Pastoral Women

Pastoral women often held a higher status compared to their settled peers. They had fewer restrictions on their role in public life and were involved in productive as well as reproductive labor. Mongol women frequently acted as political advisors, and while misogyny was absolutely present, pastoral communities’ religious sermons showed some individual focus on women’s spiritual needs, as well as some authentic depictions of the complexity in women’s lives. The presence of such ideas and understanding in a religious context is significant, given the long history of preferential treatment toward men. 

The pastoral roles of women can be seen most explicitly in the Mongol Empire (1206-1368), an initially small pastoral empire from the steppes of Mongolia. This empire was founded by Chinggis Khan, born Temujin. Long before his empire was built, Khan was raised by his resourceful mother, Hoelun, when their family was forced into exile. They reduced their reliance on pastoralism and ascribed to a hunter-gatherer like life. This was an enormous drop in social standing because they were poor, but Hoelun still built Temujin into the man who united the feuding and volatile Mongol clans in 1206 with his charisma and reliance on friends over kin. 

Before and during the unification, the Mongols herded sheep, goats, yaks, and horses for their prolific cavalry. When Giovanni DiPlano Carpinia, a European visitor to Mongolia described Mongol women, he wrote, 

Girls and women ride and gallop as skillfully as men. We even saw them carrying quivers and bows, And the women can ride horses for as long as the man; they have shorter stirrups, handle horses very well, and mind all the property. [Mongol] Women make everything: skin clothes, shoes, leggings, and everything made of leather. They drive carts and repair them, they load camels, and are quick and vigorous in all their tasks. They all wear trousers, and some of them shoot just like men.

Mongol women owned property, rode horseback as the men did, at times fought in battle, and served as regents or in religious roles. They made camps and transported supplies for the army. Raising children was the responsibility of both parents, and marriages were arranged by both families. Most widows remarried, usually to a male relative of their husbands to keep wealth in the family. 

Mongol encampment near the Volga River

In ancient nomadic societies, some scholars suggested that wealthy men with multiple wives treated them equally. However, if that fantasy was ever possible, this was certainly not the case in terms of status among the Mongol wives. Mongol men could practice polygamy, though the first wife was given special status, and thus she and her children would inherit his property. Even though each wife had her own dwelling, servants, income, and received attention from the husband, there was a clear hierarchy. The senior wife, often the first one married, held the most importance and controlled the largest and wealthiest dwelling when the group stopped to make camp for short or long periods of time. The arrangement of wifely dwellings within each camp also followed a strict hierarchy, with the managing wife at the westernmost position and the most junior wife at the eastern end.

Children lived with their respective mothers, and older children had their own tents around their mother’s. Servants had smaller quarters behind the family they served. Concubines’ dwellings were positioned behind the wives but in front of the guards and officials. In this intense hierarchy, when multiple camp-managing wives were together, the camps were arranged by the status of the mistresses. 

Nomadic women efficiently managed the camps, but it would be a big mistake to assume that because women had more freedoms that they were equal or even protected members of society. Some historians argue that the nomadic stress on bride-wealth degraded women to chattel, and they were effectively purchased by husbands like property. Further, Mongol women - both before and after the unification of the tribes - were often subject to rape and kidnapping during times of war. 

Song China

By comparison, the Song Dynasty in China was a horrifying age for women. Two centuries before Khan unified the Mongol clans, the Song Dynasty reunified China and ruled from the late 900s into the 1300s. This meant a decreasing influence of steppe nomads whose women had less restricted lives, and the return to fundamentalist Confucianism, leading to the Song Chinese keeping women separate in almost every domain in life. They emphasized women’s weakness, delicacy, and sexuality. 

The best example of increasing restrictions for women was a new practice of foot binding. Foot binding involved breaking and strapping a young girl's feet to a mold so that her feet would remain perpetually small even into adulthood. Foot binding was commonly accepted among elite families and later became widespread in China. It served to distinguish Chinese women from barbarians and peasants, reinforced female frailty, and emphasized their small size. Mothers imposed this painful procedure on their daughters in order to improve their marriage prospects later in life and help their daughters compete with concubines for the attention of men. Foot binding became a rite of passage and was usually accompanied by beautiful gifted slippers.  

The effect of foot binding

The Song Dynasty did, however, witness some positive trends for women. Women continued to work in textiles, spinning silk threads and weaving silk fabrics. In cities, women could own businesses and restaurants, or worked as maids and dressmakers. Property rights for women expanded when some officials began urging the education of women so mothers could teach their sons economics.

Korea

Further northeast, the expansion of Chinese influence in Korea led to the expansion of Confucianism there as well. This included Chinese models of family life and female behavior. Korean women, accustomed to raising their children in their parents' homes, were now expected to live with their husband’s families. Women lost their rights to inheritance, divorce, and men were no longer buried in the wife’s family plot. Elite women, especially wealthy widows, were heavily restricted because of the belief that women’s money needed to be controlled. While the practice of polygamy was already well-founded in Korea, by 1413, men had to determine which wife was primary and which was secondary to match the Chinese model. Like the Mongols, the first wife had special privileges and status.

By comparison, pastoral life with the Mongols might seem appealing to some contemporaries for these reasons, but it is important to remember that the path to becoming a part of the Mongol Empire involved conquest, and few fared well on the losing end of a battle with Mongols.

Rape Culture in War

After Chinggis Khan unified the Mongol tribes in 1206, the Mongol Empire grew rapidly out of Mongolia and into China and the rest of Eurasia. They proved vastly superior in war compared to their Eurasian peers, especially on horseback. They were better led, organized, and disciplined. Their armies were also continuously growing. When enemy soldiers were conquered, they were taken as soldiers, and scattered and redistributed into new units, so the army perpetually grew and created a sort of social revolution as tribe loyalty was replaced by loyalty to one's unit and commander. Commanders rode in the front and dressed in the same attire as their men. 

As the Mongols marched on cities, women were on the front lines of conquests and helped manage the spoils of war, and the Khan’s armies were known to be ruthless and unnecessarily violent toward their enemies. Khan declared, “Whoever submits shall be spared, but those who resist, they shall be destroyed with their wives, children and dependents.” Thousands of enemy families who refused to surrender were executed en masse. Women who survived were often enslaved. 

Chinggis Khan's own armies also undoubtedly inflicted “punishments” on the women in the regions they conquered; to include physical and sexual abuse, and rape. However, Kahn imposed orders against this. He wrote detailed laws about the treatment of women, including that even married women would not engage in sex until age 16, and even then, they would need to be the one to initiate this with their husband. As his own mother and wife had been kidnapped and raped, he also enacted laws throughout the empire against rape, kidnapping, and enslavement. 

Temujin taking the title of Ghengis Khan

Though he proclaimed these protections of women, he later engaged in these horrors himself. Unironically, Khan would often have captured women lined up in order ranked by their beauty, and only the most beautiful women were entered into his harem, while the apparently “less beautiful” women were given to his sons and commanders. He also used sexual violence as a deterrent for future enemies and to terrorize conquered women – preferring to sleep with the wives and daughters of the defeated enemy rulers to show his dominance over the conquered people. Today 16% of men can trace their lineage back to Khan – evidence of how many conquered women were subjected to rape at the hands of him and his descendants. 

While there are several stories of how he died, the most commonly accepted was that he died of injuries from a fall off a horse in 1227. One of the more questionable accounts claims he was castrated and murdered while trying to rape a Tangut princess, a nomadic ethnic group that ruled the Xi-Xia Empire in northwestern China. Still, after he died, sexual terrorism remained a part of the empire he created. 

Governance Under Khan’s Daughters

The Mongol Empire spread quickly and then fractured, stretching from China to Eastern Europe before geography proved limiting for them. They tried to invade Japan but failed, as seafaring was not their forte. They went for India, but the Himalayas were formidable. They invaded Europe, but abandoned it as a backwater region with inadequate grass for their horses. While conquest was brutal, the empire itself was tolerant of various religions and established a sophisticated structure of governance for such a large empire. Mongol women - particularly Khan’s daughters - showcased their administrative skills in managing territories and demonstrated their combat prowess alongside men during foreign conquests.

Börte was Khan’s first and favored wife. She and Temujin were betrothed at a young age and married at 17. At some point, she was captured by a rival clan and he decided to rescue her, and his success in doing so may have launched him on his path toward conquering the world. Little is known about her life, but she and Chinngis Khan had nine children, so her bloodline would help the expanding empire.

In Chinggis Khan’s lifetime, he arranged the empire to have nine parts with his piece at the center surrounded by the conquered territories governed by his and Börte’s daughters. Then the less stable territories - often on the fringes of the empire - were to be controlled by his sons. His vision appears to be that men went to war, women ruled. He executed this vision in the way he and Börte arranged the marriages of their daughters. His daughters inherited a Khan-like title which translates to "Princess Who Runs the State.” Their husbands, if they were mentioned in legal documents, were given the title gurugen, or son-in-law, and sent to war with the Mongol armies. 

The daughters of Chinggis Khan played pivotal roles in his diplomatic and military endeavors. They strategically married leaders of influential tribes and nations neighboring the Mongols, such as the Ongud, Uyghurs, and Oirats. By doing so, they became diplomatic safeguards in various directions, solidifying alliances for Chinggis Khan. 

For example, Khan and Börte’s daughter, Alakhai Bekhi, was set up in a political marriage to secure the region south of Mongolia called the Gobi Desert. At some point, the people revolted against their Mongol rulers. Her husband was killed, but she escaped back to the Mongol army. She married her stepson and regained stable control of the region. Another daughter, Checheyikhen, was sent to govern the Oirat people who lived near Kazakhstan today. Collectively, Börte’s daughters took control of the Silk Road and actively contributed to their father's campaigns in China and Persia.

Coronation of Ögedei

However, after Chinggis Khan's death in 1227, his son Ögedei rejected his father’s preference for his daughters in governance. Ögedei tried to consolidate his power by killing female relatives. In 1237, after the death of his sister Checheyigen, he ordered the mass rape of four thousand Oirat girls to subjugate the Oirat people under his rule. How many women were raped is quite possibly an exaggeration, but the women who survived were either forced into his personal harem or left on the field to be doled others as sex slaves throughout his occupied lands. 

He used this monstrous act to not only seize Checheyigen’s lands, but picked off the lands of his other siblings and his father’s other wives. There are also allegations of Ögedei orchestrating the assassination of Chinggis Khan's favorite daughter, Altalun, who ruled over the Uyghur territory. These actions marked a departure from Chinggis Khan's legacy and leadership style.

Women Successors of Empire

In the aftermath of Chinggis Khan’s death, Khan’s eldest sons were at odds jockeying for control of the empire. Because of an established military culture where men fought and women governed, the daughters of conquered kingdoms who had been married off to Khan’s descendants were poised to undo the empire that had subjugated their people. Known as “widow queens,” many conquered women assumed control when the governors of different parts of the empire died. 

Three queens, in particular, forever altered Khan’s empire: Töregene, Sorghaghtani, and Chabi. The first two were conquered wives who had witnessed their fathers and brothers murdered by the Mongols as well as the deteriorated status of their people. Their trauma was not documented, but certainly their loyalty was not to their new husbands. Chabi, a relative of Borte, was also a contender for power in the post-Khan decades. Each used their status within the new government to subvert and control the empire.

Töregene selected Khan’s son, Ogedei, from a line up and married him. She ruled from his death in 1241 as regent for their son, Guyuk, and replaced all of her husband's advisors with her own, including a Persian woman named Fatima. Despite her help, when her eldest son, Guyuk, took power in 1246, he battled with his mother, claiming Fatima was a witch. Fatima was raped and tortured for days, then all her orifices were covered and she was drowned in the river. Töregene died in unknown circumstances around that same time.

Chabi was the wife of Kublai Khan, Chinggis Khan’s grandson and ruler of conquered China from 1260-1294. Unlike the other women, she was not a conquered wife, but one arranged per custom, from within Borte’s family. She arranged the lifelong care of the empress and royal women of the Song Dynasty once they were captured. 

In China, Chabi mixed freely with men at social gatherings, rejected foot binding, and forced Khan into treating the Chinese better. She also designed new hats with brims to shade Mongol soldiers' eyes, patronized Tibetan Buddhism, and was notoriously frugal. 

Tolui and Sorghaghtani 

Across the empire, Sorghaghtani was the wife of Chinggis’s youngest son, Tolui. Sorghaghtani was an Eastern Christian from the steppe near Mongol territory. Tolui was a reckless drunk, and she was basically ruling in his name until he died of poisoning in 1232. As Mongol society dictated, she became the head of household and inherited his property. Guyuk tried to marry her to expand his power, but she refused, claiming loyalty to her deceased husband and a desire to properly raise her sons. This was significant, because Mongol women were expected to remarry. Her status as a single widow went against Mongol custom, but gave her power to try and maneuver politics to favor her sons.  

She became regent for her sons in northern China, and she insisted that her sons be well educated to properly run the empire. She hand-selected their senior wives, encouraged those women to cooperate and work together to govern, ensured that each learned the languages of the people they would rule, and encouraged religious tolerance. She even donated to both Christian churches and Muslim mosques and schools. During her time in northern China leading her own territory, she helped with opening trade, encouraged the exchange of ideas throughout the empire, and advised Ogedei and other leaders about the dangers of exploiting their conquered people, which often meant greater tolerance and security for the people under the Khans. 

In a particularly fiery episode, she collaborated with her nephew, Batu, the leader of the Golden Horde, in a plot against Guyuk. Following Guyuk's death from alcoholism, she and Batu orchestrated a strategic maneuvering of succession within the family to secure dominance for her sons. Her eldest son, Mongke, ultimately ascended as the next influential Khan, and to solidify their control, she and Batu carried out brutal purges against opposing branches of the family, specifically the Ogedeyids and Chagatayids, ensuring they would never pose a threat again. Consequently, her family maintained control over the Great Khanate until its existence concluded in 1368.

Sorghaghtani fell ill and died in February or March 1252. At that point, her sons controlled most of Chinggis Khan's empire at its greatest extent. As one of the most powerful people in the Mongol Empire, she helped to ensure its longevity and transition into the future. She was one of those rare figures that was well regarded in a number of different historical sources, and her importance to the Mongols may be rivaled only by Chinggis Khan himself.

The Mongol empire declined slowly and the power and respect given to Mongol queens also declined. A strong example of this was Khutulun, a prominent Mongol noblewoman and the renowned daughter of Kaidu, a cousin to Kublai Khan. Among Kaidu's offspring, Khutulun was the favored one, sought after for advice and political support. Some accounts suggest that Kaidu attempted to designate her as his successor to the khanate before his death in 1301. However, her male relatives rejected this choice. Following Kaidu's demise, Khutulun safeguarded his tomb alongside her brother Orus. She faced challenges from other brothers, like Chapar and relative Duwa, who sought succession. 

Illustration of Khutulun wrestling a suitor from “The Travels of Marco Polo”

This is especially remarkable because of how formidable and strong Khutulun was reported to be. Both Marco Polo and Rashid al-Din Hamadani documented their encounters with her. She was actively involved in Mongol military expeditions in Central Asia, and was trained in archery, wrestling, and horsemanship from her early years. As she matured, her wrestling prowess became so remarkable that she defeated elite male warriors in traditional competitions. Further, one suitor challenged her to a match and she so humiliated him that no marriage was arranged. 

Delhi Sultanate

Of interest to the Mongols, but safe from Mongol conquest on the other side of the Himalayan mountains, northern India saw the rise of the Delhi Sultanate in the 1200s. There, Razia Sultana became the first female Muslim leader of the region in 1236. She began her political career under her father, Iltutmish, tending to the administrative needs of their people while he was away at war. He put his trust in her because he believed his sons were all too selfish and focused on having fun to properly manage the state affairs while he was away, and even after his death. Thus, he named her as his heir, telling his nobles that she was the most capable of his children.

Miniature painting of Razia Sultana holding court

The nobles didn’t quite buy it, however, and appointed her half-brother after their father’s death. In response, she successfully led a rebellion to claim power. It was not only an anomaly to have a woman as a political leader, but further, her rebellion was one based on public support. She galvanized the people and they would be the ones to drive her to the throne. She led an army out of Delhi to meet them, and after a few key victories, the nobles were forced to accept her authority. Though she continued to face conflict throughout her reign including civil conflicts between Sunnis and Shias, as well as incursions by the Mongols, the nobles continued to be her greatest hurdle.

Despite her meteoric rise, when she claimed the throne in 1236, many of her political allies and enemies alike still expected her to serve in a ceremonial role while they - the men - pulled the strings behind the scenes, but she refused to relinquish her power. She increasingly broke from tradition to assert her authority and better connect with the people. She dressed as a man in public, and rode through the streets atop an elephant as the sultans of the past had. She regularly made connections and appearances among the people, rather than catering to the nobility. She even elevated formerly enslaved people to elite positions within her administration, and began to create a new class of nobles from her supporters to temper their power. Thus, she ran afoul of the aristocracy, who ultimately launched their own rebellion to depose her in 1240 and began unraveling the vision she had for Delhi. She would try once again to launch a rebellion, but failed, and was killed in the process.

Conclusion 

Eventually, the Mongols were expelled from China in a rebellion and declined elsewhere over time. Part of this decline was due to a backlash against female leadership and a rejection of Chinggis Khan’s reverence for female advisors and governance of conquered territories. Another part was because conquered women rulers worked to install non-Mongols in positions of power within government. 

While the empire was synonymous with physical violence, the Mongols' achievements in unifying trade across the vast network of Silk Roads also led to the mixing of peoples – and this helped spread the Black Death from central Asia, westward. By some estimates, 50-90% of various populations infected with the Black Death died. 

While a unified Mongolian Empire did not survive, it remains the most influential world empire about which so little is known. Part of the reason that little is known about the Mongol Empire is because they kept their chronicles secret. The Secret History of the Mongols was a treasured document, but at some point, for reasons unknown, an unknown chronicler tore out a section of it in order to hide the contributions of Mongol women. Only a tiny piece of that text recorded by Chinggis Khan in 1206 remains, reading, “Let us reward our female offspring.” If it weren’t for chroniclers from other nations and territories, including Marco Polo and others, the stories of these women may have been lost. 

In the Mongol Empire’s place, in China, the Middle East, Europe, and parts of Africa, we would see a rebirth, but would women? What legacy would Mongolians leave in their wake? How would the Eurasian world rebuild after the Mongols? What role would women play in that effort?