Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [82]
For the Mongols were going to conquer the world.
It was Genghis Khan who had told them so. Genghis Khan, by birth the leader of a noble clan, who in 1206 – only thirty years before – had united all the Mongol clans under him and taken, from the ancient Turkish empires of the Asian plain, the title of Kagan or Khan. Genghis: also called the Dalai – the all-powerful.
Others before had borne this title, but none had ever built an empire as the Mongols were to do.
From their homeland in the pasture lands above the Gobi Desert, these warriors born to the saddle and the bow struck southwards across the Great Wall into China, and westwards against the Turkish, and now Moslem, states of Central Asia and Persia. These were not defenceless states, but powerful. The fighting was tremendous. But Genghis crushed them. In a few years the northern city of Peking had fallen; by 1220, most of Persia was his; and then, like all the conquerors from the east, the Mongols came to cross the crescent of mountains and ride down into the great, open north Eurasian plain.
It was the aim of every Asian empire to control the rich caravan routes to the west. To do so was very profitable. But it was the aim of Genghis Khan not only to do this, but to set up a state to rule the entire world. It was not only his mission but his duty.
‘Tengri, the god of the Great Blue Sky, has granted me to rule all who live in felt tents,’ he declared. But if this meant merely the nomad dwellers on the plains, he took it to mean the world. And like the Chinese emperors he conquered, he claimed a mandate from heaven.
His object – which popular history, with some reason, often forgets – was universal peace. The rules of this new world order were all set forth by Genghis in his code – the great Yasa – a copy of which was kept, like the Covenant, sacred and hidden from the eyes of the people at each of the Mongol capitals.
‘All men are equal,’ declared the Yasa, ‘and all, on their merits, shall serve the great Khan.’ It was a formula that other empires, like the Chinese, had used. ‘The old and the poor shall also be protected,’ the Yasa ordered. And indeed, in the empire of Genghis Khan, there was a kind of welfare state.
Wiser than many despots, he also allowed freedom of religion. ‘You may worship as you please,’ the conquered were told, ‘but in your prayers, you must also pray for the Great Khan.’ And all this was bound together with the simple formula: ‘There is one God in heaven, and one lord upon the earth – the Great Khan.’
In 1227 Genghis died. Like the falcon that was the tamga of the clan, he had flown up into the heavens, many believed. But his empire did not falter. For centuries the Khans would be elected from the large number of his direct descendants, the state clan.
The empire Genghis left his sons and grandsons in his Will was divided into four parts. In the oriental world, each of the four points of the compass had a colour: the north was black, the south red; the east was blue and the west white. And the centre, the royal centre, was gold.
Thus it was that the descendants of Genghis were called the Golden Kin.
To his sons, Genghis gave the order: expand. And to each, in his Will, he left not silver and gold, but armies with which to get them.
The great army that descended upon the western world in 1237 was led by Batu Khan, a junior ruler and grandson of Genghis. At his right hand was the great Mongol general Subudey. The clan council of the Great Khan had decided that his army, though it belonged to the western of the empire’s four divisions, should be supplemented by large detachments from the other divisions as well. It consisted, it is estimated, of about 150,000 men: the core Mongol, the rest mainly Turks from the conquered lands of Central Asia.
History, since that time, has usually referred to this army, and the vast western empire it was to rule, as the Golden Horde. In fact, this name comes from a misreading