The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford [131]
The new system of clans and tribes expanded the concept of Mongol to embrace everyone living in the territory, no matter what their former ethnicity. Included were diverse and often antagonistic groups such as the Three Guards along the border with the Ming; the old imperial Ossetian and Kipchak guards from the reign of Khubilai Khan; lingering remnants of the Onggud and Tangut; and some of the Uighurs. The Six Tumen consisted of new geographic-kinship groups. In the east were the Chakhar, Khalkh, and Khorchin, and to the west were the Ordos, Tumed, and Yungshiyebu. Each of these contained a set of otogs, which were something like the old clans but were comparable to an occupational caste or a geographic group as well and constituted the primary social units of allegiance for individuals.
Within the Mongols, there would no longer be a distinction between the competing lineages descended from Genghis Khan’s four sons. Henceforth, they were all part of the Borijin. Other branches of the family descended from Genghis Khan’s brothers were also folded into the main body, with one single exception. The descendants of Khasar, the people of Manduhai’s early general and supporter Une-Bolod, were allowed to keep an independent identity within the Borijin clan.
For a people not accustomed to reading, the Mongols had to learn the new organization by means of easily learned songs such as “Zurgaan Tumen Mongol” (“The Six Tumen of the Mongols”), which listed the tribes with some pertinent information about each group’s geographic location and its social function within the united Mongol nation. The Khalkh were described as “located in the Khangai Mountains, as a guard from strangers,” or the Uriyanghai as “hunters of gazelle and wild animals, protectors from thieves, and diggers of wells.” Through these and similar songs, the people came to know who they were or, at least, who they were expected to be in the new nation.
The monarchs devised a plan to station their sons, the Seven Steels, around the edges of the empire to protect it as a permanent wall of steel, and they established a series of permanent encampments along the Chinese border. These eventually grew to approximately thirty bases from which the Mongols could keep watch on the Chinese and from which they could launch raids into China. Each settlement had a permanent cadre of soldiers stationed there, as well as animals and food supplies if a larger army needed to be sent in to assist them.
For the Mongols, the bases required minimal cost to maintain. In addition to keeping their own herds of animals, the soldiers had ample supplies of antelope, which they hunted for meat and for hides. The bases seem to have created fear and concern in the Ming court far beyond the actual danger that they posed. The Chinese responded with a new round of wall building in order to place a permanent protection between the Chinese urban and agricultural population centers and these Mongol bases.
The new Mongol nation, or Six Tumen, included Buddhists and Muslims with a mixture of the earlier Christian groups who had long since lost all contact with the outside Christian world. Manduhai and Dayan Khan did not choose among these religions, and they let their people follow any that they wanted. The government and ruling family, however, maintained a spiritual focus on a state cult formed around Genghis Khan and his shrine.
Through the work of Manduhai and Dayan Khan, “the government was rectified and humanity was united.” In this time, “peace, unity and prosperity spread throughout all the people.” Yet not all of their reforms succeeded. The effort to curtail usage of the title khan failed as each of their sons scrambled to take the title in his own domain.
After the khuriltai, Manduhai Khatun and Dayan Khan maintained