The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford [82]
The landscape evoked a pleasant intimate feeling of almost isolated tranquility, and its same small scale indicates that it lacked sufficient grazing for the number of animals needed to support a large army or even a large court of retainers. The location indicates that Manduul did not have a large army, and he was not trying to assemble one.
Only a few days’ horse ride downstream to the northwest, the much wider pastures of the old imperial area of Karakorum would have offered far more extensive grazing for the horses of a more ambitious khan. By contrast, Mongke Bulag resembled a defensive retreat or possibly a place of forced exile and confinement, providing Manduul with little opportunity to influence trade or diplomacy.
According to most texts, Manduul had no children, and he possibly did not reside in the same ger with either Manduhai or Yeke Qabartu. Yet occasionally two women, Borogchin and Esige, are mentioned as daughters of Manduhai. Since they were too old to have been born to Manduhai during her marriage to Manduul, they appear to have been close female relatives of Manduul, possibly daughters from a prior marriage of Manduul, or more likely each was a niece or younger sister who lived with him as a daughter. Soon after the arrival of Manduhai, Borogchin married either Beg-Arslan or his son and went to live with her husband in the south.
The old khan certainly had no sons, but he had two distant male relatives. Each was a rival heir-in-waiting, and each tried to cultivate a close relationship with the old khan in the hope of succeeding him. Just as important, each of the potential heirs needed a close relationship with the queen in order for her to accept him as her next husband in the event of Manduul’s death.
The strongest rival was clearly Une-Bolod, an accomplished warrior and a member of the Borijin clan, albeit through descent from Genghis Khan’s brother Khasar rather than directly from Genghis Khan himself. Such men, however, had held the office in the past. His genealogy may not have been ideal, but it clearly qualified him for the position. Regarding his heritage, he was quoted as saying that what mattered most was that all the members of the family descended from Hoelun’s womb, thereby making his ancestor Khasar and Genghis Khan equal. His most compelling advantage as a potential heir derived from his record of military accomplishments in a time when the Mongols seemed woefully lacking in the skills for which they had once been so renowned. During the time of Esen’s rule, Une-Bolod had taken refuge on the Onon River out of loyalty to his Borijin clan.
The other rival was still more an unproven boy than a man. He had no record of accomplishing anything, but he was almost precisely Manduhai’s age and came from a similar background to hers. He was the young boy Bayan Mongke, whom Samur Gunj had rescued from Esen’s murderous rampage.
In the years after Esen’s death, when there were long stretches without a khan, Une-Bolod served as the head of the family from the traditional homeland of Genghis Khan on the Onon River. When Samur sent the infant Bayan Mongke to safety among the Mongols, it was to Une-Bolod’s territory in eastern Mongolia that he fled. Despite Une-Bolod’s seniority by a decade or more, he recognized the infant as his “elder brother,” meaning from the lineage of the elder brother Genghis Khan, and therefore having priority in the line of succession to become Great Khan. Une-Bolod placed the infant with a herding family, possibly with the expectation that he might be lost or forgotten over time. The family lived in a remote and isolated section of the South Gobi, where a very sparse but mixed population of Mongols and former Tangut eked out a meager subsistence.
Because of the way that they grew up, Bayan Mongke and Manduhai had more