The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford [54]
Sorkhokhtani insisted on their strict adherence to Mongol law, but at the same time, she combined this with extensive education about the civilizations around them, particularly the Jurched, Uighurs, and Chinese. She made sure that in addition to knowing traditional steppe culture, her sons learned to speak, read, and write excellent Mongolian. She had them taught to speak colloquial Chinese, although apparently not to read or write the classical version so prized by scholars and bureaucrats. Throughout the reign of Ogodei’s family, she had tightly controlled her sons’ behavior to keep them beyond any sort of suspicion for misconduct or disloyalty to whichever Great Khan happened to be in power. All accounts agree that she did this by making them scrupulously obey the law and the ruling khan without providing him a reason to suspect or an excuse to punish any one of them. Sorkhokhtani spent her life preparing for the khuriltai of 1251.
By contrast, Oghul Ghaimish was clumsy and awkward in her public role. Despite Oghul Ghaimish’s decisive advantage of control over the imperial capital of Karakorum and all the lands around it, she lacked the skills to keep her immediate family, much less the whole Ogodei lineage, united under her. According to Juvaini, her work “amounted to little except negotiations with merchants, the provisional allocation of sums of money to every land and country, and the dispatch of relays of churlish messengers and tax-gatherers.” In the disjointed politics of the time, “her sons held two separate courts in opposition to their mother;” and thus there were three rulers in one place. And elsewhere also, “the princes made dealings in accordance with their own wishes, and the grandees and notables of every land attached themselves to a party according to their own inclination.” Confusion reigned, “and the affairs of Oghul Ghaimish and her sons got out of control because of their differences with one another and their contentions with their senior kinsmen; and their counsels and schemes diverged from the pathway of righteousness.”
Despite her need to cultivate public support, Oghul Ghaimish Khatun apparently felt a deeper desire for more revenue. In July 1250, just prior to the election for the new khan, she issued an edict to increase the taxes on herders from 1 percent to 10 percent, thereby making the tax for Mongol herders the same as for conquered farmers. Such an act alienated the people whom she most needed to support her, and it revealed her poor sense of political timing.
With the full support of her four capable sons and a lifetime of preparation and waiting, Sorkhokhtani organized the campaign to elect her son to the office of Great Khan. Sorkhokhtani conspired with her nephew Batu Khan of the Golden Horde to bypass the authority of Oghul Ghaimish, call a new khuriltai, and orchestrate the election of her eldest son, Mongke, as Great Khan. This would be the last election in which the women of the family had a public voice. Batu Khan’s invitation went to all the queens. “He sent messengers to the wives of Genghis Khan, the wives and sons of Ogodei Khan, the wife of Tolui Khan, Sorkhokhtani Beki, and the other princes and emirs of the right and left.” On July 1, 1251, the assembled Mongol throng proclaimed the election of Sorkhokhtani’s son, the forty-three-year-old Mongke, as Great Khan of the Great Mongol nation.
After securing the election for her son, Sorkhokhtani personally presided over the trial of her defeated rival, the ousted queen Oghul Ghaimish. Guyuk had interpreted the law to allow torture of people who were not members of the Borijin clan, and this now applied to her. Even if Oghul Ghaimish had been the daughter of Checheyigen, and thus the granddaughter