Dan Snow's History Hit - Genghis Khan

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

Genghis Khan roughly translates to 'Universal Ruler', a fitting name for the most famous nomadic conqueror to have ever lived. He was born as Temüjin, outcast by his tribe as a young child and left to fend for his family in the wild. But the determined young man would go on to unite the Mongolian clans and through warfare, trade and diplomacy, carve out the largest contiguous land empire to have ever existed. So what did the world that he was born into look like? How did he unite the rival clans, and go on to dominate the 13th century world?In the second episode of this two-part series on nomadic conquerors, Professor Kenneth W. Harl of Tulane University takes us through this remarkable story, and compares Genghis' life with that of Attila.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.PLEASE VOTE NOW! for Dan Snow's History Hit in the British Podcast Awards Listener's Choice category here. Every vote counts, thank you!Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.If you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can email us at [e-mail], we'd love to hear from you! 

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. At its height, the Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th centuries was the largest contiguous land empire in history. That's the largest empire which is all connected up with each other in history. It stretched from the Sea of Japan on the east of Eurasia all the way to parts of Eastern Europe, almost to the gates of Vienna. It stretched from the Arctic down to India and the Iranian plateau. This empire was forged by a man we remember as Genghis Khan. We should probably refer to him as Chinggis, which is marginally closer to the original pronunciation. Genghis or Chinggis has connotations of toughness, righteousness, strength, and Khan means ruler. Another theory is it just means universal ruler. Under Genghis Khan,

the Mongols were probably one of the most formidable military forces that ever galloped across the surface of the earth. They moved so fast they could fight out of the marching season when the snow was still on the ground. They were brutally effective at terrifying their opponents into surrender and then having conquered a people they were very good at analysing their strengths and absorbing them into their military machine. They were unpopular as you might expect among their enemies. A 13th century European chronicler called the Mongols a detestable nation of Satan that poured out like devils from hell. But I think the reality of the Mongol Empire was rather different.

Here to tell us all about the Mongols, and Genghis Khan in particular, is Dr. Ken Hull. He's a professor of classical and Byzantine history at Tulane University in New Orleans. And he's just written an enormous book called Empire of the Steps. If you're a regular listener to the podcast, you'll have heard that he was on yesterday in the podcast that precedes this one in your feed. He was talking about that other great step conqueror, Attila the Hun. And at the end of this episode, we compare those two extraordinary commanders. Enjoy.

T-minus 10. Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off. And the shuttle has cleared the tower. Ken, great to have you back on the podcast.

Previously, we were talking about Attila the Hun. We're now going to talk about that other world-changing, mighty general of the steppe, conqueror of the steppe and elsewhere, Genghis Khan. Before we get into him, tell me about the world from which he emerged, how those tribes lived, where they lived, and what their political organization was, their unity or lack of it. Let's look at the world of which he emerged, how those tribes lived, where they lived, and what their political organization was, their unity or lack of it. Let's look at the world of Genghis Khan. Those would be the eastern steppes, the grasslands east of the Altai Mountains. It would

include modern Mongolia, and that would stretch to the foothills of Manchuria. To the south, you would have the Gobi Desert, which acts as a barrier in part to the world of China. When Genghis Khan was born, he was born into a world of warring tribes, and this was usually the case on the steppes ever since the nomads first appeared, which would be somewhere around 3000 BC or somewhat earlier, when they had domesticated the horse and the means to traverse the steppes in order to seek grasslands and water for their flocks. The Mongols practiced this form of pastoral life and had 4,000 years. At the time of Genghis's birth, somewhere around 1162, the date is disputed. It could be anywhere within a decade because our sources are very vague and contradictory about it.

For 400 years, there had been no major confederation on the steppes, and the Mongol-speaking tribes had largely displaced Turkish-speaking tribes who had migrated out of the region west. Their life was about as difficult as you can imagine. The eastern steppes are dry. Water is all essential. The sacred valleys of the Onan River and its tributaries would have been the center of the Mongol world. It's overlooked by great sacred mountains. And there's constant movement seasonally that would lead to border

raids among the tribes, wife stealing. Genghis's father stole his wife. Genghis Khan, his personal name was Temujin, had his wife, Berthe, stolen by the same tribe back in revenge. This was common. It led to blood feuds. In fact, Yesugei, the father of Genghis Khan, was murdered by his hosts of another tribe when they recognized, oh, we have a blood vengeance out against him, and so they quietly poisoned his food during the dinner, and Yesugei went home to die a lingering death. These types of clashes, feuds, cattle rustling, this is the stuff of legend and epic poems. The Mongols and their associated tribes were very conscious of descent,

whether you descended from noble ancestors, white bones, or lesser ancestors, white bones, or lesser ancestors, black bones. There was constant jostling within the hierarchy of warriors. And so it was a violent and divided land and had been so for, as I said, close to four centuries. To the south, there were three great Chinese empires, two of them ruled by non-Chinese dynasties, the Shia occupying the far west, the vital borderlands on the Silk Road, the northern regions under the Jin emperors, who were descended from Jherkins, who were a forest people. Their empire may have had anywhere from 30 to 40 million residents.

It was largely a Chinese empire ruled by a foreign military elite, and the Jin emperors were extremely good at encouraging blood foods and confusion on the eastern steppes. To the far south was the great empire of the Sung, which was the heir of the Confucian traditions. And all three of these Chinese empires were constantly at odds with each other, and they pretty much regarded the nomads on the steppes as outlandish barbarians, easily bribed to fight among each other. We have experts who go in there and know how to bribe them.

And they're such silly people. You know, they'll take a low amount of silk just to kill each other. And so this was the state of affairs when Temujin was born, and it had been for a long time. You mentioned Temujin's father was killed, poisoned. Him and his family fell in very hard times as a boy. Yeah, he was about, probably about 10 years old at the time. He had just been betrothed to the daughter of the chief of another clan, Berthe, who became his wife later. They would have actually married when he was around 16. She's actually a bit older than he. And Temujin immediately sent home. His father died just as he arrived.

And then the tribe believed that this family, without an adult male, was not worth keeping around. And according to the secret history, they abandoned him. They simply took off. His mother, Holum, she pleaded with them to stay on, but no, they were thrown on their own resources. And this gets back to that first question about life on the steppes. Without followers and, you know, large number of stock animals, sheep, cattle, horses, they were really reduced to a meager existence in the forest zones on the edge of the steppes, hunting and fishing. And it took all of the wits for this small band of people, Temujin and his three brothers, his sister and two half-brothers, his mom and his stepmom, because his father had two wives. They managed to survive. And the only way, he grew up to be a great warrior. He knocked off

his older half-brother so he would be leader of the group. His mother was enraged by this, but the only way he could make anything of himself is to pledge his service to others. One was a leading prince called Jamukha. They became Anda, or blood brothers, probably when Jangus was around 16, 17 years old. They were both regarded as great warriors. And they took service with Tugrul Khan, who was the head of the Karyate tribe. And it was that arrangement, serving a greater master, that gave the future Genghis Khan the opportunity to wage war and build up a reputation and attract followers. And for the first 20 years of his career,

he was really acting as a subordinate rather than as his own master. war and build up a reputation and attract followers. And for the first 20 years of his career, he was really acting as a subordinate rather than as his own master. And the secret history tries to downplay this and probably overemphasizes Temujin's role. And Jamukha was probably the leading figure of the Karayate Confederation rather than Temujin. They broke somewhere in 1187, 1188, and then for the next, oh, 15 years or so, they constantly fought a series of battles for supremacy among the eastern tribes, and Genghis ended up winning and eventually was proclaimed lord of all the people who dwell under the felt tents,

that is, the tribes of the eastern steppes, in 1206. It was a long road to power, and how rare was it that they were all brought together, all the people who slept under the felt temps, that is the tribes of the eastern steppes in 1206. It was a long road to power. And how rare was it that they were all brought together, all the people who slept under the tents? This had not been done in over 400 years. And then before that, you would have these periods, starting with the Shuangnu in the 2nd century BC, you would have a great confederation that would last maybe three generations at most.

Usually it started to break up in the second generation. You had the Ruan Khanate, and that's about it. You really had only two really great nomadic confederations on the eastern steppes before the Mongols. You had the Northern Wei, who were a nomadic tribe ruling northern China, extremely significant group, and I really devote a lot of time to them because they built this remarkable composite state. You had a succession of Turkish Khanates, three of them. But ever since the Uyghur Khanate collapsed in the 840s, there'd been no power on the Eastern steppes. There'd been no unity. So this is just uniting the people of the Eastern steppe itself

is a world historic achievement. But now that's the epilogue of the Genghis story. We're not even onto the main narrative yet, right? His greatest victories lay ahead of him, and in 1260, he's in his 40s. Hey, that's prime of life, Ken. Ken, what's the surprise in your voice then? If you got to 45, you were doing really well. If you lived past 45,

you're probably going to live a very long time, but very few people would get there. And you have to remember, the infant mortality rate was hideous in any pre-industrial society and I imagine Ken that fighting in all those battles is not exactly safe either

and do we think Temujin or Genghis has become when he's fighting that battle for paramountcy in the eastern steppe is he personally in the line of battle yes he is and on two occasions he was badly wounded by an arrow

his personal bodyguard and his four dogs of war, the most famous being Jedi and Subotai, who became his greatest generals, these were all men who fought with him in the ranks, and on two occasions are actually responsible for tending his wounds and healing him from a poison arrow, in one instance. Any steppe ruler carried all sorts of wounds and scars in battle. The most famous, as we're not discussing, Tamerlane, had suffered two injuries, one to his arm and one to his leg, and he walked with a pronounced limp. And the body was later exhumed and

examined by Soviet archaeologists and biologists to determine if this was true, and it is. And then they closed him up and put him back in his tomb, and the next day the Germans invaded Soviet Russia, and that started the curse of Tamerlane. Don't mess with the bodies of great rulers. In the case of Genghis, yes, he would show the visible marks and wounds of having fought in the ranks of his army. He was an indomitable campaigner. When he died in 1227, he was in the midst of preparing a new campaign against the Jin emperors of northern China,

whom he had defeated earlier, and now he's going to knock them out entirely. And that job fell to his son, Ogedai, who followed him. He never stopped. He was constantly on the move. He had no capital city, would ride great distances to show his presence among the various tribes to make sure his power was effective. It is an incredibly hard living life. Of course, he was obstinous in his habits. He had to be in order to keep his health to maintain that position. And we tend to forget that. This is not a ruler living in a palace surrounded by a bureaucracy taking care of daily matters. He answers the petitions directly.

He's on the move all the time when he's not campaigning. And that's the life of a nomadic conqueror. Well, Ken, let's get some of those conquests. What's first on his list? It's North China, is it? Yes, in two different campaigns. When he became Great Khan in 1206, he faces a problem that all of these conquerors do who put together confederations. That is, he has tribes that are immediately loyal to them that expect great wealth and gifts. He then has a series of tributary tribes who provide manpower, but also get rewarded, not as lavishly as the inner circle. And the only way to obtain these gifts is to somehow exact them from the Chinese empires. And the two northern ones on his borders would be the Chia State in the far west, which controls

what's called the Gansu Corridor, which is this fertile neck of land that connects the Tarim Basin, where there are various important caravan cities, and China through the Great Jade Gate, and then the northern Chinese state and part of Manchuria ruled by the Jin emperors. They were directly on his border, and the Jin, particularly the ruling emperor at the time, Xuanzang, would be seen as the ancestral foe. He had incited rebellions among the Jin, particularly the ruling emperor at the time, Suang Zong, would be seen as the ancestral foe. He had incited rebellions among the tribes, and Genghis Khan had to have a reckoning with this emperor because the Jin court was obviously going to do everything in their power

to break up this confederation. As soon as the news arrived that there was now a new confederation on the steppes, everyone at the Jin court, Songdu, which is near Beijing today, would have just, oh my god, now what do we do? This was unexpected. How did this happen? So war was likely, if not inevitable. He attacks the western state first, and he gains two significant advantages. There's some serious military setbacks, and he realizes he has to hire a siege corps. These are largely Chinese men who would know how to build the engines of war to take cities. And he signs a treaty, the Emperor of the Chia State, which

gives him safe passage into the Jin Empire so that he can flank the Jin from the west, as well as attack from the north. And in 1211, he opens that war, which goes on for some four years. The improvements in his military show well. He captures Jin cities. The capital, Zongdu, is razed to the ground. It is a tremendous massacre. This is typical warfare on the steppes. When you defeat an opposing tribe, you usually kill the males. You may take some of the women, but you generally killed off the tribe because you couldn't afford to feed these extra mouths. And the war arose in the first place over who had grazing rights and right to waterholes. Well, now this is applied against great cities on a mass scale as an act of terror. And it is a deliberate act of terror used

by Mongol and earlier nomadic conquerors as a way to break resistance. Attila the Hun, for instance, was charged with the same destruction of Roman cities. If you resist at all, that's an excuse to raze the city to the ground once you take it. If you surrender immediately, they may offer you terms, but the terms are harsh. Genghis Khan would deport all the skilled craftsmen to Mongolia, men who could build things. He would constrict the men into his army and use them essentially as cannon fodder to assault other towns. So the Mongols waged war ferociously. And even by the standards of the Middle Ages, and believe me, there was nothing like the Geneva Convention practiced by anyone. Even by Christians against

Christians or Muslims against Muslims, the rules of war are as harsh as they can be. Even in that world, the way the Mongols waged war was more ferocious than anyone else. And it did have a reaction. It terrorized populations. Cities surrendered at the rumor of the approach of a Mongol army. And Genghis could calculate this use of terror to an enormous effect. He's probably the greatest master in the use of terror to get the defeated to surrender and accept his rule. And that's what this first war in China reveals against the Jin. The Jin fled south to Kaifeng. They relocated their capital on the Yellow River. It was a rump

state. And when Genghis, in his later years, planned his final campaign, it was to knock out this kingdom. So these were his first two wars. And by 1215, he essentially controls northern China. Then he's drawn west through a series of strange diplomatic events in which he finds himself at war with Muhammad Shah, the ruler of a state called Khorasan, which is essentially today, we'd call it Transoxiana. That would be today Uzbekistan, part of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan. This is a world that would be Iranian, largely in language and culture at the time, but had many Turkish speakers among them. Now it is largely a Turkish-speaking land. That's a later transformation. And this was the great state of Eastern Islam. And when this war broke out, Genghis Khan waged a war over 3,000 miles away from his homeland.

And it is strategically his masterpiece. He concentrated the full Mongolian army, probably over 100,000 warriors, on the Jaksartes River, which is the boundary between the steppes in central and Transaxiana. It was a logistical masterpiece. He had the steppes cleared. All the Mongols are riding with five or ten remounts. They moved rapidly. So you can jump from your horse to a fresh horse. Absolutely. And that tired horse can kind of get its energy back and you can still keep going. On the move.

He arrived so early that Mohammed Shah was still mobilising his army and he was opting for defence. He underestimated the Mongols. Oh, they're just barbarians. They're here to raid, take slaves, booty and go. That would be the experience they often had with nomads. You know, they can't take cities. Well, in February or March of 1220, Genghis Khan, we use that name now, and his youngest son, Tauli, appeared suddenly before the city of Bukhara, which is one of the great cities of Muhammad Shah's state,

Bukhara and Samarkand. They're the great fabled caravan cities on the Silk Road. And the citizens are so stumped. Where did they come from? Actually, Genghis Khan crossed the Jaksertis, headed west into the Kumkam, which is the Red Desert, and then emerged out of the desert, unexpected, driving villagers and others into the city in complete panic, and his Chinese corps of engineers

started to batter the walls down. Well, the citizens surrendered, the Turkish mercenary garrison held out in the citadel was quickly overcome, and Genghis moved into the city and ordered the taking of the craftsmen and the deportations, constricted men, and then immediately marched on Sarmakhan, which essentially was the capital of this state, and took that in no time as well. And Muhammad Shah lost his nerve and fled west. He was pursued by the Mongol armies. And in the next two years, the Mongols conquer all of Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, cross the Indus Valley, and in northern India, defeat

the son of Muhammad Shah, who dared to make a stand on the Indus. He was defeated and actually swam across the river. Genghis Khan has broken out of his homeland and conquered some of the most important regions of the Islamic world. One of his columns, led by Subedai and Jedi, pursued west, crossed the Caucasus Mountains, defeated a Russian army, defeated the tribes on the Volga, and arrived west into Western Europe. Well, Russia would be the west of the Mongols. Crossed the Volga, got back to Genghis Khan and said, there's lands to conquer in the west. This would be Russia

and farther west, and the grandson of Genghis Khan would capitalize on that information. Subutai actually, in his 60s, would accompany that expedition, which was almost as spectacular as this one by Genghis. So that final expedition against Khorasan and the conquest of Eastern Islam must rank as one of the greatest military successes by any nomad. Logistically, strategically, it's brilliant. His use of engineers, his incorporation of infantry into his army, it all shows the signs of an extremely subtle mind and a great strategic genius. He really ranks up there as one of the great conquerors of all time. And that would be in the gallery of great captains like Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Caesar,

Gustavus Adolphus, one of my favourites of all time. Second to none. Second to none, Gustavus Adolphus. He's the only great commander to fall in a battle and his army still won the battle. He gets high points for that. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. Don't forget to go to the British Podcast Awards website

and vote for us in the listener award. Much appreciated. We're talking about Genghis Khan now. Chinggis Khan. More coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades.

Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Fortunately, Genghis survived all of his wars. And furthermore, what really marks him as a great ruler is on those campaigns, he decided to keep the unity of the empire, not to divide it among his four sons, and he designated his third son, Ogedei, as the successor. And it really was the best choice at the time. And Ogedei would continue the visions of conquest of his father. I would say by the time Genghis set out on that final campaign, if not earlier, he had a vision

of world conquest. He had a strategic idea. And if you look at the world the way Genghis did, that is, he's looking from the north-south. He's in the center of the world, on the steppes. He sees those Christians to the west, the Islamic world, and China. He had a global sense of his world, and that his Mongols, because they were favored by Tengri, the eternal blue sky, would be able to conquer and master all these lands. And this was the vision he transmitted to his son and grandsons. And they did their best to carry it out. And they came pretty close. The 13th century is the Mongol century. They can see Vienna. So their scouts spotted the walls of Vienna. And then in the east Japan only frustrated by the weather the kamikaze

typhoons. That's exactly it the second invasion and the Japanese after that always believed that the islands were inviolate they would never be invaded again. Ken tell me we've talked about these Mongols they're able to switch horses so it's said the Mongols traveled faster than any army subsequently up to the invention of the internal combustion engine didn't they I mean they could cover these extraordinary distances and also if they had to they could drink the blood and drink the milk of their own horses so if they didn't want one they could dispense with their slow moving logistics yeah they could live on remarkably little food and the best account of that is the travel of missions especially especially Father Giovanni Carpini in 1246, how he covered the

steps over 3,000 miles in 105 days. That beats the Pony Express three times over. And he talks how they get up before dawn and eat this kind of porridge or boiled meat, and they travel virtually all day into the night, and then they've got dried meat and kumish. Kumish is fermented mare's milk. It's alcoholic. It's the favorite beverage of the Mongols. When they offer you kumish, you have now been accepted as an anda, a blood brother of the Mongols. Father Giovanni talks a lot about the offering of kumish. He was amazed at the distances they covered, and this was in the winter, and they're going across late fall in the winter to the Mongol court. An infantry army in the Middle Ages could travel 15, 18 miles at most. They're tied to their logistics. And that assumes they're on good roads.

They're slower if it's rough terrain. If they really forced march, they might be able to do 25 miles in a day, but they're tired. An army with infantry and cavalry has to rest every sixth or seventh day so the beasts can recover. The Mongols moving with so many mounts, and they may only be 30,000 men, but they look like they're over 100,000 because there's so many horses involved. They're covering distances of 15, 16 miles a day. They're outpacing their opponents strategically by three times. Often they arrive early in the year. They're not subject to the harvests of grain.

So, for instance, the invasion of Western Europe by Batu in 1242, they're there in April. Well, no European army's moving around in April. It's still snow on the ground. They can campaign much earlier and much later in the year. And that's what took the Russian princes entirely by surprise, is how swiftly they moved. And they're able to operate in these incredibly cold temperatures in the winter

because they subsist on so much less than their European opponents or their Chinese opponents, for that matter. So strategically, they had an immense advantage. These are men who survived the life on the steppes and for whom war was a way of life. Whether you traded or raided, either way, it got you the vital goods you needed. Every free adult male was a warrior. He knew how to use the bow. He knew how to ride. He knew how to use the edge weapons in close combat. It was a ready-made army. And Giovanni's account of the Mongols is fascinating because he gives a long passage on the Mongol way of war. He also talks a great deal about the Mongol diet, and he's astounded, and he's also offended, by what the Mongols will eat. They'll eat virtually anything to sustain themselves, all sorts of grisly little animals that no one else would even bother to hunt or use,

but the Mongols are able to skin them and turn them into dry meat and provisions. And that's one of their great achievements, is their ability to subsist on very little in harsh conditions. And that gives them an edge over all their opponents. When Genghis is now ruling over this vast empire, how does he treat these new peoples, whether it's Chinese people, Persians, Indians, Russians, what status they have within the Mongol Empire? Well, once the initial conquests are over, the Mongols are very tolerant in two ways. First, they're tolerant on religions. They allow the practice of all faiths, but they do not favor any one particular faith.

Genghis Khan, after his conquest of Khorasan, actually traveled around and saw mosques and madrasis and even probably through translators conversed with imams. And he found much of value in Islam. He didn't understand why you had to go to Mecca. That made no sense to him. And also, you know, this idea of one god. Well, that's their god, but we have Tengri, and the Christians have a god, and they're all probably part of some same divine essence. So while the Mongols in some ways inclined to a type of monotheism,

they were incredibly tolerant. And this also made them an exception in their age. We have many cases of Christian missionaries showing up to a Mongol prince who's reputedly a Christian, usually an historian Christian. And they think, well, this is our entree into converting all the Mongols, and they're all going to obey the Pope, and we're going to all march and take Jerusalem from the Muslims. And what the Mongol prince tells them, yeah, I'm a Christian, but I'm a Mongol first. My loyalty is to Khan. My loyalty is to my nation. And many faiths served the Mongol Khans, Muslims from Iran, Chinese. All of them were acceptable once they accepted the Yasa,

the law of the Khan. Once they pledged their loyalty, once they drank the kumish, they are now part of the Mongol state. As for the subject people, so long as they paid their tribute, the Mongols would impose a justice and order. And once the conquests are over, the initial stage of the massacres and the brutal fighting, there was something of a Pax Mongolica. Trade was protected and prospered. It soared. The Polos could never have traveled the way they did had not the Mongols imposed that order over Central Asia, and especially the area that was the cockpit of so many wars. Marco, his father, and his uncle were able to present themselves at the court and make a fortune, which they managed to lose on their way back home. And hence, Marco Polo had to write a bestseller in order to recover his

losses. But the career was premised on the fact that Kublai Khan ruled Eurasia and imposed a peace over the whole of the land. And so in that regard, as rulers, they were really quite tolerant once the conquests were over. Ken, let's finish up this little mini-series. We've talked about Genghis today. We released a podcast on Attila yesterday. They made war in the same way. They were both extraordinarily effective conquerors. Did they have other similar leadership styles? Well, I would say with both Attila and Genghis Khan, we were just speaking of, is that in terms of their religious outlook, they were pious, but they were incredibly tolerant. They tolerated all the faiths within their empire. I think both of them also shared a strategic vision of some kind of world empire that they would eventually head up and rule their world and pass it on to heirs. Unfortunately,

Attila died too young to do this, whereas Genghis Khan did achieve it. Another thing about them is how much each appreciated the arts and advantages of the sedentary civilizations. One would be literacy. You're dealing with nomadic peoples who are largely, if not entirely, illiterate. Nonetheless, as they build these states, they come to see the need for keeping records. In the case of Attila, he had scribes who would write Latin and Greek. In the case of Genghis Khan, it would be Chinese ideograms. And eventually, a Mongol script was devised in order to record the Mongolian language in writing.

One wonders if Attila would have done the same if he had lived longer. They also understand the value of various craftsmen and other types of technology. And the Mongols are really responsible for the transmission of technology across all of Eurasia. That's how gunpowder got to Europe. Medicinal goods, plants, animals were exchanged. The concept of paper money was carried from China and the Mongols tried to impose it in Iran as a way of extending currency. So they are very quick and very adept at learning anything from the sedentary civilizations that will allow them to survive. And that's true of all nomads. They are extremely fast learners. And the learning curve is quite high for both of these men, in my opinion.

What they inherited as an empire and what they knew about their empire and how they wanted their empire to evolve probably changed dramatically by the time of their deaths. And it speaks of a very, very subtle mind that can think in possibilities and can adapt rapidly and quickly. I would attribute those characteristics to both men, and that accounts for their success. And above all, the descriptions that come from us, the Priscus description of Attila, a written one, and that Chinese painting that is based on originals that were commissioned in the reign of Kublai Khan, which shows Genghis Khan and the descriptions of him in the secret history. Both of these men had penetrating eyes,

the ability to judge men rapidly, the ability to win loyalty and to get the best out of their supporters, and to reward honorable, faithful service generously. And not to think of themselves so much in personal luxury and any kind of easy life. Those are characteristics they also share, and that's why they were such great supporters. In the case of Genghis Khan, for instance, he captured all these beautiful women. He had a huge wagon train of them. But he handed them out as wives and concubines to all of his supporters.

And again, these supporters weren't necessarily Mongols by birth. They were Mongols by choice. Probably three-quarters of his army were actually Turkish speakers, but now they're Mongols. They have joined the Mongol nation. Most of Attila's supporters were probably Germanic speakers, but they were now Huns because they were at the court of Attila. I'll close with this tolerance and the ability to win over the subject peoples

from an excerpt from Priscus, who went to the Hun court. As he was getting ready to leave, he encountered a man who was dressed as a Mongol but spoke perfect Greek. And he inquired, well, who are you? How do you speak Greek, the language of the Eastern Roman Empire? And he revealed he was a Roman. He had been captured and he had risen to high rank in the Hun court, and yet he preferred to stay with the Huns rather than to go back to the Roman Empire, because the Huns, Attila, rewarded loyalty generously and implemented the laws effectively, quickly. The laws may have been harsh, but they were universal, whereas Roman law, so brilliant in its conception, was usually

implemented by corrupt officials. It was unfair. Punishments were not legal. And with tears in his eyes, this man said, I find a better life among the barbarians than among the Romans. And Priscus had no way to counter the argument. These nomadic conquerors, contrary to what we would think, the argument. These nomadic conquerors, contrary to what we would think, won over the loyalty and service of many of their subject peoples. Both rulers were adept at doing that, and that accounts for the success of their empires. Ken, thank you very much for that tour de force. People, if you want to hear more about Attila, go back and listen to the previous podcast on this feed in which you'll hear Kenneth Harle talk about Attila with as much fluency and knowledge and expertise as he's just done about the mighty Genghis Khan. Thank you very much.

What's your book called, Ken? It's called Empires of the Steppes and How the Nomadic Peoples Forged the Modern World. There's several subtitles. I think they differ between Britain and the United States, but it's the same book. And I had a delight in writing it. And now that I'm in retirement, I plan to do more writing. So I have a new book already I'm starting to work on. Well, Ken, please come on the podcast and talk to us about that as well. Thank you very much indeed. Well, thank you again. Bye bye. you