El and Bulqa: Between Order and Chaos in the Formative Years of the Mongol Empire (1206–1259)

Summary

IN 1206 CHINGGIS Qan unified the previously warring people of eastern Inner Asia to create the “Great Mongol State” (Yeke Mongγol Ulus). By conquering or subduing his rivals, he removed competing sources of loyalty and concentrated political power in his own hands. This centralization of power was praised by observers, both Mongol and foreign alike, who juxtaposed the Chinggisid state, characterized by a stable government and a well-defined military hierarchy, with the supposedly more volatile and centrifugal tendencies of the earlier aristocratic households (ayimaqs), often referred to as “tribes.” The Persian historian and bureaucrat, Juvaynī, noted that the Mongols of old had been so poor that they viewed metal stirrups as a sign of wealth and nobility, whilst the Secret History of the Mongols—an anonymous biography of Chinggis Qan, most likely compiled during the reign of his successor Ögödei before undergoing later revision—devoted many lines to the lack of leadership on the Inner Asian steppe prior to 1206. The anonymous Chinese history of Chinggis Qan's early campaigns, Shengwu qingsheng lu (聖武親征錄), which was completed during the reign of Qubilai Qa’an (r. 1260– 1294), characterized those who submitted to Chinggis Qan as “women who have no husbands; as horses who have no pastures.” In short, they lived in a state of disorder and poverty, which was only rectified by the creation of a strong government under Chinggis Qan's leadership.

These undoubtedly exaggerated accounts of turmoil amongst the Inner Asian nomads, written well after Chinggis Qan's rise to power, were surely intended to discourage disloyalty to the new regime. They obliged readers to consider the great power the Mongols enjoyed under Chinggisid rule and to think of any attack against their leadership and laws as a return to the chaos of the past. Indeed, to turn away from the precepts and edicts of Chinggis Qan was considered an attack on the political and social order of the Mongol Empire itself. Those guilty of such crimes were often described as being in a state of bulqa, a term that was initially employed to refer to “rebellious people” (bulqa irgen), but was later glossed in the Persian histories with the Arabic fitna (chaos, disorder).