Jack Weatherford: Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire | Lex Fridman Podcast #476

The following is a conversation

with Jack Weatherford, anthropologist

and historian specializing in Djangghaskhan

and the Mongol Empire.

He has written a legendary book on this topic titled Jenis Khan and the

making of the modern world.

And he has written many other books

including Emperor of the Seas, Kubla Khan and the Making of China,

Jangghask Khan and the Quest for God,

The Secret History of the Mongol

Queens, and other excellent books.

I've gotten to know Jack more after this conversation,

and I cannot speak highly enough about him.

He's a truly brilliant,

thoughtful, and kind soul.

This was a huge honor and pleasure for me.

This is the Lex Freedman podcast.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description

and consider subscribing to this channel.

And now, dear friends, here's Jack Weatherford.

Jenghis Khan, born in approximately

became the conqueror of the largest contiguous empire in history.

But before that he was a boy named Teigjin

who at 9 years old lost everything

his father his tribe

living in poverty abandoned

to the harshness of the Mongolian

step from a boy with nothing to the conqueror of the world.

though tell me about this boy his childhood

and uh the Mongolian

step from which he came from

>> the story of Jenis

Khan like the story I think of all of us

it doesn't begin at birth it begins that's the beginning of life the story

begins long before birth

and sometimes it can be many generations

before and sometimes only shortly before

but I think with Jenga

Khan a crucial thing is to understand how his parents met

and then how he was conceived

and that is that

one day a cart was coming across the Mongol territory

and only women drove carts. Men rode horses.

Women also rode horses

but women owned the houses which were called gears, the tents.

They owned all the household

equipment and so they had to have carts for moving back and forth.

And the fact that a cart was moving

meant that some woman was moving from one place to another.

And in fact her husband was with her.

She was a new bride

and her husband uh was

on a horse close to her.

So what happened was

a man named Yasuk.

Yasuk the future father of Jenghaskhan.

Yasuk was up on a hill.

He was hunting with his falcon.

The words of the secret history of the Mongols were very clear.

And he looked down and he saw her and he could barely glimpse her.

He knew she was young

and she was a new bride.

And he rode back to camp.

He got his two brothers and they came racing down.

And they came and

first the husband of the woman

looked around 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 that it's more important for him to live.

And she told him when he came back, you must flee.

If you stay here, they will kill you and they will take me.

But if you flee,

they will take me, but you will have the chance to find another wife.

There are many women in the world.

You find one and you call her hulan

after my name and you remember me when you're with her.

Was a very dramatic moment.

And he rode away

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.

Uh he was divided

obviously in 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.

And when he was over the ridge and she could no longer see him,

she began to scream and whail.

And one of the brothers said to her,

"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."

And he was right.

And that was the moment

that Jenis Khan's mother and father met.

That's the beginning of his story in this kidnapping.

And it's going to reverberate.

every detail of it

will come back again and again

not only throughout the story of the life of Ching Han but it's going

to continue on with the feuds and the issues caused by it

all the way into the future

and to some extent in certain parts of the world you could say it still exists.

>> So the meeting is fundamentally

uh sort of 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 Wsworth wrote in his poem, you know, the child is father of

the man and it's the childhood that created him and it's that

episode that was before he was born.

But all the things that happened throughout his childhood

made him into the man that he became.

And so he was

now suddenly this unusual

situation was created where a child is going to be born to a kidnapped

woman who is being held by strange people.

The Mongols, they were not her people.

Uh and he already had another wife or husband.

He had a wife named Soigo.

He had at that time already one son.

Later he had another son with her.

It was a very odd situation.

And in fact the father

Yasuk wasn't even there

when Timujin was born.

He was off fighting the Tatars.

And during this campaign against the Tatars,

he killed two Tatars.

One of them was naming Timujin

U, which is sort of

person of iron is what it means from the Turk.

but today part of also Mongolian

So he came back,

he had a baby

and he decided to name him Timuin,

the person of iron or iron man we might call him >> after the man he killed.

>> After the man he killed.

So he has a kidnapped mother.

She's a second wife now.

Not a legal wife, but just a second kidnapped wife.

And he's named for

someone his father just killed.

It was not auspicious beginning.

And in fact, just

episode after episode in his childhood was inospicious.

The father and mother moved camp one time when he was quite young and

somehow they overlooked him and forgot him.

He was left behind.

So here's this young child.

We don't know what age but could have been around four or five I think.

He was left behind

and as it turned out

some other people the titute

found him and then they kept him for a while and eventually he was

reunited with his father

and mother 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

because then when he when

Timuin is 8 years old

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.

And so he's taking him off at age eight,

but he didn't take the other son from the other wife, Becker.

He was keeping him.

There was something about Timujin

having been lost once and found by the titute

and reunited with the family

and now his father takes him off

at age eight and he was going to take him to his to

Erlun's family but he never made it.

He stopped with another family.

It's sort of like the first family came across

and uh in the words of the secret history it's a

sort of like instant love that

there was fire in his eyes and fire in her eyes and he saw

this girl Bura who was about 9 years old a little older

and he wanted to stay there with that family

according to the story

and so the father left him there with that family

but on the way home

the father decided He saw a drinking party

and he decided to join them. They were Tatars.

He hid his identity on the step.

Everybody kind of figures out who everybody

is or 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 Tamujin is off living with another

and uh somebody comes from his family

a family not a relative but a close person named Mongluk

comes to get him take him

and they make it through the winter.

They make it through the winter.

Mother Erloom by now she has

four sons and one daughter.

I think the daughter had already been born or the daughter was going to

be born not too long after that.

But they make it through the

The spring comes and of course

the clan is going to move to a new camp.

They go to spring camp from winter camp

and they have a a ceremony

for the ancestors and they started the ceremony

but they did not tell Erlun.

And so she came and she was angry that she had been left out.

And the old women said,

"You're the one for whom we do not have to call.

We will feed you if you come, but we do not have

to take care of you."

Letting her know that as a cap as a captive

woman, she was not a real wife in their view.

And that was really the signal that when they moved camp,

they were not taking her with them.

And they packed up

and they took her animals.

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

and the banner after death contains the soul of the person s

it's called and so she raced around and they were a little bit nervous

and so they camped for one night

and they waited until

it was dark then they took off

and this time one of the friends of the family came running out to

try to stop them and they killed killed him and Tamujin cried.

He was a little boy, 8 years old.

There was nothing he could do.

He's just a little boy.

And now that family is left there

on the step, four children, possibly five already.

Such the other woman with two children.

They're all left there to die on the step.

When the winter comes,

they will surely all die.

How do they make it through the winter?

>> Mother Erlun, 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.

She fed them through the winter.

She found foods, digging up

whatever she could, finding whatever she could, everything she could.

And even at his young age, Tamutin

was already beginning to go out to collect things

to he could get fish.

He could do a few tasks to help feed the family.

It was an extremely

awful struggle at this point,

but she saved every one of the children.

So Timin's early years were marked by loneliness,

abandonment and uh struggle. >> Yes.

Even after this uh he was kidnapped

at one point by taichiude people.

He was and we would say

I think the correct word reinsslaved.

They put him into

a kank a yolk

like a like a ox would wear.

And so his two arms are in it and his head is in it

and he's trapped in this thing.

And every night he would be taken to a different gear to be guarded by that family.

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.

And Tamujin managed to take the canank, the wooden

yolk 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.

That was one of the first lessons for the Mongols,

that uh anything that moves is a weapon.

This is going to go on for generations.

Very important for the Mongols.

If it moves, it's a weapon. He did that.

He raced off in the night

and he jumped into the river to hide.

He's still got a can on him.

He's still trapped under there.

The people are looking for him.

They come out and they're 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

and uh he was right.

He went to that family

and at great risk to themselves.

They in fact were a captive family of the Taiote

and at great risk to themselves

they uh managed to saw

off the can and then burn it in their fire

and they gave him food

to escape and then he had to go find his family again.

So this is the kind of life

that this boy Tim Tamujin had.

>> So he just to be clear his the neck is trapped

and the hands are trapped.

>> We think that's how it is.

We just have the word.

They don't say the head and the hands.

We know that his body is trapped in it.

But from all evidence we have, it's the hands and the head.

>> And he's running around

deeply alone with this thing. >> Yes. Yes.

and then he has to go out and find wherever his family is.

So this in part was the foundation

of his breaking with Mongol tradition that kinship

is >> the most important thing above all else

because here is 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.

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.

>> You mentioned that uh

Jenis Khan's uh Timin

was marked by extreme tribal violence.

Can you describe sort of

the state of affairs in the step?

How much violence is there?

How much kidnapping is there?

>> The story of Timujin

is not a unique

story for that time.

Now, as an as an isolated

family of outcasts, of course, he's not participating

in the various feuds and the raids

of the people around them,

but they are constantly

raiding in the winter.

and for women and for horses and for any kind of valuables that they can find.

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. Mongols produce nothing.

They they could produce felt

to make their tents,

but they were not craftsmen.

And so they had to get these

items from somewhere and it was through raiding.

And so even in the genealogy

of Timuin, 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.

And all of these issues go back for a long time.

Later, Changan will realize once he becomes Ching Han, he will realize that the

true source of most of the feuding on the step is over women.

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

but what happened to him next in his life.

And this is one of the things you talk about this

in some ways the love

with his wife was

her kidnapping was the defining.

If you could point to one place

where Jenis Khan the conqueror

was created, 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 8 years old and she was

nine, she's now 17.

and she and her mother come.

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.

And suddenly here is the love of his life

who's going to be living with him, making him happy.

He has somebody who loves him.

It's not just his mother running around getting food and trying to feed the

five children and plus

the the other uh wife and her two children.

No, he has somebody who loves him.

And it's all the excitement that you can imagine with the fire in the

eyes and the excitement

and then it only lasts a few months.

And so there they are

and there's a lady visiting them.

We don't know exactly who she is, but just they called her grandmother Kawakin.

Granny Kauan is there and Granny Kauin

is sleeping of course on the floor of the gear

the tent and early in the morning she feels the vibrations

in the earth and she knows

that horsemen are coming.

She rouses the family

and mother Erlloon is in charge.

Mother Erlloon is still in charge even though Timujin is now married.

She puts all of her children on a horse

and she takes the baby girl Tamulin

in her own lap

and she has one extra horse.

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.

They know there's a girl there.

this family of outcasts has acquired a wife

and they know that they're coming for that.

And so she leaves Sigo, the other wife.

She leaves this old lady, Granny Kolakin,

who actually has her own cart.

And she leaves Bursta.

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.

But Mother Erlin is right.

She's able to get her children off to the mountain and to Bharat Haldun

to the mountain side 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.

So mother eroon saved her family

but at a cost

suddenly Timbuin realizes he has obeyed his mother

but he's lost the most important thing in his life

and I do think this is the defining

moment of his life

the story began back when his mother was kidnapped

but now the kidnapping

of his wife I think it's the def what will he do

what should he do?

What can he do?

Is he going to just

resign himself to it?

Is he going to go out look for another

And he decides that life is not worth living without Bura.

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.

>> And this is the early steps

of the military genius.

born because in order to get her back

an actual organization of troops. >> He needs allies.

>> He goes to a man who ruled a Karat

people in central Mongolia

kind of on the river about where the capital Ulamat is today.

He goes there because

that Van Han is the name or Toalhan.

He goes there because Wanghan

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

and actually he took a gift

that's because Basha's mother had brought a sable coat

as a gift for mother Erlun

at that time of the marriage.

So he took the coat

and he took it and he gave it as a gift

to Vanghan and asked for his help

and Van Han said yes

and he said I will send some troops but we need more

and you need to ask

Jamoka Jam Jamaka you need to ask him to come also.

He said I will send a message to him to get troops.

you have to tell the story of Jamaka

because uh the the story

of Jenghis Khan is one of people abandoning

him being disloyal and here is a person who's not of his kin

but uh becomes his

in a way brother

uh in a way loyal and as you've described

he's both the best thing to happened

to Jenghis Khan and one of the biggest challenges

in in in the later years to Jangaskhan.

So who was Jamaka?

>> Jamaka was a boy

about the same age as as Timujin

and his family had winter camp

close to where Mother Erlun

was living with her children.

And so the two boys met during the winter time.

In fact, they both claimed descent from the same uh woman about four generations

earlier or five, it's a little unclear.

She was urihongai woman who herself was kidnapped

and actually Jamaka was the descendant of her

from the fact that she was pregnant at the moment of kidnapping

and then Tamujin is descended

from her through the new kidnapper

Banchar his her ancestor.

So they're both through the as the Mongols would say from the same womb.

They come from the same uh origin.

However, their lives were similar in that 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.

Uh unlike Tamuzin with whole household

of siblings, 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 uh an influence on his life.

But the two boys meet.

So they come from different backgrounds and Jamoka is not as deprived by any

means as the life of Tamuzin

but he has a certain

emotional deprivation I think having not had mother father siblings and he lives with

these old old people

the two boys meet they become good friends playing on the ice

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

it's called being coming

and is more than a friend.

A friend is like ner

in the language and there are several different types of friendship

but and is a friendship

that's beyond a friendship.

It's something for life

and they swore that they would be there forever

to protect each other to help each other in every moment.

And they exchanged knucklebones.

So each one of them had the knucklebone

of a a robuck, a deer.

uh knucklebones are used in these games that they play, but it's also used

to forecast the future.

You can roll them around and and all.

And it's very strange on the ice.

I will say in the winter time in Mongolia,

it can be up to 50° below zero.

And it doesn't really matter at that point whether it's either Celsius or Fahrenheit

or what it is,

but you slide something across the ice and it's just absolutely

smooth like silk and it goes on for a long way.

And if you put your ear down to the ice,

you hear this celestial

sound that is unlike any sound on the earth.

It's just like the angels are singing under the ice.

So once they've sworn in this relationship of

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.

In fact, the the

text is very specific

that Jamaka took the horn, cut it off of a two-year-old

calf, and uh he whittleled it down, and then he drilled a hole into

it in order to make a whistling

arrow, 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 robot knuckles.

This time they exchang.

And so they had been close friends.

And Van Han said, "Okay, Jamoka

should raise some troops and go with you." And he did.

So the three set out some troops from Vanghan.

He himself did not go.

He was too old.

But he sent some troops

and then Jamoka and his troops and then

basically just Tamujin and his family.

He just had his brothers. That's all.

They set off to find the Murket people up the Selen

River which flows into Siberia

and on into Lake Ball.

They had to go through some extremely rough

And you see in this

episode though, is already

a little bit fierce

without necessarily thinking it through carefully.

Uh he s he gives this long speech about all the things they're going

to do to the merket people.

We're going to jump through the the tono the the

smoke hole in the top of the gear.

We're going to jump in there and we're going to kill them all.

We're going to kill the men and the women and the children.

we will destroy these people forever.

He has a extremely

militant rhetoric at least.

And he's also rather critical of the elder people.

Van Han's people came late and he gave them this long lecture about

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 then it so he's

dressing down his superiors.

is very aggressive but he's very helpful.

So these troops they move in on the merket camp.

They also come in at night

and so the there's a small amount of warning because some men are out

hunting sables the merket men and they race back to the camp and they

tell the people and the people are are

getting ready to get out as fast as possible.

So Bura has no idea who's coming.

She doesn't want to be kidnapped again. It's just somebody.

So she and uh

the grandmother go auction again and and so

they're loaded into a cart to go away.

So Timin comes in and there's a full moon that night so they could

see what they're doing.

And he's really searching for her.

He's not paying too much attention to the battle.

And he's calling for her.

And he she hears his voice.

She knows who it is.

She jumps off the cart

and she runs to him

and they reunited and he grabs her, embraces

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

>> And that was his first full-on military engagement. >> Yes.

Aside from the things Yes.

His first full-on military engagement.

Now um along the way in addition to escaping all these horrors

he had killed his older half brother

>> and that too was a deeply formative experience.

So what what was that about?

Can you explain in in Mongol society

the role of the the older brother

and the power struggle there

and you know not to moralize but there's also

>> uh you know the the ethical

foundation behind the murder

>> the killing of Becker

that's one of the things that's totally unknown outside of the secret history of

the Mongols none of the Persian chronicles

none of the Chinese chronicles

none of them knew about this until the

secret history was uh deciphered and translated.

But Bectar was the older child of Sigle

and Esant the older brother has complete authority

over the younger siblings in Mongolian society.

They have to refer to him with a special pronoun

all the time ta

and he refers to them as chi.

It's like a formality

and and his word goes

he is the father in the absence of the father.

But also it's quite common

that if a man dies

and his brothers he has no brothers or his brothers

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 Beexter

eventually when he passed through puberty

would then perhaps marry Mother Erlun.

I don't know that that happened

but I think either it did

or Timujin was trying to prevent it because it was bad enough that he

was the older brother but he comes the older brother and a stepfather.

I think Timojin just couldn't handle that

and he was already

bear was ordering him around.

So he would take things like a fish or bird

that uh Timujin had caught and that's perfectly

acceptable in the the Mongol

>> So Timujin would catch a fish

and Bector would take the fish. >> Yes.

It's only recorded once but perhaps happened several times.

>> So that's an okay thing to do for an older brother. Just take stuff.

Yes, he can do anything he wants just about with his younger siblings. That's Yeah.

And but Timujin is not going to stand for it.

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.

And uh the boys had actually taken the sewing needles from their mother.

They were using them for fishing.

And I think it was more complicated than that.

But for whatever reason, he and his next brother,

Hasser, decided to kill him, and they did.

>> Why to you is it more complicated than that?

It feels to me like stealing of a fish

is like the final straw.

Here he's being abused.

>> Over and over and over.

And the fish is a symbol of that.

>> And so here he takes

matters into his own hands.

>> I think it is the symbol of that.

And it can be the thing that pushes him over. >> Yeah.

the edge, but it's all these other tensions of what's going on with the

family because they shoot him with arrows, they kill him, but what happens

afterwards is also interesting

for the dynamics of what was going on before because

we hear nothing from Sigo.

She and her younger

son, Belgatai, they stay with the family.

They don't go away.

But the one who is outraged

is mother Erlun, his mother.

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

and you know you are worse than than

everything that she could name

they could be worse than

she was outraged and went on and on and on about it.

So she was obviously

extremely distressed about it.

Whereas Sigle, the mother of the boy,

she may have been distressed, I don't know, but nothing has shown up in the record.

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 emotionally

deeply meaningful for The brother was gone.

The problem was solved.

mother is extremely ticked off at him.

But >> 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.

>> Yes, he is capable of doing anything that needs to be done

to resolve what he sees as a problem.

Bea was a problem. He resolved it.

at a very young age.

So he'd had that experience behind him.

But now his bear's younger brother Belgati

is on the raid with him and with Jamoka

when they go to Captain Bura back.

So uh he has both loyalty and Belgati

stays loyal to him his entire life. His entire life.

Uh it was very interesting.

So ek if we return to bursta

is it normal to have such

a love story across many years when you're separated

and sort of having that kind of loyalty

because it was two-way loyalty

from bersa to to Timigjin

and Timigan to >> and this is like uh before he was Jenis

>> 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.

But for whatever reason,

she came and it could be that

her family liked him in some way

or that she remembered him or that she had no other suitors

because 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 >> he went to literal

war to get her back. >> He risked everything.

He was willing to die.

He was willing to kill.

He was willing to die

in order to get her back.

And he got her back.

And now he's reestablished

his relationship with Jamoka.

And so they decide

to stay together and they all go off to the Horon

Valley she is pregnant.

This becomes a huge issue forever.

It's one of those things that to this day almost it's 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

murket bastard, he defends his wife viciously.

He to his own sons.

He says, "You were not there.

You do not know who loved who and who did not.

You did not see the sky turning around.

You did not see the stars falling.

You did not see the earth turn over.

You don't know what was happening.

And if I say he is my son, he is my son.

Who are you to say otherwise?

You were not there.

You come from the same warm womb.

And if your mother could hear your words,

her warm womb womb would turn to cold stone.

So he defended her forever.

But he's off now.

We go back to the beginning.

She's They're in the Hanukak Valley.

and he and Jamak

decide to renew their vows of being under to each other.

So this time it's more serious

and it uh ceremony

in front of the whole

uh we can't say tribe.

It's not big enough yet for a tribe

but but the whole clan that's there.

And then Jamaka takes off a gold belt which actually he'd stolen from the

market at some point.

Where on earth they had a go got a gold belt? I don't know.

But he took off a gold belt

and he put it on Tamuin.

And then Tamuin gave him

a mayor who had never

uh had a fold, had never given birth.

And it was unusual

mayor who had a little growth on the front of her head which they called a horn.

So it was a unusual gift and I don't

it has meaning but I don't know all the meanings behind it.

You know, it's sort of odd to me.

But uh the golden belt you can kind of sort of

think about in different ways.

But the gold the belt the belt for the Mongol man is really the sign of manhood.

And in fact this uh belt

a woman was often

then and even now called

person without a belt

because that's how they were at that time.

Today women wear belts of course but they still use the word busqu with no belt.

So it's a very important symbol of manhood.

So he gave that tamujin

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

and then when the baby was born

Tim Tuja named the baby

which means visitor and

some people say well it's because

the child was really the market child

other people say know it's because he was a visitor on the territory

of Jamok at that time

and other people can say well but Jamaka's

ancestor who had been born from the kidnapped

woman who was pregnant

that they had named that uh Jaredai

which meant foreigner so it's kind of like a parallel the visitor

the foreigner and so Jamoka's

clan was took the name from him they were called Jaran

Jaran and so there all these

things that sometimes we can't quite understand

because we don't have the total mentality

of that time and we don't we're not there.

>> But we should say that

I mean it's a pretty powerful part of this love story

is that he the child is likely not his

and he accepted that child as his own without

and defended it as it becomes much more important later.

>> As his first >> uh child. >> Yes.

He defends this child through his entire life.

And um but not long after the birth,

he and Jamoka break apart

or really it's Timujin

breaks apart at the urging of uh

she said he lords it over you too much.

Uh he orders you around too much.

You need to be free.

We need to break away.

and she urged him and he loved his wife more than anything.

I think that in a certain way the most important

other character in his life,

adult life would be the and

relationship which gets up being severely

tested in the future years.

But they run away through the night.

They go all night long to escape from him.

But uh he obviously

loved birth the most and

took the baby of course with him as well.

So here is this breaking point of the una.

How did that relationship evolve?

>> The two of them

never claimed to break it.

They had just separated.

And now we have the Banghan,

this the most powerful ruler on the step who's ruling out of central

Mongolia of the Kerat people.

And so Tamaka remains

loyal to him, but at first so does Tamujin.

They're both loyal to him, but they're fighting in different kinds of campaigns, you know.

So, for a while,

they're not fighting each other.

But eventually, some things happened that separate Tamujin.

Timujin was making all of these great victories for Van Han.

And he was even got the title Vong, which means

from from Chinese meaning

uh prince or king.

uh he Avanghan received that from the Jin dynasty

because of all of these conquests

against the Tatar people.

So Timuin was rising up and then he wanted his son to marry the

daughter of Van Han

and Van Han said no

his own son sing his

told the father no no no no we don't marry those low people they're Mongols

they're not like us you know we are carry out people

they we're not going to marry them

and so then now

war you could say breaks out or feud really it's more of a feud

And Himojin flee has to flee far away

into the east to a place called Baljuna.

And he goes to Baljuna.

And at this time then

Jamaka is going to fight

on behalf of his lord Bong Han.

The two of them do not meet in combat.

But now their forces are fighting each

>> And they didn't see that.

I mean there's an obvious tension there.

There's an obvious, if slight

breaking of loyalty, right? >> Yes.

It's hard to know what's going through their mind at that point.

We only have it later on

when the the 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.

And in fact, then

Timujin eventually defeats Van Han.

So he takes over central Mongolia.

He's starting to really rise up now.

And he has the title from his own people of

They give him that at uh

um Blackheart Mountain by the Blue Lake.

It's a very beautiful special place.

But he takes that title.

That's not a title that anyone had ever held that we know of. Ching Han.

It was a new title that he

just uh thought up or somebody thought up or somebody thought it had auspicious meaning behind it.

It's very close to the word tangis which means the sea.

Uh it could have had something to do with that.

Uh Mongolians really like we might say puns of they like words with multiple

meanings and that's very important to them.

The more meanings a word has

the more power that word has.

So it has different meaning in different languages.

So in the Mongolian it sounds like strong

chin chingis but in

Turk and there are many Turkish people including the market themselves are mostly Turk people.

Uh it sounds like uh the C thingis thing.

>> So it's exciting to them

when there's this double meaning.

>> And the the the

double meaning plays with each other and that excites them >> especially with names. >> Yeah.

I'm like today in Mongolia

or 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

>> in Mongolia so it's the power of three great

languages and three great civiliz

and so many names are like that

and so I think chingis

it doesn't have one meaning I think it means powerful

it means the sea I think it means many different things

but so he had become a Khan

and he was ruling over him.

And so Jamaka now switched loyalties

to the next kingdom over called the Nimon

people who are farther west

and um he becomes the

the protetéé could say of the Nimon people.

But when Jigaskhan attacks the Nimon,

Jamoka deserts the Nimon.

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

uh Tayang Han, the leader of the Nims,

he was rightfully scared about them

and he was left there

and he in fact was very quickly also defeated.

So Tamaka has not fought against

Timujin in this campaign.

and he's off with some of his people, Jadakan clan people.

He's off with them

they see the turning of the tide,

you know, and but he now wants to become the great Khan of the step.

He has very follow very few followers.

But he takes the title Gurhan,

which is a very old ancient important title.

But but because uh

Banghan is gone, Toglhan

gone that he can take this title and pretend to be the great Khan

of the step and all.

But his own people

turn against him and they capture him

and they think they will take him to Chingaskhan. It's not Chingaskhan.

They'll take him and they will be rewarded

perhaps for turning him in.

And Chingaskhan doesn't reward them immediately.

He kills them all

because they have betrayed

their leader who is his

and it's a very

strange encounter and so

supposedly Chenas Han says to him

come back to me

save me be beside me protect me be my shadow

be my safety guard in life

and supposedly Jamuka says,

"But I did betray you

when my people fought against you

and you will always know that

and you will never completely trust me.

I will be 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.

And I will be the guard.

I will be the protector for you and your people

So they obviously Tamuin

did not participate in the killing,

but he ordered the killing.

And uh he was

either 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.

The blood contains part of the soul and if you lose it, you're losing

your soul before you die.

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.

There a couple other methods

but I think that's probably the method by which Jamaka

was killed and so he was killed

and then Tamujin had or Chigasan

had his remains taken up and buried in a high place.

This is over near Tuva

which is today part of Russia

but until the 20th century was a part of Mongolia.

The Tuven people very very close culturally to the Mongols.

It seems that both of them

under the under relationship

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 Jamaica

perspective right >> he had become very practical at this

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

of Jamaka and when Changan

was asking him to come back and to to be his uh shadow and

to be his uh

safety guard Maybe that was just a formality

that he knew would be rejected.

Or maybe when Jamoka

offered to be killed

without shedding the blood, that was a formality

that he thought would not be followed through.

>> Nevertheless, uh to me, just reading your work and understanding the history,

this relationship seems like a really really important

relationships that defines the nature of loyalty. >> Yes.

And for for Jingus,

>> I would say in both negative

and positive ways, it was the most important relationship

of his adulthood aside from Bura.

But that relationship really did not seem to have many negative aspects.

They sometimes disagreed on things, but small things.

Uh so she was po 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.

And Chamaka, it was just a little too hotheaded

for me, you know, I mean, in my evaluation

of of him that

uh these things like, oh, we're going to drop down on the market and

we're going to come through the

smoke hole, kill everybody, and all.

And he had a flare for the dramatic even in a way giving the

gold belt to Timujin.

But Jamaka also he explained himself at the end of life

and he said you know

we both lost our father

but I also lost my mother

and you had a strong mother to raise you. I did not.

And he said you had bursta.

You have a very strong wife to help you.

And my wife he just used a word like prdler.

Like she just sort of complains and paddles along.

and we did not have a relationship.

I think something about that rings true

that there 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 for warfare

that uh Tamujin had. >> Yeah.

There's in that relationship there's a contrast because Jenghis

Khan did not accumulate

riches or uh accumulate

power in a way that was for the sake of the riches or for

the sake of the power.

It was always very practical in

>> what is the way to maximize

the success of this operation. >> Yes.

He I often wonder what happened to the gold belt.

it disappeared from the story

you know and a gold belt doesn't just disappear

you know what happened to that it's so

interesting because Tamua was never interested in material

goods and when as Jingaskhan

is 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 dress the way my soldiers dress.

I live the way my soldiers live.

We are the same.

So he had no interest in the wealth and

he had sided before with Vanghan

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 Jenghaskhan's continued rise.

That is one of the powerful things about

the Jenghis Khan story is he came from

>> 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 a way.

He was never greedy.

He was never inquisitive.

He kept the simple life.

And uh 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 a 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 at the simplest gravestone. Nothing. 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.

Like the moment somebody builds a statue of you,

it's like a slippery slope

towards becoming not seeing the world clearly,

not seeing uh surrounding

yourself with sick of hands that don't tell you the right the the information.

not being able to select

the right people to lead the armies

or to to lead the territories that you conquer.

So it's interesting that he had that foresight

of don't record, don't worship.

>> that's because that's a dangerous

road to go down for a leader.

>> And it's very hard to explain how he

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.

And in fact, no portrait was painted until 1278.

Well, by then he' already been dead for 51 years.

And then no statue the 21st century. >> Just incredible.

But let's uh let's go to the

document that you referenced several times, the secret history.

>> The secret history is a very unusual

document and and I happen to love it very much.

But I said, you know, Chinghan

allowed nothing to be written about him in his lifetime.

People couldn't take notes.

Even the army was not he

Jenask Khan ordered the invention of the alphabet for the Mongol people.

And it was adapted from the Weaguer people.

And uh so to this day, it's often called the Ukrish

alphabet, the Weager alphabet.

So he had ordered that and he'd ordered his children to learn to read and write. And some did.

I think most did not, but some did.

But one of the things he did with every campaign,

even the one at the murket when he

uh rescued Berta, was

he always adopted one

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

full of boys of

different tribes but they all became very high ranking members of the government

and one was a tatar 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 Chingis Khan of course

and so when Chinghan

died he recognized it was important not just to write down the law that's

all Chinghan allowed to be written in blue books only the law

nothing about him or campaigns

or military anything but

uh Shigi Hutuk was his name and Shiki Hutuk

realized that this was going to be lost that this is a great historic

thing that has happened

so he compiled the work part of it.

He I don't know other people contributed

helped him but it's still a little bit unclear.

Uh the Mongols they don't specify that's 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.

Uh and we also know it's the year of the mouse.

So it was 1228.

Chinghan had died in 27.

So he wrote down

it begins with what we would say are the

uh the myths although I'm not sure they're myths but the origins of the

myths it begins with the marriage of gray blue wolf

with a tawny deer

then some people say well that's some kind of myth it's toemic

and mongos they look at me I asked them about this they said

he was named blue grey wolf

she was named Tony deer

they married you know

very practical ical about it and they think they're real people.

Maybe they were or not. I don't know.

But so this earlier

history is just the genealogy

as it should be. Who knows?

But it's also in there because like Bodenar,

they call him Bodenar

the fool, the ancestor of Timujin.

He's cast out because he's just so dumb.

The rest of the family doesn't want him.

His father is undetermined who he was.

He kidnaps Hanghai woman.

She has the child who becomes ancestor.

So it's a confusing

mess, but I I tend to think it's probably accurate.

It has a lot of good information.

And by the time you get to the life of Timujin,

the reason we know these intimate things is because that person

Shiki Hut, he was there

sleeping in the same gear with the people.

So we even see in there, he will record instances

where Bura sits up in bed

and tells her husband,

"Okay, you got to do this, you got to 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 sing as Han'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

uh 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

So it was in this code

that had been used to record the information in

>> So they were recording the sounds. the sounds. Correct.

They use 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 uh it was a very unusual

document and then once they found it they they realized that some of the

Persian documents had incorporated

part of that already.

So that was very helpful to me because some of the Persians I trust

very much and I like their work very much

and so it was helpful that it already existed and all of it some

of it existed in

Mongolian 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

and like sometimes for Timuchin

they call him Chingas Han well he wasn't the Han then

and sometimes they call him Han which is like chief and other times Han

which is emperor well in Mongolia it's a big difference

you know so there little things like this that

move around that you're not sure why but it's a document

that I have great faith in it was not published in English until 1982

but Francis Woodman Cleaves at Harvard University

translated it in 50s

it was ready for publication

and he was having trouble with the publisher

and so it didn't appear for nearly 30 years.

It was supposed to be two volumes.

The first volume is the translation.

The second volume was going to be the

uh notes and the second volume was lost.

To this day it hasn't been found.

I would love to see that.

But uh anyway it now it's in all languages just about in the world. >> Can you clarify?

So there's two volumes.

The 19th century Chinese manuscript

covers the first volume.

>> Uh yes, that was translated

and then published by Harvard University.

But the notes were just the notes from

the scholar Francis Woodman Cleaves.

Those were his notes, not Mongolian notes.

There are Chinese notes that went with it because the Chinese

had trouble understanding a lot of things in it.

And they also they disapproved of some things.

So they would try to put their own notes in the margins

to kind of correct the story and explain away

why the Mongols women

would be often marrying their stepson.

It just did not

match with confusion ethics, you know.

So there's several things like that that they try to skip around.

But so it's interesting just to read the

Ming dynasty notes that are attached to it.

But the document itself

mongalo it's just so important and for me it was the guiding document.

I didn't want to be guided by anything else first.

Everything else I would check to correlate and fill in blanks and give more information.

But I went to Mongolia

to travel around to those places

because they are so exact in there

and to feel it.

And it's so important

I think because you know 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 Bura.

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 bursts 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's it was the winter."

I said, 'Oh, where did you read that?

Said, 'N no, Granny Quaxton

was on the ground and she could feel the vibrations.

She said, 'Look, this is summertime now.

You're not going to 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 that also correlates with the time that raiding was done.

So it correlates with other historic factors.

But then that gave me the the time basis for figuring out a lot of other things.

History lives in the people.

>> Just to linger on that point,

you visited different places

that were important to the story of Changdis Khan.

>> What did it feel like?

What are some memorable

things about just the experience of standing there?

I really set out mostly to visit the cities he had conquered across Central Asia and all.

And there was so little to learn.

I mean, everything was kind of known of whatever the chronicers had recorded.

The archaeologists had found whatever they had found.

And I get there and he hadn't spent much time there.

He didn't identify with it.

I wasn't feeling anything.

But in Mongolia, I would go to these places

and I would know if Chingas Han came back today, he would know exactly where he is.

There's no road, there's no sign, there's no building,

there's no power line going to nothing.

And just to smell the air,

to feel it, to see the animals and to see what what kind of

animals live here, what kind of plants are growing here,

you begin to get a a feeling for how he was thinking.

And then you begin to see ah

I know which direction they came from.

The only direction they could come from was that way.

You 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.

The Mongols all understand their way of life.

They don't need to explain anything.

They know which way the gear faces with the sun.

They know all these things.

But for me that's how I learned it.

It was from being with the people.

It was the most important thing.

And this was in starting in the 1990s.

And the people they were

at this time they were amazed

that I would come.

The Soviet era had just ended.

Socialism had was just ending. Democracy was starting.

And Chingghaskhan had been forbidden to them

for almost the entire century.

And every known descendant of Chingghas Han was killed in Mongolia.

Following the secret history

that became the key to

writing what I wrote.

Take the history which is difficult to understand.

you have to go over and it didn't

I often never understand

different parts or or I change my mind

and think it was yes now it's no

and and but the secret history is a valuable document

and to me also

it's the opening document of Mongolian

written language and I think it's very important

how do people begin

their written language >> and they begin it

with the words from highest

heaven came the destiny

of the blue wolf

who was married to the Tony deer

and their descendants who came from the great sea to live at the base

of Mount Bhan Haldun.

and then integrating the

the spiritual elements of nature, the mountains and the great sea and

this kind of just like a deep connection to nature

that they >> Mongolia is a world

that for the most part is the same as when Chinghan was there.

We cannot say that for hardly any other place in the world.

Uh I mean certainly not for America

but just a few hundred years ago

it was entirely different people, languages, everything.

But you can't say it for for London or Moscow or or Constantin Istanbul, Constantinople.

All of these things have changed so much.

But Mongolia is still Mongolia.

It's one of the largest countries in the world in in space

with the fewest number of people about today 3.3

million and they're spread out

and they live in their environment in such an intimate way.

This was important for learning

about Chingghis Khan, how he thought, how he hunted, how he strategized for war.

You learn that from the people today because they are still there.

They're still >> What's the

open Mongolian step like?

As we return to the feeling

of Timin and Jenghis

Khan, what's it like looking at this place that has not changed since his time?

The first thing I think about this step is that you can see forever in every direction.

There's no building, nothing to stop your line of view.

And it's like being in the ocean in many ways.

So you have this extremely

open space and the wind is usually blowing through it, but it's extremely fresh.

It's coming out of Siberia.

It's coming out of the Arctic.

It sweeps down across Mongolia.

Cold is a thickening sometimes but it's always fresh. Always fresh.

So you have the wind coming in.

You have the smell of the wind but also then there's grass.

The smell of grass becomes very important.

Now because of the

particular location from one year to another one area may have grass one year

and and then drought the next year another area has grass.

So you don't always know if it's not grass it's dust.

you have dust growing in.

The dust doesn't smell so good.

It doesn't feel so good.

Uh but that's just one more part of the

The waters are mostly pure.

Now, unfortunately, there has been

pollution in in this century from mining in several areas.

Even when I was there

uh even today when we go to some place like the sailing

river where we talk about the market lift

so it's a place of pure waters

and that's how Mongolians

define their world is by the water

they don't does not give lands

to his sons to rule

he gives waters and people

to rule they do not refer to the earth as land they refer to

the earth as dal

ocean the sea and so water is very important

and to learn the rules about water

you don't camp by water

if you camp by water your animals and you are going to be polluting

it messing it up so they're back maybe

in our modern terms about a kilometer back

you take the animals to the river

to drink and then you take them away

you do not bathe in that river

you take the water away from the river

and you bathe away from the river so you do not pollute the river.

The rules are very strict and very clear and they're from the time of

Chingghaskhan about how to deal with

also it's dangerous to live close to the river because there are flash floods in the summertime.

You could suddenly have it and it could wipe away

if your camp is right there by the water.

So the people they live with nature in a way that I don't see

anywhere else in the world.

And even today with the changes with the cell phone

and with solar panels and they could get TV out in the middle of

the step, still they're living a similar life.

The young people of course want to

drive a motorbike, but they're still hurting cows and yaks and camels.

If it's on a motorbike,

okay, they're still doing it the Mongol way.

But then if we

go to the time

of Timigjin of Jenghis Khan

another component is the horses.

Can we talk about their relationship with the horse

thinking about this open step