Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome back for Day 10 of Have a Day w/ The History Wizard. Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Day 9 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. This week we’re going to be learning about history’s favorite war criminal, Genghis Khan. The man, the myth, the incorrigible slut.

But first! It’s time for another installment of the Alchemist’s Table. Today potion is called Summer Cyclone. Take 1.5 oz of anejo tequila, 1 oz of Blue curacao, and 1 oz of coconut syrup. Shake vigorously and pour into a wine glass. Top with prosecco and enjoy.

With that out of the way it’s time for a biography! Would it shock you to hear that Genghis Khan was not his given name? The Khan of khans was born Temujin sometime between the years 1155 and 1167, there is still a lot of dispute over exactly when Temujin was born, though many traditions have him being born in the Year of the Pig, so either 1155 or 1167, although based on its fidelity to the accepted timeline of Temujin’s life, 1162 is generally considered the most accurate estimate for his birth year. Temujin’s life gets even more confusing when you learn that even his birthPLACE is up for debate. The Secret History records his birthplace as Delüün Boldog on the Onon River, but this has been placed at either Dadal in Khentii Province or in southern Agin-Buryat Okrug, Russia. The Secret History being the book The Secret History of the Mongols, which is the oldest surviving literary text we have written in a Mongolian language, though it bears noting that it was written after Temujin’s death.

Oh yeah, and we also don’t know where he’s buried. It’s generally accepted that he is buried somewhere near the Mongol sacred mountain of Burkhan Khaldun in the Khentii Mountains. But the exact site of his burial is, to this day, unknown.

So, we don’t know when he was born, we don’t know where he was born, and we don’t know where he was buried.  So what DO we know about the life and times of Temujin? Luckily, a whole fucking lot. Though, before we get into the scholarly consensus, let’s talk about some of the myths and legends surrounding his birth. Some legends say that Temujin was born clutching a blood clot in his hand, this is a somewhat common trope in various Asian folktales prophesying that Temujin would grow up to be a great warrior. It is also said that Hö'elün, Temujin’s mother and the principal wife of Yesügei, chieftain of the Borjigin tribe was impregnated by a ray of light. Oh, and apparently Temujin’s entire family line was started by a blue grey wolf and a red doe about 21 generations prior to his birth.

Yesügei,died when Temujin was 8 years old after being poisoned by a group of Tartars that he was sharing a meal with. Temujin was able to ally himself with some of his father’s former friends and allies and began to rise to some levels of prominence, but tensions with one of his friends Jamukha eventually led to the two men fighting a decisive battle, which Temujin list and afterwards was not seen in the lands of his father for about a decade.

There was, for a long while, debate and dispute over where Temujin was and what happened to him during that time, though it is now generally accepted that he crossed the border into Jin China where he lived as either a servant or slave, sources are unclear on exactly which.

Temujin’s clash with his former friend Jamukha took place in 1187 Dalan Baljut, and it would be around 1196 that Temujin returned to the steppes, now much more powerful and influential than he’d been before. In early summer 1196, he participated in a joint campaign with the Jin against the Tatars, who had begun to act contrary to Jin interests. As a reward, the Jin awarded him the honorific cha-ut kuri, the meaning of which probably approximated "commander of hundreds" in Jurchen. At around the same time, he assisted Toghrul with reclaiming the lordship of the Kereit, which had been usurped by one of Toghrul's relatives with the support of the powerful Naiman tribe. The actions of 1196 fundamentally changed Temüjin's position in the steppe—although nominally still Toghrul's vassal, he was de facto an equal ally.

Now, when speaking of Genghis Khan one of the things that is most often spoken about is his infamous cruelty, but this trait was not unique to him. After his defeat of his former friend Temujin Jamukha is said to have boiled 70 prisoners alive. Shortly after his return, when many of Jamukha’s former allies defected in the face of his cruelty and harshness, Temujin was able to subdue the disobedient Jurkin tribe that had previously offended him at a feast and refused to participate in the Tatar campaign. After executing their leaders, he had one of his men symbolically break a leading Jurkin's back in a staged wrestling match in retribution.

What followed was a series of campaigns with Temujin and Torghul on one side, and Jamukha on the other, having been named gurkhan, khan of the tribes, by those tribes, mainly the Onggirat, the Tayichiud, and the Tatars, who wanted to break the growing strength and supremacy of Temujin and Torghul. This campaign began in 1201 and was completed by 1202. During it a man named Jebe, from one of the tribes Temujin fought against entered into Temujin’s service. How you ask? Well during one of the battles Jebe shot Temujin’s horse out from under him. Temujin thought that was dope as fuck and said “Hey, you want a job? If you don’t I can always kill you.” Jebe took the job.

After each tribe was defeated Temujin killed their leaders and folded the surviving troops into his armies, many of them becoming nökor or noyans of Temujin during the rest of his life and campaigns. After proposing the marriage of his son Jochi (who might not have been his actual blood related son, but might have been adopted by Temujin after his wife Borte was captured and then several months later gave birth to him) Temujin was betrayed by his ally Torghul. Jamukha, who had been granted clemency following his defeat whispered poison into the ears of the other tribal leaders. He said that this was a ploy by Temujin to gain control of Torgul’s tribe the Kereit. He also fed into their fears of how Temujin was already shaking up steppe society by promotion based on merit instead of based on blood lines, something that annoyed and angered many of the tribal aristocracy.

After his defeat and forced retreat Temujin called in every available ally he still had and swore to them a, now famous, oath of loyalty that has come to be known as the Baljuna Covenant.

What follows is allegedly part of Temujin’s declaration as recorded in The Yuanshi in 1370: "[Temüjin] raised his hands and looking up at Heaven swore, saying "If I am able to achieve my 'Great Work', I shall [always] share with you men the sweet and the bitter. If I break this word, may I be like the water of the River, drunk up by others." Among officers and men there was none who was not moved to tears.

The oath-takers of Baljuna were a very heterogeneous group—men from nine different tribes who included Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists, united only by loyalty to Temüjin and to each other. This is something that Temujin would maintain for his entire life. The khanate was a shockingly diverse and multicultural place. Genghis Khan was well known, by friends and enemies alike, for being a culturally and religiously tolerant man. All people needed was to be loyal to him.

This doesn’t mean that Temujin was not a religious man. He worshipped the ancient Turkic deity Tengri, God of the Heavens and the Sky. Tengrism is an interesting religion that has elements of poly and pantheism in it. Part of Genghis Khan’s reason for conquest was his belief that it was the destiny that Tengri had laid out for him, but more on that later.

After the Baljuna Covenant there followed a few years of war where Temujin and his allies defeated Torghul and eventually Temujin’s childhood friend Jamukha. The Secret histories indicate that, despite his many betrayals Jamukha was executed honorably, though other sources indicate that he was dismembered until he finally died.

And so it was, that in 1206 Temujin became the sole ruler of the steppes. He proceeded to call a kuraltai, a gathering of the tribal chiefs and took for himself the name Genghis Khan and was named the Khaqan, the Khan of Khans over all of the Mongol tribes. Now, Genghis Khan knew something that all the men he had defeated in his rise to power didn’t. He knew why no tribal confederacies before had succeeded. It wasn’t because of any personal failing on the parts of the men in charge, it was because of the very structure of their society. The Mongol tribes were too, well, tribal. They felt their loyalty belonged to their specific family of clan and not to a larger idea of an empire or nation. 

Luckily for Genghis though, he’d already killed most of the traditional tribal leaders and chieftains, so he was able to reshape his society, like wet clay, into what he wanted it to be. So he set out to create a highly militarized society and meritocracy where loyalty to the nation, to the khan, and your own ability would decide how far you could rise.

Every single man in the empire between the ages of 15 and 70 was in the army and was organized into large 1000 men segments that were further broken down into 10 blocks of 100 that were broken down into 10 units of 10. Any captured troops who were to be folded into the Khan’s army were sent, each one, to different units so they couldn’t organize and rebel against him.

Between 1206 and 1210 Genghis consolidated his hold on power over the steppes. It was during this time that the Tangut led Western Xia kingdom fell under Mongol control. The siege of the capital Zhongxing while ultimately successful, was not one of the Khan’s greatest moments. His armies, while vast, lacked any true siege equipment save for some crude battering rams and their attempt to flood the city by diverting the Yellow River failed and wound up flooding their own camp. Still, in the end Emperor Zhangzong surrendered to the Khan and agreed to pay tribute in exchange for the Mongols withdrawing.

And now Genghis would turn his attention to the Jin Dynasty Wanyan Yongji, a man who had previously served with Genghis back when he worked for the Jin, and who Genghis hated. usurped the Jin throne in 1209. When Genghis was asked to submit and pay the annual tribute to Yongji in 1210, Genghis instead mocked the emperor, spat, and rode away from the Jin envoy—a challenge that meant war.

Despite being outnumbered 8 to 1 by the 600,000 strong Jin army, Genghis decided to invade. He made his way easily across the border and immediately began a scorched earth campaign. Anything they couldn’t carry with them would be burnt. If they couldn’t have the supplies, they’d make sure that the Jin couldn’t have them. 

The conquest of the Jin took 4 years and during that time the army of Genghis Khan grew, both in size and ability. After the failed siege of Xijing Genghis decided it was time to build a troops of siege engineers and proceeded to recruit some 500 of them from the Jin over the next 2 years. 

This trait is what would make the Khan and his armies so fearsome and successful. Well this and their willingness to be utterly ruthless and brutal when they felt they had to. But this flexibility, this humility to look at their methods and say “this isn’t working, let’s try something new” would allow them to defeat forces they, frankly, shouldn’t have been able to.

Genghis used his past successes and the stories about him that spread ahead of his armies enhance his reputation and then he wielded it like a club to smash through resistance. Take the siege of the Jin capital of Zhongdu. Yongji had been killed and the government was in shambles, but still Genghis had no way to breach Zongdu’s walls. His army was able to do nothing except camp before the city walls and wait as disease and starvation ravaged his armies. Some sources even allege that they turned to cannibalism to survive during this siege. Yet, despite this Genghis still called for peace negotiations with the Jin. Negotiations that were successful. Genghis secured the Jin empire as well as a tribute of 3,000 horses, 500 slaves, a Jin princess, and massive amounts of gold and silk.

As we stated earlier, of all the things Genghis Khan is known for, one of the most notable and oft repeated is his brutality to his enemies. Nowhere are the more stories about this than in his treatment of the Khwarazmian Empire, a Persianate Sunni Muslim empire. The khans armies there were under the command of his youngest son Tolui. Over the course of the conquest three major sieges of note took place at Nishapur, Merv, and Herat. Contemporary Persian historians put the death toll of this campaign at 5.7 million people, though more modern historians estimate and much lesser death toll of 1.25.

One story says, that after the death of one of Genghis’s step sons Toquchar, that the entire city was order slaughtered. Some stories say that all 1,748,000 people living in Nishapur were killed within an hour. 

Genghis Khan would die in 1227. He had fallen off his horse in the winter of 1226 and became more and more ill as time went on, eventually passing on August 25, 1227. The exact nature of the khan's death has been the subject of intense speculation. Rashid al-Din and the History of Yuan mention he suffered from an illness—possibly malaria, typhus, or bubonic plague. Marco Polo claimed that he was shot by an arrow during a siege, while Carpini reported that Genghis was struck by lightning. Legends sprang up around the event—the most famous recounts how the beautiful Gurbelchin, formerly the Xia emperor's wife, injured Genghis's genitals with a dagger during sex.

Following Genghis Khan’s death the capital city of the Xia Kingdom, Zhongxing was put to the sword and almost the entire population of the city was killed.

There are many stories of the Khan’s brutality, and of the brutality of his descendants. One story from later in the Mongol Empire has the plague entering Europe during the Siege of Caffa when the Mongol troops launched diseased bodies over the walls in an early form of biological warfare.

We also have stories of Mongol armies marching civilians in front of their armies to act as human shields. Over the entire course of the Mongol Empire, from 1206 until about 1400 it is estimated that their armies killed between 30 and 50 million people. Based on Antarctic ice cores, scientists have identified a sudden decrease in atmospheric carbon of about three parts per million (ppm) between 1200 and 1470 CE, which roughly correlates with the Mongol invasion of Asia as well as the Black Death in Europe. So it is very possible that Genghis Khan, his descendant’s and armies killed enough people to cool down the entire planet.

Still, slaughter and mayhem are not all Genghis was known for. He was largely responsible for the existence and prosperity of the Silk Road, he is, at least partially responsible for the existence of written Mongolian languages, which were based on the Uyghur script, he helped lay the foundation of the legal system known as the Great Yasa.

The legacy of Genghis Khan is a complex one. One the one hand we have plenty of stories of him boiling his enemies alive, of his armies creating mountains of thousands of skulls, of human shields. But as we study more and more of the legacy and life of Genghis Khan we are more and more convinced that those stories are fear based myths from the people’s he conquered, because it is also often noted that Genghis Khan abolished the use of torture thoroughout his Empire. He was religiously tolerant, he outlawed slavery, he created one of the first international postal systems. Also, about .5 percent of the population is directly related to him.

So what do we really know about the life of Genghis Khan, especially considering that no eyewitness description or contemporaneous depiction of Genghis Khan survives. We don’t really know anything. Not where or when he was born, not where he was buried, not what he looked like, nor even, really, what his conduct was in war. So did he even really exist? Yes, there’s no debate on that. There ARE plenty of contemporary sources from Mongolian, Chinese, and Persian sources discussing Genghis Khan and his verifiable existence. But beyond saying that he lived? Most everything else is propaganda from one source or another. We can still find truth in propaganda though.

All we have to do is find the things that multiple, independent sources agree on and we can reasonably assume that to be the truth. So, Genghis Khan existed, and he definitely killed a lot of people in his quest for power and wealth. The details though? Those are a bit fuzzier.

That’s it for this week folks. No new reviews, so let’s get right into the outro.

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