Mongolia | Chingis Rides West | Jurchens | Jin Dynasty | Part IV

The Mongols would not have long to enjoy their plunder. In July of 1214, when they were fattening their horses on the steppe, came the disturbing news that Emperor Xuanzong had abandoned Zhongdu, the Northern Capital. On 30,000 carts, and accompanied by 3000 camel loads of treasure, the Jin court and government had left Zhongdu and was on its way to the Southern Capital (current-day Kaifeng), hopefully out of reach of further Mongol incursions. Many Jurchens viewed this apparent refusal to face the Mongol threat head-on as abject cowardice on their part of their leadership. Mutinies broke about among Jurchen troops and even more units defected to the Mongols. The Southern Sung Dynasty, sensing the impotence of the Jin, refused to cough up the tribute it had previously promised to pay them. Chingis Khan, after the humiliating terms he had early imposed on the Jin, considered them to be subordinate to the Mongols, indeed part of the nascent Mongol Empire, and he viewed the move south as a treacherous attempt on the part to Jin Emperor to regroup and continue the fighting, despite the treaty agreements of early 1214. Obviously the war with the Jin was not over. 

In the autumn of 1214 Mongols armies again poured off the Mongolian Plateau, and by the end of the year the Northern Capital of Zhongdu was once more invested. The court and government may have fled, but the inhabitants of Zhongdu, including the army units that had remained, were by no means ready to surrender their walled and well-fortified city. In their earlier battles with the Xi Xia the Mongols had failed to take any major fortified cities due to their ignorance of siege techniques. This weakness again manifested itself. The walls of the city refused to yield, and a brutal war of attrition played out through the winter and spring of 1215. Food supplies within the city were soon exhausted and according to the Secret History, “the remaining soldiers, who began to grow thin and die, ate human flesh.” 

When a relief train sent to the beleaguered city was captured by the Mongols the defenders knew they were doomed. The commandant of the Northern Capital, Wayen Fuxing, committed suicide, and in late May or early June of 1215 troops led by the Khitan Shimo Mingan, who as we have seen had defected to the Mongols back in 1211, forced their way into the city. A month-long orgy of looting and mayhem ensued. According to one account, 60,000 women and girls committed suicide by throwing themselves from the city walls in order to avoid capture by the Mongols. This was no doubt an exaggeration, but a large part of the populace was massacred and much of city burned, but not before huge amounts of loot was seized. 

Chingis then ordered an inventory of the gold, silver, fine fabrics and other valuable goods that had been plundered in the city and sent three men, Öngür, Arkhai Khasar, and Shigikhutug to take control of the looted goods. The Vice-regent of the vanquished city, a man named Khada met them, in the words of the Secret History, “face to face, taking with him some gold-embroidered and patterned satins.” There are hints that near the end of the siege this man had opened the gates of Zhongdu to the Mongols, apparently in an effort to save his own life. 

Now it appeared he was offered gifts—bribes, that is—to the three Mongols, in an effort to ensure their good will. Shigikhutug, a member of the Tatar tribe who as a small boy had been captured by the Mongols and adopted by Chingis’s mother, refused to take the gift. Pointing out that the city of Zhongdu and everything in it belonged to Chingis Khan., he said, “How can you steal Chingis Khan’s goods and satins and bring them here and give to us behind his back? I will not take them.” The other two men took the gifts. Later Chingis, perhaps expecting that Khada would attempt to bribe them, asked the three men if they had offered them any gifts. Shigikhutug replied that Khada had offered them “gold-embroidered and patterned satins,” adding he had refused the gift but the other two had taken it. Chingis “angrily rebuked” the two other men but praised Shigiikhutukh for his honesty. He asked Shigiikhutukh, “Will you not become my seeing eyes, my listening ears?” This might be construed to mean that Chingis was asking him to become a spy and informer; in any case, Chingis later appointed him as a judge and he would play an increasingly important role in the Mongol court. For our purposes, this incident shows the importance the Mongols attached to satins and other luxurious fabrics. 

Meanwhile, the Eastern Capital (current day Liaoyang in Liaoning Province) had also fallen to the Mongols. No siege had been necessary. By means of various subterfuges the nomads had entered the city “without firing a single arrow.” One hundred thousand soldiers threw down their arms and surrendered and seized vast amounts of loot were seized. Thus by the summer of 1215 Chingis Khan again occupied much of North China. This time he had no intention of allowing all of his troops to return to Mongolia and handing nominal control of the conquered areas back to the Jin. He demanded that Xuanzong, still cowering in the Southern Capital, cede to him outright the lands the Mongols now occupied plus addition areas in current-day Hebei and Shandong provinces which were still claimed by the Jin. Henceforth, Xuanzong would rule over only a small rump state in the middle Yellow River Valley (modern-day Henan Province) with Kaifeng as its capital. 

The Jin would not be totally extinguished until 1234, but by the end of 1215 Chingis Khan had at least nominal control of most of Northern China and ruled as suzerain over Xi Xia to the west and Uighuria still farther west. The great trade routes which Occidental peoples would later call the Silk Road were now open from its various eastern terminuses, including the old Jin Central Capital of Zhongdu, through the Gansu Corridor to the great Oasis Cities of Uighuristan at the foot of the Tian Shan Mountains. News of these monumental events quickly spread beyond the Tian Shan and soon ambassadors of the great Islamic Empires of Central Asia were wending their way eastward to learn what they could about the great conqueror who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and now stood astride one the world’s most ancient civilizations.

Mongolia | Chingis Rides West | Jurchens | Jin Dynasty | Part III

The invasion began in May of 1211. This was no small move on Chingis’s part. The Jin Dynasty, despite the symptoms of dynastic decay which had been reported to Chingis by his various spies, was still one of the five or six great sedentary states of Eurasia. The Jin state had a population of perhaps 40,000,000, although only around 3,000,000 of the populace were Jurchens, descendants of the original Jurchen tribesmen from Manchuria, the rest being Han Chinese and other indigenous peoples. The Jin state could muster 150,000 or so cavalrymen, most of the Jurchens, and 300,000 to 400,000 infantrymen, most of them Chinese. The loyalty of these Chinese infantry was, of course, in question. Still, according to one modern historian, “the Jin army retained a reputation as the most powerful military state in the known world.” 

Chingis had under his overall commanded one army of perhaps 50,000 cavalry led by himself, and another army of 50,000 cavalrymen led by three of his sons. His ranks would soon be swollen with discontented tribesmen and deserters from the Jin. 

The Mongols first confronted the Onggut, a tribe of nomads which guarded the southern rim of the Mongolian Plateau on behalf of the Jin Dynasty. Their leader Alakush quickly defected to Chingis along with many of his troops, demonstrating just how tenuous a hold the Jurchens had over many of their subject peoples. Loyalists along the Onggut reacted by assassinating Alakush, but at the urging of his nephew and heir the rest of the Ongguts soon fell in line and joined the Chingis’s forces. Several towns near present day Zhangjiakhou (earlier known as Kalgan) on the very edge of the Mongolian Plateau, quickly fell to advancing nomads, and more border troops deserted. Liu Bailin, the Jin commander of the town of Weining defected, and would go on to play a leading role in the defeat the the dynasty. 

WIth the Mongols, their ranks now swelled with former Jin auxiliary troops, poised on the very edge of the great ramparts overlooking the farm lands northern China and within a couple days ride of the Central Capital of Zhongdu (Beijing), the Jurchen court panicked and put out peace feelers, apparently thinking that this was just a another Mongol raid in search of quick loot and that Chingis could be bought off with some suitable bribes. When this initial overture was rejected, an senior envoy, a Khitan man by the name of Shimo Mingan who knew the Mongolian language and had earlier met with Chingis in Mongolia, was sent north with more serious peace proposals. Shimo Mingan promptly defected to the Mongols and was made a commander of both Mongol detachments and of native Chinese troops who had now turned on the Jurchens. 

The now-augmented Mongolian forces swept down on the North China plain and by the autumn of 2011 they had invested the Jin Western Capital (modern-day Datong, in Shanxi Province). The Jin commander of the Western Capital, a man named Hushahu, who one modern historian describes as an “irascible ruffian,” abandoned his post, allowing the Mongols to take over the city (there were rumors the Mongols had bribed him), and another Jin general, the overall commander of Jin armies in the west, also turned and fled with most of his troops to the Central Capital, even though they far-outnumbered their Mongol opponents. The official history of the Jin Dynasty would later declare that the desertion of their posts by these two commanders was an forboding sign: “The spirit of resolution was lost and could not be regained. The collapse of the Jin was foretold by this event.” 

WIth the approaches to the city unguarded, and Mongol armies quickly moved eastward and by the end of the year had invested the main capital of Zhongdu, where the Jin court was headquartered. In early 1212, after laying siege to Zongdu for a month but failing to take the well-fortified city, the Mongols decided to return back to the Mongolian Plateau. Chingis himself had been wounded by an arrow in the battle for the Western Capital and his injury may have contributed to his decision to withdraw. Chingis had by no means been defeated. On their way home the Mongols even detoured eastward to loot the Jin Eastern Capital (current day Liaoyang in Liaoning Province). The Mongols were simply retiring to the fastnesses of the Mongolian Plateau to enjoy their loot, let their horses fatten on the steppe over the summer, and regroup for their next assault. The weaknesses of the Jin Dynasty had been exposed, and Chingis intended to exploit them. 

In early 1213 the Mongols again descended onto the plains on North China. The Western Capital was quickly retaken and the main capital of Zhongdu again besieged. While many Jin troops were tied down in the capital, Mongol troops spent the summer and fall rampaging across the North China plain, looting and plundering much of current-day Shanxi, Hebei, and Shandong provinces. By early 1214 the armies had converged on the Central Capital and 1214 Chingis himself was bivouacked in the northern suburbs. The noose again the city was tightened, and his sons, and generals urged him to attack the city and put an end to the Jin Dynasty once and for all. 

Inside the city walls the Jin Court was in shambles. Hushahu, the same man who had abandoned the Western Capital in 1211, had made his way to the Central Capital where he made a bid to seize control of the Jin Dynasty himself. First he killed the governor of the city and then seized the sitting Jin Emperor, the hapless Wanyan Yunji, who Chingis had earlier dismissed as an “imbecile.” After ordering court eunuchs to kill Wanyan Yunji he connived to put the aging Wanyan Hun, the older brother of Emperor Zhangzong, who had died back in 1208, on the throne as the new Jin emperor. Hushahu himself hoped to rule as the power behind the throne. But the backstabbing was not over. Shuhu Gaoji, a Jin general who harbored his own ambitions, seized Hushahu and had him executed. Now Wanyan Xun, who Hushahu had intended only as a figurehead, was ruling as Jin emperor. Whether he would be able to right the tottering Jin State and defend it against the Mongols camped outside the walls of his capital was open to question. 

Chingis, with his well-developed spy network, must have been well aware of the turmoils in the inner circles of the Jin. Yet when pressed to force the walls of the Central Capital and overthrow the dynasty he hesitated. Plundering the countryside was one thing; actually overthrowing a dynasty and assuming the responsibility for governing its subjects was quite another matter. He had seized control of the Xi Xia Empire to the west while leaving the Tanguts to govern under his suzerainty and perhaps he envisioned the same relationship with the Jin. And there were very immediate, practical considerations to take into account. The siege had already dragged on for months and more months might be required to finally take Zhongdu. The Mongol forces drawn up around the capital were desperately short of food. The Christian missionary Carpini who would later visit the Mongol court claimed that the Mongols outside Zhongdu were so starved that they resorted to cannibalism and had to kill their own comrades for food. One out of every ten died to provide sustenance for the others, he claimed. This may have been a slanderous exaggeration, but numerous other sources attest to the dire straits of the Mongol troops. Rashid al-Din reported that “things were so bad they ate the corpses of their dead companions and of fallen horses; they even ate hay.” 

To make matters worse, an epidemic of some unspecified disease soon raged among the Mongol troops, and with the onset of Spring the legendary heat of the north China plain would debilitating to both the nomads used to their cool highlands on the Mongolian Plateau and to their horses. It was not clear how much longer the Mongols could hold out. 

Chingis decided to make peace overtures. The Muslim merchant Jafar, a long time camp follower of Chingis who years earlier served as his envoy to the Jin and whose knowledge of the geography of the north China plain had proved invaluable during the invasion, was chosen to negotiate with the Jurchen court. The embattled Jurchens quickly came to terms, offering huge material inducements to persuade Chingis and his men to return to Mongolia. As part of the settlement, according to one source, Chingis received a Jin princess as a wife, 500 boy and girl slaves, 3000 horses, and quantities of gold and expensive fabrics. 

The Secret History maintains that Chingis himself got only a princess named Qiguo but that his soldiers received vast qualities of gold, silver, satin, silk, and other expensive goods: “Our soldiers loaded as much of the satin and other goods as they could carry, tied the loads with silk, and left.” 

Thus Chingis and his troops returned to the cool steppes of Mongolia returned laden with booty, and there was no doubt great rejoicing among the Mongolian women when they saw the luxurious silks, satins, and brocades their men had brought home for them. 

Mongolia | Chingis Rides West | Jurchens | Jin Dynasty | Part II

During Chingis Khan’s rise to power he had sought of patronage of Tooril, the powerful ruler of the Kerait Tribe who was headquartered in the valley of the Tuul River not far from current-day Ulaanbaatar. Tooril had recognized the nominal suzerainty of the Jin and apparently paid tribute to to them. In return he was awarded the title of Wang (or Ong) Khan. As one of Tooril’s vassals Temûchin also received a minor title from Jin Dynasty and may have also paid tribute. There are also hints that Temüchin sought refuge among the Jurchen during the low points in his early career when he was being hounded by more powerful Mongol tribes. 

Chingis Khan and the Wang Khan would later fall out and the Keraits would be defeated, calling into question the Jin title Temüchin had received as one of the Kerait ruler’s vassals. The Jin, for their part, still believed that Chingis Khan owed loyalty and tribute to them, even after he had been confirmed as leader of all the Mongols at the 1206 convocation on the Onon River. The Jurchens were no doubt aware that having became the most powerful ruler on the Mongolian Plateau Chingis now posed a direct threat to themselves, but at the time they were embroiled in war with the Song Dynasty in the south of China and could not confront Chingis directly. 

In 1208 the Jin Dynasty finally sought to clarify their relationship with Chingis Khan. The Jin emperor Zhangzong sent his uncle Wanyan Yunji, the Prince of Wei, north to reaffirm their suzerainty and receive tribute from Chingis. 

The Mongol Khan met with the prince but refused to make the proper signs of obeisance. It soon became clear the Chingis no longer recognized the Jin as his overlords. No mention was made of tribute. The infuriated Prince returned to China and began mobilizing troops to attack the Mongols. In late 1208 Emperor Zhangzong died and Wanyan Yunji became the new ruler of the Jin Dynasty. The attack was postponed, and instead Wanyan Yunji sent ambassador to Chingis with the news that he was now the Altan Khan (Golden Khan), as the the Mongols called the Jin Emperor, and that Chingis should declare his loyalty to him. Chingis, however, apparently had not been to impressed by Wanyan Yunji at their previous meeting. According to one account, when Chingis was asked by the ambassador to make obeisance to the new emperor he “flew into a rage” and stormed: “‘Is am imbecile like [Wanyan Yunjii] worthy of the throne and am I to humble myself before him?‘” He answered his own question by turning to the south and spitting in the direction of China. The ambassador was dismissed and Chingis rode away to the north. The import of these actions was clear to the Jin Emperor; Chingis Khan was declaring war on the Jin Dynasty. 

Chingis Khan’s distain for the power of the Jin Dynasty was not based on mere bravado. He had been receiving intelligence about the weakness of the Jin even before his affirmation as Khan of the Mongols in 1206. Muslim merchants who traded in both northern China and Mongolia had kept him apprized of the various internal disputes in the Jin court and of the grumblings of discontented peasants. One Muslim merchant, a man named Jafar, was an early adherent of the Mongol Khan, and Chingis eventually sent him to the Jin court fishing for information. Jin officials quickly surmised that he was a spy and dismissed him, but during his travels in northern China he gathered much information which would later be useful to the Mongols. Then in late 1206 and again in 1208 dissidents and defectors from the Jin brought Chingis brought more news of political upheavals and social disturbances in northern China, but still he was not ready to be drawn into a conflict with his powerful neighbors to the south. 

His confrontation with the Jin ambassador seems to have marked a turning point in Chingis’s altitude toward the Jin. In early 1211 Chingis summoned his followers to a Khuraltai on the Kherlen River where subject of an attack on the Jin Dynasty was broached. Also, the Uighur Idikut Barluk appeared in person as he had earlier promised and cemented his allegiance to the Mongols. With the Tanguts of Xi Xia already neutralized and the Uighurs firmly in his corner Chingis now controlled the western approaches to the territory of Chin. The pieces were falling into place for an invasion. 

But before riding south Chingis climbed to the top of a high mountain—local people to this day claim it was 7,749-foot Khentii Khaan Uul, also known as the Burkhan Khaldun of the Khamag Mongols, in current-day Khentii Aimag (the president of Mongolia is still required to go to a pilgrimage to the summit of this mountain at least once every four years)—and sought the guidance of Ikh Tenger, the Great God of the Eternal Blue Sky. According to the Persian historian Rashid al-Din Chingis proclaimed: 

O Eternal Heaven! You know and accept that the Altan Khan [Jin Emperor] is the wind which fanned the tumult, that it is he who began this quarrel. He it was who, without cause, executed Ökin Barkhakh and Ambakhai Khan, captured and delivered over to him by the Tatars. These were the elder relatives of my father and grandfather and I seek to avenge their blood. 

The Persian historian Juzjani relates much the same episode, adding that Chingis spent three days praying in a tent on the top the mountain. On the fourth day he emerged from the tent and proclaimed, “Heaven has promised me victory. Now we must prepare ourselves to take vengeance on the Altan Khan.” 

Burkhan Khaldun

Approaching the summit of Burkhan Khaldun

The summit of Burkhan Khaldun

As is clear from these accounts Chingis attempted to justify his attack on the Jin Dynasty as revenge for the deaths of his relatives. There were of course other considerations. In his struggle to attain supremacy on the Mongolian Plateau Chingis had mobilized large armies and these men were traditionally paid in plunder. With their enemies on the Mongolian Plateau already defeated there was little left to loot. Once again the nomads of the steppe turned their attention south to rich and fattened cities of China glittering on the far horizon.

Mongolia | Chingis Rides West | Jurchens | Jin Dynasty | Part I

Having written about the Uighurs and the Xi Xia,  I must finally turn my attention to the Jin Dynasty, also known as the Jurchen Dynasty (1115–1234).

The people known as Jurchens who went on to found the Jurchen, or Jin Dynasty, originated around the timbered basins of the Amur, Ussuri, and Sungari rivers in Manchuria, in what is now northeast China. Their language was Tungusic, an eastern extension of the Altaic language family and closely related to Manchu, the language of the people what would later create the Qing Dynasty. 

Almost nothing is known of their history prior to the tenth century a.d. Apparently they began to use iron only in the early eleventh century. One tribe of the Jurchen, the Wanyan, began making farming tools and weapons from iron and on the basis of this new technology soon dominated their neighbors. Under the leadership of a chieftain known as Wugunai (1021–1074) the Wanyan soon assumed leadership of a loose confederation of the various Jurchen tribes. Wugunai, according to contemporary histories, “was addicted to wine and women and could outdrink anyone,” but he was also a warrior of legendary statue . . . Continued. . .