Political Order in Pre-Modern Eurasia: Imperial Incorporation and the Hereditary Divisional System

LHAMSUREN MUNKH-ERDENE1

Abstract

Comparing the Liao, the Chinggisid and the Qing successive incorporations of Inner Asia, this article is prepared to argue that the hereditary divisional system that these Inner Asian empires employed to incorporate and administer their nomadic population was the engine that generated what scholars see either as ‘tribes’ or ‘aristocratic order’. This divisional system, because of its hereditary membership and rulership, invariably tended to produce autonomous lordships with distinct names and identities unless the central government took measures to curb the tendency. Whenever the central power waned, these divisions emerged as independent powers in themselves and their lords as contenders for the central power. The Chinggisid power structure did not destroy any tribal order; instead, it destroyed and incorporated a variety of former Liao politico-administrative divisions into its own decimally organized minqans and transformed the former Liao divisions into quasi-political named categories of populace, the irgens, stripping them of their own politico-administrative structures. In turn, the Qing, in incorporating Mongolia, divided the remains of the Chinggisid divisions, the tumens¨ and otogs,intokhoshuu and transformed them into quasi-political ayimaqs. Thus, it was the logic of the imperial incorporation and the hereditary divisional system that produced multiple politico-administrative divisions and quasi- political identity categories.

Introduction

Although many scholars consider the emergence of the Chinggisid power structure to have been a watershed in Eurasian political and social transformation because it appeared to have replaced the region’s ‘tribal’ order with a highly centralised state, some still regard it as a ‘supercomplex chiefdom’.2 Indeed, with the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Eurasia

1Lhamsuren Munkh-Erdene is currently a Humboldt Research Fellow at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Earlier versions of the article were presented at a conference entitled Mongolia in Anthropological Research: Recent Decades in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, 19–22 July 2012 and at a roundtable held at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton, New Jersey, USA, 5–8 December, 2012. The article in its present form was drafted when the author was a George Kennan Member at the IAS. The author owes a depth of gratitude to the IAS for its generous support. 2N. Kradin and T. Skrynnikova, “Stateless head: notes on revisionism in the studies of nomadic societies”, Ab Imperio,IV(2009), pp. 117–128.

JRAS, Series 3, 26, 4 (2016), pp. 633–655 C The Royal Asiatic Society 2016 doi:10.1017/S1356186316000237

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is believed by many to have reverted to a ‘tribal’-based social and political order.3 Thus, according to this paradigm, the existence of centralised state remained transient in pre- modern Eurasia, if not entirely elusive, and the ‘tribal’ order remained resilient, if not always dominant. However, David Sneath rejects this paradigm as “colonial-era misrepresentations, rooted in nineteenth century Eurocentric evolutionist theory” and argues that:

in Inner Asia many of the forms of power thought to be characteristic of states actually existed independently of the degree of overarching political centralization . . . The local power relations that since ancient times have made the Inner Asian state possible were reproduced with or without an overarching ruler or central ‘head’ ...Itwasnot‘kinshipsociety’butaristocraticpowerand state-like processes of administration that emerged as the more signiﬁcant features of the wider organizationoflifeonthesteppe...Thepoliticalrelations of aristocrats determined the size, scale, and degree of centralization of political power . . . The centralized ‘state’, then, appears as one variant of aristocracy.4

Furthermore, Sneath argues “the recognition that stratiﬁcation and the state relation are not dependent upon a centralised bureaucratic structure makes it easier to discern the substrata of power, the aristocratic order that lay at the base”.5 Thus, according to Sneath, pre-modern Inner Asian societies were not tribal but aristocratic and, their ‘states’, whether centralised or de-centralised or even ‘headless’, were aristocratic political structures. Thus, Sneath views what many scholars see as the state or the centralised state (such as a Chinggisid political structure) “as a variant of aristocracy”, that is, an aristocratic, probably centralised, state. Although Sneath elaborates very little on the origin, nature and transformation of his aristocratic order, his scheme leaves an impression that aristocracy was always present and it is the aristocracy that produces the centralised state rather than the other way round. However, more conventional scholarship maintains that the “medieval Eurasian nomadic tribe was a political organism open to all who were willing to subordinate themselves to its chief and who shared interests with its tribesmen”.6 Scholars of medieval Mongolia mostly subscribe to this view and Thomas Allsen for instance, writes that:

though deﬁned in genealogical terms, the lineage and the tribe were essentially political entities composed of individuals whose ties of blood were more often ﬁctive than real. In the steppe, common political interest was typically translated into the idiom of kinship. Thus, the genealogies

3See for example T. J. Barﬁeld, The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, 221 bc to ad 1757, (Oxford, 1989), and I. Togan, Flexibility and Limitation in Steppe Formations: The Kerait Khanate and Chinggis Khan (Leiden, 1998). 4D. Sneath, The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and the Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia (New York, 2007). pp. 1–5. 5Ibid., p. 197. 6R. P. Lindner, “What was a nomadic tribe?”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, XXIV, 4 (1982) pp. 689–711. Rudi Lindner extended or rather elaborated Morton Fried’s concept of ‘secondary tribe’ into the world of ‘nomads’. In fact, Fried himself ‘found’ his ‘secondary tribes’ among Eurasian nomads during much of their history, starting from Xiongnu down to the Qing Empire. See M. Fried, The Notion of Tribe.(MenloPark, 1975). p. 72.

of the medieval Mongols (and other tribal peoples) were ideological statements designed to enhance political unity, not authentic descriptions of biological relationships.7

Similarly, Peter Golden emphatically conﬁrms that “Much of the modern scholarship on the Eurasian nomads long ago recognized that ‘tribe’ and ‘clan’ were complex phenomena, involving the political integration, often unstable, of heterogeneous elements”8, while Thomas Barﬁeld asserts that

contrary to his [Sneath’s] assertion that anthropologists remain wedded to a genealogical conical clan model, the more common view is that such Inner Asian confederations were the products of reorganization enforced by division from the top down rather than alliance from the bottom up. It has long been accepted that ‘actual’ kinship relations (based on principles of descent, marriage, or adoption) were evident mostly within smaller units: nuclear families, extended household.9

However,Goldenstillbelievesthat“kinship...clanandtribe...musthavebeenthe building blocks on which later expanded and no longer stricto senso kinship-based political structures were constructed” and maintains “that Sneath’s thesis may be feasible for the late Chinggisid Mongol world”.10 Yet, he does “not find it a useful tool for assessing the pre-Chinggisid steppe polities”.11 Similarly, Barfield not only finds Sneath’s model ‘problematic’ for projection onto the pre-Qing period but also maintains that such “hierarchy was much weaker or non-existent among nomadic pastoral societies” outside of Inner Asia.12 In Barfield’s scheme, the tribal order is indigenous, intrinsic or essential to Eurasia while the state is an exception.13 Thus, Barfield boldly claims that: “The tribal organization never disappeared at the local level”.14 Indeed, scholars who subscribe to the ‘tribal paradigm’ seem to take ‘tribe’ as an essential or natural political organisation of pre-modern nomads, although many still see ‘tribe’ as an extension of kinship organisation. ‘Tribe’ for them is a higher level of kinship incorporation, albeit more complex and more abstract, involving many fictive elements.15 Thus, there was no need to look at the origin or genesis of ‘tribes’. The ‘tribes’ were the essential socio- political units of nomadic Eurasia. Thus, we have two different interpretations of pre-modern Eurasian political structure: tribal non-state and aristocratic state. In this article, however, I would like to look at the origin or genesis of the named categories, that is, the ‘tribes’ or the “aristocracy-led named groups”, as Golden puts it, in order to see whether pre-modern Eurasia’s political order was tribal or aristocratic.16 Thus,

7T. Allsen, “The Rise of the Mongolian Empire and Mongolian Rule in North China” in The Cambridge History of China: Alien Regimes and Border States 907–1368, VI, (ed.) H. Franke and D. Twitchett (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 321–413. 8P. Golden, “A review of The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia by David Sneath”, Journal of Asian Studies LXVIII (2009), pp. 293–296. 9T. J. Barfield, 2009. “A review of The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia by David Sneath”, Comparative Studies in Society and History,LI,4,pp.942–943. 10Golden, “A review of The Headless State.” p. 296. 11Ibid. 12Barfield. “A review of The Headless State.” p. 943. 13Barfield. The Perilious Frontier.pp.24–28. 14Ibid., p. 8. 15See for example Ibid., pp. 26–27 and Allsen, “The Rise of the Mongolian Empire”, p. 321. 16Golden, “A review of The Headless State.”p.295.

my questions are: where did these named categories come from, and how were they formed? Furthermore, in terms of political order, how principally different was the pre-Chinggisid Mongolia from that of the pre-Qing Mongolia? Tobe sure, not only is raising the question of the origin or genesis of ‘tribal’ and ‘aristocratic’ controversial but providing a well-grounded answer is extremely difficult if not virtually impossible. Furthermore, addressing this question by comparing the Liao, the Chinggisid and the Qing incorporations of Inner Asia would certainly raise a number of doubts.17 Therefore, to introduce the necessary caveats, I should add that what follows is not only unconventional and controversial but also conjectural and speculative. In all probability, this analysis will not be useful for understanding pre-Xiongnu (or Khunnu) Inner Asia. However, it is, I think, applicable to post-Xiongnu Inner Asia, and is certainly appropriate for post-Chinggisid Eurasia. Moreover, although the scheme does not pretend to explain every single case, I believe it to be valid in many of the historical cases found in the study of post-Xiongnu Eurasia. First, I will examine the Qing incorporation of Mongolia to show how the process transformed Mongolia as a whole, as well as Mongolia’s former tumen¨ sandotogs, into categories of quasi or non-political and sub-state (or sub-imperial) importance by demolishing their political structures and incorporating them into Qing politico- administrative structures. I will also show how the Qing incorporation of Mongolia created the relevant vocabularies of quasi-political population categories and sub-state or ‘under- state’ administrative ones. Then I will briefly examine the language of the Chinggisid incorporation to show the similarities between the Chinggisid and the Qing incorporations. Next, I will examine pre-Chinggisid Inner Asia to reveal the origins and transformations of the relevant polities and to compare the pre-Chinggisid political order with that of the pre-Qing period. Finally, I will provide a brief analysis of the nature of what I call “a military-oriented numerical hereditary divisional system” and its significance to the origins of ‘tribes’ or ‘aristocratic orders’.

Imperial Incorporations in Comparison In this section I will compare three successive imperial incorporations of Inner Asia, the Liao, the Chinggisid and the Qing, to show how these imperial projects consistently employed hereditary numerical divisions in incorporating Inner Asia into their realm. Starting with the Qing incorporation of Mongolia, I will move on to the Chinggisid and the Liao incorporations regressively to emphasize the transformations and continuities of hereditary divisional systems and the political order.

The Qing Incorporation of Mongolia: The Creation of Khoshuus and Ayimaqs

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Mongols had come to be known in European scholarship as a ‘race’ or ‘nation’ consisting of numerous ‘tribes’ such as Chakhar, Khalkha,

17It should be noted that the comparison is merely structural and focuses only on ‘tribal’ or ‘aristocratic’, or minqan or khoshuu-level structures.

Khorchin and so on. Thus, for example, Robert Latham, in his 1859 Descriptive Ethnology,18 provides a lengthy description of numerous Mongolian ‘tribes’ and assures that:

in no part of the world, Arabia itself not excepted, is the tribal system more developed than in Mongolia. The connection between the members of a tribe is that of blood, pedigree, or descent; the tribe itself being, in some cases, named after a real or supposed patriarch.19 The tribe, by which term we translate the native name aimauk,oraimak, is a large division, falling into so many kokhum [khoshuu] or banners.20

So, the belief that pre-modern Mongolia had always consisted of numerous ‘tribes’ established itself as the dominant paradigm for the understanding of pre-modern Mongolia and since than this paradigm has dominated the ﬁeld. Even the most vociferous critic of tribalism Morton Fried himself conceded that “secondary tribalism existed as the prelude to the rise of the massive secondary state[s]” in Eurasia such as Xiongnu, Turk, Mongol and Manchu Empires.21 Indeed, under the Qing, all of the Mongols were divided into some 200 khoshuus(or banners). While all of the khoshuus of the Qing ‘External Mongolia’ (gadagadu mongqol)22 were the hereditary territorial domains of Mongol ruling princes, some of the Mongol khoshuus that were not part of this ‘External Mongolia’ were divisions governed by Qing- appointed ofﬁcials, such as Chakhar. While most of the khoshuus of External Mongolia were grouped into chuulgan (aka league), many were not. Chuulgan was an assembly of the ruling

18Latham provides a lengthy chapter on The Mongolians citing prominent orientalists of the time such as Julius Klaproth (1783–1835) and Isaak Jacob Schmidt (1779–1847) and makes heavy use of the English translation of Egor Timkowsky’s (1790–1875) celebrated work. See R. Latham, Descriptive Ethnology: Eastern and Northern Asia-Europe, Volume 1, (London, 1859). pp. 289–340. 19Latham’s words echo Rashid al-Din who wrote “There is not one among them who does not know his tribe and lineage. Nations other than the Mongols do not have such a custom – except for the Arabs, who also keep their genealogy.” See Rashiduddin Fazlullah, Jami‘u’t-tawarikh: Compendium of Chronicles, A history of the Mongols. Part I. Trans. W. M. Thackston, (Cambridge, MA, 1998). p. 116. 20Latham, Descriptive Ethnology,p.290. 21Fried, The Notion of Tribe,p.72. 22The conventional rendering of the terms gadagadu (tulergi,andwai)anddotogadu (dorgi and nei) as –‘outer’ and ‘inner’ is inaccurate. It not only occludes the nature of the relations that the Manchu and the Mongol principalities had but also misdirects our attention. When (some parts of) the Inner (ob¨ ur¨ ) Khalkha and some other minor Mongol nobles submitted to the Manchu with their subjects, they were integrated into the Manchu eight banners making them subjects of the Manchu state. They were thus accordingly called ‘internal (dotagadu, dorgi and nei) Mongols’ and were always listed along with the Manchus and Heavy Troops as ‘internal Mongols’. See for example Mongqol dangsa ebhemel-un¨ emhithel, III (Ob¨ ur¨ Mongqol-un arad-un heblel-un¨ horyi-a, 2003) p. 215. In contrast with the ‘internal Mongols’, the Manchus designated all other Mongols’ such as Khorchin, Kharachin and others’ as ‘external (gadagadu or tulergi) Mongols’. See M. Weiers, “Die Historische Dimension Des Jade-Siegels Zur Zeit Des Mandschuherrschers Hongtaiji”, Zentral-Asiatische Studien, XXIV (1994), pp.119–145. However, in bilateral relations with the Manchu ulus these intra-Mongol named categories were referred to as Khorchin ulus,Kharachinulus and so on, suggesting a status equal to the Manchu ulus. Thus ‘internal’ indicated a subservient relationship with the Manchu state, while the designation ‘external’ suggested the opposite. Indeed, the ‘external Mongols’ or Khorchin, Kharachin and the other Mongol uluses were the treaty allies to the Manchu ulus. They were by no means subject to the Manchu state. See L. Munkh-Erdene, “The 1640 Great Code: an Inner Asian parallel to the Treaty of Westphalia”, Central Asian Survey, XXIX, 3 (2010)pp.269–288; and “The Qing transformation of Mongolia: structural ethnicization and tribalization”, A paper presented at the international workshop “Administrative and Colonial Practices in Qing Ruled China: Lifanyuan and Libu Revisited”, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, 7–8 April, 2011. Therefore, the letter, using ‘external Mongol ulus’, not only adopts Manchu terminology but also signiﬁes the status of those uluses as being external to the Manchu state. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, External Mongolia (gadagadu mongqol) roughly embraced both Inner (ob¨ or)¨ and Outer (ar) Mongolia.

princes of the several khoshuus grouped together by the Qing. They held an assembly once in three years at a ﬁxed locality after which the chuulgan was named. At the same time, Mongolia was divided into nearly 40 ayimaqs. Most of these ayimaqs had their own distinctive names, while six of them shared a common name.23 While all the ayimaqs had clearly demarcated territories, four of them had nominal khans after whose titles they were named. While some of the ayimaqs were formed of but a single khoshuu and were grouped into chuulgan with several other ayimaqs, most were formed of two or more khoshuus, while some larger ayimaqs were divided into more than 20 khoshuusandwere formed into chuulgans in themselves. Yet, if we take khoshuu and chuulgan as parts of the Qing governing structure, we can see that ayimaq was clearly not. It is these ayimaqsthatbecame known as ‘tribes’. What, then, were they? Most of the names of these ayimaqs do not appear in the sources of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Instead, their names started to appear in Ming sources.24 In the Mongolian sources of the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, they appear as tumen¨ sandotogsorkhoshuus. According to these sources, pre-Qing Mongolia consisted of tumen¨ sandotogs(orkhoshuus at least in the Khalkha and the Altan Khan’s codes).25 The tumen¨ and otog were hierarchically nested divisions of Mongolia: that is, while Mongolia was divided into tumen¨ s, these tumen¨ s were, in turn, divided into otogs(orkhoshuus). In fact, on the eve of the Qing incorporation, eastern Mongolia consisted of six tumen¨ s divided into 54 otogs while western Mongolia was consisting of four tumen¨ s and numerous otogs.26 All the tumen¨ sandotogs had distinctive names, designated territories, governing princes and a multitude of ofﬁcials, and they shared common governing institutions and legal codes and so on. However, because the Dayan Khanid princes apportioned these tumen¨ sandotogsas hereditary shares (qubi) or appanages among themselves, these divisions became autonomous princely domains in themselves.27 Thus, by the early seventeenth century, Mongolia with its fragmented sovereignty and decentralised political power – where the sovereignty of the Great Khan was nominal, while the khans and khung taijis or the territorial princes were the effective rulers of their immediate domains – was a fragmented, decentralised realm similar to the Holy Roman Empire.28 Consequently, by the early seventeenth century some of these tumen¨ s were referred to in Mongolian chronicles as ulus.29 The term ulus was used for princely domains of various sizes and is best understood as meaning the political community established by the state or

23According to Iletgel Shastir, there were six Khalkha ayimaqs. See Zarligaar togtooson Mongol, Khoton aimgiin wan gung¨ u¨udiin¨ iletgel shastir, (ed.) A. Ochir, Vol.1 (Ulaanbaatar, 2007). 24See H. Serruys, Sino-Mongol Relations during the Ming II, The Tribute System and Diplomatic Missions (1400-1600), (Brussels, 1967), and D. Pokotilov, History of the Eastern Mongols during the Ming Dynasty from 1368 to 1634, translated by Rudolf Loewenthal (Arlington, VA, 1976). 25Munkh-Erdene, “The 1640 Great Code”. 26See C. Atwood, “Banner Otog, thousand: appanage communities as the basic unit of traditional Mongolian society, Mongolian Studies, XXXIV (2012), pp. 1–76 and C. Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire (New York, 2004.), pp. 430–431, 505. 27Munkh-Erdene, “The 1640 Great Code”. 28Ibid. 29J. Elverskog, The Jewel Translucent Sutra: Altan Khan and the Mongols in the Sixteenth Century (Leiden, 2003), pp. 242, 253, 277, 278.

rulership project.30 In the documents detailing Manchu–Mongolian relations and in early Qing documents all of the tumen¨ s and some of the otogs were called ulus in Mongolian and gurun in Manchu, indicating a certain level of political autonomy. Yet, with the declaration of the Qing Empire, all of them were uniformly designated ayimaq.31 Indeed, until the Qing rule of Mongolia, as Christopher Atwood has demonstrated, ayimaq was never used to designate intra-Mongol divisions or categories.32 Instead, it was mainly used to denote confessional/religious and as well as temporary task units. Then, how did the former tumen¨ s and otogs come to be known as ayimaqs? What made them ayimaqs? What was an ayimaq? As the sources show, the Manchu rulers readily recognised most of the Mongolian tumen¨ s as well as many otogsasuluses before Ligdan’s demise. This recognition of Mongolian tumen¨ s as uluses was aimed at making them independent from the Mongol Great Khan.33 In the process, however, the Mongolian Great Khan was removed and Mongolia was dismantled as a realm. By claiming the imperial throne left vacant by Ligdan’s demise, Hong Taiji successfully persuaded his Mongol noble allies to unite under his sway. In adopting and embracing the rhetoric of Mongol uniﬁcation, Hong Taiji and the Mongol nobles had to put the emergent Mongol uluses (as potentially autonomous princely domains) back into common Mongol fold.34 In doing so, Hong Taiji and the Mongol nobles, wary of reviving Mongolian political hierarchy and integration, adopted the term ayimaq from a Manchu precedence and cognate (aiman) to embrace the emergent uluses as equal divisions or subdivisions of Mongolia, thus transcending their former tumen¨ and otog hierarchies. Furthermore, Mongol tumen¨ –ulus– ayimaqs were incorporated into the Qing Empire as ‘external vassal domains’ (gadagadu muji (literally external province) or gadagadu ayimaq (literally external divisions) or tulergi golo (literally external province) or wai-fan (literally external ﬁefdom), and just as ‘External Mongolia’ (gadagadu mongqol) was established as the dominant designation for the Manchu concept of tulergi golo,soayimaq was established as the term for its divisions.35 Thus, the dismantlement of Mongolia as an independent polity and its incorporation by the Qing as discrete vassal princely domains transformed the tumen¨ sandotogsintoayimaqs. What, then, was an ayimaq? Certainly, ayimaqs were divisions or subdivisions of External Mongolia, a peripheral territory of the Qing Empire.36 At the same time, as vassal princely domains of the Qing Empire, ayimaqs were subdivisions of the Qing Empire and as such the ayimaqs were subordinate or inferior to the imperial state units. Yet, as ‘external vassal domains’, ayimaqs enjoyed a degree of status and autonomy, including a degree of self-rule, a distinctive name, ‘territorial integrity’ and, the ability to form chuulgan assemblies and

30L. Munkh-Erdene, “Where did the Mongol Empire come from? Medieval Mongol ideas of people, state and empire, Inner Asia, XIII, 2,(2011)pp.211–237. 31Munkh-Erdene, “The Qing transformation of Mongolia”. 32C. Atwood, “How the Mongols got a word for tribe—and what it means”, Studia Historica Mongolica, Tomus X(2010)pp.63–89. 33Munkh-Erdene, “The 1640 Great Code”. 34See Dayiching ulus-un magad hauli (Qing veritable records), II (Ob¨ ur¨ Mongqol-un soyol-un heblel-un¨ horyi-a, Hayilar hota, 1990), p. 772; Munkh-Erdene “The Qing transformation of Mongolia”. 35Munkh-Erdene, “The Qing transformation of Mongolia”. 36Note that all the new terminology, such as ‘External Mongolia’ (gadagadu mongqol), external princely domains (gadagadu ayimaq or muji, tulergi golo or wai-fan) displace Mongolia or Mongolian uluses from their independent or self-contained positions and reduce them to that of dependence on, subordination to and subdivision of, periphery to and inferior to the Qing Empire and emperor.

the privilege of special entries in imperial registers. However, to win the allegiance of the Mongol nobles and to break the power of the larger tumen¨ –ulus–ayimaqs, Hong Taiji and subsequent Qing emperors continued to recognise the hereditary ruling claims of the minor Mongol nobles over their immediate subjects and territories by recognising them as hereditary ruling princes (jasaq) and institutionalising their domains as khoshuus. All of the larger ayimaqs were divided into a number of khoshuus and no larger ayimaq was left with a single overarching ruler. Instead, each khoshuu was an autonomous domain independent from all others. The power and authority of former rulers of the ayimaqs(ortumen¨ and otog) was effectively reduced to their own immediate khoshuus, though all of them enjoyed higher titles, ranks and annuities and some even retained their titles of khan. Thus, there was no real integration and rulership above the khoshuu level in the larger ayimaqs. This effectively resulted in the dismantling of the tumen¨ –ulus–ayimags. The former tumens¨ were, to be sure, the largest of these units. However, small ayimaqs formed by a single khoshuussurvivedasa single politico-administrative unit in the form of the new Qing khoshuu. The larger ayimaqs, however, became more or less headless realms. At the same time, in place of phrases such as mongqol ulus or mongqol irgen, the Qing deployed the single, simple category ‘Mongols’ (mongqolchud or mongqolud)todesignate Mongolia’s population.37 Thus, the Qing uniformly categorised the population of Mongolia simply as ‘the Mongols.’ Since the ayimaqs (as uluses) had been emergent kingdoms and princedoms before their incorporation into the Qing, we would expect their populations to have developed distinct categorical identities, bearing their ayimaqs’ names. However, this does not appear to be the case. We do not find any mention of Khorchins, Kharachins, Tumeds¨ or Ordoses among the population of the Qing External Mongolia (contemporary Inner Mongolia) in the sources, referred to in the way that the ‘Mongols’ (mongqolchud or mongqolud) are. Instead, we find only references to “the Mongols of ...” Khorchin, Kharachin, Tumed¨ and Ordos.38 We do, however, find a few instances where the populations

37See Munkh-Erdene, “The Qing transformation of Mongolia”. The expressions ‘mongqol-ud’and ‘mongqolchud’, that is, the Mongols, seem to have been terms of Manchu invention. These expressions do not appear in any of pre-Qing Mongol sources or the Mongol chronicles of the seventeenth century. The 1652 Qing veritable records is the earliest source to employ both ‘mongqol-ud’and‘mongqolchud’. See Dayiching ulus-un magad hauli, II, pp. 359, 545, 591. Subsequently, ‘mongqolchud’ appear in the eighteenth-century Mongol chronicles starting with Lomi’s 1732 work. See Lomi, Mongol borjigid owgiin tuükh¨ , (Ulaanbaatar, 2006), pp. 14–16. While Mongol ulus was too political and competing with the Dayiching ulus (literally Great Qing Ulus), irgen became a designation for the Chinese. However, the main reason seems to have been that Mongolia no longer presented a political category or state. In fact, the declaration of the Qing Empire was the final effectuating stroke of the end of Mongolia as a state (ulus). With it, Mongolia was relegated to the realm of the quasi-political. Indeed, the designation ‘Mongol ulus’(mongqol ulus) or ‘external Mongol ulus’(gadagadu mongqol ulus) that appear quite often in the seventeenth- century Qing documents, including the Mongol Code,printedin1696, disappear from the Qing documents in the eighteenth century. See Tsaadjin bichig (Mongol’skoe ulojenie) Tsinskoe zakonodatel’sto dlya mongolov 1627–1694 gg,(ed.) andtranslatedbyS.D.Dylykov,(Moskva,1998), pp. 16–17. Thus, the designation does not appear in Khuul’ zuilyn¨ bichig enacted in 1789 and 1816 at all. Instead, expressions like ‘external Mongols’ (gadaad mongolchuud), or ‘inner and outer Mongols’ (dotood, gadaad mongolchuud) or ‘many Mongol aimags’ are used. See B. Bayarsaikhan, (ed.), Mongolyn tor,¨ erkh zuin¨ tuükh¨ (deej bichig), volume 4.part1, Zarligaar togtooson Gadaad Mongolyn toriig¨ zasakh yavdlyn yamny khuul’ zuiliin¨ bichig, part 1, (Ulaanbaatar, 2008), pp. 39, 43. 38Though not exhaustive, an examination of the sources shows that the inhabitants of these ayimaqswere generally known as the Mongols. Princely families, however, were clearly identified by these ayimaqs, such as the Prince of Khorchin, to cite one example. Thus, these ayimaqs appear as domains of princely houses rather than population groups.

of Khalkha, Oyirad and Chakhar are referred to as Khalkhas, Oyirads, and Chakhars.39 The Chakhar banners were not part of Qing External Mongolia, and Khalkha existed as an independent power until the end of the seventeenth century; indeed, even thereafter Khalkha remained relatively separate and its khans retained their titles too. Certainly, the Oyirads were able to maintain their independence for the longest period of time. Yet, the majority of the sources still talk of the ‘Mongols of Khalkha’ and so on. We also do not find any origin myth or any cultural description of the ayimaqs comparable to what we find with regard to the Mongols.40 All of the princes and princely lineages were, however, invariably identified by their ayimaqs. Indeed, the Iletgel Shastir actually equates ayimaq to noble houses. As this work is a genealogy of the Mongol princes that extensively integrates information from the Da Qing Yi tong zhi ,itfusesayimaqsandkhoshuuswith their ruling lineages. Thus we read statements such as “Khorchin’s ancestor (ov¨ og¨ ) is Khavt Khasar, younger brother of Yuan Taizu” or “Tsitsig . . . is the ancestor of the two khoshuusof Tusheet¨ khan Uuba and Zasagt jun¨ wang Budach . . . Namsrai . . . is the ancestor of the three khoshuus of Darkhan chin wang Manzushir, Bint jun¨ wang Khongor and beile Dongor” or “Among the external Mongols, there are two who are named Dorw¨ od.¨ Though the name is identical, descent/lineage is different. One has Choros ovog, and the offspring of Buhan, a noble of Oirad . . . The other has Borjigid ovog, and the offspring of Khavt Khasar”.41 However, a closer reading reveals that Khasar is not the ancestor of the Khorchin ayimaq as a domain with its population but the ancestor of the Khorchin ruling princes as it says: “Present six zasags (or ruling princes) of Khorchin, and also Jalayid, Dorw¨ od,¨ Gorlos, Ar Khorchin, aimag of Dorw¨ on¨ khuükhed,¨ Muumyangan, Urad, Alashan, Khokh¨ nuur [and] Khoshuud all are his [Khasar’s] offspring”.42 Thus, we see how the Qing incorporation dismantled Mongolia as a political entity and transformed her tumen¨ sandotogs – hierarchically organised administrative divisions – into ayimaqs – discrete subdivisions of External Mongolia within the Qing Empire. The important insight is that the Qing ayimaqs were actually Mongolia’s administrative divisions – tumen¨ s and otogs – before their incorporation into the Qing. Furthermore, Mongolia’s tumen¨ s and otogs, because of the Dayan Khanid apportionment of them as princely shares, were increasingly becoming hereditary princely domains even before the Qing incorporation. And, as hereditary princely domains they were becoming more like autonomous lordships than the hierarchically subordinated divisions of a state. If this was the case at the time of the Qing incorporation and pre-Qing Mongolia, then what was the case during the Chinggisid incorporation and in pre-Chinggisid Inner Asia?

39Munkh-Erdene, “The Qing transformation of Mongolia”. 40L. Munkh-Erdene, “The Mongolian Nationality Lexicon: From the Chinggisid Lineage to Mongolian Nationality (From the seventeenth to the early twentieth century)”, Inner Asia, VIII, (2006)pp.51–98. 41Iletgel shastir,pp.138, 166. 42Ibid., p. 138. If the Qing did not uniformly categorise Mongolia’s population as the Mongols, in most probability, we would be reading of Khorchins, Kharachins, Tumeds¨ or Ordoses as discrete human groups descended from different ancestors, such as Khorchins descending from Khasar.

The Chinggisid Incorporation of Eurasia: the Creation of Minqans and Irgens

The political world of the medieval Mongol scribes was a world full of uluses and irgens. The sources abound with these two terms. For example, we find ulus 106 times and irgen nearly 200 times in the Secret History of the Mongols (SHM) alone.43 However, only the word ‘Mongol’ is designated by both words; being described as both an ulus and an irgen, while all the other contemporary polities or population categories such as Kitat, Tang’ut and so on were only ever designated irgen. None of these contemporary categories is described using the term ulus except the Mongol, and an analysis of the available sources confirms that this apparent pattern (of the usage of ulus and irgen) was a reflection of a well-established convention.44 According to this usage convention, the medieval Mongol ulus was a category of government conceptualised as a community of a realm, while the medieval Mongol irgen was a community of a realm conceptualised as community of a descent. In other words, the Mongol ulus was a political entity and community, while the Mongol (or any other) irgen was thought of as a community of language, custom and descent; an ‘ethno-cultural’ category in modern academic framing, although, in fact, it was also a community of a given realm. Thus, Mongol ulus and Mongol irgen were two different political and ‘ethno-cultural’ conceptualisations of one and the same entity. Accordingly, all the categories other than Mongol were reduced to a category of irgen-hood, subject-peoples: stateless, thus quasi- political and, consequently, ‘ethno-cultural’ or tribal in modern academic parlance.45 The usage convention for the terms ulus and irgen and their conceptual division and framework mirror the political make-up of the Mongol imperial world. Indeed, since all the sources belong to the post-1225-1226 period, their perspective is that of the imperial Mongols viewing their own imperial world. Therefore, what we read in the sources, including the SHM, is the imperial reconstruction or ex post facto imposition of the Mongol imperial framework onto its historical past. Indeed, the author of the SHM, looking through the lens afforded by the imperial framework and speaking through the contemporary language of the day, unwittingly made a systematic revision of the pre-1206 past. Thus, all the categories other than Mongol, including those of pre-1206, were reduced to irgen because they were irgens/subject-peoples46 of the empire at the time of his writing.47 Indeed, the conquered and subjugated polities no longer existed as independent political entities. In most cases, their sovereigns and political structures were destroyed and their territories were incorporated into the Chinggisid territory. Their populations, stripped of their own political structures, were integrated into the Chinggisid minqansandtheir decimal structures. Many of the subject populations such as Kereyid, Naiman and Mergid no longer constituted organised communities because they were dispersed into different Chinggisid decimal divisions. Those loyal or submissive to Chinggisid polities were made into minqansandtumen¨ s. Indeed, all of the pre-Chinggisid polities were reduced to categories of

43Munkh-Erdene, “Where did the Mongol Empire come from?”, pp. 213–215. 44Munkh-Erdene, “Where did the Mongol Empire come from?” 45Ibid., pp. 215–222. 46Besides its cultural and kinship descriptions, irgen was also a category distinct from, and subordinate to, rulers or sovereigns, that is, subjects, an object of governance. 47Munkh-Erdene, “Where did the Mongol Empire come from?”, pp. 222–225.

‘quasi-political’ in that they did not imply independent or sovereign political existence. Some of them, as minqans, were reduced to the status of sub-state-administrative categories. In short, what was left of the once hegemonic Kereyid kingdom were surviving individual persons, families and lineages known by the identity category of Kereyid, although dispersed in various Chinggisid decimal divisions. On the other hand, in dividing Mongolia’s population into military-oriented minqans, decimally organised hierarchical administrative divisions, the Chinggisid power structure produced numerous military-oriented population divisions with hereditary rulership and membership. At the same time, the Chinggisid state, as a new ulus or regnum or imperium, necessarily embraced all these divisions and imposed a new common ulus/regnum/imperium identity on its population. This not only necessarily re-appropriated previous political identities and placed them into the category of ‘quasi-political’ population categories, but also reduced them to a sub-regnum or sub-state categories.48 Thus, the Chinggisid power structure produced, on the one hand, a multitude of quasi-political identity categories and, on the other, numerous military-oriented minqans. Furthermore, as a new ulus or imperium it also imposed a common political identity on its population. Meanwhile, the memory of Kereyid and other polities was enshrined in imperial historiography as irgens – quasi or non-political (and consequently ethnic or cultural), sub or intra-state categories. The Chinggisid and the Qing incorporations display similar languages and similar patterns. The Chinggisid incorporation transformed pre-existing polities into irgens – stateless, thus, ‘quasi-political’, and consequently, ‘ethno-cultural’ categories of subject-peoples.49 Similarly, the Qing incorporation transformed Mongolia as a realm into ‘the Mongols’ as a population; and Mongolian tumen¨ sandotogs were transformed into ayimaqs – headless, thus, non-hierarchical and quasi-political subdivisions of External Mongolia, a vassal peripheral territory. If one were to take these ayimaqs as population groups, which is justiﬁable and, indeed, many did, they would appear as sub-groups or sub-categories of stateless people – tribes.50 What, then, can we say about the multitude of intra-Mongol irgens before their integration into the Chinggisid power structure? Were they tribes and clans as later writers, such as in Rashid al-Din’s elaborate terminology,51 describe them? Were they aristocratic houses and their domains? Or were they instead hierarchical politico-administrative divisions similar to pre-Qing Mongolian tumen¨ sandotogs, perhaps in the process of transforming into

48Ibid.,pp.222–225. 49Ibid.,pp.215–225. 50These quasi-political identity categories (or remains of defunct polities) are usually treated as tribes in modern scholarship. Interestingly, no modern scholarship has ever treated Mongolian khoshuus (or Chinggisid minqans) as tribes; but most modern scholarship treats pre-Qing Mongolian tumen¨ sandotogs (later turned into uluses and ayimaqs) as tribes. For instance, Tsakhar, Khalkha or Khorchin, pre-Qing Mongolian tumen¨ s, powerful emergent kingdoms and regional powers, are treated as tribes, while their subdivisions, the Qing khoshuus, are treated as banners or principalities. On the other hand, Jalaid, Dorbed,¨ Naiman and Keshigten are treated as tribes as pre- Qing Mongolian otogs but as banners or principalities as Qing khoshuus, even when these Mongolian otogseach formed single Qing khoshuus under the same ruling noble families. In fact, these victims of imperial incorporations seem to have been doubly victimised when modern scholarship reduced them to tribes. 51asha’ir˜ (clans), qaba’il˜ (tribes), and aqwam˜ (people or nation).

autonomous lordships? What were the origins of these categories and what were they called before their integration into the Chinggisid state?

Pre-Chinggisid Inner Asia: the Liao Incorporation and the Zubu-Kereyid Hegemony

Ethnographically, the demography of pre-Chinggisid Inner Asia might have been much more heterogeneous than that of the pre-Qing Mongolia. However, their political structures were not that divergent. This is to be expected since both periods were dominated by orders described as either tribal or aristocratic. However, what I would like to argue here is that the pre-Chinggisid Inner Asian political structure was similar to the pre-Qing structure in the sense that the pre-Qing Mongolia’s tumen¨ sandotogs were hierarchically subordinated politico-administrative divisions and pre-Qing Mongolia constituted a single realm, albeit a decentralised and fragmented one of what was, probably, a reviving power. And while the Kereyid was the seat of the legitimate ruler of the realm, just as Chakhar was for the Northern Yuan, the Naiman, Merkid, Tatar, Mongol, Oyirad and so on were (former) divisions of this realm, perhaps relatively autonomous ones.52 An idea of ulus congruent with the Chinggisid state of 1206 was well established in pre-Chinggisid Inner Asia and, indeed, the Chinggisid state of 1206 was built upon the Kereyid state and her sphere of hegemony.53 Certainly, scholars have noticed the centrality of the Kereyid polity in pre-Chinggisid Mongolia.54 Paul Rachnevsky even maintained that Te m ujin¨ mounted the Kereyid throne by destroying the ‘Kerait Empire’.55 Although the Chinggisid sources distort the past, their careful examination not only clearly shows that the idea of a single realm of the ‘felt-tent ulus’ was well established in pre-Chinggisid Inner Asia but also allows us to argue that pre-Chinggisid Mongolia formed a single, yet decentralised and fragmented realm under the Kereyid throne. According to the SHM,in1201, on the bank of the Ergune¨ River, an assembly of the ruling lords of almost all of the major polities of the Mongolian plateau enthroned Jamuqa as the Universal Khan (gur-qa¨ [n]). Buyuruq Khan of Naiman, Quduqa-beki of Oyirad, Jali-buqa of Tatar, Qutu, the son of Togto’a-beki of Merkid and Tarqutai-Qiriltuq of Taichiud were among many others who enthroned the Universal Khan.56 The Universal Khan declared war on Ong Khan and Temujin¨ and immediately set out to bring them under his rule. However, his campaign was ill-fated. Not only did the Universal Khan lose the battle, but his forces were scattered, effectively ending his reign. Ill-fated as the Universal Khan’s reign was, his undertaking reveals one very important political idea universally shared by the aristocracies of the ‘felt-tent ulus’. There was to be a single universal ruler over all the ‘felt-tent ulus’, meaning that all of the ‘felt-tent ulus’wereto form a single realm and the parties involved were to form its subdivisions. Both Ong Khan

52What the Chinggisid sources describe as ‘Ong Khan of Kereyid’ might have been a belittlement of the last legitimate ruler of the collapsed power as was the case with the last Great Khan of Mongolia who was mocked as the ‘Ligdan Khan of Chakhar’. See Munkh-Erdene, “The 1640 Great Code”. 53See Munkh-Erdene, “Where did the Mongol Empire come from?”. 54See P. Rachnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, T. Haining translator and (ed.) (Oxford, 1991), and Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire,pp.295–296. 55Rachnevsky, Genghis Khan,pp.78–83. 56I. de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History of the Mongols (Bloomington, IN., 1972), p. 61.

and Temujin¨ shared this idea, but Jamuqa was not the universal khan for them. Instead, their universal khan, or the legitimate ruler of the realm, was Ong Khan, while Jamuqa appears to have been enthroned to displace him. Other than the ill-fated Gur¨ Khan, no contemporary ruler of the ‘felt-tent ulus’held a more senior title than the Ong Khan (Wang Khan), and while Ong Khan’s deposed predecessor held the title of Gur¨ Khan, his heir apparent was called ‘Sangun,57 which means prince in the Cathaian language’.58 The highest title that Tayang Khan held was Tai Wang meaning ‘khan’s son’ or prince.59 The title of Wang or King, or ‘ruler of kingdom or country’ and ja’ut quri [centurion] that the Kereyid ruler and Temujin¨ received respectively from the Jin dynasty, indicates their relative status within the realm.60 Furthermore, while Tayang Khan’s exclamation ‘How can there be two khans on Earth?’61 presupposes a single, overarching ruler, his charge that Temujin¨ usurped Ong Khan’s throne ‘to become the khan’ assumes that Ong Khan was that overarching ruler.62 This clearly shows that Ong Khan was not just a ruler who happened to hold a very senior title but was the commonly recognised overarching ruler of the realm. Moreover, while the SHM narrows down the ﬁeld to focus on Jamuqa as the principal pretender to the throne, with Teb-Tenggeri and Qasar as minor obstacles in Temujin’s¨ bid to rule the ulus,theCompendium of Chronicles depicts Jamuqa, Qasar, Sacha Beki and Alag-Udur of Merkid as all being contenders for the rule of the ulus, along with Temujin.¨ 63 However, none of these sources mention Ong Khan as a contender. This telling evidence suggests that Ong Khan was the de jure sovereign of ‘Mongolia’, for whose throne these junior lords vied. Also, the Compendium of Chronicles does not include Nilqa-senggum,¨ the heir apparent, as a contender in the above list, although it reports Nilqa-senggum¨ as declaring to Temujin¨ that “We will do battle, and whichever of us emerges will be khan”.64 Certainly, Nilqa-senggum¨ as the heir apparent was not a contender for the throne but its legitimate heir. Indeed, if Ong Khan and Nilqa-senggum¨ were neither the legitimate ruler nor his heir apparent, they must have headed the list of the aspirants. Thus, the Kereyid throne was the ultimate prize for all these men. In fact, Ong Khan’s ancestor (probably his great grandfather or grandfather) was one of the earliest known rulers of ‘autonomous’ – i.e. autonomous of the Liao – ‘Mongolia’–

57Actually, Sangun or senggum¨ in the SHM seems to have been a title or an office he held while his name was Nilqa as he is addressed several times as Nilqa-senggum.¨ See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.77–79. In fact, senggum¨ or xiangwen (Chinese xianggong, lord chancellor) is a Khitan title or office of the administrator of ‘tribes’ or divisions. See Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire,p.317. 58Rashiduddin, Compendium of Chronicles,p.175. 59Ibid., p. 69. After Inancha-khan drove out Ong Khan to Qara-Kitai, the Naiman kingdom seems to have achieved a considerable prominence, and Tayang Khan’s title is an obvious reflection of that prominence. 60See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,p.57, and Rashiduddin, Compendium of Chronicles,p.165. 61The Compendum of Chronicles has it as ‘On the earth how can there be two monarchs in one Kingdom?’. See Rashiduddin, Compendium of Chronicles,p.201. 62“ot¨ og¨ u¨ yeke erten-u¨ ong-qan-ni qor-iyar-iyan ayu’ulju uk¨ u’¨ ulba¨ edo’e¨ mun¨ qan bolsu ke’en aqun-u . . . qajar de’ere qoyar qat ker bolqu”. See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,p.98. 63Rashiduddin, Compendium of Chronicles,p.181. See also de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.50, 139–40 for Jamuqa and Qasar respectively. Alag Udur does not appear in the SHM at all. 64Rashiduddin, Compendium of Chronicles,p.190.

that is the realm described as Tsu-pu or Zubu.65 According to Rashid al-Din, Ong Khan’s grandfather Marghuz (Marcus or Markos) Buyuruq Khan, the ruler of the Kereyid, was captured by Na’ur Buyuruq Khan of Tatar, a vassal “to the monarchs of Cathay and the Jurchids”, and was “sent to the King of the Jurchids, who had him killed by being nailed to a wooden donkey”.66 According to Liao-shi,in1089 Liao appointed (or rather, recognised) Mo-ku-ssu,¨ a Zubu ruler, as “the chieftain of various tribes” or, more properly, as the Great King of the Zubu, a ‘subordinate state’ to the Liao since Zubu was categorised as a ‘subordinate state’ and its ruler was addressed by the Liao as the ‘Great King’.67 However, Mo-ku-ssu¨ soon invaded Liao and destroyed the greater part of the Liao army in 1093 and continued to war with the Liao until he was captured by Yeh-luWo-t’¨ e-laˆ in 1100 and sent to the Liao court to be “hacked to pieces in the market place”. This Mo-ku-ssu¨ is none other than Marghuz Buyuruq Khan, who obviously was betrayed by the Tatar ruler.68 Thus, the kingdom of Kereyid and its hegemony over the others must have been established at least by the end of the eleventh century (or even before the Khitan conquest of Mongolia), and, thus Ong Khan, according to the SHM, really was an ‘ancient old great khan’ (erten-u¨ ot¨ og¨ uyekeqan¨ ).69 Indeed, the Chinggisid state was directly built upon the Kereyid state and many of its institutions were adopted from it. After toppling Ong Khan, Chinggis Khan adopted the decimal organisation and created institutions such as the ofﬁce of six cherbi [stewards] and kesikten [guards] consisting of 80 kebte’ul¨ [night guards] and 70 turqa’ut [day guards], and a vanguard force of 1000 ba’atut [heroes].70 The turqa’ut and ba’atut were clearly Kereyid institutions.71 In fact, Ong Khan had much larger force of turqa’ut (1000 turga’ud) and ‘presumably a corresponding number of sentries, or night guards’.72 Probably, his force of ba’atut was larger too.73 Furthermore, Ong Khan’s forces were organised in decimal divisions such as minqan turqa’ud and tumen-t¨ ubegen¨ (10,000 centre or 10,000 assault troops?) Kereyid. Thus, the Chinggisid state was built upon the Kereyid state, and as such, was its successor.

65If the Tibetan word Sogpo for Mongolia is derived from Tsu-pu (or Zubu) or Tsu-p’u, Zubu seems to have been the name of the kingdom or country. If that is the case, Kereyid must have been the name of its divisions (or ruling house) just like Chakhar, a sort of Chinggisid belittlement of Ong Khan. If that was the case, Mongol must have displaced Zubu as the name of the state and realm. It should be noted that Zhao Hong, a Song envoy, who visited Muqali’s headquarters around 1221 reported that ‘Mongols’ knew themselves only as Tatars and they call their state da menggu guo () after a long-collapsed empire. See N. Munkuev, Men-da bei-lu, Polnoe opisanie Mongolo-Tatar [A complete description of the Mongol-Tatars] (Moscow, 1975)pp.53, 249. 66Rashiduddin, Jami‘u’t-tawarikh: Compendium of Chronicles,pp.62–63. 67SeeA.K.WittfogelandFengˆ Chia-Sheng,ˆ History of Chinese Society Liao (907–1125) (Philadelphia, 1949) pp. 101–102, 317, 593. The native title of the ruler of Zubu was, obviously, khan. 68See Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire,pp.295–297. 69See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,p.97. Although defeated by the Liao founder Abaoji in 924, Zubu checked the Liao expansion westwards by constantly warring with the Liao. Thus, Zubu must have been a considerable power to have been able to deter the Liao power. Furthermore, according to Abu’l Faraj, by 1007 when the Kereyid ruler converted to Christianity, he had 200,000 followers See Togan, Flexibility and Limitation in Steppe Formations,pp.60–61, and Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire,p.296. 70See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.99–100, and Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire,p.297. 71See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.81–82. 72Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire,p.297. 73See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.81–82.

Indeed, according to the SHM, Chinggis Khan himself admitted that he, “by the favor of eternal heaven, achieved the lofty throne deposing the Kereyid people”.74 While many scholars, such as Peter Golden and Nicola di Cosmo, emphasise the continuity of the Inner Asian imperial political traditions including the decimal system, Hansgerd Cockenjan¨ persuasively documents the continuous use of the decimal system by Xiongnu, Hsien-pei, T’u-ch¨ ueh,¨ Khitan Liao, Jin and Mongol and Timurid empires.75 In fact, if many of these imperial powers rose and ruled Mongolia directly, the greater part of Mongolia was under the Liao before it was subjected to the Jin policy of ‘divide and rule’. The Liao directly controlled most of the eastern part of Mongolia for over two centuries while the rest of Mongolia was under its hegemony. The Liao maintained military garrisons in Mongolia, such as Zhenzhou and Hedong or Kedun, established in 1004,withaforce of 20,000 troops recruited locally.76 Zubu, the power that checked the Liao’s expansion westwards, was a ‘subordinate state’ headed by a ‘Great King’ or Khan. The rest of Mongolia was organised into ‘tribes’ and those that were part of the 54 ‘imperial tribes’ were under the Liao ‘Northern Administration’.77 Nearly 10 of the 54 ‘imperial tribes’ and some 24 of the ‘outer’ and ‘various tribes’ are identified either as Mongol or residing in Mongolia.78 “Tribes were administered by a Khitan senggum¨ (xiangwen, from Chinese xianggong, lord chancellor), assisted by a lingqu (lingwen, from Chinese linggong, lord director) and staff”.79 And, indeed, we find senggum¨ and lingqu in pre-Chinggisid Mongolia.80 In addition to Nilqa- senggum,¨ we find Caraqai-lingqu and Senggum-Bilge¨ in the SHM.81 Revealingly, these two were father and son. Obviously, Caraqai’s son Bilge was promoted to the commander of a division, while his father served as an assistant to the commander. What is more telling is that Bilge’s son Ambaqai was elevated as the khan of ‘Qamuq Mongqol’ after Qabul-qahan.82 Furthermore, while ‘barbarians’ formed a significant proportion of the ordo (palace) troops

74“mongke¨ tenggeri-de ihe’ekdeju¨ kereyit irge doraida’ulju und¨ ur-¨ un¨ oron-tur gurba-je¨ ”. See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,p.96. 75See P. Golden, “Imperial ideology and the sources of political unity amongst the pre-Chinggisid nomads of Wester n Eurasia”, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, II (1982), pp. 37–77; “Nomads and their sedentary neighbors in pre-Cinggisid Eurasia”, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi,VII(1991), pp. 43–44, and N. di Cosmo, Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History (Cambridge, 2004), and H. Cockenjan,¨ “Zur Stammesstruktur und Heeresorganisation Altaischer Volker¨ Das Dezimalsystem“ in Europa Slavica – Europa Orientalis: Festschrift fur¨ Herbert Ludat zum 70 Geburtstag, (eds) Klaus-Detlev Grothusen and Klaus Zernack (Berlin, 1980), pp. 51–86. Interestingly, Cockenjan¨ also reveals certain correlations between the number of the ‘tribes’ and the number of the larger decimal units such as ‘ten thousand’ in several occasions, including Oghuz’s 24 tribes and 24 ten thousand’, Bulgar-Turkish On-Ogur’s ‘ten tribes’ and ‘ten arrows’ and so on (Cockenjan,¨ 1980), pp. 56–59. 76M. Biran, The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History: Between China and the Islamic World,(Cambridge, 2005), p. 27, and Wittfogel and Feng,ˆ History of Chinese Society Liao,p.46. Zhenzhou is found in modern Chintolgoi ruins in Dashinchilen sum, Bulgan province and Hedong is found in modern Zuünkherem¨ ruins in Mor¨ on¨ sum, Khentii province in eastern Mongolia. See Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire,p.317. 77Wittfogel and Feng,ˆ History of Chinese Society Liao,p.453. 78Most of the scholars are positive about Uriangkhan and Merkit; they are less certain about Ongirat, Jajirat, and Naiman. See Wittfogel and Feng,ˆ History of Chinese Society Liao,pp.87–100. 79See Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire,p.317. 80We also find other Khitan titles such as taishi, tekin,andtarqan in pre-Chinggisid Mongolia. See Wittfogel and Feng,ˆ History of Chinese Society Liao,pp.442–445 for these Khitan titles. We find Nekun-taisi,¨ Qada’an-taisi (both Mongol), and Alin-taisi, Qori-silemun-taisi¨ and Tai-temur-taisi¨ (all Kereyid) in the SHM. Tai-temur¨ was Ong-Khan’s slain brother. See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.21–22, 71, 82–83, 87. 81de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.21, 91. 82Ibid., p. 22.

of the Liao emperor, “Mu-tsung’s ordo garrison is known to have included Tsu-pu (Zubu) tribesmen”.83 Yet, the Liao ‘tribes’ were top-down creations. According to Karl Wittfogel, the Liao rulers literally built the imperial 54 ‘tribes’ (bu ). They divided “relatively large tribal groups” into a number of smaller ‘tribes’, abolished ‘tribal statuses’ and “gathered together small fragments or even individuals and formed them into new groups” and granted them ‘tribal status’.84 For example, in one case, “Each of the old eight Ch’i-tan tribes contributed twenty households to a special garrison which, after expanding considerably, developed into the T’eli-t’e-mien tribe”.85 Furthermore, the Liao rulers mixed subjugated non-Khitans into Khitan ‘tribes’ and, indeed, seven of the eighteen T’ai-tsu’s tribes ‘were all composites’.86 Thus Wittfogel uses terms such as ‘synthetic tribes’ or ‘composites’. Indeed, Wittfogel elaborates that “Tsu [ kin] and pu are Chinese terms that are nothing more than approximate equivalents for specific and sometimes unfamiliar aspects of Ch’i-tan [Kitan] society. The term pu is used as an equivalent for pu-lo , tribe; it may also be used to mean a local group or an administrative unit”.87 In fact, Wittfogel defines tribe as “aggregates of a number of local groups, held together by the need for joint military action, by the authority of a head chief”.88 The Liao ‘tribes’ were subdivided internally and the smallest division seems to have been a chao or ‘hundred’.89 For obvious reasons, the population of Mongolia that was under the Liao must have been subjected to these top-down administrative enterprises. Indeed, the Liao presence in Mongolia seems to have been enduring. Even the powerful Zubu, who checked the Liao’s expansion westwards by constantly warring with it, also suffered from the Liao’s ‘divide and rule’ policy. After two decades of turbulence following the Liao emperor Shengzong’s campaign against Zubu in 983, the Liao achieved the surrender of the Zubu Khan in 1003 and divided the realm “into several divisions, each under a Liao military governor”.90 Later on, fighting against Markhuz, the Liao mobilised ‘tribal soldiers’ against him in 1092 and eventually won over many of Markhuz’s former allies against him.91 Even Yelu¨ Dashi, the founder of Qara-Khitai, made Hedong, a Liao military garrison, his power base during 1124–1130 and seems to have organised those under his control into ‘seven prefectures’.92 Interestingly, scholars were able to identify very few of ‘the eighteen tribes’ that Yelu¨ Dashi reportedly addressed in 1124.93 Obviously, many of these tribes (or rather divisions or dependencies), if they ever existed, were top-down ‘synthetic’ or ‘composite’

83Whether the Mongol ordo developed from Khitan ordo directly, or ‘were both variants of an earlier common form’, it is hard to prove that Mongol ordo was immune to that of the Khitan when the greater part of geographical Mongolia with its demography was part of the Liao while the remaining part of Mongolia was under Liao hegemony. See Wittfogel and Feng,ˆ History of Chinese Society Liao,pp.21, 55. 84Ibid., pp. 46–48, 85–86. 85Ibid., p. 48. 86Wittfogel and Feng,ˆ History of Chinese Society Liao,pp.46–48. 87Ibid., p. 47. 88Ibid., p. 46. 89Ibid., pp. 444-445. 90F. Mote, Imperial China 900–1800 (Cambridge, MA,1999), p. 57. 91Wittfogel and Feng,ˆ History of Chinese Society Liao,pp.362, 518, 593-594. 92See Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire,p.317, and Biran, TheEmpireoftheQaraKhitai, pp. 26-33. 93Biran, The Empire of the Qara Khitai,pp.26–33.

divisions rather than enduring bottom–up human groups with distinctive identities. Thus, the Liao’s ‘divide and rule’ policy seems to have been far-reaching in Mongolia. Even after the Liao, both the Jin and the Qara Khitai continued to have a divisive influence on Mongolia. Understandably, both of these powers exercised greater influence on their immediate neighbours – the Jin on the Tatar and Qara Khitai on the Naiman – and, in many cases, used them to frustrate the growing power of the Kereyid. Thus we have the Tatar warring with the Kereyid and its Mongol subordinates, and we see the Naiman forcing Ong Khan to flee. In response, the Kereyid ruler seems to have been actively engaging with all the surrounding powers, such as Qara Khitai, the Jin and Xi Xia, obviously to counter-balance them against each other. In fact, Ong Khan seems to have been a very able ruler: not only was he able to establish Kereyid hegemony but he also demolished the Liao divisive legacies, even in the face of the Qara Khitai and the Jin divisive interventions. If we critically approach the Chinggisid sources, we see that it was actually Toghril who was incessantly campaigning to subdue the Merkid, Tatar, Gur¨ Khan, Merkid, Naiman, and Mongol.94 As a result, in this uneasy climate, Toghril managed to revive the hegemony of Kereyid power over Mongolia, and won the title of Wang, that is, the king of the realm, a title very similar to that of his grandfather Markhuz, from the Jin court. However, one of his estranged vassals was to claim his throne and realm, surprising him at night while he was feasting unsuspectingly.95 Thus, the pre-Chinggisid Mongolia was a good deal like pre-Qing Mongolia; a decentralised, fragmented realm under the hegemony of the Kereyid kingdom. While the Jin and Qara Khitai continued to have divisive influences on the region, the Liao seems to have left many ‘synthetic’ or ‘composite’ military-oriented divisions, since Liao ‘tribes’ were themselves military-oriented divisions. Indeed, that the heads of the pre-Chinggisid Mongolian polities held military or military-oriented titles such as senggum¨ , lingqu, buyruq, beki, bahadur or ja’ut quri96 seems to suggest not only the origin of their divisions but also their subordinate status in relation to a higher authority. However, by the time of Chinggis Khan’s rise these divisions were, in all probability, becoming kingdoms and principalities or, perhaps, lordships of various sizes.97 Certainly, some of their commanders must have claimed the title of khan as Ambaqai, a son of a senggum¨ , and a grandson of a lingqu, did. Apparently, as Susan Reynolds observed in the case of medieval Europe, administrative divisions of one generation were becoming lordships in later generations.98 However, because these lords

94See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.42–48, 57–58, 61–63, 74. If we follow the order of the events of the SHM, Chinggis Khan’s own military achievement was quite modest. He suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Jamuqa at Dalan Baljut. See Ibid., p. 54. The only signiﬁcant victory that he achieved was over Tatar. See Ibid., pp. 71–72.ItistruethathebeheadedJurkin¨ leaders and defeated Taichiut. See Ibid., pp. 58–59, 62–63.However,Jurkin¨ leaders did not give battle, whereas Tayichi’ut was in retreat after they were defeated by Ong Khan’s force. Furthermore, Jurkin¨ and Taichiut were only minor forces. 95See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.94–95. 96Kereyid, Naiman and Tatar rulers held the title of buyuruq, Merkid and Oyirad beki. While others held the title of bahadur and tekin,Temujin¨ himself bore the title of ja’ut quri. See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History, and Rashiduddin, Compendium of Chronicles. All of these titles are of a military nature or have military associations and none was subsequently used as a title for a sovereign ruler. 97See T. Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government, (Princeton and Oxford, 2009) for lordship, and see Rashiduddin, Compendium of Chronicles,pp.37–78 for Rashid al-Din’s description of pre-Chinggisid polities. 98S. Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300, Second Edition (Oxford, 1997), p. 221.

believed that they should form a single realm long before Chinggis Khan actually completed the task, those who claimed the title of khan must have sought to build such a realm to answer to these expectations. Thus, pre-Chinggisid Mongolia, with its various territorial domains under the hegemony of the Kereyd Ong Khan, appears uniquely comparable to pre-Qing Mongolia that was also divided into a number of princely domains under the hegemony of the “Chakhar” Ligdan Khan, the legitimate sovereign of the waning Northern Yuan. In short, if what was left of the Chinggisid decimal hierarchical divisions were in the process of transforming into autonomous princely domains in the pre-Qing era, and then, what was left of the Liao ‘synthetic or composite tribes’ were struggling to maintain their autonomy from Kereyid incorporation in pre-Chinggisid Mongolia. Thus the comparison of the Qing and Chinggisid incorporations, as well as that of pre-Qing and pre-Chinggisid Mongolia, shows that the ‘tribes’ or ‘aristocratic houses and their domains’ were actually created by imperial powers as their top-down military oriented subdivisions. And, with the collapse of the imperial centres, these divisions began to emerge as autonomous political entities in their own right. However, with the next imperial incorporation they were transformed into ‘quasi-political’ categories while their populations were divided or reshufﬂed into new numerical divisions of the empire. This leads us to examine the nature of the hereditary divisional system that all the Inner Asian empires employed to incorporate and administer the nomadic populations of Eurasia.

A Hereditary Divisional System and the Pre-Modern Eurasian Political Order

The tribal paradigm seems to have precluded scholarly attention from examining the nature of the imperial incorporation, its institutions of local government and their structural encompassment of the population. In particular, the political significance of incorporating or dividing a nomadic population into divisions with hereditary membership and rulership, and its implications and consequences, has not sufficiently been addressed. To illustrate the nature of the hereditary divisional system99 in general, and to trace the origin of the ‘tribes’ or ‘aristocratic orders’ in particular, I will briefly discuss the Chinggisid decimal structure of minqan or thousand, the most archetypal form of the hereditary divisional system. Minqan was mainly associated with the Mongol army and many scholars suggest that the system demolished the tribal order.100 However, Sneath, citing Xiongnu and Jurchin¨ decimal structures, decisively rejects this interpretation, arguing that a decimal system that existed well before the time of Chinggis Khan’s rise was already a well-established administrative system and that “the process described by the SHM seems largely to be the official recognition of existing lordly domains and their integration into a uniform minqan administrative system”.101 Thus there was no ‘‘‘Chinggisid

99I use ‘hereditary divisional system’ to embrace decimal and non-decimal numerical divisions as well as princely appanages too. While numerical divisions were evolving into lordships, the princely appanages were basically hereditary lordships. See R. D. McChesney, “The Chinggisid restoration in Central Asia: 1500–1785”, in The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age, (eds.) Nicola Di Cosmo, Allen J. Frank and Peter B. Golden (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 277–302, for later Chinggisid princely appanages. 100See for example C. Hsiao, The Military Establishment of the Yuan Dynasty (Cambridge, MA, 1978), pp. 9–17. 101Sneath, The Headless State,pp.113–116.

revolution” that had destroyed the clan structure and completely reorganised steppe society along decimal lines’.102 Moreover, criticising a ‘tribalist’ reading of Inner-Asian history, Atwood has recently advanced a richly documented, excellent argument that Mongolian minqan, otog and khoshuu were basic local administration units of Mongolia for over 500 years in succession and constituted politico-territorial units and functioned as ‘appanage communities’.103 Upon his enthronement, Chinggis Khan incorporated the Mongqol ulus into 95 divisions called minqans and appointed their respective noyons (lords or commanders).104Minqansin turn were subdivided into za’un (hundred) and har’ban (ten).105 Some but not all of the minqans were grouped into tumen¨ s(10,000).106 The system created a legible, efficient and responsive governance of the population since it had numerically fixed units and an efficient chain of command, with each superior responsible for ten subordinates. Clearly, the system was to allow swift mobilisation of troops in time of war.107 Obviously, the system was devised to concentrate power in the hands of the monarch108 because it not only created a top-down chain of command structure but also, by creating divisions with equal size and status, precluded unwelcome expansion of power of the noyans. Thus, the system was not only efficient in mobilising the population but also effective in concentrating power in the hands of the monarch.109 The system was flexible to incorporate the pre-existing larger polities by demolishing them into smaller divisions. Even loyal or submissive Onggud, Uru’ud, Onggirat, Ba’arin and Ikires were each divided into a number of minqans.110 Evidently, minqan was the backbone of the Chinggisid administrative system and the most important unit of local government, with a uniform nested hierarchy of decimal structure and

102Ibid., p. 113. 103Because of space limitation and the focus of this article, I have limited my analysis here to minqan.However, Atwood offers a much comprehensive analysis not only minqan but also of banner and otog. See C. Atwood, “Banner Otog, thousand: appanage communities as the basic unit of traditional Mongolian society, Mongolian Studies, XXXIV (2012), pp. 1–76. 104Chinggis Khan apportioned nearly 45 thousand (minqan) subjects (irge) to his mother, brothers and sons, and at least 17 noyansofminqan were explicitly assigned to serve under them. See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.138–139, and Hsiao, The Military Establishment,pp.9–17. Thus, in addition to a decimal system, Chinggis Khan also established princely appanages. 105de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,p.114. See also Atwood, “Banner Otog, thousand”, pp. 26–27. With the expansion of the empire, more people were integrated into this system and, consequently, the number of minqansandtumen¨ s grew. Thus, for example, while Rashid al-Din numbers 126 minqans under Chinggis Khan, ‘Peng Daya, a Chinese envoy, mentions eight myriarchs under Ogedei¨ Khan’. See Rashiduddin, Compendium of Chronicles,pp.273–281; Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire,p.139;Hsiao,The Military Establishment,pp.9–17. During the conquest period, Chinggisid successors constantly reorganised minqansand tumen¨ s. The reorganisation continued even after the conquest. For example, Kebeg (1318–1326) reorganised and systematised the tumen¨ s of the Ulus Chaghatayi. See B. Manz, TheRiseandRuleofTamerlane(Cambridge, 1989), pp. 9, 24. 106Atwood, “Banner Otog, thousand”, pp. 27–28. According to the SHM, tumen¨ s, at least initially, seem to have been territorial divisions as they were designated as ‘the right wing tumen¨ at Altai’, ‘the left wing tumen¨ at Qara-un-jidun’, ‘central (tub-¨ un¨ ) tumen¨ ,’ and ‘the tumen¨ on Erdis-qudus’. See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.117–118, 127. 107Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire,p.139. 108It should be noted that Chinggis Khan had a much larger force of tumen¨ kesikten (10,000 guards of superior troops) that included the sons of the noyans minqan, za’un and har’ban.Thekesikten enjoyed a superior status over the ‘outer minqans’ (qadanadus minqad). See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.127–133. 109See N. di Cosmo, N., Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 181–183 for militarisation in nomadic societies. 110de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,p.114.

a specific territory (nuntuq) supervised by imperially appointed officials named nuntu’ucin.111 While all the offices of the noyans of each decimal unit were created imperially, all the noyansofminqans were appointed by the emperor and all were subject to uniform legal statutes.112 Apart from military service, all minqans were responsible for collecting tax and corvee for the imperial service: SHM indicates legislation where ‘minqans of all places’ were to provide a postal relay, mare’s milk and sheep for imperial use.113 Thus, a minqan was a unit of government and a unit of local administration. However, a minqan was endowed with a particular attribute that not only sets it apart from being a mere bureaucratic administrative unit but also gives it a unique constitution: a minqan had not only hereditary membership114 but also hereditary rulership.115 Hereditary membership and rulership not only gave a minqan a unique constitution but also was consequential to the imperial incorporation. Indeed, the hereditary membership and rulership provides a minqan with the twofold identity that Atwood attributes to it: an appanage, “a defined territory and people assigned to the hereditary jurisdiction of a particular nobleman and his descendants, as a unit of local government” and “a closed corporate community, that is a group of people who maintain a perpetuity of rights and membership in appanage resources, who limit these privileges to insiders; and who are discouraged from active contact with outsiders”.116 Indeed, if the hereditary rulership

111de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,p.171. The office was created during the reign of Ogedei¨ Khan (1229–1241). Apportioning territories to minqans and enforcing these must have been a mammoth task. Disputes over territories seem to have been recurring incidents. See Atwood, “Banner Otog, thousand”, pp. 28–30. 112de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.99–100, 114–120, 131; and Hsiao, The Military Establishment, pp. 9–73. 113de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.171–172. 114While “all males between fifteen and seventy years of age” were registered, the yasa prescribed that “No man may depart to another unit than the hundred, thousand, or ten to which he has been assigned, nor may he seek refuge elsewhere. And if this order be transgressed, the man who transferred is executed in the presence of the troops, while he that received him is severely punished”. See ‘Ala-ad-Din ‘Ata-Malik Juvaini, The Genghis Khan: The History of the World-Conqueror, translated by J. Boyle, (Manchester, 1997), p. 32, and Hsiao, The Military Establishment for hereditary membership. These prohibitions effectively made the membership in the minqan hereditary. Perhaps, registering the members of the decimal units in the ‘blue book’ (koke¨ debter) was an early practice. See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.115–116. However, the prohibition of abandoning one’s assigned units might have been instituted at later point to prevent quarrels over subjects and to curb concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the noyans. At any rate, there was a very consequential incident over subjects involving the powerful shaman Kok¨ oc¨ u¨ Teb Tengri and Temuge¨ otcigin, Chinggis Khan’s youngest brother, where some of Temuge’s¨ subjects abandoned him in favour of Teb Tenggeri, who refused to return them to Temuge.¨ This Teb Tenggeri is reported in the SHM as accumulating power and influence even at the expense of Chinggis Khan himself. Eventually, this quarrel led to Teb Tenggeri’s demise. See Ibid., pp. 139–144. 115Granting hereditary rulership was the principal means of securing the allegiance and loyalty of the noyans. See Atwood, “Banner Otog, thousand”, pp. 35–36. Even during the Yuan, when centralisation of power was much stronger, these offices were invariably hereditary. See Hsiao, The Military Establishment,pp.9–32. Thus, Yuan-shi reports that “If a wan-hu [myriarch] or a ch’ien-hu [chiliarch] died in a battle, [one of] his descendants would inherit his title. In case he died of disease, [the inherited title] would be lowered one rank . . . Later, all offices, whether high or low, were to be inherited indiscriminately. Only when one was removed for crimes was this not the case”. See Ibid., p. 73. Certainly, the Grand Khans were aware of the dangers of the fragmentation. Therefore, for example, Mongke¨ Khan even purged noyans with questionable loyalty en masse. See Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire,p.363. In the Yuan, they even made all the civilian offices and Chinese military commanders non-hereditary. However, the hereditary rights of the Mongol noyans were kept intact. See Hsiao, The Military Establishment,pp.25–26. 116Atwood identifies minqan, otog and khoshuu as “fiefs or appanages” and notes that he uses appanage or fief “to refer to designated shares of land and people held by nobles in Mongolia and elsewhere”. See Atwood, “Banner Otog, thousand”, pp. 2, 29. Though there are some similiraties, neither minqan nor otog nor khoshuu was a share; they were units of local governance, whereas a fief was a unit of property. See S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The

effectively separated minqans from one another, the hereditary membership virtually sealed them off. Thus, the system as a whole had a weak horizontal integration with cross- knitting bonds between individual minqans. Hence, beneath the imperial power, the system was bound to produce discrete corporate population groups or local communities with their own distinct ruling lineages.117 Thus, in effect, the hereditary divisional system was harbouring numerous potential lordships beneath the imperial sway. If the imperial as well as regional princely power were to go, minqansortumen¨ s would emerge as independent powers in themselves.118 Meanwhile, the population that was assigned to minqansandtumen¨ s, as a result of their hereditary rulership and membership, were to develop and maintain their own distinctive categorical or group identities. Most of them were simply identified by the names of their noyans or names of their noyans’ choosing or affiliations, and these names were established as the names of the populations of respective minqans. For this reason, as Atwood perceptibly notices, we have many so-called ethnonyms or named population groups in the post- imperial period.119 Certainly, their identity mythomoteur necessarily centred on the ruling noble houses.120 Because of the importance of succession and the inheritance of the office of noyan, the lineages of the ruling noble houses must have been the best remembered and, over time, in many cases the putative ancestors or founders of the ruling houses of the noyans tended to become the eponymous ancestors of all the entire minqans. For example, Yuan shi’s biography of Jurchedei¨ tells us that Jalayir, Uru’ud, Mangghud, Qinggirad and Ikires were descended from Nachin Ba’atur, an ancestor of Jurchedei,¨ a distinguished noyan of minqan.121 However, the SHM tells us that Nachin Ba’atur was an ancestor of Uru’ut and Manqgut.122 While the hereditary divisional system left the apportioned population no alternative but to loyally serve the houses of their hereditary lords, the genealogical mythomoteur of their lordly houses embraced and encompassed the subject population around the lineage myths of the lordly houses. Thus, the hereditary divisional system was destined to make a division’s population not only into a corporate community but also a distinct, durable identity group with a myth of common origin. Finally, when the empire and the regional khanates collapsed, these divisions emerged not only as autonomous minqan-uluses or tumen¨ -uluses but also as discrete identity groups.

Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994), p. 48. On the other hand, Chinggis Khan gave shares or qubi to his mother, sons and brothers, which can veritably be identiﬁed as appanages. See de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.138–139. Perhaps, those Carolingian counties that acquired hereditary rulership, although very different, might serve as a better notion of a minqan as an institution of local governance. See Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals. 117It is true that the domains of Jochi, Chaghatay, Og¨ odei¨ and later Huleg¨ u¨ actually encompassed their respective domains. However, these power centres depleted the imperial power and accelerated the fragmentation of the empire. In fact, imperial ruling elites were acutely aware of this tendency and to halt the fragmentation they tried a number of techniques, such as appointing imperial overseers, reshufﬂing the army and enmeshing princely shares throughout the empire. See for instance Hsiao, The Military Establishment. 118See P. Jackson, “From Ulus to Khanate: the making of the Mongol states c.1220–c. 1290”inThe Mongol Empire and Its Legacy, (eds.) Reuven Amitai-Preiss and David Morgan (Leiden, 1999), pp. 12–38. 119Atwood, “Banner Otog, thousand”, p. 28. 120SeeA.D.Smith,The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1986) for mythomoteur. 121Atwood, “Banner Otog, thousand”, p. 32. In fact, describing the putative ancestors of the rulers as the ancestors of the divisions was a common practice. See Munkh-Erdene, “The Mongolian Nationality Lexicon”. 122de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,pp.20–21.

This process is unmistakably noticeable throughout the Mongol Empire in the fourteenth and ﬁfteenth centuries. Many tumen¨ sandminqans transformed into autonomous lordships. The result was structurally similar throughout the entire empire and a fragmented, decentralised political order – Sneath’s aristocratic order or conventional scholarship’s multitude of tribes – emerged. We ﬁnd in the eastern half of the Mongol Empire about a dozen tumen¨ soruluses and numerous otogsorkhoshuus, while its western half was divided into many tumen¨ soruluses123 and numerous qoshunsorhazaras in the declining years of the Chinggisid successor states. However, these were by no means Fried’s ‘secondary tribes’ because they were integral parts of the imperial government. Instead, to paraphrase Fried’s own words, they were veritable emirates or kingdoms, but only after the collapse of the Chinggisid regional khanates.124 Thus military-oriented hereditary divisional system was the engine that generated lordships (or aristocratic houses or tribes) with distinct identities.125 Yet, as long as they recognised the centrality or superiority of the central ruler they remained subordinate divisions of a larger polity, a unit of local governance. Grouping or dividing population into military-oriented numerically identical divisions was a superb scheme for the concentration of power and mobilisation of troops in times of war. However, if the system as a whole created numerous separate identical divisions beneath the imperial power, making their rulership and membership hereditary transformed them not only into potential lordships but also into discrete human groups with distinctive identities. Indeed, in a situation where local rulers were hereditary, the local units tended to become autonomous lordships in themselves unless central governments took actions necessary to impede them.126 This must have been especially true when central authority was very weak and “the entire ulus was in turmoil” as it was appropriately described in the SHM.127

Conclusion

We see empire builders, in an effort to devise an efﬁcient system to centralise power and mobilise troops, create sub-state politico-territorial communities with distinct identities by dividing their manpower into military-oriented hereditary divisions. Thus, my inquiry into the origins of ‘tribes’ or “aristocracy-led named groups” shows that they were the top-down creations of what scholars call a ‘centralised state’ or ‘imperial state’. They were created by the state as means to administer and mobilise its manpower. As such, they were the parts of the imperial structure, but not pre-state kinship-based, real or imagined, groups. Similarly, Sneath’s aristocracies had their origins in the hereditary ofﬁces of the commanders of these divisions, an imperial appointment to reward and secure their service and allegiance.

123For instance, in Ulus Chaghatay, while Barulas, Suldus, Arlat, Jalayir were former Chinggisid minqans, Qar’unas, Neguderi,¨ Yasa’uri, Apard¨ı, Khuttal˜ an˜ ¨ı, Borolday and so on were tumen¨ s of later periods. See Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane,pp.22–36. 124Fried, The Notion of Tribe,p.65. 125It should be noted that the situation was no different in medieval Europe. See Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities, and Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century. 126See Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities, and Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century. 127de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History,p.150.

However, with the waning of the central power, we see these hereditary commanders emerge as independent aristocratic lords contending for the imperial throne with their own autonomous lordships as power bases. The latter happened to be the former imperial divisions, the hereditary appointments issued as a means to secure their allegiance. Both the founders of the Mongol and Manchu empires started their ascendancy from this humble origin and both usurped the thrones of the established powers to legitimise their rule. Both rulers incorporated the pre-existing polities by dividing them into smaller numerical divisions – minqansandkhoshuus; both granted heredity rulerships – noyan and jasag – to those who were loyal and submissive. Thus, we see state or empire-building efforts creating both the hereditary divisions as administrative forms as well as ‘quasi-political’ population categories at the same time. Hence the hereditary divisional system was the engine that generated numerous potential lordships (or ‘aristocratic houses’ or ‘tribes’) with distinct identities. All in all, we might say, projects of imperial incorporation created both aristocracies and ‘tribes’.

Lhamsuren Munkh-Erdene National University of Mongolia