The political story of Genghis Khan’s rise is, in three sentences: a minor Mongol chieftain’s son, orphaned at about age nine, builds a personal following in the Mongol steppe over roughly twenty years, defeats every rival tribal confederation in a sequence of campaigns ending in 1204, and is proclaimed Genghis Khan at a kurultai on the Onon River in 1206. The 20-year campaign is the subject of this page. The childhood is the subject of the early-life cluster; the post-1206 conquests are the subject of the Genghis Khan pillar.
The principal source for the rise is the Secret History of the Mongols, a 13th-century Mongolian text that was probably written down (in the Mongolian script adapted from Uyghur) sometime around 1240. The text may have been commissioned by Ögedei or composed at the Ögedeid court; the traditional attribution to the Uyghur scribe Shigi Qutuqu (mentioned in the Secret History itself, §202) is taken seriously by some Mongolists and rejected by others. The Secret History is a literary text as well as a historical one — full of heroic songs, genealogical poetry, and dramatic dialogue — but it is also, in the main narrative, a reliable account of the events it describes, and modern archaeology (e.g., the Burkhan Khaldun inscriptions) has confirmed several of its specific claims.
The principal modern treatments are Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (2004); Man, Genghis Khan: Life, Death and Legacy (2004); and the more scholarly de Rachewiltz, The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century (2 vols., Brill, 2004–2013).
The Early Years: Betrayal and Exile
Temüjin was born around 1162, the eldest son of the minor Khamag Mongol chieftain Yesugei and his wife Hoelun (of the Onggirat-related Olkhunut clan). The exact birth year is uncertain: the Secret History gives the Year of the Pig in the 12-year cycle, and 1162 is the most-cited but other dates (1155, 1167) appear in older scholarship. Yesugei had earlier been the headman of a small Mongol clan, the Kiyat, a sub-branch of the Borjigin lineage, and he had a growing personal following. The Kiyat were not the most powerful of the Mongol clans, but they had a claim to Borjigin descent, and Yesugei was the kind of chieftain — charismatic, a good fighter, a careful ally-maker — who could turn that claim into a real following.
When Temüjin was about nine years old, Yesugei was riding home from a visit to his old friend the Keraite prince Toghrul, and he stopped for a meal with a Tatar chieftain along the way. The Tatar, recognizing Yesugei as an old enemy of the Tatars, slipped poison into his food. Yesugei became ill on the journey home, and within a few days he was dead. The Secret History (§§75–78) gives the story in detail and the broad fact is uncontested.
The death of Yesugei was a catastrophe for the Kiyat. The followers of the dead chieftain, bound to him by personal loyalty rather than to the Borjigin lineage, drifted away in the customary way of the steppe; within a few years, Hoelun was left to raise her children in extreme poverty, foraging for wild roots, berries, and small game. The young Temüjin and his half-brother Begter quarreled bitterly over the dwindling livestock, and the conflict came to a head when Temüjin killed Begter in a dispute over a fish and a lark. The killing, which Temüjin later deeply regretted (the Secret History portrays him as grief-stricken), hardened the division within the family and made it clear that Temüjin was prepared to use violence to defend his interests.
The most serious threat to the family came from the Tayichiud, a Mongol clan that had once been a part of the Khamag confederation and that now seized the opportunity to take the surviving Kiyat by force. The Tayichiud captured Temüjin at one point and held him for a time in a gerel (a light wooden neck-yoke used to restrain prisoners of high status; the Secret History uses this word, not “cangue”); he was eventually rescued by his father’s friend Toghrul and brought back to his family. The episode was formative: it taught Temüjin the value of alliances with the powerful, and it cemented his relationship with Toghrul, who would later play an important role in his rise.
The First Alliances: Jamukha and Toghrul
After the Tayichiud episode, Temüjin began to rebuild the family fortunes through a series of careful political moves. The most important of these was the making of an anda, a blood-brother, of a young Mongol nobleman named Jamukha of the Jadaran clan. The two boys had been playmates as children, and they formalized their friendship as young men by exchanging gifts and making a blood oath. The anda relationship was a particularly sacred form of alliance in steppe society, in which two unrelated men bound themselves together in a relationship of mutual loyalty that was considered stronger than kinship. For several years, Temüjin and Jamukha operated as a kind of junior ruling pair, each gathering his own followers and jointly managing their affairs.
The relationship between Temüjin and Jamukha was not to last. The two men differed fundamentally in their political vision. Jamukha, a traditionalist, was content to operate within the existing tribal structures, in which the nobility of the Borjigin pedigree and the old clan hierarchies retained their authority. Temüjin, a revolutionary, was willing to break with these structures and to elevate men of low birth — the smiths, the orphans, the men of the common herd — to positions of command. By 1186, the two had fallen out, and Jamukha was operating as the headman of a separate Mongol confederation, the Jadaran, in the Khentii Mountains. The breakup was acrimonious, and it set the terms of the rest of Temüjin’s career: every major rival after 1186 was treated as an enemy to be defeated, not a brother to be reconciled.
Temüjin’s other major early alliance was with Toghrul, the prince of the Keraites. Toghrul was a Christian — a Nestorian, whose family had been baptized two generations earlier — and he was the overlord of a substantial Keraite population in the upper Orkhon basin. Toghrul was bound to Yesugei by an old friendship, and he had helped the Kiyat in their early struggles. After the Tayichiud episode, Temüjin reaffirmed this friendship and obtained Toghrul’s support in his wars against the Merkit and the Tayichiud. In return, Temüjin eventually helped Toghrul defeat the rival Keraite prince, Erke Qara, and re-establish him on the Keraite throne.
The War of Unification: 1186–1204
The war of unification was a long, complex process that involved at least a dozen major campaigns and a much larger number of small engagements. Temüjin’s strategy throughout was to defeat his enemies one at a time, in a sequence carefully chosen to prevent them from forming a coalition. The sequence, with the dates from the Secret History and from Chinese and Persian chronicles:
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The Merkit (1186, 1188, 1198). The Merkit had kidnapped Hoelun in her youth, and they remained a persistent threat to the Khamag Mongols. Temüjin defeated them in 1186 with the help of Toghrul and Jamukha, although the Merkit chieftain, Tokto’a, escaped and would remain a thorn in Temüjin’s side for many years. The final defeat of the Merkit came in 1198, again with the help of Toghrul; Tokto’a was killed in flight, and the surviving Merkit were scattered.
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The Tayichiud (1187). The Tayichiud, the clan that had captured Temüjin in his youth, were defeated in 1187. Their leaders were scattered, and most of their followers were incorporated into Temüjin’s retinue. The defeat was important because it eliminated the most immediate threat to the Kiyat and established Temüjin as a rising power in the eastern steppe.
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The Tatars (1196, 1200, 1202). The Tatar confederation was the dominant power in the eastern steppe. Temüjin fought a series of campaigns against them in 1196 (with the assistance of the Jin Dynasty, who had been the Tatars’ overlords and were happy to see them weakened), 1200, and 1202. The last of these, in 1202, was a deliberate attempt to destroy the Tatar ruling class: most of the adult Tatar males were killed, and the surviving Tatar women and children were absorbed into Temüjin’s following. The brutality of the 1202 campaign is the basis for the claim (made in the Yassa and in the later Persian histories) that the Mongols had a special hatred for the Tatars.
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The Keraites (1203). Toghrul had been a faithful ally of Temüjin for many years, but in 1203 the relationship broke down catastrophically. Toghrul, perhaps jealous of Temüjin’s growing power, perhaps manipulated by his son the Noyan, attacked Temüjin by surprise. The Battle of the Qalaqaljid Sands, fought in the summer of 1203, was a near-run thing: Temüjin was defeated and forced to retreat, and the Mongols who had gathered around him were scattered. Temüjin slowly rebuilt his strength, however, and in the autumn of 1203 he caught Toghrul on the march and defeated him. Toghrul was killed, and the Keraite state dissolved; the surviving Keraite population was absorbed into Temüjin’s following.
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The Naiman and the end of Jamukha (1204). The Naiman, the western steppe confederation, were the last major rival. The decisive confrontation was the Battle of the Chakirmaut in the spring of 1204, in which Temüjin defeated a coalition led by Jamukha, who had taken refuge with the Naiman. The Naiman were broken, and Jamukha was handed over to Temüjin by his own followers. Temüjin, unable to execute a former anda, had Jamukha killed without bloodshed (the standard account is that he was given a hero’s death, perhaps by being wrapped in felt and thrown into the river). The last major rival to Temüjin’s power was removed.
The Kurultai of 1206 and the Founding of the Empire
The unification of the Mongol tribes was complete by the spring of 1206. On the banks of the Onon River, in the Khentii Mountains — the heartland of the old Khamag Mongol territory and the birthplace of Temüjin himself — a great assembly of tribal leaders proclaimed Temüjin as Genghis Khan, a title whose precise etymology has been debated for centuries but which is generally taken to mean something like “oceanic ruler” or “universal sovereign.” The conventional date is 1206, the Year of the Tiger in the Mongol twelve-year cycle, although some sources (especially the Yuan Shi) give 1205. The date 1206 is the one that has stuck in modern usage.
The kurultai of 1206 was more than a coronation. It was the formal institution of a new political order. Genghis Khan used the occasion to announce a series of reforms that transformed the political and military structure of the Mongol people. The most important of the reforms:
- The decimal reorganization of the army into units of ten (arban), a hundred (zuun), a thousand (mingghan), and ten thousand (tümen).
- The promulgation of the Yassa code of law.
- The establishment of the keshig (imperial guard), a body of 10,000 men who served as the personal guard of the khan and the training ground for future commanders.
- The appointment of a new imperial administration under the Uyghur scribe Tatatunga (the only named Uyghur in the Secret History), with the imperial records kept in the Uyghur-derived Mongolian script.
- The first arrangements for the postal relays, the yam, that would later be expanded into a continental network.
The Genghis Khan who stood on the Onon River in 1206 was, in a real sense, a different person from the orphaned boy of 1171. He had been, in turn, a captive, a fugitive, a follower, a general, and a king. He was now an emperor — though the title would not be used in Chinese form until 1271, when Kublai Khan adopted the Chinese dynastic name Yuan. The transformation is the most consequential single political event of the 13th century.
Sources
- Igor de Rachewiltz, ed. and trans., The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century (2 vols., Brill, 2004–2013) — the standard scholarly edition.
- John Man, Genghis Khan: Life, Death and Legacy (London, 2004).
- Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (New York, 2004) — readable but populist; the sources cited are sound.
- David Morgan, The Mongols (2nd ed., Oxford, 2007), ch. 1–2.
- Timothy May, The Mongol Conquests in World History (London, 2012), ch. 1–2.