People or range · Temujin's Mongols · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Temujin's sworn clans

The Secret History (Kahn's adaptation of the Cleaves translation, pp.

44 to 49) tells how Temujin and Jamuqa parted at the Khorkhonag valley on the Onon: Jamuqa proposed to camp apart, Temujin did not understand, Borte told him to march on through the night, and at dawn camp circles from nearly all the clans had followed Temujin and not Jamuqa. They were groups of the Jalair, the Mangqut and a clan the adaptation spells Onggur (probably the Uru'ut, not pinned), the Besud, the Suldus and the Qongqotan, and camp circles of the Sukeken, the Olqunut (Hoelun's own clan), the Qorulas, the Dorben, the Noyakin, the Oronar and the Barulas. Ogele Cherbi of the Arulat and Subedei of the Uriangkhai left their own groups to join him; Chaghan Uua, chief of the Chinos, came from Jamuqa's camp; Qorchi of the Ba'arin came after a dream; Daritai came with families of the Geniges, the Jadaran and the Saghayid; Sacha Beki and Taichu brought the Jurkin; Khuchar and Altan came too.

This is the following that raised him khan at the Blue Lake about 1189. Dalan Balzhut (1187 to 1190) came after. The text does not say how many of these camp circles stayed through the ten quiet years that follow, and we could not read the passages on the later years; the clans are therefore shown as his on the evidence of the parting, and the one dated loss is the Jurkin, broken between 1196 and 1198.

Some, such as the Dorben, are said by our memory of the Secret History to take Jamuqa's side later (see the likely course of the eastern clans); that is not in the excerpt we could read.

Who holds it

Name
Temujin; chiefs named in the text: Daritai, Altan, Khuchar (Qiyat), Ogele Cherbi (Arulat), Qorchi (Ba'arin), Chaghan Uua (Chinos); later Mönglik (Qongqotan), Gu'un-a (Jalair), Jedei (Uru'ut), Quyildar (Mangqut)
Title
Khan Temujin over the chiefs of the camp circles
Confidence
medium

Overlord

Temujin.

What it holds

  • Jalair, Mangqut, Uru'ut (?), Besud, Suldus, Qongqotan: groups that followed him from Jamuqa's camp
  • Sukeken, Olqunut, Qorulas, Dorben, Noyakin, Oronar, Barulas: camp circles that followed him
  • Arulat (Ogele Cherbi, Bo'orchu), Uriangkhai (Jelme, Subedei), Ba'arin (Qorchi), Chinos (Chaghan Uua)
  • Families of the Geniges, Jadaran and Saghayid who came with Daritai
  • Qiyat lords' followings (Altan, Khuchar, Daritai); the Jurkin until 1196 to 1198

Allies and rivals

Under Temujin. Rivals: Jamuqa (the clan that lost most to him), the Tayichi'ut, the Merkit.

How things stand that morning

Presumed with Temujin on the evidence of the parting (c. 1189); no source lists the following on 1 January 1200. The Jurkin have been broken; the Tayichi'ut are not in this list.

Wealth

Herds of horses, sheep and cattle; hunting.

Military

Each camp circle rides under its own leader; Bo'orchu and Jelme are named chiefs over the rest of the people, Subedei is charged to gather soldiers (Kahn/Cleaves, p. 49). No numbers.

Threats

  • Defection of a clan to Jamuqa's name
  • The war with the Tayichi'ut
  • Dzud

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

  1. From 1200As the Tayichi'ut are broken their dependants join this following.Depends on: Temujin and Toghrul winning on the Onon. Stopped by: A Tayichi'ut recovery.

Places of note

  • Winter ordo (board estimate): The khan's household; the camp circles lie round it in the valleys of the upper Onon and Kherlen.

Where the sources disagree

  • The regional brief expects the Jalair, Besut, Barulas, Qorulas, Dorben and others to be shown as unaligned clans. The only primary text we could read puts them all with Temujin at the parting; the 'unaligned' class is therefore small (Qatagin, Saljiut, perhaps part of the Dorben) and is drawn in a separate record.
  • Kahn's spelling 'Onggur' may stand for the Uru'ut of other translations.

Evidence: The clan names are in the Kahn/Cleaves excerpt (pp. 44 to 49); the date (about 1189, with Dalan Balzhut after) and the position on 1 January 1200 are reconstructions.

On the map: The outline repeats Temujin's range; no source places the single camp circles.

Primary sources for Temujin's Mongols

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

  • Record of the Personal Campaigns of the Holy Warrior (Chinggis Khan) (presented to Khubilai in 1288, finished in Mongolian in 1290; the surviving Chinese version dates from 1369). A year-by-year Chinese account of Temujin's wars, drawn from the lost Altan Debter (the same source behind the Yuan shi's first chapter and Rashid al-Din). Read online
  • The Secret History of the Mongols (1228 or 1240 (the colophon's Year of the Rat is disputed), with later additions; the surviving Chinese transcription and gloss were made under the Ming in the 1380s). The only Mongol account of Temujin's rise, written within living memory. Read online
  • Annals of the Western Xia, Wu Guangcheng (吳廣成) (1825 to 1827, compiled from Song, Liao, Jin and Yuan sources). A Qing scholar's year-by-year reconstruction of Tangut history from the Chinese histories, since the Xia left no surviving annals of their own in Chinese. Read online
  • Compendium of Chronicles, Rashid al-Din Fadl Allah Hamadani (1300 to 1311, at Tabriz). The official Ilkhanid history, compiled from Mongol oral tradition and the lost Altan Debter. Read online
  • Compendium of Chronicles: the Turkic and Mongol tribes and the life of Chinggis Khan, Rashid al-Din Hamadani (about 1300 to 1311, in the Ilkhanate). The fullest description of who held what on the steppe around 1200, written a century later from Mongol court records (the Altan Debter) and from informants such as Bolad Chingsang. Read online
  • History of the Yuan, Song Lian (宋濂) and the Ming history office (1369 to 1370). Juan 1, the annals of Taizu (Chinggis Khan), gives a dated outline of Temujin's early wars drawn from the same lost Altan Debter as the Shengwu qinzheng lu: the Tatar war with the Jin in 1196, the Merkit and Naiman campaigns, the Tayichi'ut war, Jamuqa's coalition of 1201 and the Tatar and Kereyit wars of 1202 and 1203. Read online
  • History of the Jin, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office, with Ouyang Xuan among the chief compilers (1343 to 1344, from the Jin veritable records and the Jin national history). The official history of the Jurchen empire that ruled north China and Manchuria in 1200. Read online
  • Brief Account of the Black Tatars, Peng Daya (彭大雅) with notes by Xu Ting (徐霆) (1237 (Peng Daya's text from a 1232 to 1233 embassy, Xu Ting's notes from a 1235 to 1236 embassy)). Two Song envoys' notes on the Mongols under Ogodei: the steppe, climate, herds, hunting, the ruler's tent and court, the army, taxes, trade, the postal relay, the Uyghur and Khitan clerks, and the subject peoples. Read online

1 more in the sources library for Mongolia and the Steppe.

Sources and studies

  1. The Secret History of the Mongols, adapted by Paul Kahn from the Cleaves translation (names and place names of the early chapters)
  2. The Secret History of the Mongols, transl. and commentary Igor de Rachewiltz (Brill 2004; shorter edition ed. J. C. Street, Western Washington University 2015)
  3. Rashid al-Din, Jami' al-tawarikh (Compendium of Chronicles), transl. W. M. Thackston
  4. Christopher P. Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire (2004)

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.