Temüjin was born around 1162 on the Mongolian steppe, the son of a minor Borjigin chieftain. When he was nine his father was poisoned by the rival Tatars; the family was abandoned by their clan and reduced to scavenging on the open grass. He survived adolescence by ferocity, alliance, and an unbroken ability to inspire loyalty. By 1206, after twenty years of steppe warfare, the Mongol tribes assembled at the Onon River and proclaimed him Genghis Khan — 'universal ruler.' Over the next two decades his armies — never larger than perhaps a hundred thousand horsemen — conquered or destroyed the Western Xia, the Jin, the Khwarazmian Empire of Persia, and pushed into Russia and the Caucasus. The Mongol Empire at its peak under his sons and grandsons stretched from the Pacific to the Carpathians: nine million square miles, the largest contiguous land empire in human history. He standardised a written Mongolian script, codified law in the Yassa, and ran a courier system — the Yam — whose horsemen could carry a message four thousand miles in two weeks. He died in August 1227 on campaign in China; his tomb has never been found. Geneticists estimate that today between sixteen and thirty-two million men carry a Y-chromosome lineage descended from him.
All Figures
Mongol Emperor
Genghis Khan
1,162 CE – 1,227 CE
Founded the largest contiguous empire in history.
Watch the 48s episodeLifetime
Date source not yet attached to this catalogue record.
Epoch Episode · ~48s
Epoch Episode · 6 scenes · ~48sEpoch+
