Transcript for:
Alexander the Great vs. Genghis Khan

it's AC who's back on TRS great to be back we're going to talk more about world history today it's Alexander the Great versus chenis Khan but both of these topics are going to touch India fair to say that Modern Day Iran is the core of ancient Persia it is the successor state of ancient Persia successor State yes and I believe it was headquartered in Baghdad if I'm not mistaken zoroaster was born Hindu by the way he was born in pres gandhar m we had a Zoran expert on the show okay I know that Zoran look at themselves as a sister religion to Hinduism I would say daughter religion to Vic Hinduism effectively because we're talking about Alexander the Great at that point they were Zoras the Persians were Zoras yes why is Alexander the Great celebrated as Alexander the Great Well the geographical land mass he conquered wasn't that great compared to somebody like chungis Khan but the reason that he is so much celebrated the way he is is because I wonder who the son of Chandra Gupta MAA and his Greek wife was part of history is is kind of lost some people say the the lady's name was Helen have there been very very big historical Warlords who were female so there have been a few women Queens in Indian history like uh let's talk about jingis Khan all I know is that his International Conquest began at age 40 imagine that late 40s you begin your International career before that you just struggling domestically and he was alive at the same time that prv Chan was alive in India chupta MAA was also based out of modern day Bihar Patra pres de Patna do you think there could have been white people all over Bihar at one point there was a Greek Embassy in patut during the time of ashoke they even built temples and monasteries the Greeks I wonder what they brought to India what they brought to India was a little bit of Greek genetics it's a world history special with abijit Chava and myself these are the episodes I look forward to the most because I absolutely adore the subject of world history we're talking about Alexander the Great and chenis Khan in today's episode so if you enjoy War Stories war strategies psychology and if you enjoy the aspects of history that you can actually apply in your professional life in your social situations and in your personal journey of life if you're that kind of person you're going to enjoy this episode history is one of those subjects that you're not taught in an interesting way while you're a part of the traditional education system but this podcast is an example of how history should be taught according to me it's an evergreen episode it's an episode I enjoyed very very much this is AC along with ra on TRS [Music] I don't know how long this podcast is going to be this is one of those topics that I have wanted to do for a very long time with the man in front of me it's AC who's back on TRS great to be back welcome AC thank you so much I love history based podcasts uh a AUD is feel mixed about it like whenever we do an Indian history based episode you know it'll always do well but we're going to talk more about world history today but both of these topics are going to touch India it's Alexander the Great versus chenis Khan MH uh and then we're also going to talk about the Warlords who were forgotten a little bit but I'm going to repeat the same question I asked you before we started rolling yes why is it even important to know about these topics and or the question could be posed as why should we even learn history in the first place yes because if you learn history if you learn history and you understand the patterns of human history then you can actually understand why the way the world is why the world is the way it is today and what could happen in the future because the same patterns that that occur throughout history that Ripple throughout history like waves the same patterns are in play today so that's why you should understand history that's why you should study history because it tells you it it helps you to understand the world as it is today and why study great figures of the past well there are various schools of thought of History one is the cyclical school of thought that history occurs in Cycles what happened in the past will again happen in the future that's one school of thought there is another school of thought called the violent ape theory that we human beings are nothing but violent Apes like our cousins the chimpanzees and everything we do is driven by those base instincts violent instincts of of conquest of reproduction of of having more territory and more resources and that's why we behave the way we do there is one more school of thought called the great man school of thought or great man theory of history that everything that's happened throughout human history has been driven by a small number of great and very powerful men like Alexander the Great like jingis Khan like Napoleon like various other people like uh Vish vishnugupta chanakya and Chandra Gupta Moria and so on so forth so there are these different schools of thought of human history and the the point is that if you study history you get to understand human nature and human psychology and that is very relevant to us today yeah uh it's also a reason that almost 99% of the CEOs I've ever met are into history okay that's interesting like they always have an angle of being either into the study of war or the study of history uh I also think it's one of those subjects that you don't love a lot in school but then as an adult when you really discover the fun aspects of History you realize that why didn't I enjoy this in school especially if you're into business if you're into business competition corporate competition and all the same patterns and the same tactics and strategies you use in Warfare can be used in different ways in in a very different but similar way in business competition so that's why business people study let's say sunsu uh The Art of War for example it's very popular but you got to know how to use that m H eventually you do realize ways to use these psychological tricks from history if you keep studying about history so uh I hope that there's a lot of first time History Podcast listeners on this one yeah uh because I remember I discovered you through an elaborate and fantastic chenis Khan video so we'll do a bit of a recap later on we have to talk a little bit about Alexander but before that Alexander the Great section I have a simple question for you you know you spoke about the great man man Theory mhm I wonder why there aren't more women within the great man Theory and have there been very very big historical Warlords who were female there have been a few well historically our history has been all about muscle power look it's all about power geopolitics is all about the utilization and application of power in its various forms and throughout most of History we did not have the technology we we have today which meant that power was typically in the form of muscle power physical physical power and when it comes to physical power the men are stronger in the human species unlike other species when you have stronger females in some species so that's why it was all about men right so most of human history has been about men and typically most societies historically were patriarchal societies so that's why it's about great men have there been any great women in the past well I can think of a few I can think of Katherine the Great the Russian Tarina the Russian Empress I can think of buddhika the the brittonic chieftain who fought the Romans I can think of a few great uh Queens in Indian history like uh Rani aalai Hulker like Rani lakmi and so on so there have been a few women who have been great in history but mostly it's about men it's about male conquest yeah uh one of my most memorable episodes ever was with vikas divyati who's one of the leading UPS coaches in post Independence India honestly and he's a legendary figure in the Indian coaching scene okay uh the takeaway had from that podcast was a psychology based theory that he mentioned I can't remember what it was exactly effectively he said that um the nature of being a man and the nature of being woman is very different due to the childhood because as a guy when you're a boy and you're growing up and you're turning into a man you're separated from your mother mhm in little ways for example you're not allowed to sleep on the same bed that you could once easily sleep on you're told that know you're a teenager now go away MH uh and you just accept because that's how Society works that doesn't usually happen with the girls MH they uh enjoy the love of a mother for their whole life uh in a not so similar way to the guys that void that's created in your childhood often leaves men with the need for fulfilling that void throughout their life okay which is why guys have extremely massive goals even after they've achieved extremely massive goals but women in a very healthy way learn contentment guys are not able to learn contentment as easily as women can okay women are simpler and nicer species which also leads into that statement of if there was only female leaders all over the world we probably wouldn't see Wars I don't know how true that is that is a hypothesis but I I've known a lot of men and and have noticed that it's the guys who have that sense of aggressive expansionism aggressive ambition sometimes at the cost of their own health we talking about this earlier today and I think that this great man theory is definitely slightly about human male psychology as well you always feel little unfulfilled so even if you've conquered what your father lost in those battles yeah you want to create a kingdom that's 1,000 times larger yes indeed you don't know why but it's an internal Primal need it's it's a it's a desire it's a push it's a thing it's a hunger yeah maybe to explore this further now let's begin the story of Alexander the Great yes so Alexander the Great Alexander the Greek the great the Macedonian whatever you want to call him he was born in the 4th Century BC I think the year of his birth was 356 BC and he was born in this country called Macedonia to the north of Greece today we think of Macedonia as Greece itself but historically Macedonia was this little country this little kingdom north of Greece his father was a great conqueror his name was Phillip Philip of Macedon and Philip was this great expansionist this conqueror who fought the Greeks and other neighboring kingdoms and who subjugated them all so Philip is this guy this great conqueror this very masculine manly figure who does everything a man would do a great man would do he conquers and subdues all the Greek kingdoms and States city states like Athens and Sparta and whatnot and brings them all under his Dominion so that is the father now there's the mother figure that's Olympus so Alexander's mother was the greater influence in his life she was a very strong willed woman she was the daughter of a king of a neighboring country Greek country called epirus and her brother when Alexander was a teenager was the king of epirus so she was this imperious strong willed woman very demanding very pushy and she did not get along well with her husband King Phillip and that these are the two dominant figures in the life of Alexander so Alexander was this boy he was he at a very young age he was very precocious he he displayed a lot of qualities that looked like would mean that he would be a great king one day and his parents appointed a tutor for him Aristotle very famous name a philosopher and Aristotle was also very influential in the formative years of Alexander's life he taught him various subjects that you would teach typically teach a prince like logic like mathematics like geography and all and geography is is what fascinated Alexander because Aristotle used to speak about the eastern Nations see Greece is is located in eastern Southeastern Europe mediterian SE Asian SE uh the Greece of that day included present day Turkey uh the present day region of Anatolia the region of th which is the small European portion of turkey and so on the Baltic region also was kind of part of their world so the Greeks understood Europe they knew Europe reasonably well but they knew next to nothing about Asia Beyond Persia so uh like I said historically the present day Turkey was Greece but at that time when Alexander was born and he was a young teenager it was under Persian control our Persian Neighbors from our perspective India Persia is our well right now there's Pakistan between us but historically Persia and India were neighbors and Persia was this this very powerful Empire who was very militaristic and expansionist and they always sought to expand westwards they never fought India just let's pause it a little bit to understand Persia better because modern day people of Iranian descent when they're living abroad they refer to themselves as Persian yes so fair to say that Modern Day Iran is the core of ancient Persia it is the successor state of ancient Persia successor State yes uh and I believe it was headquartered in Bagdad if I'm not mistaken uh the ancient during Alexander's time the capital city of Persia was parur the the the Greeks called it persopolis today the Iranians called it parsa that was the ancient capital of Persia and they had other big cities under the Dominion like Bagdad like like Damascus as well by the way Syria was under Persian control at that time so they had many great cities under the control and Persia was it its territorial extent was from the Indus River so more or less the West Bank of the indust river sometimes plus or minus something all the way to Syria and the coast of the Mediterranean Sea massive even even present day Judea Israel all of that and even Egypt in those days was under Persian domination under Persian control massive Empire great movie recommendation I'd like to give at this point is 300 which a lot of my Pary friends really hate okay uh like if you recommend or talk about 300 Pary friends they they don't react very well okay because King zil xes is shown in a very villainous way in the movie but Xerxes daras all these Persian kings are revered amongst the Pari Community it's a very accidentalist version of what happened there zerus his name was K but the Greeks called him zerxis dasas was D the Greeks called him dasas arak zeris was arak chatra the Greeks called him araz zerus so these names are all twisted and and and you know modified and and the depiction is very negative fair to say that the ancient Kingdom of Persia which was one of the biggest kingdoms on the face of the Earth mhm probably it would rival the whole Indian subcontinent but I think the Indian subcontinent that time was probably a bunch of different kingdoms together it depends on what time period we're looking at Indian the Indian subcontinent has seen these cycles in which we have consolidation under one Empire like the morian Empire The kushan Empire and then fragmentation as well but one culture one civilization okay uh the Persian civilization MH do you think they followed zorran ISM yes they were zorri well during the time of Alexander they were zorran yes before that they were obviously pre pre Zoran which means they were Hindus okay okay yes okay uh zoraster was born Hindu by the way he was born in present day gandhar which is present day Afghanistan which is historical gandhar part of India H we had a Zoran expert on the show okay uh I know that Zoras look at themselves as a sister religion to Hinduism I would say daughter religion to Vic Hinduism but yeah okay whichever way you want to look at it effectively because we're talking about Alexander the Great at that point they were Zoran the Persians were Zoran yes so that whole stretch from say Iran or Afghanistan up till syriah MH uh and kind of stretching into Egypt as well they were following Zoran ISM oh no they were under persan domination or control which means you would have local Governors who persons but the people were all in Mesopotamia they were Mesopotamian people Assyrian or whatever in Egypt they were Egyptian but they all followed various different polytheistic belief systems and cultures so polytheistic systems get along very well together because you can you take anything as a God and you you worship it it's when you have monotheistic religions versus polytheistic religions that you have major clashes cultural clashes polytheistic cultures get along very well together Shinto is a great example in Japan it syncretized very beautifully with Hinduism budh M and today it's it's indistinguishable from the Indian religions and so on just a tangential example no no sure uh that's what these history podcasts are about coming back to Alexander where we paused the story uh the reason I paused was to give people a version of what ancient Persia was at this point yes I believe Alexander the Great was responsible for the fall of the Persian Empire the destruction of Persia the destruction of Persia yes but pre Alexander how long was Persia that's another controversial question so when did ancient Persia begin well it is said that it begins with the ainet dynasty the dynasty whose founder was the legendary hak shabish AIS okay and that's about let's say 3,000 BC uh 3,000 3,000 years before today around 1,00 1,200 BC we're not quite sure when it begins but the ancient Persians are very closely related to the ancient Indians the post VC or late Vic Indian people the Persian language is like a daughter language of Sanskrit it's very similar to Sanskrit the beist inscription of the of the emperor dasas bhagana inscription it sounds if you read it just like Sanskrit with certain pronunciation changes so very similar to us culturally historically genetically also today's persons are not that similar to us genetically but the ancient persons were essentially the same as us Indians genetically over the they got mixed with they got mixed with the people from the Caucasus during the turkic occupation of Persia which we will which we'll discussed during the jingis Khan part of the thing yeah and all so on going over a very long period of history in today's episode but fun uh okay back to Alexander uh and his parents I believe he was sent away from his family until the age of 17 or 18 well not really sent away it's an interesting episode of his life go for it take over so like I said his parents did not get along together very strong willed father and very strong willed imperious mother Olympus the daughter of the king of epirus and father is the king of Macedonia who had subdued the whole of Greece so mother and father don't get along and Alexander was closer to his mother he had this rivalry with his father he saw his father as kind of an and as a competitor in manliness and and and in in creating a Legacy so his his parents didn't get along his father marries another lady his mother in a fit of rage obviously naturally leaves the the her her her husband's place and moves moves back to her home country her native country epirus where her brother is the king and Alexander moves there with her so he's separated from his father for a period of time and his mother's brother his uncle obviously is very upset with uh Phillip for marrying another lady and uh disrespecting his sister so Philip he sends diplomats and embassies to his brother-in-law to the to the brother of olympias and he also offers I think his sister or his daughter probably sister in marriage to this King so everything is fine between the two kings but Alexander is staying for a while with his mother now King philli he had subdued the whole of Greece and he was beginning to plan for a massive conquest of Persia of the Persian Empire because Persia and Greece had history Persia like we discussed the movie 300 the Persians had invaded and occupied and conquered Greece during the reign of king of Emperor CH xerxis and he had I think it was zerxis or daras one of these two who had burned Athens once so there was this this animosity historical animosity uh so Philip wanted to it was not his plans for Conquest were not out of a need or a desire for Revenge it was out of a desire for self- glorification and for leaving a great legacy and proving how great he was so he had begun to amass a great Army drawn from all the different city states and kingdoms within Greece and after some time he was reconciled with his son Alexander by the time Alexander was 17 or 18 years old he he already demonstrated signs of greatness he was very fit very athletic he had great qualities as a leader and all and in a battle or two he was even given the Comm command of One Wing of Philip's Army and he acquitted himself so well that Philip felt insecure about the what the qualities his son was demonstrating okay so this is where we are and Kip Philip is planning to invade Persia so he holds this great celebration or great feast or whatever in which he invites all the various local rulers and all and there's a military parade in which Philip is the centerpiece of the you know the entire thing and it is in this parade that Philip is assassinated somebody stabs him or spears him or something and and the Assassin tries to escape but some one of Philip's soldiers assassin kills the Assassin if he had not killed the Assassin then the motive would have been discovered why Philip was assassinated so today historians speculate maybe it was Olympus mother of Alexander who had this done maybe it was Alexander himself who had his father assassinated or maybe it was something else we're not sure it's all shouted in mystery because the Assassin was killed so that's where we are that's when that's when Alexander is overnight all of a sudden with one hour's notice thrust into into the position of being the king of Macedonia and then he has choices to make as to what does he do now does he go ahead with Philip's plan to invade Persia or does he first try to consolidate his rule over Greece because now that Philip is dead all these various principalities and states in Greece may feel that they no longer have the need to submit to the new king of Macedonia so that's a that's the choice Alexander had and he decided to go ahead and go ahead with the plans to invade Persia but then he ran into problems with the city of with with the kingdom of Thieves so to the south of Macedonia there was epirus Southwest and to the southeast I believe there was thieves which was one of the principalities in Greece and thieves resisted Alexander that we not going to uh we not going to submit to you so Alexander marches South in invades thieves there is this big Siege of Thieves the city had a wall it was a fortified City and this goes on for I don't know weeks or months and by the time the siege breaks his Alexander soldiers are frustrated and they have been hit a lot by the by The Defenders of Thieves so when The Siege breaks there is a lot of Cruelty it probably happened at night Siege Warfare is very cruel because we first of all starve out the city and finally when The Siege breaks you unleash all kinds of atrocities so to make a long story short Alexander displayed great sagacity as well as cruelty at thieves he tried to uh uh let say give give uh safe safe aalam to as many people as possible let's say in a family of seven people one of the people was in favor of Alexander and and th submitted to Alexander then he would pardon the whole family but apart from that those who were not uh like that he had them all uh sold into slavery and then he had the entire city destroyed what was slavery at that point selling off to private owners yes selling off to private owners anywhere in Europe anywhere in Greece essentially to the to the elites to the uh Greek society was very interesting it had what you could call class or cast system you had the nobility it you know what we are taught is that Greece is the mother of democracy democracy begins with Greece Greek democracy me was such that only the aristocracy and only the male aristocracy could vote and you had a significant portion of the population that was slaves who were owned by these Aristocrats or Nobles and own means they had the power of life and death and whatever else on these people so that's what was done all these men women children who were slowed into slavery became the property of somebody else within Greece itself not within Europe within Greece within Macedonia most likely and they spent their the rest of their lives in slavery that's what happened was Greece the focal point of power in Europe at that point the focal point of power in Europe probably was Grace because Rome had not yet emerged as a great successor State eventually Rome was the successor successor State or the next great power in Greece what would you say is the focal point of power in modern day Europe in modern day Europe the focal point of power is Washington DC within the geographical European landmarks Germany no no Germany is under us occupation so is Italy I would say the France is the only k a independent nation in Western Europe if you look at the whole of Europe East and West Russia is the power center okay what we look at now as the Western Block versus the rest of the world MH that time was Greece and Macedonia or Europe versus Persia yes and the Greeks were kind of aware of a country called of of a civilization called India but they did not know much about it at the time what was happening in India at that time so at that time we had the nand Empire in India and the king the emperor was mahapadma nandha a very cruel person a very greedy and rapacious person who hoarded a lot of wealth in his Palace or wherever it was and it was apparently allegedly under a river or whatever that he was holding his his treasures so at the time we had a very powerful Empire in India which was not a very kind emperor that was Maha padmanand around this time where was he based in India he was B based out of patliputra present de Patna bihari yeah present de bihari magad it was called magad in those days and magad has been the seat for power in India multiple kingdoms it has given India so many empires it has been the birthplace of so many empires it was the flower of Indian culture the center of India for such a long time look where we are today um as so many narratives over Indian history also but we'll stick to Alexander and Jenis Khan specifically Alexander mhm so he goes and conquers that South uh western part of gree thi when does his Eastern descent begin right so he conquers thieves he destroys the city and that sends a very strong message to the rest of the kingdoms and Greece that this guy is not to be messed with he is no less than his father so then they all submit to him let's make a long story short okay there's a lot in there but he they all submit to him then he gathers this Army together about 50,000 men okay from various parts of Greece mainly Macedonia and then they set out eastwards to carry out the the father's plans Philips plans so they go eastwards into the balcans balcon region and they go east of that and they cross over the sea the the agian SE I believe and they land in Anatolia tury turkey which was then under Persian control and there are some battles and he goes forward but all the thing is that like I said it was there in under person control but it was historically Greece which means the peasantry the population were mostly Greek and they welcomed him being Greek they were happy to see a Greek king come and take over the the the territory so they were under Persian occupation and once Alexander comes there they see him as a liberator so he does not face a lot of resistance in Anatolia so he goes eastwards but there is this thing uh so he goes eastwards and that's when the then King of Persia Theos the third comes to know that this young boy from Greece the son of Philip is marching into Persian territory so he says this stupid boy let me teach him a lesson he gathers an army dasas I thir reputedly the Army was half a million soldiers or maybe a million soldiers and this guy Alexander has 50,000 at most and they meet somewhere in Syria near the region of Damascus somewhere around there there's a massive b battle and and at that time Persia was already an ancient empire now when you have formed a new Empire your soldiers and your Administration is hard hard and you know how to fight but if you have like seven or eight generations of Emperors before you then you become a soft State and you become more all about Pomp and pagentry and displays of power and displays of wealth and all that so he had this very large army that was very well decorated or whatever let's say but they were not good at fighting so Alexander's soldiers were all hard men the Greeks was a poor Nation at the time compared to the Eastern empires of Persia and India Greece and Europe were poor they were in poverty which means that they were very hardy people they were hard people so there's this battle to make a long story short and the poran Army is annihilated is annihilated despite being a 1 is to 10 ratio one is to 10 ratio exactly but the pan Army is routed and theas says to flee eastwards so Alexander gets his first great victory over the Persians in the region of Syria then he says then he has two options shall I pursue dasas eastwards and take over the rest of Persia or shall I first deal with Egypt Egypt is the south of Syria so he says let me go to Egypt but there was one problem over there there was an island in which there was this island Kingdom called Ti t y r e which is present day in Lebanon in present day Lebanon so this was a powerful Maritime Kingdom a very very prosperous trading center and they had a reasonably good army so they were still independent they had still not come under the Dominion of the Greeks under Alexander so Alexander decided to First Take Out Ty so he sent an embassy to Ty and said that you need to submit to me and they refused so then what he does is that he builds his version of the ramu which was about see the the island was about M or so less than half a kilometer from the shore but to build a bridge was very difficult so he builds a bridge and it gets swept out Swept Away in a storm then he rebuilds an even stronger Bridge eventually he does siege Warfare against tire and to make a long story short eventually tire is subdued and he massacr whoever he can and then he he crucifies tens of thousands of people crucification extreme cruelty so Alexander over times becomes more and more cruel that's what we see what crucification crucification is what the Romans did to Jesus later on this cross wooden cross and you nail people to that you either tie people to that or nail nail the people to that cross and you expose them to the elements to the wind and the Sun and the whatever else and after some period of time they die either by being eaten by vultur or crows or because of exposure to the elements very very very cruel death very cruel death so he crucified tens of thousands of people in the island of Ty so he subdued Ty wins the thing gets a great amount of wealth from there he also took a great amount of wealth from Damascus then he moves down south to Egypt Egypt was then under Persian domination so the Egyptians also saw Alexander as a liberator so he essentially took Egypt without without fighting too much and then he installs a go governor in to rule Egypt in his name his name was toi toy the first the Indians they called him Taya so toy was installed as the governor of Egypt and Alexander did one good thing in Egypt he founded a new city of the sea a coastal city today it is called by the Egyptians alandria and in English it's called Alexandria so that's one city that's one thing that he founded that still exists nothing else else exists so he conquers Egypt Without Really essentially without firing a single shot he takes it back from the he liberates it from the persons but it under his yoke under his domination then he once again goes back in pursuit of daros III so he goes eastwards He crosses Anatolia and goes eastwards and now he's coming into Persia he even goes northwards He crosses the Aku the the what was it called the river the Aku River I think it was called the oxus we Indians called it the Aku or the chaku or something like that and he pursues to to make a very long story short he pursues theas all everywhere eventually they meet in a big plane called gamila and this is The Great Battle of G gamila in which the entire Persian army is annihilated and once again the RAS escapes but the flower of the poran Army is finished and that plane about 300,000 dead soldiers with elephants and horses were there on the plane so you can imagine how it smelled after a day or two so everybody including the local population had to flee from the place that's how horrible it was the scene and then even eventually what happens is that uh he's able to capture the family of Theos who stupidly brought his old family to fight to the scene of the battle I think he was his family was captured in Syria itself so his mother was captured D's mother his wife was captured and a whole number of other ladies and other people he his son his child was also captured so Alexander treats them well the's family because he wanted to demonstrate how powerful and important he was that he had such important host hostages with him so the better he treated them and the more Royal Treatment he gave them the more important they be became as hostages so he treated treats dar's family very well daras flees I think north of the oxus river and eventually he is betrayed and murdered by his own people by his own generals and Alexander has the that General who did this uh tortured and given a very bad death as in the general who killed dasas Alexander tortured and killed him yes he had that General handed over to the mother of dasas who had him tortured and all but in between all of this before the death of dasas Alexander takes the city of parur persis and he gets drunk and it is all blamed on a woman one of his companions who was also drunk and she got this great idea let's burn the city because 150 years ago the Persian king dasas the first or whoever it was had burned Athens so let us burn the par pool pis and Alexander says yeah let's do it and they burn the city even today if you go to parsa present day parsa you can see burn marks on the walls he destroys the flower of uh the poran civilization the great city of parur destroyed forever it is still in ruins the way he left it let's pause this story a little bit my question is um especially for the people who are listening to this episode without much of an Insight on world history why is this one leaders spoken about more than other leaders and other Warlords in history cuz there were other people as well is it because of the geographical landmar that he conquered like why is Alexander the Great celebrated as Alexander the Great Well the geographical landmass he conquered wasn't that great compared to somebody like chungis Khan but the reason that he is so much celebrated the way he is is because there is something called Western Civilization today which I don't really see as a civilization it's but Western Civilization its Origins according to the West according to the to the Americans and whoever else it is it is ancient Greece ancient Rome ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia so if you look at an American Express credit credit card what do you see you see a Roman Centurion in it and the Roman centurions the dress they used to wear was copied from the ancient Greeks we have a helmet over here which is a Corinthian or or or or Spartan helmet the Romans copied this in their own dress right so the Roman Centurian see on an American Express credit card is kind of the head gate is derived from here from this so the western civilization it's it's birthplace is Greece Rome Rome is a successor state of Greece so essentially it's Greece Egypt and Mesopotamia and they because the Greece is the white Nation so-called supposedly white nation in this that's why they put so much emphasis on Alexander and his Conquest as an example of the greatness of the West the wigor and the Capac abilities for conquest and greatness of the West so his atrocities are kind of not spoken about and the conquests are spoken about the cruelty that it demonstrated in crucifying tens of thousands of people and burning entire Villages alive when he comes to westwards of Persia and tries to conquer India all of that is not spoken about his drunkenness and debauchery is not spoken about he dies at the age of 32 or 33 of what either of wounds he received in India or of curosis of the liver one of these two are the causes of his death the West would like us to believe that he died off drinking too much so his negative qualities are unspoken about but the the conquests are an example of the greatness of the West and that's why there is so much emphasis on Alexander in the history that we are taught including in India because our history is essentially a copy of what they teach in the west and we are taught to glorify the west and our conquerors who conquered and occupied India and destroyed India like the British we are taught that the British did such so many great things for India so all of that is a continuation of this and that's why Alexander is glorified so much in the west you know I think most people have heard about the word sikander yes Alexander alandria Alexandria very few people would have even heard the name xerxis they some people may have heard the word xerxis but the real name was kayra and no one knows that the whole history of Persian Empire has been lost like probably the only people I've heard speaking about the Persian Empire are the Pari friends I have okay right and that's a very small part of even the Indian population a very minuscule part of India of makes me wonder how many historical Legends are just lost oh I'm sure there are lots that are lost Native American history they had tremendous culture they had huge kingdoms and Empires massive metropolitan areas Africa had these things everything is gone perhaps forever uh to make Indian viewers understand the depth of this it's as if the African Mahabharat or the Persian ramayan has been lost forever no one even knows that it happened uh and maybe one day even history about Alexander might be lost you never know you never know what's going to be lost because the truth word history is that we don't know what we don't know yeah uh but coming back to the story so he conquers Persia okay he burns parur pis eventually daras dies he's betrayed by his own General and the general is tortured to death and then uh Alexander takes all the wealth of Persia so much wealth that he he gets and much of it is sent back to Greece much of that is sent back to his own mother as gifts and his mother has this constant correspondence with with Alexander she keeps sending him writing letters to him criticizing his actions to some extent ask and and exhorting him to strive for more greatness and all that and so on so that's so that's the portion chapter of Alexander but his his desire for glor glory and Conquest is not satisfied he wants to now explore the unknown Frontier the Greeks had never explored India so he says let's conquer India so that's how he crosses he he reaches all the way to the Indus and over there he and and further east there is the river they called the hopsis which is either the satl or the Ravi I don't remember which it is the readers can certainly look it up the Greeks called it the H haasis heapes so over there there was a small border Governor border Chieftain like a district level serpent whose name the Greeks called puras okay he had about I don't know 500 elephants so he's a he's a reasonably strong king and the Greeks fight this guy so they have destroyed everything in their path they have conquered Egypt they've conquered Mesopotamia the the land between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris they've destroyed the Persian Empire now they are coming into India they find this this king with 500 horse 5 500 elepants they fight him apparently they defeat him and Alexander is so impressed by The Valor of this guy called porus that he offers him the governorship of this region but while coming to this region he goes across gandhar where he finds a lot of opposition in The Villages and he has entire Villages burned alive and people burned alive that is something nobody speaks about today but look up the accounts of the Greek historians with of that time not from Alexander time but 100 or so years after him that's the first accounts we have of Alexander's history those first accounts so in that the the cruelty is is unvarnished what he did he had entire Villages burned alive and people massacred and slaughtered and crucified and whatnot extreme cruelty and then he finds the first opposition in in this guy porus and apparently he defeats porus but then the defeat is so calamitous I mean the battle is so calamitous that his own horse balus dies in that his beloved cherished horse dies in this battle and his soldiers are so exhausted and so frightened that we fought a small border Chieftain of India and this is what happened to us we almost lost and across the Indus River there is the Empire of Maha padmananda who's got 50,000 war elephants and who have weapons that we have we cannot even imagine so we don't want to cross the river so his soldiers Mutiny and they force him to go back so he goes back to Bab on where he drinks a lot and apparently after one drinking session he falls sick and from that he never recovers and he dies and as soon as Alexander dies all his Governors he had placed in various parts of the world they fight each other because now the great king is gone and we can become Kings in our own right and that's how the indog Greek kingdom is formed with all these little Kings like milind the menander and all but over a century and a half they all became indianized they marry Indian wives and all and today lots of people from Northern Western India will have a little bit of 1% 2% Greek blood but nobody will know about it so the Greeks all assimilate into into Indian Society eventually they become indianized so that is to make a long story short Alexander reaches all the way to the sapta synu region Pakistan present day Pakistan more or less and there that's where so according to the great Russian Admiral Admiral zukov the battle of the Hadas heapes was a defeat for the Greeks but their writers obviously will not say will not put it that way that's why they say that he actually won the battle and then because of his soldiers the pressure they exerted he chose to go back to Babylon and that's where he died But whichever way you look at it it was a disastrous campaign he wanted to conquer India but it did not happen and his soldiers knew that you take one step across the river you inviting a foe who you cannot imagine it is way D more dangerous than the Persians and we will not come back alive from that so that's where that's what happens he goes back to to Babylon he dies there his generals and and governors all fight each other there is the battle there is the war of the deoki of the governors and one man comes out on top ccas necator and he then comes and comes back to the border of India and he finds that the emperor empire of Maha padmananda is gone and there's a new regime in India the regime of Chandra Gupta MAA and vishnugupta chanakya and there is a small one-ear war between India and the and the Greek Greeks of sucas niker and then there is an agreement a peace treaty between India and Greece and the Greeks return the whole of Afghanistan presently Afghanistan gandar to India and the peace treaty is sealed solemnized by the marriage of Emperor chundra Gupta with the daughter of ccas and in as a Dary or as as a as an exchange thing whatever the Indian Emperor gave cukus ner 500 war elephants with which he calls out a huge EMP Empire in Western Asia and after ccas dies and after uh Chandra Gupta dies their sons maintain the same relationship so there was the first peace treaty between India and Greece that's how old India Greece relations are and that's the story of Alexander in a in a in a very brief nutshell uh I wonder who the son of chupta MAA and his Greek wife was yeah we don't know that that part of history is is kind of lost okay chupta MAA was also based out of modern day Bihar Patra present day Patna do you think there could have been white people all over Bihar at one point there was a Greek Embassy in in in patut during the time of Ashok and uh yes you had Greeks who were who had this Kingdom in in Northwestern India presently Afghanistan and some parts of Pakistan the indog Greek Kingdom they had there were several Kings there and there was a there they were all they had all become indianized which means they were all either Buddhists or Hindu and they had pilgrimes all the way to to Kashi Varanasi all the way to uh sarath all the way to pudra they even built temples and monasteries the Greeks some of those those are recorded so yes there was definite interaction and and exchange of populations and and whatnot I wonder what they brought to India what they brought to India was a little bit of Greek genetics that's it no other contribution apart from that yes some of the art the the Gandhara artart is is strongly influenced by Greek art so that is there if you see the Gandhara Buddhist art you can see Lord Buddha gutam Buddha who looks more Western than Indian I mean lot goam Buddha has lots of depictions in Japan he looks Japanese in China he looks Chinese in India he looks who he the way he really was and in gandhar he looks kind of Greek because it was the Greek artists who depicted him with Greek features so Gandhara art so that's one thing the Greeks brought to India apart from that no longlasting influence do you think it's now time to talk about chenis Khan another great conqueror an even greater conqueror than than Alexander who also has a similar connection with India but a different kind of connection with India yeah let's talk about chingis Khan uh all I know is that his International Conquest began at age 40 yeah so pre AG 40 he was a warlord in Mongolia cuz Mongolia was a bunch of Waring tribes just at it with each other feel free to begin the story Wherever You Wish yeah so just to put a caveat on that his his International Conquest begin in his late 40s imagine that late 40s you begin your International career before that you just struggling domestically that's the kind of guy he was so chingis Shri chingis Khan he was born in the year probably 1162 ad and he was alive at the same time that prv Chan was alive in India they were contemporaries okay so that's the first way to orient ourselves as Indians that that at the time that praj Chan was alive in India chingis Khan was alive or he had been born or at least he was alive at some for some period of time in Mongolia so Mongolia is this very interior part of Asia with an extremely harsh climate very extreme very cold climate the temperature can go to -30 -40 in Winter and chingis Khan was the son of a small Chieftain of the borjigin tribe in Mongolia you like you mentioned Mongolia at the time was not a kingdom or a nation it was just a this big piece of real estate in the Deep interior of Asia where you had these small small tribes who fought each other for scraps okay very harsh climate very bad conditions very little resources available food or whatever huge territory almost empty the step region and you had to fight each other for small scraps and this in inter this infighting among the Mongolian tribes was you can say encouraged by the kingdom to the South which is the tangut kingdom of China at the time there were three kingdoms in China uh at least three you had the tanguts which is the shisha the West indria Kingdom you had the S Dynasty you also had the uh the the the the Manchurian King those a kingdom in manua and so on there was also present day East turkistan or pres shinjang you had the UR who ruled there and further north from Mongolia you had the tatars who are a turkic people closely related to the Mongols and all this infighting between the Mongols and between the Mongols and the tatars was kind of engineered by the Chinese by the Shia by the by the Western Shia dynasty in China so jenas Khan is born 1162 ad in on the banks of the oron river in Mongolia and his father is a small Chieftain of the borjan tribe the blue wolves tribe and when chingis Khan is about 10 12 years old his father dies long to make a very long story short and his family is expelled from the tribe because his father had two wives there is chingis Khan's mother hun and there was another lady who was married to his father before his mother and there were five children including two half Brothers of chingis Khan so seven people were there who were dependent on one man the the chief but he dies now who will support the seven people in this harsh climate in this very harsh environment so this family was thrown out of the tribe and they were left for dead and over there you are seven people on your own in the winter you are guaranteed to die but they did not die because of the industriousness and the resourcefulness of the mother of chingis Khan who somehow ensured that the family somehow stays alive and there is a period of time in which chingis Khan is enslaved by another tribe for maybe a winter maybe 78 years we don't know exactly how long it was it was a very very harsh childhood that he went through he even had to kill his own half brother for some scraps of food because his half brother was taking all the food and starving the rest of the family so all of this happens and then eventually chingis Khan somehow survives childhood he becomes a young adult he has an ally his name was jamuka I believe who is his blood brother and then he becomes the wasal of one of the major tribes the the tribe I forget the name of the tribe but the king the the the Khan's name was on Khan and his wife and then he his he has a wife whose name is borte who there was an arranged marriage so he has his wife but then the wife is kidnapped by another tribe which is his mother's tribe in retaliation for his mother's kidnapping by his father okay all these things are there so his wife is kidnapped for a period of like a few months he takes the help of his Overlord onhan to get his wife back but the time his wife comes back she's pregnant and he doesn't know who's the father so his first son until today there is a question mark on his paternity his first son's name was Joi so even today we no one knows whether it was chingis Khan's son or the son of a rapist okay that's how it is then chingas Khan over time he is very ambitious he starts building his own following then he defeats he fights every single Mongolian tribe and instead of Exterminating them he brings them under his under his umbrella and by the time he's in his mid- 40s to late 40s he has defeated every single Mongolian Tri tribe and he becomes the Supreme Khan the chingis Khan the oceanic Khan then then what happens is that he decides as a mark of the unification of the nation to strike back at the old enemy who for centuries had persecuted the Mongolian tribes and made them fight each other which is the Chinese the Shia Kingdom of China so he goes south he crosses the great uh GOI desert and he goes and smashes the Shia and that consolidates it it solidifies and and uh solemnizes his authority to rule the Mongolian Nation because he's able to defeat the Shia Empire in China so he does that and then he defeats so this was in retaliation for centuries of atrocities he unlike Alexander who was a robber on a grand scale jingis Khan did this to teach the Chinese a lesson and to pay them back in kind for what they had been doing for centuries against the Mongols and of course he got a lot of wealth out of it but he did not keep any of that wealth he put that back into circulation in Mongolia okay let's pause it a little bit because we spoke about Alexander the Great in the first half of the episode uh specifically in terms of expansion you have to be really good at War yes and to be really good at War you need an edge good question I believe that Alexander's Edge was strategy that's what I've understood like very good strategy against the Persians and I think Cavalry Cavalry as an Warrior sitting on a horseback Cavalry and the Macedonian fanks which is a battle formation with a million Spears that face the enemy fanks is like p a l a anx fanks okay so it's a battle formation in which you had like 10 Rank and seven file 700 soldiers all with Spears all facing each other so the first row of Spears is is horizontal the next one is slightly more vertical more vertical more vertical so you have 700 spares Spears facing the enemy and no matter what you do you're going to be impaled unless you have a superior strategy so the Macedonian fanks was a great uh it was one of the great uh you could say the Trump cards that Alexander had and his very mobile Cavalry and very hard soldiers very high quality soldiers when it comes to chingis Khan he when chingis Khan was ruling Mongolia the total population of the entire nation of Mongolia was 1 million okay and his army out of that 1 million most of them were half were women obviously significant portion was children the rest were animal herders and all that so the Armed Forces at maximum were 100,000 one lakh strong they would fit inside the Narendra Modi Stadium today the entire Army that conquered half the known world could fit inside one Indian cricket stadium that's what he did so how did he achieve this iron discipline people who lived in the Mongolian step they had to have that hardiness and the discipline otherwise they would simply not survive childhood so that is that and then his entire system of organization was very scientific you know you had 10 then you had 100 then you had th000 then you had 10,000 so the biggest regiment was 10,000 and each of them had a General who was tried and tested and battle Hardy there was a pure meritocracy and pure loyalty you had to be completely loyal to chis Khan if he says go and jump off this this Cliff you should be willing to do that and meritocracy you perform well you'll be promoted you perform well you'll be promoted doesn't matter if you're related to him or not so you had these tremendous tactics and they took weapons and strategies from wherever they could they copied Chinese armor they copied Chinese horse armor they copied Chinese weapons they learned Siege Warfare from the Chinese Engineers they got gunpowder from the Chinese they copied they learned certain war strategies from the Turks when they conquered quasm which I'll talk about later and so on so they had no real scientific or technological prowess of their own but they were willing to absorb everything and anything from their enemies hunger Hunger and they combined these things in the the weirdest combinations they are the first to probably invent cannons and then cannons became the modern weapons that we have today they had tremendous uh you know they could they could move at lightning speed they invented the first InterContinental Postal System the Mongols they invented the worlds they made jingis Khan made the world's largest free trade zone even today one of the biggest trade zone free trade zones is the European Union where you have free trade no no tariffs no taxes for going from one place to another in India you had octy from one city to another if you had to to transport Goods you had to pay a tax at the at the entrance of every city the Mongol empire under chenis Khan created the world's largest free trade zone in human history so so many Innovations were brought in by chinis Khan but the military innovations were the best and he understood the role of momentum and energy in Warfare they had this for you know the two horns formation in which horses would charge and envelop the the other Army and he had these generals like subodai the Valiant who could coordinate armies over hundreds of kilometers if not thousands of kilometers at the same time they could do it in those days without having modern telecommunications so incredible leaps of of imagination incredible technological and logistical achievements and that's how they were able to conquer half the known world so by the time chingis Khan died just to go back we'll come back over here his Empire con contained much of China uh the whole of Iran much of Central Asia and all the way west until the borders of Europe and after he died his his descendants continued the same thing over time the Mongolian Empire from was from the banks of the Mediterranean Sea all the way to the banks of the Pacific Ocean enormous enormous so chingis Khan just one man conquered more territory in 20 years than Roman emperors conquered in 400 years that's the kind of achievements he had and he always fought a just War he did not fight to conquer and to to loot and to pillage and plunder and Rob like Alexander did Alexander was driven by this need for personal Glory daddy issues daddy issues absolutely he always even after his father was dead he used to make fun of his father let's see what I've done and see what what it is in comparison with what my father did he used to always disparage his father's achievements so he had daddy issues big huge unresolved IDE issues his his his entire motivation was this desire for personal Glory personal and and wealth and plunder he daras had done nothing to Alexander or to Greece neither had Egypt neither had India but he just wanted to conquer for the sake of conquering chingis Khan was driven by a desire for justice and a desire for retaliation so whe whether it is China whether it is karakai which he conquered which is like at that time it was kind of north of India north of of ladak there was a small Kingdom called karakai Tibet uh the UR region and some some part of Tibet it was a turky or you could say tangut kind of kingdom and they they they had killed one of his daughters husbands which is not a very smart thing to do so that in retaliation he conquers karakai and annihilates that and then he had sent a trade delegation to quasm so quasm is present day turkistan and Iran put together and some of the other Stans put together and it was ruled by Turks it was not ruled by Persians so the Persians of that time they saw their King uh the Shah of quasm just the way we saw someone like orze we Indians we did not see orze as our guy he he was an oppressor he was an occupier similarly the Iranians the Persians they saw the Sha of quasm Shah Mahmud or whatever his name was as a Turk as a foreigner so ching Khan had subdued China he had subdued karakai everything was peaceful now he said let us become Traders we no longer have any enemies that can hurt us so now let's engage in trade with the rest of the world so he sent a trade delegation to quasm to the city of uh utar utar it was on the Western on the Eastern borders of haras so he sends this trade delegation with all these trade goods and all to utar and the governor of utar who was a cousin or something or a relative of the king of the Sha he simply confiscates all the goods and he murders the envoys of chingis Khan so chenis Khan eventually comes to know about what happened so he sends a diplomatic delegation to kazma and he demands that this governor in aluk be handed over to Mongolia so that he can be brought to justice so once again he tries to resort to diplomacy to solve this problem and those governors are shaved off and they're made bald and they were go there were three ambassadors or three diplomats he had sent two of them their beards were shaved and their heads were shaved third one was Muslim he was beheaded so chingis Khan tries trade doesn't work he tries diplomacy doesn't work he said okay is if that's what you want let's have it so he invades quasm he captures the city of utar in aluk is captured he says I'll give you as much gold as you want changes Khan takes all this gold and silver melts it and has him drink it have you seen Game of Thrones that that one that episode but they melt gold and pour it on one of the guys' heads yeah he is the he's the brother of the Kalisi future khesi says here's your crown here's your crown so inal chuk it was inspired by what chingis Khan did to inal chuk the governor ofar but that was not all that was not enough the governor he had requested the Shah to hand over in aluk to him but the Sha also refused so quasm the conquest ofas begins with the conquest of the governor is made to drink molten gold and silver the city is smashed to Pieces it is still in Ruins today then he takes summeran he takes bukara then the Shah of Karas runs runs runs he runs all the way and he's pursued by chingis Khan's Army and he go takes refuge in one of the islands in the Caspian Sea where he dies of puracy but his son jalaludin escapes southwards with his entire family with his mother and who whoever else so chenis Khan then starts pursuing this guy jalaludin and jalaludin comes South he crosses gandhar and he comes to the banks of the indust where chingas Khan catches up with him and then there is The Great Battle of the indas in which the army of jalaludin is destroyed and smashed to pieces and jalaludin abandons his family his mother his wife his ladies he takes his horse and he jumps into the Sindu river indust river and he crosses the indust and he enters India and JIS Khan watches he says Let It Be I've destroyed his army he's done he's no longer going to be relevant and so chingis Khan was exactly where Alexander was about 1500 years ago and he had the opportunity with his army with him to invade India which at that time was the world's richest Kingdom civilization Empire whatever you want to call it Europe during Alexander's time was an impoverished land Persia and India were prosperous Rich during the time of chingus Khan India was why did everybody invade India the Turks the Mongols the muls not the Mongols muls and so on British Europeans they came for the riches JIS Khan is there with the greatest army in the world has ever seen and he he he only has to cross the indust river and he can have all of India and he's going to win he's that good at that time Northern India was ruled by Il Mish who was one of the Sultans of the small Delhi Sultan whose daughter was Razia Sultan elut Mish so chingas Khan chose to go back he chose to turn around his job was done he had destroyed the army of quasm and he was not motivated by wealth or conquest or plunder he was motivated by Justice and he brought whoever had wronged him and his people to justice so he spurned the opportunity of once in a lifetime opportunity to cross the river Indus and Conquer India he went back because the Chinese had rebelled against him and he had come to know about that so then he goes back all the way to China and restarts the conquest of China he smashes Beijing he flattens Beijing flattens it completely okay and there was this battle before that before he reaches Beijing uh it is called the battle of the badger mouth pass it's a place called yuling north of Beijing and if you look at the map today there are two Hills between which you have to come if you want to reach Beijing Beijing the northern part of Beijing is protected by this mountain ranges and there are these two Hills between which the Chinese Army had placed forts there's a river between them and that's where the big battle happened between the Defenders of Beijing and the army of chingis Khan and the Chinese Army was smashed to Pieces over there and if you look at the map today the satellite images there is no reminder there's no Memorial over there of what happened the Chinese are very insecure about what chenis Khan did to them so chenis Khan destroys the Chinese Army over there at yuling north of Beijing he marches to Beijing the city is had big walls at the time uh he he goes to this place called yank King he reaches Beijing and there is this this big Siege of Beijing and eventually his army takes Beijing and flattens the whole city and then he once again goes back to the shisha Empire in the western part of China and he's fighting them but in the year 1227 for some reason he leaves his body he dies and we don't know why it dies okay the and the Mongols they maintained a record a Chronicle of the of the days of chingis Khan it was it is today called The Secret history of the Mongols in which it is not mentioned how he died so there are all these sto about how he died maybe uh maybe his his local Chinese wife killed him or he died of wounds in a battle lots of different stories and then there is the question of where was he buried and the Western historians and the Western media are really interested in finding the burial place but they're never going to find it I promise you that they will never find it even the burial place place of Alexander is kind of not known it is probably in Alexandria alandria in Greece in in Egypt but it's not been definitively identified so two people two two great men from the great man theory of History Jenis Khan way greater than Alexander Way greater and a much better person he did of course see historians put this figure I don't know what figure they put 30 million 50 million of people that chingis Khan killed Alexander would have killed no less and chingis Khan did not slaughter people just for the fun of slaughtering them if he did Slaughter some cities which he did he did nothing which which Alexander did not do and he did this as a psychological thing so as to ensure that the other kingdoms he would capture he would invade later would just open the gates so that nobody has to be killed and which happened in Samaran and bukara at least suan for sure or bukara one of these two okay U this is the the readers can look up the actual history I don't remember all the dates all the specific locations but that's what happened so overall from my estimation chingis Khan was a far greater conqueror and a far better human being than Alexander and the reason why he is so reviled is because he is not a white guy he was not a white guy and his descendants conquered many various parts of Europe as well they smashed Russia Russia was under the Mongol yoke for a couple of centuries and so on long story short but yeah that's about chingis Khan so very different person very different character very different historical figure from Alexander in my estimation the much greater conqueror and the much better human being if he had actually decided to come into India India would have had a totally different history M okay let's talk about India a little bit okay what is the connection between the muls and the Mongols M because urban legend says that Babar was a descendant of chenis Khan but I'll let you begin this answer Wherever You Wish what I've understood is that the Mongols settled down in Turkey The Descendants the sons the grandsons it's a long story so what happens is that chingis Khan dies then his third son OG becomes the emperor after him and he concludes the conquest of China he conquers China fully then his grandson chingis Khan's grandson kubl Khan rules China as the emperor of the Yuan Empire and then his other grandsons they expand westwards some form the chag chagatai khet some conquer and Rule Russia some rule in Central Asia Samar the bukara there is the golden horde and the his grandson Hulu Khan Bagdad and puts an end to the Golden Age of Islam so his descendants they rule all parts of the world all parts of the Eastern world and some of them be become turkified they conquer turkic regions of of Asia most of their soldiers are turkic they marry among the turkic peoples and over time they become turkified so that's how many of the Mongols their descendants became became turkic and Islamic now this guy what's his name Timur who was a dreaded Invader who killed so many people in such cruel ways that you cannot imagine and he also did a massacre in Delhi in India and so on he did lots of terrible things he claimed descent from chingis Khan he said that he was a descendant of chingis Khan we don't have any actual evidence hard evidence that he was a descendant of chis Khan but he claimed descent and then you had the so you have Timur and you have chingis Khan and this guy Babar he claimed he was a descendant of both both Timur and chingis Khan it was a claim that he made and that's what historians repeat as if it is fact but we don't have any solid evidence that could either conclusively prove it or falsify it so Babar claimed that he was a descendant of chenis Khan and tamour and so on so forth but as far as I know it could just be a story so that's where we are and Babar is the founder of the the so-called Empire that's why it is claimed and many historians claim that chingis Khan his descendants ruled India but we don't have any solid evidence of that uh I think we discussed this long ago about how the mugal Emperors would have looked in person mhm uh and lots of people believe that they looked like people from Mongolia mhm correct to say Well when it comes to Babar he was definitely a very turkic looking person which means the standard the stereotypical so-called facial features know small eyes and the the facial features that people would have in the turkic regions of Central Asia and in Mongolia like which which country Mongolia let's say if you look at the people of Mongolia or China how they look kind of like that so today if you go to Turkey people look European there right most people in turkey look European because those because if you look at the genetics of turkey they are mostly Greek Armenian and uh uh Anatolian okay so most Turks are actually turkified Greeks today but the real Turks were the Central Asian people of the usbekistan kyrgistan region turkistan all those regions and those people they are the stereotypical turkic looking people and Babar would have looked like that that's what babber would have looked like and his son humayun also would have looked like that and it is said that even Akbar looked very turkic he didn't he did not look Indian but Akbar married various Indian women and his son Salim who was then known as jangar would have looked more Indian and Saleem married another I don't know who he married I don't remember the mul history but over time they became more and more Indian and by the time it was orb they were almost fully Indian looks wise and we know how bahadura looked bahadur sha zaer looked because there are photographs of him pretty dark skinned and looked very much Indian so over time they became more Indian just the way the Turks in Turkey over time they became more European by capturing and marrying European Greek women and Armenian women what is the modern Legacy of the Mongols the modern Legacy of the Mongols is a very good question uh they invented much of the modern world free trade zones do you think diplomatic immunity yeah you know how there's this urban legend about how one3 of population has descended from Changas Khan you know what it's like this the Mongols like I said earlier in this podcast the total population of Mongolia was a million during chinis Khan's time which is a tiny population in the context of the rest of the world and that population of the Mongols they were all all strongly interrelated they were all relatives of each other which means they had very similar genetics and then the Mongol suddenly they go and disperse all across the world so suddenly this huge eruption of Mongol genetics in various parts of the world and these are all very similar genetics it's not all from one man but they have the same genetic mutations so it looks like it's one man and that's how this urban legend has been has been constructed that jingis Khan was a mass rapist and he spent most of his ad life raping women in various parts of the world that he conquered that is completely untrue completely untrue that is something that is used to denigrate chis Khan and the Mongols and to paint them as as bloodthirsty and evil barbarians and rapists and all that there is absolutely no scientific fact be behind this claim and and the first I remember I had I traced back the first article in which this was written and in that it was written that it is Mongolian genetics not the genetics of chingis Khan how do you know it is chingis Khan who's the originator of all these genetics for that you would need actual genetic data from chingis Khan which means you would need a piece of his hair or a piece of his bone or something from his body we have none of that so on what basis do make this caim absurd unscientific nonsense why did we do this podcast oh we have well we want to understand human nature human history what drives greatness what drives human Conquest because the whole world that we live in today has been populated by humans through conquest and migration and it is great people like Alexander and chingis Khan who kind of serve as role models for example let's go back westwards to Alexander Julius Caesar idolized Alexander he is reputed to have visited the tomb of Alexander and he wanted to be like Alexander and his great lament in life was that he could never conquer as much territory as Alexander did so Julius Caesar conquered Iberia which is Spain he conquered Central Europe which is the gulic Celtic regions of Europe present day France Etc he conquered some parts of the British Isles then he comes eastwards conquers Greece which is when Greece ceases to be a a GE political power and becomes a part of the Roman Empire and Julia Cesar also conquered Egypt but he could not conquer Persia and India so he always had this lament in him that he would never be as great as as Alexander but what drove Julia Caesar was the same instincts that drove Alexander the same desire for Glory and wealth and plunder and territory and the same thing the same instincts and same impulses drove drove Napoleon who also idolized Julia Cesar and Alex when it comes to Asia today China makes all these territorial claims on various parts of Asia including Tibet for example it has conquered Tibet and it it claims several parts of India what is the basis of these territorial claims the basis of these territorial claims is the territorial extent of the Yuan Empire which was the Mongol Empire which had conquered China and they claim it's a Chinese Empire even though the Emperors were all Mongols and they legitimize their territorial hegemony and and hegemonic claims expansion his claims based on the conquests of the Mongols who were never Chinese so there is that Legacy and the other Legacy of the of the Mongols of chingis Khan is diplomatic immunity jingis Khan was probably the first ruler uh non yeah probably the first ruler who instituted the the the tradition and the custom and the policy of giving immunity to diplomats of other nations including those who who he was fighting with that's one thing uh postal system he instituted a Eurasia wide postal system based on horses who could travel really fast he uh invented the military strategy of Blitz Creek that the Nazis copied you know concentrated force in one place and then you then you make a hold through the defenses and move through and forget the defensive fortifications and walls they made the Great Wall of China completely obsolete the Mongols uh they created the world's largest free trade zone in human history and so many more things many of the things that we take for granted today were first thought of by the Mongols by chungis Khan and yeah so much more for the sake of military expansion mhm and then that led its way into what we know as modern day civilization yeah but yeah another thing I forgot to mention is that he had religious freedom chingis Khan did not convert anybody to his religion of theism which is a polytheistic religion chingis Khan some people imagine that chis Khan was a Muslim because he is Khan he was not a Muslim and the Muslims have taken the Khan serim from the Mongols uh so there is that and he had this policy of religious freedom means who whichever territory he conquered he did not force the people to change their way of life or to change their religion he conquered quasm which is Persia and other parts of Central Asia he allowed of course yeah at some point in time he did build bring down some mosques and he built some temples on top of them to some extent because those mosques were built on top of ancient Buddhist or Hindu temples temples of his own no Buddhist Buddhist temples or Hindu temples he would rebuild the Buddhist and Hindu yes he said to have rebuil some some temples by knocking down mosques in the quasm region and he had banned and his descendants like kubl Khan had also banned the practice of the Islamic slaughtering of animals the Halal thing so there were certain things that there were there but mostly there was religious freedom so these are the legacies of the Mongol Empire very tolerant very open Empire free trade you can practice whatever religion you want more or less to with certain restrictions and so on so overall much better than the European conquest of the world where you had complete destruction and whatever plunder was taken by the Mongolian expansions that was all put back and recirculated in the economy and the one permanent see Alexander built one permanent thing which is the city of Alexandria alandria and Greece the Mongols built nothing except for one thing Bridges they built Bridges everywhere and some of them still stand H I wonder how Changas Khan is perceived in modern day Mongolia because there's something called Mongolian throat music Mongolian throat singing The Who where they where they sing like yes they put on a voice and sing and it's very very uh transcendental music also it can be extremely meditative to listen to Mongolian throat singing yes but uh for viewers who are interested go and search for music videos after this podcast almost at the end uh of Mongolian throat singing and especially rock songs there are some incredible songs where the music videos actually depict the Warriors who fought with Changas Khan so I think that they're still revered like that that Legacy of Changas Khan is extremely revered in Mongolia and I would argue that his genetics are spread across China so possibly possibly yes at least it's mixed it's mixed for sure mhm uh controversial statement but this China's expansionist policy geopolitically speaking somebody's got that Legacy of expansionism from Mongolia well the Chinese Communist party has a completely different kind of DNA they have a Marxist DNA and yeah they don't mind expanding based on their military strength and they both hate chingis Khan and want to embody him in some way that's what I I wonder I wonder how he's perceived in China in China as a conqueror as as as the guy who conquered their their uh country he is reviled and he is hated and there is a explicit ban in inner Mongolia which is Chinese occupied Mongolia on any mention of chenis Khan and on on even teaching the history of chingis Khan his his name is blacklisted the Chinese fear him so much even today but they want to use the the expansionism of the chingis Khan Empire of the Yuan Dynasty as the basis of their own hegemonic territorial claims that's a very weird relationship they have love hate relationship mostly hate relationship but they don't mind using his Conquest as the vehicle for their own territorial claims and in Mongolia he seen as the father of the nation he is seen as the father of the nation and his wife BTE is seen as the mother of the nation so in Mongolia they they essentially worship him like the greatest Shaman whoever lived that sort of thing okay that's it for today ladies and gentlemen uh this was just an experimental podcast we're trying to figure a world history is a subject that you guys would enjoy and I think podcast are also built out of the tangents that arise in the middle of the conversation I hope it was fun for you AC it was fun absolutely doing a History Podcast after very very long with you yeah it's been a while and we'll cover a few more topics the next time please leave your suggestions down below any signing off notes for today uh it may be true that human history is the history of Great Men maybe great women also in the future so it really makes sense to study history history is not a boring topic it's something that everybody should have some interest in because it teaches you how the world that we live in came to be constructed and who made the world the way it is and what are the forces that still drive the world and we'll keep on driving driving the world in the future you study history you understand the present world and you can actually look into the future that's why you should have more of a interest in history especially these fascinating figures of his history yeah uh my tiny signing of note it's a little messed up but it is what it is I feel like as brown people of the subcontinent uh we very likely have some Greek Soldier blood in our veins and very likely have some Mongol blood in our veins also which makes me feel weird about it that some great great great great great great great great great ancestor of yours was both in the Alexander Army and maybe another one was in Jenis Khan's Army the world is a completely mixed up Melting Pot especially India which is the crossroads of History we have all kinds of genetic contributions that we may not be aware of so yes very much possible very much possible that we have some genetic contribution from Greece some from Mongolia some from the Huns who are the ancestors of the Mongols the kosan the skians and what not who knows what else lots more to explore indeed with AC thank you thank you that was the episode for today ladies and gentlemen all I want to say is that I want to create a lot more world history related episodes so I'd love to know what you thought of this particular one world history is honestly my absolute favorite subject uh I probably like it as much as I like Cricket or spirituality but I don't know how much you guys as the audience would like to learn about world history so my request to you is one send in your feedback in the comment section uh tell us how we can improve these history based episodes and two my request is to share it with fellow history Buffs I'm happy to bring history back as a genre on TRS we've not created a lot of history episodes in the recent past but if this one gets a good response I promise you that will change DRS will be back with the legend AC himself lots of love and lots of gratitude for listening in a [Music]