The assassination of the leaders of rival Mongol tribes was a common occurrence thanks to the ever-shifting loyalties and conflicting interests at play within Mongol tribal politics.
Yesugei, the father of
Genghis Khan, was unwittingly poisoned by one of his enemies. The risk was especially high at night since the
ger that Mongol nomads traditionally sleep in lacked a solid wall, so a
sword or
spear could easily penetrate the walls and kill the subject inside. As a result, Mongol rulers typically had personal guards.
Toghrul, the
khan of the
Keraites, had an imperial guard called the Torguud. According to
oral tradition, their descendants were the
Torghut. After the defeat of
Ong Khan in 1203, Genghis established the kheshig. The kheshig consisted mainly of sworn personal followers. At first, this consisted of seventy day guards (torguud or tunghaut) and eighty night guards (khevtuul). During the reign of Genghis, it seems to have been divided into four groups, commanded by the four generals
Muqali,
Chormaqan,
Bo'orchu and Borokhula. Members of the kheshig outranked almost any other military officers in the Mongol Empire. As it was exceptionally well paid and the vocation was popular, the numbers of Kheshig skyrocketed to the extent that they were only generally on duty for three days in succession. In light of this, the word kheshig refers favor or blessing in the
Mongolian language. Membership in the kheshig was regarded as a supreme honor and was an alternative to the necessity of hostage-taking for
noblemen. The guard comprised 1000 men in the early days. By the middle of Genghis Khan's reign, Kheshig numbers had expanded to a
tumen (10,000 men), commanded by Nayagha, an uncle of
Bayan of the Baarin. The Kheshig originally consisted only of
Mongols. As the empire expanded, Genghis Khan's successors recruited
Persian,
Georgian,
Armenian,
Alan,
Korean,
Italian and
Russian units. Since the kheshig was the personal
appanage of a monarch, his successors did not inherit them. Instead, the kheshigs of deceased Emperors took care of their lords' families and assisted households. However,
Güyük Khan took most of his father
Ögedei's old kheshig. For his bodyguards,
Kublai Khan retained the traditional kheshig. Kublai created a new Imperial guard force, the
suwei, of which half were Chinese and the other half ethnically-mixed. By the 1300s, even the kheshig was flooded with
Han Chinese. The
suwei were initially 6500 strong, but by the end of the dynasty, it had become 100,000 strong. They were divided into
wei or guards, each recruited from a particular ethnicity. Most
wei were Chinese, while a few were Mongols,
Koreans,
Tungusic peoples,
Kipchaks and Europeans/Middle Easterners, including Alans and even one unit of Russians. As time progressed, the Keshig was converted into an administrative organisation. ==Units==