The idea of a woman who considers no man worthy of her and sets strict conditions for suitors has led to various more or less famous creative works. However, it has a historical precedent glossed over by none other than Marco Polo in his Book of Wonders: the Mongolian princess Khutulun, an expert warrior, cousin of Kublai Khan and great-granddaughter of Genghis, who fought in battles alongside other soldiers and promised to marry only the one who could defeat her.

This brief summary will ring a bell to any comic book enthusiast and bring to mind the character of Red Sonja, a peasant from Hyrkania who, after surviving the massacre of her family by mercenaries, receives a divine visit that grants her the strength and skill of a warrior in exchange for the promise to give herself only to the man who can defeat her in combat, meanwhile living by putting her sword at the service of the highest bidder. Red Sonja was created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith based on a novel by Robert E. Howard, changing the era in which he had placed her (the 16th century) to place her in the same Hyborian Age in which Conan the Barbarian lived.

You don’t need to be a great opera specialist to enjoy Turandot, the work by Puccini that has one of the most beautiful and popular arias of the genre: Nessun dorma. Well, Turandot is the name of the protagonist, a Persian princess who cannot find a man she considers worthy of her and therefore locks herself in a tower, promising her hand to whoever can solve a series of riddles. Although this story comes from The Thousand and One Days, an anthology compiled by the eighteenth-century orientalist François Pétis de la Croix collecting exotic tales from various countries, in one of which he transplants an original Russian to Persia, although the operatic version is set in China.

Performance of Turandot in Muscat (Khalid Al Busaidi)
Performance of Turandot in Muscat (Khalid Al Busaidi). Credit: Khalidalbusaidi on Wikimedia Commons

Turandot was Turandokht, the daughter of Turan, and was inspired by Khutulun

Experts believe that the original Turandot was Turandokht, that is, the daughter of Turan (a region of Central Asia) and was inspired by the aforementioned Khutulun, which we will talk about next. That name, which means Bright Moon, is the best known but has also passed into posterity with the names Khotol Tsagaan, the Arabic Ay Yaruq, and other derivatives like Aigiarne and Aiyurug. All of them from the Far East, as she was born in the Ulus, a Mongolian khanate also called Chagatai because its ruler was Chagatai Khan, the second son of Genghis Khan, to whom he assigned the Transoxiana, a part of Turkestan between the Aral Sea and the Pamir Plateau to the Altai Mountains plus the region of Xinjiang (in Uighur China).

At the death of Chagatai in 1241, the khanate would pass into the hands of his relative Kaidu, grandson of his brother Ogodei (Genghis’s son who had inherited supreme Mongol command). Kaidu opposed his cousin Kublai for considering that he was turning his back on Mongol traditions, since the khan had promoted the adoption of Chinese culture and established a fixed capital, renouncing nomadism.

In fact, Kaidu refused to attend his proclamation, which amounted to denying him legitimacy because unanimity was required, and even allied with Berke, khan of the Golden Horde. Thus, in 1266, the Great Khan sent Baraq, a great-grandson of Chagatai, to replace him at the head of the khanate. Obviously, Kaidu was not willing to leave without a fight and the war broke out, in which he was supported by Möngke Temür, Berke’s successor.

The Chagatai Khanate at the end of the 13th century
The Chagatai Khanate at the end of the 13th century. Credit: Rowanwindwhistler on Wikimedia Commons

He was powerful enough for that, as according to Marco Polo it took five days to cross his territories. Territories, by the way, rich in cotton and of multiracial and multicultural composition, since they were inhabited mainly by Muslims but also by Nestorian Christians (from the Assyrian Church of the East) and Jacobites (better known as Monophysites, from the Syrian Orthodox Church). So it is not surprising that Baraq suffered a setback that forced him to withdraw. However, the devastation suffered in the khanate pushed for peace, which was achieved at an undetermined date, around 1269. He kept two-thirds of the Transoxiana, sharing the rest between Kaidu and his ally, and the three of them allied to conquer the khanate of Persia.

Baraq died during the campaign and his sons interpreted that everything had been a trap, since he started it alone, so they turned against Kaidu. But he was already too strong for them, having attracted all the Mongol lords to his side. He felt so secure that he even marched against Kublai himself… and crashed against him, dying in 1301 after being wounded in battle. He had spent thirty years of his life in that civil war, having his fifteen sons by his side. Interestingly, his favorite among them was the youngest, the only girl, whose skill in the art of war was extraordinary and who, if she did not become his successor, was partly due to the opposition of the male relatives.

She was Khutulun, born around 1260. We don’t have much information about her because her military genius overshadowed other details: raised among fourteen males, she had to match them, becoming not only a skilled horsewoman -like all Mongols, on the other hand- who outpaced other riders when charging the enemy, but also an expert archer -Genghis Khan decreed that all women should practice-, a good swordswoman, and even a splendid wrestler of bökh (Mongolian wrestling in which the first contestant to touch the ground with a body part other than hands or feet loses). Sometimes, Marco Polo recounts, she rode towards the enemy army, caught a man there, and brought him to her father, as skillfully as a hawk swoops on a bird.

Kublai Khan, whom Kaidu considered a traitor for embracing Chinese culture
Kublai Khan, whom Kaidu considered a traitor for embracing Chinese culture. Credit: Public domain on Wikimedia Commons

Physical strength undoubtedly helped. Although in movies and illustrations she is often shown almost as a model, the Venetian traveler describes her with an imposing appearance but in a different sense: So well formed in all her limbs, and so tall and strong, that she could almost be taken for a giant. He adds that she was very beautiful but also so strong and brave that in all the kingdom of her father there was no man who could surpass her in feats of strength.

However, Khutulun’s genius did not stop at prowess as a warrior; it extended to leadership, excelling in strategy and tactics. That’s why Kaidu always had her by his side and consulted her before and during his campaigns throughout those decades.

In that sense, it is ironic that centuries ago, and according to an uncertain legend collected in the epic poem Ballad of Mulan, in the 6th century there would have lived a Chinese warrior named Hua Mulan who disguised herself as a man to take her elderly father’s place in the imperial army. Her historicity is improbable, but the original verses gave rise to many subsequent versions, of which the Disney movie is the latest and precisely the one that has that cited irony because in it the character confronts a Mongol invasion.

American actor Rick Yune plays Kaidu in the Marco Polo series.
American actor Rick Yune plays Kaidu in the Marco Polo series. Credit: Marco Polo TV Series

Mulan left military life to return to farming, but Khutulun became Kaidu’s top general, and only he managed to convince her to marry, although she did so reluctantly and probably to dispel rumors circulating about her sexuality, which opponents spread by suggesting an incestuous relationship with her father. A husband would silence those rumors, and she eventually agreed.

Mulan left military life to return to farming, but Khutulun became Kaidu’s top general

However, tradition holds that she imposed as a condition sine qua non that the future husband defeat her in bökh beforehand. Suitors had to put up a bond of a hundred horses to be able to try, and according to reports, Khutulun managed to gather a fabulous number of equines in this way: ten thousand, a tenth of which she won from a rival who risked too much in his bet.

Finally, in the face of repeated failures of the candidates and the insistence of rumors, a wedding had to be arranged. We don’t know who the lucky man was, which indicates that he was a secondary figure, probably chosen hastily to resolve the issue, aside from a political convenience. We only have some chronicles indicating that he was a handsome man named Abtakul, who according to some was a hired assassin by Kublai to kill Kaidu but was discovered and received a pardon after impressing his potential victim with his courage, by interceding for his own mother (who had offered to die in place of her son). Other sources identify him as belonging to the Choros clan (one of those that made up the allied Ööled tribes).

Khutulun as a fighter and with the horses won, in a late medieval miniature.
Khutulun as a fighter and with the horses won, in a late medieval miniature. Credit: Public domain on Wikimedia Commons

The Arab chronicler Rashid-al-Din Hamadani introduced a juicy possibility in his work Jami ‘al-tawarikh. Rashid, who was not only a scholar but also a vizier of Ghazan, who in 1295 would become khan of Persia (his grandfather Abaqa, great-grandson of Genghis, was the man who defeated Baraq in the invasion attempt mentioned earlier), tells that Khutulun was in love with Ghazan.

However, we know that he, although he had abandoned Islam to embrace Nestorian Christianity, had several wives, and the main one was Kököchin, a Mongolian princess promised by Kublai to his father Arghun (who died before they could marry, so Ghazan took his place). That linked his khanate to Kublai, distancing him from any possibility of marrying the daughter of one of his enemies.

Anyway, Khutulun became so valuable that when her father was mortally wounded trying to wrest Karakorum from Kublai, he intended to appoint her as his successor. It couldn’t be, first because of the aforementioned opposition she encountered among her brothers, of whom she was the youngest; and second because she never had the desire to take power, as she enjoyed herself on the battlefield.

The bökh or Mongolian wrestling
The bökh or Mongolian wrestling. Credit: Marcin Konsek on Wikimedia Commons

The main rivals in the succession -a common situation among the Mongols- were Chapar and Duwa, although the latter, who was the one who won, was not Kaidu’s offspring but another general, his right-hand man. Khutulun opposed both by supporting the eldest son, Orus.

That situation lasted only until 1306, the year Khutulun died in circumstances, apparently, suspicious. However, she left a lasting memory of an undefeated warrior that still endures today during the celebration of the Naadam.

It is a traditional Mongolian summer festival in which three traditional tests are contested, bökh, archery, and horse racing; in the first one, the wrestlers wear a shuudag (tiny shorts) and a zodog (jacket that leaves the torso exposed) to make it clear that there are no women competing, as was the case when Khutulun participated. Quite a paradox.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on August 6, 2019. Puedes leer la versión en español en La historia de Khutulun, la guerrera mongola que inspiró la Turandot de Puccini

Sources

Marco Polo y Rustichello de Pisa, El libro de las maravillas. Los viajes de Marco Polo | Jack Weatherford, Khutulun, the wrestler princess | Jack Weatherford, The secret history of the mongol queens | Adrienne Mayor, The Amazons. Lives and legends of warrior women | Morris Rossabi, Khubilai Khan. His life and times | Jason Porath, Rejected princesses. Tales of history’s boldest heroines, hellions & heretics | Wikipedia

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