The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford [136]
Columbus showed how seriously he and others of his time took the history of the Mongols, whom they recognized as one of the great forces of history, but one about which they knew very little. He was not the first to go in search of the Mongols. A hundred years earlier, in the fourteenth century, as Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, the first book in the English language, he also launched a literary search for the elusive Genghis Khan and his daughter. Chaucer had traveled widely on diplomatic missions through Europe and had learned of Genghis Khan, whom he called Cambuyskan. In “The Squire’s Tale,” Genghis Khan’s daughter, the fictional Canace, acquired magical power over humans and animals; she communicated with birds and knew the use of every plant. Chaucer never finished “The Squire’s Tale.” The story, as much as was written, seemed much more of a European romance than anything to do with the Mongols; yet we will never know where it was going to end.
The Tatar tale was the only story Chaucer left unfinished in his book, and other writers through the centuries have occasionally sought to complete it. English poet John Milton described Chaucer’s fragmentary tale as a “sage and solemn” story “where more is meant than meets the ear.” In his poem “Il Penseroso,” Milton called upon Orpheus, the Greek hero of music and poetry, to help him complete Chaucer’s tale of contests, trophies, and enchantments in the life of bold Genghis Khan and his gifted daughter who communed with animals.
Even when learned poets such as Chaucer and Milton could not complete the accounts of these unique Mongol women, their poems constantly remind us of what is missing in our history. The poets preserved what the censors destroyed.
The memory of the Mongol queens lived on in marble as well as in literature. In 1631, after Mumtaz Mahal died during the birth of her fourteenth child, her husband, the Moghul emperor Shah Jahan, began the building of a magnificent tomb for her. The most gifted Muslim and Hindu artisans of the era brought a variety of cultural styles and motifs, and yet beneath it all the building took the simple domed shape of a Mongol ger. The emperor was a distant heir of Genghis Khan and Borte. His ancestors had been guregen, married to the women of the Borijin clan, and he was descended from those women though the line of Chaghatai. As though guided by an ancient Mongol memory, he placed the entrance to the Taj Mahal facing south like every Mongol ger, toward the sun. Built to honor one Moghul queen, the Taj Mahal, the most beautiful building ever erected, embodies the spirit of all the Mongol women.
In 1710, while writing the first biography of Genghis Khan, the French scholar François Pétis de La Croix published a book of tales and fables combining Persian, Turkish, Mongol, and Arabic themes. One of his longest and best stories derived from the history of Khutulun, who rode into battle with her father and refused to marry any man who could not defeat her in wrestling. In his version, she became Turandot, meaning “Turkish Daughter,” the nineteen-year-old daughter of Altoun Khan, emperor of China, but the story mostly focused on Calaf, son of Timurtasch (Timur Taishi), who was also nineteen and determined to woo her. Instead of challenging her suitors in wrestling, Pétis de La Croix had her confront them with three riddles. Instead of wagering mere horses, the suitor had to forfeit his life if he failed to answer correctly.
Pétis de La Croix wrote of Turandot: “She united with her ravishing beauty such a cultivated mind that she not only knows everything which it is customary to teach persons of her rank, but even the sciences which are