Hey, he says in his question session, “There’s nothing objective about anything I say” — so why do I have to put an objective title up there?

The wonderful Jack Weatherford stands on a stage at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, in February this year, and talks about Genghis Khan. His focus: “who he was as a person.”

Or to quote my own Bultachu Ba’atur, as he tries to talk his wife into softening on Temujin; he points to the figures-become-legends in the epics: ‘The legend, he’s described to curl your hair, he’s the bristly brindled blue-maned wolf, he glares red when he’s roused. Beneath that once was a person. What he was like?’

Jack’s a story-teller as he gives you excerpts from the Secret History of the Mongols. The start Temujin had in life. If you ever doubted Temujin is one of the astounding people in history, let Jack lay out the facts for you.

And what an odd army he had, with which to achieve things no-one else has. Hung together on loyalty and talent — not aristocracy, not kinship. His generals weren’t the steppe aristocrats but poor herders, who never betrayed him. Kin betrayed him and he did not use kinship but found or created other loyalties. Loyalty is his most important word. Army communications? — in verse. Of course, in an oral society, where people can talk in verse, the way fish swim. He built bridges. He built nothing else — no fortresses, palaces, temples, these were alien to him and remained so. But bridges, by the hundred. He was a practical man.

With a huge creative intelligence. I’ll quote Juvaini, Persian historian, dates 1226-83 — because Jack says pretty much exactly this:

The statecraft to be learnt from the great Chosroes of old and what is written on the arts of war and method of government of the Pharoahs and the Caesars was by Tchingis Khan gleaned from the book of his own mind, without records for instruction or the trouble of traditions to observe, but self-taught by the light of the intelligence God gave him: and as for his intelligence and his ingenuity, Alexander, of the curious mind, might have been his student in contrivances for the seige of castles and in how to conquer… To his own conceptions, then, he framed the Jasaq.

The Jasaq is his law code. When the Mongolian government — freed from the Soviets, under whom you weren’t allowed to mention Genghis on the streets — planned its first official statue of him, to preside over the parliament, they took for a model that of Abraham Lincoln: not a conqueror on a horse but a lawgiver. It’s how he’s seen at home.

What sort of government did he run, himself? His government began as an army, yes, and as a distribution machine. This is a man who, fairly certainly, “accumulated more wealth than any person in the history of the world: he didn’t keep it. It went out — it went out. The first people to get a share were war widows and orphans.”

But Jack talks about a dereliction of principles, late in his life. Not a violation but… a retreat from his old principles of ability and loyalty as the only factors that matter. He too succumbed to kinship above these, undone by his love for his sons, and left the government to them. I like how Jack criticises this. It didn’t work out, it had bad consequences, and is a shame, yes. Our Temujin’s only human. Jack tells you the tragedy of Jochi, his first son, who wasn’t fathered by him, but the one Temujin loved most.

Then there’s half an hour of question time. He’s asked about The Secret History of the Mongols. Jacks stresses its intimacy: conversations he had in bed at night with his wife, are reported. This isn’t a public document to honour a public figure — hence the ‘secret’.

Ethics in war? “In warfare I think he was scrupulous… He was a practical man. But a very ethical man.”

He is asked about rape, Genghis Khan and rape. Yes, I’ve seen on the internet he’s the greatest rapist in the world. Never mind evidence, assumption is enough. Jack says: “I know of no documented case where this happened.” He explains a little about how “the whole (Mongol) masculinity is so different from ours.” With wives commonly older than the husband. “Steppe culture in general — rape was not a part of it.” He distinguishes from the kidnapping of women, in tribal life. As I do — it’s quite a different thing. So different, that I have not used the word ‘rape’ — our word rape — in the story of either his kidnapped mother or his kidnapped wife. As soon as I do, modern ideas intrude, and so I don’t. Rape in his wars? “To my knowledge it did not happen.” He wants evidence, see, and they can’t bring him any. As for me, I haven’t got there yet; I’m still in 1206.

I won’t always tally with Jack Weatherford, in my portrait. His Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World came out when I was a couple of years into work on mine — and I was over the moon at such a sympathetic portrait, in a popular history, for a wide audience. But I felt dead lucky, too, that I’d had time with my Tchingis before Jack, BJW, because that’s an Anxiety of Influence I might never have escaped.

Jack Weatherford turns out to be a great talker, if you ask me, and you did since you’re here. If you have a spare hour and a quarter… put it on while you’re knitting, and listen to Jack.

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Jack Weatherford is the author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World and The Secret History of the Mongol Queens. Here’s his author page on Goodreads.

Don’t miss The UB Post on Walker Pearce, where I link to a feature on his wife from an English-language newspaper in Mongolia. Jack gets a look-in.

Ny name’s Bryn. I’d better put a face on, since we’re at a fair:

And here’s the face of my lad:

China has executed Ambaghai, the Mongols’ khan, on a hurdle with donkey ears and tail from the theatre, in mockery of the horse peoples of the steppe. It cries for hachi.

‘Hachi means that which is owed, or felt due. It can mean an act of humanity. It can mean vengeance. It meant justice.’

The Mongols go to war for Ambaghai’s hachi, in a century when no steppe people is fit to tackle China. They believe battles are won by the just, and the size differential doesn’t bother them. They are wrong, but the Mongol God comforts them with an omen. Temujin, the baby of that battle day, has in his hand his people’s future victory.

The Chinese have crossbows, but the Mongols have belief.

Of Battles Past is my FREE starter to Amgalant, the story of Chinggis or Genghis Khan. I closely follow a source, the Secret History of the Mongols. This is an intimate biography of the Mongols’ greatest figure, but uses the art of oral epic: it has frequent direct speech, frequent verse — gorgeous as a source. See my page on the Secret History for more.

Find your free copy at Smashwords, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Sony. At Amazon or Amazon UK I have to charge 99c.

If you like the first, my lad has other faces, as he grows. On these, see my page Amgalant and me. Or explore the blog; I have categories for ‘steppe culture’ and ‘Mongol history’, where I hope you can discover images and information from a world not enough known.

She’s in an online gallery called Faces of the Amur. Named for a strong tradition, as old as we go, in human masks, abstract faces and portraits, as petroglyphs and clay figures. A while ago I posted on Liao tomb masks (I think I used the phrase: Tutankhamun, eat your heart out  — or did I only tweet that?) where I said we know nothing about them, we can only guess at significance and context. These age-old human faces of the Ussuri and the Amur must help with context. The exhibition’s text, found on this page, stresses the continuity of culture, from archaeologists’ finds to ethnographic evidence — what’s in museums from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

There’s a book to go with this exhibition, that I own, but I think you get the full text online, and most of the images. I have to say, though, the big photo in the book makes our Nefertiti’s case more convincingly. She’s lovely, exudes ‘real woman’, and was the first human figure they found in Neolithic excavations on the Amur.

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Alexei Okladnikov, Art of the Amur: Ancient Art of the Russian Far East,1981, Aurora Art Publishers, Leningrad

Where’s the Amur? Here:

As a happy single these days, and even committed I think (that’d be a first) (enough about me) — I’m intrigued by the possibility that certain steppe societies allowed women to live singly.

Liao, at least. But Liao was an aspirational society for other nomad cultures, which seem to have found them fit to imitate. Almost the only information I have on this comes from Linda Cooke Johnson’s study of Liao and Jin women, Women of the Conquest Dynasties. She offers the example of Changge (1006-1077), a scholar and poet and member of the royal clan, on whom we have a biography in Liao records. “The entry specifically notes that Changge never married, and [her] epitaph mentions no husband, which suggests that marriage may not have been universal among Liao women.” [p.7]  Other than this, “The numbers of Liao tombs in which women are the sole occupants also suggest that other women may never have married.” [p.111-2]

It’s not much to go on. But Linda Cooke Johnson speculates that the Liao/Kitan custom whereby women married men of the generation beneath them may have led to singlehood. Women of the royal clan (that I like to call the Ile, instead of a Chinese transcription) were often significantly older than their husbands, but “the primary marriage pattern in which younger males married somewhat older women was common among both upper- and lower-class Kitans. Although Jin sources are less explicit, the Jurchen also evidently followed the generation-gap pattern in arranging marriages…” [p.99]  We’ll want to know at this point, sex before marriage was not a no-no. “Liao and Jin sources indicate that premarital permissiveness was a widespread and well-entrenched social custom…” [p.86]  We might feel that the unmarried were ‘left on the shelf’, but that’s our assumption, and this on girls’ sexuality reminds us not to make foreign assumptions.

In Mongol history, we have Qaidu’s daughter Qutulun (c.1260-1306) who tried not to marry, who wished to remain as her father’s right hand in war and politics. As I say, I believe Liao was a glamorous culture for other steppe societies, and I have to guess that Qutulun, to justify her life, cited Liao women, who before her had commanded troops — possibly she cited them on singlehood, too. That is, doesn’t the Liao information mean she needn’t have been pitted against society, to live thus? Still, Qutulun gave in to pressure, and to slander: she and her father were accused of incest, and after this she chose a husband — one of her father’s followers, which let her stay at her father’s side. I was a daddy’s girl too.

That incest accusation, a low blow, has an after-history in a Karakalpak epic, ‘Kyrk Kyz/Qiz’,  known in English as ‘Forty Maidens’. There, a brother and sister lead the fight against a Persian invasion. The enemy Persian Shah slanders them with incest to undo them. The brother, humiliated, leaves his troops and people, but they refuse to believe the accusation and choose the sister to head the army in his absence. Here I must see a memory of Qaidu and Qutulun. The latter’s legend as a war champion and army leader surely went towards the inspiration of this epic, which boasts more women under arms than an average plot of Xena.

I’m afraid that’s the end of my observations. I’ll keep digging, fascinated as I am, for single women on the steppe.

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– Linda Cooke Johnson, Women of the Conquest Dynasties: Gender and Identity in Liao and Jin China, University of Hawai’i Press, 2011

Yesterday I got up the gumption to send Jack Weatherford a fan email. Not only didn’t he mind, he took time to answer and even inquire into this site. Proud to have his feet here, I can tell you. Right, I’ve always been the hero-worship type, but his work is inspirational and of enormous use to me, and if my spirits were flagging, daunted by Three ahead and who cares about these subjects in the world? his kindness has given me the spurt I need.

He sent me a story from the UB Post, ‘Expats in UB’ by Allyson Seaborn, on his wife Walker Pearce who has adventured over Mongolia in a wheelchair. Now, I’d seen this… hey, I’m a fan, I keep track. Maybe you haven’t – here’s a link. Follow the link, because these are two wonderful people, loved in Mongolia. As Jack Weatherford is quoted to say in the story, it isn’t the official honours he’s had there that matter most to the both of them, but the daily “care and warmth”.

Writers have different habits, different ways to write, and I hope we can politely leave each to our own. It is an exercise in politeness, as I know from myself, because when I hear a friend say, ‘I’m sending out to my beta-readers,’ I want to howl at her, No no no no no. Of course I do no such thing.

Obviously, I don’t use beta-readers. I am the alpha to omega reader of my work, until it’s in a state fit to print. This makes for slow publishing: you need years of perspective on a work, to be an omega reader yourself. So I had my first book in my hands for nine years; I only had beta eyes – or new eyes as I call them – after I’d finished the second and come back. To ask another person for new eyes… no, I cannot contemplate it. They see differently. Only I can see the true road for my book, even if I can’t see yet, even if not for years. Foreign eyes (as I think of them) I fear must hopelessly confuse. Muddy the waters. When I can’t see clearly, the last thing I need is advice in my ears. I have to stare until I see. Or take a hike, come back in a few years’ time with the eyes of a stranger. But my eyes.

One hand writes a novel, that’s my creed. It’s no use to try to shift a belief like that, so I hope we writers can rub along together with our different habits and beliefs.

One hand, one eye to see the right words (did you hear Tolkien creep in? Bugger off, Tolkien. If I’m as crazy as Sauron, let it be so. I can tell you I’ll never change). Where was I? Only the creator’s eye can spot the right word. Other people’s words must be inserts, intrusions, and wrong. Wrong in ways you won’t notice, but you’ve been shifted, if ever so slightly, off your tracks. So if you’ve lost the sense of those tracks, wait. Wait. Wait for years. Others’ input, foreign influence – is your greatest danger.

Now, I can scarcely understate how out of fashion this writing philosophy is. Here I’m in the privacy of my blog; if I essayed to defend this argument in a writers’ public square, I’d be shot down or locked up. But I know I’m not the only one who writes this way – are you out there, solitary writers?

To express my puzzled feelings, crudely, I have a made-up tale of Picasso and the paintbrush. That’s when a bystander looks over his shoulder and says, ‘I don’t think people are going to understand that smudge in the corner. How about you turn that into a cabbage?’ He got a paintbrush through the eye, didn’t he?

It seems to me that written arts are singled out, for the art-by-committee strategy. And I don’t understand why that should be so. Writers have always fought to keep creative control, of course – and lost in general. ‘Go indie’ we urge writers of the past, safely in their graves. Except I’ve met on indie review sites the admittance question, ‘Have you been professionally edited?’ And I can’t tick yes to that box. I can tick, ‘No, piss off. But give me credence. Every word is mine. Every judgement call, my judgement – because no-one else knows what I’m doing with the book, do they? Try it. Call it single malt and have a swig.’

First impressions of the online Manas, after a once-through yesterday, at the speed I might have heard it sung. This epic talks to me, more directly than the Iliad, say, my king of epics… though maybe, kingly-wise, not as near to me, not at my heart and hearth. I am most emotional about Beowulf, whose hero is my hero, above whatsoever figures in history or fiction. But yesterday I laughed and felt and fell in love with Manas at the age of eight. It isn’t so closed a poem as Beowulf (where I can feel the one hand, that draws significance); to go on I have to switch to A.T. Hatto’s translation of another singer – with plot divergences. Have to see how I feel about that one. For now I mean the online Manas, sung by Saiakbai Karalaev, translated by Elmira Kocumkulkizil: which leaves off when Manas is still twelve – in a monster-child way, the kid’s just flattened a detachment – and Joloy and Dongo attack from the capital of China. Yes, that’s Joloy/Joloi who has his own epic, which we met (or I did, and one or two of you) in The Old Ideal.

These paintings are from Qing China’s wars on the steppe, first east, where they subject and enlist the Mongols, then against Oirats with their Zunghar state. In Manas (and this is a typical situation in extant Turk epic) Mongols known as Kalmyks are in league with the Manchus from Beijing; and they march west, a threat to peoples throughout Turkestan, like the Kyrgyz of this poem. The painting above has Kyrgyz or Kazakhs, post-conquest or perhaps to stave off conquest, with tribute of fine horses for the emperor. While beneath is a champion named Ayuxi, a captured Zunghar who thereafter fought on the side of the Qing. He can represent Joloy and his ilk, steppe greats in high standing at the Chinese court.

Manas opens with calamity for the Kyrgyz people: invaded, enslaved, slaughtered or scattered. As a picture of large-scale war, I couldn’t call to mind its like, in old epic. We don’t look at a hero or a king, at this stage, or stay with the leadership cluster; we look at a people. We hear from the girls who are taken as booty, the old men who are beaten up, the remnant populations that are driven into exile. I learnt about war habits. Loot, tax and tribute. Snippets such as the capture of craftswomen. I gained a real sense of war on the scale known in these parts – with Qing, or with Chingiz. It’s no-punches-pulled, and I can’t say that epic often gives me the groups of grandmothers who suffer. Here’s the type of big-scale battle painting we have from Qing’s conquest of the steppe. Notice the cannon ranks and gun smoke.

Rarely were a people so in need of a hero.

Leadership is important, in Manas. A lament runs through this section for Karakhan (=black khan), whose death exposed the Kyrgyz to their enemies. We never saw him, he was dead before the poem began – but we miss him. He left eight orphan sons, children, and of these, Jakip has promise, and starts a line in rear-guard action or fight-back against the Kalmyks and Chinese (called Kitay: that’s our Cathay). A neighbour khan of the Noygut, Baltay or Akbaltay (ak=white) who has been stripped of his wealth in herds, whose people have been wiped out, determines to lift a hand, to join Jakip’s efforts and at least die fighting – instead of curl up crying. Together they attack a troop with ninety-five camels loaded with loot from their tribes. For a moment they know success. Shortly they are worse off than ever. They are punished, and Baltay – who has my admiration by now – undergoes the humiliations of submission. I found this rough. ‘Humiliation’ is a word often used; there are no bones made about how low our heroes go; however, afterwards Baltay is no less esteemed by the people he led, and leads. I liked that. Here’s a celebration of surrender: a little figure on his knees in the centre of the Qing camp.

To Be Continued, because I’m pooped for today. Tomorrow we have a change of scene, and an uplift in the story.

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– the online Manas translated by Elmira Kocumkulkizil, 2005. Link: http://www.silk-road.com/folklore/manas/manasintro.html

– art: by Guiseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), Jesuit missionary and court painter to the Qing

– for a history of the Qing’s steppe wars (and where I found these paintings) see Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia, the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005