The World полностью

Töregene was not the only female potentate. In Delhi, Sultan Iltutmish favoured his eldest daughter Razia: ‘My sons are incapable,’ he said, ‘and for that reason I’ve decided my daughter should reign.’ Instead, on his death, his amirs enthroned his son Ruknuddin Firuz, a playboy who rode drunk on elephants accompanied by a retinue of eunuchs and overpromoted mahouts while his mother, Shahturkhan, ruled, settling scores by blinding and killing one of Iltutmish’s sons. She saw that her stepdaughter Razia was a threat and ordered her assassination. Instead, at Friday prayers Razia appealed to the people, inciting them to storm the palace. When they had done so, she arrested and killed Shahturkhan and Firuz before becoming sultan in her own right. The amirs who backed her had presumed she would be a figurehead; initially she respected Islamic modesty, watching councils from behind a screen, escorted by female bodyguards, but then she started to rule publicly and unveiled, cutting her hair, sporting dashing male gear – breastplates, sword and boots – and riding her own elephant through Delhi.

Her chief adviser was an enslaved Habashi (from Abyssinia) who had risen to general, named Jamaluddin Yaqut, and whom she appointed master of horse, thereby offending her Turkic generals. When she was dismounting from a horse, the courtiers noticed that Yakut slipped his hands under her armpits, a sign of shocking intimacy: they were clearly lovers. The combination of a woman and an African man, her gender, his race, was too much for them.

Razia promoted Yakut to amir al-amira – commander-in-chief. Their enemies conspired against them, assassinating him and then arresting Razia in order to place another half-brother on the throne. When he turned out to be obstreperous, one of the warlords, Altunia, who was Razia’s jailer, fell in love with her and offered marriage in return for a partnership. She agreed, but they were defeated and he was killed. Dressed as a man she sought refuge in a peasant cottage, but when she was asleep her host noticed the jewels under her coat and killed her, burying her in the garden. He was caught trying to sell her gems and revealed his secret. Her domed tomb, Delhi’s Turkman Gate, was long a place of pilgrimage.

In Karakorum, Töregene ruled for five years until in 1246 Baku Khan agreed to send envoys to vote for the unimpressive Güyük, who left most of the decisions to his mother. Güyük, ‘astute and very grave, hardly ever seen to laugh or make merry’, was determined to enforce Genghis’s discipline after the easy-going Ögodei. Now he resented his mother’s power and loathed her factotum, Fatima, finally sending guards to arrest her. Töregene refused to surrender her. Güyük and his khatun Oghul Qaimish publicly tried and tortured Fatima, who, naked, was burned and then had her orifices sewn up before being tossed into a river.

After eighteen months, Güyük marched east to attack Iraq and destroy Batu, who probably poisoned him. His widow took over as regent, negotiating with the French envoy André de Longjumeau, whom she told, ‘Peace is good’ but ‘you can’t have peace until you have peace with us!’ If not, ‘we shall destroy you’. But she united her enemies by fatally alienating Sorqaqtani.

Tolui’s widow was ‘extremely intelligent and able … the most intelligent woman in the world’, according to the historian Rashid al-Din. Carefully bringing up her four able sons, teaching them key languages – Kublai learned Chinese – this Christian, born into royalty, was open-minded, building churches but also a madrasa. Now she sent her shrewd son Möngke to see the Big Brother in Russia. Batu welcomed him warmly, reuniting the winning team that had invaded Hungary. Calling a qurultai far from Karakorum, Batu invited the widows of Genghis and of Ögodei and Sorqaqtani herself, who finessed the deal. In July 1251, Batu was offered the khaganate but refused, proposing the forty-three-year-old Möngke, who was chosen and, after graciously refusing twice, accepted on the third offer. Then they marched on Karakorum. Möngke loathed Oghul Qaimish – ‘more contemptible than a bitch’ – having her tortured just as she had tortured Fatima, naked, her orifices sewn together, then drowned in a sack. Sorqaqtani and Möngke purged the family and ended the reign of the khatuns: no women were to have power again, ordered Möngke, or ‘we shall see what we shall see’ – a euphemism for death. When the purge was at its height, Sorqaqtani fell ill, believing that her Christian God was punishing her for the killings, which she now tried to stop before her own death.

Genghis’s Tengri-blessed mission to conquer the world was far from over.

ALEXANDER NEVSKY AND MöNGKE KHAN: WORLD CONQUEST RESTORED