• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1750 0

gift to leave on the stones—the stub of a sugar cube, a few matches, a candy wrapped in crinkling paper, a sprinkle of tea leaves. It was almost as though they wanted to reach back through the centuries to offer these small gifts of nourishment and warmth to the fleeing and frightened Borte as her kidnappers slung her on a horse and galloped away with her to an unknown future. It was as though the members of our muted group wanted to tell her, their mother, that everything would be all right, that she and they, her children, would survive it all for eight more centuries. After all, they are still the children of the Golden Light, the offspring of a wolf and a doe, and in the wispy clouds of the Eternal Blue Sky of Mongolia, the Spirit Banner of Genghis Khan still waves in the wind.

Notes

These notes are to help the reader find information from a variety of sources. Works are cited in languages other than English only if no English translation could be identified.

Introduction: The Missing Conqueror

“Genghis Khan was a doer”: Joel Aschenbacher, “The Era of His Ways: In Which We Chose the Most Important Man of the Last Thousand Years,” Washington Post, December 31, 1989, p. F01.

unprecedented rise in cultural communication: For more information on the cultural exchange, see Thomas T. Allsen, Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Roger Bacon observed: The quotes are from Bacon’s Opus Majus, trans. Robert Belle Burke (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1928), vol. 1, p. 416; vol. 2. p. 792.

“we imagined your appearance”: From “Chinggis Khaan,” composed by D. Jargalsaikhan and performed by the musical group Chinggis Khaan.

Rashid al-Din described: The quotes are from Allsen, Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia, p. 88.

Arab politicians: Quoted in Eric L. Jones, Growth Recurring: Economic Change in World History (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 113.

“tendencies directed at idealizing the role of Genghis Khan”: Almaz Khan, “Chinggis Khan: From Imperial Ancestor to Ethnic Hero,” in Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers, ed. Stevan Harrell (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), pp. 261–262.

anti-party elements, Chinese spies, saboteurs, or pests: Tom Ginsburg, “Nationalism, Elites, and Mongolia’s Rapid Transformation,” in Mongolia in the Twentieth Century: Landlocked Cosmopolitan, ed. Stephen Kotkin and Bruce A. Elleman (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), p. 247.

I worked closely with: Most Mongolians today use a single name such as Lkhagvasuren or Sukhbaatar, but when necessary to distinguish among those with the same name, they identify themselves by the initial (or first two letters in the case of sh, ch, kh or ts) of a parent.

I. The Reign of Terror on the Steppe: 1162–1206

“Nations! What are nations?”: Henry David Thoreau, Journal (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), entry for May 1, 1851.

1. The Blood Clot

“There is fire in his eyes”: Secret History, § 62.

“choked with horsemen”: Ata-Malik Juvaini, Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror, trans. J. A. Boyle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), p. 98.

“whoever yields”: Ibid., p. 15.

“a man of tall stature”: Minhaj al-Siraj Juzjani, Tabakat-I-Nasiri: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, trans. Major H. G. Raverty (Bengal: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1881; reprint, New Dehli: Oriental Books, 1970), p. 1077.

“it is the great ones, among you”: Ibid. p. 105.

“like a red-hot furnace”: Juvaini, p. 106.

“If you but live”: Secret History, § 56.

Targutai boasted: Secret History, § 149.

early age of nine: The early events in Temujin’s life prove difficult to date precisely with confidence. The Mongols counted each new year as beginning at the end of winter when spring came. Each greening of the steppe counted as one new year, and age was counted according to the number of greenings a child had been through. Thus, the birth of Temujin at the start of spring gave him an immediate age of one, and each successive