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

punishments, and generally enforce the law. Because they controlled the entrance to and egress from the royal tents, they formed the basis of government administration.

All members of Genghis Khan’s own regiment held the rank of elder brother to the other nine units of ten thousand, and therefore they could issue orders to any of them and expect to be obeyed without question. Unlike other armies in which each individual held a rank, in the Mongol army, the entire unit held a rank. The lowest-ranking man in Genghis Khan’s tumen of ten thousand outranked the highest-ranking men of the other tumen. In turn, within each tumen, every member of the commander’s unit of one thousand outranked every man in the other nine units of one thousand.

To facilitate communication so that the orders got to the intended recipient, Genghis Khan relied on a system of fast riders known as arrow messengers. The military supplied the riders, but the local people supplied the stations. The postal service ranked alongside the military in importance for the Mongols, and individual Mongols were allowed to serve in it in lieu of regular military service. Depending on local terrain, the stations were set approximately twenty miles apart, and each station required about twenty-five families to maintain and operate it. Although the stations were open for public use, much of the information on the individual stations and the total number at any given time remained a carefully guarded secret, and therefore the information has not survived. Some idea of its expanse can be derived from the eighteenth century, however, when the system still operated and required approximately sixty-four stations to cross Mongolia from the Altai Mountains in the west to the entrance through the Great Wall into China in the east.

Genghis Khan adapted a variety of older methods of communication over shorter distances, such as the use of torches, whistling arrows, smoke, flares, and flags, for even more rapid transmission of information during maneuvers, hunts, and military movements. The herders had earlier developed a complicated system of arm signals that could be used long after individuals had passed out of hearing range, and under Genghis Khan these, too, were built upon to make an ever more elaborate system of rapid and efficient communication for use in battle or troop maneuvers.

Peace and prosperity bred their own problems for Genghis Khan. Six years of peace allowed, or possibly encouraged, the intrigues and the petty rivalries that threatened to undo Genghis Khan’s hard-fought unification of the tribes. The more powerful he became, the more disagreements sparked among his followers—particularly within his own family, whose members felt entitled to substantially larger shares of goods and power than his allies outside the family. Genghis Khan’s court of trusted advisers included almost none of his own relatives. He sent his mother to live with her youngest son, Temuge, who by steppe tradition was called Otchigen, the Prince of the Hearth, and had the responsibility of caring for his parents in their old age.

With a steadfastly loyal army and without family or old aristocrats as rivals, new trouble arose from an unexpected source: Teb Tengeri, Genghis Khan’s shaman. He had proclaimed time and again that the Eternal Blue Sky favored Genghis Khan and would make him ruler of the world; he interpreted dreams and all kinds of signs in favor of Genghis Khan’s success and as indications of his great importance. Genghis Khan exploited not only the supernatural value that Teb Tengeri contributed to his court but his practical value as well, as when he appointed him to oversee the estates of Hoelun and Temuge Otchigen. Teb Tengeri used his position to enrich himself and his six brothers, who formed a powerful coalition and, because of his supernatural power, had a following within the newly created Mongol nation second only to that of Genghis Khan himself.

On one occasion the seven brothers ganged up on Genghis Khan’s brother Khasar and beat him. Afterward, Khasar went to Genghis Khan’s ger, fell to his knees, and begged his brother to help him. Never completely trustful of his own family, Genghis Khan rebuked his brother and mockingly asked how it was that he, who had once been renowned as the strongest man in the tribe, could now be beaten by these men. According to the Secret History, Khasar broke into tears of shame as he knelt before his brother. He left the ger, and in his anger, fear, and humiliation, he did not speak to Genghis Khan for three days.

Apparently emboldened by this small success against Khasar, Teb Tengeri reported to Genghis Khan shortly thereafter that a dream had come to him in which he saw that Genghis Khan would rule the nation, but that in another dream he saw that Khasar would rule it. He urged Genghis Khan to strike quickly and firmly against his brother to prevent any threat to his own rule. Genghis Khan immediately ordered Khasar arrested and stripped of his small contingent of followers.

Genghis Khan’s mother lived a day’s journey away from his court with her youngest son, but she quickly heard of the trouble. She already resented Teb Tengeri’s power over her as one of the administrators of her estate, and she became enraged at hearing of the strife he had caused between her sons. Despite the late hour, Hoelun hitched her white camel to her black cart and rode through the night to reach her son’s royal encampment at sunrise.

According to the Secret History, Genghis Khan froze in surprise as his mother charged unexpectedly into his ger, untied Khasar, put his hat back on his head, and helped him to tie the sash around his waist. Working herself into ever greater anger against her eldest son, she sat down cross-legged, ripped open her deel, and pulled out her breasts that were now so old, wrinkled, and worn from nourishing five children that, according to the Secret History, even as she held them up