Khutulun was a feared fighter, who battled alongside her father against Kublai Khan, protecting the nomadic Mongol lifestyle of his Chagatai Khanate against the Chinese ways adopted by Kublai’s court.

Born around 1260 and raised with her 14 brothers, Khutulun excelled at horse riding, archery and wrestling, with the latter arguably the source of her reputation.

To this day, wrestling, horse riding and archery remain the national sports of Mongolia and they are celebrated in the Nadaam, which means “games”, with the largest being the national Nadaam every summer.

This year was no different, though like other sports events around the world the national Nadaam, which began when Genghis Khan founded Mongolia in 1206, went on behind closed doors, showing its importance to the country.

Mongolia’s steppes are steeped in wrestling history. There have been many famous Mongolian wrestlers over the years, since the 1990s many have travelled to Japan to become sumo wrestlers, building on the skills they have learned from as young as five.

Four Mongolians – known by their Japanese names Asashoryu Akinori, Hakuho Sho, Harumafuji Kohei and Kakuryu Rikisaburo – have risen to the rank of yokozuna, or grandmaster, and Mongolians rank among the most famous of all sumo among Japanese.

Others have been slated for future success in MMA, which is growing in popularity in the country thanks to fighters such as Shinechagtga Zoltsetseg, Khuukenkhuu Amartuvshin, Amarsanaa Tsogookhuu and Jadamba Narantungalag in promotions such as ONE and Bellator.

One thing Mongolian wrestlers all have in common is that they are always men. For centuries, women have not been allowed to compete but that was not always the case – as the modern fighters acknowledge in their clothing and actions.

Writing in Lapham’s Quarterly in 2010, a professor of anthropology at Macalester College, Jack Weatherford, explained how.

“They wear a particular vest with long sleeves but no shoulder covering and a completely open front exposing the whole of the chest, thereby allowing each wrestler to be certain that his opponent is male.

“At the end of each match, the winner stretches out his arms to display his chest again, and he slowly waves his arms in the air like a bird, turning for all to see.

“For the winner it is a victory dance, but it is also a tribute to the greatest female athlete in Mongolian history, a wrestling princess whom no man ever defeated,” Weatherford, who wrote Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, continued.

“Ever since she reigned as the wrestling champion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, however, male wrestlers have only wrestled men.”

Khutulun refused to marry unless the prospective husband could beat her in wrestling and it is said that she never lost, and even when her family told her to, instinct took over.

Her suitors had to wager horses for the opportunity to fight and she is said to have amassed a stable of 10,000 from her victories, as large as any emperor of the time.

Such reports come from the writing of Marco Polo and Persian writer Rashad al-Din, who travelled through Asia at the time. The accounts of her eventual marriage vary.

Al-Din suggests that she married a Mongol ruler named Ghazan after falling in love with him. Others have suggested she married a prisoner of her father’s, or one of his aides.

Some say she only chose to marry without wrestling to stymie rumours she was in an incestuous relationship with her beloved father.

Her father died in 1301 and his wish that she succeed him was denied by her brothers. She died in 1306 but has lived on in the collective memory.

Most recently the character was portrayed by South Korean Claudia Kim in the ill-fated Netflix series Marco Polo that was cancelled after two seasons back in 2016.

In the series, she is indeed a fearsome warrior and wrestler, although she does appear to allow Marco Polo to best her in a rather more intimate bout away from prying eyes.

The clue for Turkic scholars is in the name. Turandot comes from the Persian and means “daughter of Turan” with Turan being a Central Asian region formerly under the Persian empire.

That accounts vary and have changed over time, particularly as they made their way to the West, is proven by Francois Petis de La Croix’s version of her tale in A Thousand and One Days (1712), from where the opera later took its inspiration.

In it, Turandot is a Chinese princess who challenges suitors to three riddles for her hand. The price they pay is not in horses but their life if they get them wrong.

De La Croix, whose father wrote a biography of Genghis Khan, inspired several other versions of Turandot before the opera. These included a 1762 commedia dell’arte play by Carlo Gozzi adapted by German polymath Friedrich Schiller in 1801. This was first put on a year later by Johann von Goethe. Arguably, these were all the Netflix of their day.

Turandot, the opera, was unfinished at Puccini’s death in 1924 but has gone on to be a mainstay in opera houses across the world since it was finished in 1926, with its most famous aria, Nessun Dorma, being synonymous with the Three Tenors and the 1990 Fifa World Cup in Italy.

The story of Khutulun, who has a strong claim to being one of the most famous martial artists in history, is not widely known.

Khutulun – also known as Aiyurug, or Aijaruc, all of which refer to moonlight – is the name that deserves to be remembered more.

Perhaps if Mongolia – which has a strong women’s judo programme – produces a female MMA star, such as China’s Zhang Weili or Singapore’s Angela Lee, then more will be made of the country’s famous female fighter?