The Career of Genghis Khan Genghis Khan was born some time around near the Onon river in the north of present-day Mongolia. Named Temujin, he was the son of Yesugei, the chieftain of the Kiyat, a group of families related to the Borjigid clan. His father was murdered at an early age and his mother, Oelun-eke, raised Temujin, his brothers and step-brothers in great hardship. The following decade was full of reversals – Temujin was captured and enslaved and soon after his marriage, his wife, Borte, was kidnapped, and he had to fight to recover her.
During these years of hardship he also managed to make important friends. The young Boghurchu was his first ally and remained a trusted friend; Jamuqa, his blood-brother ( anda ), was another. Temujin also restored old alliances with the ruler of the Kereyits, Tughril/Ong Khan, his father’s old blood-brother. Through the 1180s and 1190s, Temujin remained an ally of Ong Khan and used the alliance to defeat powerful adversaries like Jamuqa, his old friend who had become a hostile foe.
It was after defeating him The Great Wall of China. that Temujin felt confident enough to move against other tribes: the powerful Tatars (his father’s assassins), the Kereyits and Ong Khan himself in . The final defeat of the Naiman people and the powerful Jamuqa in , left Temujin as the dominant personality in the politics of the steppe lands, a position that was recognised at an assembly of Mongol chieftains ( quriltai ) where he was proclaimed the ‘Great Khan of the Mongols’ ( Qa’an ) with the title Genghis Khan, the ‘Oceanic Khan’ or ‘Universal Ruler’. Just before the quriltai of , Genghis Khan had reorganised the Mongol people into a more effective, disciplined military force ( see following sections ) that facilitated the success of his future campaigns.
The first of his concerns was to conquer China, divided at this time into three realms: the Hsi Hsia people of Tibetan origin in the north-western provinces; the Jurchen whose Chin dynasty ruled north China from Peking; the Sung dynasty who controlled south China. By , the Hsi Hsia were defeated, the ‘Great Wall of China’ was breached in and Peking sacked in . Long drawn-out battles against the Chin continued until but Genghis Khan was satisfied enough with the progress of his campaigns to return to his Mongolian homeland in and leave the military affairs of the region to his subordinates. After the defeat in of the Qara Khita who controlled the Tien Shan mountains north-west of China, Mongol dominions reached the Amu Darya, and the states of Transoxiana and Khwarazm.
Sultan Muhammad, the ruler of Khwarazm, felt the fury of Genghis Khan’s rage when he executed Mongol envoys. In the campaigns between and the great cities – Otrar, Bukhara, Samarqand, Balkh, Gurganj, Merv, Nishapur and Herat – surrendered to the Mongol forces. Towns that resisted were devastated. At Nishapur, where a Mongol prince was killed during the siege operation, Genghis Khan commanded that the ‘town should be laid waste in such a manner that the site could be ploughed upon; and that in the exaction of vengeance [for the death of the prince] not even cats and dogs should be left alive’.