The Life and Legend of Genghis Khan: Conquests, Power, Death, and The Mongol Empire

By Robert Izzo

In the 12th century, there arose a man north of China who was ruthless and had absolute lust for power. At the age of 13, while fishing, one of his brothers snatched from his hand the fish he had caught. He killed his brother on the spot. He grew up to decimate every clan in Mongolia to take power. In the early 13th century, this man led an army and crushed China, an empire much larger than his own. This is the story of Genghis Khan.

 

Khan had an uncanny ability to lead. His followers were loyal to him and would do anything he commanded without question or hesitation. His enemies both feared and loathed him. He lived primitively as a barbarian and deemed civilized communities as cowards. Wherever his army went for their next conquest, there would flow streams of blood on the streets for days.

 

His reputation preceded him, and the opposing forces knew that death was looking for them. He destroyed homes, burned books, killed the men, captured women as trophies, and used children as human shields in battle. Get unprecedented access to the mind of this ruler and military commander.

 

Here's a preview of what you'll discover in this book:

• Genghis Khan's early childhood and upbringing
• An early indication of him emerging as a leader
• His rise to power after the death of his father
• Forging alliances and rising above the other clans
• Going international with the invasion of China
• Invasions of Europe and the Islamic world
• Capturing most of the known world
• The legacy that he left behind
• ….. And much more!

Genghis Khan had only one objective which was to expand his territory at any cost. He was brilliant at psychological warfare and had the instinctual ability to correctly predict the next move of his enemies. After his invasion of Europe, he arbitrarily implemented a set of laws to control the citizenry that he ruled over. This book will deliver you insights from his life on how he led his army, how he learned about his enemies, what was his strategy to overpower his rivals, and what made him tick.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MG Publishing
• Release date: Dec 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393492252

Book preview

The Life and Legend of Genghis Khan

Conquests, Power, Death, and The Mongol Empire

Robert Izzo

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Beginnings

The murder of Temujin’s father

The murder of Bekter

Capture and slavery of Temujin

Marriage to Borte

Rise of a new khan

Chapter Two: The Unification of the Mongols

Chapter Three: Genghis Khan

Conquest of Western Xia

Cultural appropriation

Social organization

The Yassa

The Yam

Conquest of the Jins

Conquest of the Khwarazmian empire, 1219-1221

The War in Afghanistan

Invasion of Eastern Europe

A futile search for immortality

Chapter Four: Retirement and Death

The murder of Joche

Other family

Reconquest of Western Xia

Chapter Five: The Legacy of Genghis Khan

Globalization

Chapter One: Beginnings

In 1171, a boy of nine years was traveling across the Mongolian plains to live with his bride-to-be.

His name was Temujin which, when translated, means Iron Man or Iron Worker, or Blacksmith, depending on what you want it to mean. It’s almost as if fate was hedging its bets on Temujin. He could as easily have spent his days hammering horseshoes as conquering the known world.

It really could have gone either way. Heroes are not made solely by their characters, but by their opportunities and the historical conditions surrounding them. Temujin, who became Genghis Khan, was the perfect confluence of character and opportunity.

There was nothing in Temujin’s ancestry that would predict that he, of all the Mongols, would be the one to unify a set of nomadic, territorial tribes and then go on to conquer large parts of Europe and Asia. That said, there was also nothing in his ancestry that would necessarily bar him from that greatness.

Temujin was born into tribal leadership. He was the second son of a tribal chief and powerful Khan, Yesügei. Before the birth of Temujin, Yesügei had expanded his territory by launching successful attacks on other tribes. Yesügei claimed, as ambitious leaders often do, to be descended from a god, though he modestly claimed to be separated from that origin by ten generations of ancestors.

Temujin was born with a birthmark in his palm that may have been a simple blood clot. Yesügei insisted that this mark was a sign of future greatness, thus turning a minor defect into a symbol of destiny. On his mother’s side, as well, Temujin, inherited bloodlines that could be roughly described as royal.

The young boy learned to ride horses at a very early age, and he started hunting before he was nine. He learned the use of a bow and arrow by targeting birds, then graduated to squirrels and other small game. He was shooting deer before the age of ten. He was proficient at ice skating. The Mongols carved skates out of wood or dried bones. He was also learning to hunt with falcons. Eventually, his mastery of the falcon would rival his mastery of war strategy.

Temujin was a sturdy, fast, and strong young man. But if size and strength determined destiny, the conquest of the medieval world would have gone to his brother, Qasar, who was much bigger and a master archer. Qasar is reputed to have had a superman-like physique, so broad in the shoulders and narrow at the waist that, when lying down on his side, a dog could pass underneath him at the middle.

He was born into a terrain that would today be described as harsh. The northern Mongolia into which he was born was fraught with violent tribal feuding. Mongolia, as a whole, was a fragmented domain. The lack of unity and a central government long held the Mongols back from developing the kind of infrastructure and trade agreements that lead to roads, laws, and peace. Though Mongolia would, in many ways, remain a simple tent and horse culture, there would be vast changes in just three decades.

In this culture, it was business as usual to send a nine-year-old to live with his ten-year-old fiancé’s family. This arrangement meant that the two children would live together platonically for three years until they were by Mongolian standards, of marriageable age. The earliest point at which they might produce children was an appropriate age for marriage.

Yesügei, Temujin’s father, had to do some negotiating to arrange his son’s marriage to the daughter of Dai Sechen, the head of a wealthier family. Yesügei was cash poor at that point in time (and he would not become rich later), and had only a single horse to offer as an engagement gift. At first, Dai Sechen refused the engagement at an annual tribe meeting. At that meeting, though, Temujin demonstrated the animal magnetism that would make him able to lead tens of thousands of men into war. He befriended Alchi-Noyan, Dai Sechen’s favorite son, who thought Temujin was delightful and urged his father to accept the marriage offer.

A compromise was struck. Dai Sechen agreed to the engagement and accepted the one horse as a down payment on a more suitable bride price. Meanwhile, Temujin would live with his future in-laws and work for them in exchange for his bride. It was a type of work-exchange program. Such live-in sons-in-law were a common practice, though not so usual among the aristocracy to which Temujin did officially still belong.

So, let us now return to that nine-year-old boy on the road to his future in-laws. The world he occupies could be described as crude, even for its time. There was no real alphabet; therefore, no history books or written stories, and no linguistic standardization. His people did not build dwellings, preferring to live in tents and remain unfixed.

The Mongolia that the nine-year-old Temujin traveled through was a diverse landscape. In the beginning, their path led past black rocks and fast rivers. A second leg of the journey took them across part of the Gobi desert, a formidable feature that was scorching hot in summer and ice-locked in winter.

Luckily, it was autumn when this trip took place. The desert was reasonably passable. Yesügei assured the young Temujin that, should they run out of water, there would be water in the desert. Of course, they would have to dig for it; it was only thirty feet down. Temujin was already absorbing lessons that would inform his career as a conqueror. It was, among other things, essential not to fear the desert or any other harsh terrain.

The final leg of the trip was characterized by open grassy plains and gently graded river valleys. Temujin and his father would not have moved on roads, per se, so much as pathways trammeled by other nomads.

At the time of Temujin’s childhood, China had already closed itself off from Mongolia with a seemingly unbreachable wall. China had buildings, centralized power by way of individual dynasties, and refined customs, including fireworks displays. The wall existed, in part, to protect these refinements from Mongolian invasions and, in part, to prevent ordinary Chinese citizens from defecting to the freedoms offered by the Mongolian plains.

The economy of twelfth century Mongolia was based entirely on domesticated livestock, especially sheep and goats. They did not farm. It is notable that they did not even raise grain. This meant that Mongols, in comparison to other societies, did not have the kind of trouble with obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay that came from grain consumption at a time before dentistry and medical care as we know it today.

Trade was mostly limited to furs and livestock, and it took place between the different Mongol tribes, not with the rest of the world. The tribesmen and women traveled much as the pioneers of the American West, in caravans.

The wealthiest Mongols pitched tents and then lived, not out of boxes, but out of giant chests which traveled with them and served as impromptu closets outlying the tents. From these chests they would withdraw cooking utensils and clothing necessary for day-to-day living any time the caravan stopped to water and feed the livestock.

The medieval Mongols had, of course, no municipal water, no electricity, and nothing that we would recognize as an acceptable food storage system. They also lacked windows and even the concept of rooms. A tent would always be one big living space without partitions.

Despite the simplicity of these arrangements, a Mongol tribe could be very hierarchical. The most powerful man of a tribe, typically called a khan, would be the leader, and his decisions would be law within the microcosm of his tents. His sons and daughters, along with their spouses and children, might continue to live and travel with their parents long after marriage. Other families within the tribe would have similar domestic patterns.

Mongolian men often took more than one wife, though the first wife would typically have the greatest status within the tribe and family. Wives were expected to be sexually faithful and obedient to their patriarch. Failure to live up to these expectations was punishable by death.

The tribe might well have a servant class that would bring food and beverages into the tent from the cargo chests and perform other services.

It’s likely that as he traveled with his father as escort, Temujin was riding a horse. The Mongolian species of horse, which still exists today, looks very much like it did in the Middle Ages: stocky, with bulging flank and chest muscles, an abdomen that might droop by a little or a lot, and surprisingly slender legs.

These horses averaged six hundred pounds in weight, making them midsize horses for their age. To put that into context, American Pharoah, the 2015 Triple Crown winning racehorse, weighs 1,170 pounds, almost twice the weight of the horses Genghis Khan would have ridden. Mongolian horses are so compact that some historians refer to them as ponies.

Mongolian horses were their tribes’ greatest asset. They were bred for speed, courage, ability to transport cargo, and endurance. They had no stables and would have to endure the extremes of summer heat and winter cold without weakening.

While the horse was the Mongolian rider’s greatest natural resource, his greatest technological advancements at this time were the saddle and stirrups. Saddles were made of wood, and they had high fronts and backs