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Home / Exhibits / Special Exhibits
Genghis Khan Facts
As a child, Genghis Khan feared dogs and cried easily. His half brother picked on him and bossed him around. It was these humiliating circumstances – which also included slavery, hunger and kidnapping – that inspired his long climb to power.
In 25 years, the Mongol army subjugated more lands and people than the Romans had conquered in 400. Genghis Khan, together with his sons and grandsons, conquered the most densely populated civilizations of the 13th century. Whether measured by the total number of people defeated, the sum of the countries annexed, or by the total area occupied, Genghis Khan conquered more than twice as much as any other man in history.
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Male Statue
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Even today, the majority of people live in countries conquered by the Mongols; on the modern map, Genghis Khan’s conquests include 30 countries with well over three billion people. The most astonishing aspect of this achievement is that the entire Mongol tribe under Genghis Khan numbered around a million, smaller than the workforce of some modern corporations. From this million, he recruited his army, which was comprised of no more than one hundred thousand warriors—a group that could comfortably fit into the larger sports stadiums of the modern era.
During their era of conquest, Mongol warriors’ horses splashed through the waters of every river and lake from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea.
Unsatisfied with the vast number of little kingdoms that he controlled, Genghis Khan began a tradition of consolidating smaller countries into larger ones. In eastern Europe, the Mongols united a dozen Slavic principalities and cities into one large Russian state. In eastern Asia, over a span of three generations, they created the country of China by weaving together the remnants of the Sung dynasty in the south with the lands of the Jurched in Manchuria, Tibet in the west, the Tangut Kingdom adjacent to the Gobi, and the Uighur lands of eastern Turkistan.
As the Mongols expanded their rule, they created countries such as Korea and India that have survived to modern times in approximately the same borders fashioned by their Mongol conquerors.
Genghis Khan left his empire with such a firm foundation that it continued growing for another 150 years. In the centuries that followed its collapse, his descendents continued to rule a variety of smaller empires and large countries, from Russia, Turkey, and India to China and Persia. They held an eclectic assortment of titles, including khan, emperor, sultan, king, shah, emir and the Dalai Lama. Parts of his empire remained under the rule of his descendants for seven centuries. Some reigned in India until 1857 and his last ruling descendant remained in power in Uzbekistan until 1920.
In the summer of 1227, during a campaign against the Tangut nation along the upper reaches of the Yellow River, Genghis Khan died—or, in the words of the Mongols, for whom the mention death or illness is taboo, he “ascended into heaven.” His soldiers escorted the body of their fallen khan back to his homeland in Mongolia for secret burial.
After his death, Genghis Khan’s followers buried him anonymously in the soil of his homeland without a mausoleum, a temple, a pyramid, or so much as a small tombstone to mark the place where he lay.
An often repeated account maintains that after the secret burial, eight hundred horsemen trampled repeatedly over the area to obscure the location of the grave. Then, according to these imaginative accounts, the horsemen were, in turn, killed by yet another set of soldiers so that they could not report the location of the site; and then, in turn, those soldiers were slain by yet another set of warriors.
After the secret burial in his homeland, soldiers sealed off the entire area for several hundred square miles. No one could enter except members of Genghis Khan’s family and a tribe of specially trained warriors who were stationed there to kill every intruder. For nearly eight hundred years, this area—the Ikh Korig, the Great Taboo, deep in the heart of Asia—remained closed.
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Altan Tobci
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Seemingly every aspect of European life—technology, warfare, clothing, commerce, food, art, literature, and music—changed during the Renaissance as a result of the Mongol influence. In addition to new forms of fighting, new machines, and new foods, even the most mundane aspects of daily life changed as the Europeans switched to Mongol fabrics, wearing pants and jackets instead of tunics and robes, played their musical instruments with the steppe bow rather than plucking them with the fingers, and painted their pictures in a new style. The Europeans even picked up the Mongol exclamation hurray as an enthusiastic cry of bravado and mutual encouragement.
Despite the many images and pictures of Genghis Khan made in subsequent years, we have no portrait of him made within his lifetime. Unlike any other conqueror in history, Genghis Khan never allowed anyone to paint his portrait, sculpt his image, or engrave his name or likeness on a coin. In the words of a modern Mongolian song about Genghis Khan, “we imagined your appearance but our minds were blank.”
Learn more! Walk through the exhibition online.
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