Founder of the Mongol Empire, Genghis Khan (c. 1162–1227) was a warrior king whose horsemen were infamous for their brutal attacks on cities across Asia. By the end of his life, Genghis had conquered a huge swath of China and central Asia, along with part of Eastern Europe. After Genghis’s death, his sons and grandsons expanded the empire into the largest (by land area) in human history.
The death and destruction caused by Genghis’s invasions were legendary. His usual tactic was to surround a city and then kill every inhabitant if they refused to surrender. Although he is considered a national hero in Mongolia, in most of the world the name Genghis Khan has become synonymous with inhuman tactics in wartime.
Originally named Temüjin, Genghis was the son of a nomadic Mongolian chieftain. When Genghis was nine, his father was poisoned by a rival faction in the tribe, and Genghis and his mother were reduced to poverty. He eventually reclaimed the family’s control over the clan and went on to exterminate his father’s opponents. A charismatic leader, he then went to war against neighboring groups on the Mongolian plains, united the nation under his control, and assumed the title of khan in 1206.
Over the next twenty years, Genghis unleashed a wave of conquest unlike anything ever witnessed before. Riding Mongolian ponies, his troops conquered northern China, capturing Beijing in 1215. In the 1220s, he invaded Persia and the Caucasus region. Although the Mongols were nomads with no prior experience in war against cities, they soon perfected the use of catapults, siege engines, and other medieval military tactics.
In 1227, just after defeating the Tanguts and liquidating their leadership, Genghis died after falling off a horse. He was buried in a secret location that has yet to be discovered. The empire continued to grow for another forty years, reaching its peak under Genghis’s sons in the 1250s.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- Genghis’s capital city of Karakorum, in northern Mongolia, was rediscovered by Russian archaeologists in 1889.
- According to legend, Genghis asked to be buried in a secret, unmarked grave. In carrying out his wishes, his funeral party murdered anyone it encountered on the way to the grave site. After the burial, all the servants and soldiers were slaughtered as an extra precaution to prevent them from divulging his burial place. It has never been located.
- Under Mongolia’s former Communist government, it was illegal to display Genghis’s image or even mention his name. The Communists were overthrown in 1990.
