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The Survival of the Royal Mongol Household

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The Survival of the Royal Mongol Household THE KESHJG IN IRAN: THE SURVIVAL OF THE ROYAL MONGOL HOUSEHOLD CHARLES MEL VILLE Although the rulers of the other sub-divisions of the empire had body­ guards, the Chingizid keshik continued only within the Yuan. 1 Mongke ordered that two out of every ten of the troops shared out by Genghis Khan among his sons, brothers and nephews, should be picked out and taken off the muster, and transferred to Hiilegu's personal estate (injii), to accompany him [to Iran] and to be his attendants (mulaziman) here. He also nominated others of his own sons, dependants (khwfshan) and intimates (nokod'; for the same purpose, to set off with the army in the service of Hulegii. For this reason, there are and have always been in this kingdom [Iran] am'irs from the family (urugh) and kinsmen of each of the am'irs of Genghis Khan. Each of them is appointed to his hereditary role and post (rah va kar-i mawruth). 2 [Nadir Shah] all the time selected 1,000 Rustam-like, Isfandiyar-killing warriors and called them the hamfsha-kesh'ik, who were always and con­ stantly present at the Sahib-qiran's court and royal guardhouse (kesh'ik­ khana-yi humayiln). They were not absent from the exalted court for a moment.3 The royal household is both literally the household establishment of the ruler and, in a medieval patrimonial state such as that of the Ilkhans, also the nucleus or core of the imperial government. Nevertheless, the existence of the Ilkhans' household, other than in the generic sense of the ordo (ordu) or court, has been consistently overlooked: perhaps not surprisingly, in view of the orientation of our sources (both primary and secondary). In this paper I wish to place an accent on the presence of the Mongol household in the Ilkhanate. Among the issues of interest here are to what extent the household provided- or perhaps more accurately, continued to provide- the main officers of state in Mongol Iran, and how this determined the nature of Mongol rule, especially once native traditions 1 Kwanten (I 979), 92- 93. 2 Rashid al-Din (1994), 975. 3 Marvi (1985), 229. 136 CHARLES MELVILLE of bureaucratic government reasserted themselves. I will seek to argue that the persistence of household rule in Iran, particularly as ordered around the royal guard (keshig), is one of the more enduring legacies of Genghis Khan.4 In doing so, I will also hope to inject some fresh material into the debate, pursued almost single-handedly by David Morgan, on the question of who ran the Mongol empire. 5 The Formation ef the Keshig Under Genghis Khan The patterns for Mongol government were established by Genghis Khan, who in around 1189 first formed a household of devoted followers from his nokod (sing: nokor, companions and personal depen­ dents), the patrimony left by Genghis's father and his own personal estate.6 In preparation for his campaign against the Naimans in 1204, Genghis instituted the decimal arrangement of his troops and created his personal keshig, or bodyguard, drawn from these early companions, the sons of relatives and chieftains, and those with a pleasing appearance and special skills. 7 They included a day watch 4 This paper started life as part of a series of seminars on the royal household, organized at Sabanci University, Istanbul, in December 2002, by Metin Kunt. I am grateful to him for encouraging me to focus on this neglected area. An earlier version of the paper was also presented at a history seminar at SOAS, London, in February 2003, and again benefited from the comments of the participants. I am most grateful to Tom Allsen, whose work (cit. n. 3) raised my interest in the subject in the first place, and who kindly read two drafts of the paper and offered many helpful comments. 5 Morgan, D. (1982b) and (1996). I too have been circling round this question for some time; see Melville (1990a), 62- 64 and (1994), 94-95. 6 de Rachewiltz, ed. (2004), para. 124 (50-51, 462- 66); Barthold ( 1977), 382- 83. See mainly Hsiao (1978), 34-38, and Allsen (1986), esp. 513-21, for what follows, and more recently, Crupper (1992-94). 7 For the term keshig, see for example, Cleaves (1949), 437; Doerfer (I 963), 467- 70, and Hsaio (1978), 148, n. 10, with further references. I am keenly aware of the difficulty of providing consistent spelling for these and other terms encoun­ tered in these texts, which may have a variety oflinguistic origins, Mongol, Uighur, Turkish, for all of which different transcriptions are available. Keshig, for instance, is equally frequently found as keshik (pl. keshikten, keshigten), and in Persian as ke;::,ik (plural keziktanan, i.e., with a Persian plural suffix as well). On the whole, my preferred usage is based on the spelling in Persian sources in most cases, while indicating other equivalents on first encounter. For this, I follow de Rachewiltz's commentary on The Secret History ef the Mongols (de Rachewiltz, ed. [2004]) when possible. I am also grateful to Chris Atwood for his suggestions, but accept all inconsistencies as the product of my own ignorance. .
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