the city on May 12, 1220, and fled west toward Iraq.

The people of Nishapur wisely offered no resistance to the Mongols. They obeyed the orders to surrender and agreed to assist the Mongols in the hunt for their former ruler, the sultan. The army of the Mongol general Subodei came, and the Persians fed the men and horses. For Mongols, accepting food was a highly symbolic act that not only demonstrated the submission of the conquered people but, more important, indicated that the Mongols would accept their submission and let them live as vassals. The people of Nishapur also supplied subsequent Mongol army units passing by in their hunt for the sultan.