Directly below, at the base of this peak, the Tuul makes a bend to the southwest. Directly across the valley, here narrowing to about a mile in width, are foothills extending from the western end of the Bogd Khan Uul, the mountain to the south of Ulaan Baatar. These foothills and eastern end of the Songino mountains form a natural gateway to the large basin occupied by the city of Ulaan Baatar to the east The right side of the river to the southwest is flanked by the rest of the Songino mountains for perhaps ten miles. Beyond here the Tuul enters another vast basin which drops off beyond the far-distant horizon.

The Songino Mountains were once thought to be the abode of powerful shamans and their attendant spirits. One famous shaman who lived on Songino Mountain was known as the Dark Old Man. According to legend he was also buried here, and he, or perhaps more properly his spirit, was later incorporated into the Buddhist pantheon. Although opposed to shamanism, early Mongolian Buddhists had incorporated many shamanic elements into their rituals as a means of making their religion more compatible to the common people of the country, many of whom retained a deep-seated belief in the power of shamans. Thus the Dark Old man was eventually recognized as one of the Lords of the Four Mountains, the spirits which rule over the four mountains surrounding the city of Ulaan Baatar. A paper maché mask representing the Dark Old Man was worn during the sacred Tsam dances which were held in Urga (Ulaan Baatar) up through the 1920s. The mask, with its ferocious black face and long white fangs conjuring up an archaic belief system which supposedly succumbed to the spiritual authority of Buddhism, can still be seen at the Choigin Lama Temple Museum in downtown Ulaan Baatar.

Other important individuals were also buried on Songino Khairkhan. On the slopes of the mountain archeologists have found a tomb of an chieftain or warrior, 5' 8" tall and fifty to sixty years old, dating to the 12th or 13th century. In the grave was found a pommel from a saddle; two metal stirrups, traditionally buried with their owners; a sheep shoulder blade which was probably part of a food offering; a knife with wooden handle; a birch bark quiver twenty-five inches long containing three metal-tipped arrows; part of a three-footed cast iron pot; and other oddments.

Most striking however, was a leather belt found on the body. Adorning its length were twenty-seven rosettes of solid gold, each several inches in diameter, and hanging from the belt onto the man's right hip was a beetle-shaped pendant, also of gold. Given the richness of the burial and the man's personal adornment he was undoubtedly a member of the steppe aristocracy. Given the time frame he could have been either a Mongol or a Kerait-a tribe which lived here along the Tuul during the 12th century; whichever, Songino Khairkhan was chosen as his final resting place.

From the ovoo we continued hiking along the knife-edge ridge leading the southwest. The wind had abruptly picked up force, now blowing straight out of the north at sixty or seventy miles an hour. Crossing gaps in the ridge where the wind was particularly strong I was almost bowled off my feet several times. Purevsuren gamely picked her way across the crumbly scree, holding on to her stocking cap with one hand and trying to keep her balance with the other arm. Her cheeks were soon burnished bright red by the frigid wind. Reaching one high knob on the ridge we worked our way around the lee-side and suddenly found ourselves in a protected nook, eerily calm without a breath of breeze, even though overhead the wind continued to shriek and moan. The mid-morning sun radiating off the rocks created here a pocket of warm air. It was as if we had stepped into a greenhouse. We unburdened ourselves of parkas and gloves and broke out a picnic lunch. Both of us had brought thermos of hot tea.

Below, in the gateway formed by Songino Khairkhan and spurs of Bogd Khan Uul, can be seen the village of Bio Uildvar. For several miles on either side of Bio Uildvar the banks of the Tuul are lined with scattered stands of deciduous trees. Now shorn of their leaves they appear black from our viewpoint. These trees are what remains of the Black Forest of the Tuul, where Tooril, leader of the Kerait and the original patron of Chingis Khan, made his headquarters during the last part of the twelfth century.

This Black Forest of the Tuul is mentioned several times in the Secret History of the Mongols, the thirteenth-century account of the rise of the Mongols and the life of Chingis Khan. Various sources, notably the French scholar of Central Asia, Rene Grousset, have opined that the Black Forest of the Tuul was actually a name for the thick woods covering Bodg Khan Uul, the mountain just west and south of the Tuul Valley. Indeed, anyone approaching Ulaan Baatar today by airplane will be struck by the site of this huge largely tree-covered massif rearing up straight ahead after the featureless, treeless expanses of desert and steppe directly to the south, and like the Black Hills of South Dakota the mountain from a distance does in fact appear to be black, an impression especially pronounced in winter time. Thus it would be easy to assume that is the Black Forest of the Tuul mentioned in the Secret History.

I had, however, discussed this matter with two leading Mongolian scholars of the Chingis era, D. Bazargür's and D. Enkhbayar, compilers of a book entitled Chinggis Khaan Atlas, and they maintained that according to various written sources and oral legends the Black Forest of the Tuul refers not to the forest on Bodg Khan Uul but to the stands of trees along the Tuul itself in the vicinity of Songino Mountain which were probably much more extensive in the thirteenth century.

This, then, is where Tooril, also known as Ong Khan or Wang Khan, had his camp. The Persian historian Juvaini, writing in the 1250s, noted: "In those days Ong Khan, the ruler of the Kerait . . . surpassed the other tribes in strength and dignity and was stronger than they in gear and equipment and the number of his men. And in those days the Mongol tribes were not united and did not obey one another."

Who were the Kerait, who are now largely forgotten, while the name Mongol is known all over the world? In the opinion of René Grousset they were "one of the most mysterious peoples in history. . . . They make to all intents and appearances their first appearance in the chronicles only in the generation before Chingis-khan, and step forthwith into a leading role." They apparently occupied the vacuum created by the downfall of the Khitans, a probably Mongol-speaking people who as the Liao Dynasty ruled northern China and Mongolia from 907 to 1125, and then quickly arose to become the dominant tribe of what is now central Mongolia. The core of their territories seems to have been here in the middle valley of the Tuul, where Tooril made his camp. From the Tuul they may have spilled eastward into the headwaters of the Kherlen and Onon, although this was more properly Mongol country. To the west they occupied the valley of the Orkhon, the traditional seat of ancient steppe empires, including the Hsiung-nu (circa 200 B.C.-200 A.D), the Tu-chëuh (552­630 and 683­734), and the Uighurs (744­840), and the valleys of the Orkhon's tributaries on the north side of the Khangai Mountains, the range which stretches east-west for almost three hundred miles across central Mongolia. To the southwest their territories included most if not all of the rivers flowing south out of the Khangai, from the Ongi in the east, which flows by present-day Avaikheer, capital of Ovorkhangai aimag, and eventually debouches into the salt lake of Ulaan Nuur, westward to the Tui, which flows through the city of Bayankhongor and eventually debouches into Orog Nuur, at the base of Ikh Bogd Uul, the highest peak of the Gobi-Altai Range, and on to the Baidrag River, which flows into Böön Tsaagan Nuur. None of these salt lakes, located in the sump north of the Gobi Altai Range, have an outlet to the sea. West of the Baidrag River, the drainage shifts toward the Zavkhan River, which flows not into the Gobi-Altai sump but into the Great Lakes Depression to the west, the territory of a tribe known as the Naiman. Although these were the lands thought to be occupied by the Kerait, their influence may have extended south of the Gobi-Altai Range the whole way across the Gobi Desert to the Great Wall of China. There are indications that they participated in trade along the great caravan routes through the Gobi to the Tarim Basin and the West beyond.

The exact ethnic antecedents of the Kerait remain unclear but most observers believe they were dominantly Turkish, and thus we may posit a guess that they evolved from fragments of the Turkish empires of the sixth through eighth centuries, eventually scattered by the Turkic Uighurs, who were later conquered by the Kyrgyz, themselves a Turkish speaking group from the upper Yenisei River. Indeed, scattered remnants of all of these groups may have coalesced into the tribe known as the Kerait. This must remain conjecture, however.

The Kerait apparently spoke some early form of Turkish, while of course the Mongols spoke Mongolian. Yet no where in the Secret History or in other sources do we get the impression that these two tribes had any trouble communicating with each other. Perhaps a lingua franca existed on the steppe in those days. Or perhaps a situation existed as with the current- day Kazakhs of western Mongolia. Many Kazakh women and children do not speak Mongolian, but most of the men, who have business dealings and other intercourse with Mongolians (and many of whom have served in the Mongolian army) are bilingual. At the time of Chingis's birth, however, the situation would have been reversed. It was the Keraits who aspired to hegemony in Mongolia, while the Mongols were a relatively small grouping of clans who spent a lot of time feuding among themselves.

The Keraits differed from the Mongols not only in ethnic origin and probably language but also in religion. Unlike the Mongols at the time, who practiced an ancient form of shamanism, the Keraits were at least nominally Christian. Now, when Ulaan Baatar is flooded with Christian missionaries of every stripe, and many young people are converting to Christianity, much to the consternation of their parents, the Buddhist community, and conservative, traditionally minded Mongolians in general, it is strange to think back and consider that Christianity made its first appearance here perhaps as early as the eleventh century. True, it was Nestorian Christianity, a variant of the faith little known in the world today, and but it was still Christianity.

For reasons to do with differing theologies, but also with national and cultural antipathies . . . two major dissident groups emerged. The vast majority of those who had admired Nestorius and his predecessors . . . moved out of Syria into Mesopotamia and Persia. They propounded the views ascribed to Nestorius and were called 'Nestorians' by their adversaries By the end of the 5th century they had come to dominate the Church of Persia and became thereafter the great missionaries of their form of Christianity across Asia.

From Persia Nestorianism spread to Transoxiana, that crossroads of creeds, faiths, and religions, and was soon carried into the Tarim Basin by Sogdian missionaries and merchants. It was probably these same Sogdians who carried their faith still farther east along the Silk Road, reaching China in 636. Here the Christians were warmly received by the government of the Tang Dynasty and allowed to built churches. Later Tang rulers, inclined toward Buddhism, persecuted the Nestorians, but by 714 Buddhism itself was banned and in 745 Nestorianism again was promulgated. All the while the faith had been radiating outward from the Silk Road, reaching north of the Tian Shan into Zungaria, which was controlled by the Tang, sometime in the eighth century. From here the tenets of the faith were carried along with merchants' wares still farther northward across the Altai and Gobi-Altai mountains into Mongolia, where the creed eventually came to the attention of the Keraits.

According to a letter written in about 1009 by Abdiso, the Metropolitan of Merv, to the Nestorian Patriarch John in Bagdad:

. . . while the king of a people called Keraits was hunting in one of the high mountains of his country, he was overcome by a violent snow-storm, and wandered hopelessly out of the way. When he had lost of hope of salvation, a saint appeared to him in a vision and said to him, 'If you believe in Christ I will lead you in the right direction, and you will not die here.' When he promised him that he would become a lamb in the Christian sheepfold, he directed him and led him to salvation; and when he reached his tents in safety, he summoned the Christian merchants who were there, and discussed with them the question of faith, and they answered that this could not be accomplished except through baptism. He took a Gospel from them, and lo he is worshipping it everyday; and now he has summoned me to repair to him, or to send him a priest to baptize him.

The saint which appeared before the Kerait king was Mar Sergius, who came originally from Samarkand, the capital of the ancient Sogdian realm, and who was venerated throughout Central and East Asia.
Accounts of the Kerait king's conversion also turn up in The Book of the Tower by the Nestorian chronicler Mari ibn Suleiman, writing in the eleventh century:

The King had set up a pavilion to take the place of an altar, in which was a cross and a Gospel . . . The Metropolitan inquired from (the Patriarch) what was to be done with them as they had no wheat, and the latter answered that he was to endeavor to find them wheat and wine for Easter; as to abstinence, they should abstain at Lent from meat, and be satisfied with milk. If their habit was to take sour milk, they should take sweet milk as a change to their habit.

We are told in the various sources that up to 200,000 Keraits were eventually converted to Nestorianism. The faith still had many adherents by the time of the rise of Chingis. The Kerait princess Sorkaktani, who became the wife of Chingis's youngest son Tolui (and thus the mother of Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan Dynasty in China), was a Nestorian. So was Chingai, a Nestorian Kerait who early on defected to Chingis, becoming one of his most trusted advisors, and later Chingis's son Ögedei's chancellor. The faith also spread to the Naiman, who occupied the country west of the Kerait, and to the Merkits to the north, along the valley of the Selenge. It is highly unlikely that many if any of these converts understood the doctrinal basis of Nestorianism. For most the faith manifested itself in the crudest forms, such a wearing amulets inscribed with a cross, or tattooing a cross on the body itself, "to ward off worldly dangers and enhance the positive powers in a life constantly endangered by incalculable outward events."

Marghuz had two sons, one named Qurjaquz and another who went by the title Gur-khan. Qurjaquz continued the war with the Tatars, seeking as allies the Naiman who lived in western Mongolia. His eldest son was Tooril (René Grousset's Toghril, which he claims means "goshawk"). Tooril early life was tumultuous, filled with hardship and turnabouts. At the age of seven he was captured by the Merkits, who lived in the Selenge valley to the north, and treated as a slave, forced to grind millet into flour with a mortar and pestle. Finally his father launched a raid on the Merkits and rescued his son. Then at age thirteen he was kidnapped by the Tatars, who turned him into a camel herder. He eventually escaped and returned home. "These two facts [his two abductions]," professes Turkologist Lev Gumilev, "themselves indicate that all was not well at the Kerait headquarters. His enemies could twice capture the khan's son, only with the connivance of the khan's relatives and grandees." It's not surprisingly then that upon his father's death and his own ascension to the throne he promptly executed two of his brothers who had allegedly connived against him. A third brother, Erke-qara, along with Tooril's uncle the Gur-khan, escaped and found refuge among the Naiman. While living among the Naiman Erke-qara and the Gur-khan rallied their Kerait followers, among them many who had been alienated by Tooril's murderous ascent to the Kerait throne. Attacked by Gur-khan's forces, Tooril was forced to flee to the lower Selenge, the territory of the Merkits. Tooril offered up as a wife one of his daughters, Hujaur, to the Merkit chieftain Toqtoa, but despite this magnanimous gesture Toqtoa seemed little inclined to help him regain his throne. Tooril turned for help to Yesükhei, then a minor leader of the Kiyat-Borjigin clan of the Mongols, Yesükhei saw a chance to strengthen his own hand by allying himself with Tooril. With the assistance of Yesükhei and his men Tooril defeated the Gur-khan, who along with his followers was forced to flee to the land of the Tanguts, in what is now the Chinese province of Kansu. To cement their alliance Tooril and Yesükhei became blood brothers (anda) in what became known as the Oath of the Black Forest, named after Tooril's camp at the Black Forest of the Tuul, at the base of Songino Mountain. Tooril proclaimed, "In memory of the service you have rendered me, my gratitude shall be manifested to your children and to your children's children, may the high heavens and the earth be my witness." Yesükhei's son Temüjin, the future Chingis Khan, would later have due cause to remind Tooril of his oath made here at the Black Forest of the Tuul, and to hold him to it. Still later, after the two had become bitter enemies and he had finally defeated Tooril, his erstwhile ally, Chingis himself come here to live at the Black Forest, and eventually he built himself a palace somewhere in or near the forest, one of the few permament abodes he ever had.

While rummaging through a collection of documents made by early Russian trade missions in Mongoli I had come across a report filed by a Russian named Porshennikov who in 1675 led a caravan south from the Russian settlement of Seleginsk in what is now Buryatia, nominally part of the Russian Republic. Nine days after leaving Seleginsk they arrived at "the river Tola [Tuul] on which dwells the Khutukhta lama, celebrated as being the head of all the sacrificers, the Metropolitan as we would say; and in that place they have built for their idol a great temple of stone, as it were a town, the masons who built it having been brought from China." This might well be the first description in a foreign language of the town which eventually became Ulaan Baatar, and also the first mention of Zanabazar-the "Khutukhta lama"-who was the first of the eight Bogdo Gegens of Mongolia (ignoring for the moment the claims of the ninth reincarnation, currently living in India). More to our immediately concern, Porshennikov goes on to say, "On the same river [the Tuul], a little lower down, is a deserted stone-built city, a very strong one even now, were but the walls repaired a little."

During one of my interviews with the scholars of the Chingisid Era D. Bazargür's and D. Enkhbayar I asked them if this was possibly a reference to a settlement built by the Keraits, perhaps Tooril's "camp" on the Tuul, or did it perhaps refer to Chingis's "palace" on the Tuul where, as the Secret History tells us, Chingis repaired to in 1225, after his seven year campaign against the Moslem empire of Khwarazm. Not much is known about Tooril's camp, opine my two interlocutors, but there were probably some baishins (small houses of logs or stone), Bazargür says, in additional to a large collection of gers, or felt tents. As for Chingis' palace, very little is known about it, but it is entirely possible that Chingis had erected here a "stone city", perhaps on the site of Tooril's original encampment. This may be what Porshennikov was referring to. Currently, however, no ruins of any palace or town remain in the Songino area, according to Bazargür. This seems a bit odd actually. Mongolia is littered with surprisingly well-preserved ruins much older than this. Perhaps their proximity to Ulaan Baatar was their downfall; the ruins may have been bull-dozed over for some development, or the building materials recycled into new structures.

Tooril, the Ong Khan, who as the ruler of the Kerait had once dwelt here at the base of Songino Khairkhan Uul, met an ignomonious death. Unwillingly forced into by battle with Chingis by his own son Senggüm, who was jealous of Chingis's close relation with his father, Tooril and the Keraits were defeated. Tooril fled with a few retainers across the Gobi Desert and was finally killed by some Naiman sentries he stumbled upon who mistook him for a common thief.
Now Tooril would be almost totally forgotten had not the peripatetic Venetian travelor Marco Polo in his book Description of the World identified him as Prestor John, that legendary figure who many Europeans at the time believed ruled a vast kingdom of Christians somewhere in the East and was prepared to come to the aid of the Crusaders by attacking the forces of Islam from the rear. Marco Polo, who was almost certainly never in what is now Mongolia-although his father and uncle probably were-conflated the stories he had heard about Tooril into the Prestor John legend and thus immortalized the Kerait chief who of course never had the means or the desire to attack the Moslems of the Middle East.

The wind had gotten even stronger and Purevsuren did not want to continue on to Dartsagtyn Gozgor Uul, the highest point on the ridge. After after our tea break we decided to retrace our steps back to the road. I never did make it back to climb Dartsagtyn Gozgor Uul. Nor did I ever see Purevsuren again. A couple of weeks later Dashpurev informed me that she and her children had left for Korea. It seems she had met a Korean businessman in a night club who invited them to come and live with him in Seoul. Generous guy, what with the kids and all.