Genghis Khan

Born c. 1162

Died 1227

Mongolian chieftain and conqueror

N o empire in history has ever been as large as that conquered in the 1200s by the Mongols, who began their conquests as a simple nation of shepherds and nomads in Central Asia. What welded them into a mighty fighting force was not a religion, or a political belief, or even a shared need for land or food; it was a man, a severe but shrewd warlord known to history as Genghis Khan.

The son of a chieftain

Today Mongolia is a quiet, underpopulated, and underdeveloped land to the north of China. For centuries, it had been home to a hardy nomadic people who had no written language or—until the Middle Ages—cities of their own. The man who briefly made Mongolia the most powerful nation on Earth was born with the name Temujin (TIM-yuh-jin) in 1162.

According to legend, Temujin came into the world grasping a lump of clotted blood, a sign of the forcefulness and violence that would dominate his life. His father was a chieftain named Yesugei (YES-oo-gay), who, when the boy was still young, arranged his marriage to Borte (BOHR-tuh), the daughter of a neighboring chieftain. The families celebrated with a feast, but while returning to his clan's area, Yesugei was poisoned by Tatars (TAT-arz), another nomadic group in the region.

A harsh childhood

Not only was Temujin's mother Ho'elun (hoh-LOON) left a widow and her children fatherless, but the status of nine-year-old Temujin, his father's designated heir, was uncertain. When the leader of another clan, Targutai (tar-goo-TY), seized all their possessions, Temujin's family was defenseless. They might have died had it not been for the resourcefulness and determination of his mother.

Over the next five years, Ho'elun kept her family— Temujin, a younger brother, two older half-brothers, and other smaller children—alive by avoiding the areas controlled by Targutai. This meant that they had to live off of the worst hunting and grazing grounds, and many times they barely made it through a winter without starving. The experience was unquestionably a hardening one for Temujin, who no doubt grew up quickly in the harsh environment of the Central Asia steppes (pronounced "steps"; vast areas of arid land with few or no trees).

When Temujin was fourteen, Targutai learned that he was still alive, and ordered his capture. Temujin managed to escape from a wooden harness in which his captors confined him, and taking advantage of their drunkenness during a feast, he fled their camp and returned to his family. The people who helped him in his escape, and the young men who joined forces with him immediately afterward, would later have honored places in his army. From among their ranks would come several of the hard-driving generals later referred to with admiration as the "Four Coursers of Genghis Khan."

Building his army

Steadily Temujin began taking what had been promised to him long before, and in due course he married

Borte. In honor of their marriage, his new father-in-law gave him a special cloak, and Temujin quickly gave the cloak as a present to Toghrul (tohg-ROOL), a powerful chieftain who had once been an ally of his father's. In the Mongolian culture, which placed a strong emphasis on honoring those more powerful, it was an extremely wise move.

Thus when Borte was kidnapped by a band of enemy tribesmen, Temujin was able to call on the aid of Toghrul. He also asked the help of a childhood friend named Jamukha, and their three forces—Temujin hastily raised an army of his own—defeated the enemy tribe and rescued Borte. For some time after this, Temujin and Jamukha were the closest of friends, but for some reason they later parted ways. Shortly after Jamukha and his men left Temujin's camp, in 1187, a group of clans proclaimed Temujin "Genghis Khan" (JING-us KAHN), meaning "rightful ruler."

Betrayed by old allies

Despite his impressive title, Genghis was but one of several khans, or chieftains, and in the years that followed, tensions between him and other leaders—particularly Jamukha—would grow. In 1198, both men aided the Chinese in a successful war against a common enemy, the Tatars. The shared effort, however, did little to reunite Genghis and Jamukha, and in 1191, clans opposed to Genghis's leadership recognized Jamukha as Gur Khan, or "sole ruler." They then launched an attack against Genghis, who managed to ward them off with the aid of Toghrul's troops.

Brian Boru

There is no historical indication that Brian Boru (buh-ROO; c. 941–1014), king of Ireland, had any of the cruel ways typically attributed to Genghis Khan; nonetheless, there were similarities between the two men, though they were widely separated by time and space. Both grew up hiding from enemies, surrounded by a nation disunited and given to internal quarrels, and both would later unite their people and lead them to victory. The empire won by Genghis barely outlasted his grandchildren; Brian's united Ireland did not outlast his own lifetime.

Brian's father led one of several kingdoms that constituted Ireland, and though the Irish had a single "high king," the position lacked any real authority to unite the nation. This made them vulnerable to attacks from outsiders, and in Brian's time Ireland was under constant threat from the Danes, descendants of the Vikings. Together with his older brother and others, Brian waged a long war against the Danes. Later, however, his brother tired of fighting and agreed to make peace with the enemy, but Brian refused to so, and continued fighting.

Eventually Brian won over enough kingdoms to pose a serious challenge to the Danes, and he set out to conquer all of Ireland. In 999, he won the capital city of Dublin, and in 1002 became high king. Now more than sixty years old, he turned his attention from battle to administration, seeking to solidify the position of the high

king. He also formed a strong alliance with the Catholic Church, and instituted a system of church schools to strengthen education throughout the country.

In later years, Brian referred to himself as "emperor of the Irish," and seems to have consciously modeled his rule on that of Charlemagne (see entry) and other great European figures. Though he had authority over the other kings of Ireland, many opposed his power. Eventually his enemies formed an alliance with the Danes, and marched against Brian on Good Friday, April 23, 1014. Brian was killed, and though ironically his side won the battle, their cause was lost without their leader. Brian's vision of Irish unity died with him.

In 1203, however, Jamukha influenced Toghrul to join his side, and they plotted to double-cross Genghis. Once again, the celebration of a betrothal—that is, the promise of a marriage, in this case of Toghrul's son to Genghis's daughter—would provide the occasion for the betrayal. Toghrul's son tried to lure Genghis to a feast, where they would kill him, but one of Genghis's advisors figured out what was going on, and urged him not to go.

Genghis gathered his forces, and called on the clans that had sworn their allegiance to him, but they doubted his ability to win against the superior forces of his enemies, so they chose to stay out of the battle. That battle was inconclusive, but soon afterward, Genghis defeated Toghrul. Next came Jamukha, who he captured some months later. Reportedly Genghis offered his old friend the opportunity to let bygones be bygones, but Jamukha was supposedly so ashamed at his capture that he demanded to be killed. Whether or not this is true, Genghis's men killed him, and in 1206 the Mongols united as a nation for the first time and proclaimed Genghis "ruler of all men."

Conquering China

With a swift and sudden fury, Genghis—then about forty-four years old—rode onto the pages of history, leaving an indelible mark in the twenty-one years that remained for him. The reasons behind his conquest of such a large empire are not clear, but it seems as though he simply started going and never stopped. The Mongols were extraordinarily fierce warriors who struck terror in the hearts of their victims, a terror that was justified by the heaps of corpses they left behind them. It simply did not occur to Genghis to let people live: in his mind, leaving survivors would require him to devote troops to overseeing them, and he wanted to keep on moving.

His viewpoint on conquered peoples began to change somewhat when, in 1211, after subduing several other peoples along the Chinese border, he and his armies went after China itself. The Chinese had long regarded the Mongols as just one of many "barbarian" groups at the fringes of their empire, and had believed that the Mongols' rightful place was as servants to China. Now that was about to change. By 1215, Genghis's hordes, as the Mongol troops were called, had reached Peking, now more commonly known as Beijing (bay-ZHEENG; capital of modern China), which they virtually destroyed. Soon afterward, a former official of the Chinese emperor pointed out to Genghis that if he allowed some people to continue living in the lands he conquered, they could pay him valuable tax money to finance further warfare. Genghis accepted this sound advice, and changed his tactics in the future.

The conquest of the world

In 1216, a sultan in Persia unwisely offended Genghis, who sent his troops westward to take what is now Iran, Afghanistan, southern Russia, Georgia, and Armenia. By 1223, the Mongols controlled a region that stretched from the borders of Turkey to northern India to China.

Genghis himself, about sixty-five years old, died on August 18, 1227, of complications resulting from falling off a horse. He was buried in northeastern Mongolia, and it was said that forty beautiful maidens and forty horses were slaughtered before his grave.

In the years that followed Genghis's death, the Mongolian empire would grow to reach from the outskirts of Vienna, Austria, in the west, to the Korean Peninsula in the east. It was an almost unbelievably vast realm, and the driving force behind its conquest had been Genghis. Within less than two centuries, the Mongols' empire would fade into memory, and the Mongols themselves would retreat to their homeland.

For More Information

Books

Brill, Marlene Targ. Extraordinary Young People. New York: Children's Press, 1996.

Demi. Chinghis Khan. New York: H. Holt, 1991.

Encyclopedia of World Biography, second edition. Detroit: Gale, 1998.

Lamb, Harold. Genghis Khan and the Mongol Horde. Illustrated by Elton Fax. Hamden, CT: Linnet Books, 1990.

Langley, Andrew. 100 Greatest Tyrants. Danbury, CT: Grolier Educational, 1997.

Web Sites

"Bios: Genghis Khan." [Online] Available http://library.thinkquest.org/17120/data/bios/khan/ (last accessed July 26, 2000).

"Boru." [Online] Available http://www.irishstoryteller.com/boru.html (last accessed July 26, 2000).

"Brian Boru." Clannada na Gadelica. [Online] Available http://www.clannada.org/docs/brianboru.htm (last accessed July 26, 2000).

"Empires beyond the Great Wall: The Heritage of Genghis Khan." [Online] Available http://vvv.com:80/khan/index.html (last accessed July 26, 2000).

"The History of Ireland—Irish Royalty." [Online] Available http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/7545/Ireland.html (last accessed July 26, 2000).

"P.M.A.: Virtual Exhibits—Genghis Khan." Provincial Museum of Alberta. [Online] Available http://www.pma.edmonton.ab.ca/vexhibit/genghis/intro.htm (last accessed July 26, 2000).