Jochi
Encyclopedia
Jochi (c. 1181–1227) was the eldest of the Mongol
chieftain Genghis Khan
's four sons by his principal wife Börte
. An accomplished military leader, he participated in his father's conquest of Central Asia
, along with his brothers and uncles.
at the time), Börte was abducted by members of the Mergid
confederation. She was given to a certain Chilger Bökh, who was the brother of the Yehe Chiledu, as a spoil of war. She remained in Chilger Bökh's captivity for a few months before she was recovered by Temüjin. Shortly afterwards she gave birth to Jöchi. By all accounts, Genghis Khan treated Jochi as his first son, but a doubt always remained among the Mongols
whether Temüjin or Chilger Bökh was the real father of Jochi. This uncertainty about his paternity was not without consequences. Jochi’s descendants, although they formed the oldest branch of the Genghis Khan’s family, were never considered for the succession in claiming their father’s heritage and there were signs of estrangement between Jochi and Genghis Khan.
, extending the northern border of the Mongol Empire
for the very first time. On behalf of his father, Jochi led two campaigns against the Kyrgyz, in 1210 and 1218. Jochi’s contribution in the Khwarezm
war was extensive and he was responsible for capturing the towns of Signak, Jand, and Yanikant in April, 1220, during this war. Subsequently he was given the command of operation against the city of Urgench (Gurganj) which was the capital of the Khwarezmian Empire
. Here the siege of the town led to inordinate delays because Jochi engaged in extensive negotiation with the town to persuade it to surrender peacefully and save it from destruction. This action was seen as militarily unsound by his brother, Chagatai
. Chagatai wanted to destroy the city but Genghis Khan had promised the city to Jochi after his victory. This difference of opinion on military affairs deepened a rift between Jochi and Chagatai. Genghis Khan intervened in the campaign and appointed Ögedei
as the commander of the operation. Ögedei resumed the operations vigorously and the town was duly captured, sacked, massacred and destroyed thoroughly.
The differences in tactics between Jochi and Chagatai in early 1221 added to their personal quarrel about the succession. To settle the matter, Genghis Khan called a kurultai
. The formal meeting was used in both familial matters and matters of state. Temüjin was elected/appointed Khan of his tribe during a kurultai, and he called for them often during his early campaigns to garner public support for his wars. These meetings were key to Genghis Khan legitimacy. Tribal tradition was also critical. As Genghis Khan's first born son, Jochi, was favored to rule the clan and the empire after his father died. At the familial kurultai called in 1222, the issue of Jochi's legitimacy was brought up by Chagatai. At that meeting, Genghis Khan made it clear that Jochi was his legitimate first-born son. However, he worried that the quarrelsome nature of the two would split the empire. By early 1223 Genghis Khan had selected Ögedei, his third son, as his successor. For the sake of preserving the Empire, both Jochi and Chagatai agreed but the rift between them never healed. Their rift would later politically divide the European part of the Mongol Empire from its Asian part permanently.
went with him but Jochi withdrew to his territories north of Aral and Caspian Seas. There he remained until his death and would not see his father again in his lifetime. Perhaps the selection of Ögedei as a successor to Genghis Khan had greatly disappointed him; this is a probable explanation for Jochi's withdrawal from court life.
Though the histories are unclear, there is evidence that Jochi conspired against Genghis, and that Genghis in return pondered a pre-emptive strike. When Genghis Khan returned home he sent for Jochi. When the latter refused to obey and asked a pardon Genghis Khan sent Chagatai and Ögedei against him. But before it came to open hostilities, news came that Jochi had died in February 1226 .
Genghis Khan had divided his empire among his four surviving sons during his lifetime. Jochi was entrusted with the westernmost part of the empire, then lying between Ural and Irtish rivers. In the kurultai of 1229 following Genghis Khan’s death, this partition was formalized and Jochi’s family (Jochi himself had died six months before Genghis Khan) was allocated the lands in the west up to ‘as far as the hooves of Mongol horses had trodden'. Following the Mongol custom, Genghis Khan bequeathed only four thousand ‘original’ Mongol troops to each of his three elder sons and 101,000 to Tolui, his youngest son. Consequently Jochi’s descendants extended their empire mostly with the help of auxiliary troops from the subjugated populations which happened to be Turkic. This was the chief reason why the Golden Horde acquired a Turkic identity. Jochi's inheritance was divided among his sons. His sons Orda and Batu
founded the White Horde and the Blue Horde, respectively, and would later combine their territories into the Kipchak Khanate or Golden Horde
. Another of Jochi’s sons, Shiban
, received territories that lay north of Batu and Orda’s Ülüs.
Genghis Khan had made Jochi responsible for the supervision and conduct of the community hunt. Hunting was essentially a large scale military exercise designed specifically for the training of the army. It frequently encompassed thousands of square kilometers of area, required the participation of several tumen
s and lasted anywhere between one to three months. Rules and procedure of the conduct of the military exercise were encoded in the Yassa
.
Certain incidences hint towards the fact that Jochi was of a kinder disposition than Genghis Khan, though the adjective “kind” must be interpreted by the standards of his times and milieu because Jochi had had his share of indulgence in massacres of civilians. On one occasion Jochi pleaded with his father to spare the life of a son of an enemy chief who had been taken captive and who happened to be a great archer. Jochi argued that such a great archer could be an asset to the Mongol army. Genghis Khan brushed aside this argument and had the captive executed.
Mongols
Mongols ) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia...
chieftain Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan , born Temujin and occasionally known by his temple name Taizu , was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death....
's four sons by his principal wife Börte
Börte
Börte was the first wife of Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire. Börte became the head of the first Court of Genghis Khan, and Grand Empress of his Empire. Little is known about the details of her early life, but she was betrothed to him at a young age, married at 17, and then...
. An accomplished military leader, he participated in his father's conquest of Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
, along with his brothers and uncles.
Early life
There is some question as to Jochi's true paternity. Shortly after her marriage to Genghis Khan (known as TemüjinGenghis Khan
Genghis Khan , born Temujin and occasionally known by his temple name Taizu , was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death....
at the time), Börte was abducted by members of the Mergid
Merkit
The Mergid was one of the five major tribal confederations in Mongolian plateau in the 12th century.The Mergids inhabited in basins of the Selenge River and lower Orkhon River...
confederation. She was given to a certain Chilger Bökh, who was the brother of the Yehe Chiledu, as a spoil of war. She remained in Chilger Bökh's captivity for a few months before she was recovered by Temüjin. Shortly afterwards she gave birth to Jöchi. By all accounts, Genghis Khan treated Jochi as his first son, but a doubt always remained among the Mongols
Mongols
Mongols ) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia...
whether Temüjin or Chilger Bökh was the real father of Jochi. This uncertainty about his paternity was not without consequences. Jochi’s descendants, although they formed the oldest branch of the Genghis Khan’s family, were never considered for the succession in claiming their father’s heritage and there were signs of estrangement between Jochi and Genghis Khan.
Wars of conquest
In 1207 he had successfully conquered the forest peoples in SiberiaSiberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
, extending the northern border of the Mongol Empire
Mongol Empire
The Mongol Empire , initially named as Greater Mongol State was a great empire during the 13th and 14th centuries...
for the very first time. On behalf of his father, Jochi led two campaigns against the Kyrgyz, in 1210 and 1218. Jochi’s contribution in the Khwarezm
Khwarezm
Khwarezm, or Chorasmia, is a large oasis region on the Amu Darya river delta in western Central Asia, which borders to the north the Aral Sea, to the east the Kyzylkum desert, to the south the Karakum desert and to the west the Ustyurt Plateau...
war was extensive and he was responsible for capturing the towns of Signak, Jand, and Yanikant in April, 1220, during this war. Subsequently he was given the command of operation against the city of Urgench (Gurganj) which was the capital of the Khwarezmian Empire
Khwarezmian Empire
The Khwarazmian dynasty or Khwarezmian dynasty, also known as Khwarezmids, dynasty of Khwarazm Shahs or Khwarezm-Shah dynasty was a Persianate Sunni Muslim dynasty of Turkic mamluk origin.They ruled Greater Iran in the High Middle Ages, in the period of about 1077 to 1231, first as vassals of...
. Here the siege of the town led to inordinate delays because Jochi engaged in extensive negotiation with the town to persuade it to surrender peacefully and save it from destruction. This action was seen as militarily unsound by his brother, Chagatai
Chagatai Khan
Chagatai Khan was the second son of Genghis Khan and first khan and origin of the names of the Chagatai Khanate, Chagatai language and Chagatai Turks....
. Chagatai wanted to destroy the city but Genghis Khan had promised the city to Jochi after his victory. This difference of opinion on military affairs deepened a rift between Jochi and Chagatai. Genghis Khan intervened in the campaign and appointed Ögedei
Ögedei Khan
Ögedei Khan, born Ögedei was the third son of Genghis Khan and second Great Khan of the Mongol Empire by succeeding his father...
as the commander of the operation. Ögedei resumed the operations vigorously and the town was duly captured, sacked, massacred and destroyed thoroughly.
The differences in tactics between Jochi and Chagatai in early 1221 added to their personal quarrel about the succession. To settle the matter, Genghis Khan called a kurultai
Kurultai
Kurultai is a political and military council of ancient Mongol and Turkic chiefs and khans. The root of the word "Khural" means political "meeting" or "assembly" in the Mongolian language, it is also a verb for "to be established"...
. The formal meeting was used in both familial matters and matters of state. Temüjin was elected/appointed Khan of his tribe during a kurultai, and he called for them often during his early campaigns to garner public support for his wars. These meetings were key to Genghis Khan legitimacy. Tribal tradition was also critical. As Genghis Khan's first born son, Jochi, was favored to rule the clan and the empire after his father died. At the familial kurultai called in 1222, the issue of Jochi's legitimacy was brought up by Chagatai. At that meeting, Genghis Khan made it clear that Jochi was his legitimate first-born son. However, he worried that the quarrelsome nature of the two would split the empire. By early 1223 Genghis Khan had selected Ögedei, his third son, as his successor. For the sake of preserving the Empire, both Jochi and Chagatai agreed but the rift between them never healed. Their rift would later politically divide the European part of the Mongol Empire from its Asian part permanently.
Succession controversy
In the autumn of 1223 Genghis Khan started for Mongolia after completing the Khwarezm campaign. Ögedei, Chagatai and ToluiTolui
Tolui, was the youngest son of Genghis Khan by his chief khatun Börte...
went with him but Jochi withdrew to his territories north of Aral and Caspian Seas. There he remained until his death and would not see his father again in his lifetime. Perhaps the selection of Ögedei as a successor to Genghis Khan had greatly disappointed him; this is a probable explanation for Jochi's withdrawal from court life.
Though the histories are unclear, there is evidence that Jochi conspired against Genghis, and that Genghis in return pondered a pre-emptive strike. When Genghis Khan returned home he sent for Jochi. When the latter refused to obey and asked a pardon Genghis Khan sent Chagatai and Ögedei against him. But before it came to open hostilities, news came that Jochi had died in February 1226 .
Genghis Khan had divided his empire among his four surviving sons during his lifetime. Jochi was entrusted with the westernmost part of the empire, then lying between Ural and Irtish rivers. In the kurultai of 1229 following Genghis Khan’s death, this partition was formalized and Jochi’s family (Jochi himself had died six months before Genghis Khan) was allocated the lands in the west up to ‘as far as the hooves of Mongol horses had trodden'. Following the Mongol custom, Genghis Khan bequeathed only four thousand ‘original’ Mongol troops to each of his three elder sons and 101,000 to Tolui, his youngest son. Consequently Jochi’s descendants extended their empire mostly with the help of auxiliary troops from the subjugated populations which happened to be Turkic. This was the chief reason why the Golden Horde acquired a Turkic identity. Jochi's inheritance was divided among his sons. His sons Orda and Batu
Batu Khan
Batu Khan was a Mongol ruler and founder of the Ulus of Jochi , the sub-khanate of the Mongol Empire. Batu was a son of Jochi and grandson of Genghis Khan. His ulus was the chief state of the Golden Horde , which ruled Rus and the Caucasus for around 250 years, after also destroying the armies...
founded the White Horde and the Blue Horde, respectively, and would later combine their territories into the Kipchak Khanate or Golden Horde
Golden Horde
The Golden Horde was a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate that formed the north-western sector of the Mongol Empire...
. Another of Jochi’s sons, Shiban
Shiban
Shiban or Shayban was one of the Left Wing princes. He was Jöchi's fifth son and a grandson of Genghis Khan. Because he was too young when his father died in 1227, he did not receive any lands at that time....
, received territories that lay north of Batu and Orda’s Ülüs.
Genghis Khan had made Jochi responsible for the supervision and conduct of the community hunt. Hunting was essentially a large scale military exercise designed specifically for the training of the army. It frequently encompassed thousands of square kilometers of area, required the participation of several tumen
Tumen
Tumen or Tümen was a part of the decimal system used by Turkic and Mongol peoples to organize their armies. Tumen is an army unit of 10,000 soldiers...
s and lasted anywhere between one to three months. Rules and procedure of the conduct of the military exercise were encoded in the Yassa
Yassa
Yassa was a secret written code of law created by Genghis Khan. It was the principal law under the Mongol Empire even though no copies were made available...
.
Certain incidences hint towards the fact that Jochi was of a kinder disposition than Genghis Khan, though the adjective “kind” must be interpreted by the standards of his times and milieu because Jochi had had his share of indulgence in massacres of civilians. On one occasion Jochi pleaded with his father to spare the life of a son of an enemy chief who had been taken captive and who happened to be a great archer. Jochi argued that such a great archer could be an asset to the Mongol army. Genghis Khan brushed aside this argument and had the captive executed.
Children
Jochi had at least 14 sons and one daughter:- OrdaOrda KhanOrda Ichen was a Mongol Khan and military strategist who ruled eastern part of the Ulus of Jochi during the 13th century.-First Khan of the Blue Horde:...
(c. 1204-1280) - BatuBatu KhanBatu Khan was a Mongol ruler and founder of the Ulus of Jochi , the sub-khanate of the Mongol Empire. Batu was a son of Jochi and grandson of Genghis Khan. His ulus was the chief state of the Golden Horde , which ruled Rus and the Caucasus for around 250 years, after also destroying the armies...
(c. 1205-1255) - BerkeBerkeBerke Khan was the ruler of the Golden Horde who effectively consolidated the power of the Blue Horde and White Hordes from 1257 to 1266. He succeeded his brother Batu Khan of the Blue Horde and was responsible for the first official establishment of Islam in a khanate of the Mongol Empire...
, Khan of the Golden HordeGolden HordeThe Golden Horde was a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate that formed the north-western sector of the Mongol Empire...
from 1257-1267 - Berkhechir
- ShibanShibanShiban or Shayban was one of the Left Wing princes. He was Jöchi's fifth son and a grandson of Genghis Khan. Because he was too young when his father died in 1227, he did not receive any lands at that time....
- Tangad
- Teval (Buval). He was the grandfather of Nogai KhanNogai KhanNogai , also called Isa Nogai, was a general and de facto ruler of the Golden Horde and a great-great-grandson of Genghis Khan. His grandfather was Baul/Teval Khan, the 7th son of Jochi...
. - Chilagun
- Sinqur
- Chimbay
- Muhammed
- Udur
- Tuq-timur, the ancestor of late khans of the Great HordeGreat Horde- Dissolution of the Golden Horde :The peripheral regions of the Golden Horde broke off as follows: 1438: Kazan Khanate, 1441: Crimean Khanate, 1466: Astrakhan Khanate The remnant, which became known as the Great Horde, was left with the steppe between the Dnieper and Yaik, the capital Sarai and a...
. - Shingum
- a daughter who married the QarluqQarluqThe Karluks were a prominent nomadic Turkic tribe residing in the regions of Kara-Irtysh and the Tarbagatai Mountains west of the Altay Mountains...
chief of AlmaliqAlmaliq, ChinaAlmalik was a medieval city in Central Asia's Ili river basin. Its site is located within the present-day Huocheng County in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, between the city of Yining and the border with Kazakhstan.Almalik was originally one of...
.
Ancestry
See also
- Mongol EmpireMongol EmpireThe Mongol Empire , initially named as Greater Mongol State was a great empire during the 13th and 14th centuries...
- Genghis KhanGenghis KhanGenghis Khan , born Temujin and occasionally known by his temple name Taizu , was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death....
- MongolsMongolsMongols ) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia...
- Ögedei KhanÖgedei KhanÖgedei Khan, born Ögedei was the third son of Genghis Khan and second Great Khan of the Mongol Empire by succeeding his father...
- SubutaiSubutaiSubutai was the primary military strategist and general of Genghis Khan and Ögedei Khan...
- Nogai KhanNogai KhanNogai , also called Isa Nogai, was a general and de facto ruler of the Golden Horde and a great-great-grandson of Genghis Khan. His grandfather was Baul/Teval Khan, the 7th son of Jochi...