The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford [31]
The movement of Alaqai Beki off the Mongolian Plateau began Genghis Khan’s expansion into the vast civilizations and kingdoms south of the Gobi. Cities and kingdoms stretched out in a seemingly infinite array before the Mongols: the Jurched kingdom with its millions of Chinese peasants and craftsmen; the small but productive kingdoms of Korea; the exotic and mystic land of Tibet; the degenerate but luxurious miniature Song Empire of South China, the isolated and varied kingdoms of Yunnan, and still more whose names and people remained completely unknown to the Mongols.
Before the Mongols could taste the wealth of any of these distant lands, they needed a beachhead to the south of the Gobi. The Gobi loomed like a large ocean of rock and gravel protecting the southern kingdoms from the northern tribes. Under good conditions, crossing the Gobi required six weeks, but they had to be very carefully chosen weeks. A small error could easily lead to the death of hundreds of warriors and horses.
The Mongols could not cross in the spring because the horses and men were usually too weak to withstand the harsh trip, and the horrific sandstorms of the spring could bury a whole army. Summer was too hot and winter too cold. The fall provided the best weather for travel, but only in years with enough rainfall to supply the minimum needs of grass and water. Even in a good fall season, a miscalculation might see the army severely hampered by an unseasonably late heat wave or, even more likely, an early arrival of winter.
At the end of even the best crossing, the army would be at its weakest and thereby most vulnerable to foreign attack. Crossing in the fall meant that they arrived in the south at the start of winter, a time when Mongols liked to attack, but not an auspicious time for the horses to graze and regain their strength after the hard trek through the Gobi. The army needed a large supply of fresh horses to replace the worn-out ones that would need months to recover, and the men needed food after the deprivations of nearly two months in the desert. While the men and animals recovered, they needed protection from any southern army that might seize this moment to expel them back into the harsh Gobi.
Alaqai overcame each of these obstacles for the Mongol army. By controlling the Onggud lands, she supplied the army with provisions and new horses while protecting it from southern attack. Alaqai’s kingdom was a fortress built in enemy territory.
Because Genghis Khan’s army of about 100,000 soldiers was approximately one-tenth the size of the Jurched’s to the south, he devised a plan that emphasized tactical retreat as much as attack. For such a strategy to succeed, he required a place to which he could withdraw and be guaranteed protection. Alaqai provided that cover for his army. She was both the vanguard of the Mongol army and its security.
Two of Alaqai’s sisters rapidly followed as queens over two other Turkic groups: the Uighurs in what is now the Xinjiang region of western China and the Karluk to the northwest in what is now Kazakhstan. Like soldiers being deployed to the front lines, his daughters were hurriedly assigned to their marriages as Genghis Khan planned a large-scale assault on China.
Genghis Khan’s policy of benign treatment of people who voluntarily joined his empire, plus his harsh treatment of those who resisted, lured many minority groups with a grievance against their rulers to rebel and ask him for help. Despite the strict conditions of military commitment that accompanied membership in the Mongol Empire, Genghis Khan’s cultural and religious tolerance especially attracted people who felt abused by a class of rulers speaking a different language or practicing a different religion than their subjects. The most poignant plea came from the Uighur people, who had originated centuries earlier in the Orkhon River area of central Mongolia but had relocated to the oases of western China