by
http://www.archive.org/stream/genghiskhantheem035122mbp/genghiskhantheem035122mbp_djvu.txt
The above is a very worthwhile read, the book is probably the only one of it’s kind
This is from the Keystone library and I will outline some of it briefly.
This is from the Keystone library and some think
the only authentic translations of the life and
times of Genghis Khan. I am only going to provide
a few excerpts.
Many speak of Genghis Khan but we really do not know
that much about him, only 700 year old tales. Some in
India paint Kahn as a Hindu as he is known to have had
greenish gray eyes, light skin and long brownish red
hair.
We do know that Marco Polo traveled halfway around the world to
meet Kubla Khan, the son of Genghis Khan
Both the Mohammedan Shah and the leaders of China
behind the great wall soon found out it was a great
mistake to treat Genghis Khan with disrespect. He
allied himself with a tribe beyond the wall who
had grievances against Chinese rulers and they
opened the gates for the Bogdo.
It is said that Genghis Khan himself later in
life confided to a close friend he may have
went to far with the carnage against the Pashtuns
in Afghanistan.
Genghis Kahn felt the only way to to channel
the warlike spirit of the Mongols was to focus
them on an external enemy or else they were
prone to fight among themselves and settle old
conflicts.
GENGHIS KHAN
FOREWORD
THE MYSTERY
SEVEN hundred years ago a man almost conquered
the earth. He made himself master of half the
known world, and inspired mankind with a fear that
lasted for generations.
In the course of his life he was given many names-
the Mighty Manslayer, the Scourge of God, the
Perfect Warrior, and the Master of Thrones and
Crowns. He is better known to us as Genghis
Khan.
Unlike most rulers of men, he deserved all his
titles. We moderns have been taught the muster-
roll of the great that begins with Alexander of
Macedon, continues through the Caesars, and ends
with Napoleon. Genghis Khan was a conqueror of
more gigantic stature than the well-known actors
of the European stage.
Indeed it is difficult to measure him by ordinary
standards. When he marched with his horde, it
was over degrees of latitude and longitude instead of
miles ; cities in his path were often obliterated, and
rivers diverted from their courses; deserts were
peopled with the fleeing and dying, and when he had
I 4 GENHGIS KHAN
Napoleon appeared to be the most brilliant of Europeans. (Napoleon) But we
cannot forget that he abandoned one army to its fate
in Egypt, and left the remnant of another in the snows
of Russia, and finally strutted into the debacle of
Waterloo. His empire fell about his ears, his Code
was torn up and his son disinherited before his death.
The whole celebrated affair smacks of the theatre and
Napoleon himself of the play-actor.
Of necessity we must turn to Alexander of Macedon,
that reckless and victorious youth, to find a con-
quering genius the equal of Genghis Khan. Alexander
the god-like, marching with his phalanx toward the
rising sun, bearing with him the blessing of Greek
culture. Both died in the full tide of victory, and
their names survive in the legends of Asia to-day.
(There is a separate post concerning Alexander)
Many things have contributed to keep the per-
GENGHIS KHAN 15
sonality of Genghis Khan hidden from us. For one
thing the Mongols could not write, or did not care
to do so. In consequence the annals of his day exist
only in the scattered writings of the Ugurs, the
Chinese, the Persians and Armenians. Not until
recently was the saga of the Mongol Ssanang Sctzen
satisfactorily translated.
So the most intelligent chroniclers of the great
Mongol were his enemies a fact that must not be
forgotten in judging him. They were men of an
alien race. Moreover, like the Europeans of the
thirteenth century, their conception of the world as
it existed outside their own land was very hazy.
They beheld the Mongol, emerging unheralded
out of obscurity. They felt the terrible impact of
the Mongol horde, and watched it pass over them to
other lands, unknown to them. One Mohammedan
summed up sadly in these words his experience with
the Mongols, ” They came, they mined) they slew
trussed up their loot and departed”
The difficulty of reading and comparing these
various sources has been great. Not unnaturally, the
orientalists who have succeeded in doing so have
contented themselves mainly with the political details
of the Mongol conquests. They present Genghis
Khan to us as a kind of incarnation of barbaric power
a scourge that comes every so often out of the desert
to destroy decadent civilizations.
The saga of Ssanang Setzen does not help to
explain the mystery. It says, quite simply, that
Genghis Khan was a bogdo of the race of gods. Instead
of a mystery, we have a miracle.
The medieval chronicles of Europe incline, as we
16 GENGHIS KHAN
have seen, toward a belief in a sort of Satanic power
invested in the Mongol and let loose jan Europe.
All this is rather exasperating that modern his-
torians should re-echo the superstitions of the thir-
teenth century, especially of a thirteenth-century
Europe that beheld the nomads of Genghis Khan only
as shadowy invaders.
There is a simple way of getting light on the mystery
that surrounds Genghis Khan. This way is to turn
back the hands of the clock seven hundred years and
look at Genghis Khan as he is revealed in the chron-
icles of his day ; not at the miracle, or the incarnation
of barbaric power, but at the man himself.
We will not concern ourselves with the political
achievements of the Mongols as a race, but with the
man who raised the Mongols from an unknown tribe
to world mastery.
To visualize this man, we must actually approach
him, among his people and on the surface of the
earth as it existed seven hundred years ago. We
cannot measure him by the standards of modern
civilization. We must view him in the aspects of a
barren world peopled by hunters, horse-riding and
reindeer-driving nomads.
Here, men clothe themselves in the skins of
animals, and nourish themselves on milk and flesh.
They grease their bodies to keep out cold and
moisture. It is even odds whether they starve or
frdcze to death, or are cut down by the weapons of
other men.
” Here arc no towns or cities,” says valiant Fra
Carpini, the first European to enter this land, ” but
everywhere sandy barrens, not a hundredth part cf
GENGHIS KHAN 17
the whole being fertile except where it is watered by
rivers, which arc very rare.
” This land is nearly destitute of trees, although
well adapted for the pasturage of cattle. Even the
emperor and princes and all others warm themselves
and cook their victuals with fires of horse and cow
dung.
” The climate is very intemperate, as in the middle
of summer there arc terrible storms of thunder and
lightning by which many people are killed, and
even then there are great falls of snow and such
tempests of cold winds blow that sometimes people
can hardly sit on horseback. In one of these we had
to throw ourselves down on the ground and could
not sec through the prodigious dust. There are often
showers of hail, and sudden, intolerable heats followed
by extreme cold ” :
This is the Gobi desert, A,D. 1162, the Year of
the Swine in the Calendar of the Twelve Beasts.
Only after death the measure of their achievements
differs beyond comparison. Alexander’s generals
were soon fighting among themselves for the king-
doms from which his son was forced to flee.
CHAPTER I
THE DESERT
LIFE did not matter very much in the Gobi.
Lofty plateaus, wind-swept, lying close to the
clouds. Reed bordered lakes, visited by migratory
winged creatures on their way to the northern tundras.
Huge Lake Ba’ikul visited by all the demons of the
upper air. In the clear nights of mid-winter, the flare
of the northern lights rising and falling above the
horizon.
Children of this corner of the northern Gobi were
not hardened to suffering ; they were born to it.
After they were weaned from their mother’s milk to
marc’s milk they were expected to manage for
themselves.
The places nearest the fire in the family tent
belonged to the grown warriors and to guests. Women,
it is true, could sit on the left side, but at a distance,
and the boys and girls had to fit in where they could.
So with food. In the spring when horses and cows
b.cgan to give milk in quantity, all was very well.
The sheep grew fatter, too. Game was more abundant
and the hunters of the tribe would bring in deer and
even a bear, instead of the lean fur-bearing animals
like the fox, marten and sable. Everything went into
z8
GENGHIS KHAN *9
the pot and was eaten the able-bodied men talcing
the first portions, the aged and the women received
the pot next* and the children had to fight for bones
and sinewy bits. Very little was left for the dogs.
In the winter when the cattle were lean the children
did not fare so well. Milk existed then only in the
form of kumiss milk placed in leather sacks and
fermented and beaten. It was nourishing and slightly
intoxicating for a young man of three or four years
if he could contrive to beg or steal some. Meat
failing, boiled millet served to take the edge off
hunger after a fashion.
The end of winter was the worst of all for the
youngsters. No more cattle could be killed off with-
out thinning the herds too much. At such a time
the warriors of the tribe were usually raiding the
food reserves of another tribe, carrying off cattle
and horses.
The children learned to organize hunts of their
own, stalking dogs and rats with clubs or blunt
arrows. They learned to ride, too, on sheep, clinging
to the wool.
Endurance was the first heritage of Genghis Khan,
whose birth name was Temujin.* At the time of
his birth his father had been absent on a raid against
a tribal enemy, Temujin by name. The affair went
well both home and afield ; the enemy was made
prisoner, and the father, returning, gave to his infant
son the name of the captive foe.
His home was a tent made of felt stretched over
a framework of wattled rods with an aperture at the
Temujin signifies ” The Finest Steel “Tumur-ji. The Chinese version
is T’M mou j** t which has another meaning altogether, ” Supreme Earth
Man,”
20 GENGHIS KHAN
top to let out the smoke. This was coated with white
lime and ornamented with pictures. A, peculiar kind
of tent, this yurt that wandered all over the prairies
mounted on a cart drawn by a dozen or more oxen.
Serviceable, too, because its dome-like shape enabled
it to stand the buffeting of the wind, and it could be
taken down at need.
The married women of the chieftains and Temu-
jin’s father was a chieftain all had their own orna-
mented yurts in which their children lived. It was
the duty of the girls to attend to the yurt^ to keep the
fire burning on the stone hearth under the opening
that let the smoke out. One of Temujin’s sisters,
standing on the platform of the cart before the
entrance flap, would manage the oxen when they
were on the move. The shaft of one cart would be
tied to the axle of another and would creak and roll
in this fashion over the level grassland where, more
often than not, no single tree or bit of rising ground
was to be seen.
In the yurt were kept the family treasures, carpets
from Bokhara or Kabul, looted probably from some
caravan chests filled with women’s gear, silk gar-
ments bartered from a shrewd Arab trader, and inlaid
silver. More important were the weapons that hung
on the walls, short Turkish scimitars, spears, ivory or
bamboo bow cases arrows of different lengths and
weights, and perhaps a round shield of tanned leather,
lacquered over.
These, too, were looted or purchased, passing from
hand to hand with the fortunes of war.
Tcmujin the youthful Genghis Khan had many
duties. The boys of the family must fish the streams
GENGHIS KHAN at
they passed in their trek from the summer to winter
pastures. The horse herds were in their charge, and
they had to ride afield after lost animals, and to search
for new pasture lands. They watched the skyline for
raiders, and spent many a night in the snow without
a fire. Of necessity, they learned to keep the saddle
for several days at a time, and to go without cooked
food for three or four days sometimes without any
food at all.
Temujin’s (Genghis Kahn), father was a chieftain all had their own orna-
mented yurts in which their children lived.
Temujin was marked by great physical strength,
and ability to scheme which is only another way of
adapting oneself to circumstances. He became the
leader of the wrestlers, although he was spare in
build. He could handle a bow remarkably well;
not so well as his brother Kassar who was called the
Bowman, but Kassar was afraid of Temujin.
From the tales of the minstrels he knew that he
came of distinguished stock, the Bourchikoun, or
Grey-eyed Men. He harkened to the story of his
ancestor, Kabul Khan, who had pulled the emperor
of Cathay by the beard and who had been poisoned
as a consequence. He learned that his father’s sworn
brother was Toghrul Khan of the Karaits, the most
powerful of the Gobi nomads he who gave birth
in Europe to the tales of Prester John of Asia.*
A few days later a Mongol galloped up with word
that Ycsukai, who had passed a night in the tent of
some enemies and had presumably been poisoned,
lay dying and had asked for Temujin. Although the
thirteen-year-old boy rode as fast as a horse could
carry him to the ordu or tent village of the clan, he
found his father dead.
Temujin was now seated on the white horseskin,
Khan of the Yakka Mongols, but he had no more than
the remnant of a clan around him, and he was faced
with the certainty that all the feudal foes of the
Mongols would take advantage of the death of
Yesukai to avenge themselves upon his son.
And Targoutai who had persuaded most of Temu-
jin’s clansmen to join his standard must now hunt
down the youthful khan of the Mongols, as an older
wolf seeks and slays a cub too prone to take the
leadership of the pack.
Genghis Kahn’s father died and he now found himself
hunted. All feudal clans would now take advantage and
avenge themselves upon him.
Houlun was suffered to live Targoutai seeking no
one but Temujin.
Thus the hunt began, with the Taidjuts close upon
the heels of the boys. The hunters made no great
haste. The trail was fresh and clear, and these nomads
were accustomed to track down a horse for days if
need be. So long as Temujin did not get a fresh
mount, they would close in on him.
The boys headed instinctively for the shelter of
gorges, with timber growth to screen them. At times
they dismounted to hack down trees over the narrow
track and hinder the pursuers. When twilight came
upon them they separated, the younger brothers and
the girls hiding in a cave, Kassar turning off, and
Temujin himself riding on toward a mountain that
offered concealment.
(Hunted like an animal in Childhood, Genghis Kahn
rose to leader of the mongols.)
” The deep water is gone,” they said, ” the strong
stone is broken. What have we to do with a woman
and her children ? ”
Houlun, the wise and courageous, did what she
could to avert the break-up of the clan. Taking the
standard of the nine yak-tails in her hand she rode
after the deserters and pleaded with them, persuading
some few families to turn back their herds and carts.
(From the hunted a small child forms an empire to
become known as Genghis Khan.) One must read the following
book to understand the hardships experienced by the young
Kahn.
So utterly had Genghis Khan made himself master
from Armenia to Korea, from Tibet to the Volga,
that his son entered upon his heritage without protest,
and his grandson Kubilai Khan still ruled half the
world. (A world I might add was visited by Marco Polo)
This empire, conjured up out of nothing by a
barbarian, has mystified historians. The most recent
general history of his era compiled by learned persons
in England admits that it is an inexplicable fact.
A worthy savant pauses to wonder at ” the fateful
personality of Genghis Khan, which, at bottom, we
can no more account for than the genius of Shake-
speare. 11
Many things have contributed to keep the per-
GENGHIS KHAN 15
sonality of Genghis Khan hidden from us. For one
thing the Mongols could not write, or did not care
to do so. In consequence the annals of his day exist
only in the scattered writings of the Ugurs, the
Chinese, the Persians and Armenians. Not until
recently was the saga of the Mongol Ssanang Sctzen
satisfactorily translated.
So the most intelligent chroniclers of the great
Mongol were his enemies a fact that must not be
forgotten in judging him. They were men of an
alien race. Moreover, like the Europeans of the
thirteenth century, their conception of the world as
it existed outside their own land was very hazy.
They beheld the Mongol, emerging unheralded
out of obscurity. They felt the terrible impact of
the Mongol horde, and watched it pass over them to
other lands, unknown to them. One Mohammedan
summed up sadly in these words his experience with
the Mongols, ” They came, they mined) they slew
trussed up their loot and departed”
The difficulty of reading and comparing these
various sources has been great. Not unnaturally, the
orientalists who have succeeded in doing so have
contented themselves mainly with the political details
of the Mongol conquests. They present Genghis
Khan to us as a kind of incarnation of barbaric power
a scourge that comes every so often out of the desert
to destroy decadent civilizations.
The saga of Ssanang Setzen does not help to
explain the mystery. It says, quite simply, that
Genghis Khan was a bogdo of the race of gods. Instead
of a mystery, we have a miracle.
This is the Gobi desert, A,D. 1162, the Year of
the Swine in the Calendar of the Twelve Beasts.
He was conscious of his strength, and his right of
leadership. Was he not the first-born of Yesukai the
Valiant, Khan of the Yakka or Great Mongols,
master of forty thousand tents ?
From the tales of the minstrels he knew that he
came of distinguished stock, the Bourchikoun, or
Grey-eyed Men. He harkened to the story of his
ancestor, Kabul Khan, who had pulled the emperor
of Cathay by the beard and who had been poisoned
as a consequence. He learned that his father’s sworn
brother was Toghrul Khan of the Karaits, the most
powerful of the Gobi nomads he who gave birth
in Europe to the tales of Prester John of Asia.*
But at that time Temujin’s horizon was limited
by the pasture lands of his tribe, the Yakka Mongols.
” We are not a hundredth part of Cathay,” a wise
counsellor said to the boy, ” and the only reason why
we have been able to cope with her is that we are all
nomads, carrying our supplies with us, and experienced
in our kind of warfare. When we can, we plunder ;
when we cannot, we hide away. If we begin to build
* This name originated in Europe. At that time there were many tales
of a Christian emperor who ruled inner Asia, who was known as Prester John
or Presbyter Johannes. Marco Polo and others after him have chosen to
identify Toghrul with the mythical Prester John.
GENGHIS KHAN 23
towns and change our old habits, we shall not prosper.
Besides, monasteries and temples breed mildness of
character, and it is only the fierce and warlike who
dominate mankind/ 9 *
When he had served his apprenticeship as herd
boy, he was allowed to ride with Yesukai. By all
accounts the young Temujin was good to look upon,
but remarkable more for the strength of his body and
a downright manner than for any beauty of features.
He must have been tall, with high shoulders, his
skin a whitish tan. His eyes, set far apart under a
sloping forehead, did not slant. And his eyes were
green, or blue-grey in the iris, with black pupils.
Long reddish-brown hair fell in braids to his back.
He spoke very little, and then only after meditating
on what he would say. He had an ungovernable
temper and the gift of winning fast friends.
He had been weaned among the nomads and he knew that the one way to keep them from each other’s throats was to lead them to war elsewhere. He meant to harness the whirlwind and direct it away from the Gobi.
“These men who will share with me the good and
bad of the future, whose loyalty will be like the clear
rock crystal I wish them to be called Mongols.
Above everything that breathes on earth I wish them
to be raised to power.”
They had been united before, briefly, under the
Hiung-nu monarchs who harried Cathay until the
great wall was built to shut them out. (Cathay is China)
Khan planned to use his legions against the people behind the great wall, cathay, ruled by the son of heaven.
He did and he won with great cunning and skill. You must read portions of the book to find out why.
From the China to the Aral sea one master reigned. Rebellion had ceased.
The couriers of the Khan galloped over fifty degrees
of longitude, and it was said that a virgin carrying a
sack of gold could ride unharmed from one border of
the nomad empire to the other.
But this administrative activity did not altogether
satisfy the aging conqueror. He no longer relished
the winter hunts over the prairies. One day in the
pavilion at Karakorum he asked an officer of the
Mongol guard what, in all the world, could bring the
greatest happiness.
“The open steppe, a clear day, and a swift horse
under you,” responded the officer after a little thought,
” and a falcon on your wrist to start up hares/’
” Nay,” responded the Khan, ” to crush your
enemies, to see them fall at your feet to take their
horses and goods and hear the lamentation of their
women. That is best.”
The Master of Thrones and Crowns was also the
Scourge. His next move was one of conquest, terrible
in its effect, and it was toward the west. And it came
about in a most curious way.
In the finest traditions of the middle east, Persia and Bagdad were at war with each other (1200). The emperor of emperors proposed trade with the Mohammed Shah and it began peacefully until his trade envoys were murdered by agents of the Shah.
When the survivors of his embassy returned to
Genghis Khan, the master of the Gobi went apart to
a mountain to meditate upon the matter. The slaying
of a Mongol envoy could not go unpunished ;
tradition required revenge for the wrong inflicted.
” There cannot be two suns in the heavens,” the
Khan said, ” or two Kha Khans upon the earth.”
A
brief and ominous message went this time to the
Shah.
” Thou hast chosen war. That will happen which
will happen, and what it is to be, we know not. God
alone knows.”
War, inevitable in any case between these two
conquerors, had begun. And the careful Mongol had
his casus belli.
This accomplished, there remained the second and
greater problem to transport the horde of a quarter-
Z22
GENGHIS KHAN 123
million warriors from Lake Baikal over the ranges of
mid-Asia into Persia. A distance of some two thousand
miles as the crow flies, and a country wherein travellers
to-day only venture with a well-equipped caravan.
A march impossible for a modern army of that size.
He had no doubt of the ability of the horde to
make the march. In it, he had fashioned a fighting
force that was able to go anywhere on land. Half of
it never saw the Gobi again, but some of his Mongols
marched over ninety degrees of longitude and back
again.
Apparently it struck him during this ride to his
host that he himself might not return alive. Passing
through a fine woodland, and looking at a lofty grove
of pines, he remarked :
” A good place for roe-deer, and for hunting.
A good resting place for an old man.”
(A glimpse of Tecumseh, who indeed knew the day he would die and gave his prized possessions to the indians with him in Canada.)
He gave orders that upon his death the Tassa, his
code of laws, was to be read aloud, and men were to
live according to it. For the horde and his officers
he had other words :
” Ye go with me, to strike with our strength the man
who has treated us with scorn. Ye shall share in my
victories. Let the leader of ten be as vigilant and
obedient as the leader of ten thousand. If either fail
in duty, he will be deprived of life, and his women and
children also.”
Kits were small and strictly serviceable
leather sacks holding nose-bags for the pony and a
pot for the man ; wax, and files for sharpening the
arrow-heads, and spare bow-strings. Later on, every
man would have his emergency rations smoke-cured
meat, and dry milk curds. This dried milk could be
put into water and heated.
The main body of the horde moved more slowly
westward, dropping through gorges, and over frozen
lakes to the icy floor of the Sungarian gate, the pass
from which all the nomad clans have come out of high
Asia. Here they were buffeted by winds and chilled
by a cold so great that whole herds might be frozen if
caught in the pass during a bur an > a black wind storm.
By now most of the cattle had died off and had been
eaten. The last stores of hay had vanished ; the carts,
perforce, had been left behind, and only the hardiest
of the camels survived.
The ponies dug up moss and dry grass with their hoofs
from under the snow. The hunters went afield for
game. Forging ahead in the utter cold of high Asia,
a quarter-million men endured hardships that would
have put a modern division into hospital. The Mongols
did not mind it particularly. Wrapped up in their
sheepskins and leather, they could sleep under drifting
snow ; at need, the round, heavy yurts warmed them.
When food failed, they opened a vein in a horse,
drank a small quantity of blood and closed the vein.
THE FIRST CAMPAIGN
MEANWHILE Juchi and Chepd Noyon had
had a pitched battle with the Mohammedans
under the Roof of the World. It is worth telling about.
The Mohammedan Shah was in the field before
the Mongols. Fresh from victories in India, he had
mustered his host of four hundred thousand. He had
gathered his atabegs, and strengthened his Turks with
contingents of Arabs and Persians. This host he had
led north, searching for the Mongols who were not
yet on the scene. He met and attacked some of
Chepd Noyon’s patrols who were not aware of the
war, and the appearance of these fur-clad nomads on
their shaggy ponies aroused the contempt of the much
better clad Kharesmians. When his spies brought him
accounts of the horde, the Shah did not alter his
opinion. ” They have conquered only unbelievers
now the banners of Islam are arrayed against them.”
Soon the Mongols were visible. Raiding detach-
ments descended the heights toward the wide river
Syr. They appeared at villages in fertile valleys,
driving off the herds, gathering up all available grain
and foodstuffs ; they set fire to the dwellings and
retired in the smoke. Their carts and herds were sent
back to the north with detachments of warriors and
a day later they rode into a village fifty miles away.
The chronicle relates that the losses of the Moham-
medans were beyond all counting, and as the Mongol
advance penetrated within the centre of the Turks,
the Shah himself was in danger. He saw within arrow
flight the horned standards of the horde, and only
the desperate efforts of his household divisions saved
him from death. And Juchi’s life was saved, so the
story runs, by a Cathayan prince who was serving in
his command.
” A fear of these un-
believers was planted in the heart of the Sultan, and
an estimation of their courage. If anyone spoke of
them before him, he said that he had never seen men
as daring and as steadfast in the throes of battle, or as
skilled in giving blows with the point and edge of
their swords.”
Even before this two sons of the Khan had appeared
at Otrar, down the Syr to the north. Otrar, whose
governor had put to death Mongol merchants.
Inaljuk, who had ordered the execution of the mer-
chants, was still governor of the city. Knowing that
he had little mercy to expect from the Mongols, he
shut himself up in the citadel with the best of his men,
138 GENGHIS KHAN
and held out for five months. He fought to the end,
taking refuge in a tower when the Mongols had cut
down or captured the last of his men ; and when his
arrows gave out, he still hurled stones down on his
foes. Taken alive, in spite of this desperation, he was
sent to the Khan, who ordered molten silver to be
poured into his eyes and ears the death of retri-
bution. The walls of Otrar were razed and all its
people driven away.
Mohammed, the Warrior, called by his people a
second Alexander, had been thoroughly outgeneralled.
The Mongols under the sons of the Khan, carrying
fire and sword along the Syr, had been no more than
so many masks for the real attacks thrust home by
Chep Noyon and Genghis Khan.
Genghis Khan had said with much truth, ” The
strength of a wall is neither greater nor less than the
courage of the men who defend it.” In this case, the
Turkish officers chose to leave the townspeople to
their fate and escape to join the Shah. So they went
out, with the soldiery of the Shah at night, by the
water gate, and headed toward the Amu.
The Mongols suffered them to pass, but three
tumans followed them and came up with them at the
river. Here the Turks were attacked and nearly all
of them put to the sword.
From the mosque, the Khan went to the city square
where orators were accustomed to assemble an audience
to lecture upon matters of science or doctrine.
” Who is this man ? ” demanded a newcomer, of a
venerable sayyid.
This passage is almost invariably misquoted in histories, and riven as
follow* : ” Genghis Khan rode into the mosque and shouted to his men,
The hay is cut give your horses fodder.’ ”
14* GENGHIS KHAN
” Hush ! ” whispered the other. ” It is the anger
of God that descends upon us.”
The Khan a man who knew well how to address
a multitude, says the chronicle ascended the speaker’s
rostrum and faced the people of Bokhara. First he
questioned them closely about their religion, and com-
mented gravely that it was a mistake to make the
pilgrimage to Mecca. ” For the power of Heaven is
not in one place alone, but in every corner of the
earth.”
He waited for the interpreter to explain his words.
The Mohammedans seemed to him to be like the
Cathayans, builders of cities, makers of books. Useful
in furnishing him with provisions, in yielding up their
wealth in giving him information about the rest of
the world ; useful in giving labourers and slaves to
his men artisans to send back to the Gobi.
” You have done well,” he went on, ” in supplying
my army with food. Bring now to my officers the
precious things you have hidden away. Do not
trouble about what is lying loose in your houses we
will take care of that.”
The rich men of Bokhara were placed under guard
Thirty thousand
Kankali Turks on their own account went over to the
Mongols were received amiably, given Mongol mili-
tary dress and massacred a night or two later. The
Mongols would never trust the Turks of Kharesm,
especially those who turned traitor.
AT Samarkand it was reported to Genghis Khan
that Mohammed Shah had forsaken the city
and gone south.
” Follow Mohammed Shah wherever he goes in
the world. Find him, alive or dead. Spare the cities
that open their gates to you but take by assault those
that resist. I think you will not find this as difficult
as it seems.”
Some of his Turkish warriors grew discon-
tented and rebellious, and Mohammed saw fit to sleep
in a small tent pitched beside his own. And one
morning he found the empty tent filled with arrows.
” Is there no place on earth,” he asked an officer,
” where I can be safe from the Mongol thunderbolt ? ”
He was advised to take ship on the Caspian and go
out to an island where he could be hidden until his
sons and atabegs could collect an army strong enough
to defend him.
After going south a bit to besiege and storm the important cities they had passed by in hunting down Mohammed, the Mongols turned north, into the
Caucasus.
They raided Georgia. A desperate struggle took
place between the Mongols and the warriors of the
mountains. Chep Noyon hid himself on one side of
the long valley that leads up to Tiflis, while Subotai
made use of the old Mongol trick of pretended flight.
The five thousand men in ambush sallied out upon the
flank of the Georgians, who suffered terribly in the
battle.*
Left once more to their own devices, Subotai and
Chep No yon wandered down into the Crimea and
stormed a Genoese trade citadel. What next they
might have done there is no knowing. They were
intent on crossing the Dnieper into Europe when
Genghis Khan, who had followed their movements by
courier, ordered them to return to a rendezvous some
two thousand miles in the east.
” Have you never heard,” cries the Persian chron-
icler, ” that a band of men from the place where the
sun rises, overrode the earth to the Caspian Gates,
carrying destruction among peoples and sowing death
in its passage ? Then, returning to its master it
arrived sound and hale, loaded with booty. And this
in less than two years.”
Their Shah lost to them, and two of his sons killed in
battle against the Mongols, they began to muster
160 GENGHIS KHAN
under their natural leaders, the Persian princes and
the sayyids, the descendants of a warrior prophet.
Genghis Khan was quite aware of his situation. He
knew that the real test of strength was before him
that perhaps a million men, good horsemen and
exceedingly well armed, were now ready to move
against him. For the present they lacked a leader and
they were scattered throughout a dozen kingdoms, in
a circle around him.
It made a tabula rasa of the heart of Islam. The
survivors of the massacres lived on so shaken in spirit
that they cared for nothing except to find food and
to hide, too fearful to leave the weed-grown debris
until the wolves who came to the unburied dead
exterminated them or drove them away. Such sites
of destroyed cities were forbidden to human beings
-a scar on the face of a once fertile earth. More than
once earth was ploughed into the ruins, and grain
planted.
The nomads, valuing human life less than the soil
that could nourish grain and beasts, were eradicating
GENGHIS KHAN 167
the cities. Genghis Khan had paralysed the growing
movement of rebellion had broken resistance
before it could form against him. He would allow
no mercy.
” I forbid you,” he said to his Orkhons, ” to show
demcncy to my enemies without an express order
from me. Rigour alone keeps such spirits dutiful.
An enemy conquered is not subdued, and will always
hate his new master.”
The Mongols have left us no record of such
experiences. But we know that they accepted the
victories of the Khan as a matter predestined. Was he
not the Lord Bogdo, the sending from the gods, the
maker of laws ? Why should he not take what portion
of the earth pleased him ?
Genghis Khan, apparently, did not attribute his
victories to any celestial intervention. He did say,
more than once, ” There is only one sun in the sky,
and one strength of Heaven. Only one Kha Khan
should be upon the earth. “
The veneration of his Buddhists he accepted with-
out comment ; he acquiesced in the role of the
Scourge of God bestowed upon him by the Moham-
172 GENGHIS KHAN
mcdans he even reminded them of it when he saw
something to be gained by so doing. He listened to
the urging of the astrologers, but made his own plans.
Unlike Napoleon, there was nothing of the fatalist
in him ; nor did he assume, as Alexander had done,
the attributes of a god. He set about the task of ruling
half the world with the same inflexible purpose and
patience he had devoted to tracking down a stray
horse in his youth.
He viewed titles with a utilitarian eye. Once he
ordered a letter to be written to a Mohammedan
prince on his frontier. The letter was composed by a
Persian scribe who put in all the imposing titles and
flattery beloved of the Iranians. When the missive
was read over to Genghis Khan, the old Mongol
shouted with rage and ordered it to be destroyed.
” Thou hast written foolishly,” he said to the scribe.
” That prince would have thought I feared him.”
Such was the yam, and two generations later Marco
Polo described it as he saw it in his journey to Kam-
balu,* which was then the city of the Khans.
” Now you must know that the messengers of the
Emperor travelling from Kambalu find at every
twenty-five miles of the journey a station which they
call the Horse Post House. And at each of these
stations there is a large and handsome building for
* Khan baligh, the City of the King. Kubilai Khan, who was emperor
in Marco Polo’s time, resided in the Chinese capital. ” Chandu ” is Shanda
the ” Xanadu ” of Coleridge’s poem.
” In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Where Alph the sacred river ran ”
Marco Polo relates that it took him six days’ travel from Chandu to Kambalu,
and his marches must have been long ones.
When I came before the Khan I kneeled, and he
asked me whether I had said to his secretaries that he
GENGHIS KHAN *6)
was a Buddhist. To this I answered, “My lord,
I said not so.”
” I thought well you said not so,” he answered,
” for it was a word you ought not to have spoken.”
Then, reaching forth the staff on which he leaned
toward me, he said, ” Be not afraid.”
To this I answered, smiling, that if I had feared
I should not have come hither.
” We Mongols believe there is but one God,” he
said then, “and we have an upright heart toward
him.”
” Then,” I responded, ” may God grant you this
mind, for without His gift it cannot be.”
” God hath given to the hand divers fingers,” he
added, ” and hath given many ways to man. He hath
given the Scriptures to you, yet you keep them not.
Surely it is not in your Scriptures that one of you
should dispraise another.”
” Nay,” said I, ” and I signified to your highness
from the beginning that I would not contend with
any one.”
” I speak not,” said he, ” of you. In like manner,
it is not in your Scriptures that a man should turn
from justice for the sake of profit.”
To this I answered that I had not come to seek
money, having even refused what was offered me.
And one of the secretaries then present avowed that
I had refused a bar of silver and a piece of silk.
” I speak not of that,” said the Khan. ” God
hath given to you the Scriptures and ye keep them
not ; but he hath given to us soothsayers, and we do
what they bid us and live in peace.”
He drank four times, I think, before uttering this,
264 GENGHIS KHAN
and, while I waited attentively in expectation that he
might disclose more respecting his faith, he spoke
again :
” You have stayed a long time here and it is my
pleasure that you return. You have said that you dared
not take my ambassador with you. Will you take,
then, my messenger or my letters ? ”
To this I answered, if the Khan would make me
understand his words and put them in writing, I
would willingly carry them to the best of my power.
He then asked if I would have gold or silver or
costly garments, and I answered that we were accus-
tomed to accept no such things, yet could not get out
of his country without his help. He explained that he
would provide for us, and demanded how far we wished
to be taken. I said it were sufficient if he had us
conveyed to Armenia.
” I will cause you to be carried thither,” he made
answer, ” after which, look to yourself. There are
two eyes in a single head, yet they both behold one
object. You came from Batu, and therefore you must
return to him.”
Then, after a pause, as if musing, he said, ” You
have a long way to go. Make yourself strong with
food, that you may be able to endure the journey.”
So he ordered them to give me drink, and I
departed from his presence and returned not again.
XV
THE GRANDSON OF GENGHIS KHAN IN THE HOLY LAND
A LITTLE-KNOWN chapter of history is the
contact of the Mongols with the Armenians
and the Christians of Palestine after the death of
Genghis Khan. Hulagu, his grandson, brother of
Mangu who was then Khan, took over the dominion
of Persia, Mesopotamia and Syria in the middle of the
thirteenth century. What followed is well sum-
marised in the Cambridge Medieval History -, Vol. IV,
P- 175-
Bogdo sometimes equate with divine beings