Regent and khatun of the Mongol Empire
Toregene Khatun
(also
Turakina
,
Mongolian
:
Д?ргэнэ
,
????????
) (d. 1246) was the
Great Khatun
and
regent
of the
Mongol Empire
from the death of her husband
Ogedei Khan
in 1241 until the election of her eldest son
Guyuk Khan
in 1246.
Background
[
edit
]
Toregene was born into the
Naiman
tribe. Her first husband was a member of the
Merkit
clan. Some sources state that his name was Qudu (d. 1217), son of Toqto'a Beki of the Merkits.
[1]
[2]
However,
Rashid-al-Din Hamadani
named her first husband as
Dayir Usun
of the Merkits.
[3]
When
Genghis
conquered the Merkits in 1204, he gave Toregene to Ogedei as his second wife. While Ogedei's first wife
Boraqchin
had no sons, Toregene gave birth to five sons,
Guyuk
,
Kotan
,
Kochu
,
Qarachar
, and
Qashi
(father of
Kaidu
).
She eclipsed all of Ogedei's other wives and gradually increased her influence among the court officials. But Toregene still resented Ogedei's officials and the policy of centralizing the administration and lowering tax burdens. Toregene sponsored the reprinting of the
Taoist canon
in North China.
[4]
Through the influence of Toregene, Ogedei appointed Abd-ur-Rahman as
tax farmer
in China.
Great Khatun of the Mongol Empire
[
edit
]
Soon after
Ogedei
died in 1241, at first power passed to the hands of
Moge Khatun
, one of Ogedei's widows and formerly one of Genghis Khan's wives.
[
citation needed
]
With the support of
Chagatai
and her sons, Toregene assumed complete power as regent in spring 1242 as Great Khatun
[5]
and dismissed her late husband's ministers and replaced them with her own, the most important being another woman,
Fatima
, a
Tajik
or
Persian
captive from the
Middle Eastern campaign
. She was a
Shia Muslim
who had been deported from the city of
Meshed
to
Mongolia
.
She tried to arrest several of Ogedei's main officials. Her husband's chief secretary,
Chinqai
, and the administrator,
Mahmud Yalavach
, fled to her son
Koden
in North China while
Turkestani
administrator
Masud Begh
fled to
Batu Khan
in the Pontic Steppe. In
Iran
, Toregene ordered
Korguz
arrested and handed over to the widow of
Chagatai
, whom he had defied. The
Chagatayid Khan
Qara Hulegu
executed him. Toregene appointed
Arghun Aqa
of the
Oirat
as governor in Persia.
She put Abd-ur-Rahman in charge of general administration in North China, and Fatima became even more powerful at the Mongol court. These actions led the Mongol aristocrats into a frenzy of extortionate demands for revenue.
[
clarification needed
]
Role in Mongol conquests
[
edit
]
Toregene had friendly relations with Ogedei's commanders in China. The conflicts between the Mongols and the Song troops took place in the areas of
Chengdu
. Toregene sent her envoys to negotiate peace, but Song imprisoned them.
[6]
The Mongols captured
Hangzhou
and invaded
Sichuan
in 1242. She ordered Zhang Rou and Chagaan (
Tsagaan
) to attack the
Song dynasty
. When they pillaged the Song territory, the Song court sent a delegation to
ceasefire
. Chagaan and Zhang Rou returned north after the Mongols accepted the term.
[7]
During the reign of Ogedei, the
Seljuks
of
Rum
offered friendship and a modest tribute to
Chormaqan
.
[8]
Under
Kaykhusraw II
, however, the Mongols began to pressure the
Sultan
to go to Mongolia in person, give hostages, and accept a Mongol
darughachi
. Mongol raids began in 1240. The Seljuk Sultan Kaykhusraw assembled a large army to meet them. The king of
Cilician Armenia
was required to produce 1400 lances and the Greek
Emperor of Nicaea
400 lances. Both rulers met the sultan in
Kayseri
to negotiate details. The
Grand Komnenos of Trebizond
contributed 200, while the young
Ayyubid
prince of
Aleppo
supplied 1000 horsemen.
[9]
In addition to these, Kaykhusraw commanded the Seljuq army and irregular
Turkmen
cavalry, though both had been weakened by the Baba Ishak rebellion. However,
Baiju
and his Georgian
auxiliaries
crushed them at the
battle of Kose Da?
in 1243. After that battle, the
Sultanate of Rum
, the
Empire of Trebizond
and the
Lesser Armenia
quickly declared their allegiance one by one to the Mongol Empire ruled by Toregene Khatun.
The Mongol troops under general Baiju probed the forces of
Abbasid
Iraq
and
Ayubid
ruled
Syria
in 1244?46.
Guyuk's reign
[
edit
]
She was an exercise of power in a society that was traditionally led only by men. She managed to balance the various competing powers within the empire, and even within the extended family of the descendants of
Genghis Khan
, over a 5-year period in which she not only ruled the empire, but set the stage for the ascension of her son Guyuk as Great Khan. During Toregene's reign, foreign dignitaries arrived from the distant corners of the empire to her capital at
Karakorum
or to her nomadic imperial camp. The
Seljuk
sultan came from Turkey?as did representatives of the
Caliph
of
Abbasid
in
Baghdad
. So did two claimants to the throne of
Georgia
:
David Ulu
, the illegitimate son of the late king?and
David Narin
, the legitimate son of the same king. The highest-ranking European delegate was
Alexander Nevsky
's father, Grand Prince
Yaroslav Vsevolodovich
of
Vladimir
and
Suzdal
, who died suspiciously just after dining with Toregene Khatun.
The Mongols practiced
polygamy
. Ogedei Khan's favorite son was Kochu, who was his through another wife, and he had nominated Kochu's son Siremun to succeed him after his father suddenly died in China in 1237. But some sources mention that Khoch was a son of Toregene and she did not want little Shiremun to succeed.
[1]
Toregene opposed the choice in favor of
Guyuk
, but despite the enormous influence she had on him, she was unable to persuade Ogedei to change his selection. She did, however, achieve her aims through cunning. When the lesser khans appointed her regent after her husband's death, she appointed her favorites to high positions in the imperial household and initiated what was to be a successful scheme to elevate her son Guyuk. When
Temuge
Otchigen, the youngest brother of Genghis, gathered his men and tried to unsuccessfully seize the throne, Guyuk quickly came to meet him. Toregene managed to keep a
Kurultai
from being held until it was sure her son Guyuk was favored by the majority. Toregene passed power onto her son
Guyuk
in 1246. She retired west to Ogedei's
appanage
on the
Emil
.
Despite her role in ensuring Guyuk's election as Khagan, the relationship between Toregene and her son eventually collapsed. Guyuk's brother Koden accused
Fatima
of using
witchcraft
to damage his health; when Koden died a few months later, Guyuk insisted that his mother hand Fatima over for execution. Toregene threatened her son Guyuk that she would commit suicide to spite him. Guyuk's men seized Fatima and put her to death by sewing up all of her orifices and dumping her into water; Toregene's supporters in the imperial household were simultaneously purged.
[10]
Within 18 months of Fatima's death, Toregene herself died under still unexplained circumstances. She was posthumously renamed Empress Zhaoci (
Chinese
:
昭慈皇后
;
lit.
'Brilliant kind empress') by
Kublai
in 1265-1266.
[11]
In popular media
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
Citations
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
C.P. Atwood
Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire
, p. 544
- ^
Broadbridge, Anne F., ed. (2018),
"Toregene"
,
Women and the Making of the Mongol Empire
, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 164?194,
doi
:
10.1017/9781108347990.007
,
ISBN
978-1-108-44100-1
,
S2CID
240364072
, retrieved
2021-02-01
- ^
Fazlullah, Rashiduddin (1998).
Jami'u't-tawarikh: Compendium of Chronicles (A History of the Mongols)
. Harvard University. p. 53.
- ^
Australian National University. Institute of Advanced Studies
East Asian History
, p. 75
- ^
The journey of William of Rubruck to the eastern parts of the world, 1253?55
, p. 62
- ^
Jeremiah Curtin
The Mongols A History
, p. 343
- ^
J. Bor
Mongol hiiged Eurasiin diplomat shastir, vol. II
, p. 224
- ^
C.P. Atwood
Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire
, p. 555
- ^
Simon de Saint-Quentin,
Histoire des Tartares
, xxxi. 143?44.
- ^
Man, John (2006).
Kublai Khan: From Xanadu to Superpower
. London: Bantam Books. pp. 76?77.
ISBN
978-0553817188
.
- ^
"Book of Yuan"
.
www.guoxue.com
(in Chinese).
Archived
from the original on 2011-06-09
. Retrieved
2021-02-01
.
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