Youth and Early Career
Esen was born to his father, Toghon, the Choros taishi (grand preceptor, from 太師) who had expanded Oirat territory substantially, with more Mongol tribes acknowledging his supremacy.
His early campaigns were against the Chaghatayid khans of Moghulistan. Esen three times defeated and twice captured the Moghuli ruler Uvais (Ways Khan) (1418–1432). Esen released him respecting his Chinggisid blood in both cases. The second time Uvais granted Esen his sister Makhtum Khanim who bore his two sons. Esen had to nominally convert to Islam in order to marry the Muslim princess, but remained effectively a shamanist.
After his father died in 1438, Esen inherited his position, taishi, for the reigning khan Togtoo-Bukha (r.1433-52). Under Esen taishi's leadership, the western Mongols and other Mongol tribes who support Togtoo-Bukha conquered the rest of Mongolia, and received the submission of the Jurchens and the Tuvans (Uriankhais) in Manchuria and Eastern Siberia. It is unarguably true that the Oirat warriors played a crucial role in this conquest. In the 1430s Esen also took over control of the Mongol kingdom called Qara Del in Hami oasis on the Silk Road between the Gobi and the Takla Makan deserts; after 1443-45 his conquest reached the northern border of Korea.
Read more about this topic: Esen Taishi
Famous quotes containing the words youth and, youth, early and/or career:
“I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Our Indian said that he was a doctor, and could tell me some medicinal use for every plant I could show him ... proving himself as good as his word. According to his account, he had acquired such knowledge in his youth from a wise old Indian with whom he associated, and he lamented that the present generation of Indians “had lost a great deal.””
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)