The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford [107]
Stretching back more than a thousand years, to the time of the Huns and then to the eighth-century Turkic empires, the Mongol state always had its base in the center between the Tuul and Orkhon rivers. The Mongols had strengthened their hold on this area, in part by moving other steppe tribes into the west along the Altai Mountains to serve as a buffer against the unknown but threatening forces of Muslim Central Asia, the Europeans, and the Mongols’ steppe neighbors.
Through the centuries, the Oirat, called Kalmyk by the Muslims and Russians, had spread out of their original forest home in Siberia; by the time of Manduhai’s reign, their name had expanded into a generic term encompassing all the western Mongol and Turkic tribes around the Altai Mountains. Since the time of Genghis Khan’s daughter Checheyigen, the Oirat, as a son-in-law nation, usually had a female of the Borijin clan come to marry their leader. Over time, the leader of the Oirat came to be known as the taishi, while the title khan was reserved primarily for the Borijin leaders. For a while, the joint titles and the marriage alliance kept the two parts of the Mongol nation closely connected.
When the Mongols weakened in the time of Elbeg Khan, both the Ming court and the Silk Route warlords tried to separate the eastern and western Mongols and play them off each other. Both foreign powers sought to promote the Oirat as a separate nation, apart from the Mongols in the east, with equal leaders deserving of their own titles.
As the Ming Dynasty declined in vigor and the ties with western Mongolia became harder to maintain, the warlords of the Silk Route began pursuing the same strategy of dividing eastern and western Mongols, and they had more success. Until the time of Esen, the taishi was a western Mongol and lived among the people over whom he ruled. After Esen’s assassination, the Turkic warlords such as Beg-Arslan and Ismayil claimed the title and the right to rule the Oirat, although they preferred to stay close to their trade oasis cities along the Silk Route and to control the Oirat indirectly from a distance. As long as the taishi kept trade goods coming into the Oirat territory, no one seemed to mind.
Manduhai had to retake control of the Oirat, unite the Mongols, and thereby deprive Ismayil, and the future warlords, of the title or power to rule over the Oirat. She did not yet have an army large enough to cross the desert and conquer the oases of the Silk Route where the warlords held their power base and where large segments of the Oirat lived. But she was ready to challenge Beg-Arslan and Ismayil for command over the Oirat living north of the Gobi. Even if she could not conquer them completely, she needed to neutralize the warlords’ ability to use the Oirat against her.
In preparation for the first major campaign, Manduhai sent a train of ox carts laden with equipment and provisions with an infantry escort to guard them. She and the main army would leave later and pass by the infantry and supply carts. The organization of the army showed clearly that Manduhai’s plans for making war reached a much higher state of forethought and execution than the usual raids that had characterized much of steppe warfare over the previous two centuries. In an organization uncharacteristic of steppe leaders, she used infantry and cavalry as well as the caravan of supply carts; her army more closely resembled that of a sedentary state than that of a nomadic one.
Three days later, the young queen was ready to depart. The chronicles all agree that she fixed her hair to accommodate her quiver. The hairstyle of noble married women of that era precluded fighting or any other manual endeavor. She removed the headdress of peace and put on her helmet for war.
By taking off her queenly headdress, known as the boqta, she removed virtually the only piece of clothing that separated a man from a woman. The boqta ranks as