Genghis Khan: The Secret History of the Mongols

A noble prince reduced to poverty as a boy,

has risen above his brutal childhood to become

a brilliant leader on the Mongolian plains.

He is now the fearsome ruler known as Chinggis Khan.

What gave his followers the idea that he was greater

than a mere conqueror was the fact that he was so successful.

He has crushed foes, subdued rival houses,

and clawed back everything his family lost.

He achieves a lot diplomatically,

which is a side to his career that can easily be overlooked.

Now, at the age of 44,

he is the undisputed ruler of the Mongolian people,

but he stands at the brink of something far greater

with an insatiable hunger for power, his eyes are set

on the world beyond Mongolia.

The world irrevocably changed with his actions.

Chinggis Khan's ambition knows no bounds,

and soon the world will learn the cost of standing

in his way.

1206, this is the huge assembly, the Kurultai.

There would have been a lot of ritual, great deal of luxury.

There would have been power and pomp on display.

There are all the major Royals, members of Chinggis Khan's

own family, are there.

You're gathering huge numbers of people and livestock.

The Kurultai is where they make major decisions.

Decision concerning war,

decision concerning peace, decision concerning

big trade treaties.

One most practical reason for Kurultai is

to choose a new Khan.

When you become a famous, important ruler,

you show it to the world. You make it official

by taking a title.

Chinggis Khan is a title that means also that something new

is going to happen under this new ruler is sitting

on a very deep heritage, but he is already planning to do

something new, something bigger.

He wants to go higher than his predecessors,

and he's able to break tradition, and that's what,

exactly what he's going to do.

Actually, this is the beginning of a completely new story.

It is a story told in the legendary book,

The Secret History of the Mongols,

a new translation helps challenge long held beliefs

and myths about Chinggis Khan, offering a new perspective

on his legacy and people.

Chinggis Khan is seen now in Mongolia as

the founder of the nation, the father who created

the Mongolian people and the world-famous conqueror.

That being said,

there's a difference of opinion about him.

Some people are particularly fascinated by the glory

of that Imperial age.

Others see him as part of a conquest dynasty that did

invade and attack its neighbors.

The idea that the Mongols were barbarians, that's all nonsense.

We know these are highly sophisticated political

formations, just as complex and sophisticated

and as hierarchical as the dynasties around them.

So, it's another very sophisticated political

formation, just as other kingdoms on the Eurasian

continent were.

Central to Chinggis Khan's vision

is the unification of the people of the Mongolian plains

under a single banner, loyal only to him.

He wants to have one single Mongol people.

There's only going to be one group on the steppe.

Everyone is now a Mongol.

This is why the Mongols still exist.

Is because of this moment in 1206,

Chinggis Khan has agreed there will only be the Mongols.

To achieve this goal, Chinggis Khan reorganizes

the military structure of his new realm,

adapting and refining a military system

that strengthens his command.

This was a really ancient system

for administration that dates back to at least

the second century BCE,

you can see that Chinggis Khan did revamp it.

It divides up subject that is, commoner households

into units of 10, fitted into units of 100 those into units

of 1000 and those into units of a nominal 10,000

he declares exactly which of these 1000 household units

are authorized and supported, and exactly who

is the hereditary Noble who will rule over it.

He could designate members of his own royal family

or his most important supporters as rulers

of these 10,000 or Tumen units.

Chinggis Khan also knows he must protect

his position as leader as one's warring households

come together under his command.

This is where the Empire really comes

into focus. He realizes he's his single ruler of the step.

And he also needs to try to get beyond the old system

that allowed for all the feuds, all the fighting that have

taken place throughout his lifetime.

He does not want to return to that.

My sense of this is that he does not completely trust

all of his relatives.

He is very focused on loyalty.

Chinggis Khan has inserted himself at the top

of an existing hierarchy of commoners and nobles.

What was new was Chinggis Khan's new reorganization

of the existing divisions of power, the kingdoms within

that he had reused, absorbed and replaced with his own

newly centralized Imperial formation.

There'll be multiple layers of authority.

He'll have his relatives, his sons, ruling certain areas,

but he also has commanders.

They're ultimately Chinggis Khan's men.

They ultimately report back to him,

so they serve as a system of checks and balances against

his relatives. Should they ever have

some ambition to threaten his power.

The position of ruler comes with unique dangers

and threats, so Chinggis Khan prepares for challenges

to his authority.

Very wisely preempts any possible disloyalty

by creating a bodyguard.

It's called Keshig.

The Keshig consisted of a total of 1100 men.

This included guards for the daytime, included night guards,

included a special regiment that rode with him into battle.

But in 1206, he increases the size to 10,000.

He orders all of his commanders to send the son to them,

and they would assemble the bodyguard out of this.

Now this will serve as a hostage.

It helps guarantee good behavior.

If you misbehave, we could possibly kill your son,

or if you misbehave, we can kill you,

and we have someone here that we can replace you with.

And these guys will be great fighters.

They'll be great warriors.

So, it serves not only a bodyguard,

but also a military academy, an intelligence agency,

and it's a finishing school for diplomats,

for governors to learn how to rule on behalf of the Khan,

to understand the wishes.

Genghis Khan's reforms of the nobility

and a Kesh bodyguard make him more powerful than ever,

but he will face untold enemies, both from beyond

Mongolia's borders and from closer to home.

After the death of Chinggis Khan's father,

his mother remarried, and this new branch of family

would soon ignite unrest.

Chinggis Khan's stepfather had seven sons,

and the middle one was called K kecu Teb Tenggeri.

K kecu was his name, and Teb Tenggeri was a title he had,

which means something like most heavenly.

Now it seems that he was a really powerful Shaman.

The ancient faith of the steppe rulers

was a shamanistic devotion to Tengri, the eternal blue sky,

who controlled the fate of the world.

At the time of Genghis Khan,

they did have rituals and believed in spirits of Nature,

trees, mountains, rivers, lakes.

They are also ancestors.

In every important family, people gather to celebrate

the family ancestors.

This is a very rich set of beliefs.

We find that a lot of the declarations

of the spiritual and religious refer to an overarching

heavenly power that created destinies that favored

some rulers over others, and that was used extensively

to justify Chinggis Khan's claim to ultimate power.

So certainly, shamans were important

in the Mongolian court.

Chinggis Khan decided religious elites

need to be respected.

They also need to be loyal to the power;

also, they need to stay away and not decide for the Emperor.

That's also something that you can see clearly

from 1206 onwards.

At this stage, it seems as if K kecu Teb Tenggeri

and his other brothers become increasingly

arrogant and proud.

They seem to throw their weight around.

A rivalry emerges.

Teb Tenggeri has started to suggest that it's actually

Chinggis Khan's brother Qasar, who might be destined

by Heaven to rule this is a real threat

to Chinggis Khan himself.

Teb Tenggeri's poisonous rumors are so

persuasive that Chinggis Khan grows suspicious

of his own brother until their mother intervenes.

Then mother reprimanded Chinggis Khan

that you were just from the same womb, same brotherhood.

You can't be rival to each other.

You have to be friendly to each other.

Chinggis Khan finds this coming to a head

when his younger brother comes into his tent saying

that he's been beaten up by Teb Tenggeri and his brothers

and begging Chinggis Khan to do something about it.

Chinggis Khan is slow to move against Teb Tenggeri

until his wife Börte urges decisive action,

warning that the shaman is too dangerous to ignore.

In the secret history,

we get a lot of accounts of women,

particularly the royal women, giving advice and guiding