ghenghis khan

Drawing by Superbrothers staff of the actor who played Temujin/Genghis's wife Borte in the film Mongol (2007), the film was inspired by the book excerpted below. Next to her are a couple Spirit Banners. As the Genghis Khan type character is adapted and re-built for the new Superbrothers project, the character's gender may switch (creating an interesting symmetry with The Scythian) or the character's gender may remain ambiguous or undeclared.

Below are relevant excerpts from "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" by Jack Weatherford (2004, paperback). The book describes itself as 'The startling true history of how one extraordinary man from a remote corner of the world created an empire that led the world into the modern age.' It's an excellent book, well-written, fascinating, highly recommended. I read this book on my honeymoon in summer of 2011 after unplugging from the internet following the initial launch of Sword & Sworcery. Some aspects of the histories and concepts in this book have stuck with me and have been woven into the lore of the new project.

pg. 32-34  the sacred mountain, the three rivers, a pivotal decision

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 kindap 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 these 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 to pray to the spirit of the mountain. Unlike the other steppe tribes that had embraced the scriptural and priestly traditions of Buddhism, Islam or Chistianity, the Mongols remained animists, praying to the spirits around them. They worshipped the Eternal Blue Sky, the Golden Light of the Sun, and the myriad spiritual forces of nature. The Mongols divded 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. As 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 spriits around him, as was Mongol practice, he sprinkled milk into the air and on the gorund. 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.

For the steppe tribes, political, wordly power was inseperable from supernatural power since both sprang from the same source, the Eternal Blue Sky. In order to find success and to triumph over others, one must first be granted supernatural power from the spirit world. For his Spririt Banner to lead to victory and power, it had to first be infused with supernatural power. Temujin's three days of prayer while hidng on Burkhan Khaldun marked the begining of a long and intimate spriritual relationship he would maintain with this mountain and the special protection he believed it provided. This mountain would the source of his strength.

Rather than merely giving him the power, Burkhan Khaldun seems to first test himself with a difficult choice. Each of the three rivers that flowed out from the mountain offered him an alternate choice of action. He could return to the southeast, downstream to the Kherlen River, where he had been living on the steppe, but no matter how many animals or wives he managed to accumulate as a herder, he would always risk losing them in another raid to the Merkid, the Tayichiud, or whoever else came along. The Onon River, along which he himself had been born, flowed to the notheast and offered another option. Beacuse it meandered through more wooded and isloated land than the Kherlen Riber, the Onon offered more shelter, but it lacked pastures for animals. Living there would require the group to scrape by, as in his childhood, while fishing, trapping birds, and hunting rats and other small mammals. Life on the Onon would be safe but without prosperity or honor. The third option was to follow the Tuul River, which flowed toward the sourthwest, to seek the help of Ong Khan, to whom he had given the sable coat. At that time, Temujin had declined the offer to make him a subordinate leader under Ong Khan's authority. Now, only a year later, with the life he had chosen instead shattered by the Merkid raiders, Temujin still seemed reluctant to plunge into the internecine struggle of khan against khan, but there seemed no other way to get back his bride.

Though he had sought to create a quiet life apart from the constant turmoil of steppe warfare, the Merkid raid had taught him that such a life was simply not to be had. If he did not want to live the life of an impoverished outcast, always at the mercy of whatver raiders chose to swoop down on his encampment, he would now have to fight for his place in the hierarchy of steppe warriors; he would have to join in the harsh game of constant warfare he had thus far avoded.

Aside from all the issues of politics, hierarchy, and spiritual powers, Temujin showed how desperately he missed Borte, the one person in a short and tragedy-laden life who brought him happiness. Despite the emotional reserve that Mongol men were expected to show in public, particulaly in the presence of other men, Temujin made a strong emotional affirmation of his love for Borte and of his pain without her. He lamented that not only had the attackers left his bed empty, but they had cut open his chest, broken his heart. Temujin chose to fight. He would find his wife, or he would die trying. After those three difficult days of pondering, praying, and planning on the mountain, Temujin followed the Tuul River down to search for the camp of Ong Khan and seek his help. 

pg.66 steppe coronation

Like most successful rulers, Genghis Khan understood the political potential of solemn ceremony and grand spectacle. Unlike most rulers confined within the architecture of buildings such as palaces or temples, however, the installation of Genghis Khan took place on the vast open steppe, where hundreds of thousands of people participated.

pg.67-68 lawgiver

Most leaders, whether kings or presidents, grew up inside the institutions of some type of state. Their accomplishments usually involved the reorganization or revitalization of those institutions and the state that housed them. Genghis Khan, however, consciously set out to create a state and to establish all the institutions necessary for it on a new basis, part of which he borrowed from prior tribes and part of which he invented.

He rewarded men who came from lowly black-boned lineages and placed them in the highest positions based on their achievements and proven loyalty to him on and off the battlefied.

In order to maintain peace in this large and ethnically diverse set of tribes that he had forged into one nation, he quickly proclaimed new laws to suppress the traditional causes of tribal feuding and war. The Great Law of Genghis Khan differed from that of other lawgivers in history. He did not base his law on divine revelation from God; nor did he derive it from an ancient code of any sedentary civlization. He consolodated it from customs and traditions of the herding tribes as maintained over centuries; yet he readily abolished some practices when they hindered the functioning of his new society. He allowed groups to follow traditional law in their area, so long as it did not conflict with the Great Law, which functioned as a supreme law or common law over everyone.

Genghis Khan's law did not delve into all aspects of daily life; instead, he used it to regulate the most troublesome aspects. As long as men kidnapped women, there would be feuding on the steppes. Genghis Khan's first new law reportedly forbade the kidnappings of women, almost certainly a reaction to the kidnapping of his wife Borte.

Aside from fighting over lost animals, the steppe people argued frequently over hunting rights for wild animals. Genghis Khan codified existing ideals by forbidding the hunting of animals between March and October during the breeding time. By protecting the animals in the summer, Genghis Khan also provided a safety net for the winter, and hunters had to limit their kill to what they neeeded for food and no more. 

In addition to sex, property, and food, Genghis Khan recognized the disruptive potential of competing religions. In one form or another, virtually every religion from Buddhism to Christiantiy and Manichaenism to Islam had found converts among the steppe people, and almost all of them claimed not only to be the true relgion but the only one. In probably the first law of its kind anywhere in the world, Genghis Khan decreed complete and total religious freedom for everyone. Although he continued to worship the spirits of his homeland, he did not permit them to be used as a a national cult.

pg. 86 nomad

Crossing the vast Gobi required extensive preparation. Before the army set out, squads of soldiers went out to check the water sources and to report on grass conditions and weather. A Chinese observer remarked how the advance group scouted out every hill and every spot before the main army arrived. They wanted to know everyone in the area, every resource, and they always sought to have a ready path of retreat should it be needed.

The Mongol was ideally suited to travel long distances; each man carried precisely what he needed, but nothing more.

pg. 170 the tree at the center of the universe

Envoys to Mongke's court at Karakorum reported the working of an unusual contraption in his palace. A large tree sculpted of silver and other previous metals rose up from the middle of his courtyard and loomed over his palace, with the branches of the tree extending into the building and along the rafters. Silver fruit hung from the limbs, and it had four golden serpents braided around the trunk. At the top of the tree, rose a triumphant angel, also cast in solver, holding a trumpet at his side. An intricate series of pneumatic tubes inside the tree allowed unseen servants to blow into them and manipulate them to produce what seemed to be acts of magic. When the khan wanted to summon drinks for his guests, the mechanical angel raised the trumpet to his lips and sounded the horn, whereupon the mouths of the serpents began to gush out a fountain of alcoholic beverages into silver basins arranged at the base of the tree. Each pipe discharged a different drink - wine, black airak, rice wine, and mead.

The four serpents on the Silver Tree of Karakorum symbolized the four directions in whih the Mongol Empire extended, as did the four alcoholic drinks derived from crops of distant and exotic civilizations: grapes, milk, rice and honey. Trees were rare on the steppe, but they had a more important role in the homeland and origin of the Mongool family of Genghis Khan. In their oral history, the first ancestor to try to unite the Mongo tribes had been made khan nunder a tree on the Khorkhonag steppe, and it was in this same area that Temujin and Jamuka had taken the oath as andas after the Merkid battle. The whole contraption offered a spectacular and pungent remidner of the Mongol origins and of their mission to conquer the entire world in all four directions. Mongke accepted the obligation to bring everything under the rule of the Mongol state that stood like one massive tree at the center of the universe. Mongke Khan took that command as the literal destiny of his nation and as his responsibility to achive. 

pg.172 - 174. the envoy and the theological wrestling match

After making the French envoy wait for many months, Mongke finally received him officially in court on May 24, 1254. Rubruck informed the officials that he knew the word of God and had come to spread it. In front of the assembled representatives of the various religions, the khan asked Rubruck to explain to them the word of God. Rubruck stumbled over a few phrases and stressed the importance to Christians of the commandment to love God, whereupon one of the Muslim clerics asked him incredulously, "Is there any man who does not love God?"

Rubruck responded, "Those who do not keep His commandments, do not love Him."

Another cleric then asked Rubruck, "Have you been in heaven that you know the commandments of God?" He seized upon the implication of what Rubruck was saying to them about God's commandments and challenged him directly: "By this you mean that Mongke Khan does not observe God's commandments?"

The discussion continued for some time, and according to Rubruck's own account, it was obvious that he did not fare well in the sometimes acrimonious arguments. He was unaccustomed to debating with people who did not share his basic assumptions of Catholic Christianity. Evidently, Mongke Khan recognized the problems he was having and suggested that all the scholars present take time to write out their thoughts more clearly and then return for a fuller discussion and debate of the issues.

The Mongols loved competitions of all sorts, and they organized debates among rival religions the same way they organized wrestling matches. It began on a specfic date with a panel of judges to oversee it. In this case Mongke Khan ordered them to debate before three judges: a Chrisian, a Muslim, and a Buddhist. A large audience assembled to watch the affir, which began with great seriousnes and formaility. An official aly down the strict rules by which Mongke wanted the debate to proceed: on pain of death "no one shall dare to speak words of contention."

Rubruck and the other Christians joined together in one team with the Muslims in an effort to regute the Buddhist doctrines. As these men gathered togetehr in all their robes and regalia in the tents on the dusty plains of Mongolia, they were doing that no other set of scholars or theologians had ever done in history. It is doubtful that representatives of so many types of Christianity had come to a single meeting, and certainly they had not debated, as equals, with representatives of the various Muslim and Buddhist faiths. The religiohs shcolards had to compete on the basis of ehir beliefs and ideas, using no weapons or the authority of any ruler or army behind them. They could use only words and logica to test the ability of their ideas to persuade.

In the initial round, Rubruck faced a Buddhist from North China who began by asking how the world was made and what happened to the soul after death. Rubruck countered that the Buddhist monk was asking the wrong questions: the first isue should be about God from whom all things flow. The umpires awared the first points to Rubruck.

Their debate ranged back and forth over the topics of evil versus good, God's nature, what happens to the souls of animals, the existence of reincarnation, and whether God had created  evil. s they debated, the clerics formed shifting coalitions among the various religions according ot h topic. Between each round of wretingly, Mongol atheltes would drink fermented mare's milk: in keeping with that tradition, after each rund fo the debate, the larned men paused to drink deeply in prepartion for the next match.

No side seemed to convince the other of anything. Finally, as the efects of th alcohol became stronger, the Crhsistians gave up trying to persuade anyhtinone with logiucal arguments, and reseorted to singing. The Muslims, who did not sing, responed by loudly reciting the Koran in an effort to drown out the Christians, and the Buddhists retreated into silent meditaiton. At the eof hte dbeate, unable to convert or kill one another, they conlucded the way most Mongol celerations concluded, with everyone simply too druink to continue. pg.172-173

A few days after the debate at Karakorum, Mongke Khan summoned Rubruck to dicharge him and send him back to his home country. He took this occasion to explain to the priest, and through him to the rulers of Europe, that he himsel belonged to no single religion, and he lectured Rubruck on Mongol beliefs about tolerance and goodness: "We Mongols believe in one God, by Whome we live and Whom we die and toward Him we have an upright heart." He then explained, "Just as God gave different fingers to the hand so has He given different ways to men. To you God has given the Scriptures and you Chsitians do not observe them. " He cited as evidence that the Christians eagerly placed money ahead of justive. He thien explained that instead of the Scriptirues, God had given the Mongols holy men, their shamans. oin daily life, "we do what tehy tell us, and live in peace "with one another.

p.129 reflections of an elder

His voice comes through as simple, clear and informed by common sense. He ascribed the fall of his enemies more to their own lack of ability thatn to his superior prowess: "I have not myself distinguished qualities." He said that the Eternal Blue Sky had condemmed the civilizations around him because of their "haughtiness and their extravagant luxury." Despite the tremendous wealth and power he had accumulated, he continued to lead a simple life: "I wear the same clothing and eat the same food as the cowherds and horse-hearders. We make the same sacrifices, and we share the riches." He offered a simple assesment of his ideals: "I hate luxury,
 and "I exercise moderation." He strove to treat his subjects like his children, and he treated talented men like his brothers, no matter what their origin was. He described his relationship with his officials as being close and based on respect: "We always agree in our principles and we are always united in mutual affection."

Drawing by Superbrothers staff of the actor Mako in one of the Conan films, included here to represent an older Genghis Khan.