Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan (born Temüjin; August 1227), also known as Chinggis Khan, was the first ruler of the Mongol Empire, which he created in 1206 in his fatherland in what is now Mongolia.

After the death of his father when Temüjin was eight, his family was left behind by the Mongols. They became very poor but did not die. Temüjin was very clever, and people who liked him came to be his soldiers. He made friends with two rulers, Jamukha and Toghrul, and they helped him find his wife Börte, who had been made a prisoner. However, they Temüjin and Jamukha started to dislike each other, and they began a war. Temüjin lost at the start and may have had to run away for years. By 1196, he was back in Mongolia, and many soldiers came to fight for him. Soon, Toghrul started to dislike Temüjin and attacked him in 1203. Temüjin won the war, and both Toghrul and Jamukha died.

Temüjin took the name "Genghis Khan", the meaning of which is unknown, at a large meeting in 1206. He made changes to the society of the Mongols so that it was more stable and killed a powerful shaman who tried to overcome him. His armies then attacked foreign lands: the Western Xia in 1209, the Chinese Jin dynasty in 1211, the Qara Khitai in 1218 and the Khwarazmian Empire in 1219. Many of those countries suffered greatly from those attacks. Genghis Khan died in 1227. His third son, Ögedei, became the second ruler of the Mongol Empire in 1229.

Many people think very different things about Genghis Khan. For his people, he was intelligent and caring. To his enemies, he was an evil murderer. His soldiers killed millions of people, but also allowed trading and communications to grow across Asia. After his death, the Mongolians made him into a god. Today, they remember him as the father of their country.

Name
Because Mongolian has a different script, its words are spelled in English in different ways. "Genghis" comes from the Mongolian . Some other well-known spellings are "Chinggis", "Chingis", "Jinghis", and "Jengiz". His birth name "Temüjin" ( in Mongolian) is also spelled "Temuchin" in English.

 Early life 
Different historians (people who study history) think that Temüjin was born in different years: 1155, 1162 or 1167; 1162 is the date accepted by most historians. Temüjin himself may not have known. The place that he was born is also unknown. It was on the Onon River, but it could have been in what is now Mongolia or Russia.

Temüjin was born io Mongols. His father was the chief Yesügei. His mother was Yesügei's main wife, Hö'elün. Yesügei had taken Hö'elün by force from the husband she had earlier. Historians do not know what his name means. Some think he was named after an enemy prisoner, Temüchin-uge. Other historians think that "Temüjin" means "blacksmith". Many stories were told about Temüjin's birth. One story says he was born holding a blood clot in his hand. For the Mongols, this was a sign that Temüjin would be a soldier. Other people claimed that his real father was a ray of light, which touched Hö'elün. 

Temüjin had three younger brothers and a younger sister. He also had two half-brothers. One of them, named Behter, was older than he was. The children grew up at Yesugei's home next to the Onon River, where they learned how to ride a horse and shoot a bow. When Temüjin was eight years old, his father wanted to arrange his future marriage. They went to Hö'elün's original people with whom the Mongols had arranged marriages many times. Yesügei arranged that Temüjin would marry Börte, the daughter of the powerful chief Dei Sechen. When he was going home, Yesügei was poisoned by the Tatars, his old enemies, and hsoon died.

Yesügei's death caused the people whom he ruled to break apart. Both Temüjin and Behter were too young to rule. The other Mongols found new chiefs and left behind Hö'elün and her family, whose lives became much more difficult. To eat, they were forced to collect roots and nuts, hunt for small animals and catch fish. Both Temüjin and Behter could have been Yesügei's heir. Temüjin was the child of Yesügei's main wife, but Behter was older. Temüjin also feared that Behter would marry Hö'elün when he became an adult. One day, Temüjin and his younger brother Qasar murdered Behter. That crime was absent from official histories of Temüjin's life. Around that time, Temüjin became best friends with another boy, Jamukha. They gave each other presents and promised that they would always be friends.

Temüjin became a prisoner many times because his family was no longer protected by the Mongols. One time, he ran away while the people imprisoning him were having a meal. Another time, he was helped by another boy, Bo'orchu, who soon became Temüjin's first follower.

Rise to power
upright=1.3|thumb|alt=Painting of two men wearing crowns on a couch, with three men on either side looking at them |Temüjin and Toghrul
Temüjin returned to Dei Sechen to marry Börte when he became 15. Dei Sechen was very happy to see Temüjin and organised the marriage. Temüjin wanted to serve Toghrul, the khan (chief) of the Kerait tribe, who had been best friends with Yesügei. Toghrul ruled a large country in central Mongolia but disliked many of his followers. He was happy to accept Temüjin as a new follower. The two liked each other, and Temüjin started to attract followers for himself. Temüjin and Börte had their first child, a daughter named Qojin, around this time.

Soon afterwards, 300 Merkits attacked Temüjin and took Börte prisoner. She was married by force to a Merkit man. Temüjin asked Toghrul and Jamukha, who was now chief of the Jadaran tribe, to help. Both of them took 20,000 soldiers to attack the Merkits and soon won. Börte was found safely but soon gave birth to a son, Jochi. It was never known who Jochi's real father was. Temüjin raised him as his son, but others believed that he was the son of the Merkit man. Over the next fifteen years, Temüjin and Börte had three more sons (Chagatai, Ögedei, and Tolui) and four more daughters (Checheyigen, Alaqa, Tümelün, and Al-Altan).

Although Temüjin and Jamukha stayed friends for a while, they started to like each other less. Hö'elün and Börte told Temüjin that he needed to have more followers. He listened to their advice, and many of Jamukha's people became his followers. Temüjin was known to be more caring than other rulers, and his shamans (priests) claimed that his destiny was very large. Jamukha disliked Temüjin's rise. They fought a battle around 1187, which Temüjin lost clearly. It is likely that Temüjin spent many years as a servant of the Jurchen Jin dynasty, in northern China. Becaue Temüjin later attacked that state, the shameful time was not mentioned by official Mongol historians.

Around 1196, Temüjin returned to Mongolia to fight the Tatars. He also helped Toghrul become khan of the Kereit again. Jamukha had cruelly killed many prisoners after his 1187 victory. Many of his followers defected to Temüjin when he returned. Temüjin and Toghrul fought many battles together against other tribes and became very powerful. Temüjin became the only power in eastern Mongolia by winning battles against the Tatars. He killed the Tatar chiefs and their men became his followers. 

Three main peoples were left in Mongolia: the Naimans in the west, the Mongols in the east, and the Kereit in between. Temüjin wanted Jochi to marry one of Toghrul's daughters. Toghrul's son Senggum thought Temüjin was trying to control his Kereit tribe. He made his father believe that Temüjin had to die. Toghrul attacked Temüjin in 1203 and won the Battle of Qalaqaljid Sands. Temüjin was left with very few men. He made a promise to them, the Baljuna Covenant, that he would make them famous if they remained his followers. He gathered all of the friends and followers possible and attacked Toghrul by catching him by surprise. The Mongols won this battle. Toghrul was killed while he was running away. 

The Naiman tribe, to which Jamukha had run, was the only enemy left. In May 1204, Temüjin won the Battle of Chakirmaut. Jamukha asked his former friend to kill him without cruelty, which happened.

 Early reign: reforms and Chinese campaigns (1206–1215) 
 of 1206 and reforms
Temüjin held a large meeting () beside the Onon River in 1206, where, he took the official name "Genghis Khan". No one knows what it means. Some historians think it had no meaning and was just a name for the ruler of the new Mongol Empire. Others think "Genghis" means "strong and just". A third theory claims that "Genghis" meant "Universal Ruler".

Genghis Khan began to reorganise Mongol society. The existing systems worked for small tribes and peoples but were not suited to large countries. Genghis wanted his new country to be stable. Because he had killed many chiefs, he could organise everything as he wanted. His family became the most important people in the new empire. Genghis broke down the tribes and sorted the people into groups of tens, hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands. Each new group was made up of men from many tribes to make sure they did no longer obeyed their old people.

Genghis's early followers also became very important. Both Bo'orchu and Muqali were given ten thousand men to lead. Other followers took control of a thousand soldiers each. Many of these men had been very poor: two were sons of blacksmiths, one was a carpenter, and three were shepherds. However, Genghis made them important because they obeyed him.

Consolidation of power (1206–1210)
From 1204 to 1209, Genghis Khan focused on ruling his new nation. He first dealt with the shaman Kokechu, who wanted more power. Many Mongols thought Kokechu had magic, so he was already an important man. Kokechu first lied about Genghis Khan's brother Qasar. Qasar was almost sent to prison before his mother Hö'elün stepped in. Then Kokechu shamed Temüge, Genghis's youngest brother, in public. Börte saw that Kokechu was becoming powerful enough to attack Genghis. Genghis was scared of Kokechu's magic, but listened to his wife. He allowed Temüge to arrange Kokechu's death. In this way, Genghis Khan took Kokechu's place as the shaman of the Mongols.

The Mongols nation grew slowly. Jochi went north in 1207 to attack the . These were people who lived near the taiga in Siberia. Jochi took over their trade in food, clothing materials, and gold. Mongol armies defeated the Naimans and Merkits again on the River Irtysh in late 1208. Their khan was killed, and Kuchlug fled into Central Asia. The Uyghurs became followers of the Mongols in 1211.

The Mongols began attacking the edge of the Western Xia kingdom in 1205. Most of the Xia army was in the south and east to against attacks from the Song and the Jin kingdoms. Its northern edge was only protected by the Gobi Desert. Genghis decided to attack Western Xia heavily in 1209. The Mongols took control of the castle of Wulahai in May. They attacked the capital city Zhongxing, now Yinchuan. The Mongols could not progress for two months but then won a battle after a feigned retreat. Because they did not have any siege equipment, they couldn't take control of Zhongxing. They tried to redirect the Yellow River into the city but flooded their own camp in January 1210. The ruler of Western Xia gave up and gave the Mongols presents, including his daughter Chaka, so they would go away.

Campaign against the Jin (1211–1215)

In 1210, Genghis expressed that he wanted to attack the Jin kingdom. He knew the Jin had eight soldiers for every Mongol soldier. Genghis wanted revenge for the death of his relative Ambaghai Khan in the 12th century. He also wanted to give his army the goods in the Jin kingdom.

After calling for a  in March 1211, Genghis launched his invasion of Jin China in May, reaching the outer ring of Jin defences the following month. The border fortifications were guarded by Alaqush's Ongud tribe, whoch allowed the Mongols to pass without difficulty. The three-pronged chevauchée aimed to plunder and burn a vast area of Jin territory to deprive them of supplies and popular legitimacy and to secure the mountain passes, which would allow access to the North China Plain. The Jin lost numerous towns and were hindered by a series of defections, the most prominent of which led directly to Muqali's victory at the Battle of Huan'erzhui in autumn 1211. The campaign was halted in 1212, when Genghis was wounded by an arrow during the unsuccessful siege of Xijing (now Datong). After that failure, Genghis set up a corps of siege engineers, which recruited 500 Jin experts over the next two years.

The defences of Juyong Pass had been strongly reinforced when the conflict resumed in 1213, but a Mongol detachment, led by Jebe, managed to infiltrate the pass and surprise the elite Jin defenders, whch opened the road to the Jin capital, Zhongdu (now Beijing). The Jin administration began to disintegrate: after the Khitans, a tribe subject to the Jin, entered open rebellion, Hushahu, the commander of the forces at Xijing, abandoned his post and staged a coup in Zhongdu, killing Yongji and installing his own puppet ruler, Xuanzong. The governmental breakdown was fortunate for Genghis's forces; emboldened by their victories, they had seriously overreached and lost the initiative. Unable to do more than camp before Zhongdu's fortifications while his army suffered from an epidemic and famine (they resorted to cannibalism according to the historian Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, who may have been exaggerating), Genghis opened peace negotiations despite his commanders' militance. He secured tribute, including 3,000 horses, 500 slaves, a Jin princess and massive amounts of gold and silk before he lifted the siege and set off homewards in May 1214.

As the northern Jin lands had been ravaged by plague and war, Xuanzong moved the capital and imperial court  southwards to Kaifeng. Interpreting that as an attempt to regroup in the south and then to restart the war, Genghis concluded that the terms of the peace treaty had been broken. He immediately prepared to return and capture Zhongdu. According to the historian Christopher Atwood, it was only at this juncture that Genghis decided to conquer all of northern China. Muqali captured numerous towns in Liaodong during the winter of 1214–15. Although the inhabitants of Zhongdu surrendered to Genghis on 31 May 1215, the city was sacked. When Genghis returned to Mongolia in early 1216, Muqali was left in command in China. He waged a brutal but effective campaign against the unstable Jin regime until his death in 1223.

 Later reign: western expansion and return to China (1216–1227) 

Defeating rebellions and Qara Khitai (1216–1218)
In 1207, Genghis had appointed a man, Qorchi, as governor of the subdued Hoi-yin Irgen tribes in Siberia. Appointed not for his talents but for prior services rendered, Qorchi's tendency to abduct women as concubines for his harem caused the tribes to rebel and tp take him prisoner in early 1216. The following year, they ambushed and killed Boroqul, one of Genghis's highest-ranking  (comrade). The khan was livid at the loss of his close friend and prepared to lead a retaliatory campaign. Eventually dissuaded from this course, he dispatched his eldest son, Jochi, and a Dörbet commander. They managed to surprise and defeat the rebels, which secured control over the economically-important region.

Kuchlug, the Naiman prince who had been defeated in 1204, had usurped the throne of the Qara Khitai dynasty, in Central Asia, between 1211 and 1213. He was a greedy and arbitrary ruler, who probably earned the enmity of the native Islamic populace by attempting their forced conversion to Buddhism. Genghis reckoned that Kuchlug could be a threat to his empire, and Jebe was sent with an army of 20,000 cavalry to the city of Kashgar; he undermined Kuchlug's rule by emphasising the Mongol policies of religious tolerance and gained the loyalty of the local elite. Kuchlug was forced to flee south to the Pamir Mountains but was captured by local hunters. Jebe had him beheaded, paraded his corpse through Qara Khitai amd proclaimed the end of religious persecution in the region.

Invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire (1219–1221)
Genghis had now attained complete control of the eastern portion of the Silk Road, and his territory bordered that of the Khwarazmian Empire, which ruled over much of Central Asia, Persia and Afghanistan. Merchants from both sides were eager to restart trading, which had halted during Kuchlug's rule. The Khwarazmian ruler, Muhammad II, dispatched an envoy shortly after the Mongol capture of Zhongdu, and Genghis instructed his merchants, the , to obtain the high-quality textiles and steel of Central and Western Asia. Many members of the  invested in one particular caravan of 450 merchants, which set off to Khwarazmia in 1218 with a large quantity of wares.

Inalchuq, the governor of the Khwarazmian border town of Otrar, decided to massacre the merchants on grounds of espionage and to seize the goods; Muhammad had grown suspicious of Genghis's intentions and either supported Inalchuq or turned a blind eye. A Mongol ambassador was sent with two companions to avert war, but Muhammad killed him and humiliated his companions. The killing of an envoy infuriated Genghis, who resolved to leave Muqali with a small force in northern China and invade Khwarazmia with most of his army.

Muhammad's empire was large but disunited. He ruled alongside his mother, Terken Khatun, in what the historian Peter Benjamin Golden terms "an uneasy diarchy", and the Khwarazmian nobility and populace were discontented with his warring and the centralisation of government. For thise reasons and others, he declined to meet the Mongols in the field but instead garrisoned his unruly troops in his major cities. That allowed the lightly-armoured, highly-mobile Mongol armies uncontested superiority outside city walls. Otrar was besieged in autumn 1219, and the siege dragged on for five months, but in February 1220, the city fell, and Inalchuq was executed. Genghis had meanwhile divided his forces. Leaving his sons Chagatai and Ögedei to besiege the city, he had sent Jochi northwards down the Syr Darya river and another force southwards into central Transoxiana, while he and Tolui took the main Mongol army across the Kyzylkum Desert and suprised the garrison of Bukhara in a pincer movement.

Bukhara's citadel was captured in February 1220, and Genghis moved against Muhammad's residence Samarkand, which fell the following month. Bewildered by the speed of the Mongol conquests, Muhammad fled from Balkh and was closely followed by Jebe and Subutai. The two generals pursued the Khwarazmshah until he died from dysentry on a Caspian Sea island in winter 1220–1221 afterr he had nominated his eldest son, Jalal al-Din, as his successor. Jebe and Subutai then set out on a  expedition around the Caspian Sea. Later called the "Great Raid", it lasted four years and saw the Mongols come into contact with Europe for the first time. Meanwhile, the Khwarazmian capital, Gurganj, was being besieged by Genghis's three eldest sons. The long siege ended in spring 1221 amid brutal urban conflict. Jalal al-Din moved southwards to Afghanistan, gathered forces on the way and defeated a Mongol unit commanded by Shigi Qutuqu, Genghis's adopted son, in the Battle of Parwan. Jalal al-Din was weakened by arguments among his commanders, and after losing decisively at the Battle of the Indus in November 1221, he was compelled to escape across the Indus River into India.

Genghis's youngest son Tolui was concurrently conducting a brutal campaign in the regions of Khorasan. Every city that resisted was destroyed: Nishapur, Merv and Herat, three of the largest and wealthiest cities in the world, were annihilated. This campaign established Genghis's lasting image as a ruthless, inhumane conqueror. Contemporary Persian historians placed the death toll from the three sieges alone at over 5.7 million. a number that is regarded as grossly exaggerated by modern scholars. Nevertheless, even a total death toll of 1.25 million for the entire campaign, as estimated by John Man, would have been a demographic catastrophe.

 Return to China and final campaign (1222–1227) 
Genghis abruptly halted his Central Asian campaigns in 1221. Initially aiming to return via India, Genghis realised that the heat and humidity of the South Asian climate impeded his army's skills, and the omens were additionally unfavourable. Although the Mongols spent much of 1222 repeatedly overcoming rebellions in Khorasan, they withdrew completely from the region to avoid overextending themselves and set their new frontier on the Amu Darya River. During his lengthy return journey, Genghis prepared a new administrative division to govern the conquered territories and appointed  (commissioners,  "those who press the seal") and  (local officials) to manage the region back to normalcy. He also summoned and spoke with the Taoist patriarch Changchun in the Hindu Kush. The khan listened attentively to Changchun's teachings and granted his followers numerous privileges, including tax exemptions and authority over all monks throughout the empire. a grant that the Taoists would later use to try to gain superiority over Buddhism.

The usual reason given for the halting of the campaign is that the Western Xia, having declined to provide auxiliaries for the 1219 invasion, had additionally disobeyed Muqali in his campaign against the remaining Jin in Shaanxi. Timothy May has disputed that by arguing that the Xia fought in concert with Muqali until his death in 1223, when, frustrated by Mongol control and sensing an opportunity with Genghis campaigning in Central Asia, they ceased fighting. In either case, Genghis initially attempted to resolve the situation diplomatically, but when the Xia elite failed to come to an agreement on the hostages whom they were to send to the Mongols, he lost patience.

Returning to Mongolia in early 1225, Genghis spent the year in preparation for a campaign against them. It began in the first months of 1226 with the capture of Khara-Khoto on the Xia's western border. The invasion proceeded rapidly. Genghis ordered for the cities of the Gansu Corridor be sacked to one by one and granted clemency only to a few. Having crossed the Yellow River in the autumn, the Mongols besieged what is now Lingwu, just  south of the Xia capital, Zhongxing, in November. On 4 December, Genghis decisively defeated a Xia relief army; the khan left the siege of the capital to his generals and moved southwards with Subutai to plunder and to secure Jin territories.

 Death and aftermath 

Genghis fell from his horse while hunting in the winter of 1226–1227 and became increasingly ill during the following months. That slowed the siege of Zhongxing's progress, as his sons and commanders urged him to end the campaign and to return to Mongolia to recover. They argued that the Xia would still be there another year. Incensed by insults from Xia's leading commander, Genghis insisted for the siege to be continued. He died on either 18 or 25 August 1227, but his death was kept a closely-guarded secret, and Zhongxing, unaware, fell the following month. The city was put to the sword, and its population was treated with extreme savagery. The Xia civilisation was essentially extinguished in what Man described as a "very successful ethnocide". The exact nature of the khan's death has been the subject of intense speculation. Rashid al-Din and the History of Yuan mention he suffered from an illness: possibly malaria, typhus, or bubonic plague. Marco Polo claimed that he was shot by an arrow during a siege, and Carpini reported that Genghis was struck by lightning. Legends sprang up around the event; the most famous recounts how the beautiful Gurbelchin, formerly the Xia emperor's wife, injured Genghis's genitals with a dagger during sex.

After his death, Genghis was transported back to Mongolia and buried on or near the sacred Burkhan Khaldun peak, in the Khentii Mountains, a site that he had chosen years earlier. Specific details of the funeral procession and burial were not made public knowledge; the mountain, declared  ( "Great Taboo"; i.e. prohibited zone), was out of bounds to all but its Uriankhai guard. When Ögedei acceded to the throne in 1229, the grave was honoured with three days of offerings and the sacrifice of thirty maidens. Paul Ratchnevsky theorised that the Mongols, who had no knowledge of embalming techniques, may have buried the khan in the Ordos to avoid his body decomposing in the summer heat en route to Mongolia, but Atwood rejects that hypothesis.

Succession
The tribes of the Mongol steppe had no fixed succession system but often defaulted to some form of ultimogeniture, the succession of the youngest son, because he would have had the least time to gain a following for himself and needed the help of his father's inheritance. However, that type of inheritance applied only to property, not to titles.

The Secret History records that Genghis chose his successor while he prepared for the Khwarazmian campaigns in 1219; Rashid al-Din, on the other hand, states that the decision came before Genghis's final campaign against the Xia. Regardless of the date, there were five possible candidates: Genghis's four sons and his youngest brother, Temüge, who had the weakest claim and was never seriously considered. Even though there was a strong possibility that was illegitimate, Genghis was not particularly concerned by that, but he and Jochi became increasingly estranged over time because of Jochi's preoccupation with his own appanage. After the siege of Gurganj, he only reluctantly participated in besieging the wealthy city that would become part of his territory, and he failed to give Genghis the normal share of the booty, which exacerbated tensions. Genghis was angered by Jochi's refusal to return to him in 1223 and was considering sending Ögedei and Chagatai to bring him to heel when news came that Jochi had died from an illness.

Chagatai's attitude towards Jochi's possible succession( he had termed his elder brother "a Merkit bastard" and had brawled with him in front of their father) led Genghis to view him as uncompromising, arrogant and narrow-minded, despite his great knowledge of Mongol legal customs. His elimination left Ögedei and Tolui as the two primary candidates. Tolui was unquestionably superior in military terms since his campaign in Khorasan had broken the Khwarazmian Empire, and his elder brother was far less able as a commander. Ögedei was also known to drink excessively even by Mongol standards, which eventually caused his death in 1241. However, he possessed talents that all of his brothers lacked: he was generous and generally well-liked. Aware of his own lack of military skill, he trusted his capable subordinates and, unlike his elder brothers, compromised on issues; he was also more likely to preserve Mongol traditions than Tolui, whose wife Sorghaghtani, herself a Nestorian Christian, was a patron of many religions including Islam. Ögedei was thus recognised as the heir to the Mongol throne.

Serving as regent after Genghis's death, Tolui established a precedent for the customary traditions after a khan's death. They included the halting of all military offensives involving Mongol troops, the establishment of a lengthy mourning period overseen by the regent, and the holding of a  to nominate successors and select them. For Tolui, that presented an opportunity. He was still a viable candidate for succession and had the support of the family of Jochi. However, any general , attended by the commanders whon Genghis had promoted and honoured, would observe their former ruler's desires without question and appoint Ögedei as ruler. It has been suggested that Tolui's reluctance to hold the  was driven by the knowledge of the threat that it posed to his ambitions. In the end, Tolui had to be persuaded by his advisor Yelü Chucai to hold the . In 1229, it crowned Ögedei as khan, with Tolui in attendance.

Family
Börte, whom Temüjin married , remained his senior wife. She gave birth to four sons and five daughters, all of whom became influential figures in the empire. Genghis granted Börte's sons lands and property through the Mongol appanage system, andhe secured marriage alliances by marrying her daughters to important families. Her children were:
 Qojin, a daughter born , who later married Butu of the Ikires, one of Temüjin's earliest and closest supporters and the widower of Temülün.
 Jochi, a son born  after Börte's kidnapping, whose paternity was thus suspect even though Temüjin accepted his legitimacy. Jochi predeceased Genghis; his appanage, along the Irtysh River and extending into Siberia, evolved into the Golden Horde.
 Chagatai, a son born ; his appanage was the former Qara Khitai territories surrounding Almaligh in Turkestan, which became the Chagatai Khanate.
 Ögedei, a son born , who received lands in Dzungaria and succeeded his father as ruler of the empire.
 Checheyigen, a daughter born , whose marriage to Törelchi secured the loyalty of the Oirats to the north.
 Alaqa, a daughter born , who married several members of the Ongud tribe between 1207 and 1225.
 Tümelün, a daughter born , who married Chigu of the Onggirat tribe.
 Tolui, a son born , who received lands near the Altai Mountains as an appanage; two of his sons, Möngke and Kublai, later ruled the empire, and another, Hulagu, founded the Ilkhanate.
 Al-Altan, a daughter born , married the powerful Uighur ruler Barchuk. Shortly after the accession of Güyük Khan in the 1240s, she was tried and executed on charges that were later suppressed.

After Börte's final childbirth, Temüjin began to acquire a number of junior wives through conquest. They had all been princesses or queens, and Temüjin married them to demonstrate his political ascendancy. They included the Kereit princess Ibaqa; the Tatar sisters Yesugen and Yesui; Qulan, a Merkit; Gürbesu, the queen of the Naiman Tayang Khan; and two Chinese princesses, Chaqa and Qiguo, of the Western Xia and Jin dynasties, respectively. The children of the junior wives were always subservient to those of Börte, with daughters married off to seal lesser alliances and sons, such as Qulan's child , never a candidate for succession.

Character and achievements
No eyewitness description or contemporaneous depiction of Genghis Khan survives. The Persian chronicler Juzjani and the Song diplomat Zhao Hong provide the two earliest descriptions. Both recorded that he was tall and strong with a powerful stature. Zhao wrote that Genghis had a broad brow and long beard, and Juzjani commented on his cat's eyes and lack of grey hair. The Secret History records that Börte's father remarked on Genghis's "flashing eyes and lively face" when he met him.

Atwood has suggested that many of Genghis Khan's values, especially the emphasis he placed on an orderly society, derive from his turbulent youth. He valued loyalty above all, and mutual fidelity became a cornerstone of his new nation. Genghis did not find it difficult to gain the allegiance of others: he was superbly charismatic even as a youth, as is shown by the number of people who left existing social roles behind to join him. Although his trust was hard to earn, if he felt loyalty was assured, he granted his total confidence in return. Recognised for his generosity towards his followers, Genghis unhesitatingly rewarded previous assistance. The  most honoured at the 1206  were those who had accompanied him since the beginning, and those who had sworn the Baljuna Covenant with him at his lowest point. He took responsibility for the families of  who were killed in battle or otherwise fell on hard times by raising a tax to provide them with clothing and sustenance.

The principal source of steppe wealth was post-battle plunder of which a leader would normally claim a large share. Genghis eschewed that custom and chose instead to divide booty equally between himself and all his men. Disliking any form of luxury, he extolled the simple life of the nomad in a letter to Changchun and objected to being addressed with obsequious flattery. He encouraged his companions to address him informally, give him advice and criticise his mistakes. Genghis's openness to criticism and willingness to learn saw him seeking the knowledge of family members, companions, neighbouring states and enemies. He sought and gained knowledge of sophisticated weaponry from China and the Muslim world; appropriated the Uyghur alphabet with the help of the captured scribe Tata-tonga; and employed numerous specialists across legal, commercial, and administrative fields. He also understood the need for a smooth succession, and modern historians agree he showed good judgement in choosing his heir.

Although he is today renowned for his military conquests, very little is known about Genghis's personal generalship. His skills were more suited to identifying potential commanders. His institution of a meritocratic command structure gave the Mongol army military superiority even though it was not technologically or tactically innovative. The army that Genghis created was characterised by its draconian discipline, ability to gather and use military intelligence efficiently, mastery of psychological warfare, and willingness to be utterly ruthless. Genghis thoroughly enjoyed exacting vengeance on his enemies. The concept lay at the heart of  (), the steppe code of justice. In exceptional circumstances, such as when Muhammad of Khwarazm executed his envoys, the need for vengeance overrode all other considerations.

Genghis came to believe that the supreme deity Tengri had ordained a great destiny for him. Initially, the bounds of his ambition were limited to Mongolia, but as success followed success, and the reach of the Mongol nation expanded, he and his followers came to believe he was embodied with  (). Believing that he had an intimate connection with heaven, anyone who did not recognise his right to world power was treated as an enemy. That viewpoint allowed Genghis to rationalise any hypocritical or duplicitous moments on his own part, such as killing his  (blood brother) Jamukha or killing  who wavered in their loyalties.

Legacy and historical assessment
Genghis Khan left a vast and controversial legacy. His unification of the Mongol tribes and his foundation of the largest contiguous state in world history "permanently alter[ed] the worldview of European, Islamic, [and] East Asian civilizations", according to Atwood. His conquests enabled the creation of Eurasian trading systems unprecedented in their scale, which brought wealth and security to the tribes. Although he very likely did not codify the written body of laws known as the Great Yasa, he reorganiseed the legal system and established a powerful judicial authority under Shigi Qutuqu.

On the other hand, his conquests were ruthless and brutal. The prosperous civilizations of China, Central Asia, and Persia were devastated by the Mongol assaults and underwent multigenerational trauma and suffering as a result. Perhaps Genghis's greatest failing was his inability to create a working succession system. His division of his empire into appanages, meant to ensure stability, actually did the reverse, as local and state-wide interests diverged, and the empire began to divide into the Golden Horde, the Chagatai Khanate, the Ilkhanate, and the Yuan dynasty in the late 1200s. In the mid-1990s, the Washington Post acclaimed Genghis Khan as the "man of the millennium" who "embodied the half-civilized, half-savage duality of the human race". This complex image has remained prevalent in modern scholarship, with historians emphasising both his positive and negative contributions.

 Mongolia 
For many centuries, Genghis Khan was remembered in Mongolia as a religious figure, not a political one. After Altan Khan converted to Tibetan Buddhism in the late 1500s, Genghis was deified and given a central role in the Mongolian religious tradition. As a deity, Genghis drew upon Buddhist, shamanistic, and folk traditions; for example, he was defined as a new incarnation of a chakravartin (idealised ruler) like Ashoka, or of Vajrapani, the martial bodhisattva; he was connected genealogically to the Buddha and to ancient Buddhist kings; he was invoked during weddings and festivals; and he took a large role in ancestor veneration rituals. He also became the focus point of a sleeping hero legend in which he will return to help the Mongol people in a time of great need. His cult was centred on the  (), today a mausoleum in Inner Mongolia, China.

In the 19th and the early 20th century, Genghis began to be viewed as the national hero of the Mongolian people. Foreign powers recognised that. During its occupation of Inner Mongolia, the Empire of Japan funded the construction of a temple to Genghis, while both the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party used the memory of Genghis to woo potential allies during the Chinese Civil War. That attitude was maintained during World War II, when the Soviet-aligned Mongolian People's Republic promoted Genghis to build patriotic zeal against invaders; however, as he was a non-Russian hero, who could serve as an anti-communist figurehead, that attitude swiftly changed after the war's end. According to May, Genghis "was condemned as a feudal and reactionary lord [who] exploited the people". His cult was repressed, the alphabet that he chose was replaced with the Cyrillic script and celebrations planned for the 800th anniversary of his birth in 1962 were cancelled and denigrated after loud Soviet complaints. Because Chinese historians were largely more favourable towards him than their Soviet counterparts, Genghis played a minor role in the Sino-Soviet split.

The arrival of the policies of glasnost and perestroika in the 1980s paved the way for official rehabilitation. Less than two years after the 1990 revolution, Lenin Avenue in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, was renamed Chinggis Khan Avenue. Since then, Mongolia has named Chinggis Khaan International Airport and erected a large statue in Sükhbaatar Square, which was itself renamed after Genghis between 2013 and 2016. His visage appears on items ranging from postage stamps and high-value banknotes to brands of alcohol and toilet paper. In 2006, the Mongolian Parliament officially discussed the trivialisation of his name through excessive advertising.

Modern Mongolians tend to downplay Genghis's military conquests in favour of his political and civil legacy and view the destructive campaigns as "a product of their time", in the words of the historian Michal Biran, and secondary to his other contributions to Mongolian and world history. His policies, such his use of the , his establishment of the rule of law through an independent judiciary and human rights, are seen as the foundations that allowed the creation of the modern democratic Mongolian state. Viewed as someone who brought        peace and knowledge, rather than war and destruction, Genghis Khan is idealised for making Mongolia the centre of international culture for a period. He is generally recognised as the founding father of Mongolia.

Elsewhere

The historical and modern Muslim world has associated Genghis Khan with many of ideologies and beliefs. Its first instinct, as Islamic thought had never previously envisioned being ruled by a non-Muslim power, was to view Genghis as the herald of the approaching Judgemnt Day. Over time, as the world failed to end, and his descendants began converting to Islam, Muslims began to see Genghis as an instrument of God's will, which was destined to strengthen the Muslim world by cleansing its innate corruption.

In post-Mongol Asia, Genghis was also a source of political legitimacy because his descendants had been recognised as the only ones entitled to reign. As a result, aspiring potentates who were not descended from him had to justify their rule by nominating puppet rulers of Genghis's dynasty or stressing their own connections to him. Most notably, the great conqueror Timur, who established his own empire in Central Asia, did both. He was obliged to pay homage to Genghis's descendants Soyurgatmish and Sultan Mahmud, and his propaganda campaigns vastly exaggerated the prominence of his ancestor Qarachar Noyan, one of Genghis's lesser commanders, and depicted him as Genghis's blood relative and second-in-command. He also married at least two of Genghis's descendants. Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India, in turn derived his authority through his descent from both Timur and Genghis. Until the 18th century in Central Asia, Genghis was considered the progenitor of the social order and was second only to the prophet Muhammad in legal authority.

With the rise of Arab nationalism in the 19th century, the Arab world began to view Genghis increasingly negatively. Today, he is perceived as the ultimate "accursed enemy", a "barbarian savage who began the demolition of civilization which culminated in" the Siege of Baghdad in 1258 by his grandson Hulegu Khan. Similarly, Genghis is viewed extremely negatively in Russia, where historians have consistently portrayed the rule of the Golden Horde, the "Tatar Yoke", as backwards, destructive, inimical to all progress and the reason for all of Russia's flaws. His treatment in modern Central Asia and Turkey is more ambivalent: his position as a non-Muslim means that other national traditions and heroes, such as Timur and the Seljuks, are viewed more highly.

Under the Yuan dynasty in China, Genghis was revered as the nation's creator and remained in that position even after the foundation of the Ming dynasty in 1368. Although the late Ming somewhat disavowed his memory, the positive viewpoint was restored under the Manchu Qing dynasty (1644–1911), which positioned itself as his heirs. The rise of 20th-century Chinese nationalism initially caused the denigration of Genghis as a traumatic occupier, but he was later resurrected as a useful political symbol on a variety of issues. Modern Chinese historiography has generally viewed Genghis positively, and he has been portrayed as a Chinese hero. In contemporary Japan, he is most known for the legend that he was originally Minamoto no Yoshitsune, a samurai and tragic hero who was forced to commit seppuku in 1189.

The Western world, which was never directly affected by Genghis, has viewed him in shifting and contrasting ways. During the 14th century, as shown by the works of Marco Polo and Geoffrey Chaucer, he was seen as a just and wise ruler, but during the 18th century, he came to embody the Enlightenment stereotype of a tyrannical Oriental despot, and by the 20th century, he represented a prototypical barbarian warlord. In recent decades, Western scholarship has become increasingly nuanced to view Genghis as a more complex individual.

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Category:1160s births
Category:1227 deaths
Category:Mongol emperors