Chingis Khan the King

Chingis Khan the King

The awesome history of Chingis Khan is in every respect a perpetually intriguing one. No human in the whole history of Mankind has ever come close to what he accomplished. Testimony from contemporary sources, as well as subsequent history, corroborate that the historical Temuchin (which means "blacksmith"), by the sheer force and warmth of his personality managed to win a conglomerate of different tribal people to his side, and by political as well as military means, to overcome all resistance against his grand Purpose, to unite the "people who live in felt tents," denoting all nomads of Inner Asia and Siberia that were drawn into the orbit of his influence.

Before the advent of Temuchin, fratricidal strife, cattle-stealing, destructive intertribal wars with only personal, local and temporary results were the order of the day. When he entered the scene, the enormousness of his authority did not only manage to bring the internecine destruction to an end, he went on to place the small Mongol nation (which never numbered above one and half a million) on the stage of world history in a way that seems to transcend every human experience, past and present. Even eight hundred years after his accomplishments, those belonging to his cultural tradition reverence him with undying fervor. That is perhaps the most telling proof of the extraordinary powers he brought into the World.

It is possible to determine the historical factors that facilitated the rise of Temuchin and led to the establishment of his brainchild the Mongol empire. They are real. It is also true that several typical features of Chingis' armies, such as the decimal system on which the army was structured, the feigned retreat, and the reconnaissance system were age-old techniques of the peoples between Lake Bajkal and China.

Nevertheless, Chingis Khan's consistent success in employing them, his principle of promotion on the basis of capability alone, his lifelong uncanny genius for winning people's hearts and to attract followers, evidenced already from his boyhood; his persistence in striving for exalted objectives that stretched far beyond the immediate, material and visible, and aim his endeavors towards the application of the Siberian/Mongolian heritage on something that was extendable in space-time, but first and foremost the dazzling success he had as the creator of a feeling of shared purpose in close to everyone with whom he came in contact, together with his being the architect of the Mongol Empire, is unique in the world. Chingis Khan, as a general, politician and man, has simply no parallel in history. He did in a stupendous degree transcend the ordinary limits of humans. Even more awe-inspiring: Being a genuine humanitarian with a grand Purpose, he energized his Mongolian peoples to join him in doing the same. The unceasing veneration of his memory among those connected to the Mongol tradition bespeaks the intrinsically philanthropic, unselfish nature of his authority and of his ultimate aims.