Genghis Khan (May 31, 1162-August 25, 1227,{sys:(year(now)-1227)} years ago), Mongolian Khan (reigned from 1206 to 1227)

Don't stay away because of the distance, you can walk if you want. Don't stay away because of the weight, you can move if you want - Genghis Khan; True success is only when everyone else fails - Genghis Khan; The greatest joy in life is to hunt down your enemies everywhere, invade their land, plunder their wealth, and then listen to the cries of their wives and children - Genghis Khan

The Mongols rightly named the 13th century the "Mongol century". In this century, steppe storms swept through most of Eurasia, changing the political map and civilization of these regions. And Genghis Khan was the initiator of this century storm and the most famous conqueror in history.

Tyrant or genius?

Genghis Khan's name was Temujin, and he was born into a family of leaders of the Burzhijin clan of the Mongolian Neelon tribe. At that time, there were hundreds of tribes on the Mongolian plateau, entangled in endless feuds with each other, and the Jin Kingdom took advantage of their contradictions and adopted a strategy of "divide and rule" to make them vassals.

But all this was completely changed because of the sudden appearance of Temujin. Temuzhen was a rough boy. When he was 9 years old, his father was poisoned to death by his enemy. He was once imprisoned by the enemy. After narrowly escaping, he defected to Wang Han, the leader of the Keli Tribe, who had once allied with his father, and was adopted by Wang Han as his adopted son. He took advantage of his condition as a descendant of the clan leader and with the help of Wang Han, gathered the old subordinates of his clan and gradually developed into a brave and skillful team. This team became stronger and stronger in the tribal wars and continued to grow. Temuzhen was not only a talented military commander, but also an outstanding diplomatic strategist. This was highlighted by his strategy of uniting the majority and focusing on attacking the individual in tribal wars. He successively conquered Zadarati, Tatar, Keli, Naiman and other tribes, and became the overlord chosen by the God of War on the Mongolian Plateau.

In 1206, the most important assembly of Temujin's life, and perhaps the most important in Mongolian history, was held, establishing Temujin as the common leader of all Mongolian tribes, with the title of Genghis Khan. From then on, the Mongols stopped the civil war and the military front was unified.

In the process of unifying the various ministries of Mongolia, Genghis Khan gradually explored a set of methods of governing the country. After unifying Mongolia, this method became the basic system of the country and was fixed. He divided the Mongolian people into nearly a hundred thousand households, with a thousand households as the basic unit of state administration. Each thousand households was also an organization that integrated military and animal husbandry production. Below the thousand households were divided into hundreds and ten households, and some thousand households had 10,000 households above them (but a thousand households did not necessarily represent a thousand households, it was just a general term, and the same was true for hundreds and ten thousand households). Genghis Khan divided the thousands of households into his descendants, and he actually implemented a military feudal system. Genghis Khan selected the most skilled and loyal young people in Mongolia to form a guard army (called Qixue) under the direct command of the Khan himself, which was the pillar force of the Khan's rule and conquest.

The Mongolians originally had no writing. Genghis Khan encouraged aristocratic children to learn Uyghur script and used Uyghur script to spell Mongolian, gradually forming Mongolian. Genghis Khan compiled the decrees and military orders issued by his previous congresses into the "Dharmic Ceremony", which was Mongolia's first written law. The Mongolian nation with written characters and codes has become stronger (but Mongolia is still a "barbaric" nation compared to many neighboring countries).

The first target of Genghis Khan's foreign war was the relatively weak Xixia, and after forcing Xixia to submit, he attacked the Jin Kingdom, which had enslaved them for a long time. Genghis Khan personally led the army, holding the banner of revenge for his ancestors, launched the war in 1211. The Mongol army, which was unstoppable like a tiger going down the mountain, progressed very smoothly, wiping out the main force of the Jin Army in the battle of Huihe River, and approaching the capital of the Jin Kingdom, Zhongdu (now Beijing). The emperor of the Jin Kingdom moved the capital southward in a hurry, and a large area of land north of the Yellow River soon fell into the hands of the Mongols.

Then, Genghis Khan turned his wild eyes to the west. Xiliao, which was in civil strife, was obviously no match for the vibrant Mongolian state, and Genghis Khan's iron cavalry soon leveled the country. Then, the Central Asian power Huaxianzimo became the next target. In 1219, Genghis Khan attacked in the name of killing Mongol caravans and ambassadors 200,000. The 400,000 army of Huaxianzimo, which was in a strong period, was vulnerable to Genghis Khan's army. In a few years, the empire was destroyed. The actions of the Mongol army in this conquest fully reflect the cruelty of a barbarian nation. Wherever they go, they will become desolate ruins, and the ruined cities will be looted, and even burned under water.

The control of Central Asia was a crucial step for the Mongol conquest. From this base, the Mongols launched a series of charges into farther and wider lands. At the same time as the conquest of Huaxia Zimo, a Mongolian expedition army advanced north along the Caspian Sea into the plains of Eastern Europe and conquered the feuding princes of Rus. But Genghis Khan's long-cherished wish was to conquer the feud of Jin, and in the last years of his life his main goal was East Asia. To destroy Jin, he must first break his right arm - Xixia. After nearly two years of tenacious resistance, the soldiers and civilians of Xixia were finally forced to accept the fate of the subjugated country, but at the same time as the destruction of Xixia, Genghis Khan's life also came to an end. He died in the army due to typhus.

The era of Genghis Khan was only the beginning of the Mongol Empire's conquest of the world. Inspired by his speech,"The world is vast and there are many rivers. You can each expand your territory to your heart's content", his descendants conquered a wider land. In China, his grandson Kublai Khan established an unprecedented unified dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty, and was crowned emperor of China; in West Asia, his other grandson Hulagu destroyed the Arab Empire that lasted for more than 500 years and established the Ilkhanan State; in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, his other grandson Batu established the Golden Horde Khanate, ruling countless princes and tribes. Later, Timur, who claimed to be a descendant of Genghis Khan, established the Timur Khanate in Central Asia, and Timur's descendant Babur established the Mughal Dynasty in India. These "child empires" and "grandson empires" of the Mongolian Empire left a profound influence on world history.

I am afraid no one will object that Genghis Khan should be listed among the most influential emperors in the world. However, related to his ranking, there are still some issues that should be discussed.

Will the development of Mongolian society in the early 13th century inevitably produce a sole ruler like Genghis Khan? This cannot be easily concluded. The Mongolian tribes maintained the balance of power by several powerful tribes in the civil war year after year. If there were no talented military strategist like Genghis Khan to break the balance of power, the process of unification might be delayed for many years. By then, the international situation faced by a unified Mongolia would be very different, and the conquest activities might not be able to be carried out so smoothly.

Is the great success of the Mongols in their foreign wars more due to the tribe's tradition of bravery and fighting or to the correct leadership of Genghis Khan himself? The former may have a greater share, because even after the death of Genghis Khan, his successors remained invincible in conquering different regions. But it also proved that the military and political system established by Genghis Khan and the "Mongolian Spirit" initiated by him still had great power after his death.

Genghis Khan's position in military history cannot be ignored. He established a "great detour" tactic, which did not directly challenge the enemy in front of the line, but defeated the opponent through long-distance and rapid roundabout, split combined attacks and surprise attacks. In the latter part of his military career, Genghis Khan mainly faced with the problem of siege warfare. He developed a siege method led by throwing artillery stones, which was tried and tested. Genghis Khan's military ideology attaches great importance to supporting war through war and does not require large amounts of logistics supplies. Of course, this comes at the expense of cruel plunder of the conquered land. In the wars between nomadic peoples and agricultural peoples since ancient times, the former generally had a certain advantage, but it was not an absolute advantage. The most powerful nomadic peoples before Mongolia, such as the Xiongnu and Turks, had records of being defeated by the agricultural peoples. In the 13th century, Mongolia clearly surpassed all its predecessors. Genghis Khan himself was almost never defeated, and in his two generations, there were only a few records of losing at the end of an arrow.

The conquests of Genghis Khan and his descendants promoted the reorganization of the world map, erasing a series of long-standing but decaying countries from the map. The Mongols did not rule for a long time in most regions, and after them, a series of new forces rose from these regions. In fact, the Mongols had little positive impact on the progress of human civilization, because they were a backward and small-numbered barbarian race who could only accept the fate of gradual assimilation in the regions they conquered, which made Genghis Khan's influence less than that of Alexander the Great, who widely spread Greek civilization. No clear and long-term new order was established, which is why Genghis Khan did not enter the top three in this list.

The greatest historical impact of the Mongol Empire was that their conquests brought the cultural plates of the world closer together in the same whole, the Silk Roads were reopened, there was a great increase in cross-border travelers, and the relatively isolated geographical plates had a great increase in knowledge of the outside world. It can also be said that because of the Mongols, the world has become smaller.

Comments: Genghis Khan united the grassland nations that were biting each other, unified their wolf nature to the outside world, and established a set of most efficient laws and regulations, and created a set of tactics that best suit their own characteristics, so that they were invincible. When dealing with the conquered enemy, they mainly used extermination strikes to make the enemy lose the ability to make a comeback for a long time. The Mongols in Genghis Khan's era carried the lightest moral burden on their shoulders.