The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford [17]
Most of the participants in the khuriltai of 1206 came from the steppes, but a few delegations from the world beyond also participated; among these were Genghis Khan’s newfound allies, the Onggud. The fortuitous meeting with the merchant Hassan at Baljuna had evidently made as deep an impression on the Onggud as it had on Genghis Khan, because some of them also became his followers. The decisive test for this impromptu alliance between the Mongols and the Onggud had come in 1205, two years after the Baljuna rescue. After rallying his followers to defeat the Tatars and the Kereyid, Genghis Khan faced only a single powerful confederation left on the steppes, the Naiman. The Naiman leader dispatched envoys to Ala-Qush, an Onggud leader, to woo him away from Genghis Khan and join them in a war against the upstart Mongols. Such an alliance might have been able to crush the newly emerging nation from opposite sides, or at least keep it from expanding further. Ala-Qush not only rejected the Naiman offer of an alliance but sent envoys to warn Genghis Khan of a planned Naiman trap.
According to tradition, when the Onggud envoys approached the camp of Genghis Khan, they brought with them a gift from civilization; this time it was wine made from grapes, a commodity previously unknown to the Mongols, but one destined to have a major impact on them and the success of their world empire. In recognition of their unique relationship, Genghis Khan agreed to a future marriage between his daughter Alaqai Beki and the son of Ala-Qush of the Onggud.
After the earlier failed marriage negotiations for his offspring, Genghis Khan always married his daughters to only the most trustworthy of allies. He never permitted one to marry a rival, nor did he allow them to marry any of his generals or other subordinates. Despite the emphasis on rising in rank according to merit and deeds, he maintained strict lineage segregation. His daughters married men from the aristocratic lineages of the steppes, and later he extended this practice to the ruling lineages of specially chosen neighboring kingdoms.
Genghis Khan’s sons also married women from the same quda alliance lineages as his daughters. In addition, the sons, and Genghis Khan himself, sometimes took a different type of wife from the royal wives and daughters of defeated tribes. In each case, Genghis Khan and his sons married a widow or daughter of the dead khan, thereby unmistakably demonstrating that the men of Genghis Khan’s family had replaced those former rulers. Thus Genghis Khan took two Tatar queens and a Merkid princess as wives, while arranging for his eldest and youngest sons to marry the Kereyid princesses who had been Ong Khan’s nieces.
As part of the wedding ceremony, a Mongol bride stood in front of her new ger and put on the boqta, the tall headgear of a queen. She also put on all her jewelry. Before entering the ger, she walked between two large fires that sanctified her so that she might enter her marriage in the purest possible state. The marriage happened without much ceremony, but for eight days afterward, people brought presents to the couple. On the eighth day, the family would host a grand feast. As described by Pétis de la Croix, “These feasts seldom end without some quarrel, because they are too profuse of their liquors.”
The husband had to have a place prepared for his new wife. In one episode in which a khan brought in a new queen for whom he had not yet prepared a home, he sought to bring her to the ger of his senior wife. Out of hospitality for the younger woman, the elder queen did not at first object and she went to sleep, apparently without suspecting that the couple might try to consummate the marriage at that time.
However, during the night the khan became amorous with his bride. The older queen, sleeping nearby, awoke. “How shall I watch you two enjoying each other in bed?” she angrily asked them.
Although it was night, the senior queen ordered them out. “Leave my ger!” Since there was no other ger in the vicinity, the khan and his younger wife had