Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. In twelve
Speaker 1: seventy one, the Italian explorer Marco Polo set off for
Speaker 1: China from his home in Venice at the age of seventeen.
Speaker 1: You've probably heard of Marco Polo. On his adventures, he
Speaker 1: encountered all manner of marvels, islands replete with rare spices,
Speaker 1: sumptuous courts, even testimony about strange, huge and exotic serpents
Speaker 1: with long, jagged mouths, or, as we might know them, crocodiles.
Speaker 1: After Marco Polo had spent nearly twenty years in the
Speaker 1: court of the Chinese Emperor, he finally decided to return home.
Speaker 1: But there was no chance he could go back the
Speaker 1: way he came. An unexpected war had flared up in
Speaker 1: the very center of Asia, where trade caravans passed between
Speaker 1: the eastern and western parts of the continent. Marco Polo
Speaker 1: had no choice but to sail around Asia to reach
Speaker 1: Persia in order to ultimately get back to Venice. He
Speaker 1: commanded fourteen ships that allowed him to avoid the perils
Speaker 1: of trekking through the mountains, and after a few years,
Speaker 1: Marco Polo finally docked at the Persian port city of Hormus.
Speaker 1: As with every location he found himself in, he began
Speaker 1: listening for news that might prove helpful for the rest
Speaker 1: of his journey. It turned out that the wars still
Speaker 1: raged in Central Asia, but there was more. Marco Polo
Speaker 1: was a collector of legends and stories, and there was
Speaker 1: one story from the war that captivated him. One of
Speaker 1: the armies was being led by a woman. No not
Speaker 1: just a woman, a giantess whose face was allegedly as
Speaker 1: alluring as the moon, and whose arms were apparently strong
Speaker 1: enough to move mountains. Of course, Marco Polo had heard
Speaker 1: of rare cases of women leading armies in Europe, but
Speaker 1: none as seemingly strong as this mysterious cutuloon. Marco Polo
Speaker 1: recorded these scattered rumors he heard and moved along toward home.
Speaker 1: How much of what Marco Polo heard about this so
Speaker 1: called giantess is true? Even if Marco Polo's book that
Speaker 1: he wrote about his journey was based on a real
Speaker 1: journey to China, which is actually debatable, Historians today recognized
Speaker 1: that Marco Polo's account is at the least highly embellished.
Speaker 1: It was made to entertain readers, not simply quote transmit
Speaker 1: information about the East. If we can't be certain that
Speaker 1: Marco Polo didn't at best embellish the hearsay he jotted down,
Speaker 1: how can we be certain that Kutulun, this mythical giantess,
Speaker 1: even existed. As a matter of fact, we have good
Speaker 1: reason to believe that she did exist, though between you
Speaker 1: and me, she probably wasn't a giantess. Writing in thirteen
Speaker 1: oh seven, the Persian historian Russidaldin compiled an expansive history
Speaker 1: of Mongolian royalty around the same time that Marco Polo's
Speaker 1: travels were being published. In his account, Russiad Aaldin also
Speaker 1: mentions Kutuloun and also refers to her unusual capabilities on
Speaker 1: the battlefield. We don't have any exceptional sources on Kutuloon
Speaker 1: besides Marco Polo and Russiad al Din, and even they
Speaker 1: wrap this obscure figure in layers of mythmaking The task
Speaker 1: of excavating the historical Cutaloon is made extra difficult by
Speaker 1: the fact that so much of her persona became the
Speaker 1: basis for Italian plays in the eighteenth century, and in
Speaker 1: German theater in the nineteenth and in Romantic opera in
Speaker 1: the twentieth. Much of our modern interpretation of Kutulun is
Speaker 1: colored by these works of high art. Can we cut
Speaker 1: through the mist of hearsay, dramatization, and mythology to parse
Speaker 1: apart any certain truths about the royal giantess. The name
Speaker 1: Kutlun is often translated from Mongolian as moonlight or face
Speaker 1: of the moon. That's an apt descriptor for our heroine,
Speaker 1: because the face she presents changes depending on who is
Speaker 1: telling her story and when her story is being told,
Speaker 1: whether by a Venetian merchant in the thirteenth century, a
Speaker 1: Persian historian in the fourteenth, or an Italian composer in
Speaker 1: the twentieth. For now, let's assume Marco Polo's perspective. When
Speaker 1: he docked in the port of Hormus off the Persian Gulf.
Speaker 1: He didn't just hear rumblings of yet another conflict between
Speaker 1: the Mongolian successor states. At the very center of that
Speaker 1: geopolitical drama was another smaller drama, a wrestling competition of
Speaker 1: all things, and a princess who offered her hand in
Speaker 1: marriage to any man who could best her. As the
Speaker 1: legend goes, none could. It's a great story. Marco Polo
Speaker 1: wanted to write it down. I'm Danish schwartz and this
Speaker 1: is noble blood. When Kutalun was born in twelve sixty
Speaker 1: nothing marked her as particularly special compared to the rest
Speaker 1: of the royal family. She was the daughter of Kaidu,
Speaker 1: the Khan or ruler of much of Central Asia, and
Speaker 1: great grandson of Genghis Khan, but we don't even know
Speaker 1: the name of Kutalun's mother. Kutulun was probably born in
Speaker 1: what is now Kazakhstan, in or around the busy trading
Speaker 1: town of Kahili, Situated on a step in between a
Speaker 1: massive freshwater lake to the north and snow capped mountains
Speaker 1: to the south. This city, like so many others in
Speaker 1: the emerging Chagatai Khanate, bustled with trade. Think of a
Speaker 1: knit like a smaller, less formal kingdom, but with its
Speaker 1: own system of government and leader. Mongol soldiers and settlers
Speaker 1: technically dominated the land, but local farmers carried on with
Speaker 1: their crops. Turkish nomads proselytized Islam Persian statesmen offered their
Speaker 1: political expertise, and even the occasional European took lodging as
Speaker 1: they hunted for lucrative spices. The world that Kutaloon was
Speaker 1: born into, one that connected goods, gold, and good ideas
Speaker 1: from all four corners of the globe, was only possible
Speaker 1: because of the rapid and ruthless expansion of the Mongols
Speaker 1: over much of the Asian continent starting in twelve o six.
Speaker 1: In his lifetime, Genghis Khan and his legions forged an
Speaker 1: empire that spanned all the way from Russia to the
Speaker 1: Korean Peninsula. But just as soon as Genghis Khan and
Speaker 1: his descendants subjugated them these lands, their unified empire began
Speaker 1: to fall apart at the seams. It was already an
Speaker 1: enormous challenge to govern new lands, let alone half a continent.
Speaker 1: In the decades leading up to Kutalun's birth in twelve sixty,
Speaker 1: the unified Mongol Empire effectively dissolved into four smaller empires.
Speaker 1: But of course, the next generations of royalty dreamed of
Speaker 1: stitching the once great empire back together. Kutualun's great uncle,
Speaker 1: Kubla Khan, the emperor of China that Marco Polo ventured
Speaker 1: off to meet, tried to force Kaidu, Kutalan's father, into
Speaker 1: accepting his right to rule all of Central Asia. It
Speaker 1: was naturally quite difficult for Kubla Kan to do that
Speaker 1: from China, thousands of miles away, so he began with
Speaker 1: an invitation. Kaidu would set off for Kubla Khan's course,
Speaker 1: recognize his cousin as overlord in a customary oath swearing,
Speaker 1: and then march back to his home in the Chogatai Kanate.
Speaker 1: That sounds okay, but Kaidu wasn't buying it. For every
Speaker 1: invitation that Kubla Khan sent, Kaidu came up with a
Speaker 1: very convenient excuse of why he couldn't go. In one case,
Speaker 1: Kaidu's herds were apparently too lean to travel the vast
Speaker 1: distance between their cities, so Kaidu suggested they try again
Speaker 1: next year. Next year didn't happen either. Kaidu understood that
Speaker 1: any show of fealty to Kubla Khan would undermine his
Speaker 1: own freedom in Central Asia, including his freedom to tax
Speaker 1: the rivers of spice, gold, and silk parading in and
Speaker 1: out of his cities. There were other cultural tensions that
Speaker 1: underwrote Kaidu's strategic refusal to s submit to his cousin.
Speaker 1: Kubla Khan and his clan members had adapted their empire
Speaker 1: to the Chinese systems that had preceded them, building a
Speaker 1: state that was agricultural, centralized, and more or less sedentary.
Speaker 1: That was a far cry from what Kaidu considered a
Speaker 1: more traditional Mongolian ethic pastoral, decentralized, nomadic. Kaidu believed it
Speaker 1: was important that he provide his children a more traditional
Speaker 1: Mongolian upbringing. Where most princesses of the medieval world lived
Speaker 1: restricted lives destined for political marriages, Kutaloon was exposed to
Speaker 1: a rougher life right from the beginning. In her pastoral community,
Speaker 1: children learned to use the bow and arrow from a
Speaker 1: young age. Boys were expected to guard larger animals like
Speaker 1: camels and the cows that row across the plains, while
Speaker 1: girls were tasked with protecting the sheep and goats that
Speaker 1: grazed closer to home. Young Kutalun thrived in this environment.
Speaker 1: She quickly developed expertise in the traditional mongol arts of
Speaker 1: horse riding, archery and wrestling, to the awe and discontent
Speaker 1: of her fourteen brothers. Rashid al Din writes somewhat derisively
Speaker 1: that Kutulun quote went around like a boy. Kutulun's prodigious
Speaker 1: fighting skills were also likely inspired by the chaos that
Speaker 1: ensued from her father's earlier conflicts with Kubla Khan, her
Speaker 1: great uncle. According to a tradition solidified during the reign
Speaker 1: of Genghis Khan, all major representatives of the royal families
Speaker 1: needed to recognize an overlord for his rule to stand
Speaker 1: as legitimate. Kaidu's refusal of an overlord therefore gave Kubla
Speaker 1: Khan no choice but to demand obedient by force. He
Speaker 1: dispatched a general named Barak to capture the lands under
Speaker 1: Kaidu's control. Barak first ambushed Kaidu in a crushing defeat,
Speaker 1: but Kutalun's father was not one to back down so easily.
Speaker 1: What information we have about him suggests that he was
Speaker 1: forgiving and generous at court, and cold and rational on
Speaker 1: the battlefield. Russiad al Din writes that he never took wine, salt,
Speaker 1: or kumis traditional fermented milk alcohol, a characterization that, whether
Speaker 1: true or not, corresponds with the attitude Kaidu had when
Speaker 1: he pursued his military and political ambitions. Suffering from temporary losses,
Speaker 1: Kaidu called upon the support of his cousins to the
Speaker 1: north and surprised Barak with a force of over sixty thousand,
Speaker 1: overwhelming him and effectively securing control over the Chagatai lands.
Speaker 1: As Kaidu pressed his advantage over Kubla Khan in the
Speaker 1: following decades and repressed descent from lesser lords, he increasingly
Speaker 1: called upon the support of his daughter. Marco Polo, dedicating
Speaker 1: a whole chapter to the warrior princess had this choice
Speaker 1: description of her military prowess quote. Kutaloon's father never went
Speaker 1: on a campaign without her, and gladly he took her
Speaker 1: for not a knight in all his train played such
Speaker 1: feats of arms as she did. Sometimes she would quit
Speaker 1: her father's side and make a dash at the host
Speaker 1: of the enemy and seize some man thereout as deftly
Speaker 1: as a hawk pounces on a bird, and carry him
Speaker 1: to her father. End quote. Politically prominent Mongolian women were
Speaker 1: not something new. Queens took over as regents in between
Speaker 1: the death of a khan and the election of a successor.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they ruled for several years. Some royal women became
Speaker 1: heroines of the Khanate's founding mythology, like Altani, the wife
Speaker 1: of one of Genghis Khan's generals who saved his heir
Speaker 1: from kidnappers. Even before Genghis Khan, Mongolian folklore passed down
Speaker 1: stories of warrior queens who took up arms and led
Speaker 1: hosts in dire times. But Kutulun wasn't fighting out of
Speaker 1: dire need. This wasn't a desperate rescue mission, and her
Speaker 1: renown didn't come from a connection to any man, let
Speaker 1: alone a husband. That's exactly what troubled her father's court.
Speaker 1: If Rashid al Din's dismissive comments on Kutulun's military ambitions
Speaker 1: are any indication, and many onlookers saw her dismissal of
Speaker 1: typical feminine duties as condemnable, certainly a line of rhetoric
Speaker 1: that her brothers utilized as they tried in vain to
Speaker 1: bring their father's attention back to them. The supposedly true
Speaker 1: heirs to the royal estates. The traditional spirituality espoused during
Speaker 1: ginghis Khan's reign supported harmony between the masculine sky and
Speaker 1: the feminine earth. Did Kutalun's peers see her military leadership
Speaker 1: as a benefit or a disruption to that harmony, whether
Speaker 1: for optics or from personal conviction. Kaidu decreed that his
Speaker 1: daughter Kutaloun would marry, but there was no chance he
Speaker 1: could ever compel her to marry any particular suitor. Kutaloon
Speaker 1: would be allowed to choose her own own bridegroom. In
Speaker 1: this case, the courting would take place within the confines
Speaker 1: of a wrestling pit. For a khan like Kai Dou,
Speaker 1: the marriages of his children represented opportunities for useful political alliances.
Speaker 1: To his daughters, those marriages would prove troublesome. Kutulun's younger sister, Kotuchin,
Speaker 1: married young, but during her first pregnancy, her husband unexpectedly
Speaker 1: fell in love with an enslaved girl. Affairs weren't uncommon,
Speaker 1: but affairs laid out in public by the very parties
Speaker 1: involved were well not quite strategic. In one account of
Speaker 1: the story, Kutuchin's husband approached his father in law, Kaidu
Speaker 1: with the enslaved girl he loved in hand, naively pleading
Speaker 1: with him to recognize their own relationship as a marriage
Speaker 1: and scrap the former one, you know, his marriage to
Speaker 1: Kaidu's daughter. Kaidu had the man executed on the spot.
Speaker 1: A different account tells us that actually Kutuchin confronted her
Speaker 1: husband after discovering the affair, at which point her husband
Speaker 1: supposedly bit and killed her, not the most conventional way
Speaker 1: of murdering your royal wife. Katuchin's brothers protested that Kaidu
Speaker 1: should execute their murderous brother in law, but the Khan
Speaker 1: in this story resists by arguing that this wouldn't save
Speaker 1: their already bitten to death sister. In this story, Kaidu
Speaker 1: instead issues one hundred lashes, sets his son in law free,
Speaker 1: and even goes so far in his magnanimity as to
Speaker 1: give a different one of his daughters to the man
Speaker 1: as a bride, since his son's quote could not allow
Speaker 1: a stranger to take their sister's place. If this probably
Speaker 1: apocryphal set of stories tells us anything it's that whatever
Speaker 1: safety or autonomy royal women achieved in familial politics could
Speaker 1: easily be violated through an unfit marriage. Women became expendable
Speaker 1: when it was politically convenient for the surrounding ruling men
Speaker 1: of the Kanate. In one case, Kutulun's great aunt elicited
Speaker 1: public humiliation for simply disagreeing with a minister of her
Speaker 1: husband's court. That minister went on to execute the great
Speaker 1: aunt's daughter in law for adultery without illegal proceeding, violating
Speaker 1: Angis Khan's prior mandate that no member of the royal
Speaker 1: family could be killed without some collective agreement. As historian
Speaker 1: Jack Weatherford argues, the era in which Kutualun lived and
Speaker 1: fought in marked the beginning of Mongol women's erasure from
Speaker 1: political life. Regardless of the rich tradition of powerful historical
Speaker 1: Mongol women in her lifetime, Kutulun was the exception, not
Speaker 1: the rule. If Kutulun had to marry, she would only
Speaker 1: marry a man who could beat her in a wrestling match.
Speaker 1: The chances of her finding such a man quickly was
Speaker 1: probably pretty slim. After all, she had dominated the very
Speaker 1: best of her father's enemies on the battlefield for years.
Speaker 1: Marco Polo writes that Kutulun sent challenges to worthy opponents
Speaker 1: across several kingdoms on the following terms. The first winner
Speaker 1: receives her hand in marriage, but every man must wager
Speaker 1: one hundred horses to enter the competition. According to the
Speaker 1: traditional rules of Mongolian wrestling or bach, the first competitor
Speaker 1: to touch the ground with something other than their feet
Speaker 1: loses the match. Many a Kaki nobleman entered the gauntlet,
Speaker 1: only to be thrown down and utterly humiliated. Kutlun allegedly
Speaker 1: won ten thousand horses, vanquishing suitors until an exceptionally renowned
Speaker 1: nobleman entered the picture with a new wager one thousand
Speaker 1: horses for a chance to win her hand. Naturally, her father,
Speaker 1: and depending on the source, also possibly Kutulun's mother begged
Speaker 1: Kutlun to throw the match. In his account, Marco Polo
Speaker 1: does not identify the prince for us, but he claims
Speaker 1: he was the son of a great king, which really
Speaker 1: isn't that helpful. But the point is that Kutulun's parents
Speaker 1: saw this nobleman as the chance for their wild daughter
Speaker 1: to secure a prosperous future for herself and their lineage.
Speaker 1: In one account, Kutaloun staunchly resists her parents please. In another,
Speaker 1: she agrees, but then something snaps upon entering the ring,
Speaker 1: hearing the roar of the crowd, seeing across from her
Speaker 1: an opponent worthy of equal status. The two wrestlers locked
Speaker 1: arms for minutes on end, neither able to get the
Speaker 1: better of the other, until finally Kutalun threw the prince down,
Speaker 1: collected his multiplied wager, and mortified both him and her family.
Speaker 1: Marco Polo's version of the story ends on this high note,
Speaker 1: almost like a fairy tale, Kutaloun defeating the man that
Speaker 1: people wanted her to throw the match to, but the
Speaker 1: pot stirring. Rashid al Din carries the tale a little further.
Speaker 1: After several years without a planned marriage, insidious rumors spread,
Speaker 1: claiming that Kutaloun and her father Kaidu had an incestuous relationship.
Speaker 1: Out of shame, Kutaloun finally relented and chose a man
Speaker 1: to marry. But even in this story, I think it's
Speaker 1: important to remember she chooses the man. She was never
Speaker 1: bested by a suitor in the wrestling pit one on one.
Speaker 1: In this version of the story, the man she chose, Abtakool,
Speaker 1: is said to have been quote vigorous, tall and handsome,
Speaker 1: like so many of the other figures in Kutalun's life.
Speaker 1: We know little about him except he was of noble
Speaker 1: ancestry and that the couple raised two sons. But there
Speaker 1: was no chance Kutalun would settle down for an unexciting,
Speaker 1: sedentary domestic life. She campaigned with her father until the
Speaker 1: very end. Leadership in her father's army was indispensable in
Speaker 1: the face of a massive geopolitical shift brewing to the east.
Speaker 1: Kubul Khan died in twelve ninety four. After decades of
Speaker 1: directing most of his political and military attention to invasions
Speaker 1: of Korea and Japan. Kubul Khan's successor, Timour, quickly relinquished
Speaker 1: those commitments and turned his attention to the west, where
Speaker 1: he made attempts to force the unruly Central Asian war
Speaker 1: lords to recognize Chinese rule once and for all. The
Speaker 1: ensuing campaign was disruptive enough to deter Marco Polo from
Speaker 1: traveling on the overland route back to Venice. The seventy
Speaker 1: year old Kaidu did his best to deflect the impending invasion,
Speaker 1: and with the help of his daughter, they kept Temor
Speaker 1: in Czech after one hard fought battle on September three, third,
Speaker 1: thirteen oh one, Kaidu ultimately took an arrow wound that
Speaker 1: would prove fatal A month later. Rashid al Din mentions
Speaker 1: that Kutualun's father was buried in the mountains, where in
Speaker 1: one version of the story, Kutalun and her husband lived
Speaker 1: modestly and guarded her father's burial place until her death
Speaker 1: four years later. In another version of the story, more
Speaker 1: reflective of the relationship between Kaidu and Kutalun, it said
Speaker 1: that the Khan agitated for his daughter to be the
Speaker 1: one to succeed him before he died. Each of her
Speaker 1: fourteen brothers nearly revolted in response, and yet another compromise,
Speaker 1: Kutalun remained the general of her father's elite military, while
Speaker 1: her brother Oris took the mantle of government. Their rule
Speaker 1: collapsed within four years, and the wrestler princess died under
Speaker 1: he unclear circumstances, But the world that she and her
Speaker 1: father had made out of the dramatic collapse of the
Speaker 1: Mongol Empire had lasting consequences. Never again would a unified
Speaker 1: Mongol power tame the autonomous step of Central Asia. Parsing
Speaker 1: through the different versions of Kutalun's narrative yields an image
Speaker 1: of an amicable relationship between a father who struggled to
Speaker 1: keep his fledgling empire intact and a daughter whose skills
Speaker 1: lent themselves to that task. For all we know, Kaidu
Speaker 1: and Kutualun were on great terms, but reading between the
Speaker 1: lines yields a slightly different, more complex picture. The Khan
Speaker 1: may have offered Kutualun the chance to choose her own husband,
Speaker 1: but both Marco Polo and Rashid al Din indicate that
Speaker 1: this was a privilege that she had to fight for,
Speaker 1: and fight she did. The warrior princess, as luminous as
Speaker 1: the moon and stable as the Altai mountains, carved a
Speaker 1: space for herself within the confines of a world that
Speaker 1: didn't want her to take that space. Every compromise was
Speaker 1: just as much a sign of her subjugation as it
Speaker 1: was of her power. Nearly four centuries after Coutaloon's death,
Speaker 1: the French diplomat Francois Petit de Lacroix was sent by
Speaker 1: the court of Louis the fourteenth to Persia in sixteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, where he stumbled upon the strange and strangely
Speaker 1: familiar story of a Mongol princess turned wrestler. For one
Speaker 1: hundred years, the English and French sponsored diplomatic missions to
Speaker 1: the Ottoman and Cephavid empires to advance their mercantile interests abroad.
Speaker 1: It was always useful to have someone who could speak
Speaker 1: the land language of your competitor. Laquax was part of
Speaker 1: that political tradition, but like so many of his contemporaries,
Speaker 1: the so called orient also stoked his intellectual curiosity. His
Speaker 1: father wrote the definitive biography of Genghis Khan, so the
Speaker 1: young man had rather big shoes to fill. His interests
Speaker 1: ranged from mystical poetry to biblical artifacts, but upon returning
Speaker 1: to France, Laqua turned his attention on translating a compendium
Speaker 1: of stories he had acquired on his travels. You've probably
Speaker 1: heard of One thousand and one Nights, a frame narrative
Speaker 1: featuring nested stories stories including Aladdin's Lamp and Ali Baba
Speaker 1: and the Forty Thieves. Laquax was the first European to
Speaker 1: translate the companion set of stories known as One thousand
Speaker 1: and one Days for centuries, the last context European readers
Speaker 1: had with Kutalun was Marco Polo's vague descriptions. At last,
Speaker 1: Laqua breathed new life into her character, though not without
Speaker 1: major changes to the story. Orientalists like Lacua often misconstrued dates, names,
Speaker 1: even whole narratives as they translated from one language to another.
Speaker 1: The so called orient became one big mesh of homogeneous
Speaker 1: ideas and pictures. Think Agroba in Disney's Aladdin. Where in
Speaker 1: the world exactly is Agroba supposed to be? Laqua didn't
Speaker 1: exactly translate a new version of Kutalun's stories. Rather, he
Speaker 1: conflated elements of her story with another narrative taken from
Speaker 1: the twelfth century Persian poet Nizami, specifically the narrative of Turnidot,
Speaker 1: literally the daughter of Turan. Turnidott had also tested suitors
Speaker 1: for her hand in marriage, Except unlike Kutaloon's test, Turnidott's
Speaker 1: test was a series of riddles, and the price of
Speaker 1: failure was the suitor's head, not one hundred horses. And
Speaker 1: if you're more familiar with the opera and you're wondering
Speaker 1: why I'm pronouncing Turnidott with a T, it's because the
Speaker 1: word is Persian, and Puccini, like me, wasn't great at pronunciation,
Speaker 1: but in this case the Persian word is turnidot. To
Speaker 1: eighteenth century European audiences, Turnidat and Kutaloon were more or
Speaker 1: less the same person, despite the fact that one was
Speaker 1: a fictional poetic character and the other was a historical princess.
Speaker 1: In seventeen sixty two, the Italian playwright Carlo Gazzi picked
Speaker 1: up the story of Turnidatt as the basis for a
Speaker 1: new comedy full of playful, irreverent character. Turnidat was a
Speaker 1: hit in eighteenth century Venice, but it wasn't until eighteen
Speaker 1: o two when Kutaloun's European legacy would reach astronomical heights.
Speaker 1: The German poet Friedrich Schiller translated Gozi's playful screenplay into
Speaker 1: a sincere and heavily symbolic love story, and he produced
Speaker 1: the play with a man who was none other than
Speaker 1: Johann Wolfgang von Gerte. They treated their aristocratic audiences to
Speaker 1: an abstracted, fairy tale version of Kutaloon. In this version
Speaker 1: of the play, the audacious nobleman Kaliff agrees to compete
Speaker 1: in Turnidat's test of riddles for her hand in marriage.
Speaker 1: Turnidat meanwhile, is motivated to put up as many barriers
Speaker 1: between her and her suitors as possible because, for some
Speaker 1: unexplained reason, she just hates the male sex. Khaluff guesses
Speaker 1: the answers to her riddles in a matter of minutes.
Speaker 1: The spoiler alert The answers are all Christian virtues like faith, hope,
Speaker 1: and finally love. But seeing that Turnidatt is unhappy with
Speaker 1: the outcome, Kaliff agrees to his own execution if she
Speaker 1: can guess his name in the course of a day.
Speaker 1: So there's a little bit of Rumpelstiltskin in here. Too
Speaker 1: Unable to do so, Turnidat is won over by Kaliff's selflessness.
Speaker 1: He melts her ice cold heart through the power of love.
Speaker 1: Turnidat cries out in the final lines, could I then,
Speaker 1: after all this, look down in scorn on men? No?
Speaker 1: And may Heaven forgive me all I did that made
Speaker 1: me seem a monster in men's sight. Kutaloon embodied strength
Speaker 1: that exceeded even her fiercest male competitors. Turnidat in fiction
Speaker 1: was given a frail frame and an intelligent mind, though
Speaker 1: not so intelligent as to outwit the hero Culloff. In history,
Speaker 1: Kutaloun crushed every suitor in acts of glorious defiance. Turnidot's
Speaker 1: ice cold heart was land to conquer. Kutaloon, in the end,
Speaker 1: got to choose her husband. Turnidat really makes no such choice.
Speaker 1: Far from an agent in her own life, Turnidat is
Speaker 1: essentially a prize for the hero, a heavily distorted reflection
Speaker 1: of the Mongol princess who once decimated armies like a hawk.
Speaker 1: Jacomo Puccini created the most famous reproduction of Turnidat in
Speaker 1: his nineteen twenty four opera of the same name. One
Speaker 1: solo from Puccini's work may be the single most famous
Speaker 1: moment and in opera history. Coincidentally that solo has Kuloff
Speaker 1: proclaiming Turnidat as his wife. The real Kutaloon and her
Speaker 1: victories have all but disappeared from view. Lying underneath every
Speaker 1: depiction of the fictional Turnidat, behind every closed curtain at
Speaker 1: her opera, is a real princess whose life was incomprehensible
Speaker 1: to the framework of gender that modern Europe had developed
Speaker 1: and then projected onto the world. Perhaps opera goers in
Speaker 1: Vienna and Milan would have reacted to Kutualoun just as
Speaker 1: Rashid al Din did, dismissive of her for going around
Speaker 1: like a boy. That's not the type of heroin anyone
Speaker 1: wants to see in an opera. But for all we know,
Speaker 1: the real Kutaloon would have worn that criticism like a
Speaker 1: badge of honor. That's the story of the real, historical Kutaloon.
Speaker 1: But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear
Speaker 1: a little bit more about how her legacy continues in
Speaker 1: the present day. Every year, in the midst of summer,
Speaker 1: Mongolia gears up for Nedam literally Games, a traditional festival
Speaker 1: featuring acrobatic performances and athletic competitions. Youth face off in
Speaker 1: horse riding and archery, but the most beloved sport is
Speaker 1: to this day wrestling. There have probably been major esthetic
Speaker 1: and policy changes in wrestling since the thirteenth century, namely
Speaker 1: no more wagering horses for your opponent's hand in marriage,
Speaker 1: but otherwise the main is pretty much the same. The
Speaker 1: first to touch the ground with a part of their
Speaker 1: body besides their feet loses. Before and after the match,
Speaker 1: competitors perform an eagle dance that represents the mythical Garuda bird,
Speaker 1: symbolizing bravery and grace. Though each region has its own
Speaker 1: style of pre and post match rituals, Thousands of men
Speaker 1: compete yearly, and depending on your ranking in an overall tournament,
Speaker 1: they're bestowed with different titles like Elephant, Lion, or Giant.
Speaker 1: The general perception is that these traditions also symbolize an
Speaker 1: uninterrupted inheritance from the mythologized founding of Mongolia under Genghis Khan,
Speaker 1: who himself used wrestling as a method of keeping his
Speaker 1: troops in shape. One particularly unusual element in contemporary Mongolian
Speaker 1: wrestling is the costume that the athletes wear, a two
Speaker 1: piece suit that covers one's shoulders, arms, and back, but
Speaker 1: opens to reveal the chest. Theories have circulated on the
Speaker 1: origins of the uniform, but one of the most prominent
Speaker 1: explanations credit Kutloon as Mongolian military and athletic institutions over
Speaker 1: the centuries gradually began marginalizing women. It was considered far
Speaker 1: too inappropriate for a woman to compete in a sport
Speaker 1: seen as the domain of men. Some suggest that the
Speaker 1: wrestling uniforms open torso emerged as a way for the
Speaker 1: audience to confirm that all participants were indeed male. The
Speaker 1: winner of the competition would raise their arms at the
Speaker 1: end of a match, not only to celebrate, but also
Speaker 1: to clarify their sex to the audience. To this day,
Speaker 1: while women are allowed to compete in horse riding and archery,
Speaker 1: they are barred from traditional wrestling matches. This genealogy is
Speaker 1: all very speculative, but there is something rather poetic about
Speaker 1: male wrestlers still motivated by the fear of suffering a
Speaker 1: humiliating defeat at the hands of a woman. Kutalin's reputation
Speaker 1: continues after her. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is
Speaker 1: created and hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing
Speaker 1: and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah's Wi, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender,
Speaker 1: and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by
Speaker 1: Noemi Griffin and rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh
Speaker 1: Thain and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.