18

From Temujin to Genghis Khan

In the spring of 1206, the khans and princes of all the tribes of the eastern steppes gathered in the Orkhon valley beneath the sacred mountain Khairkhan, today designated a World Heritage Site.1 Their retinues and subjects filled the tent cities along the riverbanks. Voices in every dialect of Turkish, Mongol, and Khitan reverberated in the valley verdant with grasses so vital for the grazing herds. For days, wrestling matches, horse races, and archery contests thrilled onlookers, while sacrifices and feasts were offered to Tengri, the lord of the eternal blue sky. Shamans emerged from their trances induced to see into the other world and offered predictions of an imperial future. This was the greatest kurultai ever held. Before the assembly of lords and warriors, Temujin, then forty-four years old, was acclaimed Genghis Khan, perhaps designating him the “mighty lord,” but more aptly rendered as “oceanic or universal lord.”2 No one could have predicted this future for the boy Temujin, born of a second wife to a khan of a lesser clan of an obscure Mongol tribe, Tayichiud, in the Onon valley. After nearly thirty years of fighting, he imposed a unity among those dwelling in the felt tents for the first time in nearly four centuries. Temujin, ever after known as Genghis Khan, turned the Mongol tribes into a nation, and won for them a world empire.

Temujin’s nation, the Mongols, were comparative newcomers on the eastern Eurasian steppes, for their ancestors had long dwelled to the north in the Arctic forest of the taiga, where they pursued hunting, fishing, and trapping. Between the late tenth and early twelfth centuries, Mongolian-speaking clans settled the Orkhon valley and eastern steppes of Mongolia abandoned by the Uyghurs surviving the sack of their capital, who had migrated to the cities of the Tarim Basin.3 The Mongols spoke a distinct Altaic language that had diverged from Turkish seven or eight centuries earlier.4 The language of Genghis Khan, dubbed Middle Mongolian by philologists, is well-known because his grandson Kublai Khan commissioned his Uyghur scribes to invent a script to record in Mongolian Genghis Khan’s deeds in the so-called Secret History of the Mongols and law code (yassa), as well as his own decrees.5

Mongolian, a typical agglutinative language, employs suffixes to designate grammatical functions of nouns and verbs. It shares with Turkish the rules of vowel harmony, but vowels are grouped into three classes rather than the two classes of Turkish. In Genghis Khan’s day, Mongols had already borrowed numerous Turkish words for objects, diet, and activities associated with the nomadic way of life. Also the language already betrayed influences from the tonal languages of Tibetan and Chinese. Mongols were adaptable, adopting words, concepts, and material culture from their neighbors. They had to be, because they were always a minority on the eastern Eurasian steppes. At the death of Genghis Khan, Mongolian speakers numbered at most one million.6 Their modern descendants total six million or are six times as many, and they are evenly split between the Mongolian Republic and Inner Mongolia under Chinese jurisdiction. In contrast, today seventy-eight million or thirteen times as many individuals speak Turkish languages, of whom nearly half reside in the Republic of Turkey. Most likely, three-quarters of the warriors who loyally followed Genghis Khan were Turkish rather than Mongolian speakers. Yet to the world, they were all feared as Mongols.

Once on the steppes, the Mongols adapted a nomadic way of life learned from their Turkish kinsmen and neighbors, because intermarriage, often conducted by ritual raids to steal wives, was always a common practice among nomadic tribes. The Mongols also claimed the sacred landscape of Mount Khairkhan and the Orkhon valley as their own. In 1162, Temujin was born into this world of incessant clan and tribal warfare. In this world, the Mongols were neither numerous nor remarkable.7 Their kinsmen to the immediate southwest, the Keraits, were wealthier, for they roamed the far more temperate grasslands between the Sayan and Altai Mountains. The Turco-Mongolian Naimans just east and south of the Altai Mountains were more powerful; the Merkits south of Lake Baikal were fiercer; the Tatars on the steppes southeast of the Mongols were the wealthiest of all the tribes and allied to the Jin emperors, themselves descendants of Jurchen barbarians from Manchuria. The Jin emperor who ruled over northern China and the steppes south of the Gobi had long incited wars among the nomadic tribes.8

The Secret History alone records the travails of Temujin’s early life, but so many of the incidents are more the stuff of epic rather than history. Temujin was the first son of Yesügei, a lesser khan of the minor Mongol clan Tayichiud, and his second consort, Hoelun, in 1162.9 His father, Yesügei, smitten by her beauty from afar, had abducted Temujin’s mother, Hoelun, from her husband, Chiledu, when the newly wedded couple were en route to the husband’s Merkit encampment. The Merkits did not forget or forgive the abduction, but Yesügei kept his lovely prize.10 Hoelun later claimed that her son Temujin was born holding a blood clot in his right hand—an omen Hoelun never quite fathomed.11 For all the tales of Temujin’s precociousness, he was merely the son of the second consort. Sochigel, the principal wife, had two sons, Begter and Belgutei, who took precedence in the clan, and Begter was the eldest and presumed heir.12 At age nine, Temujin was betrothed to Börte, a slightly older girl of the nobler Onggirat clan, and, as was customary, Temujin was to labor for his in-laws until the couple was of age for marriage. The marriage sealed an important alliance for Yesügei, who removed Temujin as a rival to Begter.13 Upon concluding the marriage contract, Yesügei set out for his encampment in the Onon valley, but he chanced upon a band of Tatars, who offered hospitality. One of his hosts recognized Yesügei as marked for death over a vendetta, so he administered a slow-acting poison in Yesügei’s food. Temujin was summoned home, but his father had already passed away.14

The clan’s kurultai dispossessed Temujin, still age nine, abandoning his family without horses or stock animals, because the impoverished clan could ill afford to feed the two widows, Sochigel and Hoelun, and their eight young children, Temujin and his five siblings and his two half brothers. Hoelun immediately took charge.15 The family eked out an existence in the forests along the valleys of the Onon and Kerulen Rivers. Temujin matured into a wily, resourceful adolescent, dubious of any ties except loyalty demonstrated by deeds. He expected, even anticipated, betrayal throughout life, and so survived the treacherous politics of the Eurasian steppes. He also gained a sense of his destiny, and the favor of Tengri, eternal lord of the blue sky. Hence, he would never accept anything less than primacy over those he led. At age fourteen, in 1176, he and his younger brother Khasar stalked and murdered their older half brother Begter, who would have succeeded to the leadership of the family and even taken Hoelun as his consort.16 Begter calmly accepted his death, uttering the prophetic words that “without me you have no companions but your shadow.”17 Soon afterward, Hoelun exclaimed the same words, for she instantly surmised the dastardly deed committed by her two sons. She cursed her sons as bloodstained wolves. Since such acts of homicide within any tribe were a communal pollution in the eyes of the gods, Temujin’s clan, the Tayichiud, tracked down and captured Temujin, who had fled into the northern forests. The clan punished him by imprisoning him in a cangue. The cangue was a solid wooden wheel in two movable halves with an opening in the center for the victim’s neck. The prisoner’s arms were bound to the cangue by iron handcuffs, so he was utterly helpless. Yet the humiliating punishment did not break Temujin’s will. Remarkably, he escaped due to the aid of a kindly couple of elderly servants who had been entrusted to care for the prisoner. Temujin never forgot their courageous act.18

Temujin escaped to rule over a clan comprising little more than a single gers and his immediate family: his mother and stepmother, his five younger siblings, the younger half brother, Belgutei, and his closest companions, Boorchu and Jelme, destined to be two of the leading generals of the Mongol imperial army.19 Even more surprising, Börte had faithfully waited for her groom the past seven years, and her father, Dei Seichen, honored the betrothal when Temujin reached sixteen years of age.20 His father-in-law, who had no love for Temujin’s own clan, saw in his son-in-law a brave and cunning warrior. Two years later, in ca. 1180, Temujin presented the bridal gift of Börte, a magnificent sable cloak, as a gift to Toghrul, Ong Khan of the Keraits, so that Temujin could renew a family tie with this old friend of his father. Toghrul accepted Temujin as a vassal and the leader of his own clan.21 Temujin also swore an oath of brotherhood (anda) with Jamuka, a boyhood friend of the Jadaran clan and rising warrior in the service of Toghrul Khan.22 Contrary to the intimations of our main sources, the Secret History, the Chinese accounts, and the two Persian historians Atâ-Malek Juvayni and Rashid al-Din, Temujin was the lesser partner in each transaction.23 Together Jamuka and Temujin attracted the bold and ambitious among the young warriors.

The Merkits settled their score with Temujin’s family over the kidnapping of Hoelun by abducting Börte in a dawn attack on Temujin’s encampment. While Temujin and his companions galloped off into the early light, Börte remained behind to be taken prisoner, and so distracted her husband’s pursuers.24 In 1181, Temujin and his new allies surprised the Merkit camp in the Khilok valley in a night raid and rescued Börte.25 Soon after, Börte bore a son, Jochi; Temujin always accepted the boy as his son, although Jochi was almost certainly the son of his mother’s captor, Chilger Bökh,26 given the length of her captivity. The daring rescue, which is celebrated at length in the Secret History, won Temujin instant fame among the Mongol clan leaders and the jealousy of Jamuka. Tensions mounted as Temujin outshone his immediate superior, Jamuka, in raids against the Tatars. Perhaps within a year of Börte’s rescue, Jamuka expelled Temujin from his encampment, although Temujin later claimed that he left of his own accord. Thereupon, with the approval of his overlord Toghrul, his clans proclaimed Temujin their khan. Temujin thus repudiated his oaths of brotherhood and fealty to Jamuka.27 Jamuka, in turn, claimed the greater title gurkhan, for he commanded far more numerous and distinguished clans and boasted of a superior descent of the white bones from nobler Mongol progenitors. The ailing Toghrul, if not encouraging, did not discourage this clash between his two leading vassals. The Jin and Song emperors initially must have dismissed the clash as another civil war among Mongol clans aggrieved over petty slights. But Temujin and Jamuka each sought out ever more allies. Over the course of the next two decades, the conflict escalated until every tribe on the eastern steppes, and even many Mongol tribes of the taiga, were embroiled in a general war. The emperors of the three Chinese empires then could not resist interfering in a conflict that conveniently pitted the tribes against each other. The Jin and Song courts backed different contenders as alliances and the fortunes of war repeatedly shifted.

For over ten years, Temujin and Jamuka clashed in running battles and raids on encampments, but neither could nor desired to achieve all-out victory. Their followers sought honor, booty, and slaves, and the fighting seldom ended in pursuit of the scattered foe. Furthermore, even in war, the bonds of brotherhood still counted for both Temujin and Jamuka. In 1195, Jamuka gained a decisive edge and overran the Kerait encampment so that Toghrul Khan fled as an exile to Gurkhan Yelü Zhilugu of the Karakhitans.28 In 1197, Temujin rallied his clans and gained the backing of the Jin court so that he reversed the situation and restored Toghrul Khan to the Kerait throne.29 The desultory fighting climaxed in 1202 when Temujin and Toghrul Khan decisively defeated Jamuka at the head of a coalition of disaffected Mongols, Merkits, Naimans, and Tatars near the foothills of the Khingan Mountains.30 For the moment, Temujin controlled the steppes between the Onon River and Khingan Mountains. Temujin ruthlessly massacred the Tatars in revenge for their poisoning of his father.31 All Tatar males taller than the wheel of a gers were executed, while the women and children were enslaved. Envoys of the Jin emperor Zhangzong hailed the victory, and conferred on Toghrul the rank of wang, “king,” a coveted title within the Chinese hierarchy of allies.32 Yet fancy imperial titles could not assuage Toghrul’s fear and resentment of his overmighty vassal Temujin. The new Wang Khan, egged on by his son Senggum, fatally blundered by allying with Jamuka.33 In 1203, Toghrul Khan suddenly turned on Temujin. In a surprise attack, he and Jamuka won a hard-fought battle, scattering Temujin’s warriors. Toghrul Khan, however, halted any pursuit because his son Senggum had been struck in the head by an arrow. His new ally, Jamuka, also wanted to humble rather than destroy Temujin, for Jamuka had his own political scheme. Jamuka hoped to turn Temujin into an ally who would counter Toghrul Khan in his own bid for supremacy over the Mongol tribes. Temujin escaped to Baljuna, a lake on the swampy eastern edge of Mongolia. Only a handful of companions stood by Temujin, and they faced a bleak exile on the northern fringe of the steppes, where grasslands give way to the taiga.34 For the rest of his life, Temujin remembered those warriors who stood by him in defeat and shared the privations during that dark summer. But Toghrul Khan and Jamuka soon quarreled, and Temujin rallied his warriors and audaciously captured the Kerait encampment.35 Toghrul fled west, but fell into the hands of the Naimans, who failed to recognize the Wang Khan and slew him.36 The surviving Keraits bowed to Temujin as their khan. If not earlier during this long conflict, certainly by now Temujin started to reorganize his warriors into tactical units drilled by his faithful companions and organized without regard to kinship.

The ever-resilient Jamuka organized another coalition of Naimans, Merkits, and fugitive Mongols to stop Temujin. In the spring of 1204, Temujin summoned a national kurultai that declared his foes rebels and traitors, because Jamuka’s newfound allies, the Naimans, were ancestral enemies of the Mongols. In a brilliant campaign of speed and maneuver, Temujin brought his foes to decisive battle near the future site of Karakorum in the autumn of 1204. Temujin smashed Jamuka’s army.37 Only the Naiman prince Kuchlug escaped the catastrophe, eventually seeking refuge at the court of the gurkhan of the Karakhitans.38 Jamuka himself fled the battlefield, but soon after, he was betrayed by his companions. Even though Temujin still feared his rival and former friend, he long wrestled with the decision to order the execution of his anda, for it was tantamount to fratricide.39 According to the Secret History, Temujin even implored Jamuka to join his circle of comrades, but Jamuka proudly declined, accepting that he alone had broken the oaths of anda. To be sure, the dramatic scene has been embroidered by the Secret History, but without a doubt, Temujin reluctantly and sadly made one of the most difficult decisions in his life: the execution of his childhood friend and blood brother. Temujin graciously granted Jamuka his final request for a noble death and burial. Jamuka was wrapped in a carpet, laid on the ground, and trampled by Mongol horsemen lest any blood were shed that might bring down divine retribution on the Mongol nation. Jamuka was given an honorable funeral and burial on a high point, where, as he had promised in his final words, his guardian spirit would protect his friend Temujin and his progeny.40 Temujin now faced no serious rival on the eastern Eurasian steppes.

The next year, 1205, Sübetei, the brother of Jelme and Temujin’s finest general, defeated and massacred the Merkits, who still defied Temujin.41 Sübetei acted on direct orders from Temujin, who wanted not only to pay back a vendetta but also to send a stern warning to any would-be rebels. By the end of the year, all the tribes of the eastern steppes had acknowledged Temujin as their lord. In May 1206, Temujin summoned the kurultai that acclaimed him Genghis Khan. Even at the pinnacle of his success, Temujin showed restraint in accepting his lordship. He praised at length each of his brothers and companions to whom he owed his success.42 He singled out many individuals, whatever their rank or clan, who had done favors for him in the past. All were richly rewarded. To be sure, Temujin demanded absolute loyalty, but he generously shared his successes with all who loyally served. All present were inspired by his display of greatness, and few, if any, had doubts that they had just elected the greatest khan ever to rule on the Eurasian steppes.

Temujin, ever after known as Genghis Khan, had just united the tribes of the eastern Eurasian steppes for the first time in four hundred years. Only an exceptional ruler such as Genghis Khan could have pulled off such an extraordinary achievement. In retrospect, his spectacular rise to power can too easily be seen as inevitable because of the favorable accounts of the Secret History, Persian court historians, and Chinese accounts written with the advantage of hindsight. Instead, each of the previous imperial confederations of steppe nomads had risen primarily through the actions of exceptional leaders. Yet even such leaders were hard-pressed to maintain the unity of their confederations, and their heirs soon warred among themselves. Therefore, it would be unfair to censure the emperors of the three warring Chinese states for not grasping that domination of the nomads by a Sinified emperor of North China had just abruptly ended. Nor could they have dreamed that Genghis Khan would achieve the unimaginable of winning the greatest world empire ever ruled by a nomadic conqueror.43

Genghis Khan himself never mistook ceremony for the reality of power.44 He was unimpressed by Chinese pomp, and he could never have played the role of the Son of Heaven in the fashion of his grandson, Kublai Khan, who ruled over all of China. Genghis Khan, just like Attila, was modest in personal habits and dress, sharing the hardships and simple food with his men. He looted fabulous riches and took innumerable slaves, but he gave them away to his followers. By the end of his reign, Genghis Khan maintained a harem comprising four camps (ordu), each of forty women, but these consorts and concubines were trophies or gifts to seal a political alliance. He cherished Börte as his wife and counselor.45 Only their children and grandchildren were destined to inherit under the rules of lateral succession.

By all accounts, Genghis Khan possessed a commanding presence: he was tall, with a full beard, and penetrating catlike gray eyes. The Khitan noble Ila Ahai, an envoy of the Jin emperor, was so impressed by Genghis Khan’s bearing that he abandoned his master and declared his loyalty to the Mongol khan.46 Many Khitan, Uyghur, and Chinese generals and officials were equally so inspired to join his court. We are fortunate to possess a portrait of Genghis Khan, the first of any conqueror of the steppes. This Chinese painting is based on an ink sketch commissioned by Kublai Khan fifty years after his grandfather’s death.47 The portrait’s features convey the charismatic personality that so impressed his grandson, Kublai Khan. Throughout his life, Genghis Khan relentlessly campaigned, sustained two near fatal wounds, and died from the exertions of his last war on August 25, 1227. He was restless, perceptive, and quick to learn from his foes. He had honed his skills in cunning and deception to survive the treacherous world of raids and plots on the steppes. At a very young age, he had learned to trust only the few who acted loyally rather than the many who spoke promises. He never tolerated those who flattered him or sought to capitalize on their kinship or high rank. He could stage fits of rages to cow sycophants or to intimidate suspected traitors into confessing. His suspicious nature served him well as general and ruler, but he tempered it with praise and rewards to the loyal, whose successes he never envied. Hence, he was a terror to his enemies and a benefactor to his people.48

Genghis Khan has also been hailed for his tolerance of the faiths of all his subjects, but he shared the pragmatic spiritual beliefs of all nomads.49 He was devoted to his ancestral spirits. Before any campaign, he engaged shamans who could read the future in the charred shoulder bones of sheep. Among many tribes of the eastern Eurasian steppes, shamans were as respected as khans, and in some cases, charismatic individuals combined both roles. Temujin had long depended on the shaman Kokchu for sage advice and insight into the future until the shaman dared to plot treachery soon after his acclamation. Genghis Khan ordered an honorable ritual execution.50 Kokchu too was wrapped in a carpet and trampled under the hooves of the horses ridden by the household guards. Genghis Khan thereafter only consulted shamans who dared not challenge his authority. He also treated prophets, ascetics, and mystics of other faiths as blessed ones with insights into the divine. In May 1222, Genghis Khan received into his camp south of the Hindu Kush the renowned Daoist monk Qiu Chuji. According to his biographer, Li Chi Chang, the serene Qiu Chuji was summoned from China to Samarkand, and then he was escorted to the Mongol camp. Khan and sage discussed the matter of immortality and just life. Genghis Khan was so impressed that he corresponded with Qiu Chuji thereafter and extended numerous benefits to him and his disciples.51

Genghis Khan, just like the earlier Turkish khans, was willing to consider a new divine power if its holy ones could demonstrate its power. Genghis Khan favored Nestorian monks because they tended the sick during plagues.52 Turkish mothers since the sixth century had tattooed crosses on their children’s foreheads to ward off disease.53 Genghis Khan shared with his fellow Mongols the view that the sign of the cross was an apotropaic device against disease and a symbol of the divine blessing of the world’s four quarters. Furthermore, Christian monks could consume meat and fermented drink, the staples of the nomadic diet. He appreciated the deep spirituality of Buddhist monks, even though they were vegetarians.54 Foremost, Buddhist monks, while vegetarians, blessed those of his subjects in military and merchant careers for following their dharma of upholding the Mongol order. Genghis Khan could only conclude that so many merchants who flocked to his court had prospered because of their Buddhist faith. His encounter with Islam came much later in life. In 1222–1223, Genghis Khan toured the caravan cities of Transoxiana and eastern Iran, which his warriors had so ruthlessly sacked just years before.55 He could not help but be impressed by medresses with tiled minarets and richly decorated domed mosques whose fountains offered a glimpse into paradise. Through interpreters, he conversed with Sufi mystics and imams. He discovered that he approved of many of the practices of Islam, although he found incomprehensible the Muslim’s duty to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, and he was deeply suspicious of the allegiance of Sunni Muslims to the caliph in Baghdad as the successor of Muhammad, whom Genghis Khan considered one more shaman.56

He tolerated and respected the many faiths of his subjects, but he never showed the slightest inclination to convert to any of them. These faiths of other nations were merely ancient expressions of the universal power of Tengri, lord of the eternal blue sky. He also insisted that all clergy obey his laws, which were recorded in his law code, yassa, the first one known from a nomadic conqueror.57 The khan’s law took precedence over any sacred law. In their dealings with the Pope of Rome and the caliph of Baghdad, Genghis Khan and his heirs insisted that spiritual leaders must first recognize the Mongol khan and his law as absolute if they were to receive any protection or patronage. In his mind, Genghis Khan simply concluded that his authority must be far superior to all others because his successes marked him alone as enjoying divine favor.

Genghis Khan forged a Mongol nation devoted to him in the crucible of war. To this day, the Mongols still see him as the greatest of conquerors, favored by Tengri, and the khan who inspired their ancestors to acts of epic bravery that forever changed the world. From hard experience, Genghis Khan learned to read the loyalty and ability of men so that he judged and promoted each on the basis of merit. He held his councils of war as informal and frank discussions, eliciting honest advice from his trusted commanders. He consulted and inspired, listened and commanded. His ability to lead is the rare exception in history. He prized and rewarded ability, and the genius of his senior commanders reflected his own genius. His capacity to lead is best seen in the careers of his trusted “four dogs of war,” four of the best generals in the Mongol army.58 None of them was a kinsman; two of them were not even a Mongol by birth. Sübetei and his older brother Jelme were sons of a humble blacksmith of the forest people who pledged the boys to the service of Yesügei, Temujin’s father.59 At a comparatively late age, the teenage boys had to master archery, horsemanship, and strategy. Kublai hailed from similarly obscure origins, and rose in rank due to exceptional bravery. Jebe, of the Besud clan, was a deadly foe turned companion. In the so-called Battle of the Nine Arrows in 1201, Jebe shot an arrow that lodged into Genghis Khan’s neck. Jelme drew it out and sucked out the poison from Temujin’s veins. Afterward, the captured Jebe bravely admitted the deed, but instead of punishing him, Temujin took Jebe into his service.60 Temujin renamed the bold warrior Jebe, “the arrow,” in place of his former name. Jebe would prove to be a brilliant strategist. All had stood by Temujin during the dark days after the defeat in 1204. The Secret History lauds them in epic verse when Jamuka replies to his Naiman ally Tayang Khan’s inquiry about the identity of these foes on the battlefield. “These are the Four Dogs of my anda Temujin. They feed on human flesh and are tethered with iron chains. They have foreheads of brass, their jaws are like scissors, their tongues like piercing awls, their heads are iron, their whipping tails swords. They feed on dew. Running they ride on the back of the wind. In the day of battle, they devour enemy flesh. Behold, they are now unleashed, and they slobber at the mouth with glee. These four dogs are Jebe, and Kublai, Jelme, and Subotai.”61 They were appropriately named, because the Mongols employed in war Tibetan mastiffs bred as ferocious guard dogs.

Sübetei has been hailed as the greatest of the four, fighting in over sixty-five battles in twenty major campaigns. He improved on tactics, employing encirclement and continuous frontal attacks in successive waves rather than the feigned retreat and ambush.62 Strategically, he operated over wide fronts hundreds of miles in length so that he could move swiftly and strike terror before he concentrated his forces for the decisive battle. Tsarist and Soviet military theorists intensively studied Sübetei’s campaigns, from which they drew lessons of strategic maneuver and concentration of force. The Soviet Marshal Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky, nicknamed the “Red Napoleon,” credited Sübetei for his own strategy of deep battle with which the Red Army countered the Wehrmacht’s Blitzkrieg in the Second World War.63 Tukhachevsky, however, ran afoul of his paranoid master, Stalin. The marshal was denounced, arrested by the NKVD,64 convicted in a show trial, and shot in the back of the head in 1937. His family suffered the same fate.65 Sübetei, however, was entrusted with independent campaigns by his master Genghis Khan, and served with equal distinction under Genghis Khan’s son Ögedei. Sübetei died at age seventy-two, honored and celebrated in epic verse.66 His descendants just as loyally and honorably served the later khans. The contrast cannot be more stark between the two autocrats in their treatment of their subordinates. Genghis Khan employed terror against foes; Stalin against his own.

Genghis Khan exceeded all previous conquerors in placing bravery and loyalty above all other considerations. He accepted many defeated nomads into the Mongol nation. His bodyguard and army were organized without considerations of clan or nation. All served as Mongols who drank fermented mare’s milk, qumis, and accepted the salt of the Great Khan. In turn, Genghis Khan accepted them into both his service and the Mongol nation. Therefore, Genghis Khan reorganized the tribal armies into an imperial one based on units of ten and commanded by officers of proved loyalty and bravery.67 Only after he had been declared Genghis Khan could Temujin reorganize his warriors into an imperial army. Quick to innovate, Genghis Khan in his later offensive campaigns also mastered logistics and siege warfare on a scale no previous nomadic conqueror ever achieved.68 He and his heirs also drafted the subject peoples as auxiliaries who served as infantry, archers, or heavy cavalry. With each conquest, the imperial Mongol army gained in strength and diversity. Yet his officers, drawn from Genghis Khan’s bodyguard, even imposed strict discipline and drill on vassal and allied units.69 Even by the standards of his time, Genghis Khan was pitiless in waging war. He committed far more massacres than any previous conqueror of the steppes, and he is perhaps exceeded only by his emulator, Tamerlane.70 After 1206, he applied the massacres so common on the steppes on a grand strategic level to conquer the cities of Northern China and the lands of Eastern Islam. Muslim, Christian, and Chinese writers condemned as acts of barbarism his policy of massacres and wanton destruction of cities and cultivated fields. Yet Genghis Khan deliberately struck terror into the hearts of their foes by slaughtering villagers and urban populations that showed the slightest resistance. Terrified refugees fleeing the Mongol advance spread reports that often shocked enemies into immediate surrender. His sons and grandsons conducted the same gruesome strategy in their conquests of Russia, the Islamic world, and China. Genghis Khan remained a son of the Eurasian steppes. War was for him personal, a matter of bravery and honor. At times, grief and wrath swelled up into uncontrollable rage whenever one of his kinsmen fell in battle. In 1217, he ordered the massacre of a recalcitrant forest people who had slain his adopted son Boroghul in a skirmish.71 Five years later, in 1221, Genghis Khan committed two grisly atrocities to settle a blood feud committed by determined foes. In April, the Mongol army massacred the entire population of Nishapur, the famed caravan city of northern Iran, in retribution for the death of Genghis Khan’s son-in-law Tokuchar the year before.72 Even more ghastly, months later, Genghis Khan ordered the extermination of all living creatures in the valley of Bamyan.73 In the fighting to capture the strategic valley, the khan’s favorite grandson, Mutugen, fell, pierced by an arrow. The ruined settlements were never reoccupied, and the desolate landscape bore witness to all future travelers of the terrible grief and wrath of the Great Khan. For Genghis Khan, these massacres avenged a blood feud on a colossal scale rather than served as a calculated act of terror, although the results differed little from his deliberate acts of genocide. Genghis Khan never changed his outlook that war was bound up with his personal honor and survival of his family. Such had been the case for all previous conquerors from the steppes. But Genghis Khan possessed in his army a most lethal instrument to exact his vengeance on a scale that even shocked Chinese, Muslim, and Christian contemporaries who were accustomed to the brutalities of war, which today would be condemned as war crimes.

Yet to his warriors and his nation, Genghis Khan was hailed the greatest of rulers who embodied the virtues long prized in a ruler and first recorded on the Turkic monumental inscriptions of the Orkhon valley. In 1206, Temujin had ensured his fame in poetry and legend. Yet in the next twenty years, he would achieve far more than in the previous forty. That year, the Jin emperor Zhangzong and court realized that they now faced war, but they could not fathom the ferocity and genius of their opponent.74 They meticulously mobilized for war against the upstart khan of the Mongols. They did not have to wait long.