News

How the lives — and sexual freedoms — of Genghis Khan’s Mongolians helped shape a civilisation www.ft.com

Three and a half long decades ago, when central Asian regions such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan were still in the grip of the Soviet Union, I embarked on a postgraduate study of how Islam and communism were interacting in a Tajik village. But since the KGB was omnipresent, I knew that I would not get a visa if I revealed my PhD topic.

So instead, I told the Soviet authorities that I wanted to study Tajik wedding rituals — a topic deemed to be politically acceptable for Soviet anthropologists then. And, to my delight, it turned out to be a better choice than I had ever imagined: not only did I get the backing of the Soviet academic system, but my study of marriage rituals, gender relations, sexuality and reproduction became a brilliant “key” to unlock the local culture, to cite anthropologist Nancy Tapper.

Now a Mongolian anthropologist called Baasanjav Terbish has used the same key to explore the past 800 years of her native country. The results in her book, Sex in the Land of Genghis Khan, are utterly fascinating, offering a compelling perspective on the political economy of the region made famous by Genghis Khan. After all, as she notes, “human sexuality is a product of culture” and “a profoundly political issue”.

Her account provides a powerful companion to a more conventional new study of the region, Empires of the Steppes, from the esteemed historian Kenneth Harl, which sets out to be a definitive account of its different tribes. Think of the latter as a macro-frame to Mongolian history, while the former is a micro-level account of what happened on the ground — or, more accurately, in people’s beds.

Terbish’s story starts — like most accounts of the region — with the era just before the rise of the 13th-century ruler Genghis Khan. She freely admits that “until modern times, Mongols themselves did not write about their sexual lives”, meaning that definitive information is sparse.

But, from the accounts that do exist, she notes that the shamanistic cultures of the period did not view sexuality with shame and women enjoyed an unusually high level of freedom. While strictures against adultery were introduced during the Genghis Khan era, these were a tool of political discipline and control as much as anything else — men who had established alliances with other men through marriage did not want their lineages confused.

Women who were unmarried were generally given more sexual freedom, and even when Islamic norms were adopted by Genghis Khan’s descendants, such as the llkhanate established in the mid-13th century, they were looser than one might expect in many Muslim states.

“The Muslim world of the Middle Ages, including the territory over which the Ilkhanate ruled, was very different from today’s Islamic world,” Terbish writes. “During that period, it was common for Islamic scholars to engage theologically in issues relating to all aspects of sex, which gave birth to a rich tradition of Islamic sexology.” Who knew?

She had at least seven children by six different men. Rather than receiving a public dressing-down, the state pinned the medal of Glorious Mother of the First Class to her chest

This pattern predominated for centuries until the socialist era, with benefits (such as a relative lack of shame about sexuality and freedom for women) and costs (syphilis was rampant in 19th-century Mongolia, as horrified Russian doctors noted).

But when the communist regime took control, in the early 20th century, the pattern shifted: as in the Soviet culture I studied, party officials assumed that the state should have control of peoples’ lives — and bodies.

One consequence was that women were encouraged to produce as many children as possible, even when unmarried. “My paternal aunt, who lived her whole life in Dundgobi province, was notorious in her youth,” recalls Terbish, who uses her own life experiences to make the book extremely readable. “She enjoyed sexual intimacy with many married and single men, giving birth to at least seven children by six different men. Rather than receiving a public dressing-down, the state pinned the medal of Glorious Mother of the First Class to her chest.”

However, communist officials also insisted that the only acceptable form of sexual encounter was heterosexual, suppressed expressions of pleasure or passion, and left citizens living in such cramped conditions that sex was often impractical. This was also true of the wider Soviet Union.

The most interesting — and tragic — twist in this tale, however, is the arrival of the post-Soviet era: Terbish explains that when the communist state collapsed, many social norms crumbled as well. That has emancipated some people. But Mongolian nationalists are increasingly espousing a vision of pre-communist nationhood based on a mythical (and historically inaccurate) sense of puritanism, coupled with xenophobia. Indeed, the book opens with a scene of a Mongolian prostitute having her hair shaved off by nationalists after serving a Chinese client.

The lessening of socialist controls has also led to sexual abuse, alcoholism and sex trafficking. Sexuality, in other words, provides a good metaphor for the chaos of regime change, as in many other post-Soviet countries; indeed, if I have one key criticism of the book, it is that not enough parallels are drawn with other regions where similar dynamics have played out.

Harl’s account of Central Asia takes a radically different tack: he aspires to write “a sweeping narrative covering forty-five centuries” (yes, really) of the region’s nomads, ranging from well-known names, such as Genghis Khan and the Mongols, to the less familiar Scythians, Parthians, Khazars and Tocharians.

This is harder to digest than Terbish’s account, not just because of the lack of salacious material, but also because the account is dense and many of the peoples described are little known in the west. That, in a sense, should be no surprise: although Central Asia has been a crucially important crossroads and engine of history for Asia, the Middle East and Europe, after the demise of the Silk Road 600 years ago — and the rise of marine trading routes — Europe became less interested. And during the cold war the region became so difficult to access that it was often treated like a blank point in the map.

But this sense of mystery is why I first ventured there. And it is also why the two books are worth reading. After all, we live in an era where so-called “Great Game” geopolitical rivalries are resurfacing and the world is scrambling to get hold of the commodities that sit in these vast lands. Now, more than ever, we need a better understanding of this area and its history — whether panoramic or intimate.

Published Date:2023-08-15

Category

Events

How the lives — and sexual freedoms — of Genghis Khan’s Mongolians helped shape a civilisation www.ft.com

Events

News

Facebook