Borjigin Temüjin

Biography

A dispersed family and new alliances

Temüjin was born into the Borjigin clan of the Kiyad Mongols. His father Yesügei arranged his marriage to Börte, daughter of the Onggirat leader Dei Sechen. Yesügei was poisoned by Tatars on his return journey, and many of his former followers left Ö'elün's family. Temüjin, his mother, and his siblings survived by hunting and gathering. The Secret History of the Mongols records that Temüjin and his brother Qasar killed their older half-brother Bekter. This is a report of a family conflict in a Mongol source, not a story that should be recast as an act of public justice. He was held captive for a time by the Tayichi'ud, escaped with help from Sorkan-Shira, and gained early followers such as Bo'orchu.

After Temüjin married Börte, Merkit raiders abducted her. He asked his father's ally Toghril and his sworn brother Jamuqa for aid. Their combined forces recovered Börte. Jochi was born after her return, prompting later historical speculation about his paternity. Temüjin consistently recognized Jochi as his son; the speculation cannot be presented as a proven biological conclusion. Temüjin and Jamuqa then competed for followers and authority on the steppe. The result of their battle around 1187 is disputed, and records of Temüjin's activities in the following years are incomplete.

Unification of the steppe

In 1196 (first year of the Jin Cheng'an era), Temüjin joined a Jin and Kereit operation against the Tatars and gained political standing. He subsequently defeated the Tayichi'ud and Tatars and incorporated fighters from former enemies. His alliance with Toghril and Toghril's son Senggüm broke down in 1203 (third year of the Jin Taihe era). After a setback at Qalaqaljit Elet, he regrouped and defeated the Kereit. In 1204 (fourth year of Taihe), he defeated the Naiman ruler Tayang Khan; Jamuqa's power was broken as well. Mongol sources give different details of the Baljuna oath and Jamuqa's death. Their dramatized scenes cannot be treated as verbatim transcripts.

At an assembly near the upper Onon in 1206 (first year of the Mongol Empire), Temüjin received the title Genghis Khan. The exact origin of “Chinggis” has several proposed explanations; “oceanic” or “powerful” cannot be presented as its settled meaning. He reorganized people under the ruling family into units of tens, hundreds, and thousands, with higher commanders over larger formations, and expanded the keshig guard. Older tribal ties did not disappear at once, but the new military and household structure placed commanders in a more direct relationship with the Great Khan. He promoted Bo'orchu, Muqali, Jelme, Jebe, Subutai, and others and incorporated some conquered communities into the new order.

Western Xia and Jin

Mongol forces raided the Western Xia frontier from 1205. Temüjin led a major campaign in 1209 (fourth year of the Mongol Empire). Although the Mongols still lacked sophisticated siege equipment, the fighting forced Western Xia to seek peace and agree to tribute. He then turned against Jin. Mongol forces crossed its northern defenses in 1211 (sixth year of the Mongol Empire) and attacked across North China. From 1213 to 1214 (second year of Jin Chongqing through second year of Jin Zhenyou), multiple columns entered the region. Jin moved its capital to Kaifeng; the Mongols renewed their advance, and Zhongdu fell in 1215 (tenth year of the Mongol Empire). The city was plundered. Temüjin later entrusted much of the war in North China to Muqali and drew men and supplies from Western Xia, the Uyghurs, and other groups. A campaign personally led by Temüjin, one conducted by his generals, and conquests made by his successors must be distinguished.

Khwarazm and final years

In 1218 (thirteenth year of the Mongol Empire), Jebe defeated Kuchlug, who had taken power in Western Liao. With Mongol and Khwarazmian territories adjoining, a Mongol merchant caravan entered Khwarazm but was destroyed at Otrar; Khwarazm's ruler Muhammad II then mistreated or killed envoys sent in response. Temüjin invaded in 1219 (fourteenth year of the Mongol Empire). He divided his army to besiege Otrar and enter Transoxiana, while personally crossing the desert toward Bukhara. Bukhara and Samarkand fell in 1220 (fifteenth year). Urgench fell after a long siege in 1221 (sixteenth year); Jalal al-Din was defeated near the Indus. Tolui's campaign in Khorasan caused immense loss of life in several cities. Medieval figures for the dead are often exaggerated and cannot be used as exact totals. Jebe and Subutai also advanced north of the Caspian toward the Caucasus and the Rus lands.

During the western campaign, Temüjin appointed officials to administer conquered areas and met the Daoist Qiu Chuji to discuss longevity and government. Scholars have argued that the later tale of Qiu stopping the killing with a single remark was shaped by later Quanzhen tradition; it is not an established event. Temüjin returned to Mongolia in 1225 (twentieth year of the Mongol Empire) and invaded Western Xia again the following year. He died during that campaign in 1227 (twenty-second year). The major historical accounts describe illness; a fall from a horse or an arrow wound may have contributed, while stories of a lightning strike or assassination by a Western Xia consort are legends. His burial site was not made public. Tolui managed affairs temporarily, and Ögedei took the throne at an assembly in 1229 (twenty-fourth year of the Mongol Empire).

Temüjin was born on the sixteenth day of the fourth month of 1162 on the Onon river at Deli'un Boldaq, and is said to have been born clutching a clot of blood the size of a knucklebone in his right hand. His father Yesügei was chief of the Kiyad branch of the Mongols; his mother Hö'elün had been the wife of Chiledü of the Merkit, whom Yesügei, seeing her beauty while hunting, carried off with the help of two kinsmen and took to wife. At the time of Temüjin's birth Yesügei had just taken prisoner the Tatar chief Temüjin Üge, and to mark the victory he named his eldest son Temüjin, "the finest of iron".

In 1170, at nine, Temüjin went with his father to the Khonggirad to arrange a marriage and met Dei Sechen, who thought the boy's appearance remarkable and, having dreamed of a white gerfalcon carrying the sun and moon to his hand, took it for a good omen and betrothed his daughter Börte to him, Temüjin remaining among the Khonggirad as a son-in-law. On his way home Yesügei was poisoned with drugged wine by a Tatar, the son of Temüjin Üge, and died after summoning his son back. With Yesügei dead the Kiyad declined, the followers deserted, and Hö'elün and her sons were left destitute: she tightened her belt and hurried day and night along the Onon gathering fruit and digging roots, while Temüjin and his brothers made hooks of needles to fish the river and wove nets, so that his childhood passed in such hardship. In those years came the killing of his half-brother Bekter: when Temüjin took a golden fish and Bekter seized it, as he had seized a lark Temüjin had shot, Temüjin in anger had him shot with arrows by his full brother, which brought down Hö'elün's furious rebuke with the sayings of the ancestors — and her teaching in word and example was not without effect on his life's work.

The Tayichi'ud, fearing the brothers' growing strength, attacked; Temüjin fled into the Tergüne hills and was taken, made to wear the cangue and paraded through the camp. He escaped by a ruse: one night, when his captors feasted on the Onon and left a boy to watch him, he struck the boy down and fled through the water, and as the Tayichi'ud searched by separate roads the commoner Sorgan Shira found him lying face up in the water, told him to hide and promised silence, then persuaded the searchers to wait until morning; returning, he urged him to flee at once. Remembering that he had once lodged with Sorgan Shira and that his sons Chilagun and Chimbai had pitied him and taken off his cangue at night, Temüjin went to their door at dawn. Sorgan Shira was alarmed, but his sons said that even a hawk chasing a sparrow into the grass must let it be hidden, and that a man in extremity who came to them could not be refused; they took off the cangue, hid him in a cart of wool and set their sister Qadaan to watch it. When the Tayichi'ud searched the camp and came to the wool cart, Sorgan Shira asked whether in such heat any man could endure being in the wool, and the searchers went away; he gave Temüjin a bay horse, a flint and bow and arrows, and a lamb cooked in a leather bag with mare's milk for the journey, and Temüjin got home. He afterward moved his camp to the Blue Lake of Qara Jirugan by the Sangur river southeast of modern Ulaanbaatar.

Knowing that he could not resist the Tayichi'ud alone, he sought the protection of a stronger power and went to Wang Khan of the Kereit, his father's anda, calling him father and becoming his vassal, and began gathering strength and collecting his father's old followers. He married Börte of the Khonggirad and gave Wang Khan her black sable coat, at which Wang Khan was delighted and gathered his old followers for him, so that adherents came in growing numbers; and he moved his camp to the sources of the Kerulen at Burji.

The starting point of his life's work was the campaign to recover his wife. When Toqto'a of the Merkit — brother of Chiledü, Hö'elün's first husband — and his fellows attacked, Börte and other members of the family were taken; Temüjin obtained the aid of Wang Khan and of Jamukha of the Jadirat and fell on the Merkit in the Bu'ura valley, winning a complete victory, recovering his family and seizing much property and many slaves. The fighting probably fell between 1180 and 1184. Afterwards Temüjin and Jamukha returned to the Qorqonagh Jubur and renewed their sworn brotherhood, camping side by side for more than a year; as his strength grew he drew away from Jamukha and set up his own camp by the Sangur river, where his father's old followers and various tribes came in, and the Kiyad nobles gathered to him: Qubilai of the Barlas, Jetei of the Mangqut, Subedei of the Uriyangqat, Jelme's brother, Borochu's brother, Monggetu and his son, and Seche Beki, the son-in-law Botu, his uncle Daritai and his cousins Altan and Quchar. These joined again into a Kiyad noble league and in 1189 at the Blue Lake raised Temüjin as their chief, to command the Mongol tribes.

Made khan, he at once organized his guard, making Borochu and his own and half-brothers its captains and creating ten offices — bowmen, swordsmen, grooms, cooks, herders of sheep and horses, cartwrights, guards of the tent — all filled by his trusted nökör, forming a compact force of his own. By the end of the twelfth century the plateau had three powers: Temüjin of the Kiyad, Wang Khan of the Kereit and Jamukha of the Jadirat. The Tayichi'ud nobles, "wide in land and people and called the strongest", could not tolerate the revival of the Kiyad: in 1190 Jamukha, disaffected with Temüjin, joined thirteen tribes including the Tayichi'ud and attacked with thirty thousand men, and Temüjin, warned by one of Jamukha's men, gathered thirty thousand of his own in thirteen wings and fought at Dalan Baljut near the Sangur river, where he could not hold and withdrew into a narrow bend of the Onon. Jamukha and the Tayichi'ud won, but "had no discipline within", their chiefs quarreling for power and slaughtering their prisoners in great numbers, which offended their followers, while Temüjin courted men's hearts and treated the people of the tribes well, so that the Jalayir, Uru'ut and Mangqut and other Niru'un Mongol tribes left the Tayichi'ud for him, and his strength quickly recovered.

In 1196 the Tatars rebelled against the Jin and were broken by the Jin chancellor Wanyan Xiang, fleeing to the Orja river. Hearing of it, Temüjin told To'oril Khan, who came with the Kereit army while Temüjin raised the Mongol tribes "to avenge father and grandfather", and at the Orja river they stormed the Tatar stockades, took their chiefs and seized all their carts, horses, grain and stores. Wanyan Xiang, for their help against rebels, gave To'oril the title of wang, whence he was called Wang Khan, and Temüjin the title of ja'ut-quri, commander of the subject tribes. The battle and the Jin reward greatly raised his standing and power: he could now command the tribes and the noble houses as an official appointed by the Jin. On returning he attacked and destroyed the Jurkin, the senior branch of the Kiyad nobility, on the grounds that they had broken their oath, refused to march to avenge his forebears and raided his camp, seizing their people and removing the one house within the league with the best claim to rival him. In 1200 he joined Wang Khan against the Tayichi'ud, won north of the Onon and killed Tarkhutai, and then went on with Wang Khan's army to clear away, one after another, the tribes that contended with him on the steppe.

As Temüjin's power grew, the steppe nobles united to raise Jamukha as gur khan, khan of khans, sworn to oppose him. In 1201 Jamukha with eleven tribes, the Tatars, Khonggirad, Qatagin, Salji'ut and Dörben among them, attacked him, and the two sides fought at the Teni river, a tributary of the Onon, where Temüjin defeated him. The next autumn came the battle at Köyiten: it began as a war of the Naiman chief Buyruq Khan with Toqto'a of the Merkit against the Kereit, and Jamukha with the remnants of the Tayichi'ud, Dörben, Qatagin, Salji'ut and Tatar joined in, so that Temüjin and Wang Khan fought them together. At first the allies lost and withdrew from the Uruqut Shirin river to the frontier wall, holding the Alan rampart; the Naiman army followed, and Temüjin sent Altan, Quchar and a third as vanguard, and the two sides fought a decisive battle at Köyiten, where the Naiman coalition was beaten; Jamukha, seeing the army broken, withdrew without fighting down the Argun, plundering as he went, until Wang Khan's troops caught him by the Argun and he surrendered.

Temüjin then destroyed the Tatar at Dalan Nemürges. Before attacking them he issued two ordinances: that no one should plunder in victory but that the spoils be divided after the fighting was done, and that troops who fell back to their original position in battle must return to the fight, on pain of death — his first legislation as head of the league, meant to raise the khan's authority and restrain the noble houses; and Kiyad nobles who disobeyed afterward were punished by his nökör. In the pursuit of the Tayichi'ud he was shot through the neck and lay near death, and Jelme sucked out the clotted blood and, slipping naked into the enemy camp, brought back a bucket of mare's milk and revived him; at dawn the Tayichi'ud submitted. Their destruction removed the great obstacle to the unification of the Mongols, and their officers, among them the archer Jebe — who had shot through the neck of Temüjin's horse at Köyiten, and whom he pardoned for his frankness and took into service — became his trusted instruments. After these two great battles Jamukha's power declined and the plateau was divided between two powers: the east, from the Onon to the Khingan, under Temüjin, and the west, from the Onon to the Altai, under Wang Khan.

For years Temüjin had served Wang Khan, following him on campaign, using the Kereit power to strengthen himself, clearing away rival Mongol nobles and destroying the strong tribes of the east. His growing strength roused the suspicion of Wang Khan and his son Senggüm, and Mongol nobles urged the khan to destroy him. He had earlier sought the granddaughter of Wang Khan in marriage for his eldest son and been refused; in the spring of 1203 the khan and his son agreed to a pretended betrothal and invited him to the wedding feast to kill him, but Temüjin, warned in secret, prepared for war. The plot revealed, Wang Khan attacked and the two fought at Qalanjin Shatu, where Temüjin, outnumbered, lost and his men scattered; he rallied four thousand six hundred horsemen at Mount Jintegei and withdrew to the Baljuna river. There, in dire straits, shooting wild horses for food and drinking muddy water, he raised his hands to heaven and swore with the nökör who followed him that if he should achieve his great work he would share sweet and bitter with them all, and that if he broke his word, let him be as the river water — and the soldiers wept; the oath by the waters of Baljuna became a byword of his hard beginnings. Wang Khan, victorious, grew proud and careless, and Temüjin, recovering, learned that he was feasting at Jjejier Undur with no guard, surprised and besieged him, and after three days and nights broke his main force; Wang Khan fled west into Naiman territory and was killed by a frontier officer, Senggüm fled to the Tangut and, expelled, was killed elsewhere, and the Kereit people were absorbed. He had now conquered every tribe from the Khingan in the east to the Khangai in the west, and the foundation of his empire was laid.

With the Kereit destroyed, the Naiman were badly shaken. In 1204 the Naiman chief Tayang Khan, confident of his strength, resolved to attack the Mongols and sent envoys to the Önggüt south of the desert, but without success — the Önggüt sent the envoys and their information to Temüjin. On the news Temüjin resolved to concentrate his horses and men by the Khalkha river, reorganizing them by thousands, hundreds and tens under appointed chiefs and forming a guard corps, and then marched west up the Kerulen, taking position between the upper waters of the two rivers. Tayang Khan brought not only the main Naiman army but also Jamukha and a crowd of scattered Mongol and Kereit nobles with their men, a great host but ill-disciplined and full of quarrels, and he himself was weak. When the Naiman reached Mount Naququn east of the Orkhon the Mongols came up, and Jamukha and the rest, seeing the Mongol array so strong that victory was hopeless, left Tayang Khan and dispersed; the Naiman were routed, Tayang Khan was wounded and taken and soon died, and Temüjin pressing on to the Altai subdued the Naiman. Jamukha, fleeing to Mount Tanglu, was seized by five of his own nökör and delivered to Temüjin, who put him to death. He at once marched north against the three Merkit clans, whose chief Toqto'a fled to Buyruq Khan of the Naiman, and the Merkit were subdued in their turn. In the spring of 1206 he crossed the Altai into the northern Naiman country of Uluq Taq and fell suddenly on Buyruq Khan, who was hunting on the Khökh Üsün river and was taken by surprise; northern Naiman perished too, and Küchlüg and Toqto'a fled west to the Irtysh.

Having unified the plateau, in the spring of 1206 Temüjin held a great assembly, a khuriltai, at the source of the Onon. It is said that the shaman Kököchü, called Teb Tenggeri, the spokesman of heaven, declared that since all the rulers who had been called gur khan had been conquered and their lands were now his, he should take the title of khan of all under heaven, and that the will of heaven was that his title be Chinggis Khan. The princes and ministers then gave him the title, and the state was named after the tribe, the Yeke Mongghol Ulus, the Great Mongol State. On taking the throne he instituted a military-civil administration, formed a guard corps of his own and promulgated the code of Chinggis Khan, the most widely applied body of law of its time.

With the plateau unified, plundering the neighboring countries became the aim. To his sons, quarrelling over the succession, Temüjin said that the world was wide and its rivers many, and that they might each go and enlarge their camps and conquer states; and to his generals he said that a man's greatest joy was to put down the unruly, defeat his enemies, seize all they had, ride their fine horses and take their beautiful wives — the appetite for plunder being the root of the Mongol rulers' wars abroad. The depth of the social crises in the great states of the thirteenth century gave him the opportunity for large-scale expansion. After founding the state he turned first on the Tangut and then on the Jin, following the principle of the weak before the strong, attacking first the wealthy and strategically placed Tangut state: from the third month of 1205 he raided its frontier, storming Lijili stockade and passing Luosi city and taking many people and beasts; in the autumn of 1207 a second incursion took Wulahai, and when the Tangut gathered the armies of the right wing against them the Mongols did not press further and withdrew in the third month of 1208. In 1209 came a third and greater attack: the Tangut prince as commander with fifty thousand men was beaten and his second-in-command taken and killed for refusing to submit; in the fourth month Wulahai surrendered, the Mongols drove deep, and after two months' standoff took the key fortress of Keyimen by a stratagem and invested the capital Zhongxingfu. Temüjin had the river turned against the city, but the outer dike broke and flooded his own camp, so that he raised the siege, opened negotiations and forced Li Anquan to give a daughter and agree to submit, to aid the Mongols against the Jin and to pay yearly tribute. In 1217, when the Tangut failed to answer a demand for troops, the Mongols crossed the Yellow River and attacked again, reaching the walls of Zhongxingfu in the first month of 1218, and the Tangut soon sent envoys to submit and the Mongols withdrew; in 1224 he attacked once more and took territory.

The last stage of the Tangut war ran parallel with the war against the Jin. In 1226, on the ground that the Tangut had sheltered his enemies, Temüjin launched the campaign that destroyed the state, and in the sixth month of 1227 its last ruler submitted and the Tangut state ended. The war against the Jin had been in preparation long before the founding of the Mongol state: Temüjin knew of the corruption, slack armament and internal quarrels of the Jin, and had once come to Jining to present tribute when Wanyan Yongji received it, so that he had seen him and knew him for a mediocrity. When Wanyan Yongji took the throne and sent envoys to the Mongols, Temüjin, seeing that such a man could be emperor in China, despised the Jin the more, refused to kneel and receive the edict and rode away north; Wanyan Yongji in fury planned an attack, which Temüjin at first did not believe until secret word reached him, and then struck first.

In 1211, on the pretext of avenging his forebears — Mongol khans having been nailed to wooden asses by the Jin — he led his army against the Jin in person. The main force broke through the wall on the Jin northwestern frontier, stormed the Wusha fort and Wuyue camp; the Jin commander there, fearing the enemy, withdrew from Fuzhou to Xuanping, losing the three prefectures of Chang, Huan and Fu. The Jin army, said to be three hundred thousand, held the Yechuling pass and was beaten by Temüjin, and as it fled to the Huihe fort it was pursued with the dead covering the fields and choking the streams — the Jin's finest troops, the histories say, perished there. Another column entered the Jin territory by the southwest wall and ravaged Jingzhou, Fengzhou, Yunnei, Dongsheng, Wuzhou and Shuozhou. In 1212 the Mongols took Xuande and Dexing and other prefectures; before the western capital Temüjin was struck by a stray arrow and withdrew, while his vanguard Jebe stormed the eastern capital, plundering it and returning. In 1213 he gathered his armies, entered by Yechuling again, reached Huailai and Jinshan, defeated more than a hundred thousand Jin troops and pursued them to the Juyong pass; as that pass was strong he turned its flank, leaving a few troops to attack it while he led the main army southwest through the Zijing pass, taking Zhuo and Yi prefectures, and Jebe riding hard on Nankou so that the pass was taken from within and without, after which he divided his forces around Zhongdu. Jochi with the right column went down the Taihang into the western and southern circuits of Hebei and Hedong to the Yellow River; his brother with the left ravaged Ji, Ping and Luan; and Temüjin himself with his youngest son Tolui took the center through eastern Hebei and Shandong to the river. The three columns slaughtered and plundered through the eight circuits north of the Yellow River, so that it was said that for several thousand li in the two rivers and Shandong the people had been all but exterminated, and gold, silk, boys and girls, cattle, sheep and horses swept away, houses destroyed and cities left as ruins.

In the spring of 1214 the three columns joined, invested Zhongdu and sent envoys in to demand tribute. The newly enthroned Xuanzong of Jin was forced to give the princess Qiguo, daughter of Wanyan Yongji, with quantities of gold and silk and boys and girls, and Temüjin, unable for the moment to take the city, withdrew through the Juyong pass; at the same time he sent generals to take Liaodong and Liaoxi. In the fifth month the Jin emperor moved south to Nanjing, the tribal troops near Zhongdu mutinied and went over to the Mongols, and Temüjin, using the removal of the capital as a breach of faith, besieged Zhongdu again, taking and receiving the surrender of the neighboring prefectures by blockade and inducement. In the fifth month of 1215 Zhongdu fell and he had its gold, silver, pearls, jade and brocade carried off to his camp. He went on to press his conquest of the central plains as far as the Tie men pass south of the Yellow River, posting governors and officials from the conquered regions under his rule.

The organization and method of war of the Mongol army are the key to the speed of its expansion. About the founding of the state Temüjin had his people organized in thousands, hundreds and tens under appointed commanders, every man able to fight being on the rolls, which broke up the old loose structure of tribal kinship; and he enlarged the guard corps into an elite directly under the khan, serving both as bodyguard and as a school for commanders. For sieges he formed artillery units, making stone-throwing engines the first instrument of assault, hundreds of pieces being used at once, so that cities fell quickly; to master the skills of other peoples he seized craftsmen and artisans everywhere, tens of thousands from a single city, afterward setting up artisan corps and iron works for weapons; and for communications he created the arrow-speed relay riders, covering several hundred li a day, which much quickened the movement of orders and troops. These arrangements gave the Mongols the advantage at once in intelligence, mobility and the taking of strong places: envoys, offers of surrender and scouting went ahead, the main body struck in concentration, and against strong walls artillery and the labor of captured craftsmen were brought up, while the surrendered officials, local strongmen and troops were used to hold what had been taken.

In the western campaign this showed as a combination of surrender and destruction: towns and chiefs who submitted early kept their standing and paid tribute and supplied troops, while those who held out or rebelled after submitting were punished with severity. The war with Khwarezm ran on these lines: Muhammad, having withdrawn south of the Amu Darya, fled west and died on an island near the southern shore of the Caspian; his son Jalal al-Din gathered some hundred thousand men at Ghazni, beat a Mongol force of thirty thousand at Parwan and brought several Khorasan cities already under Mongol occupation to rise for him — one of the few setbacks of the campaign. Temüjin gathered his columns, crossed the Hindu Kush and, profiting by Jalal al-Din's internal quarrels and the dispersal of his troops, broke him on the Indus in the eleventh month of 1221, Jalal al-Din escaping into India, and the resistance in Transoxiana and Khorasan was largely cleared. Meanwhile Subedei and Jebe, their pursuit of Muhammad done, were ordered on to raid western and central Persia, crossed the Caucasus into the Qipchaq and Russian lands, destroyed the joint army of the Russian princes and the Qipchaq on the Kalka river and returned by the Volga and north of the Caspian and Aral, so that the Mongols had reached eastern Europe.

In the autumn of 1225, after seven years in the west, Temüjin returned north of the desert. The next year, the Tangut having broken faith, he insisted on the campaign in person despite being over sixty: marching south he destroyed the Tangut armies of the western commands, went down the Ejin river to summer at Hunshui mountain, and took Shazhou, Suzhou, Ganzhou, Xiliangfu and Lingzhou, investing Zhongxingfu; the Tangut emperor died of fear, his nephew succeeded, and after a long siege the last ruler sued for peace. In the spring of 1227 he left part of his army at the siege and marched south into Jin territory, taking Lintao and resting at Qingshui county below the Liupan mountains. Gravely ill, he required his sons to be of one mind in raising his third son Ögedei, and left word that the Jin's best troops at the Tong pass, resting on the mountains and the great river, could not be broken at once, but that if the road through Song were borrowed — the Song being the Jin's hereditary enemy and certain to consent — the Mongols could strike at Daliang through Tang and Deng, and the Jin, drawing off the Tong pass troops to save themselves, would come a thousand li with men and horses exhausted and be destroyed. He died on the twelfth day of the seventh month of 1227 at Qingshui; his commanders then received the last Tangut ruler's surrender and, by his order, killed him, and the Tangut state ended. His son Ögedei took the throne two years later and carried out the testament against the Jin.

His burial and the later cult of him have left a number of stories. By Mongol custom he was buried in secret without a mound, and the site is still unknown; later ages have conjectured the Qinian valley on the southern slopes of the Khentii or the region of the Onon and Kerulen, all without proof, and since the Yuan emperors kept the same secret burial, the whereabouts of Chinggis Khan's grave has long been an open question in scholarship. The mausoleum at Ordos in Inner Mongolia is a later construction, its eight white tents housing relics and a symbolic seat rather than the actual burial — a distinction often stressed by researchers. In Mongol tradition itself the worship of him and the genealogical legends of the Secret History formed the common memory of the tribes thereafter, and the khans of the Northern Yuan claimed descent from him, so that the title Chinggis Khan, beside his other name Sechen, became the most emblematic of names in Mongol political and cultural identity.

Major Activities

State organization and appointments

Temüjin assigned people from different steppe groups to military and household units under commanders loyal to him. The keshig served as his guard and as a place where the sons of commanders could serve close to the court. Muqali directed much of the Jin war; Jebe and Subutai led far-ranging expeditions. The Uyghur official Tata-tonga helped adapt the Uyghur script to Mongolian, while Shigi Qutuqu handled judicial matters. These choices help explain the army's capacity for coordinated operations over long distances. They do not mean that every appointment was based solely on merit: members of the ruling family continued to hold the highest standing.

Law, religion, and trade

Various sources attribute rules and commands called the Yasa to Temüjin, but no complete original text of a “Great Yasa” survives. Later assembled provisions cannot be treated as a fully verifiable law code. The Mongol government allowed people of different religions to practice and employed traders and specialists across communities. Temüjin's meeting with Qiu Chuji and contacts with Muslim merchants also served practical needs of rule and exchange. Protection offered to loyal followers and traders coexisted with reprisals and massacres of cities that resisted; a portrait that chooses only one side would be incomplete.

Scale and cost of conquest

During his lifetime, Temüjin consolidated the Mongol steppe, dealt severe blows to Jin and Western Xia, defeated Khwarazm, and established a political base stretching from East Asia into Central Asia. Cavalry organization, intelligence, converging columns, and the use of specialists from conquered peoples contributed to the results. His forces also plundered and killed in cities that resisted, causing severe losses of population and economic life. The Mongol Empire expanded further under his descendants, and all of that later territory cannot be credited as land he personally conquered.

In the war against the Jin he adopted the advice of two officials to replace slaughter with offers of surrender, so that Jin troops came over as soon as they saw his banners; for siege work he had cannon built on his officers' proposal, making artillery the first instrument of assault, so that hundreds of pieces were used at a time and cities fell quickly; to acquire the techniques of other peoples he seized craftsmen and artisans everywhere, tens of thousands from a single city, afterward forming artisan corps and setting up works for smelting iron and making weapons; and for communications he created the arrow-speed post riders, covering several hundred li a day, so that orders and the movement of troops were much faster. In the spring of 1216 the armies withdrew north of the desert, and the next year he gave Muqali the nine-tailed white banner of the khan's authority and discretionary powers, created him grand preceptor and prince, and put him in command of five tribes with the Khitan, Jurchen and Chinese troops to wage war on the Jin alone. Muqali, adopting Jin institutions, set up a military government in the Yan and Yun regions and, following the instruction to gather the bold and reduce the unreduced towns, drew in officials and local strongmen to extend the occupied areas — while the Jin court also courted the strongmen, so that north of the Yellow River the war became largely a contest of such armed bands, a grinding stalemate, until Muqali died in 1223 after six years in which he had conquered much of Hebei and Shandong.

The submission of the northern tribes and the ending of Western Liao were accomplished in the same early years. Soon after founding the state he received the submission of the Kyrgyz and other peoples; when the sending of an officer to the Tumat to choose beautiful women provoked a revolt, he sent a general in 1217 who was killed in an ambush, and a second force reduced them; and because the Kyrgyz refused to send troops against the Tumat, he sent Jochi the next year, who took the land of the eight rivers, subdued the Us, the Qangqas and other peoples and pressed on to the Kyrgyz as far as the Imar river. Between 1208 and 1211 Mongol generals sweeping up the Naiman and Merkit remnants on the Irtysh brought various tribes over; and Küchlüg of the Naiman, having fled to the Western Liao capital and by a stratagem seized its throne, was destroyed in 1218 when Temüjin sent Jebe against him, who took and killed him at Sariq Qol in Badakhshan, so that all Western Liao passed to the Mongols and the empire now bordered the great power of Khwarezm in Central Asia.

The war with Khwarezm arose from the massacre of a caravan. Muhammad, shah of Khwarezm, having taken much of Western Liao, planned to expand eastward and in 1215 sent an embassy to learn how the Mongol war with the Jin stood; Temüjin received the envoys, declared his wish for friendly trade, sent envoys back and organized a caravan of more than four hundred men for Khwarezm. In 1218 the caravan reached the frontier town of Otrar, where the governor, coveting its goods, accused the merchants of being spies, killed them all and seized their goods; a camel driver who escaped brought word to Mongolia, and Temüjin, in furious anger, sent three envoys to demand satisfaction, one of whom Muhammad killed and two of whom he had shaved and drove out. The affair became his pretext for the campaign in Central Asia, and war was unavoidable. In the summer of 1219 he crossed the Altai with two hundred thousand men, spent the summer on the Irtysh and entered Khwarezm, dividing into four columns: Chaghadai and Ögedei to besiege Otrar, Jochi down the Syr Darya against Jand, another commander against the upper Syr Darya towns, and Temüjin himself with Tolui at the center toward Bukhara. Muhammad, learning that the Mongols had crossed the Syr Darya, fled in panic from his new capital Samarkand to the south bank of the Amu Darya; in the second month of 1220 Temüjin took Bukhara, and afterward Samarkand and other cities, Muhammad dying in flight while his son Jalal al-Din carried on the resistance.

The second stage of the western campaign was pursuit and sweeping up. Temüjin sent Jochi and Jebe with thirty thousand men after Muhammad, who fled west under pressure and died soon after on an island near the southern shore of the Caspian, leaving his son Jalal al-Din to succeed him. In the autumn Temüjin sent Tolui with picked troops across the Amu Darya against the cities of Khorasan, and by the summer of 1221 Marv, Nishapur and Herat had fallen in turn; Jochi, Chaghadai and Ögedei besieged Urgench, the old capital of Khwarezm; and Temüjin himself, having taken Termez and the other towns along the Amu Darya, crossed in the spring, took Balkh and besieged the fortress of Talikan for seven months until Tolui's arrival carried it. Jalal al-Din had by then gathered some hundred thousand men at Ghazni, beaten a Mongol force of thirty thousand at Parwan and recovered his reputation, and several Khorasan cities already under Mongol occupation rose for him; Temüjin gathered his columns, crossed the Hindu Kush and, profiting by the quarrels and dispersal of Jalal al-Din's forces, broke him on the Indus in the eleventh month, Jalal al-Din escaping into India. Subedei and Jebe, their pursuit of Muhammad done, were ordered on to raid the cities of western and central Persia: in the spring of 1222 they entered Georgia and crossed the Caucasus by Derbent into the Qipchaq lands; at the request of the Qipchaq chief, the Russian princes decided at Kiev to resist the Mongols jointly and killed the envoys sent by Subedei and Jebe. In the fifth month of 1223 the Mongols and the Russian and Qipchaq allies fought east of the Kalka river, and because the Russian princes could not agree or act together they were beaten one by one; Subedei and Jebe plundered southern Russia and turned back by the Volga, raiding the Bulgars, and returned north of the Caspian and Aral to rejoin the main army. The expedition carried the Mongols as far as eastern Europe and opened the way for the later campaign of the princes.

In the autumn of 1225, after seven years in the west, Temüjin returned north of the desert. The next year, the Tangut having broken faith, he insisted on campaigning against them himself at sixty-four: marching south he took the western garrisons and destroyed the Tangut armies of the western commands, went down the Ejin river to summer at Hunshui mountain, and took Shazhou, Suzhou, Ganzhou, Xiliangfu and Lingzhou in succession, investing Zhongxingfu; the Tangut emperor died of fear and his nephew succeeded, and after a long siege the last ruler sent envoys to sue for peace. In the spring of 1227 Temüjin left part of his army before Zhongxingfu and marched south into Jin territory, taking Lintao and the surrounding towns, and rested at Qingshui county below the Liupan mountains. Gravely ill, he required his sons to be of one mind and to raise his third son Ögedei as his successor, and left as his testament that, using the old enmity between Song and Jin, the Mongols should borrow the road through Song territory and destroy the Jin together with the Song. According to the New History of Yuan, he told those about him that the Jin's best troops were at the Tong pass, resting on the mountains to the south and the great river to the north, and could not be broken at once; but that if the road through Song were borrowed — the Song being the Jin's hereditary enemy and sure to consent — the Mongols could strike straight at Daliang through Tang and Deng, and the Jin, withdrawing the Tong pass troops to save themselves, would come a thousand li to the rescue with men and horses alike exhausted, and would then certainly be broken. He died on the twelfth day of the seventh month of 1227 at Qingshui below the Liupan mountains; the Mongol commanders then received the surrender of the last Tangut ruler and, by his dying order, put him to death, and the Tangut state ended. His third son Ögedei took the throne two years later and carried out his testament by destroying the Jin.

The institutional arrangements made after the founding deserve separate notice. In the spring of 1206 Temüjin held a khuriltai at the source of the Onon, was given the title Chinggis Khan by the princes and ministers, and named the state after his tribe, the Yeke Mongghol Ulus, the Great Mongol State. He then instituted a military-civil administration: the people were organized into ninety-five thousands under meritorious chiefs, with ten-thousands above them and the khan at the head, forming a graded military and administrative hierarchy; the kesig or guard was enlarged as the khan's own elite, in charge of the bodyguard, the documents and the household, and men who had served in it afterward became commanders at every level; Shigi Qutuqu was made chief judge, in charge of criminal cases and of the registers of households and revenues, the earliest judicial and administrative head of the Mongol state; and the code of Chinggis Khan, the jasaq, was promulgated, covering military orders, taxes and services, the post stations, hunting, litigation and family relations, the most widely applied body of law of the age. For writing he had the captured Naiman seal-keeper Tatatunga write Mongolian in the Uyghur alphabet, creating a script to record laws, documents and edicts — the turn from oral tradition to written record. To bind so vast a territory he built the post-station system with the arrow-speed riders and posted judges and governors in the several regions.

In his family arrangements he divided his lands and people among his sons: Jochi took the steppe west of the Irtysh and the Qipchaq country, Chaghadai Transoxiana and the region about the Tianshan, Ögedei the country about Emil and was named his heir, while Tolui, by the Mongol custom of the youngest son keeping the hearth, inherited his own camp and most of the army. This division produced within decades the khanates of the Golden Horde, of Chaghadai and of Ögedei and the Yuan of the Tolui house; after him Ögedei took the throne, and afterward Möngke and Kublai, sons of Tolui, so that the relation of the Yuan to the four khanates descends from these arrangements. In religion he was tolerant, allowing Buddhist, Daoist, Muslim and Christian alike, and he protected the trade routes and favored merchants, so that in the brief unity of the empire people, goods and techniques passed between Europe and Asia; the descriptions of the East by Marco Polo and others have this Mongol peace of the roads as their background. As to his own grave, by Mongol custom he was buried in secret without a mound, and its place is still unknown.

The empire Temüjin left was inherited by his sons and rapidly extended. After his death Tolui governed as regent for two years, and in 1229 a khuriltai raised his third son Ögedei as great khan, the Taizong emperor. Ögedei carried on the war against the Jin, putting his father's testament into effect: in 1231 Tolui led his army through Song territory by a flank march toward Tang and Deng, and in the next year broke the main Jin army at Sanfeng mountain; in 1234 the Mongols with their Song allies took Caizhou, the Jin emperor Aizong hanged himself, the last ruler died among the soldiers, and the Jin state ended. In 1235 began the campaign of the princes' eldest sons under Batu, son of Jochi, whose armies went as far as eastern Europe, storming Ryazan, Vladimir and Kiev and pressing into central Europe before turning back after Ögedei's death; Batu founded the khanate of the Golden Horde on the Qipchaq steppe. In the same years the southern front saw repeated fighting with the Song about Xiangyang, Sichuan and the Huai, and the Mongol state's extent and influence reached their height within decades of his death. Institutionally, the thousands system, the kesig, the jasaq, the chief judgeship and the post stations that he established were kept and elaborated by his successors, and the Yuan central and local administration rested in large part on that inheritance.

On his life the sources are varied. The Secret History of the Mongols tells in Mongolian verse from the ancestors of Chinggis to the reign of Ögedei, and is the most direct and the most literary account of the founding of the state; in Chinese the annals in the Yuan History are the backbone, with the Record of the Campaigns and the New History of Yuan besides; among Persian and Arabic writers Rashid al-Din's Jami' al-Tavarikh and Juvaini's History of the World Conqueror supply much on Central Asia and the western campaign; and European envoys such as Pian del Carpine and William of Rubruck left accounts of the Mongol court, army and customs. The standpoints and detail of these works differ: Mongol narratives emphasize heaven's mandate and genealogy, the Chinese sources his campaigns and political acts, the Persian historians the wars in Khwarezm and Central Asia, and the European travel accounts a strong apprehension of his expansion — so that his image had several faces already in the thirteenth century.

Later judgment has long oscillated between the unifier and the conqueror. On one side he united the tribes of the plateau, long divided in war, into a single polity, created a script, promulgated a code, built the post stations and a military-civil administration, so that the Mongols rose from a tribal league to an empire across Eurasia, and in the brief unity opened the routes between east and west, greatly accelerating the movement of men, techniques, goods and ideas, with the Silk Road at its most open under Mongol rule. On the other his conquests brought vast destruction of cities and loss of life, the damage in Central Asia, Persia and northern China being especially severe, and the slaughter and plunder of besieged towns are recorded in quantity in the sources of both east and west. Recent scholars generally keep both faces in view: military conquest and institution-building were alike the substance of his life, and the rapid division of the empire into several khanates after his death shows that a structure resting on personal authority had not developed a stable mechanism of succession and governance.

Personal Relations

• Yesügei and Ö'elün: His parents. After Yesügei's death, Ö'elün raised Temüjin and his siblings.
• Börte: His principal wife and mother of Jochi, Borjigin Chagatai, Ögedei, and Tolui. Speculation about Jochi's paternity did not erase Temüjin's recognition of him as a son.
• Jochi, Borjigin Chagatai, Ögedei, and Tolui: His four sons by Börte. Ögedei was chosen to succeed him, and Tolui acted as regent after his death.
• Qasar and Temüge: Brothers who took part in the politics and warfare of the steppe.
• Jamuqa and Toghril: A sworn brother and an ally, respectively, who later became rivals for supremacy.
• Bo'orchu, Muqali, Jebe, and Subutai: Commanders active in the guard, the Jin war, and the western campaigns.
• Qiu Chuji and Yelü Chucai: A Daoist figure and a Khitan adviser, respectively; their activities and advice are recorded in historical sources.

Historical Assessment

The Yuan Shi presents Temüjin as an ancestral founder of the Yuan dynasty. Persian historians such as Juvayni and Rashid al-Din considered his organization and campaigns from different positions; sources from conquered regions place greater weight on destruction and killing. Modern research examines both his consolidation of the steppe and his creation of imperial institutions, and the devastation inflicted on communities in North China, Central Asia, and Persia. Later exchange across Eurasia was a historical consequence of Mongol rule, but it did not cancel the suffering of those conquered. Assessments of Temüjin need to distinguish his own actions, the later expansion under his heirs, and retrospective commemorations.