History of Karakorum

Genghis Khan was born around 1167 under the name of Temüdschin. We know most about his childhood and youth from the Secret History of the Mongols, an epic that was probably written around 1240. According to this, Temüdschin was born the son of a Mongolian nobleman in the region of the Onon and Cherlen rivers in the north of present-day Mongolia, in what is now the Chentij Aimag. While he was still a child, his father was poisoned during a feud, and the family was abandoned by his followers. Nearly destitute, his widowed mother struggled to keep the family alive. Temüjin also had to flee his enemies, was captured and enslaved, but managed to escape and take refuge on the holy mountain of Burchan Chaldun. As a young man, he gathered a loyal following and, through skilful diplomacy, won allies among the Mongolian tribes. A period of fighting and shifting alliances between the various Mongol groups followed. In 1205, Temüjin emerged victorious from these conflicts and the following year he was proclaimed ruler of all the Mongols by the assembly of Mongol nobles, the Quriltai, and given the title ‘Genghis Khan’.

Genghis Khan immediately began to build a military state apparatus based on the decimal system: his trusted generals were each given command of ten thousand warriors. These ten thousand troops were in turn divided into thousands, hundreds and tens. Strict loyalty was expected of their leaders. Backed by the military might of the united Mongol tribes, Genghis Khan began military campaigns to expand his territory. He conquered the Kyrgyz tribe and the western Mongolian Oirad. In 1209, the Uighurs submitted to his rule without a fight. With the Uighurs, he gained important experts with knowledge of administration and their own written language, who were crucial to the development of his empire. Once a nomadic people with a large empire and their own capital in the Orkhon Valley, the Uighurs had settled in the Turfan region of north-western China. They had already adopted the Sogdian script in the early Middle Ages and cultivated a rich written culture. They became indispensable advisers and teachers to the Mongols in the establishment of a state administration. It was also a Uighur who, on the orders of Genghis Khan, adapted the Uighur script for Mongolian, paving the way for a separate Mongolian written language. The resulting Mongolian alphabet

In the following years, the Tangut Empire was subjugated and the Jin Dynasty Empire in northern China was attacked. In 1218, when the Shah of Khorezmia had a Mongolian trading legation in Otrar looted and murdered, Genghis Khan set out on a campaign of revenge in Central Asia. This led to the subjugation of the Kara-Kitai, the conquest of the important trading centres of Otrar, Samarkand and Bukhara, and ultimately to the death of the Shah and the destruction of his empire. During the campaign in Central Asia, Mongol contingents advanced into the Caucasus and Crimea for the first time, where they destroyed a united contingent of Russian princes and Kipchaks at the Battle of Kalka in 1223. It was from this encounter that the first disturbing news and rumours of the approaching Mongols spread to Western Europe. Parallel to the Central Asian campaign, the conflicts in northern China continued. The already subjugated Tanguts refused to follow the Mongols. This prompted Genghis Khan to launch another punitive expedition, which ended with the destruction of the Tangut Empire and the death of its ruler. This was also the last campaign of the Mongol ruler, who died in 1227 as a result of a hunting accident. By the time of his death, he had laid the foundations for the largest contiguous empire the world had ever seen.