What the History of Genghis Khan

Though Genghis Khan took many wives throughout his life, his only Empress was his first wife Borte. Genghis had actually been betrothed to Borte since the tender age of nine. Now that’s loyalty.

Genghis Khan’s Empire spanned many modern countries, and even continents. From Eastern Asia into Eastern Europe, Genghis Khan amassed one of the largest empires history has ever seen.

Genghis Khan was a master tactician, often employing clever tricks to defeat his enemy. Some examples include false retreats to bait enemies into ambushes, and tying sticks to horses’ tails to kick up dust storms equal to those kicked up by large armies.

We still don’t know how Genghis Khan died. We do know it was in August 1227, but the rest remains a mystery.

They would generally pull bow strings back with their thumbs, and so created the rings to protect their digits. Thanks a lot, Genghis.

Genghis Khan invaded China with 90,000 troops and defeated an army of 1 million plus soldiers. He killed nearly 500,000 soldiers while a great many more, including generals and high ranking officers, defected to the Mongols. It’s not about the size of your army, but how you use it.

World War II was the deadliest war in the history of the mankind. However, the Mongol invasions proved almost as deadly, even though the world population was just one fifth of what it was during the WWII.

Genghis Khan believed in being rewarded for hard work, and operated on a meritocracy over a nepotistic system. Many of his highest ranking officers and generals had earned their way to those positions, instead of simply being born to a particular family.

The conquests and destruction of the Mongol Empire didn’t end with the great Genghis Khan’s death in 1227, however. Decades later, in 1258, the Mongols were still at it in grand style.

In fact, they pretty much ended the Islamic Golden Age when they destroyed Baghdad that year. Survivors of the sacking (there weren’t many) reported that, “the waters of the Tigris ran black with ink from the enormous quantities of books flung into the river and red from the blood of the scientists and philosophers killed.”

Most of Genghis Khan’s most trusted generals were his enemies at one point or another.

The Mongols didn’t like to spill noble, highborn blood on the ground, but they also really liked killing. To get around this, they came up with some gruesome loopholes: they loved to bend backs until they snapped, and frequently poured molten silver into the orifices of their victim

Genghis Khan’s armies killed an estimated 40 million people. In fact, his armies killed so many people that he cooled the planet and reduced the carbon footprint of human beings. While effective, this is definitely not the solution to climate change.

Khan often used spies to incite civil wars and revolutions within opposing empires to weaken them for his invasions.

The Khan never let a slight go unpunished. The Khwarezmid Empire killed his messengers when he offered to open up trade routes.

Life in Mongolia when Genghis was young was not a piece of cake, to say the least. After his father’s death, Genghis’ family lived in poverty, and Genghis’ half-brother Begter was beginning to eye up Genghis’ mother Hoelun as a potential wife.

A legend says that once, when the Mongol horde defeated the Russian forces, they celebrated their victory in gruesome style.  They took all the survivors of the battle, laid them on the ground, and put a wooden slab on top of them.

The Mongols then proceeded to eat a victory feast over their enemies, watching as the last of the survivors were slowly crushed to death beneath them.

This next one happened long after Genghis’ death, but it still says a lot about his legacy. Around 1346, just before the plague arrived in Europe, Mongol hordes were struck by the Black Death as they laid siege to the town of Kaffa.

As their numbers quickly diminished, the Mongols began to hurl the bodies of those who had died from the plague into the walled city in an attempt to turn the bodies into plague-carrying agents of mass destruction. I like to think Genghis was smiling down from heaven—but it gets even more gruesome.

Many scholars believe that this was how the Black Death first came to Europe, as the people brought the disease with them when they fled Kaffa and headed west for havens such as Sicily.

This means that the Mongols, between the Black Death and their regular conquering, have maybe the highest death count of any civilization in world history.

Toregene Khatun was one of Genghis Khan’s daughters-in-law, and she had almost as brilliant and brutal a reputation as Genghis. She ruled as Great Khatun and regent of the Mongol Empire for five years, and helped her son Guyuk become Khan in 1246.

When he became Khan, Guyuk’s brother Koden accused one of Toregene’s closest advisors, Fatima, of using witchcraft on him. Koden then promptly died. Grieving his brother and pretty convinced Fatima was definitely a witch, Guyuk demanded that dear old mom deliver Fatima to face execution for her crimes. Toregene, not happy about the situation, claimed she would commit suicide rather than hand over her beloved advisor.

Well, he seized Fatima anyway, killing her by sewing up her mouth and other orifices and then dumping her into water. He then proceeded to strip the household of his mother’s supporters. Toregene died a few months later under mysterious, and obviously very suspicious, circumstances. It’s hard out there for a Mongol.