Genghis Khan is, without a doubt, one of the most famous historical figures in the world as well as one of the most influential people to have ever lived. Born in ignominy to the fractured clans of the Mongolian steppes, he and his decendants would come to lead the largest continuous empire in human history following decades of brutal and efficient campaigns against countless powerful kingdoms and empires across Eurasia. Genghis Khan was born with the name Temujin, along with several brothers and sisters. He was married off to a different clan at a young age by his father, and lived with the clan of his future wife until he reached maturity. Meanwhile, his father died ­ likely poisoned by a meal offered by a treacherous Tatar host ­ and Temujin decided to head home in an attempt to claim his father’s title for himself. His original clan, perhaps unsurprisingly, were less than thrilled at the prospect of being led by a scrawny little whelp and abandoned Temujin along with his mother and siblings to the wolves. They took to desperate foraging and hunting in order to keep themselves alive, but that proved not to be enough when Temujin and one of his brothers killed their oldest brother ­ the product of years of slowly building resentment over the oldest brother’s role as the dominant figure in the family. Sometime after the murder of his oldest brother, Temujin was captured by the resentful allies of his father, the Taichiud tribe, and promptly enslaved. His story in history may very well have ended there were it not for the intervention of a sympathetic guard who freed him, allowing him to escape with the assistance of several other allies ­ many of these men, including the son of Temujin’s savior, would become some of his most crucial generals in his later years. At the age of sixteen, Temujin was finally married to his wife, Borte, as part of the arrangment that his father had set up many years previously. Unfortunately, Borte was soon kidnapped by a rival tribe in order to be wed to someone else, and Temujin was forced to lead a rescue mission to free her. Borte would prove to be Temujin’s most important consort, siring all of his primary successors ­ including Jochi (born nine months after Borte’s rescue and thus subject to rumors of bastardry), Chagatai, Ogedei, and Tolui. All of these figures would become highly important in the future Mongol Empire. Around 1190, Temujin began the process of attempting to unify the disparate Mongol clans. This proved to be difficult, but Temujin proved to have several major advantages over his contemporary opponents. Firstly, he was highly uncommon among Mongol leaders in that he led his army as a meritocracy, promoting soldiers and officers based on skill instead of family connections. He also proved to be highly adept at expanding his own forces by incorporating the armies of defeated tribes into his own, as opposed to driving them off or killing them. These were significant breaks in Mongol tradition, but ones that allowed Temujin to extend his power over all the Mongol clans by 1206. Upon his consolidation of all the Mongol tribes, the title of Khan would be bestowed upon him, and Temujin would thereafter be known as Genghis Khan. Not content with simply being the leader of the Mongols, Genghis Khan began the long series of Mongol military campaigns that would last for decades. The first invasion was against the Western Xia Dynasty in China, which saw the Xia capitulate and agree to become a vassal of the Mongol Empire in 1211. A significantly more brutal campaign against the Jin Dynasty resulted in the deaths of over half a million Jin soldiers and the siege and sacking of Beijing. The Jin clung to power for several more decades, severely weakened, until finally being defeated for good several years after Genghis Khan’s death. During this time, Temujin was forced to put down an uprising by the deposed leader of one of the Mongol tribes, Kuchlug, who had attempted to revive his power. Perhaps the most prominent war waged by Genghis Khan himself was against the Khwarezmian Empire, the ruling faction of Persia that had ruled the region for two centuries. Initially, Genghis did not want to wage war against the Persians and desired them as a trading partner. He set a trading caravan to the Empire to discuss trading terms, but the caravan was attacked and looted by a local governor. Genghis Khan still attempted to make peace, and sent three ambassadors to the Shah himself to both make trade agreements and attempt to convince the Shah to properly punish his wayward vassal. The Shah promptly executed one of the ambassadors and sent the other two back in a blatant insult towards the Khan. Genghis Khan was outraged by such a diplomatic affront and began planning for his largest invasion yet. He personally led a hundred thousand men along with his greatest generals against the Khwarezmians. Despite being outnumbered, the Mongols nevertheless had the upper hand due to a great deal of infighting within the Shah’s army, as well as the poor decision by the Khwarezmian leadership to scatter their forces throughout their lands instead of concentrating into an effective force. The Mongols soon successfully captured Otrar, the city that was home to the very governor who had sacked the original Mongol caravan, and utterly destroyed it with the cost of tens of thousands of lives. The governor himself was brutally executed, while the Shah himself fled the battle, eventually dying suspiciously, an ignominous failure, two years after his defeat. The rest of the Khwarezmian Empire was slowly and brutally conquered by 1220, with millions of civilians being murdered or sold into slavery by the Mongol victors. Even by the standards of the era and the standards of the Mongols themselves, the conquest of Khwarezmia would prove to be one of the most brutal military campaigns undertook by the Mongols or any other nation in human history. His lust for conquest not yet satiated, Genghis Khan ordered some of his forces, led by the great general Subutai, to continue campaigns against Russia and Georgia while he returned to Mongolia. Subutai oversaw the conquest of the Kingdom of Georgia, overran the Crimea (then controlled by the Italian Republic of Genoa), before defeating an allied force of tribal Cumans and soldiers of the Kievan Rus’. This campaign proved to be a precursor to the eventual Mongol conquest of the region, but at the time only resulted in the execution of several Kievan leaders as revenge for their killing of peace emissaries sent by Subutai. As he returned to Mongolia along with the rest of his forces in 1226, Genghis Khan was nearing the end of his life. His last campaign was one of revenge, as the Western Xia ­ who had previously been an begrudging vassal of the Mongols ­ allied with the crippled Jin Dynasty in a feeble alliance against the Mongols. They had counted on war with the Khwarezmians to distract Genghis Khan, but his attention soon returned to them and he led a terrible campaign against his treacherous ally. Genghis Khan led his forces against the Xia, defeating them in bloody battle after battle and captured several major cities. In 1227, the Mongols successfully captured and destroyed the Xia capital before continuing their advance through Xia territory. Finally, the Xia Emperor surrendered along with the rest of his forces and submitted to the Mongols. Genghis Khan, a man not renowed for his mercy, ordered the entire royal family of the Western Xia eradicated for their treachery. During the final months of the campaign, Genghis Khan died of contested causes, generally held to either be wounds sustained in battle with Xia troops or simply his old age. He was buried in an unknown location which remains a mystery to this day. Popular legend says that the soldiers who buried him killed anyone in their path along with the slaves who built the tomb, and that the soldiers themselves were then killed. Genghis Khan’s death heralded a relatively short period of increased Mongol expansion headed by his descendants, but by the death of his grandson Kublai Khan in 1294, the period of Mongol expansion had ended. The Empire had fractured into four major factions; the Yuan Dynasty that controlled China and Mongolia and was led most prominently by Kublai Khan, along with the Ilkhanate of Persia, the Golden Horde of Russia, and the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia. Despite the relative speed in which the Mongol Empire disintegrated, Genghis Khan left a wide and incredibly controversial legacy that remains debated to this day. Despite the weakness and instability suffered by many of the Mongol polities, Mongol imperial rule nevertheless lasted until 1857 under the banner of the Mughal Empire, due largely to the tireless conquests of the Mongol ruler Tamerlane in the 1300s. Arguably, however, the Mongols’ greatest impact on history went far beyond their military expeditions and empires. Genghis Khan caused many dramatic changes across Eurasia, both negative and positive. As should be expected, his brutal massacres of millions of people radically changed the demographics of the region for centuries, and his destruction of many of the most powerful nations and kingdoms of the age caused shockwaves throughout the known world. Genghis Khan, a Tengri shamanist himself, was remarkably religiously tolerant in an age where such a concept was almost nonexistent. Thus, despite their infamous reputation for cruelty, the Mongol Empire became a cosmopolitan nexus of various different religions and cultures, allowing the growth of culture, art, and science in a way rarely matched in history. The Mongols also encouraged trade due to its obvious economic benefits, and made sure that their territory would be some of the safest in the world for traders and merchants. This led to the Pax Mongolica of the 13th and 14th Centuries, encouraged by the Mongols’ harsh but firm and effective rule over their territory. The Pax Mongolica would unfortunately end with the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire, coupled with the rise of the Black Death and its easy spread throughout the known world thanks to the very same trade routes the Mongols had opened. In the modern world, Genghis Khan is generally viewed through one of several lenses. The Mongols themselves view him as a great ruler and their primary founder, and he is widely popular even today with many Mongols. Mongol citizens often claim that the stories behind Genghis Khan’s brutality are exaggerated by the victims of his massacres while his positive role in the fields of governance, meritocracy, and trade are often overlooked. Meanwhile, the areas that suffered directly from the brutal hand of the Mongols generally have a more negative opinion of Genghis Khan and his legacy. Public opinion is mixed in China, with many citizens in Inner Mongolia ­ an area of Mongolia under Chinese control ­ viewing him positively, while many other Chinese citizens are conflicted due to the varying role the Yuan Dynasty played in stabilizing China while also resulting in the deaths of many innocent people. The lukewarm opinion of Genghis Khan in much of China is more than matched by opinions of him in the Middle East and Central Asia. There, he is looked on as a genocidal monster who saw the deaths of up to two­thirds of the population of Persia and oversaw massacres in Afghanistan, Mesopotamia, and Central Asia among many other places. This opinion is generally shared by the people of Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and Hungary, all of whom suffered immense destruction and casualties at the hands of Mongol attacks. Ultimately, while many can and often do disagree on the moral implications of Genghis Khan’s legacy, there is no argument that his legacy was enormous and still affects much of the world even to the present day. The impact Genghis Khan had on the world cannot be overstated, and despite the huge controversy surrounding him and his descendants, he is undoubtedly one of the most important and influential figures in human history. Bibliography: Genghis Khan and the Mongols ­ ​
http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h11mon.htm Heirs to Discord ­ http://web.archive.org/web/20080625210646/http://ideas.union.edu/articles/files/22_Stevens_He
irs_to_Discord.pdf Genghis Khan ­ http://web.archive.org/web/20060113174030/http://www.historychannel.com/thcsearch/thc_reso
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