Genghis Khan

1167-1227

Mongol Conqueror

In 1206, the nomadic Mongol tribes of northern Central Asia united for the first time, and chose as their leader a chieftain, nearly 40 years old, by the name of Temujin. Long before, he had been given the title by which history knows him: Genghis Khan, or "rightful ruler"; now his compatriots declared him "ruler of all men." During the two decades that followed, Genghis would live up to that title, laying the foundations for the largest empire ever known.

According to legend, Temujin came into the world grasping a lump of clotted blood, a sign of the forcefulness and violence that would dominate his life. His father, a chieftain named Yesugei, was poisoned by Tatars, a rival nomadic group in the region, and thereafter Temujin's mother Ho'elun managed to keep her family alive only through sheer will and resourcefulness. As designated heir to Yesugei, young Temujin was in a particularly vulnerable position, and for many years the family hid from Targutai, a leader of another clan who had seized all their possessions.

At the age of 14, Temujin survived an assassination attempt at Targutai's hands, and in the process recruited his first subordinates, men who would later hold places of honor in his army. He soon married a girl named Borte, a marriage that had been arranged long before by his father. When Borte was kidnapped by enemy tribesmen, Temujin called on the aid of two men: Jamukha, a childhood friend; and Toghrul, a powerful chieftain who had once been an ally of his father's. The three succeeded in rescuing Borte, but when a group of clans in 1187 proclaimed Temujin "Genghis Khan" (sometimes translated as "rightful ruler"), this created tension with Jamukha.

Over the years that followed, this enmity grew, and in time Jamukha and Toghrul formed an alliance against Genghis. Genghis had difficulty organizing an army to deal with his two enemies, but with a small force he eliminated first Toghrul, then Jamukha. It was at that point, in 1206, that he united all Mongols under his rule.

It was as though the years of conflict with his countrymen had created an unstoppable momentum in Genghis, who then embarked on a campaign of conquest that seems to have had no immediate cause. His first target consisted of enemy tribes around him; then in 1211, his forces assaulted China. By 1213, they had crossed the Great Wall, spreading out through northern China; and in 1215, Genghis's hordes sacked Peking.

In those early years of conquest, Genghis had simply killed everyone who stood in his way. But the gradual absorption of China added an aspect of sophistication previously lacking in the Mongol tactics. In particular, a former official ofthe Chinese emperor pointed out to Genghis that if he allowed some people to continue living in the lands he conquered, they could pay him valuable tax money to finance further warfare. Genghis accepted this sound advice.

Certainly Genghis was much more of an empire-builder than he was an administrator, and he placed Mongol-controlled portions of China under the control of a general while he moved into Central Asia. In their pursuit of Küchlüg, a rival chieftain who had fled to Afghanistan, the Mongols had found themselves faced with Sultan Muhammad, who controlled much of Persia, Afghanistan, and neighboring Central Asian territories. After Muhammad's forces executed a group of Genghis's ambassadors, war was virtually inevitable.

Genghis began moving westward in 1219, and by the spring of 1220 had taken Bukhara and Samarkand. After they destroyed Sultan Muhammad, Genghis's troops kept going, swarming into the Caucasus and thus beginning the centuries-long occupation of Russia under the Golden Horde. Genghis himself occupied what is now Tajikistanin the winter of 1220-21, and in the latter year laid waste to the ancient city of Balkh in Khurasan. By summer he was on the shores of the Indus River, dealing a decisive blow against Muhammad's son Jalal al-Din.

Genghis returned to Mongolia in the spring of 1225, and was soon embroiled in another conflict with yet another tribe. It was during this campaign that he died at age 65 on August 18, 1227, of complications resulting from falling off a horse. By this point, the Mongols controlled a region that stretched from the borders of Turkey to Russia to northern India to China—an empire already as large as that of Rome at its peak. In the years that followed Genghis's death, the Mongol realms would stretch from the Korean peninsula to the outskirts of Vienna, and from Siberia to the Indian subcontinent.

Thus Genghis, known to history as a blood-thirsty and merciless conqueror, actually provided the world with an orderly, unified governmental system. For the century that followed, Mongol rule made travel between East and West relatively safe, which it had not been since the declining days of the Roman Empire. This in turn made possible journeys of discovery—most notably that of Marco Polo (1254-1324)—that added greatly to Europeans' emerging knowledge of the world around them.

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