As head of the tribe, the ruling khan's main duties concerned the allotment of pastures, the plotting of migration times and routes, and decisive leadership. The shaman and the other nobles, effectively a tribal council, both confirmed and counterbalanced the chief's authority. The tribe operated on a minimum of two administrative levels. At the highest level was the tribal chief, who exercised direct control over the tribal nobles. At a lower level, individual nobles controlled their own retinue of commoners, who were solely answerable to them.
Sometimes it was considered in the tribes' interest to form alliances or join confederations or even seek the protection of a stronger tribe. However, this invariably involved some loss of independence, something that any tribe was loath to suffer. Tlae reality' of the steppes dictated that the smaller or weaker tribes had to sometimes sacrifice their independence in order to merely ensure their continued existence. Where the supratribal arrangement existed, it took on the form of an enlarged reflection of the tribe, incorporating common myths, beliefs, practices, traditions, and institutions. Often a royal lineage, a golden lineage in the case of the Mongols, became a unifying theme with which to command an extra sense of unity and identity.
Mongol paiza granting free passage to the bearer. Courtesy of Xinjiang Qinshan Culture Publishing
After Chinggis Khan assumed the leadership of the "people of the felt-walled tents/'*’ his clan, the Borjigid, dominated the other clans and tribes, who then declared their allegiance or submission fi7/ and also took on the collective name of Mongols. The supratribe could be joined by outsiders by one of three methods. First, a whole tribe could pledge loyalty and be incorporated in its entirety into the larger polity (political unit). Second, after suffering defeat a tribe could be broken into individuals, tents, or family units and distributed as booty among all the component parts of the supratribe. Third, and especially with nontribal military elements, outsider units could be assigned to individual military commanders to act under his personal command. These supratribal polities were extremely fluid, and their composition frequently changed, expanding or shrinking over time, though the idea of a vague "people" or "nation" or persisted and provided a continuing sense of identity. When Chinggis Khan reached the pinnacle of his power in the third decade of the thirteenth century, he allotted new ulus'* named after his sons, and these ulus were to form the basis of political and even geographical entities for centuries after his death. Individual tribes, to conclude, would submit and relinquish some of their independence to a supratribal polity when material gain, usually in the form of war-generated booty, was offered or when the tribe's security or very existence was threatened.
World History
