This tolerance had a political side—the Khan knew that happy subjects were less likely to rebel—but the Mongols also had an exceptionally liberal attitude towards religion.
While Genghis and many others subscribed to a shamanistic belief system that revered the spirits of the sky, winds and mountains, the Steppe peoples were a diverse bunch that included Nestorian Christians, Buddhists, Muslims and other animistic traditions. The Great Khan also had a personal interest in spirituality. He was known to pray in his tent for multiple days before important campaigns, and he often met with different religious leaders to discuss the details of their faiths.
In his old age, he even summoned the Taoist leader Qiu Chuji to his camp, and the pair supposedly had long conversations on immortality and philosophy. Along with the bow and the horse, the Mongols most potent weapon may have been their vast communication network. By stopping to rest or take on a fresh mount every few miles, official riders could often travel as far as miles a day. The system allowed goods and information to travel with unprecedented speed, but it also acted as the eyes and ears of the Khan.
Thanks to the Yam, he could easily keep abreast of military and political developments and maintain contact with his extensive network of spies and scouts. The Yam also helped protect foreign dignitaries and merchants during their travels.
The traditional narrative says he died in from injuries sustained in a fall from a horse, but other sources list everything from malaria to an arrow wound in the knee. One of the more questionable accounts even claims he was murdered while trying to force himself on a Chinese princess. However he died, the Khan took great pains to keep his final resting place a secret.
According to legend, his funeral procession slaughtered everyone they came in contact with during their journey and then repeatedly rode horses over his grave to help conceal it. The tomb is most likely on or around a Mongolian mountain called Burkhan Khaldun, but to this day its precise location is unknown. Jamukha asked for a noble death, which meant without the shedding of blood.
His former friend granted him that, so had his back broken. Among the first people to feel the force of the newly united Mongol nation was the Western Xia of northwest China, who succumbed to a sustained Mongol invasion. In , Genghis followed that by attacking the Jin, gobbling up land, cities and loot in a spectacular campaign that culminated in the fall of Beijing. The Mongolians were highly adept at communicating over large distances, something they had honed over centuries of rounding up animals on the steppe.
This enabled them to slowly tighten the noose around the enemy. Guile was another key weapon in the Mongol armoury. Genghis Khan relied heavily on spies and was certainly not above using fake news as a tactic. Genghis Khan was also a master of the feigned retreat, luring opponents out of defensive positions before delivering a lethal strike. Combine all this with his ability to quickly assimilate new technologies into his own army — such as Chinese siege weapons, mortars, gunpowder, not to mention thousands of captured troops — and you had a truly formidable foe.
And then, of course, there was terror. Cities that put up a fight were routinely subjected to an orgy of destruction: their men butchered, women raped and buildings razed. Yet in terms of sheer barbarity, the worst was yet to come. Having subdued the Western Xia and Jin to the east, Genghis Khan looked to establish trade links to his west.
He sent emissaries into the Khwarezmid Empire modern-day Afghanistan and Iraq. Let us conclude a firm treaty of friendship and peace. When he learned of this grisly snub, he flew into a rage that would change the course of history. Some of the most notorious of all Mongol atrocities were perpetrated during this campaign, visited upon the eastern outposts of Islam.
Muslim historians record that, after it succumbed to a five-month siege, 50, Mongol soldiers slaughtered ten men each. Among their other victims was the oasis city of Merv also Turkmenistan , whose libraries, constituting the greatest collection in central Asia, contained , volumes.
Most had their throats slit. The Genghis Khan of popular imagination tends to be a pitiless killer, leading a merciless army across the land and building an empire on the bones of millions. But there was another, often overlooked, side to him, and that was as the enlightened ruler who realised that if his Mongol Empire was to prove sustainable, he would have to work with the peoples he had subjugated.
As a result, his capital of Karakorum bristled with small communities of foreign silversmiths, silk-weavers, artists, architects and the like. And whether they were Christian, Muslim or Buddhist, it appears they were free to worship in peace.
The empire made the world a smaller place, in effect serving as a transmission belt for technology, science and goods between areas as diverse as China, Iran and eastern Europe. Without these Mongol trade routes, Marco Polo could never have made his celebrated journey from Europe to China in the late 13th century.
The widereaching network of routes connected by regular staging posts enabled a message to travel miles in a single day. It remained the fastest way of sending messages across Asia until the advent of the railways.
Genghis Khan was, it appears, entirely unrepentant for violence. By , the Mongol campaign in central Asia was effectively over. Countless cities had been razed, millions lay dead and Genghis Khan now presided over an empire that extended west to the Caspian Sea.
Was he now prepared to rest on his laurels? To sit back and savour the spoils of victory? Not a bit of it. Mongol texts tells us that Genghis Khan genuinely believed that it was his destiny to conquer the world for his god, Tengri.
Whatever his motivation, within a year he was on the campaign trail again, leading an army back into China. But it was not to be. During , he was taken ill and died only days later. His body was transported all the way back to Mongolia, where it was buried somewhere unknown near a sacred mountain. Its location remains a mystery to this day.
But my life was too short to take the whole world. Young Temujin was a member of the Borjigin tribe and a descendant of Khabul Khan, who briefly united Mongols against the Jin Chin Dynasty of northern China in the early s.
According to the "Secret History of the Mongols" a contemporary account of Mongol history , Temujin was born with a blood clot in his hand, a sign in Mongol folklore that he was destined to become a leader. His mother, Hoelun, taught him the grim reality of living in turbulent Mongol tribal society and the need for alliances. When Temujin was 9, his father took him to live with the family of his future bride, Borte.
On the return trip home, Yesukhei encountered members of the rival Tatar tribe, who invited him to a conciliatory meal, where he was poisoned for past transgressions against the Tatars. Upon hearing of his father's death, Temujin returned home to claim his position as clan chief. However, the clan refused to recognize the young boy's leadership and ostracized his family of younger brothers and half-brothers to near-refugee status. The pressure on the family was great, and in a dispute over the spoils of a hunting expedition, Temujin quarreled with and killed his half-brother, Bekhter, confirming his position as head of the family.
At 16, Temujin married Borte, cementing the alliance between the Konkirat tribe and his own. Soon after, Borte was kidnapped by the rival Merkit tribe and given to a chieftain as a wife.
Temujin was able to rescue her, and soon after, she gave birth to her first son, Jochi. Though Borte's captivity with the Konkirat tribe cast doubt on Jochi's birth, Temujin accepted him as his own. With Borte, Temujin had four sons and many other children with other wives, as was Mongolian custom. However, only his male children with Borte qualified for succession in the family. When Temujin was about 20, he was captured in a raid by former family allies, the Taichi'uts, and temporarily enslaved.
He escaped with the help of a sympathetic captor, and joined his brothers and several other clansmen to form a fighting unit. Temujin began his slow ascent to power by building a large army of more than 20, men. He set out to destroy traditional divisions among the various tribes and unite the Mongols under his rule. Through a combination of outstanding military tactics and merciless brutality, Temujin avenged his father's murder by decimating the Tatar army, and ordered the killing of every Tatar male who was more than approximately 3 feet tall taller than the linchpin, or axle pin, of a wagon wheel.
Temujin's Mongols then defeated the Taichi'ut using a series of massive cavalry attacks, including having all of the Taichi'ut chiefs boiled alive. By , Temujin had also defeated the powerful Naiman tribe, thus giving him control of central and eastern Mongolia. The early success of the Mongol army owed much to the brilliant military tactics of Genghis Khan, as well as his understanding of his enemies' motivations.
He employed an extensive spy network and was quick to adopt new technologies from his enemies. The well-trained Mongol army of 80, fighters coordinated their advance with a sophisticated signaling system of smoke and burning torches. Large drums sounded commands to charge, and further orders were conveyed with flag signals.
Every soldier was fully equipped with a bow, arrows, a shield, a dagger and a lasso. He also carried large saddlebags for food, tools and spare clothes. The saddlebag was waterproof and could be inflated to serve as a life preserver when crossing deep and swift-moving rivers. Cavalrymen carried a small sword, javelins, body armor, a battle-ax or mace, and a lance with a hook to pull enemies off of their horses.
The Mongols were devastating in their attacks. Because they could maneuver a galloping horse using only their legs, their hands were free to shoot arrows. The entire army was followed by a well-organized supply system of oxcarts carrying food for soldiers and beasts alike, as well as military equipment, shamans for spiritual and medical aid, and officials to catalog the booty.
Following the victories over the rival Mongol tribes, other tribal leaders agreed to peace and bestowed on Temujin the title of "Genghis Khan," which means "universal ruler.
With this declaration of divine status, it was accepted that his destiny was to rule the world. Religious tolerance was practiced in the Mongol Empire, but to defy the Great Khan was equal to defying the will of God.
It was with such religious fervor that Genghis Khan is supposed to have said to one of his enemies, "I am the flail of God.
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