Genghis Khan

The founder of the Mongol Empire was born Temüjin around 1162 into the Borjigin clan, on the steppe near the Onon River in present-day Mongolia. His early life, known mainly through the Secret History of the Mongols, was marked by hardship: his father, a minor chieftain, was poisoned, and the family endured years of poverty and tribal rivalry. Through alliance, warfare, and a capacity for absorbing defeated rivals into his own following, Temüjin gradually subdued the Merkits, Keraites, Naimans, and Tatars. In 1206 a kurultai, or assembly of steppe nobles, proclaimed him Genghis Khan, ruler of a unified Mongol nation.

The campaigns that followed reshaped Eurasia. Mongol armies forced the Western Xia state into submission, broke the defenses of the Jin dynasty in northern China, and between 1219 and 1222 destroyed the Khwarazmian Empire in Central Asia and Persia after its governor executed a Mongol trade mission. These wars were accompanied by destruction on a large scale, but they also opened overland routes that later carried trade and diplomacy between China, the Islamic world, and Europe.

Genghis Khan's administration outlasted his conquests. He organized his army on a decimal system that cut across tribal lines, promoted commanders on merit, adopted the Uyghur script for writing Mongolian, and established the yam relay system of post stations. His legal pronouncements, collectively remembered as the Yassa, and his practice of toleration toward the varied religions of his subjects became standing features of Mongol rule.

He died in August 1227 during a final campaign against the Western Xia; the circumstances of his death and the location of his grave remain uncertain. The empire passed as a shared inheritance to the sons of his chief wife Börte: Jochi, who predeceased him, Chagatai, Ögedei, and Tolui. From these four lines descended the great khanates into which the empire eventually divided. Jochi's son Batu founded the Golden Horde on the western steppe; Tolui's sons Kublai and Hulagu established the Yuan dynasty in China and the Ilkhanate in Persia; and Chagatai's heirs ruled Central Asia. The dynastic framework Genghis Khan created thus connected ruling houses from the Pacific coast to the Black Sea for generations after his death.