The Horde of the Lord: A History of Asiatic Judaism

Gosing

It is said that where mediocre writers borrow, great writers steal. As I am but a poor teenager who has years to go before he can dream of even becoming an OK writer, I happily admit that the main idea of this TL was borrowed from Judith Tarr’s excellent short story Measureless to Man, which in turn borrowed its main idea from Henry Turtledove.

I’d like to think the research I’ve done for this TL is pretty good, but as always feel free to point out any inaccuracies or discrepancies that you see. And above all, COMMENT!!!!!!!!!!!

Introduction​


The Lord works in mysterious ways.

This phrase has been used so many times and in so many ways that it has become a cliché dead of actual meaning; and yet still if the religiously inclined look back across the broad expanse of human history those words ring truer than ever. If a man merely pays attention to the events of his own days, the world he lives in seems chaotic and ungoverned by the laws of logic; yet if he looks back at the days behind him, some small part of the truth snaps into view. The trends and arcs of history become apparent, surprises become obvious, and the obvious becomes surprising; the world gains context…

What is the meaning of this meandering introduction? It is merely to explain the approach to my subject I will be taking. Many who have only taken a cursory glance at the origins of Asiatic Judaism profess incredulity; how is it, they say, that a petty Asian lord converted to a tiny, defeated religion whose followers were scattered across a continent hundreds of miles away, and then made that faith the fourth largest in the history of the world? Surely if this appeared in a work of fiction it would be castigated as a ridiculous fantasy?

While the conversion of Temujin to Judaism was indeed a dramatic left turn of the wheel of history, there was already plenty of grease on the axle. The Mongol peoples had always lived in a state of constant flux, and by the time Temujin reached adulthood his own Khamag Mongols were in a state of crisis, as the mighty Jin Empire to the south had switched its patronage from them to the rival Tatar tribe. The Khamag Mongols and their allies, the Kerait, were desperate for a way to stave off Chinese influence, and of course desperation on a nation-wide scale always leads to religious turbulence. And the pre-existing Mongol religion, however distorted by post facto tampering by Asiatic Jewish historians, does seem to have been in some ways ideal for syncretism with Judaism, with its quasi-monotheistic emphasis on the worship of the Eternal Blue Sky (which in the early days of Asiatic Judaism was declared to be one and the same with God Most High) and the holiness of the mountain Burkhan Kaldun, which provided an excellent justification for Temujin’s chosen status (he was born at its base) and an convenient connection to the story of Moses.

Nor was this momentous shift the work of a single man in a single moment; Temujin may have begun the formation and spread of Asiatic Judaism in earnest (even though he received the basics of the religion ready-made from the Ong Khan), but that religion reached its current size only due to the tireless work of many men spread over four centuries. Shlomo Melech Chonguo*, Khagan Ogedai, the above-mentioned Ong Khan, and even Jochebed the Slave can put forward a case for fatherhood of Asiatic Judaism in some ways better than that of Temujin himself.

But I run centuries ahead of myself. The story of Asiatic Judaism begins its long and crooked tale in the glorious springtime of the year Christians call 1162, in the hilly plains to the north of the Gobi Desert…


*Imagine a bit of Paul of Tarsus, a bit of Constantine the Great, and a bit of OTL Genghis Khan. The name means “Solomon, King of China” in...errr...Hebrew-Mandarin (Hebranderin?). Don’t worry, it’s not actually what he called himself; that’s just the name traditionally used for him in the West.
 
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Gosing

Herzen's love-child said:
I'm all ears. :cool: I just now read the Tarr short story (I'm a speed reader)---very good, a better writer than Turtledove me thinks!
More please!
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Completely agreed about Tarr. I'll have to check out whatever else she's written.

There won't be too many details taken from the story (though she did a very good job at fleshing out the scenario), but there'll be a few references here and there.
 

Gosing

Prologue (Part I)​


AN: The reader should note that much of the biographical information in this chapter comes from scribes who wrote their records several centuries after the death of Temujin, and thus no definitive statement can be made on the veracity of their claims. For example, 1162 is only the most accepted theory as to Temujin’s year of birth; many scholars hold that he was born in 1155 or 1167. Unfortunately, there are no better sources available at the present time.

As with its brother Abrahamic religions, Asiatic Judaism was born in a backwater inhabited by numerous feuding tribes and surrounded by greater powers. The grassy, hilly plains of Mongolia, too far north to be part of the Gobi Desert, too far south and east to be part of the Altai or Khangai mountain ranges, are ideally suited to nomadic hunters, and indeed people of that nature still live there to this day; even in the time of Temujin, there were ancient tales of great heroes and shamans of the steppe.

The world that Temujin was born into was a brutal one; in sharp contrast to the “civilized” Chinese lowlands, which were fertilized and warmed by air currents from the Pacific Ocean, the weather on the plains came from the Arctic. The people of the steppe had no living and only vague cultural memory of unification; they were divided into countless clans which existed in a constant state of flux. Alliances could break or be made at the drop of a hat, the slightest insult could be used as a pretext for war, and a single bad year of hunting could bring a winter-long free-for-all.

The clans of the steppe knew two primary forms of warfare. The first was the raid, usually directed at the herders of isolated valleys and passes. These people had virtually no protection from the fearsome riders that swooped down upon them; they generally fled on first sighting of the raiders, leaving their goods to be divvied up by the clan in question. The second was the inter-clan war, usually (again) caused by material needs. These were generally brief and free of copious bloodshed, with victory determined by how much livestock could be seized by the raiders. The idea of a Western-style declaration of war was absurd; raids were just one more way of getting food, as important and uninteresting as hunting.

There was in this era (and to a lesser extent, to today) a general rivalry between the clans of the north and south. The southerners enjoyed free and copious trade with China, and were always less hungry and better armed than the northerners; the northerners were more rugged, better warriors, and always happy to give the pansy southerners a kick in the rear. This state of affairs delighted the Chinese, who had for centuries made it their policy to promote discord among the hairy barbarians to prevent any invasion of their country.

It was into this world that Temujin was born on a bright spring day in 1162. His father was the patriarch Yesugei of the Borjigh Clan, a founding but rather insignificant member of a confederation of clans formed in the late tenth century called the Khamag Mongol. Founded by the semi-mythical figure Khaidu Khan, who was alleged to have temporarily united the steppe peoples, the Khamag had more recently defeated a large Chinese invasion. His mother, Hoelun, was a young woman of high standing from a southern tribe that had recently been kidnapped in a Borjigh raid. Her relatives had failed to strike quickly enough against the interlopers, so she had no choice but to accept her new life as a concubine.

Despite his seemingly elite status, Temujin had a hard childhood; as the third son of Yesugei (and by a decadent southerner!) he was virtually ignored by his father. In one memorable episode the about five year old Temujin was simply forgotten by his clan during after a meeting with the Tayichiud Clan; their leader, Targutai, took him in for several years before returning him at the next meeting with the Borjigh.
By the time Temujin was nine (eight by western calendars), Yesugei was concerned at his growing rivalry with Begter, his eldest son. Desperate for a way to get rid of Temujin, Yesugei wound up dumping the boy in a marriage contract with Borte of the Onggirat, a young girl he stumbles across on his travels. Temujin was, in accordance to Mongol ritual, sent away to work for the girls’ family, thus slowly gaining acceptance in their clan.

It was at this stage that events took a dramatic left turn. By the time Yesugei made it back to the Borjigh camp, he had been driven to death’s door by an unknown disease. He had become convinced that he had been poisoned by the Tatars, a large eastern tribe that he had won a bloody conflict against recently and a feast of whom’s he had attended on the ride back to his camp. With his last breath he ordered Temujin home.

The following years were the worst of Temujin’s life. The massively weakened Borjigh wandered aimlessly, only kept alive by the superhuman efforts of Hoelun, who had become accustomed to northern life. Too weak even to raid for their food, the Borjigh were reduced to eating wildflowers and marmots.

As he grew older in this climate, Temujin’s rivalry with his elder brother grew even beyond his father’s fears. Begter, who was to soon accede to leadership of the clan, lost no chance to show off his supremacy over his brothers, on several occasions taking game that Temujin had shot for no other reason than to exert his authority. By the age of fourteen, Temujin had had enough; with a half brother (and good shot) named Khasar as his accomplice, he he fired several arrows into Begter’s chest while the older boy was meditating.

Satisfactory as it may have been, the killing of Begter proved a foolish move. Fratricide was considered among the worst, if not the worst, crimes by the Mongols; anybody could do anything to Temujin and go unpunished. In a way he was lucky that he was caught first by the Tayichiud Clan; whereas other clans might have killed him, left his body to rot, and moved on, the Tayichiuds merely forced him into demeaning hard physical labor in service of the clan.

Though in later times he would look back upon it as a time of shame, Temujin’s two years of enslavement to the Tayichiuds was beneficial to him in many ways. His almost pathological hatred and fear of being subordinate to anyone, first provoked by Begtar, was solidified; he swore that he would never again be a slave to any man. He also gained an undying hatred of the caste system of the plains peoples, which would bear fruit in his eventual reorganization of his homeland’s social system. In his ultimate escape, he honed the resourcefulness that would serve him well across the breadth of Asia.

And, most momentous of all, he gained a religion…*

*Everything up until this sentence is OTL. Sorry about that; I got kind of carried away in the OTL backstory. I promise some divergence in the next update.
 

Gosing

TaylorS said:
OOH, what a bizarrely cool idea! :D
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Yeah, it is. And I totally came up with it all by myself...:D

Herzen's love-child said:
Mongols with payot. Awesome image.:cool:
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No promises, but...:p

Martinus Paduei said:
Will there be a surviving Khazar component to the Hordes?
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Unfortunately the Khazars have been gone for almost a century at the time of the PoD. That's not to say the can't be revived, or that they're memory won't have lingering effects on the international scene...

Massa Chief said:
I hope the Ashkenazim have more influence here than in Tarrs tale.
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The Ashkenazim are pretty much set up to be shafted in this scenario, but they don't have to come off as badly as they do in Tarr's story.
 

mikegold

YES!!! Very much looking forward to this.

Nitpick: Melech Soloman ha-Chonguo - assuming that "ha" is the Hebrew word "the," and not a Mandarin word, this means "King Solomon the China." What you probably want is "Shlomo Melech Chonguo" - Solomon, king of China. This is generally the correct form in biblical and rabbinic Hebrew - i.e., "David Melech Yisrael," "Nebuchadnezar Melech Bavel," etc.
 

Gosing

mikegold said:
YES!!! Very much looking forward to this.

Nitpick: Melech Soloman ha-Chonguo - assuming that "ha" is the Hebrew word "the," and not a Mandarin word, this means "King Solomon the China." What you probably want is "Shlomo Melech Chonguo" - Solomon, king of China. This is generally the correct form in biblical and rabbinic Hebrew - i.e., "David Melech Yisrael," "Nebuchadnezar Melech Bavel," etc.
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Ah, but you see, ITTL, the, er, preponderence of Asians in Judaism, brought, um, a general linguistic shift in Hebrew, which uhuhuhuh-

Fixed :eek:.
 
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