To hide the burial place of the founder of the Mongol Empire, his entourage killed tens of thousands of people.
The vastness of the Mongol Empire surpassed all the states that ever existed. And until now, researchers cannot find the hill on the slopes of which, according to legends and testimonies, the great khan, whose new name was translated as "ruler of the world", ended his earthly journey.
Death: causes unknown
However, there was also a mysterious uncertainty about the death of the great ruler. The famous pilgrim Marco Polo wrote that Genghis Khan died from a wound received as a result of a poisoned arrow hitting his knee. The Pope's envoy Plano Carpini, who returned from Mongolia, reported in 1247 that the khan had died from a lightning strike. Officially, it was believed that his death was associated with an illness that occurred from falling from a horse during a hunt.
And according to the ancient Mongolian legend, the reason is completely tragicomic: the khan, who at that time was already well over seventy, died allegedly from a wound caused by the beauty's teeth. Whether in a fit of passion she bit him, or she wanted revenge - no one knows. Kur-beldishin-Khatun was the wife of the Tangut ruler, and after the fall of the capital of the Tangut kingdom, Chinggis, by right of the conqueror, took all the lands into his own hands, and the captured beauty became one of his many wives. Yes, that's such a biting man …
Regarding the burial place, the same Marco Polo said: “All the great sovereigns, the descendants of Genghis Khan, you know, are buried in the great mountain Altai, and wherever the great sovereign of the Tatars dies, even a hundred days' journey to that mountain, they bring him there to bury …
Details of the culminating event of 1227 - the funeral of Genghis Khan - emerged from various sources. The funeral cortege with the remains left the bend of the Yellow River (Yellow River, on the territory of present-day China) and moved through the Gobi Desert to Karakorum, where the Mongol nobility and heads of clans gathered. On the way, everyone who could prematurely learn about the death of the supreme khan were exterminated.
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On the day appointed by the shamans, the remains, dressed in ceremonial clothes, were placed in a fob. Then (for reliability or for distinction?) This coffin was put into four more, one and the other, and taken to the Burkhan Khaldun mountain. It was to become a place of eternal rest. And so that no one disturbed the peace, they killed all the slaves who performed the funeral work, and set up guards in remote places from the grave. No one was supposed to know where she was.
The goal was achieved. Over the years, bushes, and then trees, completely hid the slopes of the Khentei mountain range, and no one could say which of the mountains bore the name Burkhan Khaldun. And there was no clarity with the name of the peak. But most of the versions about the location of Genghis Khan's grave led to this Khentei massif.
It is not the highest within Mongolia, it does not exceed 2800 m (in the Mongolian Altai, the peak of Munkh-Khairkhan Ula reaches 4362 m). The highland is located in the central part of the country and today has become a place of pilgrimage and searches for many expeditions.
Black cat in a dark room
The mystery of the tomb of the "Conqueror of the Universe" began to excite the imagination of treasure hunters, archaeologists and historians. All testimonies, guesses, legends are taken into account.
According to Rashid-ad-din, the great khan was buried in the place indicated by him. Once he allegedly hunted in the lower reaches of the Onon River, from where it was six days' journey to Mount Burkhan Khaldun. In one place, the view that opened from the slope held the khan's gaze, and he, dismounting, felt joy and deep peace of mind. A noticeable lonely tree grew here. Maybe it inspired sad thoughts. Khan remarked: "This area is suitable for my burial … Let it be remembered and celebrated."
This legend did not move the 19th century Mongolian scholar J. Schmidt, and he believed that the body of the great khan was not taken to Mongolia, since the Mongols did not possess the skills of embalming corpses. Therefore, one should look elsewhere as well.
But of the seven alleged burial sites of Genghis Khan, five are still associated with a mountain or a mountain range. In the Mongolian Altai, the expedition of the Russian traveler M. K. Kozlov in 1923-1926 discovered the ancient mausoleum of the khan with a view of hundreds of kilometers around. At the foot of Khan-Kokshun in Hangai, the ruins of a Chinese town were revealed and an inscription was found on a stone slab that the city was built in 1275 by the troops of Khubi-Lai, the grandson of Genghis Khan, who seized the throne of the Chinese emperor. On one of the ridges, among the huge stones, the expedition-niks found the tomb of thirteen generations of direct descendants of Genghis Khan.
Searches in these places continued, but the population invariably protested against the excavations. Residents reminded of the prediction: if the eternal sleep of the great khan is disturbed, the curse will fall on the seekers and their country, and they cited an example of one coincidence. On the eve of World War II, Soviet scientists headed by Professor I. Gerasimov opened the grave of another famous Mongol conqueror, Tamerlane, and the next day the war of Germany against the USSR began. Like, the curse came true.
Scientists, as you know, do not really take into account this rumor. Although not averse to ask the local population about the legends of the deep antiquity.
For example, during the Mongol-Japanese expedition of the 1990s, an 88-year-old man recalled the story he heard in childhood about the funeral of Genghis Khan. One, they say, a Turkic commander delivered his body to his homeland. He buried four coffins in different places, surrounded the original grave of the guards and for three months grazed thousands of horses in that place in order to score all sorts of tracks. After that, he offered a reward to anyone who discovers the location of the grave. Nobody could find her. A large area around one of the mountains in Khentei was declared sacred, forbidden to penetrate on pain of death.
One of the Mongolian clans, who called themselves Darkhan, was entrusted to guard the sanctuary, and he continued to live here for 700 years until he was forcibly evicted in the first half of the last century. The territory fell into desolation, and in these once sacred places only the howling of wolves was heard. The Japanese, with their most advanced technique, did not find anything noticeable. Which led one of the researchers to notice: it is difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if it is not there …
But the seekers did not give up. A version was developed about the burial of the great khan at the place of his birth, on the Onon River. According to legend, the generals brought the body here and, having built a dam near the De-lyun-Boldok mountain, diverted the river bed.
A sarcophagus of rock crystal with the body of the khan was placed on the bare rocky bottom, and then the Onon waters were again launched along the old channel.
A dead enemy remains an enemy
Why did the nomads so guarded their graves and furnished the burials of their fellow tribesmen with such mystery? The fact is that they had a long tradition of desecrating the graves of their enemies. The Turks and Mongols believed that their community was not only people living today, tribesmen, but also their ancestors. The soul of a deceased relative can return to this world and incarnate in a descendant, but only if the buried skeleton contains all the bones and certainly in the whole state.
Considering this, some shamans even went to extremes: in order to guarantee a return to this world, throughout their lives they collected every hair, nail or tooth in order to put it all in the grave during the funeral. Destroying the same skeleton of a person, thereby cutting off the path to rebirth and reducing the enemy camp by one soul.
