It is important to remember that Chinggis Khan and his chief wife Börte actually had nine children, not just their four famous sons. These were Qojin (a daughter, and the eldest), Jochi, Chagatai and Ögedei (three sons), Chechiyegen, Alaqa and Tümelün (three more daughters), Tolui (the youngest son) and Al Altan (the youngest daughter).Footnote 1 Most scholars can rattle off the names of the four boys, whose central roles in the expansion, governance and political life of the Empire are well-known. But fewer people can name the five girls and their corresponding contributions to Mongol history, even though their marriages expanded the empire peacefully into realms just outside the Mongolian heartland in the early 1200s.Footnote 2 Thereafter Börte's daughters helped govern territories, contributed to military campaigns, and enjoyed status, wealth and influence.Footnote 3
This paper begins with one of these daughters, Chechiyegen, who married into the Oirats, then turns to the history of Chechiyegen's descendants, who wedded within the house of Tolui in Iran, the Ilkhanids, for many generations. Because Chechiyegen was Börte and Chinggis Khan's daughter, the Oirat family among Hülegü’s people enjoyed an excellent position and brilliant prospects. But an unfortunate series of adult Oirat deaths, few Toluid-Oirat births in the later years of the Ilkhanate, and the serious challenges posed by rival in-law families like the Qongrats and the Kereyits combined to compromise what had begun as the glorious history of a people.
Marriage patterns
The Mongols and their in-laws (quda) favoured certain marriage patterns that conferred social, political and economic benefits on everyone involved. In particular, steppe tradition liked a wife to marry a few of her children to the offspring of her brothers.Footnote 4 Although by modern definitions these marriages were consanguineous, and although the Mongols themselves opposed consanguinity and adhered strictly to a pattern of exogamous marriages, their definitions of exogamy concerned only the male line, not the female.Footnote 5 Thus a man could not marry his children to those of his own brother because the fathers were in the same family, but he could marry them to the children of his sister because in this case the fathers (the man, his brother-in-law) were not. As a result, when a man wedded one of Börte's daughters, he knew that his children could later marry back into the Chinggisid family, especially the girls.Footnote 6 That is, one or more daughters of an in-law man and his Chinggisid wife would wed princely cousins (their mother's brother's sons). For the record, although consanguinity has been linked to slightly higher infant and child mortality rates and increased genetic flaws, scholars caution against overemphasizing the biological risks while ignoring the social benefits such marriages provided.Footnote 7 Consanguinity over generations may have contributed to the poor health of the Ilkhanid ruling family beginning in the 1280s, but it was by no means the only cause.Footnote 8
Meanwhile, the benefits of intermarriage were significant. If the opportunity arose, for example, one or more of a woman's brothers might serve as military commanders for her Chinggisid husband. These brothers could then sire their own daughters and sons (with any wife), to whom their sister could wed the royal children she bore the prince. We already know that the Chinggisids frequently married their children to members of their own entourages; the tradition of exchange marriages confirms a preference for the wife's family within that entourage.Footnote 9 The next generation then produced daughters to be wives, mothers and managers of property, and sons to carry on family military traditions. These offspring would continue to intermarry through the female line when possible, which created an in-law family over generations. Not surprisingly, a chief ambition for these wives of Chinggisid princes was to place a son on the throne, which could benefit both families. But this was a real challenge: the Oirat in-laws had only three such opportunities in seventy-odd years of marriage with the Toluid Ilkhanids.
Chechiyegen
Chechiyegen was probably Börte and Temüjin's fifth child, and may have been born in 1187 or 1188.Footnote 10 Like all her sisters, Chechiyegen provided Temüjin and Börte with the womanly capital necessary to forge strong political alliances with likely men. Her well-chosen strategic marriage in 1207 into the Oirats gave her father control not only of the Oirat people themselves, but, through them, of their fellow Forest Peoples to the Mongols’ northwest.Footnote 11 The weddings formed a constellation: Chechiyegen married one son of the Oirat leader, her niece (Jochi's daughter Qolui), wedded the other, and her brother Tolui married an Oirat princess.Footnote 12
After marriage Chechiyegen surely assumed a managerial role over flocks and people in her husband's territories, since this was the work nomadic women performed.Footnote 13 She also bore seven children: Buqa Temür, Börtö’ä, and Bars Buqa (three sons), and Güyük, Orqina, Elchiqmish and Köchü (four daughters).Footnote 14 Chechiyegen's husband had an additional daughter, Öljei, from another woman.Footnote 15 Chechiyegen and her husband then married all of their girls right back into the Chinggisid house, probably in the 1220s and 1230s. Thus the Oirats were connected first to the Toluids when Elchiqmish married Arik Böke and Güyük married Hülegü; then to the Chagatayids when Orqina married Qara Hülegü; and finally to the Jochids when Köchü married Batu's son Toqoqan and produced his heir, Möngke Temür (r. 1267–80).Footnote 16 (See Table 1.) All four women became chief wives. But none of Chechiyegen's daughters married Ogodeyids, which raises questions about Chechiyegen's relationship to that house. But certainly, after the Ogodeyids were ousted and the Toluid prince Möngke came to power in 1251, Chechiyegen was the only one of Börte's daughters strong enough to send Oirat warriors to join the army that Möngke asked his brother Hülegü to lead to Iran in 1253.Footnote 17 Chechiyegen's daughter Güyük, Hülegü’s chief wife, began the story of Oirat fortunes in southwestern Asia.
Table 1. Chechiyegen's four daughters and their husbands
All women are in bold
*All family trees are partial, since a full representation would require three dimensions, not two
The greater lady and the first prince: Güyük Khatun and Jumghur
Not only did Chechiyegen's status as Hülegü’s aunt and a Chinggisid make Güyük into a chief wife, but Güyük's position was further supported by Hülegü's wedding to her half-sister Öljei.Footnote 18 As chief wife, Güyük managed the largest and best-appointed camp, and enjoyed wealth of her own, as well as control of some of her husband's flocks. It was usual for some of her husband's lesser wives or concubines to live in her camp: in fact, Hülegü’s five wives, nine named, and various other concubines clustered together in only two or three camps, rather than each woman having her own establishment.Footnote 19
Güyük also did her duty by producing two children with Hülegü. One was his son Jumghur, who became the first Toluid-Oirat prince. Although Jumghur was not Hülegü’s oldest boy, he outranked the actual eldest son, Abagha, whose mother was a Suldus wife living in Güyük's camp.Footnote 21 Güyük later married Jumghur back into her own family by wedding him, consanguinously, to her niece Tolun, the daughter of her brother Buqa Temür.Footnote 22 Güyük's other child was a daughter, Buluqan Aqa, who married a Tatar prince.Footnote 23 (See Table 2.) Further strengthening the Oirat in-law family, Güyük's brother Buqa Temür came to work for Hülegü in 1253 as a commander for the Oirat troops.Footnote 24
Table 2. Güyük, Hülegü, Öljei and Buqa Temür
All women are in bold
Tiny dotted line represents half-siblings
The presence of so many Oirats with the Ilkhanids thus allowed the creation of an Oirat in-law family, complete with sons and daughters to marry available royals. By wedding Jumghur to Buqa Temür's daughter, Güyük began what became the senior line of Oirat in-laws in the Ilkhanate, composed of descendants born from marriages between her own royal offspring (or, later, her half-sister Öljei's) and those of their brother. (See Table 2.) The junior line began when Hülegü married a daughter, Tödögech (from a concubine), to an Oirat man, Tankiz, who was not Chechiyegen's descendant, but whose son and grandson later also married Tödögech, allowing her to produce several Toluid-Oirat children.Footnote 25 (See Table 6.)
But Güyük never fully capitalised on her status, children and considerable family support because she died in Mongolia and did not go to Iran.Footnote 26 This marked the first major setback to Oirat fortunes among the Ilkhanids. As Hülegü’s chief wife and mother of a son, Güyük had been the senior member of the Oirat in-law family, but her death allowed other wives to step into the breach. The first of these was a Qongrat wife from Börte's people, Qutui.Footnote 27 Qutui herself gave birth to two of Hülegü’s sons, Tekshin and Tegüder, while concubines answerable to her produced an additional six, meaning that a full eight of Hülegü’s fourteen sons (although none of his seven daughters), came from her establishment.Footnote 28 In addition, Hülegü gave the great camp, in which Jumghur resided, to Qutui after Güyük's death. Further weakening Oirat family chances, Hülegü decided to leave Jumghur in Mongolia. If Güyük was even alive then, was she able to lobby for the inclusion of her son on the Iran campaign? We do not know.
But Qutui and the Qongrats were not the only rivals to the Oirats. Another contender appeared in the elderly Kereit princess Dokuz, whom Möngke gave to Hülegü as a wife and advisor in about 1253.Footnote 29 Dokuz's position as Tolui's widow (and Sorqaqtani's cousin), and the fact that this was a second marriage through the levirate, not a first marriage, elevated her over all other wives.Footnote 30 The Kereit thus became new rivals to the Oirats and the Qongrats in marriage politics. Dokuz's camp eventually grew to match the establishment that was first Güyük's and then Qutui's, although all of Hülegü’s children in Dokuz's camp—a daughter and three sons—came from concubines since Dokuz herself was well past childbearing age.Footnote 31 Furthermore, Dokuz traveled to Iran with Hülegü, while Qutui did not.Footnote 32 Nevertheless, Qutui did eventually move to Iran in the 1260s with the great camp under her care. But on the way disaster struck the Oirat family when Jumghur died of illness on the road.Footnote 33 This marked the second major Oirat family loss after Güyük, and the first death of a Toluid-Oirat prince and contender for the Ilkhanid throne.
The lesser lady: Öljei Khatun
As a result of Dokuz's seniority, the deaths of Güyük and Jumghur, and Qutui's takeover of the Oirat camp and dominance in sons, Güyük's half-sister Öljei had to maintain the Oirat family in what may have been a third wifely camp. Öljei rose as best she could to the challenge, helped by the fact that she and Dokuz were the only wives to go to Iran.Footnote 34 Öljei was further supported by the presence of her half-brother Buqa Temür with his family and troops. In 1256 Öljei produced a son, Möngke Temür, who became the second Toluid-Oirat prince after Jumghur, and a new candidate for succession in the Ilkhanate. Öljei also gave birth to three daughters, whom she used to consolidate Oirat family fortunes: one married a son of Buqa Temür, another a lesser Oirat man in Hülegü’s entourage, and the third the Tatar widower of Güyük's deceased daughter Buluqan.Footnote 35 (See Table 2.) However, although like her co-wives Öljei probably supplied Hülegü with concubines, none seem to have produced children, so Öljei's only human capital was her own offspring, especially since Güyük's children remained in Qutui's camp.
But Öljei made the most of her position: she and Dokuz are both described as chief wives, which suggests that Öljei enjoyed high status even though she did not quite measure up to Dokuz's tremendous position.Footnote 36 At the sack of Baghdad in February 1258, Hülegü favoured Öljei by giving her the last son of the famous Abbasid house.Footnote 37 After Hülegü’s death, his son and heir Abagha (r. 1265–82) honoured Öljei by remarrying her through the levirate.Footnote 38 Thereafter he demonstrated his esteem for her wisdom by assigning her to work with the commander Samaghar to tutor his half-brother, Öljei's 10-year-old son Möngke Temür, as a governor in the Caucasus region, where Abagha had stationed him in opposition to the Jochids.Footnote 39 At other times Öljei was able to intervene with Abagha in political matters, and was sometimes honoured with grants of territory.Footnote 40
The second prince: Möngke Temür
But Öljei's greatest asset, and the clearest hope for Oirat family achievement, was the prince Möngke Temür. She therefore took appropriate pains to prepare her son for success, not only through her work with him in the Caucasus, but also by marrying him to her half-niece and namesake, Öljei (the Younger), a daughter of Buqa Temür.Footnote 41 As Monggke Temür's chief wife, Öljei the Younger produced a daughter, Ara Qutlugh, who married back into the Oirat in-law family, while her co-wives and concubines gave birth to five other children, some of whom made strategic alliances outside the Oirats.Footnote 42 (See Table 3.)
Table 3. Möngke Temür to Taraqai
All women are in bold
Tiny dotted line represents half-siblings
Mönggke Temür's chance then came in October 1281 when he was 26 and Abagha chose him to lead the vanguard in an army headed for Mamluk Syria. Möngke Temür's maternal cousins, Buqa Temür's son Jaqir and his son Taraqai (husbands of Mönge Temür's sister Menggügen and daughter Ara Qutlugh, respectively) also went to command the Oirat troops.Footnote 43 Reports on the prince's role in this campaign vary: some claim he was so young that his commanders made the real decisions, while others describe him as the mastermind of the endeavor.Footnote 44 We do know that Möngke Temür was injured while fighting in the Mongol centre at the Battle of Homs on 29 October 1281 with Mamluk forces.Footnote 45 The Ilkhanid armies lost and withdrew from Syria, and Möngke Temür himself retired to his mother's lands in Northern Iraq to recover, and rage over his defeat.Footnote 46
Shortly thereafter in April 1282, Abagha died unexpectedly after a night of heavy drinking.Footnote 47 Now came the moment of Oirat opportunity. At a quriltai called to discuss succession, Öljei seized her chance and proposed Mönggke Temür as Ilkhan, despite his recent humiliation in Syria.Footnote 48 But even while the deliberations were underway, Öljei received the horrifying news that Möngke Temür had suddenly died of unclear causes.Footnote 49 This devastated Oirat chances in an instant.
The lean years
Oirat fortunes waned after the loss of their second prince, especially during the reign of Abagha's half-brother, Aḥmad Tegüder (r. 1282–84), the sole surviving son of Hülegü’s Qongrat widow, Qutui. Tegüder's reign marked a pinnacle in Qongrat family influence: four of his six wives were Qongrats, including the chief wife, Töküz, and Armini, the second wife and mother of five children (see Table 4).Footnote 50 This Qongrat family monopoly worked against the Oirats, whose presence among Tegüder's wives was maintained only by El Qutlugh, a great-granddaughter of Güyük Khatun, who bore no children with him.Footnote 51 (See Table 5.) It is possible that El Qutlugh marks the beginning of the period when royal wives produced very few offspring (with the occasional exception like Armini). This could have been a result of male and female alcoholism, as well as generations of consanguinity, among other, as yet unknown, reasons.Footnote 54
Table 4. Ahmad Tegüder and his Qongrat women folk
All women are in bold
Table 5. El Qutlugh (the lineage is not wholly clear)
All women are in bold
But despite the Qongrat wifely numbers and Armini's unusual fertility, Tegüder was soon ousted by Abagha's son Arghun (r. 1284–1291) and a coalition of commanders and widows.Footnote 55 Tegüder's fall also disempowered his Qongrat womenfolk, of whom Arghun married only the youngest and least influential.Footnote 56 Furthermore, Arghun's two highest-ranking wives were Oirat women, and Öljei actively supported his reign.Footnote 57 The Oirat family thus seemed poised to make a comeback.Footnote 58 Arghun's chief wife, Qutlugh, hailed from the junior line of Oirats, and bore Arghun's son Khitai Oghul, the third Toluid-Oirat prince.Footnote 59 (See Table 6.) But he was her only child, and Qutlugh died in 1288, followed by the prince in 1298.Footnote 60 Arghun's second Oirat wife, Qutlugh's niece Öljetei, was so young that he never touched her, and without children her influence was negligible.Footnote 61 As a result the Oirat wives failed to compete despite their strong position; their family was then unexpectedly sidelined by Arghun's third wife, the Kereyit Örüg Khatun, a niece of Dokuz, who crushed all wifely competition by producing five children, among them the future ruler Öljeitü.Footnote 62 Worse still for Oirat family fortunes, when Arghun himself died in 1291, Tegüder's Oirat widow El Qutlugh was accused of murdering him with witchcraft, and executed in January 1291.Footnote 63 This was an especially low moment for Chechiyegen's descendants. Güyük, her daughter Buluqan, great-granddaughter El Qutlugh and the two princes, Jumghur and Möngke Temür, were dead, as was Qutlugh from the junior line. Buqa Temür and the great patron Öljeï had disappeared from the historical sources. Who was left to lead the family?
Table 6. Tödögech and the junior line Footnote 52 All women in bold
*Note that Öljetei appears twice, once married to Arghun, once to Öljeitü There is some disagreement about Öljetei's parentage: Rashīd al-Dīn claims she was Sülemish's daughter (as represented here), but Qāshānī presents her as Ḥajjī's full sister (and therefore Chichek's daughter) instead.Footnote 53
The flight to Syria
Then Oirat fortunes sank lower. Rule next passed to Arghun's half-brother Geikhatu (r. 1291–95), who married no Oirat women at all.Footnote 64 In time Geikhatu's control of the Ilkhanate was threatened by his cousin Baidu, a grandson of Hülegü.Footnote 65 Among his supporters were the Oirat troops who had fought with Möngke Temür in Syria in 1281, led by Taraqai, a grandson of Buqa Temür and husband of Möngke Temür's daughter Ara Qutlugh.Footnote 66 (See Table 3.) But Baidu was defeated and executed by Arghun's son Ghazan (r. 1295–1304), after which Taraqai found himself a traitor.Footnote 67 Ghazan's Toluid-Oirat wife Günjishkab (a descendant of Jumghur) did nothing to help Taraqai, who fought his way out of the Ilkhanate with 10,000-18,000 of his troops and their families, and fled to Mamluk Syria.Footnote 68 His timing seemed ideal: an Oirat mamluk named Kitbugha had taken over in December 1294, and welcomed the refugees warmly.Footnote 69 But Kitbugha was ousted in 1296, and many of the Oirat leaders were executed after a failed coup in winter 1299–1300.Footnote 70 Thereafter the remaining Oirat people slowly assimilated into Mamluk military society through marriage and disappeared from historical view.Footnote 71
The last prince: Abū Sa‘īd
But back in the Ilkhanate the Oirat family made one last comeback. Although Ghazan's brother and heir Öljeitü (r. 1304–16) was the son of the Kereyit Örüg, only one of his twelve wives, Qutlugh Shah, was a Kereyit, and her only daughter died as a child.Footnote 72 Qutlugh Shah also must have been overshadowed by the four Oirat wives, including the chief wife, Ghazan's widow Günjishkab, who bore no children.Footnote 73 A second Toluid-Oirat wife was Büchigen, a granddaughter of Öljei from the senior Oirat line, who produced a daughter, Dulandi.Footnote 74 The third and fourth Oirat wives were either half- or full sisters, Ḥajji and Öljetei, from the junior Oirat line.Footnote 75 (See Tables 6 and 7.) Each sister bore a son, but only one, Ḥajji's son Abū Sa‘īd, lived to adulthood. Five other boys born to Öljeitü’s wives died as children, which raises some questions about the effects of generations of consanguinity.Footnote 76
Table 7. Günjishkab and Öljeitü Khan's other three Oirat wives Footnote 78
All women are in bold
Tiny dotted line represents half-siblings; (Ö) represents Öljeitü in the penultimate line
Öljeitü himself died in December 1316, and the 12-year-old Abū Sa‘īd became the only Toluid-Oirat prince to ascend the throne in 1317, 36 years after Möngke Temür's death. But Abū Sa‘īd's reign was coopted by his powerful commanders, ministers and mother. These complex political struggles have been admirably dealt with by others;Footnote 77 suffice to say that Abū Sa‘īd's death in 1335 ended Oirat family fortunes in the Ilkhanate, although they had already been on the wane.
Conclusion
The Oirats living in the Ilkhanate had started in an excellent position, since Chechiyegen's status as a Chinggisid princess made Güyük into Hülegü’s chief wife, and allowed Buqa Temür's appointment to the Iran campaign with the Oirat soldiers. The intermarriage of Güyük's children with those of her brother Buqa Temür, assisted by the contributions of children from the half-sister, Öljei, laid a strong foundation for future generations of Oirat in-laws and Toluid-Oirat royals, while the junior line of Oirats, descending from Hülegü’s daughter Tödogech and her Oirat husbands, provided additional cousins to support the senior line.
But despite their advantages, the Oirat royal wives placed almost no sons on the throne. Only Ḥajjī managed it with Abū Sa‘īd, but this was hardly a brilliant Oirat success since his realm was rife with problems. Rather, such vicissitudes as unexpected adult death and declining survival rates among the increasingly fewer children who were born joined with the challenges posed by rival in-law families like the Qongrats and the Kereyits to show an unexpectedly inglorious history among Chechiyegen's descendants.
