The Great Genghis Khan

Unification of the Mongol Nation

The year 1206 was a turning point in the history of the Mongols and in world history: the moment when the Mongols were first ready to move out beyond the steppe. Mongolia itself took on a new shape. The petty tribal quarrels and raids were a thing of the past. Either the familiar tribe and clan names had fallen out of use or those bearing them were to be found, subsequently, scattered all over the Mongol world, testifying to the wreck of the traditional clan and tribe system. A unified Mongol nation came into existence as the personal creation of Genghis Khan and, through many vicissitudes (feudal disintegration, incipient retribalization, colonial occupation), has survived to the present day. Mongol ambitions looked beyond the steppe. Genghis Khan was ready to start on his great adventure of world conquest. The new nation was organized, above all, for war. Genghis Khan’s troops were divided up on the decimal system, were rigidly disciplined, and were well equipped and supplied. The generals were his own sons or men he had selected, absolutely loyal to him.

Genghis Khan’s military genius could adapt itself to rapidly changing circumstances. Initially his troops were exclusively cavalry, riding the hardy, grass-fed Mongol pony that needed no fodder. With such an army, other nomads could be defeated, but cities could not be taken. Yet before long the Mongols were able to undertake the siege of large cities, using mangonels, catapults, ladders, burning oil, and so forth and even diverting rivers. It was only gradually, through contact with men from the more settled states, that Genghis Khan came to realize that there were more sophisticated ways of enjoying power than simply raiding, destroying, and plundering. It was a minister of the khan of the Naiman, the last important Mongol tribe to resist Genghis Khan, who taught him the uses of literacy and helped reduce the Mongol language to writing. The Secret History reports it was only after the war against the Muslim empire of Khwārezm, in the region of the Amu Darya (Oxus) and Syr Darya (Jaxartes), probably in late 1222, that Genghis Khan learned from Muslim advisers the “meaning and importance of towns.” And it was another adviser, formerly in the service of the Jin emperor, who explained to him the uses of peasants and craftsmen as producers of taxable goods. He had intended to turn the cultivated fields of northern China into grazing land for his horses.

The great conquests of the Mongols, which would transform them into a world power, were still to come. China was the main goal. Genghis Khan first secured his western flank by a tough campaign against the Tangut kingdom of Xixia, a northwestern border state of China, and then fell upon the Jin empire of northern China in 1211. In 1214 he allowed himself to be bought off, temporarily, with a huge amount of booty, but in 1215 operations were resumed, and Beijing was taken. Subsequently, the more systematic subjugation of northern China was in the hands of his general Muqali. Genghis Khan himself was compelled to turn aside from China and carry out the conquest of Khwārezm. This war was provoked by the governor of the city of Otrar, who massacred a caravan of Muslim merchants who were under Genghis Khan’s protection. The Khwārezm-Shāh refused satisfaction. War with Khwārezm would doubtless have come sooner or later, but now it could not be deferred. It was in this war that the Mongols earned their reputation for savagery and terror. City after city was stormed, the inhabitants massacred or forced to serve as advance troops for the Mongols against their own people. Fields and gardens were laid waste and irrigation works destroyed as Genghis Khan pursued his implacable vengeance against the royal house of Khwārezm. He finally withdrew in 1223 and did not lead his armies into war again until the final campaign against Xixia in 1226–27. He died on August 18, 1227.