Nature of Mongolians:
The knights at their tournaments, in their finery, armor and emblems of ancestry, believed they were the foremost warriors in the world, while Mongol warriors thought otherwise. Mongol horses were small, but their riders were lightly clad and they moved with greater speed. These were hardy men who grew up on horses and hunting, making them better warriors than those who grew up in agricultural societies and cities. Their main weapon was the bow and arrow. And the Mongols of the early 1200s were highly disciplined, superbly coordinated and brilliant in tactics.
The Mongols were illiterate, religiously shamanistic and perhaps no more than 700,000 in number. Their language today is described as Altaic, a language unrelated to Chinese, derived from inhabitants in the Altay mountain range in western Mongolia. They were herdsmen on the grassy plains north of the Gobi Desert, south of Siberia's forests. Before the year 1200, the Mongols were fragmented, moving about in small bands headed by a chief, or khan, and living in portable felt dwellings. The Mongols endured frequent deprivations and sparse areas for grazing their animals. They frequently fought over turf, and during hard times they occasionally raided, interested in goods rather than bloodshed. They did not collect heads or scalps as trophies.
Childhood of Tamujin:
At the time of his birth in 1162, no one in China had heard of Europe and no one in Europe had heard of China.
By the time of his death in 1227, he had connected them with diplomatic and and commercial contacts that still remains unbroken.
Genghis Khan was born near the border of modern Mongolia and Siberia. Holeum, a young kidnapped girl struggle to give birth to him, her first child. Temujin was not valued by his father who was already married before he kidnapped his mother and had a son, Begter, slightly older than him from his first wife. At the age of 9, Temujin choose his wife Borte. His father died at the same period.
With her husband dead and no other man willing to take her, Holeum's family was abandon by the Tayichiud tribe protecting them. Holeum and and an other woman with their 7 children were left out behind to die. Most of Temujin's youth was consumed by the work of helping his family survive. In the land of harsh lives, they had fallen to the lowest level of steppe life.
Death of his Father:
When he was nine, Yesugei, a member of the royal Borjigin clan of the Mongols, was poisoned by a band of Tatars, another nomadic people, in continuance of an old feud.
With Yesugei dead, the remainder of the clan, led by the rival Taychiut family, abandoned his widow, Höelün, and her children, considering them too weak to exercise leadership and seizing the opportunity to usurp power. For a time the small family led a life of extreme poverty, eating roots and fish instead of the normal nomad diet of mutton and mare’s milk. Two anecdotes illustrate both Temüjin’s straitened circumstances and, more significantly, the power he already had of attracting supporters through sheer force of personality. Once he was captured by the Taychiut, who, rather than killing him, kept him around their camps, wearing a wooden collar. One night, when they were feasting, Temüjin, noticing that he was being ineptly guarded, knocked down the sentry with a blow from his wooden collar and fled. The Taychiut searched all night for him, and he was seen by one of their people, who, impressed by the fire in his eyes, did not denounce him but helped him escape at the risk of his own life. On another occasion horse thieves came and stole eight of the nine horses that the small family owned. Temüjin pursued them. On the way he stopped to ask a young stranger, called Bo’orchu, if he had seen the horses. Bo’orchu immediately left the milking he was engaged in, gave Temüjin a fresh horse, and set out with him to help recover the lost beasts.
Prince become his brother:
Temüjin and his family apparently preserved a considerable fund of prestige as members of the royal Borjigin clan, in spite of their rejection by it. Among other things, he was able to claim the wife to whom Yesügei had betrothed him just before his death. But the Merkit people, a tribe living in northern Mongolia, bore Temüjin a grudge, because Yesügei had stolen his own wife, Höelün, from one of their men, and in their turn they ravished Temüjin’s wife Börte. Temüjin felt able to appeal to Toghril, khan of the Kereit tribe, with whom Yesügei had had the relationship of anda, or sworn brother, and at that time the most powerful Mongol prince, for help in recovering Börte. He had had the foresight to rekindle this friendship by presenting Toghril with a sable skin, which he himself had received as a bridal gift. He seems to have had nothing else to offer; yet, in exchange, Toghril promised to reunite Temüjin’s scattered people, and he is said to have redeemed his promise by furnishing 20,000 men and persuading Jamuka, a boyhood friend of Temüjin’s, to supply an army as well.
Stolen Death:
Jamukha and Temüjin drifted apart in their friendship, each began consolidating power, and soon became rivals. Jamukha supported the traditional Mongolian aristocracy, while Temüjin followed a meritocratic method, and attracted a broader, though lower class, range of followers.Due to his earlier defeat of the Merkits, and a proclamation by the shaman Kokochu that the Eternal Blue Sky had set aside the world for Temüjin, Temüjin began rising to power. In 1186, Temüjin was elected khan of the Mongols. However, Jamukha, threatened by Temüjin's rapid ascent, quickly moved to stop Temüjin's ambitions. In 1187, he launched an attack against his former friend with an army of thirty thousand troops. Temüjin hastily gathered together his followers to defend against the attack, but he was decisively beaten in the Battle of Dalan Balzhut.Jamukha horrified people greatly and harmed his image by boiling seventy young male captives alive in cauldrons, alienating many of his potential followers and eliciting sympathy for Temüjin.Toghrul, as Temüjin's patron, was exiled to the Qara Khitai. The life of Temüjin for the next ten years is very unclear, as historical records are mostly silent on that period.
Elimination of Rivals:
Temüjin now set about systematically eliminating all rivals. Successive coalitions formed by Jamuka were defeated. The Tatars were exterminated. Toghril allowed himself to be maneuvered by Jamuka’s intrigues and by his own son’s ambitions and suspicions into outright war against Temüjin, and he and his Kereit people were destroyed. Finally, in the west, the Naiman ruler, fearful of the rising power of the Mongols, tried to form yet another coalition, with the participation of Jamuka, but was utterly defeated and lost his kingdom. Jamuka, inconstant as ever, deserted the Naiman khan at the last moment. These campaigns took place in the few years before 1206 and left Temüjin master of the steppes. In that year a great assembly was held by the River Onon, and Temüjin was proclaimed Genghis Khan: the title probably meant Universal Ruler.
Unification of Mongol Empire into one seal
The part of the Merkit clan that sided with the Naimans were defeated by Subutai, who was by then a member of Temüjin's personal guard and later became one of the most successful commanders of Genghis Khan. The Naimans' defeat left Temüjin as the sole ruler of the Mongol plains – all the prominent confederations fell or united under his Mongol confederation.
Accounts of Genghis Khan's life are marked by claims of a series of betrayals and conspiracies. These include rifts with his early allies such as Jamukha (who also wanted to be a ruler of Mongol tribes) and Wang Khan (his and his father's ally), his son Jochi, and problems with the most important shaman, who was allegedly trying to drive a wedge between him and his loyal brother Khasar. His military strategies showed a deep interest in gathering good intelligence and understanding the motivations of his rivals, exemplified by his extensive spy network and Yam route systems. He seemed to be a quick student, adopting new technologies and ideas that he encountered, such as siege warfare from the Chinese. He was also ruthless, demonstrated by his tactic of measuring against the linchpin, used against the tribes led by Jamukha.
As a result, by 1206 Temüjin had managed to unite or subdue the Merkits, Naimans, Mongols, Khereids, Tatars, Uyghurs, and other disparate smaller tribes under his rule. It was a monumental feat for the "Mongols" (as they became known collectively). At a Khuruldai, a council of Mongol chiefs, Temüjin was acknowledged as "Khan" of the consolidated tribes and took the new title "Genghis Khan". The title Khagan was not conferred on Genghis until after his death, when his son and successor, Ögedei, took the title for himself and extended it posthumously to his father (as he was also to be posthumously declared the founder of the Yuan dynasty). This unification of all confederations by Genghis Khan established peace between previously warring tribes and a single political and military force under Genghis Khan.
Conquests in Northern China:
Genghis Khan moved to secure his borders. To his south he made an alliance with the Uyghurs, who were closer than the Mongols were to the Silk Road and to wealth. He married his daughter to the Uighur Khan, and the Uighur Khan brought to the wedding party a caravan laden with gold, silver, pearls, brocaded fabrics, silks and satins. The Mongols had only leather, fur and felt – a humiliation for a master of the entire world.
Genghis Khan needed booty to pay troops securing his northern border and subduing an old enemy there, the Merkits. He acted on his mandate as the rightful ruler of the entire world and attacked the Tangut conquerors of northwestern China from a century before, the Tangut ruling Chinese farmers and herders there. The Tangut had much in goods like the Uighur Khan. Against the Tangut the Mongols were outnumbered in warriors two to one, and the Mongols had to learn a new kind of warfare against fortified cities, including cutting supply lines and diverting rivers. Genghis Khan and his army were victorious, and in 1210 Genghis Khan won from the Tngut recognition as overlord.
Also in 1210, the Jurchen emperor, Weishaowang, who ruled a part of northern China that includd Beijing, was concerned. He sent a delegation to Genghis Khan demanding submission as a vassal. The Jurchen emperor controlled the flow of goods along the Silk Road, and defying him meant a lack of access to those goods. Genghis Khan discussed the matter with his fellow Mongols and choe war. Genghis, according to the scholar Jack Weatherford, prayed alone on a mountain, bowing dwn and stating his case to "his supernatral guardians," describing the grievances, the tortures and killings that generations of his people had suffered at the hands of the Jurchens. And he pleaded that he had not sought war against the Jurchens and had not initiated the quarrel.
In 1211, Genghis Khan and his army attacked. The Jurchens had a large and effective army but they were hard pressed by both the Mongols and the Tangut. And the Jurchens were under attack by Chinese from south of the Yangzi River, the Southen Song emperor there wishing to take advantage of the Jurchen-Mongol conflict to liberat northern China.
The Jurchens drove the Chinese armies into retreat. The Mongols were benefiting from China having failed during the previous century to make itself a strong militay power, and the Mongols were benefitting from the Jurchens being burdened by their rule over a conquered people. The Mongols were benevolent toward those who sided with them and used terror and violence against those who did not. The Mongols ravaged the countryside, gathered information and booty and drove populations in front of them, clogging the roads and trapping the Jurchens within their cities, where Jurchen authority was subject to revolty those they had conquered. The Mongols used conscripted labor in attacking cities and in operating their newly acquired Chinese siege engines.
Against the Jurchens the Mongols had an advantage in diet, which included a lot of meat, milk and yogurt, and they could miss a day or two of eating better than Jurchen sold iers, who ate grains. Genghis Khan and his army overran Beijing and pushed into the heartland of northern China. Military success helped as people acquired the impression that Genghis Khan had the Mand ate of Hea ven and that fighting against him was fighting heaven itself. The Jurchen emperor recognized Mong ol authority and agreed to pay tribute.
Religion of Genghis Khan:
The religion of genghis Khan, empeor of the mongols, about whose romantic conquests much has been written, must remain largely a matter of conjecture and theory . But the subject is important from the point of view of the impact of animasim and origional monotheism. Did monotheism precede animism among the mongolians, or was it contemporary with, or develop from it. Did Tamuchin as a youth have same idea of God as he had when he died, as Genghis Khan, or had he been subtly influcenced by Christianity or Mohammedanism, with the both of witch he had contacts in later life, though he embraced neither faith. For the remained a Deist supported by shamanism. There may be many source of information about his life history, but these are not all easily availble to students of the region of Mongolia, at that period. Whatever the religious views of his tibesmen may have been, genghis kHan was certainly the man of Crystallize and consilidate them, in the same way as he consolidated the loose tribes which afterwards formed his Empire.
No comments:
Post a Comment