The Kereyit of Toghrul, Ong Khan

Who rules

Name

Toghrul (To'oril, Toghril; Rashid's Tughril; Chinese Tuoli, Wang Han)

Title

Khan (qan) of the Kereyit, holding the Jin rank of wang (Ong Khan)

Since

Khan of the Kereyit since the 1160s or 1170s (not pinned). Driven out twice and restored twice: first by his uncle Gur Khan (restored by Yesugei), then by his brother Erke Qara with Naiman help, restored with Temujin's help in 1197 or 1198 on the reconstruction used here. Wang title from the Jin in 1196.

Born

About 1140 on the Russian Wikipedia article's reckoning; he was an age-mate of Yesugei (anda, sworn brother), so born between about 1130 and 1145 and between sixty and seventy on 1 January 1200 (the English Wikipedia says about 1130; guess)

Family

Son of Qurjaqus (Cyriacus) Buyiruq Khan, grandson of Marghuz (Mark) Buyiruq Khan. Brothers: Tai Temur Taishi and Buqa Temur (killed by Toghrul), Erke Qara (exile, with the Naiman), Jakha Gambu, Ilqa Selenge (named on the Russian Wikipedia list; nothing known). Son Senggum (Nilqa Senggum). Daughters named in the Secret History for 1203: Cha'ur Beki. Nieces: Ibaqa Beki and Sorqaqtani Beki, daughters of Jakha Gambu.

Confidence

high for the man and his place; medium for the order and years of his expulsions

The Kereyit and their ruling house are named in the Secret History, Rashid al-Din and the Chinese annals; the 1190s dates disagree by one to three years. This record follows Pelliot (wang title 1196) and the year-by-year chronology of the 'Rise of Genghis Khan' article (expulsion by Erke Qara after 1196, restoration 1197, raids on the Merkit 1198 and 1199, Naiman fight 1199).

Overlord

None. He holds a Jin rank (wang, a prince's title, given in 1196 after the joint campaign against the Tatars) and the Qara Khitai gurkhan (Yelu Zhilugu) claims the western steppe peoples; no tribute from the Kereyit to either is attested.

What the realm holds

• The ordu of Toghrul in the Black Forest of the Tula (winter camp), a mobile court of tents with a guard of his own household and, very likely, a tent church (the Church of the East's tent altar among the Kereyit goes back to the mission of about 1009; none is described for 1200)
• The herds and summer pastures of the Kereyit clans on the Tula and the upper Orkhon, the Ongi headwaters and the eastern slope of the Khangai
• The separate camps of Senggum, Jakha Gambu (when present) and the Kereyit nobles
• Hunting in the Black Forest and the forests of the Khentii and Khangai
• The Church of the East among the Kereyit: priests, a tent church and Christian families (Toghrul's own faith is presumed, not shown)
• Rights of plunder and tribute over the Merkit on the Orkhon-Selenga march by raiding, not by regular tribute
• The ruined Uyghur and Khitan towns of the Orkhon and Tuul lie in his pastures (Khar Balgas, Chin Tolgoi) but nobody holds or garrisons them

How it was acquired

By descent in the Kereyit khan's house (Marghuz, Qurjaqus). Toghrul took the khanate by killing two brothers, was expelled by his uncle Gur Khan and restored with Yesugei's help (sworn brothers, anda), was expelled again by his brother Erke Qara with Naiman backing, took refuge with the Qara Khitai and returned with Temujin's help. The Jin rank wang came after the joint campaign against the Tatars of 1196 (Julian year 1196, animal year of the Dragon, bingchen).

Allies and rivals

Temujin's Mongols: sworn son (the bond goes back to Yesugei), joint campaigns of 1196 (Tatars), 1198 and 1199 (Merkit) and autumn 1199 (Naiman); Temujin's four chief companions rescued Senggum's family in 1199. Jamuqa: said to stand with Toghrul in the 1199 Naiman campaign, camp that winter not pinned. Naiman (Tayang and Buyiruq): enemies, protectors of Erke Qara, raided the Kereyit camps in autumn 1199. Merkit (Toqto'a Beki): enemies, raided by Toghrul and Temujin in 1198 and 1199.

Tatars: old enemies, broken by the Jin and the allies in 1196. Jin: patron of the wang rank. Qara Khitai: gave Toghrul refuge in exile; claims the steppe. Tanguts (Xia): Jakha Gambu's refuge and the Kereyit's road to the south.

The realm that morning

On the morning of 1 January 1200 Toghrul sits in winter quarters in the Black Forest of the Tula (exact valley not pinned), at war with the Naiman after the autumn 1199 fighting, in alliance with Temujin, and hostile to the Merkit. Senggum's wife and children were taken by the Naiman raid of autumn 1199 and got back through Temujin's companions, so the household owes the Mongols a debt this winter. The brother Erke Qara is outside the Kereyit with the Naiman or elsewhere; Jakha Gambu's place is not pinned.

The Naiman stand on the Khangai crest to the west, the Merkit on the lower Orkhon and Selenga to the north, Temujin's Mongols on the upper Kherlen and Onon to the east, and the Gobi, the Ongud and the Tangut border to the south. On the Secret History's own order the Naiman fight and the seizure of Senggum's family belong to the Year of the Dog (1202 on the translator's footnotes) and have not happened yet; this record keeps the working reading of 1199 and says so in its notes.

Wealth

Herds of horses, sheep and cattle, camels in the south; furs and game from the Black Forest; the caravan and market trade with the Jin frontier markets and the Tanguts through the Ongud and the Gobi roads; Jin gifts that come with the wang rank; booty from the Tatar and Merkit raids; tolls and gifts from merchants (Uyghur and Muslim traders are likely at the ordu but none is named). A tent hung with gold, the 'golden tent' in which Toghrul feasts in the Secret History's account of 1203, shows what the court looked like. No figures.

Military

Horse archers fighting in clan bands under their nobles round the khan's household guard; no numbers can be given (the Secret History's and Rashid's counts are not evidence). They took the field with the Mongols in 1196, 1198 and 1199. The Black Forest is the refuge: there is no fort. The 1199 raid showed that the camps and families can be struck while the army is away.

Threats

• Naiman revenge for the 1199 campaign, with Erke Qara as their claimant
• A third expulsion from within: the brothers and nobles who resent Toghrul's reliance on Temujin
• Jamuqa's intrigue and Senggum's jealousy of Temujin
• A dzud on the Tula and Orkhon herds
• Merkit raids on the northern march

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.

In 1200

1. Spring or summer 1200 (month not pinned; the OMNIA board's calendar says 'during 1200')Toghrul joins Temujin against the Tayichi'ut on the Onon; the allies win; Temujin is wounded in the pursuit.Depends on: Toghrul and Temujin keeping their tie, no Naiman attack on the Kereyit that spring, the Tayichi'ut still on the lower Onon. Stopped by: A Naiman or Merkit move on the Kereyit camps; Senggum or the nobles refusing the march; Temujin finishing the Tayichi'ut alone.

Later, on the likely course

1. 1201Jamuqa is raised to gurkhan by a coalition and Toghrul comes to Temujin's help at Koyiten (one line; after the opening date).Depends on: The coalition forming. Stopped by: Toghrul sitting out the fight.
2. 1203The break with Temujin, the Kereyit defeat and Toghrul's death at the hands of a Naiman patrol under Qori Subechi (one line; after the opening date).Depends on: Senggum's quarrel with Temujin over the marriage offer. Stopped by: A different settlement of the marriages.

Places of note

• Black Forest (Qara Tun) of the Tula: Toghrul's winter camp: Winter ordu of Toghrul; the exact valley is not pinned.
• Upper Orkhon: summer pasture of the Kereyit clans: Clan pastures on the upper Orkhon and the Ongi headwaters; inferred from Rashid's placing of the Kereyit on the Orkhon.

Where the sources disagree

• The campaign board entry kereit-orda calls Toghrul 'the strongest steppe ruler'. He is the best titled and the best supplied with allies, but he was twice driven out by his own kin, owes his restoration to Temujin, and the Naiman under Tayang and Buyiruq are a rival power of the same weight. Treat him as first among several, not as master of the steppe.
• The campaign board entry kereit-orda puts the orda at 47.9N 106.9E, the centre of modern Ulaanbaatar. The Black Forest of the Tula is located by convention on the Tuul near here; the actual valley is not pinned.
• The regional brief asks for the dating of the wang title: 1196, after the Jin campaign against the Tatars (Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo; the mne record adds the Jin-side Servan Khaalga inscription of May and June 1196, which we have not opened). Rashid's tiger year is 1194; the English Wikipedia article on Toghrul follows it. 1196 is the likelier.
• The assignment lists Quri Subechi among Toghrul's officers. Qori Subechi was a Naiman patrol commander who killed Toghrul in 1203, not a Kereyit officer.
• The assignment lists Nilqa as a second son. Nilqa is Senggum's own name (Nilqa Senggum, 'Nilqa the general'); Senggum and a second son Yeku (Uyku) are the two sons named by the English and Russian Wikipedia articles; only Senggum is attested as a grown man in 1200, and Yeku's age and place are not given. Doquz Khatun, later Hulegu's Christian wife, is called Yeku's daughter by the English article (she is not yet born or is a child in 1200).
• The identification of Toghrul with Prester John is a European idea of the 1250s to 1290s (Rubruck, Marco Polo) and has not happened on 1 January 1200.
• The dating of the Naiman war, the central problem of the brief. This record uses the working reading (the brief's '1199?', Rashid, the Chinese annals, the Wikipedia chronology): Temujin, Toghrul and Jamuqa beat Buyiruq beyond the Altai in 1199 (at Lake Kishil-bash on the mnw record) and Kokse Sabraq struck back at Senggum on the way home (autumn, by the brief's working date). The Secret History as read by the mnw researcher (sections 159, 162 and 163) tells both episodes after the Argun oath and Koyiten of 1201, in the Year of the Dog (1202 on the translator's footnotes); on that order the Kereyit and the Naiman have not fought and Senggum's family has not been taken. The two readings cannot be reconciled with certainty.
• Toghrul's own Christianity is presumed, not shown. The English Wikipedia article on Toghrul says there is no credible proof that he was himself Christian, because the Mongolian sources say nothing of his religion; it holds that the Keraites as a people took the Church of the East early in the 11th century. His father and grandfather carry Christian names in Rashid (Qurjaqus is Cyriacus, Marghuz is Marcus). The brief's 'Christian household' is a fair reading of the people, not a fact about the khan.
• The Wikipedia articles disagree on the chronology of 1194 to 1200. The English article on Toghrul follows Rashid: wang title after a Tatar campaign of 1194, exile, Toghrul with Temujin by 1196 for about two years, the Keraites fully back with him around 1198. The Wikipedia chronology of Temujin's rise, Pelliot and Ratchnevsky put the Tatar campaign and the title in 1196, the expulsion in 1196 and the return in 1197. This record uses the second, and says 1197 or 1198 for the restoration.

Evidence: Rulers, kin and the main events are in the Secret History, Rashid and the Chinese annals (thick for 1203, thin for 1196-1200). This session could not reach the Secret History text or the English Wikipedia article on the Keraites; the English article on Toghrul was read late. The details are from the Pelliot page, two Wikipedia chronologies, the Russian Wikipedia family list and the researcher's memory of the Secret History and Rashid. The season of the Naiman fight of 1199 (autumn) is the campaign brief's working date; the Wikipedia chronologies give only the year.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

On the map: A people is drawn by its yearly range; the lines are rough and follow pasture and river basins, not a boundary agreed on the ground. The north edge (about 49 N) meets the Merkit; the east edge (about 108.3 E, the Tula-Kherlen divide) meets Temujin's Mongols; the Gobi herders lie to the south.

Primary sources for this realm

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
• 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
• Journey to the West of the Perfected Changchun (Qiu Chuji), Li Zhichang (李志常) (about 1228, from the journey of 1220 to 1224). A dated eyewitness itinerary across the steppe and the Tarim twenty years after 1200: the Kereyit country and the Ongud frontier, the Naiman mountains, the Uyghur towns of Beshbaliq and the Tarim with their Buddhist and Christian communities, Almaliq of the Qarluq, and Samarkand. Read online