Scientists and travelers who visited Mongolia were often surprised by the apparent discrepancy between the historically established image of the great conquerors who rallied around the legendary Genghis Khan and the peaceful, measured life of the population of this Asian country. How did the ancestors of such good-natured and hospitable people manage to create a huge empire with their military might? This question disappears if we assume that the modern Mongols and the great conquerors of the 13th century have different ethnic origins.
An error has occurred
Academician of the International Academy of Genghis Khan, famous researcher Anatoly Olovintsov in his book «Turks or Mongols? The Age of Genghis Khan» (Moscow, 2015) expressed the opinion that Arab, Chinese, Western European and Russian historians made the same mistake. They identified the common name of several Turkic-speaking peoples united by Genghis Khan with a certain ethnic community.
That is, there was a substitution of concepts, initially the word «Mongol» was not the name of the people. It was used to refer to those people who joined the banner of the great conqueror.
«Mongols is the name of a political union of different Turkic–speaking tribes, given by Genghis Khan himself in 1206,» says A.G. Olovintsov.
But historians, convinced that the word «Mongol» is an ethnonym, found in the Chinese chronicles a mention of a certain Mengu people (Menwa, Menu, Mangu), who inhabited the Amur coast since ancient times. Scientists have suggested that these people are the ancestors of the Mongols.
However, many researchers doubt the correctness of this statement, because the peoples united by Genghis Khan lived much to the west of the aforementioned Mengu, who were not even nomadic livestock breeders, but were mainly engaged in hunting, judging by the Chinese chronicles.
«The Mengu or Minwu tribe, i.e. the genuine Mongols, lived far to the northeast, in the lower reaches of the Amur River and were exterminated by the Jurgen in the second half of the 12th century, and «in no way,» as academician V.P. Vasiliev emphasizes, these «Mengu» did not belong to the Mongols of Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan never came into contact with them,» says A.G. Olovintsov.
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Linguistic Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Saint Petersburg) Pavel Rykin wrote an article «The Creation of the Mongolian Identity: the term «Mongol» in the era of Genghis Khan,» which was published in the journal Bulletin of Eurasia (No. 1 for 2002). He also believes that there is no continuity or «genetic connection» between Mengu and the followers of Genghis Khan, and the word «Mongol» was not an ethnonym, but a polytonym, that is, the name of the community of people who form the state.
In this regard, we can recall at least Americans who are representatives of different races and peoples, but have a single identity in the eyes of residents of other countries.
Who are they
According to historians, Genghis Khan’s army initially consisted of two ethnic groups: the more privileged ones, which included the great conqueror himself, and people of less important origin. The Taijiuts, Uruud, Mankud, Jajirats, Barulas (Barlas), Barins, Dorbans, Saljiuts and Katazhins counted themselves among the first. The second group included: sulduses, ikirases, arulats, bayouats, korolas, congirats, ongirats and congrads. Then they were joined by other peoples who roamed north of the Great Wall of China: Zhalairs, Naimans, Onguts, Kereits, Merkits, Uighurs and others. Almost all of them were Turkic-speaking.
Author of the book «Turks or Mongols? The Era of Genghis Khan» gave four main arguments:
The Uighur script became the language of the official documents of the empire, since the closely related Turkic languages are very similar. And almost all of Genghis Khan’s followers, including himself, understood texts written in Uighur.
During the excavations of the Golden Horde mounds, archaeologists did not find a single coin that contained an inscription in the Mongolian language in its modern sense. But there are often Turkic inscriptions, including those made in Arabic letters.
Russians borrowed many words from the conquerors and their descendants, but they are all Turkic (karaul, quiver, roundup, bulat, yesaul, bunchuk, bazaar, shop, altyn, bezmen, tovar, money, arshin, armyak, etc.).
The names of Genghis Khan’s ancestors and descendants, as well as his relatives, are of Turkic origin: Yesugei, Kabul Khan, Targitai, Khasar, Joshi, Temulun, Temuge, Batu, Bereke, Mutugen, Yesentu, Shiban, Chagatai, Baydar, Ogedei, Sartaktai, Bayan, Tului, Kuyuk, Barak, Toktamysh. The same can be said about the closest associates of the great conqueror, major officials of the Golden Horde.
By uniting the disparate Turkic-speaking peoples under his leadership, Genghis Khan had to unite them, creating a kind of new historical community, so he introduced a single designation for all «Mongols».
Where did the name come from
An outstanding philologist of the Karakhanid state, Mahmud al-Kashgari, in the 70s of the XI century compiled the dictionary «Divan Lugat at-Turk» (A set of Turkic words), in which the word mengi means «infinity, eternity». By the way, the Turkish adjective bengi also translates into Russian as «eternal.» In general, the letters «m» and «b» in the Turkic languages often change, this is their common property has long been known to philologists.
As suggested by A.G. Olovintsov, Genghis Khan and his associates named their state «Mengi El», because the word «el» (il) in Turkic means «country». So the founder of the empire wanted to emphasize that his goal is to create a state that will exist forever. Therefore, the citizens of this new political entity began to be called Mongols, inspiring them with a sense of pride and unity.
The great conqueror planned to create a country in which there would be no titular, state-forming nation, and all people would be called Mongols. This was how Genghis Khan planned to end the constant interethnic strife.
Researcher P.O. Rykin believes that the self-designation «Mongols» was adopted by the followers of the great conqueror in contrast to the Chinese classification. The officials of the Celestial Empire, as is known, called all the nomads from the north Tatars, extending to those whom they considered barbarians, the name of the people who inhabited the border territories. Unwilling to accept the designation given by the Chinese, Genghis Khan’s associates began to be proudly called Mongols. And this word was not an ethnonym in that historical era.
This circumstance, by the way, explains the confusion with the name «Mongol-Tatars», which was assigned to the conquerors by foreign authors.
Modern Khalkha Mongols
Thousands of young and healthy men, representatives of the Turkic-speaking peoples, left in the 13th century to conquer other countries. According to many researchers, Genghis Khan and his descendants literally drained their native steppes of blood. But nature does not tolerate emptiness. And over time, representatives of the Tungusic-Manchurian peoples, who became known as the Mongols, mingled with the small local population, moved to these lands.
An unknown author of the chronicle «Shara Tuji» (The Yellow Story), compiled in the 17th century, pointed out that even four centuries after Genghis Khan, the population of those lands was only about 60 thousand people. Colonization of the territory of modern Mongolia by numerous Manchus was inevitable.
Representatives of several peoples who inhabited the Khalkha River basin later began to call themselves «Khalkha». Among them were: Hotogians, Darigans, Khorchins, Chakhars, Uzumchins, Tunguses, Tanguts, Sartuls and others. Having migrated to the west and pushed back the Oirats, at the end of the XV century they began a gradual colonization of the steppe.
«In the 17th century, the Khalkhas princes became masters of the whole of Mongolia, pushing the Western Mongols («Derben-Oirat») even further west, to the Irtysh. (But that will be another Dzungarian story.) The remaining former «Mongols of Genghis Khan» in the number of 6 tumens, as mentioned in the Mongolian chronicles of the mid–17th century, were practically assimilated and drowned in the Manchurian mass,» wrote A.G. Olovintsov.
According to statistics, the Khalkha people now number more than 2 million people. This is about 82% of Mongolia’s population. On the grounds that they form the backbone of the country, the word «Mongols» was artificially added to their ethnonym.
Another language and faith
The speech of the Khalkha Mongols formed the basis of the literary Mongolian language. It was formed in the XVI-XVII centuries on the basis of a mixture of the Turkic languages of the indigenous population of the steppe and the Tungusic-Manchu dialects.
The Mongolian philologist Bazylkhan Bukhatuly (1932-2012) in his work «A brief comparative historical grammar of the Mongolian and Kazakh languages» (Almaty, 1974 edition) noted that the Turkic languages (in particular, Kazakh) differ markedly from Mongolian. So, out of 40 thousand words recorded in dictionaries, about 3 thousand root morphemes and more than 600 affixes are common, of which 24 thousand derived words are formed. Moreover, only a quarter of Mongolian and Kazakh words have a complete lexical match.
That is, a modern Kazakh will understand the speech of some associate of Genghis Khan, but he will need an interpreter to communicate with the Khalkha Mongol.
Another important difference between modern Mongols and the great conquerors of the past is faith. As you know, Buddhism officially became the religion of the nomads who inhabited the steppes north of the Great Wall of China during the reign of Altan Khan (1543-1589), while most of Genghis Khan’s associates were shamanists.
It’s not that simple. However, the point of view given in the article that the great conquerors of the 13th century were Turks by origin is not recognized by all scientists. For example, the Merkits, one of the peoples attached to Genghis Khan’s army, could be of Tungusic-Manchu origin. This was written by Candidate of Historical Sciences, researcher at the Institute of Humanitarian Studies and Problems of the Small Peoples of the North SB RAS (Yakutsk) Vasily Ushnitsky in the article «The Mystery of the Merkit tribe: the problem of origin and offspring», which was published in the journal Bulletin of Tomsk State University (No. 1 for 2013). The scientist does not exclude the kinship of Merkits with Evenks and Yukaghirs. This means that the question of the ethnic origin of the great conquerors remains open.