The man known to history as Genghis Khan was born in the middle of the twelfth century. While different sources place his year of birth between 1155 and 1167, the most commonly accepted date is 1162. His personal name was Temujin and he was a member of the Borjigin clan. There is also no consensus on Genghis’ place of birth, but it is likely that he was born around the upper valley of the Onon River, near the sacred mountain of Burqan Khaldun in the Khentii Mountains in northeastern Mongolia. Temujin’s father was a Mongol chieftain named Yesugei. According to the Secret History of the Mongols, the official history of Genghis’ life and conquests written for the Mongol royal family after his death, Yesugei was the grandson of Qabul Khan, the head of the Borjigin clan in the early twelfth century. Some historians argue that this could have been later propaganda to enhance Genghis’ lineage, and Yesugei was not related to the royal clan at all. Nevertheless, he was clearly the leader of a fearsome band of warriors who served Qabul’s son Qutula in the 1150s. Yesugei was also the sworn brother of Toghril, the leader of the Kereit tribe, one of the five major tribal confederations of Mongolia. Yesugei and Toghril often fought against the Merkit confederation and in around 1160, Yesugei abducted a 15-year-old girl named Hoelun who had been betrothed to a Merkit chieftain, sparking a feud that would last more than half a century. Over the course of the following decade, Hoelun would give Yesugei four sons and a daughter, of whom Temujin was the oldest. By the time of Temujin’s birth, Yesugei already had two sons from another wife, and he was not his eldest son or a clear heir of any kind to him. From a young age, Temujin learned horsemanship and archery, the two skills that formed an essential part of warfare for the nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppe, the vast steppe stretching from Hungary in the west to Manchuria in the east. As a child, Temujin was also introduced to hunting and falconry, which would become his favourite pastimes as an adult. While Temujin was close to his siblings, his closest childhood friend was a boy from the Jadarad clan named Jamuga, and the two became sworn brothers. During his childhood, Temujin began to learn about the complex relationships among the Mongolian tribes. The Mongol tribe into which Temujin was born was divided into two major clans: the Borjigin and the Tayichiud. The Mongols were one of five major tribes in the region, the others being the Kereit, Merkit, Tartars, and Naiman. The peoples of Mongolia were surrounded by powerful neighbours. To the east and southeast was imperial China, which since 1115 had been ruled by the Jin dynasty founded by the Jurchen tribe from Manchuria. To the south was the Western Xia in northwest China, ruled by the Tangut people from Tibet. To the north was the desolate and inhospitable region we call Siberia today, while substantially to the west and south-west were the Muslim powers of Central Asia and the Middle East, which were in a period of some decline by the twelfth century, the Arab Caliphate having gone through its golden age centuries earlier between the eighth and tenth centuries. In around 1171, when Temujin was probably around nine years old, he was betrothed to Borte, the daughter of Dai Sechen, a chief of the Ongirrad tribe. The leaders of prominent Mongol families often married Ongirrad women, but this required Temujin and his father to travel on a long journey across the Gobi desert to take part in the betrothal ceremony. Although he was a powerful warrior, Yesugei could only afford to offer Dai Sechen a single horse for his daughter. Although the Ongirrad chief agreed to the match, he stipulated that the horse would serve as an initial dowry, and until a greater dowry was paid Temujin would have to stay behind and work for his future father-in-law. While the young Temujin was ashamed that his father could not afford to pay for his bride straight away, he spent three happy years among the Ongirrad working as a herder. Temujin heard stories about the bourgeoning trade between the Ongirrad and the wealthy Jin empire south of the Great Wall. Temujin’s time with the Ongirrad ended when he was around 12 years old. During one of his raids, Yesugei encountered a band of Tartars. Rather than launching an attack, the Tartars invited him to dinner. Bound by the steppe traditions of hospitality, Yesugei felt he could not refuse, and was duly poisoned by his hosts. The slow-acting poison enabled Yesugei to leave instructions to bring Temujin back home. Although Dai Sechen was reluctant to part with the boy, he recognised the difficulties Temujin’s family faced and allowed him to leave. By the time Temujin returned home, his mother Hoelun had tried and failed to assume her late husband’s leadership position in the name of her teenage sons, and the Tayichiud claimed leadership among the Mongols once again. As Hoelun’s followers deserted her one by one, she and her sons were reduced to destitution and forced to hunt and fish to survive. Temujin and his brother Qasar proved the most effective at catching the prey, but their elder half-brothers, Begter and Belgutei, began to lay claim to their food. On one occasion, Begter stole a large fish that Temujin and Qasar had caught and proceeded to cook and eat it. The younger half-brothers responded by ambushing Begter while Belgutei was away and showering him with arrows. While Belgutei did not seek to avenge his brother’s death, Hoelun was incensed and warned her sons that the family could not hope to confront their real enemies by fighting and killing each other. Hoelun’s fears proved justified, as the Tayichiud leader Targutai used Begter’s murder as the pretext to capture Temujin. The boy escaped into the woods and survived for six days before hunger eventually forced him to escape, during which effort he was captured and taken into Tayichiud captivity. Although he was forced to wear a device that restricted his movements, he managed to overcome his guard and was rescued by a sympathiser to the Borjigin cause. By the time he returned to his family, the 14-year-old Temujin found them without anything to their name apart from nine horses. A once proud family had fallen quickly. When the Tayichiud then raided their camp and took eight of the horses, Temujin took the remaining steed and relentlessly pursued the enemy. On his way, he encountered a young warrior named Bo’orchu, who immediately became his friend and companion and joined the pursuit of the Tayichiud. After recovering the horses in a daring night raid, they were struggling to get away from the Tayichiud riders when Temujin noticed that the leader of the pursuit had ridden far ahead of the rest of his men. Bo’orchu took the opportunity to fire an arrow which wounded the Tayichiud leader, enabling the pair to get away safely. Over the next few years, Temujin and Bo’orchu would build up a band of loyal raiders. During this period, another gifted warrior named Boroqul joined Temujin and became a close companion. In around 1178, when Temujin was 16 years old or so, he rode to Ongirrad territory in Bo’orchu’s company and claimed Borte as his bride from his proud father-in-law, Dai Sechen, having been away for several years. Two years later, Temujin would suffer one of the worst humiliations of his life. A large Merkit raiding party of 300 horsemen descended upon Temujin’s camp and scattered them. Although Temujin managed to escape with his brothers and his mother Hoelun, Borte appears to have been deliberately left behind in order to enable Temujin’s flight. As he pondered how to recover his wife, Temujin reached out to the Kereit chief Toghril and appealed to him by reminding him of his sworn brotherhood with Temujin’s late father Yesugei. Toghril accepted Temujin as his adopted son and organised a large army to fight the Merkit. The alliance prevailed in the ensuing campaign and Borte was rescued. During her time in Merkit captivity Borte had been given to the brother of the Merkit chief, and by the time of her liberation she was pregnant with his child. Nevertheless, when Borte gave birth to a son in 1182, Temujin accepted the child as his own and gave him the name Jochi. The following year, Borte gave birth to a second son, a biological child of Temujin named Chagatai, who would never stop reminding his father of Jochi’s illegitimacy. Now in his early twenties, Temujin had established himself as a reasonably powerful Mongol leader, but also one who was widely feared and respected for his bravery. His main rival during this period was Jamuga, his childhood friend and sworn brother who was by the early 1180s the leader of the Jadarad clan. The two men had crossed paths again as part of the coalition against the Merkit, but after a couple of years they went their separate ways, each with ambitions to unite the Mongols under their leadership. Although Jamuga could count on larger numbers and the support of an older and more conservative generation, Temujin had the support of most of the Borjigin clan and was attracting many talented followers from humble backgrounds to his cause. These included Jelme, a recruit from one of the tribes who lived in the northern forests, and his ten-year-old brother Subedei, who despite his youth would soon become a trusted and talented warrior. In 1186, Temujin’s wife Borte gave birth to a third son, Ogedei. The same year, Temujin’s followers elected him khan of the Borjigin clan. However, his rise was seemingly halted the following year after he was defeated by Jamuga’s army at a place called Dalan Baljut. The main sources for Genghis or Temujin’s life are silent for several years thereafter, suggesting that he had lost most of his following and was forced into exile. According to the biography of Subedei, during this period Temujin and his remaining followers took refuge in the Jin Empire in China. Temujin’s absence deprived Toghril of a powerful ally, and Kereit khan was also overthrown and forced into exile. In 1195 Temujin finally had the opportunity to re-establish himself when the Jin and the Tartars began fighting over the spoils following a joint victory against the Ongirrad. Temujin offered an alliance with the Jin frontier commander and proceeded to deal the Tartars a series of heavy defeats in 1196. The resulting plunder made Temujin rich and he used his position to re-establish his alliance with Toghril and restore him as the Kereit khan. In 1197, Temujin exploited the momentum in his victory against the Tartars by reviving his feud with the Merkit. 21-year-old Subedei infiltrated the Merkit camp and used the intelligence he gathered to lead a short and victorious campaign. A further series of victories followed in the late 1190s and into the early 1200s for Temijun and his allies against the Merkit and other rival peoples of the Steppe such as the Naiman. These victorious campaigns caused considerable anxiety among rival tribes, who in response elected Jamuga as universal khan, a grander title than Temujin’s own. Over fifteen tribes had joined this new coalition, but many individuals were disaffected and supported Temujin’s cause by passing on key intelligence about the coalition’s plans. Forewarned of a surprise attack by Jamuga, Temujin sought Toghril’s assistance and won an easy victory as a snowstorm threw the coalition forces into disarray. Temujin pursued Jamuga’s Tayichiud allies and engaged them at Koyiten by the banks of the Onon River and routed them again. However, on this occasion he was wounded in the neck by a poisoned arrow. According to Mongol lore, his life was only saved because his general, Jelme, sucked the venom from the wound and spat it out while Temujin lay unconscious. As the prisoners of war were rounded up, the man who had been responsible for the near-fatal wound was brought in front of the khan. Rather than executing him, Temujin praised him for his marksmanship and recruited him as an officer. He soon acquired the nickname Jebe, or “the Arrow”, and would go on to become one of the khan’s greatest commanders. Jamuga’s defeat led to the temporary fragmentation of his coalition, yet by 1202 he had formed a new alliance with the Naiman and a number of defectors from Temujin’s forces, including several disaffected uncles and his brother Qasar. Jamuga then launched a concerted attack on Temujin, but the Borjigin khan proved equal to the situation, manoeuvring his forces skilfully and switching between guerrilla tactics and field battles. In the winter, after a formal ceremony confirming him as heir to Toghril’s Kereit khanate, Temujin and his adopted father defeated the Naiman. In an effort to consolidate his alliance with Toghril, he proposed that his son Jochi marry Toghril’s daughter. The proposal infuriated Toghril’s disinherited son Ilkha, who defected to Jamuga after his father refused to break ties with Temujin. With Ilkha at his side, Jamuga rode to Toghril’s camp and forced him to join the anti-Temujin coalition. In 1203, Temujin was defeated by a Kereit army commanded by his adoptive father but escaped with around half his force when Jamuga called off the pursuit. His old companion Bo’orchu and his son Ogedei were initially unaccounted for and returned to camp with heavy wounds. While an angry Temujin sent a series of letters to his former supporters accusing them of betraying him, he began to build a new coalition. From his new base near the Baljuna Convent, Temujin and his senior commanders swore an oath to fight to the bitter end. Meanwhile, the members of the coalition lost faith in Toghril’s leadership, and Temujin’s brother Qasar returned to his side. In the autumn, Temujin went on the offensive against Toghril and defeated the Kereit army after a hard-fought battle that lasted three days until Temujin’s general Muqali broke through to the enemy’s camp. While escaping from the battlefield, Toghril was killed by some Naiman bandits. Temujin then assumed the leadership of the Kereit and announced the unification of the Mongol and Kereit nations and welcomed several of Toghril’s lieutenants into his ranks. Temujin’s latest success led to the formation of another coalition between Jamuga and the Naiman. As part of his preparations for this final confrontation, Temujin began to reorganise his army into units of tens, hundreds, and thousands, following the example of the Jin Chinese Empire. He also formed an elite bodyguard and began to set up administrative structures to govern the recently pacified tribes. He soon developed a formula which promised autonomy to peoples who agreed to submit without a fight, while threatening dreadful consequences for those who chose to resist, a method of psychological warfare which would be used consistently by the Mongols in their conquests over the next century. In 1204, Temujin convened a quriltai or grand council to plan the upcoming campaign against the Naiman. The khan was persuaded to launch his campaign early on 17 May 1204. By the end of June, the Mongols reached Naiman territory and the first clashes took place. Although his army was far smaller than the enemy’s, Temujin ordered his men to light five fires per person at night to give the impression of superior numbers. The Naiman commander, Tayang Khan, was deceived by this ruse and proposed retreating to friendlier terrain in the Altai Mountains, however his subordinates compelled him to pursue an active strategy. Over the next few months both armies danced around each other until Tayang prepared to do battle at Chakirmaut at the foot of Mount Naqu. As Temujin and his leading generals spearheaded the attack, Jamuga suddenly led his men away from the field, depriving Tayang of his numerical superiority. Despite this, the Naiman army resisted bravely but Temujin’s initial charge caught them off guard, and the Mongols gradually surrounded their valiant enemies as they retreated up the slopes of Mount Naqu. Temujin was astonished to see the enemy storm down the hill in a last-gasp charge and offered the Naiman honourable terms of surrender, but they preferred to fight to the last man. Tayang was taken prisoner and died of the wounds sustained during the battle not long afterwards. Most of his allies submitted to Temujin. At the age of 42, after suffering several setbacks over the course of his life, Temujin had vanquished his enemies and united over 30 tribes under his rule in a large tract of the Asian Steppe. Temujin’s victory at Chakirmaut seemed decisive, but the mysterious Jamuga was still unaccounted for. While most of his followers had deserted him and submitted to Temujin, he fled into the mountains with a dwindling band of men. Upon hearing that Temujin had put a large bounty on his head, the five men who remained with Jamuga tied him up and brought him to Temujin. As Temujin prized loyalty above all else, he executed Jamuga’s captors for their treachery but took considerably longer to decide on the fate of his sworn brother. Eventually he ordered his sadistic nephew Eljigidei to carry out a brutal execution by hacking him to pieces. In 1205, Temujin began to launch raids against the Tanguts to the south, while Subedei worked to further pacify the new subjects of the Mongols by suppressing a fresh Merkit rebellion. The following year, 1206, Temujin held another quriltai which brought together all the Mongol nobles to officially proclaim the creation of a new Mongol empire. It was at this juncture that Temujin was given a new title, Genghis Khan, which should more accurately be rendered as Chingis Khan. The name is usually translated as ‘universal ruler,’ though recent scholarship suggests ‘fierce ruler’ is a better translation. Temujin accepted the imperial throne on the condition that everyone would obey his word. After assuming imperial power, Genghis began to reward his followers. His longstanding companions Bo’orchu and Boroqul were given the highest ranks, while the likes of Jebe and Subedei were ranked one step below. The four were members of a nine-man cabinet that enjoyed the greatest privileges and took part in key decision-making alongside the khan. While Genghis had united the tribes of Mongolia through conquest, he faced a monumental task in eliminating various tribal and clan loyalties to forge a single Mongol nation. In order to achieve this Genghis set out to build a new political system in which his subjects placed allegiance to the khan and the Mongol nation above kinship ties. The success of this would depend on his ability as khan to provide his people with huge amounts of wealth plundered from enemies through new conquests. This incentive system demanded frequent campaigns outside the new empire’s borders, and Genghis consequently continued the military reorganisation that he had started in the latter stages of his unification campaigns. The basic organisational unit in the new decimal system was the minqan, or one thousand men, though the formidable tumen or ten thousand is more widely known. Since each of Genghis’ subjects was attached to a minqan, this decimal system was also intended to replace the old social structure of clans and tribes. While most of the leaders of the minqans were from the old aristocracy, a significant minority had more humble origins, reflecting the meritocratic ethos that had allowed Genghis to find some of his greatest commanders among the lower classes. To cap it all off, Genghis strengthened his bodyguard or keshig to over 10,000 men, who were recruited from the sons of powerful men to ensure their good behaviour. Genghis gave his four sons senior responsibilities: Jochi was master of the hunt, Chagatai was responsible for enforcing the new law code, Ogedei served as head of the nascent civil bureaucracy, and the youngest Tolui was named commander-in-chief. Despite this, Genghis’ sons complained that they lacked military authority and apart from Tolui their military authority only extended to their own minqans. This prompted Genghis to set up a new division of empire to placate his sons in 1209. 45,000 men were divided amongst Genghis’ family members, and the four sons were each given their own fiefs with the potential of further expansion. While Genghis stipulated that these realms would be subject to control by the central government, the imperial princes often ignored the officials appointed by their father to monitor their activities and their domains would eventually form the basis of increasingly independent states under their descendants. As part of his state-building programme, Genghis introduced a new law code known as the Great Yasa. While large parts of the Yasa codified the traditional customs of the Steppe peoples, it was also an attempt to establish a common set of laws for the new Mongol nation. Part of the code took the form of military regulations, concerning the mobilisation of armies, the duties of officers, and the punishment they would suffer if they failed to carry out those duties. With regard to taxation, Genghis gave generous exemptions to religious leaders and foreign merchants. While the khan maintained his traditional pagan beliefs, his policy of religious toleration would eventually allow him and his successors to rule over a vast empire of Buddhists, Muslims, Nestorian Christians, and Confucians right across Asia. He maintained good relations with the Muslim merchants who operated along the Silk Road to the west and sought Mongol assistance to access the Chinese markets to the east. There were also harsh elements to this. For instance, the Yasa mandated the death penalty for a wide range of crimes including lying, contaminating running water, and the failure to share food with strangers, though wealthy criminals could often escape capital punishment by paying large fines. The Yasa only applied to Mongols, and there was little consideration for the fate of foreigners. Accordingly, the Mongols habitually captured foreign women on campaign and took them as concubines. Genghis and his sons had the first pick of the female captives, and he would go on to have 23 official wives and a harem of over 500 women. Some geneticists and historians have speculated that as many as 16 million people today may be descended from Genghis Khan. Over the course of the three years between 1206 and 1209, Genghis continued to make changes to his new military organisation, and parts of the keshig or bodyguard were assigned specialist duties such as intelligence gathering, surveying and mapmaking, and organising the supplies for the army. In peacetime, the annual hunt organised by Jochi served as the main form of training for Genghis’ armies. As in a military campaign, the tumens would work together and surround the animals across a large area, before gradually closing in for the kill. Anyone who allowed an animal to escape the net or killed an animal before the khan’s arrival was subject to severe penalties. Once everything was ready, Genghis and his inner circle would descend upon the encircled animals, before allowing the officers and their men to complete the slaughter. The exercise not only enabled the Mongol armies to practice their manoeuvres and communication methods, but also provided a vast quantity of food to feed the men. The Mongol cavalryman’s primary weapon was the bow and arrow, and each man would carry a short-range and long-range bow. Each horse archer was equipped with sixty arrows in total, divided into short-range and long-range projectiles, though the most ferocious was the relatively small composite bow which required great upper body strength to use effectively, but which landed arrows with devastating speed and power. Most notably, it could be fired from horseback while riding by a skilled cavalry archer. It was this weapon which would enable the enormous conquests which were to follow. Each Mongol warrior also had at least six horses, enabling them to travel up to 65 miles a day. The speed at which Mongol armies moved was Genghis’ main strategic advantage. Since his armies were often outnumbered by the enemy, Genghis employed a range of tactics to exaggerate the size of his own forces. One of the best-known Mongol tactics was the feigned retreat. If the army was struggling to make progress against a strong defensive position, it would withdraw from the field and leave their plunder behind. While the enemy was distracted by the loot, the Mongols would turn back and cut them to pieces in the open field. Although the Mongols later employed Chinese siege engineers, they were not used to siege warfare, and Genghis initially avoided attacking well-fortified cities. He preferred to attack smaller towns and distributed the resulting plunder evenly among his otherwise unpaid troops. After his elevation as khan, Genghis rarely took personal command of military campaigns, preferring to send his sons and senior generals instead. In 1207, Jochi led a successful campaign against the Turkic Forest Peoples in southern Siberia, who included the Buriyat, Kirghiz, and Oyirad. In 1208, Subedei won a crushing victory against the ever-rebellious Merkit, though he was criticised by Genghis for allowing some to escape further north. In 1209, Genghis secured the submission of the Uighur kingdom in East Turkestan, now the Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang. The Uighurs had once ruled a mighty empire that included much of Mongolia, but by the beginning of the thirteenth century they had submitted to the Qara Khitai, whose empire extended from modern-day Kazakhstan into northwest China. Genghis subsequently recruited many Uighurs into the Mongol imperial administration and adopted the Uighur script for the first official Mongol written texts. With the conquest of the Forest Peoples and the submission of the Uighurs, Genghis laid much of the groundwork for an invasion of China. Since the collapse of the Tang dynasty in 907 AD, China had been divided between a number of competing dynasties. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, there were four such states: the Jurchen Jin empire in the northeast, the Tangut Western Xia in the north, Qara Khitai in the northwest, and the Song dynasty south of the Yangtze River. Although the Song was the only one of these states ruled by the Han Chinese majority, the rulers of all four states adhered to Chinese customs and administrative practices. The Mongolians would benefit substantially from the divided state of China at this time. Genghis came to see the Tangut empire both as a source of plunder for his restless armies and a testing ground for their ability to fight the more powerful Jin. After the initial raid in 1205, Genghis launched a larger campaign in 1207 which forced the Tangut to agree to pay an annual tribute. When the payment was suspended in 1209, Genghis organised a large invasion force and embarked on a punitive expedition. Eventually the desperate Tangut decided on a formal submission to Genghis Khan and promised to supply troops for future campaigns. By 1211, with his rear secure, the 49-year-old Genghis Khan was ready to turn his attention to the Jin empire. While this was motivated in part by the desire to avenge frequent Jin raids into Mongol territory and the relentless logic of perennial conquest to feed and pay his troops, the invasion of northern China had been a long-held ambition. The Jin had conquered northern China from the Khitan Liao dynasty at the beginning of the twelfth century, and proceeded to drive the Song emperors south of the Yangtze River. While a peace treaty was signed between the Jin and Song in 1142, relations between the two Chinese powers remained uneasy and the peace was interrupted by occasional conflict. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Song embarked on an effort to reclaim territories north of the Yangtze River. While the Jin easily defeated the invasion force, within a few years the Jin heartland of Manchuria faced a Khitan rebellion partly encouraged by Genghis. Having been preoccupied with its wars against the Song dynasty, the Jin left its northern frontier relatively undefended. As the Jin planned to strengthen its northern defences by building a new wall, Genghis decided that it was time to strike. In early 1211 Genghis called a quriltai or grand council in which he set out his plans to conquer northern China. Unlike previous Steppe peoples who had intermittently conquered parts of northern China and abandoned their homeland to newcomers, Genghis intended to maintain his power base in Mongolia from which he would rule over an empire that incorporated both the nomadic Steppe cultures of Central Asia and sedentary cultures of China. The invasion force of around 100,000 men began moving in March. Genghis divided his army into three columns. The eastward column was commanded by Jebe and Subedei, the central one was led by the khan personally alongside Tolui and Muqali, while the western column was commanded by Genghis’ three other sons. While Genghis’ elder sons faced no opposition after crossing the Gobi desert, the other two columns raided the area north of Jin in an attempt to draw the enemy out to battle. When the Jin armies refused to take the bait, Genghis decided to march his forces south. In response, the Jin formed two armies, one to face the advancing Mongols in a frontal attack and the other to strike against Genghis’ right flank. Genghis ordered Jebe to march his men westwards behind his column and eliminate the threat to his flank, leaving the Jin with a single army. While the Jin commander deployed his forces in a narrow pass to prevent the Mongols from fighting on open ground, the momentum of Muqali’s charge proved overwhelming for the Jin cavalry, which trampled over the infantry as it took flight. The Mongols went on to win two further pitched battles to destroy the Jin field armies. Genghis followed up by capturing several major cities and ordered Jebe to advance to the Juyong Pass near the Jin capital of Zhongdu, modern-day Beijing. Unable to take the pass by direct assault, Jebe feigned retreat and went on to destroy the garrison in front of the pass. He marched on to Beijing but was recalled by Genghis, who realised that the Mongol army was not yet equipped to capture such a well-fortified city. Despite their battlefield successes in 1211, once the Mongols returned home for winter with their plunder the Jin reoccupied all the cities they had lost. The following year, Jebe led a raid deep into Manchuria and sacked the city of Liaoyang, encouraging a major Khitan uprising in the process. In October 1212, Genghis joined Jochi, Chagatai, and Ogedei to attack the city of Datong, but the khan was wounded by an arrow and broke off the siege. In 1213, Genghis defeated a new Jin field army before taking the Juyong Pass and surrounding Beijing. The Mongol successes led Hushashu, the commander of the Beijing garrison, to overthrow the Jin emperor and install a puppet ruler with himself as regent. In November, Hushashu managed to defeat the Mongols outside Beijing, but was defeated a couple of days later and killed by his deputy commander. Genghis maintained 5,000 men around Beijing and divided his army into four columns which ravaged the whole empire. Genghis and Tolui led the largest detachment south and threatened the southern Jin capital of Kaifeng. In the space of three short months, the four Mongol armies rampaged through the entirety of Jin territory and left behind a trail of devastation by destroying all the crops in an effort to starve the population into submission. While Genghis returned to Mongolia, he maintained a tight blockade on Beijing and encouraged the Jin emperor to submit to him. Although the Jin signed a peace agreement in 1214 which provided for an end to the blockade of Beijing in return for a heavy payment to the Mongols, the Jin emperor almost immediately fled south and established his capital at Kaifeng. Genghis resumed hostilities and appointed a general named Samuqa to lead the siege of Beijing. Although the Mongol army was also suffering from extreme hunger and both besieger and besieged had allegedly resorted to cannibalism, Samuqa remained methodical in his approach. Two Jin armies sent from the south in early 1215 were defeated by the Mongols. In May, the Mongols launched an assault on the city, and after overcoming the valiant resistance from the Jin defenders, the victorious Mongols sacked the city, devastating it to the extent that the population fell by more than three-quarters in the process. Despite this enormous setback, the Jin government in Kaifeng refused to surrender. In 1216, Muqali defeated a Jin counterattack in the east while Samuqa led 30,000 men south and joined up with a Tangut force to devastate the countryside around Kaifeng. Genghis hardened his peace conditions following Samuqa’s raid, and negotiations with the Jin broke down. When Genghis returned to Mongolia in early 1216, he left Muqali in charge as commander in China. Muqali was given an army of 70,000 men, but most of these came from recently-subjugated nations who could desert him at the first sign of Mongol weakness. The limited manpower forced the Mongol commander to scale down his operations, and in 1218 Genghis himself had to lead a pacification campaign against the Tangut, who had moved away from a pro-Mongol policy under a new ruler. By the end of the year, Genghis supplied Muqali with reinforcements which increased the size of his army to 100,000 men. Although he could be as brutal as his comrades, Muqali also sought to consolidate Mongol control by acting magnanimously towards his defeated foes, and he had methodically subdued much of northern China. He died in 1223 with a pristine military record, having never lost a single battle in his career. Muqali was aided in his campaigns by an alliance with the Song dynasty, but following his death conflict arose between the erstwhile allies, enabling the Jin to make a brief recovery. The Mongols would have to wait another decade to fully extinguish the Jin empire. While Muqali was campaigning in northern China, Genghis’ attention had been drawn westwards. Since the beginning of the thirteenth century, Qara Khitai had been at war with Shah Muhammad II of the Khwarezmian Empire, situated to the east of the Caspian Sea in Central Asia. In 1208, the fugitive Naiman prince Quqluq arrived in Qara Khitai and built up an army under the pretext of fighting Genghis, only to overthrow his overlord and declare himself khan in 1213. The reemergence of an old rival on his doorstep led Genghis to send an army of 20,000 men under Jebe to invade Qara Khitai. The Muslim majority population who had suffered under Quqluq’s anti-Islamic religious policy welcomed the Mongols as liberators and defected en-masse. After sweeping aside Quqluq’s army, Jebe entered the Qara Khitan capital, Balasagun in what is now Kyrgyzstan, in triumph and incorporated it into the Mongol empire. He then followed Quqluq south into Kashgaria, where he encouraged the Muslims to revolt by issuing a proclamation of religious tolerance. In 1218, Jebe eventually caught up with Quqluq in northeastern Afghanistan and executed him. So began the Mongol westwards expansion into Central Asia, even as other parts of Genghis’ armies were still undertaking the conquest of China far to the east. While Jebe was pursuing Quqluq, Genghis sent another army north under Jochi and Subedei to pursue the remnants of the Merkit, who had allied with the Cuman or Kipchaks, a Turkic people who occupied a large expanse of the Eurasian steppe from the lower Danube in the west to the Irtysh River in the east. The Mongols had driven the Merkit-Cuman army into Khwarezmian territory and defeated it in battle. Angered at the incursion, Shah Muhammad sent an army to meet the Mongols. Although considerably outnumbered, the Mongols managed to fight the Khwarezmians to a standstill before withdrawing. Upon hearing reports of the battle, Genghis was keen to maintain peaceful relations with Khwarezmia and to establish a mutually beneficial trading relationship, allowing him to turn his attention back to China. In early 1218, Genghis sent a large trade mission to Otrar in the north of the shah’s empire, a fort in the far east of Kazakhstan today. The local governor proceeded to massacre the entire contingent claiming that they were spies. Genghis initially showed restraint and sent a team of three envoys led by a Muslim diplomat asking the shah to hand over the local governor. When an indignant Shah Muhammad executed the diplomat in response, Genghis finally took action and declared war. As both sides prepared for war, Shah Muhammad and his advisers decided that they could most effectively fight the Mongols by retreating into their cities and forcing them into costly sieges, which the Mongols were still not comfortable with engaging in, preferring battles in the open field. Meanwhile, Genghis received a steady stream of information about the Khwarezmian Empire through the network of Muslim merchants. He knew that the empire was ridden with divisions, and that the shah had struggled to establish centralised control from his base at Samarkand. Furthermore, the shah’s mother Terken Qatun was a powerful political figure and could issue decrees in her own name. These dynamics played perfectly into Genghis’ hands, allowing him to sow disinformation among Khwarezmian officials by issuing false decrees from Terken Qatun. Although the terrain of the Khwarezmian Empire posed considerable challenges for any invasion force, Genghis was confident in his army’s ability to achieve victory. A Mongol army of 30,000 horsemen under Jebe and Jochi made the first move, heading west from Qara Khitai and entering the fertile Ferghana valley in the spring of 1219 after crossing the high passes between the Pamir Mountains and the Tian Shan. Meanwhile, Genghis’ main army, accompanied by his three younger sons and Subedei, the strategic mastermind of the campaign, would strike at Otrar. Although the Khwarezmians had intended to pursue a defensive strategy, the appearance of the Mongols in Ferghana provoked Shah Muhammad into sending a large army against them. Since Jebe and Jochi’s army was intended as a diversionary force, Jebe advised retreat, but the headstrong Jochi disobeyed his father’s instructions not to engage in a pitched battle. Like their previous encounter, the battle proved indecisive, but the Mongols managed to inflict heavy casualties on the enemy before withdrawing from the field. By this point, the vanguard of Genghis’ main army had appeared in the north and was advancing on Otrar. By October 1219 Genghis’ force of 100,000 men, including allied contingents, arrived in Otrar on the banks of the Syr Darya River. While Genghis attempted to lay a trap by sending a small force up the Syr Darya towards Samarkand, the greatest city of Central Asia at that time, the shah counted on a strong 60,000-man garrison at Otrar to hold out against the Mongols. Once Genghis realised that the shah would not take the bait, he ordered his sons to besiege Otrar with full force. With several years of experience besieging Chinese cities now behind them, the Mongols were far more proficient at siege warfare than the Khwarezmians had anticipated, and Otrar fell quickly in February 1220. In the meantime, Jochi marched north to capture the cities along the Syr Darya, while Jebe turned south to close off any escape route from Samarkand. Genghis and Tolui took 40,000 men and marched southwest across the Kuzil Kum desert and arrived at the oasis city of Bukhara in February 1220. The bewildered Shah Muhammad was now surrounded by Mongol armies on all sides. Genghis had a particular interest in capturing Bukhara, since the city was fabulously wealthy. The Mongols captured the city after two weeks, and Genghis proceeded to levy heavy taxes on the wealthy elite. The capture of Bukhara opened the road to Samarkand, some 150 miles to the east. Though the shah’s capital was well-fortified and defended by a garrison of up to 100,000 men, the run of spectacular Mongol victories had dented Muhammad’s confidence. Genghis and Tolui were joined by Chagatai and Ogedei in the siege of Samarkand. Genghis employed a favourite tactic of placing prisoners of war in the front ranks to lead the assault. Those who weren’t cut down by their compatriots turned tail and fled, giving the impression that the Mongol army was collapsing. The defenders sallied out in pursuit, allowing Genghis to move in for the kill at the head of his Mongol veterans. While Shah Muhammad II managed to escape the encirclement, the Mongols captured Samarkand after a ten-day siege and proceeded to sack it with impunity. Genghis rested most of his army but sent a force under his elder sons to take control of the Amu Darya, known in classical antiquity as the Oxus River, which separated Persia from the Turkic peoples of Central Asia. The fugitive Shah Muhammad struggled to formulate a recovery plan and eventually moved to northern Iraq. Jebe and Subedei led 20,000 men and captured several cities in Persia and Iraq and drove Muhammad out of his latest refuge. The defeated shah retreated north and escaped to an island in the Caspian Sea, where he died of illness in January 1221. While the shah was on the run, Genghis sent additional forces to invade the Khwarezm heartland. After taking the city of Khiva in December 1220, Jochi arrived at the walls of Gurganj. A relief column under the command of Shah Muhammad’s son and successor marched east towards Gurganj but failed to secure the support of rival factions and marched away. As Jochi continued the siege, an impatient Genghis decided to send a large force under Chagatai to reinforce him. The two brothers had always hated each other and soon began to feud, and it was only the intervention of Bo’orchu that prevented them from coming to blows. Genghis would respond to the familial infighting by demoting Jochi and Chagatai in the succession and nominating Ogedei as his senior heir. Ogedei brought another 20,000 men to reinforce his brothers and took command of the siege, taking the city in April 1221. After such a long siege, the Mongols carried out another notorious massacre, killing almost every single one of the city’s inhabitants. The Mongols went on to treat the whole province of Khwarezm in similar fashion. The trail of Mongol destruction did not end there, as Genghis dispatched Tolui to invade the Khorasan region across the Amu Darya on the Iranian Plateau. The merciless Mongol prince proceeded to sack the cities of Merv and Nishapur, both of which were major centres of Islamic learning and culture and were among the wealthiest and most populous cities in the medieval world. According to some estimates, Tolui’s campaign resulted in the loss of over a million lives. In the meantime, Genghis continued to campaign in Central Asia around what is now Afghanistan, eventually pacifying the region in the course of late 1221 and early 1222. He also launched a probing attack into India, but decided that it was not worth his while to entangle himself in a new war with the powerful Indian sultans, an initiative which would overstretch his resources. Before returning home, he ordered Ogedei to pacify the Hindu Kush, while an ill-conceived revolt amongst the people of the province of Khorasan also had to be suppressed and insurrections at Merv and Herat. Although a number of Khwarezmian mountain fortresses continued to resist, by 1223 the last remnants of the empire were extinguished, effectively leaving the Mongols in control of the vast majority of Central Asia, a region approximating to modern-day Iran, Afghanistan, parts of northern Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It had taken Genghis less than half a decade to do so. While Genghis and his sons were completing the conquest of the Khwarezmian Empire, Jebe and Subedei were carrying out the greatest long-distance raid in history. Shortly after the death of Shah Muhammad in early 1221, Subedei obtained permission from Genghis to lead a campaign directed at the Cuman heartland on the Russian steppe, stretching from north of the Caspian Sea all the way westwards to Ukraine. The khan gave him a force of 20,000 cavalry with instructions to return within three years. After reducing several cities in northern Persia, they turned north towards the Caucasus. As they approached the city of Tabriz in what is now Iranian Azerbaijan, the city’s governor meekly surrendered and agreed to pay an astronomical tribute. The Mongol victories prompted groups of Turkmen and Kurdish raiders to join them to share the spoils. These auxiliaries served as the vanguard for an invasion of the Kingdom of Georgia, with the Mongols following behind. After ordering the vanguard to lay waste to the countryside, Subedei enticed the Georgian army into battle and won a decisive victory. After returning to northern Persia to cover Tolui’s northern flank as he laid waste to Khorasan, Jebe and Subedei returned to the Caucasus late in the year and defeated the Georgians once again. After crossing the Caucasus mountains, the Mongols descended into the Eurasian steppe, which was dominated by the Cumans. When two large Cuman armies were defeated, they sought assistance from the Russian princes. At this moment, the Mongols received an envoy from Venice offering a lucrative trade agreement in return for military assistance against their Genoese rivals on the shores of the Black Sea. The Mongols accepted the offer and destroyed a Genoese trading colony here. Then, armed with Venetian intelligence about the principalities of Rus and their traditional antagonistic relationship with the Cumans, Jebe and Subedei and their men spurred on their steeds. Not long afterwards, the Mongols met a grand coalition of Russia, Kievan and Cuman leaders and their men at the Battle of the Kalka River in what is now Ukraine on the 31st of May 1223. It resulted in a major Mongol victory and the beginning of Mongol rule in south-western Russia. It was also an astonishing statement of how successful Genghis’ conquests had been that his forces were now winning victories on the edges of Europe. In its aftermath, Jebe and Subedei turned east and began the journey home. In the words of the Novgorod Chronicle, “God knows whence he fetched them against us, or where they hid themselves.” It would be another fourteen years before the Mongols returned and when they did they would campaign as far as Hungary, an expedition which neither Alexander the Great’s Macedonians or any other commander equalled in history in terms of how extensive the conquests were. Jebe and Subedei eventually returned back to Central Asia by 1224, where Jebe died shortly afterwards. Around that time Genghis began the homeward journey to Mongolia, arriving back on the Steppe in February 1225. During the Khwarezmian campaign, Genghis had learned that his unreliable Tangut allies had become traitors and joined with the Chinese against the Mongols. Determined to settle scores with the Tangut, Genghis personally led a new campaign accompanied by Ogedei, Tolui, and Subedei. Although the Mongols were held up by lengthy sieges, by the middle of 1226 Subedei had conquered the Gansu corridor north of Tibet. As the Mongol net closed around the Xia capital of Zhongxing later in the year, Genghis defeated a relief force in spectacular fashion by riding over the frozen Yellow River floodplain. He left the siege of Zhongxing to his subordinates and joined Subedei in raiding Jin territory. By the time the Xia agreed to surrender in July 1227, the Great Khan was close to death. Shortly before embarking on his final campaign, he had fallen from his horse and his health had never recovered. During the campaign, he convened a great quriltai to formally proclaim Ogedei as his successor as great khan, while stipulating that Ogedei’s successors would be chosen by a quriltai. Genghis Khan died on the 25th of August 1227, at roughly 65 years of age. According to the Secret History, his body was taken back to Mongolia and entombed in his homeland, but some historians theorise that he was actually buried in the Ordos desert as his body would have decomposed rapidly in the summer heat. The location of Genghis’ tomb remains one of history’s great mysteries, and the tale that anyone with knowledge of the site was put to death is probably true. Genghis’ death did not bring the Mongol conquests which he had initiated to an end. Under Ogedei’s rule fresh invasions were launched into Persia and new attacks were launched against the Arab Caliphate in what is now Iraq, beginning a war in the Middle East that would last several decades, eventually culminating in the siege and capture of Baghdad, the capital of Islam since the middle of the eighth century, in 1258. The Mongol Empire would eventually extend nearly to the Mediterranean Sea here before the expansion ended. To the east, Ogedei also launched the first invasion of the Korean Peninsula. After the short reign of Guyuk Khan in the mid-1240s, Mongke Khan, a grandson of Genghis, succeeded as the fourth Khan. His reign was one of consolidation as the administration of the vast Mongol empire was improved and largely conquered territories were brought fully under Mongol rule, particularly in the Middle East. Thereafter the empire fragmented into several Khanates owing to succession disputes. These included the Golden Horde or Jochid khanate in Russia; the Yuan Dynasty in China; the Chagatid khanate in Central Asia; and the Ilkhanate in the Middle East. The greatest of the later Mongol rulers was Kublai Khan, who ruled between 1260 and 1294 and was a grandson of Genghis. He completed the conquest of China and even attempted to launch invasions of Japan, though these were unsuccessful. It was to Kublai’s court that the Italian explorer and merchant Marco Polo arrived in the late thirteenth century, leaving behind a western account of the splendour and grandeur of the court of this Mongolian ruler. It was a long way from the desperate straits Genghis had found himself in as a young man on the Asian Steppe a century earlier. Genghis Khan leaves behind a legacy as one of the greatest conquerors in world history. After emerging from relative obscurity to take control of the Borjigin clan, Genghis had to fight bitter campaigns to eliminate his rivals and unite the tribes of Mongolia into a single state. He went on to conquer much of northern China before turning his hordes west and vanquishing Qara Khitai and the Khwarezmian Empire in Central Asia. His successes were achieved because of three factors. Firstly, he managed to unite the traditionally divided tribes of the Asian Steppe into a formidable army. Secondly, he took advantage of the military machine that Mongolian cavalry archers riding swiftly on horseback across Asia constituted, and was a formidable general himself, one who showed his adaptability by adopting Chinese siege engines into his armies with relative speed. But, thirdly, and finally, Genghis was also somewhat lucky. When he began his conquests, imperial China was in a weakened and divided state, while to the west the great Muslim powers of the Middle East and Central Asia had declined considerably since the glory days of the Arab Caliphate centuries earlier. Genghis’ accomplishment was that he managed to exploit these highly advantageous circumstances. His sons and his descendants would build on their father’s conquests to create the largest contiguous empire in human history. What do you think of Genghis Khan? Was he a great conqueror and pragmatic political leader who was adept enough to build an empire that encompassed dozens of nations and multiple religions, or was he a cruel and manipulative despot who ruled with an iron fist and allowed his armies to commit unimaginable atrocities on the thinnest of pretexts? Please let us know in the comment section and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.