57 Fun Facts About Genghis Khan

What was Genghis Khan's birth name?

Temüjin was the name of an enemy chief his father had just captured, and the Secret History says the newborn was named after him to mark the victory.

Genghis Khan was born into which clan of the Mongols?

Borjigin princes outlasted the empire by centuries: the clan was still supplying rulers in Mongolia in the 20th century, some 700 years after Genghis was born into it.

According to the most prominent legend, what was Genghis clutching in his hand when he was born?

A blood clot in a newborn's fist was read by the Mongols as an omen, and storytellers took this one as the sign that the boy was born to be a warrior.

Genghis's father was poisoned while accepting a meal from members of which tribe?

The Tatars recognised him as an old enemy when he stopped to share their meal on his ride home, and slipped poison into his food; he reached his own camp only to die.

What did Genghis Khan's clan do after his father's death?

Abandoned his family: the clan had no use for a child chief and rode off, leaving his mother to keep the children alive on roots, nuts, fish and small game.

In the Secret History, whom does the young Genghis kill over hunting spoils?

His half-brother Behter had been seizing the younger boys' catch, so Genghis and a brother ambushed and killed him; the chronicle also records their mother's furious scolding.

Which childhood blood brother of Genghis became his greatest rival and was eventually executed?

Jamukha was handed over by his own companions, whom Genghis executed for betraying their lord; the Secret History says Jamukha then asked his old friend for an honourable death and got it.

Who was Genghis Khan's principal wife, betrothed to him when both were children?

Börte's children alone carried the empire forward: only her four sons were ever candidates to succeed Genghis, while the sons of his many later wives were passed over.

Which Hollywood star played Genghis Khan in the notorious 1956 epic The Conqueror?

John Wayne's Mongol warlord became one of Hollywood's most famous miscastings, and the film a grim legend: it was shot in Utah, downwind of Nevada's nuclear test site, and by 1980, 91 of its 220 cast and crew had developed cancer.

Who was Genghis Khan's mother?

Hö'elün had been snatched by his father from her first husband on the road home from her wedding, a kidnapping that started a feud and later cost Genghis his own bride.

Genghis's newlywed wife was kidnapped by raiders from which tribe?

The Merkits were settling an old score, since his father had stolen his mother from one of their own; Genghis called on two powerful allies, and their combined armies won her back.

Which eldest son of Genghis was born soon after his mother's rescue, his paternity in doubt?

Jochi was raised by Genghis as his own son, but the doubt never died: when the succession came up, his brother Chagatai called him a bastard to his face and the two came to blows in front of their father.

Medieval Europeans identified Toghrul, the steppe khan who was Genghis's first patron, with which legendary king?

Prester John was the Christian priest-king Europe hoped would appear out of the East, and Toghrul's people were Christians; Marco Polo retold their war as Genghis fighting Prester John over a refused marriage.

The Song envoy Zhao Hong wrote in 1221 that the young Genghis spent over a decade how?

As a slave of the Jin, the envoy wrote, which was how he came to know that empire's affairs so well; Mongol chronicles are silent on those years, and historians now think the report likely.

The Baljuna Covenant, made by Genghis in 1203, was what kind of pact?

An oath with his last followers, sworn by the muddy waters of Baljuna after a crushing defeat; the men who drank there with him came from many peoples and faiths, and were honoured for the rest of their lives.

How did Genghis's former patron Toghrul die after his defeat in 1203?

Killed unrecognised by a Naiman: the old khan had ridden west to seek shelter with that people, and one of its soldiers cut him down. Genghis then married two of the dead man's nieces to himself and a son.

Which Orkhon Valley site, a campsite under Genghis Khan, did his heir wall in as the Mongol Empire's capital?

Karakorum was little more than a town of tents until 1235, when walls and a palace went up; centuries later its stones were carted off to build a Buddhist monastery that still stands beside the ruins.

Genghis Khan was proclaimed ruler in 1206 at which kind of assembly?

A kurultai also had to choose every later Great Khan: when Genghis died, the throne stood empty for two years until one met to confirm his heir.

One theory holds that the title 'Genghis' derives from a Turkic word meaning what?

Ocean: the sea was thought to ring the whole earth, so an 'oceanic' khan ruled everything, which is why the title is usually glossed as 'universal ruler'; its true origin is still debated.

Genghis Khan expanded the keshig to 10,000 men to serve as what?

His bodyguard was recruited from the sons and brothers of his commanders, which kept their families loyal; it doubled as the training ground for his future generals.

According to the Secret History, Genghis had a phobia of what?

Dogs: in the Secret History his own father, leaving the boy with his future in-laws, asks them not to let his son be frightened by theirs.

Which Mongol khanate, founded by a grandson of Genghis Khan, took tribute from the Russian princes for over two centuries?

The Golden Horde left the Russian princes on their thrones but made them answer to its capital on the Volga and collect its tribute themselves, a grip that held until Moscow threw it off at the Ugra River in 1480.

The Xia kingdom, which Genghis invaded in 1209, was ruled by which people?

The Tanguts wrote in a script of their own, thousands of intricate signs devised in the 1030s; it outlived the kingdom the Mongols destroyed but was later forgotten, and scholars had to decipher it in the 20th century.

In his 1209 siege of the Xia capital, Genghis dammed which waterway, only to flood his own camp?

The Yellow River broke through the Mongols' crude dam and swamped their own camp; even so, the Xia emperor sued for peace and handed over tribute, including a daughter.

How did Genghis respond in 1210 when a Jin envoy demanded that he submit and pay tribute?

He spat and rode away, which was as good as a declaration of war: the following spring he called his chiefs together and led them south against the Jin.

In 1212 Genghis began recruiting Chinese experts to form a corps of what?

Siege engineers were what his cavalry lacked: after his horsemen failed before the walls of a Jin city in 1212, he recruited Chinese specialists, and their catapults later broke the cities of Central Asia.

The Jin capital Zhongdu, which fell to Genghis Khan's army in 1215, is which modern city?

Beijing, then called Zhongdu, was sacked so thoroughly that it is said to have burned for a month; half a century later a grandson of Genghis rebuilt it as his own capital.

In which time-travel comedy do two high-school slackers kidnap Genghis Khan for a history report?

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure has its heroes collect Genghis, Joan of Arc, Lincoln and others for extra credit, then park them at a California mall, where the great figures of history run riot and get arrested.

In the Secret History, the enemy warrior Jebe joins Genghis after admitting he had done what to him in battle?

Shot his horse from under him, the archer confessed, expecting to die for it; Genghis praised a man who did not hide what he had done, gave him the new name Jebe, and saw him rise to be one of the empire's great generals.

A 2003 genetics paper proposed that about one man in 200 worldwide carries what from Genghis Khan's family?

A Y chromosome, handed from father to son: the team found one lineage in about 8% of men from China to Uzbekistan and traced it to Mongolia about 1,000 years ago, though later studies have questioned the link.

How did Genghis Khan's general Jebe win Qara Khitai's Muslims away from their ruler Kuchlug?

By proclaiming religious freedom: Kuchlug had pressed his Muslim subjects to give up their faith, so when Jebe announced that the persecution was over, the towns turned on Kuchlug and he fled for the mountains.

The massacre of a Mongol trade caravan in which border town sparked Genghis Khan's war with Khwarazm?

Otrar's governor seized the caravan's goods and had its merchants killed as spies, and the shah then killed the envoy sent to protest; Genghis answered with invasion, and the governor was executed when his town fell.

Who ruled the Khwarazmian Empire when Genghis invaded in 1219?

Muhammad II never met the Mongols in open battle: sharing power uneasily with his mother, he scattered his huge army among city garrisons, and the cities fell one by one.

Chased across Persia by Genghis's generals, the Khwarazmian shah died on an island in which body of water?

The Caspian Sea put him beyond the reach of horsemen but not of illness: the shah whose killing of an envoy had started the war died on his island that winter, a fugitive in his own empire.

Which general rode with Jebe on the Great Raid that crushed the Rus' princes at the Kalka in 1223?

Subutai's riders routed the Rus' princes at the Kalka and then simply rode home; a far larger Mongol army came back in the late 1230s and took the Rus' cities one by one.

Which Khwarazmian prince escaped Genghis Khan in 1221 by riding his horse off a cliff into the Indus?

Jalal al-Din fought until the battle was lost, then rode over the edge and made the far bank; Genghis is said to have held his archers back and pointed the prince out to his own sons as a model of courage.

The 40-metre steel statue of Genghis Khan on horseback near Ulaanbaatar was built facing which way?

East, toward his birthplace and the sunrise: the steel horseman stands where legend says Genghis found a golden whip, and an elevator and stairs take visitors up to a viewing deck on the horse's head.

Genghis Khan summoned the Taoist Changchun hoping for what?

An elixir of immortality was what he had heard the sage possessed; told frankly that no such medicine existed, Genghis honoured him anyway and freed his followers from taxes.

The yam, begun under Genghis Khan and later described by Marco Polo, was the Mongol Empire's system of what?

Postal relays of fresh horses, food and shelter let riders cover well over a hundred miles a day; the network doubled as the khan's eyes and ears, bringing him military news from every frontier.

Genghis Khan had Mongolian written down for the first time using the script of which people?

The Uyghurs supplied both the alphabet and the scribe, a captive who adapted it for Mongolian; written in vertical columns, it served Mongolia for seven centuries until Cyrillic replaced it in the 1940s.

Genghis died in August 1227 during his final campaign against which state?

Western Xia's capital surrendered weeks later, its defenders unaware that he was dead; the Mongols then destroyed the kingdom so thoroughly that it vanished from the map.

What triggered Genghis's final illness in the winter of 1226–27?

A fall from his horse while hunting left him feverish and in pain; his sons and generals begged him to go home and recover, but he would not break off the campaign, and he died that August.

According to Marco Polo, how did Genghis Khan die?

Shot by an arrow during a siege, in the knee, wrote Polo decades later; the friar Carpini heard it was lightning. The Mongols hid the death when it happened, and rival stories have filled the gap ever since.

Genghis was buried on or near which sacred peak, afterwards declared a forbidden zone?

Burkhan Khaldun had saved his life as a young man, when he hid on its slopes from raiders; he swore that he and his descendants would honour the mountain with a sacrifice every morning.

What is known today about the location of Genghis Khan's tomb?

It has never been found: by legend the funeral escort killed everyone it met on the road and rode horses over the grave to hide it, and the district around it stayed closed to outsiders for centuries.

Who succeeded Genghis as ruler of the Mongol Empire in 1229?

Ögedei was the compromise: less of a general than his brothers, but generous, well liked and ready to give ground, he was the one candidate his feuding elder brothers could both accept.

Genghis's chosen heir was notorious for what habit, blamed for his death in 1241?

Excessive drinking: scolded by a brother, the heir is said to have agreed to an overseer and a fixed number of cups a day, then had himself served in cups twice the size.

Which grandson of Genghis founded the Yuan dynasty in China in 1271?

Kublai Khan finished what his grandfather had started: Genghis led the first Mongol armies into China, and Kublai completed the conquest of the whole country in 1279, when the last Song resistance collapsed.

Which grandson of Genghis sacked Baghdad in 1258, ending the Abbasid Caliphate?

Hulegu's destruction of Baghdad enraged his own cousin Berke, a Mongol khan who had converted to Islam, and within four years the two were at war, Mongols fighting Mongols.

Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire, claimed descent from both Genghis and which other conqueror?

Timur had no such bloodline himself, so he never took the title of khan: he ruled through puppet khans descended from Genghis and married into the family to style himself its son-in-law.

A Japanese legend claims Genghis Khan was really which samurai hero, said to have escaped death in 1189?

Minamoto no Yoshitsune was forced to kill himself in 1189, but sympathy for the fallen hero bred tales that he slipped away to the mainland; in the late 1800s, as Japan looked toward Asia, storytellers made him Genghis Khan.

In the mid-1990s the Washington Post acclaimed Genghis Khan as what?

Man of the millennium was the paper's verdict in its last edition of 1995: it argued that he embodied the half-civilised, half-savage duality of the human race.

A saying attributed to Genghis Khan, on the joy of crushing his enemies, was reworked for the hero of which 1982 film?

Conan the Barbarian gives it to Arnold Schwarzenegger as his first line in the film; in the original, preserved by a Persian chronicler, Genghis calls it his supreme joy to cut his enemies to pieces and drive them before him.

The Secret History, the Mongols' own account of Genghis Khan's life, survived because it was transliterated into what?

Chinese characters were used to spell out the Mongolian sounds in a Ming-dynasty primer for training interpreters; the original was lost, and that language-class crib became the only complete copy.

Which name is given to the secret code of laws long credited to Genghis Khan?

The Yassa was kept secret and no copy has ever been found, so historians now doubt that Genghis issued a single written code at all; Mongol law seems to have grown decree by decree.

Genghis broke with steppe custom over post-battle plunder by doing what?

Dividing it equally with all his men came with a rule: nobody was to stop for loot until the enemy was beaten, and when three of his relatives broke it he stripped them of everything they had taken.

Which supreme deity did Genghis believe had destined him for world domination?

Tengri, the sky god of the steppe peoples, had chosen him, he believed; as victory followed victory he came to treat anyone who refused to submit as a rebel against heaven itself.