A Wedding Gift That Altered the Course of History
And Caused the Newlyweds' First Clash
The Black Sable Cloak
The day that Temujin rode into the ordu, or village, of his future wife, Borte, seeking permission from her father to marry her, little did he know that a wedding gift from his new in-laws would change his life forever. In honor of their marriage, Borte’s parents gave him a luxurious cloak made from black sable pelts. The cloak was meant for Hoelun, Temujin’s mother.
At this time, around the year 1178, the teenaged Temujin was the sole provider and protector of his family. A lone band of scavengers, they were vulnerable to attack and looting by enemy clans and tribes. When Temujin received the cloak, he immediately saw its value as a bargaining tool. As soon as he and Borte arrived in Temujin’s camp to begin their new life together, he took the cloak and gave it to Toghrul, the powerful steppe warlord and chief of the mighty Kerait nation, in exchange for Toghrul’s pledge of protection for Temujin’s new wife and family.
Why Toghrul?
Because he was destitute with no allies, Temujin’s only hope for survival of his small clan lay with Toghrul, a former anda, or blood brother, of his now-deceased father. In my forthcoming novelization of Borte and Genghis Khan, titled “Sovereigns of the Steppe: The Rise of Borte and Genghis Khan,” giving the sable cloak to Toghrul causes the newlyweds their first major conflict. And, in just a matter of days, Temujin would be back at Toghrul’s doorstep, seeking another audience with him, this time to beg for help in rescuing his kidnapped wife.
Buying Protection For One’s Family
Despite the many debated events in Mongolia’s pre-empire history, the story of Temujin trading the sable cloak for Toghrul’s protection is universally accepted as authentic. There is no doubt that after the fortunes of Temujin’s family had fallen in the wake of his father’s death, along with the hardships of his own boyhood capture and enslavement, that a treasure like the sable cloak would be far more valuable as a negotiating tool than, as Borte said upon presenting the cloak to her new mother-in-law: “ … I bring you this fine cloak of black sable. To keep your knees always warm.”
As the shrewd Hoelun tells Temujin later in the same scene, after she gives her son permission to take the cloak, “Peace, even for a short time, is better than warm knees.”
Fascinating how the sable coat caused conflict and resulted in a kidnapping. I'm looking forward to your book. Is there a lot of extant writing for events of that time period or are you having to fill in a lot of gaps for the purposes of your story?