Джек Уезерфорд - Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

the end of the horseflesh meal, Temujin Khan raised one hand to the sky, and with the other he held up the muddy water of Baljuna in a toast. He thanked his men for their loyalty and swore never to forget it. The men shared in drinking the muddy waters and swore eternal allegiance to him. In the retelling of the episode in oral history, it became known in history as the Baljuna Covenant, and acquired a mythic aura as the lowest point in the military fortunes of Temujin Khan but also as the event out of which the identity and form of the Mongol Empire would arise.

The event acquired a symbolic representation of the diversity of the Mongol people based on mutual commitment and loyalty that transcended kinship, ethnicity, and religion. The nineteen men with Temujin Khan came from nine different tribes; probably only Temujin and his brother Khasar were actually from the Mongol clans. The others included Merkid, Khitan, and Kereyid. Whereas Temujin was a devout shamanist who worshiped the Eternal Blue Sky and the God Mountain of Burkhan Khaldun, the nineteen included several Christians, three Muslims, and several Buddhists. They were united only in their devotion to Temujin and their oath to him and each other. The oaths sworn at Baljuna created a type of brotherhood, and in transcending kinship, ethnicity, and religion, it came close to being a type of modern civic citizenship based upon personal choice and commitment. This connection became a metaphor for the new type of community among Temujin’s followers that would eventually dominate as the basis of unity within the Mongol Empire.

After hiding at Baljuna, Temujin formulated his plan to counterattack. He knew that he had to move quickly while Ong Khan was still basking in his false confidence of having permanently rid himself of Temujin’s threat. Temujin dispatched word of his plan to his followers scattered across the steppe, and the story probably contained all the details of the miraculous appearance of the horse that saved him and his men. In the following days, to a degree that Temujin himself possibly had not expected, his newly organized army units of tens and hundreds reassembled themselves across the steppe. As Temujin marched westward from Baljuna back toward the lands of Ong Khan, his men returned to him from all directions. In addition, some of Temujin’s relatives through his mother and through his wife Borte, ones who had been loyal followers of Ong Khan, now deserted their Kereyid leader and came searching for Temujin’s camp.

Meanwhile, to celebrate his victory over Temujin, the still unsuspecting Ong Khan organized a large feast in his palatial golden ger that he took wherever he went. Overconfident in his own power over his followers and unaware of what was happening out on the steppe, Ong Khan celebrated in the illusion that Temujin’s followers had been disbanded and that Temujin himself was far away in the east.

Temujin’s army raced toward the place of the feast. Loyal followers had gone ahead of them to station reserves of horses so that as one set tired out, another awaited his men. With these remounts, his army raced, without pause, through the dead of night, in what he called the Lightning Advance. Rather than approaching the Kereyid court directly across the steppe, which would have been the easy approach, Temujin took his men over a more remote and difficult pass that he knew would not be guarded.

Suddenly, Temujin, who was thought to be several days’ ride away, swooped down on the revelers; his men had surrounded the entire camp. Over the next three days of hard fighting the Kereyid retreated before the advancing army of Temujin. Many of the followers of Ong Khan deserted to Temujin’s banner, and, as was his known policy, he accepted them so long as they had not committed any act of treachery or harm to their former leader other than to abandon him in favor of Temujin.

Ong Khan’s army was not so much defeated as swallowed by Temujin’s forces. The Kereyid court fled in different directions, with each man for himself. Ong Khan’s son fled south and, after being abandoned by his own servants, died of thirst in the desert, while Jamuka and his shrinking followers fled west toward the territory of the Naiman, the last of the three great steppe tribes not yet defeated by Temujin. Ong Khan also tried to make his way alone to the sanctuary of the Naiman tribe.

Having failed to capture the leader of his enemies, or even the son of the old khan, the Mongols had to account for this failure and dismiss its importance. Temujin’s supporters spread stories to denigrate Ong Khan’s reputation and to assure people on all sides he was dead and no longer a threat. According to the account circulated by the Mongols, after arriving safely at the Naiman border, Ong Khan encountered a border guard who, refusing to believe that the solitary old man was the renowned warrior khan of the Kereyid, killed him. They said that to atone for the killing of Ong Khan, the Naiman queen had his head brought to her and placed on a sacred white cloth of felt in the position of honor at the back of the ger, opposite the door, where she could make offerings and prayers to it. Nothing could be more offensive to Mongol sensibilities than such a bloody item inside the home, and nothing could be more dangerous than the head, the seat of Ong Khan’s soul. According to the story, however, she ordered a musician to play the morin huur, the horsehead fiddle, while her daughters-in-law sang and danced for the head and she made ceremonial offerings of wine to it as though Ong Khan were still alive and an honored guest in her ger. When Tayang Khan, the Naiman ruler, entered and saw the severed head, he panicked and shouted in horrified anger that the head had smiled