Jochi

Encyclopedia : J : JO : JOC : Jochi

Jochi (also spelled Jöchi) (c. 1185-1227), was the first son of Chinggis Khan's wife Börte. The wording here is important as shortly after her marriage to Chinggis Khan (known as Temujin at the time), Börte had been abducted by the members of the Merkit tribe. She was given to a certain Chilger Boke, who was the brother of Merkit chief, as a spoil of war. She remained in Chilger Boke's captivity for a few months before she was recovered by Temujin. Shortly afterwards she gave birth to Jöchi. By all accounts, Chinggis Khan treated Jochi as his first son, but a doubt always remained among the Mongols whether Temujin or Chilger Boke was the real father of Jochi. This uncertainty about his paternity was not without results. Jochi’s descendants, although they formed the oldest branch of the Chinggis Khan’s family, were never considered for the succession of the empire. The descendants of Chinggis Khan’s other sons apparently exploited the uncertainty so well that the Jochi’s branch of the family remained permanently ineligible in the election for the Khakhan (Great Khan).

The word ‘Jochi’ means guest in Mongolian. Some historians have ascribed meaning to the word in the context of Jochi’s uncertain paternity, but it does not seem to imply anything as ‘Jochi’ was a common name among Mongols.

The first major military campaign that Jochi commanded independently was when he was ordered to conquer the tribes residing between the Selenga and the Yenisey rivers in Siberian forests. He subdued Oirat, Kirghiz, Buriyat, Barqun, Ursut and Tubas tribes residing in Siberian forests during this campaign of 1207-1208 and received the proud approval of his father for his achievements as a military commander. Chinggis Khan then assigned these tribes and their territories to Jochi.

Jochi continued to play an important role in his father’s campaigns till the Khwarezm campaign in early 1220’s. But as his younger brothers came of age and started asserting themselves in claiming their father’s heritage, there were signs of estrangement between Jochi and Chinggis Khan. 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 Khwarezm 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 the destruction. This can be interpreted as the proof of his (relatively) tolerant personality or it can be interpreted as his shrewd personality as the town had been promised to him as an appanage and an intact populous town would have been beneficial for him. Whatever the reason, the delays led to a very public quarrel between Jochi and an impatient Chagatai in early 1221. Chinggis Khan intervened and appointed Ogedei as the commander of the operation. Ogedei resumed the operations vigorously and the town was duly captured, sacked, massacred and destroyed thoroughly. Presumably this incidence sowed the seed of rift between Jochi and Chagatai-Ogedei and would have implications in the future of the Mongol Empire.

By early 1223 Chinggis Khan had selected Ogedei as his successor. In the autumn of 1223 Chinggis Khan started for Mongolia after completing the Khwarezm campaign. Ogedei, Chagatai and Tolui went with him but Jochi withdrew to his territories north of Aral and Caspian Seas. There he remained till his death and would not see his father again in his lifetime. Perhaps the selection of Ogedei as a successor to Chinggis 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 Chinggis, and that Chinggis in return pondered a pre-emptive strike. When Chinggis Khan returned home he sent for Jochi. When the latter refused to obey Chinggis Khan sent Chagatai and Ogedei against him. But before it came to open hostilities, news came that Jochi had died in February 1227.

Chinggis 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 Khuriltai of 1229 following Chinggis Khan’s death, this partition was formalized and Jochi’s family (Jochi himself had died six months before Chinggis Khan) was allocated the lands in the west up to ‘as far as the hooves of Mongol horses had trodden'. Following the Mongol custom, Chinggis 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 Turkish. This was the chief reason why Golden Horde acquired a Turkish identity. Jochi's inheritance was divided among his sons Orda and Batu, who 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 son Shiban’s territories lay north of Batu and Orda’s Ülüs.

Chinggis 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 tumens and lasted anywhere between one to three months. Rules and procedure of the conduct of the military exercise were encoded in the Yasa.

Certain incidences hint towards the fact that Jochi was of a kinder disposition than Chinggis 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 Chinggis Khan 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 can be an asset to the Mongol army. Chinggis khan brushed aside this argument and had the captive executed.

Jochi

See also