Genghis Khan: A Visionary Leader or a Brutal Conqueror?
Ref: War History Online
Genghis Khan also encouraged philosophers, mathematicians,
scientists and artists from all over the empire to meet and work together.
Genghis Khan is one of the most recognized figures in history, and is either
portrayed as a bloodthirsty, all-conquering tyrant, or a visionary leader
whose progressive ideas were far ahead of their time.
Opinions on Genghis Khan (birth name Temujin) can obviously
be quite polarized, but the truth of the matter is that, like most people,
he was a complex individual with both flaws and strengths. What cannot
be denied about him is the sheer scale of what he achieved, which is virtually
unequaled in human history: the largest contiguous land empire the world
has ever seen.
Genghis Khan was born around 1162, and was the second
son of the Kiyad chief (the Kiyads were one of the tribes of the Mongol
confederation). He endured a difficult childhood, in which his father was
killed by the rival Tatar clan and his family was expelled by his clan.
He, his mother and his siblings were forced to survive in the wild by scavenging
and hunting. He was captured by the Tayichi’ud tribe and made a slave for
a time, and his wife Börte – he got married in his late teens – was
kidnapped for a time by the Merkit tribe. He got her back, though, and
began to establish himself as a formidable warrior and shrewd leader by
his early twenties.
Through both conquests and the forging of strategic alliances,
he had united the tribes under the Mongol banner by 1206, and after this
began to expand his sphere of influence outward. What had been a confederation
soon became an empire, and continued to spread outward in all directions
for many decades, both up to and well after Genghis Khan’s death in 1227.
While there is no getting around the fact that this empire
was forged by violent conquest, and the fact that tens of millions of people
would ultimately end up dead as a result of the Mongol conquests over the
course of the 13th century, Genghis Khan did do some good during the establishment
and expansion of his empire, and many of his ideas were undoubtedly progressive
for the medieval era.
Firstly, in terms of good, Genghis Khan allowed freedom
of religion throughout his empire. Unlike most empire-forgers before him
(and many after him), he was not fanatically devoted to any one religion.
While he followed Tengrism, an old religion native to Central Asia that
was characterized by shamanism, animism and belief in the spirits of nature,
he allowed complete freedom of religion for all citizens of his empire.
He consulted Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist and other missionaries
and religious leaders, expressing an interest in the philosophies of their
various faiths, particularly in his older years.
He also established what we would now call an international
courier or postal service, which he named the Yam. Under the Yam system,
a great number of post houses were established across the length and breadth
of the empire, at which a rider could change his tired mount for a fresh
one. In this way messages and goods could cover distances of up to two
hundred miles in a single day. This also proved extremely useful for gathering
intelligence and planning military campaigns.
Genghis Khan’s empire also created a period of stability
and safety that had not existed before. Travellers from Europe were free
to take their caravans across central Asia as far as China via the Silk
Road, and vice versa, creating a period of economic prosperity and forging
links of international trade. This not only fostered economic prosperity,
but it also developed many trades, crafts, and arts by diversifying markets
and exposing various craftsmen, artisans, and artists across the empire,
from Europe to China, to styles, materials, and methods they would not
otherwise have seen.
Genghis Khan also encouraged philosophers, mathematicians,
scientists and artists from all over the empire to meet and work together.
The academies and institutes of art, philosophy, and science that formed
throughout the thirteenth century enriched the cultural and intellectual
landscape of his successors’ khanates.
Genghis Khan was also a proponent of another very progressive
idea for the time: that of meritocracy. Almost every other minor and major
regional power at the time passed on titles and power via hereditary means.
They did everything they could to ensure that “high-born” men inherited
power, land, titles, and leadership roles, and that “low-born” commoners
could never hope to attain such things. Genghis Khan, however, took the
opposite approach, one that was quite revolutionary for its time. Anyone
who proved his worth by virtue of his talent, bravery, military skills,
and loyalty could rise to the very upper echelons of leadership, regardless
of his birth and background.
This even extended to former enemies. Genghis Khan preferred
to offer conquered soldiers the chance to join his army and fight for him,
with the promise of rewards for loyalty, rather than simply imprisoning,
enslaving or executing them, as was common practice for the time. Also,
Genghis Khan usually offered those he was intent on conquering the chance
to submit peacefully, generally without any majorly negative consequences,
before attacking them. If they agreed to submit, their cities and towns
would be spared and nobody would be harmed – but if they refused this offer
he would crush them without mercy.
Despite all these good things he may have done, and regardless
of the widespread peace and international trade routes that were established
due to the expansion of the Mongol empire, there is still no getting around
the fact that Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes were incredibly violent
and brutal. The final tally of human deaths as a result of the Mongol conquests
is estimated at around forty to one hundred million – which was close to
eleven percent of the entire world population at the time. Entire towns
and cities were razed to the ground, and every living thing in them put
to the sword.
Overall, while it is easy to remember Genghis Khan only
as a bloodthirsty warlord and brutal conqueror, it is also necessary to
remember that he did not only kill, sack, loot and plunder – he managed,
during his extraordinary rise to power and his reign, to do some rather
good things too.
The Stirrup: Genghis
Khan’s Deadliest Weapon
Ref: War History Online
Though most of us have never given such an unremarkable,
humdrum object a second thought, the humble stirrup, used by horse riders
for much of recorded history, has had an immense influence on the evolution
of global geopolitics as we know them. It may seem strange to refer to
a simple loop of leather or steel dangling from a rider’s saddle as a piece
of “technology,” but it was exactly that, and in the early days of its
usage it was quite revolutionary.
Just as the phalanx formation upended the conventional
wisdom of infantry combat when it was introduced in antiquity, adding stirrups
to a rider’s saddle enabled the newly-united Mongol nation to emerge from
relative obscurity in Northeast Asia into a terrifying fighting force that
ruled the largest land empire in history for several generations. Archaeological
records indicate that the Mongols were using stirrups as early as the 10th
century, and even at this early stage, they were being ornately but solidly
crafted out of metal. Mongol horsemen were extremely skilled fighters
on horseback, and they adapted their tactics to their enemies to great
effect.
While history is filled with tales of armies winning by
plunging forward until one side beat a retreat and was destroyed by pursuing
opponents, the Mongols threw conventional warfare to the wind and practiced
retreating as an offensive maneuver. Riding with stirrups gave the forces
of Genghis Khan and his descendants a previously unimaginable tactical
advantage. The Khans’ Eastern European foes were utterly unprepared to
meet a force that could continue to attack while retreating. With
the stability that two feet planted in stirrups gave them, the Mongol forces
perfected the art of using their bows on horseback, doing so even while
riding mounted backwards. This allowed them to stay out of the range of
the ground troops that would pursue them on their retreat, and they quickly
learned that even a false retreat would lure Hungarian, Polish or Russian
infantry and cavalry out of formation and into an ill-fated pursuit.
Marco Polo himself witnessed the Mongols in combat, writing
that the horsemen “never let themselves get into a regular melee, but keep
perpetually riding around and shooting into the enemy.” Used in conjunction
with stationary archers and mounted cavalry, the Mongols’ tactics brought
them from their homeland to a distance uncomfortably close to Vienna over
a period of decades. The trail that they blazed through Europe on
the way to their ultimate prize was the result of their innovative use
of a very simple device.
Had it not been for a series of events that caused them
to return and wage war against the Song dynasty in China, they could have
effected incredible changes on Western European society. Even without
sacking Rome, the mark that they left on every culture they encountered
is indelible – few conquering forces can claim to be the subject of contemporary
historians as far apart as Rome and China.
The Great Wall of China is a testament to the organization
that was required to rebuff their attacks. A Song general wrote about
their use of the stirrup, describing its function in redistributing the
weight of the rider – evidently, the stirrup was novel enough at that time
to warrant mention and effective enough to warrant extensive additions
to the Great Wall shortly after the Mongol forces’ return to the East.
If historians were impressed with the technology of the
stirrup a millennium ago, they might be equally impressed at how little
mind the world would give such a simple invention later in human history
– like the phalanx, Europe and Asia adjusted to the tactics associated
with the stirrup, and today it is a mere curiosity for those who no longer
ride horses.
