Jack Weatherford: Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire | Lex Fridman Podcast #476

The following is a conversation with Jack Weatherford, anthropologist and historian specializing in Djangghaskhan and the Mongol Empire. He has written a legendary book on this topic titled Jenis Khan and the making of the modern world. And he has written many other books including Emperor of the Seas, Kubla Khan and the Making of China, Jangghask Khan and the Quest for God, The Secret History of the Mongol Queens, and other excellent books. I've gotten to know Jack more after this conversation, and I cannot speak highly enough about him. He's a truly brilliant, thoughtful, and kind soul. This was a huge honor and pleasure for me. This is the Lex Freedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description and consider subscribing to this channel. And now, dear friends, here's Jack Weatherford. Jenghis Khan, born in approximately 1162, became the conqueror of the largest contiguous empire in history. But before that he was a boy named Teigjin who at 9 years old lost everything his father his tribe living in poverty abandoned to the harshness of the Mongolian step from a boy with nothing to the conqueror of the world. though tell me about this boy his childhood and uh the Mongolian step from which he came from the story of Jenis Khan like the story I think of all of us it doesn't begin at birth it begins that's the beginning of life the story begins long before birth and sometimes it can be many generations before and sometimes only shortly before but I think with Jenga Khan a crucial thing is to understand how his parents met and then how he was conceived and that is that one day a cart was coming across the Mongol territory and only women drove carts. Men rode horses. Women also rode horses but women owned the houses which were called gears, the tents. They owned all the household equipment and so they had to have carts for moving back and forth. And the fact that a cart was moving meant that some woman was moving from one place to another. And in fact her husband was with her. She was a new bride and her husband uh was on a horse close to her. So what happened was a man named Yasuk. Yasuk the future father of Jenghaskhan. Yasuk was up on a hill. He was hunting with his falcon. The words of the secret history of the Mongols were very clear. And he looked down and he saw her and he could barely glimpse her. He knew she was young and she was a new bride. And he rode back to camp. He got his two brothers and they came racing down. And they came and first the husband of the woman looked around and he decided to flee. Not because he was a coward, but he figured he would probably pull the men after him. They would chase him. And they did. They chased him. He went far away. He circled around. He came back. He arrived back at the cart where his wife was. Her name was Erlun. And Erlun had time to think while he was riding around being chased by the Mongols. And she decided that it's more important for him to live. And she told him when he came back, you must flee. If you stay here, they will kill you and they will take me. But if you flee, they will take me, but you will have the chance to find another wife. There are many women in the world. You find one and you call her hulan after my name and you remember me when you're with her. Was a very dramatic moment. And he rode away and he looked back and forth and it said that the pigtails or the braids that were hanging down were whipping back and forth from his chest to his back. Uh he was divided obviously in whether he should go or stay. But the three men were approaching again. and they were headed straight for the cart this time. And they came in and they took Erlun. She didn't say a word until her husband was over the ridge. And when he was over the ridge and she could no longer see him, she began to scream and whail. And one of the brothers said to her, "Doesn't matter if you shake the waters out of the river and if you shake the mountains with your screaming, you will never see this man again." And he was right. And that was the moment that Jenis Khan's mother and father met. That's the beginning of his story in this kidnapping. And it's going to reverberate. every detail of it will come back again and again not only throughout the story of the life of Ching Han but it's going to continue on with the feuds and the issues caused by it all the way into the future and to some extent in certain parts of the world you could say it still exists. So the meeting is fundamentally uh sort of a mixture of heartbreak and dark criminal type of kidnapping. Yes. And from that is conceived this conqueror of the the biggest contiguous empire in history. What I was really interested in was how did this happen? Who was this person? As as Wsworth wrote in his poem, you know, the child is father of the man and it's the childhood that created him and it's that episode that was before he was born. But all the things that happened throughout his childhood made him into the man that he became. And so he was now suddenly this unusual situation was created where a child is going to be born to a kidnapped woman who is being held by strange people. The Mongols, they were not her people. Uh and he already had another wife or husband. He had a wife named Soigo. He had at that time already one son. Later he had another son with her. It was a very odd situation. And in fact the father Yasuk wasn't even there when Timujin was born. He was off fighting the Tatars. And during this campaign against the Tatars, he killed two Tatars. One of them was naming Timujin U, which is sort of person of iron is what it means from the Turk. but today part of also Mongolian language. So he came back, he had a baby and he decided to name him Timuin, the person of iron or iron man we might call him after the man he killed. After the man he killed. So he has a kidnapped mother. She's a second wife now. Not a legal wife, but just a second kidnapped wife. And he's named for someone his father just killed. It was not auspicious beginning. And in fact, just episode after episode in his childhood was inospicious. The father and mother moved camp one time when he was quite young and somehow they overlooked him and forgot him. He was left behind. So here's this young child. We don't know what age but could have been around four or five I think. He was left behind and as it turned out some other people the titute found him and then they kept him for a while and eventually he was reunited with his father and mother and it's very odd to me that I never have any inkling of a spark of relationship much between the father and the son because then when he when Timuin is 8 years old his father decides to take him off to find a wife, which finding a wife in the Mongolian terms means you give the child to that family or you give the boy to that family and he will live with them and they will raise him up and they will train him the way they want before he can marry their daughter. And so he's taking him off at age eight, but he didn't take the other son from the other wife, Becker. He was keeping him. There was something about Timujin having been lost once and found by the titute and reunited with the family and now his father takes him off at age eight and he was going to take him to his to Erlun's family but he never made it. He stopped with another family. It's sort of like the first family came across and uh in the words of the secret history it's a sort of like instant love that there was fire in his eyes and fire in her eyes and he saw this girl Bura who was about 9 years old a little older and he wanted to stay there with that family according to the story and so the father left him there with that family but on the way home the father decided He saw a drinking party and he decided to join them. They were Tatars. He hid his identity on the step. Everybody kind of figures out who everybody is or they figured out who he was and supposedly they poisoned him. He got on his horse and was able to ride back home, but within a few days he died. So now Tamujin is off living with another family and uh somebody comes from his family a family not a relative but a close person named Mongluk comes to get him take him back and they make it through the winter. They make it through the winter. Mother Erloom by now she has four sons and one daughter. I think the daughter had already been born or the daughter was going to be born not too long after that. But they make it through the winter. The spring comes and of course the clan is going to move to a new camp. They go to spring camp from winter camp and they have a a ceremony for the ancestors and they started the ceremony but they did not tell Erlun. And so she came and she was angry that she had been left out. And the old women said, "You're the one for whom we do not have to call. We will feed you if you come, but we do not have to take care of you." Letting her know that as a cap as a captive woman, she was not a real wife in their view. And that was really the signal that when they moved camp, they were not taking her with them. And they packed up and they took her animals. They took the animals. But she at that moment she still had one horse for a moment and she jumped on the horse and she took the banner of her husband and she raced around the people and the banner after death contains the soul of the person s it's called and so she raced around and they were a little bit nervous and so they camped for one night and they waited until it was dark then they took off and this time one of the friends of the family came running out to try to stop them and they killed killed him and Tamujin cried. He was a little boy, 8 years old. There was nothing he could do. He's just a little boy. And now that family is left there on the step, four children, possibly five already. Such the other woman with two children. They're all left there to die on the step. When the winter comes, they will surely all die. How do they make it through the winter? Mother Erlun, in the words of the secret history, she pulled her hat down over her head. She took her black stick and she ran up and down the banks of the river, digging out roots to feed the gullet of her brood. She fed them through the winter. She found foods, digging up whatever she could, finding whatever she could, everything she could. And even at his young age, Tamutin was already beginning to go out to collect things to he could get fish. He could do a few tasks to help feed the family. It was an extremely awful struggle at this point, but she saved every one of the children. So Timin's early years were marked by loneliness, abandonment and uh struggle. Yes. Even after this uh he was kidnapped at one point by taichiude people. He was kidnapped and we would say I think the correct word reinsslaved. They put him into a kank a yolk like a like a ox would wear. And so his two arms are in it and his head is in it and he's trapped in this thing. And every night he would be taken to a different gear to be guarded by that family. And one night there was a little celebration. So most of the people are drinking. And he's left with a boy who's not very smart. And Tamujin managed to take the canank, the wooden yolk that he's trapped in, and use it as a weapon by turning it around very quickly and hitting the boy in the head, knocking him out. That was one of the first lessons for the Mongols, that uh anything that moves is a weapon. This is going to go on for generations. Very important for the Mongols. If it moves, it's a weapon. He did that. He raced off in the night and he jumped into the river to hide. He's still got a can on him. He's still trapped under there. The people are looking for him. They come out and they're up and down the river and he's hiding underneath the water for the most part, trying to breathe as best he can, but it's dark and it protects him a little bit. They give up and they say, "Okay, we'll come back tomorrow." He can't possibly escape. But the next day he knew one family that he thought he could go to and uh he was right. He went to that family and at great risk to themselves. They in fact were a captive family of the Taiote and at great risk to themselves they uh managed to saw off the can and then burn it in their fire and they gave him food to escape and then he had to go find his family again. So this is the kind of life that this boy Tim Tamujin had. So he just to be clear his the neck is trapped and the hands are trapped. We think that's how it is. We just have the word. They don't say the head and the hands. We know that his body is trapped in it. But from all evidence we have, it's the hands and the head. And he's running around deeply alone with this thing. Yes. Yes. and then he has to go out and find wherever his family is. So this in part was the foundation of his breaking with Mongol tradition that kinship is yes the most important thing above all else because here is his life story where he's abandoned over and over and over by his father's own brothers see the men who kidnapped her they had an obligation under Mongol law and custom to marry her when her husband died. They did not. they should take care of her and her children because her children are the children of their brother. They count as the sons of the clan or they should but no they had all deserted all betrayed him. He learned very early on that you cannot trust family. You mentioned that uh Jenis Khan's childhood uh Timin was marked by extreme tribal violence. Can you describe sort of the state of affairs in the step? How much violence is there? How much kidnapping is there? The story of Timujin is not a unique story for that time. Now, as an as an isolated family of outcasts, of course, he's not participating in the various feuds and the raids of the people around them, but they are constantly raiding in the winter. and for women and for horses and for any kind of valuables that they can find. It's almost like their way of getting trade goods from China that one group raids the other in order to find out whatever they have for textiles or for metal. Mongols produce nothing. They they could produce felt to make their tents, but they were not craftsmen. And so they had to get these items from somewhere and it was through raiding. And so even in the genealogy of Timuin, you see going back generation after generation of women having been kidnapped, children born who are not necessarily the father's child, and it's unclear who the father was. And all of these issues go back for a long time. Later, Changan will realize once he becomes Ching Han, he will realize that the true source of most of the feuding on the step is over women. And later he will outlaw the kidnapping of women and the sale of women in part not only because of what had happened to his mother but what happened to him next in his life. And this is one of the things you talk about this in some ways the love story with his wife was her kidnapping was the defining. If you could point to one place where Jenis Khan the conqueror was created, it's that point, his wife being kidnapped. Can you can you describe first of all his love for this woman and what that means and what the kidnapping of her meant? At age 16, Bertha, the girl he had met when he was 8 years old and she was nine, she's now 17. and she and her mother come. It It's hard to even imagine what it was like for this 16-year-old boy who has suffered these indignities of life in every way that you can imagine. And suddenly here is the love of his life who's going to be living with him, making him happy. He has somebody who loves him. It's not just his mother running around getting food and trying to feed the five children and plus the the other uh wife and her two children. No, he has somebody who loves him. And it's all the excitement that you can imagine with the fire in the eyes and the excitement and then it only lasts a few months. And so there they are and there's a lady visiting them. We don't know exactly who she is, but just they called her grandmother Kawakin. Granny Kauan is there and Granny Kauin is sleeping of course on the floor of the gear the tent and early in the morning she feels the vibrations in the earth and she knows that horsemen are coming. She rouses the family and mother Erlloon is in charge. Mother Erlloon is still in charge even though Timujin is now married. She puts all of her children on a horse and she takes the baby girl Tamulin in her own lap and she has one extra horse. But she won't take Bursta because she knows she doesn't know who the men are. She has no idea. But they're coming. They're coming in the dark. They're coming for a woman. They know there's a girl there. this family of outcasts has acquired a wife and they know that they're coming for that. And so she leaves Sigo, the other wife. She leaves this old lady, Granny Kolakin, who actually has her own cart. And she leaves Bursta. They pile into Granny's cart, and it's only an ox to pull it, so they don't get too far before the attackers get there. But Mother Erlin is right. She's able to get her children off to the mountain and to Bharat Haldun to the mountain side away from them because the men are so focused on this cart and finding out how many women are in there and who they are and all. So mother eroon saved her family but at a cost suddenly Timbuin realizes he has obeyed his mother but he's lost the most important thing in his life and I do think this is the defining moment of his life the story began back when his mother was kidnapped but now the kidnapping of his wife I think it's the def what will he do what should he do? What can he do? Is he going to just resign himself to it? Is he going to go out look for another wife? And he decides that life is not worth living without Bura. He has found something good in this life. And if he has to die trying to get her back, he will die trying to get her back. And this is the early steps of the military genius. born because in order to get her back requires an actual organization of troops. He needs allies. Allies. He goes to a man who ruled a Karat people in central Mongolia kind of on the river about where the capital Ulamat is today. He goes there because that Van Han is the name or Toalhan. He goes there because Wanghan had uh been the lord over his father at one point and his father had gone on raids for him and so he went there and actually he took a gift that's because Basha's mother had brought a sable coat as a gift for mother Erlun at that time of the marriage. So he took the coat and he took it and he gave it as a gift to Vanghan and asked for his help and Van Han said yes and he said I will send some troops but we need more and you need to ask Jamoka Jam Jamaka you need to ask him to come also. He said I will send a message to him to get troops. you have to tell the story of Jamaka because uh the the story of Jenghis Khan is one of people abandoning him being disloyal and here is a person who's not of his kin but uh becomes his in a way brother uh in a way loyal and as you've described he's both the best thing to happened to Jenghis Khan and one of the biggest challenges in in in the later years to Jangaskhan. So who was Jamaka? Jamaka was a boy about the same age as as Timujin and his family had winter camp close to where Mother Erlun was living with her children. And so the two boys met during the winter time. In fact, they both claimed descent from the same uh woman about four generations earlier or five, it's a little unclear. She was urihongai woman who herself was kidnapped and actually Jamaka was the descendant of her from the fact that she was pregnant at the moment of kidnapping and then Tamujin is descended from her through the new kidnapper Banchar his her ancestor. So they're both through the as the Mongols would say from the same womb. They come from the same historic uh origin. However, their lives were similar in that both lost their fathers very early. But Jamaka also lost a mother. So he grew up in the household of his grandfather. He had no siblings. Uh unlike Tamuzin with whole household of siblings, he grew up with his grandfather and his grandfather had several wives. So he grew up with a bunch of old women which later he said he thought was uh an influence on his life. But the two boys meet. So they come from different backgrounds and Jamoka is not as deprived by any means as the life of Tamuzin but he has a certain emotional deprivation I think having not had mother father siblings and he lives with these old old people the two boys meet they become good friends playing on the ice and so they're playing on the ice and then very early on I think when they're about 10 or 11 years old they decide to make a pact it's called being coming and is more than a friend. A friend is like ner in the language and there are several different types of friendship but and is a friendship that's beyond a friendship. It's something for life and they swore that they would be there forever to protect each other to help each other in every moment. And they exchanged knucklebones. So each one of them had the knucklebone of a a robuck, a deer. uh knucklebones are used in these games that they play, but it's also used to forecast the future. You can roll them around and and all. And it's very strange on the ice. I will say in the winter time in Mongolia, it can be up to 50° below zero. And it doesn't really matter at that point whether it's either Celsius or Fahrenheit or what it is, but you slide something across the ice and it's just absolutely smooth like silk and it goes on for a long way. And if you put your ear down to the ice, you hear this celestial sound that is unlike any sound on the earth. It's just like the angels are singing under the ice. So once they've sworn in this relationship of then a couple years later they swear it again but this time they're slightly older boys and they have bows and arrows and so they exchange arrows with each other. In fact, the the text is very specific that Jamaka took the horn, cut it off of a two-year-old calf, and uh he whittleled it down, and then he drilled a hole into it in order to make a whistling arrow, which is used uh for several purposes among the Mongols. It's used for signals for one thing from one person to another. But also when you're hunting, if you want to move the animal in a certain direction, you send a whistling arrow in the opposite direction to make the animal move. So it had a lot of uses. So the boys had exchanged robot knuckles. This time they exchang. And so they had been close friends. And Van Han said, "Okay, Jamoka should raise some troops and go with you." And he did. So the three set out some troops from Vanghan. He himself did not go. He was too old. But he sent some troops and then Jamoka and his troops and then basically just Tamujin and his family. He just had his brothers. That's all. They set off to find the Murket people up the Selen River which flows into Siberia and on into Lake Ball. They had to go through some extremely rough territory. And you see in this episode though, Jamaka is already a little bit fierce without necessarily thinking it through carefully. Uh he s he gives this long speech about all the things they're going to do to the merket people. We're going to jump through the the tono the the smoke hole in the top of the gear. We're going to jump in there and we're going to kill them all. We're going to kill the men and the women and the children. we will destroy these people forever. He has a extremely militant rhetoric at least. And he's also rather critical of the elder people. Van Han's people came late and he gave them this long lecture about we are Mongols and if we give our word, our word is our promise forever and rain or sleet or snow, it doesn't matter. We be there on time. And then it so he's dressing down his superiors. is very aggressive but he's very helpful. So these troops they move in on the merket camp. They also come in at night and so the there's a small amount of warning because some men are out hunting sables the merket men and they race back to the camp and they tell the people and the people are are getting ready to get out as fast as possible. So Bura has no idea who's coming. She doesn't want to be kidnapped again. It's just somebody. So she and uh the grandmother go auction again and and so they're loaded into a cart to go away. So Timin comes in and there's a full moon that night so they could see what they're doing. And he's really searching for her. He's not paying too much attention to the battle. And he's calling for her. And he she hears his voice. She knows who it is. She jumps off the cart and she runs to him and they reunited and he grabs her, embraces her and then he said, "This is the goal. This is why we are here. We don't need anything else." He was very clear about that. And that was his first full-on military engagement. Yes. Aside from the things Yes. His first full-on military engagement. Now um along the way in addition to escaping all these horrors he had killed his older half brother Beh and that too was a deeply formative experience. So what what was that about? Can you explain in in Mongol society the role of the the older brother and the power struggle there and you know not to moralize but there's also uh you know the the ethical foundation behind the murder the killing of Becker that's one of the things that's totally unknown outside of the secret history of the Mongols none of the Persian chronicles none of the Chinese chronicles none of them knew about this until the secret history was uh deciphered and translated. But Bectar was the older child of Sigle and Esant the older brother has complete authority over the younger siblings in Mongolian society. They have to refer to him with a special pronoun all the time ta and he refers to them as chi. It's like a formality and and his word goes he is the father in the absence of the father. But also it's quite common that if a man dies and his brothers he has no brothers or his brothers do not marry his widow then if he has a son by another wife she will become his wife. So it would have been common that Beexter eventually when he passed through puberty would then perhaps marry Mother Erlun. Now I don't know that that happened but I think either it did or Timujin was trying to prevent it because it was bad enough that he was the older brother but he comes the older brother and a stepfather. I think Timojin just couldn't handle that and he was already bear was ordering him around. So he would take things like a fish or bird that uh Timujin had caught and that's perfectly acceptable in the the Mongol hierarchy. So Timujin would catch a fish and Bector would take the fish. Yes. It's only recorded once but perhaps happened several times. So that's an okay thing to do for an older brother. Just take stuff. Yes, he can do anything he wants just about with his younger siblings. That's Yeah. And but Timujin is not going to stand for it. So mostly in the record, they kind of put the blame on this fish, which I'm not so sure that's really the blame. And uh the boys had actually taken the sewing needles from their mother. They were using them for fishing. And I think it was more complicated than that. But for whatever reason, he and his next brother, Hasser, decided to kill him, and they did. Why to you is it more complicated than that? It feels to me like stealing of a fish is like the final straw. Here he's being abused. Yes. Over and over and over. And the fish is a symbol of that. And so here he takes matters into his own hands. I think it is the symbol of that. And it can be the thing that pushes him over. Yeah. the edge, but it's all these other tensions of what's going on with the family because they shoot him with arrows, they kill him, but what happens afterwards is also interesting for the dynamics of what was going on before because we hear nothing from Sigo. She and her younger son, Belgatai, they stay with the family. They don't go away. But the one who is outraged is mother Erlun, his mother. She screams and hollers at him in the longest kind of tirade you can imagine about you will never have anybody in your life except your own shadow and you know you are worse than than everything that she could name they could be worse than she was outraged and went on and on and on about it. So she was obviously extremely distressed about it. Whereas Sigle, the mother of the boy, she may have been distressed, I don't know, but nothing has shown up in the record. So he does have this episode of having killed off his brother, but I don't think it was a deeply meaningful I think it was important, but I don't think it was emotionally deeply meaningful for Timujin. The brother was gone. The problem was solved. mother is extremely ticked off at him. But but it does show, in fact, it's interesting if it's not a big deal for him. It does show that he's willing to resort to murder, to take care of a bad situation. Yes, he is capable of doing anything that needs to be done to resolve what he sees as a problem. Bea was a problem. He resolved it. at a very young age. So he'd had that experience behind him. But now his bear's younger brother Belgati is on the raid with him and with Jamoka when they go to Captain Bura back. So uh he has both loyalty and Belgati stays loyal to him his entire life. His entire life. Uh it was very interesting. So ek if we return to bursta is it normal to have such a love story across many years when you're separated and sort of having that kind of loyalty because it was two-way loyalty from bersa to to Timigjin and Timigan to burst and this is like uh before he was Jenis Khan I think as children he was too preoccupied with staying alive and getting trying to find fish and roots to eat and things like that to really be pining for her all the time. But for whatever reason, she came and it could be that her family liked him in some way or that she remembered him or that she had no other suitors because at 17 she should have been married actually. So I I can't explain why, but it was certainly a strong love story after the fact if not before. I mean th those two were loyal to each other throughout their lives. Uh she was I would say the most important person to him. Uh after that he went to literal war to get her back. He risked everything. He was willing to die. He was willing to kill. He was willing to die in order to get her back. And he got her back. And now he's reestablished his relationship with Jamoka. And so they decide to stay together and they all go off to the Horon Valley and she is pregnant. This becomes a huge issue forever. It's one of those things that to this day almost it's an issue. and what happens. But as he says much later in life when his own sons rebel against him and they call that first child a murket bastard, he defends his wife viciously. He to his own sons. He says, "You were not there. You do not know who loved who and who did not. You did not see the sky turning around. You did not see the stars falling. You did not see the earth turn over. You don't know what was happening. And if I say he is my son, he is my son. Who are you to say otherwise? You were not there. You come from the same warm womb. And if your mother could hear your words, her warm womb womb would turn to cold stone. So he defended her forever. But he's off now. We go back to the beginning. She's pregnant. They're in the Hanukak Valley. and he and Jamak decide to renew their vows of being under to each other. So this time it's more serious and it uh ceremony in front of the whole uh we can't say tribe. It's not big enough yet for a tribe but but the whole clan that's there. And then Jamaka takes off a gold belt which actually he'd stolen from the market at some point. Where on earth they had a go got a gold belt? I don't know. But he took off a gold belt and he put it on Tamuin. And then Tamuin gave him a mayor who had never uh had a fold, had never given birth. And it was unusual mayor who had a little growth on the front of her head which they called a horn. So it was a unusual gift and I don't it has meaning but I don't know all the meanings behind it. You know, it's sort of odd to me. But uh the golden belt you can kind of sort of think about in different ways. But the gold the belt the belt for the Mongol man is really the sign of manhood. And in fact this uh belt a woman was often then and even now called person without a belt because that's how they were at that time. Today women wear belts of course but they still use the word busqu with no belt. So it's a very important symbol of manhood. So he gave that tamujin and they celebrated and then the words of the secret history they slept apart under the same blanket apart from the other group and they were happy together and then when the baby was born Tim Tuja named the baby which means visitor and some people say well it's because the child was really the market child other people say know it's because he was a visitor on the territory of Jamok at that time and other people can say well but Jamaka's ancestor who had been born from the kidnapped woman who was pregnant that they had named that uh Jaredai which meant foreigner so it's kind of like a parallel the visitor the foreigner and so Jamoka's clan was took the name from him they were called Jaran Jaran and so there all these things that sometimes we can't quite understand because we don't have the total mentality of that time and we don't we're not there. But we should say that I mean it's a pretty powerful part of this love story is that he the child is likely not his and he accepted that child as his own without and defended it as it becomes much more important later. As his first uh child. Yes. He defends this child through his entire life. And um but not long after the birth, he and Jamoka break apart or really it's Timujin breaks apart at the urging of uh she said he lords it over you too much. Uh he orders you around too much. You need to be free. We need to break away. and she urged him and he loved his wife more than anything. I think that in a certain way the most important other character in his life, adult life would be the and relationship which gets up being severely tested in the future years. But they run away through the night. They go all night long to escape from him. But uh he obviously loved birth the most and took the baby of course with him as well. So here is this breaking point of the una. How did that relationship evolve? The two of them never claimed to break it. They had just separated. And now we have the Banghan, this the most powerful ruler on the step who's ruling out of central Mongolia of the Kerat people. And so Tamaka remains loyal to him, but at first so does Tamujin. They're both loyal to him, but they're fighting in different kinds of campaigns, you know. So, for a while, they're not fighting each other. But eventually, some things happened that separate Tamujin. Timujin was making all of these great victories for Van Han. And he was even got the title Vong, which means from from Chinese meaning uh prince or king. uh he Avanghan received that from the Jin dynasty because of all of these conquests against the Tatar people. So Timuin was rising up and then he wanted his son to marry the daughter of Van Han and Van Han said no his own son sing his told the father no no no no we don't marry those low people they're Mongols they're not like us you know we are carry out people they we're not going to marry them and so then now war you could say breaks out or feud really it's more of a feud And Himojin flee has to flee far away into the east to a place called Baljuna. And he goes to Baljuna. And at this time then Jamaka is going to fight on behalf of his lord Bong Han. The two of them do not meet in combat. But now their forces are fighting each other. And they didn't see that. I mean there's an obvious tension there. There's an obvious, if slight breaking of loyalty, right? Yes. It's hard to know what's going through their mind at that point. We only have it later on when the the relationship is being resolved in unfortunate ways that they claim that neither one of them ever truly broke it because they never harmed each other directly. And in fact, then Timujin eventually defeats Van Han. So he takes over central Mongolia. He's starting to really rise up now. And he has the title from his own people of Chingghaskhan. They give him that at uh um Blackheart Mountain by the Blue Lake. It's a very beautiful special place. But he takes that title. That's not a title that anyone had ever held that we know of. Ching Han. It was a new title that he just uh thought up or somebody thought up or somebody thought it had auspicious meaning behind it. It's very close to the word tangis which means the sea. Uh it could have had something to do with that. Uh Mongolians really like we might say puns of they like words with multiple meanings and that's very important to them. The more meanings a word has the more power that word has. So it has different meaning in different languages. So in the Mongolian it sounds like strong chin chingis but in Turk and there are many Turkish people including the market themselves are mostly Turk people. Uh it sounds like uh the C thingis thing. So it's exciting to them when there's this double meaning. And the the the double meaning plays with each other and that excites them especially with names. Yeah. I'm like today in Mongolia or well I've been there so long I think the fad has passed now but about 20 years ago it was popular to name children Michelle girls because it's a French name an American name and it means smile in Mongolia so it's the power of three great languages and three great civiliz and so many names are like that and so I think chingis it doesn't have one meaning I think it means powerful it means the sea I think it means many different things but so he had become a Khan and he was ruling over him. And so Jamaka now switched loyalties to the next kingdom over called the Nimon people who are farther west and um he becomes the the protetéé could say of the Nimon people. But when Jigaskhan attacks the Nimon, Jamoka deserts the Nimon. He tells them, "These people have uh snouts of steel and they eat humans alive." And he was telling him all these horrible things about the Mongols, you know, and uh uh Tayang Han, the leader of the Nims, he was rightfully scared about them and he was left there and he in fact was very quickly also defeated. So Tamaka has not fought against Timujin in this campaign. and he's off with some of his people, Jadakan clan people. He's off with them they see the turning of the tide, you know, and but he now wants to become the great Khan of the step. He has very follow very few followers. But he takes the title Gurhan, which is a very old ancient important title. But but because uh Banghan is gone, Toglhan gone that he can take this title and pretend to be the great Khan of the step and all. But his own people turn against him and they capture him and they think they will take him to Chingaskhan. It's not Chingaskhan. They'll take him and they will be rewarded perhaps for turning him in. And Chingaskhan doesn't reward them immediately. He kills them all because they have betrayed their leader who is his and it's a very strange encounter and so supposedly Chenas Han says to him come back to me save me be beside me protect me be my shadow be my safety guard in life and supposedly Jamuka says, "But I did betray you when my people fought against you and you will always know that and you will never completely trust me. I will be like a louse underneath the collar of your tunic. I will be like a thorn in the lapel of your dell." He said, "Kill me without shedding my blood. Let me die. And if you do, take my remains up to a high place and bury me. And I will be the guard. I will be the protector for you and your people forever." So they obviously Tamuin did not participate in the killing, but he ordered the killing. And uh he was either it's not specified how he was killed without shedding the blood, but the Mongols had several ways because the most honorable way to die was without shedding blood. The blood contains part of the soul and if you lose it, you're losing your soul before you die. So they usually wrapped them up in felt carpets and then beat them to death or trampled them to death with horses, something like that. There a couple other methods but I think that's probably the method by which Jamaka was killed and so he was killed and then Tamujin had or Chigasan had his remains taken up and buried in a high place. This is over near Tuva which is today part of Russia but until the 20th century was a part of Mongolia. The Tuven people very very close culturally to the Mongols. It seems that both of them under the under relationship had a deep value for loyalty and so the way you know it's not worth living after you've been disloyal which is the the Jamaica perspective right he had become very practical at this point and he understood that you needed complete total loyalty and trust with everybody around you and I think for this reason he was willing either say to accept the the plea of of Jamaka and when Changan was asking him to come back and to to be his uh shadow and to be his uh safety guard again. Maybe that was just a formality that he knew would be rejected. Or maybe when Jamoka offered to be killed without shedding the blood, that was a formality that he thought would not be followed through. Nevertheless, uh to me, just reading your work and understanding the history, this relationship seems like a really really important relationships that defines the nature of loyalty. Yes. And for for Jingus, I would say in both negative and positive ways, it was the most important relationship of his adulthood aside from Bura. But that relationship really did not seem to have many negative aspects. They sometimes disagreed on things, but small things. Uh so she was po she was by him and she was positive in every regard so far as we know forever. Although she was not submissive, but she was always on his side. And Chamaka, it was just a little too hotheaded for me, you know, I mean, in my evaluation of of him that uh these things like, oh, we're going to drop down on the market and we're going to come through the smoke hole, kill everybody, and all. And he had a flare for the dramatic even in a way giving the gold belt to Timujin. But Jamaka also he explained himself at the end of life and he said you know we both lost our father but I also lost my mother and you had a strong mother to raise you. I did not. And he said you had bursta. You have a very strong wife to help you. And my wife he just used a word like prdler. Like she just sort of complains and paddles along. and we did not have a relationship. So I think something about that rings true that there were some some elements of that that were true. But he Jamaka certainly didn't have the intelligence and the the real genius for dealing with people dealing with soldiers especially in war for warfare that uh Tamujin had. Yeah. There's in that relationship there's a contrast because Jenghis Khan did not accumulate riches or uh accumulate power in a way that was for the sake of the riches or for the sake of the power. It was always very practical in what is the way to maximize the success of this operation. Yes. He I often wonder what happened to the gold belt. it disappeared from the story you know and a gold belt doesn't just disappear you know what happened to that it's so interesting because Tamua was never interested in material goods and when as Jingaskhan is the ruler he in some ways you could say became the richest man in the world because he controlled the most wealth flowing through him but he always dressed simply he always lived in the tent and he said I eat what my soldiers eat I dress the way my soldiers dress. I live the way my soldiers live. We are the same. So he had no interest in the wealth and he had sided before with Vanghan which was very advantageous because they had more trade goods and wealthier people and all but he just didn't have the temperament I think that was going to be helpful for Jenghaskhan's continued rise. That is one of the powerful things about the Jenghis Khan story is he came from nothing. From absolute nothing and he didn't from what I see and understand become sort of corrupted by the riches or change. He fundamentally remained the same person who does not have value for material things. He changed and matured in various ways over life as we all do or we hope we do. But he never became a way. He was never greedy. He was never inquisitive. He kept the simple life. And uh part of the simple life for him meant that no one was allowed to write about him. No one was allowed to make his likeness. They couldn't paint a picture of him. They couldn't make a a a statue of him. No building could be built dedicated to him. No palace, no tomb, no temple of any sort, not even at the point of death at the simplest gravestone. Nothing. Nothing. It's fascinating that a kid like a boy that doesn't know the world would have the intelligence to understand how corrupting that is. Like the moment somebody builds a statue of you, it's like a slippery slope towards becoming not seeing the world clearly, not seeing uh surrounding yourself with sick of hands that don't tell you the right the the information. not being able to select the right people to lead the armies or to to lead the territories that you conquer. So it's interesting that he had that foresight of don't record, don't worship. Yes, that's because that's a dangerous road to go down for a leader. And it's very hard to explain how he stuck to that, how he got it. you're so easily corrupted by power and uh and and yet he maintained this very fierce attitude towards his relationship was with the people around him, his guard mostly the or his private part of the army, you know, that went with him, the central part of the army. That was his relationship, his family. He had four wives. This was what was important to him. And in fact, no portrait was painted until 1278. Well, by then he' already been dead for 51 years. And then no statue until the 21st century. Just incredible. But let's uh let's go to the document that you referenced several times, the secret history. The secret history is a very unusual document and and I happen to love it very much. But I said, you know, Chinghan allowed nothing to be written about him in his lifetime. People couldn't take notes. Even the army was not he Jenask Khan ordered the invention of the alphabet for the Mongol people. And it was adapted from the Weaguer people. And uh so to this day, it's often called the Ukrish alphabet, the Weager alphabet. So he had ordered that and he'd ordered his children to learn to read and write. And some did. I think most did not, but some did. But one of the things he did with every campaign, even the one at the murket when he uh rescued Berta, was he always adopted one orphan and that child became a full member of the Mongol nation in his household. His mother Erlun would raise the child. So she eventually had a whole household full of boys of different tribes but they all became very high ranking members of the government and one was a tatar boy who turned out not to be so great as a soldier uh but he could read and write. He was the best and later eventually he became the supreme judge appointed by Chingis Khan of course and so when Chinghan died he recognized it was important not just to write down the law that's all Chinghan allowed to be written in blue books only the law nothing about him or campaigns or military anything but uh Shigi Hutuk was his name and Shiki Hutuk realized that this was going to be lost that this is a great historic thing that has happened so he compiled the work part of it. He I don't know other people contributed helped him but it's still a little bit unclear. Uh the Mongols they don't specify that's they always tell you exactly where something happens. So we know exactly where it happened in Mongolia. You can still go to that spot where he wrote it. That's very important to the Mongols. Uh and we also know it's the year of the mouse. So it was 1228. Chinghan had died in 27. So he wrote down it begins with what we would say are the uh the myths although I'm not sure they're myths but the origins of the myths it begins with the marriage of gray blue wolf with a tawny deer then some people say well that's some kind of myth it's toemic and mongos they look at me I asked them about this they said what he was named blue grey wolf she was named Tony deer they married you know very practical ical about it and they think they're real people. Maybe they were or not. I don't know. But so this earlier history is just the genealogy as it should be. Who knows? But it's also in there because like Bodenar, they call him Bodenar the fool, the ancestor of Timujin. He's cast out because he's just so dumb. The rest of the family doesn't want him. His father is undetermined who he was. He kidnaps Hanghai woman. She has the child who becomes ancestor. So it's a confusing mess, but I I tend to think it's probably accurate. It has a lot of good information. And by the time you get to the life of Timujin, the reason we know these intimate things is because that person Shiki Hut, he was there sleeping in the same gear with the people. So we even see in there, he will record instances where Bura sits up in bed and tells her husband, "Okay, you got to do this, you got to do that, you can't do this anymore. we can't think of you know it's all recorded right so it's a very intimate document and this is one reason that it was secret it was only for the family they were trying to uphold sing as Han's prohibition against putting out information about the family so it was secret for a very long time so much so the scholars began to think it didn't exist and then in the 19th century a Russian academic who was working in uh China at the time in Beijing, he discovered a manuscript which was very very odd that people didn't think was anything because it's all Chinese characters, but it makes no sense in Chinese. But he recognized, but if you read it, pronounce it, it makes sense in Mongolian. So it was in this code that had been used to record the information in Chinese. So they were recording the sounds. the sounds. Correct. They use Chinese characters to record sounds which is always problematic in some little areas you're not exactly sure what the name is or something like but uh it was a very unusual document and then once they found it they they realized that some of the Persian documents had incorporated part of that already. So that was very helpful to me because some of the Persians I trust very much and I like their work very much and so it was helpful that it already existed and all of it some of it existed in Mongolian other Mongolian sources that were written later some of it was uh just incorporated so it seemed to be fairly genuine but it wasn't 100% pure it had little things had happened to it along the way uh some things have been stipped here and there and a few words changed and like sometimes for Timuchin they call him Chingas Han well he wasn't the Han then and sometimes they call him Han which is like chief and other times Han which is emperor well in Mongolia it's a big difference you know so there little things like this that move around that you're not sure why but it's a document that I have great faith in it was not published in English until 1982 but Francis Woodman Cleaves at Harvard University translated it in 50s it was ready for publication and he was having trouble with the publisher and so it didn't appear for nearly 30 years. It was supposed to be two volumes. The first volume is the translation. The second volume was going to be the uh notes and the second volume was lost. To this day it hasn't been found. I would love to see that. But uh anyway it now it's in all languages just about in the world. Can you clarify? So there's two volumes. The 19th century Chinese manuscript covers the first volume. Uh yes, that was translated and then published by Harvard University. But the notes were just the notes from the scholar Francis Woodman Cleaves. Those were his notes, not Mongolian notes. There are Chinese notes that went with it because the Chinese had trouble understanding a lot of things in it. And they also they disapproved of some things. So they would try to put their own notes in the margins to kind of correct the story and explain away why the Mongols women would be often marrying their stepson. It just did not match with confusion ethics, you know. So there's several things like that that they try to skip around. But so it's interesting just to read the Ming dynasty notes that are attached to it. But the document itself mongalo it's just so important and for me it was the guiding document. I didn't want to be guided by anything else first. Everything else I would check to correlate and fill in blanks and give more information. But I went to Mongolia to travel around to those places because they are so exact in there and to feel it. And it's so important I think because you know history does not live in books. History does not live in archives or even libraries as much as I need them for my work. But history lives in the people. History lives in the memory of the people and the culture. And for example, the episode with the kidnapping of Bura. So I went to that place and I didn't know when it happened, what season it happened. It was very important for figuring out the bursts that came afterwards and other events that were being correlated. Very important to me. And so I'm just talking to the people who live in that valley, the nomads there. They said, "Oh, it's clear. It's it was the winter." I said, 'Oh, where did you read that? Said, 'N no, Granny Quaxton was on the ground and she could feel the vibrations. She said, 'Look, this is summertime now. You're not going to feel any vibrations. The ground here is so soft. Suddenly, a whole important piece that I've been searching for just came together from some nomad sitting there next to his horse. And he was absolutely right. It could only happen in the winter. And that that also correlates with the time that raiding was done. So it correlates with other historic factors. But then that gave me the the time basis for figuring out a lot of other things. History lives in the people. Just to linger on that point, you visited different places that were important to the story of Changdis Khan. What did it feel like? What are some memorable things about just the experience of standing there? I really set out mostly to visit the cities he had conquered across Central Asia and all. And there was so little to learn. I mean, everything was kind of known of whatever the chronicers had recorded. The archaeologists had found whatever they had found. And I get there and he hadn't spent much time there. He didn't identify with it. I wasn't feeling anything. But in Mongolia, I would go to these places and I would know if Chingas Han came back today, he would know exactly where he is. There's no road, there's no sign, there's no building, there's no power line going to nothing. And just to smell the air, to feel it, to see the animals and to see what what kind of animals live here, what kind of plants are growing here, you begin to get a a feeling for how he was thinking. And then you begin to see ah I know which direction they came from. The only direction they could come from was that way. You you begin to see it and his life starts to unfold in a very dramatic way that I have the text but the text is like it has no scenery, no props, nothing like that. The Mongols all understand their way of life. They don't need to explain anything. They know which way the gear faces with the sun. They know all these things. But for me that's how I learned it. It was from being with the people. It was the most important thing. And this was in starting in the 1990s. And the people they were at this time they were amazed that I would come. The Soviet era had just ended. Socialism had was just ending. Democracy was starting. And Chingghaskhan had been forbidden to them for almost the entire century. And every known descendant of Chingghas Han was killed in Mongolia. Following the secret history that became the key to writing what I wrote. Take the history which is difficult to understand. you have to go over and it didn't I often never understand different parts or or I change my mind and think it was yes now it's no and and but the secret history is a valuable document and to me also it's the opening document of Mongolian written language and I think it's very important how do people begin their written language and they begin it with the words Derees, from highest heaven came the destiny of the blue wolf who was married to the Tony deer and their descendants who came from the great sea to live at the base of Mount Bhan Haldun. and then integrating the the spiritual elements of nature, the mountains and the great sea and this kind of just like a deep connection to nature that they have. Mongolia is a world that for the most part is the same as when Chinghan was there. We cannot say that for hardly any other place in the world. Uh I mean certainly not for America but just a few hundred years ago it was entirely different people, languages, everything. But you can't say it for for London or Moscow or or Constantin Istanbul, Constantinople. All of these things have changed so much. But Mongolia is still Mongolia. It's one of the largest countries in the world in in space with the fewest number of people about today 3.3 million and they're spread out and they live in their environment in such an intimate way. This was important for learning about Chingghis Khan, how he thought, how he hunted, how he strategized for war. You learn that from the people today because they are still there. They're still living. What's the open Mongolian step like? As we return to the feeling of Timin and Jenghis Khan, what's it like looking at this place that has not changed since his time? The first thing I think about this step is that you can see forever in every direction. There's no building, nothing to stop your line of view. And it's like being in the ocean in many ways. So you have this extremely open space and the wind is usually blowing through it, but it's extremely fresh. It's coming out of Siberia. It's coming out of the Arctic. It sweeps down across Mongolia. Cold is a thickening sometimes but it's always fresh. Always fresh. So you have the wind coming in. You have the smell of the wind but also then there's grass. The smell of grass becomes very important. Now because of the particular location from one year to another one area may have grass one year and and then drought the next year another area has grass. So you don't always know if it's not grass it's dust. you have dust growing in. The dust doesn't smell so good. It doesn't feel so good. Uh but that's just one more part of the country. The waters are mostly pure. Now, unfortunately, there has been pollution in in this century from mining in several areas. Even when I was there uh even today when we go to some place like the sailing river where we talk about the market lift so it's a place of pure waters and that's how Mongolians define their world is by the water they don't does not give lands to his sons to rule he gives waters and people to rule they do not refer to the earth as land they refer to the earth as dal ocean the sea and so water is very important and to learn the rules about water you don't camp by water if you camp by water your animals and you are going to be polluting it messing it up so they're back maybe in our modern terms about a kilometer back you take the animals to the river to drink and then you take them away you do not bathe in that river you take the water away from the river and you bathe away from the river so you do not pollute the river. The rules are very strict and very clear and they're from the time of Chingghaskhan about how to deal with also it's dangerous to live close to the river because there are flash floods in the summertime. You could suddenly have it and it could wipe away if your camp is right there by the water. So the people they live with nature in a way that I don't see anywhere else in the world. And even today with the changes with the cell phone and with solar panels and they could get TV out in the middle of the step, still they're living a similar life. The young people of course want to drive a motorbike, but they're still hurting cows and yaks and camels. If it's on a motorbike, okay, they're still doing it the Mongol way. But then if we go to the time of Timigjin of Jenghis Khan another component is the horses. Can we talk about their relationship with the horse thinking about this open step uh from a young age they've been all Mongols are trained uh to master riding horses as you write while standing on the horse. So they learned how to ride while standing on the horse from a young age. While standing on the horse, they often jousted with one another to see who could knock the other off. When their legs grew long enough to reach the stirrups, they were also taught to shoot arrows and to lasso on horseback, making targets out of leather pouches that they would dangle from poles so they would blow in the wind. The youngsters practice hitting the targets from horseback at varying distances and speeds. The skills of such play proved invaluable to horsemanships later in life. Can you speak to the relationship of Jangghaskhan and the Mongols to horses? The Mongol and the horse are inseparable. I wrote one line in in the book that the editor removed because that was insulting. I said the Mongol and the horse, they live together. They know each other with every twitch of the muscle and they smell the same. Well, I was saying it just not to be insulting about anything, but they have that deep intimacy and the horses do know their owner from the smell. This is very important. It's also important for Chinghan because they made the the flags what they call the sult out of the horse hair from their own horses. And so in battle they used it for a very practical purpose and that is the horses would return to their source because they knew the smell of their flag. It was other members of their own herd. So the language itself I have never ever mastered all the words just for the colors of horses much less for all the other things about it. I can remember Mongolians being out there in the countryside. And they say, "Oh, I want to learn English." I say, "Okay, yeah, that's nice." Um, you teach me some words in Mongolia. I teach you the words. Okay. Say, "What color is that horse?" I say, "Brown." They would say, "Brown." I say, "Yes." Okay. What color is that horse? Brown. Then they But you said this color was brown. What color is this? Yeah. So, I mean, I I I just amazing. I mean they have words based on sort of how smooth the coloring is and the the variation in the texture and all the different today in English sometimes you can put them together we say like yellow brown or brown brown or you know but the words for horses by of course by sex and then they have three because they have gildings so they're very important too and by age and by whether or not they've reproduced in the case of the females. All these things are important parts of the horse. And the horse a few years ago the a presidential candidate ran under the slogan raised in the dust of many fast horses. It just resonates with the Mongolian spirit and the dust itself is important. The Mongolians, they will wipe the sweat and the dust off the horse and wipe it onto their own forehead, which is the most sacred part of the body where the soul resides. This is how intimate the relationship is with the horses. And they're hard on them in some ways. They train them very well. They ride them very hard. But the horses are also trained for that. They use a very small crop that's it's a little bit like a stick with a slight whip at the end and they hit the rump of the horse. Never anything else. They're horrified at Western people who use metal spurs and uh metal to harm the horse in the stomach and to harm the head of a horse. They say it's a capital crime. I mean, I I don't know anyone who's ever executed for it, but you never ever harm a horse's head. So the horses are important in every way, even religiously important with the making of the fermented horses milk that the mother goes out every morning and she throws some to each of the four directions to start the day and they use it for every kind of thing that but you know some things puzzled me that in my watching I remember one day being with a very nice family. It happened to be on a gilding day when they were out there gilding the wouldbe stallions who don't get to be stallions. But uh then one of the this family they had a bunch of boys and I think about like one or two girls were like four or five boys. And one boy was maybe 11 years old. He fell from the horse. You could see it not so far away. He fell from the horse and he didn't get up. No one moved. In fact, they all kind of turned attention away. And I thought, what am I supposed to say? This boy fell down. Somebody go get him. No. And then the boy was trying to hobble back. He still had the range to his horse. He was but he couldn't remount and he was trying to hobble back. So his little brother went out to help him come in. And they came into the gear and they sat down. The mother just turned her back. And I'm thinking, how on earth can you do this? This is a child. This is your child, you know. But two weeks later by chance another boy who is practicing for Nadam the annual races like this boy had been doing he was off in an area right close to the forested mountain area and the horse bolted took off through the woods. He was knocked off by a tree and then the horse went deeper into the woods. The boy followed him. The boy became lost. The boy was 12 years old. He was lost for two weeks and he lived. I would have died in 48 hours. He lived. He said, "Well, he slept in the daytime when it was warm. He walked at night when it was cold, even though this was a summertime. The nights can be quite cold, especially on a mountain." And he sang loudly all night long to keep the wolves away. And he knew what to eat. And then he walked until he found water moving. And then he would follow that water down to the neck. He lived. And I realized the boy falls on the horse, his mother's not going to be there. She knows that. And it's probably hard for her too to see her boy suffer, but she knows. Just a small tangent. Uh there's a wrestler named Carrie Colette and he tells the story about mental toughness that the first time he saw truly mentally tough people was when he visited uh Mongolia for a wrestling tournament and he remembered that they were taking showers in ice cold water and you know all the other wrestlers they would take the shower and the when the water hits them you could see a little grimace. With the with the Mongols, there was just no it was emotionless. Sort of like uh ice cold water or any other kind of hardship. It you build a hardness to that and I suppose that falling from the horse is just an example of that. There's a mental hardness and a mental toughness. You have to be able to to take care of yourself. And with the weather, for example, the often in in that time is still today, some people, if they can have the privacy to do it, they the men will strip naked in the first heavy snow and roll around in the snow in order to prepare for the coming winter. And I and the valley where I live, the rest a lot of wrestlers come there to train in the summertime for the competition. And and the water's very cold coming down from the mountain. And every day when there's a break, they go down, they take again, they do not get in the water, never, but they take the water and they pour the cold water over themselves. And yes, that's refreshing to them. Refreshing. Well, then uh getting back to the horses, the value they had for the horses and the horse riding skill they developed throughout their life created one of the most unstoppable military forces in history. So, if we just talk about the mounted archery that they've employed in war, um the Mongols were able to do targeted shooting accurately at 200 m or more while riding fast, you know, uh up to speeds of 60 km an hour, I read. So, uh, there's a lot to say like, you know, you you have to time and just watching some of the videos, it's just incredible how stable you could be on top of a horse. And I guess you're supposed to be shooting at a moment of the gallop when all four of the feet of the horse are off off the ground. And you have to time all of that. You have to position your body to maintain balance. And then there's the skill of the actual holding and shooting the bow accurately. And there's obviously the technology of the bow, the composite bow, the recurve bow. They've also I read used crossbows later. They've adapted the technology. And there's a particular kind of thumb draw that you use for shooting with the composite bow that works for a horse cuz the thing is bouncing up and down, right? So you have to like not drop the arrow. It's just incredible to be able to shoot while the horse is going 60 km an hour. Anyway, can you speak to this kind of exceptional excellence that the Jenghaskhan and the Mongols had for uh riding horses and uh engaging in war uh off of the horse? The Mongol, the horse and the bow were a perfect combination and it was the most lethal weapon known to the world before the modern era. It was incredible the synchronization and the timing of the movements and also the years of skill. The fact that from absolute birth the Mongols would be on a horse and by 3 years old they would probably be riding alone on the horse. Now when I first went to Mongolia in the 1990s at that time all jockeyies on horses for races had to be under six years old. That was the age limit. The cut off was six years old at that time. And so you had some as three years old racing out there. It's absolutely incredible. And of course that's at that age they can't even have a saddle because they can't even be used. So they're just all they're doing is staying on the horse. The horse has been trained to do what it has to do and they just stay on it. But by staying on it, they they learn the horse. They become one. And not just one horse with one rider, but one rider with several horses. They usually five is the number that you should have uh for you when you go off to battle. And this ability then is shoot. You have to defend your animals. There are wolves around, fox, other things. And in some areas there were even tigers and uh uh other animals that would come in and you had to be able to shoot to defend it against other people who might be raiding you. So they became excellent archers. They had composite bows that were very powerful, much more powerful than those of most sedentary people. Now, I say all that because it's very important, but those are all sort of nomadic traits of the great step. Anyway, I mean, in an earlier version, you had the Huns who came out of Mongolia and Hun is just the Mongolian word for human. Hun, that's to this day, that's what they say for human being. So they came out of Mongolia and all the early Turk groups came out of Mongolia and they had the similar skills. So you have this perfect weapon but also you have to have perfect strategy and how to coordinate it and organize it and use it. And this is where the genius that I cannot explain at all but the genius of Jenghaskhan came in. Other people I think were had been very good in earlier times. a number of Turk leaders and also um or even Autillaa the Hun who of course was actually born in the west but but they were charismatic leaders and very dramatic leaders and it wasn't that they were so excellent in their strategy. They were very good in warfare and that's what carried him through. Changing Han's army was extremely good in warfare but small. He never got probably above 100,000. at the most 110,000 that is small when you're going against China that has millions just in the army not to count in the country and you're going against Russia and you're going against the Middle East and Persia and Afghanistan and these areas your whole army has to be as finely tuned as each rider each bow and each horse that's the weapon but the army becomes the super weapon of Chingghis Han, how he organized it on how he used it and the strategies that he put together. Yeah. When you have a small army, just think about that. A small army that conquered It would fit in a stadium today in America. So there's extreme efficient coordination of units, mostly cavalry, right? All cavalry. Oh, it's all cavalry. He had no infantry and he had no baggage train. He had no backup commissary. Uh early on, no engineer corps. Later one was added much later. Uh but no, all cavalry and uh so there's light cavalry and heavy cavalry and uh breaking down units using the decimal system 10, 100, a thousand. So um there's a kind of hierarchy where you delegate authority but to the degree there's commands they must be followed strictly. So for like extremely efficient accurate precise deployment of these uh troops on the battlefield and the dynamic movement of the troops including all the interesting tactics that were utilized. You have to have really good communication and coordination and for that orders must be followed. Uh is there something to speak to that like how do you tune this kind of system to where everybody is working together so well? I think the first point is the extreme loyalty of the people whom Chinghan chose. His kinsmen as we said had deserted him. His and was a Christianal relationship but the all the others that he found were just common people herders or hunters very common and they were loyal to him and never ever revolted against him never betrayed him. So he had extreme loyalty and then as you mention he organized his decimal system. So the smallest unit of the army was the ar the 10 the squad of 10 men. They were put together and then the head of that squad, he had total control over it. But the men knew that they were going to protect each other and they had to come back with every member or everybody. You don't leave anybody behind. So this was extremely important. So if you submit to the orders of the man in charge, you know that he's risking his own life for you also. and you know that your brother on the left and on the right is risking his life for you. The army was they were organized with five horses each man. They had their bow and they had a lot of arrows as many as they could have but they also retrieved arrows at the end of their battle. And they also would retrieve the enemy arrows. This was a great advantage by the way when they hit Russia because the Russians could not use Mongolian arrows. They could knock them in their in their bow. But the Mongols could use Russian arrows. But so all these little things, but it's not even just the arrow. Also, they had to carry needle and thread. Every soldier had to be able to sew. And sometimes that could be a torn garment. It could be a piece of skin or a wound that somebody has. Was a very odd thing when you think about the army of Ching Han and they're carrying everything themselves. They don't have any pack train behind them. And that one of the things they have to carry is needle and thread in order to sew up things. So complete self-reliance in that regard. Yes. They also carried dried dairy products it's called where they dry curd and they can keep it for a couple of years even. But you dry it and then when you need it you can put it in a flask of water. You ride all day it joggles up and down. Boom boom boom and turns into kind of thick protein. It said that the Mongols could easily go 3 to 5 days without ever building a fire. They had enough food there with. So all these little things at the lowest level were important as well at the highest level of his loyalty of his men to him and it went all the way down. Loyalty was extremely important and he organized the army into left-wing, right-wing or east and west. Mongols the word for left is east. The word for right is uh west. So those two wings and then in the middle was the goal, the center, this moving center that was his is a bodyguard and his unit in the middle. Then usually they would have a vanguard and a rear guard. And sometimes the vanguard would go out as much as two years in advance to clear the land, run the people away, scare them, make them go away so that the grass is left there for the army when it moves through. And they never marched the way other armies do in a line of one following the other. They would always go in long lines spread out in wings so that each horse is on its own path you can say all but all parallel together. So they had very precise ways of doing things and uh this I think was the secret with him and he used the best people but he also he was willing to train them as much as possible. He never punished them for what happened. So Shiki Hutuk for example the the supreme judge he was in command one time of a group in the battle in in Afghanistan and he lost the battle which is very very unusual for Mongols. So Chingis Khan went out with him said okay let's go to the…

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