Sorghaghtani Beki: A Khereid Daughter And Knowledgeable Women In The Mongol Empire

Sorghaghtani Beki was a Khereid princess and daughter-in-law of Temüjin (Genghis Khan) and is known to have been one of the most influential and knowledgeable women in the Mongol Empire. She had four sons with Tolui, the youngest son of Genghis Khan, and she worked it so that her sons were the ones to inherit the birthright of their grandfather. She raised each one of her sons and prepared them by educating them and teaching them the languages of the lands that they ruled. Sorghaghtani, although she was illiterate, realized the value of literacy and instilled that in her children. Unlike most of the Mongols, Sorghaghtani was Nestorian Christian instead of Shamanistic. When her son Kubilai was Khan, he gave her, her own territory in North China.

We know about her life and of other lives of rural people because of historian Judith Bennett. Cecilia lived her entire life in Brigstock which is a manor in central England. She was the seventh of either children and all but two of them lived to adulthood which was very uncommon. Her family was wealthy compared to other peasants (450 square foot home). The economy in Brigstock focused on the growing of wheat, barley, rye, and oats; and meadows and pastures for sheep, horses, and oxen. There was a great famine that wreaked havoc on England from 1315 to 1322 and it killed one-tenth of England’s six million people. It was during this famine that Cecilia’s parents died and left her an ample inheritance. She used the money to buy land from peasants and at the end of the famine, she had twenty-five acres and at the time of her death, she had seventy acres of pasture and two acres of good farming land. Because she was a woman, Cecilia could not hold office in the manor and she was paid one-third less than a man doing the same job. Cecilia never married but stayed close to her two brothers that stayed in Brigstock. She employed skilled and unskilled laborers and servants on a daily basis on her land and she sold what was produced on her land. This look into the life of Cecilia gives us a very important look into the life of peasants which were ninety percent of the medieval