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It's June the 1st, in the year 1215, in northern China. We're in Zhongdu, capital of the powerful Jin Dynasty. From the city's battlements, a weathered old war veteran, his stomach rumbling with hunger, primes his muzzle loader. The Jin have been at the forefront of using gunpowder and developing firearms, innovations that will change the face of warfare. But the veteran knows that this is a last forlorn throw of the dice.
After the months-long siege, he is one of the few left defending the walls. Beyond them he can see Jong-Do's attackers stretched out. They are the Mongols, the most potent fighting force in the world, under the leadership of the greatest military mastermind of the age. Perhaps any age, Genghis Khan. Khan is building piece by piece the largest empire the world has yet seen, and today Jong-Do stands in his way.
The city's rulers creep away during the dark of night, opting to take their chances on the open ground. But the veteran is determined to protect his hometown until the end. He and his comrades have run out of shot for their guns. So instead, they melt down Zhongdu's reserves of gold and silver, raining the precious metal down upon the attackers. Better than leaving it to be plundered.
In the stifling heat, he fires off one final shot. At last, the decision is made. There is nothing left to do but surrender. The defenders open the city gates and the Mongols pour in. For a month, they sack the city. Their pent-up rage is unleashed upon their captives. The city's proud buildings are torn down and set alight, the smoke twisting in the dry air. Word of the atrocities reaches those in the surrounding towns.
One story goes that thousands of virgins have flung themselves from Zhongdu's walls, rather than face assault by the invaders. Another describes piles of skulls bleaching beneath the sun. Everyone agrees these brutal aggressors are demons. In the end, no one is quite sure whether the stories are true. What is certain is that thousands are dead, if not hundreds of thousands. No one has had the time to count, certainly not the old veteran.
who is soon cut down in the melee. The Mongols are not concerned about being accused of obscene transgressions. There is something to be said for your enemies thinking you are devils. It makes the next attack on the next town that bit easier. Frightened people tend to submit with minimal resistance. And no one is more frightening than Genghis Khan. In the late 12th and early 13th centuries,
The Mongol lands of Central Asia are a place of nomadic herders and warriors. This is a region divided between rival tribes, locked in a perpetual cycle of raiding and counter-raiding. That is until the emergence of Genghis Khan. Named Temujin at birth, he comes from a minor clan. He will overcome all manner of setbacks to become head of an empire twice as big as that of ancient Rome. Today his name is synonymous with tyranny.
a vicious barbarian who terrorized the innocent and laid waste to whichever town found itself in his path. No one knows quite how many died at his hand, and those of his followers. The figure could be well into the millions. So who is Genghis Khan? Let's find out. From Noisa, this is Real Dictators. It's almost 800 years since the death of Genghis Khan in 1227 CE.
He remains a well-known figure in the East and the West, but many of us know little more than his name. If we have an impression of him, it tends to be forged by movies and storybooks. If we think we know anything about the way he looks, it comes from portraits created at least half a century after his death, since he forbade his likeness from being captured during his lifetime. Most of us even get his name wrong. Timurgin assumed the title we know him by in 1206.
when he was already into his 40s. But whereas the world knows him as Genghis, we should more accurately call him Chinggis Khan. Timothy May is Professor of Central Eurasian History and Associate Dean of Arts and Letters at the University of North Georgia. The proper title for Temujin is Chinggis Khan.
We know this because there is what we call the Chinggis Stone. It was a inscription found in northern Mongolia that actually has the title on it. Genghis Khan becomes popular basically because a Frenchman, Petit Delacroix, a historian during the reign of Louis XIV, wrote perhaps the first academic biography of Chinggis Khan.
And being French, he wrote it as Genghis Khan with a G. Petit Delacroix's Genghis Khan becomes very, very popular. It gets brought into the early United States. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were very keen on the book and gave it as gifts. Americans like their Gs hard, so it became Genghis Khan. So Genghis it is.
The future Khan story starts in 1162 on a hillock in a place called Delun Boldog. This is the northern part of what today is Mongolia, not far from the Siberian border. The sparkling waters of two major rivers, the Onon and the Kherlin, flow across the land. A mountain, Burkhan Khaldun, blooms high above. It's a warm day in early summer.
A girl, Hoelun, just 16 years old, crouches on the grass. Pain is etched across her face, her body racked with the contractions of childbirth. She's lived here just a few months. This was never meant to be home. The newborn announces its arrival with a cry. It's a boy. Someone spots something in his tiny fist. A large, black blood clot.
Roughly the size and shape of the animal knuckle bones that the people here use in games of dice. Is this auspicious? Or a sign of something more ominous? The baby's father is a man named Yasuge. He is a senior member of the Mongol Bojigan clan. He calls the boy Temujin, a word that means something like impulsive drive. The name belonged to a warrior from a rival tribe, a warrior that Yasuge recently killed in battle.
It's perhaps a strange inspiration, but nothing about Temujin's beginnings is straightforward. His very arrival in the world is the result of violence. For a start, Temujin's mother, Hoelun, is another man's wife. She was until recently partnered with a young warrior called Chiledu. He was of the rival Merkit clan. After their wedding, the happy couple set out onto the steppe, the dry, grassy plain that extends for hundreds of miles on all sides.
Holen was in a small black cart pulled by an ox. Juleida was on horseback, riding alongside. They entered Bojigan territory. On a clifftop high above them, a young man was out with his horse and hunting Falcon. It was Yasuge. He laid eyes on the couple below. Yasuge already had a wife and child of his own, but even from this distance he could see that Holen was a rare beauty. Besides,
Mongol tradition permits a man to take several wives, either consensually or by force. Hearing the thundering hooves, seeing Yasuge and his retinue approach, Holon knew that surrender was the only option. No point in Chiledu trying to take them on. It was a mismatch. She insisted he leave her and flee. Holon removed her top and stuffed it into Chiledu's hand. At least he could carry this memento of her.
In Mongol culture, the blood, breath and scent of a person are all considered to carry their owner's soul. This piece of clothing then contained her very essence. Several months later, the sky reverberates with Holan's screams again. This time, the screams of childbirth. She holds her firstborn son, the product of a loveless union. Temujin, the future Chinggis Khan.
The Asian steppe covers a vast area and encompasses many rival groups. Among them, the Tatars, Merkit, Naaman, Kerait, and Keitan. As you travel through the steppe landscape, it changes dramatically. From the desert of the Gobi to verdant pastures, thick forest, and rugged mountains, there is every sort of weather, from claustrophobic heat to snow drifts deep enough to lose a stallion in.
The Mongol rhythm of life is dictated by the seasons: tending livestock in spring, searching for pasture in the short summers, drying and preserving meat and dairy in the autumn, and hunting in the long winters. Marie Favarot is Associate Professor of History at Paris-Nanterre University
They had different kind of animals, not only horses, but camels, goats, sheep, also oxen. They were also hunters, and we know that they would also work on metals. Sometimes they are presented as very poor. It's not really sure that they were so poor, actually. They were traders, probably not the most powerful traders in the area, but still, they were used to communicate with different kind of peoples.
Robberies are commonplace, of animals and goods, but also, as Holland knows only too well, sometimes people.
If you are a ordinary Mongol, one of the things you always have to worry about is being raided. Someone rustling your livestock, which is basically your livelihood. If you lose your sheep, you lose your animals, you're destitute. There's a saying among the Mongols that we have no whip but the tail of our horse. The Mongols, when they're riding their horses, they direct the horse using a short whip. It's about a foot long, has some leather thongs on it.
And basically when you're saying you only have your horse's tail as a whip, that means you're poor, you're destitute. For the Bojigan people, hunting is especially important as the supply of prey is unreliable. In good times, you might feast on a deer or a boar. But at other times, birds, otters, even rats become the staples, perhaps supplemented by fish if the rivers haven't frozen over.
And when the day's work is done, the nomads retire to their gers, domed tents made from lattice frameworks and covered in felt blankets. These serve as the centers of clan life. Those who live sedentary lives in towns and cities might wonder why the nomads endure such hardship. For the nomads, it's those others who live in prisons of their own making. In the decades to come, Chinggis Khan will rule over millions. But in his early years,
Temujin's entire world is restricted to no more than a few hundred people, of whom he might see only a handful on a regular basis.
A typical family is going to have probably 100 sheep, maybe 10 horses, and all of that takes a good bit of pasture. And so everyone's going to be spread out. The Mongols really until the 20th century, the steppe in general, they did not conceive of owning territory. Everyone had hereditary pastures that they had used for years and years. And often fighting was over pastures. You want to get better grass for your animals.
You know, you would move from pasture to pasture depending on the season, depending on the grass. You'd want to be in the highlands during the summer where it might be a bit cooler. And then the lowlands during the winter, stay out of the mountains when it's cold and so forth. Custom dictates that the tribe's people look out for one another. But protection for young Temujin and his mother is in short supply. Hoelun has not found it easy settling into the Borjigin clan.
Hardly surprising given the circumstances of her arrival. As only a second wife to Yasuge, she is of a lower status than his first bride, who is also the mother of Yasuge's oldest child. Holun must fight for her position within the group, and for her sons too. Temujin learns how to ride, how to shoot a bow and arrow, and how to wrestle like pretty much every other Mongol child. But he's not an obvious tough guy.
He is afraid of dogs, for example, and quick to tears. He gets on terribly with his older half-brother, Begta, who bosses him about. As he grows up, Temujin quickly comes to understand that he is not favored by his father. But, as it turns out, his father won't be around for much longer anyway. One day, when Temujin is around nine years old, Yasuge makes his way back home after visiting with another clan. He comes upon a party of Tatars.
Yesugei killed the Tartar in battle a few years back. Nonetheless, he has no qualms about calling on their hospitality. Someone comes to your camp, you offer hospitality. Even if you're an enemy, it's one of those unspoken things. You give shelter and hospitality to one of your enemies.
And this is just one of those unspoken social conventions because this could happen to you. You could be traveling. There's no hotels, there's no inns, there's no taverns or any place for you to stay. You can either stay out in the open in the steppe, unprotected, or you could find someone's camp, find food, find shelter. This could happen even today. Yasuge is sensible enough not to advertise his identity. He eats and drinks with them and then takes his leave.
What he does not realize is that his hosts have him rumbled. They've already taken their revenge. Yasuge has been poisoned. By the time he stumbles back home, he's gravely ill. Within days, he's dead. The late father has left two wives and seven children not yet in their teens. With no senior male sponsor, Temujin, his mother, and his siblings are on their own. They're cold-shouldered by their neighbors.
One night there is a ceremonial feast to honor the ancestors, but no invitation arrives for Temüjin's family. A short while later, the clan moves camp. They purposefully leave the family behind. Hoelun shames the clan into keeping them within the fold. For now, at least. One of the elders sticks up for them. He's speared to death for his intervention. Temüjin has been raised to cherish the bonds of family and clan.
but he's realizing that these are not things that he can rely on. Hoelun wanders up and down the riverbanks, foraging for food. As for clothing, she fashions what she can from the skins of dogs and even mice. Temujin helps too, bending fishing hooks from his mother's sewing needles and making wooden arrowheads that he uses to hunt. Somewhere along the way, against this backdrop of hardship and clan betrayal, he resolves to restore his family's fortunes.
It's a pretty wretched existence, made worse by the constant tension between Temujin and his older half-brother Begta. Temujin cannot stand the way Begta tries to lord it over him. According to Mongol sources, events come to a head when the pair go fishing one day. Temujin is in his early teens at this point. He casts into the water. Soon he feels a pull on the line. There on the hook is a large, writhing fish.
But then Begta makes a grab for it and claims it as his own. A textbook sibling rivalry, you might assume. But this situation is anything but normal. It's about to take an extremely disturbing turn. Temüjin's dislike for Begta has another complicating dimension to it. According to Mongol tradition, Begta has a sexual claim on any wife of his dead father, who is not his own mother. In other words, Begta can now take Holun.
his own stepmother as his wife. And given her vulnerable situation, Hoelun might well be receptive to the proposition. For Temujin, this is too much to contemplate. He decides to take matters into his own hands. Temujin enlists the help of a younger brother. Together, the siblings track Begta to a hill, where he sits gazing out at the steppe beyond. The two boys silently stalk him. Temujin approaches from behind,
His brother, a crack archer from the front. Closer and closer they creep, still undetected. They deftly load arrows into their bows. When they're almost upon him, they rise out of the grass, beg to seize them, but he refuses to run or to fight. Temujin fixes his eye upon his quarry, as defenseless as the beasts he tracks in the forest. No wave of mercy comes over him. Instead, adrenaline pumping, both brothers fire.
As Begta lies bleeding to death, the murderers are faced with a problem: what to do with the body? In accordance with Mongol tradition, they are fearful of coming into contact with his blood.
Part of that is because sometimes a spirit will get trapped at a particular location. Basically, their ghost is there. And so you want to keep them happy. No one wants an angry ghost. Often this can be because your blood has seeped into the ground. And so typically the Mongols will try to avoid executing someone so that their blood spills into the ground out of fear that, particularly if they're powerful, that then you'll have a very powerful spirit trapped in your vicinity.
Terrified of his ghost, the brothers abandon Begta to die alone, out here in the open. The murder shocks the community. Hoelun is distraught. And there are other, less forgiving authorities to whom Temüjin must answer. The Borjigin have recently come under the purview of a more powerful Mongol clan, the Teiichud. They too are outraged. Temüjin flees, seeking sanctuary in the mountains.
By killing his brother, he has made himself head of his family, but he is now also a fugitive. It doesn't take long for the Teiichu to catch up with him. As a punishment, they bind him into a Kang, a device something like an ox yoke. Incapacitated, Temujin is put at the disposal of various low-ranking families. It's a humiliating experience, made more painful by the deep wound that the Kang opens on his neck.
Exactly how long his captivity lasts is uncertain. It's likely several weeks, if not months. Our principal contemporary source for Temüjin's early life is The Secret History of the Mongols, a document that melds the mythical with the factual, the oldest surviving piece of literature in the Mongolian language. It was written shortly after Chinggis Khan's death, so provides an extraordinary snapshot of the lives and values of the man himself and his contemporaries.
As we shall learn, there are also some inconvenient gaps in the narrative, gaps that are difficult to fill. This is an occupational hazard, delving so far back into history. Nonetheless, as long as we bear the secret history's limitations in mind, it remains a vital source. Professor Mikhail Buran is a Mongol expert from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
It's obviously meant to praise Genghis Khan. And that's why he's starting so low and rising so far and so on and so forth. First of all, it's the only source we have that actually presents the thing from the Mongol point of view. Most of what we know about Genghis Khan or the Mongols comes from the Chinese or Muslims or Christian people who were either subject to them, not always very sympathetic or enemies. It gives you the feeling of how life were in Mongolia and what the people were thinking about or how the life goes on there.
The secret history is vague on the length of time Temujin spends in captivity, but it does tell of his eventual escape. One day, Temujin swings his kang, the ox-yoke, at his guard while he looks the other way. He manages to knock him unconscious. Then he makes a run for it. Reaching a nearby river, Temujin enters the water and ducks out of sight under a bank. He stays there until he's sure that the search party looking for him has passed.
His next move is to seek refuge with one of the local low-ranking families, a family he's been forced to serve in his time as a prisoner. Despite the trying circumstances, he's struck up good relations with several of these locals. The family agree to help him. Temujin buries himself in a large pile of wool, recently shorn from their livestock. He waits, silent, hidden. Later, they roast a lamb to share with him. They clearly think highly of him.
This is a token of esteem not given to just anyone. He gorges himself on the sweet meat. Then they give him one of their horses, and gratefully, he makes his final escape. His freedom regained, Temujin returns to steppe life, but now as head of his family. His imprisonment has confirmed his suspicion that while blood ties do bind you, only a fool trusts their relations blindly.
In his moment of need, he was saved not by a family member, but by near strangers. When he reaches 16, Temujin's mind turns to forging what might prove the most important alliance of all: his marriage. Let's scroll back seven years. When Temujin is just nine years old, his father summons him. "It's time to go out and find a wife," Yasuge says. "Father and son are soon riding out together."
Just a short while into their journey, they stop for the night with a family who have a daughter just a little older than Temujin. She is called Borte. The pair hit it off, and so a deal is made. Temujin will stay with this family, and when he's proved himself, Borte will become his wife. Leaving Temujin, Yasuke makes to return home. It is this fateful journey that will see him poisoned, murdered by the vengeful Tatas he meets on the way.
The event that turns Temujin's world upside down. With Yasuge gone, Temujin faces a horrible dilemma: abandon his blood relatives at their lowest point, or turn his back on his betrothed and return home to pick up the pieces. Reluctantly, he chooses the latter. Now, seven years on, Temujin resolves to go and find Borte again. She's waited for him, he's welcomed into her family, and the couple are married.
Eventually Temujin brings Borde home to his family, to their camp on the Kaelin River. He hopes for a quiet, contented life. That dream will soon be shattered. It's the middle of the night. Temujin and his family are all asleep. One of the women drifts in and out of her slumbers. She is faintly aware of a drumming sound, an incessant thud getting louder and louder. Her eyes open wide. It's not a drum. It's the sound of hooves. The camp is under attack.
It's a Merkit raiding group. In the gloom of the pre-dawn hours, Temujin abandons his wife. He races for the mountains, to the refuge of the forested slopes of Mount Burkhan Khaldun. Back at the camp, Borte hides herself in an ox cart. The terrified young woman, still only in her teens, is discovered and taken by the raiders. On Burkhan Khaldun, Temujin wonders what to do. On this most sacred mountain,
He turns to the eternal blue sky for spiritual guidance. The Mongol spiritual world in the 13th century is very complex. The term that scholars tend to use is like a primal religion, meaning it does not have a user's manual, a Bible, Quran, and so forth. It does not come with a guidebook. But basically what they believe is that there are spirits everywhere. In the water, in the mountains, there's a sky god, there's an earth mother, there's a bunch of other minor gods.
But the spirit world can interact with the mundane world. If you get sick, if something happens, it's because the spirits are messing with you. They might have stolen your soul. And so families will propitiate spirits to seek their favor. Three days later, after much spiritual contemplation, Temüjin's mind is made up. He will get Borte back. He sets out for the Merkit territories.
On arrival, he commands a rapid-fire rout of the enemy. But Borte has already been gifted as a bride to one of the Merkit men. He has smuggled her away in, you've guessed it, an ox cart. As the secret history tells it, Temujin gets back on his horse before riding through the night, calling out her name. At last, Borte hears his voice. She leaps from the cart. Staggering to her feet, she runs through the darkness. She grabs the reins of his horse.
He dismounts, and they fall into a passionate embrace. As they return home, it seems like yet another new beginning for Temujin. He has his wife back, and she's pregnant too. There will be those who wonder because of the timing just who the father is, but Temujin seems unconcerned. He has the woman he wants, and the beginnings of his own family.
Temujin has been aided in attacking the Merkits and rescuing Borte by two figures who will play a major role in his life, one named Togrul and the other Jamukha. Togrul is leader of the Keraites, one of the most powerful groups in the Central Steppe. He also happens to have been the closest friend, a blood brother in fact, of Temujin's late father. Jamukha, meanwhile, is Temujin's dearest childhood friend,
a distant relative from the Jaedan clan who frequently set up camp next to Bojigan territory. As children, the pair spent happy seasons riding their horses and firing arrows at targets they constructed from leather pouches tied to poles. They went hunting too, and whiled away the hours playing with discarded animal knuckle bones. Temujin came to think of Jemuga not as a friend or even a brother, but as something better, a soulmate.
When they were eleven years old, they swore oaths of allegiance to each other, exchanging knuckle bones to mark the occasion. A year later, they repeated their vows, but this time they gifted each other arrowheads. They drank each other's blood too, an action that no Mongol undertakes lightly. Their clans went their separate ways in the coming years and the boys grew apart, but neither has forgotten their bond.
They have intertwined their fates for better and worse. After the Meerkat mission, Temujin and Jamukha swear allegiance once more, this time on a cliff edge in front of a crowd of witnesses. They swap sashes and horses as a sign of commitment. Temujin and his followers join up at Jamukha's people. They live together as one big happy family on the steppe for some eighteen months. But tensions are soon beginning to show.
Temujin and Jamukha are the two rising stars of the Mongol world. Both begin to realize there is room for only one top dog. Jamukha decides to take the horses off to the mountains. Temujin is told to take the sheep and the goats elsewhere. Whatever the specific cause of their dispute, the blood brothers' relationship will never recover. The best friends will soon become bitterest enemies. When Temujin leaves the camp, he also takes with him a good number of Jamukha's followers.
It's clear that many of them see something in him that they feel is lacking in Jamukha. It's portrayed as someone who's generous and at the same time can be ruthless. He can be very violent, but he can be also understanding other people. He is very good in negotiation, doesn't take crazy risks, that's for sure. So he's very wise in that sense.
At the same time, he has a sense of loyalty. That's how it's at least said in the text. You need to be loyal to your chief. You need to be loyal in general. And this is a very high quality for him. It's something I really recognize as very, very important. The rivalry between the two only increases when Temüjin is chosen as Khan of the Bojigin Mongols. It's an acknowledgement of his burgeoning stature. It's also an important first step to becoming Khan of all the Mongols.
and Jamukha knows it. Matters escalate significantly when one of Jamukha's brothers is killed as he tries to rustle cattle from the Bojjigin. In the year 1187, with the boyhood friends well into their twenties, they engage in their first major battle against each other. It will not be the last. As it turns out, the Battle of Dalan Baljut is almost a no contest. Jamukha's cavalry wipes the floor with Temüjin's. Not content with this spectacular victory,
Jamukha adds insult to injury. It's said that he decapitates one of Temüjin's men and ties the victim's head to the tail of a horse so that it might be paraded around. The story goes that he takes another 70 of the enemy and boils them in cauldrons, thus, as the Mongols believe, destroying their very souls. As word spreads of his purported misdeeds, many on the steppe begin to regard Jamukha as a danger
Is this really who they want as leader? Despite the defeat, Temujin starts to look the better bet. But then something rather strange, and from our perspective, inconvenient happens.
Jamukha decisively defeats Temujin, and here's the neat part. Temujin disappears from history for 10 years. There's a decade where we have no idea what he's really doing. There's one source that spots him in the Jin Empire, northern China. But again, we don't know exactly what he's doing there. Was he a slave? Was he a refugee? He's there for some reason, but we don't know why. But suddenly as he disappeared...
Temüjin returns to frontline Mongol life sometime in the mid to late 1190s. He comes back stronger than ever. When he comes back 10 years later, he's able to reestablish himself as the leader of the Borjigin Mongols. This seems rather remarkable for a guy who got his butt handed to him in a battle against Jamukha. After his hiatus, we find him joining a campaign alongside Toghrul against the mighty Tatars.
Temujin's reputation as a general is enhanced. He seems to have learned a lot in his time out of the spotlight. He begins to introduce some of the innovations that mark him out for greatness. He builds on the personal qualities that had been evident years earlier, when he was able to draw followers away from Jamukha.
You talk to him as a dictator, but actually his fame at this point was for his generosity and because he treated people like his own. He let them eat the same food and they, you know, ride the same horses and wear the same clothes. And therefore his supporters increased. In battle, Temüjin has seen how the eagerness of his men to loot actually impedes them securing victory. He orders that from now on there will be no ransacking until the enemy has been thoroughly overcome.
All the loot is to be delivered to him for distribution. He will pay it out to the soldiers in accordance with what he considers each has earned. For every dead soldier, their share goes to their widow or orphaned children. There are those, especially among higher ranks, who take issue with these changes. But anyone who contradicts Temujin is stripped of their booty altogether. Who you were born to and who you know becomes less important.
In return, the ordinary soldiers who make up the majority of his forces respect him only more.
And definitely he's learned the hard way that you can't always trust family. He really learns that what is most important is talent. If he wasn't a warlord, if he came back today, he could manage a football team. They'd win everything because he can spot the talent and knows how to use them. This is what he does throughout his life. He finds guys who are quite talented. He puts them in a position to succeed.
and their success then helps him. Again, he doesn't completely abandon his family, but you can tell he doesn't fully trust them. Temujin restructures his burgeoning army to do away with traditional ties. Every individual is wedded to his service alone. Every healthy male between the ages of 15 to 70 is considered an active member of the military.
A squad comprises ten troops who become de facto brothers, tied to each other until death or extreme old age. They may or may not come from the same families or clans. Ten squads make up a company, ten companies form a battalion, and ten battalions constitute an army. Distinction on the battlefield is rewarded with promotion.
He chose as the leaders those people who were first of all loyal to him personally and secondly those who were very skilled in warfare. That means he has a very professional military elite and he can counter them completely.
These generals, these commanders that he's promoted, some of them are going to be married off to his sisters or daughters to secure their loyalty. But also we have the generals who have no blood relation to him, who really rise out of pure loyalty to Chinggis Khan. He understood the importance of leadership and also training leadership. There are some battles that the Mongols lose.
Chinggis Khan's stepbrother, Chigi Hutuktu, loses a battle in Afghanistan at the Parwan Valley around Kabul. Chinggis Khan then holds what is known as an after-action report. And basically they discuss how did he deploy his troops? What happened? What should you have done? You know, basically teach him where you went wrong, what you could have done better. With his military growing and reorganized just as he wants it,
Temüjin is within touching distance of becoming the dominant Mongol leader, but his old friend turned nemesis, Jamukha, remains stubbornly in the picture. Jamukha makes a major play in the year 1201. It has the feel of a last throw of the dice, or indeed the knuckle bones. He calls a council of the clans to back his claim to leadership of the Mongols. Jamukha comes from an ancient clan.
On the basis of this familial longevity, he wins the support of some of the oldest and most powerful groups. But plenty stay loyal to Temujin, setting the scene for a mighty showdown. It duly arrives at the Battle of Koi-ten. The buildup is a tale of psychological warfare. Each side looks to the heavens for evidence that they are favored. Animals are sacrificed, their bodies burned, and their bones studied by shamans.
When lightning strikes and the air rumbles with thunder, the shamans sell it as a sign of divine intervention for whichever of the two they support. On the first day of the battle, the cavallries of both armies prove finely matched. The enemies retire for the night in camps set up close to each other to ensure that neither can launch a surprise attack. It's been a bad day for Temujin personally. His horse has been shot and he himself has taken an arrow to the neck.
As he slumps in his tent, aids surround him, strength draining from his body. He passes out. It looks as if he might die, but he is brought back from the brink. A faithful attendant sucks the blood from his wound so that it doesn't become infected. Given Mongol superstitions around blood, this is an action that goes above and beyond what might be expected. By the next morning, Temujin is largely recovered.
Reinvigorated, he leads his men to a decisive victory over Jamukha's army. Temüjin now knows he has the military might to win the steppe for himself. But first, he'll try a subtler way to secure power. He hits on a scheme to marry his eldest son to the daughter of Toghrul. Once the aging Khan dies, by now only a matter of time, Temüjin will be the obvious choice to take over his lands and followers. He will be an unstoppable force.
But Togrul has other plans and refuses the marriage proposal. Despite his personal history with Temüjin, he has long been happy to play him and Jamukha off against each other, ensuring neither becomes too strong, all the better to maintain his own power base. Jamukha has also been in the old man's ear, filling his mind with the danger Temüjin poses to them both.
Besides, it's difficult to forget Temüjin's lowly origins. Is this outsider really the man to wield Mongol power? But, just as his diplomatic scheme seems to have failed, word reaches Temüjin that the marriage is on. There must be a great feast to celebrate, of course. Temüjin sets off with a small coterie of companions. When they arrive, they find that they are hopelessly outnumbered. It's a trap.
Jamukha is there too, up to his neck in the plot. Temujin flees, setting up camp by a lake far away. He has lived to fight another day, but he and his men have few supplies, no clean water. What follows next is perhaps the most important turnaround of Temujin's career. His men spot a wild horse. They hunt it, then feast upon it. It has been given to them, they believe, as a sign. Their hunger sated, and their hearts lifted.
The men swear new oaths of loyalty to one another, a mix of tribes and religions, but all committed to Temujin. Meanwhile, back at Togol's camp, celebrations are already in full swing. They will be taken completely by surprise when Temujin attacks. His men gallop across the terrain, their chosen route is an indirect one, intentionally so, to maintain the element of surprise.
Finally, Temujin descends on Togrol. Despite the numerical disadvantage, over three days of battle, Temujin crushes him. Many of the enemy come over to Temujin's side, but both Togrol and Jamukha escape his clutches. For now, at least. Togrol soon meets his end in a skirmish with another clan. Jamukha, however, stays stubbornly out of reach. Temujin pursues him relentlessly. At long last, in 1204,
The two prepare to face off at the Battle of Chakimot. The night before the battle is a moonless one. Jamukha's forces creep away. They have no appetite for more fighting. As they flee, working blind in the dark, they stumble into a gorge and fall to their deaths. Those that did not abscond are easily beaten on the battlefield the next day.
And this is probably the most important battle of Temujin's life. This is the first time where we have something really happening that if he loses, it's over. If he wins, he controls Mongolia. This is a watershed moment. Jamukha is running out of roads. His few surviving followers have had enough. They turn on their leader and deliver him to Temujin. According to the secret history, Temujin is disgusted by this flagrant treachery.
no matter that they've served up Chimuka on a plate. So much so, that he has the men executed. Temujin tries to persuade his old friend and rival that they should lay down their weapons and form an alliance. Brothers fighting for each other, like in the good old days. But Chimuka knows that those days are past. No such agreement could ever work in practice. All he asks is that he be executed as an aristocrat. With no bloodshed, Temujin agrees.
Jamukha has his back broken before being buried in the highborn tradition. His rivals all dispatched, Temüjin stands on the cusp of complete power. The path is now clear for him to claim leadership of all Mongols. In 1206, Temüjin calls a council of all the Mongol tribes. They come together at Burkhan Khaldun, the mountain that has been the backdrop to so many scenes in his life. Temüjin cannot see an end to the crowds.
Gers, the traditional Mongol tents, stretch for miles in every direction. Tens of thousands of animals graze the land, their herders readying them for the forthcoming feasts. Temüjin is well into his forties already, but here he is, ruler of a million people, and a land the size of Western Europe. At night, the air reverberates with music. The distinctive timbre of the traditional throat singers combines with the drumming and chanting of shamans.
The gathered masses stand in lines, their hands stretched out in supplication to the eternal blue sky. The centerpiece of proceedings sees Temujin lifted on a black felt carpet and carried to a throne where he is formally given his new title. His followers bow their knees nine times before him. The age of Chinggis Khan has arrived. In the next episode of Real Dictators, in the second and final part of the Chinggis Khan story,
The leader brings reforms to his newly unified Mongol nation. The man formerly known as Temüjin will now conquer an empire bigger than any before in recorded history. But how exactly does he do it? And why? And how will history judge him? As a cruel tyrant or a great leader? That's next time on Real Dictators.
