anti-party elements, Chinese spies, saboteurs, or pests: Tom Ginsburg, “Nationalism, Elites, and Mongolia’s Rapid Transformation,” in Mongolia in the Twentieth Century: Landlocked Cosmopolitan, ed. Stephen Kotkin and Bruce A. Elleman (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), p. 247.
I worked closely with: Most Mongolians today use a single name such as Lkhagvasuren or Sukhbaatar, but when necessary to distinguish among those with the same name, they identify themselves by the initial (or first two letters in the case of sh, ch, kh or ts) of a parent.
I. The Reign of Terror on the Steppe: 1162–1206
“Nations! What are nations?”: Henry David Thoreau, Journal (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), entry for May 1, 1851.
1. The Blood Clot
“There is fire in his eyes”: Secret History, § 62.
“choked with horsemen”: Ata-Malik Juvaini, Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror, trans. J. A. Boyle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), p. 98.
“whoever yields”: Ibid., p. 15.
“a man of tall stature”: Minhaj al-Siraj Juzjani, Tabakat-I-Nasiri: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, trans. Major H. G. Raverty (Bengaclass="underline" Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1881; reprint, New Dehli: Oriental Books, 1970), p. 1077.
“it is the great ones, among you”: Ibid. p. 105.
“like a red-hot furnace”: Juvaini, p. 106.
“If you but live”: Secret History, § 56.
Targutai boasted: Secret History, § 149.
early age of nine: The early events in Temujin’s life prove difficult to date precisely with confidence. The Mongols counted each new year as beginning at the end of winter when spring came. Each greening of the steppe counted as one new year, and age was counted according to the number of greenings a child had been through. Thus, the birth of Temujin at the start of spring gave him an immediate age of one, and each successive greening made him one year older. For purposes of this book, however, ages are calculated in the traditional Western way.
Yesugei’s sons by his other wife: Regarding the marriage of a widow to a stepson, in one known case of an aristocratic Mongol family in the seventeenth century, after a woman’s husband died, she married one of his sons; after that husband died, she then married his son. Finally, when this husband also died, she married his son. Thus, in her lifetime she was married to four men from the same family: her first husband, his son, his grandson, and his great-grandson. See J. Holmgren, “Observations on Marriage and Inheritance Practices in Early Mongol and Yüan Society, with Particular Reference to the Levirate,” Journal of Asian History 20 (1986), p. 158.
“of the skins of dogs and mice”: Juvaini, Genghis Khan, p. 21.
“food that could not be digested”: Secret History, § 201.
the eldest son assumed that role: The Mongol language reflects the importance of older siblings by having distinct words for older brother (akh) and older sister (egch), whereas younger siblings, both male and female, are lumped together in one term (düü). The akh, “Elder Brother,” had such importance that his title eventually became synonymous with the leader of a family cluster or other small group. In the case of full siblings, the ranking is obvious: by birth order. But for half siblings, the ranking order of the children depends on many factors, including, most particularly, the relative ranking of their mothers.
“Destroyer! Destroyer!”: Secret History, § 78.
ten years in slavery: “Meng-Ta Peu-Lu Ausführliche Aufzeichnungen über die Mongolischen Tatan von Chao Hung, 1221,” In Peter Olbricht and Elisabeth Pinks, Meng-Ta Pei-Lu und Hei-Ta Shih-Lüeh: Chinesische Gesandtenberichte über die frühen Mongolen 1221 und 1237 (Weisbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1980), p. 12.
2. Tale of Three Rivers
“The banner of Chingiz-Khan’s fortune”: Ata-Malik Juvaini, Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror, trans. J. A. Boyle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), p. 22.
supernatural power: The etymology of many Mongol and Turkic words show a constant intertwining of physical and political prowess with supernatural strength. Khan, Mongolian for chief, is almost identical to the Turkic term for shaman, kham. The Mongolian female shaman was called an idu-khan, while the term for male shaman originated in the same word for wrestler or athlete.
“We have made their breasts to become empty:” Francis Woodman Cleaves, trans., The Secret History of the Mongols (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), par. 113, pp. 47–48.
“let us love one another”: Urgunge Onon, trans., The History and the Life of Chinggis Khan (The Secret History of the Mongols), (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), § 117.
Jamuka and Temujin rode together: For a contrasting interpretation of the class relations between the two men, see Boris Y. Vladimirtsov, The Life of Chingis-Khan, trans. Prince D. S. Mirsky (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1930).
“Barren Island”: Rachewiltz’s translation of The Secret History, § 136, 1972.
never forgot how Jelme saved him: Temujin’s wound closely paralleled the nearly simultaneous battle wound suffered by King Richard the Lionhearted of England. In April 1199, while combating one of his rebel vassals, an arrow pierced his left shoulder. Richard tried to pull out the arrow, but its iron barb held and the shaft broke. For the next agonizing days, doctors treated him but without being able to combat the growing infection and fever. Finally, on the eleventh day, he died. His body was embalmed but disassembled to be buried with great ostentation in different places of sentimental importance to him. His brain was removed and sent for burial in an abbey in Poitiers. His heart went to the cathedral in Rouen, and his body to the Abbey Fonteurault. In marked contract, by sucking the blood from Temujin’s wound, Jelme prevented him from following the painful and untimely fate of King Richard.
He organized his warriors: For more information on troop estimates, see Bat-Ochir Bold, Mongolian Nomadic Society: A Reconstruction of the “Medieval” History of Mongolia (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001), p. 85.
“Let no one set up camp”: Secret History, § 179.
People of the Felt Walls: This phrase is still used in Mongolia, “Esgii Tuurgatan.”
3. War of the Khans
“All the tribes were of one color”: Ata-Malik Juvaini, Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror, trans. J. A. Boyle (Seattle: University of Washington Press), p. 38.
“Is not Genghis Khan ashamed”: Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo, trans. Ronald Latham (London: Penguin Books, 1958), p. 94.
Lake Baljuna: Baljuna is called a lake in the text, but it may have been a river or a small lake connected to the Balj River, a tributary of the Onon. The exact timing of the event is in great debate. Some scholars believe that it occurred at another point in the long civil wars and not as part of the betrayal by Ong Khan. A few scholars discount the story entirely, but based particularly on heavy Chinese documentation, most scholars accept it. For a full discussion of the event and the various versions of it, see Francis Woodman Cleaves, “The Historicity of the Baljuna Covenant,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 18, nos. 3–4 (December 1955), pp. 357–421.