Transcript for:
Comparative Analysis of Alexander and 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 Genghis 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 present-day Gandhar. We had a Zoroastrian expert on the show. I know that Zoroastrians look at themselves as a sister religion to Hinduism. I would say daughter religion to Vedic Hinduism. Effectively, because we're talking about Alexander the Great, at that point they were Zoroastrians. The Persians were Zoroastrians, yes. Why is Alexander the Great celebrated as Alexander the Great? Well, the geographical landmarks he conquered wasn't that great compared to somebody like Genghis Khan. But the reason that he is so much celebrated the way he is, is because... I wonder who the son of Chand... Gupta Maurya and his Greek wife was. Part of history is kind of lost. Some people say that 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... Let's talk about Chinggis Khan. All I know is that his international conquests began at age 40. Imagine that. Late 40s you begin your international career. Before that you're just struggling domestically. And he was alive at the same time that Prithviraj Chauhan was alive in India. Chandragupta Maurya was also based out of modern day Bihar. Do you think there could have been white people all over Bihar at one point? There was a Greek embassy in Patliputra during the time of Ashok. 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 Abhijit Chawda 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 Genghis 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. 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. Audiences 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. Hmm. It's Alexander the Great versus Genghis Khan. 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 the patterns of human history, then you can actually understand why the world is the way it is today and what could happen in the future. Because the same patterns 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 helps you 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 conquest, of reproduction, 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 Genghis Khan, like Napoleon, like various other people like Vishnu Gupta Chanakya and Chandru Gupta Maurya and so on and so forth. So there are these different schools of thought of human history. And 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, 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. 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 shit, 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. tactics and strategies you use in warfare can be used in different ways, in a very different but similar way in business competition. So that's why business people study, let's say, Sun Tzu's The Art of War, for example. It's very popular, but you got to know how to use that. Eventually, you do realize ways to use these psychological tricks from history if you keep studying about history. So I hope that there's a lot of first-time history podcast listeners on this one. Because I remember I discovered you through an elaborate and fantastic Genghis 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 theory. 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 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... 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 tsarina the russian empress i can think of buddhika the the britonic chieftain who fought the romans i can think of a few great uh Queens in Indian history like Rani Ahalya Bhai Holkar, like Rani Lakshmi Bhai 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. One of my most memorable episodes ever was with Vikas Divyakirti sir, who's one of the leading UPSC coaches in post-independence India, honestly. And he's a legendary figure in the Indian coaching scene. The takeaway I had from that podcast was A psychology based theory that he mentioned, I can't remember what it was exactly. And effectively, he said that 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 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 you're a teenager now, go away. And you just accept because that's how society works. Yes. That doesn't usually happen with the girls. They enjoy the love of a mother for their whole life 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. Women are the 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've known a lot of men and women and I 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 were 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 a little unfulfilled so even if you've conquered what your father lost in those battles yeah you want to create a kingdom that's 1000 times larger yes indeed you don't know why but it's an internal primal need it's 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 philip philip of macedon and philip was this great expansionist this conqueror who fought the greek 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 cities, 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 Olympias. 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 Philip. And these are the two dominant figures in the life of Alexander. So Alexander was this boy. He was, at a very young age, he was very precocious. 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 he would typically teach a prince, like logic, like mathematics. Like geography and all. And geography is what fascinated Alexander because Aristotle used to speak about the eastern nations. See, Greece is located in southeastern Europe. Mediterranean Sea, Aegean Sea. The Greece of that day included present-day Turkey. The present-day region of Anatolia, the region of Thrace, 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, 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 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. And I believe it was headquartered in Baghdad, if I'm not mistaken. Oh, the... Ancient, during Alexander's time, the capital city of Persia was Parshvapur. The Greeks called it Persepolis. Today, the Iranians call it Parsa. That was the ancient capital of Persia. And they had other big cities under their dominion like Baghdad, like Damascus as well, by the way. Syria was under Persian control at that time. So they had many great cities under their control. And Persia, its territorial extent was from the Indus River, so more or less. The West Bank of the Indus River, sometimes plus or minus something, all the way to Syria and the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. Massive, even present-day Judea, Israel, all of that, and even Egypt in those days was under Persian domination, under Persian control. Massive empire. A great movie recommendation I'd like to give at this point is 300, which a lot of my Parsi friends really hate. Okay. Like if you recommend or talk about 300 Parsi friends, they don't react very well. Okay. Because King Xerxes is shown in a very villainous way in the movie. But Xerxes, Darius, all these Persian kings are revered amongst the Parsi community. It's a very occidentalist version of what happened there. Xerxes, his name was Kshayarsh. But the Greeks called him Xerxes. Darius was Darius. The Greeks called him Darius. Artaxerxes was Artaxatra. The Greeks called him Artaxerxes. So these names are all twisted. modified 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, 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. The Indian subcontinent has seen these cycles in which we have consolidation under one empire, like the Mauryan Empire, the Kushan Empire, and then fragmentation as well, but one culture, one civilization. Okay. The Persian civilization, do you think they followed Zoroastrianism? Yes. They were Zoroastrians? Well, during the time of Alexander, they were Zoroastrians, yes. Before that, they were obviously pre-Zoroastrian, which means they were Hindus. Okay. Okay. Yes. Zoroastrian 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. We had a Zoroastrian expert on the show. Okay. I know that Zoroastrians look at themselves as a sister religion to Hinduism. I would say daughter religion to Vedic 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 Zoroastrians. The Persians were Zoroastrians. Yes. So that whole stretch from, say, Iran or Afghanistan up till Syria and kind of stretching into Egypt as well, they were following Zoroastrianism? No, they were under Persian domination or control, which means you would have local governors who were Persians. 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 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, Buddhism. And today it's indistinguishable. From the Indian religions and so on. Just a tangential example. No, no, sure. That's what these history podcasts are about. Coming back to Alexander. Yes. Where we paused the story. 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. Oh 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 Achaemenid dynasty, the dynasty whose founder was the legendary Achaemenes. Okay. And that's about, let's say, 3000 BC. 3000. 3000 years before today, around 1000-1200 BC. We're not quite sure when it begins. But the ancient Persians are very closely related to the ancient Indians, the post-Vedic or late Vedic Indian people. The Persian language is like a daughter language of Sanskrit. It's very similar to Sanskrit. The Behistun inscription of the Emperor Darius, Bhagastana 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 Persians are not that similar to us genetically. But the ancient Persians were essentially the same as us. Indians, genetically. Oh, they got mixed? They got mixed with the people from the Caucasus, during the Turkic occupation of Persia, which we'll discuss during the Chinggis Khan part of the thing. Going over a very long period of history in today's episode. but fun okay back to Alexander 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 you take over so like I said his parents did not get along together very strong-willed father and a very strong-willed imperious mother Olympias the daughter of the king of Epirus Olympias 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 a competitor in manliness and in creating a legacy. So his parents didn't get along. His father marries another lady. His mother in a fit of rage obviously naturally leaves her. her husband's place and 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 Philip for marrying another lady and disrespecting his sister. So Philip, he sends diplomats and embassies to his brother-in-law. 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 Philip, 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 in the movie 300, the Persians had invaded and occupied and conquered Greece. During the reign of King of Emperor Xerxes. And he had, I think it was Xerxes or Darius, one of these two who had burned Athens once. So there was this, this animosity, historical animosity. 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 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 command of one wing of Philip's army. And he acquitted himself so well that Philip felt insecure about the qualities his son was demonstrating. Okay. So this is where we are. And 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 entire thing. And it is in this parade that Philip is assassinated. Somebody stabs him or spears him or something. And the assassin tries to escape but one of Philip's soldiers 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 Olympias, 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 shrouded in mystery because the assassin was killed. So that's where we are. That's when Alexander is overnight. All of a sudden, with one hour's notice, thrust 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 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 kingdom of Thebes. So to the south of Macedonia, there was Epirus, southwest, and to the southeast, I believe, there was Thebes, which was one of the principalities in Greece. And Thebes resisted Alexander. that we're not gonna submit to you. So Alexander marches south, invades Thebes. There is this big siege of Thebes. 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, Alexander's soldiers are frustrated and they've been hit a lot by the defenders of Thebes. 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 Thebes. He tried to, let's say, give safe asylum 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 Thebes submitted to Alexander. Then he would pardon the whole family. But apart from that, those who were not like that, he had them all 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 elites, to the... Greek society was very interesting. It had what you could call class or caste system. You had the nobility. You know, what we are taught is that Greece is the mother of democracy. Democracy begins with Greece. Greek democracy 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 owned 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 sold into slavery became the property of somebody else. Within Greece itself. Not within Europe. Within Greece. Within... Macedonia most likely. And they spent 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 Greece because Rome had not yet emerged as a great successor state. Eventually, Rome was the 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 landmass, Germany? No. No? Germany is under US occupation. So is Italy. I would say France is the only quasi-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 Bloc versus the rest of the world, that time was Greece and Macedonia or Europe versus Persia. Yes, and the Greeks were kind of aware of a country called, 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 nanda empire in india and the king the emperor was maha padmananda 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. There was Mahapadmananda. Around this time. Where was he based in India? He was based out of Pataliputra, present-day Patna. Bihari. Yeah, present-day Bihari. Magad. It was called Magad in those days. And Magad has been the seat for power in India for 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. There are so many narratives about Indian history also, but we'll stick to Alexander and Genghis Khan here. Specifically Alexander. So he goes and conquers that south western part of Greece. Thebes. When does his eastern descent begin? Right. So he conquers Thebes. He destroys the city and that sends a very strong message to the rest of the kingdoms in 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 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 father's plans, Philip's plans. So they go eastwards into the Balkans, Balkan region, and they go east of that and they cross over the sea, the Aegean Sea, I believe, and they land in Anatolia. Turkey. Turkey. which was then under Persian control. And there are some battles and he goes forward. But the thing is that, like I said, it was then under Persian control, but it was historically Greece, which means that 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 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. So he goes eastwards. And that's when the then king of Persia, Darius III, 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, Darius III. 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 battle 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... pageantry 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 portion Army is annihilated. It is annihilated. Despite being a 1 is to 10 ratio. 1 is to 10 ratio. Exactly. But the Persian army is routed and Darius has to flee eastwards. So Alexander gets his first great victory over the Persians in the region of Syria. Then he has two options. Shall I pursue Darius 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 Tyre. T-Y-R-E, which is present day in Lebanon. In present day Lebanon. So this was a powerful maritime kingdom, a 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 Tyre. So he sent an embassy to Tyre 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 Ram Setu, which was about, see the island was about 100 meters 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 away in a storm. Then he rebuilds an even stronger bridge. Eventually he does siege warfare against Tyre. And to make a long story short, eventually Tyre is subdued. And he massacres whoever he can and he crucifies tens of thousands of people. Crucification. Extreme cruelty. So Alexander over time becomes more and more cruel. That's what we see. What is 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 the people to that cross and you expose them to the elements, to the wind and the sun and whatever else and after some period of time, They die either by being eaten by vultures 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 Tyre. So he subdues Tyre, 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 fighting too much. And then he installs a governor to rule Egypt in his name. His name was Ptolemy. Ptolemy I. The Indians, they called him Ptolemy. So Ptolemy 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 Al-Iskandriya. And in English it's called Alexandria. So that's one city, that's one thing that he founded that still exists. Nothing 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 Persians but puts it under his yoke, under his domination. Then he once again goes back in pursuit of Darius 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 Akshu, the, what was it called? The river, the Akshu river I think it was called, the Aksas. We Indians call it the Akshu or the Chakshu or something like that. And he pursues, to make a very long story short, he pursues the Raiyas everywhere. Eventually they meet in a big plain called Gau Gamela. And this is the great battle of Gaugamela in which the entire Persian army is annihilated. And once again, Darius escapes. But the flower of the Persian 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 eventually what happens is that he's able to cap. the family of Darius who stupidly brought his own family to fire to the scene of the battle I think he was his family was captured in Syria itself so his mother was captured Darius's mother his wife was captured in a whole number of other ladies and other people his son his child was also captured so Alexander treats them well the rise his family because he wanted to demonstrate how powerful and important he was that he had such important hostages with him. So the better he treated them and the more royal treatment he gave them, the more important they became as hostages. So he treats Darius's family very well. Darius 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 that general who did this. tortured and given a very bad death. As in the general who killed Darius. Darius. Alexander tortured and killed him. Yes. He had that general handed over to the mother of Darius who had him tortured and all. But in between all of this, before the death of Darius, Alexander takes the city of Parshvapur, Persepolis, 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... So 150 years ago, the Persian king, Darius I or whoever it was, had burned Athens. So let us burn the Parshipur, Parshipolis. And Alexander says, yeah, let's do it. And they burned 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 the Persian civilization, the great city of Parshipur, destroyed forever. It is still in ruins. The way he left it. Let's pause this story a little bit. My question is, especially... for the people who are listening to this episode without much of an insight on world history. Why is this one leader spoken about more than other leaders and other warlords in history? Because there were other people as well. Is it because of the geographical landmass 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 Genghis 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. But Western civilization, its origins, according to the West, according 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 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 Spartan helmet. The Romans copied this in their own dress. So the Roman centurion you see on an American Express credit card is kind of, the headgear is derived from here, from this. So the Western civilization, its birthplace is Greece-Rome. Rome is a successor state of Greece. So essentially it's Greece, Egypt and Mesopotamia. And because Greece is the white nation, so-called supposedly white nation in this, that's why they put so much emphasis on Alexander and his conquests as an example of the greatness of the West. The vigor and the capabilities 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 cirrhosis of the liver. One of these two are the causes of his death. The West would like us to believe that he died of drinking too much. So his negative qualities aren't spoken about, but 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 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 Sikandar. Yes. Al-Iskandria. Alexandria. Very few people would have even heard the name Xerxes. Xerxes. Some people may have heard the word Xerxes, but the real name was Kshayarsh. No one knows that. The whole history of this Persian Empire has been lost. Like, probably the only people I've heard speaking about the Persian Empire are the Parsi friends I have. Okay, right. And that's a very small part of even the Indian population. A very minuscule part of India. Kind 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. To make Indian viewers understand the depth of this, it's as if the African Mahabharata or the Persian Ramayana has been lost forever. No one even knows that it happened. 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 about history is that we don't know what we don't know. Yeah. But coming back to the story. So he conquers Persia. Okay, he burns Parshipur, Persopolis. Eventually Darius dies. He's betrayed by his own general. And the general is tortured to death. And then... Alexander takes all the wealth of Persia, so much wealth that 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 Alexander. She keeps sending him, writing letters to him, criticizing his actions to some extent, and exhorting him to strive for more greatness and all that and so on. So that's the Persian chapter of Alexander. But his desire for 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 reaches all the way to the Indus. And further east, there is the river they call the Hydapses, which is either the Sutlej or the Ravi. I don't remember which it is. The readers can certainly look it up. The Greeks called it the Hydaspis, Hydapses. So over there, there was a small border governor, border chieftain, like a district level serpents, whose name the Greeks called Porus. Okay. He had about, I don't know, 500 elephants. So 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 have conquered Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. They have destroyed the Persian Empire. Now they are coming into India. They find this king with 500 elephants. 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 burnt alive, and people burned alive. That is something nobody speaks about today. But look up the accounts of the Greek historians of that time. Not from Alexander's time, but a hundred or so years after him. That's the first accounts we have of Alexander's history. Those first accounts. So in that, the cruelty 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 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, Muciphalus, 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 Mahapadmananda who's got 50,000 war elephants and who have weapons that 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 Babylon 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 Indo-Greek kingdom is formed. With all these little kings like Milind, Menander and all. But over a century and a half, they all became Indianized. They married 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 Indian society eventually. They become Indianized. So that is, to make a long story short, Alexander reaches all the way to the 7th century. Hindu region. Pakistan. Present-day Pakistan, more or less. And there, that's where... So, according to the great Russian admiral, Admiral Zhukov, the Battle of the Hydaspes, Hydapses, 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're inviting a foe who you cannot imagine. It is way more dangerous than the Persians. And we will not come back alive from that. So that's what happens. He goes back to Babylon. He dies there. His generals and governors all fight each other. There is the battle. There is the war of the Dayadoki. of the governors and one man comes out on top, Seleucus Nicator. And he then comes back to the border of India and he finds that the empire of Mahapadmananda is gone. And there's a new regime in India. The regime of Chandragupta Maurya and Vishnagupta Chanakya. And there is a small one year war between India and the Greeks of Seleucus Nicator. And then there is... An agreement, a peace treaty between India and Greece, and the Greeks return the whole of Afghanistan, present-day Afghanistan, Gandhar to India. And the peace treaty is sealed, solemnized by the marriage of Emperor Chandragupta with the daughter of Seleucus. And as a dowry, or as an exchange thing, whatever, the Indian Emperor gives Seleucus nearly 500 war elephants, with which he cows out a huge empire in Western Asia. And after Seleucus dies and after Chandragupta dies, their sons maintain the same relationship. So there was a first peace treaty between India and Greece. That's how old India-Greece relations are. And that's the story of Alexander in a very brief nutshell. I wonder who the son of Chandragupta Maurya and his Greek wife was. Yeah, we don't know. That part of history is kind of lost. Okay. Chandragopita Maurya was also based out of modern-day Bihar. Pataliputra, present-day Patna. Do you think there could have been white people all over Bihar at one point? There was a Greek embassy in Pataliputra during the time of Ashok. And yes, you had Greeks who had this kingdom in northwestern India, present-day Afghanistan and some parts of Pakistan. The Indo-Greek kingdom, there were several kings there. And there was a... They were all...... They had all become Indianized, which means they were all either Buddhists or Hindus. And they had pilgrimages all the way to Kashi, Varanasi, all the way to Sarnath, all the way to Patliputra. They even built temples and monasteries, the Greeks. Some of those are recorded. So yes, there was definite interaction and exchange of populations 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 Gandhara art is strongly influenced by Greek art. So that is there. If you see the Gandhara Buddhist art, you can see Lord Buddha, Gautam Buddha, who looks more Western than Indian. I mean, Gautam Buddha has lots of depictions. In Japan, he looks Japanese. In China, he looks Chinese. In India, he looks the way he really was. And in Gandhara, 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 long-lasting influence. Do you think it's now time to talk about Genghis Khan? Another great conqueror, an even greater conqueror than Alexander, who also has... a similar connection with India. But a different kind of connection with India. Yeah, let's talk about Chinggis Khan. All I know is that his international conquests began at age 40. Yeah. So pre-age 40, he was a warlord in Mongolia. Because Mongolia was a bunch of warring 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 international conquests begin in his late 40s. Imagine that. Late 40s, you begin your international career. Before that, you're just struggling domestically. That's the kind of guy he was. So, Chinggis, Sri Chinggis Khan, he was born in the year probably 1162 AD. And he was alive at the same time that Prithviraj Chauhan was alive in India. They were contemporaries. Okay? So that's the first way to orient ourselves as Indians. At the time that Prithviraj Chauhan was alive in India, Chinggis Khan was alive or he had been born. Or at least he was alive 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 minus 30, minus 40 in winter. And Genghis Khan was the son of a small chieftain of the Borjigin tribe in Mongolia. Like you mentioned, Mongolia at the time was not a kingdom or a nation. It was just 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 steppe region, and you had to fight each other for small scraps. And this infighting among the Mongolian tribes was, you can say, encouraged by the kingdom to the south, which is the Thangut kingdom. of China. At the time there were three kingdoms in China, at least three. You had the Tanguts, which is the Shixia, the Western Jia kingdom. You had the Song dynasty. You also had the Manchurian kingdom, there was a kingdom in Manchuria and so on. There was also present-day East Turkestan or present-day Xinjiang, you had the Uyghurs 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 Western Shia dynasty in China. So, Genghis Khan is born 1162 AD on the banks of the Orkhon River in Mongolia. And his father is a small chieftain of the Borjigin tribe, the Blue Wolves tribe. And when Genghis 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 Genghis Khan's mother, Hoylun. And there was another lady who was married to his father before his mother. And... there were five children, including two half-brothers of Genghis Khan. So seven people were there who were dependent on one man, 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 Genghis Khan, who somehow ensured that the family somehow stays alive. And there is a period of time in which Genghis Khan is enslaved by another tribe for maybe a winter, maybe seven, eight 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 Chinggis Khan somehow survives childhood. He becomes a young adult. He has an ally. His name was Jamukha, I believe, who is his blood brother. And then he becomes the vassal of one of the major tribes. The tribe, I forget the name of the tribe, but the king, the Khan's name was Ong Khan. And his wife, and then he has a wife whose name is Bort. 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, Ong Khan, 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 Jotchi. So even today, no one knows whether it was Chinggis Khan's son or the son of a rapist. Okay, that's how it is. Then Genghis 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 umbrella. And by the time he's in his mid 40s to late 40s, he has defeated every single Mongolian tribe. And he becomes the Supreme Khan. The Genghis Khan, the Oceanic Khan. 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 Xia kingdom of China. So he goes south, he crosses the great... Gobi Desert. And he goes and smashes the Shia. And that consolidates, it solidifies and 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. Unlike Alexander who was a robber on a grand scale, Genghis 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. 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 in a warrior sitting on a horseback. Cavalry and the Macedonian phalanx, which is a battle formation with a million spears that face the enemy. Phalanx is like... P-H-A-L-A-N-X. Phalanx. Okay, so it's a battle formation in which you had like 10 rank and 7 file. 700 soldiers, all with spears, all facing each other. So the first row of spears is horizontal. The next one is slightly more vertical, more vertical, more vertical. So you have 700 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 phalanx was a great, it was one of the great, you could say. Trump cards that Alexander had and his very mobile cavalry and very hard soldiers, very high quality soldiers. When it comes to Chinggis Khan, when Chinggis 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, 1 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 1000, 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 Chigis Khan. If he says go and jump off 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 learned certain war strategies from the Turks when they conquered Khwarazm, 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 weirdest combinations. They are the first to probably invent cannons. and then cannons became the modern weapons that we have today. They had tremendous, you know, they could move at lightning speed. They invented the first intercontinental postal system, the Mongols. They invented the world's, they made, Genghis Khan made the world's largest free trade zone. Even today, one of the biggest free trade zones is the European Union, where you have free trade. No tariffs, no taxes for going from one place to another. In India, you had octroi. From one city to another, if you had to transport goods, you had to pay a tax at the entrance of every city. The Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan created the world's largest free trade zone in human history. So many innovations were brought in by Genghis Khan. But the military innovations were the best. And he understood the role of momentum and energy in warfare. They had these formations, you know, the two horns formation, in which horses would charge and envelop the other army. And he had these generals like Subodai the Valiant. who could coordinate Arby's 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 imagination, incredible technological and logistical achievements. And that's how they were able to conquer half the known world. So by the time Genghis Khan died, just to go back, we'll come back over here. His empire contained much of China, the whole of Iran, much of Central Asia and all the way west. until the borders of Europe. And after he died, his descendants continued the same thing. Over time, the Mongolian Empire was from the banks of the Mediterranean Sea all the way to the banks of the Pacific Ocean. Enormous. Enormous. So Genghis 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 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 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 daddy issues. His entire motivation was this desire for personal glory, personal and wealth and plunder. He, Darius 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. Genghis Khan was driven by a desire for justice and a desire for retaliation. So whether it is China, whether it is Karakhetai, which he conquered, which is like, at that time it was kind of north of India, north of Ladakh. There was a small kingdom called Karakhetai. Tibet. The Uyghur region and some part of Tibet. It was a Turkic or you could say Tangut kind of kingdom. And they... They... They had killed one of his daughter's husbands, which is not a very smart thing to do. So in retaliation, he conquers Karakhetai and annihilates that. And then he had sent a trade delegation to Khwarazm. So Khwarazm is present-day Turkmenistan 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, the Shah. of Khwarazm just the way we saw someone like Aurangzeb, way Indians. We did not see Aurangzeb as our guy. He was an oppressor. He was an occupier. Similarly, the Iranians, the Persians, they saw the Shah of Khwarazm, Shah Mahmood or whatever his name was, as a Turk, as a foreigner. So Chinggis Khan had subdued China. He had subdued Kara Khitai. 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 Khwarazm, to the city of Uttarar. Uttarar. It was on the eastern borders of Khwarazm. So he sends this trade delegation with all these trade goods and all to Uttarar. And the governor of Uttarar, who was a cousin or something, or a relative of the king, of the Shah, he simply confiscates all the goods. And he murders the envoys of Chinggis Khan. So Chinggis Khan eventually comes to know about what happened. So he sends a diplomatic delegation to Khwarazm. And he demands that this governor in Alchuk be handed over to Mongolia so that he can be brought to justice. Once again he tries to resort to diplomacy to solve this problem. And those governors are shaved off and they are made bald. And 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, Genghis Khan tries trade, doesn't work. He tries diplomacy, doesn't work. He says, okay, if that's what you want, let's have it. So, he invades Khwarazm. He captures the city of Uttarar. Inalchuk is captured. He says, I'll give you as much gold as you want. Genghis Khan takes all this gold and silver, melts it and has him drink it. Have you seen Game of Thrones? That one, that episode? Where they melt gold and pour it on one of the guy's head. Yeah, he's the brother of the Khalisi, future Khalisi. Says, here's your crown. Here's your crown. So Inalchuk, it was inspired by what Genghis Khan did to Inalchuk. the governor of Uttaraar. But that was not all. That was not enough. The governor, he had requested the Shah to hand over Inalchuk to him, but the Shah also refused. So the conquest of Khwarazm begins with the conquest of Uttaraar. 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 Samarkand, he takes Bukhara. Then the Shah of Khwarazm runs, runs, runs. He runs all the way. And he's pursued by Chinggis Khan's army. And he takes refuge in one of the islands in the Caspian Sea where he dies. Of Pluracy. But his son Jalaluddin escapes southwards. With his entire family. With his mother and whoever else. So Chinggis Khan then starts pursuing this guy. Jalaluddin. And Jalaluddin comes south. He crosses Gandhar. And he comes to the banks of the Indus where Chinggis Khan catches up with him. And then there is the great battle of the Indus in which the army of Jalaluddin is destroyed and smashed to pieces. And Jalaluddin abandons his family, his mother, his wife, his ladies. He takes his horse and he jumps into the Sindhu river, Indus river. And he crosses the Indus and he enters India. And Chinggis 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 Chinggis 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 Genghis Khan India was why did everybody invade India the Turks the Mongols the Mughals not the Mongols Mughals and so on British Europeans they came for the riches Jigis Khan is there with the greatest army the world has ever seen. And he only has to cross the Indus river and he can have all of India. And he's gonna win. He's that good. At that time, northern India was ruled by Iltutmish. who was one of the sultans of the small Delhi Sultanate, whose daughter was Razia Sultan, Iltutmish. So Chinggis Khan chose to go back. He chose to turn around. His job was done. He had destroyed the army of Khwarazm 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, a once in a lifetime opportunity, to kill. 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. It is called the Battle of the Badger's Mouth Pass. It's a place called Yehuling, 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 these mountain ranges. And there are these two hills between which the Chinese army had placed forts. There is a river between them. And that's where the big battle happened between the defenders of Beijing and the army of Genghis 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 Genghis Khan did to them. So, Genghis Khan destroys the Chinese army over there at Yehuling, north of Beijing. He marches to Beijing. The city had big walls at the time. He goes to this place called Yanjing. He reaches Beijing and there is 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 Xixia Empire in the western part of China. And he is fighting them. But in the year 1227, for some reason... He leaves his body. He dies. And we don't know why he dies. And the Mongols, they maintained a record, a chronicle of the days of Genghis Khan. It is today called the secret history of the Mongols. in which it is not mentioned how he died. So there are all these stories about how he died. Maybe his local Chinese wife killed him, or he died of wounds in a battle. There are 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 of Alexander is kind of not known. It is probably in Alexandria. Alexandria, Al-Iskandria in Egypt. But it's not been definitively identified. So two people, two great men from the great man theory of history. Genghis Khan, way greater than Alexander. Way greater. And a much better person. Of course, historians put this figure. I don't know what figure they put. 30 million, 50 million of people that Genghis Khan killed. Alexander would have killed no less. And Genghis 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 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, which happened in Samarkand and Bukhara. At least Samarkand for sure. Or Bukhara. One of these two. Okay. This is, 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, Chinggis 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 Chinggis 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 hmm okay let's talk about India a little bit okay What is the connection between the Mughals and the Mongols? Because urban legend says that Babar was a descendant of Genghis 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 Chinggis Khan dies, then his third son, Ogedei, becomes the emperor after him. And he concludes the conquest of China. He conquers China fully. Then his grandson, Chinggis Khan's grandson, Kublai Khan, rules China as the emperor of the Yuan Empire. And then his other grandsons, they expand westwards. Some form the Chagatai Khanate, some conquer and rule Russia, some rule in Central Asia. Some are called the Bukhara. There is the Golden Horde and his grandson Hulegu Khan, Baghdad, 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 become Turkified. They conquer Turkic regions of Asia. Most of their soldiers are Turkic. They marry among the Turkic people and over time they become Turkified. So that's how... Many of the Mongols, their descendants 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 Genghis Khan. He said that he was a descendant of Genghis Khan. We don't have any actual evidence. Hard evidence that he was a descendant of Genghis Khan, but he claimed descent. And then you had the, so you have Timur and you have Genghis Khan. And this guy Babar, he claimed he was a descendant of both. Both Timur and Genghis 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 Babur claimed that he was a descendant of Chinggis Khan and Timur and so on and so forth. But as far as I know, it could just be a story. So that's where we are. And Babur is the founder of the so-called Mughal Empire. That's why it is claimed and many historians claim that Chinggis Khan, his descendants ruled India. But we don't have any solid evidence of that. I think we discussed this long ago about how the Mughal emperors would have looked in person. And lots of people believe that they looked like people from Mongolia. Correct to say? Well, when it comes to Babur, he was definitely a very Turkic looking person. Which means the standard, the stereotypical Mongoloid so-called facial features, small eyes and the facial features that people would have in the Turkic regions of Central Asia and in Mongolia. Which is like, 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. Most people in Turkey look European. Because if you look at the genetics of Turkey, they are mostly Greek, Armenian. and Anatolian. Okay. So most Turks are actually Turkified Greeks today. But the real Turks were the Central Asian people of the Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan region, Turkmenistan, all those regions. And those people, they are the stereotypical Turkic looking people. And Babur would have looked like that. That's what Babur 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 did not look Indian. But Akbar married various Indian women. And his son Salim, who was then known as Jahangir, would have looked more Indian. And Salim married another, I don't know who he married. I don't remember the Mughal history. But over time, they became more and more Indian. And by the time it was Aurangzeb, they were almost fully Indian. Looks wise. And we know how Bahadur Shah looked. Bahadur Shah Zafar 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. They invented much of the modern world. Free trade zones. Do you think... Diplomatic immunity. You know how there's this urban legend about how... one third of the population has descended from Genghis 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 Genghis 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 strongly interrelated. They were all relatives of each other, which means they had very similar genetics. And then the Mongols suddenly... they go and disperse all across the world. So suddenly you have 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 constructed, that Genghis Khan was a mass rapist, and he spent most of his adult 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 Chinggis Khan and the Mongols. And to paint them as bloodthirsty and evil barbarians and rapists and all that. There is absolutely no scientific fact behind this claim. And the first, I remember 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 Chinggis Khan. How do you know it is Chinggis Khan who is the originator of all these genetics? For that you would need actual genetic data from Chinggis 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 they make this claim? Absurd, unscientific nonsense. Why did we do this podcast? Oh, we have to... 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 Chinggis 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 Gallic, 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 geopolitical power and becomes a part of the Roman Empire. And Julius Caesar 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 Alexander. But what drove Julius Caesar was the same instincts that drove Alexander. The same desire for glory and wealth and plunder and territory. And the same... The same instincts and same impulses drove Napoleon, who also idolized Julius Caesar and Alexander. 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 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 hegemonic claims, expansionist claims, based on the conquests of the Mongols, who were never Chinese. So there is that legacy. And the other legacy of the Mongols, of Genghis Khan, is diplomatic immunity. Genghis Khan was probably the first ruler, probably the first ruler who instituted the... tradition and the custom and the policy of giving immunity to diplomats of other nations including those 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 blitzkrieg that the nazis copied you know concentrated force in one place and then you then you make a hole through the defensive then you move through and forget the defensive fortifications and walls They made the Great Wall of China completely obsolete, the Mongols. 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 Genghis Khan. And yeah, so much more. For the sake of military expansion. And then that led its way into what we know as modern day civilization. Yeah, but another thing I forgot to mention is that he had religious freedom. Genghis Khan did not. convert anybody to his religion of Tengriism which is a polytheistic religion. Genghis Khan, some people imagine that Genghis Khan was a Muslim because he is Khan. He was not a Muslim and the Muslims have taken the Khan surname from the Mongols. So there is that. And he had this policy of religious freedom means whichever territory he conquered he did not force the people to change their way of life or to change their religion. He conquered Khwarazm which is Persia and other parts of Central Asia. He allowed, of course, At some point in time, he did 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 faith? No, Buddhist temples or Hindu temples. He would rebuild the Buddhist and Hindu temples? Yes, he is said to have rebuilt some temples by knocking down mosques in the Khwarazm region. And he had banned and his... Descendants like Kublai Khan had also banned the practice of the Islamic slaughtering of animals, the halal thing. So there were certain things that 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 could practice whatever religion you want, more or less, with certain restrictions and so on. So overall, much better than the European conquests 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 one permanent... See, Alexander built one permanent thing, which is the city of Alexandria, Alexandria and Greece. The Mongols built nothing, except for one thing. Bridges. They built bridges everywhere. And some of them still stand. I wonder how Genghis Khan is perceived in... Modern day Mongolia. Because there's something called Mongolian throat music. Mongolian throat singing. The who? Where they sing. Like that. Yes. They put on a voice and sing. And it's very, very transcendental music also. It can be extremely meditative to listen to Mongolian throat singing. Yes. But for viewers who are interested, go and search for music videos after this podcast, almost at the end. Of Mongolian throat singing and especially rock songs. Yes. There are some incredible songs where the music videos actually depict the warriors who fought with Genghis Khan. So I think that they're still revered. Like the legacy of Genghis 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. controversial statement, but this China's expansionist policy, geopolitically speaking, somewhere it'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 Genghis Khan and want to embody him in some way. That's what I wonder. I wonder how he's perceived in China. In China, as a conqueror, as... The guy who conquered their country, he is reviled and he is hated. And there is an explicit ban in Inner Mongolia, which is Chinese-occupied Mongolia, on any mention of Genghis Khan and on even teaching the history of Genghis Khan. His name is blacklisted. The Chinese fear him so much even today. But they want to use the expansionism of the... Chinggis Khan Empire of the Yuan Dynasty as the basis of their own hegemonic territorial claims. It'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 is seen as the father of the nation. He is seen as the father of the nation and his wife Borte is seen as the mother of the nation. So in Mongolia, they essentially worship him. Like the greatest shaman who ever lived. That sort of thing. Okay. That's it for today, ladies and gentlemen. This was just an experimental podcast. We're trying to figure out if world history is a subject that you guys would enjoy. And I think podcasts 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 fun. And we'll cover a few more topics the next time. Please leave your suggestions down below. Any signing off notes for today? 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 that 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 will keep on 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 an interest in history, especially these fascinating figures of history. Yeah. 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, 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 chengish 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 were the ancestors of the mongols the kushans the skithians and whatnot 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. 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. 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. TRS will be back with the legend AC himself. Lots of love and lots of gratitude for listening in.