Genghis Khan created one of the bloodiest trails in history, killing millions of
people to the point that he almost alone changed the carbon footprint of his time
by himself. The Mongol Emperor and his successors cast a dark shadow of their
prominence and dominance over the world. Yet, there are hidden grim secrets about
the Mongol Empire that are not known by everyone. Welcome to Nutty History,
and today let’s find out what creepy things were normal in the Mongol Empire.
Before Genghis Khan became the mighty Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire, he was a
little boy named Temujin. Obviously, Temujin doesn’t sound as intimidating as Genghis Khan
but don’t let it fool you, because Temujin showed early signs of the dominant personality that will
acquire whatever he wanted. After the death of his father, Temujin and his family were on the run for
several years with Temujin’s mother Hoelun acting as the chief of the pack. This family consisted
of multiple ex-wives of Temujin’s father and multiple siblings and half-siblings of Temujin.
It was fairly obvious that the family had some frictions and rivalries among them.
However, Hoelun made sure that the family stayed together and police any signs of trouble brewing
in the home. But, as the boys grew, a new problem arose, according to Mongol traditions,
the eldest son of the father was supposed to get the privilege of marrying his father’s wives
excluding his own mother, and keep the concubines as well. Begter, the eldest of Temujin’s
half-siblings, was sort of a bully and would tease Temujin about marrying his mother soon.
When Begter announced himself as the chief of the family for being the eldest male, Temujin could
not contain his resentment any further despite his mother’s strict orders. During a hunting
excursion, Temujin and his brother Khasar waited for the opportune moment and filled Begter’s body
with arrows. Though Temujin was chastised by his mother for killing his kin, this was the moment
when Temujin found how convenient murder can be as a problem solver. We all know how liberally
Genghis Khan used this method following years, just ask China and Persia. From a fratricidal
teenage boy to becoming one of the most ruthless emperors the world has ever seen, Temujin had more
obstacles to overcome. Temujin and his family were in constant danger due to his father’s
former allies turned enemies not to mention the generations-long adversaries of Mongols
were also hunting his family. Temujin himself was captured in a raid but managed to escape
but his wife wasn’t so lucky in another similar incident. Enraged Temujin quickly assembled a
small coalition of allies and charged the Merkids who proved no match to Temujin’s vengeance.
Temujin was only 19 years old at that time and this victory helped to establish his reputation
as a formidable warrior. However, things were not looking so bright for Borte. Before Temujin
arrived to rescue her, Borte had already been tortured, assaulted, and stripped of her
dignity multiple times by her abductors. Things worsened when Borte found out she was pregnant.
As it’s been quite sometime between her sharing bed with Temujin, there was no way to ascertain
if the child in her belly belonged to Temujin or one of the kidnappers. But to everyone’s surprise,
despite the rumors and questions raised by the rest of Mongolia, Temujin declared that he would
accept the child as his own, and such was his influence that nobody dared to question him
for decades until he was on his deathbed. However, these two events in Genghis Khan’s family were the
most important steps that helped him to ascend to the throne of a unified Mongolia. Now as we
mentioned earlier, killing his step brother Begter taught Genghis Khan an important life lesson.
Murder can solve almost everything and he took the lesson to its heart and the history testifies
that. A huge number of Genghis’ enemies died in very sudden and suspicious circumstances.
However, Genghis wasn’t always subtle and shrewd about killing his enemies, a lot of his enemies
were killed openly. Ghenghis ascertained that by making an example of their demise. A particularly
petty case involved a famous Mongol wrestler named Buri, who had made the mistake of humiliating
Genghis’s brother Belgutei in a match long before Genghis’s rise to power. After Temujin unified
the Mongols and took the title of Genghis Khan, he remembered what Buri had done and asked the
famed wrestler to have a rematch with his beloved brother. Buri knew he was trapped. Declining the
invitation would mean death and accepting it and defeating Belgutei would be no different either.
Seeing that his only chance to survive this trap was to intentionally lose the match,
Buri gladly ate the dirt in the arena against Belgutei. Pinned against Belgutei’s weight,
Buri conceded and hoped that it would settle the score with Genghis Khan but Genghis Khan had
already decided Buri’s fate. Even though the match was over, Genghis signaled his brother to push his
knee on Buri's back until Buri’s back gave up and cracked. The paralyzed wrestler kept asking for
forgiveness from the emperor but Genghis, ever so merciless, ordered the soldiers to drag the
paralyzed wrestler outside and leave him there to die. Genghis later explained that Buri’s decision
to throw the match was an act of cowardice and he has no place for cowards under his rule.
The same fate befell Genghis’s shaman Teb Tengri later when he tried to use Khan’s brothers to
create a rift in Genghis’s family. He tried to create a rift between the brothers by making a
prophecy that Khasar will betray Genghis to take the throne for himself. But Hoelun, Genghis’s
mother, intervened in time and stopped Genghis from committing fratricide for the second time.
After Hoelun’s death, Teb Tengri made his move against Genghis’s youngest brother Temuge
and this time on his wife’s advice, Genghis invited Teb Tengri for a wrestling match.
He had his back broken and died from paralysis. Ironically, Genghis detested torture but he had
no issue killing his enemies as painfully as possible. Later on Mongol Emperors also came
up with similar horrible and excruciating forms of death sentences. During the reign of Guyuk
Khan, Guyuk suspected a courtier named Fatima for the death of his brother in dubious circumstances.
After coming to the conclusion that Fatima must have poisoned his brother,
he had her tortured to get her confession. Once she confessed, Guyuk ordered to sew her “upper
and lower” orifices and had her thrown to the river. Yikes! What an awful way to go! The Mongols
traditionally had a taboo against shedding royal blood so if a regal person was sentenced to death,
they would get extra creative! For example, after the fall of Baghdad to the forces of Hulagu Khan,
The Abbasid Caliph al-Musta’sim was rolled up in a carpet and trampled to death by stampeding horses.
But that was nothing in comparison to the macabre end of Russian Princes after the
Battle of the Kalka River. The princes were shoved under some floorboards and crushed as
the Mongols celebrated, danced, and ate while holding their victory feast on top of them.
Even Tarantino can’t top that sort of gruesomeness in his films.
One of the things that made Mongolians different from their contemporary times was the treatment of
women. Unlike the rest of the world, Mongolian women enjoyed freedom, value, and equal status
in their society unlike any other country of that time. But calling Mongolians - feminists
would be a big mistake because such a liberal attitude towards the fairer sex
was limited to native Mongolian women only. Foreign women captured during raids and invasions
were basically a victim of human trafficking and slavery. These women were forced to marry Mongol
men or worse they were turned into concubines. The Mongols also often demanded young maidens as
tribute from subjects of their conquered lands. The Siberian queen Botohui-tarhun was one of the
rare leaders who managed to kick Mongolian rear-side in the battle. However, despite
her legendary resistance eventually, Mongols managed to overpower her, and Botohui-tarhun
was captured and forced to get married to an ordinary Mongol soldier. Now they didn’t kill
her but surely erased her name from history. The only foreign woman who managed to beat Mongolians
in their own game was Merkid princess Toregene who was gifted to Ogedei by his father Genghis
Khan after the latter defeated and subjugated Merkids. Toregene was a cunning woman who managed
to rise to the rank of the favored wife and then exploited Ogedei’s weakness for alcohol to make
him drink to his death. Then she became the ruler of the Mongol Empire for the next five years.
In modern times, body odor is considered a sign of not only bad hygiene but also a bad
personality. In the Mongol Empire, strong body order was a sign of strong character.
In the old Mongol religion of Tengrism, water bodies were considered the home of the dragon
gods. Because of their belief that the water cycle was controlled by dragons,
they considered bathing in water would contaminate the water and disturb the sanctity of the thing
these dragon gods call home. This in turn would result in the dragon gods becoming angry.
It wasn’t just about bathing but washing clothes as well because their clothes carried the same
filth, sweat, dirt, and other body fluids. But that doesn’t mean they would throw worn clothes
out and don new clothes every week or so. In fact, it was quite the contrary, Mongols wore the same
set of clothes 24 hours a day, seven days a week until those clothes couldn’t handle their stench
anymore and they tore apart after completing their miserable age span. Even then Mongols only threw
away those smelly, torn rags if they didn’t belong to the royal family. Members of the royal family
instead of throwing their dirty laundry would give it to those who pleased them. Today it
might be considered perhaps the worst gift ever, but for subjects of the Mongol Empire, receiving
dirty underwear from the king was considered the most ostentatious and generous honor.
Killings in the name of “One True Religion” is a tale as old as time
but Mongols were on the next level as their reason for delivering religious justice revolved around
Genghis Khan. Interestingly, on one hand, while Mongols were one of the most religiously
tolerant empires, they also justified mass murders and genocide with religion.
In 1218, Genghis Khan climbed the pulpit of a mosque in the recently conquered city of Bukhara
and gave a chilling speech to its surrendering citizens. “You have committed great sins. If
you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”
Genghis had a self-belief that he was the wrath of the god or at least he propagated this notion to
his enemies. Even after his death, the successors glorified killing and pillaging in his name. One
of Genghis’s grandsons, Guyuk, told Pope Innocent IV that the power vested in the bloodline of
Genghis Khan by the heavens gave them the right to rule all land from sunrise to sunset. Any opposing
this would be considered an enemy of the empire he threatened. Genghis’s other grandson Mongke went
one step further and proclaimed Genghis as the one true lord in his letter to the king of France.
Hulagu Khan was also a firm believer of this propaganda that Genghis Khan was a chosen vessel
of God’s punishment and was beset on the path to punish those nations who never learned their
lesson. Do you think people like Genghis Khan and others who call themselves vessels of God have
any truth in their claim? Tell us in the comments. And as always, thanks for watching Nutty History!