The wrestling princess known as Khutulun, , Aiyurug, or Aijaruc, all meaning moonlight.
She was also known as the princess of 10,000 horses, was the pride and glory of the Mongol Horde and great-great granddaughter of Genghis Khan.
In opposition to her uncle, the emperor Kublai Khan, who enjoyed the luxury of the Chinese court, Khutulun rejected the temptations of sedentary civilization and sought to maintain the hardy Mongol way of life.
A bit of background on the Khans’ Mongol Empire – it was, for the time, as big a deal as deals got.
At its height, it was the largest contiguous empire in human history, stretching from China to Europe and the Middle East.
The whole thing was started by Genghis Khan , who unified a number of nomadic tribes under a single banner.
Around 1162, Genghis Khan was born with the first name Temujin; he had to earn the name Genghis Khan.
“Khan” means ruler, and “Genghis” is based on the Mongol word “Tenggis,” which means “ocean” or “wide-spreading.”
The Mongolians took their fighting to the next level. They were trained to be stronger than any other army in the world, because it was the Khan’s goal to take over the entire world.
The Mongols developed on the Eurasian steppe, a mass of rolling plains, forests, mountains, and tundra with a climate of extremely variable weather.
Due to the difficulties of living in this area, organized mobility became a crucial component of any society there, and a unique management of people became the distinctive style of a Eurasian empire.
Along with killing people from on horseback, of course.
Their society began training their young boys on horseback riding and archery at just 2 years old. After a couple generations, the Mongols were unstoppable war machines.
However, other historians suggest the name Genghis could come from “Jenggis” meaning “right, just, and true.” Either way, pretty cool.
While Genghis Khan did bring many advances to the regions he conquered (religious tolerance, increased trade, meritocracy — all good things), you probably know him more for his reputation for brutality. Certainly he was known for it back in the day, too.
And it was not undeserved. Here’s an example: Genghis once conquered a nation called the Khwarezmid Empire – a Persianate Sunni Muslim dynasty of Turkic mamluk ( malmuk : a white or east Asian slave in Muslim countries) origin.
Khan killed so many Persians (modern day Iranians), that the population of Persia didn’t return to pre-Mongol numbers until the 1900s, nearly 700 years later.
Right after taking control, he decided to erase it from existence, burning towns to the ground and killing everyone in its government. He went so far as to divert a river through the deposed emperor’s birthplace, wiping it off the map.
This sort of thing was what he was known for, and it was those warlike traits that he passed down to his descendants and again -Khutulun was his great-great-granddaughter.
By 1260, the year Khutulun was born, the Mongol Empire was starting to fray at the seams, and civil war was imminent.
Basically, some of the Khans — Khutulun’s father Kaidu among them — favored the old ways of riding, shooting, and other trappings of the nomadic lifestyle, while Kublai Khan — Kaidu’s uncle — was more into politics, governing well, and other things that no doubt bored the average Mongol to tears.
By 1280, her father Kaidu became the most powerful ruler of Central Asia, reigning in the realms from western Mongolia to Oxus, and from the Central Siberian Plateau to India.
Eventually Kaidu and Kublai began outright warring against each other, in a conflict that would last 30 years.
Emperor Kublai Khan (grandson of Genghis Khan) had his work cut-out, keeping the peace.
Throughout his life, he would be constantly thwarted in his efforts to take over the mountainous lands of Western Mongolia and China, by, of all people, his own niece — Khutulun.
As the great-granddaughter of the most successful warlord in human history (no exaggeration), Khutulun could easily have lead a privileged life of palaces and fine food, had she chosen to ally with Kublai Khan.
Instead she dedicated herself to the traditional Mongolian pursuits of riding horses, archery, and kicking the ass out of anyone who crossed her.
Though Kaidu had fourteen sons, he relied mostly on his daughter Khutulun for advice and aid in military matters.
In 1260, Marco Polo described Yarkand, part of the area under Kaidu as “5 days’ journey in extent”; that its inhabitants were mostly Muslim although there were also some Nestorian and Jacobite Assyrians (Christian); and that it had plenty of food and other necessities, “especially cotton.”
In the Toluid Civil War between 1260 and 1264, Kublai Khan was warring with his own brother Ariq Böke, who was proclaimed Great Khan at Karakorum, Kaidu began to have major conflicts with Kublai and his ally, the Ilkhanate.
Meanwhile, the Chagatayid Khan Alghu, who supported Kublai as Khagan, ravaged the lands of Kaidu. This forced Kaidu to make an alliance with Berke, the khan of the Golden Horde.
After the defeat of Ariq Böke in 1264, Kublai summoned Kaidu to his court, possibly to discuss the future of the empire and give Kaidu his share of the Ögedeid appanage in China.
But Kaidu avoided appearing at his court and said that his horses were too thin to bear long distance travel because Genghis Khan had made a law that all branches of the family had to approve the granting of the title of Great Khan, Kaidu’s enmity was a constant obstacle to Kublai’s ambitions.
By 1293 A.D. and the continent-spanning Mongol Empire had formally broken up after a civil war.
The new Mongolian Yuan Dynasty controlled a tiny fraction of the Empire’s former territory–from present-day Southern Russia to Northern Thailand, the entirety of Tibet, and through to the Korean Peninsula.
While women in Mongolia didn’t shy away from a battle and were known for shooting with bows and fighting on horseback, impressive enough, Khutulun went even farther with her signature battle move.
She would bravely charge into the enemy ranks and yank an enemy soldier off his horse and drag him back to her troops with him still in her hand. The move was so impressive explorer Marco Polo compared Khutulun in a battle to “a hawk pouncing on its prey.”
“Sometimes she would quit her father’s side, and make a dash at the host of the enemy, and seize some man thereout, as deftly as a hawk pounces on a bird, and carry him to her father; and this she did many a time.”
That’s intimidating AF .
It definitely accomplished it’s moral boosting purpose for the troops.
But all of this paled in comparison next to her skill with wrestling.
Above all else, Khutulun’s true passion was wrestling.
Khutulun grew up with 14 brothers and surrounded by testosterone.
Seemingly learned from an early age how to confront and beat them.
As Khutulun grew older her reputation as a strong and cunning fighter grew.
When she reached adulthood, she frequently entered wrestling competitions–a popular spectator sport in the Yuan Dynasty, but what set Khutulun apart was that she never lost- ever.
She became ever richer by winning horses from defeated opponents, and eventually her herd of ten thousand rivaled the herds of the emperor.
The Mongols of Kaidu Khan’s clan valued physical ability above all things.
They bet on matches constantly, and if you won, people thought you were literally gifted by the gods.
Now, these weren’t your modern day matches, separated out by things like weight class and gender — anyone could and did wrestle anyone else, and they’d keep going until one of them hit the floor.
This was the environment in which Khutulun competed. Against men. Of all shapes and sizes.
As she grew older, she joined the public competitions and acquired great fame as the wrestler whom no man could throw.
How can we be sure of that?
Well, according to Marco Polo (and this is corroborated by other historians of the time, including Rashīd al–Dīn Faḍlullāh Hamadānī), papa Kaidu desperately wanted to see his daughter Khutulun married, but she refused to do so unless her potential suitor was able to beat her in wrestling.
So she set up a standing offer, available to all comers: beat her and she’d marry you. Lose, and you give her 100 horses.
She ended up 10,000 horses richer – and no husband.
Now, in these sorts of texts, 10,000 is like saying “a million.”
It’s shorthand for “so many I can’t count them all”
While 10,000 may have been hyperbolic, suffice to say, it was a truly ludicrous amount of horses, supposedly rivaling the size of the emperor’s herds.
She remained this stubborn about marriage even as she got older and pressure mounted on her to marry.
Marco Polo tells of a time where a bolder -than-average suitor challenged her.
He was so confident that he bet 1,000 horses instead of the usual 100.
Apparently he was a decent guy, because Kaidu and his wife really liked him.
Khutulun’s parents approached her privately and begged her to just throw the match. Just lose intentionally, they said, so you can marry this totally decent guy.
She walked away from that match 1,000 horses richer and yet again – no husband.
Unfortunately, due to her stubborn refusal to take a husband, people began to talk.
Of all Kaidu’s children, Khutulun was the favorite, and the one from whom he most sought advice and political support.
According to some accounts, he tried to name her as his successor to the khanate before he died in 1301. However, his choice was declined due to her male relatives.
This maybe why rumors began to spread around the empire that she was having an incestuous affair with her father (these sorts of slanderous rumors, you may begin to note, are a usual problem in similar historical tales).
Realizing the problems her refusal to marry was causing for her family, she did finally apparently settle down with someone — although who, exactly, is subject to some debate.
Sources vary about her husband’s identity – Whoever it was never beat her at wrestling, though.
Some chronicles say her husband was a handsome man who failed to assassinate her father and was taken prisoner; others refer to him as Kaidu’s companion from the Choros clan.
Rashid al-Din wrote that Khutulun fell in love with Ghazan, Mongol ruler in Persia.
Near the end of his life, Kaidu attempted to install Khutulun as the next Khan leader, only to meet stiff resistance from others — particularly Khutulun’s many brothers.
Instead, a rival named Duwa was appointed to be Great Khan, and Khutulun’s story here begins to slide into obscurity.
5 years after Kaidu’s death, Khutulun died under unknown circumstances, at the age of 46.
Afterwards, the Mongol Empire, particularly the more nomadic factions, began to crumble.
Khutulun could be considered one of the last great nomadic warrior princesses.
After her death, she was forgotten for centuries.
She only began her comeback to historical prominence starting in 1710 when a Frenchman named Francois Petis de La Croix, while putting together his biography of Genghis Khan, wrote a story based on Khutulun.
This story was called Turandot (“Turkish Daughter”), but it was greatly changed from the facts of her life. In it, Turandot challenged her suitors with riddles instead of wrestling matches, and if they failed her challenge, they were killed.
Centuries later, in the early 1900s, the story of Turandot was turned into an Italian opera — except, getting even farther from Khutulun’s actual history, the opera became about a take-no-nonsense woman finally giving in to love. Ugh.
But while the West may have totally rewritten history with its recasting of Khutulun into Turandot, Mongolia continues to honor Khutulun’s actual story to this day.
The traditional outfit worn by Mongolian wrestlers is conspicuously open-chest — the reason being to show that the wrestler is not a woman, in deference to the undefeated Khutulun.
sources
- Understanding World Societies, Combined Volume: A Brief History
- The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan
- badass of the week
- rejected princess
- mongol
- History Collection