Temujin's childhood of abandonment, betrayal by his own clan, and the murder of his half-brother taught him that kinship cannot be trusted, which became the foundation of his revolutionary break with Mongol tradition.

(00:00:00) The following is a conversation with Jack Weatherford, anthropologist and historian specializing in Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. (00:00:10) He has written a legendary book on this topic titled Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, and he has written many other books, including Emperor of the Seas, Kublai Khan and the Making of China, Genghis Khan and the Quest for God, The Secret History of the Mongol Queens, and other excellent books. (00:00:29) I've gotten to know Jack more after this conversation, and I cannot speak highly enough about him. (00:00:35) He's a truly brilliant, thoughtful, and kind soul. (00:00:40) This was a huge honor and pleasure for me. (00:00:44) And now a quick few second mention of a sponsor. (00:00:46) Check them out in the description or at lexfriedman.com slash sponsors. (00:00:51) It's the best way to support this podcast. 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(00:10:14) I promise to work extremely hard to always bring you nuanced, long-form conversations with a wide variety of interesting people from all walks of life. (00:10:24) And now, dear friends, here's Jack Weatherford. (00:10:45) Genghis Khan, born in approximately 1162, became the conqueror of the largest contiguous empire in history. (00:10:54) But before that, he was a boy named Temujin. (00:10:58) who at nine years old lost everything, his father, his tribe, living in poverty, abandoned to the harshness of the Mongolian steppe, from a boy with nothing to the conqueror of the world. (00:11:09) So tell me about this boy, his childhood, and the Mongolian steppe from which he came from. (00:11:15) The story of Genghis Khan, like the story I think of all of us, it doesn't begin at birth, that's the beginning of life, the story begins long before birth. (00:11:27) And sometimes it can be many generations before and sometimes only shortly before. (00:11:32) But I think with Genghis, a crucial thing is to understand how his parents met and then how he was conceived. (00:11:40) And that is that one day a cart was coming across the Mongol territory and only women drove carts. (00:11:50) Men rode horses, women also rode horses, but women owned the houses, which were called gears, the tents, (00:11:57) They owned all the household equipment, and so they had to have carts for moving back and forth. (00:12:02) And the fact that a cart was moving meant that some woman was moving from one place to another. (00:12:08) And in fact, her husband was with her. (00:12:10) She was a new bride, and her husband was on a horse close to her. (00:12:17) So what happened was a man named Yasuke, (00:12:21) Yasuke, the future father of Genghis Khan, Yasuke was up on a hill. (00:12:26) He was hunting with his falcon. (00:12:28) The words of The Secret History of the Mongols were very clear. (00:12:31) And he looked down and he saw her, and he could barely glimpse her, but he knew she was young, and she was a new bride. (00:12:38) And he rode back to camp. (00:12:40) He got his two brothers, and they came racing down. (00:12:44) And they came, and first the husband of the woman looked around, (00:12:51) 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 (00:13:19) that is more important for him to live. (00:13:22) And she told him when he came back, You must flee. (00:13:25) If you stay here, they will kill you and they will take me. (00:13:29) But if you flee, they will take me, but you will have the chance to find another wife. (00:13:33) There are many women in the world. (00:13:35) You find one and you call her Hulun after my name, and you remember me when you're with her. (00:13:42) It was a very dramatic moment, and he rode away. (00:13:47) 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 he was divided obviously and 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 (00:14:16) And when he was over the ridge and she could no longer see him, she began to scream and wail. (00:14:22) And one of the brothers said to her, It 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. (00:14:34) And he was right. (00:14:35) That was the moment that Genghis Khan's mother and father met. (00:14:41) That's the beginning of his story in this kidnapping. (00:14:45) And it's going to reverberate. (00:14:46) Every detail of it will come back again and again, not only throughout the story of the life of Genghis Khan, but it's going to continue on with the feuds and the issues caused by it all the way into the future. (00:15:01) And to some extent, in certain parts of the world, you could say it still exists. (00:15:05) So the meeting is fundamentally sort of (00:15:10) 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 uh Wordsworth wrote in his poem you know the child is father of the man (00:15:36) And it's the childhood that created him. (00:15:39) And it's that episode that was before he was born. (00:15:42) But all the things that happened throughout his childhood made him into the man that he became. (00:15:49) And so he was now suddenly this unusual situation was created where a child is going to be born to a kidnapped woman who's being held by strange people, the Mongols, they were not her people. (00:16:07) And he already had another wife or husband. (00:16:10) He had a wife named Sochigo. (00:16:12) He had at that time already one son. (00:16:15) Later he had another son with her. (00:16:17) It was a very odd situation. (00:16:19) And in fact, the father, Yasuke, wasn't even there when Temudzin was born. (00:16:25) He was off fighting the Tatars. (00:16:27) And during this campaign against the Tatars, he killed two Tatars. (00:16:32) One of them was naming Temudzin Uge, which is sort of, (00:16:36) Person of iron is what it means from the Turkic, but today a part of also Mongolian language. (00:16:44) So he came back, he had a baby, and he decided to name him Temujin, the person of iron, or Iron Man, we might call him. (00:16:53) After the man he killed. (00:16:54) After the man he killed. (00:16:56) So he's a kidnapped mother. (00:16:59) She's a second wife now, not a legal wife, but just a second kidnapped wife. (00:17:05) And he's named for someone his father just killed. (00:17:10) It was not auspicious beginning. (00:17:13) And in fact, just episode after episode in his childhood was inauspicious. (00:17:20) The father and mother moved camp one time when he was quite young, and somehow they overlooked him and forgot him. (00:17:28) He was left behind. (00:17:30) So here's this young child, we don't know what age, but it could have been around four or five, I think. (00:17:35) He was left behind, and as it turned out, some other people, the Tai Chute, found him, and then they kept him for a while, and eventually he was reunited with his father and mother. (00:17:47) 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. (00:17:58) Because then when Temuchen is eight years old, (00:18:02) 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. (00:18:19) And so he's taking him off at age eight, but he didn't take the other son from the other wife, Bekhter. (00:18:27) He was keeping him. (00:18:29) There was something about Temuzin having been lost once and found by the Tai Chiut and reunited with the family. (00:18:35) Now his father takes him off at age eight, and he was gonna take him to Erlun's family, but he never made it. (00:18:44) He stopped with another family. (00:18:46) It's sort of like the first family he came across. (00:18:48) And in the words of The Secret History, it's sort of like instant love. (00:18:55) There was fire in his eyes and fire in her eyes. (00:18:57) And he saw this girl, Berchta, who was about nine years old, a little older, and he wanted to stay there with that family, according to the story. (00:19:07) And so the father left him there with that family. (00:19:11) But on the way home, the father decided he saw a drinking party and he decided to join them. (00:19:20) They were Tatars. (00:19:22) He hid his identity. (00:19:24) on the step everybody kind of figures out who everybody is and 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 temuan is off living with another family (00:19:49) And 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. (00:20:01) They make it through the winter. (00:20:02) Mother Erloom, by now, she has four sons and one daughter. (00:20:07) I think the daughter had already been born or the daughter was going to be born not too long after that. (00:20:13) But they make it through the winter, the spring comes, (00:20:17) And of course, the clan is going to move to a new camp. (00:20:21) They go to spring camp from winter camp. (00:20:23) And they have a ceremony for the ancestors. (00:20:27) And they started the ceremony, but they did not tell Erlun. (00:20:32) And so she came and she was angry that she had been left out. (00:20:36) The old women said, You're the one for whom we do not have to call. (00:20:41) We will feed you if you come, but we do not have to take care of you. (00:20:45) letting her know that as a captive woman, she was not a real wife in their view. (00:20:52) And that was really the signal that when they moved camp, they were not taking her with them. (00:20:58) And they packed up and they took her animals. (00:21:03) 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. (00:21:14) And the banner after death contains the soul of the person, . (00:21:18) And so she raced around and they were a little bit nervous. (00:21:21) And so they camped for one night and they waited until it was dark. (00:21:27) Then they took off. (00:21:28) And this time, one of the friends of the family came running out to try to stop them, and they killed him. (00:21:36) And Temujin cried. (00:21:38) He was a little boy, eight years old. (00:21:41) There was nothing he could do. (00:21:42) He was just a little boy. (00:21:43) And now that family is left there on the steppe, four children, possibly five already. (00:21:52) Sochigal, the other woman with two children, (00:21:55) They're all left there to die on the steppe. (00:21:58) When the winter comes, they will surely all die. (00:22:03) How do they make it through the winter? (00:22:05) Mother Erloom, 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. (00:22:24) She fed them through the winter. (00:22:26) She found foods, digging up whatever she could, finding whatever she could, everything she could. (00:22:34) And even at this young age, Temutzin was already beginning to go out to collect things. (00:22:39) He could get fish. (00:22:41) He could do a few tasks to help feed the family. (00:22:45) It was an extremely awful struggle at this point, but she saved every one of the children. (00:22:52) So (00:22:53) Tim's early years were marked by loneliness abandonment and uh struggle yes even after this uh he was uh kidnapped at one point by T people he was kidnapped and we would say I think the correct word we enslaved they put him into a can a yoke like a (00:23:18) like an ox would wear. (00:23:20) And so his two arms are in it, and his head is in it, and he's trapped in this thing. (00:23:26) And every night he would be taken to a different gear to be guarded by that family. (00:23:32) 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. (00:23:41) And Temutzin managed to take the cank, the wooden, (00:23:44) yoke 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. (00:23:52) That was one of the first lessons for the Mongols that anything that moves is a weapon. (00:23:59) This is going to go on for generations, very important for the Mongols. (00:24:03) If it moves, it's a weapon. (00:24:05) He did that, he raced off in the night and he jumped into the river to hide. (00:24:12) He still got a kank on him. (00:24:14) he's still trapped under there the people are looking for him they come out and 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 (00:24:39) And he was right. (00:24:41) He went to that family and at great risk to themselves. (00:24:44) They, in fact, were a captive family of the Tai Chiyot. (00:24:48) And at great risk to themselves, they managed to saw off the cank and then burn it in their fire. (00:24:56) And they gave him food to escape. (00:24:59) And then he had to go find his family again. (00:25:02) So this is the kind of life that this boy Temujin had. (00:25:07) So he, (00:25:08) Just to be clear, the neck is trapped and the hands are trapped? (00:25:12) We think that's how it is. (00:25:14) We just have the word. (00:25:15) They don't say the head and the hands. (00:25:18) We know that his body is trapped in it, but from all evidence we have, it's the hands and the head. (00:25:24) And he's running around deeply alone with this thing. (00:25:29) Yes, yes. (00:25:31) And then he has to go out and find wherever his family is. (00:25:34) So, (00:25:36) This, in part, was the foundation of his breaking with Mongol tradition that kinship is the most important thing above all else. (00:25:45) Because here's his life story where he's abandoned over and over and over. (00:25:49) By his father's own brothers. (00:25:51) See, the men who kidnapped her, they had an obligation under Mongol law and custom to marry her when her husband died. (00:26:02) They did not. (00:26:04) 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. (00:26:12) But no, they had all deserted, all betrayed him. (00:26:14) He learned very early on that you cannot trust family. (00:26:20) You mentioned that Genghis Khan's childhood, Timojin, was marked by extreme tribal violence. (00:26:28) Can you describe sort of, (00:26:31) the state of affairs in the steppe? (00:26:33) How much violence is there? (00:26:35) How much kidnapping is there? (00:26:37) The story of Temujin is not a unique story for that time. (00:26:43) Now, as an isolated family of outcasts, of course, he's not participating in the various feuds and the raids of the people around him, but they are constantly raiding in the winter. (00:26:56) And for women and for horses and for any kind of valuables that they can find, (00:27:01) 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. (00:27:11) Mongols produced nothing. (00:27:13) They could produce felt to make their tents, but they were not craftsmen. (00:27:19) And so they had to get these items from somewhere, and it was through raiding. (00:27:23) And so even in the genealogy of Temujin, 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. (00:27:38) And all of these issues go back for a long time. (00:27:43) Later, Chenghis Khan will realize, once he becomes Chenghis Khan, he will realize that the true source of most of the feuding on the steppe is over women. (00:27:52) 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. (00:28:05) And this is one of the things you talk about. (00:28:07) This, in some ways, the love story with his wife was her kidnapping was the defining. (00:28:16) If you could point to one place where Genghis Khan, the conqueror, was created, (00:28:22) 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 eight years old and she was nine she's now 17 and she and her mother come it (00:28:50) 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. (00:29:00) And suddenly, here is the love of his life, who's gonna be living with him, making him happy. (00:29:08) He has somebody who loves him. (00:29:09) It's not just his mother running around getting food and trying to feed the five children and plus the other wife and her two children, no. (00:29:18) He has somebody who loves him. (00:29:20) And it's all the excitement that you can imagine with the fire in the eyes and the excitement. (00:29:26) And then it only lasts a few months. (00:29:31) And so there they are, and there's a lady visiting them. (00:29:35) We don't know exactly who she is, but just they called her grandmother, Kwakchin. (00:29:39) Granny Kwakchin is there. (00:29:40) Granny Kwakchin is sleeping, of course, on the floor of the gear, the tent. (00:29:46) And early in the morning, she feels the vibrations in the earth, and she knows that horsemen are coming. (00:29:54) She rouses the family. (00:29:57) And Mother Erlun is in charge. (00:29:59) Mother Erlun is still in charge, even though Temujin is now married. (00:30:03) She puts all of her children on a horse. (00:30:06) She takes the baby girl, Temulin, in her own lap. (00:30:10) She has one extra horse. (00:30:15) 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. (00:30:26) They know there's a girl there. (00:30:28) This family of outcasts has acquired a wife, and they know that they're coming for that. (00:30:34) And so she leaves Sochiko, the other wife, she leaves this old lady, Granny Kolaksin, who actually has her own cart, and she leaves Bursta. (00:30:44) 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. (00:30:53) But Mother Erlun is right. (00:30:55) She's able to get her children off to the mountain, into Burkhat Haldun, to the mountainside, 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. (00:31:08) So Mother Erlun saved her family. (00:31:13) but at a cost, suddenly Tembujin realizes he has obeyed his mother, but he's lost the most important thing in his life. (00:31:24) And I do think this is the defining moment of his life. (00:31:29) The story began back when his mother was kidnapped, but now the kidnapping of his wife, I think it's the define, what will he do? (00:31:36) What should he do? (00:31:37) What can he do? (00:31:39) Is he going to just resign himself to it? (00:31:45) Is he going to go out, look for another wife? (00:31:48) And he decides that life is not worth living without Bursta. (00:31:53) 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. (00:32:02) And this is the early steps of the military genius born, because in order to get her back requires (00:32:12) an actual organization of troops he needs allies allies he goes to a man who ruled a carry out people in central Mongolia then of to River about where the capital ulan B is today he goes there because that vang Han is the name or torgal Han he goes there because vang Han 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 (00:32:40) And actually he took a gift. (00:32:42) That's because Bashta's mother had brought a sable coat as a gift for Mother Erlun at that time of the marriage. (00:32:52) So he took the coat and he took it and he gave it as a gift to Wang Han and asked for his help. (00:32:59) And Wang Han said, Yes. (00:33:01) And he said, I will send some troops, but we need more. (00:33:04) And you need to ask Jamuk. (00:33:08) Jamakha, you need to ask him to come also. (00:33:12) He said, I will send a message to him to get troops. (00:33:17) You have to tell the story of Jamakha, 'cause the story of Genghis Khan is one of people abandoning him, being disloyal, and here is a person who's not of his kin, but becomes his, in a way, brother, in a way, loyal, and as you've described, (00:33:38) He's both the best thing to us happened to Genghis Khan and one of the biggest challenges in the later years to Genghis Khan. (00:33:47) So who was Jamaka? (00:33:49) Jamaka was a boy about the same age as Timucin. (00:33:55) And his family had winter camp close to where Mother Erlun was living with her children. (00:34:01) And so the two boys met during the wintertime. (00:34:04) And in fact, they both claimed descent from the same woman about four generations earlier, or five, it's a little unclear. (00:34:11) She was a Urihankai woman who herself was kidnapped. (00:34:15) And actually, Zamakha was the descendant of her. (00:34:18) from the fact that she was pregnant at the moment of kidnapping and then tuan is descended from her through the new kidnapper bonar his 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 and they 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 (00:34:48) unlike Temuzin with a whole household of siblings. (00:34:52) 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 an influence on his life. (00:35:01) But the two boys meet, so they come from different backgrounds, and Jamaka is not as deprived by any means as the life of Temuzin, but he has a certain emotional deprivation, I think, having not had mother, father, siblings, and he lives with these old, old people. (00:35:17) The two boys meet, they become good friends playing on the ice. (00:35:21) 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. (00:35:31) It's called being coming anda. (00:35:34) Anda is more than a friend. (00:35:36) A friend is like in the language, and there are several different types of friendship, but anda is a friendship that's beyond a friendship, it's something for life. (00:35:46) And they swore that they would be there forever to protect each other, to help each other in every moment. (00:35:54) And they exchanged knuckle bones. (00:35:56) So each one of them had the knuckle bone of a roebuck, a deer. (00:36:01) Knuckle bones are used in these games that they play, but it's also used to forecast the future. (00:36:06) You can roll them around and all. (00:36:08) And it's very strange. (00:36:09) On the ice, I will say, (00:36:12) In the wintertime in Mongolia, it can be up to 50 degrees below zero. (00:36:18) And it doesn't really matter at that point whether it's either Celsius or Fahrenheit or what it is. (00:36:23) But you slide something across the ice and it's just absolutely smooth like silk, and it goes on for a long way. (00:36:31) And if you put your ear down to the ice, you hear this celestial sound that is unlike any sound on the earth. (00:36:39) It's just like the angels are singing under the ice. (00:36:42) So once they've sworn this relationship of Anda, 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. (00:36:54) In fact, the text is very specific that Jamaka took the horn, cut it off of a two-year-old calf, and he whittled it down, and then he drilled a hole into it in order to make a whistling arrow. (00:37:10) 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 roebuck knuckles this time they exchanged and so they had been close friends and Wang Han said okay jamuka should (00:37:38) raise some troops and go with you. (00:37:41) And he did. (00:37:42) So the three set out, some troops from Wang Han. (00:37:44) He himself did not go, he was too old, but he sent some troops, and then Jamuka and his troops, and then basically just Temujin and his family. (00:37:53) He just had his brothers, that's all. (00:37:56) They set off to find the Murkut people up the Seleng River, which flows into Siberia and on into Lake Baikal. (00:38:05) They had to go through some extremely rough territory. (00:38:08) And you see in this episode, though, Jamaka is already a little bit fierce without necessarily thinking it through carefully. (00:38:22) He gives this long speech about all the things they're gonna do to the Murkit people. (00:38:26) We're gonna jump through the , the smoke hole in the top of the gear. (00:38:31) We're gonna jump in there, and we're gonna kill them all. (00:38:34) We're gonna kill the men and the women and the children. (00:38:37) We will destroy these people forever. (00:38:39) He has an extremely militant rhetoric, at least. (00:38:44) And he's also rather critical of the elder people. (00:38:46) Van Han's people came late, and he gave them this long lecture about (00:38:51) 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 in it so he's dressing down his Superiors he's very aggressive but he's very helpful so these troops they move in on the Mit camp they also come in at night and so the (00:39:18) There's a small amount of warning because some men are out hunting sables, the murkut men, and they race back to the camp and they tell the people, and the people are getting ready to get out as fast as possible. (00:39:31) So Bursta has no idea who's coming. (00:39:33) She doesn't wanna be kidnapped again. (00:39:35) It's just somebody. (00:39:37) So she and the grandmother go oxygen again, and so they're loaded into a cart to go away. (00:39:45) So Temuchen, (00:39:47) comes in and there's a full moon that night so they could see what they're doing. (00:39:51) And he's really searching for her. (00:39:54) He's not paying too much attention to the battle. (00:39:56) And he's calling for her and she hears his voice. (00:40:00) voice she knows who it is she jumps off the cart and she runs to him and they reunited and he grabs her and braces 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 (00:40:26) Yes, aside from the things, yes, his first full-on military engagement. (00:40:31) Now, along the way, in addition to escaping all these horrors, he had killed his older half-brother, Bekhter. (00:40:40) And that too was a deeply formative experience. (00:40:43) So what was that about? (00:40:44) Can you explain in Mongol society the role of the older brother and the power struggle there? (00:40:51) And not to moralize, but there's also (00:40:56) you know, the ethical foundation behind the murder. (00:41:01) The killing of Bechter, that's one of the things that's totally unknown outside of The Secret History of the Mongols. (00:41:07) None of the Persian chronicles, none of the Chinese chronicles, none of them knew about this until The Secret History was deciphered and translated. (00:41:17) But Bechter was the older child of Sochigal. (00:41:21) And his son, the older brother has complete authority over the younger siblings in Mongolian society. (00:41:28) They have to refer to him with a special pronoun all the time, ta, and he refers to them as chi. (00:41:34) It's like a formality. (00:41:37) And his word goes, he is the father in the absence of the father. (00:41:42) But also it's quite common that if a man dies and his brothers, he has no brothers or his brothers, (00:41:51) 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 Bechter 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 (00:42:17) Temujin was trying to prevent it 'cause it was bad enough that he was the older brother, but he becomes the older brother and a stepfather. (00:42:24) I think Temujin just couldn't handle that. (00:42:26) And he was already, Bekhter was ordering him around, so he would take things like a fish or a bird that Temujin had caught. (00:42:34) And that's perfectly acceptable in the Mongol hierarchy. (00:42:40) So Temujin would catch a fish. (00:42:42) And Bector would take the fish. (00:42:45) Yes, it's only recorded once, but it perhaps happened several times. (00:42:48) So that's an okay thing to do for an older brother, just take stuff. (00:42:53) Yes, he can do anything he wants just about with his younger siblings. (00:42:57) That's, yeah. (00:43:00) But Temujin is not gonna stand for it. (00:43:02) 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. (00:43:10) And the boys had actually taken the sewing needles from their mother. (00:43:14) They were using them for fishing. (00:43:16) And I think it's more complicated than that. (00:43:20) But for whatever reason, he and his next brother, Hasser, decided to kill him. (00:43:26) And they did. (00:43:27) Why to you is it more complicated than that? (00:43:29) It feels to me like stealing of a fish is like the final straw. (00:43:34) Here he's being abused. (00:43:37) Yes. (00:43:38) over and over and over. (00:43:39) And the fish is a symbol of that. (00:43:41) And so here he takes matters into his own hands. (00:43:45) I think it is the symbol of that, and it can be the thing that pushes him over the edge. (00:43:50) But it's all these other tensions of what's going on with the family. (00:43:54) Because they shoot him with arrows, they kill him. (00:43:57) But what happens afterwards is also interesting for the dynamics of what was going on before, because we hear nothing from Sochigo. (00:44:07) She and her younger son, Belgatai, they stay with the family. (00:44:11) They don't go away. (00:44:12) But the one who is outraged is Mother Erlun, his mother. (00:44:16) 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. (00:44:27) And you are worse than everything that she could name that could be worse than. (00:44:33) She was outraged and went on and on and on about it. (00:44:36) So she was (00:44:37) obviously extremely distressed about it. (00:44:41) Whereas Sachigal, the mother of the boy, she may have been distressed, I don't know, but nothing has shown up in the record. (00:44:49) 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 a mostly deeply meaningful for Temujin. (00:45:01) The brother was gone. (00:45:03) The problem was solved. (00:45:04) Mother is extremely ticked off at him, but... (00:45:09) 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. (00:45:23) Yes. (00:45:24) He is capable of doing anything that needs to be done to resolve what he sees as a problem. (00:45:31) Bechter was a problem. (00:45:32) And he resolved it at a very young age. (00:45:36) So he'd had that experience behind him. (00:45:38) But now, Bector's younger brother, Belgatai, is on the raid with him and with Zamoka when they go to capture Bersterbach. (00:45:47) So he has both loyalty, and Belgatai stays loyal to him his entire life, his entire life. (00:45:58) So it's very interesting. (00:45:59) So actually, if we return to Bersta, is it normal to have such a love story across many years when you're separated and sort of having that kind of loyalty? (00:46:10) Because it was two-way loyalty from Bersta to Timujin and Timujin to Bersta. (00:46:17) And this is like before he was Genghis Khan. (00:46:20) 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. (00:46:32) But for whatever reason she came in, it could be that her family (00:46:39) liked him in some way or that she remembered him or that she had no other Suitors cuz 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 (00:47:08) to get her back. (00:47:09) He risked everything. (00:47:10) He was willing to die. (00:47:11) He was willing to kill. (00:47:13) He was willing to die in order to get her back. (00:47:17) And he got her back, and now he's reestablished his relationship with Jamoka. (00:47:25) And so they decide to stay together, and they all go off to the Horonak Valley, and she is pregnant. (00:47:38) this becomes a huge issue forever it's one of those things that to this day almost it's a 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 murk and bastard he defends his wife (00:48:02) viciously to his own sons. (00:48:05) He says, You were not there. (00:48:07) You do not know who loved who and who did not. (00:48:09) You did not see the sky turning around. (00:48:12) You did not see the stars falling. (00:48:14) You did not see the earth turn over. (00:48:16) You don't know what was happening. (00:48:17) And if I say he is my son, he is my son. (00:48:21) Who are you to say otherwise? (00:48:23) You were not there. (00:48:24) You come from the same warm womb. (00:48:26) And if your mother could hear your words, her warm womb would turn to cold (00:48:32) own so he defended her forever but he's off now we go back to the beginning she's pregnant they're in the hanuk Valley and he and jamuk decide to renew their vows of being Anda to each other so this time it's more serious and it uh ceremony in front of the whole uh (00:49:01) We can't say tribe, it's not big enough yet for a tribe, but a whole clan that's there. (00:49:06) And then Chamaka takes off a gold belt, which actually he'd stolen from the market at some point. (00:49:13) And where on earth they got a gold belt? (00:49:15) I don't know. (00:49:16) He took off a gold belt and he put it on Temuchin. (00:49:20) And then Temuchin gave him a mayor who had never had a foal, had never given birth. (00:49:28) And it was an unusual mare who had a little growth on the front of her head, which they called a horn. (00:49:33) So it was an unusual gift. (00:49:34) And I don't, it has meaning, but I don't know all the meanings behind it. (00:49:39) You know, it's sort of odd to me. (00:49:40) But the golden belt, I can kind of sort of think about it in different ways. (00:49:45) But the golden belt, the belt for the Mongol man is really the sign of manhood. (00:49:50) And in fact, this , a woman was often then and even now called (00:49:58) person without a belt, because that's how they were at that time. (00:50:01) Today, women wear belts, of course, but they still use the word , with no belt. (00:50:07) So it's a very important symbol of manhood. (00:50:10) So he gave that to Mudjid, 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. (00:50:23) And then when the baby was born, (00:50:28) Temujin named the baby , which means visitor. (00:50:34) And some people say, Well, it's because the child was really the market child. (00:50:39) Other people say, No, it's because he was a visitor on the territory of Chamuk at that time. (00:50:44) And other people can say, Well, but Chamuk's ancestor, who had been born from the kidnapped woman who was pregnant, that they had named that , which meant foreigner. (00:50:56) So it's kind of like a parallel, the visitor, the foreigner. (00:50:59) And so Jamukha's clan took the name from him. (00:51:02) They were called Jadaran, Jadaran. (00:51:05) And so there are all these things that sometimes we can't quite understand because we don't have the total mentality of that time and we're not there. (00:51:16) But we should say that, I mean, it's a pretty powerful part of this love story is that the child is likely not his. (00:51:26) And he accepted that child as his own, and defended it as it becomes much more important later, as his first child. (00:51:36) Yes, he defends this child through his entire life. (00:51:42) But not long after the birth, he and Jamaka break apart, or really it's Temujin breaks apart, at the urging of Bersta. (00:51:54) She said he lords it over you too much, he orders you around too much, you need to be free, we need to break away. (00:52:03) And she urged him, and he loved his wife more than anything. (00:52:07) I think that in a certain way, the most important other character in his life, adult life, would be the Anda relationship, which gets up being severely tested in the future years. (00:52:19) But they run away through the night, they go all night long to escape from (00:52:24) him, but he obviously loved birth the most and took the baby, of course, with him as well. (00:52:31) So here's this breaking point of the Unda. (00:52:35) How did that relationship evolve? (00:52:37) The two of them never claimed to break it. (00:52:41) They had just separated, and now we have the (00:52:46) Vang Khan, the most powerful ruler on the steppe, who's ruling out of central Mongolia of the Keriat people. (00:52:54) And so Zhamaka remains loyal to him, but at first so does Temujin. (00:53:00) They're both loyal to him, but they're fighting in different kinds of campaigns and all. (00:53:04) So for a while, they're not fighting each other. (00:53:09) But eventually some things happened that separate Temujin. (00:53:14) Temujin was (00:53:16) making all of these great victories for Vang Han. (00:53:19) And he even got the title Vang, which means from Chinese, meaning prince or king. (00:53:28) Vang Han received that from the Jin dynasty because of all of these conquests against the Tatar people. (00:53:34) So Temuchin was rising up, and then he wanted his son to marry the daughter of Vang Han. (00:53:41) And Vang Han said no, his own son. (00:53:46) He told the father, No, no, no, no. (00:53:48) We don't marry those low people. (00:53:50) They're Mongols. (00:53:51) They're not like us. (00:53:52) We are Karia people. (00:53:54) We're not going to marry them. (00:53:56) And so then now war, you could say, breaks out our feud, really. (00:54:01) It's more of a feud. (00:54:02) And Hemujin has to flee far away into the east to a place called Baljuna. (00:54:08) And he goes to Baljuna. (00:54:09) And at this time, then Jamaka is going to fight on behalf of (00:54:16) his lord, Bang Han. (00:54:20) The two of them do not meet in combat, but now their forces are fighting each other. (00:54:26) And they didn't see that. (00:54:28) I mean, there's an obvious tension there. (00:54:30) There's an obvious slight breaking of loyalty, right? (00:54:35) Yes. (00:54:36) It's hard to know what's going through their mind at that point. (00:54:38) We only have it later on when the (00:54:43) their 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. (00:54:54) And in fact, then Temujin eventually defeats Vang Khan. (00:54:59) So he takes over central Mongolia. (00:55:01) He's starting to really rise up now. (00:55:04) And he has the title from his own people of Chinggis Khan. (00:55:08) They give him that at (00:55:10) Black Heart Mountain by the Blue Lake. (00:55:12) It's a very beautiful, special place. (00:55:15) But he takes that title. (00:55:17) That's not a title that anyone had ever held that we know of. (00:55:20) Chinggis Khan, it was a new title that he just thought up or somebody thought up, or somebody thought it had auspicious meaning behind it. (00:55:31) It's very close to the word Tinggis, which means the sea. (00:55:34) It could have had something to do with that. (00:55:38) Mongolians really like, we might say, puns of, they like words with multiple meanings. (00:55:43) And that's very important to them. (00:55:44) The more meanings a word has, the more power that word has. (00:55:48) So if it has different meaning in different languages. (00:55:51) So in the Mongolian, it sounds like strong, chin, chingis. (00:55:56) But in Turkic, and there are many Turkic people, including the Mercat themselves, are mostly Turkic people, it sounds like the sea, thingis, thingis. (00:56:06) So it's exciting to them when there's this double meaning. (00:56:09) Yes. (00:56:10) And the double meaning plays with each other and that excites them. (00:56:13) Especially with names. (00:56:15) Yeah. (00:56:15) I'm like today in Mongolia, 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. (00:56:30) in Mongolia. (00:56:31) So it's the power of three great languages and three great civilizations. (00:56:35) And so many names are like that. (00:56:38) And so I think Chinggis, it doesn't have one meaning. (00:56:40) I think it means powerful. (00:56:41) It means the sea. (00:56:42) I think it means many different things. (00:56:44) But so he had become a Khan and he was ruling over him. (00:56:47) And so Chamukha now switched loyalties to the next kingdom over called the Naiman people who are farther west. (00:56:55) And he becomes the (00:56:59) the protege you could say of the Niman people but when Genghis Khan attacks the Niman jamaka deserts the Niman 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 (00:57:25) Taiyang Han, the leader of the Naimans, he was rightfully scared about him, and he was left there. (00:57:32) And he, in fact, was very quickly also defeated. (00:57:36) So Tamaka has not fought against Temuzin in this campaign. (00:57:40) And he's off with some of his people, Jadaran clan people. (00:57:47) He's off with them, and they see the turning of the tide. (00:57:56) But he now wants to become the Great Khan of the Steppe. (00:58:00) He has very few followers. (00:58:02) But he takes the title Gurkhan, which is a very old, ancient, important title. (00:58:08) But because Wang Han is gone, Torgul Khan gone, that he can take this title and pretend to be the Great Khan of the Steppe. (00:58:19) But his own people, (00:58:22) turn against him, and they capture him, and they think they will take him to Chinggis Khan. (00:58:28) It's not Chinggis Khan. (00:58:30) They'll take him and they'll be rewarded perhaps for turning him in. (00:58:35) And Chinggis Khan does reward them immediately. (00:58:38) He kills them all because they have betrayed their leader, who is his Handa. (00:58:49) It's a very strange (00:58:51) encounter. (00:58:52) And so, supposedly, Chinggis Khan says to him, Come back to me, save me, be beside me, protect me, be my shadow, be my safety guard in life. (00:59:07) And supposedly, Jammukha says, But I did betray you. (00:59:14) My people fought against you, and you will always know that. (00:59:18) and you will never completely trust me I will be a 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 (00:59:46) and I will be the guard, I will be the protector for you and your people forever. (00:59:52) So they, obviously Temutian did not participate in the killing, but he ordered the killing. (01:00:02) And he was either (01:00:06) 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. (01:00:14) The blood contains part of the soul, and if you lose it, you're losing your soul before you die. (01:00:18) 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. (01:00:26) There are a couple other methods, but I think that's probably the method by which Jamaka was killed. (01:00:32) And so he was killed, and then Temujin had, or Chinggis Khan had his remains taken up and buried in a high place. (01:00:40) This is over near Tuva, which is today part of Russia. (01:00:45) But until the 20th century, it was a part of Mongolia, the Tuvan people, very, very close culturally to the Mongols. (01:00:53) It seems that both of them, under the under relationship, (01:00:58) 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 the jamako 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 (01:01:28) of Jamaka, and when Ching-e Khan was asking him to come back and to be his shadow and to be his safety guard again, maybe that was just a formality that he knew would be rejected. (01:01:44) Or maybe when (01:01:46) Jamoka offered to be killed without shedding blood. (01:01:50) That was a formality that he thought would not be followed through. (01:01:54) Nevertheless, to me, just reading your work and understanding this history, this relationship seems like a really, really important relationship that defines the nature of loyalty for Genghis. (01:02:08) I would say in both negative and positive ways, it was the most important relationship (01:02:14) of his adulthood aside from Bursa, but that relationship really did not seem to have many negative aspects. (01:02:22) They sometimes disagreed on things, but small things. (01:02:25) So 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. (01:02:35) And Chamokka, (01:02:37) It was just a little too hotheaded for me. (01:02:39) I mean, in my evaluation of them, that these things like, oh, we're gonna drop down on the market and we're gonna come through the smoke hole, kill everybody and all. (01:02:50) And he had a flair for the dramatic, even in a way giving the gold belt to Mucin. (01:02:57) But Jamaka also, he explained himself at the end of life. (01:03:01) And he said, You know, we both lost our father. (01:03:07) but I also lost my mother, and you had a strong mother to raise you. (01:03:12) I did not. (01:03:13) And he said, You had Bersta, you have a very strong wife to help you. (01:03:19) And my wife, he just used a word like prattler, like she just sort of complains and prattles along, and we did not have a relationship. (01:03:29) So I think something about that rings true that (01:03:35) 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 warfare that uh temuin had yeah there's in that relationship there's a contrast because jenis Khan did not accumulate riches or uh (01:04:00) accumulate power in a way that was for the sake of the riches or for the sake of the power. (01:04:05) It was always very practical in what is the way to maximize the success of this operation. (01:04:13) Yes, yes. (01:04:15) I often wonder what happened to the gold belt? (01:04:17) It disappeared from the story, you know, and a gold belt doesn't just disappear, you know, what happened to that? (01:04:24) It's so interesting because (01:04:27) Tamucha was never interested in material goods. (01:04:30) 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. (01:04:38) But he always dressed simply. (01:04:41) He always lived in the tent. (01:04:43) And he said, I eat what my soldiers eat. (01:04:46) I dressed the way my soldiers dressed. (01:04:48) I lived the way my soldiers live. (01:04:50) We are the same. (01:04:51) So he had no interest in the wealth. (01:04:56) 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. (01:05:12) That is one of the powerful things about the Genghis Khan story is he came from nothing. (01:05:16) From absolute nothing. (01:05:18) And he didn't, from what I see and understand, become sort of corrupted by the riches or change. (01:05:25) He fundamentally remained the same person who does not have value for material things. (01:05:31) He changed and matured in various ways over life, as we all do, or we hope we do, but he never (01:05:38) became avaricious in any way. (01:05:39) He was never greedy. (01:05:41) He was never acquisitive. (01:05:42) He kept the simple life. (01:05:44) And part of the simple life for him meant that no one was allowed to write about him. (01:05:49) No one was allowed to make his likeness. (01:05:51) They couldn't paint a picture of him. (01:05:53) They couldn't make a statue of him. (01:05:56) 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. (01:06:06) 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. (01:06:16) Like the moment somebody builds a statue of you, it's like a slippery slope towards becoming, not seeing the world clearly, not seeing (01:06:27) surrounding yourself with sycophants that don't tell you the right, the information, not being able to select the right people to lead the armies or to lead the territories that you conquer. (01:06:39) So it's interesting that he had that foresight of don't record, don't worship. (01:06:46) That's because that's a dangerous Rd. (01:06:48) to go down for a leader. (01:06:49) And it's very hard to explain how he (01:06:52) 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 (01:07:21) And in fact, no portrait was painted until 1278. (01:07:24) Well, by then, he already been dead for 51 years, and then no statue until the 21st century. (01:07:34) Just incredible. (01:07:35) But let's go to the document that you referenced several times, The Secret History. (01:07:42) The Secret History is a very unusual document, and I happen to love it very much, but I said, you know, Ching Tan allowed nothing to be written about him. (01:07:51) in his lifetime. (01:07:53) People couldn't take notes. (01:07:54) Even the army was, Genghis Khan ordered the invention of the alphabet for the Mongol people, and it was adapted from the Uyghur people. (01:08:03) And so to this day, it's often called the Uyghur alphabet, the Uyghur alphabet. (01:08:08) So he had ordered that, and he'd ordered his children to learn to read and write, and some did. (01:08:13) I think most did not, but some did. (01:08:17) 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. (01:08:30) And that child became a full member of the Mongol nation in his household. (01:08:35) His mother, Erlun, would raise the child. (01:08:38) So she eventually had a whole household (01:08:41) 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 (01:09:03) 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. (01:09:16) But Shigi Hutuk was his name. (01:09:18) Shigi Hutuk realized that this was gonna be lost, that this is a great historic thing that has happened. (01:09:25) So he compiled the work. (01:09:26) Part of it, I don't know, other people contributed, helped him, but it's a little bit unclear. (01:09:31) The Mongols, they don't specify. (01:09:33) They always tell you exactly where something happens. (01:09:35) So we know exactly where it happened in Mongolia. (01:09:39) You can still go to that spot where he wrote it. (01:09:41) That's very important to the Mongols. (01:09:44) And we also know it's the year of the Mao, so it was 1228, Chinggis Khan had died in '27. (01:09:50) 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, it begins with the marriage of a gray-blue wolf with a tawny deer. (01:10:03) Then some people say, well, that's some kind of myth. (01:10:05) It's totemic. (01:10:06) And Mongols mostly, they look at me, I asked them about this. (01:10:10) They said, what? (01:10:12) He was named Blue Gray Wolf. (01:10:15) She was named Tawny Deer. (01:10:17) They married, you know, they're very practical about it. (01:10:21) And they think they're real people. (01:10:22) Maybe they were or not. (01:10:23) I don't know. (01:10:24) But so this earlier history is just the genealogy is, (01:10:29) It should be. (01:10:30) Who knows? (01:10:31) But it's also in there because like Bodinchar, they call him Bodinchar the fool, the ancestor of Temujin. (01:10:36) He's cast out because he's just so dumb. (01:10:39) The rest of the family doesn't want him. (01:10:41) And his father is undetermined who he was. (01:10:44) He kidnapped the Uri Hanghai woman. (01:10:46) She has the child who becomes ancestor. (01:10:49) So it's a confusing mess, but I tend to think it's probably accurate. (01:10:54) He has a lot of good information. (01:10:55) And 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. (01:11:06) So we even see in there, he will record instances where Bersta sits up in bed (01:11:12) and tells her husband, Okay, you gotta do this. (01:11:14) You gotta do that. (01:11:15) You can't do this anymore. (01:11:16) We can't think of, you know, it's all recorded, right? (01:11:19) So it's a very intimate document. (01:11:21) And this is one reason that it was secret. (01:11:23) It was only for the family. (01:11:25) They were trying to uphold Chinggis Khan's prohibition against putting out information about the family. (01:11:31) So it was secret for a very long time. (01:11:34) So much so the scholars began to think it didn't exist. (01:11:39) 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. (01:11:59) But he recognized, but if you read it, pronounce it, it makes sense in Mongolian. (01:12:06) And so it was in this code that had been used to record the information in Chinese. (01:12:12) So they're recording the sounds. (01:12:14) The sounds, correct. (01:12:16) They used 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 it was a very unusual document. (01:12:29) And then once they found it, they realized that some of the Persian documents had incorporated part of that already. (01:12:36) So that was very helpful to me because some of the Persians I trust very much and I like their work very much. (01:12:42) And so it was helpful that it already existed and all of it, some of it existed in Mongolian. (01:12:49) 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 like sometimes for tuin they call him Chingis Khan well he wasn't the Han then and sometimes they call him Han which is like Chief and other times Han which (01:13:17) which is emperor. (01:13:18) Well, in Mongolia, it's a big difference. (01:13:20) So there are little things like this that move around that you're not sure why, but it's a document that I have great faith in. (01:13:28) It was not published in English until 1982, but Francis Woodman Cleaves at Harvard University translated it in the '50s. (01:13:36) It was ready for publication, and he was having trouble with the publisher, and so it didn't appear for nearly 30 years. (01:13:44) It was supposed to be two volumes. (01:13:45) The first volume is the translation, (01:13:47) The second volume was going to be the notes, and the second volume was lost. (01:13:55) To this day, it hasn't been found. (01:13:58) I would love to see that. (01:13:59) But anyway, now it's in all languages just about in the world. (01:14:03) Can you clarify? (01:14:04) So there's two volumes. (01:14:06) The 19th century Chinese manuscript covers the first volume. (01:14:12) Yes, that was translated and then published by Harvard University. (01:14:16) But the notes were just the notes from the scholar, Francis Woodman Cleves. (01:14:20) Those were his notes, not Mongolian notes. (01:14:23) I got it. (01:14:23) There are Chinese notes that went with it because the Chinese had trouble understanding a lot of things in it. (01:14:30) And they also, they disapproved of some things. (01:14:32) So they would try to put their own notes in the margins to kind of correct the story and explain away why (01:14:40) the Mongols women would be often marrying their stepson. (01:14:44) It just did not match with Confucian ethics. (01:14:49) So there's several things like that that they try to skip around. (01:14:52) But so it's interesting just to read the Ming dynasty notes that are attached to it. (01:14:58) But this document itself, Mongolin Nutshopcho, (01:15:02) It's just so important. (01:15:04) And for me, it was the guiding document. (01:15:06) I didn't wanna be guided by anything else first. (01:15:09) Everything else I would check to correlate and fill in blanks and give more information. (01:15:14) But I went to Mongolia to travel around to those places because they are so exact in there and to feel it. (01:15:23) And it's so important, I think, (01:15:26) because history does not live in books. (01:15:28) History does not live in archives or even libraries as much as I need them for my work. (01:15:34) But history lives in the people. (01:15:36) History lives in the memory of the people and the culture. (01:15:40) And for example, the episode with the kidnapping of Berchta. (01:15:44) So I went to that place and I didn't know when it happened, what season it happened. (01:15:49) It was very important for figuring out the births that came afterwards and other events that were being correlated, very important to me. (01:15:56) And so I'm just talking to the people who live in that valley, the nomads there. (01:16:01) They said, Oh, it's clear it was the winter. (01:16:05) I said, Oh, where did you read that? (01:16:08) I said, No, Granny Coaxin was on the ground and she could feel the vibrations. (01:16:12) She said, Look, this is summertime now. (01:16:14) You're not gonna feel any vibrations. (01:16:16) The ground here is so soft. (01:16:19) Suddenly, a whole important piece that I've been searching for just came together from some nomad sitting there next to his horse. (01:16:33) And he was absolutely right. (01:16:35) It could only happen in the winter. (01:16:37) And that also correlates with the time that reading was done. (01:16:40) So it correlates with other historic factors. (01:16:42) But then that gave me the time basis for figuring out a lot of other things. (01:16:46) History lives in the people. (01:16:48) Just to linger on that point, you visited different places that were important to the story of Genghis Khan. (01:16:56) What did it feel like? (01:16:58) What are some memorable things about? (01:17:02) Just the experience of standing there. (01:17:05) Yes. (01:17:06) I really set out mostly to visit the cities he had conquered across Central Asia and all. (01:17:11) And there was so little to learn. (01:17:13) I mean, everything was kind of known of whatever the chroniclers had recorded. (01:17:17) The archeologists had found whatever they had found. (01:17:20) And I get there and he hadn't spent much time there. (01:17:23) He didn't identify with it. (01:17:25) I wasn't feeling anything, but in Mongolia, I would go to these places and I would know, (01:17:31) If Genghis Khan came back today, he would know exactly where he is. (01:17:34) There's no road, there's no sign, there's no building, there's no power line going, nothing. (01:17:42) And just to smell the air, to feel it, to see the animals and to see what kind of animals live here, what kind of plants are growing here. (01:17:51) You begin to get a feeling for how he was thinking. (01:17:55) And then you begin to see, ah, (01:17:57) I know which direction they came from. (01:17:59) The only direction they could come from was that way. (01:18:01) 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. (01:18:15) The Mongols all understand their way of life. (01:18:17) They don't need to explain anything. (01:18:19) They know which way the gear faces with the sun. (01:18:22) They know all these things. (01:18:23) But for me, that's how I learned it. (01:18:25) It was from being with the people. (01:18:27) It was the most important thing. (01:18:30) And this was starting in the 1990s. (01:18:33) And the people, at this time, they were amazed that I would come. (01:18:40) The Soviet era had just ended, socialism was just ending, democracy was starting, and Genghis Khan had been forbidden to them. (01:18:49) for almost the entire century. (01:18:51) And every known descendant of Genghis Khan was killed in Mongolia. (01:18:56) Following the secret history, that became the key to writing what I wrote. (01:19:01) Take the history, which is difficult to understand. (01:19:04) You have to go over, and I often never understand different parts, or I changed my mind and think it was yes, now it's no. (01:19:13) But the secret history is a valuable document. (01:19:17) And to me, also, it's the opening document of Mongolian written language. (01:19:23) And I think it's very important how do people begin their written language. (01:19:30) And they begin it with the words, . (01:19:36) From highest heaven came the destiny of the blue wolf who was married to the tawny deer and their descendants. (01:19:46) who came from the Great Sea to live at the base of Mount Burhan Haldun. (01:19:52) And then integrating the spiritual elements of nature, the mountains and the Great Sea, and this kind of, just like a deep,