The following is an attempt to synthesize some portion of the enormous amount of information contained in the introduction and first two chapters of Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.
The Secret History of the Mongols
Until the last third of the twentieth century very little was known about Genghis Khan. There was no Mongol record of his life and, "[u]nlike any other conqueror in history, Genghis Khan never allowed anyone to paint his portrait, sculpt his image, or engrave his name or likeness on a coin...". (xxv, xxix)
It was "half a century after his death" that portraits were finally painted, and "each culture projected its particular image of him." Europeans "pictured him as the quintessential barbarian...ugly in every detail." (xxv)
Scholars did likewise. "From Korea to Armenia, they composed all manner of myths and fanciful stories about Genghis Khan's life." An unbalanced conception of the Mongols prevailed: "their achievements lay forgotten, while their alleged crimes and brutality became magnified." (xxv-vi)
The legacy of this unbalanced conception of the history of the Mongols is embedded in some English terms. Nineteenth century racists dubbed Native Americans and Asians members of the "Mongoloid" race. The term was also used to refer to the mentally retarded. And Weatherford attributes the word "mogul" to this legacy, as referring to "[w]hen the richest capitalists flaunted their wealth and showed antidemocratic or antiegalitarian values...". (xxvi)
"[T]he Mongols became scapegoats for other nations' failures and shortcomings." Nations that have pointed to the heritage of Mongol rule to explicate contemporary shortcomings include China, India, and Russia, in addition to Arab nations in which "Arab politicians...assured their followers that Muslims would have invented the atomic bomb before the Americans if only the Mongols had not burned the Arabs' magnificent libraries and leveled their cities." In 2002, the Taliban likened the American assault to that of the Mongols' centuries before. In 2003 Saddam Hussein apparently made a similar comparison. (xxvi-vii)
Rumors had survived through the centuries that after Genghis Khan's death the details of his life had been recorded "by someone close to him." Scholars eventually concluded that "such a text had never existed, that it was merely one more of the many myths about Genghis Khan." (xxv)
However, "in the nineteenth century", a copy of such a document was found in Beijing. Yet it could not be immediately translated because it "used Chinese characters to represent Mongolian sounds of the thirteenth century." Chinese summaries of each chapter included with the document "offered tantalizing hints at the story in the text, but otherwise the document remained inexplicable" until the 1970s when it finally began to be translated. The document was given the title The Secret History of the Mongols. (xxvii-xxix)
Weatherford does not address why the document was not translated for a century or more. It could not have helped that soon after the First World War and the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, Mongolia was ruled by Communists. Weatherford does not delve deeply into this history, but it is clear that after 1937, if not earlier, the Communists suppressed The Secret History and "[t]hroughout most of the twentieth century, the deciphering of the Secret History remained mortally dangerous in Mongolia." This presumably denied the vast majority of Mongolian speakers from participating in translating it. (Although this had not changed in the 1970s.) (xxviii)
The Communists were characteristically brutal in Mongolia. "During the 1930s, Stalin's henchmen executed some thirty thousand Mongols in a series of campaigns against their culture and religion." It was during this time that "[t]he soul of Genghis Khan disappeared from the Buddhist monastery in central Mongolia...". (xv) We'll get to that.
Mongolians took advantage of an apparent expansion of civic liberty in the 50s and 60s to issue "a small series of stamps in 1962 to commemorate the eight hundredth anniversary of the birth of Genghis Khan"; to erect a monument to mark Genghis Khan's place of birth; and to research their history. "The Soviets reacted with irrational anger to the fear that their satellite state might pursue an independent path or, worse yet, side with Mongolia's other neighbor, China, the Soviet Union's erstwhile ally turned enemy." Tomo-ochir, the political figure who had encouraged the rediscovery of the Mongols' past, was "finally hacked to death with an ax" and Mongolian scholars repressed. (xxviii-ix)
The Mongols and Their Culture
Mongolia can be divided into three regions. In the north are forests and mountains. In the south there extends the Gobi desert. Between these lay steppe--expansive, semi-arid grassland. (10,13)
At the time of the birth of Genghis Khan, the Mongols were a "small and insignificant band" that existed along the northeastern edge of modern-day Mongolia, where the steppe meets the Siberian forest. Indeed, The Secret History claims the Mongols originated from Siberian cultures. The Mongols also claim "a direct descent from the Huns...". (xxxiv, 10, 13, 16)
The Mongols herded animals on the steppe as well as hunted in the forest. They "were considered scavengers who competed with the wolves to hunt down the small animals, and, when the opportunity arose, steal animals and women from the herders of the steppe." (13, 16)
Violence between tribes was a regular aspect of nomadic life. Genghis Khan's mother, Hoelun, had been kidnapped before his birth, and his wife, Borte, was kidnapped from him, though he rescued her. During such kidnappings it was customary for the men to flee. This was because the women would not be killed if captured, and because the men stood a chance of gathering allies and rescuing the women if they escaped. Defending against a more numerous raiding force promised only peril.
When Hoelun was captured by the Mongols she found herself now eating "marmots, rats, birds...". This contrasted sharply with "the abundant and rich diet of meat and milk" with which she had been accustomed. Her experience highlights the difference between life on the steppe, whence she had been taken, and life on the edge of the forest. In the north, "the weather was always worse, the grazing more sparse, and men more rugged and violent." (13, 17)
Weatherford's narrative contains a great deal about Mongolian culture. He mentions that Christianity had spread among at least some of the nomadic tribes of central Asia. "[T]he Mongols", however, "remained animists...". They worshipped "the Eternal Blue Sky" and other spiritual forces. In one scene, Weatherford describes Temujin's--he was not yet "Genghis Khan"--religious practices in the forests of Burkhan Khaldun ("God Mountain") after his wife Borte is kidnapped. He "sprinkled milk into the air and on the ground" to thank the spirits, believing "he had just been saved by the mountain where he was hiding...". This experience "marked the beginning of a long and intimate spiritual relationship he would maintain with this mountain...". (28-9, 32-3)
The Mongols believed a man's soul was contained in his "Spirit Banner" or sulde. The Spirit Banner was a spear with the hairs of a herder's best horses tied to it. It was Genghis Khan's Spirit Banner that Weatherford is discussing at the opening of his book when he writes that "[t]he soul of Genghis Khan disappeared...". The significance of the Spirit Banner and the Mongols' beliefs about it are demonstrated in the story of how Hoelun used her dead husband's to shame the Tayichiud tribe when they contemplated abandoning her and her children. (They later do so when the Spirit Banner is out of sight.) When the Mongolians issued a stamp to commemorate the 800th anniversary of Genghis Khan's birth, upon the stamp was his Spirit Banner. And when Tomo-ochir had a monument constructed to mark the place of Genghis Khan's birth, upon it, also, was a representation of his Spirit Banner. (6, 20)
The Mongols considered one's corpse to no longer contain a soul and was thus of no importance. Therefore, Genghis Khan's specific resting place is not known, he received no tomb or pyramid--not even a headstone. After his secret burial, soldiers "sealed off the entire area for several hundred square miles." The Communists kept this place off limits to prevent it from becoming "a rallying point for nationalists", but instead of referring to it as "the Great Taboo" as the Mongols had, "the Soviets called it by the bureaucratic designation of Highly Restricted Area." Around this Highly Restricted Area the Communists constructed a regular "Restricted Area", and Weatherford speculates that nearby the Soviets were storing nuclear weapons. (xxi-ii)
For the Mongols, "mere mention of blood or death violates a taboo...". This comes into play when discussing Temujin's period of enslavement. After killing his half brother Begter, he is hunted down and enslaved by the Tayichiud tribe who "considered themselves the aristocratic lineage" of the region. Though there are many reasons to believe his enslavement lasted many years, or that he endured several episodes of slavery, "Mongol traditions and sources acknowledge only this one brief period of capture and enslavement...". This is "in keeping with Mongol sensibilities [which] dictate only barely mentioning the bad while emphasizing instead the heroic nature of the escape." (23-7)
The Mongols lived in gers. These were "domed tent homes made of felt blankets tied around a lattice framework...". Weatherford suggests it was an indication of Temujin's aspirations to unite all the nomadic tribes of central Asia that he began referring to his subjects as "the People of the Felt Walls", referring to the felt walls of their abodes. Implicitly, gers were not unique to the Mongols. (13, 53-4)
The Mongols Conquer the World
Genghis Khan "grew up in a world of excessive tribal violence, including murder, kidnapping, and enslavement." The many tribes regularly inflicted violence on one another. "For the nomads, trading with their neighbors and fighting with them constituted an interrelated part of the yearly rhythm of life...". Genghis Khan would unite these tribes and lead them on decades of conquests that helped create the modern world, as Weatherford indicates in the title of his book. (xvi, 14, 15) look at 21
The achievements of the Mongols are truly breathtaking for someone learning about them for the first time, as I am. "The majority of people today live in countries conquered by the Mongols; on the modern map, Genghis Khan's conquests include thirty countries with well over 3 billion people." (xviii)
The Mongols of course excelled at warfare. They "ended the era of walled cities" by "perfecting siege warfare". They traveled with few supplies, amongst them an "engineer corps that could build whatever was needed on the spot from available materials." "[U]nlike almost every other army, the Mongols easily rode and even fought on frozen rivers and lakes...". (xvii, 4, 22)
"The Mongols swept across the globe as conquerors, but also civilization's unrivaled cultural carriers." They "deliberately" encouraged commercial trade and the exchange of ideas. Weatherford directly attributes the Renaissance to Europe's contact with the Mongols. Though the Mongols "slaughtered the aristocratic knighthood of the continent", they did not engage in looting, nor did they "bother to conquer the cities", because of Europe's poverty at that time relative to the East. Besides this, "[i]n nearly every country touched by the Mongols, the initial destruction and shock of conquest by an unknown and barbaric tribe yielded quickly to an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and improved civilization." Indeed, "Genghis Khan's empire connected and amalgamated the many civilizations around him into a new world order." Before him, "[n]o one in China had heard of Europe, and no one in Europe had heard of China...". (xix, xxii-iv)
Many of the accomplishments of the Mongols are strikingly modern and contrast sharply with the popular conception of the Mongols. Genghis Khan built a system based on merit as opposed to lineage. He promoted religious freedom, the rule of law and the abolition of torture. "He took the disjointed and languorous trading towns along the Silk Route and organized them into history's largest free-trade zone." (xix, 40)
"On every level and from any perspective, the scale and scope of Genghis Khan's accomplishments challenge the limits of imagination and tax the resources of scholarly explanation." (xviii)
In case you were wondering if there was anything that Genghis Khan didn't do, let me leave you with this: "He lowered taxes for everyone...". (xix)
The Secret History of the Mongols
Until the last third of the twentieth century very little was known about Genghis Khan. There was no Mongol record of his life and, "[u]nlike any other conqueror in history, Genghis Khan never allowed anyone to paint his portrait, sculpt his image, or engrave his name or likeness on a coin...". (xxv, xxix)
It was "half a century after his death" that portraits were finally painted, and "each culture projected its particular image of him." Europeans "pictured him as the quintessential barbarian...ugly in every detail." (xxv)
Scholars did likewise. "From Korea to Armenia, they composed all manner of myths and fanciful stories about Genghis Khan's life." An unbalanced conception of the Mongols prevailed: "their achievements lay forgotten, while their alleged crimes and brutality became magnified." (xxv-vi)
The legacy of this unbalanced conception of the history of the Mongols is embedded in some English terms. Nineteenth century racists dubbed Native Americans and Asians members of the "Mongoloid" race. The term was also used to refer to the mentally retarded. And Weatherford attributes the word "mogul" to this legacy, as referring to "[w]hen the richest capitalists flaunted their wealth and showed antidemocratic or antiegalitarian values...". (xxvi)
"[T]he Mongols became scapegoats for other nations' failures and shortcomings." Nations that have pointed to the heritage of Mongol rule to explicate contemporary shortcomings include China, India, and Russia, in addition to Arab nations in which "Arab politicians...assured their followers that Muslims would have invented the atomic bomb before the Americans if only the Mongols had not burned the Arabs' magnificent libraries and leveled their cities." In 2002, the Taliban likened the American assault to that of the Mongols' centuries before. In 2003 Saddam Hussein apparently made a similar comparison. (xxvi-vii)
Rumors had survived through the centuries that after Genghis Khan's death the details of his life had been recorded "by someone close to him." Scholars eventually concluded that "such a text had never existed, that it was merely one more of the many myths about Genghis Khan." (xxv)
However, "in the nineteenth century", a copy of such a document was found in Beijing. Yet it could not be immediately translated because it "used Chinese characters to represent Mongolian sounds of the thirteenth century." Chinese summaries of each chapter included with the document "offered tantalizing hints at the story in the text, but otherwise the document remained inexplicable" until the 1970s when it finally began to be translated. The document was given the title The Secret History of the Mongols. (xxvii-xxix)
Weatherford does not address why the document was not translated for a century or more. It could not have helped that soon after the First World War and the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, Mongolia was ruled by Communists. Weatherford does not delve deeply into this history, but it is clear that after 1937, if not earlier, the Communists suppressed The Secret History and "[t]hroughout most of the twentieth century, the deciphering of the Secret History remained mortally dangerous in Mongolia." This presumably denied the vast majority of Mongolian speakers from participating in translating it. (Although this had not changed in the 1970s.) (xxviii)
The Communists were characteristically brutal in Mongolia. "During the 1930s, Stalin's henchmen executed some thirty thousand Mongols in a series of campaigns against their culture and religion." It was during this time that "[t]he soul of Genghis Khan disappeared from the Buddhist monastery in central Mongolia...". (xv) We'll get to that.
Mongolians took advantage of an apparent expansion of civic liberty in the 50s and 60s to issue "a small series of stamps in 1962 to commemorate the eight hundredth anniversary of the birth of Genghis Khan"; to erect a monument to mark Genghis Khan's place of birth; and to research their history. "The Soviets reacted with irrational anger to the fear that their satellite state might pursue an independent path or, worse yet, side with Mongolia's other neighbor, China, the Soviet Union's erstwhile ally turned enemy." Tomo-ochir, the political figure who had encouraged the rediscovery of the Mongols' past, was "finally hacked to death with an ax" and Mongolian scholars repressed. (xxviii-ix)
The Mongols and Their Culture
Mongolia can be divided into three regions. In the north are forests and mountains. In the south there extends the Gobi desert. Between these lay steppe--expansive, semi-arid grassland. (10,13)
At the time of the birth of Genghis Khan, the Mongols were a "small and insignificant band" that existed along the northeastern edge of modern-day Mongolia, where the steppe meets the Siberian forest. Indeed, The Secret History claims the Mongols originated from Siberian cultures. The Mongols also claim "a direct descent from the Huns...". (xxxiv, 10, 13, 16)
The Mongols herded animals on the steppe as well as hunted in the forest. They "were considered scavengers who competed with the wolves to hunt down the small animals, and, when the opportunity arose, steal animals and women from the herders of the steppe." (13, 16)
Violence between tribes was a regular aspect of nomadic life. Genghis Khan's mother, Hoelun, had been kidnapped before his birth, and his wife, Borte, was kidnapped from him, though he rescued her. During such kidnappings it was customary for the men to flee. This was because the women would not be killed if captured, and because the men stood a chance of gathering allies and rescuing the women if they escaped. Defending against a more numerous raiding force promised only peril.
When Hoelun was captured by the Mongols she found herself now eating "marmots, rats, birds...". This contrasted sharply with "the abundant and rich diet of meat and milk" with which she had been accustomed. Her experience highlights the difference between life on the steppe, whence she had been taken, and life on the edge of the forest. In the north, "the weather was always worse, the grazing more sparse, and men more rugged and violent." (13, 17)
Weatherford's narrative contains a great deal about Mongolian culture. He mentions that Christianity had spread among at least some of the nomadic tribes of central Asia. "[T]he Mongols", however, "remained animists...". They worshipped "the Eternal Blue Sky" and other spiritual forces. In one scene, Weatherford describes Temujin's--he was not yet "Genghis Khan"--religious practices in the forests of Burkhan Khaldun ("God Mountain") after his wife Borte is kidnapped. He "sprinkled milk into the air and on the ground" to thank the spirits, believing "he had just been saved by the mountain where he was hiding...". This experience "marked the beginning of a long and intimate spiritual relationship he would maintain with this mountain...". (28-9, 32-3)
The Mongols believed a man's soul was contained in his "Spirit Banner" or sulde. The Spirit Banner was a spear with the hairs of a herder's best horses tied to it. It was Genghis Khan's Spirit Banner that Weatherford is discussing at the opening of his book when he writes that "[t]he soul of Genghis Khan disappeared...". The significance of the Spirit Banner and the Mongols' beliefs about it are demonstrated in the story of how Hoelun used her dead husband's to shame the Tayichiud tribe when they contemplated abandoning her and her children. (They later do so when the Spirit Banner is out of sight.) When the Mongolians issued a stamp to commemorate the 800th anniversary of Genghis Khan's birth, upon the stamp was his Spirit Banner. And when Tomo-ochir had a monument constructed to mark the place of Genghis Khan's birth, upon it, also, was a representation of his Spirit Banner. (6, 20)
The Mongols considered one's corpse to no longer contain a soul and was thus of no importance. Therefore, Genghis Khan's specific resting place is not known, he received no tomb or pyramid--not even a headstone. After his secret burial, soldiers "sealed off the entire area for several hundred square miles." The Communists kept this place off limits to prevent it from becoming "a rallying point for nationalists", but instead of referring to it as "the Great Taboo" as the Mongols had, "the Soviets called it by the bureaucratic designation of Highly Restricted Area." Around this Highly Restricted Area the Communists constructed a regular "Restricted Area", and Weatherford speculates that nearby the Soviets were storing nuclear weapons. (xxi-ii)
For the Mongols, "mere mention of blood or death violates a taboo...". This comes into play when discussing Temujin's period of enslavement. After killing his half brother Begter, he is hunted down and enslaved by the Tayichiud tribe who "considered themselves the aristocratic lineage" of the region. Though there are many reasons to believe his enslavement lasted many years, or that he endured several episodes of slavery, "Mongol traditions and sources acknowledge only this one brief period of capture and enslavement...". This is "in keeping with Mongol sensibilities [which] dictate only barely mentioning the bad while emphasizing instead the heroic nature of the escape." (23-7)
The Mongols lived in gers. These were "domed tent homes made of felt blankets tied around a lattice framework...". Weatherford suggests it was an indication of Temujin's aspirations to unite all the nomadic tribes of central Asia that he began referring to his subjects as "the People of the Felt Walls", referring to the felt walls of their abodes. Implicitly, gers were not unique to the Mongols. (13, 53-4)
The Mongols Conquer the World
Genghis Khan "grew up in a world of excessive tribal violence, including murder, kidnapping, and enslavement." The many tribes regularly inflicted violence on one another. "For the nomads, trading with their neighbors and fighting with them constituted an interrelated part of the yearly rhythm of life...". Genghis Khan would unite these tribes and lead them on decades of conquests that helped create the modern world, as Weatherford indicates in the title of his book. (xvi, 14, 15) look at 21
The achievements of the Mongols are truly breathtaking for someone learning about them for the first time, as I am. "The majority of people today live in countries conquered by the Mongols; on the modern map, Genghis Khan's conquests include thirty countries with well over 3 billion people." (xviii)
The Mongols of course excelled at warfare. They "ended the era of walled cities" by "perfecting siege warfare". They traveled with few supplies, amongst them an "engineer corps that could build whatever was needed on the spot from available materials." "[U]nlike almost every other army, the Mongols easily rode and even fought on frozen rivers and lakes...". (xvii, 4, 22)
"The Mongols swept across the globe as conquerors, but also civilization's unrivaled cultural carriers." They "deliberately" encouraged commercial trade and the exchange of ideas. Weatherford directly attributes the Renaissance to Europe's contact with the Mongols. Though the Mongols "slaughtered the aristocratic knighthood of the continent", they did not engage in looting, nor did they "bother to conquer the cities", because of Europe's poverty at that time relative to the East. Besides this, "[i]n nearly every country touched by the Mongols, the initial destruction and shock of conquest by an unknown and barbaric tribe yielded quickly to an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and improved civilization." Indeed, "Genghis Khan's empire connected and amalgamated the many civilizations around him into a new world order." Before him, "[n]o one in China had heard of Europe, and no one in Europe had heard of China...". (xix, xxii-iv)
Many of the accomplishments of the Mongols are strikingly modern and contrast sharply with the popular conception of the Mongols. Genghis Khan built a system based on merit as opposed to lineage. He promoted religious freedom, the rule of law and the abolition of torture. "He took the disjointed and languorous trading towns along the Silk Route and organized them into history's largest free-trade zone." (xix, 40)
"On every level and from any perspective, the scale and scope of Genghis Khan's accomplishments challenge the limits of imagination and tax the resources of scholarly explanation." (xviii)
In American terms, the accomplishments of Genghis Khan might be understood if the United States, instead of being created by a group of educated merchants or wealthy planters, had been founded by one of its illiterate slaves, who, by sheer force of personality, charisma, and determination, liberated America from foreign rule, united the people, created an alphabet, wrote the constitution, established universal religious freedom, invented a new system of warfare, marched an army from Canada to Brazil, and opened roads of commerce in a free-trade zone that stretched across the continents.
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