Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Khutulun

(Turandot)

1260 – 1306 CE

Mongolian "Tiger Woman"

Daughter of Genghis Khan's cousin, Kaidu—the most powerful Central Asian ruler of the time—Khutulun became a famous warrior, wrestler, and political influence. Marco Polo described how she could ride into an enemy swarm and snatch a captive like a hawk grabbing a chicken. Beautiful, powerful, and charming; she challenged her many suitors with wrestling competitions and won thousands of horses before finally accepting one. She was chosen by her father to succeed him but the male relatives stopped the succession. She became known in the West as Turandot and memorialized by François Pétis de la Croix, Carlo Gozzi, Friedrich Schiller, Goethe, and—most famously—by Giacomo Puccini. Her renown continues today in many stories and movies, as a popular and extremely successful Australian race horse, and in the Netflix series, Marco Polo.

Lineages
Politicians Women of Wisdom

Eras

Western

High Middle Ages (1095 – 1304 CE)
Renaissance (1304 – 1576 CE)

Chinese

Yuan Dynasty 元朝 (1271 – 1368 CE)

Quotes by Khutulun

Quotes about Khutulun (3 quotes)

“The censors who sliced the pages did not destroy the history; they only hampered our ability to see it... There are architectural tributes to the lives and importance of these women in enduring structures as varied as the Taj Mahal of India and the Great Wall of China. The music of Puccini, the plays of Schiller, the poetry of Chaucer, and even the dances of Mongolian wrestlers keep the stories alive.”

— Jack Weatherford 1945 CE –
from Secret History of the Mongol Queens

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“Today, when Mongolian men wrestle, they wear a particular vest with a completely open front—in honor and fear of Khutulun—to prove that he is genuinely male... History may have turned its back on the queens of the Mongols, but the people have never forgotten their heroines.”

— Jack Weatherford 1945 CE – via Shan Dao
from Secret History of the Mongol Queens

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“She united with her ravishing beauty such a cultivated mind that she not only knows everything which it is customary to teach persons of her rank, but even the sciences which are only learned by men, she knows how to write the different characters of several languages, she knows arithmetic, geography, philosophy mathematics, and above all, theology.”

— François Pétis de la Croix 1653 – 1713 CE via Jack Weatherford
Early and influential orientalist

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