Outer Mongolia

"Yak Polo - a world first"

Genuine front page headline of local newspaper.

Being in Outer Mongolia is seen as a byword for being in the middle of nowhere. But in the mid thirteenth century, Mongolia was the biggest empire in the world. In fact the Mongolian empire was actually the largest that has every existed. Its, founder Genghis Khan (also known as Chinggis Khan) was listed by Washington Post as “the most important man of the last thousand years”

Most of the books I’ve read about Genghis Khan try to paint him as a great sage and noble leader. But really, that’s a load of rubbish. He might have been a great military leader but that’s because he made no bones about killing anyone who he disliked or he disrespected. His legal code was simultaneously surreally arbitrary and unforgiving brutal. For example there was actually a law against “hurting a horses’ eye”. Not only that, but the punishment was death

Nevertheless, he did found a mighty empire, which at one point, covered the whole of Russia, all of China, Mongolia, and swept west all the way into parts of Europe, and whole swathes of the Arab world including Baghdad.

Genghis Khan was hardly an enlightened new man. In one famous story, he asked his junior officers what they thought was man’s greatest pleasure. “Seeing a bird fly in spring” they replied. “No!” shouted Genghis, “it is to defeat your enemy, seize his possessions, and then take his women folk…” He goes on in some detail about what should be done next, but I think it does not bear repetition.

Genghis Khan is given god-like status by some of the inhabitants today. Indeed there is a sect that today worships at the cemetery of his body. Historical accuracy is not a strong point of this cemetery. The tomb was built in the 1970s - Khan died in 1227 - and doesn’t contain his remains at all, but of all things, a jar with a piece of Camel’s hair in it.

What exactly were they thinking?

‘Oh well, we meant to put the body of Genghis Khan, our god-like leader here, but we got mixed up and put a piece of Camel’s hair there instead. Whoops.’

Genghis Khan’s biggest contribution to today’s world was probably from his fiery loins. He regarded women as part of the spoils of war and fathered hundred’s of children. Indeed an article in the American Journal of human genetics concluded that 16 million men were direct descendents of Genghis Khan. Chris Tyler Smith at Oxford’s Department of Biochemistry said in a report at the time: “At first it seemed like a joke, but as we accumulated more data .. this seemed to be the best explanation.”