The Secret History of the Mongol Queens

Muslim and Christian chroniclers used the story of the unnamed Mongol princess as the defining illustration of Mongol barbarism in war, with accounts of skulls piled up into pyramids according to sex and age, and of conquerors so ruthless that they even killed the cats and dogs of the defeated city. Despite the repeated use of these images in recounting Mongol warfare, the histories that seemed to record so precisely the number of dead never bothered to mention the name of the woman who so terrified enemy soldiers and civilians alike. The chroniclers described her merely as the daughter of Genghis Khan, the elder sister of the general Tolui, and the widow of the warrior Tokuchar.

Genghis Khan encouraged the terrifying stories about the Mongols. With such a small army compared with those that he faced and with the massive populations that he sought to conquer and control, he learned to win by propaganda and public relations as much as by his army. From the terrible abuse around him in his childhood, he mastered an uncanny ability to discern what people most wanted and most feared. He managed to use both in building his empire.

Of all civilizations to crumble before the Mongol onslaught, the Muslims certainly suffered the most and benefited the least from the Mongol invasion. After the extensive carnage of their conquest by Genghis Khan between 1219 and 1224, the Muslim states of the Middle East never again reclaimed their economic and cultural prowess at the center of the world commercial system.

For thousands of years, the people who settled in the deserts of Inner Asia traded via the unhurried flow of goods from one oasis to the next. Chinese silks slowly made their way to Rome to be unwoven and sold thread by thread, and, just as gradually, silver coins bearing the portraits of the Roman emperors drifted across the deserts toward China. Small caravans of camels—or donkeys in some areas—connected the oasis villages, and goods traveled primarily from one village to another. The traders of each oasis carefully maintained trade relations with the next, but each community and many intertwining and alternative routes prospered and withered according to local weather and political patterns. This amorphous system of small but jealously guarded routes prevented merchants from traveling in a single caravan along one entire route. Every item had to be traded dozens of times as it slowly wended its way along these multiple routes.

With the fall of Nishapur, the destruction of the Khwarizm Empire, and the conquest of the Persian cities, the Silk Route had become a Mongol highway. For the first time in the thousands of years of trade and commerce, one power controlled the Silk Route all the way from northern China across Central Asia, south to the Indus River, and west to the Caucasus Mountains at the threshold of Europe. Trade flowed uninterrupted from the Arctic Circle to the Indian Ocean, from inside the workshops of China to the cities of Persia. Except for the crucial distance of the Gansu Corridor, ruled by the Tangut kingdom, which lingered on as only a semi-vassal state of the Mongols, Genghis Khan’s daughters controlled all the states between China and Muslim Central Asia. With the aid of his daughters and his mighty army, Genghis Khan had accomplished what Alexander the Great had attempted and failed to do and what the Romans, Arabs, and Chinese had only dreamed of achieving.

The Mongols exercised ownership of the trade system, but since they knew nothing about commerce, they let the merchants run it. Mongols reaped the rewards and enjoyed the luxuries while opening up all the trade routes under a unified system and consistent policies. The Mongols simply supplied the infrastructure of safe routes, frequent resting stations, ample wells, relief animals, a speedy postal service, stable currency, bridges, and equal access for merchants, without regard to their nationality or religion.

The daughters of Genghis Khan did not create the interlocking network of trade routes, but they made it work much faster. Mongol protection and the organization of an intercontinental system of rest and relay stations permitted new supercaravans that were not only much larger than the old ones but could travel considerably farther by obtaining supplies and replacing animals as needed. Genghis Khan opened new routes, bypassing smaller settlements, and he destroyed whole cities that served as roadblocks. The Mongol routes, like modern superhighways, allowed large caravans to connect not just one oasis with the next but the entire string of oases, as merchants could now travel thousands of miles on a single journey.