98 Part II: Outsiders
as Ikh Khorig (the forbidden zone), it was kept off limits even by the Soviets into
the twentieth century, who did not want the sacred area to play into Mongolian
nationalism. The Ikh Khorig is still sacred to Mongolians, though there is inter-
national competition to find the tomb of Genghis Khan and the treasures
inside using ultra-high-resolution satellite imaging, so far with no success.
Eventually his grandsons in their various segments of his empire adopted
Tibetan Buddhism (Kublai) and Islam (Helugu). Many of the wives of the royal
family were Christian, and places of worship of numerous faiths were built in
the Mongol capital at Karakoram.
In the nineteenth century a strange document was found in Beijing.
Though the Chinese characters could be easily read, it had been written in a
code that used Chinese characters to represent Mongolian sounds of the thir-
teenth century (Weatherford 2004:xxvii). It became known as the Secret History
of the Mongols. It took more than a century to translate it, since the Soviets con-
sidered all persons, Russian and Mongolian, who attempted to study it “anti-
party” elements or Chinese spies. The greatest breakthrough came in the 1970s
when one chapter at a time began appearing in Mongolian and English, and
Harvard University Press published it all in 1982. The book appears to have
been written within a couple of decades of Genghis Khan’s death in 1227,
probably in 1252 (Atwood 2007), as the unitary vision of an elderly MongolTraditional gers or yurt dwellings like this goatherd’s can still be seen in Mongolia and other
steppe regions.