Who Was Genghis Khan Really? I'll Tell You!
Written: Mar 01 '05 (Updated Mar 01 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: absolutely fascinating and well-researched
Cons: how Genghis Khan has been vilified by those not Mongols
The Bottom Line: I hope you'll all read this book...
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| jankp's Full Review: Genghis Khan And The Making Of The Modern World Bo... |
We could very possibly still be stuck in the primitive world of the Middle Ages if it hadn't been for the phenomenal brilliance, peace-seeking ambition and global vision of the nomadic, illiterate man who grew up with the name of Temujin and later came to be known as Genghis or Chingiss Khan. Surrounded by loving family and friends, he died in his bed at almost 70 years of age and immediately one of the mourners had his life story written down. The manuscript, known as The Secret History Of The Mongols, was discovered in the nineteenth century in Beijing, which now sits where Genghis Khan's capital city Zongdu was built. Countless scholars around the world have tried to decipher it and one did for the Germans during WW11, but the translation was luckily destroyed in transit.
Then when Communism collapsed in 1990 and Soviet occupation of Mongolia lifted, the homeland of Genghis Khan could finally be visited for the first time. Many researchers came in search of the tombs, but they were not found. The author of Genghis Khan And The Making Of The Modern World, Jack Weatherford, came to the deliriously-happy country as a traveling social anthropologist and stayed for five years to join a team of Mongolians in research that became what you will read in his book.
Archaelogist Dr. Kh. Lkhagvasuren (student of Dr. Kh. Perlee), Professor O. Purev, Colonel Kh. Shagdar, Political Scientist D. Bold-Erdene and Geographer O. Sukhbaatar (covered a million kilometers across Mongolia) were the other members of his team. Comparing the accounts in the Secret History with the most significant primary and secondary texts from a dozen languages, poring over maps and debating the meanings, they soon realized they would need to play like detectives on a crime scene and visit the region itself. The Introduction describes their journey back in time, for the place was undisturbed by modern technology, and how they conducted their research for five years.
CONTENTS
The Mongol Dynasties
Introduction
Part 1: The Reign of Terror on the Steppe--1162-1206
1 The Blood Clot
2 Tale of Three Rivers
3 War of the Khans (khan means chief)
Part II The Mongol World War: 1211-1261
4 Spitting on the Golden Khan
5 Sultan Vs Khan
6 The Discovery and Conquest of Europe
7 Warring Queens
Part III The Global Awakening: 1262-1962
8 Khubilai Khan and the New Mongol Empire
9 Their Golden Light
10 The Empire of Illusion
Epilogue: The Eternal Spirit of Genghis Khan
Notes
A Note on Transliteration
Glossary, Selected Bibliography, Acknowledgements, Index
Weatherford takes us back to when Genghis Khan was born by Mongolia's Khentii Mountain Range near the Onon River in the spring of 1162, the Year of the Horse (I learned what animal each year was attributed to!). His mother Hoelun had just married, but a hunter spied her and her husband in the forest and decided to kidnap her. Her first child, Temujin, belonged to the hunter and she never saw her husband again. Temujin's father, already with one wife and son, was of a small band that would one day be called the Mongols and he would be poisoned and dead when Temujin was only 8 and had just met the girl he would marry. Temujin's tribe deserted them, then in a few years he would kill his older, ruling stepbrother and go on the run with his large, mixed family.
Temujin ran for the mountains, was captured, made a slave for a number of years, escaped and found the girl still waiting for him. As soon as he married her, she was kidnapped, but he wouldn't live without her and rescued her with the help of a khan friend of his father's. This incident, as Weatherford writes, 'would prove the decisive contest that would set him on the path to greatness.'
Now Temujin realizes that he can never live a peaceful life with his wife and family with the terrifying way life is between the tribes on the steppe. He doesn't want to be anyone's slave again, either, so after the successful rescue of his wife he becomes a steppe warrior, followed by a khan. He wants to unify all the tribes under one khan and break with tradition, to assign responsibility according to peoples' abilities rather than their kinship to him. This new way of doing things, and his new laws that applied to him as well, inspired so much loyalty and contentment among his ever-increasing followers that not one deserted under his command.
The Wolf Chief
Temujin takes the name Genghis or Chingiss Khan, meaning strong or wolf chief. After establishing the Mongol Nation in 1206 he keeps honing his incredible military tactics in the Mongol World War that lasted five decades. He breaks with tradition all over the place, not only in having no cavalry or artillery, but in their preferred use of propaganda terrifying a walled city into submission. They hated bloodshed and personal combat, would not torture or mutilate or rape, would often trick their foes before they attacked, and learned to loot after winning the battle. All loot was divided evenly among them and captives were put to work according to their ability. When the loot became plentiful, Genghis began trading with other nations and establishing trade routes. He did not simply want to conquer the world on an ego trip, but to institute a global order based on free trade, a single internatonal law, religious tolerance and a universal alphabet.
Statistics of how many people they killed in their war were usually highly exaggerated with their approval, as they were of much smaller numbers than who they conquered and only their propaganda, craftiness and innovative warfare helped them to win. As they did so, they collected and passed all of the skills from them to the next, establishing cultural communication, greater trade and more advanced civilization.
Genghis Khan conquered more than twice as much as any man in history, thirty countries holding over 3 billion people, which created a new world order and ushered in the Renaissance in Europe. Christopher Columbus set sail in 1492 not to find America, but in the hope of finding the collapsed Mongol Empire for his Spanish queen. If you wonder why it finally collapsed under the descendants of Genghis, it's a very sad story you should read for yourselves. I was entranced by it.
Unfortunately, starting in the late 1700s with Voltaire in a political play of his, The Orphan of China, Genghis Khan became known as a brutal barbarian jealous of 'the superior virtues of civilization' and Mongols as a curse to scientists and a scapegoat for many nations' failures. China and Japan were to be feared for how they were contaminating the world. Most recently the Taliban murdered the descendants of the Mongol army that had lived for 8 centuries there, just because the American invasion reminded them of the Mongols.
I've already jabbered long enough on this excellent 2004 book of 271 pages. Weatherford has done a magnificent job researching the history of the Mongols and made it completely fascinating in Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. I'm checking out his other books like Indian Givers and Savages and Civilizations.
Recommended:
Yes
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Member: Jan Peregrine
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