The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford [2]
At court these noble women wore elaborate headdresses of felt and feathers that rose more than two feet above their ears so they would tower over everyone around them and “give [themselves] a great luster when they are on horseback.” When they could, they raised their children in peace, but when it was necessary, they put on the helmet of war, took up the bows and arrows of battle, and went forth to defend their nation and their families. The royal Mongol women raced horses, commanded in war, presided as judges over criminal cases, ruled vast territories, and sometimes wrestled men in public sporting competitions. They arrogantly rejected the customs of civilized women of neighboring cultures, such as wearing the veil, binding their feet, or hiding in seclusion. Some accepted the husbands given to them, but others chose their own husbands or refused any at all. They lived by the rules of society when prudent, and they made new rules when necessary.
Without Genghis Khan’s daughters, there would have been no Mongol Empire. Genghis Khan recognized early in his career that an empire as large as the one he was creating could not be managed by a single ruler alone. To survive it needed different centers of power that fulfilled complementary roles. Not able to rely upon his sons to guard the empire he was conquering, he increasingly turned to his daughters, who ruled a string of kingdoms along the Silk Route from northern China through Central Asia.
Yet almost as soon as Genghis Khan died, the daughters came under attack, first from the wives of their brothers. What started as a war of powerful women against one another soon degenerated into simply a war against women in power. In the next generation, their nephews, the grandsons of Genghis Khan, intensified the attack on the systematic balance of powers left by Genghis Khan and on the lineages of his daughters.
Through most of the Mongol imperial era, from 1206 until 1368, the royal women of Genghis Khan’s Borijin clan mounted a persistent opposition to the centralized governments of their male relatives. Not only did the women fight outside efforts to claim their territories, but even after some faced gruesome and horrendous deaths, their daughters and granddaughters continued the struggle for the heritage bestowed upon them by Genghis Khan.
With the official role of royal women compromised and then nearly eliminated, the empire buckled, collapsed, and died. By 1368 the Mongols had lost their lands, fled back to their steppe homeland in disgrace, and resumed fighting among themselves with even more viciousness than ever. The bickering, feuding, and raiding lasted for another century, until a new queen unexpectedly appeared around 1470. Queen Manduhai the Wise lifted up the Mongol banners that had been left trampled in the dust. She awakened the forgotten consciousness of the Mongols. She put the Mongol nation back in order, created a new government, and then, like the Mongol queens before her, disappeared back into the fog of neglect.
Words and documents can dimly reflect the truth, like shadows by a night fire or the outline of a mountain through the mist, but alone they are too small and primitive to contain all of it. While words may be altered or censored, the truth endures, even when not properly recorded. Truth can be forgotten, misplaced, or lost, but never annihilated. The human hand might erase the words, mutilate the manuscript, or chisel off a name, but that only alters memory. Such vandalism tampers with the evidence without altering the facts. Cutting part of a document still leaves an outline of what was removed, a silhouette of the missing piece.
Once an event happens, evidence will remain in some form. The land always remembers. The truth will