The early life of Genghis Khan, the man who would unite the Mongol tribes and build the largest land empire in the history of the world, was marked by betrayal, exile, captivity, and a long, patient struggle to rebuild the power of his family. The story of his youth is told in greatest detail in the Secret History of the Mongols, the thirteenth-century Mongolian text that is the only major historical source written by Mongols. The Secret History portrays Temüjin as a man of extraordinary ability who, through a combination of personal talent, political alliances, and military victories, transformed a small, divided, and threatened people into the ruling class of the largest empire the world had ever seen.
Birth and Family
Temüjin was born around 1162, the eldest son of the Kiyat chieftain Yesugei and his wife Hoelun. The Kiyat belonged to the Borjigin clan, which claimed descent from a legendary common ancestor called Bodonchar, and the Borjigin pedigree gave the family a claim to rule that no amount of personal ability could have created on its own. The Mongols’ tradition recognized the right of the Borjigin to rule, and any candidate for the supreme chieftainship of the Mongol people had to be able to claim Borjigin descent.
The name “Temüjin” is a form of the Mongol word for “iron,” and it was given to the boy in honor of a victory that his father had just won over a rival Tatar chieftain. The victory was a small one, and Yesugei was at the time a relatively minor chieftain, but the name was an omen of the iron character that the boy would display in his later career. Yesugei’s clan, the Kiyat, was a sub-branch of the Borjigin lineage, and Yesugei had a growing following of warriors who were loyal to him personally.
The Death of Yesugei
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 death of Yesugei was a catastrophe for the Kiyat. The followers of the dead chieftain, bound to him by personal loyalty, drifted away in the customary way of the steppe; within a few years, Hoelun was left to raise her children in extreme poverty. 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, 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 in the form of 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” (a Chinese punishment that the Yassa later borrowed). Temüjin 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. 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.
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 Marriage to Börte
The marriage of Temüjin to Börte, a young woman of the Onggirat clan, was arranged by Yesugei before his death. The marriage took place when Temüjin was about nine years old, and the bride was brought to the Kiyat household to be raised. The marriage was a major political alliance, as the Onggirat were a powerful clan in the eastern steppe, and the marriage secured the loyalty of the Onggirat to the Kiyat and (later) to Temüjin.
Börte was kidnapped by the Merkit in her youth, in retaliation for a raid that the Kiyat had conducted against the Merkit. The kidnapping was a major blow to Temüjin, and he spent the next several years gathering forces to rescue her. The rescue was eventually accomplished with the help of Toghrul and Jamukha, and Börte was returned to Temüjin. The rescue of Börte was a formative event in Temüjin’s early career, and it cemented his alliances with Toghrul and Jamukha.
Börte was, by all accounts, a remarkable woman, and she played an important role in the political life of the Mongol court. She was the mother of Temüjin’s four sons — Jochi, Chagatai, Ögedei, and Tolui — and she was the principal wife of the imperial household. Börte outlived Temüjin and was an important figure in the imperial family for several decades after his death.
The Rise to Power
The years between the death of Yesugei (around 1171) and the unification of the Mongol tribes (1206) were the years in which Temüjin transformed himself from a poor, orphaned boy into the ruler of the most powerful state in the eastern steppe. The transformation was a long, complicated process, and it involved a combination of personal talent, political alliances, military victories, and historical accident.
Temüjin was a man of extraordinary ability. The Secret History portrays him as physically tough, militarily skilled, politically cunning, and personally charismatic. He was also a man of considerable intelligence, with a strong interest in law, administration, and culture. He was, in particular, a man with a strong sense of justice, and the Yassa code of law that he later promulgated was the result of a long reflection on the legal and political traditions of the steppe.
Temüjin’s success was also the result of his willingness to break with the conventions of the steppe. The traditional steppe society was organized around the aristocratic lineages, and the right to rule was reserved for members of the Borjigin clan. Temüjin accepted the Borjigin pedigree, but he was willing to promote men of low birth to positions of command on the basis of their ability. This willingness was, in the long run, the most important foundation of his rise, because it allowed him to build a loyal following that was not based on the old aristocratic hierarchies.
The Kurultai of 1206
The unification of the Mongol tribes was complete by the spring of 1206. In a great assembly on the banks of the Onon River, in the Khentii Mountains, the leaders of the major Mongol tribes proclaimed Temüjin as “Genghis Khan,” a title whose meaning has been debated but which is generally taken to mean something like “oceanic ruler” or “universal sovereign.” The proclamation marked the foundation of the Mongol Empire, and the date — 1206 — is conventionally used to mark the beginning of Mongol imperial history.
The Sources
The principal source for the early life of Genghis Khan is the Secret History of the Mongols, a 13th-century Mongolian text that was probably written down in the Uyghur-derived Mongolian script around 1240. The Secret History portrays Temüjin as a man of extraordinary ability who, through a combination of personal talent, political alliances, and military victories, transformed a small, divided, and threatened people into the ruling class of the largest empire the world had ever seen. The standard modern edition is Igor de Rachewiltz’s two-volume English translation and commentary (Brill, 2004–2013); the principal older edition is the Chinese-transcription version translated by Francis Woodman Cleaves (Harvard, 1982).
The Persian chroniclers Juvaini (History of the World Conqueror, c. 1260; trans. Boyle, 1958) and Rashid al-Din (Jami’ al-Tawarikh, c. 1300–1311; trans. Thackston, 1998–1999) wrote 30–50 years after the events and provide a different, more Persian-influenced perspective. Juvaini in particular adds details about the Börte kidnapping, the Kerait and Merkit geography, and the lineage of the Borjigin that are not in the Secret History. The two traditions — Secret History and the Persian chronicles — broadly agree, and where they disagree it is usually on the interpretation of a character rather than on the bare facts.
The modern popular biographies are John Man, Genghis Khan: Life, Death and Legacy (2004), and Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (2004). The standard scholarly biography is Paul Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy (1991). The best one-volume Mongol history in English is David Morgan, The Mongols (2nd ed., 2007), ch. 1–2.
The early life of Genghis Khan was a remarkable story of survival, perseverance, and political genius. The boy who had been orphaned and exiled in his youth had, by the age of about 44, become the ruler of the largest empire the world had ever seen. The story of his youth is a reminder that the most consequential figures in history are often the product of difficult circumstances and that the will to power can be forged in the most adverse of conditions.
Sources
- Igor de Rachewiltz, ed. and trans., The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century (2 vols., Leiden: Brill, 2004–2013) — the standard scholarly edition.
- John Andrew Boyle, trans., The History of the World Conqueror by Juvaini (2 vols., Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958).
- W. M. Thackston, trans., A Critical Edition of the Compendium of Chronicles by Rashid al-Din (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1998–1999).
- John Man, Genghis Khan: Life, Death and Legacy (London: HarperCollins, 2004).
- Paul Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) — trans. Thomas Nivison Haining.
- David Morgan, The Mongols (2nd ed., Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), ch. 1.
- Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (New York: Crown, 2004).