Genghis Khan
Temüjin united the steppe tribes and built the largest contiguous land empire in history in about twenty years. He was born around 1162 to a minor Mongol chief who was poisoned by Tatars when the boy was nine, after which the clan abandoned the family and his mother raised the children on roots and fish. He killed his own half-brother over a stolen fish, was captured by a rival clan and escaped wearing a wooden collar, and spent his twenties building a following out of anda oaths and obligations rather than birth. The reorganisation he imposed is the reason the conquests worked. He broke the tribes up and redistributed their men into decimal units of ten, hundred, thousand and ten thousand under commanders he appointed on merit, several of whom had been enemies or shepherds; he made loyalty to him rather than to a clan the basis of everything, forbade the plundering of a camp until a battle was won, and codified it in the yasa. He was proclaimed Genghis Khan at a great assembly in 1206. The campaigns followed: the Xi Xia and the Jin in northern China, the Kara-Khitai, and then Khwarazm, whose shah executed a Mongol trade delegation in 1218 and whose cities were destroyed with a thoroughness that emptied whole provinces. The death toll across the conquests is unknowable and was enormous. He also guaranteed religious freedom, protected merchants, ran a relay postal system, and made the Silk Road safe. He died in 1227 and his burial place is unknown.
- Lived: 1162 CE – 1227 CE
- Nationality: Mongolian
- Roles: military_leader, leader
