STATUS

Women generally enjoyed a high status in Mongol society and were involved in most aspects of life, including battle, along with their men folk. This is apparent when even a cursory look at the genealogical tables of the Mongol Great Khans reveals extended periods when women effectively ruled over the whole empire. Between 1241 and 1246 the Great Khan Ogodei's widow, Toregene, ruled as regent, and between 1248 and 1251 the Great Khan Giiyiik's widow, Oghul Ghaymish, became regent until Mongke was installed as the new Great Khan. After Chinggis Khan's youngest son, Tolui, died (1231-32), his formidable wife Sorghaghtani Beki resisted attempts to remarry her to Ogodei's son Giiyiik. Instead she ruled her late husband's domains herself, and eventually she was able to successfully promote her own sons as heirs to the Mongol throne. In

Mongol women's traditional dress, Holihut Museum, Courtesy of Xinjiang Qinshan Culture rublisliing

Turkistan (central Asia) theChaghataid homelands were long ruled by the widow of Chinggis's second son, Chaghatai,

The high status women enjoyed in Mongol society found reflection in the lands under their control, and both the Iranian provinces of Shiraz and Kirman experienced extended periods of rule by powerful women. Qutlugh Terkan Khatun (ruled 1257-83) of Kirman maintained close personal, political, and cultural links with her Mongol overlords in the Iranian Mongol capital of Maragheh during her two decades of rule over this southern Persian province. The period she resided over as queen is considered a golden age in Kirman's history. Her namesake in the neighboring province of Shiraz, though not as illustrious nor so well regarded nor indeed so long-serving, was a powerful female monarch and reflected the Mongol influence on the society of the time.

The women whose biographies are examined later in this chapter are of course not typical, but their names, details of their lives, and their achievements would have been known and discussed by women in more mundane circumstances. These women would have inspired, and if they were not role models they were dream models for more ordinary women. Though fhe women examined led extraordinary lives, their lives illustrate attitudes to women and the potential allowed to women in an essentially patriarchal society. There are many aspects of Mongol society that contrasted with the sedentary societies on its borders. One of these is the role and status of women. In both China and Persia women faced far more oppression and lack of basic freedom than their sisters on the steppe. Women on the steppe endured a hard and at times harsh existence, but they shared this hardship with their men, and they faced their problems together on an equal footing. This was not the case in the urbanized societies outside the Eurasian steppe, and when the Mongol hordes swept southward and westward this contrast between the status of fhe women in the two societies came to the fore. This medieval clash of civilizations was not as dramatic as might have been expected, however. Prior to the irruption of the Mongols, cultural exchange and integration had already been taking place. In city-states such as existed in Kirman, the ruling family were Persianized Turks only one generation from the steppe. Turanian women had already settled into an Iranian court. Within two generations a Turkish queen had exchanged the saddle for a throne and the golden age of Kirman was presided over by a woman.

The women whose lives are now to be presented are Mongol and Turco-Mongol women who achieved greatness and gave hope, pride, and encouragement to the women who toiled over the pots, babies, and horses back in the ordu. Though a woman could not formally become Great Khan, women effectively achieved the highest office not infrequently at the local, regional, and highest imperial level.

These periods when women acted as regents, ruling the vast Mongol Empire, have often been dismissed merely as interludes in the main march of male-dominafed Mongol history, but a closer examination of their reigns and the role these women played along with the influence they wielded suggests otherwise. Both Temiijin's mother and first wife were sfrong-willed, independenf-minded women.