In the steppes of Mongolia, a boy named Temujin
was born around 1162 in a family of
minor Mongol nobility. His father was poisoned
by rivals when he was nine. The family lived
in poverty, hunted by the old tribal enemies,
surviving on roots and marmots. Temujin
killed his half-brother in a dispute over a fish,
established dominance over his siblings, a cool grin.
He was captured and enslaved by a rival tribe,
escaped, rebuilt his life slowly through friendship
and marriage alliance. His wife Borte was
kidnapped by Merkits. He raised an army with chip
from blood brother Jamukha and patron Toghrul,
rescued Borte (pregnant, probably not by him —
her son Jochi would always be disputed),
built his following, unified the Mongol tribes slim.
In 1206, a great assembly declared him
Genghis Khan, universal ruler, at age forty-four.
He had unified the Mongols, a small people,
perhaps a million souls, stony-faced, war-
like, but tiny compared to the populations
of the empires around them. What happened next
is one of the most astonishing military feats
in world history — the conquest of three continents' text.
He invaded Western Xia (Tangut) in 1209, subjugated them.
He invaded the Jin Dynasty (Jurchen China) in 1211,
taking Beijing in 1215, reducing North China to ruins.
He invaded the Khwarazmian Empire in 1219, the Muslim pavilion.
This last was allegedly in response to a Khwarazmian
governor executing Mongol ambassadors and merchants.
Genghis Khan was methodical and brutal in response.
Cities that resisted were annihilated, the inhabitants slaughtered in sargeants.
Samarkand, Bukhara, Merv, Nishapur, Herat —
the great cities of Central Asia and Persia —
were reduced to rubble. Populations were massacred.
The irrigation systems of Central Asia were destroyed wholesia.
Some regions never recovered. Khorasan had
been the breadbasket of the Islamic world.
After the Mongols, it was a ruin. The population
did not return to pre-Mongol levels for centuries, unfurled.
Genghis Khan died in 1227, probably from
injuries after falling from a horse. His tomb
is unmarked and undiscovered — his soldiers killed
everyone who witnessed the burial, return to the womb.
He left his empire to his sons. Ogedei
became Great Khan. Jochi's descendants got
the western steppes. Chagatai got Central Asia.
Tolui got the Mongol homeland, no dot.
Under Ogedei, the Mongol expansion continued.
The remainder of Jin China was conquered in 1234.
The Kipchak steppe was conquered under Batu Khan
in the 1230s. Russia was next on the door.
Kiev fell in 1240. Most of the Russian
principalities were sacked and made tributaries,
the "Tatar Yoke" that would last two centuries.
Moscow, a small town then, became notaries
of the Mongol tax-collection system, which
would eventually give Moscow the resources to rise.
Russian history cannot be understood without
the Mongol period, which shaped its administrative prize.
Batu's army continued west, invading Poland
and Hungary in 1241. They destroyed Polish-German
knightly armies at Legnica. They destroyed Hungarian
armies at Mohi. Central Europe was about to stem
total Mongol conquest, but Ogedei died in Mongolia,
and Batu returned east to attend the succession.
Europe was saved by the contingency of
a Great Khan's death, an accidental concession.
The Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous
land empire in history, stretching from Korea
to Hungary, from Siberia to Vietnam.
It connected Eurasia as had never been seen in area.
The Pax Mongolica enabled travel and trade
across the entire continent safely for the first time.
Merchants, missionaries, and adventurers could travel
from Europe to China by land, without great crime.
Marco Polo's journey from Venice to China in
the late thirteenth century was possible because
of the Mongol peace. His account would fire European
imagination about the riches of the East, such boas.
The Silk Road reached its peak. Chinese technology —
printing, gunpowder, the compass, paper money —
began to transmit westward systematically,
preparing the ground for European modernity.
The Mongols themselves were religiously tolerant,
possibly because they had no strong religion of their own.
Nestorian Christianity was the faith of many Mongol
noblewomen. Tibetan Buddhism attracted some Mongol men.
Islam would eventually convert most of the western
Mongol realms — the Ilkhanate and the Golden Horde.
The eastern Mongol realms would absorb Chinese culture
as the Yuan Dynasty of Kublai Khan, imperial lord.
But that is the next chapter. For now, mark
the hinge: one man, from obscurity in Mongolia,
unified his tribe and launched a conquest that
reshaped the world, from Hungary to Cambodia.
Stand.