One year after defeating his greatest rival,
Temüjin Khan summoned the greatest and most important Kurulatai in Mongolian history.
After many days of ceremony and ritual, and many nights of celebration,
Temüjin is elected Khan of all Mongols, and chooses a new title for himself:
Genghis Khan.
Music [Birth of the People]
At the age of 45, Genghis Khan controlled vast territory and over 1 million souls.
His domain stretched from the Gobi desert in the south, to the Arctic tundra in the north.
From the Manchurian Forests in the east, to the Altai mountains to the west.
He named his new people 'The Great Mongol Nation'.
He abolished inherited aristocratic titles,
criminalized the abduction or enslavement of any Mongol,
forbade the selling and kidnapping of women,
declared all children born of Mongol parents to be legitimate,
and made livestock theft punishable by death.
He ordered the adoption of a writing system,
conducted a census, and instituted diplomatic immunity and freedom of religion,
Exempting all religious leaders and their property from taxation and public service.
Eventually he extended this tax exemption to anybody who provided essential public services,
including undertakers, doctors, lawyers, teachers and scholars.
With the Nomadic tribes united and Genghis Khan established as their leader,
His next step wasn't clear.
He had spend so many years locked in conflict with Jamukah and Ong Khan,
That now his enormous tribe lacked a mission.
So he turned his gaze beyond the steppe.
And engaged in a series of raids against the Tangut Empire, in what is now western China.
Unlike the nomadic Steppe tribes, the Tangut had walled cities, moats, and fortresses.
Their armies were nearly twice the size of Genghis Khan's.
In these campaigns, he had to adopt new methods of warfare to adapt to these conditions.
He quickly learned classic siege techniques,
such as cutting off his enemy's food supplies.
But soon began experimenting with new tactics
On one raid he attempted to divert a nearby river to flood the city.
Despite scant experience in engineering,
the Mongols did succeed in diverting the river.
But they wiped out their own camp instead of the Tangut.
They survived their mistake though, and went on to conquer the city.
And with every siege, the Mongols would learn,
and eventually become experts at devastating enemy cities.
Until this point, not many people outside of Mongolia had taken much notice of the upstart barbarian chief,
Or his newly proclaimed nation.
This was about to change.
In 1210 when Genghis Khan was 48,
The Jurchen nation send a delegation from their capital city of Zhongdu,
Where modern day Beijing now lies.
Ong Khan had previously sworn allegiance to them,
So now they came to demand the submission of Genghis Khan.
Upon hearing this order, Genghis Khan turned in the direction of their nation in the south,
spat on the ground, unleashed a line of insults,
and then mounted his horse and rode north.
Leaving the stunned envoy choking in his dust.
The Mongol army advanced to the south,
sending squads of soldiers ahead to scout for decent pasture,
seek out water sources, and report on weather conditions.
Their previous raids in the Tangut Empire turned out to be perfect practice
for their campain against their Jurchen neighbours.
Desert crossings and siege warfare were now solved problems.
And the Mongols had another surprising advantage:
Their diet.
Traditional armies traveled in long columns with massive supply trains.
The Mongols, in contrast, spread out over a vast area to provide sufficient pasture for their animals.
And each warrior hunted for himself, or carried his own individual supplies.
Though dispersed, the Mongols' strict decimal organization system was diligently enforced,
Such that each unit, with it's own doctors and commanders,
always knew where to report and how to find what they needed.
And because most of the Mongol army was illiterate,
and communication across such a large area was critical,
The officers came up with a novel solution:
Orders were composed in rhyme,
to ensure that messages were easily memorized,
and repeated to each new person exactly as they were originally spoken.
The Mongols also launched propaganda campains to break the spirit of the Jurchen people,
claiming that the Mongols were coming as a liberating force, to free them from the oppressive royal family.
More than a few Jurchen defected to join him.
In the end, they found victory by transforming the Jurchen's greatest asset,
their large population,
into a weakness.
They terrorized the country side and conscripted local peasants,
clearing out all the surrounding villages before turning their sights to the larger cities,
using peasants as human shields.
Rounding up an enemies herds and stampeding them towards their owners battlelines
was a traditional Steppe tactic.
But the Mongols modified this old classic by using enemy peasants instead.
Attacking and burning undefended vlilages,
and sending terrified peasants fleeing in all directions,
clogging highways and making it difficult for the Jurchen's supply caravans to move.
Over the course of the campaign,
more than 1 million refugees fled the country side and poured into the cities,
causing chaos and food shortages.
The Jurchen military ended up executing tens of thousand of their own people
just to maintain enough food stores to feed their armies.
During this campaign, Genghis Khan discovered that Chinese engineers
had developed powerful machines to batter city walls from afar.
To adapt these massive war machines to fit his mobile army,
he began hosting a core of engineers on every campaign,
who would camp in the forests close to target cities,
and cut down enough wood to build siege engines on the spot.
In 1214, despite some difficulties adapting to the hot, damp climate,
Genghis Khan finally besieged the capital city of Zhongdo.
The Jurchen had endured so much strife by then,
that they quickly agreed to settlement, rather than face a prolonged siege.
In return for Mongol withdrawal,
the Jurchen leader, known as the Golden Khan,
swore allegiance to Genghis Khan.
And offered massive amounts of silk, silver, gold, horses and people.
As soon as the Mongols left, however,
the Golden Khan and his entire royal court fled.
Hoping to get far enough away to escape the reach of the Mongol army.
Genghis Khan saw this as a breach of their agreement, and returned to sack the capital.
This time, Genghis Khan offered no opportunity to negotiate.
They looted the city according to the new Mongol law.
They took absolutely everything, inventoried it, and distributed it amongst the army.
As a final punishment, as the Mongol warriors retreated to their homeland,
they churned up the earth behind them, and trampled it with their horses.
Genghis Khan wanted to ensure that the peasants never returned to their fields.
Besides, this way he could convert the land to open pasture,
both to feed his newly captured livestock, and to allow easier access in future campaigns in the region.
But in the years that Genghis Khan had been raiding abroad, trouble had begun to brew at home.
Some of his most steadfast followers, the Muslim Uyghurs of the desert oases,
supported him so strongly that other Uyghurs living further to the west,
in modern day Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan,
wished to overthrow their Buddhist rulers and join Genghis Khan as well.
Some sent envoy to Mongols land, seeking an alliance.
But others were under the control of Kuchlug, the son of the Naiman Khan who had harbored Jammukah.
In his new position of power, Kuchlug began to persecute his Muslim subjects,
forbidding the call to prayer, public worship, or Muslim religious study.
Without a ruler to protect them, the Muslim Uyghurs turned to Genghis Khan to overthrow their oppressor.
Although the Mongol army was thousands of miles away,
Genghis Khan sent 20,000 soldiers, under the command of one of his generals, to defend the Muslims.
And because they were engaging in this campaign at the request of their allies,
this time they did not raid or loot the capital city.
But instead, simply defeated the army, beheaded Kuchlug, and returned home.
Leaving behind a herald to proclaim the restoration of religious freedom in the land.
Most importantly to Genghis Khan,
this victory ensured complete control over the Silk Road between the Chinese and the Muslims.
Although he didn't control the Sung Dynasty, where silk was produced,
or the primary purchasing areas in the Middle East,
he rerouted the twisting channels of the Silk Road into one large stream over the course of his campaign.
And directed it through the Mongol Steppes.
So much silk passed through his land that the Mongols even started using it as a packing material.
Suddenly, life on the Steppe looked very different than it had before.
Raw hide ropes were exchanged for silk cords.
Fur and leather clothes were replaced in robes, embroidered with silver and gold.
Yurts were decorated with silk rugs, pillows, and blankets.
Perfume,
makeup,
jewelry,
board games,
paper fans,
incense,
honey,
wine, and tea,
became commonplace.
Skilled artisans, scholars, and entertainers from across Genghis Khan's empire
contributed their art, science, and culture to Mongol society.
The Muslims in the region,
from the mountains of modern Afghanistan to the Black Sea,
produced steel, the finest of all metals,
as well as cotton and glass.
Genghis Khan wanted these novel luxuries also.
He sent ambassadors to the Sultan with gifts,
approaching not as a conqueror,
but as an ally, seeking an equal trade agreement.
With great suspicion, the Sultan accepted.
Genghis Khan sent hundreds of merchants from his newly acquired territories
in caravans laden with goods to trade.
As soon as the caravan entered their territory, however,
a local official seized the goods and killed the merchants,
completely unaware of the incredible mistake he had just made.
When Genghis Khan heard of this,
he sent envoys to the Sultan, asking him to punish the man responsible for the attack.
Instead, the Sultan doubled down,
and killed some of the Mongol envoys,
maiming the others and sending them back to the Khan.
Genghis Khan
was
furious.
So enraged was he by this insult,
that he withdrew once again to his sacred mountaintop to pray, and decide on a course of action.
After three days of contemplation, he descended with his intentions set.
The Mongols were going to war.
[Amazing Music] (The Infinite Steppe)