She enters the family in a very disadvantageous position. Public Domain How did Töregene become regent of all Mongolia, around the year 1241? Khutulun, the great-great-granddaughter of Chinggis Khan and a fierce warrior, inspired the 20th-century opera Turandot. That’s perfectly acceptable in (their) nomadic society. So in the case of Töregene, who became regent of the entire Mongol Empire after the death of Chinggis Khan’s son Ögedei, or in the case of Sorghaghtani, who maneuvered her son to be the ruler of the entire empire, they’re functioning as senior widows who are regents for men. But women can take over, in theory temporarily but sometimes not really temporarily, on behalf of some man, usually a son of their own. After Chinggis Khan’s death in 1227, many women rose to power.
So without women running the place where Mongols lived, there wouldn’t have been a camp for the Mongol men to return to from their military campaigns. When they arrived, they would place the yurts in the correct order, set them up, etc. They’d drive that long line of carts, often drawn by oxen or yaks. And then there’s all the thousand and one little things that everyone does every day-mending things, checking in with people, checking on kids, making sure that the kids aren’t fighting too much, etc.įurthermore, when the camp had to move from point A to point B, which it did regularly according to season and pasture, women were in charge of that. It’s often a woman’s job to be the hospitable partner, to bring in food and welcome guests. She is going to oversee or perform the typical daily herding activities. If merchants come through, she’s going to talk to them about economic activity.
She’s responsible for their home, the yurt or ger that they live in. Chinggis Khan’s senior wife, Börte, is responsible for a camp. I think we could put it all in the general category of management. The better question would be what weren’t their tasks. Karolina Zygmanowska/Courtesy Anne Broadbridge What were the responsibilities and tasks of the Mongol women in charge of camps? For millennia, nomads have used the camels as pack animals. Anne Broadbridge (left) and guide Emma Hite ride Bactrian camels on the Mongolian steppe. Khutulun, Chinggis Khan’s great-great-granddaughter, would swoop down on the enemy “as deftly as a hawk,” wrote Marco Polo.Ītlas Obscura spoke with Central Asia scholar Anne Broadbridge, author of Women and the Making of the Mongol Empire, about the many roles women had in the Mongol Empire, how society perceived them, and the rise of perhaps the most powerful woman of the medieval world: Töregene. While their husbands fought in distant, years-long military campaigns, Börte and other Mongol women kept the empire running. At 28, she became the Grand Empress of the Mongol Empire her name was Börte.īörte’s husband, Chinggis Khan (also known, based on the Arabic transliteration, as Genghis Khan), receives all the glory for founding the largest contiguous land empire the world has ever known, but Börte and her immense contributions have been largely forgotten. Commanders and shepherds alike reported to her, and she coordinated complex seasonal migrations of thousands of people and their livestock. And while her husband traveled and fought and conquered, she ruled those who remained in Mongolia, managing every aspect of daily life in a massive nomadic camp. In 1178, a 17-year-old Mongol woman married a man she hardly knew.
#AMMA ROSE SERIES#
In Atlas Obscura’s Q&A series She Was There, we talk to female scholars who are writing long-forgotten women back into history.
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