The many troubles of Temujin’s early years must have seemed behind him and his family now that everyone was old enough to work in some way. In addition to his brothers, Temujin’s household expanded to include two other young men. Boorchu had joined the group after a chance encounter while Temujin was tracking some stolen horses; Jelme was apparently given to Temujin by his father, although the Secret History does not explain why. With these two additions, the camp consisted of seven teenage boys to hunt and protect the group. In addition to his bride, Borte, Temujin’s household also included his sister and three older women: his mother, Hoelun, who was matriarch, as well as Sochigel, the mother of Temujin’s half brother Belgutei, and yet another old woman of unknown origin who stayed with them.
According to the account of the Secret History, Temujin would have preferred to remain simply the ruler of this intimate clan, but the roiling world of tribal attack and counterattack all around them would not allow so idyllic a life. For generations stretching back through hundreds of years, the tribes of the steppes had been preying on one another mercilessly. The memory of past transgressions lingered. An injury inflicted on any family within a tribe served as a license for retribution, and it could serve as a pretext for a raid even after many years. No matter how isolated they might attempt to be, no group such as Temujin’s could go unaccounted for, or untouched, in this world of continual turmoil.
After all his family had already suffered, now, after eighteen years, the tribe from which Temujin’s mother had been abducted, the Merkid, decided to seek their vengeance for that slight. The Merkid came not to reclaim Hoelun, the widow who had grown old struggling to raise her five children, but after Borte, Temujin’s young bride, who would serve to repay the kidnapping of Hoelun from them. The alliance he had so shrewdly made with Ong Khan was to prove decisive in Temujin’s response to this crisis, and the challenges of the Merkid would prove the decisive contest that would set him on his path to greatness.
2
Tale of Three Rivers
The banner of Chingiz-Khan’s fortune
was raised and they issued forth.
A
TA-
M
ALIK
J
UVAINI,
Genghis Khan: The History of the
World Conqueror
EARLY ONE MORNING AS the family slept in their ger, which stood alone on an isolated steppe in the upper reaches of the Kherlen River, a raiding party of Merkids raced toward them. The old woman the family had taken in lay with her head on the ground, but as old women often do, she passed much of the predawn hours drifting in and out of a fitful sleep. As the horses drew nearer, she sensed the vibrations of their hooves on the ground. Suddenly snapping out of her sleep, she shouted with alarm to rouse the others. The seven boys sprang up, scrambled frantically to put on their boots, and raced out to their horses, hobbled nearby. Temujin fled with his six companions and his mother and sister, leaving behind his new bride, his stepmother, Sochigel, and the old woman who had saved them all. In the desperate tribal world where daily life skirted so close to potential tragedy and annihilation, no one had the luxury of artificially chivalrous codes of behavior. In the quick decision of their utilitarian calculus, leaving these three women as booty would at least slow the raiders enough so that the others might have time to escape. For Temujin’s fleeing band, the open steppe offered no refuge; they would have to ride hard to reach safety in the mountains to the north.
By the time the attackers reached the ger, Temujin and his small group had raced off into the early morning darkness, but they quickly found Borte hiding in an oxcart that the old woman was leading away. For several desperate days while the Merkid prowled the vicinity, Temujin stayed constantly on the move, hiding along the slopes and wooded crevices of Mount Burkhan Khaldun. Finally, the Merkid abandoned their roaming, and headed off northwest, toward their home on the distant Selenge River, a tributary of Siberia’s Lake Baikal. Fearing that the withdrawal might have been a trap to lure him out of hiding, Temujin sent Belgutei and their two friends, Boorchu and Jelme, to track the kidnappers for three days to make sure that they did not double back to surprise him.
Hiding in the forest of Mount Burkhan Khaldun, Temujin faced the pivotal decision of his life: deciding what to do about the kidnapping of his wife. He could have chosen to abandon any hope of recapturing Borte, and that would surely have been the expected course, as his small group could not possibly take on the much more powerful Merkid. In due time, Temujin could find another wife, but he would have to kidnap her, as his father had done to his mother, because no family would voluntarily bestow their daughter on a man who had already lost one wife to more powerful men.
In the past, Temujin had relied upon his quick wits to fight or flee, but the decisions had been spontaneous ones in response to a sudden danger or opportunity. Now he had to think carefully and devise a plan of action that would influence the whole of his life. He had to choose his own destiny. In the belief that he had just been saved by the mountain where he was hiding, he turned in prayer to the spirit of the mountain. Unlike the other steppe tribes that had embraced the scriptural and priestly traditions of Buddhism, Islam, or Christianity, the Mongols remained animists, praying to the spirits around them. They worshiped the Eternal Blue Sky, the Golden Light of the Sun, and the myriad spiritual forces of nature. The Mongols divided the natural world into two parts, the earth and the sky. Just as the human soul was contained not in the stationary parts of the body but in the moving essences of blood, breath, and aroma, so, too, the soul of the earth was contained in its moving water. The rivers flowed through the earth like the blood through the body, and three of those rivers began here on this mountain. As the tallest mountain, Burkhan Khaldun, literally “God Mountain,” was the khan of the area, and it was the earthly place closest to the Eternal Blue Sky. And as the source of three rivers, Burkhan Khaldun was also the sacred heart of the Mongol world.
The Secret History relates that Temujin, grateful for having escaped death at the hands of the Merkid, first offered a prayer of thanks to the mountain that protected him and to the sun that rode across the sky. He made special thanks to the captured old woman who had saved the others by hearing like a weasel. To thank the spirits around him, as was Mongol practice, he sprinkled milk into the air and on the ground. Unwinding his belt from his robe, he hung it around his neck. The sash or belt, traditionally worn only by men, was the center of a Mongol man’s identity. For Temujin to remove his sash in this way was to remove his strength and to appear powerless before the gods around him. He then removed his hat, put his hand on his breast, and dropped down onto the ground nine times to kowtow before the sun and before the sacred mountain.