The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford [25]
The merchants from beyond the Gobi sold delicately carved combs for fixing the hair, and they traveled with magic needles that could point out the south or north in the dark or on a day darkened by sandstorms. They played musical instruments with the voices of angels, and they frightened away demons with brass cymbals that sounded like cranes dancing on ice. They blew into horns to call the thunder, and conch shells that could summon the gods. Their medicines were said to restore sight to the blind and make the barren fruitful. The bamboo wood was light enough to float on water, but strong as metal, and light could pass through the beads of glass and colored crystal. Their cosmetics revitalized an aged woman’s beauty, and their potions could return an old man’s virility. Compared to the novelties of the markets, the nomad’s life seemed drab, the wealth in cows and horses appeared trifling, and the herder’s clothes looked coarse and plain.
To obtain the luxury goods of the south, the Mongols needed something to trade. The yaks, cows, sheep, and goats could not make the trek across the Gobi, and the horses and camels could not carry heavy loads of wool or leather. The most valuable products of the north came not from the domesticated animals, but from the wild animals: antelope hides, black and brown sable pelts, tiger and wolf skins, bear claws, and the horns of elk, reindeer, ibex, and wild sheep. The Mongols could also provide hunting hawks, as well as large supplies of feathers from cranes and tundra swans. Even the fur of marmots, squirrels, and dogs could be traded, and the southern pharmacists sought to harvest body parts of wild animals, from tongue and teeth to tail and testicles, for use in medicines.
Most of these products lay beyond the Mongol steppe world; they came from animals of the distant Amur River in the northeast or the forests around Lake Baikal in the northwest. The Mongols called the northern area Sibr, which later became Siberia, and they referred to the tribes as the Oi-yin Irged, the Forest People, eventually shortened to Oirat. These groups lived in small hunting camps among the trees adjacent to the taiga in the shadow of the Arctic. Because horses could not survive that far north, some of the bands moved on sleds pulled by dogs, and others relied on reindeer. They wore animal skins and furs, ate the wild animals of the forest, and lived in bark tents. Even the rough wool and felt of the steppe was a luxury among the Oirat, while silks and teas remained as exotic to them as bamboo or books.
In 1207, only a year after the founding of the nation, Genghis Khan dispatched his eldest son, Jochi, with an army to Siberia to subdue the northern tribes. The Oirat living along the Shishigt River, west of Lake Hovsgol, became the first to join Genghis Khan. Unlike the herding tribes living on the open steppe, the Oirat lived by hunting in a wooded zone. Prior to Jochi’s campaign, they had not been very active in the steppe wars, but they owed nominal allegiance to a sequence of Genghis Khan’s enemies, including Jamuka, the Merkid, and the Naiman. However, their chief quickly recognized that the Oirat’s future prosperity lay with the Mongols, with whom he eagerly sought an alliance.
Genghis Khan accepted the Oirat and made a proposal of marriage with two of the chief’s sons. Genghis Khan’s daughter Checheyigen married Inalchi. Then Genghis Khan made the alliance deeper by marrying his granddaughter, who was the daughter of Jochi, to the chief’s other son, Torolchi. With the marriage of each woman, Genghis Khan’s nuptial edicts became stronger and more direct in making