The Career of Genghis Khan

The Career of Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan’s rise is the story of how a boy born into hardship on the Mongolian steppe unified warring tribes and built the largest contiguous land empire in history. His career matters not just for the conquests, but for how he transformed nomadic warfare into a disciplined, innovative military machine.

Early Life and Struggle

Born around 1162 near the Onon river in present-day northern Mongolia, he was named Temujin. His father, Yesugei, was chieftain of the Kiyat, a group of families related to the Borjigid clan. When Yesugei was murdered, Temujin was still young, and his mother, Oelun-eke, raised him, his brothers, and step-brothers in great hardship.

The following decade was full of reversals. Temujin was captured and enslaved. Soon after his marriage, his wife Borte was kidnapped, and he had to fight to recover her. Yet these years of hardship also brought important friendships. The young Boghurchu became his first ally and remained a trusted friend for life. Jamuqa, his blood-brother (anda), was another. Temujin also restored old alliances with Tughril, also called Ong Khan, the ruler of the Kereyits and his father’s old blood-brother.

Alliance and Consolidation

Through the 1180s and 1190s, Temujin remained an ally of Ong Khan, using the alliance to defeat powerful adversaries — including Jamuqa, his old friend who had turned into a hostile foe. Only after defeating Jamuqa did Temujin feel confident enough to move against other tribes: the powerful Tatars (his father’s assassins), the Kereyits, and Ong Khan himself in 1203.

The final defeat of the Naiman people and the powerful Jamuqa in 1206 left Temujin as the dominant personality in steppe politics. This position was recognised at an assembly of Mongol chieftains, the quriltai, where he was proclaimed the ‘Great Khan of the Mongols’ (Qa’an) with the title Genghis Khan — the ‘Oceanic Khan’ or ‘Universal Ruler’.

Conquest of China

Genghis Khan’s first major concern was China, divided at the time into three realms:

• The Hsi Hsia, people of Tibetan origin, in the north-western provinces
• The Jurchen, whose Chin dynasty ruled north China from Peking
• The Sung dynasty, which controlled south China

By 1209 the Hsi Hsia were defeated. The Great Wall of China was breached in 1213, and Peking was sacked in 1215. Long-drawn-out battles against the Chin continued until 1234, but Genghis Khan was satisfied enough with progress to return to his Mongolian homeland in 1216, leaving military affairs in the region to his subordinates.

Campaigns in Central Asia and the Middle East

After the defeat in 1218 of the Qara Khita, who controlled the Tien Shan mountains north-west of China, Mongol dominions reached the Amu Darya, including the states of Transoxiana and Khwarazm. Sultan Muhammad, ruler of Khwarazm, provoked Genghis Khan’s fury by executing Mongol envoys.

In the campaigns between 1219 and 1221, the great cities — Otrar, Bukhara, Samarqand, Balkh, Gurganj, Merv, Nishapur and Herat — surrendered to the Mongol forces. Towns that resisted were devastated. At Nishapur, where a Mongol prince was killed during the siege, Genghis Khan commanded that the town be laid waste so completely that the site could be ploughed upon, and that in taking vengeance for the prince’s death, not even cats and dogs should be left alive.

The Scale of Destruction

All reports of Genghis Khan’s campaigns agree on the vast numbers killed following the capture of cities that defied his authority. The figures are staggering:

How did medieval chroniclers arrive at such figures? Juwaini, the Persian chronicler of the Ilkhans, stated that 1,300,000 people were killed at Merv. He reached the figure because it took thirteen days to count the dead, and each day they counted 100,000 corpses.

Later Campaigns and Death

Mongol forces pursuing Sultan Muhammad pushed into Azerbaijan, defeated Russian forces at the Crimea, and encircled the Caspian Sea.

Another wing followed the Sultan’s son, Jalaluddin, into Afghanistan and the Sindh province. At the banks of the Indus, Genghis Khan considered returning to Mongolia through North India and Assam, but the heat, the natural habitat, and ill portents reported by his Shaman soothsayer made him change his mind.

Genghis Khan died in 1227, having spent most of his life in military combat.

The Secret of Mongol Military Success

His military achievements were astounding, and they were largely a result of his ability to innovate and transform different aspects of steppe combat into extremely effective military strategies.

• The horse-riding skills of the Mongols and Turks provided speed and mobility to the army
• Their abilities as rapid-shooting archers from horseback were perfected during regular hunting expeditions, which doubled as field manoeuvres
• The steppe cavalry had always travelled light and moved quickly, but now it brought all its knowledge of terrain and weather to do the unimaginable: they carried out campaigns in the depths of winter, treating frozen rivers as highways to enemy cities and camps
• Nomads were conventionally at a loss against fortified encampments, but Genghis Khan quickly learnt the importance of siege engines and naphtha bombardment. His engineers prepared light, portable equipment, used against opponents with devastating effect

The Succession and the Fate of the Empire

The period after Genghis Khan’s death saw continued Mongol unity under his successors:

The fragmentation produced three major lineages:

• Toluyids: the Yuan dynasty in China and the Il-Khanid state in Iran
• Chaghataids: in the steppes north of Transoxiana and ‘Turkistan’
• Jochid lineages: in the Russian steppes, described as the ‘Golden Horde’ by observers

The Ogodei lineage was defeated and absorbed into the Toluyids.

Later Developments in the Mongol World …