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The Gür Khan, whatever his personal failings, had enjoyed during most of his reign the popular acclaim of many the people in his realm. Not until his army under Tayangu was defeated in the autumn of 1210 and many of his disheartened troops went on a looting spree did the Gür Khan’s subjects turn on him. Khüchüleg was cut from different cloth. Although he entertained pretensions of ruling the old Khara Khitai Empire he was basically a freebooter who was more interested in loot and plunder than the day-to-day administration of a functioning society. A nomad from the steppes of Mongolia, he was particularly insensitive to the needs of the sedentary peoples which he now at least nominally ruled. And not of all the local chieftains who were loyal to the Gür were ready to bow down to the Naiman marauder.  Trouble started first at Almaliq, near the current-day city of Ili in the Valley Of The Ili River , the source of which is deep in the Tian Shan to the east. The Ili River was the easte...

Earlier I posted about the Old Silk Road City of Otrār ,  located on the north bank of the middle stretches of the Syr Darya River (the Jaxartes of Classical Antiquity) near its confluence with the Arys River, about 105 miles northwest of the current-day city of Shymkent in Kazakhstan. Now it appears that archaeologists in Kazakhstan Have Unearthed An Ancient City near Shymkent: The skulls of the people here are distinctly and artificially deformed; they are elongated, Seitkaliyev said. “These ‘distinctive markings’ are most famous with the Aztecs, but this was also a very common way for Sarmatian nobles to distinguish themselves from the commoners.” This evidence raises the possibility that the find could be a Sarmatian settlement. The Sarmatians were an Iron Age nomadic people of Caucasian appearance. In ancient times, the Sarmatians from Western Kazakhstan migrated in large numbers to Europe, but the majority of them went in an unknown direction,” Seitkaliyev said. ...

Khüchüleg, born the Son Of A Khan in Mongolia, had no intention of playing second fiddle to the Gür Khan. He quickly set about assembling an army that was loyal to him alone. According to Juvaini:  . . . from all sides his tribesmen assembled around him. And he assaulted divers places and plundered them, striking one after another; and so he obtained a numerous army and his retinue and army was multiplied and reinforced.  One reason so quickly gained adherents was that he allowed his men to loot and plunder at will; the Gür Khan had kept a tight reign on his own troops and paid them a salary in lieu of the right to indiscriminate plunder, a policy almost unheard of at the time. Not only the exiled tribesmen from the Mongolian Plateau were attracted to Khüchüleg’s free-booting ways; soon soldiers were deserting the Gür Khan’s own army and joining up the Naiman adventurer’s marauders. He was still fighting under the banner of the Khara Khitai, however, and in the autumn of 1209...

Telo Tulku Rinpoche ,   the Shadjin Lama of Kalmykia and the President of the Buddhist Union of the Republic of Kalmykia (see Elista , capital of Kalmykia), is in town for a conference at the Open Society Forum  (apparently only A-List people were invited to this conference and I could not get tickets to his talk; you would have thought it was a Lady Gaga concert) and to visit Narobanchin Khiid , the monastery of his former incarnation, the Diluv Khutagt . On Sunday we wandered out to   Mandshir Khiid   on the south side of Bogd Khan Mountain. Telo Tulku Rinpoche at the entrance to Mandshir Khiid  Andzha, Telo Tulku Rinpoche’s assistant  Telo Tulku Rinpoche with two Mongolian pilgrims Telo Tulku Rinpoche examined the ruins of Mandshir Khiid. Most of the temples were destroyed in the 1930s Telo Tulku Rinpoche with more pilgrims from Chita, in Russia  Telo Tulku Rinpoche and Batjargal, one of his Mongolian followers Image of Milarepa ...

His father dead and the Naiman Army Defeated , Khüchüleg and a band of his most devoted followers fled south across the Altai Mountain into the Zungarian Depression in what now northern Xinjiang Province , China. As mentioned, Togtoga Beki and the Merkits had earlier aligned themselves with Naiman, but they too, like Jamukha, had apparently fled on the eve of the final battle. Chingis’s soldiers pursued them and in the autumn of 1204 the Merkit army was almost totally annihilated. Only Togtoga Beki, his sons, and a handful of his most devoted followers were able to escape the slaughter. His youngest son Khutukhan eventually would be tracked down by Jochi, Chingis’s oldest son, who as rumored may have been the biological son of a Merkit. Khutukhan was renowned for his skills as an archer, and supposedly for this reason Jochi begged Chingis to spare his life (whether Jochi harbored some sympathy for Merkits, since he was rumored to be half-Merkit himself, is unknown). Chingis was having...

The Final Battle With The Naiman did have one unexpected consequence. Found wandering around the field of battle was a well-dressed man who appeared to be armed only with wooden pens. He also had in his possession the official seals of Tayang Khan. Taken before Chingis himself, he explained that he had been the Naiman ruler’s personal scribe and seal bearer. His name was Tatatunga and he was a Uighur originally from Uighuristan . He had been hired by the Naiman as a scribe and court intellectual. He apparently spoke the Naiman language, whatever that might have been, and presumably he knew at least some Mongolian. Chingis was always quick to utilize the talents of those caught up in his dragnets. Soon realizing how Tatatunga’s particular skills might be used, he set him the task of developing a script for the Mongol language, which up until then did not have a writing system . . . Continued .

Rain had been falling on and off most of the night. When I arose at 4:30 there was a brief lull, but by the time I had finished my orisons at 5:30 a steady pounding of precipitation could be heard on the hard ground outside my hovel. Bogd Khan Mountain to the south was lost in banks of fog. About mid-morning the rain began to taper off. By noon it was a slow drizzle and the fog had broken into streamers which twisted and curled over the ridges of Bogd Khan Mountain. Usually on rainy afternoons like this I like to Drink Shan Ling Xi Ooolong Tea and daydream about Kuchean Dancing Girls .  Today I had to meet a friend of mine at the Bogd Khan Winter Palace Museum . I had not been there for several years, in fact not since the ceremonial gateway to the main temple complex had undergone a major facelift. There were several tourist buses outside in the parking lot and the lady at the door tried to make me buy a ticket, but I explained that I had some important business to d...

While Events Played Out In Otrār yet other drama were unfolding high up in the hidden recesses of the Pamir Mountains on the southern edge of Inner Asia. Situated at the convergence of five other great mountains ranges—the Tian Shan, Kun Lun, Himalaya, Hindu Kush, and Karakoram—the range is often referred to as the Pamir Knot, the nexus which ties all the other ranges together.  The Pamir Knot from south of Kashgar. This is right where the Kun Lun and the Pamir ranges come together.  Although much of the range consists high, grassy plateaus, it also lays claim to some of the world’s highest summits, including 24,590-foot Ismoili Somoni Peak, 23,310-foot Evgenia Korjenevskaya Peak, and 23,406-foot Peak Lenin. Some geographers also include 24,757-foot Muztagh-Ata in the Pamirs, although most consider it part of the Kun Luns.  24,757-foot Muztagh-Ata  Indeed, the exact boundaries of the range are unclear, but much of it would appear to be in current-day Tajikistan, a...

As most of you know, the Summer Solstice is rapidly approaching. Here in Mongolia it occurs on Wednesday, June 22 at 1:17 in the morning. The sun will rise at 4:53 and set at 8:55, making for a day of  16 hours, 2 minutes, and 3 seconds.  The Solstice is of course a big day for Pagans   and we can expect a replay of the usual Lalapolooza at Stonehenge . The ancient Romans too made a big deal of the Solstice and the Roman Emperor Hadrian even lined up the buildings of his villa in accordance with the Solstice: Hadrian's villa 30 kilometres east of Rome was a place where the Roman Emperor could relax in marble baths and forget about the burdens of power. But he could never completely lose track of time, says Marina De Franceschini, an Italian archaeologist who believes that some of the villa's buildings are aligned so as to produce sunlight effects for the seasons. For centuries, scholars have thought that the more than 30 buildings at Hadrian's palatial ...

I have never been in  Afghanistan and know little about what is going there. In an effort to fill in this lacuna I do read Kabul Perspective  by Abbas Daiyar. Mr. Daiyar spends a lot of time in Mongolia and I happen to know him. He is currently in Afghanistan where he was born and grew up and where his family still lives. From the quality of his writing you might assume he is a well-seasoned, gray-bearded journalist. Actually, he is in his already well-seasoned early twenties and beardless.  He also writes for CNNWorld and numerous other outlets. If you want a view of what is going on in Afghanistan from someone who actually lives there he is an excellent source. He also has a Mongolian-Themed Blog .

The governor of Otrār was a man named Inalchuq, the nephew of the Khwarezmshah’s mother, Turkān-Khātün. Perhaps because of his close relations with the Shah’s family he had been granted the lofty title of Gāyer Khan. Although accounts maintain that all 450 of the traders sponsored by the Mongols were Muslims, a Hindu merchant from India had also managed to attach himself to the caravan. This man had met Inalchuq previously, before he had become the Gāyer Khan and the governor of Otrār, and apparently he had not been impressed. Now this Indian merchant, who was in Juvaini’s words, “rendered proud by reason of the power and might of his own Khan [Chingis]”, addressed his old acquaintance in a condescending manner, calling him by his common name of Inalchuq instead of by his title. The proud governor was infuriated by the Indian’s haughty, patronizing behaviour, and Juvaini insinuates that he used this incident as a pretext to put the entire trade mission under house arrest...

Today there is no city known as Otrār, and very few people have even heard of the Otrār which flourished back at the beginning of the thirteen century. The scattered ruins of this once-sizable metropolis which still do exist turn up on the itineraries of only the most determined tourists who venture into what is now southern Kazakhstan. Yet when the Mongol-Sponsored Caravan of 450 Muslim Traders turned up at its gates in 1218 it was one of the most famous trade centers in Inner Asia and renowned for its arts and crafts and the intellectual accomplishments of its citizens. The caravan men were no doubt looking forward to resting in the city’s well-appointed caravanserais and refreshing themselves in its famous bathhouses. Little did they know that the events which soon overwhelmed them would, in the words of nineteenth-century Orientalist E. G. Browne, trigger:  . . . a catastrophe which, though probably quite unforeseen, even on the very eve of its incidence, changed the face of t...

Having already received an Embassy from the Khwarezmshah and met with Traders from the Khwarezm Empire , Chingis decided to respond in kind by sending his own emissaries to the Sultan’s realm. He took a two-pronged approach. A diplomatic mission would make contact with the Khwarezmshah himself in hopes of establishing the peaceful relations necessary for further trade, and an officially sanctioned trading mission would demonstrate to the Khwarezmshah and his subjects just how how lucrative trading with Mongols could be. The three merchants who had just visited Chingis would accompany the Mongol-sponsored caravan of traders back to Khwarezm and presumably act as intermediaries. According to one account, the embassy was dispatched before the trading mission left for Khwarezm. Another maintains that the embassy left at the same time as the trading mission but then at some point en route hurried on ahead for a meeting with the Khwarezmshah himself.  The leaders of the diplomatic embas...