GENGHIS KHAN

A Life from Beginning to End

BY

HENRY FREEMAN

Copyright © 2016 by Hourly History Limited

All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Mystery of the Steppes

When Warriors Are Made

Rites of Passage

A Battle Against Shamanic Destiny

United They Stand

Throwing Sand at an Empire

Genghis Khan’s Crusade

The Last Days of Genghis Khan

>>BONUSES<<

Introduction

Mystery of the Steppes

Genghis Khan was one of the most pivotal figures in history. When the Mongolian Hordes poured out of Central Asia, they took the entire world by surprise. This seminal event led to a worldwide conflagration that had an effect upon nearly every civilization on the planet, and yet in the Western World and beyond we tend to forget how this nomad from the Mongolian Steppes influenced the world.

The world wasn’t without conflict when Genghis Khan rose to prominence, as the devastating effects of the Crusades and Muslim conquest in Asia Minor were still fresh. Yet despite these already smoldering firestorms, no one quite foresaw the major power that would rise up out of the frigid wastelands of the Steppes.

At the time of Khan’s birth in 1162, Mongolia was little more than a collection of loosely knit family-based tribes. How this unorganized group of wanderers would be able to turn themselves into the greatest fighting force and later the largest land empire ever known to man remains one of the greatest mysteries of history. In fact, nearly everyone that came in contact with the Mongolian military machine took it for granted at first, underestimating its power.

The Chinese government had been dividing the northern tribes against each other for centuries. It initially believed the armies led by Khan were just a temporary aberration that their own military might would put down in good time. However, when the Mongolian army hand reached Nanjing, the Ch’in Dynasty had to accept the hard fact that Genghis Khan wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. This same realization dawned on the Shah of the Iranian/Afghanistan empire: despite reports from local merchants of Khan’s military might, the Shah simply dismissed him as just another infidel to be destroyed. This shortsighted view would cost him his entire kingdom and his life.

The Mongolians went from one of the poorest and least organized communities on the planet to the most highly-disciplined fighting machine on the face of this Earth. Just how did this happen? There’s only one answer to that question: Genghis Khan.

Chapter One

When Warriors Are Made

Genghis Khan was born with the name of “Temujin.” The name means “blacksmith” or “one who forges,” and he certainly forged an empire; he founded what would become the largest in the history of the world, an empire that began with the unification of just a few nomadic tribes in Northeast Asia. It was after this unification that the true conquest of the world began: the Mongol invasions would greatly expand their territory to include almost all of Eurasia.

Immediately preceding the ascendency of their empire, the Mongolians themselves had been the victims of vicious Chinese exploitation from the government of Northern China. For about 1000 years, Chinese dynasties played a classic little game of divide and conquer with their neighbors to the north, They frequently shifted allegiances and played one tribe against another in an effort to keep all of them divided, off balance and weak.

But just as the modern advocates of the divide and conquer strategy can tell you, these tactics can only last for so long. Whether you’re looking at the orchestrated discord the 20th Century saw in Vietnam or the current factions being played against each other in a place like Afghanistan, the longer you pay with matches strewn about these powder kegs, the greater your chances of getting burned by them.

The first match, when it came to Genghis Khan, was the death of his father at the hands of tribal rivals who fed him poison. His father, a great tribal leader in his own right, inspired the young Genghis sought to strike out on his own as the leader of his tribe. However, because of his young age, the other tribal leaders refused to recognize any claim he had to leadership. His entire family was reduced to a kind of refugee status outside of the protection of the tribe.

Sent to the outskirts of their society, Khan’s family struggled to survive. His mother was forced to forage for wild plants in order to feed their family. Sustenance did improve slightly however when her sons were old enough to begin to hunt, but this newfound ability also led to a horrific episode of fratricide in which Genghis killed Bekhter, his older brother.

There were a few underlying reasons for animosity between the Khan brothers—such as disputes over who should lead the family—but according to legend, the spark that set off the explosion in this particularly deadly form of sibling rivalry was nothing more than a piece of fish. It’s hard for most of us to fathom, but when the often half-starved young Genghis saw his brother gobble down the rare find of a fresh fish without sharing it with the rest of the family, he absolutely lost his mind. Genghis shot an arrow right through his brother’s head!

This crime of passion would not go unpunished, however, starting with a curse that his own mother Houlon was said to have leveled against her son for taking away her other child. She is said to have screamed at him, “You were born with a clot of blood in your hand, with death. I told your father you were a curse on us but he was blind. You have stolen a son from me, my own boy. I should have killed you when I saw the midwife opening your hand. I should have known then what you were.”

Shortly after this supposed superstitious diatribe and condemnation of Genghis by his own mother, the local tribesmen, who had previously abandoned his family, decided to exact a punishment on Genghis for the murder. In a truly medieval kind of justice, they locked him into a device known as a “kang”. Essentially a wooden board that rested over the shoulders, this device held his wrists up high immobilized on either side of his head.

With these kinds of restraints Genghis was unable to function. He couldn’t even feed himself and had to rely upon the kindness of others just so he wouldn’t starve to death. As the story goes, Genghis, who had been left in this completely immobilized condition, was left with just one guard to watch over and take care of him one evening. Sick and tired of being a prisoner, Genghis finally lashed out; when the guard wasn’t looking, he swung his wooden bondage at him, striking the guard in the head and knocking the man out.

Genghis then ran from the tent that had been his prison and rushed toward the forest. He was seeking to hide himself when he heard the sounds of some of his captors in pursuit. Coming upon a river, he submerged himself in the water in an attempt to hide in its depths. Most of his pursuers passed right on by without even seeing him, but Khan noticed one of the men turn and look him directly in the eye. He knew that he had been spotted and expected the observer to call out to the others, but after the man lingered and hesitated for a few moments, he simply passed on by as if he hadn’t seen him. Khan remembered this man’s altruistic action and knew that he was someone whom he could trust.

Although he was spared from this encounter, Khan quickly realized that as long as he was trapped in the wooden shackles of the kang he would be absolutely helpless. This is when Khan made the bold move to follow the compassionate passerby who had not alerted the authorities to his presence. That night, he stole back to the camp; when no one was looking, he made his way to the tent of the man who had previously spared him.

When the bizarre sight of a soaking wet Genghis dripping river water right off the massive wooden device on his shoulders, the man was horrified. He took mercy on Khan, grabbed some tools, and set about breaking open the wooden restraints. He split the kang in half and as they fell from the boy’s shoulders, he threw them in the fire to burn the evidence of their removal.

The man then hid Khan in a cart loaded with sheep wool - the best the he could do on short notice - and soon enough the rest of the camp was searching for Genghis Khan. Eventually the search team burst into the man’s tent and ransacked the place, trying to find Khan. Perfectly hidden in the cart, he was safe from the men’s prying eyes, but before they left one of them took his spear and stabbed into the cart just to make sure. Khan was stabbed right in the leg.

Khan realized any sound out of him would most likely be the end of his life. Showing great tenacity at his young age, Genghis managed to stay completely quiet despite the pain. After his pursuers finally gave up their search and left, Khan’s host quickly put the boy on a horse. Despite the injury he had sustained, his savior urged him to “Go now to your brothers and mother.”

When he returned to his family’s encampment however, they were nowhere to be seen. The usual location of their family tent was deserted. After wandering through the area, Khan finally found them all huddled together in hiding nearby, afraid of falling victim to random raids from neighboring tribes in his absence. It was then that Khan decided that a move would be in order for his family; gathering up a few belongings and making use of eight horses for the journey, he took them by the darkness of night to the far away camp of a family supporter.

Whatever reservations that Houlon had about her son and his fratricide were pushed to the side in a staunch and pragmatic view of reality. Genghis was the only hope for the family to survive; from this point on, she would place all of her hopes on him. In the next few years, Khan trained himself in both hunting and warfare, vigorously preparing himself to take back his own personal claim to the Mongolian Steppes.

However, his rehabilitation was interrupted when a band of thieves ambushed him in the middle of the night, stealing his eight horses. In the vast plains of Mongolia, this was a very serious offense. To suddenly be relegated to just your own two feet in a land where everyone was on horseback was a tremendous vulnerability. This created a serious disadvantage when raiders charged through on the backs of their own horses attacking your settlement.

This was a serious issue and demanded immediate retribution. Genghis immediately jumped on the back of the only remaining horse he had left and started following the trail of the thieves. After four days of tracking these culprits, Khan ran into Borchu, another young Mongolian about his age, who was out in the pasture milking his cows. Genghis asked the boy if he happened to see eight horses and a group of men ride through. The youth answered him honestly that he had in fact seen this group pass.

Genghis told Borchu that the horses were stolen from his family. Surprisingly, the young man offered his assistance in tracking the bandits down. In his hospitality he even offered a fresh horse for Khan to use as the two of them took off after the marauders. However, before the young duo could catch up to the main encampment of horses a fierce warrior from the group started to pursue the two in turn.

According to the story, Borchu suggested that he would stand his ground and take on the aggressor while Khan went on ahead to engage the rest of the group. Realizing that the young man taking on a battle-experienced warrior twice his age and size would be a disaster, Khan refused to allow him to such suicidal measures. Instead he urged Bochu to stick with him as they pushed further towards the main encampment of horse thieves.

Yet as their pursuer remained on their tail, Bochu was desperate to rid themselves of him. He dropped back slightly, picked up his bow, and with one shot of his arrow managed to score a direct hit on the marauder, mortally wounding him and making him drop from his horse. At this point Genghis knew that his boy was no ordinary cattle herder, and had tremendous promise as an archer.

After the death of this bandit, the two continued their course to the stolen horses. Once closing within range of the animals, Khan managed to lasso and round them up. He and Borchu then made a mad dash out of the range of the rest of the marauders, and the two comrades made their way all the way back to Borchu’s encampment where they met the young man’s father, telling him the story of how they got Khan’s horses safely back from the thieves.

Borchus feared that his father might be irate that he had left his duty to help Khan, but instead of being angry he was beside himself with pride that these two boys could manage such a feat by themselves. He then congratulated them, saying, “You are young. Be friends and be faithful.” The young Genghis Khan was then elated to know that he had not only recovered his lost horses but had gained one of the first of many powerful allies on the Mongolian Steppes.

Chapter Two

Rites of Passage

Every young man has a rite of passage, a transition from childhood to adulthood. By the Mongolian standards of 1800 years ago, Khan’s transition occurred at an exceptionally young age. by the time he was 17 years old and ready to finally take a wife, he was a young man with far more experience than those mere 17 years of official existence.

His bride-to-be, Bourtai, was a local girl that his father had arranged for him to marry before he had passed away. The last time that his potential father-in-law saw him, Khan was only 9 years old. When Genghis Khan once again arrived at Bortai’s tent 8 years later, her father greeted him and acknowledged his surprise, admitting to Genghis, “we did not expect you to be alive.”

Yet even though years and much intrigue had passed since Bourtai’s father had promised his daughter’s hand in marriage, in Mongolian society promises like that just don’t expire so easily. Picking up exactly where they had left off all of those years ago, Genghis’ soon-to-be father-in-law immediately ordered for his servants to kick off the “ikhudur” (festival) and get the party started. A flurry of servants began to scramble, killing and dressing sheep to make hearty Mongolian stews while Genghis Khan and all of his companions danced and clapped to local Mongol musicians in happy expectation.

Once started, the revelry of an ikhudur lasts several days at a time, with the merrymakers doing nothing but drinking and feasting until they pass out in the early morning hours. On the third day of this Mongolian styled Mardi Gras that the bride to be dressed in her official wedding attire of a white felt dress and braided hair and presented herself to the assembly. She was then sent running through the tents while Genghis engaged in a mock chase.

This was all for show. Bourtai was a voluntary participant, and even though Bourtai had consented to marry the Mongol, this ritual belies the more sinister practice the Mongolians had of outright kidnapping brides. In that nomadic culture, if a woman could not be persuaded by consent, it was quite common for young men to just snatch up any available woman they saw, whether she consented or not.

This was such an ingrained aspect of nomadic life that even willing wedding participants enjoyed to give a “little chase” in remembrance of this outrageous custom. And so, giggling and laughing all the way, the two lovers pretended to struggle with one another until Khan successfully “captured” his bride.

After this chase was complete, the two were then officially declared husband and wife. Yet as the particularly long-lived nature of the Mongolian grudge would soon demonstrate, the two would not have long to celebrate their honeymoon. Shortly after their marriage, the couple was besieged by distant relatives of Khan’s own mother, who sought a long awaited vengeance for his father’s original abduction of Houlon 18 years previous.

It can be said that Genghis Khan himself was the product of rape and a forced marriage. Now he was being forced to pay for the sins of his own father in the form of his new wife being viciously ripped away from him in like manner. These hardened cousins of Khan came in the middle of the night wielding torches, swords and axes ready to smash the heads in of anyone that dared to stop them.

Khan and his companions were overwhelmed by this sudden onslaught. Before they could even process what was happening, Bourtai had been seized, the abductors thundering off with her in tow across the plains, all of to satisfy a long-running feud. The would-be bride of Houlon’s son was snatched up and given to a relative of the man who Khan’s mother had originally been engaged to.

Khan was infuriated. Gaining the full support of Bourtai’s father, he sought to correct his own fresh grievance in this never-ending grudge match and raced off to regain his bride. This combined force then descended upon the clan of kidnappers and managed to overtake them.

According to the story, Genghis then rode through the camp, crying out the name of his bride. Bourtai ran to her husband, with the two embracing each other lovingly as Khan happily declared, “I have found that which I sought.” It would have been truly touching sight, but the fact that Bourtai gave birth exactly 9 months later would forever put a shadow upon whether or not that first child was truly Khan’s son or a result of her brief contact with her abductors. Even so, whatever was the case, Genghis never fell out of love with this woman, and he devoted the rest of his life to her. .

Soon after his marriage life was secure, Genghis went about trying to strengthen his political position among the various tribes of the Mongolian steppes. By the time his once meager group of companions had swelled into a force of some 14,000 brave and devoted warriors, Khan decided it was time to take things to the next level. Khan knew that the time had come to test his new following of loyal devotees, and prove their mettle in pitched combat.

That moment came when they were set upon suddenly by a force more than double the size of their own. About 30,000 warriors of the rival Taidjut tribe descended on Khan’s encampment. Genghis knew full well that he couldn’t confront these superior numbers directly, since it would only lead to them being encircled by the larger army. Grasping immediately that conventional warfare was not going to be able to do the trick, Khan here began his long career as an unconventional military strategist.

To offset the larger force of his adversaries, the wily Khan quickly drew up several units and protected them by wooden barricades. He then formed on his other flank a large hollow square known as a kibitka in which he placed his cattle and carts full of women and boys who were themselves armed with bow and arrows. In this fashion, Genghis allowed his battle lines not to be overwhelmed and he was able to have each of his units ride at their own pace up and down the valley where he had been encamped.

Genghis then prepared his men to make one last attempt to charge the 30,000-strong enemy forces as they began to cross through the valley. He managed to send the vast bulk of his men to the front center line of his opponent and break their line of defense. The enemy forces fell into disarray; their formation was scattered. Khan’s forces then set loose a fusillade of arrows, a withering assault that devastated his enemies.

This rain of death created even more panic as enraged squadrons of the opposing tribe threw themselves at Khan’s forces with abandon, many of them being slain by the arrows and lances of Genghis’ men. This sort of provocation was exactly what Khan was looking for, as it provoked the enemy to make senseless and haphazard attacks. In short time, the results of these frenzied assaults were the destruction of about six thousand warriors and the capture or death of at least seventy chief leaders. The ones who perished in the fighting were likely the lucky ones. If popular legend is to be believed, Khan—who was not at all adverse to torturing his enemies—had the rest of these men thrown in huge pots and had them boiled alive.

After his first major victory in battle, Genghis Khan could finally present himself as a true leader. His men showed their recognition of him by awarding him with the traditional ivory baton that Mongolian leaders carried with them.

Khan now began in earnest his efforts to bring as many as he could under his power. In the beginning Khan’s aims were very simple; instead of political power, he was in search of manpower. First in the criteria of the men he would lead was loyalty. In regard to this Genghis Khan himself remarked, “What shall be said of a man who will make a promise at dawn and break it at nightfall?”

Khan also sought to establish himself as a fair-minded leader by taking measures such as reforming the hunting rights of his subjects, allowing them to keep more of their hunted game for themselves. Allowing the warriors of harsh and frigid Mongolia to stock up on more meat for the winter would be an equivalent to a modern day politician given his constituents a big tax cut. Khan’s generosity with his men would be rewarded.

Chapter Three

A Battle Against Shamanic Destiny

The ancient Mongolian world was full of sentimental intrigue. Superstitious feeling was abundant, and in the camps of Genghis Khan no one espoused these metaphysical leanings more than the local shaman, Teb Tengri. As a metaphysical guru who claimed to be able to leave his body and hold conference with the spirit world at will, Teb Tengri was a legend in his own right.

He was believed to have a whole host of supernatural and meditative powers such as being able to withstand extreme temperature. According to the Persian historian Rashid al-Din, “in the heart of winter” Teb Tengri would “sit naked in the middle of a frozen river, and from the heat of his body the ice would melt and steam would rise from the water”.

Yet it was his supposed ability to contact the spirit world in particular that led him into an adversarial relationship with Genghis Khan in the real world. The conflict began when the shaman reported to Genghis that the spirits had told him that if he did not kill his younger brother Kassar, his brother would surpass him in greatness and would obtain the position of world conqueror that Khan had intended for himself.

Genghis was highly sensitive to such reports. Against his better judgement, he used it as the basis to attack his brother. Khan’s mother Houlan intervened however and convinced Khan to spare Kassar’s life. It wasn’t long after this episode when the shaman was once again intent to stir things up with his prophetic reports; it was at this point that Khan realized that it wasn’t any of his brothers he needed to fear but the shaman himself.

Genghis soon deduced that there was a good chance that the mystic was spouting off supposed prophecy on purpose in order to create discord in the Mongol’s camp. With this realization, Khan sought out the monk’s destruction as retribution. Before he could act however, the prophet began going about the camps in wild abandon, trying to turn everyone else against the tribe through his claims of supernatural revelation and prophesied plots.

Teb Tengri was obviously trying to undermine the authority of Genghis Khan any way he could. This shaman that much in the way of support in the camps, and Khan knew that he would not be able to go after him directly lest he turned a significant faction of the camp against him in the process. The shaman was well aware of this fact as well, and soon demonstrated his feelings of invincibility by calling upon the youngest brother of Khan, Temuge, for a meeting,

Soon into this meeting it became clear to Temuge and everyone present that the real purpose of this meeting was to make the young Mongul a target of scorn and ridicule. After a brief discussion of his aims of taking over the tribe, Teb Tengri ordered the young Mongol to kneel before him. The men under the shaman’s sway made sure that this subservience was achieved, forcing Temuge to his knees.

Humiliated, Temuge informed his brother about what had happened. This was a major matter of honor, and to have a brother disgraced like this meant that the whole Khan name would be dragged through the mud. Genghis Khan felt that he had to do something, but being in the position of chief, he bound by his role to arbitrate matters without taking sides.

Khan realized that while his own hands were tied, others were not. He came up with a plan, telling his brother, “This day Teb Tengri will come to my tent. Deal with him as pleases thee.” And so it was that when the shaman came into the tent, Temuge caught him by surprise. Grabbing him by the shoulders informed the prophet, “Yesterday I was forced to kneel to you, but today I will strength with you.”

Putting even the most prolific of professional wrestlers to shame, Khan’s brother swept the prophet to the ground in swift move. At this point the pragmatic Genghis Khan is said to have told his brother to take it outside, shouting, “Wrestle not here! Go outside!” to avoid bringing shame on the household by an indoor prophet-whipping.

Unfortunately for the shaman, three other experienced wrestlers were standing outside the door of the hut. As soon as Teb Tengri stepped out they made their move; they they grabbed the shaman and with ferocious strength broke him in half, snapping his spine. They then picked up the paralyzed prophet and threw him to the side like a piece of trash; his helpless body bounced and rolled before coming to a stop, slamming into the wheel of a horse cart.

He lay there motionless, breathing his last ragged breaths in terrible pain as an exultant Temuge walked up to him. Pretending that the dead prophet was still alive, Temuge began pointing at him and shouting, “Teb Tengri forced me to my knees yesterday! Now, when I wish to try strength with him, he lies down and will not rise.” It was then that Munlik, Teb Tengri’s father, came upon the scene. Upon seeing his prophet lying broken on the ground he cried out in disdain, “Oh Khan, I have served you, until this day!”

His statement, meant to be a stern reproach, signalled to anyone that was listening that this was the end of his partnership with Genghis Khan. Upon hearing their father’s cue of dissent, his surviving six sons then reached for their weapons, ready to take on the Khan’s men to exact vengeance over the shaman’s death. Genghis, seeking to defuse the situation, chose not to call his own men to arms. Instead, he boldly stepped toward the entrance of his tent and called out, “Aside! I wish to go out!”

Everyone was a bit surprised at the temerity of his command. Despite their bleeding prophet on the ground, they acquiesced to Genghis and got out of his way. Genghis then went over to the shaman; seeing that he was in fact, quite dead, Khan ordered for his tent to be moved to cover the dead prophet’s body and then sealed it up so no one could gain entrance to it.

The attempt to save face and to conceal the murder of the shaman seemed to mollify Munlik. Respecting Khan’s effort to avoid the creation of a blood feud, Munlik allied in seeking to make it seem as if the slaying of Teb Tengri had never occurred, revealing that it was the principle of the matter that had offended Munlik - not so much the death of his son.

Making good on this subterfuge, Khan had his men quietly approach the tent later that night. When no one was looking, they stole the body of the prophet through the top of the tent and disposed of it. The next day, when word had spread of the wrestling match, several curious onlookers had arrived and began to pose questions as to what had happened. They demanded for the tent to be opened so they could see the prophet.

In response, Genghis Khan simply opened his tent to show that he was not there, remarking to the onlookers, “Teb Tengri made plots against my brothers and struck them, and now the spirits of Heaven have taken away both his life and his body.” He thereby forged a myth, claiming that the spirits themselves had snatched the shaman up and transported him to the nether realms, thereby freeing himself and his family from any culpability in his demise. With this bit of shadow play, Genghis knew that he had beaten his own shamanic destiny. Free from the meddling of prophets and soothsayers, he was ready to be the complete and sole master of his own fate.

Chapter Four

United They Stand

In examining the far reaches of Mongolian history, if you find that that there is not much unity involved in the war torn story of the country, you are probably right. Until Genghis Khan unified the battling tribes through the force of his own strong arm, Mongolia was known mostly as either a no man’s land or at the very least a nomad’s land, a place where the few people who dared to eke out their existence in it’s cold expanse lived as perpetual migrants who never settled down, with only their own family members serving as any sort of government.

The neighboring Karaits, who were distant relatives to the Mongols, were much more civilized than the Mongols ever were, thanks to their walled-in cities. One of Khan’s main benefactors that lived behind these walls, Toghrul, was known as a sort of Prester John of the East.

Toghrul was a great friend of Khan’s father. Genghis could have requested assistance from this leader at any time, but wishing to bargain with this benefactor from a position of strength rather than one of weakness, Khan kept Toghrul as the ace up his sleeve for years that he struggled to consolidate his own power.

After the death of the Teb Tengri, Genghis was ready to play that card. Meeting up with the great leader, Khan told him, “Without your assistance, oh my father, I cannot survive unmolested. You too cannot live in peace without my firm friendship. Your false brothers and cousins would invade your land and divide your pastures between them. Your son hath not wisdom to see this at present, but he would be denied of power and life if your enemies prevail. Our way to keep our security and survive is through friendship nothing can shatter. Were I your son also, matters would be settled for both of us.”

The old leader understood the request and gave his agreement to the terms of Genghis Khan. This was a bond that would last for as long as the two both lived in the area. Even though Toghrul was the one that had been made foster father and potential supporter of Khan at the demise of his father, it was actually Toghrul and his people that needed Khan’s help.

Ever since the rise of Islam, Muslim forces had been pushing further and further east, forcibly converting anyone that came across their swords. The Karits had become predominantly Christian by 1000 CE, which meant that Toghrul and his people were all either Christians or practitioners of ancestral shamanism and were being routinely threatened by the Islamic advance.

According to legend, the conversion happened in dramatic fashion. The chieftain of the Karaits was lost somewhere in the wastelands of Central Asia near the end of his life, and he was supposedly contacted by some supernatural entity. This being told him he would survive and be able to find his way home if only he would only put his faith in Christ. According to the story, he was then somehow instantaneously transported back to his camp.

It was from this moment on that the chieftain became a Christian and in turn encouraged the Christianization of his subjects. While the truth of what actually happened to the lost Chieftain is lost to the mists of time, the fact remains that he did become a renowned Christian leader in the east. In fact, this led to rumors of his kingdom helping to create the legend of Prester John, one that embodied the longings and legends of Western Europe for a great Christian King in the East.

But for Genghis Khan, Toghrul was much more than the shadow figure of some exaggerated legend; he was a part of his extended family, a friend of his father’s that had pledged to look after Genghis in the event of his death. It was to this foster father that Genghis now turned to for consultation. According to tribal tradition, it was right to claim adoption from the old chieftain and Toghrul was ready to accept this role. This acceptance soon led Khan into his first conflict with the Muslim enemies of these Eastern Christians.

Islamic forces that long held animosity toward the Christians of the steppes were relentless in their onslaught against the small kingdom. Being true to his vows, Khan protected his foster father and drove them out. Not long after this effective rout of Toghrul’s enemies, Khan bore witness to a military expedition of a whole other kind, one led by the Ch’in government to the south in order to take on an age-old thorn in the side of the great country: the Tatars.

As they were the same group that had murdered his own father, Genghis Khan had also sworn revenge against the Tatars. With such an excellent opportunity for his vengeance to unfold, Khan attacked the Tatars from the north as the Chinese army besieged them from the south. Genghis enlisted the aid of the Karaits in this endeavor, and the coalition was victorious. Khan’s number of captives and future supporters swelled as a consequence.

Once Genghis Khan had achieved what was previously unthinkable and united all of the warring Mongolian tribes under one banner, he made it official in 1206 when a council was held to distribute his legal code, the Yasa. This code of laws dictated the rules of coexistence for all of his subjects. What had been a fairly lawless society was transformed as he finally set down major legal reform, including new laws such as those that condemned theft and adultery.

According to this code, if a horse were taken illegally from someone, the penalty would be death. It also forbade the kidnapping of women, a practice that had been rampant in Mongol culture. Ironically, the laws only applied inside Mongol land, which meant that the kidnapping of enemy women as part of the spoils of war would remain fair game for the Mongols. Khan also commented on drinking in his codex; while not making alcohol consumption illegal, he stressed moderation since so many Mongolians had not died by the sword, but by the bottle of alcohol they were drinking.

Chapter Five

Throwing Sand at an Empire

With solidarity among the main tribes of Mongolia established, Khan then turned his eyes to the historic antagonist to the south: China. As it was better known at the time, the Ch’in Dynasty, was one of the longer running dynasties of the period, the same one that the name “China” is ultimately derived.

The Chi’n had been spreading division and discord among the Mongolians for centuries. It had always been easy for them to strike out at the northern tribes at will and then retreat to the safe confines of the Great Wall of China, an edifice which had been built specifically to keep Khan’s people out. However, now that Genghis Khan had unified the tribes, he set his sights on finally challenging the southern superpower. In a move of sheer audacity, he set his flags flying on the ramparts of the wall.

Depositing these flags was a simple bit of preemptive psychological warfare, getting those living around and behind the wall to worry about what an attacking Mongolian army might mean before any such attack even took place. He also managed to sneak some spies and informants through the Great Wall in order to collect intelligence on the Chinese.

After these points of intelligence were established, Khan then sent about 200 riders to canvass themselves along the wall all throughout the countryside. Behind this first line he placed his more advanced pike cavalry numbering somewhere in the thousands; behind this regiment was the main body of the Mongol advance, numbering close to one hundred thousand men.

Genghis Khan himself remained in the center of this force, flanked by an additional one thousand strong auxiliary that formed his own kind of imperial guard. Once the main forces were positioned near the walls, the Mongols found ways either around or over the barriers. However, in many other places sympathizers on the inside opened the gates and allowed Khan’s army to simply walk right through.

Once this first wave of the Mongol invasion poured through the wall, they were soon met by the front line defenses of the Chinese military were positioned on the frontier roads that stretched out from the main gates. These military units were mostly foot soldiers, however; Khan’s fast-moving cavalry, rapidly firing off torrents of arrows from horseback, made quick work of these enemy infantry divisions, mowing most of them down before they even knew what had hit them.

Another great success Khan’s army achieved was the ability to surround a crack unit of Ch’in troops and cut down the entire unit. The whole Chinese military seemed to be on the run from the Mongols as Khan’s men came upon some of the main walled cities of the region. Yet it was here, outside these massive city walls, that Genghis Khan began to realize the exact kind of quandary that he had found himself in.

He had a very limited force—one that was getting weaker by the day—while his enemy had virtually unlimited resources and excess manpower in the millions. No matter how many of their soldiers Khan’s troops cut down, there Chi’n always had another supply of fresh-faced infantry that could be summoned and shipped down the river to fight his own slowly dwindling regiment anew.

He knew that even though he was wreaking terrible devastation on them, their sheer overwhelming numbers would eventually overtake Khan and his forces. Genghis now heeded the warning warning that the Ch’in emperor himself was have said to have issued at the outset of aggression when he told him, “Our Empire is like the Sea; yours is but a handful of sand.”

Realizing how futile his position truly was, and not wanting to get swallowed up in a sea of endless Chinese peasants and infantry, Genghis decided to pull out and ordered his men to march back to the steppes of Mongolia. Over the next three years, Khan’s forces would lead raids against the great power to the south only to retreat back to their Mongolian homeland.

While Khan was unable to deal a knockout blow to his enemies during these years, he gained much wealth and experience from the raids while his enemy only grew weaker. This set the stage for his all-out assault on northern China in the spring of 1214. In a great war of military attrition, Genghis Kan had managed to counteract the declaration of the Chinese Emperor and he had begun—through sheer persistence and determination—to stop up the sea of the Chinese military through multiple bursts of his marauders across the Mongolian Steppes.

By the spring of 1214, the besieged government of Northern China had been attacked several times by bands of roving Mongolians. Every instance was relatively similar: the marauders would come without warning, pouring out of the northern steppes, and then the Chi’n government would go on the defensive, engaging in fierce combat to push the invaders back to the steppes. The Mongols would then retreat to their homeland until they had enough strength to engage the Chinese all over again. The cycle seemed destined to repeat itself indefinitely since the Ch’in government did not seem to have the means or the will to confront Khan directly.

Without taking the battle directly to Mongolia, prospects of avoiding these physically and economically draining conflicts seemed non-existent. For the Mongolians, who had made their bread and butter for years by looting other tribes, being able to plunder the rich Chinese cities to their south routinely had reaped benefits for them far greater than they had expected. As if they were feeding an addiction, these bandits were unwilling to quit until all of the wealth and resources of the great civilization to their south was firmly in Mongol hands.

Genghis Khan was about 55 years old when he led his final assault on Northern China. He separated his army into three divisions, one one of which was led by his sons. Another was led by expert officers who had defected from Liao-Tung, the region northeast of China that had itself been a victim of previous Chi’n conflict in the past. The last group of soldiers to assault the Chi’n’s was a regiment led by Khan himself.

These three armies worked in unison yet retained separate autonomy. They would besiege a city, take all of the people they found in the countryside, and would then use captives on their frontlines to force cities to open their gates. During the first stint of this last invasion, Khan’s men met little resistance and found that most of the imperial apparatus had moved further south.

The Emperor and the entire imperial capitol itself had been moved hastily to the Southern city of Nanjing just a few weeks prior. It was a bold move to attempt to gather strength and stave off political collapse, but for the most part it was a severe measure that backfired on the imperial government of the Chi’ns, leading to many of their subjects to move toward outright mutiny and rebellion. Being abandoned by their imperial overlords, many of the first cities that Khan encountered simply opened up their gates and gave way to what they thought was inevitable: a Mongol takeover.

This time around, Khan’s forces made it all the way to the outskirts of Nanjing. However, with the army facing starvation and disease, Khan realized that he would have to put off his final assault on the Chi’n dynasty once again as the summer drew to a close. Yet this time he wouldn’t leave the field without giving a direct message to the Emperor himself, telling him, “What do you think now of the war between us? All the provinces north of the Yellow River are in my power. I am going to my homeland. But could you permit my officers to go away without sending gifts to appease them?” This was a power hungry move on Genghis Khan demanding tribute from his nearly defeated foe before he himself retreated back to the Mongolian Steppe. Amazingly, it was a demand that the embattled Chinese Emperor met.

Although many of his advisors informed the Chinese Emperor that the Mongols were in no shape to be making demands, the Emperor, seeking to appease his foe one more time, sent out hundreds of slaves and servants as well as an entire herd of horses laden with silk and gold as a great gift to the Mongolian warlord.

Genghis Khan showed his appreciation as his forces crossed back over into the Gobi Desert. He executed all of the Chinese captives he had with him and left their dead carcasses scattered all over the edge of the desert for the Chinese Emperor’s intelligence officers to later see the carnage so they could report back the untold cruelty exacted by Genghis Khan.

In the wake of such cruelty, this retreat back to the Gobi was only a very brief respite, the full force of Khan would once again strike the Chi’n Empire in early 1215. Sending his legions all the way to the new imperial stronghold in the south, this time Genghis Khan would be victorious and the Chi’n were completely defeated. With his bits of Mongolian sand, Khan managed, finally, to stem the tide of the great sea that had been the Chi’n Dynasty.

Chapter Six

Genghis Khan’s Crusade

After the defeat of the Ch’in Dynasty, all of Khan’s military measures had been directed in Central and East Asia. Khan himself had grown up in the wide spaces of the Mongolian Steppe and the only other civilization he had been in contact with was that of medieval China, but in the meantime he had received various visitors from the outside in the form of Arab merchants. It was from these men that he learned of the world outside of Asia.

From their reports, he heard of the fertile valleys beyond his dominion that existed in the more temperate climates of the Middle-East, places where there was no snow or frigid winds. He heard of the rich cities that these merchants came from with their great resources and large populations.

The merchants also displayed the great riches of these lands in their caravans, showcasing finely tempered steel blades, chain mail and even rubies, all on full display for the Khan. These merchants traveled from their faraway lands through the great mountain barrier that bordered Mongolia, and they intrigued the great leader with their tales of the riches of his Islamic neighbors.

With the initial idea of increasing trade, Khan set out to contact his nearest Muslim neighbor from the west, the Shah of Persia (modern-day Iran). The Shah himself was a great conqueror of a vast domain. Genghis sent his own envoy to the Shah with the infamous tidings, “I sent the greeting. I know your power and the great extent of your empire, and I look upon you as a most cherished son. On your part, you must know that I have conquered China and many Turkish nations. My country is an encampment of warriors, a mine of silver, and I have no need of other lands. To me it seems that we have an equal interest in encouraging trade between our subjects.”

The Shah immediately took offense to this message, viewing it as condescending and unbelievably boisterous in its claims of conquest. He responded in irate incredulousness, “Who is Genghis Khan? Has he really conquered China?” Khan’s intermediaries, not seeking conflict, attempted to assuage the Shah’s ego a bit, and after downplaying Khan’s military might managed to set up a trade agreement. Relations then went on rather smoothly with Khan’s new trading partner for about a year until an unfortunate incident that would spark an all-out war.

It began when a caravan of several hundred merchants from Khan were seized by one of the Shah’s governors and accused of harboring spies among them. The Shah, who was quite used to routinely capturing and killing supposed spies, didn’t think too much of it, and quickly ordered the governor to put the merchants to death. When Genghis Khan heard the news of what had happened to his envoy however, he was not going to take such an assault on his own merchants lightly.

Khan was quick to demand recompense. He then sent another envoy to make his discontent known, but this envoy was also intercepted. The Shah then had the leader of this group summarily executed and then insulted the rest of the envoy by forcibly shaving off all of their beards. This of course was an outrage the Mongolian leader would not be able to tolerate; Khan sent his own declaration of war to the Shah in which he stated, “You have chosen war. That will happen which will happen, and what it is to be, we know not. God alone knows.”

Genghis Khan then set his sights on the land of Khwarezmia, a conglomeration of nations that included modern day Iran, Afghanistan, and a few other portions of Central Asia, lands that had already spent centuries under the full dominion of Islam. Khwarezmia was an empire in its own right, but it was one that Khan was readily prepared to dismantle.

Unlike when he started his campaign against the Chi’n, Genghis he now had his own vibrant empire to take care of. He had to leave enough structure behind to make sure he could maintain it. To accomplish this he had to leave behind some of his best generals just to make sure that peace would be maintained in the rest of the empire while he embarked on a campaign elsewhere.

With his empire secure under these trusted soldiers, Khan then took his expeditionary force and began to move west toward the Shah’s domain, moving his men slowly through the mountain ranges and across the plains along with their horses and cattle herds. The initial thrust of the expedition seemed to be going well, but the Mongolians, being as superstitious as ever, were held back by what they believed to be an ill omen.

The snow began to fall much too early to the Mongolians’ liking that year. It was this early snowfall that made Genghis Khan’s army stop in its tracks to consult with their astrologers to determine what the weather might mean for them and their war with the Shah of Iran. When they consulted one of the Chinese soothsayers that they had brought along with them they were informed that the snow signified “that the lord of the cold and wintry lands will overcome the lord of the warm climates.” The interpretation was that Khan’s warriors, pouring out of the frigidly cold wasteland of the steppes, were destined to destroy the Shah’s army of the more temperate environs.

This Chinese mystic may have just been paying lip service to his new Mongol overlords, but after exchanging notes on the issue everyone agreed that he was right. Self-fulfilled prophecy or not, the Mongol army was determined to make his shamanic magic happen as they screamed forward toward their new adversaries.

This vote of confidence in the good-natured intent of the snow flurries must have been good for the morale. Otherwise, the intermittent snowstorms during their sojourn were quite an impediment. Due to the nearly white-out conditions, it had become increasingly hard to effectively navigate the terrain.

In order to avoid any of the regiments getting lost, the trails were marked off with sheep’s horns stuck in the ground by the advance guard. The horns were crucial markers since their pointed tips could easily be seen poking through the frigid waste. So it was that with the horns of dead animals lining their trail they made their way to the Shah of Kwarezmia.

The Shah himself had already received important snippets of information about the armies that were encroaching upon his land, but the intelligence reports he had received did not change his confidence in his own chance of victory. Upon hearing the reports, the Shah supposedly reasoned, “They have conquered only unbelievers, now the banners of Islam are arrayed against them.”

Soon after these proclamations, the first leg of the Mongol force led by Khan’s eldest son Jochi was sighted descending from the highlands and down to the villages in the valley. Swarming down on the land like locusts, they burned and pillaged all of the farms and dwellings that they encountered. In this advanced contingent, all stolen goods that were acquired were then moved up the supply lines of the Mongols for later use by the main army.

The Shah sent a large army to meet this advance force. Seeing what he thought was a much inferior ragtag kind of army, the Shah ordered an immediate attack on the formation. Seeing the Shah’s military charging at them, some of Jochi Khan’s advisors told him to pull back and regroup with the main contingent. However, Jochi was very much like his father. He was not someone who liked the idea of backing down, and reportedly snapped at the advisor, “If I flee, what then shall I say to my father?”

So it was that the oldest son of Genghis Khan, seeking to prove his valor, had his men meet the Shah’s contingent head-on with complete fearlessness. Upon impact, the Mongols struck hard into the Shah’s frontline, smashing their heavy swords against their opponent’s scimitars. The Mongols were so ferocious and unrelenting that they managed to break the Shah’s battle formation with catastrophic losses early on in the skirmish.

The assault of the Mongols was so effective that the Shah himself found himself suddenly within range of Mongol arrow fire. It was only through the valiant efforts of his own personal entourage that he was saved from sudden death. It was then up to the Shah’s son Jelal ed-Din to drive back Genghis Khan’s son, which he managed to do with a quick and daring counter charge that gave the Shah’s forces just enough breathing room to regroup.

After another fierce exchange, in typical Mongol hit and run fashion, the Eastern warriors retreated at full speed back to the steppes. Even though the Shah, ignorant of these hit and run tactics common to the Mongol horde, claimed victory in driving the Mongols back, it was a tough pill to swallow when he realized he had lost 160,000 of his best men to a much smaller force.

Even though the Shah attempted to spin this first encounter with the juggernaut of Khan’s forces as a victory, he knew full well that the Mongolian hordes would be back. Not wishing to repeat the same drastic losses his men had suffered in open combat, the Shah fortified all of his cities with strong garrisons of troops and sought to beat Genghis through siege warfare.

However, this was a move that would prove to be deadly. Khan had improved his siege tactics quite a bit since his war with the Ch’in Dynasty. In the time since he had taken down the government in northern China, he also had a whole host of highly skilled Chinese engineers at his disposal to help him tear apart even the most well-fortified cities. As city after city fell to the Mongols, one thing remained: the Shah himself.

The Shah, determined not to suffer the torture and humiliation that would undoubtedly await him upon capture, led his potential captors on a long chase. By the spring of 1220, he had ventured into the cavernous reaches of Afghanistan, then back through the mountains of Iran, only to flee to the gates of Baghdad in Iraq until finally seeking refuge on an island in the middle of the Caspian Sea.

Due to such steadfast determination to evade his would-be tormentors, the Mongols were never able to lay a hand on the Shah. However, he died a broken man shortly after his flight, impoverished and sickened by disease and anxiety. Unfortunately for the Shah, even though he was able to run from the wrath of Khan, in the end he could not hide from the long reach of his vengeance.

Conclusion

The Last Days of Genghis Khan

With the untold conquest of northern China and the subjugation of the entire region of Iran and Afghanistan, Genghis Khan had achieved much more than he ever could have imagined as a wandering nomad of the Mongolian Steppes. But Khan knew that in order to have a lasting legacy with these conquests he still needed to subdue the ancient Sung Dynasty of Southern China.

Just as he was crossing over into this ancient realm of Southern China, Khan received word that his oldest son Juchi had died. The death of his firstborn seemed to strike Genghis Khan particularly hard - quite uncharacteristic of his usually stoic demeanor. When he heard of the loss of his son, he asked to be alone. He retreated to his tent where he wept bitterly.

The advance into China went on however, but once the horde was firmly within Sung territory Genghis abruptly called for his eldest son Tuli—who was in the field nearby—to come to his tent. When Tuli entered, he found Genghis Khan huddled near a fire, wrapped in blankets and in a sick and weakened state. Khan, knowing that his own end was close, told his son, “It is clear to me that I must leave everything and go hence from thee.”

Khan then gave his son clear instructions on how to proceed in the mission on the advent of his demise. He told him to take under his charge all of the lands of the East, while his son Chagatai would be assigned all of the lands to the west, with his son Ogotai as the ultimate successor ruling over them all. Many of these details had already been long discussed and rehashed among the Khan family, and now that Genghis himself was at death’s door, he sought to finalize them.

Shortly after this final directive Genghis Khan breathed his last, apparently content and confident knowing that his legacy was in good hands. His followers then spirited his body away back to Mongolia to bury him in his beloved homeland of the Steppes. There was no grave marker for the great conqueror, and his final resting place remains unknown, as if fulfilling some great missive that he leave the world just as he came into it: shrouded in mystery.

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Table of Contents

Mystery of the Steppes

When Warriors Are Made

Rites of Passage

A Battle Against Shamanic Destiny

United They Stand

Throwing Sand at an Empire

Genghis Khan’s Crusade

The Last Days of Genghis Khan