Women of the Mongol Court

                               Morris Rossabi

 These edited notes were taken from a lecture by Morris Rossabi, presented
 as part of the lecture series in conjunction with Mongolia: The Legacy of
           Chinggis Khan, an exhibition at the Denver Art Museum.

This material includes reasons for successful Mongol expansion, the role of
Mongol women during the conquest, and the significance of the Mongol
conquest in world history. It is good to keep in mind that modern Mongolia
is three times the size of France and has a population of 2.2 million
people. Professor Rossabi teaches at Queens College and Columbia University
and is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of World History. He reads
thirteen langauges and does research in nine of them. These notes were
transcribed by Heidi Roupp from his lecture. Inaccuracies are hers, not
Professor Rossabi's.

     The most important accomplishment of Chinggis Khan was uniting the
Mongols not so much by conquest but by bringing together Mongols who were
scattered throughout the country in the desert of the south, in the steppe
lands of Central Mongolia, and in the forested and mountainous regions
along the northern frontier.

How were the Mongols able to establish the largest contiguous land empire
in world history?

     The Mongol Empire stretched from Korea and the Pacific all the way
over to Georgia, Armenia, and Hungry. How were the Mongols able to
establish such an empire with a population of 200,000 when China alone had
a population of 100 million? The Mongols united at a time when disunity
prevailed throughout Asia. As Chinggis Khan started his invasions, China
was disunited, fragmented, and relatively weak. Similarly Central Asia was
fragmented into a series of khanates and city states. In the Middle East,
the Abbasid dynasty that ruled from Baghdad for five centuries was also
declining. Southern Russia was a series of city states. There was no
central government controlling the area. In a sense the Mongols were
successful because there was a power vacuum in most of these regions.

     The Mongols had other advantages. The Mongols had a powerful military
force based on the horse. They had the mobility to initiate full scale
attacks, invasions, and hit and run raids. If they met a formidable enemy,
they could retreat quickly. Another factor that led to their success was
that the Mongols never had any intention of creating an empire. Each one of
Chinggis Khan's discrete attacks was based on specific circumstances such
as trade disputes or the treatment of Mongols or Mongol merchants. One of
his first campaigns was directed at Yanjing (modern Beijing) in northern
China. It was one of his greatest successes. In 1215 he laid siege to
Yanjing, the capital of the Jin Dynasty, and succeeded in taking it. But
instead of capitalizing on that victory to control northern China, when he
got what he wanted, he simply went back to Mongolia. He barreled through
Central Asia in a period of five or six years because of a dispute over
trade. When he had conquered the whole territory, instead of going further
west, he returned to Mongolia. Chinggis Khan did not have any vision of
becoming a world khan.

Why did the Mongols leave Mongolia in the first place and head both south
and west if they had no conception of world domination?

     First the Mongols as nomadic peoples were dependent on trade with
sedentary folk. The Mongols and other nomadic peoples had a fragile
economy. They never accumulated a surplus because they couldn't carry a
surplus. If their animals got diseased or killed or if the animals couldn't
get grass because of a bad winter, the Mongols had no reserves. So they
depended on trade with the Chinese to get grain and other products they
needed. The Mongols didn't have much of an artisan class in thiis initial
period. The Mongols needed trade to acquire the products made by artisans.
The Chinese, on the other hand, didn't need things the Mongols provided so
there was an inequitable economic relationship. In 1200 A.D. the dynasty
that controlled Northern China reduced trade with the Mongols. The Mongols
had to attack to survive.

     The second explanation has to do with the climate. In 1974 a group of
historical climatologists determined that from 1180 to 1290 the mean annual
temperature of Mongols declined, not a lot, but enough that the growing
season was reduced. Less grass forced the Mongols to move. At that point
Chinggis Khan began organizing the tribes. This was probably his greatest
accomplishment. It is almost impossible to unite nomads because the optimal
size of nomadic groups is a tribal unit. A tribe is relatively small to
allow groups to find grass for their animals. It is very difficult to
persuade tribes to come into a supratribal group, a confederation, large
enough to pose a challenge to a sedentary civilization. Chinggis Khan was
able to do that. In 1206 all of Mongolia was under his rule. By the end of
his life in 1227 he had conquered a limited territory. He was not the great
conqueror but he fostered the Mongol Empire. It is really the second and
third generations who expanded Mongol holdings.

How did women play a role in Mongol invasions and expansion?

     In a nomadic society each member of the society was critical to the
survival of the group. Another explanation for Mongol success is that women
played a very important role in the economy, they took care of the animals
if need be. The Mongols had total male mobility for warfare. This made the
Mongols a more daunting force than they might have been. Women also played
a role in the military. Many women who actually took part in battle were
mentioned in Mongol, Chinese, and Persian chronicles. Women were trained
for the miliatry. Mongol women had rights and privileges that were not
accorded to most East Asian women. Mongol women had the right to own
property and to divorce. Although we don't know about ordinary Mongol
women, we do know about prominent Mongol women among the elite. They were
mentioned repeatedly in Mongol, Chinese, and European chronicles of the
13th century.

Sorghaghtani Beki

     Probably the most famous of these women was Kublai Khan's mother,
Chinggis Khan's daughter-in-law, Sorghaghtani Beki. She is mentioned in so
many sources as one of the great figures of the 13th century that we are
assured that she was as remarkable as she is portrayed. European
missionaries who visited the Mongols in the middle of the 13th century
remarked that she was the most renowned of the Mongols. Persians wrote
about her. A Middle Eastern physician wrote that "if I were to see among
the race of women another who is so remarkable a woman as this, I would say
that the race of women is superior to the race of men.

     She set the stage for all four of her sons to become khans. Although
she herself was illerate, she recognized that her sons had to be educated.
Each one learned a different language that the Mongols needed in
administering the vast domain that they had conquered. Although she was a
Nestorian Christian, she recognized that if the Mongols were to administer
this vast empire that they had subjugated, that one of the ways of doing so
was to ingratiate themselves to the clergy of these various religions. So
she and her sons protected and provided support for each of the religions
within the Mongol domains. She supported Muslims, Buddhists, and
Confucianists. She introduced her son Kublai to the ideas of Confucian
scholars to help him understand and be prepared to rule China. Her third
contribution to Mongol rule was that she recognized that pure exploitation
of subjected peoples would make no sense. Ravaging the economy of the
conquered territories would ultimately be self defeating. Instead of
turning China into one big pastureland, she supported the Chinese
peasantry. If the Mongols bolstered the local economy, eventually that
would lead to increased production and increased tax collections. Each of
her sons followed the same philosophy. Religious toleration, support of the
religions, support of the indigenous economy, and literacy--all proved
crucial to her son Kublai, the man who really bridged the transition form
nomadic steppe conquest to governance of the domains the Mongols had
conquered.

     Kublai identified with the Chinese. He realized he would have to make
concessions to the Chinese in order to rule China. There was no way for the
Mongols to succeed on their own. 100 million people can't be ruled with a
couple of tens of thousands Mongols. Mongols had no experience collecting
taxes. In order to get that support from the Chinese, he began to act like
a typical Chinese emperior. In the 1260's he began to restore Confucian
rituals to the court. He moved the capital from Mongolia into China. He was
responsible for selecting the site of Beijing as the site for the center of
the Mongolian Empire. He patronized painting and painters in the Chinese
tradition and supported Chinese drama. Chinese theatre went through a
tremendous cultural efflorescence during Kublai Khan's era.

Chabi

     In all of these efforts he was helped by his wife Chabi who played as
important a rule as his mother had done. Chabi supported Tibetan monks who
began converting the Mongol elite to Tibetan Buddhism. When Kublai
conquered southern China, Chabi was influential in preventing revenge. She
took measures to maintin the Song imperial family, to provide them with
funds and a palace, not to enslave them or kill them. She too played a
critical role in Mongol rule.

Khutulun

     One other extraordinary woman in Kublai Khan's era was Kublai's niece
Khutulun. She relished the military life and loved combat. She even
impressed Marco Polo who described her as so strong and brave that in all
of her father's army no man could out do her in feats of strength. Her
parents were a little concerned when she didn't marry by the age of 22 or
23. They were constantly beseeching her to enter into a marriage
arrangement. She said she would only consent if a prospective suitor bested
her in a contest of physical strength. She agreed to accept any challenge
as long as the young man gambled 100 horses for the chance to beat her.
Within a short time she accumulated about 10,000 horses. Finally a very
handsome, confident, skillful young prince arrived at the court to
challenge her. He was so confident of victory that he gambled a thousand
horses rather than just the 100 she demanded. He bet he could beat her in a
wrestling match. The night before the contest, Khutulun's parents implored
their daughter to let herself be vanquished. But she would have none of
that. She said that if she were vanquished in a fair contest, she would
gladly be his wife but otherwise she wouldn't do it. So on the day of the
wrestling match, the contestants appeared pretty evenly matched. The
combatants grappled for quite a time. Then in a sudden movement, she
flipped the prince over and won the contest. The prince took off and left
the 1000 horses behind. She actually never did marry. She accompanied her
father on all of his compaigns.

     While some of the stories may be hyperbolic, what they are telling us
is that women in the elite were confident, were not about to be bowled over
by men, and played an important role in Mongol society. There is so much
emphasis on women playing military, political, and economic roles in this
period that we're fairly sure this stretched beyond the elite woman. It
trickled down to the ordinary women as well. Interestingly enough by the
14th century, there are no more Mongol women playing roles as leaders. They
become increasingly acculturated. In the next generation after Kublai Khan,
the daughters and granddaughter of Kublai Khan are no longer as prominent.
They began accepting some of the restraints imposed on Chinese women. In
that sense, in that sense alone, the Mongols were very much influenced by
China.

What was the significance of the Mongol Conquest in world history?

     The Mongols brought the East and West together. For the first time the
Europeans were in touch with East Asia. Not just Marco Polo but many
Genoese and Venetian merchants as well as Persian astronomers and doctors
came to Chna. In fact, four Persian hospitals were started in Beijing in
the 13th century. The exchange of textiles and artisans influenced the art
and culture of all Asia. The tremendous flow of ideas, of products, of
people that occurred in the 13th and 14th centuries is the most important
contribution the Mongols made.

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