Death of Genghis Khan

Death of Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire, died on August 18, 1227, at his summer residence in Gansu, China. He organized the Mongol tribes into a powerful unified force which would conquer the largest empire in history after his death.

Genghis was born in Mongolia with the name of Temuchin sometime in the mid-1160s. According to legend he was born with a clot of blood in his hand, presaging prowess as a warrior. Temuchin's father was a chieftain and also a nephew of the khan of the Mongols, who were then just one of several tribes in what has come to be known as Mongolia. After his father's death, Temuchin often narrowly avoided death at the hands of rival clans looking to usurp his family's power. He proved himself in battle many times and became a leader among his people. As the other chieftains of the tribe came to follow him, Temuchin earned the title of Genghis Khan (also spelled Chingiz Khan), which means “universal ruler.”

Genghis went on to either subdue or win the loyalty of the other Mongolian tribes, such as the Kereits, Merkits, and Tatars. All of these fierce nomads became known generally to outsiders as Mongols, although the generic name Tatar has been popular as well. Their excellent horsemanship enabled them to survive in the rugged Mongolian countryside, where the sparse vegetation and windswept terrain had caused the people to eke out a living as herders. Because they frequently clashed with others over the land's limited natural resources, Mongol males were trained in the arts of war from an early age. Combined with their skills on horseback, they made a fearsome cavalry force, particularly when Genghis consolidated all of the tribes into a single military system in which riders were organized into units based on multiples of 10 (10 riders, 100 riders, 1,000 riders, etc.) and subjected to other methods of rational military organization.

The Mongols' greatest advantages were speed and endurance. They were lightly armored and could cover vast distances, engaging their enemies quickly and cutting through their lines to the rear. They were also skilled in the use of the compound bow— a bow made of wood, strips of bone, and glue, able to be fired from horseback with deadly accuracy and at long ranges rivaling that of any contemporary infantry archer. The result was that Genghis quickly came to possess one of the most formidable military forces in the world.

In 1206 Genghis was proclaimed Great Khan during a meeting of the Mongol chieftains. He embarked on a campaign of conquest, first attacking the Chin emperors of China and taking most of northern China, including the Chin capital at modern-day Beijing in 1215. It was a humiliating defeat for the mighty Chinese Empire, which was much more populous than Mongolia and had vastly greater resources. Then Genghis expanded into central Asia, attacking a large empire known as Khwarizm which encompassed modern-day Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. By the early 1220s Genghis had conquered most of Khwarizm, and he was turning his attention to campaigns in China once again when he died in 1227.

Genghis's descendants greatly expanded the Mongol Empire, sweeping across Russia to the west and into eastern Europe, then withdrawing to the Volga River region, where Batu ruled over the domains of the famous Golden Horde. Hulagu took much of the Middle East, including modern-day Iraq. Kublai Khan completed the conquest of China and established the Yuan dynasty whose lands reached as far south as Vietnam. For centuries the Mongols ruled the largest empire on Earth. The empire ultimately fell apart, however, due to various factors, such as the vast distances which thwarted effective rule by any central government and the absorption of the Mongol conquerors into the more advanced and populous civilizations which they ruled.