| Jochi | |
| Succession: | Khan of the Ulus of Jochi |
| Predecessor: | none |
| Successor: | Orda Batu |
| Issue: | Orda Khan Batu Khan Berke Khan Shiban Tuqa-Timur |
| Religion: | Tengrism |
| Dynasty: | Borjigin |
| Mother: | Börte |
Jochi (Mongolian:, also ; –) was a Mongol army commander who was the eldest son of Temüjin (Genghis Khan), and presumably one of the four sons by his principal wife Börte, though issues concerning his paternity followed him throughout his life. An accomplished military leader, he participated in his father's conquest of Central Asia, along with his brothers and uncles. He founded the Golden Horde, which was part of the Mongol Empire and later became a functionally separate khanate after the Division of the Mongol Empire.
Jochi's mother, Börte, was born into the Onggirat tribe, who lived along the Greater Khingan mountain range south of the Ergüne river, in modern-day Inner Mongolia. At the age of ten, she was betrothed to a Mongol boy named Temüjin, son of the Mongol chieftain Yesugei. Seven years later, after he had survived a turbulent adolescence, they married. They had their first child, a daughter named Qojin, in 1179 or 1180. By forming alliances with notable steppe leaders, such as his friend Jamukha and his father's former ally Toghrul, and with the help of his own charisma, Temüjin had begun to attract followers and gain power. Word of his rise spread and soon attracted the attention of the Merkit tribe, from whom Yesugei had abducted Temüjin's mother Hö'elün, sparking a blood feud; they resolved to take revenge on Yesugei's heir.
Because of their consequences, the subsequent events were considered highly controversial: most contemporary authors omitted any mention of the events, while the two that did (the Secret History of the Mongols, a mid-13th-century epic poem, and the 14th-century Persian historian Rashid al-Din's Jami al-tawarikh) are badly contradictory. In 1180 or 1181, a large force of Merkits raided Temüjin's camp; while most of his family managed to escape, Börte was captured. She was forcibly married to Chilger-Bökö, the younger brother of Hö'elün's original husband. Meanwhile, Temüjin had convinced his allies to assemble substantial forces to help him rescue Börte. Under Jamukha's command, the combined army campaigned against the Merkits and defeated them, recovering Börte and taking large amounts of plunder.
However, there was a problem—Börte was heavily pregnant and soon, in Jamukha's camp, gave birth to Jochi. As Chilger-Bökö had undoubtedly raped her, and as she had been among the Merkits for nearly nine months, Jochi's paternity was uncertain; this was reflected in his name, meaning "guest" in Mongolian. While Temüjin always regarded Jochi as his son by blood and treated him accordingly, many Mongols, such as his younger brother Chagatai, viewed him as a Merkit bastard.
By 1203, Jochi was old enough for marriage. Temüjin intended to betroth him to a daughter of his ally Toghrul, but this proposal was taken as insulting by Toghrul's people and it eventually led to war between the two leaders. After Toghrul's defeat, Jochi was given one of his nieces, Begtütmish, as a wife. He also married other women: Börte's niece Öki; her relative Sorghan; and a number of less powerful women, named Qutlugh Khatun, Sultan Khatun, Nubqus, Shīr, Qarajin, and Kul. In addition, Jochi took concubines. It is unknown who Jochi's senior wife was, but it was likely either Öki or Sorghan.
Jochi's most important sons were Orda Khan and Batu Khan; they were the children of Sorghan and Öki respectively. Neither these women nor Begtütmish was the mother of Jochi's other notable son, Berke. In addition to these three, he fathered other sons and daughters, but none had significant careers, reflecting the junior status of their mothers.
In 1206, having united the tribes of Mongolia, Temüjin held a large assembly called a where he was acclaimed as "Genghis Khan". He also began to reorder his new nation, dividing the nation between members of his ruling dynasty. As the eldest son, Jochi received the largest share—nine thousand subject warriors, all with their own families and herds; Chagatai received eight thousand, and their younger brothers Ögedei, and Tolui received five thousand each. As expected for a firstborn, Jochi received the territories furthest away from the homeland for his (domain): they were located in western Mongolia along the River Irtysh.
This allocation was made in the expectation that Jochi would expand, and so in 1207–08 he campaigned against and subjugated the, a collection of tribes on the edge of the Siberian taiga between the Angara and Irtysh rivers. Jochi secured a marriage alliance with the Oirats, whose leader Qutuqa Beki guided the Mongols to the Yenisei Kyrgyz and other Hoi-yin Irgen. These tribes soon submitted, and Jochi took control of the region's trade in grain and furs, as well as its gold mines. He subsequently reinforced Subutai's army before it defeated the renegade Merkits at the battle of the Irtysh River in later 1208 or early 1209. Jochi would campaign intermittently against the Merkits and their Qangli allies for the next decade, finally destroying the last remnants of the people in 1217 or 1218 alongside Subutai.
Alongside his brothers Chagatai and Ogedei, Jochi commanded the right wing in the 1211 invasion of the Chinese Jin dynasty. The Mongols marched from Genghis's campaign headquarters in modern Inner Mongolia into Shanxi, where they pillaged and plundered. He may have also taken part in the Irghiz River skirmish, an inconclusive engagement fought against the army of Muhammad II of Khwarazm.
Jochi played a major role in the Khwarezm war of 1219–1221 in Central Asia – his forces captured 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, in present-day Turkmenistan), the capital of the Khwarezmian Empire. Here the siege of the town suffered delays because Jochi engaged in extensive negotiation with the town to persuade it to surrender peacefully and to save it from destruction. Jochi's brother Chagatai regarded this action as militarily unsound: Chagatai wanted to destroy the city but Temüjin (now Genghis Khan) had promised the city to Jochi after his victory. This difference of opinion on military affairs deepened a rift beatween Jochi and Chagatai. Genghis Khan intervened in the campaign and appointed Ögedei as the commander of the operation. Ögedei resumed the operations vigorously – capturing, sacking and thoroughly destroying the town and massacring its inhabitants (1221).
The differences in tactics between Jochi and Chagatai in early 1221 added to their personal quarrel about the succession. To settle the matter, Genghis Khan called for a "kurultai", a political and military council - a formal meeting used both in familial matters and in matters of state. Genghis Khan had won election/appointment as Khan of his tribe during a kurultai, and he called them often during his early campaigns to garner public support for his wars – such meetings were key to Genghis Khan's legitimacy. Tribal tradition was also critical. As Genghis Khan's first-born son, Jochi was favored to rule the clan and the empire after his father died. At the familial kurultai called in 1222, Chagatai raised the issue of Jochi's legitimacy. At that meeting, Genghis Khan made it clear that Jochi was his legitimate first-born son. However, he worried that the quarrelsome nature of the two would split the empire. By early 1223 Genghis Khan had selected Ögedei, his third son, as his successor. For the sake of preserving the Empire, both Jochi and Chagatai agreed, but the rift between them never healed. Their rift would later politically divide the European part of the Mongol Empire from its Asian part permanently.
During the autumn of 1223 Genghis Khan started for Mongolia after completing the Khwarezm campaign. Ögedei, Chagatai and Tolui went with him but Jochi withdrew to his territories north of Aral and Caspian Seas. There he remained until his death and would not see his father again in his lifetime.
In the Kurultai of 1229 following Genghis Khan's death, Jochi's family was allocated the lands in the west up to 'as far as the hooves of Mongol horses had trodden'. Following the Mongol custom, Genghis 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 Turkic. This was the chief reason why the Golden Horde acquired a Turkic identity.
His sons Orda and Batu founded the White Horde and the Blue Horde, respectively, and would later combine their territories into the Kipchak Khanate or Golden Horde. Jochi's son Berke was among the earliest Mongols to convert to Islam. Under Jochi's son Batu, Mongol rule expanded to its westernmost limit, and the Golden Horde (Kipchak Khanate) was established to consolidate the Jochid ulus.
The first mention about his mausoleum is found in 16th century Sharaf-name-yi shahi, describing the 1582 the campaign of the Abdullah Khan II:[1]
Jochi had at least 14 sons[2] and two daughters: