Several mitochondrial functions decline with age. The contributing factors include, the intrinsic rate of proton leakage across the inner mitochondrial membrane (a correlate of oxidant formation), decreased membrane fluidity, and decreased levels and function of cardiolipin, which supports the function of many of the proteins of the inner mitochondrial membrane.
Oxidants generated by mitochondria appear to be the major source of the oxidative lesions that accumulate with age. Evidence supports the suggestion that age-associated accumulation of mitochondrial deficits due to oxidative damage is likely to be a major contributor to cellular, tissue, and organismal aging.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/092544399500024X
A space elevator is a proposed transportation system connecting the Earth's surface to space. The elevator would allow vehicles to travel to orbit or space without the use of rockets.
“Space elevators could jump in and help the whole process by lowering the cost to geosynchronous and beyond.” Swan, a satellite engineer by trade, said a functioning elevator would decrease the cost of launching satellites and missions by 99 percent.
Many central banks actively buy or sell foreign currency or other foreign financial assets in order to affect the exchange rate of their own currency. Those in countries with fixed exchange rates do so openly and explicitly.
Those in countries with floating exchange rates are, in theory at least, supposed to refrain from such intervention, but many do so nevertheless. If a central bank buys a large amount of foreign currency – from exporters, for instance – two things can happen to the domestic currency.
https://www.facebook.com/sarah.trolland
...
...
First, if the central bank simply buys foreign exchange from local firms or households in exchange for domestic currency, that will increase the monetary base and money supply, causing the exchange rate to depreciate against the foreign currency.
Meanwhile, the increase in the money supply will stimulate the domestic economy and, in many cases, create pressure for an increase in the price level over and above that caused by the initial depreciation of the currency. This form of intervention in the foreign exchange market is called unsterilized intervention.
In contrast, the central bank may decide that the domestic economy does not need any stimulation at the moment, and thus seek to avoid the secondary impacts stemming from the expansion in the money supply. In this case, it instead engages in sterilized intervention – meaning that it mops up any incipient increase in the domestic money supply by selling an equivalent value of government bonds to local banks.
If a central bank buy large amounts of foreign currency how does it affect the national currency? Central Bank pays for this purchase (it is called FX market intervention, by the way) with domestic currency. The latter is for all intents and purposes freshly printed.
So there is now less foreign currency on the market and more domestic currency. Supply-Demand tells us that foreign currency should become more expensive and domestic - more cheap, both in the short run via exchange rate and in the longer run via higher inflation.
Thas is, compared to the situation of no purchase. It is an important clarification because there can be scores of other factors affecting supply and demand of currencies at the time of the intervention. So in reality you can observe a whole spectrum of exchange rate and price movements.
E.g. China CB did huge interventions while building up its USD 3 trln reserves in the 2000s. But purchases were made out of large trade surplus, so exchange rates stayed relatively stable. And rapidly growing Chinese economy digested new money just fine with no inflationary effects. The story would be quite different if you do the same for some stagnant economy with no trade surplus.
Some definitions need be made before the question about currency trades is properly addressed. Notwithstanding, the short answer is that large disparities in the exchange rates triggered by speculators have affected--in many cases-- the sovereignty of many nations.
These speculators either as individuals or financial institutions often convert large quantities of one currency into another provoking overnight devaluations of the smaller economy. Currency appreciation or depreciation in the same context is an increase or decrease in the value of the currency.
Following World War II the Bretton Woods Conference, pursued exchange rate systems to promote global economic stability. Countries will usually peg their currency to a major convertible currency. The collapse of "soft" pegs in Southeast Asia and Latin America in the late 1990s led to currency substitution becoming a serious policy issue. Panama, Ecuador and El Salvador became fully “dollarized” economies and adopted the US dollar as legal tender.
The “Eurozone” adopted the euro as its common currency and sole legal tender in 1999, which amounted to full currency substitution despite some evident differences in other country’s economy i.e., Germany and Greece.
In a floating exchange rate system, a currency's value moves up or down in the short run this can happen unpredictably for a variety of reasons, having to do with trade flows, speculation, or other factors in the international capital market. For instance, China purchases of foreign materials by home industries pay with one or more reserve currency, thus, causing a depreciation of the home currency.
However, this method of purchase with a reserve currency is far more efficient than converting from one currency to another when a commercial transaction takes place. Typically, foreign commerce is conducted with a reserve currency basket such as the US dollar, the euro or the British pound.
This basket of currencies is traded in international currency exchange markets with only minor adjustments mainly due to differences in GDP output, fiscal policy and the monetary policy of each country according to the principle of long-run purchasing power parity.
The foreign exchange market (Forex) or currency market is a global decentralized or over-the-counter (OTC) market for the trading of currencies. This includes all aspects of buying, selling and exchanging currencies at current or determined prices.
Financial centers around the world function as anchors of trades between a wide range of buyers and sellers around the world. Currencies are always traded in pairs. The foreign exchange market does not set a currency's absolute value but rather determines its relative value by setting the market price of one currency pegged to another. For example 1 USD is worth X Canadian or Japanese yen etc.
The modern foreign exchange market began forming during the 1970s. This followed three decades of government restrictions on foreign exchange transactions, when countries gradually switched to floating exchange rates from the previous fixed exchange rate regime set by the Bretton Woods system. The foreign exchange market today trades in many other financial products such as currency swaps and forward transactions.
"Arbitrage" is a French word and denotes a decision by an arbitrator or arbitration tribunal. For example interest rate parity is a no-arbitrage condition representing an equilibrium state under which investors will be indifferent to interest rates available on bank deposits in two countries. The relationship between spot and forward is known as the interest rate parity.
If the purchase of foreign currency is achieved by sale of newly created national currency, and all the rest being equal, the tendency is to a weakening of the national currency, due to the new abundance of it, relatively to the foreign currency. Such an intervention is usually part of a competitive devaluation aka currency war.
Usually all the rest isn’t equal though, actually it is never equal, but in the particular case above, all the other variables, in the very short period, move relatively little.
Usually a large purchase of foreign currency is performed in response to economic conditions that require it, for example a strongly positive trade balance.
https://www.quora.com/If-a-central-bank-buy-large-amounts-of-foreign-currency-how-does-it-affect-the-national-currency
Many American and European economists argue that currency manipulation is an issue that the world economic policy needs to address. The process of countries keeping their exchange rates weak and the dollar strong by selling their own currencies in the foreign exchange markets is known as currency manipulation.
Countries that perform currency manipulation raise the price of their imports and subsidize their exports. At the expense of the United States and other economies, these countries generate domestic production, increase their trade surplus, and strengthen their international competitive positions.
The United States of America accuses countries such as China of engaging in currency manipulation practices. President Obama and the U.S government accused China of cheating at international trade. According to them, China manipulates its currency by depressing the price of its exports.
The natural market supply demand function of the currency exchanges is what currency manipulation bypasses. The country with a trade-surplus uses currency manipulation to maintain the demand and keep the price of other currencies up. This ensures that the goods from its own country still cost less while goods from other countries cost more.
Most people in America and other ‘developed’ countries accept the theory that currency devaluation hurts the United States by increasing the ‘trade deficit’ and helps China by increasing its exports.
Often, American economists argue that what China is doing is illegal. In order to prevent members, which includes China, from gaining an unfair advantage over other members, IMF requires all member governments to avoid manipulating exchange rates. However, China claims that the purpose of managing its currency is not to cheat trading partners but to ensure domestic stability.
Today, many news sources are highlighting the fact that China is manipulating the valuation of the Yuan (RMB) to protect itself from a free market currency valuation. Furthermore, they state that such a valuation would lead to the devaluation of the RMB.
First and foremost, everyone needs to understand that the Central Bank of every sovereign country has the right to fix an exchange rate that stabilizes that country’s policies and/or full employment. With full employment in mind, let’s consider this question: How devaluing the Chinese RMB would affect the Chinese employment and the US economy?
The current exchange rate between the RMB and the USD is 6.51 at the time of publishing this article. That means every US dollar is worth 6.51 Chinese Yuan (RMB) or for each loaf of bread, assuming the loaf is $1.00, bought for a US household buys 6 ½ loaves of bread for a Chinese household.
Now, as an example, let’s cut the exchange rate to 3 so each loaf of bread bought in a US household now only buys 3 loaves of bread for a Chinese household. This means that the price of each loaf of bread in China has now doubled. If the price of bread has doubled because of the exchange rate being cut in half then the workers in China are going to demand more wages.
When Chinese employers raise wages for angry employees trying to buy bread then they have to raise prices to cover for the wage increase. When Chinese employers raise prices, the cost of exports to the US consumer goes up! Now US consumers are paying higher prices for a loaf of bread that used to cost them a dollar! In other words, no one wins.
https://www.tricordintl.com/how-currency-manipulation-works-and-an-argument-for-china/
Historically, two of the worst words in the Japanese language relate to a woman’s womb: 石女 (umazume, stone woman), an insult hurled at females who failed to bear children, and 畜生腹 (chikushō-bara, beast womb), for women who gave birth to twins and triplets — since folk wisdom said only animals had multiple births.
Much of Japanese profanity revolves around women’s reproductive organs, which says something about the values of the society and culture. Language reveals the judgments and biases of the group; it specifies how they see the world and how they want it to be — and, in doing so, shapes that very world. Given that so many demeaning and negative words related to women endure, is it any surprise that sexism is still rife in Japan?
That is clear from the 30th-anniversary edition of “Womensword: What Japanese Words Say About Women,” by Kittredge Cherry. Although it was first published in 1987 and parts of it are now outdated, its overall narrative is still startlingly relevant.
Cherry’s short, meticulously researched pieces are filled with lively descriptions and illuminating historical tales about words relating to women, illustrating how womanhood, femininity and the role of women are perceived in Japanese society. Cherry’s writing is witty, but this collection of short essays reads at times like a dismal history of sexual oppression. It is astonishing how many words there are to belittle and objectify women.
Take, for example, the way in which 女 (onna, woman) often signifies something evil or underhand when it forms part of another word: 奴隷 (dorei, slave) when combined with the character for hand; three women together are 姦しい (kashimashii, noisy), or even liable to 姦する (kan suru, rape, seduce or assault); a woman sandwiched by two men is 嬲り殺し (naburi-koroshi, death by torture). Jealousy, according to the kanji in 嫉む (sonemu), is a woman’s disease.
That men rank above women is a given: Both men and women are offended when their behavior or thoughts are called 女性的 (joseiteki, woman-like). No woman wants to be an 男勝り(otoko-masari, man-surpasser), as it seems arrogant; 女以下 (onna-ika, worse than a woman) is a cutting insult for men.
Another good chunk of words in the book ram home the belief that women exist to be 良妻賢母 (ryōsai-kenbo, good wives and wise mothers). 花嫁修業 (hanayome-shugyō, bridal training) suggests self-improvement should be in the service of snagging a good mate; 永久就職 (eikyū-shūshoku, eternal employment) refers to a wife’s duties, recognizing that marriage is an economic arrangement; and marrying a man far richer than oneself is praised as 玉の輿に乗る (tama-no-koshi ni noru, riding the jeweled palanquin) rather than disdained as “gold-digging,” as it is in English.
On the other side of the Madonna-whore spectrum, there’s the expectation that a man deserves to have his sexual desires gratified: Scholars can apparently count 30 words for prostitute, but not a single one for men who buy their services.
The kanji for 痴漢 (chikan), which refers to molesters on trains and the like, is made of characters meaning “foolish” and “man”; Cherry suggests this “reflects the indulgent way these fools are viewed by society” — as merely stupid rather than criminal sex abusers.
...
Thankfully, there are some reverential words as well: 天照大神 (Amaterasu-ōmikami, Amaterasu the sun goddess) is the foremother of all Japanese people and the supreme deity in Shinto, one of the few religions to perceive the sun as female. Women had more political and religious power in ancient times, when Japan was matriarchal.
Two traditions from that time that have survived are 婿養子 (mukoyōshi, men marrying into women’s families and taking their name) and 里帰り(sato-gaeri, women going to stay with their mother to give birth, leaving their husband at home).
As this 30th-year edition has only been updated with a new introduction, the text itself is outdated. Points are substantiated with surveys conducted in 1982 or earlier, and there are jarring sentences such as “It will be years before the full impact of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law [passed in 1985] is known.”
...
Modern readers who don’t know Japan very well may be tempted to believe that employers still make sure unmarried female staff live with their family, that some salarymen only ever utter three words to their wives (“Dinner! Bath! Bed!”) and that White Day is a recent, and unsuccessful, marketing ploy.
Cherry explains in her introduction that she has been waiting in vain for three decades for someone to write a modern equivalent of “Womensword,” but no one yet has. It seems that health reasons, having forced her into early retirement, may have prevented her from doing a more comprehensive update of the rest of the copy, but her introduction is a thorough assessment of what has changed in the past 30 years, including growing recognition of transgender issues, the fading appeal of marriage for women, marriage equality for lesbians, the falling birth rate, “womenomics” and increasing voluntary celibacy among both sexes.
Even as more of a socio-historical text rather than a contemporary vernacular guide, “Womensworld” remains a rich treasure trove of words and reflections on aspects of Japanese womanhood that you won’t find anywhere else.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2017/01/30/language/womans-lowly-place-japan-mirrored-language/#.XgrypLiIZkg
The song came about after more than two years of peace activism by John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono, that began with the 'bed-ins' they created in March and May 1969.
The song was part of an international multimedia campaign launched by the couple in December 1969, at the height of the counterculture movement and protests against America's involvement in the Vietnam War.
They had rented billboard spaces in 12 major cities around the world, for the display of black-and-white posters that declared "WAR IS OVER! If You Want It – Happy Christmas from John & Yoko".
The slogan had previously appeared in the 1968 anti-war songs 'The War Is Over' by Phil Ochs, and 'The Unknown Soldier' by the Doors. However, it is not known if this was deliberate or merely coincidental.
Lennon came up with the song as a way of continuing the themes of social unity and peaceful change via personal accountability, that was previously the basis of the earlier billboard campaign, while attempting to convey optimism and avoiding the sentimentality he felt often characterised Christmas music.
He was the first Beatle to release an original Christmas song after they had parted ways.
In October 1971, with just a simple melody and half-formed lyrics, Lennon recorded an acoustic guitar demo in his room at the St Regis Hotel in New York City, where he and Ono were living at the time.
Ono later received co-writing credit, but her actual contribution to the song at this stage is unclear, as she did not participate in the demo.
Lennon brought in Phil Spector to produce the song. The first recording session was held on Thursday, October 28, at the Record Plant studio.
Session musicians – some of whom had performed as members of the Plastic Ono Band – recorded instrumental backings, and Lennon and Ono added the main vocals.
30 children aged from four to 12 from The Harlem Community Choir recorded backing vocals in the chorus.
The song begins with a spoken Christmas greeting from Ono and Lennon to their children from previous marriages: Ono whispers "Happy Christmas, Kyoko", then Lennon whispers "Happy Christmas, Julian".
This has often been erroneously transcribed as "Happy Christmas, Yoko. Happy Christmas, John."
When Lennon first played the demo for Phil Spector, the producer said that the song's opening line, "So this is Christmas…", was rhythmically identical to his 1961 single 'I Love How You Love Me' by the Paris Sisters.
Lennon also instructed the guitarists to play mandolin riffs similar to the ones heard in 'Try Some, Buy Some', a song Spector and George Harrison had produced for his wife, Ronnie Spector, of the Ronettes.
The chords and melodic structure of the song are rather similar to the traditional English ballad 'Skewball'. The verses are particularly similar to the 1963 version (titled 'Stewball') by Peter, Paul and Mary.
A dispute between publisher Northern Songs and Lennon over publishing rights delayed the release of the song in the UK until November 1972.
It peaked at number four in 1972, and has charted many since. In 1980, in the weeks after Lennon's death, it reached number two, behind his other classic 'Imagine'.
On its US debut in 1971, it wasn't a success. This was due to the single's late release, which resulted in limited airplay before Christmas, and a lack of promotion at the time.
https://www.smoothradio.com/features/the-story-of/john-lennon-happy-xmas-war-is-over-lyrics-meaning/
Whoever takes a swim along Puerto Rico's shores at night will witness a special show. The water starts to glow in a bright blue and green. The effect is called bioluminescence - it's our natural phenomenon of the week.
When people flock to the beaches of the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico at night, they do so for a reason: The water immediately surrounding swimmers starts to glow a mystical bluish-green. The light glows stronger with each movement.
Puerto Rico is said to be the place to go to watch the water glow. Nowhere else in the world is the concentration of microscopically small algae greater. And those algae, or plankton, are bioluminescent - meaning, they glow in the dark.
The single-celled organisms are called dinoflagellates. One could also call them the fireflies of the sea.
They can be found all over the world. But it is only in a place like Puerto Rico, where there are so many, that you can see them glow so strongly.
And there can be many, when conditions like water quality and nutrient supply are just right. If colonies reach 100,000 single cells per liter of water and the sun is strong throughout the day, the dinoflagellates can be charged - just like a solar lamp - and glow the night away.
If some troublemaker appears, the plankton try to scare the intruder away. In the case of fish, this could work - with humans, obviously not. The light is produced through a very simple chemical reaction. When oxygen and the biological substances luciferin and luciferase (an enzyme) come together, energy is generated, which is released as light.
But the light can be different depending on the bioluminescent species present. Various colors are possible. While aquatic species often glow blue or blue-green - because this color can be seen best underwater - fireflies on land appear yellow.
The black dragonfish has the ablity to produce its own light. This is advantageous because many animals cannot see red light in the depths of the ocean. The light works instead as an invisible searchlight - the creature can locate its prey, but does not attract attention.
https://amp-dw-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.dw.com/en/bioluminescence-why-plankton-glows/a-40118563? amp_js_v=0.1&usqp=mq331AQCKAE%3D#origin=https%3A%2F% 2Fwww.google.com&prerenderSize=1&visibilityState=prerender&paddingTop=32&p2r=0&horizontalScrolling=0&csi=1&aoh=15773619824695 &viewerUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Famp%2Fs%2Famp.dw.com%2Fen%2Fbioluminescence-why-plankton-glows%2Fa- 40118563&history=1&storage=1&cid=1&cap=navigateTo%2Ccid%2CfullReplaceHistory%2Cfragment%2CreplaceUrl
Phytoplankton spend their days in the upper part of the water column because they need the sunlight. The problem is that most nutrients remain further down in the water column, out of reach for most species.
So dinoflagellates and cyanobacteria have developed the ability to swim downwards during the evening and upwards in the morning. This gives them a huge advantage compared to other groups of phytoplankton.
One species called Mesodinium rubrum is especially exciting. It is actually a ciliate but some consider it a phytoplankton since it has chloroplasts. It is among the fastest species in the world compared to it's size. It's about 30 micrometers long and can theoretically migrate about 30 meters during one night.
https://www.quora.com/Do-plankton-sleep
...
Are hermit crabs edible? Why or why not?
Probably edible but I wouldn’t recommend it. They are scavengers, and as such they don’t hunt fresh food. They eat whatever they can find. The way I understand it, scavengers like Opossum and Coyote taste bad mainly because of that. Also it would be very expensive since they can’t be bred in captivity. A very tiny crab sells for $10 at the mall. It would have less meat than a shrimp of the same size.
For comparison, lobsters eat crabs, clams, mussels, starfish, smaller fish. Most of that is probably fresh and alive. Shrimp feed on algae and zooplankton.
...
At least one species of hermit crab (known as the coconut crab) is commonly eaten in the south pacific. Apparently humans can get get poisoned that way but only where the crab in question has been consuming something toxic to humans (such as the sea mango). The coconut crab variety get pretty big apparently, so it is at least worth using for food… the only ones I have encountered have really been too tiny to make the effort.
https://www.quora.com/Are-hermit-crabs-edible-Why-or-why-not
The slave-warriors of medieval Islam overthrew their masters, defeated the Mongols and the Crusaders and established a dynasty that lasted 300 years.
The Mamluks ruled Egypt and Syria from 1250 until 1517, when their dynasty was extinguished by the Ottomans. But Mamluks had first appeared in the Abbasid caliphate in the ninth century and even after their overthrow by the Ottomans they continued to form an important part of Egyptian Islamic society and existed as an influential group until the 19th century.
...
They destroyed the Crusader kingdoms of Outremer, and saved Syria, Egypt and the holy places of Islam from the Mongols. They made Cairo the dominant city of the Islamic world in the later Middle Ages, and under these apparently unlettered soldier-statesmens’ rule, craftsmanship, architecture and scholarship flourished. Yet the dynasty remains virtually unknown to many in the West.
The dynasty had two phases. From 1250 to 1381 the Bahri clique produced the Mamluk Sultans; from 1382 until 1517 the Burgi Mamluks were dominant. These groups were named after the principal regiments provided by the Mamluks for the last Ayyubid sultan as-Salih whom they served before overthrowing in 1250; the Bahirya or River Island regiment, based on a river island in the centre of Cairo and the Burgi or Tower regiment.
The word Mamluk means ‘owned’ and the Mamluks were not native to Egypt but were always slave soldiers, mainly Qipchak Turks from Central Asia. In principle (though not always in practice) a Mamluk could not pass his property or title to his son, indeed sons were in theory denied the opportunity to serve in Mamluk regiments, so the group had to be constantly replenished from outside sources. The Bahri Mamluks were mainly natives of southern Russia and the Burgi comprised chiefly of Circassians from the Caucasus.
As steppe people, they had more in common with the Mongols than with the peoples of Syria and Egypt among whom they lived. And they kept their garrisons distinct, not mixing with the populace in the territories. The contemporary Arab historian Abu Shama noted after the Mamluk victory over the Mongols at Ayn Jalut in 1260 that, ‘the people of the steppe had been destroyed by the people of the steppe’.
Boys of about 13 would be captured from areas to the north of the Persian empire, and trained to become an elite force for the personal use of the sultan or higher lords. The Arabic word Ghulam (boy) was sometimes employed for the bodyguards they would become.
The boys would be sent by the caliph or sultan to enforce his rule as far afield as Spain (Venice and Genoa were major players in their transportation despite Papal interdictions) and sold to the commanders of the Islamic governments of the region. Under their new masters they were manumitted, converted to Islam, and underwent intensive military training.
Islamic society, like that of medieval Christendom, took the form of a theoretical pyramid of fealty with the king or sultan at the top and numerous petty lords at its base with each lord above them holding rights of loyalty over them.
In the military societies of the 13th century higher lords or amirs maintained a large number of Mamluks, and the sultan held the most. During the Mamluk Sultanate, succession and the power struggles to dispute succession were based chiefly on the size of a candidate’s powerbase, in terms of numbers of men in arms and client lords, that he could muster.
The Mamluks, who had been taken from their families in their youth and had no ties of kin in their new homelands, were personally dependent on their master. This gave the Mamluk state, divorced as it was from its parent society, a solidity that allowed it to survive the tensions of tribalism and personal ambition, through establishment of interdependency between the lower orders and sergeants and the higher lords.
And at the centre Mamluk politics were bloody and brutal. Mamluks were not supposed to be able to inherit wealth or power beyond their own generation but attempts to create lineage did occur and every succession was announced by internecine struggles. Purges of higher lords and rivals were common and sultans commonly used impalement and crucifixion to punish those suspected of acts of lèse majesté or intrigue.
In theory a Mamluk’s life prepared him for little else but war and loyalty to his lord. Great emphasis was placed upon the Furūsiyya – a word made up of the three elements: the ‘ulum (science), funun (arts) and adab (literature) – of cavalry skills.
The Furūsiyya was not dissimilar to the chivalric code of the Christian knight insofar as it included a moral code embracing virtues such as courage, valour, magnanimity and generosity; but it also addressed the management, training and care of the horses that carried the warrior into battle and provided him with leisure time sporting activities.
It also included cavalry tactics, riding techniques, armour and mounted archery. Some texts even discussed military tactics: the formation of armies, the use of fire and smoke screens. Even the treatment of wounds was addressed.
The Mamluk dynasty carefully codified the Furūsiyya, and beautiful illustrated examples were produced. These books also carry the mark of the Mongol influence; many pages are decorated with lotuses and phoenixes, motifs carried from China through the Pax Mongolica.
The Mamluks lived almost entirely within their garrisons, and their leisure activities show a striking correspondence to the much earlier comment of the military writer Vegetius that the Romans’ drills were bloodless battles and their battles were bloody drills. Polo was the chief among these for the Mamluks; with its need for control of the horse, tight turns and bursts of speed, it mimicked the skills required on the battlefield.
Mounted archery competitions, horseback acrobatics and mounted combat shows similar to European jousting often took place up to twice a week. The Mamluk sultan Baybars constructed a hippodrome in Cairo to stage these games and polo matches.
The Mamluks’ opportunity to overthrow their masters came at the end of the 1240s, a time when the Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty, set up by Saladin in the 1170s, had reached a modus vivendi with the Crusader states; skirmishing, rather than outright war, was the order of the day in Syria and the Holy Land. However, events in the east were beginning to impact on the region. The Mongols on the eastern steppes were attacking western Chinese tribes and advancing into southern Russia, pushing other peoples west.
In 1244, with the tacit support of the Ayyubids in Cairo, Jerusalem fell to a wandering band of Khwarezmians, an eastern Persian group who were themselves fleeing the Mongol destruction of their fledgling empire. One of their first acts was to destroy the tombs of the Latin kings of Jerusalem.
In response, Louis IX of France called a crusade (the seventh) though neither the papacy nor any other major Christian monarch was stirred to action. Rather than directly attacking the Holy Land, Louis planned to wrest the rich lands of Egypt from Islam, hoping that control there would lead to the control of Syria.
Louis took Damietta in the Nile delta in June 1249 with an army of about 20,000 men. The Egyptian army withdrew further up the river. Louis started to march on Cairo in November and should have gained an advantage from the death of the last Ayyubid sultan, as-Salih. Despite chaos in Cairo during which the sultan’s widow, Shaggar ad Durr, took control – initially with Mamluk support – Louis and the Templars were roundly defeated by the Mamluk Bahirya commander Baybars at al-Mansourah (al- Mansur).
Louis refused to fall back to Damietta and his troops starved, before a belated retreat during which he was captured in March 1250. He was ransomed in return for Damietta and 400,000 livres. Louis left for Acre where he attempted a long- distance negotiation with the Mongols (who he may have believed to be the forces of the mythical Christian king Prester John) to assist him against the Muslims.
As-Salih had done much to promote the power of the Mamluks during his reign, perhaps too much, and the Mamluks eventually forced Shaggar ad Durr to marry their commander Aybeg. Louis’ crusade therefore proved the catalyst for the Mamluks to finally dispense with their Ayyubid overlords. The Bahri Mamluk dynasty was set up in 1250, with Aybeg as its first, though not uncontested, sultan. However, Aybeg was later murdered in his bath on his wife’s orders. More political murders followed including the beating to death of Shaggar ad Durr until Qutuz, the vice-regent, brought the factions bloodily under his control.
In February 1258 the Mongol armies of Hulegu, grandson of Chinggis Khan and the brother of Kublai, later the Great Khan and Emperor of China, took Baghdad. The Mongols undertook a wholesale massacre: at least 250,000 were killed, but the intercession of Hulegu’s wife spared the Nestorian Christians.
Mongol troopers kicked al-Musta’sim, the last Abbasid caliph and spiritual leader of Islam, to death after having rolled him in a carpet – the Mongols did not wish to spill royal blood directly. Aleppo fell almost as bloodily soon after, and it was widely reported, though perhaps untrue, that the Mongols used cats with burning tails sent running into the city to end the siege by fire.
Damascus quickly capitulated, but one of those who escaped the Mongols was the Mamluk general Baybars (1223-77), who had been instrumental in the defeat of Louis in 1249. He fled back to Cairo.
Minuet Boccherini violin sheet music
...
...
The Mongols completed their conquest of Syria by the near-annihilation of the Assassin sects and by over-running the kingdoms of Anatolia. Only Egypt, a few isolated cities in Syria and the Arabian Peninsula were left to Islam in its historic heartland. The Mamluk sultanate, in power for less than a decade, had shown few signs of enduring. It was led by sultan Qutuz, who had seized power in November 1259 and was still consolidating his authority.
Hulegu sent envoys to Qutuz in Cairo demanding his surrender. Qutuz killed the envoys and placed their heads on the gates of the city, considering treaty with the Mongols to be impossible and that exile into the ‘bloodthirsty desert’ was equivalent to death. Qutuz mobilized and was joined by Baybars.
At this point news arrived that the Mongol Great Khan Mongke had died, and Hulegu returned to Karakorum to support his branch of the family’s claim on power. The remaining Mongol army in Syria was still formidable, numbering about 20,000 men under Hulegu’s lieutenant, Kit Buqa. The Mamluk and Mongol armies encamped in Palestine in July 1260, and met at Ayn Jalut on 8 September.
Initially, the Mamluks encountered a detached division of Mongols and drove them to the banks of the Orontes River. Kit Buqa was then drawn into a full engagement; Qutuz met the first onslaught with a small detachment of Mamluks; he feigned retreat and led the Mongol army into an ambush that was sprung from three sides. The battle lasted from dawn till midday.
The Mamluks employed fire to trap Mongols who were either trying to hide or flee the field; Kit Buqa was taken alive and summarily executed by Qutuz. According to the Jama al-Tawarikh (a 14th century Persian history) he swore his death would be revenged by Hulegu and that the gates of Egypt would shake with the thunder of Mongol cavalry horses.
As the Mamluks returned to Cairo, Baybars murdered Qutuz and seized the sultanate himself. This event set the pattern of succession in the Mamluk Empire: only a handful of sultans ever died of natural causes and of these, one died from pneumonia brought on by permanently wearing armour to ward off assassination attempts. The average reign of the sultans was a mere seven years.
Despite this the dynasty proved to be one of the most stable political entities of the medieval Middle East. After the Ottomans had hanged the last Mamluk sultan in 1517, the loss of the Mamluks was universally lamented in Egypt, and many minor Mamluk functionaries remained to manage the Turks’ new province.
Baybars I proved thorough and ruthless, and a gifted exponent of realpolitik. Even though he was to follow his victory over the Mongols with an assault on the remaining Crusader cities in Syria, he maintained friendly relations with Norman Sicily; and even though he attempted to destroy what remained of Assassin power in Syria, he employed what was left of them to carry out political murders among both his domestic rivals and enemy leaders.
Indeed the future king Edward I of England was fortunate to survive a Baybars’ sponsored Assassin attempt on his life in Acre in 1271 during the Eighth Crusade. For some years Baybars kept a member of the Abbasid family as a puppet caliph to engender legitimacy for the Mamluk dynasty – until the unfortunate man was packed off to North Africa and never heard of again. Baybars is said to have died in 1277 from drinking a cup of poisoned wine intended for a guest; the story is probably apocryphal but it fits well with the nature of his life.
It has been suggested that the Mongols, the invincible force of the time, were outclassed by the Mamluks on the battlefield; the Mongols were lightly armoured horse-archers riding small steppe ponies and carrying little but ‘home-made’ weapons for close combat, whereas the heavily armoured Mamluks, on larger Arab-bred horses, could match them in their mounted archery and then close and kill with the lance, club and sword. It has also been argued that the Mongols were lacking in organizational training whereas the Mamluks spent their lives in training.
According to this view, the Mongols were most effective only in terms of their mobility and their rate of fire. The Mongols’ use of ‘heavy’ arrows, allied with the waves of galloping cohorts each of which would fire four or five arrows into the enemy, would exhaust the opposition. Indeed, this together with outflanking manoeuvres, appears to have been the pattern of Mongol attacks. Each Mongol trooper had several fresh mounts ready to ensure the momentum of the attack was not lost.
The Mamluks could match the Mongols’ archery assault with their crafted bows and armour and, though they had just one horse each, they could use the larger size of these mounts to deliver a charge like that of Norman knights but with the addition of mobile archery and a ‘Parthian shot’ if required during withdrawal. The timing of the charge was all. The Mamluks were able to destroy the Mongol army at Ayn Jalut – and again at the second battle of Homs in 1281 – by a series of attacks; their command and control mechanisms must have been impressive.
The Mamluks themselves formed only the core of Syrian and Egyptian armies. Shortly after Ayn Jalut, the Mongols were defeated again at Homs in 1260 by an army combining Ayyubid levies and Mamluks. Islamic success against the Mongols was founded on the military abilities of the Mamluks, but it was Mamluk statecraft that ultimately defeated the invaders.
As well as rapidly clearing Syria of Mongols, they began a process of fortification and improved communications and diplomacy with the Islamic princes of the region, thus consolidating Egyptian power in Syria. The protection of Syria was central to the Mamluk claim to be the defenders of Islam. Egypt’s resources were devoted to building and training the army for Syria, which was always mobilized at the slightest provocation from the Mongols.
Communications within the Mamluk state were also well-organized. Harbours were improved and a four-day postal service established between Cairo and Damascus. Baybars opened up trade with the Spanish kingdom of Aragon and maintained friendly relations with the Italian maritime states. He also sent emissaries to the Golden Horde, the Mongol khanate of Russia with which Hulegu’s Ilkhanate was involved in a protracted struggle.
The Blue Danube (Strauss) violin sheet music.
...
...
Baybar’s assaults on Lesser Armenia and the threat of a concerted and simultaneous Mamluk and Golden Horde attack on the Ilkhanate meant that the Mongols felt a need to hem in the Mamluks and if possible bring Northern Syria into their sphere of influence. The spreading of the Muslim faith among the Golden Horde would also have alarmed the Ilkhans, who themselves did not begin converting until late in the 14th century.
The Ilkhans’ subject population was overwhelmingly Muslim, and the Mamluks, with their Egyptian-based caliphate, had effectively become the leaders of the Muslim world. In retaliation, the Ilkhanate made agreements with Constantinople, perhaps fearing that Byzantium, too, might engage with the Golden Horde or the Mamluks if the Mongols attacked Greek possessions.
As well as holding the Mongols at bay, Baybars destroyed the Christian lands of Outremer. In 1263 he captured Nazareth and destroyed the environs of Acre. In 1265 he captured Caesarea and Haifa. He then took the fortified town of Arsuf from the Knight Hospitallers and occupied the Christian town of Athlit. Safed was taken from the Knight Templars in 1266. He slaughtered the Christians if they resisted, and had a particular enmity for the military orders: the Templars and Hospitallers received no quarter.
Qalawun, his general and a later sultan, led an army into Armenia in 1266. Sis, the capital, fell in September 1266. With the fall of Armenia the Crusader city of Antioch, first captured by Bohemond in 1098, was isolated. Baybars commenced its siege on 14 May 1268 and the city fell four days later. All the inhabitants who were not killed were enslaved.
Acre was attacked again in 1267 but withstood the assault. Jaffa fell in March 1268 and Beaufort the following month. In 1271 Baybars took the White Castle and Krak des Chevaliers from the Templars and Hospitallers after a month-long siege, and added to its already awesome fortifications. The Christians had shown that such powerful fortresses could break up insurgencies, make up for a paucity of forces and threaten communication lines, and the Mamluks followed the same policy.
Baybars may have feared an alliance between the Mongols and Christian powers. The Mongols certainly tried to achieve this and in 1271 Edward Plantagenet, during the Eighth Crusade, was able to convince them to send a sizeable force into Syria to reduce the Mamluk pressure on the remaining Crusader cities.
But after the failure of the Crusade the last cities soon fell: Tripoli was taken by the army of Sultan Qalawun, Baybar’s successor, in 1289 and the Crusader settlement of Acre fell in 1291. This effectively made the Syrian coast an impossible beachhead for Christians; there would be no more Crusader attempts to regain the Holy Land or Syria.
The Mamluk dynasty was now secure, and it lasted until the 16th century. Power struggles prevented continuity at the centre, and even after the Circassian Burji Mamluks seized power from the Bahri Mamluks in the mid-14th century, factionalism and insecurity continued unabated.
The Mamluks managed successfully to re-establish their Syrian powerbases following Timur’s brief but hugely destructive invasion in the early 1400s; but the dynasty had been left weakened by the Black Death which had made repeated onslaughts through the Middle East from the mid-14th century and it soon lost the valuable trade revenues of Syria after the Portuguese opened up Europe’s ocean trade and the route to India in the late 15th century.
In the end it took two only two brief battles for the Ottoman Sultan Selim I to decimate the last Mamluk army to take the field just outside Cairo near the Pyramids in 1517. The Ottoman army used firearms and artillery, but the Mamluks rode out to meet them with bow, lance and sword. History had caught up with them.
Selim I continued to employ a Mamluk as viceroy, however, and recruitment of Circassians as ‘tax farmers’ continued until the new age arrived in Egypt with Napoleon’s army in 1798. Indeed faction building and Mamluk infighting were still characteristic of Egyptian politics in the early 19th century.
Although warfare was the primary concern of these slave soldiers, their contribution to Islamic art and architecture was immense. Many of the sultans were remarkable builders, a fine example being Qalawun’s mausoleum complex in Cairo, which includes a mosque, a religious school and hospital.
The dynasty’s achievements in the arts of the book, especially of the Qur’an, are also very fine. The importance of fighting and training meant that the art of the armourer was highly prized; Mamluk armour was decorated and intricate, helmets, leggings, spurs and shields often carried inscriptions such as:
Father of the poor and miserable, killer of the unbelievers and the polytheists, reviver of justice among all. An offshoot of this artifice was high quality metalwork, such as candlesticks, lamps, ewers and basins, highly decorated with musicians and dancers, warriors and images of the hunt. Intricate decoration of Mamluk glassware can also be seen in mosque lamps, many carrying the Qu’ranic inscription.
The lamp enclosed in glass: the glass as it were a brilliant star – a suitable testament to a dynasty that prevailed against the most powerful empire of the medieval age. This article originally appeared in the March 2006 issue of History Today with the title 'The Mamluks'.
https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/who-were-mamluks
IN THE FALL OF 1237, AFTER EIGHT YEARS IN OFFICE, OGODEI KHAN ordered the most horrendous crime of his twelve-year reign and one of the worst Mongol atrocities recorded. The nearly unbearable horror was committed not against enemies, but against the nation’s daughters.
His soldiers assembled four thousand Oirat girls above the age of seven together with their male relatives on an open field. The soldiers separated out the girls from the noble families and hauled them to the front of the throng. They stripped the noble girls naked, and one by one the soldiers came forward to rape them. As one soldier finished with a screaming girl, another mounted her.
“Their fathers, brothers, husbands, and relatives stood watching,” according to the Persian report, “no one daring to speak.” At the end of the day, two of the girls lay dead from the ordeal, and soldiers divvied out the survivors for later use.
A few of the girls who had not been raped were confiscated for the royal harem and then divided up in comically cruel ways— given to the keepers of the cheetahs and other wild beasts. The pride of Ogodei’s reign had been the international network of postal stations constructed across Eurasia.
He decided to augment the services of the system by sending the less attractive girls to a life of sexual servitude, consigned to the string of caravan hostels across his empire to cater to the desires of passing merchants, caravan drivers, or anyone else who might want them. Finally, of the four thousand captured girls, those deemed unfit for such service were left on the field for anybody present who wished to carry them away for whatever use could be found for them.
Somewhere in their wanderings the Mongols had learned the power of sexual terrorism. Muslim chroniclers charge that the Mongols had used a similar tactic only a few years earlier when Ogodei sent an army into North China. The Mongol force of 25,000 defeated a Chinese army of 100,000. The Mongol commander, according to the Muslims, permitted the mass sodomizing of the defeated soldiers.
“Because they had jeered at the Mongols, speaking big words and expressing evil thoughts, it was commanded that they should commit the act of the people of Lot with all the Khitayans who had been taken prisoner.” Even if the account was exaggerated, its existence shows that people had the idea of using mass rape as a weapon.
Even in a world hardened by the suffering of a harsh environment and prolonged warfare, nothing like Ogodei’s transgression had been known to happen before, and nothing could excuse it. The chroniclers, long accustomed to reporting on rivers flowing with blood and massacres of whole cities, seem to choke on the very words they had to write to record the Rape of the Oirat Children. The Mongol chroniclers could only speak in vague terms that acknowledged a crime by Ogodei without admitting the horror of what the khan did to his own people.
The Persian chroniclers recorded the full cruelty and sheer evil behind the crime inflicted on these innocent, “star-like maidens, each of whom affected men’s hearts in a different way.” Everyone knew that this barbarous act violated in spirit and in detail the long list of laws Genghis Khan had made regarding women.
Girls could be married at a young age but could not engage in sex until sixteen, and then they initiated the encounter with their husbands. They could not be seized, raped, kidnapped, bartered, or sold. Ogodei violated every single one of those laws.
The chronicles explain that the episode was punishment against the Oirat for not sending girls for Ogodei’s harem. Ogodei’s debauched appetites at this stage of his life, however, favored alcohol over girls, and while this excuse may have been proffered, the rape of the Oirat virgins was part of a much larger assault against the power of Genghis Khan’s daughters and their lineages.
Depraved as the violence against the girls was, it did not spring from the mindless lust of a wicked old man. The atrocity grew from a calculating greed and the desire to expand Ogodei’s wealth and power. He used this ordeal to seize the lands of his sister Checheyigen, who most likely had recently died. This act brought the Oirat under Ogodei’s control.
Many of the girls raped that day had been born after the death of Genghis Khan in 1227. They lived in a much different Mongol Empire from the one he founded and left to his people, and the mass rapes, although only a decade later, showed how quickly the world was changing.
The rape of the Oirat girls was the opening move in a long political, diplomatic, and terror campaign against the women of Genghis Khan’s Borijin clan. Through the attack, Ogodei was taking away the powers left to his sister and imposing his own authority over her lands, her people, and her family. His crime was the beginning of the ruination of everything that his father had accomplished for his family and nation. Without the father’s restraining hand, the stronger of his children began to pick off the weaker ones.
Genghis Khan’s unusual system of political organization had placed Ogodei in the geographic center, surrounded by the territories of his brothers and sisters. The empire as a whole continued growing at the outer edges, but the central location of Ogodei’s personal holdings prevented him from expanding without moving into the territory of his siblings.
He began encroaching on their lands almost as soon as he came to power. Since he outranked them as Great Khan, it was hard to resist him. The Oirat kingdom of Checheyigen disappeared first, but the lands of the other sisters would soon follow. The unprecedented violence Ogodei had committed against the family of one sister would now expand into a struggle against all of them.
Ogodei managed to find or invent a variety of excuses to expand his power at the expense of other members of the Borijin royal family. He moved into the territory of his father’s widows Yesui and Yesugen in the Khangai Mountains and along the Tuul River. As the youngest son, his brother Tolui, had inherited their mother’s land on the Kherlen, but Ogodei had tried to take it as well after Tolui died.
One day in 1232, the forty-three-year-old Tolui had stumbled out of his ger and in a drunken tirade collapsed and died. Some observers surmised that Ogodei had orchestrated the death with the help of shamans who drugged the alcoholic Tolui.
No matter the cause, Ogodei immediately sought to benefit from his brother’s death by arranging a marriage for his son Guyuk with Tolui’s widow Sorkhokhtani. Knowing precisely what Ogodei was trying to do, she politely, but firmly, refused on the grounds of devoting her life to her four sons, but the refusal meant that she could never marry anyone else.
Having failed to gain the eastern lands through this marriage strategy, Ogodei sent Guyuk on a European campaign under the leadership of his cousin, Jochi’s son Batu, who was expanding his family’s holdings from Russia into Poland and Hungary up to the borders of the German states, and south into the Balkans.
The plan, later denied by Ogodei after it failed, seemed to have been for Guyuk to take control of some of the new territories for himself, thereby giving Ogodei’s family a hold in Europe from which they could slowly absorb the lands of their relatives who controlled Russia. Batu firmly rejected Guyuk’s attempts to claim part of the conquests, and after a night of raucous drinking, crude mocking, and angry arguing, Batu chased Guyuk away in fear for his life.
In addition to her central Mongolian territory along the Tuul River, Yesui had been granted the Tangut kingdom astride the crucial Gansu Corridor of China’s Silk Route. Ogodei sent his second son, Koten, to take those lands. Koten proved more successful than his brother Guyuk, occupying part of the Onggud lands that had once been controlled by his aunt Alaqai Beki and the Tangut lands ruled by Yesui Khatun. Koten used these lands as a base for the conquest of Tibet, and he became the first Mongol patron of Tibetan Buddhism.
Had Ogodei’s plan worked, his sons would have occupied Manchuria to the east and Tibet to the south, as well as Hungary, Poland, and Ukraine to the west, thereby encircling the Mongol Empire with his personal lands all around the edges.
As each of Genghis Khan’s wives died in the coming years, her territory was seized by one of Genghis Khan’s sons. Just as a man’s earthly spirit lived on in the hair of his horses, a woman’s spirit lived on in the wool that she pressed to make the felt walls of herger. The sons seemed afraid to confiscate the actual ger that had been the queen’s ordo.
The ger had been given to her by Genghis Khan, and it was there that he had lived and slept with his wives. As each queen died, she was sent to Burkhan Khaldun for burial there, and her ordo was sent to the former territory of Borte at Khodoe Aral, where the Avarga stream flows into the Kherlen River. Here the four structures were erected as permanent memorials to Genghis Khan and his empire. Known as the Four Great Ordos, they became a mere symbolic relic of the empire Genghis Khan had created.
Genghis Khan’s death left a power vacuum that his weak and quarrelsome sons exploited but failed to fill. Although Genghis Khan’s daughters and their families suffered greatly during the reign of Ogodei, a new set of women came into power; these were the wives of the khans, the daughters-in-law of Genghis Khan. Ogodei’s wife Toregene was the first to take command, while her husband sank deeper into his wine. Although not the first wife, she gradually assumed the title yeke khatun, “empress.”
The oldest surviving use of that title is from an order that she issued under her name and her seal on April 10, 1240, while her husband was still alive. The text indicates that she controlled part of the civilian administration of the empire. She pursued her own activities of supporting religion, education, and construction projects on an imperial scale.
In a similar way, even before his death, the alcoholic Tolui had effectively abdicated power to his wife Sorkhokhtani because he “used to weep a great deal.” Recognizing his own inability, “he commanded that the affairs of the ulus [nation] and the control of the army should be entrusted to the counsel of his chief wife, Sorkhokhtani Beki.” After the death of Chaghatai, khan of Central Asia and the only one of Genghis Khan’s sons not to succumb to alcoholism, his widow Ebuskun assumed power.
Until their sudden arrival on the political scene, very little is known of these women; they had married into the family without, in most cases, anyone noticing them enough to mention who they were or where they came from. Mongol chronicles do not specify Toregene’s origin, but according to Chinese chroniclers, she had been born a Naiman. Before her marriage to Ogodei, she had been married to the son of the Merkid chief.
The Merkid had been the first enemies of Genghis Khan, responsible for kidnapping his wife Borte, and through the decades he had found and defeated them several times, only to see them strike up the feud again. When Genghis Khan conquered the Merkid for the final time in 1205, the Year of the Ox, he decided to destroy the tribe—killing off the leading men and dividing up the rest. In the distribution of the remaining tribe, Genghis Khan gave the soon-to-be-widowed Toregene to Ogodei as a junior wife.
These queens such as Toregene and Sorkhokhtani had been princesses before marrying Genghis Khan’s sons. Their fathers, husbands, and brothers had been killed, but as women of the aristocratic clans, they had grown up at the center of political and diplomatic life and been exposed to the intrigues that simmer and periodically explode in every power center. In addition, the most powerful daughters-in-law of Genghis Khan came from the western tribes of Mongolia and were Christians.
It is uncertain if any were literate, but being raised as Christians, they at least knew the importance of written documents, and they had a larger worldview that made them proponents of religion and education in general. Sorkhokhtani supported Muslim schools in central Asia, and Toregene patronized the Taoist monasteries in China.
In her position as empress, Toregene was by far the most powerful of all the women, but she provoked angry opposition within the Mongol court on two primary accounts. She sought to increase tax revenues from wherever she could, but in a seemingly contradictory policy, she also sought to diminish the powers of the central administration, or at least to reduce the authority and power of the ministers and officials who managed the imperial court and oversaw the bureaucracy.
In 1240, a dispute arose over how to produce more tax revenue from northern China, and Ogodei moved in Mahmud Yalavach, one of his experienced Muslim administrators from Central Asia, to take over as supreme judge. Toregene, however, did not like him, and at the same time she had one of her favorites, Abd-ur-Rahman, appointed as chief tax collector. The resulting rivalry sustained enormous dissension for twenty years.
In 1241, Ogodei died, probably paralyzed from an alcoholic binge. Toregene assumed complete power over the Mongol Empire as yeke khatun. In pursuit of her own policies, she dismissed all her late husband’s ministers and replaced them with her own. Despite being the mother of five sons, she chose not to move them into high positions of critical importance in her new government. Instead, the highest position went to another foreign woman, who had been a servant in Toregene’s household.
She was Fatima, a Shiite Muslim Tajik or Persian captive from the Middle Eastern campaign. The Persian chronicler Juvaini, who seemingly disapproved of women involved in politics, wrote that Fatima enjoyed constant access to Toregene’s tent, and she “became the sharer of intimate confidences and the depository of hidden secrets.”
Fatima played a political role while the older “ministers were debarred from executing business, and she was free to issue commands and prohibitions.” So enormous was Fatima’s reputed power that the Persian chroniclers referred to her as a khatun, a “queen,” of the Mongols.
Toregene maintained her nomadic court in the vicinity of the capital city, Karakorum, built by her late husband in the fertile steppes near the Khangai Mountains and adjacent to the Orkhon River in central Mongolia. By Mongol standards, the area encompassed a beautiful, well-watered series of steppes, covered with green pastures in the summer and providing nearby mountains to shelter the herders and their animals in the harsh winter; for visitors, the area presented untold hardships.
One of the educated Persian officials working with the Mongols wrote of Karakorum: “And the wind has pitched over our heads tents of snow without ropes or poles. Its arrows penetrate our clothes like an arrow shot by a person of great bulk.”
The newly erected capital of Karakorum consisted of a small cluster of buildings constructed in both Chinese and Muslim styles, but they were hardly more than a series of warehouses for the tribute sent from around the empire. The city also provided housing and work space for the numerous captured workmen producing goods for Ogodei’s followers, and it contained a large contingent of foreign clerks translating documents and helping to handle the poorly organized administration of the massive empire.
With the usual Mongol dread of solid walls of wood or stone, Ogodei always lived in his ger camp, which moved four times a year in a large patterned migration within a radius of about a hundred miles around his capital. To maintain the continuity of her husband’s and Genghis Khan’s adherence to traditional Mongol patterns, Toregene continued to run the country from her mobile court.
She reigned as yeke khatun from 1241 until 1246 because it took that long to orchestrate her son Guyuk’s succession as Great Khan. She had to overcome the stated preference of Ogodei for another heir, as well as the opposition of most of the officials appointed by her husband.
She could not persuade these men, so she reorganized the administration of the court and the newly conquered territories, appointing new administrators from China to Turkey. In the cases of recalcitrant officials who did not heed her words, she resorted to extreme measures of public punishment.
The Uighur scribe Korguz, who had been quite loyal to her husband and had been given administration over eastern Iran, angered the empress; she had him arrested and executed by stuffing stones in his mouth until he choked to death. One of her most problematic issues derived from northern China, where she repeatedly had trouble exerting her authority over the Mongols in charge there, particularly over her second son, Koten.
He harbored ambitions to take power from his mother and to become Great Khan; so when she began persecuting his father’s former officials, many of them escaped to Koten’s court for refuge. Toregene continued and intensified her husband’s struggle for land within the Mongol Empire.
The lands closest to hers were those of Ogodei’s sisters. Just as Ogodei had moved against the lands of his sister Checheyigen on an unconvincing pretext, Toregene now moved against his sister Al-Altun.
Al-Altun had ruled the Uighur territory under the aegis of Genghis Khan. It is not known what type of dealings Ogodei had with his sister while their father lived, but around the time of Ogodei’s death, someone from his faction executed her. According to the Persian chronicle of Rashid al-Din, this was done in violation of laws of Genghis Khan and the Mongols. “They put to death the youngest daughter of Genghis-Khan, whom he loved more than all his other children … although she had committed no crime.”
The official excuse for executing Al-Altun seems to have been the accusation that she poisoned her brother Ogodei. She “had killed his father [Ogodei] with poison at the time when their army was in Hungary, and it was for this that the army had retreated from those countries. She and many others were judged and killed.” Accusing her of such a crime against her brother at least partially justified killing her since she would have been the first to break the law against killing a member of the family.
The claim, however, did not convince the family, as evidenced by a subsequent speech made by Tolui’s son Khubilai Khan at the trial of some of the retainers of Ogodei demanding to know why they killed her without a trial, as mandated by Genghis Khan.
https://www.facebook.com/vitorbelfort/
...
...
Ogodei’s daughter Alajin Beki assumed power over the Uighurs. She first married the eldest son of the old Idiqut, who had been married to her aunt, and when he died, she married his younger brother. Like their father, each of them inherited the title of Idiqut upon marrying the daughter of the Great Khan.
In 1246, five years after her husband’s death, Toregene had gained sufficient control of the empire to summon a khuriltai to select Ogodei’s successor and to have her son named Great Khan. It had been almost two decades since the last khuriltai in 1229 to elect Ogodei, but this khuriltai contrasted markedly with the last one.
The Secret History specifies that the princes of the family as well as the princesses and the imperial sons-in-law attended the khuriltai of 1229, but the role of the imperial daughters-in-law at that time was so negligible that their presence was not even mentioned. By 1246, these women had risen so quickly in power that they completely controlled the khuriltai and managed every detail of its agenda.
By the khuriltai of 1246, all four of Genghis Khan’s sons were dead. None of his daughters remained in power, and it is not certain that even one was still alive. The empire of eight kingdoms had been reduced to four, corresponding to the territory of the now dead sons, but three of these were ruled by women. Ebuskun, the widow of Genghis Khan’s second son, Chaghatai, ruled Central Asia or Turkestan.
Sorkhokhtani served as regent for eastern Mongolia and her sons’ expanding territory in northern China. Toregene ruled the territory of her late husband in the center of Mongol territory, and as empress she presided over the whole empire. Only the Golden Horde of Russia, under the control of Batu Khan, remained under male rule.
Women ruled from Korea to the Caucasus Mountains, from the Arctic to the Indus, but not one was a daughter of Genghis Khan, a member of the Borijin clan, or even technically a Mongol. Never before, or since, had, or has, such a large empire been ruled by women. Yet these women were not allies; they were rivals, as each sought more power and lands for herself and her sons.
In anticipation of the great gathering on the steppes of Mongolia in 1246, foreign dignitaries arrived from the distant corners of the empire to the capital at Karakorum or to Toregene’s nomadic imperial camp, where she held court in a large and elegant tent. Friar Giovanni DiPlano Carpini, the first European envoy to Mongolia, seemed surprised both that she had a court of her own and that the tent could contain such an enormous entourage.
Guyuk, Toregene’s son, “sent us to his mother where a court was solemnly held, and when we had arrived there, so great was the size of the tent which was made of white fabric, that we reckon that it could hold more than two thousand men.” In addition, each of the khan’s wives maintained her own court as well. Guyuk’s “wives had other tents, however, of white felt which were quite large and beautiful.”
Emirs, governors, and grandees jostled along the same roads as princes and kings. The Seljuk sultan came from Turkey, as did representatives of the caliph of Baghdad, and two claimants to the throne of Georgia: David, the legitimate son of the late king, and David, the illegitimate son of the same king. The highest-ranking European delegate was Grand Prince Yaroslav II of Vladimir and Suzdal, who died suspiciously just after dining with Toregene Khatun in the fall of 1246.
Even after Toregene installed Guyuk as Great Khan, he initially showed little interest in his position. As Juvaini wrote, “He took no part in affairs of state, and Toregene Khatun still executed the decrees of the Empire.” Within a short time, however, he decided to consolidate his power, and a disagreement arose between them concerning Fatima, his mother’s close confidante.
Guyuk wished to remove Fatima, and he sent soldiers to arrest her at his mother’s court. Toregene refused to surrender her. Toregene had twice been married to foreign men whom she had not chosen. Each time, she complied with the demands the world put upon her to be a wife, mother, and queen.
With Ogodei, her second forced marriage, she had produced and reared five sons, and despite their incompetence and frequent defiance and disregard for her, she had promoted their interests. Against all odds and the express wishes of his father, she had made Guyuk emperor, but she had received no thanks from her sons or anyone else.
Now in her old age, she found some solace in and emotional attachment to Fatima. Willing to forgo political life, the two women wanted to live in peace and quiet. Their close relationship may have stemmed from nothing more than having the shared experience of being foreign women forcefully brought into the Mongol court.
Despite repeated efforts by Guyuk to arrest Fatima, Toregene continued to defy her son and would not yield. The court focused on this emotional struggle of wills between Toregene the empress and her son Guyuk the Great Khan. As with so many such episodes in Mongolian history, the details are missing, but the outcome is clear. She lost.
The Muslim historian Abu-Umar-I-Usman implied that her son assassinated Toregene in order to seize total power. They sent the “Khatun to join Ogodei,” he wrote, “and raised his son to the throne of sovereignty, but God knows the truth.” The chronicler certainly seemed to think that she deserved her fate because “she displayed woman’s ways, such as proceed from deficiency of intellect, and excess sensuality.”
Fatima’s fate was far worse. Guyuk hated her and wanted a public confession that she had bewitched his mother. He brought her to his court, naked and bound. Although Genghis Khan had forbidden the use of torture as part of a trial or as a punishment, Guyuk found a simple way around that law on the grounds that Fatima was not a Mongol, much less a member of the royal clan.
He made her torture into a public spectacle as interrogators beat and burned her in ways designed to inflict the greatest pain without shedding her blood, which might pollute the court. For days and nights the ordeal continued, with brief periods of rest so that she might regain enough strength to suffer yet another round.
Other women may have been arrested at this point and brought to trial as well. “And then they sent also for their ladies,” wrote the French envoy Rubruck in order that “they might all be whipped with burning brands to make them confess. And when they had confessed, they were put to death.” Who they were or to what they confessed remains unknown.
In the end Fatima also confessed to every sin and crime that her torturers demanded, but then rather than letting her just die from her wounds or executing her quickly, Guyuk subjected her to one final ordeal. He ordered the torturers to sew up every orifice of her body to ensure the most agonizing death possible. Wrapping her carefully in felt to prevent blood escaping from the stitches, the executioners then threw Fatima into the river.
Fortunately for Mongolia and the world, Guyuk died a little more than a year later. The circumstances were not clear, but he had accumulated too many enemies to speculate on which one may have brought his life to a close. In the continuing political struggles at the center of the empire, the fringes began to unravel. With his limitless love of colorful metaphors, Juvaini wrote: “The affairs of the world had been diverted from the path of rectitude and the reins of commerce and fair dealing turned aside from the highway of righteousness.”
He described the land as being in darkness, “and the cup of the world was filled to the brim with the drink of iniquity.” The Mongol people and their subjects, “dragged now this way, now that, were at their wits’ end, for they had neither the endurance to stay nor did they know of a place to which they might flee.”
Ogodei’s incompetent reign had ended with the cruel rape of the Oirat girls; Guyuk’s sadistic reign began with the death of his mother and the public torture of Fatima. Rather than satisfying some mysterious need for revenge, these two episodes had unleashed the wicked forces of total moral corruption. The lines of authority and power shifted rapidly and are difficult to discern with precision yet certain patterns seem clear.
While many men faced execution or highly suspicious deaths, once powerful women increasingly bore the brunt of the violence. Rashid al-Din recorded, with seeming approval, that when one of Chaghatai’s queens disagreed with a minister in her husband’s court, the minister publicly chastised and humiliated her. “You are a woman,” he told her, and therefore “have no say in this matter.”
No one defended the queen, and the minister continued his campaign to limit the power of the women in the court. After rebuking the queen, the minister executed one of Chaghatai’s daughters-in-law for adultery without any legal proceeding or requesting permission from anyone. Genghis Khan had left a law that no member of the family, the Altan Urug, could be executed without the agreement of a representative from each branch of the family.
The minister made clear that this law did not apply to daughters-in-law. The execution of the daughter-in-law at the court of Chaghatai indicated an expanding resentment against the daughters-in-law in general. The climax of their era was about to erupt in a violent clash between two of them, Oghul Ghaimish and Sorkhokhtani.
Following Guyuk’s brief and chaotic eighteen months as Great Khan, his widow Oghul Ghaimish stepped forward to take control of the empire just as her mother-in-law Toregene had done seven years earlier. She was either from the Merkid tribe or possibly was the daughter of Queen Checheyigen, who had ruled the Oirat, and thus would have been a granddaughter of Genghis Khan.
Her name derived from the Turkish phrase meaning “a boy next time,” given by parents who have several daughters and hope for a son. Names have a strange way of creating their own destiny, and this name proved prophetically accurate. She was the last empress to nominally lay claim over the whole empire.
Aside from her constant struggle within the royal family, we know little of Oghul Ghaimish other than from a mission report from a Dominican friar, Andrew of Longumeau, sent by Louis IX of France. He arrived with a small delegation bringing a tent chapel equipped with everything that they might need to convert the Mongols to Catholicism. Fortunately this delegation did not need to travel the whole distance to Mongolia, as the regent Oghul Ghaimish kept her camp and stronghold in modern Kazakhstan, south of Lake Balkash.
The quotes Longumeau gathered and attributed to the queen show a more thoughtful ruler than the one portrayed in the Muslim histories. According to this report, she said to the French: “Peace is good; for when a country is at peace those who go on four feet eat the grass in peace, and those who go on two feet till the ground, from which good things come, in peace.”
Yet most of her comments were far blunter. She followed these philosophical musings with a very simple, pragmatic point that showed her political goals. “You cannot have peace,” she told the French envoy, “if you are not at peace with us!” She then told him to “send us of your gold and of your silver so much as may win you our friendship.” Otherwise, “We shall destroy you!” She then wrote a letter to Louis IX, ordering him to come to Mongolia to surrender to her.
The Eternal Blue Sky willed that she rule over the French, and if he accepted this, she would reappoint him to his office as king. This was not what the friars had in mind when they brought her the nice chapel tent, but it is unlikely that either she or the French delegates realized how soon she herself was about to be consumed in the conflagration of Mongol imperial politics.
All the diplomats and ambassadors at her court seemed to despise her. Another French envoy, Rubruck, wrote of Oghul Ghaimish: “As to affairs of war and peace, what would this woman, who was viler than a dog, know about them?”
He also eagerly passed on the gossip he heard about her. He wrote that Mongke Khan, the eldest son of Tolui and Sorkhokhtani, “told me with his own lips” that Oghul Ghaimish “was the worst kind of witch and that she had destroyed her whole family by her witchcraft.”
Oghul Ghaimish was empress, but her nemesis, Tolui’s widow Sorkhokhtani, only had the title of beki, “lady.” Over the next three years, the two women fought a vigorous contest for control of the empire. The inexperienced khatun was no match for Sorkhokhtani, whom Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists praised effusively for her cunning.
She was probably the most capable woman of the Mongol era, and she had been preparing her entire life for the moment when she had the chance to seize power for her sons. Her role in shaping the form and fate of the Mongol Empire far outweighs that of any other person of her era, and in historical impact, she stands second only to Genghis Khan himself.
By the time she faced off against Oghul Ghaimish, Sorkhokhtani had spent nearly two decades as a widow devoted solely to the task of molding her four sons into outstanding men of respected aptitude. Her sons were probably the best educated and, aside from Batu in Russia, the most talented men in the Mongol Empire.
She instilled in her sons an abiding respect for her Christian faith, and they often accompanied her to celebrate the holy days. The sons also maintained portable chapels in tents that went along on the Mongol campaigns, but none of them publicly accepted baptism into her faith.
Sorkhokhtani insisted on their strict adherence to Mongol law, but at the same time, she combined this with extensive education about the civilizations around them, particularly the Jurched, Uighurs, and Chinese. She made sure that in addition to knowing traditional steppe culture, her sons learned to speak, read, and write excellent Mongolian. She had them taught to speak colloquial Chinese, although apparently not to read or write the classical version so prized by scholars and bureaucrats.
Throughout the reign of Ogodei’s family, she had tightly controlled her sons’ behavior to keep them beyond any sort of suspicion for misconduct or disloyalty to whichever Great Khan happened to be in power. All accounts agree that she did this by making them scrupulously obey the law and the ruling khan without providing him a reason to suspect or an excuse to punish any one of them. Sorkhokhtani spent her life preparing for the khuriltai of 1251.
By contrast, Oghul Ghaimish was clumsy and awkward in her public role. Despite Oghul Ghaimish’s decisive advantage of control over the imperial capital of Karakorum and all the lands around it, she lacked the skills to keep her immediate family, much less the whole Ogodei lineage, united under her. According to Juvaini, her work “amounted to little except negotiations with merchants, the provisional allocation of sums of money to every land and country, and the dispatch of relays of churlish messengers and tax-gatherers.”
In the disjointed politics of the time, “her sons held two separate courts in opposition to their mother;” and thus there were three rulers in one place. And elsewhere also, “the princes made dealings in accordance with their own wishes, and the grandees and notables of every land attached themselves to a party according to their own inclination.”
Confusion reigned, “and the affairs of Oghul Ghaimish and her sons got out of control because of their differences with one another and their contentions with their senior kinsmen; and their counsels and schemes diverged from the pathway of righteousness.”
Despite her need to cultivate public support, Oghul Ghaimish Khatun apparently felt a deeper desire for more revenue. In July 1250, just prior to the election for the new khan, she issued an edict to increase the taxes on herders from 1 percent to 10 percent, thereby making the tax for Mongol herders the same as for conquered farmers. Such an act alienated the people whom she most needed to support her, and it revealed her poor sense of political timing.
With the full support of her four capable sons and a lifetime of preparation and waiting, Sorkhokhtani organized the campaign to elect her son to the office of Great Khan. Sorkhokhtani conspired with her nephew Batu Khan of the Golden Horde to bypass the authority of Oghul Ghaimish, call a new khuriltai, and orchestrate the election of her eldest son, Mongke, as Great Khan.
https://www.facebook.com/Earth-Spirit-Love-130341814349187
...
...
This would be the last election in which the women of the family had a public voice. Batu Khan’s invitation went to all the queens. “He sent messengers to the wives of Genghis Khan, the wives and sons of Ogodei Khan, the wife of Tolui Khan, Sorkhokhtani Beki, and the other princes and emirs of the right and left.” On July 1, 1251, the assembled Mongol throng proclaimed the election of Sorkhokhtani’s son, the forty-three-year-old Mongke, as Great Khan of the Great Mongol nation.
After securing the election for her son, Sorkhokhtani personally presided over the trial of her defeated rival, the ousted queen Oghul Ghaimish. Guyuk had interpreted the law to allow torture of people who were not members of the Borijin clan, and this now applied to her.
Even if Oghul Ghaimish had been the daughter of Checheyigen, and thus the granddaughter of Genghis Khan, by the rules of patrilineal descent she was not a member of the Borijin clan but of the clan of her father. Her husband and her children were all Borijin members and unquestionably Mongols, but she was neither.
In a show trial similar to the one endured by Fatima, Oghul Ghaimish had to face her accusers naked, her hands sewn together with strips of rawhide. The ordeal was more public torture and interrogation than a judicial proceeding, and other women of the Ogodei branch of the family also had to face similar torture and judgment. The outcome was always the same. The condemned woman was executed in some gruesome manner and thrown into the river.
Mongke conducted the trial of the men. He sat on a chair in front of a shrine to Genghis Khan and had each man brought in for questioning. Since it was still, at least for now, against the law of Genghis Khan to torture a member of the Borijin family, Mongke ordered that their retainers be brought in and beaten to make them confess the crimes of their former masters.
As part of the spectacle, one of the ministers decided or was forced to commit suicide with his own sword during the proceedings. Tanggis, an Oirat son-in-law of the late Guyuk, was beaten until the flesh fell from his thighs; yet he was a lucky one, because he survived. In yet another sign of how far they had drifted from the laws of Genghis Khan, the new generation of Mongol rulers seems to have lost its abhorrence of public bloodletting.
After the main trials in the central Mongol court concluded, regional officials were ordered to hold similar trials of members of Ogodei’s lineage and their former administrators. The purge reached a climax in a literal hunt for dissenters who had escaped from the court to the countryside and found refuge from the first round of reprisals.
In the traditional hunts, men formed a large circle, and by tightening it drove the prey toward the center for slaughter. In this enormous hunt, Mongke’s court ordered ten units of ten thousand men each to sweep through the land in a large military formation, searching for sympathizers of the deposed branch of the family. The hunt yielded some three hundred families who had fled from the authorities.
They suffered the same fate as those before them. They were beaten with heated brands until they confessed. Then they were executed. We know nothing of most of the victims or of their alleged crimes. They survive in the historical record only because their deaths left a warning to future generations.
One queen called Toqashi Khatun was tried and convicted, in the presence of her husband, by a former political rival serving as judge. The judge “ordered her limbs to be kicked to a pulp.” According to Rashid al-Din, the judge thereby “relieved his bosom filled with an ancient grudge.”
Sorkhokhtani had emerged victorious, but her sons then channeled their fury against the survivors, including women who had once been their allies and helped them attain power. The worst era for royal Mongol women followed the election of Mongke Khan.
Once such a purge destroys its original target, the sponsors of the persecutions often find it difficult to stop the violence. Having destroyed their enemies, they turn their fury toward one another and thus make enemies of their former confederates. The killers began to kill one another. Soon women within the victorious side came under attack.
Rubruck reported that when a wife of Mongke Khan had two people executed, he became angry with her. Then “he forthwith sent to his wife and asked her where she had found out that a wife could pass a death sentence, leaving her husband in ignorance of what she had done.” As punishment he had her sealed up in solitary confinement for a week “with orders that no food be given her.”
As for the queen’s two retainers, a brother and sister who had carried out the executions, Mongke first killed the brother. Then he ordered the man’s head be removed and hung around his sister’s neck. Soldiers then chased her around the camp beating her with burning brands. When they finally tired of the torture, they killed her. Mongke also wanted to have his wife executed but did not. “And he would have had his own wife put to death had it not been for the children he had of her.”
Every successful purge needs a complicit judge or judiciary, and the family of Sorkhokhtani found him in Menggeser Noyan of the Jalayir clan, whom they appointed to be supreme judge of the Mongol Empire. Since he came from neither the ruling Borijin clan nor any of their marriage ally clans, he should have been fair and impartial in reviewing cases and imposing judgments, but according to the Persian chronicles, “He was pitiless in executing offenders.”
Initially, Menggeser Noyan arrested the members of Guyuk’s family, oversaw the interrogation, passed judgment on them, and then executed them. In this way, he insulated Mongke Khan and his family from some of the personal blame, since it was still too grave a crime for one member of the Borijin clan to execute another.
The purge expanded and continued until 1252, and most of the arrests occurred far from the main court. Still, in such cases the accused had a theoretical right of appeal to the court, particularly for a capital crime. Menggeser Noyan decided not to review any of the appeals until after execution of sentence.
It remains unknown, but also unlikely, that he found anyone innocent after execution. In the terror and chaos created by the purge, Sorkhokhtani’s victorious faction confiscated the lands and property of the accused. Sorkhokhtani’s sons annexed the entire kingdom of Alaqai Beki, who had ruled the Onggud and all of northern China.
She claimed these lands on the legal grounds that her daughter had been married to Alaqai’s son who had been killed in the southern campaign. Around 1253, Mongke Khan gave control of the Onggud and surrounding area toward the west to his younger brother. Thus, Khubilai Khan peacefully absorbed the Onggud kingdom of his aunt Alaqai Beki, but the other acquisitions for him and his brothers proved much more difficult and usually bloody.
Whereas the ruling family managed to take control of Alaqai Beki’s Onggud nation by politics, they found it much harder to seize the Uighur territory, ruled by the late khan Ogodei’s daughter Alajin Beki and her husband the Idiqut. Since the Idiqut was obviously loyal to the Ogodei faction, Menggeser Noyan ordered his arrest and personally oversaw the questioning of the Uighur leader.
He faced a brutal interrogation, but it probably was similar to many others presided over by the judge. They twisted the Idiqut’s hands until he passed out from pain. When he revived, they placed his head into some type of wooden press.
Menggeser departed from the scene of the interrogation, but he left the Idiqut in the press with guards. During Menggeser’s absence, one of the guards took pity on the Idiqut and loosened the press. When Menggeser returned and saw what had happened, he had the guard seized and delivered “seventeen stout blows upon the posterior.”
For a time, the Idiqut persisted in denying any involvement in a vague plot and heresy, but in the end, he and his companions succumbed and admitted to anything required of them. One of Mongke Khan’s partisans summarized the interrogations very simply. “After sipping the unpalatable cup of the roughness of the Tatar rods,” the accused ones always “vomited forth and declared what was hidden in their breasts.”
The Mongols sent the Idiqut and his men back to the Uighur territory with orders that on the Muslim holy day of Friday, the Idiqut’s brother cut off the unfortunate leader’s head and saw his two companions in half. To prove that his loyalty to Mongke Khan surpassed that to his own family, the new Idiqut complied.
Although he was Great Khan during this time, Mongke may have been less involved with the purge than his mother, Sorkhokhtani, and her allies. Persian chroniclers portray him as a merciful man who opposed the killing of Mongols by Mongols. In other aspects of his eight-year reign, Mongke Khan showed consistent and seemingly genuine respect for the Great Law left in place by his grandfather Genghis Khan.
Of all the grandsons, he and his cousin Batu Khan of Russia seemed the most capable and the most dedicated to following the spirit of that law. The layers of officials may have shielded him from some of the worst atrocities, but he could not have been totally ignorant, no matter how preoccupied with other issues.
The purges subsided slightly when Sorkhokhtani became desperately ill. As a Christian, she feared that the illness might be related to the wretched evil she had unleashed. In an effort to attain forgiveness and prolong her life, she began to pardon the convicted.
While technically sparing the life of the condemned, she and her family still sought to inflict the maximum punishment on them and to offer a lesson to anyone else who might oppose her family’s rule. The condemned’s “wives and children, his servants and cattle, all his animate and inanimate possessions, were seized and distributed.”
As a secondary form of punishment for those whose lives were spared, she sent them into the most dangerous assignments of the military, “arguing that if he is fated to be killed he will be killed in the fighting.”
In the case of others: “They send him on an embassy to foreign peoples who they are not entirely certain will send them back: or again they send him to hot countries whose climate is unhealthy such as Egypt and Syria.” Sorkhokhtani died in February or March of 1252, while the campaign of retribution still raged through the empire.
Although Mongke Khan continued to appoint some women as queens and gave them limited power to rule over subservient areas, he made certain that they had no independent power and prevented anyone else from giving power to women. Mongke Khan issued a decree that no woman could be made khatun by a shaman or one of Guyuk’s former officials. If any shaman or other official recognized a woman as khatun, Mongke Khan ordered the penalty of death, using the uniquely Mongol expression “They shall see what they shall see.”
What Genghis Khan had spent a lifetime creating was destroyed within another lifetime. The Mongol Empire lingered for another century—at first growing fatter and fatter through conquest, then slowly decaying into a twisted shadow of its once noble origin. It would never again be the empire of its founder, who imposed a strict code of laws and lived an unadorned life of austerity and hard work.
The delicately balanced system of men and women sharing similar powers had proved too fragile to survive. Though occupying the largest empire, the Borijin family had become just one more bloated and decadent dynasty spilling out across the pages of world history.
Like a drunk who tears down his own ger in some unfathomable rage, the Borijin clan destroyed everything that had made it grand and powerful. They sank into a prolonged degeneracy surrounded by the broken pieces of their once glorious Mongol Empire.
The chronicler Abu-Umar-I-Usman reported that years earlier, in 1221, during Genghis Khan’s Central Asian campaign when his sons Jochi and Chaghatai conquered the capital city of Urgench, they seized the women they wanted to keep for themselves and then gathered all the remaining women outside the city walls on an open plain. They divided the women into two groups and ordered them to strip naked. According to this story, Genghis Khan’s sons then gave the order for one group to attack the other.
“The women of your city are good pugilists,” one of the sons was quoted as saying to the conquered city officials. “Therefore, the order is that both sides should set on each other with fists.” The women, thinking that the victorious side would be allowed to live, set to fighting each other with tremendous fury.
The soldiers watched the spectacle, cheering some fighters on and jeering at others. Many women killed other women in the course of the day, but eventually the audience tired of the match. At the end of the game, the generals ordered the soldiers to kill all the surviving women.
Such stories, especially from anti-Mongol sources, can never simply be accepted as fact based on only a single account. Yet the report always teaches us something, even if it is nothing more than that the idea of such an event existed; it was conceivable, and thus someone might do such a thing.
Sometimes even the most implausible stories from one decade or generation become the realities for the next one. In the generation after Genghis Khan, many of the powerful women of the empire expired fighting one another much like the women of this story. And, like them, the Mongol queens ended up killing one another, only in the end to be killed themselves.
The violence did not end with the overthrow of the queens; it continued to spread and became endemic to family politics. Sorkhokhtani had kept her four sons united and focused on rivals outside their family, but, with her gone, the sons turned on one another.
Within eight years, in 1259, Mongke died during a campaign in China, and his two younger brothers, Khubilai, based in northern China, and Arik Boke, based in Mongolia, began a battle for power. Khubilai captured Arik Boke and sought to put him on trial for treason, but when other members of the Borijin clan refused to attend the trial, Arik Boke died mysteriously in captivity in 1266, almost certainly a victim of his brother’s quest for power.
The Mongol Empire was soon to reach its maximum territorial extent, but it could not long survive the family fighting that was destroying its ruling family. Khubilai commanded the greatest army, but it was more Chinese than Mongolian, and although he claimed the title of Great Khan in 1260, he had been elected in only a sham khuriltai held in China rather than Mongolia and without support from the Borijin clan or other Mongols.
While continuing to worship the spirit of their grandfather Genghis Khan and making him into a virtual god, his heirs destroyed everything he created. Yet the more they destroyed, the more ritually important they made him.
Khubilai Khan created the office ofjinong, meaning “Prince of Gold,” or “Golden Prince,” and assigned him “to guard the northern frontiers and to govern ‘the Four Great Ordos’ of the Founding Emperor, the military forces, the Mongols and the homeland.” With this responsibility, thejinongcontrolled the most sacred objects in the Mongol world: the black sulde, Genghis Khan’s horsehair banner in which a part of his earthly soul remained after he ascended into heaven, and the four gers of his four wives.
Mysteriously, however, over the coming years, what began as only four gers increased to eight. They were explained as being the shrines of his horse or his milk pail, but the structures housing them had once belonged to some woman since milk pails and saddles did not own gers. The most plausible explanation is that just as the ger of each of Genghis Khan’s four wives was brought to Avarga after she died, these were quite possibly the gers of his four deposed daughters.
Since the felt contained part of the departed woman’s soul, none of the sons claiming her land wanted her soul left behind to haunt him. The solution was to collect them all together. Thereafter, they were known as the Eight Gers or Eight Ordos of Genghis Khan.
If you find an error please notify us in the comments. Thank you!
https://erenow.net/biographies/the-secret-history-of-the-mongol-queens/6.php
Born into a family of aristocrats, she married Manduul Khan when she was 18 years old, and bore a daughter, whose name unfortunately isn’t known. Soon after the death of her husband the Khan, Manduhai adopted the 7-year-old orphan Batmunkh, then the last living direct descendant of Genghis Kahn. Manduhai named him “Dayan Kahn”, meaning “Great Kahn” or “Khan of whole universe”.
When Dayan Khan turned 19, Manduhai married him, again becoming the Khatun or Empress. Older and more experienced than the Khan, she retained great influence over court and military. Together they reunified the Mongol retainers of the former eastern region of the Mongol Empire.
Manduhai fought in battles herself, even while pregnant, and was once injured while carrying twins of Dayan Khan. She and the twins survived, and her army won the battle.
Mandukhai managed to keep Dayan Khan in power as a Chingis Khan’s descendant and defeated the Oirats, actions which have contributed to the legends which formed about her life. She left seven sons and three daughters. The later khans and nobles of Mongolia are her descendants.
https://brewminate.com/queen-manduhai-the-wise/
Early in his career, Jack Weatherford wrote books about Indian tribes throughout the Americas. Eventually, the anthropology professor whose academic home is Macalester College in St. Paul found a new fascination even farther away -- Mongolia.
Six years ago, his book "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" appeared in print and started selling well. But Weatherford gradually realized one volume could not convey all the stories he wanted to write about the 13th-century ruler who gave shape to a gigantic Asian empire.
One of the strands that fascinated Weatherford involved Khan's female descendants in a world long ago when males dominated -- at least in spoken and written histories. Khan's four sons figured in the histories, but by many accounts the sons did little to glorify the name of their father.
As Weatherford says in his new book, "The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire," "Genghis Khan sired four self-indulgent sons who proved good at drinking, mediocre in fighting, and poor at every- thing else; yet their names live on despite the damage they did to their father's empire."
The ruler's seven or eight daughters (Weatherford notes that documentation is unclear about the precise number), however, possessed "su- perior leadership abilities" to the sons, so Khan willed "strategically important parts of his empire" to the women.
Learning their precise accomplishments would be difficult because of gaps in the historical record caused partly by misogyny. "In their lifetime, [the daughters] could not be ignored, but when they left the scene, history closed the door behind them and let the dust of centuries cover their tracks," Weatherford writes. "Those Mongol queens were too unusual, too difficult to understand or explain. It seemed more convenient just to erase them."
Without the wisdom of the daughters, Weatherford is convinced, the Mongol Empire would have crumbled much faster than it did. Dissolution arrived during the decade of the 1360s. But Mongol pride did not evaporate. The most compelling part of Weatherford's new book is the restoration of the Mongol empire during the late 15th century with the emergence of another woman descended from Genghis Khan, a woman known by the name Queen Manduhai the Wise.
She was such a superb warrior that the Chinese dynasties feared she would encroach on their population, their lands. The Chinese built what today is known as the Great Wall of China partly to halt Manduhai's invaders.
Weatherford writes clearly and dynamically. Yet the book is still difficult to follow at times -- so many names with unfamiliar sounds, so many battles to track, so many marriages and murders within the Khan empire and outside of it. That said, Weatherford's original research makes the difficult effort worthwhile for readers who care about the history of a faraway, mysterious empire.
http://www.startribune.com/daughters-kept-khan-s-empire-alive/84174122/
The Japanese missions to Imperial China were diplomatic embassies which were intermittently sent to the Chinese court. Any distinction amongst diplomatic envoys sent from the Imperial Japanese court or from any of the Japanese shogunates was lost or rendered moot when the ambassador was received in the Chinese capital.
Extant records document missions to China between the years of 607 and 839 (a mission planned for 894 was cancelled). The composition of these Imperial missions included members of the aristocratic kuge and Buddhist priests. These missions led to the importation of Chinese culture, including advances in the sciences and technology. These diplomatic encounters produced the beginnings of a range of Schools of Buddhism in Japan, including Zen.
From the sinocentric perspective of the Chinese Court in Chang'an, the several embassies sent from Kyoto were construed as tributaries of Imperial China; but it is not clear that the Japanese shared this view. China seems to have taken the initiative in opening relations with Japan. Sui Emperor Yangdi dispatched a message in 605 which read:
The sovereign of Sui respectfully inquires about the sovereign of Wa. The court of Empress Suiko responded by sponsoring a mission led by Ono no Imoko in 607. A message carried by that mission, believed to have been written by Prince Shōtoku, contains the earliest known written instance in which the Japanese archipelago is referred to by a term meaning "land of the rising sun." The salutation read, in part:
From the sovereign of the land of the rising sun (hi izuru tokoro) to the sovereign of the land of the setting sun. The Imperial embassies to the Sui dynasty (遣隋使 Kenzui-shi) included representatives sent to study government and technology.
The Imperial embassies to Tang dynasty (遣唐使 Kentō-shi) are the best known; 19 missions were completed. A 20th mission had been planned for 894 (Kanpyō 6, 8th month), including the appointment of ambassadors. However, shortly before departure, the mission was halted by Emperor Uda because of reports of unsettled conditions in China. The emperor's decision-making was influenced by the persuasive counsel of Sugawara no Michizane.
Japanese envoys to the Tang court were received as ambassadors: Three missions to the Tang court were dispatched during the reign of Emperor Kōtoku. Emperor Kanmu's planned mission to the Tang court in 804 (Enryaku 23) included three ambassadors and several Buddhist priests, including Saichō (最澄) and Kūkai (空海); but the enterprise was delayed until the end of the year. The ambassadors returned in the middle of 805 (Enryaku 24, 6th month).
They were accompanied by the monk Saichō, also known by his posthumous name Dengyō Daishi (伝教大師), whose teachings would develop into the Tendai school of Japanese Buddhism.[13] In 806 (Daidō 1, 8th month), the return of the monk Kūkai, also known posthumously as Kōbō-Daishi (弘法大師), marks the beginning of what would develop into the Shingon school of Japanese Buddhism.
New ambassadors to China were appointed by Emperor Ninmyō in 834, but the mission was put off. 836–839: The mission was postponed by a typhoon; but the ambassadors did eventually travel to the Tang court, returning in 839 with a letter from Emperor Tang Wenzong.
In China, a steady and conservative Confucianist Song dynasty emerged after the end of the Tang dynasty and subsequent period of disunity during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. During this time, although travel to China was generally safe, Japanese rulers believed there was little to learn from the Song, and so there were no major embassy missions to China.
Ancient Japan was called Wa, which had a primitive culture when compared to Tang culture.[citation needed] The Tang folks referred to Wa as 東夷 (Eastern barbarians).
From 630 onward, Wa sent large groups of monks, students and government officials, up to 600 each time, to the Tang capital of Chang'an to learn the then advanced production technology, social system, history, philosophy, arts and architecture. Among many items adopted by Wa:
Heian-kyō, the new Japanese capital established in 794, and was a laid out in a grid similar to that of Chang'an, the Tang capital.
Culture, many Han Chinese characters (漢字) were borrowed from Tang civilization to build the Japanese culture. Tang dress codes (known today as Wafuku 和服), eating habits were the fashion which was imitated and popularized.
During Japan's self-imposed isolation in the Edo period (1603–1868), Japan's vicarious relationships with China evolved through the intermediary of the Kingdom of Ryukyu. Japan's view of external relations was ambivalent.
1853 (Kaei 6): Hayashi Akira completed Tsūkō ichiran. The work was created under orders from the bakufu to compile and edit documents pertaining to East Asian trade and diplomacy; and, for example, it includes a detailed description of a Ryukyuan tribute embassy to the Qing Chinese court in Beijing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_missions_to_Imperial_China
Somewhere in Time/The Old Woman(From Maksim Mrvisa/Royal Philharmonic Orchestra)
...
...
Libra is represented by the scales in Astrology. So, the harmony-seeking duality of Libra is heavily represented in the Justice Tarot card, but what does all of this symbolism mean?
Native Librans have an intuitive desire to maintain balance and harmony in their personal relationships, and are represented by the scales to show this quest for balance in all things. Libras are quite possibly the most popular sign of the zodiac, because they know how to charm and befriend all the other signs! Not to mention Libra is ruled by Venus, the planet of love and beauty, making this an exceptionally attractive sign.
Even so, Libras are not completely without fault -- they are often accused of painstaking indecision. This is in direct response to their internal scales weighing right vs wrong before making any decisions. But even with these sporadic bursts of momentary confusion, Libras manage to make decisions with grace once they balance their knowledge with intuition!
https://www.tarot.com/tarot/justice-tarot-card-libra-zodiac-sign
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.