The Successors of Genghis Khan - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian ...

BEGINNING OF THE HISTORY OF OGETEI QA AN
and then dispensed therefrom. For [corn] and [wine]271 there were
provided great wagons drawn by six272 oxen each.
He ordered the Muslim uzan273 to build a pavilion a day's journey
from Qara-Qprum, in a place where were in ancient days the falconers
of Afrasiyab274 and which is called *Gegen-Chaghan.275 He
would be in this place in the spring because he used to fly hawks
there.276 In the summer he would be in Ormugetii.277 There he had
pitched a great tent which held a thousand persons and which was
never struck. The outside was adorned with gold studs and the inside
covered with nasij.27* It is called Sira-Ordo.279 In the autumn he was
in Koke-Na'ur,280 4 days' journey from Qara-Qprum, where he would
271 The words in brackets are supplied from Verkhovsky (p. 41). Blochet's text has
the unintelligible NKTY and SRMH.
272 Eight, according to Verkhovsky (p. 41).
273 Uzan: Persian plural of T. uz, "skillful, craftsman."
274 Probably Biigii Khan, the legendary ruler of the Uighur, is meant. See HWC,
p. 54 and note 5. Already in the Iith century Kashghari had identified Alp-Er
Tonga, a mythical Turkish hero, with Afrasiyab, the hereditary enemy of Iran in
the Persian National Epic. So too the Qara-Khanids claimed to be of the "house
of Afrasiyab" (dl-i Afrasiyab). See Tares de I'Asie Centrale, p. 70.
2" In Blochet's text the first element of the name appears as KR, a reading which
Verkhovsky adopts in his translation (Karchagan), though his own text has KHZ,
which is much nearer to an original *KKN. Gegen-Ghagan ("Bright and White")
was apparently the name given to a series of lakes about 25 miles north of Qara-
Qprum, probably on the Orkhon near the old Uighur capital at Qara-Balghasun.
See Boyle 1970. The pavilion was built in 1237 at the same time as a "city" called
Sa'uri(n). See Cleaves 1952, pp. 25—27.
276Juvaini (HWC, p. 237) speaks of his watching the hunting of waterfowl in
front of the pavilion, which he calls Qarshi-yi Suri, that is, apparently, "the Qarshi
of Sa'uri."
277 AWRMKTW. The name occurs otherwise only in the Allan Tobchi (p. 147 of the
translation), where it is mentioned as the place in which Giiyiik ascended the throne
of the Khanate. Ormiigetii was apparently the name given to a mountainous area
to the south-east of Qara-Qorum between the Orkhon and the Khogshin Gol. See
Boyle 1970.
278 See Glossary. There were in fact, according to Carpini, two other pavilions
in this area: the "Golden Orda," where Giiyiik's enthronement took place and where
he afterward received the Pope's envoys, and " a wonderful tent, all of red purple,
a present of the Kitayans [that is, the Chinese]." See Boyle 1970.
279 The Sira-Orda of Carpini. See Becquet-Hambis, pp. 28 and 119.
280 For the first element of the name, Blochet's text has KW§H and Verkhovsky's
KWSH. Koke-Na'ur ("Blue Lake")—not to be confused with the Koke-Na'ur of
SH (§89), which lay on the Sengkiir within the great bend of the Keriilen, and still
less with the Koko Nor in Chinghai, where there were no Mongols in the I3th century
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