The Princess Who Wrestled for Her Future

You've probably heard of Marco Polo. On his adventures, he encountered all manner of marvels, islands replete with rare spices, sumptuous courts, even testimony about strange, huge and exotic serpents with long, jagged mouths, or, as we might know them, crocodiles. After Marco Polo had spent nearly twenty years in the court of the Chinese Emperor, he finally decided to return home. But there was no chance he could go back the

way he came. An unexpected war had flared up in the very center of Asia, where trade caravans passed between the eastern and western parts of the continent. Marco Polo had no choice but to sail around Asia to reach Persia in order to ultimately get back to Venice. He commanded fourteen ships that allowed him to avoid the perils of trekking through the mountains, and after a few years, Marco Polo finally docked at the Persian port city of Hormus.

As with every location he found himself in, he began listening for news that might prove helpful for the rest of his journey. It turned out that the wars still raged in Central Asia, but there was more. Marco Polo was a collector of legends and stories, and there was one story from the war that captivated him. One of the armies was being led by a woman. No not just a woman, a giantess whose face was allegedly as alluring as the moon, and whose arms were apparently strong

enough to move mountains. Of course, Marco Polo had heard of rare cases of women leading armies in Europe, but none as seemingly strong as this mysterious cutuloon. Marco Polo recorded these scattered rumors he heard and moved along toward home. How much of what Marco Polo heard about this so

called giantess is true? Even if Marco Polo's book that he wrote about his journey was based on a real journey to China, which is actually debatable, Historians today recognized that Marco Polo's account is at the least highly embellished. It was made to entertain readers, not simply quote transmit information about the East. If we can't be certain that Marco Polo didn't at best embellish the hearsay he jotted down, how can we be certain that Kutulun, this mythical giantess,

even existed. As a matter of fact, we have good reason to believe that she did exist, though between you and me, she probably wasn't a giantess. Writing in thirteen oh seven, the Persian historian Russidaldin compiled an expansive history of Mongolian royalty around the same time that Marco Polo's travels were being published. In his account, Russiad Aaldin also mentions Kutuloun and also refers to her unusual capabilities on

the battlefield. We don't have any exceptional sources on Kutuloon besides Marco Polo and Russiad al Din, and even they wrap this obscure figure in layers of mythmaking The task of excavating the historical Cutaloon is made extra difficult by the fact that so much of her persona became the basis for Italian plays in the eighteenth century, and in German theater in the nineteenth and in Romantic opera in the twentieth. Much of our modern interpretation of Kutulun is

colored by these works of high art. Can we cut through the mist of hearsay, dramatization, and mythology to parse apart any certain truths about the royal giantess. The name Kutlun is often translated from Mongolian as moonlight or face

of the moon. That's an apt descriptor for our heroine, because the face she presents changes depending on who is telling her story and when her story is being told, whether by a Venetian merchant in the thirteenth century, a Persian historian in the fourteenth, or an Italian composer in the twentieth. For now, let's assume Marco Polo's perspective. When he docked in the port of Hormus off the Persian Gulf. He didn't just hear rumblings of yet another conflict between

the Mongolian successor states. At the very center of that geopolitical drama was another smaller drama, a wrestling competition of all things, and a princess who offered her hand in marriage to any man who could best her. As the legend goes, none could. It's a great story. Marco Polo wanted to write it down. I'm Danish schwartz and this is noble blood. When Kutalun was born in twelve sixty nothing marked her as particularly special compared to the rest

of the royal family. She was the daughter of Kaidu, the Khan or ruler of much of Central Asia, and great grandson of Genghis Khan, but we don't even know the name of Kutalun's mother. Kutulun was probably born in what is now Kazakhstan, in or around the busy trading town of Kahili, Situated on a step in between a massive freshwater lake to the north and snow capped mountains to the south. This city, like so many others in

the emerging Chagatai Khanate, bustled with trade. Think of a knit like a smaller, less formal kingdom, but with its own system of government and leader. Mongol soldiers and settlers technically dominated the land, but local farmers carried on with their crops. Turkish nomads proselytized Islam Persian statesmen offered their political expertise, and even the occasional European took lodging as

they hunted for lucrative spices. The world that Kutaloon was born into, one that connected goods, gold, and good ideas from all four corners of the globe, was only possible because of the rapid and ruthless expansion of the Mongols over much of the Asian continent starting in twelve o six. In his lifetime, Genghis Khan and his legions forged an empire that spanned all the way from Russia to the

Korean Peninsula. But just as soon as Genghis Khan and his descendants subjugated them these lands, their unified empire began to fall apart at the seams. It was already an enormous challenge to govern new lands, let alone half a continent. In the decades leading up to Kutalun's birth in twelve sixty, the unified Mongol Empire effectively dissolved into four smaller empires. But of course, the next generations of royalty dreamed of

stitching the once great empire back together. Kutualun's great uncle, Kubla Khan, the emperor of China that Marco Polo ventured off to meet, tried to force Kaidu, Kutalan's father, into accepting his right to rule all of Central Asia. It was naturally quite difficult for Kubla Kan to do that from China, thousands of miles away, so he began with

an invitation. Kaidu would set off for Kubla Khan's course, recognize his cousin as overlord in a customary oath swearing, and then march back to his home in the Chogatai Kanate. That sounds okay, but Kaidu wasn't buying it. For every invitation that Kubla Khan sent, Kaidu came up with a very convenient excuse of why he couldn't go. In one case, Kaidu's herds were apparently too lean to travel the vast distance between their cities, so Kaidu suggested they try again

next year. Next year didn't happen either. Kaidu understood that any show of fealty to Kubla Khan would undermine his own freedom in Central Asia, including his freedom to tax the rivers of spice, gold, and silk parading in and out of his cities. There were other cultural tensions that underwrote Kaidu's strategic refusal to s submit to his cousin.

Kubla Khan and his clan members had adapted their empire to the Chinese systems that had preceded them, building a state that was agricultural, centralized, and more or less sedentary. That was a far cry from what Kaidu considered a more traditional Mongolian ethic pastoral, decentralized, nomadic. Kaidu believed it was important that he provide his children a more traditional

Mongolian upbringing. Where most princesses of the medieval world lived restricted lives destined for political marriages, Kutaloon was exposed to a rougher life right from the beginning. In her pastoral community, children learned to use the bow and arrow from a young age. Boys were expected to guard larger animals like camels and the cows that row across the plains, while girls were tasked with protecting the sheep and goats that

grazed closer to home. Young Kutalun thrived in this environment. She quickly developed expertise in the traditional mongol arts of horse riding, archery and wrestling, to the awe and discontent of her fourteen brothers. Rashid al Din writes somewhat derisively that Kutulun quote went around like a boy. Kutulun's prodigious fighting skills were also likely inspired by the chaos that ensued from her father's earlier conflicts with Kubla Khan, her

great uncle. According to a tradition solidified during the reign of Genghis Khan, all major representatives of the royal families needed to recognize an overlord for his rule to stand as legitimate. Kaidu's refusal of an overlord therefore gave Kubla Khan no choice but to demand obedient by force. He dispatched a general named Barak to capture the lands under Kaidu's control. Barak first ambushed Kaidu in a crushing defeat, but Kutalun's father was not one to back down so easily.

What information we have about him suggests that he was forgiving and generous at court, and cold and rational on the battlefield. Russiad al Din writes that he never took wine, salt, or kumis traditional fermented milk alcohol, a characterization that, whether true or not, corresponds with the attitude Kaidu had when

he pursued his military and political ambitions. Suffering from temporary losses, Kaidu called upon the support of his cousins to the north and surprised Barak with a force of over sixty thousand, overwhelming him and effectively securing control over the Chagatai lands. As Kaidu pressed his advantage over Kubla Khan in the following decades and repressed descent from lesser lords, he increasingly

called upon the support of his daughter. Marco Polo, dedicating a whole chapter to the warrior princess had this choice description of her military prowess quote. Kutaloon's father never went on a campaign without her, and gladly he took her for not a knight in all his train played such feats of arms as she did. Sometimes she would quit her father's side and make a dash at the host of the enemy and seize some man thereout as deftly as a hawk pounces on a bird, and carry him

to her father. End quote. Politically prominent Mongolian women were not something new. Queens took over as regents in between the death of a khan and the election of a successor. Sometimes they ruled for several years. Some royal women became heroines of the Khanate's founding mythology, like Altani, the wife of one of Genghis Khan's generals who saved his heir from kidnappers. Even before Genghis Khan, Mongolian folklore passed down stories of warrior queens who took up arms and led

hosts in dire times. But Kutulun wasn't fighting out of dire need. This wasn't a desperate rescue mission, and her renown didn't come from a connection to any man, let alone a husband. That's exactly what troubled her father's court. If Rashid al Din's dismissive comments on Kutulun's military ambitions are any indication, and many onlookers saw her dismissal of typical feminine duties as condemnable, certainly a line of rhetoric that her brothers utilized as they tried in vain to

bring their father's attention back to them. The supposedly true heirs to the royal estates. The traditional spirituality espoused during ginghis Khan's reign supported harmony between the masculine sky and the feminine earth. Did Kutalun's peers see her military leadership as a benefit or a disruption to that harmony, whether for optics or from personal conviction. Kaidu decreed that his daughter Kutaloun would marry, but there was no chance he

could ever compel her to marry any particular suitor. Kutaloon would be allowed to choose her own own bridegroom. In this case, the courting would take place within the confines of a wrestling pit. For a khan like Kai Dou, the marriages of his children represented opportunities for useful political alliances. To his daughters, those marriages would prove troublesome. Kutulun's younger sister, Kotuchin, married young, but during her first pregnancy, her husband unexpectedly

fell in love with an enslaved girl. Affairs weren't uncommon, but affairs laid out in public by the very parties involved were well not quite strategic. In one account of the story, Kutuchin's husband approached his father in law, Kaidu with the enslaved girl he loved in hand, naively pleading with him to recognize their own relationship as a marriage and scrap the former one, you know, his marriage to Kaidu's daughter. Kaidu had the man executed on the spot.

A different account tells us that actually Kutuchin confronted her husband after discovering the affair, at which point her husband supposedly bit and killed her, not the most conventional way of murdering your royal wife. Katuchin's brothers protested that Kaidu should execute their murderous brother in law, but the Khan in this story resists by arguing that this wouldn't save

their already bitten to death sister. In this story, Kaidu instead issues one hundred lashes, sets his son in law free, and even goes so far in his magnanimity as to give a different one of his daughters to the man as a bride, since his son's quote could not allow a stranger to take their sister's place. If this probably apocryphal set of stories tells us anything it's that whatever safety or autonomy royal women achieved in familial politics could

easily be violated through an unfit marriage. Women became expendable when it was politically convenient for the surrounding ruling men of the Kanate. In one case, Kutulun's great aunt elicited public humiliation for simply disagreeing with a minister of her husband's court. That minister went on to execute the great aunt's daughter in law for adultery without illegal proceeding, violating Angis Khan's prior mandate that no member of the royal

family could be killed without some collective agreement. As historian Jack Weatherford argues, the era in which Kutualun lived and fought in marked the beginning of Mongol women's erasure from political life. Regardless of the rich tradition of powerful historical Mongol women in her lifetime, Kutulun was the exception, not the rule. If Kutulun had to marry, she would only marry a man who could beat her in a wrestling match. The chances of her finding such a man quickly was

probably pretty slim. After all, she had dominated the very best of her father's enemies on the battlefield for years. Marco Polo writes that Kutulun sent challenges to worthy opponents across several kingdoms on the following terms. The first winner receives her hand in marriage, but every man must wager one hundred horses to enter the competition. According to the traditional rules of Mongolian wrestling or bach, the first competitor to touch the ground with something other than their feet

loses the match. Many a Kaki nobleman entered the gauntlet, only to be thrown down and utterly humiliated. Kutlun allegedly won ten thousand horses, vanquishing suitors until an exceptionally renowned nobleman entered the picture with a new wager one thousand horses for a chance to win her hand. Naturally, her father, and depending on the source, also possibly Kutulun's mother begged

Kutlun to throw the match. In his account, Marco Polo does not identify the prince for us, but he claims he was the son of a great king, which really isn't that helpful. But the point is that Kutulun's parents saw this nobleman as the chance for their wild daughter to secure a prosperous future for herself and their lineage.

In one account, Kutaloun staunchly resists her parents please. In another, she agrees, but then something snaps upon entering the ring, hearing the roar of the crowd, seeing across from her an opponent worthy of equal status. The two wrestlers locked arms for minutes on end, neither able to get the better of the other, until finally Kutalun threw the prince down, collected his multiplied wager, and mortified both him and her family.

Marco Polo's version of the story ends on this high note, almost like a fairy tale, Kutaloun defeating the man that people wanted her to throw the match to, but the pot stirring. Rashid al Din carries the tale a little further. After several years without a planned marriage, insidious rumors spread, claiming that Kutaloun and her father Kaidu had an incestuous relationship. Out of shame, Kutaloun finally relented and chose a man to marry. But even in this story, I think it's

important to remember she chooses the man. She was never bested by a suitor in the wrestling pit one on one. In this version of the story, the man she chose, Abtakool, is said to have been quote vigorous, tall and handsome, like so many of the other figures in Kutalun's life. We know little about him except he was of noble ancestry and that the couple raised two sons. But there was no chance Kutalun would settle down for an unexciting,

sedentary domestic life. She campaigned with her father until the very end. Leadership in her father's army was indispensable in the face of a massive geopolitical shift brewing to the east. Kubul Khan died in twelve ninety four. After decades of directing most of his political and military attention to invasions

of Korea and Japan. Kubul Khan's successor, Timour, quickly relinquished those commitments and turned his attention to the west, where he made attempts to force the unruly Central Asian war lords to recognize Chinese rule once and for all. The ensuing campaign was disruptive enough to deter Marco Polo from

traveling on the overland route back to Venice. The seventy year old Kaidu did his best to deflect the impending invasion, and with the help of his daughter, they kept Temor in Czech after one hard fought battle on September three, third, thirteen oh one, Kaidu ultimately took an arrow wound that

would prove fatal A month later. Rashid al Din mentions that Kutualun's father was buried in the mountains, where in one version of the story, Kutalun and her husband lived modestly and guarded her father's burial place until her death four years later. In another version of the story, more reflective of the relationship between Kaidu and Kutalun, it said that the Khan agitated for his daughter to be the

one to succeed him before he died. Each of her fourteen brothers nearly revolted in response, and yet another compromise, Kutalun remained the general of her father's elite military, while her brother Oris took the mantle of government. Their rule collapsed within four years, and the wrestler princess died under he unclear circumstances, But the world that she and her father had made out of the dramatic collapse of the Mongol Empire had lasting consequences. Never again would a unified

Mongol power tame the autonomous step of Central Asia. Parsing through the different versions of Kutalun's narrative yields an image of an amicable relationship between a father who struggled to keep his fledgling empire intact and a daughter whose skills lent themselves to that task. For all we know, Kaidu and Kutualun were on great terms, but reading between the

lines yields a slightly different, more complex picture. The Khan may have offered Kutualun the chance to choose her own husband, but both Marco Polo and Rashid al Din indicate that this was a privilege that she had to fight for, and fight she did. The warrior princess, as luminous as the moon and stable as the Altai mountains, carved a space for herself within the confines of a world that didn't want her to take that space. Every compromise was just as much a sign of her subjugation as it

was of her power. Nearly four centuries after Coutaloon's death, the French diplomat Francois Petit de Lacroix was sent by the court of Louis the fourteenth to Persia in sixteen seventy four, where he stumbled upon the strange and strangely familiar story of a Mongol princess turned wrestler. For one hundred years, the English and French sponsored diplomatic missions to the Ottoman and Cephavid empires to advance their mercantile interests abroad.

It was always useful to have someone who could speak the land language of your competitor. Laquax was part of that political tradition, but like so many of his contemporaries, the so called orient also stoked his intellectual curiosity. His father wrote the definitive biography of Genghis Khan, so the young man had rather big shoes to fill. His interests ranged from mystical poetry to biblical artifacts, but upon returning to France, Laqua turned his attention on translating a compendium

of stories he had acquired on his travels. You've probably heard of One thousand and one Nights, a frame narrative featuring nested stories stories including Aladdin's Lamp and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Laquax was the first European to translate the companion set of stories known as One thousand and one Days for centuries, the last context European readers had with Kutalun was Marco Polo's vague descriptions. At last, Laqua breathed new life into her character, though not without

major changes to the story. Orientalists like Lacua often misconstrued dates, names, even whole narratives as they translated from one language to another. The so called orient became one big mesh of homogeneous ideas and pictures. Think Agroba in Disney's Aladdin. Where in the world exactly is Agroba supposed to be? Laqua didn't

exactly translate a new version of Kutalun's stories. Rather, he conflated elements of her story with another narrative taken from the twelfth century Persian poet Nizami, specifically the narrative of Turnidot, literally the daughter of Turan. Turnidott had also tested suitors for her hand in marriage, Except unlike Kutaloon's test, Turnidott's test was a series of riddles, and the price of

failure was the suitor's head, not one hundred horses. And if you're more familiar with the opera and you're wondering why I'm pronouncing Turnidott with a T, it's because the word is Persian, and Puccini, like me, wasn't great at pronunciation, but in this case the Persian word is turnidot. To eighteenth century European audiences, Turnidat and Kutaloon were more or less the same person, despite the fact that one was a fictional poetic character and the other was a historical princess.

In seventeen sixty two, the Italian playwright Carlo Gazzi picked up the story of Turnidatt as the basis for a new comedy full of playful, irreverent character. Turnidat was a hit in eighteenth century Venice, but it wasn't until eighteen o two when Kutaloun's European legacy would reach astronomical heights. The German poet Friedrich Schiller translated Gozi's playful screenplay into a sincere and heavily symbolic love story, and he produced the play with a man who was none other than

Johann Wolfgang von Gerte. They treated their aristocratic audiences to an abstracted, fairy tale version of Kutaloon. In this version of the play, the audacious nobleman Kaliff agrees to compete in Turnidat's test of riddles for her hand in marriage. Turnidat meanwhile, is motivated to put up as many barriers between her and her suitors as possible because, for some unexplained reason, she just hates the male sex. Khaluff guesses the answers to her riddles in a matter of minutes.

The spoiler alert The answers are all Christian virtues like faith, hope, and finally love. But seeing that Turnidatt is unhappy with the outcome, Kaliff agrees to his own execution if she can guess his name in the course of a day. So there's a little bit of Rumpelstiltskin in here. Too Unable to do so, Turnidat is won over by Kaliff's selflessness. He melts her ice cold heart through the power of love. Turnidat cries out in the final lines, could I then,

after all this, look down in scorn on men? No? And may Heaven forgive me all I did that made me seem a monster in men's sight. Kutaloon embodied strength that exceeded even her fiercest male competitors. Turnidat in fiction was given a frail frame and an intelligent mind, though not so intelligent as to outwit the hero Culloff. In history, Kutaloun crushed every suitor in acts of glorious defiance. Turnidot's ice cold heart was land to conquer. Kutaloon, in the end,

got to choose her husband. Turnidat really makes no such choice. Far from an agent in her own life, Turnidat is essentially a prize for the hero, a heavily distorted reflection of the Mongol princess who once decimated armies like a hawk. Jacomo Puccini created the most famous reproduction of Turnidat in his nineteen twenty four opera of the same name. One solo from Puccini's work may be the single most famous moment and in opera history. Coincidentally that solo has Kuloff

proclaiming Turnidat as his wife. The real Kutaloon and her victories have all but disappeared from view. Lying underneath every depiction of the fictional Turnidat, behind every closed curtain at her opera, is a real princess whose life was incomprehensible to the framework of gender that modern Europe had developed and then projected onto the world. Perhaps opera goers in Vienna and Milan would have reacted to Kutualoun just as Rashid al Din did, dismissive of her for going around

like a boy. That's not the type of heroin anyone wants to see in an opera. But for all we know, the real Kutaloon would have worn that criticism like a badge of honor. That's the story of the real, historical Kutaloon. But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about how her legacy continues in the present day. Every year, in the midst of summer, Mongolia gears up for Nedam literally Games, a traditional festival

featuring acrobatic performances and athletic competitions. Youth face off in horse riding and archery, but the most beloved sport is to this day wrestling. There have probably been major esthetic and policy changes in wrestling since the thirteenth century, namely no more wagering horses for your opponent's hand in marriage, but otherwise the main is pretty much the same. The first to touch the ground with a part of their

body besides their feet loses. Before and after the match, competitors perform an eagle dance that represents the mythical Garuda bird, symbolizing bravery and grace. Though each region has its own style of pre and post match rituals, Thousands of men compete yearly, and depending on your ranking in an overall tournament, they're bestowed with different titles like Elephant, Lion, or Giant.

The general perception is that these traditions also symbolize an uninterrupted inheritance from the mythologized founding of Mongolia under Genghis Khan, who himself used wrestling as a method of keeping his troops in shape. One particularly unusual element in contemporary Mongolian wrestling is the costume that the athletes wear, a two piece suit that covers one's shoulders, arms, and back, but

opens to reveal the chest. Theories have circulated on the origins of the uniform, but one of the most prominent explanations credit Kutloon as Mongolian military and athletic institutions over the centuries gradually began marginalizing women. It was considered far too inappropriate for a woman to compete in a sport seen as the domain of men. Some suggest that the wrestling uniforms open torso emerged as a way for the

audience to confirm that all participants were indeed male. The winner of the competition would raise their arms at the end of a match, not only to celebrate, but also to clarify their sex to the audience. To this day, while women are allowed to compete in horse riding and archery, they are barred from traditional wrestling matches. This genealogy is all very speculative, but there is something rather poetic about male wrestlers still motivated by the fear of suffering a

humiliating defeat at the hands of a woman. Kutalin's reputation continues after her. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah's Wi, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender,

and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.