Genghis Khan by Weatherford

Ref: Jack Weatherford (2004). Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Crown.

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Summary­

• Whether measured by the total number of people defeated, the sum of the countries annexed, or by the total area occupied, Genghis Khan conquered more than twice as much as any other man in history.

• The tribe of Genghis Khan acquired a variety of names—Tartar, Tatar, Mughal, Moghul, Moal, and Mongol.

• Starting from the Jurched campaign, the well-trained and tightly organized Mongol army would charge out of its highland home and overrun everything from the Indus River to the Danube, from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. In a flash, only thirty years, the Mongol warriors would defeat every army, capture every fort, and bring down the walls of every city they encountered. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus would soon kneel before the dusty boots of illiterate young Mongol horsemen.

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Major Events

• 370-430: Huns conquer much of Eurasia.

• 1204: Battle of Chakirmaut (Battle of the 13 Sides); the final battle for control of Mongolia

• 1206: Mongol Empire is founded by Genghis Khan.

• 1206-1227: Reign of Genghis as 1st Khan of the Mongol Empire.

  • 1206: Mongol Yassa Code.

  • 1207-1209: Mongol conquest of the Tangut (Western Xia Dynasty);    

  • 1211-1214: Mongol-Jurched War

  • 1219: Mongols defeat the Black Khitan.

  • 1219-1221: The Mongols defeat the Khwarizm Empire

  • 1221-1223: Mongol forces come into contact with Europe

  • 1227: Death of Ghengis Khan and his son Jochi, separately.

• 1229- 11Dec, 1241: Reign of Ögedei as 2nd Khan of the Mongol Empire.

  • 1230s: Mongol conquest of the Song Empire.

  • 1236-1241: A Mongol Eastern Campaign in Europe

  • 1241: Death of Ögedei, in a drunken stupor.

• 1241-1246: Yeke (Töregene) Khatun rules as regent of the Mongol Empire.

• 1246-1248: Reign of Güyük as 3rd Khan of the Mongol Empire.

  • 1248: Death of Güyük.

• 1 Jul, 1251-11 Aug, 1259: Reign of Möngke as 4th Khan of the Mongol Empire.

  • 1250s: Mongol conquest of Arabia, led by Hülegü, and the Army of the right.

  • 1250s: Mongol conquest of the Song Empire, led by Khubilai, and the army of the left.

  • 1259: Death of Möngke Khan.

• Jun, 1260: Arik Boke is proclaimed Great Khan.

• 1260-1264: Toluid Civil War is fought between brothers Arik Boke and Khubilai.

• 1260-1294: Reign of Khubilai as 5th Khan.

  • 1271: Khubilai forms the Yuan Dynasty.

  • 1274: First Mongol Conquest of Japan is stopped by the Kamikaze.

  • 1279: Mongol Yuan forces conquer the Song Dynasty.

  • 1281: Second Mongol Conquest of Japan; >100K die in storms at sea.

  • 1280s: Mongol Conquest of SE Asia.

  • 1292-1293: Mongol conquest of Java

• 1328-1332: At least 4 members of the Golden Family occupy the throne, and one, the 7yo Rinchinbal Khan, had it for only two months in 1332.

• 1330-1400: The Black Death kills millions across Eurasia.

• 1333-1368: Reign of Toghun Temür over the Yuan Dynasty of China; considered the last Mongol khan.

• 1368: Rise of the Ming Empire following the Red Turban Rebellion;

• 1370- 1405: Reign of Timur the Lame (Tamerlane). Timur leads the conquest of Western, South, and Central Asia, the Caucasus, and S. Russia, defeating the Khans of the Golden Horde, the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria, the emerging Ottoman Empire, and the late Delhi sultanate of India, emerging as the most powerful ruler in the Islamic World.

• 1519: Babur becomes the first Moghul Emperor in India.

• 1644: The Manchu overthrow the Ming.

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Mongol Legacy

• Smashed the feudal system of aristocratic privilege and birth and built a new and unique system based on individual merit, loyalty, and achievement.

• Created an international law (Yassa) that recognized the ultimate supreme law of the Eternal Blue Sky over all people.

• Introduced paper currency intended for use everywhere, as bullion and coins proved bulky to transport.

• Created primary schools for universal basic education of all children.

• Improved medicine through hospitals, training centers, and research clinics.

• Established a national history office.

• Produced the cannon using highly skilled engineers from China, Persia, and Europe, who combined Chinese gunpowder with Muslim flamethrowers and applied European bell-casting technology.

• Refined calendars to create a 10K year calendar more accurate than any previous one.

• Sponsored the most extensive maps ever assembled.

• Destroyed the uniqueness of the civilizations around them by shattering the protective walls that isolated one civilization from another and by knotting the cultures together.

• Distributed an early type of combined passport and credit card.

• Emphasized free commerce, open communication, shared knowledge, secular politics, religious coexistence, international law, and diplomatic immunity.

• Enabled open and secure access of goods, messages, and people across the Silk Routes connecting Eurasia.

• The Mongols united all of the areas speaking various Chinese dialects with the adjacent kingdoms of the Tibetans, Manchurians, Uighurs, and dozens of smaller kingdoms and tribal nations. “The greatest legacy of the Mongol Empire bequeathed to the Chinese is the Chinese nation itself.”-Hidehiro Okada (Japanese Scholar).

• The practices of Timur in the late 14c (slaughter, torture, humiliation) were anachronistically assigned back to Genghis Khan.

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Mongol Warfare

• The Mongol army transformed warfare into an intercontinental affair fought on multiple fronts stretching across thousands of miles. Genghis Khan’s innovative fighting techniques made the heavily armored knights of medieval Europe obsolete, replacing them with disciplined cavalry moving in coordinated units.

• The Mongol military consisted entirely of cavalry, armed riders without a marching infantry.

• Genghis Khan recognized that warfare was not a sporting contest or a mere match between rivals; it was a total commitment of one people against another. Victory did not come to the one who played by the rules; it came to the one who made the rules and imposed them on his enemy. Triumph could not be partial. It was complete, total, and undeniable—or it was nothing.

• Genghis Khan’s military might evolved through a persistent cycle of pragmatic learning, experimental adaptation, and constant revision driven by his uniquely disciplined mind and focused will.

• Tactics: The Mongols did not find honor in fighting; they found honor in winning. They had a single goal in every campaign—total victory. Toward this end, it did not matter what tactics were used against the enemy or how the battles were fought or avoided being fought. Winning by clever deception or cruel trickery was still winning and carried no stain on the bravery of the warriors, since there would be plenty of other occasions for showing prowess on the field. For the Mongol warrior, there was no such thing as individual honor in battle if the battle was lost. As Genghis Khan reportedly said, there is no good in anything until it is finished.

  • The steppe mode of warfare consisted primarily of shooting arrows at one another from horseback or from fixed positions behind the protection of rocks or hastily assembled log barricades. When fighting, the steppe warriors sought to avoid blood, so they rarely fought close to one another in hand-to-hand combat. The breath or odor of the enemy carried a part of his soul, and thus warriors sought to avoid the contamination of even smelling their enemy. The attackers swarmed toward their enemies on horseback, firing arrows rapidly as they approached, then turned and continued firing as they fled. Sometimes the defenders rode out with long poles to dismount their opponents and then shoot them as they stumbled back to their feet.

  • Rather than relying on defensive fortifications, the Mongols used speed and surprise on the battlefield, as well as perfecting siege warfare to such a degree that the Mongols ended the era of walled cities.

  • The basic Mongol tactic was to frighten the enemy into surrendering before an actual battle began.

  • Crow Swarm (Falling Stars): A Mongol attack formation; at the signal of a drum, or by fire at night, Mongol horsemen gallop towards the enemy from all directions at once, launching waves of arrows and disappearing suddenly. “They come as though the sky were falling, and they disappear like the flash of lightning” shaking  and unnerving the enemy. Before they could respond properly to the attack, the Mongols were gone and left the enemy bleeding and confused.

  • Dog Fight: A Mongol attack formation; Mongol elements feign withdrawal, departing suddenly and leaving lots of equipment and stores behind. Once lured from their walled cities, they either strung their pursuers out in a long line that became increasingly defenseless and easily attacked or the fleeing Mongols divided into small squads and their pursuers off in small groups that could be easily overcome.

  • The Mongols always wanted a clear area of retreat or advancement where his army could always find adequate pasturage for the horses and for the other animals on which their success depended. Where the pastures ended, the Mongols stopped. With five horses per warrior, they needed that pasture to function. Their marked advantages of speed, mobility, and surprise were all lost when they had to pick their way through forests, rivers, and plowed fields with crops and ditches, hedges, and wooden fences.

• IO: The Mongols operated a virtual propaganda machine that consistently inflated the number of people killed in battle and spread fear wherever its words carried.

  • In preparing the psychological attack on a city, Genghis Khan offered generous terms of surrender to the outlying communities, and the ones that accepted the terms and joined the Mongols received great leniency. In the words of the Persian chronicler, “whoever yields and submits to them is safe and free from the terror and disgrace of their severity.” Those that refused received exceptionally harsh treatment, as the Mongols herded the captives before them to be used as cannon fodder in the next attack.

  • The Mongols did not torture, mutilate, or maim.

• Rank: Unlike other armies in which each individual held a rank, in the Mongol army, the entire unit held a rank.

• Communications

  • Arrow Messengers: A communication/post office system in which the military supplied fast riders to carry messages while the local people supplied the stations. The postal service ranked alongside the military in importance for the Mongols and individuals were allowed to serve in it in lieu of regular military service.

• Supplies: The Mongol army traveled without a commissary or cumbersome supply train other than its large reserve of horses that always accompanied the soldiers. As they moved, they milked the animals, slaughtered them for food, and fed themselves from hunting and looting.

  • The Mongol was ideally suited to travel long distances; each man carried what he needed, nothing more. In addition to his deel, the traditional wool robe that reached to his ankles, he wore pants, a fur hat with earflaps, riding boots with thick soles, and clothes designed to protect from the worst weather. Each warrior carried flints for making fires, leather canteens for water and milk, files to sharpen arrowheads, a lasso for rounding up animals or prisoners, sewing needles for mending clothes, a knife and a hatchet for cutting, and a skin bag into which to pack everything. Each squad of ten carried a small tent.

• Rations: The poorest Mongol soldier ate mostly protein, thereby giving him strong teeth and bones. Unlike the Jurched soldiers, who were dependent on a heavy carbohydrate diet, the Mongols could more easily go a day or two without food.

• Medical: Each Mongol unit of one thousand traveled with its own medical unit, usually composed of Chinese doctors, to care for the sick and wounded.

• Camp: The tents were lined up in specific formations, each formation with its name and purpose, and even the insides of the tents were arranged in precisely the same way. After a day of travel, fighting, or hunting, the army camped with the officers at the center of the camp surrounded by guards and other soldiers. At night, horses were kept ready in case they might be needed, and a perimeter was set up at the edge of the camp.

  • At dusk they made small fires, preferably when it was too light for the fire to show up clearly at a distance, yet too dark for the smoke to be seen from very far away. With the fire, they quickly prepared their only hot meal of the day. After eating, they did not linger or sleep by the fire; they dispersed into yet smaller groups of three to five men who slept in hidden recesses spread throughout the area. As soon as daylight broke the next morning, they began the day with a careful reconnaissance of the right, the left, the back, and the front.

• Command: Orders moved by word of mouth from man to man. To ensure accurate memorization, the officers composed their orders in rhyme, using a standardized system known to every soldier. The Mongol warriors used a set of fixed melodies and poetic styles into which various words could be improvised according to the meaning of the message. For a soldier, hearing the message was like learning a new verse to a song that he already knew.

• Weapons

  • Ballista: A mechanical device that shot large arrows that could damage structures and kill any person or animal in its path.

  • Firelance: Jurched weapon; a bamboo tube stuffed with gunpowder, which when lit produced a slow burn that spewed sparks, flames, and smoke out of the end of the tube like a flamethrower.

  • Projectiles: The Mongols changed the formula of gunpowder to provide enough O to make it ignite in one rapid blast rather than in the traditional slow burn of the firelance or of rockets, and the Mongols harnessed these explosions to hurl a variety of projectiles.

• When attacking, the Mongol warriors wore a light leather armor that was thick in the front but thin at the back so “that they might not be tempted to run away.” In battle, “they use darts, clubs, battle-axes, and swords… and fight bravely and unyieldingly, but their chief prerogative is their use of the bow.” If captured, “they never ask for mercy, and themselves never spare the vanquished.”

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Mongols and Europe

• In Europe, the Mongols slaughtered the aristocratic knighthood of the continent, but, disappointed with the general poverty of the area compared with the Chinese and Muslim countries, turned away and did not bother to conquer the cities, loot the countries, or incorporate them into the expanding empire.

• Europe suffered the least from the Mongol Conquest yet acquired all the advantages of contact through merchants such as the Polo family of Venice and envoys exchanged between the Mongol khans and the popes and kings of Europe. The new technology, knowledge, and commercial wealth created the Renaissance in which Europe rediscovered some of its prior culture, but more importantly, absorbed the technology for printing, firearms, the compass, and the abacus from the East.

• The Europeans received all the benefits of trade, technology transfer, and the Global Awakening without paying the cost of Mongol conquest. The Mongols had killed off the knights in Hungary and Germany, but they had not destroyed or occupied the cities. The Europeans, who had been cut off from the mainstream of civilization since the fall of Rome, eagerly drank in the new knowledge, put on the new clothes, listened to the new music, ate the new foods, and enjoyed a rapidly escalating standard of living in almost every regard.

• In their patronage of popular culture to entertain themselves and the masses, the Mongols adhered to their cultural abhorrence of bloodshed. Although they enjoyed wrestling and archery, they developed no counterpart to the gladiatorial games and public slaughter that fascinated the Romans, nor any of the traditional European sports of pitting animals against each other, as in bear baiting and dogfights, or animals against humans, as in bullfighting. Mongols did not permit the execution of criminals to become a public sport, as in the beheadings and hangings common in European cities. The Mongols offered no counterpart to the common public entertainment of burning people alive that occurred so frequently in western Europe wherever the Christian church had the power to do so.

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Mongol Law

• Yassa Code (1206): The Great Law of Genghis Khan, which functioned as a supreme law, or a common law over everyone. The code forbade the kidnapping of women, the abduction and enslavement of any Mongol, declared all children legitimate, whether born to a wife or a concubine, forbade the selling of women into marriage, and outlawed adultery (Mongol adultery did not include sexual relations between a woman and her husband’s close relatives, nor those between a man and female servants or the wives of other men in his household). It made animal rustling a capital offense, requiring anyone finding a lost animal to return it to its owner on penalty of death (which included a massive lost and found system), codified existing ideals by forbidding the hunting of animals between Mar-Oct during breeding time, placed limits on hunting and specified how animals should be hunted as well as the manner of butchering, so as to waste nothing. The law promoted all religions and exempted religious leaders and their properties from taxation and public service (which was later extended to a range of professions including essential public workers, undertakers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and scholars). The law codified the election of Khan by kurultai, and, in probably the first of its kind anywhere in the world, decreed complete and total religious freedom for everyone. The law recognized group responsibility and group guilt. The solitary individual had no legal existence outside the context of the family and the larger units to which it belonged; therefore, the family carried the responsibility of ensuring the correct behavior of its members. A crime by one could bring punishment to all. Genghis Khan made it clear that his Great Law applied as strictly to the rulers as to everyone else.

  • Genghis Khan did not base his law on divine revelation from God; nor did he derive it from an ancient code of any sedentary civilization. He consolidated it from the customs and traditions of the herding tribes as maintained over centuries; yet he readily abolished old practices when they hindered the functioning of his new society. He allowed groups to follow traditional law in their area, so long as it did not conflict with the Great Law.

• She: A Mongol organizational unit comprised of ~50 households that exercises broad responsibility and authority over the lives of the she. They oversaw local farming, exercised responsibility for improving the land and managing water and other natural resources, and provided food reserves for time of famine. In general, they functioned as a form of local government.

• Torture: Mongol law specified that before torture could be applied to elicit a confession, the officials had to already have substantial evidence, not mere suspicion, that the person had committed a particular crime. The Mongol legal code of 1291 specified that officials must “first use reason to analyze and surmise, and shall not impose abruptly any torture.”

• Rather than writing the crime on the body, Mongol authorities preferred to write the offense on a wall erected in front of a criminal’s home so that the entire community could watch him carefully. They also used a system of parole in which freed prisoners had to report twice a month to local officials to have their behavior reviewed.

• Quotas: The Mongols staffed each office with an ethnic quota of the three major groups of N. Chinese, S. Chinese, and foreigners so that each official was surrounded by men of a different culture or religion.

• Wherever possible and at whatever level, the Mongols replaced the bureaucracy with councils modeled on the small kurultai of the steppes. The local councils met daily, and any new measure had to come with the seal of approval of at least two officials. The council had to debate the issues and reach a consensus; the decision had to be made by the group, not by a single official. By Chinese standards, this was an extremely inefficient and impractical system that took too much time and energy compared with simply having one official make the decision and the people follow it. The Mongols promoted the use of other small councils, in a variety of ways. Patients displeased with medical service could seek redress from a council composed of representatives of the medical profession and nonmedical officials. Similar groups were formed to settle disputes involving a great variety of professions, from soldiers to musicians.

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Mongol Life

• The winter was the season for hunting. The men left home in small parties to roam the mountains and penetrate the forests hunting rabbits, wolves, sables, elks ibex, argali (wild sheep), boars, bears, foxes, and otters. Sometimes the whole community participated in hunts, where they would encircle as large an area as they could and drive the game toward a central slaughtering point.

• When their legs grew long enough to reach the stirrups, children were taught to shoot arrows and to lasso on horseback. Making targets out of leather pouches that they would dangle from poles so that they would blow in the wind, the youngsters practiced hitting the targets from horseback at varying distances and speeds.

• Mongols were animists, praying to the spirits around them. They worshiped the Eternal Blue Sky, the Golden Light of the Sun, and the myriad spiritual forces of nature. The Mongols divided the natural world into two parts, the earth and the sky. Just as the human soul was contained not in the stationary parts of the body but in the moving essences of blood, breath, and aroma, so, too, the soul of the earth was contained in its moving water. The rivers flowed through the earth like the blood through the body, and three of those rivers began here on this mountain. As the tallest mountain, Burkhan Khaldun, literally “God Mountain,” was the khan of the area, and it was the earthly place closest to the Eternal Blue Sky. And as the source of three rivers, Burkhan Khaldun was also the sacred heart of the Mongol world.

• Under the kinship hierarchy, each lineage was known as a bone. The closest lineages, those with whom no intermarriage was allowed, were known as white bones. More distant kin with whom intermarriage was allowed were the black-boned lineages. Since they were all interrelated, each lineage claimed descent from someone of importance, but the strength of the claim depended on their ability to enforce it.

• 7: An unluck number for Mongols.

• Horse: The most important and honored animal in the Mongol world, symbolized the power of Temujin’s destiny, and its sacrifice, as before any major battle or kurultai, not only fed the men, but further empowered Temujin’s Spirit Banner.

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Mongol Mythology

• According to legend, the Mongols originated in the mountain forest when Blue-Gray Wolf mated with Beautiful Red Doe on the shores of a great lake.

• The Mongols’ closest relatives were Tatars and Khitan to the east, the Manchus yet farther to the east, and the Turkic tribes of central Asia to the west.

• The Mongols themselves claim a distinct identity from the Turkic and Tatar groups. They asserted, then and now, a direct descent from the Huns, who founded the first empire on the high steppe in the 3c. Hun is the Mongolian word for human being, and they called their Hun ancestors Hun-nu, the people of the sun.

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Khwarizm

• The cities of the Khwarizm empire had been a particularly important center for mathematic scholarship; the word algorithm was derived from al Khwarizm.

• The Khwarizm Muslims produced steel. They had cottons and other fine textiles, and they knew the mysterious process of making glass. The vast area from the mountains of modern Afghanistan to the Black Sea fell under the power of the Turkic sultan Muhammad II, whose empire was called Khwarizm. Genghis Khan wanted these exotic commodities, and toward this end he sought a trading partnership with the distant sultan.

• The Muslim lands of the 13c, combining Arabic, Turkic, and Persian civilizations, were the richest countries in the world and the most sophisticated in virtually every branch of learning from astronomy and mathematics to agronomy and linguistics, and possessed the world’s highest levels of literacy among the general population.

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Tibet

• The Tibetan variation of Buddhism contrasts most strongly with the Confucian ideals of the Chinese.

• Unable to criticize their Mongol rulers directly, the Chinese people turned much of their hatred toward the foreigners who helped the Mongols administer their empire. The Tibetan Buddhist monks in particular became the object of hatred, since local people along the newly opened Mongol route to Tibet carried the obligation not merely of feeding, housing, and transporting the monks, but of carrying their goods for them as well. The monks, often armed, acquired a terrible reputation for abusing people who served them.

• The Mongol khans of China took refuge in the spirituality of the Tibetan monks, who encouraged them to turn away from the outside world of illusory problems of society and to perform acts that would help their own individual soul.

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Moghuls

• The Moghuls made India into the world’s greatest manufacturing and trading nation and—contrary to both Muslim and Hindu traditions- raised the status of women.

• Din-i-Illah (Divine Faith): The Universalist religion preached by the Moghul Khan’s of India, with one God in Heaven and one emperor on Earth.

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Silk Route

• Silk became known in the West as satin, taking its name from the Mongol port of Zaytun from which Marco Polo sailed on his return to Europe.

• Along the silk road, card playing spread rapidly because merchants and soldiers found the light and easily transported game an entertaining and novel pastime.

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Jewish Persecution

• “In the time of the government of Moses their rebellious hearts (Jews) were perverted to an evil way of thinking, so that they followed after strange gods and unknown customs, so now in a more wonderful manner, owing to the vengeance of God, they were unknown to every other nation, and their heart and language was confused, and their life changed to that of the cruel and irrational wild beast.” Because of “the enormous wickedness of the Jews,” the Christians accused them of bringing the wrath of the Mongols on innocent Christians. Christians accepted this story as proof of “the hidden treachery and extraordinary deceit of the Jews.”-Paris, Early ‘Historian’.

• Unable to defeat the Mongols, their enemy menacing the boundaries of their civilization, the Europeans could defeat the Jews, their imagined enemies at home. In one city after another from York to Rome, angry Christian crowds attacked the Jewish quarters of their cities…Christians set fire to Jewish homes and massacred the residents. Those Jews who managed to escape the cities fled from place to place in search of refuge, but in almost all communities, they found more persecution. To clearly identify which refugees were Jewish refugees and to prevent their entering new Christian communities, the church ordered that Jews had to wear distinctive clothes and emblems to mark them for all to see.

• Due to the Black Death, In Europe, the Christians turned on the Jews, who had a close association with commerce and with the east, from whence the plague came. Some Jews were shut up in their homes and burned; others were taken out and tortured on the rack until they confessed their crimes.

• King Louis IX and his fellow countrymen burned some 12K handwritten and illuminated Jewish books. For these and other great services to the furtherance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, his church canonized him as Saint Louis.

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Black Death

Black Death: Following transmission, blood begins to ooze beneath the skin, which discolored the skin, lumps form and ooze blood and pus in the groin. The lumps, subsequently called buboes (groin- Greek), then formed in the armpit and neck, and from them came the medical term for the disease: bubonic plague. When the lumps grow too large, they burst open. The lack of O moving into the body and the dry blood beneath the skin made the person appear to turn black; from this dramatic symptom, the disease became known as the Black Death.

• In some people, the disease attacked the lungs rather than the lymph nodes, and as the air in the lungs turned bloody and frothy, they drowned.

• One of the few effective measures was taken by the city of Milan. As soon as plague broke out in a house, officials raced to seal up the entire house with everyone- sick and well, friends and servants- sealed inside.

• According to the most plausible, but not completely verifiable, accounts, the disease originated in the south of China. China functioned as the manufacturing center of the Mongol World System, and as the goods poured out of China, the disease followed with Mongol warriors bringing it north with them…The roads and way stations set up by the Mongols for merchants also served as the inadvertent transfer points for the fleas and, thereby, for the disease itself…With the luxurious fabrics, exotic flavors, and opulent jewels, the caravans brought the fleas that spread the plague from camp to village to city to continent.

• In the Gobi, the black death found hospitable new homes in marmot burrows and the extensive rodent colonies, where it has lived ever since…In other urban areas, the disease found its perfect environment in rat populations that had lived in close proximity with humans for so long that no one suspected them as sources for the disease.

• The plague not only isolated Europe, but it also cut off the Mongols in Persia and Russia from China and Mongolia.

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Decline of the Mongols

• Plague collapsed the commercial system, which led to revolts, and the dismemberment of the Mongol Empire.

• The administrative division of the Mongol Empire was split into four major parts—China, Moghulistan, Persia, and Russia.

In Russia

• The Golden Horde of Russia broke into smaller hordes that declined steadily in power through four long centuries. During such an extended interaction, the Mongols and their Turkic allies amalgamated with each other into several different ethnic groups of Turco-Mongols that maintained a separate identity from one another as well as from the larger Slavic society.

In Arabia

• In the Muslim territories, instead of returning to the control of Arabs who had been the traders, the intermediaries, the bankers, the shippers, and the caravan drivers who connected Asia and Europe, a new cultural hybrid emerged that combined a Turco-Mongol military system with the legal institutions of Islam and the ancient cultural traditions of Persia. The eastern part of the Muslim world found a new cultural freedom in which they could still be Muslims but without the domination of Arabs, whom they never allowed to regain power. New dynasties, such as the Ottoman of Turkey, the Safavid of Persia, and the Moghul of India, sometimes called Gunpowder Empires, relied primarily on the vast innovations in Mongol weaponry, a military organization based on both a cavalry and an armed infantry, and the use of firearms, to fight foreign enemies and, perhaps more important, to maintain domestic power over their ethnically varied subjects.

In Europe

• Columbus insisted that although the Muslims barred the land route from Europe to the Mongol court, he could sail west from Europe across the World Ocean and arrive in the land described by Marco Polo. Since he had not found the land of the Great Khan of the Mongols, he decided that the people he met must be the southern neighbors of the Mongols in India, and thus Columbus called the native people of the Americas Indians, the name by which they have been known ever since.

In China

• In China, the Ming expelled the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish traders whom the Mongols had encouraged to settle in China, and in a major blow to the commercial system of the Mongols, Ming authorities abolished the failing paper money entirely and returned to metal. They rejected the Tibetan Lamaist Buddhism that the Mongols had sponsored, and replaced it with traditional Taoist and Confucian thought and traditions.

• After an abortive effort to revitalize the Mongol trade system, the Ming burned their ocean vessels, banned foreign travel for Chinese, and spent a large portion of the GNP on building massive new walls to lock foreigners out and the Chinese in.

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People

• Toghrul (Ong Khan) (?-1203): Khan of the Keraites in Central Mongolia. He was the blood brother (anda) of the Mongol chief Yesugei, and served as an important patron and ally to Temüjin.

• Jamaka (?): Mongol military and political leader and chief rival to Temüjin, his sworn blood brother, in the unification of the Mongol tribes.

• Genghis Khan (Temüjin) (1162-1227): Founder and 1st Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death. He came to power by uniting many of the nomadic tribes of the Mongol Steppe and was subsequently proclaimed universal ruler of the Mongols. He set in motion the conquest of Eurasia, launching campaigns against the Qara Khitai, Khwarizmi, the W. Xia, and the Jin Dynasty with his generals raiding into medieval Georgia, Circassia, the Kievan Rus, and the Volga Bulgaria.

  • Father: Yesugei; while on campaign against the Tatars, killed a warrior called Temujin Uge, for whom he named his son.

  • Mother: Hoelun; kidnapped by Yesugei.

  • Siblings: Khasar (younger) & Begter (older). Begter was killed by arrows shot from Khasar and Temujin when they were kids. Rather than approach him and risk contamination from his blood, which was flowing onto the earth, they turned and abandoned him to die alone.

  • On death, Genghis allotted personal lands and herds to each son, but instructed his quarreling sons Jochi and Chaghatai to “make up your camps far apart and each of you rules your own kingdom.”

  • Twice in their childhood, Temujin and Jamuka swore an oath of eternal brotherhood, becoming blood brothers according to Mongol tradition.

  • The two boys became andas, a bond that was supposed to be stronger even than that between biological brothers because andas freely chose their tie. Jamuka was the only anda Temujin had in his life.

• Muhali (Muqali) (1170-1223): Mongol Noyan (General) of Genghis Khan; moved slowly and methodically but could sustain longer and broader assignments. Acted as Genghis Khan’s second-in-command during the invasion of Jin China and was promoted to Viceroy of China.

• Subodei (Subitai) (1175-1248): Mongol Noyan (General) and primary strategist of Genghis and Ögedei Khan. He directed more than 20 campaigns and won 65 pitched battles during which he conquered or overran more territory than any other commander in history as part of the expansion of the Mongol Empire. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest military commanders and strategists in history.

  • Subodei had been the greatest general in Genghis Khan’s army, and with his shrewd knowledge of siege warfare and the use of large attack machines, he had played a major role in every important campaign the Mongols had fought. At 60yo, he was probably blind in one eye, and according to some reports so fat that he could no longer ride a horse and had to be hauled around in an iron chariot.

  • Subodei favored a break with the policies of Genghis Khan by organizing a massive campaign to the west, toward Europe, a previously unknown civilization that he had recently discovered quite by accident.

• Jochi (1182-1227): Eldest son of Temujin and Mongol Army Commander leading forces in his father’s conquest of Central Asia.

• Yeke (Töregene) Khatun (?-1246): Great Khatun (Empress) and regent of the Mongol Empire from the death of her husband Ögedei Khan in 1241 until the election of her eldest son Güyük Khan in 1246. As Khatun, while the men fought, she supported religion and education and worked to build buildings and important social structures on an imperial scale.

• Jebe (?-1224): Mongol Noyan (General) of Genghis Khan; fought fast and furiously, taking unusual chances and inspiring resolute courage among his men in battle.

• Ögedei (1186-1241): Son of Genghis and 2nd Mongol Khan ruling from 1229 until his death in 1241. By 1235, Ögedei had squandered most of his father’s wealth. Ögedei continued the expansion of the empire that his father had begun to the borders of Southern China, the Mongol Invasions of Europe, and the Mongol Conquests of China. He participated extensively in conquests in China, Iran, and Central Asia.

• Sorkhokhtani Beki (1190-1252): Wife of Ghengis Khan’s youngest son, Tolui and ruler of Mongolia, N. China, and E. Mongolia, among the most influential and powerful women in history. Each of Sorkhokhtani’s sons was a khan. Möngke, Arik Boke, and Khubilai would all carry the title of Great Khan for various lengths of time, and her other son, Hülegü, would become the Il Khan of Persia and the founder of his own dynasty there. Her sons would push the empire to its maximum size by conquering all of Persia, Baghdad, Syria, and Turkey. They would conquer the Chinese Sung dynasty in the south and push into Vietnam, Laos, and Burma. They would destroy the dreaded sect of the Assassins and execute the Muslim caliph.

• Ebuskun (?): Ruler of Central Asia (Turkestan) and wife of Chaghatai, Genghis Khan’s second son.

• Güyük (1206-1248): Eldest son of Ögedei Khan and 3rd Khan of the Mongol Empire.

• Möngke (1209-1259): Eldest son of Genghis’ teenaged son Tolui with his wife Sorkhokhtani, and 4th Khan of the Mongol Empire. He was the first Khan from the Toluid line and made significant reforms to improve the administration of the empire during his reign. Under Möngke, the Mongols conquered Iraq and Syria as well as the Kingdom of Dali (modern Yunnan).

• Khubilai (Kublai, Emperor Shizu of Yuan, Setsen Khan) (1215-1294): 4th son of Tolui, grandson of Genghis Khan, 5th Khan of the Mongol Empire and founder of China’s Yuan dynasty following the conquest of the Song and the subsequent unification of China. Khubilai built a Chinese capital, took Chinese names, and setup a Chinese administration.

• Hülegü (Hulagu) (1217-1265): Mongol ruler, son of Tolui, and grandson of Genghis Khan who conquered much of Western Asia under his brother Möngke Khan.

• Khaidu (1230-1301): Grandson of Ögedei Khan, brother of Güyük, and the khan of the Chagatai Khanate division of the Mongol Empire (the central steppe), ruling parts of modern day Zinjiang and Central Asia. Khaidu actively opposed his uncle, Kublai, who established the Yuan dynasty. , was often in rebellion against his cousin Khubilai.

• Bayan of the Baarin (Boyan- Chinese) (1236-1295): Mongol Noyan (General) of the Yuan Dynasty who commanded the army of Khubilai Khan against the Southern Song Dynasty, ushering in its collapse. 

• Toghon Temür (Huizong) (1320-1370): The last emperor of the Yuan Dynasty following its overthrow by the Red Turban Rebellion which established the Ming dynasty and, later, first emperor of the N. Yuan dynasty. His is considered the last Khan of the Mongol Empire.

• Timur the Lame (Tamerlane) (1336-1405): The last nomadic conqueror of the Eurasian Steppe; A Turkish-Mongol conqueror who founded the Timurid Empire in present day Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia, becoming the first rule of the Timurid dynasty. Timur was an undefeated commander and widely regarded as one of the greatest military leaders and tacticians in history, as well as one of the most brutal. The practices of Timur (slaughter, torture, humiliation) were anachronistically assigned back to Genghis Khan.

• Babur (1483-1530): Descendent of Timur and Founder of the Mughal Empire in the Indian Subcontinent.

• Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840): German zoologist and professor of medicine at Göttingen University. Created zoological classifications for human beings based on comparative anatomy, particularly on skin pigmentation, hair and eye color, skull type, and facial features such as size and form of the nose, cheeks, and lips. According to his study, humans divided naturally into three primary races corresponding to Africa, Asia, and Europe, and to two less important subcategories of American and Malay. On the theory that Asians originated in Mongolia, he classified all of them under the rubric Mongols. European scientists rapidly accepted his theory, making it scientific gospel.

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Misc Quotes

“In order to cut through traditional rivalries and feuds in Athens, Cleisthenes abolished the tribes and reassigned everyone to ten units of ten, thereby transforming a tribal city into a city-state that grew into the strongest military, commercial, artistic, and intellectual power along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea.”

“You may conquer an army with superior tactics and men, but you can conquer a nation only by conquering the hearts of the people.”

“People conquered on different sides of the lake should be ruled on different sides of the lake.”

“It will be easy to forget your vision and purpose once you have fine clothes, fast horses, and beautiful women. In that case, you will be no better than a slave, and you will surely lose everything.”

“Tea made from orange peel, kudzu flowers, ginseng, sandalwood, and cardamom. Sipped on an empty stomach, the tea was guaranteed to overcome a hangover.”

“This noble king was called Genghis Khan, Who in his time was of so great renown That there was nowhere in no region So excellent a lord in all things. He lacked nothing that belonged to a king. As of the sect of which he was born He kept his law, to which that he was sworn. And thereto he was hardy, wise, and rich, And piteous and just, always liked; Soothe of his word, benign, and honorable, Of his courage as any center stable; Young, fresh, and strong, in arms desirous As any bachelor of all his house. A fair person he was and fortunate, And kept always so well royal estate That there was nowhere such another man. This noble king, this Tartar Genghis Khan.”-Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

“The first key to leadership is self-control, particularly the mastery of pride, which is something more difficult to subdue than a wild lion, and anger, which is more difficult to defeat than the greatest wrestler…If you can’t swallow your pride, you can’t lead…Never think of yourself as the strongest or smartest. Even the highest mountain has animals that step on it. When the animals climb to the top of the mountain, they are even higher than it is.”-Genghis Khan.

“Don’t talk too much. Only say what needs to be said. A leader should demonstrate his thoughts and opinions through his actions, not through his words… a leader can never be happy until his people are happy… have a vision, goals, and a plan…without the vision of a goal, a man cannot manage his own life, much less the lives of others.”-Genghis Khan.

“There is no good in anything until it is finished.”-Genghis Khan.

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Terminology

• Aral (Mongolian): The land between two rivers.

• Atavistic Mongolism (Orangism): A theory wherein the Occidental Mongols bore responsibility not merely for retardation but for much of the crime and feeblemindedness found in the West. According to this theory, Jews, in particular, sustained much of the Mongol influence because they had interbred with Khazars and other steppe tribes, and then brought that degraded genetic influence with them throughout Europe.

• Chin: Strong (Mongolian); firm, unshakable, fearless. 

• Eternal Blue Sky: The Mongol God that stretched from horizon to horizon in all four directions.

• Ger: Family.

• Hazara: Afghan descendants of the Mongol army.

• ‘Huree, Huree, Huree’: Mongol Prayer Ending, similar to the Christian use of ‘Amen’.

• Hurray: A Mongol exclamation used as an enthusiastic cry of bravado and mutual encouragement; later picked up by the Europeans.

• Moghulistan: The Persian name for the Mongol territory.

• Jizya: An Islamic tax on non-Muslims.

• Karakorum: ‘Black Stones’, ‘Black Walls’; the capital of the Mongol Empire.  

• Nizari Ismailis: A heretical Muslim sect of Shiites more commonly known as the Assassins, who were holed up in hundreds of unconquered mountain fortresses stretching from Afghanistan to Syria, the most important of which was Alamut, the Eagle’s Nest, in N. Persia. The cult apparently had one simple and effective political strategy: kill anyone, particularly leaders or powerful people, who opposed them in any way. The cult recruited young men who were willing to die in their attacks with the assurance that they would achieve instant entry into paradise as martyrs of Islam. Supposedly, because of the importance of narcotics for the Ismailis, the people around them called them hashshashin, meaning “the hashish users.” Over time, this became modified into the word assassin.

• Ordu (Horde): The tribal center, chiefly court of the Mongol chief, consisting of relatives serving as a sort of aristocracy over the tribe, managing it and leading it.

• Secret History of the Mongols: The original Mongolian documents recording the history of the Mongols.

  • In the 19c, a copy of the document written in Chinese characters was found in Beijing. Scholars easily read the characters, but the words made no sense because they had been recorded in a code that used Chinese characters to represent Mongolian sounds of the 13c. The scholars could read only a small Chinese language summary that accompanied each chapter; these offered tantalizing hints at the story in the text, but otherwise the document remained inexplicable. Because of the mystery surrounding the document, scholars referred to it as The Secret History of the Mongols, the name by which it has continued to be known.

• Silk Route: Runs S. of the Gobi, sporadically connecting Chinese and Muslim societies.

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Chronology

• 1961: Mongolia is admitted to the UN.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1944: Death of Sayid Alim Khan in Kabul, the former emir of Bukhara and the last reigning descendant of Genghis Khan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 20c: The Soviets purge Mongolia of descendants of Genghis Khan, marching whole families into the woods to be shot and buried in unmarked pits, exiling them into the gulag or Soviet amps across Siberia where they were worked to death, or simply causing their mysterious disappearance into the night of history.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 2 Sep, 1920: The Old Bukhara fortress in Uzbekistan falls to the Red Army.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1857: The Last Moghul Emperor, Bahadur Shah II of India, is removed by the British army. His two sons and grandson are beheaded.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1844: The first recorded link between retarded children and the “Mongoloid race” occurs in a study by Robert Chambers, who associated the malady with incest: “Parents too nearly related tend to produce offspring of the Mongolian type—that is, persons who in maturity still are a kind of children.”-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1644: The Manchu, who overthrew the Ming, strategically intermarry with the descendants of Genghis Khan to claim legitimacy as his heirs in blood as well as in spirit.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1620: English scientist Francis Bacon recognizes the impact that changing technology had produced in Europe, designated printing, gunpowder, and the compass as three technological innovations on which the modern world was built.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1556-1608: Reign of Akbar over India’s Moghul Empire.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1519: Babur becomes the first Moghul Emperor in India. Babur was 13 generations descended from Genghis Khan’s second son, Chaghatai.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1440: “On Learned Ignorance” is written by German cleric Nicolaus of Cusa; considered the opening of the European Renaissance.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1390: “The Canterbury Tales” are written by Geoffrey Chaucer, who had traveled widely in France and Italy on diplomatic business. The tales are the first book written in English, and the story of the squire relates a romantic and fanciful tale about the life and adventures of Genghis Khan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 9 Apr, 1370- 14 Feb, 1405: Reign of Timur the Lame (Tamerlane) over the Mongol holdings in central Asia, a Turkic warrior who claimed descent from Genghis Khan. He sought to revive the Mongol Empire, conquering much of its former territory from India to the Mediterranean, slaughtering, torturing, and humiliating without reason. After seizing the sultan of the Ottoman kingdom of Turkey, he forced him to watch as his wives and daughters served Timur naked at dinner and, in some reports, satisfied his sexual demands. The descendants of Timur became known as the Moghuls of India.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • Late 14c: Timur leads military campaigns across Western, South, and Central Asia, the Caucasus, and S. Russia, defeating the Khans of the Golden Horde, the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria, the emerging Ottoman Empire, and the late Delhi sultanate of India, emerging as the most powerful ruler in the Islamic World.

• 1368- 23 May, 1370: Reign of Toghun Temür over the N. Yuan dynasty and the Mongolian Plateau following its overthrow by the Red Turban Rebellion which established the Ming dynasty (Wiki).

• 1368: Rise of the Ming Empire following the Red Turban Rebellion; the Great Khan Toghun Temür escapes with some 60K Mongols, however the 400K left behind are captured, killed, and absorbed by the Ming.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1356: Inflation devalues Mongol currencies to near zero following years of waning confidence in the Mongol administration.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1340: The Pratica della mercatura (Practice of Marketing) is published as a commercial handbook by Florentine merchant Francesco Balducci Pegolotti. In it, he stresses that the routes to Mongol Cathay were “perfectly safe, whether by day or by night.”-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1335: The Mongols of the Persian Ilkhanate disappear, either killed or absorbed into the much larger population of their former subjects.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 19 Jul, 1333- 10 Sep, 1368: Reign of Toghun Temür over the Yuan Dynasty of China; considered the last khan of the Mongol Empire.

• 1330-1400: Plague ravishes Eurasian human populations, decreasing the African population from 80M to 68M, the Asian population from 238M to 201M (China from ~123M to 65M), and the European population from 75M to 52M, with total populations falling from 450M to between 350-375M.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1350: Plague crosses the N. Atlantic from the Faeroe Islands to Iceland and Greenland, killing ~60% of Icelandic Settlers; probably the single most important factor in the final extinction of the struggling Viking colony in Greenland.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 14 Feb, 1349: Strasbourg authorities’ herd 2K Jews to the Jewish Cemetery outside the city to begin a mass burning. Some Jews were allowed to save themselves by confessing their crimes and converting to Christianity, the city outlawed the presence of any Jew in the city.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

    • City after city picked up the practice of publicly burning Jews to thwart the epidemic…In the Christian parts of Spain, the people initiated similar persecutions against the resident Muslim minority, driving many of them to seek refuge in Granada and Morocco.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • Jun, 1348: Plague reaches England.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1348: Plague ravages the port cities of Italy. When the Genovese and other refugees fled the port by boat, they took the disease with them to Constantinople, from where it easily spread to Cairo in Egypt and to Messina in Sicily.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

    • 1348: The Tuscan city of Pistoia bars entry to people from plague infected areas, bans the importation of used textiles, and forbids the sale of fruit or the slaughtering of animals that might cause the smell of death, which they suspect as contributing to the spread of the disease.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford

  • Jul, 1348: Pope Clement VI issues a Papal Bull protecting the Jews and ordering the Christians to stop their persecutions; the campaign against them escalates.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1347: The Black Death enters Europe from Asia at the Crimean port of Kaffa (modern Feodosia); a trading post established by merchants from Genoa primarily for the exports of Russian slaves to Egypt.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1345: Plague reaches the capital of the Golden Horde at Sarai on the lower Volga.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1338: Plague crosses from China over the Tian Shan Mountains, wiping out a Christian trading community near lake Issyk Kul in Kyrgyzstan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1331: Chroniclers record that 90% of the people of Hopei Province had died. By 1351, China had reportedly lost between half to two-thirds of its population to the plague.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1328-1332: At least 4 members of the Golden Family occupy the throne, and one, the 7yo Rinchinbal Khan, had it for only two months in 1332.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1313: In Mongol-occupied Persia, Rashid al-Din publishes the first known book on Chinese medicine to be published outside of China.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1292-1293: The Mongol conquest of Java succeeds in killing the Javanese King but ends in failure after several leaders are killed in a trap.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1293: Mongol forces kill the King of Java, conquering the islands with apparent ease, before falling into a trap. Believing that they were preparing for a ceremonial submission by the new king, the Mongol leaders were lured into an ambush. Many of the leaders were killed and the remaining troops retreated in humiliation from the island.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1292: The Mongol fleet sets sail for Java with 1K ships and 20K soldiers.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1289: Khubilai Khan dispatches an envoy to Java to request submission. Fearing that the Mongols might be planning on taking away Javanese control of the valuable spice trade from the Molucca Islands, the Javanese king branded the face of the envoy and sent him back to Khubilai, who ordered the preparation of an armada to capture Java.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• May, 1288: Pope Nicholas IV issues a papal bull calling for construction of a new mother church at Assisi for his Franciscan order.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1281: Khubilai Khan launches an expedition to discover and map the source of the Yellow River, which the Mongols called the Black River. The expedition opens up a route from China into Tibet and uses this to include Tibet and the Himalayan area in the Mongol postal system. This new connection connects Tibet commercially, religiously, and politically.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1280s: The Mongol army marches through Indochina meeting with success in Burma, Annam in N. Vietnam, and Laos. Several of the SE Asian kingdoms, including the rulers of Champa in S. Vietnam and Malabar on the coast of India, voluntarily submit to Mongol rule.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Summer, 1281: Second Mongol Conquest of Japan; The Mongol fleet suffers ~100K casualties in storms off Japan while waiting for separate fleets to link up for an attack into Hakata Bay.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1279: Mongol delegates sent to Japan are executed, both sides prepare for war. The Mongols prepare to invade from two directions, with another Korean fleet of about the same size as the first. Following it would come the main fleet from China with 3,500 ships manned by 60K sailors to transport 100K soldiers; and this time they were coming in summer, instead of sailing in the fall.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1279: Mongol Yuan forces conquer the Song Dynasty of Southern China.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1277: Khubilai Khan posthumously confers Chinese names on his ancestors and builds a larger temple with eight chambers: one for the founders of the family, Yesugei Baatar and Hoelun, another for Genghis Khan, one for each of Genghis Khan’s four sons, and one each for Güyük Khan and Möngke Khan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1276: Mongol troops overtake the Sung capital at Hangzhou, and over the next few years they wipe up the small pockets of local resistance.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1274: First Mongol Conquest of Japan; Mongol Khan Khubilai assembles an armada of ~900 ships to transport an army of 23K Korean and Chinese infantry and an unknown number of Mongol horsemen to take Japan.

  • Nov, 1274: The Mongol force sails from Korea to Japan, capturing Tsushima Island and then Ika Island before sailing into Hakata Bay and landing its forces and animals. The Mongols slaughter the Japanese warriors before the Japanese retreated to a fortress. The Mongols reload the ship and that night, a terrific storm below across the ocean. The Kamikaze, or Divine Wind, shatter many of the boats against the rocks and shore killing ~13K soldiers, most by drowning. The Japanese execute the Mongol envoys by chopping off their heads, spilling their blood, and displaying the severed heads for public mockery.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1272: Mongol Khan Khubilai orders the building of his new capital at Zhongdu, connecting it by canal to the Yellow River. The Mongols called the place Khanbalik, the City of the Khan. His Chinese subjects called it Dadu, the Great Capital, and it grew into the modern capital of Beijing. At the heart of the city, however, Khubilai created a Mongol haven where few foreigners, including Chinese, could enter. Behind high walls and guarded by Mongol warriors, the royal family and court continued to live as Mongols. The large open areas for animals in the middle of the city had no precedent in Chinese culture. This Forbidden City constituted a miniature steppe created in the middle of the Mongol capital. During the Mongol era, the whole complex of the Forbidden City was filled with Gers. While Khubilai and his successors maintained public lives as Chinese emperors, behind the high walls of their Forbidden City, they continued to live as steppe Mongols.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1270s: Khubilai Khan founds the Mongolian National University in Khanbalik (1271), the Office for the Stimulation of Agriculture under the authority of eight commissioners who sought ways to improve farmers’ lives and their yields, introduced a paper currency, created primary schools for universal basic education of all children in order to make everyone literate, created hospitals and training centers, and establishes a national history office, commissioning the compilation of complete histories of the Jurched, Khitan, and Sung.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1271: Formation of the ‘Da Yuan’ (Great Origins) Mongol dynasty in China.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1269: Khubilai khan founds the Mongolian language school to create a single alphabet that could be used to write all the languages of the world. He assigned this task to the Tibetan Buddhist lama Phagspa, who presented the khan with a set of 41 letters derived from the Tibetan alphabet. Khubilai Khan made Phagspa’s script the empire’s official script, but rather than force the system on anyone, he allowed the Chinese and all other subjects to continue using their own writing system as well in the hope that the new script would eventually replace the old by showing its superiority.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1268: The Mongols send an envoy to Japan demanding their surrender, the Japanese refuse.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1266: Death of Mongol Khan Arik Boke, mysteriously but conveniently for Khubilai.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1260s: The Mongol Empire is divided into four primary zones of political administration.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • Khubilai ruled over China, Tibet, Manchuria, Korea, and E. Mongolia.

  • The Golden Horde ruled over the Slavic countries of E. Europe.

  • Hülegü ruled over the Ilkhanate (the ‘vassal empire’ from Afghanistan to Turkey).

  • Traditional Mongols occupied the central steppe, which became known as Moghulistan encompassing from Kazakhstan and Siberia in the N. and across Turkistan in Central Asia to Afghanistan in the South.

• 1260-1294: Reign of Khubilai, grandson of Genghis, as 5th Khan of the Mongol Empire. Khubilai founds China’s Yuan dynasty following the conquest of the Song and the subsequent unification of China. Khubilai builds a Chinese capital, takes Chinese names, and establishes a Chinese administration.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Jun, 1260: Arik Boke, Möngke’s youngest brother, is proclaimed Great Khan at a kurultai in Karakorum.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1260-1264: The Toluid Civil War is fought as a war of succession following the death of 4th Mongol Khan Möngke between his younger brothers Khubilai and Ariq Böke. The episode marked the beginning of the fragmentation of the Mongol empire.

  • 1264: Arik Boke surrenders to Khubilai at Shangdu following a harsh winter (1263) that destroys his power base.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1260: Khubilai summons a kurultai in his own territory, proclaiming him Great Khan. To win the loyalty of his Chinese subjects, Khubilai proclaims himself emperor, choosing the title of Zhongtong (Chung-t’ung), meaning “central rule.” After cutting off the food supply to Karakorum, he sends his Army to capture the city. Arik Boke fought hard but withdrew. Khubilai summoned another kurultai on Mongolian territory to decide the fate of Arik Boke and to ratify himself as the legitimate khan without the taint of his earlier election on Chinese soil. Despite the overwhelming military might of Khubilai’s army, the Golden Family refused to attend.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 11 Aug, 1259: Death of Möngke Khan in battle during an assault on Diaoyu fortress.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1255: The Catholic church sanctions the torturing of people suspected of heretical beliefs.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• May, 1253-1260: The Mongol conquest of the Arab states of the Middle East is led by Hülegü with his army of the Right.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 3 Sep, 1260: The Battle of Ayn al-Jalut; an Egyptian Mamluk slave army defeats a Mongol detachment at the Springs of Goliath, near the Sea of Galilee (modern Israel), marking the westernmost border of advance of the Mongols.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1259: Damascus surrenders to the Mongols. When the Mongols left Baghdad and headed further west toward Damascus, the Crusader knight Bohemond of Antioch came out with his army to attack Damascus from the Mediterranean side, and he brought supplies and food to help the Mongols. Similarly, the Seljuk sultan sent his army from Anatolia to join the Mongol assault.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 29 Jan- 10 Feb, 1258: The Mongols siege and capture of Baghdad.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

    • 10 Feb, 1258: The Caliph surrenders and is locked up without food or water for 3 days and then ordered to eat the gold looted from the city. When he could not, the Mongols condemn him to death, wrapping him and his followers in carpets or sewn sacks and either kicking them to death or trampling them with horses.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

    • 5 Feb, 1258: Mongols forces break through the walls of Baghdad. Hülegü orders the people of Baghdad to surrender their weapons, leave all their goods, and march out of the city. Rather than comply with the order, the defending army tries to escape, but the Mongols gave chase and cut them down.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

    • Jan, 1258: The Mongols encircle Baghdad, occupying extensive suburbs beyond the city walls. Baghdad fills to its maximum with refugees.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • Nov, 1257: Unconvinced of the Caliph’s power to speak for either God or the entire Muslim population, Hülegü began to march toward Baghdad.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1253-1257: Mongol Campaign against the Nizari Ismailis, a heretical Muslim sect of Shiites more commonly known as the Assassins, who were holed up in hundreds of unconquered mountain fortresses stretching from Afghanistan to Syria, the most important of which was Alamut, the Eagle’s Nest, in northern Persia.

    • Spring, 1257: Recognizing defeat, the Imam requests to travel to Karakorum to meet with Möngke. He and his party are refused to see him and are escorted out to the mountains and stomped to death.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

    • 19 Nov, 1256: Imam of the Nizari Ismailis surrenders to the Mongols. Hülegü parades him from Ismaili castle to Ismaili castle to order his followers to surrender.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• May, 1253: Hülegü, with his Army of the right, depart to conquer Baghdad, the Arab cultural and financial capital, while Khubilai, and his army of the left, heads out to conquer the Song Empire.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Feb, 1252: Death of Mongol regent Sorkhokhtani.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1 Jul, 1251-11 Aug, 1259: Reign of Möngke, eldest son of Genghis’ teenaged son Tolui with his wife Sorkhokhtani, and 4th Khan of the Mongol Empire. He was the first Khan from the Toluid line and made significant reforms to improve the administration of the empire during his reign. Under Möngke, the Mongols conquered Iraq and Syria as well as the Kingdom of Dali (modern Yunnan) as the entire energy of the state was redirected toward the conquest of the Sung dynasty and the Arab states of the Middle East. Hülegü, the brother with the best military training, was assigned to take the Army of the Right with the plan to attack the Arab cities of Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo while Möngke and Khubilai led the Army of the Left to conquer the Sung Dynasty. Möngke’s youngest brother Arik Boke, remained in Mongolia to manage the Empire. The Mongol Empire reached its greatest extent under Möngke Khan, who was the last of Genghis Khan’s descendants to be acknowledged and accepted as Great Khan by the whole of the Mongol Empire.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1254: Möngke Khan hosts a debate in Mongolia between Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. The religious scholars had to compete on the basis of their beliefs and ideas, using no weapons or the authority of any ruler or army behind them. They could use only words and logic to test the ability of their ideas to persuade. Their debate ranged back and forth over the topics of evil versus good, God’s nature, what happens to the souls of animals, the existence of reincarnation, and whether God had created evil. No side seemed to convince the other of anything. Finally, as the effects of the alcohol became stronger, the Christians gave up trying to persuade anyone with logical arguments, and resorted to singing. The Muslims, who did not sing, responded by loudly reciting the Koran in an effort to drown out the Christians, and the Buddhists retreated into silent meditation. At the end of the debate, unable to convert or kill one another, they concluded the way most Mongol celebrations concluded, with everyone simply too drunk to continue.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1253: Möngke Khan creates a Department of Monetary Affairs to control and standardize the issuance of paper money. Möngke allowed each nation under its control to mint coins, but established a universal measured based on the Sukhe, a silver ingot divided into 500 parts. So long as the Mongols maintained control of money, they could let merchants assume responsibility for the movement of goods without any loss of government power.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1 Jul, 1251: Möngke (43yo) is declared Grand khan at a second kurultai in Karakorum. Members of the Ögedei lineage attempt a coup but are captured and condemned to death. Two of the princes had their mouths stuffed with stones and dirt until they died while the regent Oghul Ghaimish Khatun captors had rawhide sewed around her hands and was stripped naked for public ridicule before being wrapped in felt and drowned with another senior woman from the family. A third woman from their family was wrapped in a blanket and kicked to death. In all, Möngke executed 77 people within or close to Ögedei’s lineage.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1250-1270: Mongolia suffers a lowering of temperatures. In a fragile ecological zone such as Mongolia, a change of only a few degrees in annual temperature severely reduces the small amount of precipitation, restricts the growth of the grass, and thereby weakens or kills the animals.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1250: Möngke, Sorkhokhtani’s eldest son, is elected Mongol Khan at a kurultai called by Batu Khan near Lake Issykul in the Tian Shan Mountains outside of Mongolia. The Ögedei family boycotts the election on grounds that a legitimate election had to be held in Karakorum, Mongolia.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 24 Aug, 1246- 20 Apr, 1248: Reign of Güyük, eldest son of Ögedei, as 3rd Khan of the Mongol Empire. His reign was one of horrible revenge in which is unleashed a crude campaign to consolidate power and eliminate rivals, his soldiers hunt down and kill everyone connected with Fatima, his mother’s advisor, whom he has rolled in a felt blanket and drowned in a river with all her orifices of her body sewn shut.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 20 Apr, 1248: Death of Güyük (43yo), 3rd Khan of the Mongol Empire after leaving his family stronghold to conduct a surprise attack on Batu Khan in Russia.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • Nov, 1246: Mongol Khan Güyük asks Pope Innocent IV: “How do you know whom God absolves and to whom He shows mercy? How do you know that God sanctions the words you speak? God had given the Mongols, not the pope, control of the world from the rising sun to the setting sun. God intended for the Mongols to spread his commandments and his laws through Genghis Khan’s Great Law. Come to Karakorum with all your princes in order to pay homage to the Mongol khan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 22 Jul, 1246: Friar Giovanni of Plano Carpini, a 65yo cleric and one of the disciples of Saint Francis of Assisi, arrive at the Mongol court as an agent and spy for Pope Innocent IV, commissioned to find out as much as possible about these strange people who had threatened Europe.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1242-1246: Ebuskun, wife of Genghis Khan’s second son Chaghatai rules Central Asia (Turkestan) as regent.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1241-1246: Yeke (Töregene) Khatun rules as regent of the Mongol nation following the death of her husband Ögedei Khan. Soon after Ögedei’s death, Toregene summoned a kurultai to elect Güyük instead of the grandson nominated by Ögedei, but she could not get a quorum of the Golden Family.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 11 Dec, 1241: Death of Mongol Khan Ögedei, reportedly in a drunken stupor. News of the death reached the Mongol forces in Europe, 4000 miles from Karakorum, within 4-6 weeks. Chaghatai died at about the same time, and thus in the mere 14y since the death of Genghis Khan, all four of his sons had died, and now the princes, Genghis Khan’s grandsons, raced home to continue their battles against each other in the quest to become the next Great Khan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 6 Oct, 1241: Solar eclipse.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1240: The Oldest known mention of the ‘Mongols’ is made by Matthew Paris, a monk of the Benedictine abbey at St. Albans in Hertfordshire, England. Paris called them “an immense horde of that detestable race of Satan” and “like demons loosed from Tartarus (Hell- Greek).”-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1236-1241: A Mongol Eastern Campaign in Europe is led by Subodei and Jebe. They began the campaign in each territory by sending official envoys to request the capital city to surrender, join the Mongol family, and become the vassals of the Great Khan. If they agreed, the envoy offered protection to the new vassals from their enemies and allowed them to keep their ruling family and their religion. In return for such protections, the people had to agree to commit tribute of 10% of all wealth and goods to the Mongols. Few cities took the offer.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 11 Dec, 1241: Following the death of Ögedei, the Mongols withdraw from W. Europe back to their strongholds in Russia. Prior to leaving, the Mongols trade their prisoners to the Italians for goods, beginning a large and lucrative relationship between the Mongols and the merchants of Venice and Genoa. The Italians supplied the Mongols with manufactured goods in return for the right to sell the Slavs in the Mediterranean markets.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 11 Apr, 1241: The Battle of Mohi (Battle of the Sajo River); Mongol forces led by Subodei decisively defeat Hungarian forces at Mohi under King Bela. Hungarian forces gather into a densely packed camp fortified with wagons and heavy iron chains. The Mongols pull up catapults, hurling an assortment of naphtha, gunpowder, flaming oil, forcing the Hungarians to disperse but finding themselves virtually surrounded by the Mongols with one marked gap in the line left open towards Pest, a 3-day ride away. As the Hungarians retreat towards Pest, they are picked off by a waiting Mongol army. Some 10K Hungarians soldiers are killed and Pest is razed. The Mongols take control of the Great Hungarian Plains, the slopes of the N. Carpathian Mountains, and Transylvania. Mass panic across Europe ensues.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 9 Apr, 1241: The Battle of Wahlstatt (‘the Chosen Place’); Mongol forces rout a combined German, French, Polish, and Silesian force of 30K men led by Duke Henry II of Silesia. Duke Henry orders his cavalry to charge the Mongol ranks, which is repulsed, however the Mongols conduct a feigned retreat. With cries of victory, the European knights break ranks and began chasing the Mongols. Precisely when the European horses began to tire, the Mongols employ a smokescreen, cutting off the knights from the archers and infantry far behind them. The Mongols crush the Germans. The entire campaign from Kiev to Germany had been merely a Mongol diversion to keep the Europeans from sending soldiers to fend off the real Mongol objective: invading the grassy plains of Hungary.

    • The fallen Duke Henry II became a martyr as Henry the Devout, and a Benedictine monastery was built with the altar over the exact spot where, according to Christian mythology, his mother, Saint Hedwig, found his headless, naked corpse, identifying it by the six toes on his left foot.

  • Late 1240: Subodei dispatches a three-pronged army of 50K toward Hungary in the S. and a smaller, diversionary force of 20K across Poland toward Germany in the N.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • Nov- 6 Dec, 1240: The Mongol Conquest of Kiev; Mongol forces take Kiev and loot/burn the city to the ground. The Kievan commander Dmitri had fought so hard, even after being abandoned by many of the city’s aristocrats, that Batu, with great appreciation of his military talent and tenaciousness, released him and let him live.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

    • Taking advantage of early ice to cross the rivers, Mongol envoys arrived at the gates of Kiev. Not unexpectedly, the city authorities murdered them and arrogantly pinioned the bodies above the city gate. Under the leadership of Möngke, the Mongol army amassed around the city in the early winter in what the Russian priests recorded as “clouds of Tatars.” The noise of the Mongols was said to be so loud that people inside the city could not hear one another talk. As the soldiers fought to hold the walls, the civilians sought refuge in the Church of the Virgin.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • Dec, 1237: Mongol conquest of Riazan; Mongol warriors divide and scourge the surrounding countryside, with each Mongol seizing a set number of civilians to be used for labor. Villages were burned and the remaining peasants fled to the city’s walls. When the Mongol army reached the city, they sent a woman ambassador to deliver terms and demand surrender, however she was not received for fear she was a witch. Instead of attacking the walls or Riazan, the Mongols use their massive number of conscripts to build a wall completely surrounding the already walled city. On the 21 Dec, the Mongols storm the city, killing everyone inside and burning it to the ground.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1236: Mongol forces under Subodei defeat the Bulgars on the Volga River while Möngke (eldest son of the deceased Tolui) leads another force S. towards the Kipchak Turks. Some Turks fled but others joined him. The Mongols use their territory as their base camp with a reserve of millions of animals pastured on the steppes for hundreds of miles to the East. From there, they launch a 3y campaign across what would become Russia and Ukraine.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1230s: The Mongol army divides and pushes out in all directions conducting a China campaign against the Sung and an Eastern campaign against Europe- mostly under the command of his favored sons.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1230: Ögedei sends a Mongol force of three tumen’s (~30K soldiers), to re-assert rule in central Asia, and under the leadership of General Subodei, ally with the Sung dynasty to pick apart the remaining wealth and land of the Jurched. Ögedei increasingly uses the might of his army to make the routes safe for merchants to bring in more goods. He stations permanent garrisons to protect the roads and merchants, and he abolishes the complex system of local taxes and extortion that had added to the difficulty and expense of trade.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1229- 11 Dec, 1241: Reign of Ögedei Khan, son of Genghis Khan and 2nd Khan of the Mongol Empire. Ögedei continued the expansion of the empire that his father had begun to the borders of Southern China, the Mongol Invasions of Europe, and the Mongol Conquests of China. He participated extensively in conquests in China, Iran, and Central Asia. On his death, he was succeeded by his wife, Yeke, who ruled as regent.

• 1227: Death of Jochi on the W. Steppe, succeeded by his son, Batu Khan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1227: Death of Ghengis Khan while on campaign against the Tangut near the Yellow River. His sons Chaghatai and Jochi agree that neither would become Khan, with succession falling to their third brother, Ögedei. Jochi inherits the lands conquered by Subodei around the Volga River and moves to the far Western steppe.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Winter, 1226–1227: While crossing the Gobi to make war on the Tangut, Ghengis Khan pauses to hunt wild horses but falls from his horse, sustaining internal injuries and fever. Against the advice of his wife Yesui, Ghengis Khan continues his campaign against the Tangut.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1222: The Mongol Conquest of Central Asia stops at the city of Multan, in the center of modern-day Pakistan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1221-1223: Mongol forces under Subodei and Jebe first come into contact with Europe while pursuing the Sultan of Khwarizm.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 31 May, 1223: Battle of the Kalka River; Mongol forces under Subodei and Jebe decisively defeat a coalition of several Rus’ principalities under the command of Mstislav the Bold. After nearly two weeks of chase, the vanguard of the Russian army caught up with the Mongols on the Kalka River, which empties into the Sea of Azov, the place Jebe and Subodei had selected as most advantageous to the Mongols. The Mongols conduct a silent attack controlled and coordinated by the waving of flags. Mounted Mongol archermen raced silently towards the Russian infantry lines, pausing just short of the Slav’s hand weapons, firing their arrows straight into the Russian infantry ranks. The Mongols overtook the Russian warriors and one by one, killed the reigning princes of the Russian city-states, following them all the way back to the Black Sea. The Mongols wrap Prince Mstislav and his two sons-in-law in felt rugs, stuffing them beneath the floorboards of their ger, slowly, bloodlessly, crushing the men as the Mongols drank and sang through the night on the floor above them.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • Apr, 1223: Mongol forces led by Subodei reach the banks of the Dnieper River, N. of the Black Sea where they fight a coalition of hastily assembled troops from small kingdoms and city-states of the area- Smolenks, Galich, Chernigov, Kiev, Volhynia, Kursk, Suzdal, and some of the Kipchak. Three of the armies—from Galich, Chernigov, and Kiev—came under the command of princes, all of whom were named Mstislav. The most impressive of the three Mstislavs was Prince Mstislav Romanovitch of Kiev, the largest and richest of all the cities.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • Sep, 1222: Mongol forces under Jebe defeat Georgian forces; the Mongols charge the Georgians, fired a few volleys, and then turned to flee in a feigned retreat (Dog-Fight Strategy). The overconfident Georgian forces broke ranks and began to eagerly chase the Mongols, thinning out as the slower fell farther behind. Suddenly, Jebe’s forces led them straight into the ranks of another Mongol regiment under Subodei. While Subodei began picking off the Georgians, Jebe’s soldiers mounted fresh horses and rejoined the fight. Within hours, the Mongols had completely destroyed the Georgian Army and the small nation’s aristocracy. Subodei makes the country a vassal sate, the first in Europe.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1221: Mongol Noyan (General) Subodei discovers Europe during Genghis Khan’s invasion of Central Asia when Subodei and Jebe had circled the Caspian in pursuit of the Khwarizm Sultan. After the sultan’s death, they ask and receive permission to continue to see what lay to the north. There they discovered the small Christian kingdom of Georgia, ruled by Giorgi III the Brilliant.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1219-1221: The Mongols decisively defeat the Khwarizm Empire, taking the cities of Bukhara, Samarkand, Otrar, Urgench, Balkh, Banakat, Khojend, Merv, Nisa, Nishapur, Termez, Herat, Bamiyan, Ghazni, Peshawar, Qazvin, Hamadan, Ardabil, Maragheh, Tabriz, Tbilisi, Derbent, Astrakhan. Genghis Khan brings all four of his sons with him on the Central Asian Campaign, hoping they would learn not only how to be better warriors, but how to work and live together.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1221: Battle of Bamiyan (a Buddhist pilgrimage site and home of the largest statues in the world)). Although the Mongols defeat the defenders, during the battle, an arrow struck and killed Genghis Khan’s favorite grandson Mutugen. The valley is eventually resettled by the Hazara (‘Ten-Thousand’- Persian), who claim to be descendants from one of Genghis Khan’s regiments of that size.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • Early, 1221: Battle of Urgench; After razing the city, the defenders continued fighting from the charred ruins. The Mongols built a damn, diverted the river, and flooded the city, killing the defenders and destroying nearly everything in the city.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • Mar, 1220: The Mongols conquer Bukhara (modern Uzbekistan) led by the Sultan of Khwarizm.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1219: Genghis Khan sends a trusted general with a detachment of soldiers to find out what had happened to his envoys to Khwarizm.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1217: Genghis Khan sends three Ambassadors to the Sultan of Khwarizm. When the caravan enters Khwarizm in the NW province of Otrar (modern S. Kazakhstan), the governor seizes the goods and kills the merchants and their drivers. Hearing of the episode, Ghengis Khan sends envoys to request that the sultan punish the local official for the attack; instead, the sultan rebuked the khan, killing some of the envoys, and mutilating the faces of the others.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

    • “I have the greatest desire to live in peace with you. I shall look on you as my son. For your part, you are not unaware that I have conquered North China and subjected all the tribes of the north. You know that my country is an ant heap of warriors, a mine of silver, and that I have no need to covet other dominions. We have an equal interest in fostering trade between our subjects…I ask…that our people might trade together with safety, and find in a perfect union with one another, that repose and plenty which are the chief blessings that can be wished for in all Kingdoms.”-Genghis Khan® Khwarizm Sultan.

• 1219: The Mongols defeat the Black Khitan; Genghis Khan orders Jebe with 20K Mongol soldiers across Asia to defend the Muslims of Balasagun against the oppression of the Black Khitan, now Guchlug, who had fled Mongolia, married the daughter of the Black Khitan and usurped his power. Jebe’s army defeated Guchlug’s army and had him beheaded near the modern border of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China. The victory gave Genghis Khan complete control over the Silk Route.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1219: Some of the Siberian tribes that had first submitted to Mongol rule during Jochi’s invasion of 1207 quit sending tributary furs, forest products, and young women. When a Mongol envoy arrived to investigate, they found they now had a woman chief whom they called Botohui-tarhun (‘Big & Fierce)’, who had set a trap for the Mongol envoys. She sent a contingent of her troops to seal off the trail behind the men to prevent their escape, then she ambushed them from the front. Botohui-tarhun’s forces triumphed—and in the battle, her warriors killed the Mongol general. Genghis Khan gave the queen Botohui-tarhun in marriage to the second of the envoys, whom she may have already taken as her husband since she had kept him as her prisoner and had not killed him.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1211-1214: Mongol-Jurched War; the Mongols cross the Gobi Desert and invade the Jurched. Rather than face a prolonged siege and war, the Jurched agreed to a settlement with the Mongols, giving them massive amounts of silk, gold, 3K horses, and 500 young men and women. To seal the arrangement, the Golden (Jurched) Khan recognized himself as a vassal of Genghis Khan and gave him one of his royal princesses as a wife. As soon as the Mongols withdrew, the Jurched reneged, evacuating Zhongdu and fleeing S. to Kaifeng. The Mongols followed, defeated the Jurched and looted the city.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1210: A Jurched delegation arrives at the Mongol encampment to proclaim the ascension of a new Golden Khan demanding the submission of Genghis Khan and the Mongols as a vassal nation. In response, Genghis Khan returns to his home on the Kherlen River and summons a kurultai -Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1207-1209: Mongol conquest of the Tangut (Western Xia Dynasty); the Mongols learn a new type of warfare against walled cities, moats, and fortresses and force the Tangut Emperor Renzong to submit to vassal status.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1207: Genghis Khan deploys his eldest son, 28yo Jochi and his tumen on a campaign into Sibir (modern Siberia) to secure the submission of the forest tribes and the reindeer herders. Jochi returns successfully with thousands of new recruits for the Mongol army, as well as tribal leaders with whom Genghis Khan negotiates a number of alliance marriages, including one with Jochi’s daughter. In addition to people, Jochi brings back valuable tribute, including rare furs such as black sable, hunting birds, and other forest products. However, expansion into the N. offered little attraction beyond furs and feathers.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1206: The Mongol Yassa Code: The Great Law of Genghis Khan, which functioned as a supreme law, or a common law over everyone. The code forbade the kidnapping of women, the abduction and enslavement of any Mongol, declared all children legitimate, whether born to a wife or a concubine, forbade the selling of women into marriage, and outlawed adultery (Mongol adultery did not include sexual relations between a woman and her husband’s close relatives, nor those between a man and female servants or the wives of other men in his household). It made animal rustling a capital offense, requiring anyone finding a lost animal to return it to its owner on penalty of death (which included a massive lost and found system), codified existing ideals by forbidding the hunting of animals between Mar-Oct during breeding time, placed limits on hunting and specified how animals should be hunted as well as the manner of butchering, so as to waste nothing. The law promoted all religions and exempted religious leaders and their properties from taxation and public service (which was later extended to a range of professions including essential public workers, undertakers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and scholars). The law codified the election of Khan by kurultai, and, in probably the first of its kind anywhere in the world, decreed complete and total religious freedom for everyone. The law recognized group responsibility and group guilt. The solitary individual had no legal existence outside the context of the family and the larger units to which it belonged; therefore, the family carried the responsibility of ensuring the correct behavior of its members. A crime by one could bring punishment to all. Genghis Khan made it clear that his Great Law applied as strictly to the rulers as to everyone else.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Apr, 1199: Death of King Richard the Lionheart of England, shot by an arrow in his left shoulder.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1165-1194: Reign of Toghrul (Ong Khan) over the Keraites (Wiki).

• 1162-1206: Rise of Temujin, ‘Genghis Khan’, and the unification of Mongolia.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1206: Genghis Khan; Temujin summons a kurultai near the headwaters of the Onon River near his sacred mountain of Burkhan Khaldun. He names his people Yeke Mongol Ulus (‘Great Mongol Nation’). He abolishes inherited aristocratic titles in lineages, clans, and tribes. All such offices belonged to the state, not to the individual or his family, and they would be distributed at the will of the new ruler. For himself, Temujin rejects the older tribal titles such as Gur-Khan or Tayang Khan and chose instead, ‘Chinggis Khan’ (‘Genghis Khan’- Persian). After decades of internecine warfare, Mongolia is unified.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1205: Jamuka’s followers, desperate and resigned to defeat, seize him and delivered him to Temujin. Rather than reward the men who brought Jamuka to him, Temujin has them executed in front of the leader whom they had betrayed.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

    • “Now, when the world is ready for you, what use is there in my becoming a companion to you? On the contrary, sworn brother, in the black night I would haunt your dreams, in the bright day I would trouble your heart. I would be the louse in your collar, I would become the splinter in your door-panel. Kill me and lay down my dead bones in the high ground. Then eternally and forever, I will protect the seed of your seed, and become a blessing for them.”-Jamuka.

  • 1204: The Battle of Chakirmaut (Battle of the 13 Sides); the final battle for control of Mongolia is fought between Tayang Khan and Temujin at the base of the Altair mountains. Temujin orders a moving bush formation (‘Tumbleweed Formation) with dispersed squads of ten advancing from different directions followed by a Moving Bush (‘Lake Formation’), in which a long line of troops advanced, fired arrows, and then was replaced by a next line, attacking in waves and causing the Naiman to spread out. Once the Naiman had spread out over a lone ling, Temujin regrouped and conducted a chisel formation, narrow across the front but deep, channeling maximum force to one point, easily defeating the remaining Naiman. Tayang Khan is killed but his son Guchlug flees to the distant Tian Shan Mountains of the Black Khitan, while Jamuka disappears into a forest.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

    • The few remaining bands of Merkid were quickly swallowed by the growing Mongol nation, and the 40yo Jamuka lived as an outcast bandit with a small number of followers who fed themselves on wild animals. In Temujin’s long quest for control of the Mongol clans, Temujin had defeated every tribe on the steppe and removed the threat of every aristocratic lineage by killing off their men and marrying their women to his sons and other followers. Temujin now ranked as undisputed ruler of a vast land, controlling everything from the Gobi in the south to the Arctic tundra in the north, from the Manchurian forests in the east to the Altai Mountains of the west.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1203: Temujin requests a marriage between Ong Khan’s daughter and his eldest son, Jochi (if Ong Khan accepted the proposed marriage, it would be acknowledgment of Temujin as the favorite over Jamuka). The marriage would put him in the strongest position to succeed Ong Khan as the future ruler of the central steppes. Only about one day’s ride from Ong Khan’s court, Temujin learns that the wedding invitation was a plot against him. Ong Khan had assembled his army secretly and intended to kill him and wipe out his family.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1203: Temujin re-organizes his Mongol warriors into squads (arban) of ten ordered to live and fight together as brothers; no one of them could leave the other behind in battle as a captive; forcing them into new units that no man could desert or change, under penalty of death, thereby breaking the power of the old-system lineages, clans, tribes, and ethnic identities.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

    • Ten of the squads formed a company (zagun), of one hundred men, with one selected as their leader. Ten companies formed a battalion (mingan), of one thousand men. Ten battalions formed an army (tumen), of ten thousand men. The leader of each was chosen by Temujin. At the time of reorganization, Temujin reportedly had 95x mingan, but since some of the units were not staffed to capacity, the total number of troops may have been ~80K.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

    • All members of the tribe—regardless of age or gender—had to perform a certain amount of public service. If they could not serve in the military, they were obliged to give the equivalent of one day of work per week for public projects and service to the khan; caring for the warriors’ herds, gathering dung for fuel, cooking, making felt, repairing weapons, singing and entertaining the troops.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1202: Ong Khan (Toghrul) sends Temujin on campaign to plunder the Tatars in the East. While on campaign, Temujin takes the aristocratic Tatar Yesugei and her elder sister Yesui as wives. After this battle, the Mongols took in so many Tatars, many of whom rose to great prominence, that the name Tatar became synonymous with, and in many cases better known, than the name Mongol.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1201: Temujin and his forces defeat the Tayichiud after being warned by Jelme that he was walking into a trap. Jelme is later entrusted with some of the most important expeditions of the Mongol conquests.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1201: In a challenge to Temujin and Ong Khan, Jamuka summons a kurultai that confers upon him the honored title of Gur-ka or Gur-khan (Chief of all chiefs, khan of all khans).-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • ~1200: The main rivals to the Mongol confederation are the Naimans to the West, the Merkids to the North, the Tanguts to the South, and the Jin to the East (Wiki).

  • 1197: Temujin and his followers attack the Jurkin, defeating them. Temujin takes Avarga, which serves as his base of operations for the remainder of his life.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • Winter, 1196: The Kereyid ruler Ong Khan and Temujin with his followers set out on their campaign against the Tatars; their raid brings quick successes, yielding sophisticated manufactured good from the Chinese Empire.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1187: Battle of Dalan Balzhut; Forces of Temujin are decisively defeated by the armies of Jamaka, who has 70 young male captives boiled alive in a cauldron (Wiki).

  • 1186: Temujin is elected khan of the Mongols. Jamaka is threatened by the rise and gathers his forces to attack Temujin (Wiki).

  • May, 1181: After breaking winter camp for summer pastures, Jamuka rides alone, unwilling to share his leadership role with Temujin. Later in the day, when Jamuka stops to pitch camp, Temujin and his entourage flee in secret. The rift between the two evolves into two decades of warfare as Temujin and Jamuka both rise in stature as leading Mongol warriors.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1179: Birth of Jochi (‘visitor’, ‘guest’), first son of Borte and Temujin.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1178-1181: Temujin and Jamuka with his Jadaran warriors, rescue Borte. Temujin joins his small camp to that of Jamuka’s.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1178: The Mongol Merkid tribe abduct Borte, wife of Temujin, to avenge the kidnapping of Temujin’s mother, Hoelun, by his father Yesugei nearly 20y earlier. Temujin flees SW along the Tuul River seeking the help of Ong Khan and his Kereyid tribe, who provides him with the support of his sworn anda, Jamuka, of the Jadaran clan, who readily agrees to help fight the Merkid.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

  • 1175: Death of Temujin’s father, Yesugei, poisoned by Tatar’s, leaving his family impoverished.-War by NatGeo.

  • 1162: Birth of Temujin, later Genghis Khan, on the Mongolian Steppe.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Late 12c: Mongolia; The great expanse of the steppe N. of the Gobi falls under the rule of three major tribes. The center was controlled by Ong Khan and his Kereyid tribe, the W. was dominated by the Naiman tribe under their ruler Tayang Khan, and the Tatars occupied the area to the east as vassals of the Jurched of N. China under their ruler Altan Khan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1160: Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa attempts to conquer the Lombard City of Cremona in the N. of modern Italy. He institutes an escalating series of violent acts of terror, beheading prisoners and playing with the heads outside the city walls, kicking them like balls. The defenders of Cremona then brought out their German prisoners on the city walls and pulled their limbs off in front of their comrades. The Germans gathered more prisoners and executed them in a mass hanging. The city officials responded by hanging the remainder of their prisoners on top of the city walls. Instead of fighting each other directly, the two armies continued their escalation of terror. The Germans then gathered captive children and strapped them into their catapults, hurling them over the city walls.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1125: Founding of the Jurched Dynasty ruling much of Manchuria and inner Mongolia from their capital city of Zhongdu (modern Beijing).-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1014: Byzantine Christian emperor Basil defeats the Bulgarians. Basil has 15K Bulgarian war captives blinded, leaving one man out of each 100 with one eye in order that he might lead the other 99 homeward and thereby spread terror.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 762: Baghdad is founded.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 370-430: The Huns spread out from the Mongolian steppes and conquer countries from India to Rome. Unable to sustain contact among the various clans, they quickly assimilate into the cultures they conquer.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

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