Shigi Qutuqu

Shigi Qutuqu (c. 1178–1260)^[1] was a high-ranking official during the first decades of the Mongol Empire. The adopted son of the empire's founder Temüjin (later Genghis Khan) and his wife Börte, Shigi Qutuqu played an important role in the codification of Mongol law, serving with distinction as an administrator in North China. He may also have been the author of the Secret History of the Mongols, which alters and augments his position in early Mongol society.

Although the Secret History states that Shigi Qutuqu was adopted by Hoelun, Temüjin's mother, chronological difficulties rule this account out. The foundling was brought up in Temüjin's household and was one of the first Mongols to become literate. The Secret History exaggerates his role in the years after the empire's foundation, but Shigi Qutuqu was nevertheless appointed to several high-ranking legal positions; he served in this capacity during the Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty. He was however the commander during the only Mongol defeat of the western campaign against Khwarazmia, being overcome by Jalal al-Din at the Battle of Parwan.

Shigi Qutuqu continued his career as an official during the reign of his adopted brother Ögedei Khan, Genghis's successor. He executed a census of North China in 1235–6 which allowed the Mongol administration to overhaul its fiscal policies soon after. While some found his decrees and judgements oppressive and biased, other sources praise his honesty and judicial integrity. Having survived the power struggles during the reigns of Güyük and Möngke, Shigi Qutuqu died at the age of 81 during the Toluid Civil War.

Biography

Early life

The Secret History of the Mongols and Rashid al-Din's Jami' al-tawarikh both provide details^[a] of the early life of Shigi Qutuqu, but the accounts differ greatly.^[3] According to the Secret History, after the Mongol^[b] leader Temüjin (later titled Genghis Khan) had led a raid against a Tatar camp named Naratu Šitü’en, his plundering troops found a boy abandoned in the camp; he was recognised to be of aristocratic descent as he was wearing a nose ring made of gold and a silk jerkin lined with sable. The Secret History also records that Hoelun, Temüjin's mother, adopted the boy as her sixth child, naming him Shigi Qutuqu.^[5] This account is however difficult to believe. The raid on Naratu Šitü’en can be dated fairly precisely to a campaign Temüjin fought in alliance with the Kereit chieftain Toghrul and the Chinese Jin dynasty in May–June 1196, but Shigi Qutuqu was already prominent in Mongol society by 1206, which is implausible if he were a small child a decade earlier. He would also have been decades younger than his adoptive siblings.^[6] By depicting him as a noble at birth and later the adopted brother of Temüjin, this version may have intended to position Shigi Qutuqu as a more senior member of Mongol society.^[7]

Rashid al-Din's account of Shigi Qutuqu's adoption takes place more than a decade earlier. He records that when Temüjin and his wife Börte were still childless, they found a young boy and raised him as their son; if true, this incident would have occurred in the early 1180s as Börte's eldest son Jochi was born in 1184 at the earliest. Rashid al-Din's explanation, which draws upon natural relationships, is considered more plausible by modern historians such as Paul Ratchnevsky and Christopher Atwood.^[8] The comfort the adoption of Shigi Qutuqu brought Börte, who may have been depressed due to her difficulties conceiving, is sufficient to explain the honour and attention subsequently paid to him. It also clearly explains a scene reported after Börte's death, in which Shigi Qutuqu beats his hands upon her grave, wailing O, sayin eke minu! (lit. Oh, my good mother!).^[9]

Two incidents in Shigi Qutuqu's childhood were transmitted by Rashid al-Din. In one, he managed to subdue a herd of gazelles in a winter blizzard; in the other, he had a role in saving Tolui, Temüjin's youngest legitimate son, from a Tayici'ut bandit.^[7] In around 1204, Temüjin appointed the Uighur scribe Tatar Tong'a as a tutor for his sons; Shigi Qutuqu took to this new avenue very adeptly, recording his adopted father's judgements and decrees in concert with his tutor.^[10]

Under Genghis

During the great kurultai (lit. assembly) of 1206, Temüjin, newly entitled Genghis Khan, appointed many of his leading commanders to high positions in the new Mongol state. Two of them, Muqali and Bo'orchu, were honoured above all others, receiving legal protection and command of wings of the [[Military of the Mongol Empire|Mongol army].^[11] Shigi Qutuqu took offence to this generosity, with the Secret History recording his words as follows: "Have Bo'orchu and Muqali rendered greater service than others? Have they given more of their strength than others? When it comes to distributing rewards I appear to have rendered less service [than they]!"^[12]

Genghis Khan's response, as written in the Secret History, was to instruct Shigi Qutuqu to "punish the thieves and put right the lies" by writing down all legal details, including those concerning rewards distribution, in a köke debter (lit. blue book). He entrusted Shigi Qutuqu with legal jurisdiction throughout the entire Mongol nation, making him the first jarghuchi (lit. judge) alongside Genghis's own half-brother Belgutei, who was appointed to the position of Minister of State.^[13] Modern historians consider this account biased: Ratchnevsky suggests that the Secret History, seeking to demonstrate that Genghis Khan was influenced by those around him, "obviously exaggerates Shigi Qutuqu's authority", while Atwood believes that the chronicle conflated the events of the 1206 kurultai with subsequent appointments, when he may have replaced Belgutei.^[14] Nevertheless, Shigi Qutuqu was at some point charged with maintaining the laws of the Mongols, possibly by establishing a kind of case law, as was later recorded by Rashid al-Din.^[15] He would probably not have compiled these records personally, but instead supervised scribes also taught by Tatar Tong'a.^[16]

 

The capture of Zhongdu, depicted in the Jami al-tawarikh (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris)

Shigi Qutuqu participated in the first Mongol campaign against the Jin dynasty. After Emperor Xuanzong fled south to Kaifeng, the city of Zhongdu fell to the Mongols after a long siege on 31 May 1215. Although the city was thoroughly plundered, Genghis Khan personally dispatched Shigi Qutuqu to secure and confiscate the Jin dynasty's treasury.^[17] For his honest accounting and recording of the plunder, he was praised highly by Genghis Khan—an event not only recorded in the Secret History and by Rashid al-Din but also in the late thirteenth-century Shengwu qinzheng lu.^[18] The History of Yuan, composed c. 1370, notes that Shigi Qutuqu took administrative roles following the occupation of northern China, with his remit including the appointments of minor officials.^[19]

Leading the imperial vanguard during the Mongol invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire, Shigi Qutuqu was in command during the Battle of Parwan, the first defeat of the campaign for the Mongols.^[20] This reverse was described in detail by Rashid al-Din and other Persian chroniclers such as Minhaj-i Siraj Juzjani and Ata-Malik Juvayni, and more laconically by the Mongol chronicles: the Secret History, the Shengwu qinzheng lu, and the History of Yuan. According to Juvayni, before the battle at Parwan, Shigi Qutuqu had sacked and burned the city of Ghazni with around 10,000 soldiers, before helping to complete the capture of Merv.^[21] He was dispatched with around 30,000 men to defeat the renegade Khwarazmian prince Jalal al-Din Mangburni in early 1221 but was repulsed by his enemy after two days of hard fighting, narrowly escaping a painful death at the hands of Jalal al-Din's forces.^[22] News of the Mongol defeat triggered an uprising in the city of Herat, which had previously submitted and which was subsequently annihilated.^[23]

Upon hearing of his adopted son's defeat, Genghis Khan masked his private distress with anger and set out to avenge the loss with his three elder sons—Jochi, Chagatai, and Ögedei. He criticised Shigi Qutuqu's choice of battlefield, and noted that he thought his adopted son had been spoiled by constant victories.^[24] At the Battle of the Indus, during which Genghis comprehensively defeated Jalal al-Din, Shigi Qutuqu was appointed to guard the captured Khwarazmian soldiers.^[25]

Under Ögedei

 

A Yuan dynasty portrait of Ögedei Khan

Upon Ögedei's accession to the Mongol throne after Genghis's death in 1227,^[26] he honoured his adopted sibling by naming him "elder brother" and placing him after his sons in the Mongol order of precedence. Shigi Qutuqu participated in the 1231 campaign against the Jin under the command of Tolui and was involved in action along the Yellow River; he was assigned to the service of Sorghaghtani Beki after her husband Tolui's death and was present at the fall of Kaifeng.^[27] He also briefly participated in a 1235 campaign against the Southern Song dynasty under the command of Köchü, Ögedei's third son.^[28]

As a leading Mongol scholar and official, Shigi Qutuqu was appointed in mid-1234 to the position of chief jarghuchi in Northern China. Acting in concert with the Chinese official Yelü Chucai, he executed a general census of the captured territories from Yanjing in 1235–6.^[29] Medieval historians credit him with judicial integrity and administrative quality, while modern historians ascribe a good part of the success of Ögedei's fiscal reforms to Shigi Qutuqu's actions and policies.^[30] He was however known to favour Buddhist adherents such as the monk Haiyun (1203–57), whom he consulted for advice on matters practical and personal; Haiyun took advantage of this connection to obtain concessions for the Buddhist population during Mongol rule.^[31] The Song dynasty ambassador Xu Ting termed Shigi Qutuqu's financial excesses "dreadful", while other authors such as Liu Bingzhong blame him for high corvée assignments and a generally repressive economic atmosphere.^[30]

The remainder of Shigi Qutuqu's life is uncertain. As a senior member of the Mongol imperial family, he probably returned to Karakorum to participate in the kurultai following the death of Güyük in 1248;^[c] he managed to avoid death in the subsequent power struggles, possibly due to his divided loyalties between the Ögedeid and Toluid branches of the Borjigin imperial family. Having survived the new khagan Möngke (d. 1259),^[33] Shigi Qutuqu died in 1260 during the Toluid Civil War. It is unknown what side he took in the dispute, fought between Tolui's sons Ariq Böke and Kublai.^[34]

Legacy

Shigi Qutuqu laid the foundations for legal procedures across the entire empire through his early judicial activities.^[1] Under the name Siri Qutug, he was a central figure in the legends surrounding Genghis Khan until the late Middle Ages. The daughter of his son San-la married a high-ranking military engineer who established a private academy in Honan; their son Mu-yen Temur became a renowned book collector.^[35]

A significant number of scholars have connected Shigi Qutuqu with some role in the authorship of the Secret History of the Mongols. On the surface, the literate Shigi Qutuqu, who had grown up in Temüjin's household and had thus been personally involved in many important events, was one of the best-qualified Mongols to write such a history. The text itself is also very favourable to him—it discusses his successes very fully but dismisses his loss at Parwan in one sentence. The Secret History also completely ignores the career of Chinqai (c. 1169–1252), a leading Mongol official whose career rivalled Shigi Qutuqu's, and deprecates Muqali's career.^[36] As a scholarly dispute regarding the dating of the composition of the Secret History—on whether the majority of the work was written in 1228 and subsequently added to, or whether the work was created in toto in 1252 —remains ongoing, it is not certain whether the work was directed by Shigi Qutuqu himself, by a clerk in his household,^[37] or by other writers entirely.^[38]

In modern-day Mongolia, Shihihutug University in Ulaanbaatar is named after him.^[39]

References

Notes

1. The Secret History was composed between 1228 and 1260, while Rashid al-Din was writing in the early fourteenth century.^[2]
2. At this point in time, the word "Mongols" only referred to the members of one tribe in northeast Mongolia; because this tribe played a central role in the formation of the Mongol Empire, their name was later used for all the tribes.^[4]
3. Güyük was the son of Ögedei (d. 1241).^[32]

Citations

1. Atwood 2004, p. 464.
2. Atwood 2004, pp. 465, 492–493.
3. Ratchnevsky 1993, p. 75.
4. Atwood 2004, pp. 389–391.
5. Ratchnevsky 1993, p. 75; Secret History, trans. Atwood, § 135.
6. Ratchnevsky 1993, p. 76.
7. Ratchnevsky 1993, p. 77.
8. Atwood 2004, p. 464; Ratchnevsky 1993, p. 76.
9. Ratchnevsky 1993, pp. 76–77.
10. Atwood 2004, pp. 386, 464.
11. Ratchnevsky 1991, p. 90; Atwood 2004, p. 393.
12. Ratchnevsky 1991, p. 95.
13. Ratchnevsky 1991, p. 95; Hodous 2022, pp. 331–332; Secret History, trans. Atwood, § 203.
14. Ratchnevsky 1993, p. 80; Atwood 2004, p. 464; Dunnell 2023, p. 30.
15. May 2018, p. 77; Morgan 1986, pp. 165, 174–175.
16. Dunnell 2023, p. 30.
17. Atwood 2004, p. 620.
18. Atwood 2004, pp. 464, 499; Ratchnevsky 1993, pp. 80–82; Dunnell 2023, p. 36.
19. Ratchnevsky 1993, pp. 82–83; Atwood 2004, p. 612.
20. Ratchnevsky 1991, p. 133; Ratchnevsky 1993, p. 83.
21. Ratchnevsky 1993, pp. 83–85.
22. Atwood 2004, p. 436.
23. Dunnell 2023, p. 46.
24. Barthold 1992, p. 443; Ratchnevsky 1991, p. 133.
25. Ratchnevsky 1993, p. 85.
26. Atwood 2004, p. 100.
27. Ratchnevsky 1993, p. 85; Atwood 2004, p. 464.
28. Ratchnevsky 1993, pp. 88–89.
29. Atwood 2004, pp. 78, 464; Ratchnevsky 1993, pp. 86–88.
30. Ratchnevsky 1993, p. 88.
31. Ratchnevsky 1993, p. 87.
32. Atwood 2004, p. 418.
33. Atwood 2004, p. 362.
34. Ratchnevsky 1993, pp. 89–90.
35. Ratchnevsky 1993, pp. 90, 93–94.
36. Atwood 2004, p. 492; Ratchnevsky 1993, pp. 90–91, 93.
37. Atwood 2004, pp. 492–493; Ratchnevsky 1993, pp. 91–92.
38. Buell 2003, p. 244.
39. Shihihutug University introduction.

Sources

• Atwood, Christopher P. (2004). Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire. New York: Facts on File. ISBN 978-0-8160-4671-3. Retrieved 2 March 2022.
• The Secret History of the Mongols. Translated by Atwood, Christopher. London: Penguin Classics. 2023. ISBN 978-0-2411-9791-2.
• Barthold, Vasily (1992) [1900]. Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion (Third ed.). New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. ISBN 978-8-1215-0544-4.
• Buell, Paul D. (2003). Historical Dictionary of the Mongol World Empire. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-4571-8.
• Dunnell, Ruth W. (2023). "The Rise of Chinggis Khan and the United Empire". In Biran, Michal; Kim, Hodong (eds.). The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 19–106. ISBN 978-1-3163-3742-4.
• Hodous, Florence (2022). "Jarqu and Jarquchin". In May, Timothy; Hope, Michael (eds.). The Mongol World. Abingdon: Routledge. pp. 331–340. ISBN 978-1-3151-6517-2.
• May, Timothy (2018). The Mongol Empire. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-4237-3. JSTOR 10.3366/j.ctv1kz4g68.11.
• Morgan, David O. (1986). "The 'Great "yāsā" of Chingiz Khān' and Mongol Law in the Īlkhānate". Bulletin of the School of Oriental & African Studies. 49 (1): 163–176. JSTOR 617678.
• Ratchnevsky, Paul (1991). Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy. Translated by Thomas Haining. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-0-6311-6785-3.
• Ratchnevsky, Paul (1993). "Sigi Qutuqu (c. 1180–c. 1260)". In de Rachewiltz, Igor (ed.). In the Service of the Khan: Eminent Personalities of the Early Mongol-Yüan Period (1200-1300). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. ISBN 978-3-4470-3339-8.
• "Мэндчилгээ" [Greetings]. www.shihihutug.edu.mn. Retrieved 15 June 2023. Шихихутугаар овоглосон манай эрдмийн хамт олон Монгол Улсын дээд боловсролын тогтолцоонд өөрийн орон зай, хүндтэй байр сууриа эзлэв [Our academic team, named after Shihihutu, has taken its place and respectable position in the higher education system of Mongolia.]