Mongol Empire
Temujin - Genghis Khan
Andrew Marr's History of the World - Into The Light
Grassland of the Nomad
The answer to why Islam did not proliferate can be found in another story from the margins, from a world of remote grassland and forests. There
is a very simple way of telling the human story.
First, hunter-gatherers and then farmers, and then towns and cities and all the rest of it. But there is one group of people who stand completely
outside this story, and they are the nomads, living on grassland that is too thin for farming but is wonderful for sheep and yak and goats, and so
they move with the seasons. In many ways, the nomads are the people who tread most lightly on the surface of the Earth and leave least behind.
But there is always an exception to the rule.
In the 12th century, the Mongolian steppe was home to hundreds of rival nomadic tribes. Into this world of feuding and violence, a boy was born.
His name was Temujin. When Temujin was nine, his father was poisoned by a rival tribe. Cast out with his mother and brothers, the young Mongol stayed
alive by foraging and hunting.
Temujin and Brothers
Temujin would never forget a lesson his mother taught him. "Brothers who work separately, like a single arrow shaft, can be easily broken. But
brothers who stand together against a world, like a bundle of arrows, cannot be broken." from unity came strength. This single piece of learned
wisdom would be the basis of everything that Temujin would achieve.
As he got older, Temujin fought and manoeuvred his way to lead his clan. But his ambition was much greater than that. Temujin's greatest
achievement was to unite the tribes of the Steppes. When he defeated them, instead of offering them exile and disgrace, he would offer them
brotherhood and a share in the spoils of future wars. And quite soon, the rival tribes were being melded together into one people, one army,
riding and fighting together.
Temujin the Wattior
In 1206, Temujin took the title "universal ruler", or Genghis Khan. And he began to expand his empire beyond Mongolia. In just six
years, his army swept across northern China and in 1215, ransacked Beijing, giving the Mongols weapons they'd never seen before.
Defeating the Chinese gave Genghis Khan access to awesome new military technology – battering rams, scaling ladders, monster-sized
crossbows, and catapults that could fire firebombs. With China now absorbed into is growing empire, Genghis turned his army West and marched
into Central Asia to confront the greatest adversary of all – the forces of Islam.
In the spring of 1220, the Mongols reached the magnificent eastern outpost of the Islamic Empire, Bukhara.
Bukhara
Bukhara, like Merv, Baghdad, and Samarkand, was where the rich, optimistic heart of the Islamic world could be found. But Bukhara had never
experienced anything like the Mongols. The combination of Chinese technology and Genghis Khan's disciplined, fearsome army of nomad horsemen
produced a new kind of army, a new kind of threat. The siege of Bukhara raged for 15 days, until the city was finally scorched into submission.
When Genghis went into Bukhara, his army showed no mercy. And Genghis himself was honoured, as always, with the first pick of the captured women.
Genghis Khan
Bukhara was only the start. One by one, the other great Muslim treasure-house cities were annihilated. By 1223, Genghis Khan's destruction of
the Muslim empire in Central Asia was complete. Within 20 years, the Mongol empire stretched from Beijing in the East right through the land of
the Rus', into eastern Europe, almost to the gates of Vienna. Genghis Khan's belief in strength through unity had resulted in the largest land
empire in history.
Genghis Khan Monument
In his homeland today, the great warrior Emperor is revered as a national hero and immortalised by this 40m-high steel monument.
But it seems as if Genghis Khan, a man of many concubines and conquests, may have achieved immortality of a different kind. In 2003,
scientists discovered a specific genetic marker in men in Europe and Asia, which originated a little less than 1,000 years ago, in an area
suspiciously close to that of the Mongol Empire. And they concluded that probably 16 million men alive today really did spring from the loins
of Genghis Khan.
By wiping out the heart of the original Muslim civilisation, Genghis Khan left the way clear for another part of the world to begin to grow.
Christian Europe. Trade flourished between East and West in the century after Genghis died, an era of peace known as the Pax Mongolica.
