The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire

Every society produces its own cultural conceits, a set of lies and delusions about itself that thrive in the face of all contrary evidence.

Although many people can be your helper, no one should be closer to you than your own consciousness.

Unlike societies that employed baroque procedures for distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate children, the Mongols accepted all children as equal. No child could be born without the consent of the Eternal Blue Sky. No earthly law or custom could presume to declare the child illegitimate.

In the Mongol perspective, challenges choose us, but we choose how to respond. Destiny brings the opportunities and the misfortunes, and the merit of our lives derives from those unplanned moments.

Although there are many things you can rely on, no one is more reliable than yourself,

No friend is better than your own wise heart!” Genghis Khan

While words may be altered or censored, the truth endures, even when not properly recorded. Truth can be forgotten, misplaced, or lost, but never annihilated.

Genghis Khan had well-founded and unshakable faith in his daughters and the other women around him. “Whoever can keep a house in order,” he said, “can keep a territory in order.” As the military campaigns grew longer, the division of labor solidified into a division of command authority. At its heart, the dual-shaft system functioned quite simply. She ruled at home; he served abroad. Even

The royal Mongol women raced horses, commanded in war, presided as judges over criminal cases, ruled vast territories, and sometimes wrestled men in public sporting competitions. They arrogantly rejected the customs of civilized women of neighboring cultures, such as wearing the veil, binding their feet, or hiding in seclusion.

Outlawing the sale or barter of women marked Genghis Khan’s first important departure from tribal practices regarding marriage, and gradually through a series of such changes he transformed the social position of his daughters, and thereby of all women, within his burgeoning empire.

Although Genghis Khan recognized the superior leadership abilities of his daughters and left them strategically important parts of his empire, today we cannot even be certain how many daughters he had. In their lifetime they 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. Those Mongol queens were too unusual, too difficult to understand or explain. It seemed more convenient just to erase them. Around

Three of her sisters became queens along the Silk Route, ruling over the grand Turkic nations of Onggud, Uighur, and Karluk.

If the truth was important enough for one generation of powerful officials to go to great lengths to hide it, then it should be important for us to search for it now.

Religious clerics, political ideologues, and government bureaucrats do not have the right to change history. The truth may be hard to find, but it is out there—somewhere. If we do not continue the work, the truth remains hidden. If we stop the search, then the censor has defeated us.

The Mongols, and certainly Genghis Khan in particular, placed great importance on sudden individual acts of unexpected heroism. Those are the moments that reveal not just the character of the person, but the soul itself. Many people are paralyzed by fear or, equally as debilitating, by indecision. The hero acts, and often fails, but acts nonetheless.

Following the example of Genghis Khan, the early Mongol rulers clearly recognized that knowledge constituted their most potent weapon, and controlling the flow of information served as their organizing principle. Genghis

tranquility, and its same small scale indicates that it lacked sufficient grazing for the number of animals needed to support a large army or even a large court of retainers. The location indicates

The truth may be hard to find, but it is out there—somewhere.

importance of constant learning as the key to being a successful ruler.

Get up early and go to bed late.

Maintain your soul as one in the night and the day.

Because you are the daughter of your Khan father, you are sent to govern the people of the Oirat tribe.

highest mountain always had the title of khan. Rivers and lakes that never ran dry bore the title khatun,

Truth can be forgotten, misplaced, or lost, but never annihilated. The human hand might erase the words, mutilate the manuscript, or chisel off a name, but that only alters memory. Such vandalism tampers with the evidence without altering the facts. Cutting part of a document still leaves an outline of what was removed, a silhouette of the missing piece.

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.

Christians fought everyone, but mostly themselves, as bishops attacked bishops, popes excommunicated kings, kings created antipopes.