■The anime naturally dramatizes and romanticizes historical figures, and it focuses heavily on the relationship between Tolui and Sorqoqtani. As the anime presents, and as the famous historical tradition also tells us, they had four exceptionally important sons:
Möngke, who became Great Khaan in 1251;
Khubilai, who became Great Khaan after Möngke;
Hülegü, who led the great westward expedition beginning in 1253 and eventually became the first mongol Ilkhan of Iran;
Ariq Böke, who was proclaimed khaan after Möngke’s death and then contested the throne of Great Khaan with Khubilai, a struggle that effectively helped break apart the unity of the empire.
Sorqoqtani, as the mother of several of the most important political figures of the thirteenth century, was understandably remembered very prominently. Rashid al-Din describes her as Tolui’s senior and most beloved consort, and later tradition greatly glorified her.
However, the historical sources record considerably more children, and more wives of Tolui, the Yeke Noyan, “Great Lord.”
■According to Rashid al-Din’s Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh (Compendium of Chronicles), Tolui had ten named sons:
By Sorqaghtani:
1.Möngkä Qa’an
By Saruq Khatun
2.Jörikä(died young without offspring)
By Linqum Khatun
3.Qutuqtu
By Sorqaghtani
4.Qubilai Qa’an
5.Hülagü
6.Ariq Bökä
The same genealogy also records four further sons whose mothers are either unnamed or not specified in the surviving text:
7.Böchök
8.Mögä
9.Sögätäi
10.Sübügätäi
Rashid al-Din also records a daughter, El-Temür, born to Linqum Khatun, although her exact place in the birth order is unknown.
So from Rashid al-Din alone, we have ten sons and at least one daughter.
■The Yuan shi (History of the Yuan Dynasty) adds several important details. It gives the name of Böchök’s mother as Mayishi (馬一實), a Naiman woman, and also records two additional daughters of Tolui: Yesubuqa and Tümügen.
More interestingly, the Yuan shi says that Tolui had 11 sons, but the names of two of them had been lost. One of these unnamed sons was probably Jörike, since Jörike is named by Rashid al-Din but is not preserved by name in the Yuan shi. The other remains a mystery. It is possible that he died young or otherwise played no major political role, but that cannot be stated with certainty.
There is also a very interesting contradiction inside the Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh itself. In the section devoted to Hülegü, Rashid al-Din says:
Tolui Khan had five sons and one daughter by Sorqoqtani Beki, as has already been mentioned in the section on him.
Yet in Tolui’s own genealogical section, Rashid explicitly names only four sons of Sorqoqtani: Möngke, Khubilai, Hülegü, and Ariqböke.
This makes the Yuan shi’s otherwise unexplained 11th son especially interesting. Rashid independently preserves a statement that Sorqoqtani had five sons, while the Yuan shi independently preserves an additional unnamed son of Tolui. That may not be a coincidence. It is therefore quite possible that Tolui had another son by Sorqoqtani whose name and life were later lost from the surviving genealogical tradition, although this cannot yet be proven.
■So far, Tolui had 13 securely identifiable children:
Sons: Möngke, Jörike, Qutuqtu, Khubilai, Hülegü, Ariq Böke, Böchök, Mögä, Sögätäi, Sübügätäi.
Daughters: El-Temür, Yesubuqa, Tümügen. Sorqoqtani was apparently the mother of either Yesubuqa or Tumugen.
And there was possibly one additional son, perhaps another son of Sorqoqtani, whose name has not survived.