The kurultai of 1206 was the great assembly of Mongol tribal leaders that proclaimed Temüjin as Genghis Khan and that marked the formal unification of the Mongol tribes into a single political entity. The kurultai was held in the spring of 1206 on the banks of the Onon River, in the Khentii Mountains, the heartland of the old Khamag Mongol territory.
The Word “Kurultai”
The word “kurultai” (also spelled “khuriltai,” “khurultai,” or “khuriltuy”) comes from the Mongolic root “khur-” meaning “to gather” or “to assemble.” The kurultai was the central political institution of the Mongol people, and it served as the assembly at which important decisions were made: the election of a new khan, the declaration of war, the allocation of pasture, and the promulgation of new laws. The kurultai was, in essence, the political forum of the steppe, and it played a role analogous to that of the popular assembly in ancient Rome or the parliament in medieval Europe.
The Kurultai of 1206
The kurultai of 1206 was the most important kurultai in Mongol history. It was held at the source of the Onon River, in a place that has been identified with modern-day Khentii province in northeastern Mongolia. The exact date of the kurultai is not certain, but it is generally placed in the spring of 1206, the Year of the Tiger in the traditional Mongol calendar.
The kurultai was attended by the leaders of all the major Mongol tribes, including representatives of the Kiyat, the Tayichiud, the Kerey, the Onggirat, the Baarin, the Jalayir, the Besut, and the Uruud. Each tribal leader came with his retinue, and the assembly was a major gathering by the standards of the steppe. The participants debated the question of who should rule the unified Mongol people, and the choice fell on Temüjin, the son of Yesugei and Hoelun and the victor of the recent wars of unification.
The proclamation of Temüjin as “Genghis Khan” was a momentous event. The title “Genghis” has been variously interpreted, but the most common translations are “oceanic,” “firm,” or “universal.” The title was meant to convey the claim of the bearer to rule not only the Mongol tribes but all peoples under heaven, and it was a deliberate echo of the Chinese imperial title of “Son of Heaven” and the Central Asian title of “Khagan” or “Khan of Khans.”
The Decisions of the Kurultai
The kurultai of 1206 was not merely a coronation. It was also the occasion for a number of important political and military reforms. Genghis Khan used the kurultai to announce a series of measures that transformed the structure of Mongol society and laid the foundations of the Mongol Empire.
The most important reform was the decimal reorganization of the army. Genghis Khan divided his followers into units of ten (arban), a hundred (zuun), a thousand (mingghan), and ten thousand (tümen), and appointed his own commanders to each unit. The decimal structure gave the Mongol army a flexibility and a discipline that had been lacking in the old tribal levies, and it became the model for the imperial armies of the khanates for the next two centuries.
The second important reform was the promulgation of the Yassa code of law. The Yassa was a written body of law that bound the entire Mongol nation, and it was the first time that the Mongols had had a uniform legal system. The Yassa regulated military service, hunting, hospitality, religious freedom, theft, adultery, and capital punishment, and it established a uniform system of justice throughout the empire.
The third important reform was the appointment of a new imperial guard, the keshig. The keshig was a body of ten thousand men, drawn from the most loyal and able of Genghis Khan’s followers, who served as the personal guard of the khan. The keshig was the training ground for the future commanders of the Mongol army, and many of the most famous Mongol generals, including Subutai and Jebe, served in the keshig before being given field commands.
The Legacy of the Kurultai
The kurultai of 1206 was the founding event of the Mongol Empire. The institutions created at the kurultai — the decimal army, the Yassa, the keshig, the imperial administration — survived the death of Genghis Khan and continued to define the Mongol state for the next century and a half. The date of the kurultai, 1206, is conventionally used to mark the beginning of Mongol imperial history, and the event is one of the most important political events of the medieval world.
The kurultai also established a precedent that would be followed for the next two centuries. The election of a new khan required a kurultai of the imperial family, and the right of the family to elect the khan was recognized as a fundamental principle of Mongol political life. The principle was eventually abandoned as the khanate became more centralized, but it remained an important part of the political tradition of the Mongols until the seventeenth century.
Sources
- David Morgan, The Mongols (2nd ed., Oxford, 2007).
- Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410 (London, 2005).
- Timothy May, The Mongol Conquests in World History (London, 2012).