﻿“One man, however, had a different proposal. Subodei, fresh from his victory over the Jurched,
had been the greatest general in Genghis Khan’s army,
and with his shared knowledge of siege warfare and the use of large attack machines,
he had played a role in every important campaign the Mongols had fought. He was sixty years old,
probably blind in one eye, and according to some reports so fat that he could no longer ride a
horse and had to be hauled around in an iron chariot. Despite these physician limitations,
his mind was sharp and vigorous, and he was eager to return to war.”
This is how Jack Weatherford describes Mongol general Sübe’etei in his incredibly popular book
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. This is a consistent part of Sübe’etei’s image on
the internet and modern popular history: that the most famous of Mongol generals was, ironically,
too fat to ride a horse, and needed to be hauled around in the thirteenth century
equivalent of a mobility scooter. But where does this description come from? What is our source for
it? Well, there isn’t one; at least, not directly. Today we’re going to have a look at how a few
lines from different historical sources get pulled together into a new, wholly fictional, image.
Firstly, and simply put: there is no surviving medieval description of Sübe’etei’s appearance
or weight. He could have been rather slender and dainty, or a Big Beautiful Warrior;
we have absolutely no idea, and we don’t shame him either way. Here’s the thing about Sübe’etei;
he is mentioned often enough, but as an individual we know very little about him. The
few descriptions are vague and often generic, usually commenting about him being loyal and
utterly devoted to the khans. He appears to have been somewhat callous to human lives,
but when the khan demanded him to spare a city Sübe’etei hoped to slaughter,
then he followed the order to the letter. Largely it seems he was a very reserved individual,
well at home on campaign and unconcerned with politics or administrative matters;
his duty was war, and he was good at it. At least at the start of his career, we know he
was quite a physically active figure. In 1203 he led an ambush against bandits who had captured
his father and their herd of sheep. In 1212 at the start of the war against the Jin Dynasty,
he was the first to mount the walls of the city of Huanzhou. It was this physical courage,
being at the front of danger, that earned him his common epithet; ba’atur, the brave,
the valiant, the knight. From 1211 almost right up until his death in 1248 at the age of 73,
Sübe’etei essentially lived on campaign, leading armies across north China, Central Asia, Iran,
the Caucasus, the western steppes and Europe. He very rarely wasn’t campaigning against someone.
Sübe’etei was a soldier’s general who basically bounced across Eurasia like a violent pinball;
that alone would make it rather difficult to maintain a rotund physique, or at least be
traveling that entire distance, and all those mountain ranges confined to a cart.
The source most usually cited for Sübe’etei being a bit husky is a few lines from the Secret History
of the Mongols, the famous chronicle written for the Mongolian royal family in the thirteenth
century. There, Chinggis Khan provides Sübe’etei with an iron cart in order to pursue fleeing
Merkits, enemies of the Mongols who had fled far across Kazakhstan and reached distant Turkic
allies. Sübe’etei is mentioned with an iron-cart twice in the Secret History, but the Secret
History itself does not describe precisely what an iron cart is, and modern commentators have made
all manner of suggestions. One of the most fun is that it was some sort of iron covered battle cart,
like an early tank. Another idea was that it was a mobile forge to smith tools or weapons.
The more common assumption people make is that the vehicle had its axles reinforced with iron in some
capacity. The idea being, stronger axles would make the vehicle better able to survive over the
rough terrain. Given that it would be crossing the Altai mountains and an absolutely massive distance
from Mongolia to the Caspian steppes, this is a reasonable assumption. But some people looked
at this at thought; well an iron reinforced axle? That must mean it's bearing something very heavy.
And what’s heavier than an obsese person? However, when we look at other sources we get
what these iron carts actually were. The Jami’ al-Tawarīkh of the Ilkhanid vizier Rashīd al-dīn,
written at the very start of the 1300s, indicates specifically that the wheels of the carts were
reinforced with iron spikes, so that they would not break while traveling over rocks.
The Shengwu Qinzheng lu similarly describes it as iron-shod wheels. The Secret History and
the relevant sections of the Jami’ al-Tawarīkh and Shengwu Qinzheng lu all relied on the same,
now-lost, body of Mongolian sources, and we can expect that the meaning of the Secret History
is intended to have been the same as these other sources. So it’s rather simple then;
it was just the wheels of these carts which were reinforced to better survive the long journey;
Sübe’etei and Jochi spent some two years on campaign, crossing Kazakhstan and back,
and required strong carts. Dr. Atwood suggests these were large carts which bore tents and
living quarters on them, and thus were carrying a great weight; this was not a lightning raid,
but a methodical campaign to finish off the last of the Merkit. Of course, the Secret
History of the Mongols is now far easier to find a translation of, and at first glance
seems superior to these seemingly more obscure Chinese and Persian sources. Someone not very
familiar with Mongol history could be forgiven for only consulting the Secret History’s version,
as I suspect most adherents to the round-Sübe’etei theory do. But with a
bit of textual comparison and historical context, this iron-cart is not terribly mysterious.
But if that’s the matter of the carts, where are these other details of the obese Sübe’etei coming
from? Stephen Pow and Jingjing Liao in their article “Subutai: Sorting Fact from Fiction,”
offer an explanation. Rashīd al-Dīn has two descriptions which may have been an influence.
One is a reference to a relation of Sübe’etei who was old and needed to be moved around in
a cart—not account of weight, but age. He also describes Qonichi, a great-grandson of Jochi, as
being so fat that no horse could carry him, and he also had to be transported in a cart. His guards
apparently needed to watch over him in his sleep, to ensure he did not suffocate. This is probably
helped along by the well attested tendency of many Mongol princes and generals to have become
rather out of shape and gouty. It seems that these details were added
to Sübe’etei’s myth by less scrupulous scholars,
simply looking for something to say about Sübe’etei, who otherwise is a
rather murky figure. And the iron cart episode in the Secret History of the Mongols appeared to be
indirect evidence for it. This is hardly the only example of authors taking details from
other individuals and adding them to Sübe’etei. Pow notes several others in his article. Again,
we have so little information on Sübe’etei as an individual, to the frustration of many an
author. This is why I stress the importance of going back to the primary sources, and not just
accepting claims in on the internet, popular and scholarly literature if they cannot be backed up
from the medieval accounts. If it can’t be found in them, then it is a fabricated detail.
Perhaps Sübe’etei actually was a heavier set man who was restricted to a cart in his later years.
Perhaps he was very slim. But we don’t know. It’s unrecorded and essentially you can leave it to
your imagination. But understand the difference between artistic license, and what’s actually
recorded by historical sources; and what other people have repeated, without bothering to see
where it came from. There will, I suppose,
be a lot more videos on all of these popular myths about Sube’etei. So subscribe and you
can listen to me poke more holes in all your favourite stories about the Mongol Empire.