Real Dictators - Genghis Khan Part 2: Rise of the Mongols

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

The leader brings reforms to his newly unified Mongol nation. The man formerly known as Temüjin will now conquer an empire bigger than any before in recorded history. But what are the innovations that underpin his supremacy? And how will history judge him - as a cruel tyrant, or a great leader? A Noiser production, written by Dan Smith. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's a cool March day in the year 1220. We're in Bukhara, a thriving city on the Silk Road. It's part of the sprawling Khwarezmian Empire, located in what today is Uzbekistan. It's been 14 years since Chinggis Khan united the peoples of the Mongolian steppe and was proclaimed great leader of the Mongol nation. Much of that time has been spent away from home, pursuing his enemies and gaining territory. Bukhara is just the latest in a long line of cities to fall to him. But there is something different about today. Chinggis Khan never normally sets foot in a vanquished city himself. He leaves it to his trusted commanders to oversee the plundering

of treasure, the slaughter of the ruling class, and the taking of prisoners. But today, he wants to make a point. Two years ago, he sent a merchant caravan of four hundred treasure-laden camels and a hundred men to the Khwarezmian city of Otr. He'd hoped to encourage greater trade between his empire and theirs. The Mongol merchants took with them items including luxurious furs from Siberia and a slab of gold said to be as thick as a camel's neck. But the merchants were massacred. Their goods were brought here to Bukhara.

Unable to ignore such an insult, the Khan is now ready for revenge. With the city's defenders defeated, Chinggis rides triumphantly through the gates, past the wooden houses and market stalls, into the center of town. The Khan dismounts when he arrives at Bukhara's great mosque. He walks inside and slowly climbs up the steps to the pulpit. When he reaches the top, he surveys his audience. Nearly 300 of the city's elite have been ordered to come here. At last he addresses them.

O people, know that you have committed great sins, he says. If you ask me what proof I have for these words, I say it is because I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me. This is the second and final part of the Chinggis Khan story. And this is Real Dictators. Let's go back 14 years from the sacking of Bukhara to 1206, when the warrior Temüjin has just been anointed Chinggis Khan on the sacred mountain of Burkhan Khaldun. Now, as head of the great Mongol nation, he must prove himself a skilled civic as well

as military leader. He could seek to achieve this by laying down the law in whatever way he considers appropriate. The modus operandi of so many dictators through history. He can be fairly sure no one is going to take him to task. But he chooses another, more unexpected route. He surrounds himself with trusted advisors. And, crucially, he delegates authority. It's a model that's worked well for him on the battlefield.

And it will aid him in government too. Family is and always has been important to him. Further down the line, Chinggis Khan will ensure that the leadership of the Mongols remains in his line of descent, the crown passed from son to son. But the experiences of his youth, his abandonment by clan members after the death of his father, and his toxic relationship with his older half-brother, have convinced him of the benefits of meritocracy. Such a system represents a revolutionary break with Mongol tradition, where blood ties have been everything.

Professor Timothy May if he may. And most of his supporters are not his relatives. Many of them are commanders who've risen from basically being servants or even slaves. One of his leading generals, Jebe, was actually a guy who shot his horse and possibly also wounded Temujin in the neck. Temujin almost died from this. But once they located this guy, he didn't try to deceive them. He said, yeah, I'm the guy who killed your horse. Temujin is impressed by him. They bring him into service. He becomes one of the leading commanders.

Temujin seems to rely most heavily on these non-relatives who owe everything to him. He listens to them. They will carry out his commands perfectly. They're a big reason why he's able to dominate the steppe. Chinggis quickly grasps that the best way to hold his empire together is to work with the subjugated. When the blood has dried and the dust has settled, he tends to seek compromise.

Professor Marie Favereau. It's a very integrative society. So each time they conquer new people, they look at their abilities and their skills and they integrate their people. A good merchant is always a good administrator

because he knows how to speak the language, he knows how to count. Okay, get into the administration. They don't have have preconceived view of who should be in such and such position. If you're able to do it, then just, you know, you take the job.

Professor Mikhail Buran. They have to be pragmatic, because if you want to be able to continue, not only to conquer, but also to rule such a huge empire, you have to be open to expertise from outside, otherwise you cannot do it. So he has to be open in a way. In one instance, he vanquishes a rival clan,

the Jurkin, on the battlefield. In the aftermath, he takes the Jurkin leaders, puts them on trial for treachery, and executes them. Then he takes their land and divides it between the households of his own followers. More revolutionary is that he does much the same with the surviving people. He absorbs them into his army and his own population.

One Jurkin boy, for instance, is even taken to be raised by Temujin's mother as her own child. This is empire building by assimilation. If you are a group that's been loyal to him, you get to maintain your identity. If you're not, then basically what he does is he breaks up that tribe and disperses the population. What he's trying to do is make everybody a Mongol and they'll call their state the Yeke Mongol Ulus, or the Great Mongol State Nation. He's really just creating a single Mongol people. Now, these other identities, they don't completely disappear, but they're certainly suborned to the overlying Mongol identity.

There is one last sting in the tail for the Jurkin. Temüjin hosts a grand feast to mark their assimilation. Back before the conquest, his brother, Belgute, was slashed by a jerkin wielding a knife. Now amid the festivities, Temujin calls for a wrestle-off between his brother and his attacker, a giant of a man known as Buri the wrestler. As they scrap, Belgute mounts his colossal adversary like a horse, then with Temujin's consent drives his knee deep into the man's spine, snapping his back. The newcomers can be under no illusion. Join us, but do not cross us.

Chinggis Khan enshrines a legal system based on a mixture of new laws and tradition. Collective responsibility is promoted, so that each social group is responsible for the actions of its individual members. To ensure that laws are recognized, he realizes the need for a consistent written language. It's the first formalized script in Mongol history, based on that of the Uyghur ethnic group, who were absorbed into the Mongol sphere early in his rule. The Khan legislates wherever he sees potential weaknesses in Mongol unity. Animal rustling, historically a source of much conflict, is formally outlawed. So too is the kidnapping of women, a crime that has

so impacted his own mother's life. Nor may any woman be sold into marriage, or any Mongol be enslaved. Adultery between members of different households is criminalized. At the center of Mongol civic life is the leader's own royal court. Outside his gher, his traditional tent, standing proudly, is his spirit banner. Created from the tail hairs of nine stallions, the flag is imbued with profound meaning for those who gaze upon it. They believe it physically carries the destiny of the leader, that it is a totem of his very spirit.

When the empire is at peace, a banner of white flies, but when it's at war, the banner is black. For most of his reign, it's the latter. For all that he legislates with regard to adultery, Chinggis Khan is hardly famed for fidelity in his own personal life. But Borte, his first spouse, wields genuine power within the court, and, more widely, the empire. He'll have concubines, and the concubines are strictly there for entertainment purposes. But the princesses or the queens, they have status.

Borte is a trusted advisor until her death. She'll always be the primary wife. Her sons are the ones who are the next in line for the throne. Anybody else is not going to be considered. When he goes on campaign, one of the younger wives always goes with him. Borte does not go, one, because she's older, but she's also running things at home. The queens run the camp. They're sort of in charge of logistics. They know the amount of animals. They know how much these animals can produce in terms of food, in terms of raw materials. They keep track of the wealth that's coming in. They serve as sort of a wing of the government. component for the creation of the Mongol Empire. And his daughters, once he starts marrying them off to foreign rulers, essentially become his viceroys.

In total, Chinggis Khan and Borte have nine children together, four sons and five daughters. But marriage among the elites can also be a diplomatic and political tool. As Chinggis begins to look beyond the frontiers of his own nation, he is given, or takes, new partners as a symbol of unity and sometimes a symbol of submission. He ends up with at least seven wives. There is much speculation as to the number of his offspring. There have been many bold claims about how many of us might descend from him. One genetic study in 2003 famously suggested some 16 million people alive today are his

direct descendants, about a quarter of a percent of the global population. The exact number will likely never be known. The exact number will likely never be known. Chinggis Khan establishes a new settlement that will eventually become the imperial capital, a place called Karukorum. In due course, his son will turn it into a grand city, with fortified walls and a palace at its heart. But for now, the large royal camp is comprised of a sea of tents. It hums with life.

Look in any given tent and you might find an artist, a metal worker, an architect, a weaver, or any manner of other professionals. With his court and his civic reforms, Chinggis Khan ushers in a period of relative stability. Genghis Khan ushers in a period of relative stability. He soon sets his sights on the northwest Chinese kingdom of Xixia, ruled by the Tangut people. This will be his first incursion against a settled as opposed to a nomadic people. China at this time is not a unified nation. It's divided between competing dynasties, among them the Jin and the Tanguts. It has long suited the Chinese dynasties to have a disunited steppe. While the tribes there fight each other, they aren't a nuisance in China.

The rise of Chinggis then represents a significant threat. In what would become a familiar pattern, on the battlefield the Mongols sweep aside the forces of Xishu with relative ease. But what is it that makes them so dominant? Firstly theirs is a lean army. A Mongol cavalryman knows how to travel light. His kit consists of a long woolen robe, trousers, a fur hat, thick-soled boots, a leather container for milk or water, a lasso, a sewing kit, a file to sharpen his arrowheads,

flints for making fire, a knife, and an axe. All this fits in a single bag. All this fits in a single bag There is just one tent for every ten soldiers There is no need for a supply train The troops milk their animals and slaughter them for meat as they go Put all this together And the Mongols eat up ground quicker than anyone else Most of the troops are schooled in the arts of riding and archery From as soon as they can sit

up as babies. They learn how to fire with extreme accuracy, timing the release of their arrows to coincide with the moment their horses lift their hooves. With extraordinary coordination, they are able to speedily change strategies to bewilder their enemies, attacking first in small pockets, change strategies to bewilder their enemies, attacking first in small pockets, then in great overwhelming waves, or galloping past the enemy and around them until they are encircled. Another favoured tactic is the famed retreat, luring unwitting opponents out of their defensive line and into an ambush. The Mongol people and the Mongol army are almost a single entity. Everyone is expected to contribute to the war effort, and every fit male is, by default,

a soldier. They grow up with horses, their lives dedicated to working as one with their animals. And their nomadic lifestyle means that coping with different terrains is second nature. Chinggis Khan is also an early master of the psychology of war. He has plenty of tricks up his sleeve to get inside his enemies' heads. For example, when the Mongols are outnumbered, as they often are, he makes their numbers seem bigger by crossing mountain passes in single file so that the enemy sees an endless procession of cavalry. Similarly, he tells his men to set up camp and light as many fires as possible so that their foes will overestimate their number.

He also instructs them to tie branches to the tails of their horses so that when they gallop, the dust cloud they create is utterly overwhelming. On one occasion before a battle in the early spring, he lets loose a few of his horses that look particularly puny and tight at belly after the slim pickings of the winter months. They are promptly rounded up by the enemy, who assume that all Mongol horses are in similarly bad shape. Thus, they are lulled into a false sense of security. Just as he sows disinformation amongst his enemies, so too Chinggis understands the value of reliable intelligence for himself. As Sun Tzu emphasized centuries earlier in The Art of War, a good general does all he can to understand his enemy and the terrain in which he is to fight. In this vein, Chinggis Khan runs a network of spies

and establishes a highly sophisticated communication system to safeguard sensitive information. Given that most soldiers are illiterate, messages are passed as verse that troops can learn by rote. This evolves into what may be considered the world's first postal service, with horsemen sprinting between designated communication points.

It's the most efficient such system the world will see prior to the arrival of the railways. By weaponizing information, Chinggis is often able to beat the enemy before they even take to the battlefield. For all this, the Xizha expedition brings new challenges. The Mongols have the game to overwhelm any nomadic camp. But laying siege to a city is another thing entirely. In 1208, Genghis Khan leads his forces to the tangled capital, Chongqing,

the biggest city he has yet encountered as an aggressor. Not to be overawed, he hits upon a scheme both grand and slightly mad. He sets his men to work damming and diverting a nearby river. The city is duly flooded into submission. No matter that the Mongols' own camp is also underwater, Zhong Jing has surrendered. Sieges it turns out are long, expensive, and energy-sapping. So Chinggis studies his enemies within China, who have much more experience of siege warfare. The more military success he has, the more defectors come over to him, including siege

engineers and tacticians. And where they don't come willingly, they're found amongst the prisoners he rounds up. He learns how to undermine a city's foundations by strategic digging, and how to scale walls using movable towers with retractable ladders. There are other machines too, like trebuchets, catapults, and mangonels that hurl missiles and burning liquids. When a city's walls have been breached, they sometimes follow the terrifying sackings and the dreaded exemplar massacres, slaughters designed to frighten others into submission. The exemplar massacre is one of his many strategies, but it becomes his calling card,

the thing for which he is best or worst remembered. After Xixia, Chinggis sets his sights on an even grander prize, the lands of the Jin, the dominant dynasty in northern China. The trouble starts in 1210. The Jin have a new emperor. He sends an envoy to Chinggis, demanding he submit. But the Mongol leader is having none of it. He refuses the command, spits on the ground, leaps on his horse and rides off, leaving the envoy spluttering in a dust cloud.

When word gets back to the Emperor, he's furious. He sends another messenger to the troublesome Khan. Our empire is like the sea, he tells him. Yours is but a handful of sand. How can we fear you? The djinn soon discover that this is not simply another band of steppe marauders. When Chinggis' troops arrive at the Djinn capital of Zhongdu, they face their biggest challenge of the entire campaign.

Aside from its miles of high, fortified, crenellated walls, the city has several moats. There are four smaller fortress towns nearby, connected to the main city via underground tunnels. Among its huge population are tens of thousands of warriors and several thousand more in each of the satellite settlements. As medieval cities go, it's about as impregnable as you can get. Inside Zhongdu, rival camps of hawks and doves emerge.

There are those who want to take on the upstart Mongol, but that reputation for ruthless brutality plays on the nerves of others. In the end, the doves win. Best to negotiate a peace deal in return for the breaking of the siege. Chinggis Khan extracts highly favorable terms. He walks away with 100,000 gold bars, 300,000 yards of silk, 3,000 horses, and 500 of the city's young men and women. On top of that, the emperor gives him a princess. The Khan decides it's too hot and dry to cross the Gobi Desert on the way back home.

He decides to make camp and wait for the cool of the autumn. Spirits are high, that is, until a messenger arrives to sour the mood. That is, until a messenger arrives to sow the mood. The emperor, it transpires, is in the process of moving his capital south from Chengdu to another city, Kaifeng. Ching is apoplectic. This is not the spirit of their agreement. It's treachery. After an epic siege, the city falls.

By the end of the year, 1215, Chinggis Khan has control of 862 walled cities. It's a testament to how far his army has come. No longer just a cavalry force, they've learned to break down fortresses. After the Djinn, Chinggis fixes his gaze on the Khwarezmian Empire. It's probably the biggest, strongest empire you've never heard of. At this point in 1218, it's an Islamic powerhouse, covering swathes of modern-day Iran, Afghanistan

and Central Asia. Initially, Chinggis Khan wants to land a trade deal with the Khwarezmian leader, Sultan Muhammad II. Chinggis sends a caravan of merchants to the city of Otra. But, as we learned at the outset of this episode, the response of the city's governor is to butcher the merchants. He apparently believed the Mongol traders were spies. It's not such a ridiculous notion, as merchants often double as intelligence agents. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, Ching ascends a legation to the sultan. But the sultan proceeds to kill one of the envoys, returning his head in a sack.

He burns the beards of the others, a grave insult. In response, Chinggis prepares his army and sweeps into enemy territory. His first port of call is Otra itself. The city capitulates in short order. Its governor is punished for his greed in gruesome, symbolic fashion. He has molten silver poured down his throat. Chinggis then divides his army into three expeditionary forces. He himself leads one of these battalions across the Kizil Kum desert.

these battalions across the Kizil Kum desert. He reappears in Bukhara, where, after laying siege to the city, he makes for the pulpit of the local mosque. It's here that he announces himself as the punishment of God. Bukhara's people are dealt with like livestock. A man brought up in the ways of animal husbandry chingis khan sees enemy populations as herds to be managed just as he sees enemy combatants as beasts to be hunted outside the next city those vanquished enemies from the last place are used to carry huge quantities of rubble they use this to fill in the new city's moats. They're then herded in a great mass, used as the advance party in breaching its walls, paving the way for the Mongol warriors to enter behind them and finish the job. These are the same people that are going to be spreading

stories about the Mongols of how scary they are. And that fear worked very much in the Mongols' factor. The Mongols were not concerned with having a bad reputation and probably strongly encouraged it. Chinggis Khan is fast building the biggest empire the world has yet seen. Yet, incredibly, it's happened almost accidentally. Some historians suggest that in the first instance, he invades primarily to chase away his enemies and to ensure the safety of his borders. But he does it with such efficiency that those borders keep expanding. He is, we might say, an unintentional conqueror. It took him a long time to unite the Mongols.

And after he was crowned as the head of the Mongols, his main intention was to keep them united because it was quite obvious how fluid the situation was and how easy they can just jump away. He rearranged the society of Mongolia. I think this is very important because this is something that former nomadic chief never did. But he did, and this was a main change,

and it allowed him to have a much more centralized polity. He's a guy who definitely has determination. He has ambition. But he does not have a master plan. I think his plan initially is just to survive. He has no grand plans to rule the world or anything like that. The campaign in the Khwarezmian Empire is what transforms Chinggis Khan into a global historical character,

a man operating on a different level when it comes to empire building. How does he become a world conqueror, you can ask? It was the invasion into the Muslim world that really made him a world conqueror. Because beforehand, you know, there were many nomadic tribes who fought in North China, maybe conquered a little bit, established their own dynasty. This was not new. And then Lili Khan came, and in less than a year, he managed to destroy this huge superpower. Two events from this invasion stand out as particularly horrendous, even by the standards of Mongol folklore.

The first occurs at Merv, located on a site in modern-day Turkmenistan. It is one of the largest cities in the world, a jewel of Islamic civilization. It is said that visitors can see its magnificent buildings rising into the sky from a day's journey away. Among them is its library, replete with some 150,000 volumes, the largest in Asia. But on an early spring day in 1221, the city's residents spot unwanted visitors. The Mongols have arrived, led by Chinggis Khan's son, Tolui. The city opens its gates, hoping that this last-minute gesture will save them. But there is no escape.

An Arab historian, Ibn al-Atir, describes the carnage. He says that troops defending the city are seized and taken before Chinggis Khan, who sits upon a golden throne. Here, in front of a large crowd, the prisoners are executed. It is, Alathir says with chilling simplicity, a memorable day for shrieking, weeping and wailing. As the Mongols search for plunder, they set the city alight, destroy its library, and haul off the wealthiest citizens, beating them for information about where to find more

booty. They even dig up the grave of one of the old sultans in search of treasure. Meanwhile, the civilian population is divided into groups of men, women, and children. population is divided into groups of men, women, and children. According to the chronicler, because they are deemed to have resisted, they are all murdered. Chinggis Khan orders that the bodies should be counted. They total some 700,000. It's one of the most appalling episodes of slaughter on the historical record. A few weeks later, another of the Silk Road cities, Nishapur in modern-day Iran, suffers a similarly awful fate.

Its crime is to have been the scene of a skirmish at which one of Chinggis Khan's sons-in-law was killed. When the Mongols arrive in 1221, the widow is asked to decide the city's fate. She decrees that every one of its citizens should die. Ten days later, the death toll is said to exceed even that of Merv. Legend has it that the skulls of the slain are used to construct vast, macabre pyramids. Chinggis Khan's son, Tolui, is then said to yoke herds of oxen who plough what's left of the city into the ground, where it remains undisturbed for some 700 years. Had there been no Chinggis Khan, we might today speak of the Khwarazmian Empire alongside

the other empires of world history, but he has snuffed it out in its infancy, and its name will hardly be remembered. Basically, the Mongols take a view of, if we're going to do this, if you make us attack you, we're going to make sure that you're never a threat to us again. That's what's so terrifying of it is that they become so proficient at it. When they do it, it's on a scale hitherto unseen. That is what terrorizes people. As we look back 800 years, there are truly vast numbers of innocent victims. Civilians are massacred, and rape becomes a weapon of war. The death toll may well be in seven figures.

It's been estimated that his military exploits result in so many fatalities that the world's carbon dioxide levels noticeably fall. Chinggis Khan does prefer a peaceful submission to a bloody victory, but that is little consolation to his victims. So first of all, big important question, how many people died during the time of Genghis Khan because of the conquest? Honestly, many people, but how many we can't tell. There are a lot of mention of decline in population.

Most of them, we don't know the population before Genghis Khan. So it's very hard to tell in Central Asia how many people really died. It's very interesting to see that many people think that these Mongol conquests were more violent than others. Where does it come from?

Because we don't have the exact numbers. We can question this notion of extermination, actually, because it's not his interest. What he wants, clearly, is to have more people, more people in his armies, more warriors. He wants more workers in the camp, so more prisoners. Killing everybody doesn't make sense. His compromises with the vanquished can seem quite progressive. For example, while he himself holds shamanist beliefs, he allows a broad freedom of religion entirely out of keeping with the trends of his age.

In part, this is inspired by a genuine fascination with other faiths, but there is also a streak of pragmatism. Particularly if he found a religion useful, meaning that they had influence over a large number of populations he'd grant them exemptions he'd grant them property now not all religions got the same benefits though christians muslims daoists and buddhists they all received tax exemptions received property they received favor jewsichaeans, Zoroastrians did not. And largely it's because they didn't have the numbers or the political influence to really carry much weight.

The Mongols, from their perspective, the main thing is the Koke Monke Tingri, the blue eternal sky, their chief god has favored them. And the proof is in the pudding, as it were. As the Mongols expand, well, how can you explain this? Well, heaven's on our side. Your religion doesn't seem to be offering you much against our sky gods, so there's not much reason we should really join you. But on the other hand, we're not going to persecute you. Some have argued that the exemplar massacre is a form of bloodletting, designed to avoid further violence by encouraging submission But if Chinggis Khan is concerned, as he undoubtedly is for his legacy

for how history will see him then it's a double-edged, blood-soaked sword In the popular imagination, such events are what define him How can we reconcile the massacres of Bukhra, Merv and Jong-Do with the forward-thinking, egalitarian chief that his advocates put forward? The one who brings tribes and peoples together, who ensures that military widows and orphans are looked after. These facets of his character seem inherently contradictory. However we judge his conduct,

as Chinggis Khan reaches his seventh decade, he has never had so much momentum. With the Khwarezmians defeated and the Jinns suing for peace, in 1223, Chinggis Khan feels comfortable enough to return to Mongolia. There are always domestic matters to attend to, or uprisings somewhere to put down. His forces in the Khwarezmian Empire are left under the command of arguably his two greatest and most trusted generals, Jebe and Subede. Together they chase down the fleeing Khwarezmian Sultan, Muhammad II, pursuing him through

Iran and onwards to the Caspian Sea. There he evades them by escaping to an island, but alone and marooned, a once mighty figure reduced to wearing rags, the Sultan soon perishes. Their task complete, the two generals now undertake one of the most extraordinary expeditions in Mongol history. They travel from Iran to Azerbaijan, and then on to Armenia and Georgia, into the Caucasus mountains, and then on to modern-day Russia and Ukraine. They make it as far as Bulgaria and Hungary, defeating all comers along the way.

Western Europe begins to quake at the prospect of this little-understood enemy coming for them. But such is the wealth and opportunity on offer in China and the Muslim world. Europe, in fact, holds limited appeal. Eventually, Jaybe and Subede double back and begin the return journey to their homeland. With an army of just 20,000 or so, they have covered 5,000 miles of hostile and unfamiliar ground. It's difficult to think of a comparable achievement in military history. By 1225, Chinggis Khan has an empire that extends through Mongolia, China, the Middle East, Central Asia,

and as far west as the Caspian Sea. But he cannot rest on his laurels. He's soon preparing yet another campaign, this time back in China to deal with the troublesome Tangut, who are rebelling once again. In January 1227, the Mongols arrive outside the Tangut capital, Chongqing. There's nothing much for Chinggis Khan to do while he waits for the siege to take effect, so he decides to go hunting. As he rides through the woods, a group of wild horses suddenly appears from nowhere.

His stallion is spooked and rears up, throwing him heavily to the ground. He is a tall, imposing man still, but he's now in his mid-sixties, and age is catching up with him. He has suffered major internal injuries. As his aides haul him back to camp, he's insistent that word of his condition must not get out. He's determined nothing should distract him completing the job at hand. Warlord to the end, he insists that Zhong Jing must be shown no mercy, and that the treacherous Tangut royal family be executed. On August the 18th, 1227, Chinggis Khan dies from his injuries. Not long afterwards,

the Tangut ruler Mo comes to his camp in a last bid to make peace. A macabre farce plays out. As far as Mo knows, he is simply being snubbed, made to look small by a man at the peak of his powers. He grovels outside Chinggis' tent, begging for mercy. He has no idea he is pleading clemency from a corpse. When he has sufficiently debased himself, he is killed along with the rest of his family, in accordance with the dead Khan's orders. The empire of Xixia is no more. One final conquest notched up from beyond the grave.

Rumors begin to swirl as to the cause of Chinggis Khan's death. The Venetian explorer Marco Polo reports that he received an arrow wound in battle. Another gruesome story has it that a Tangut princess inserted a blade into her private parts, mortally wounding the Mongol when he penetrated her. Such rumours are perhaps only to be expected. Chinggis Khan is a man to whom myth has always attached itself. Even his burial place is shrouded in mystery. In accordance with tribal custom, he is buried in a secret, unmarked location. Beforehand, his body is washed and dressed in a white robe, felt hat and boots, then laid out on a white felt blanket

filled with fragrant sandalwood. Placed on a humble cart, he begins the long journey from China home to Mongolia. Such is the demand for complete confidentiality, so legend has it, that anyone unfortunate enough to cross the path of the funeral cortege is slain, as are those charged with constructing his tomb. Then the soldiers who kill them are themselves slaughtered. Meanwhile, the ground in which his tomb lies, widely suspected to be somewhere in the vicinity of Mount Burkhan Khaldun,

is trampled by horses, planted the trees, and even has a river diverted over it to disguise its entrance. That, at least, is how the story goes. In death, he begins his transition

from revered leader to supposed divine spirit. After his death, he essentially becomes a demigod. Because going back to this whole spiritual attitude of if you're a con in the spirit world, you're going to be a powerful person. Well, what do you do for a guy who conquers more territory than any other person in history? For a guy who started his life off fatherless at the age of 10 with no real prospects to then becoming the most

powerful figure in history, really, until the modern era. How else do you view this guy? I strongly believe that the whole concept of Chinggis Khan was meant to rule the world or that heaven decreed that Chinggis Khan was going to rule the world. I think this came later. I believe this came as a way of rationalizing what just happened. How did we do this? Because there's no reason to think that the Mongols should have been able to pull this

off. I mean, if you're putting money down at Monte Carlo or Las Vegas, if we could go back in time and say, who is going to rise in the 13th century to become a major power? No one would have picked the Mongols. They were basically a minor league player in the grand scheme of things at this time. So you can certainly understand why when it was all said and done and after Chinggis Khan died and they took a breath and looked around, you can see why they viewed him essentially as a demigod. Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the Chinggis Khan story

is that his empire, rooted so much in his personal attributes, survives his death. And not only does it survive, it grows. Clearly, his succession was not settled. It was a big mess when he died for the succession. So it's even, I think, more impressive if you think that the succession itself was not clear and yet the whole organization remained

and even developed after that. Rumors have abounded regarding the legitimacy of Chinggis' oldest son, Jochi, ever since Borte fell pregnant with him right around the time of her kidnapping by the Merkits. The Khan's second son, Chagatai, considers these doubts grounds enough that his older brother should not inherit the empire. But instead of fighting it out, they come to a remarkably civil agreement. They concur that the youngest son, Tolui, will rule as regent.

He does until 1229, when the next youngest brother, Ogedei, takes over. Under him, and later, Chinggis Khan's grandson Kublai Khan, the empire reaches its zenith. Khan's grandson Kublai Khan, the empire reaches its zenith. In 1241, for example, Mongol forces find themselves massed around Vienna, with the city preparing to be overrun. It's only the sudden death of Ogedei and the army's subsequent recall to Mongolia that stops a major incursion into Western Europe. And it's during the rule of Kublai Khan, who reigns from 1260 until 1294, that China is united as a nation.

Chinggis Khan's reputation fluctuates wildly over the years. In the 14th century, the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer writes that he was a noble king of great renown and that there was nowhere in no region so excellent a lord in all things. Yet by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries he has been largely forgotten, at least in the West. Then in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries he re-enters the collective consciousness. Only this time, he tends to be depicted as a cruel tyrant. There are many reasons for this, not least a rather condescending attitude in the West to all things Oriental.

It's notable, for instance, that the West tends to view Chinggis Khan warmly when relations with the Ottoman Empire are cordial, but recasts him as the unacceptable face of barbarism each time the Ottomans fall out of favour. Meanwhile as Russia, China and Iran struggle to establish their own national identities, it's routinely the Mongols who once occupied those places who are blamed for causing the impediments they face. The Mongols were not especially builders of magnificent cities or producers of great cultural works.

Their technological breakthroughs were modest. They did not bequeath us a global language or a new religion. But as an unstoppable fighting power, Genghis Khan created the nation of Mongolia, built a vast empire around it, and laid the foundations for its future expansion. For better and worse, he molded the world and paved the way to the modern age. It's been argued that without them, there might have been no unified China, no European Renaissance or Reformation, and no voyage to America by Christopher Columbus, who serendipitously stumbled upon the continent as he searched for new routes to the East.

The Mongol Empire also aided the more rapid spread of Islam across the world. If we set aside the movie cliches of the mustachioed barbarian slaughtering at will, here is a man who can be viewed from myriad perspectives. Undoubtedly tyrannical, brutal and destructive, to some a demon, to others an inspiring leader, even in some ways a progressive one. When we think about globalization and all those stuff,

we really think about the modern period. But then suddenly we discover that medieval period that we tend to think as obscure and barbarian and not really developed. Suddenly we discover, well, no, they had their time of globalization under the Mongols. This is going to be the true legacy of the Mongol Empire, is connecting the world in a way that had not been connected before.

And this will lead to an exchange of technology, of ideas, of religions, of people moving back and forth. Remarkable leader or cruel dictator. From our distant place in time and space, we might conclude that he was both. Real Dictators will be taking a short break. But stay tuned. We'll return in the coming weeks. Thank you.