The Mongolian steppe was a dangerous place to live during the 12th century AD–world history and facts
The Mongolian steppe was a dangerous place to live during the 12th century AD; at any moment your wife and possessions could be taken and you could be left with nothing.
Life was cruel. Strength was in numbers and alliances, but even alliances were fragile and easily broken.
According to the Secret History of the Mongols, one day, sometime in the mid-12th century, a Mongol chief of the Borjigin tribe named Yesugei was out hawking on the banks of the River Onon when he saw a cart being pulled by a camel,¹ accompanied by a man named Chiledu from a neighbouring tribe, the Merkits.
Inside the cart was a woman of beauty. Yesugei was smitten and he returned with his brothers to stop the slow-moving cart. He kidnapped the woman, whose name was Hoelun, and chased off Chiledu, who was her husband.
Yesugei returned home with Hoelun and she eventually accepted his hand in marriage. Several months later she fell pregnant and in c. 1162 she gave birth to a baby boy who was apparently clutching a blood clot the size of a knucklebone.² They named the boy Temujin, but he would become known to history as Genghis Khan (Chinggis Khan).
If the secret history is correct and Yesugei just happened to cross paths with Hoelun by chance while he was out hawking, it is worth wondering how history would have played out without their chance meeting.
What if Yesugei had decided not to go out that day? There would be no Genghis Khan, probably no united Mongol force and therefore no Mongol Empire, and the history of Asia would have been radically different.
But they did meet, they had their baby, and the time had come for the rise of the Mongols.
Notes:
1. Either a camel, yak or ox. Two book sources contradict each other.
2. "Later, in folklore, this was seen as an omen of fierceness–but only because the baby turned out fiercely successful."
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