#476 – Jack Weatherford: Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire

Jack Weatherford: This, in part, was the foundation of his breaking with Mongol tradition that kinship is the most important thing above all else. Because here's 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, and 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.

Jack Weatherford: Tamucha was never interested in material goods. And when as Genghis Khan as 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 dressed the way my soldiers dressed. I lived the way my soldiers live. We are the same. So he had no interest in the wealth. He had sided before with Wang Han, 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 Genghis Khan's continued rise. That is one of the powerful things about the Genghis 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 avaricious in any way. He was never greedy. He was never acquisitive. He kept the simple life. And 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 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, the simplest gravestone. Nothing.

Jack Weatherford: One of the things he did with every campaign, even the one at the market when he 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 hole full of boys of different tribes but they all became very high-ranking members of the government and one was a tar 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 Genghis Khan of course. And so when Chinggis Khan died, he recognized it was important not just to write down the law, that's all Chinggis Khan allowed to be written in blue books, only the law, nothing about him or campaigns or military, anything. But Shigi Hutuk was his name. Shigi Hutuk realized that this was gonna be lost, that this is a great historic thing that has happened. So he compiled the work. Part of it, I don't know, other people contributed, helped him, but it's a little bit unclear. The Mongols, they don't specify. 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. And we also know it's the year of the Mao, so it was 1228, Chinggis Khan had died in '27. So he wrote down, it begins with what we would say are the myths, although I'm not sure they're myths, but the origins of the myths... By the time you get to the life of Temujin, the reason we know these intimate things is because that person, Shigi Hutuk, he was there, sleeping in the same gear with the people. So we even see in there, he will record instances where Bersta sits up in bed and tells her husband, Okay, you gotta do this. You gotta 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 Chinggis Khan'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 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. And so it was in this code that had been used to record the information in Chinese.

Jack Weatherford: And it's so important, I think, because 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 Berchta. 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 births 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 was the winter. I said, Oh, where did you read that? I said, No, Granny Coaxin was on the ground and she could feel the vibrations. She said, Look, this is summertime now. You're not gonna 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 also correlates with the time that reading was done. So it correlates with other historic factors. But then that gave me the time basis for figuring out a lot of other things. History lives in the people.