The Mongol Princess Who Won 10,000 Horses With Her Bare Hands

The true story of Khutulun — the undefeated Mongol wrestling princess who beat every man who challenged her, won a herd of 10,000 horses, and was named heir to a khanate by her own father. Around 1280, a foreign prince arrived at the Mongol court with one thousand horses. He had come to wrestle a woman — and if he lost, the horses were hers. He lost. He was not the first, and he was not the last. Her name was Khutulun: daughter of Kaidu Khan, great-great-granddaughter of Genghis Khan, cousin to the Emperor of China. For nearly twenty years she refused to marry any man who could not first beat her in wrestling — and no one ever did. She rode at the front of her father's cavalry, plucking enemy soldiers from their saddles "as easily as a hawk seizes a fowl," in the words of Marco Polo, who recorded her while she was still alive. When her father tried to name her his heir over fourteen sons, her brothers refused — and to spare the khanate a civil war, she stepped aside. Then she died, her herd was scattered, and history nearly lost her for six centuries. This is the story those who knew her wrote down — and the story the world is only now recovering. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 00:00 The Prince Who Bet 1,000 Horses 01:12 The Mongol Empire at War With Itself 02:48 A Daughter Among Fourteen Sons 05:00 She Discovers Wrestling 06:00 The Terms: Beat Her or Pay 100 Horses 07:12 The Battlefield Commander 10:00 The Thousand-Horse Match 12:36 The Slander and the Marriage She Chose 14:24 Named Heir — and the Brothers Who Refused 16:00 Her Death and Disappearance 17:00 The Real Turandot, and the Recovery ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ PRIMARY SOURCES CITED ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo (Il Milione), Book 4, c. 1300 — Khutulun appears as "Aiyurug" • Rashid al-Din Hamadani, Jami al-Tawarikh (Compendium of Chronicles), c. 1310, Ilkhanate Persia • Yuan Shi (History of the Yuan), official Chinese dynastic history, compiled 1370 • Jack Weatherford, The Secret History of the Mongol Queens, Crown, 2010 • Michal Biran, Qaidu and the Rise of the Independent Mongol State in Central Asia, Curzon Press, 1997 • Morris Rossabi, Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times, 1988 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ UNTOLD WORLD HISTORY tells the stories of the people history almost forgot. Previous episodes: Yasuke, the African samurai who watched Japan burn — La Buse, the pirate who threw an unsolved treasure cipher to the crowd at his own hanging — and Zheng Yi Sao, the pirate queen who commanded 70,000 men and retired rich. If this story was worth your time, subscribe — and share it with someone who would want to hear it. #khutulun #mongolempire #genghiskhan