Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire

Genghis Khan was the ruler of the Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous Empire ever to exist on Earth.

In 1162, the year of Genghis Khan's birth, the nomadic tribes of central Asia had to survive in harsh climates.

Sometimes winters were extremely cold; sometimes drought struck the dry, sparse grasslands north of the Gobi desert.

The nomads were forced to raid their more civilized neighbors in order to get the food and other resources that they needed.

Sometimes the raiders would settle and be absorbed in the civilization they attacked. Most of the time, however, they withdrew to the grassy plains until the next famine.

China was the only major civilization that these tribes could reach easily.

The Chinese were usually safe, however, because they had built a Great Wall in the northern part of their empire to stop these tribes.

They also made alliances with some Mongol tribes, supporting them in their bloods feuds and wars in return for their service in defense of the Chinese Empire.

This helped keep the Mongols at bay.

Sometimes the Chinese were very weak, and the tribes grew powerful enough to turn and sweep down on the empire itself, ousting and supplanting the ruling dynasty.

This happened in the early 900's when the Khitan tribes took northern China and established the Liao (iron) dynasty.

Cathay, the ancient name for China, comes from the name Khitan.

Between 1114 and 1125, the Juchen ousted the Liao from northern China and established the Jin dynasty there.

In 1167, Yesügei Baghatur, chief of the Kiyad tribe of northeastern Mongolia, was returning from a battle against his neighbors, a Tartar tribe.

Thirty years earlier, the Tartars had betrayed to the Chinese the chief of a tribe allied by blood to the Kiyads. Now, by way of revenge, Yesügei had taken a Tartar chief, Temüjin.

On his return home, Yesügei found that his wife borne him a son.

According to custom, he called the boy Temüjin, to give him the valor and courage of the captured chief.

Temüjin grew up to become Genghis Khan.

Temüjins Strategy

Temüjin's goal was to unite all the Mongol tribes and use them to create an enormous an invincible army, and then force every surrounding civilization - China, Russia and the Khwarezmian Empire, which included parts of Iran and Turkestan - to pay tribute

Temüjin realized that he would have to break up the existing petty clan loyalties and feuds of his countrymen and replace them with a greater all-Mongol loyalty.

He knew that in order to do this, he would have to use political tact as well as military might.

Temüjin took advantage of existing customs that helped his aims and he would devalue and destroy customs that ran counter to them.

He encouraged two tribal customs.

The first was the Mongol custom of "nukur", in which one warrior one warrior freely bound himself to the service of another.

The binding oath took precedence over all other claims of loyalty, even those of tribe and marriage.

The other custom was that of the protected or subordinate tribe. Under this system, a tribe voluntarily put itself under the protection of a powerful neighbor and performed services for the superior tribe in return for protection.

The superior tribe often took advantage of this arrangement and oppressed the people of the subordinate tribe. However, if this happened it was not considered dishonorable for the protected tribe to desert its guardians, even in the height of battle.

Temüjin owed several early victories to such desertions in his favor.

By fostering these institutions, Temüjin weakened older tribal and blood brother loyalties of the nomads.

He also destroyed the system whereby the more powerful tribes had "left-hand" and "right-hand" branches, and power passed, by custom, from one branch to the other at each generation.

Temüjin's Success

After three decades of political maneuvering and unhesitating, ruthless use of military might, Temüjin had turned the divided and scattered Mongol tribes into some of the most efficient, loyal, and fearsome warriors the world has ever known.

Temüjin praised men who deserted to him but refused to betray their former masters. If a deserter betrayed his master, Temüjin accepted the betrayal but always executed the betrayer.

He never turned against an ally just because it would be advantageous to do so and he had the opportunity. He would maneuver and scheme until he could accuse the unwanted ally of disloyalty. Thus, he was able to justify his action in terms of the common good, possibly win over some of his opponent's supporters, and teach everyone a lesson about forgetting old disputes.

Genghis Khan

In 1206, Temüjin, who already a khan, or chief, was formally proclaimed Genghis Khan.

It is thought that the word came from the Turkic word "tingiz", or ocean. The Mongols believed that the world was flat and surrounded by water, so Genghis Khan was the ruler of the world.

In 1203, Genghis Khan created an elite bodyguard, which, while a unit of the regular army, was under his personal command. Many of the guards were sons of generals and military governors and were hostages for their parents' good behavior.

He rewarded service and victory with grants of land and people. The people thus given to a warlord soon learned that their loyalty belonged to him, not to earlier allies and kinsfolk, who now might belong to another lord.

In a little over three decades, Genghis Khan had created an efficient political unit, without the benefit of writing or of a single, organizing religion.

Growth of the Mongol Empire

Genghis Khan learned of wealthy civilizations to the west from Arab, Persian and Turkish traders.

He also knew of the literate Uyghur and other Turkic nomads living in the areas between his lands and the source of the great wealth. He saw that to exploit the westward possibilities for booty and tribute, he would have to make use of these nomads.

Traveling merchants played a vital part in the expansion of Genghis Khan's empire, first as his spies, then as informal and formal ambassadors, and finally as administrators and governors of the enlarged empire.

Genghis Khan made advancements to military technology. The tradi-tional nomad army had a limited, though terrifying, arsenal, with tactics centering on cavalry.

Each rider had four to six ponies, any one of which could carry him up to 100 miles in a day. By rotating his choice of mount, the rider could ensure that each pony carried only food, light equipment and tents for three to five days between each man-carrying ride.

In this way, the cavalry could cover huge distances at unprecedented speeds, and strike, conquer, and loot, before either pressing on or vanishing back into the Asian steppes.

The foot soldiers of the khan's armies were also used to long marches and quick strikes.

For those small, self-reliant units, a favorite tactic was to feign retreat and draw the enemy after them, then to wheel about, reform, and annihilate the astonished pursuers.

Although these were adequate tactics for hit-and-run border raiders, Genghis Khan realized that they were not sufficient for conquering the world, so he recruited the best Hsia and Chinese military engineers. As his empire grew, he called upon Persian and Khwarezmian engineers as well.

In just over 10 years, he had completely transformed Mongol military tactics.

Armies in the field fell before Genghis Khan's cavalry and foot soldiers. Fortified towns were no more secure. His forces battered them with catapults and other devices, tunneled under their walls, and blew them down with gunpowder.

By 1225, Genghis Khan had conquered most of central Asia by about 1225.

In 1215, Genghis' forces had captured Khanbaliq (now Beijing), and extended their rule over most of northern China and Manchuria.

After taking Khanbaliq, Genghis Khan turned his attention to the west. Between 1215 and 1222, he subdued first eastern Turkestan and then the Khwarezmian Empire, the greatest Muslim power in central Asia.

He then sent one band of troops to pursue the defeated Khwarezmian across the Hindu Kush down into northwest India, and another band around the south of the Caspian Sea through Georgia and theCaucasus into southern Russia.

Mongol Empire After Genghis Khan's Death

Genghis Khan died in 1227, several years after the Mongols had laid waste and terrorized much of southern Russia and the Volga Valley.
One of his four sons, Ögedei continued the expansion of Mongol rule farther into China, the Middle East, and through Russia into the countries of Eastern Europe.

In 1238, Ögedei's armies crossed Russia.

The Mongols defeated the Russians on the banks of the Dniepr at the Battle of Legnica (Liegnitz) in1240.

Before Southern Russia was occupied by the Mongols, it was as economically advanced as the other countries of Eastern Europe.
It had well-developed towns with skilled workers and a growing middle class of merchants and tradesmen.

The Mongols destroyed it all. They instituted their own system of absolute rule, by which tax-gathering princes lived off crushed and obedient peasants.

It was more than 200 years before Russia became even as prosperous as it had been in 1220.

The heavily armed Teutonic Knights of the Crusades were defeated by Mongol troops at the Battle of Legnica, in 1241.

By 1241 the Mongols, who were called Tartars by the Europeans, had penetrated as far as what is now Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary.

The Mongols wear feared throughout Europe.

In 1238, when the Mongol hordes had only reached southern Russia, Matthew Paris, an English chronicler, recorded that the people of Gotland (in the Baltic Sea off southern Sweden), and Friesland (in of The Netherlands) were not coming to England for the herring catch because they were afraid of the Mongols. This led to a surplus of herring.

A mission from Syria, which had suffered Mongol attacks, came to the English and French courts with proposals for a Muslim-Christian alliance against the Mongols.

Nothing came of the request, but it helped to spread accounts of the awful devastation the Mongols left in their wake.

At the time, the other nations of Western Europe were divided by a quarrel between the pope of the time and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. They were also involved in plans for the Crusades.

Withdrawal from Europe

Ögedei's death in 1241 resulted in disputes among the other Mongol chieftains.

Most of the Mongol leaders, including the generals in charge of the European campaign, hurried back to Karakorum in order to participate in the election of the next Great Khan - a process that might take years.

Thus, the Mongols withdrew from Europe. They had had met no serious opposition and felt they could resume and swiftly conclude their conquest of Europe at any time.