The Nomad Empires of the

Eurasian Steppes
 

3RD CENTURY B.C.- 7TH CENTURY A.D.
 

Genghis Khan
(1167 -1227)

The empires of the 2 equestrian nomads of the Xiongnu, 1 Huns, and Turkic people, as well as the 3 Mongolian empire of Genghis Khan in the 13th century, were all based on coalitions of different tribes and peoples.

Because the founders of the empires did not define themselves by ethnicity, every group that identified with the interests of the empire—even former enemies—was taken in. Of course, this confederal style easily led to fragmentation of the nomad empires, and most of them were very short lived.

The tribal federation of the Xiongnu, which formed at the end of the third century B.C., presented a serious threat to Han dynasty China, which went to great lengths—from the construction of the Great Wall to offensive military strikes—to rid itself of this opponent. During the course of the second and third centuries, the Chinese succeeded in gradually dividing and driving off the Xiongnu. Parts of the confederation then became dependent on the Chinese and were assimilated; other groups were
defeated by the Chinese and driven westward. It seems likely that the Xiongnu, as they withdrew, forced out other peoples and tribes living further west—the Kushana, who then invaded Central Asia and India, for example. Today it is considered doubtful that the Huns who appeared in the fourth century were directly related to the Xiongnu, although it is possible that some remains of the Xiongnu merged into the tribal confederation of the Huns. In the fifth century, the powerful Sassanians of Persia came into conflict with the nomad empire of the Hephthalites, who were also known as the "white Huns." After the Hephthalites swept south to destroy the remains of the great Gupta empire in northern India, they were themselves annihilated in 567 by the Sassanians under Khosrow I.

Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan, Genghis also spelled Chinggis, Chingis, Jenghiz, or Jinghis, original name Temüjin, also spelled Temuchin (born 1162, near Lake Baikal, Mongolia—died Aug. 18, 1227), Mongolian warrior-ruler, one of the most famous conquerors of history, who consolidated tribes into a unified Mongolia and then extended his empire across Asia to the Adriatic Sea.

Genghis Khan was a warrior and ruler of genius who, starting from obscure and insignificant beginnings, brought all the nomadic tribes of Mongolia under the rule of himself and his family in a rigidly disciplined military state. He then turned his attention toward the settled peoples beyond the borders of his nomadic realm and began the series of campaigns of plunder and conquest that eventually carried the Mongol armies as far as the Adriatic Sea in one direction and the Pacific coast of China in the other, leading to the establishment of the great Mongol Empire.

Historical background
With the exception of the saga-like Secret History of the Mongols (1240?), only non-Mongol sources provide near-contemporary information about the life of Genghis Khan. Almost all writers, even those who were in the Mongol service, have dwelt on the enormous destruction wrought by the Mongol invasions. One Arab historian openly expressed his horror at the recollection of them. Beyond the reach of the Mongols and relying on second-hand information, the 13th-century chronicler Matthew Paris called them a “detestable nation of Satan that poured out like devils from Tartarus so that they are rightly called Tartars.” He was making a play on words with the classical word Tartarus (Hell) and the ancient tribal name of Tatar borne by some of the nomads, but his account catches the terror that the Mongols evoked. As the founder of the Mongol nation, the organizer of the Mongol armies, and the genius behind their campaigns, Genghis Khan must share the reputation of his people, even though his generals were frequently operating on their own, far from direct supervision. Nevertheless, it would be mistaken to see the Mongol campaigns as haphazard incursions by bands of marauding savages. Nor is it true, as some have supposed, that these campaigns were somehow brought about by a progressive desiccation of Inner Asia that compelled the nomads to look for new pastures. Nor, again, were the Mongol invasions a unique event. Genghis Khan was neither the first nor the last nomadic conqueror to burst out of the steppe and terrorize the settled periphery of Eurasia. His campaigns were merely larger in scale, more successful, and more lasting in effect than those of other leaders. They impinged more violently upon those sedentary peoples who had the habit of recording events in writing, and they affected a greater part of the Eurasian continent and a variety of different societies.

Two societies were in constant contact, two societies that were mutually hostile, if only because of their diametrically opposed ways of life, and yet these societies were interdependent. The nomads needed some of the staple products of the south and coveted its luxuries. These could be had by trade, by taxing transient caravans, or by armed raids. The settled peoples of China needed the products of the steppe to a lesser extent, but they could not ignore the presence of the nomadic barbarians and were forever preoccupied with resisting encroachment by one means or another. A strong dynasty, such as the 17th-century Manchu, could extend its military power directly over all Inner Asia. At other times the Chinese would have to play off one set of barbarians against another, transferring their support and juggling their alliances so as to prevent any one tribe from becoming too strong.

The cycle of dynastic strength and weakness in China was accompanied by another cycle, that of unity and fragmentation amongst the peoples of the steppe. At the peak of their power, a nomadic tribe under a determined leader could subjugate the other tribes to its will and, if the situation in China was one of weakness, might extend its power well beyond the steppe. In the end this extension of nomadic power over the incompatible, sedentary culture of the south brought its own nemesis. The nomads lost their traditional basis of superiority—that lightning mobility that required little in the way of supply and fodder—and were swallowed up by the Chinese they had conquered. The cycle would then be resumed; a powerful China would reemerge, and disarray and petty squabbling among ephemeral chieftains would be the new pattern of life among the nomads. The history of the Mongol conquests illustrates this analysis perfectly, and it is against this background of political contrasts and tensions that the life of Genghis Khan must be evaluated. His campaigns were not an inexplicable natural or even God-given catastrophe but the outcome of a set of circumstances manipulated by a soldier of ambition, determination, and genius. He found his tribal world ready for unification, at a time when China and other settled states were, for one reason or another, simultaneously in decline, and he exploited the situation.

Early struggles
Various dates are given for the birth of Temüjin (or Temuchin), as Genghis Khan was named—after a leader who was defeated by his father, Yesügei, when Temüjin was born. The chronology of Temüjin’s early life is uncertain. He may have been born in 1155, in 1162 (the date favoured today in Mongolia), or in 1167. According to legend, his birth was auspicious, because he came into the world holding a clot of blood in his hand. He is also said to have been of divine origin, his first ancestor having been a gray wolf, “born with a destiny from heaven on high.” Yet his early years were anything but promising. When he was nine, Yesügei, a member of the royal Borjigin clan of the Mongols, was poisoned by a band of Tatars, another nomadic people, in continuance of an old feud.

With Yesügei dead, the remainder of the clan, led by the rival Taychiut family, abandoned his widow, Höelün, and her children, considering them too weak to exercise leadership and seizing the opportunity to usurp power. For a time the small family led a life of extreme poverty, eating roots and fish instead of the normal nomad diet of mutton and mare’s milk. Two anecdotes illustrate both Temüjin’s straitened circumstances and, more significantly, the power he already had of attracting supporters through sheer force of personality. Once he was captured by the Taychiut, who, rather than killing him, kept him around their camps, wearing a wooden collar. One night, when they were feasting, Temüjin, noticing that he was being ineptly guarded, knocked down the sentry with a blow from his wooden collar and fled. The Taychiut searched all night for him, and he was seen by one of their people, who, impressed by the fire in his eyes, did not denounce him but helped him escape at the risk of his own life. On another occasion horse thieves came and stole eight of the nine horses that the small family owned. Temüjin pursued them. On the way he stopped to ask a young stranger, called Bo’orchu, if he had seen the horses. Bo’orchu immediately left the milking he was engaged in, gave Temüjin a fresh horse, and set out with him to help recover the lost beasts. He refused any reward but, recognizing Temüjin’s authority, attached himself irrevocably to him as a nökör, or free companion, abandoning his own family.

Temüjin and his family apparently preserved a considerable fund of prestige as members of the royal Borjigin clan, in spite of their rejection by it. Among other things, he was able to claim the wife to whom Yesügei had betrothed him just before his death. But the Merkit people, a tribe living in northern Mongolia, bore Temüjin a grudge, because Yesügei had stolen his own wife, Höelün, from one of their men, and in their turn they ravished Temüjin’s wife Börte. Temüjin felt able to appeal to Toghril, khan of the Kereit tribe, with whom Yesügei had had the relationship of anda, or sworn brother, and at that time the most powerful Mongol prince, for help in recovering Börte. He had had the foresight to rekindle this friendship by presenting Toghril with a sable skin, which he himself had received as a bridal gift. He seems to have had nothing else to offer; yet, in exchange; Toghril promised to reunite Temüjin’s scattered people, and he is said to have redeemed his promise by furnishing 20,000 men and persuading Jamuka, a boyhood friend of Temüjin’s, to supply an army as well. The contrast between Temüjin’s destitution and the huge army furnished by his allies is hard to explain, and no authority other than the narrative of the Secret History is available.

Rise to power
With powerful allies and a force of his own, Temüjin routed the Merkit, with the help of a strategy by which Temüjin was regularly to scotch the seeds of future rebellion. He tried never to leave an enemy in his rear; years later, before attacking China, he would first make sure that no nomad leader survived to stab him in the back. Not long after the destruction of the Merkit, he treated the nobility of the Jürkin clan in the same way. These princes, supposedly his allies, had profited by his absence on a raid against the Tatars to plunder his property. Temüjin exterminated the clan nobility and took the common people as his own soldiery and servants. When his power had grown sufficiently for him to risk a final showdown with the formidable Tatars, he first defeated them in battle and then slaughtered all those taller than the height of a cart axle. Presumably the children could be expected to grow up ignorant of their past identity and to become loyal followers of the Mongols. When the alliance with Toghril of the Kereit at last broke down and Temüjin had to dispose of this obstacle to supreme power, he dispersed the Kereit people among the Mongols as servants and troops. This ruthlessness was not mere wanton cruelty. Temüjin intended to leave alive none of the old, rival aristocrats, who might prove a focus of resistance; to provide himself with a fighting force; and, above all, to crush the sense of clan loyalties that favoured fragmentation and to unite all the nomads in personal obedience to his family. And when, in 1206, he was accepted as emperor of all the steppe people, he was to distribute thousands of families to the custody of his own relatives and companions, replacing the existing pattern of tribes and clans by something closer to a feudal structure.

At least from the time of the defeat of the Merkits, Temüjin was aiming at supremacy in the steppes for himself. The renewed friendship with Jamuka lasted only a year and a half. Then, one day while the two friends were on the march, Jamuka uttered an enigmatic remark about the choice of camping site, which provoked Temüjin’s wife Börte to advise him that it was high time for the two friends to go their separate ways. What lies behind this episode is difficult to see. The story in the Secret History is too puzzling in its brevity and its allusive language to permit a reliable explanation. It has been suggested that Jamuka was trying to provoke a crisis in the leadership. Equally, it may be that the language is deliberately obscure to gloss over the fact that Temüjin was about to desert his comrade. In any event, Temüjin took Börte’s advice. Many of Jamuka’s own men also abandoned him, probably seeing in Temüjin the man they thought more likely to win in the end. The Secret History justifies their action in epic terms. One of the men tells Temüjin of a vision that had appeared to him and that could only be interpreted as meaning that Heaven and Earth had agreed that Temüjin should be lord of the empire. Looking at the situation in a more down-to-earth way, the interplay of the vacillating loyalties of the steppe may be discerned. The clansmen knew what was afoot, and some of them hastened to move over to Temüjin’s side, realizing that a strong leader was in the offing and that it would be prudent to declare for him early on.

The break with Jamuka brought about a polarization within the Mongol world that was to be resolved only with the disappearance of one or the other of the rivals. Jamuka has no advocate in history. The Secret History has much to tell about him, not always unsympathetically, but it is essentially the chronicle of Temüjin’s family; and Jamuka appears as the enemy, albeit sometimes a reluctant one. He is an enigma, a man of sufficient force of personality to lead a rival coalition of princes and to get himself elected gur-khān, or supreme khan, by them. Yet he was an intriguer, a man to take the short view, ready to desert his friends, even turn on them, for the sake of a quick profit. But for Temüjin, it might have been within Jamuka’s power to dominate the Mongols, but Temüjin was incomparably the greater man; and the rivalry broke Jamuka.

Clan leaders began to group themselves around Temüjin and Jamuka, and, a few years before the turn of the century, some of them proposed to make Temüjin khan of the Mongols. The terms in which they did so, promising him loyalty in war and the hunt, suggest that all they were looking for was a reliable general, certainly not the overlord he was to become. Indeed, later on, some of them were to desert him. Even at this time, Temüjin was only a minor chieftain, as is shown by the next important event narrated by the Secret History, a brawl at a feast, provoked by his nominal allies the Jürkin princes, whom he later massacred. The Jin emperor in northern China, too, looked on him as of no great consequence. In one of the reversals of policy characteristic of their manipulation of the nomads, the Jin attacked their onetime allies the Tatars. Together with Toghril, Temüjin seized the opportunity of continuing the clan feud and took the Tatars in the rear. The Jin emperor rewarded Toghril with the Chinese title of wang, or prince, and gave Temüjin an even less exalted one. And, indeed, for the next few years the Jin had nothing to fear from Temüjin. He was fully occupied in building up his power in the steppe and posed no obvious threat to China.

Temüjin now set about systematically eliminating all rivals. Successive coalitions formed by Jamuka were defeated. The Tatars were exterminated. Toghril allowed himself to be maneuvered by Jamuka’s intrigues and by his own son’s ambitions and suspicions into outright war against Temüjin, and he and his Kereit people were destroyed. Finally, in the west, the Naiman ruler, fearful of the rising power of the Mongols, tried to form yet another coalition, with the participation of Jamuka, but was utterly defeated and lost his kingdom. Jamuka, inconstant as ever, deserted the Naiman khan at the last moment. These campaigns took place in the few years before 1206 and left Temüjin master of the steppes. In that year a great assembly was held by the River Onon, and Temüjin was proclaimed Genghis Khan: the title probably meant Universal Ruler.

Unification of the Mongol nation
The year 1206 was a turning point in the history of the Mongols and in world history: the moment when the Mongols were first ready to move out beyond the steppe. Mongolia itself took on a new shape. The petty tribal quarrels and raids were a thing of the past. Either the familiar tribe and clan names had fallen out of use or those bearing them were to be found, subsequently, scattered all over the Mongol world, testifying to the wreck of the traditional clan and tribe system. A unified Mongol nation came into existence as the personal creation of Genghis Khan and, through many vicissitudes (feudal disintegration, incipient retribalization, colonial occupation), has survived to the present day. Mongol ambitions looked beyond the steppe. Genghis Khan was ready to start on his great adventure of world conquest. The new nation was organized, above all, for war. Genghis Khan’s troops were divided up on the decimal system, were rigidly disciplined, and were well equipped and supplied. The generals were his own sons or men he had selected, absolutely loyal to him.

Genghis Khan’s military genius could adapt itself to rapidly changing circumstances. Initially his troops were exclusively cavalry, riding the hardy, grass-fed Mongol pony that needed no fodder. With such an army, other nomads could be defeated, but cities could not be taken. Yet before long the Mongols were able to undertake the siege of large cities, using mangonels, catapults, ladders, burning oil, and so forth and even diverting rivers. It was only gradually, through contact with men from the more settled states, that Genghis Khan came to realize that there were more sophisticated ways of enjoying power than simply raiding, destroying, and plundering. It was a minister of the khan of the Naiman, the last important Mongol tribe to resist Genghis Khan, who taught him the uses of literacy and helped reduce the Mongol language to writing. The Secret History reports it was only after the war against the Muslim empire of Khwārezm, in the region of the Amu Darya (Oxus) and Syr Darya (Jaxartes), probably in late 1222, that Genghis Khan learned from Muslim advisers the “meaning and importance of towns.” And it was another adviser, formerly in the service of the Jin emperor, who explained to him the uses of peasants and craftsmen as producers of taxable goods. He had intended to turn the cultivated fields of northern China into grazing land for his horses.

The great conquests of the Mongols, which would transform them into a world power, were still to come. China was the main goal. Genghis Khan first secured his western flank by a tough campaign against the Tangut kingdom of Xixia, a northwestern border state of China, and then fell upon the Jin empire of northern China in 1211. In 1214 he allowed himself to be bought off, temporarily, with a huge amount of booty, but in 1215 operations were resumed, and Beijing was taken. Subsequently, the more systematic subjugation of northern China was in the hands of his general Muqali. Genghis Khan himself was compelled to turn aside from China and carry out the conquest of Khwārezm. This war was provoked by the governor of the city of Otrar, who massacred a caravan of Muslim merchants who were under Genghis Khan’s protection. The Khwārezm-Shāh refused satisfaction. War with Khwārezm would doubtless have come sooner or later, but now it could not be deferred. It was in this war that the Mongols earned their reputation for savagery and terror. City after city was stormed, the inhabitants massacred or forced to serve as advance troops for the Mongols against their own people. Fields and gardens were laid waste and irrigation works destroyed as Genghis Khan pursued his implacable vengeance against the royal house of Khwārezm. He finally withdrew in 1223 and did not lead his armies into war again until the final campaign against Xixia in 1226–27. He died on Aug. 18, 1227.

Assessment
As far as can be judged from the disparate sources, Genghis Khan’s personality was a complex one. He had great physical strength, tenacity of purpose, and an unbreakable will. He was not obstinate and would listen to advice from others, including his wives and mother. He was flexible. He could deceive but was not petty. He had a sense of the value of loyalty, unlike Toghril or Jamuka. Enemies guilty of treachery toward their lords could expect short shrift from him, but he would exploit their treachery at the same time. He was religiously minded, carried along by his sense of a divine mission, and in moments of crisis he would reverently worship the Eternal Blue Heaven, the supreme deity of the Mongols. So much is true of his early life. The picture becomes less harmonious as he moves out of his familiar sphere and comes into contact with the strange, settled world beyond the steppe. At first he could not see beyond the immediate gains to be got from massacre and rapine and, at times, was consumed by a passion for revenge. Yet all his life he could attract the loyalties of men willing to serve him, both fellow nomads and civilized men from the settled world. His fame could even persuade the aged Daoist sage Changchun (Qiu Chuji) to journey the length of Asia to discourse upon religious matters. He was above all adaptable, a man who could learn.

Organization, discipline, mobility, and ruthlessness of purpose were the fundamental factors in his military successes. Massacres of defeated populations, with the resultant terror, were weapons he regularly used. His practice of summoning cities to surrender and of organizing the methodical slaughter of those who did not submit has been described as psychological warfare; but, although it was undoubtedly policy to sap resistance by fostering terror, massacre was used for its own sake. Mongol practice, especially in the war against Khwārezm, was to send agents to demoralize and divide the garrison and populace of an enemy city, mixing threats with promises. The Mongols’ reputation for frightfulness often paralyzed their captives, who allowed themselves to be killed when resistance or flight was not impossible. Indeed, the Mongols were unaccountable. Resistance brought certain destruction, but at Balkh, now in Afghanistan, the population was slaughtered in spite of a prompt surrender, for tactical reasons.

The achievements of Genghis Khan were grandiose. He united all the nomadic tribes, and with numerically inferior armies he defeated great empires, such as Khwārezm and the even more powerful Jin state. Yet he did not exhaust his people. He chose his successor, his son Ögödei, with great care, ensured that his other sons would obey Ögödei, and passed on to him an army and a state in full vigour. At the time of his death, Genghis Khan had conquered the land mass extending from Beijing to the Caspian Sea, and his generals had raided Persia and Russia. His successors would extend their power over the whole of China, Persia, and most of Russia. They did what he did not achieve and perhaps never really intended—that is, to weld their conquests into a tightly organized empire. The destruction brought about by Genghis Khan survives in popular memory, but far more significant, these conquests were but the first stage of the Mongol Empire, the greatest continental empire of medieval and modern times.

Charles R. Bawden

Encyclopaedia Britannica

1 Huns in Europe,
steel engraving, 19th century

2 The stone carving
'Horse trampling the Xiongnu'
in front of the Huo Qubing's Tomb.

3 Nomad yurts in the Gobi Desert, present-day Mongolia

Hun king Attila

The Huns overran the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths in 375, destroying everything in their path. Due to their custom of strapping their children's noses flat from an early age, in order to widen their faces, they were described by early chroniclers as "animal-like creatures"—which only increased the terror they instilled. The Huns were not set on totally exterminating the Germans, though, since they needed them for their army.

East Rome tried to hold off the Huns from its borders with payments of up to 1,500 pounds of gold annually.

But despite this, the 4 Huns under Attila— who had earlier killed his brother and co-regent Bleda in 445— pushed deep into East Roman territory 6, 7 devastated the Balkan provinces, and extorted ever greater tribute payments.

Attila then turned towards the West, leading his immense, and growing, army of Huns and Germanic tribesmen. Along the way many cities, such as Trier and Metz, were burned to the ground. In June 451, the Franks, Visigoths, and Romans, led by the imperial commander Aetius, brought the Huns' advance to a halt.

The resulting 8 Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, near Chalons-sur-Marne, lasted several days and cost around 90,000 lives.

The Huns and their allies were forced to withdraw toward Eastern Europe, but Attila was still not completely defeated. In 452 he invaded northern Italy and threatened Rome.


Huns map

The Appearance of the Huns

"For by the terror of their features they inspired great fear in those whom perhaps they did not really surpass in war....Their swarthy aspect was fearful, and they had...pinholes rather than eyes. Their audacity is evident in their threatening appearance, and they are beings who are cruel to their children on the very day they are born. For they cut the cheeks of the males with a sword, so that before they receive the nourishment of milk they must learn to endure wounds."

Jordanes, Getica (History of the Goths, ch.XXUI) 551 a.d.



Artificially deformed skull of a noblewoman,
fifth century a.d