Much to my surprise I am fascinated by this book by Jack Weatherford. From the Amazon sale site:
The name Genghis Khan often conjures the image of a relentless, bloodthirsty barbarian on horseback leading a ruthless band of nomadic warriors in the looting of the civilized world. But the surprising truth is that Genghis Khan was a visionary leader whose conquests joined backward Europe with the flourishing cultures of Asia to trigger a global awakening, an unprecedented explosion of technologies, trade, and ideas.
Fighting his way to power on the remote steppes of Mongolia, Genghis Khan developed revolutionary military strategies and weaponry that emphasized rapid attack and siege warfare, which he then brilliantly used to overwhelm opposing armies in Asia, break the back of the Islamic world, and render the armored knights of Europe obsolete. Under Genghis Khan, the Mongol army never numbered more than 100,000 warriors, yet it subjugated more lands and people in twenty-five years than the Romans conquered in four hundred. With an empire that stretched from Siberia to India, from Vietnam to Hungary, and from Korea to the Balkans, the Mongols dramatically redrew the map of the globe, connecting disparate kingdoms into a new world order.
http://www.paradoxplace.com/Perspectives/Maps/Mongol%20Empire.htm
But contrary to popular wisdom, Weatherford reveals that the Mongols were not just masters of conquest, but possessed a genius for progressive and benevolent rule. On every level and from any perspective, the scale and scope
of Genghis Khan’s accomplishments challenge the limits of imagination. Genghis Khan was an innovative leader, the first ruler in many conquered countries to put the power of law above his own power, encourage religious freedom, create public schools, grant diplomatic immunity, abolish torture, and institute free trade. The trade routes he created became lucrative pathways for commerce, but also for ideas, technologies, and expertise that transformed the way people lived. The Mongols introduced the first international paper currency and postal system and developed and spread revolutionary technologies like printing, the cannon, compass, and abacus. They took local foods and products like lemons, carrots, noodles, tea, rugs, playing cards, and pants and turned them into staples of life around the world. The Mongols were the architects of a new way of life at a pivotal time in history.
And from Wikipedia to help me sort people out as I read:
Genghis Khan[note 3] (c. 1162 – August 18, 1227), born Temüjin, was the Great Khan and founder of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death. He came to power by uniting many of the nomadic tribes of Northeast Asia
The last chapters that I have read explain that one of the practices that started Temujin on his road to success in the early days of his conquest was to exterminate the men who opposed him who were leaders in their own right. But then to actually adopt the people that had been part of the opposition into his camp so that there was no retaliation from subdued opponents later. He would even choose a male child to be adopted by his own mother to raise so that the child became his brother.
And tonight I am reading about the fact that while rulers and conquerors over history have asked men to die for them, Genghis never willingly gave up a single man. All of his strategy was absolutely about not loosing any men in the battle.
I finished the book last night. Truly I was fascinated to the very end. And then the author spoke for quite a long time about how he became involved with the story of Ghengis Khan which was interesting in it's own right. The one thing that I would add to the above information is that the Mongols never imposed their own religion nor their own language (in fact it was forbidden for people who were not Mongols by birth to learn the Mongol language) nor their own ways of life on those people who had been conquered. When much later in the Mongol empire they built boats and became involved in trading, they themselves were NOT the merchants. They transplanted merchants who already had those skills to run the trading posts all over the world.
