Kind: captions
Language: en
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
1162,
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
language.
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
family
and uh 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.
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
winter.
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
kidnapped
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
>> yes
>> 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
childhood
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
mother
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
story
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
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
wife?
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
requires
an actual organization of troops.
>> He needs allies.
>> 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
historic
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
territory.
And you see in this episode though,
Jamaka
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
that.
>> 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
Beh
>> 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.
Now
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
hierarchy.
>> 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.
>> Yes.
>> 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
Timujin.
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
burst
>> and this is like uh before he was Jenis
Khan
>> 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
that
>> 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
and
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
pregnant.
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.
>> Yes.
>> 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
other.
>> 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
Chingghaskhan.
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.
>> Yes.
>> 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
and
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
forever."
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
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 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
again.
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.
So
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.
>> 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
nothing.
>> 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
>> yes
>> 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.
>> Yes,
>> 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
until
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
orphan
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
what
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
Mongolian.
So it was in this code that had been
used to record the information in
Chinese.
>> 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?
>> Yes.
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
Derees,
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
have.
>> 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
living.
>> 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
country.
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 uh from a
young age they've been all Mongols are
trained uh to master
riding horses as you write while
standing on the horse. So they learned
how to ride while standing on the horse
from a young age. While standing on the
horse, they often jousted with one
another to see who could knock the other
off. When their legs grew long enough to
reach the stirrups,
they were also taught to shoot arrows
and to lasso on horseback, making
targets out of leather pouches that they
would dangle from poles so they would
blow in the wind. The youngsters
practice hitting the targets from
horseback at varying distances and
speeds. The skills of such play proved
invaluable to horsemanships later in
life. Can you speak to the relationship
of Jangghaskhan and the Mongols to
horses?
The Mongol and the horse are
inseparable.
I wrote one line in in the book that the
editor removed because that was
insulting. I said the Mongol and the
horse, they live together. They know
each other with every twitch of the
muscle and they smell the same. Well, I
was saying it just not to be insulting
about anything, but they have that deep
intimacy and the horses do know their
owner from the smell. This is very
important. It's also important for
Chinghan because they made the the flags
what they call the sult out of the horse
hair from their own horses. And so in
battle they used it for a very practical
purpose and that is the horses would
return to their source because they knew
the smell of their flag. It was other
members of their own herd. So the
language itself I have never ever
mastered all the words just for the
colors of horses much less for all the
other things about it. I can remember
Mongolians being out there in the
countryside. And they say, "Oh, I want
to learn English." I say, "Okay, yeah,
that's nice." Um, you teach me some
words in Mongolia. I teach you the
words. Okay. Say, "What color is that
horse?" I say, "Brown." They would say,
"Brown." I say, "Yes." Okay. What color
is that horse? Brown.
Then they But you said this color was
brown. What color is this?
>> Yeah.
>> So, I mean, I I I
just amazing. I mean they have words
based on sort of how smooth the coloring
is and the the variation in the texture
and all the different today in English
sometimes you can put them together we
say like yellow brown or brown brown or
you know but the words for horses by of
course by sex and then they have three
because they have gildings so they're
very important too and by age and by
whether or not they've reproduced in the
case of the females. All these things
are important parts of the horse. And
the horse a few years ago the a
presidential candidate ran under the
slogan raised in the dust of many fast
horses.
It just resonates with the Mongolian
spirit and the dust itself is important.
The Mongolians, they will wipe the sweat
and the dust off the horse and wipe it
onto their own forehead, which is the
most sacred part of the body where the
soul resides. This is how intimate the
relationship is with the horses. And
they're hard on them in some ways. They
train them very well. They ride them
very hard. But the horses are also
trained for that. They use a very small
crop that's it's a little bit like a
stick with a slight whip at the end and
they hit the rump of the horse. Never
anything else. They're horrified at
Western people who use metal spurs and
uh metal
to harm the horse in the stomach and to
harm the head of a horse. They say it's
a capital crime. I mean, I I don't know
anyone who's ever executed for it, but
you never ever harm a horse's head. So
the horses are
important in every way, even religiously
important with the making of the
fermented horses milk that the mother
goes out every morning and she throws
some to each of the four directions to
start the day and they use it for every
kind of thing that but you know some
things puzzled me that in my watching I
remember one day being with a very nice
family. It happened to be on a gilding
day when they were out there gilding the
wouldbe stallions who don't get to be
stallions. But uh then one of the this
family they had a bunch of boys and I
think about like one or two girls were
like four or five boys. And one boy was
maybe 11 years old. He fell from the
horse. You could see it not so far away.
He fell from the horse and he didn't get
up. No one moved. In fact, they all kind
of turned attention away. And I thought,
what am I supposed to say? This boy fell
down. Somebody go get him. No.
And then the boy was trying to hobble
back. He still had the range to his
horse. He was but he couldn't remount
and he was trying to hobble back. So his
little brother went out to help him come
in. And they came into the gear and they
sat down. The mother just turned her
back. And I'm thinking, how on earth can
you do this? This is a child. This is
your child, you know.
But two weeks later by chance
another boy who is practicing for Nadam
the annual races like this boy had been
doing he was off in an area right close
to the forested mountain area and the
horse bolted took off through the woods.
He was knocked off by a tree and then
the horse went deeper into the woods.
The boy followed him. The boy became
lost. The boy was 12 years old. He was
lost for two weeks and he lived. I would
have died in 48 hours. He lived. He
said, "Well, he slept in the daytime
when it was warm. He walked at night
when it was cold, even though this was a
summertime. The nights can be quite
cold, especially on a mountain." And he
sang loudly all night long to keep the
wolves away. And he knew what to eat.
And then he walked until he found water
moving. And then he would follow that
water down to the neck. He lived. And I
realized the boy falls on the horse, his
mother's not going to be there.
She knows that. And it's probably hard
for her too to see her boy suffer, but
she knows.
Just a small tangent. Uh there's a
wrestler named Carrie Colette and he
tells the story
about mental toughness that
the first time he saw truly mentally
tough people was when he visited uh
Mongolia for a wrestling tournament and
he remembered that they were taking
showers in ice cold water and you know
all the other wrestlers they would take
the shower and the when the water hits
them you could see a little grimace.
With the with the Mongols, there was
just no it was emotionless. Sort of like
uh ice cold water or any other kind of
hardship.
>> Yes.
>> It you build a hardness to that
>> and I suppose that falling from the
horse is just an example of that.
There's a mental hardness and a mental
toughness.
>> You have to be able to to take care of
yourself. And with the weather, for
example, the often in in that time is
still today, some people, if they can
have the privacy to do it, they the men
will strip naked in the first heavy snow
and roll around in the snow in order to
prepare for the coming winter.
And I and the valley where I live, the
rest a lot of wrestlers come there to
train in the summertime for the
competition. And and the water's very
cold coming down from the mountain. And
every day when there's a break, they go
down, they take again, they do not get
in the water, never, but they take the
water and they pour the cold water over
themselves. And yes, that's refreshing
to them. Refreshing.
>> Well, then uh getting back to the
horses, the value they had for the
horses and the horse riding skill they
developed throughout their life created
one of the most unstoppable military
forces in history. So, if we just talk
about the mounted archery that they've
employed in war,
>> um the Mongols were able to do targeted
shooting accurately at 200 m or more
while riding fast, you know, uh up to
speeds of 60 km an hour, I read. So, uh,
there's a lot to say like, you know, you
you have to time and just watching some
of the videos, it's just incredible how
stable you could be on top of a horse.
And I guess you're supposed to be
shooting at a moment of the gallop when
all four of the feet of the horse are
off off the ground. And you have to time
all of that. You have to position your
body to maintain balance. And then
there's the skill of the actual holding
and shooting the bow accurately. And
there's obviously the technology of the
bow, the composite bow, the recurve bow.
They've also I read used crossbows
later. They've adapted the technology.
And there's a particular kind of thumb
draw that you use for shooting with the
composite bow that works for a horse cuz
the thing is bouncing up and down,
right? So you have to like not drop the
arrow. It's just incredible to be able
to shoot while the horse is going 60 km
an hour. Anyway, can you speak to this
kind of exceptional excellence that the
Jenghaskhan and the Mongols had for uh
riding horses and uh engaging in war uh
off of the horse?
>> The Mongol, the horse and the bow were a
perfect combination and it was the most
lethal weapon known to the world before
the modern era. It was incredible the
synchronization and the timing of the
movements and also the years of skill.
The fact that from absolute birth the
Mongols would be on a horse and by 3
years old they would probably be riding
alone on the horse. Now when I first
went to Mongolia in the 1990s at that
time
all jockeyies on horses for races had to
be under six years old.
That was the age limit. The cut off was
six years old at that time. And so you
had some as three years old racing out
there. It's absolutely incredible. And
of course that's at that age they can't
even have a saddle because they can't
even be used. So they're just all
they're doing is staying on the horse.
The horse has been trained to do what it
has to do and they just stay on it. But
by staying on it, they they learn the
horse. They become one. And not just one
horse with one rider, but one rider with
several horses. They usually five is the
number that you should have uh for you
when you go off to battle. And this
ability then is shoot. You have to
defend your animals. There are wolves
around, fox, other things. And in some
areas there were even tigers and uh uh
other animals that would come in and you
had to be able to shoot to defend it
against other people who might be
raiding you. So they became excellent
archers. They had composite bows that
were very powerful, much more powerful
than those of most sedentary people.
Now, I say all that because it's very
important, but those are all sort of
nomadic traits of the great step.
Anyway, I mean, in an earlier version,
you had the Huns who came out of
Mongolia and Hun is just the Mongolian
word for human. Hun, that's to this day,
that's what they say for human being. So
they came out of Mongolia and all the
early Turk groups came out of Mongolia
and they had the similar skills. So you
have this perfect weapon but also you
have to have perfect strategy and how to
coordinate it and organize it and use
it. And this is where the genius that I
cannot explain at all but the genius of
Jenghaskhan came in. Other people I
think were had been very good in earlier
times. a number of Turk leaders and also
um or even Autillaa the Hun who of
course was actually born in the west but
but they were charismatic leaders and
very dramatic leaders and it wasn't that
they were so excellent in their
strategy. They were very good in warfare
and that's what carried him through.
Changing Han's army was extremely good
in warfare but small. He never got
probably above 100,000. at the most
110,000
that is small when you're going against
China
that has millions just in the army
not to count in the country and you're
going against Russia and you're going
against the Middle East and Persia and
Afghanistan and these areas
your whole army has to be as finely
tuned as each rider each bow and each
horse that's the weapon but the army
becomes the super weapon of Chingghis
Han, how he organized it on how he used
it and the strategies that he put
together.
>> Yeah. When you have a small army, just
think about that. A small army that
conquered
the world.
>> It would fit in a stadium today in
America.
>> So there's extreme
efficient coordination of units, mostly
cavalry, right?
>> All cavalry.
>> Oh, it's all cavalry. He had no infantry
and he had no baggage train. He had no
backup commissary.
Uh early on, no engineer corps. Later
one was added much later. Uh but no, all
cavalry and uh so there's light cavalry
and heavy cavalry and uh breaking down
units using the decimal system 10, 100,
a thousand. So um there's a kind of
hierarchy where you delegate authority
but to the degree there's commands they
must be followed strictly.
>> Yes.
>> So for like extremely efficient accurate
precise
deployment of these uh troops on the
battlefield and the dynamic movement of
the troops including all the interesting
tactics that were utilized. You have to
have really good communication and
coordination and for that orders must be
followed.
>> Yes.
>> Uh is there something to speak to that
like how do you tune this kind of system
to where everybody is working together
so well?
>> I think the first point is the extreme
loyalty of the people whom Chinghan
chose. His kinsmen as we said had
deserted him. His and was a Christianal
relationship but the all the others that
he found were just common people herders
or hunters very common and they were
loyal to him and never ever revolted
against him never betrayed him. So he
had extreme loyalty and then as you
mention he organized his decimal system.
So the smallest unit of the army was the
ar the 10 the squad of 10 men. They were
put together and then the head of that
squad, he had total control over it. But
the men knew that they were going to
protect each other and they had to come
back with every member or everybody. You
don't leave anybody behind. So this was
extremely important. So if you submit to
the orders of the man in charge, you
know that he's risking his own life for
you also. and you know that your brother
on the left and on the right is risking
his life for you. The army was they were
organized with five horses each man.
They had their bow and they had a lot of
arrows as many as they could have but
they also retrieved arrows at the end of
their battle. And they also would
retrieve the enemy arrows. This was a
great advantage by the way when they hit
Russia because the Russians could not
use Mongolian arrows. They could knock
them in their in their bow. But the
Mongols could use Russian arrows. But so
all these little things, but it's not
even just the arrow. Also, they had to
carry
needle and thread.
Every soldier had to be able to sew. And
sometimes that could be a torn garment.
It could be a piece of skin or a wound
that somebody has. Was a very odd thing
when you think about the army of Ching
Han and they're carrying everything
themselves. They don't have any pack
train behind them. And that one of the
things they have to carry is needle and
thread in order to sew up things.
>> So complete self-reliance in that
regard.
>> Yes. They also carried dried dairy
products it's called where they dry curd
and they can keep it for a couple of
years even. But you dry it and then when
you need it you can put it in a flask of
water. You ride all day it joggles up
and down. Boom boom boom and turns into
kind of thick protein. It said that the
Mongols could easily go 3 to 5 days
without ever building a fire. They had
enough food there with. So all these
little things at the lowest level were
important as well at the highest level
of his loyalty of his men to him and it
went all the way down. Loyalty was
extremely important and he organized the
army into left-wing, right-wing or east
and west. Mongols the word for left is
east. The word for right is uh west. So
those two wings and then in the middle
was the goal, the center, this moving
center that was his
is a bodyguard and his unit in the
middle. Then usually they would have a
vanguard and a rear guard. And sometimes
the vanguard would go out as much as two
years in advance to clear the land, run
the people away, scare them, make them
go away so that the grass is left there
for the army when it moves through.
And they never marched the way other
armies do in a line of one following the
other. They would always go in long
lines spread out in wings so that each
horse is on its own path you can say all
but all parallel together. So they had
very precise ways of doing things and uh
this I think was the secret with him and
he used the best people but he also he
was willing to train them as much as
possible. He never punished them for
what happened. So Shiki Hutuk for
example the the supreme judge he was in
command one time of a group in the
battle in in Afghanistan and he lost the
battle which is very very unusual for
Mongols. So Chingis Khan went out with
him said okay let's go to the
battlefield together and look it over
and you explain to me what you did and
then we will talk about it. So he was
very thoughtful in the way that he was
training the people around him and they
knew they weren't going to be punished.
It's not like these countries where the
general comes back and gets executed cuz
he lost. No. Changing Han knows every
general is going to try 100%. And if
they retreat, fine. They're saving
Mongol lives. They know what to do. He
respects that. So all these things like
that fit together. But I think a part of
it that was important for him. So he had
this base from step warfare already, the
horse, the the archery, and how that all
fit together. But he was very quick to
embrace any kind of other technology
that he saw. I think that sedentary
armies like sedentary civilizations,
they get stuck in their ways. This is
how we do it. And we're going to make it
a little faster. We're going to make it
a little bigger, a little stronger, but
this is how we think. Ching Han had no
set way to think. And when he
encountered the first walled cities
around 1209 after founding his nation in
1206, he went out on these raids. And I
really think they were raids, not wars
at first. So he went into Tanga
territory of what's now northwestern
China in the upper reaches of the Yellow
River. So he went there and of course
the cities have walls around them. This
is a man who's never encountered a wall
in his life.
Well, he did, but they were made out of
felt. The walls around his tent are, you
know, felt walls.
>> Yeah. Just imagine what it's like
uh for the first time in your life
seeing a wall.
>> Yes.
>> When when you come from the Mongolian
step where there's no there's very few
even natural walllike things,
>> right? Well, they have like the wall
cliffs in some places. They're familiar
with that and they can climb them but
they don't have people at the top
shooting down the mountain but on the So
he looked but he looked at everything
around him and he saw okay they have
this river and they have all these
channels and they're always moving water
around and like we said for a Mongol
anything that moves is a potential
weapon. Anything that doesn't move is a
target. You've got moving water you've
got a standing non-moving wall. So heed
said, "Okay, the men are going to dig
uh channel and they're going to bring
down the wall of the Tangut city." Well,
they did it and they didn't know exactly
what they were doing and the embankments
weren't high enough and too much water
came in from the Yellow River and
actually flooded out the Mongol camp.
But okay, it happened. We learned that
lesson. So, we're going to improve it.
And that became a strategy that actually
worked for the Mongols for the next 50
years all the way to Baghdad. They were
able to use it when they conquered
Baghdad in 1258. So this is this ability
to see things and to try them and if
they fail to try them in a different way
but a better way. We all think we learn
from our mistakes. We all Yeah. Yeah. I
I learned from that. I And what do we
do? We repeat the mistake. I think it's
just a part of human nature. Well, it
didn't work the first eight times, but
I'm going to do it one more time. I
think it's going to work. I'm I know I'm
going to win the lottery this time
because I got the right. That's how we
think. But he had that real ability to
first of all to be humble before these
other things he didn't know about
technology, understand that he didn't
understand, but he could understand it
in his own way. And he did over and
over. The Mongols were excellent at
putting together new things in new ways
and using them against their enemies.
>> So
rapid extreme continued innovation. So
you couple that with a
I mean you have to say a revolutionary
idea that promotion
uh should be based on merit. That idea
combined with the innovative approach to
to the military is uh it just feeds on
itself because the people who are
learning from their mistakes and
constantly improving are the ones that
get promoted in the positions of power
and then they inspire everybody else to
do the same. And so it's just if every
action is judged based on the excellence
of that action then over time repeated
iteration in war creates a more and more
powerful army.
>> Yes. Yes. And they were able to do that
for three generations to create an army
that was ever expanding, ever changing
its tactics and its technology. And they
got worse at it over time. But Chingis
Han was the one who innovated it. He was
the best with it. And uh he used it
throughout his lifetime and he was
getting better over his lifetime with
using foreign information, foreign
technology, foreign ideas. Uh
he just had a genius for that.
>> If we can go back to the horses, you
mentioned every soldier had five horses.
The reason for that is the horses get
tired.
>> Yes. And so you can cover a lot of
ground in a single day.
>> Yes. Usually the way the rotation of the
horses would the horse would usually
ride for one day and then rest for the
next uh four to five days and then
another horse would be riding the next
day. One way to measure it is that later
at the time of the death of a good the
word went from Mongolia to Hungary in uh
6 weeks.
>> Mongolia to Hungary in six weeks. Mhm.
>> So let's just imagine this army that's
able to move at such high speeds,
>> does not need to follow roads
>> because it's used to riding in the open
step.
>> Yeah.
>> So it can do all kinds of dynamic
movements in encircling a place.
>> And then also one of the other famous
things is the faint retreat that was
used continuously. Can you explain how
that worked? The Mongols did not fight
for honor the way we often think of
brave soldiers Achilles and the Iliad
and things like that. They fought for
victory. That was the one thing. So to
retreat to save lives and all there's no
shame in that. So the Mongols would
often retreat and Chinghan basically he
himself never fought a battle that he
thought he could lose. and he won every
battle he fought. That wasn't true for
every general under him as we said for
Shigi Hutuk for example, but he won
every battle because there was no shame
in retreating and in not fighting, not
engaging the enemy. However, that also
becomes a tactic and that they would
send in a small group of soldiers to
attack and the Mongols were able to fire
of course going forward on the horse.
They were able to then act like they
were defeated and turn, but they could
still fire backwards, which was the
Parthion shot, which is unusual in the
world. Not totally unique, but unusual
to fire backwards. But the Mongols also
could lean down and fire under the neck
of the horse. So they're protected. They
had many different ways. So they're
firing coming, they're firing going, but
usually the soldiers who are against
them would break ranks to chase them.
They want to go, they want to get their
weapons, they want to kill the Mongols.
And if they didn't immediately break
ranks, the Mongols would often start
throwing things out like loot from some
place and valuables around. And the
soldiers usually couldn't resist it. So
they'd come chasing out after the
Mongols, sort of pale metal, going in
every different direction. And then they
would get to a certain point and from
behind the two hills the Mongol army
would come and slaughter them. Over and
over this tactic worked. It's like the
one with the water. I'm thinking the
people how can they not know this is
what the Mongols are doing? How can they
not know that?
>> Human nature. There is something that
when the forces are retreating,
>> you want to follow them. You want to
follow them. You can't help it.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> I don't know what that is. That's maybe
the animalistic, but take that with the
ability at high speeds for the Mongols
to encircle and attack the flanks.
>> Yes.
>> Which
there has been many great military
historians who have written about the
great military forces throughout
history. And uh one of the things you
write about and in general is the the
Mongols don't get don't get written
about almost at all and don't get credit
for um for the military tactics and the
military genius exhibited through the
different strategies. This kind of idea
of the fain retreat and then attacking
the flanks.
>> Yes,
>> that's you know been if not invented and
perfected by the uh by Jenis. He really
was a military genius. But there were
other things too. You know, they didn't
like roads.
>> Yeah.
>> You know, they just didn't like the
roads. So, they would often be coming
from some direction that nobody ever
came from. And the people would be
unprepared for that. Uh the most famous
example is probably in in Bkara. Uh this
is a beautiful, wonderful old city,
great place in the world to this day.
And they came across the desert.
Well, nobody had ever attacked across
the desert. So people see dust coming
they think well caravan they don't even
know what's going on but it was the
direction that was a surprise element in
that particular case. So he was able to
think in ways that the other people were
not thinking and to be able to surprise
them.
>> What do you think it again felt like to
have this Mongol armada the horses?
It must have the growl must shake when
you have that many horses. What do you
think it feels like to be in a town when
Jenghis Khan is approaching?
>> I think that terror was one of the
greatest weapons that he had that he
cultivated this reputation of ferocity.
Not only did he win battles, but he in
he didn't allow people to write about
him as we said, but he encouraged
refugees. said when he conquered a city,
he always made sure there are plenty of
refugees to go to the next city because
it's going to weaken them. It's going to
weaken their their food supply and
they're going to terrorize the people
with tales of the millions of people
that the Mongols killed with their steel
chisel teeth and eating children and all
kinds of horrible tales. Chenasan
encouraged it. You know, this is
propaganda. It's terrorism of a mental
sort to weaken the enemy. And so when
you hear or even if you know they're
coming, you see the dust, you hear the
the the kind of roar that comes with all
those horses and the trembling of the
earth, it must have been truly
terrifying.
>> So the psychological warfare was was a
was a part of the whole process. But as
I understand um there was always an
offer for the towns and the territories
being attacked for them to surrender
peacefully without the loss of life.
>> Yes. And the alternative would be the
near complete loss of life.
>> Can you speak to that?
>> Chenghazan had a precise system.
Exactly. He sent in envoys first to
explain to the people a little bit about
the Mongols already was much was known.
But to explain to them that if they
surrendered all the lives would be
spared and they could continue in their
professions. It's just that now the
rulers would be the Mongols. they would
have to pay the taxes and used it be the
same taxes they'd paid before, but now
they would go to the Mongols. That was
kind of the general system. And because
you only have a 100,000 soldiers, you
can't leave a detachment there, you
know. So, you're going to leave the
local people in charge to run their
country or their city or their area the
way they have done in the past. He was
absolutely faithful to that. In one
episode in the north of Persia, modern
Iran, his son-in-law, Togar, he violated
that and was stealing and looting from
the people who had surrendered.
Changingan called him in and he stripped
him of his rank and he said, "The next
city, you go first
as a common soldier." And of course, he
was killed in the next battle. I don't
know the name of the daughter,
unfortunately. I've tried to figure that
out. But anyway, it was a close relative
to him and he was killed in the next vi
violating this law. So that was the law.
So then if the city fought and the
Mongols won, they did not kill everyone.
What they did was they killed all the
leaders. They felt like the elite had
not served them well and they usually
killed the army because they couldn't
incorporate the army into their own. The
army had failed. But the one thing that
they valued were all the artisans.
everybody who had a skill. And that
skill could be making a pot. It can be
hammering out a metal plate. It can be
weaving carpets. It can be translating
or just reading and writing. Every
person with a skill was spared.
So the killing of the people who were
defeated wasn't so severe. What was
truly severe was if you surrendered,
and many of them did, and then they knew
they would not be harmed. So they're not
harmed. The Mongols go on. The Mongols
are hundreds of miles away and all.
Forget about the Mongols. Check out Hans
said word that we're supposed to send so
many cows or sheep to help. Forget about
the Mongols. They're far away. It's a
rem. No, he stopped. He returned. He
conquered the city and he killed
everyone. That's the way it worked.
>> So the most drastic slaughter happens
when there's an agreement and there
betrayal.
>> Yes. And as it turned out, I would say
it was more the Middle East or what we
call around Iran and Afghanistan where
these were the worst cases. And um
I would say only only in Afghanistan did
sometimes the emotion of the slaughter
take over in an unfortunate way. But he
had a a grandson whom he loved very much
and that grandson traveled with him and
he had the happy childhood that Tamujin
had not had and I think Chingas Hans
loved that about him. But in
Afghanistan, he was sent off to conquer
the valley of Bameyan where the great
Buddhas are. Actually, he was sent to
Bameyan and as it says in the Persian
history, you know, the the thumb of fate
fired the arrow that shot him down. He
was killed.
And for Chingas Han, he had never lost a
family member. Not one. none of his
sons, none of his grandsons in battle.
He had not lost them. And now to lose
the most valuable grandson you have, the
one that's your pride and joy in so many
ways. And so he called the father, his
own son, to him
and did not tell him. They did not
announce it to the public. And the son
came and the son didn't know why he was
being summoned. And Chinghan said,
"You have to tell me that you will not
cry or moan when I tell you this,
but your son is no more."
And the father was, "No one was allowed
to moan. No one was allowed to cry. No
one was allowed to do anything. you just
he said make them cry.
You know, he came down on the people of
Afghanistan
so harshly
and it went on for weeks and weeks the
killing in in Afghanistan
and then it just kind of wore itself
out. He recognized that he had allowed
his emotions to overcome practicality
and the slaughtering of these people
should stop and so he did. But that's
the only time I know of that he really
kind of lost control of his own
emotions.
And it's something we can all
understand. But his response was truly
extreme of we will not cry, we will not
mourn, they will cry, they will mourn.
So that goes against
the cold rational way he approached
war which is peace is offered.
>> Yes.
>> And then betrayal is punished.
>> I should add he did not slaughter the
people into peaceful towns. What
happened was the killing of the what
people thought was the heir and he well
may have been of Chinghan. The killing
of him revitalized a lot of people's
hopes and a lot of cities revolted. The
ones who did not revolt were not killed.
But the cities who revolted, he killed
them all. There was a mass slaughter.
>> There are estimates that Jenis Khan and
his Mongol Empire were responsible for
an estimated
40 million deaths, approximately 10% of
the world's population. So to put this
number in the perspective of the modern
day, that would be equivalent to killing
about 800 million people in today's
population.
So how should we think about the
brutality of numbers like these?
>> The number itself is difficult to deal
with. Millions of people were killed.
For every family that lost someone,
it's a total loss. There's no, it
doesn't matter what the number is. It's
a tremendous loss. And there was
tremendous loss of life as in every war.
I don't think we should judge him any
differently than other conquerors in
history and other countries today that
fight wars including our own country. If
we whatever we are willing to permit our
country to do uh we should be able to
understand why Chinghan or the Mongols
did it. You look today in the world,
people are killing
children, women, civilians. Every day,
every day. And it's always in the name
of something in the name of peace or in
the name of God or in the name of our
nation. There always reasons for the
killing. And the United States has
certainly evolved with involved with
that. supplying the weapons for bombing
people, invading Afghanistan, invading
uh fighting in Iraq, fighting in Syria.
The United States is very involved in
that. And it's always, oh, but we're
defending democracy and yeah, we brought
a hell of a lot of democracy to
Afghanistan.
We killed a lot of people.
You can even look back to World War II,
our great moment of democracy and
bringing freedom and democracy to
Germans. We dropped atomic bombs on
Hiroshima Nagasaki. Those were not
military targets. We were not doing
anything strategic against the country
other than terrorizing the country by
killing women and children. That's
America. That's us. My father fought in
that war. In fact, he fought in all. He
fought in Vietnam. He fought in that
war. And he fought in Korea.
And he was a good American. I mean,
there was nothing wrong with it. And I'm
not I don't even condemn America, but
I'm saying how can we condemn one set of
people for doing it and then excuse it
in ourselves. But we tend to do that. We
especially barbarian people, people from
step for example, we tend to demonize
them or any enemy we have, we tend to
demonize them.
>> You said a lot of interesting things
there. So one is just the very nature of
war that war is hell.
that sometimes things like dropping the
the atomic bomb which is an act of
essentially terror in the same style as
Jenghaskhan
uh in an attempt to prevent further
war. It's a justification. People are
always fighting for peace. Always
fighting for peace. World War I was to
make the world safe for democracy and
peace and then World War II. But what
happened? We went to war in Korea. We
went to war in Vietnam. We bombed
Cambodia. We bombed Laos. We bombed
Afghanistan. We bombed Syria. Uh we
bombed Iraq. We're always fighting for,
you know, and I'm not a pacifist. I am
not. I grew up surrounded with soldiers
and I am not a pacifist, but I try to be
a realist that all nations kill.
It happens everywhere. So, can we
universally also then in the way you're
passionately criticizing wars of the
20th century, can we also criticize
Jenghis Khan and Alexander the Great and
the wars fought by Caesar and others in
the Roman Empire that they're
essentially
wars of conquest.
>> Yes.
>> And in some human way were not necessary
or were not defensive. They're just part
of this human drive to expand, to
explore, and to accumulate power. Maybe
this is a good place to also talk about
somebody I respect a lot, Dan Carlin of
uh Hardcore History Podcast. He did an
amazing series on Jenis Khan and the
Mongols called Wrath of the Cons. I
recommend people go listen to it. Um so
he had a lot of interesting ideas there.
One of them he presented the idea of
historical
arsonists. So referring to figures who
cause immense destruction but also pave
the way for new developments and
progress. Um basically making this
complicated case that destruction often
in history paves the way for progress.
So what do you think about this idea?
>> Creative destruction. It certainly works
in some aspects of life even with
ourselves. For example, if we can
creatively destroy some of our habits
and build new ones, it sometimes works.
or or we can destroy relationships that
we're in uh in order to create new ones.
It can work when you start applying it
to world history. It it does become a
little bit more difficult. I certainly
think that these episodes create great
changes. You can see great changes that
happen because of the Mongol Empire.
Now whether or not that's a good reason
for the Mongol Empire having happened,
it seems like a bit of a stretch for me.
You know the the Mongols helped to unify
many countries. You can think Korea had
been three basically kingdoms pushed
them together. Everything that you see
in China today was a part of the Mongol
Empire. They put together North China,
South China, uh, Tibet, Manuria and, uh,
it was a little bit larger under the
Mongols. Even Russia with so many little
kingdoms and duchies and dukedoms and
the center had been into Ukraine and in
Kiev and they shifted the focus out of
Ukraine and more towards into what we
call Russia now and they began the
process of the unification. It had a
great impact on the country. So in a way
it's a new creation. Yes, it does arrive
out of the destruction. But also, I
think we need to look where does the
destruction come from? And it often
comes because the powers around them
have been so debilitated and so
corrupted and so decayed of their own
lack of moral fiber that it was easy to
conquer them. Case of Kublakhan finally
conquered all of China. He was
conquering a decayed
dynasty. When the Mongols conquered
Baghdad and overthrew the caiff, they
were conquering a very decayed
institution.
No one likes war, and I certainly don't
like war, but I'm not 100% against it. I
think that there are times uh
that people are going to do it for their
own protection if nothing else or their
of their family and it's justified in
that sense to themselves. It may not be
justified in a world sense, but I just I
just make the case for being tolerant of
what the Mongols did if we can tolerate
what the Americans did. And I am
American true and true. There's no
question about that. But we overlook all
of our things that we did. Now, it's
interesting. For example, in in
Afghanistan, we were there for some 20
years. We had made the Taliban stronger
before when they were fighting against
the Russians and then we kicked them out
and then they kicked us out. But some of
the Taliban leaders are from the Jadran
clan, the descended from Jamuk family,
from his clan. This is what I mean when
I say that the ramifications from that
time are still with us and we don't even
see it. And when when Saddam Hussein
went on television for the last time in
Iraq to plead with his people, he said,
"The Mongols, meaning the Americans, the
Mongols have returned. The Mongols have
returned." And he said, "The Americans
are just the new M." And
I can see it. I don't accept it, but I
can see how people think. If we can be
honest with ourselves and strip away our
own lies about ourselves, then perhaps
we will be more ethical in our dealings
with other people. Uh and and there's
effects that you could talk about. I
mean, the unification of China, Mongols
or otherwise, is a very important step
in the history of China uh that
permeates to to today. And then there's
a lot of stuff that we'll talk about the
ideas of religious freedom, the the
postal network, the the trade routes,
all of this. There's a lot of
progressive consequences of the Mongol
um conquest in the Mongol Empire. We'll
talk about that, but let's linger on the
on the heavier topic for a little bit
longer. Like we were talking about Dan
Carlin. He was uh critical of your work
a little bit, showing it respect, but
also a little bit critical as being a
bit too um
um emphasizing and focusing
a lot on the positive impacts correctly
and accurately, but not giving enough
airtime or describing the the brutality
of the killing, the the hell that is
war. So can can you understand his
criticism?
>> Guilty.
>> I'm guilty.
>> Steel man.
>> Carl is a very smart man. I respect him
very much and I like him tremendously.
And and and he's right. But that is not
what I want to stress. It's not that I
want to deny the the killing. It's not
that I want to deny the warfare, but
that's pretty much the same everywhere
in the world. And how much do we need to
say about
how the wall was broken down, how this
unit was defeated and all? No, it's what
comes afterwards. You know, just as the
story of our life begins far earlier
than we are born, the story of our life
goes on for a long time afterwards. If
you have a nation of 1 million people
and you are ruling over hundreds of
millions of people, hundreds of millions
of people, China, Russia, the Middle
East, you do not do that through
warfare. You conquer them initially
through warfare, but you do not rule
them through warfare. You've got to be
offering something that they want,
something that they like. and all the
things you you've mentioned from the the
trading system, the postal system, the
religious freedom, the rights of women,
the rights of minorities, these were
things that people responded to. And so
the world benefited tremendously
from the life of Chingis Han. But all we
want to talk about, and I don't deny it,
is the conquest part. Okay, that's 20
years. if it went on for another 150
years,
there's more to the story than just
conquest.
>> And uh there is a point that you
correctly identify and you've also
written about Native Americans and so on
that history does seem to be written by
the non-barbarians.
But in reality, history is not divided
in this kind of way. And the barbarians
are not these crude, brutal, plain,
simple people. that there is a
sophisticated deep culture within them
as well.
>> Yes.
>> All the different uh kinds of peoples
that came from the step.
>> Yes. I guess if there's one thing that I
try to do in my career of writing, it is
to get us to recognize the importance of
tribal people in the history of the
world. We tend to have two categories
for them. They are barbarians who kill
people and eat one another. or they're
victims and we should feel sorry from
them and nostalgic about everything
about them and maybe wear some of their
beads or some of their clothing to show
how much we sympathize with their
suffering. That's the two roles for
tribal people. But I'm trying to show
them in a different light that they
conquered. Yes, they were conquerors,
but they also created great things in
the history of the world. and that the
Mongol Empire was really the first
modern empire in the way that I'm
putting together that story and Ching
Han was the the genius behind that who
created this in this idea that there
could be one world in which there would
be one set of supreme law but all people
could follow their own law. You could
have any religion you wanted, but
ultimately you had to obey kind of the
great ethics of the sky. And there were
things like that about his vision
that I think very few people in history
had a vision. And I look around the
world today and in my lifetime
since uh the time of Roosevelt's death,
I look around, I don't see much vision.
I see lots of slogans, lots of talks,
policy papers. Oh my god, we can produce
it.
Where is the vision? It's always we're
going to have peace and we're going to
have a better life and you know, vote
for me or vote for my party and we're
we're really for the people and we're
what the heck are they talking about?
There is no vision there. So what is
this country? What should this country
be? What is this world? How should we
No, no vision. Well, those figures, I
mean, they're rare through history. The
legendary figures that come along that
have vision, but are able to
uh capture the public imagination and
heart and mind with the vision, but also
have the skill
>> to uh execute and implement it and all
of those things combined and
>> have the mental fortitude not to be
corrupted by success along the way. All
of those things
>> that's very rare in history.
>> And when they come along, they change
the direction of history. If if we could
linger on some of these
world defining ideas, religious freedom
is it's just surprising and incredible
that Jangghaskhan was able to enforce
uh inspire the value of religious
freedom throughout all of these
disperate lands for whom religion was a
very powerful force. So can you speak to
that? Some empires in history and some
rulers have been tolerant of various
groups. I mean Rome to some extent was
reasonably tolerant of different sects
and religions. Not of the Christians but
reasonably. But what happened with
Chinghan?
The first campaign he had outside of
Mongolia was for the weaguer people who
lived in western China. They at that
time were being ruled by actually we had
mentioned before the Nimon King Tayang
Han. uh his son Gutsluk had fled uh no
good worthless
well son but Gutslook had fled into uh
what is today the the area around uh uh
Kyrgystan and they ruled over the
weaguer people. He had been a Christian.
The the Nimon had been a Christian tribe
but he converted to Buddhism. Well, his
subjects were Muslim and he outlawed the
Muslim religion and he made all kinds of
things happen. So the weakers sent a
delegation to Chingghaskhan.
At this time they all they knew that the
emperors of China were too weak to
protect them. So they sent delegation to
Chingghaskhan and ask him to come and
save them from him. And he did. He sent
down a detachment. He didn't actually go
himself. He sent detachment down there.
They drove Goodook from power. Goodook
fred down towards uh Pakistan in that
direction. They caught up with him. They
killed him. That's that's what the
Mongols did, you know. And then Chingis
Han made the first law that he ever made
for people outside of Mongolia. So up to
this point it's been tribal law. And he
saw as we had mentioned before that for
the tribes were mostly fighting over
women. So you outlaw the kidnapping of
women. You outlaw the sale of women and
you cut down on a lot of the feuding.
But he saw that civilized quote unquote
people fought a lot over religion. They
weren't fighting over women. They fight
over religion. And so he made the law.
Now this was very interesting. We talk
about religious freedom. Religious
freedom comes in many forms. One form is
to allow institutions
to do what they want. So we're going to
allow the the the Mormons and the
Catholics and the Jews and the Muslims
each to do what they want in the
organized churches that they have. His
law was not that. It presumed that. It
allowed that. But he said every person
has the right to choose their religion.
No one can stop them. No one can force
them. The idea that it was individual
choice. No one in history had ever
thought of that. That it belonged to the
person.
>> I mean that's a really really powerful
statement. Yes.
>> That alone I mean that's why you talk
about Thomas Jefferson being deeply
inspired by Jenis Khan. That
>> religious freedom. Yes. of the
individual. But it's like such a
powerful
illustration manifestation of just
individual freedom period.
>> Yes.
>> If if you in the in in the world in
history are allowed to practice any
religion you want,
that's uh I mean that is like one of the
uh biggest way to say that the
individual is fundamentally free in the
society.
>> Yes. It was a great source of power for
him also. You know, I don't say that he
did this because of some ideological
reason. Just like he didn't outlaw the
kidnapping of women for ideological
reasons. He didn't come to it through
studying ideas of moral right. He came
to it through practical experience of
life. His mother was kidnapped. His wife
was kidnapped. He knew that that was a
crime against every ethics that you can
think of and every form of morality.
That's why he did it. Not for
ideological reasons, but practical
reasons. It hurt people. It hurt people.
It was the same with religion. He gave
this right to everybody because it was
going to be their own personal right to
keep them from being hurt. And then that
gave him tremendous support from
minorities of many types.
And so they flocked to him. Minorities
after that this was a minority effort of
the Muslim weaguers to come to him. Many
people flocked to him for the same
reason for that kind of religious
freedom. So that religious freedom and
also the other things you mentioned they
create a stable society and that allows
uh him with a small army to administer a
large empire.
>> And also I will say on a more more
practical political sort of way of
thinking he recognized the power of
having a balance of power of like uh
Shiite and Sunni that both are going to
be allowed equal rights. one is not
dominant over the other and Christians
and Jews they all have well
that keeps the society from fragmenting
against him or uniting against him and
it's a kind of fragmentation that he's
taken advantage of. I don't think that
was his main reason but I do think he
was quite aware of that that you give
every religion the right and
unfortunately
he the only religion he didn't recognize
as a religion was confusionism.
He said what do they do you know the
towists can do magic on the earth and
they can give people magic formulas and
to cure or they have all this kind of
stuff going on. Well what did the
confusionist do? So still the people
could be confusionist that was okay but
he didn't expend all the tax-free rights
see that was another thing he dropped
all taxes on religious institutions all
types but uh since the confuseness were
not necessarily classified but then of
course eventually that was that was
abused so much because the religions
were then get everybody to donate
property you can still use it you can
still farm your land but it's ours and
now you don't have to pay taxes on it
you just give us some
you know, got abused, but it started off
as a good idea.
>> Um, and and genuinely, as I understand,
maybe you can correct me,
of course, there's the practical aspect
of the those those policies, but he
himself was just curious about the
different religions as well, uh, as I
understand. So, he never chose any
religion except the one from which he
>> came I guess. I mean can you describe
what he believed spiritually himself?
It's interesting you know we said after
the the death of Shirimon his grandson
in Bameyan and the slaughter that
followed that he went through a new
phase in which he summoned religious
scholars of all sorts of famous Chung
Chang from China whom I despise but
anyway he came and with all of his magic
formulas for things and then a bunch of
various Muslim leaders came. So Changing
Han was exploring all these different
religions and not just in a simple way.
He had organized public lectures from
these people and public debates. Not
antagon antagonistic debates but
discussions among groups of people who
hated each other and would never discuss
anything. And suddenly this powerful man
summons him and he has to say okay well
explain your religion and explain yours.
And even in sometimes you can't just
explain it in terms of your own
scripture.
>> What do you say to the people who
believe it? So he was exploring but no
he never changed at all. He was an
animist. We would say that's about the
only term we know to use.
Early in life he worshiped that mountain
where he took refuge several times. Bhan
Haldun. Bhan Haldun was the great refuge
of his life. He would go to the top. He
would pray. He would take off his hat.
He would take off his belt. He would
stand there before the sky and pray.
Also later on actually this became
rather dramatic. He would sometimes go
away to pray should we invade these
people. And so all of the subjects are
waiting to hear what's God going to tell
Chinghan when he goes up the mountain,
you know. And so there episodes like
that, but he was very sincere. But I
think what happened, the Mongols have so
many spirits in the water, the
mountains, everything around them. And
you have to know them
>> personally and pray to them and know
what they like and don't like and should
you sing to them or should you offer
some milk products or what do you do?
You have to know them. Well, you get
away from Mongolia and this was a
problem in China. They didn't know the
spirits.
>> This caused great consternation for the
Mongols. You've got a land here and the
spirits don't like us. They're hostile
lands. We don't even know who they are.
We don't know these spirits in China. It
took a long time. And so gradually
Chingghaskhan
he kind of moved from just the spirit of
the mountain that he worshiped which
remained his main focus of worship his
whole life. He removed that to the sky.
That was the one universal spirit. It
was everywhere in the world. The sky was
the same for every people. And so for
the Mongolians in their language, the
word for sky and the word for heaven and
the word for God and the word for
weather are all the same. Tenure tener
and so or or in the case of the eternal
sky when they're talking about it in a
religious terms, the eternal blue sky.
Uh so he he became more universalistic
in this animist vision of the world. And
so then the sky could embrace all
religions, all religions. And all people
were trying to attain the same form of
enlightenment. Well, enlightenment is
too specific a word, but the same form
of moral life and guidance from the sky.
He felt that each person
knew morality. Each person could
communicate a no morality within
themselves. They didn't have to just be
taught it by somebody from a book. And
in fact as one of his uh grandson
Monkhan said you know you people talking
to all the others to the Christians the
Jews the the Muslims the the Dowists and
said you people have your scriptures and
you don't live by them we have our
spirits and our shamans and our drums
and we live by them and I think it's
true. It's just as throughout this
conversation, it's just blowing my mind
that the the kid from the Mongol step
that lost everything, right? Lost just
had the hardest of lives is is now,
yes, a military
genius,
but also this kind of sage type
character to understand the value of
religious freedom. I mean, there is a
cynical way to see all these things cuz
he he did awfully a lot of things that
look like he's a feminist.
>> Yeah.
>> And you're saying, well, the cynical way
to see that is what he saw the value of
promoting women in positions of power
because they create a more stable
society and you know, there's less power
struggles, all that. But the reality is
>> there's a lot of things that look
awfully progressive about the things
he's implemented and they stayed. I'm
not trying to say it in modern terms,
right? You know, when you have one
million people, you've got to use
everyone and the men are fighting. And
so he left women to administer a lot of
things inside the country, the economy
in particular. And then in in some of
the ancillary Turk kingdoms around the
Mongols such as the Angut, the Harle and
different Mong and the Weaguer even were
administered by his daughters primarily.
and then his his wives were in charge of
administering the land of Mongolia
itself and handling the economy. So he
was using the women but uh in a very
practical way but it wasn't necessarily
in our ideological way. I think it's the
same with the environment. I'm not
trying to say he was an environmentalist
in our modern way but he passed very
strict laws about the use of water and
also about not using water that you
couldn't move water into an area to
irrigate it that was violating the earth
and violating the water. So they think a
lot of the historians they think the
Mongols are so stupid they let the
irrigation system be destroyed. No, it
takes more work to destroy an irrigation
system than it does to create it. They
destroyed those systems out of a policy
and that was this is going to return to
pasture land.
This lasted Kublakhan was the one who
changed that actually and then started
allowing for more irrigation and the
movement of water and things. But but
Chinghan we can't use these modern terms
of uh like a human rights crusader or
that I'm trying to say he's a the
democrat the modern sense or
environmentalist or a feminist but all
of this was a part of it. Another part
was the protection of envoys. He said,
"Every envoy, every ambassador, every
messenger
is protected from arrest, from torture,
and from killing. And if you kill
one of ours, we will wipe you out."
And in 1240, that was the destruction of
Kiev. I mean, this is after Chinghan
already. You know this a good dehan his
son the happy happy drunk a goodhan's
army had come there under subai great
great great the greatest general in the
history of the world I would say subadai
person who's not subai was jingis khan
who for the military part he was the
greatest strategist for organizing
everything together but the military
part was subadai so subadai had been
there and they sent in an ambassador who
happened to be a woman now some of the
western sources say a daughter of
chingishan I have no evidence of that
and I don't quite believe it, but maybe
she was kin to him or something. Some
say she was a daughter of Shingan.
Others say she was a witch. The people
of Kiev decided she was a witch and
killed her.
Okay, that's it. That's it. Kiev was
destroyed for killing a Mongol envoy.
>> The envoy is a method of communication.
Yes.
>> In diplomacy.
>> Yes. And so if you destroy that method
of communication or disrespected
>> in any way.
>> Exactly.
>> And that sends a signal to everybody
else. Yes. Send an envoy, you respect
it.
>> That's why these these plans I say that
the making of the modern world most of
the ideas have we accept the idea. We
don't do the practice. All of us accept
today diplomatic freedom. Diplomats are
killed around the world yearly. We
accept the idea of female equality and
emancipation of every way. But in fact,
they're enslaved in many parts of the
world today. Uh we we accept the idea of
religious freedom. Oh, but not those
people. That's not theirs isn't good.
Their religion isn't right. But but our
religion, we will tolerate them, but
they got to be more like No, we only say
these things, but the world still hasn't
achieved some. And he did achieve these
within his empire in his time. He
achieved those. So one of the things
we've mentioned but I I think is really
really fascinating and maybe an
immeasurable impact uh that Jenaskhan
had is on trade and uh you know you
could say a lot of stuff but basically
establishing a unified trade network
that spanned I don't know how many
thousands of kilometers
uh and there's a lot of interesting
things that were done to enable that
trade. One is providing uh safety and
security of not just the envoys like we
mentioned for communication in the
military context but for the merchants.
Can you speak to the what Jangghaskhan
did for the trade network connected to
the Silk Road as an example?
>> Nomads in general are are interested in
trade and throughout most of history
they have been the traders who carried
the goods from one city to another, one
oasis to another. And so the Mongols
were also extremely interested and
extremely dependent. They could create
very little in their home country. They
couldn't grow hardly anything and they
didn't have the technological skills for
most of the crafts. So they're very
dependent on trade.
>> Mhm.
>> Well, they raised the status of
merchants very high. This was
particularly a problem in the Chinese
world. It wasn't so much in the
Christian or the or the Muslim world,
but certainly in the Chinese world where
merchants were considered extremely low.
And all of a sudden, he raises them up
above scholars. They're going to have
certain rights. For example, they get to
be taxed one time. Whatever the national
tax is, that's it. They're not taxed
every time they stop in some new town.
And he he created a set of uh what we
would call rest houses or or um
recuperation centers where they could
get fresh horses,
they could get food, they could deposit
their money and get paper receipts that
could be used anywhere in the empire.
They were guaranteed protection. if they
had to pass through an area where it
might be dangerous, then uh a small
group, a squad of men and uh horses
would go with them. So trade was
extremely important. And then the
Mongols, they also they supported trade
in a very odd way and that is the
merchants would come in and they would
ask for an outrageous price for some
goods, you know, much more than they
should get, waiting for the Mongols to
bargain them down.
And the mongals would say, "I'll give
you much more than that." It was his and
his grandson or his son Alehan was once
asked, "Why do you do that? You got to
stop doing this." This was a a Muslim
financial advisor. He had called in.
They told him, "Well, you've got to stop
paying more than people ask." And then
Okod said, "Where's the money going to
go? It's still in my empire. It's going
to come back eventually." you know and
so they had a much different attitude
with great respect and I think a symbol
of that is in the time of Kublacon when
we see that his uncle and father went to
China and came back from China and then
on the second trip Marco Polo went with
him to China and back they were safe the
whole way their goods were safe they
came back with tremendous amount of
wealth they were never harassed and the
mere fact that they could cross it took
two years but the mere fact that they
could cross the whole continent
safely and come back. That was
unprecedented. We really don't have any
welldocumented case of anybody say from
China visiting Europe or Europe visiting
China before the Mongols. But since
Jingask Khan, there's never been a year
without contact between east and west.
It was permanent. Once he created it, it
was permanent.
>> I don't think it's possible to measure
the positive impact of that because it
wasn't just trade of goods. It was also
exchange
explicit or implicit along the way.
Exchange of ideas whether that's
exchange of technologies, exchange of
like philosophical ideas, scientific
ideas,
um technical mathematical ideas, all of
this spread throughout and constantly
circulating.
Um maybe can you speak to that aspect of
it?
>> Yes, it was an exchange of ideas on
every level. ideas, technology, uh
ideologies, beliefs, scientific
information, everything was being
exchanged includ
crops for new areas. But but Jenis Khan,
he had a a part of his genius of
organization was knowing what skill
people had that would contribute towards
his empire. For example, the Muslims
were very good with arithmetic. In fact,
he conquered the the little empire of
Horesm from which we get the word
algorithm because there was a
mathematician there who invented
algorithms. And so belong he conquered
it very quickly, very easily, no
problem. But it belonged to him. But the
Muslims were using the zero.
>> The Mongols were absolutely impressed
with that. The Chinese less so. They're
very suspicious about the zero. But the
Mongols were very impressed because
herders numbers are important to them
for keeping up with their animals.
In fact, the Mongols have a simple
system. Uh they reduce all animals to
the number of horses. You can ask
somebody how many animals you can have
and they can say well one 100 horses and
it doesn't mean they have 100 horses.
It's going to be um like
uh five cows count as four horses. Five
sheep or five goats count as one horse,
you know. Um, four camels count as five
horses. So, they reduced it all down
like that. The Mongols take a census of
everything. And that's one of the first
things Chinghan did. And that was one of
the demands he made of every place he
went is a complete census of your
people. Uh, and every house had to post
outside. How many people, how many
animals, what did they do, the
occupations, all this information. So
they needed good mathematics for this.
The Muslims provided it. So they took
the Muslims to China, these Middle
Eastern scholars and all. Unfortunately,
they were rather ruthless sometimes when
it came to implementing the tax
policies, but they became the financial
adviserss to him. Uh other groups of
people had other roles like that and he
was moving them around constantly.
And so you had a combination as I said
he himself had that genius for combining
new bits of technology but it created a
new kind of cultural spirit in which
other people were also combining
technology at other levels and being
encouraged. It was no longer heresy or
the devil's work to bring in this thing.
So we had the spread of printing for
example. We had the partial spread of
something something such as print money
for example. But we had almanacs being
created now through printing that
combined different calendars and
different information that was coming
along. But one simple but lethal form of
technology was that for example Chinese
had gunpowder.
Mostly it was used for fireworks,
religious things and then sometimes in
warfare was used for kind of primitive
hand grenade or primitive bomb that
could be thrown with a trebuche and this
is in the time of Kubla war the grandson
but so they had that the Middle Eastern
the Muslims they had and the Byzantines
especially they had uh
Napa what we call Greek Greek fire
flamethrowers that could set things on
fire you know the Europeans did not
expel excel very much in technology.
They were behind in almost everything,
but they could cast bells for churches.
Okay, let's take that bell and we're
going to turn it on its side
and we're going to use some principles
of the flamethrower
and we're going to use the gunpowder
from China and you've got a cannon.
So the Mongols even early on by the time
they got to the siege of Baghdad but not
I think in the lifetime of Chingghaskhan
but soon thereafter and his uh sons and
grandsons they were using some very
primitive forms of cannon and uh even
some some like firing rods. We can't
even call it anything like a rifle but
it could fire a very small uh ballistic
device and all. So this combination
>> of metal urgy, gunpowder, flamethrowers,
uh you put it all together and you come
up with something incredibly different.
>> So if we jump around a little bit sort
of on on the topic of a cannon, what are
some technological developments that uh
Jenis Khan and his son and Kubakai were
using? So how much gunpowder were they
using in general? What was their
approach to siege warfare for example?
What are some different ideas there?
>> If we switch to the grandson Kublakhan,
he first of all he changed a lot of the
strategies. They were no longer working.
The Mongol system worked perfectly on
the grassland but by the time you get to
Hungary the grassland starts to give
out. By the time you get to Poland is so
many farms it's hard for horses to get
through the farms and they don't want to
go on the roads. By the time you get to
the Indus River, it's too hot, too
humid. The bows are beginning to wilt.
The horses are exhausted. It's it's not
working. So to conquer South China,
Kublakhan had to come up with new
things.
One thing, the South Chinese had built a
great wall. It was called the Great Wall
of the Sea. This is before the wall that
we know as a great wall, which is really
the Ming wall of the Ming dynasty was
built, but the great wall of the sea.
And they used it as a defensive navy.
They had the largest a navy in the
world. It was defensive and it was most
literally defensive. And it came time
for warfare. They would chain the ships
together across the mouth of a harbor to
protect the city. And so it became a
wall. So actually if we rewind rewind
Kublan who was he and what was the state
of China at that time that kind of sets
up this idea of uh ships and siege
warfare.
>> In 1215 Chinghan conquered the city we
now know as Beijing. It was the capital
of the Jin dynasty of northern China.
And at that time southern China was
ruled by the Song dynasty or usually
called the southern song. He had already
conquered the Shishia kingdom or the
Tangut people and so most of northern
China was under the control of the
Mongols from about 1215 and then he
conquered middle. Later his uh uh his
descendants conquered middle and then
Kublakhan was the one to take on the
south. But Kublakhan was born that year
in 1215 about 3 months after the the
capture of Beijing and he was nobody.
He was the second son of the fourth son
of Chingghaskhan. Well, he's got lots of
cousins out there who've been riding
around. They've conquering Russia and
they've already burned down Kiev and
they've conquered different places in
the world. They're real Mongols. That's
their whole life. And he's born and he
doesn't meet uh Chingghisan till he's
about seven years old because Chinghan
was away on conquest in in Central Asia.
And Chinghan came back and he met him
and he said, "Oh, he doesn't look like a
Mongol. He looks like his mother's
people." His mother was Sakani who was
actually a part of the royal family of
the Murket people whom he had conquered
sometime earlier. And it looks like his
mother's people who was a little bit
more tawny. Mongols tend to be very
white with very bright bright red cheeks
and have a certain very round face and
so on. And uh so he looked different and
for whatever reason his mother I think
she recognized the difference and
treated him differently. Her oldest son
was called Monk, later Monan Monk, and
she wanted him to become, even though
her husband was drunk, who died out on
campaign drunk. And she took over
northern China and she began to put it
together. And she wanted her son to
become the great Han, the emperor of the
Mongol Empire. And this wasn't in line.
This wasn't going to happen because he's
the fourth son out of three. others are
way in line, way ahead of her. But she
caused the revolution. She made it
happen. She put her son in Mohan in
1251. He became great Han.
He only lived till 1259. He died of
something. It could have been Kalera or
they're different stories. I don't know
the truth of it, but he died on campaign
in China trying to conquer southern
China. Well, up to this point, Kubla
Khan had not been distinguishing
himself. His mother was uh she was a
Christian woman, but she had a Buddhist
nurse for him and she had Chinese
scholars come in to tutor him. She had a
very good education for him. And I think
that she planned that he was going to be
a great administrator under his older
brother and he was going to administer
the lands in China. And so he was
learning all this stuff for it. But the
older brother, he insisted on sending
him out on campaign. Oh, but he was
overweight. He was fat. He had gout. He
needed to go rest. There was always some
excuse. And the brother was assigning
people, Orihai, who was the son of
Subadai, the great general. He assigned
him to teach him warfare.
He he wasn't great on the battlefield.
He really was not. But he was very smart
and at first a little bit lazy. He liked
talking about the religion, sitting
around, go hunting. as long as he had
many men with him to do the shooting and
uh and then to prepare the food and all.
And and his territory in northern China
was just being run in the dirt by these
administrators the Mongols had brought
in. They were just overt taxing the
people, cheating the people, doing
everything wrong. And his mother
basically just pulled his chain and she
said, "Go to your land. This is your
land. You have to administer this land.
You go there. You live there. you take
charge. And everybody was terrified of
the mother. And so he ran off to China
and he started administering his land
and he started learning how to do it.
Well, when his brother died in 1259, he
was down on the yellow uh Yangti River
on a campaign that he was sent by his
brother. He was having no success at
all, but he thought, "Okay, the
brother's dead. I should finish the
campaign." Meanwhile, his youngest
brother, Aricbach, Arikbok was another
hothead Mongol like their father, Tulu.
He was rather hotheaded and he was back
in Mongolia and his tolerance for
religions, he was had to oversee the
debate one time between the Dowists and
the Buddhists, because the Mongols
thought the Dowists were overt taxing
everybody, the Buddhists. And so, he had
to oversee it. He got mad and he picked
up a statue of the Buddha and beat the
Dowist representative to death. So he
just wasn't good for moderating debates,
you know. So he was going to be the new
great Khan. So he was declared the great
Khan in Mongolia.
But this was a turning life for Kubla
Khan who had never achieved much of
anything other than talking to people.
So his wife Chabi sent him some coded
messages basically telling him, "Forget
about southern China. It's gonna always
be there. You could conquer that some
other time. Right now, your brother is
taking over the empire. You should be
the new emperor. You are the next son
after Mon.
And somehow she invigorated him. And he
came back and even though he didn't have
all the military strategy, he had
northern China. The resources were
immense. He could cut off Mongolia.
Mongolia was very dependent on northern
China for food. All the Mongols
supported Aricbok. All the ones in
Central Asia, uh, all of them were
supporting Aikbuk. And so he went to get
food from them
and then they didn't want to give up
their food. Yeah, we want to support you
for Great Han, but we're not giving up
our food. So he was basically kind of
starved into submission in 1262.
And then he was taken prisoner into
China. And then he
mysteriously
passed away in 1264
while a legal case was being brought
against him for trial, but he never made
it to trial. Uh he was gone. So
Kublakhan
had not really distinguished himself
very much. But
he didn't have the genius of his
grandfather. I won't say that. But he
was smart and clever. He understood more
about China than most Mongols did. And
he understood most more about Mongols
than most Chinese did.
So the great thing left that Chinghan
said on his deathbed,
"Finish conquering China." You know that
was the great objective. So
Kubalai was going to fulfill this and
they didn't know how. The great wall of
ships was protecting the southern song.
this huge Yangzey river was so bad wide
the ocean on the side. All of these
things were protecting them. So he had
one of his very smart generals named Aju
who was a real Mongol but he was also
able to think in innovative way. He was
the grandson of Subadai
and he went with his father Urri Hungai
on the conquest of the Red River of
Northern Vietnam against the Dviet
people.
They went down the river. They were
trying to surround this Chinese
territory. They were going to hit them
from the north, from the west, and from
the south. So they went down the the Red
River and to conquer the Daviet. The
Dviet moved their army up on the other
side by boat and then they had a whole
core of elephants. So they have the
Mongols on one side of the river and the
Dviet forces on the other side.
Orhangadai was a smart man, not a
genius, but smart. And he already knew
from campaigns in Burma that the only
way to route the elephants was with
flaming arrows to the feet. That was it.
But he recognized that they came up on
boats. Mongols didn't like boats. It
just they crossed the river on a goat
skin. They wanted to do something
organic. A boat was like a cart. A cart
belonged to a woman. It was a floating
cart. I am not going over on a floating
cart. I'm going to ride a goat skin
across the river.
So he's assigned one detachment. You
have to burn the boats. So the dive
cannot escape when we route the
elephants. Well, the war battle I mean
got started. The elephants are running
wild. All kinds of chaos is going on.
The the group that sent to burn the
boats, they're Mongols. They want to go
to war. I mean, why burn a bunch of
women's carts? It's just not, you know,
floating. So they go and join the
battle. They leave the boats. Well, the
Mongols won the battle, but the Dviet
forces got on the boats and sailed back
to what's now Hanoi. And then they
evacuated the city, took all the food,
everything out of the city, and they
disappeared into the delta. The Mongols
arrived, they conquered, quote unquote,
Hanoi, the capital city, and they had
nothing.
>> They had nothing. They won every battle.
They lost the war. They retreated. Aju
was the son of Hunghadai and he saw all
this happen and he recognized the
importance of water and boats and so he
knew and he spent his time studying the
Yangty River and every little river
around it and the cities. And the
crucial thing he saw was the cities are
heavily heavily fortified on the land
side because invasion comes from the
land and they expect this little line of
boats to protect them on the water and
so their city walls are weak. The
defenses are weak on that side. That's
where we have to attack. So how they
sent off to the Ilanate to Persia where
Chingis Khan his uncle was now dead and
his cousins were ruling there or his
nephews we would say or cousins nephew.
So uh they sent over engineers to build
special kind of trebuche catapult and
they had to play around with it to adapt
it for a boat because they were usually
made for stable ground but they adapted
it for the boat and for throwing heavy
things and also for some uh incendiary
bombs. They developed it. They attacked
the first city. It fell. They attacked
the ne it fell. They had something that
was working. They worked their way down
the Yangze River destroying city after
city with this navy and then the army
would move in after the navy had broken
down.
>> So this is a a catapult on a ship.
>> Catapult on a ship but it's Yeah. We
call type shape for this type of
catapult.
>> So this is an engineering solution
for peoples who are deeply uncomfortable
with boats.
>> Yes.
>> And they've accepted it.
>> Yes. Now it's a great weapon. It's like
it's not it's no longer a woman's cart.
It's a bow and arrow. It is a giant bow
and arrow.
>> Yeah. It's fascinating. So that they go
they hit them hard on the walls on the
weak side. Yes.
>> Where there's no the army protection.
>> Yes. And they conquer their way down
to Hoou, the capital of the southern
song.
They've been in power for a long time
since 970. And now we're already into
the 1270s.
That's a long time. They are dissipated.
They've been had child em they had
embezzles ruling. All kinds of things
going on. And at this point, we have a a
child in command.
But K hubai makes a very strange move.
He says, "Okay, let's invade Japan now."
They think, "What?
We're fighting against the Song
Dynasty."
And most people ascribe it to all kinds
of things, but actually I think there
was a great logic to it. One was he had
abolished his grandfather's policy of
defeat and destroy until they are no
more. That was the phrase that was used
for their enemies and he had replaced it
with a kind of mercy policy. Try to
incorporate them into your army if
possible, but be merciful. He did not
want to destroy and he was not. He was
had a lot of defectors coming in and
because the Mongols prized people with
skills, a lot of very clever people with
ship building and engineers and these
people were flocking to the Mongols.
Whereas the scholars were all hanging
out in Guanghou doing calligraphy and
poetry and having contests over who
could sing or paint or I don't know what
scholars do but they were they were
being scholars.
>> Yes. But there actually I think there's
a very very good reason for invading
Japan. Several the main one was to cut
off the supply of sulfur. They needed it
for gunpowder in South Tong. They lost
their sources in northern China when
they were driven out. They got it from
Japan. It was a great source. But I
think there were other reasons. If they
could trade, they could also perhaps
flee to Japan. And they didn't want that
to happen. And then there's this idea
of, you know, like kill the chicken to
scare the monkey. It's like, okay, we'll
go do this and then maybe they'll just
surrender down there if they see us
conquer Japan. Well, it was a total
failure. You've got a bunch of ships
that are m mainly great on the river
and'll ride along the coast and you're
crossing some treacherous water there
and and you the Mongols basically just
did not know what they were doing. Okay,
you can arrive with a trabushe and you
can throw grenades at the beach. It's
not really going to do a lot of damage.
It might scare a few horses, but you're
not destroying cities. And the Japanese
cities were more in they weren't there
on the beach waiting for Mongols to come
invade. So he failed in that invasion.
>> So we should say that this is the the
time of the samurai, right?
>> Samurai. Yeah.
>> So, um, so there was never a real test
of like
>> No, there was some fighting and the
samurai learned some very valuable
things. The samurai had such a
ritualized way of it's like the knights
of Europe.
>> Yes.
>> Coming out with armor that had to be
lifted up on a crane onto a horse and I
mean it was just craziness. Craziness.
The samurai almost at that point you
ride out in front of your enemy and you
recite the story of your genealogy,
>> right?
what you know Mongols they have no use
for that they're there to fight they're
there to win but on the other hand this
was unknown territory to them and the
weather did turn against them but I
don't want to give too much credit to
the weather I really think that the
Japanese defeated them the Mongols
weren't well prepared their ships were
not very good they were defeated in the
first invasion
>> could they get off the ships onto the
beach
>> they did they had some skirmishes or
small battles on land. Yes, they did.
>> But they didn't successfully complete
them. I mean,
>> no.
>> So, they couldn't do their usual Mongol
thing,
>> right? Well, see, they don't have enough
horses for one thing.
>> Yeah.
>> You know, and uh there were many
tactical things that they had done
incorrectly. It's the first time anybody
had ever tried to have such a massive
invasion.
>> Yeah. So, they're just learning the
basics of what it means to have a navy.
So he has failed to conquer and he's
thinking like a Mongol that you rule the
those waters and lands but he ruled the
ocean. He stopped the trade. He stopped
the supply. He cut off the possibility
of the Song dynasty fleeing to Japan.
He won
>> in a certain way. He lost but he had won
his objective of cutting off southern
China. Also it gave him navy some
experience with the ocean and now they
were ready to move out into the ocean
around southern China.
So they were closing in then.
Au was in command but actually the head
command was a man named Bayan who was a
Mongol who had been raised more in
central Asia. He was perhaps born close
to the Fragana Valley in that area.
We're not exactly sure where he was
born, but he grew up over there and then
he eventually was living in uh what's
now Iran, but he came and he took over
command of the army. He was very
cosmopolitan, sophisticated,
intelligent.
Aju should have been in command, but
Bayern recognized that and he and Aju
worked together very well. Aju knew how
to fight the war. Bayern was able to
negotiate things back with the capital
city and handle things. So Bayern is in
command and so the generals are
deserting the Southong right and left.
The artisans are all coming up to join
the Mongols paid. The generals are
loading up the boats with all the jewels
and they grab a couple of uh brothers to
the little 5-year-old emperor and they
put them on a boat and they're fleeing.
They even deserted their own f their own
families. The generals were corrupt
cowards who fled. The person left in
charge was the Daer Empress, an old
lady. She had no children. She was her
name. The Daer Empress. She said she was
missing an eye. She was ugly. They
called her ugly. She that's what they
called her at that time.
She was in charge. And she offered the
Mongols everything. I'll give you
everything. Please let the emperor stay.
Okay? Even if you demote him to just
being a king, please let him stay.
Bayern said no. Total surrender. Total
surrender. So she decided to surrender.
Well, she said, "Yes, we will surrender
the capital." So Bayern came in with a
small group of soldiers. They looked
around and she invited him to come to
the palace to surrender. And he said,
"No,
I didn't win this war in the palace. My
soldiers won this war in the field. You
have to come with the emperor in front
of my soldiers to surrender. But he did
not harm her. He respected her and there
was no looting of the city.
Now later they take everything in a very
systematic way. They take the archives
and all this kind of stuff away. But
there's no wholesale looting and killing
of people, nothing like that. So they've
taken the capital
and she comes out. She surrenders. She
bows on the ground towards Beijing and
then she takes the child emperor and
they slowly make their way uh she was a
little bit sick. It took her a longer
time to Beijing and they surrender again
in a public ceremony bowing to the
Kublakhan. He gives each of them a
palace. He gives them a new uh new uh uh
title. He protect he's trying to show
the world this is the new face of
Mongols. We don't kill off the old
people anymore who are ruling. We're
going to give them a palace, treat them
nicely and all.
But the navy that had fled did not
defend the city. Those cowardly
generals,
they made the new little boy,
sevenyear-old brother, half brother to
the emperor Gong was his name. They made
him the emperor.
Well,
they're just floating around on the
ocean, losing
all support
from city after city. The Muslims who
were controlling the trade and
controlling many of the ships of that
area, they were Chinese Muslims, but but
they were still Muslims.
They switched sides to the Mongols
because of the religious freedom thing
and because they were merchants and
their status would be raised. So the the
Mongol uh the Muslims were switching
over the the fleet was kind of a fleet
lost without a country out there. They
had some loyal supporters some places or
they dropped the emperor in the ocean.
You think how do you drop the emperor in
the ocean? They accidentally spilled him
in the ocean and then they fished him
out but he died. So fortunately they had
one more seven-year-old halfb
brotherther. So on Lantau Island,
exactly where the Hong Kong airport is
today, the new well it's not so new
anymore, but I still think it was the
new airport on Lantau Island. Uh so they
went there and they had a big coronation
ceremony and all, but the people there
were not supportive enough. It certainly
wasn't Hong Kong then anyway, the delta
of the Pearl River. So they they sailed
out farther south to another island and
then they took it over and of course the
first thing they did was well we have to
build a palace.
>> What? The Mongols are chasing you and
you're going to stop and build a palace.
>> So these are like the remains of the
Chinese.
>> Yes. The generals and the army and the
navy.
>> And there was a real competence issue.
>> Yes.
>> Okay. So they're going to build
>> we're going to protect it with a great
wall of the sea. Right.
>> They chained together the boats across
the entrance to the harbor and they put
a palace boat so-called in the middle.
>> Mhm.
>> The generals didn't trust their own
soldiers enough. So they made all of
them leave the island and go to the
boats to fight the Mongols. So the
Mongols arrived and over and over and
over they asked them to surrender. You
won't be harmed. All this kind of stuff
and all and but the Mongols now took
over the land. So they had the water all
around them and they had the land and
once the fighting started they could
just shoot down from the highland right
onto the ships and they've cut the ships
off from the fresh supply of of wood and
water. So they can't boil rice. They
have to try to eat rice and drink sea
water. They're all sick as dogs out
there. And
the leaders refuse to surrender. The
little boy is there. 7-year-old emperor,
Bing was his name, with his pet parrot.
That's the only thing he had left in
life was his pet parrot.
And then the Mongols, they offered every
opportunity.
But
the prime minister, socalled, coward
that he is, although he's treated as a
hero today in China and throughout their
history, the coward that he was, he
said, "We will not disgrace the country
by letting them capture the emperor."
So, first he threw his own wife and
children into the water to drown.
And then he took the emperor and held
him the sevenyear-old. He was seven
years and one month. He had just turned
seven years old. And jumped into the
water with his child.
A child murderer. He is a child murderer
to do that. Somehow in the whole ruckus,
the cage came undone with the parrot and
the parrot fell in the water, too.
>> So the seven-year-old boy and the parrot
died in the water. That was the end of
one of the greatest dynasties in the
history of the world. The Song dynasty.
They were intellectually great. They
were artistically great. They were
technologically great. They were just
one of the greatest moments of world
history. And it ends with this coward
killing a child and his pet parrot in
order to save the honor that was
betrayed by this woman. The men lost the
war. The men lost the war. Who's to
blame? an old oneeyed ugly lady, Empress
Shier.
>> Well, the bigger picture there is
probably is become the institutions
became corrupt and stale and the the
army weakened and the the pol the
politician the politician class
>> probably
>> has have have lost their skill and
competence at ruling and all that kind
of stuff. And
>> all that is true and the and the Chinese
summarize that with losing the mandate
of heaven,
>> right? I mean everybody has their
perspective. Maybe if um
the way you told the story has a very
kind of objective
sort of way of revealing the absurdity
and the cowardice of it. But you know
there's probably the Chinese perspective
that they tell the story in some kind
like maintained honor to the last
>> yes
>> to the last moment. They very often most
scholars depict Emprecia as the traitor
to the country. And I say no that boy
lived on for another 45 years.
And so she did not betray the country.
She protected her emperor that she was
supposed to protect.
>> It was the man who killed the child
emperor who killed Young Bing.
So what was the lasting impact of uh
Kubla Khan unifying China?
>> Well yes first of all he had unified
China in the largest sense of the word
with Korea, Tibet, Manuria, Mongolia,
part of Central Asia. Uh he had unified
it but he did so at the expense of his
empire. They didn't recognize him as the
great emperor and there was great
opposition from the golden horde of
Russia and also from the the central
region which is called the the Chagatid
the descendants of Sagade the second son
the Chagatai Empire and then from the
Ilanate of Persia
>> these are the different sort of
fracturings of the Mongol
>> the sons of Jingaskhan
>> and only the Ilanate were still loyal to
him but they're so far away
>> but now has a navy.
>> But this is I mean even the four pieces
the whole thing is gigantic and even the
pieces are gigantic.
>> So I mean it's very hard to keep an
empire of this size together.
>> Yes. But he had China. It was unified
under him
and then he he sent out the first
expedition to sail directly to Persia.
There had been trade all throughout
thousands of years, but it was usually
porttoport, you know, different
merchants trading goods. No, he
organized a great fleet to send a uh a
queen or princess to become a queen in
the Ilan to marry the Ilhan of Persia.
It's Persia and Ezra and uh Armenia and
Iraq and part of Syria, all of that
area. So he sent organized this and it
so happened that Marco Polo was ready to
go home because they knew Kublakhan was
about to die and in fact he only had
about one year left to live and they
wanted to get their riches out before
they didn't know what's going to happen.
This is a new dynasty. They've been in
total control of China for one
generation
and they didn't know what was going to
happen. And also just before that there
had been a bad sign because Kubla Khan
had tried to invade Japan a second time
and he had failed a second time. And the
second time I think again he had a
practical purpose and that was he had
this whole huge song army that now he's
the new enlightened Mongol who doesn't
slaughter. So he's got what is he going
to do? They're not reliable. They're not
safe. So he sends a bunch of them up
into the Amur River of what's now the
Russian Far East or we call Siberian
English, but the Russian Far East, the
Amur River. Uh he sent expeditions up
into Tibet exploring options up there,
but there wasn't enough room or enough
agricultural area for a huge military
colony. But most of his ships were
loaded with former prisoners of the war
from the Song Dynasty. And they were not
armed. They had hoes and implements for
farming. He wanted to create obviously
an agricultural military agricultural
farm in Japan to help feed northern
China because it was very important just
as they were doing with the Ammo River
but it was more complicated. So
again they lost
they didn't have it and part of the
reason is the the expedition was massive
and they organized it in the Mongol
principles of leftwing right-wing
this didn't work at sea because the left
wing is from Korea. There's Korean ships
built up there. The right wing is from
southern China mostly with ships built
down there. They're not the same. They
have a head, but there's no center
point. Chingaskhan always had the goal.
They called it G. The goal. The center
or or Q L actually goal. But anyway,
they he had the center in command. No,
he sent the two without a clear and they
were arguing with each other, not
cooperating, not helping each other,
sabotaging each other. They get there
and once again they have the same
problems. Even though they've come with
lots of grenades this time. Again, the
grenades are exploding. They're they're
scaring the horses, you know. It's
impressive. And a lot of silk screens
are made later showing these impressive
battles and all, but they lost. And
again, a typhoon happened to be the
final the final destruction of the navy.
But I think it's Japan had defeated the
Mongols. I would say Japanese deserve
credit for that victory. And then the
the sinking of the ships was more caused
by the by the typhoon. But already the
Japanese had developed good strategies
while the Mongols had been away. They
knew how the Mongols fought and they
knew that at night they could fire
flaming arrows at the ships, set them on
fire and they were doing great damage.
So again, Kublakhan lost the invasion of
Japan.
But the soldiers were gone. They
drowned.
He didn't kill them off. It wasn't his
deliberate plan, but the problem was
solved.
It's one of those ironies of history
that is hard to quite understand. So
this had happened, but then Kublakhan
was coming to the near the end of life
and Marco Polo and those wanted to get
out. They're ready to go. And Kubla Khan
allowed them to sail on this expedition
with Huxchin was her name, the princess
Hujin to go to
Hormuz.
And so they went and that began a whole
system of trade back and forth back and
forth. Kublakhan died soon after that.
His grandson who's not so well respected
in history because he's often called a
drunk, but his name was Timur. tumor and
but he was a drunk when he was young but
his grandfather had him caned a couple
times in public and he cured him of
drinking and actually he was not a drunk
later on and he was first he knew
reassembled the Mongol Empire he did the
golden horde declared loyalty to him
recognized him as great Han as emperor
of the whole empire the tagat of central
uh Asia they declared loyalty to him.
The Ilcarnate was already loyal to him.
They all declared loyalty. He had
reassembled the empire and he had the
greatest navy in the world. And he sent
out envoys to every place they had
attacked or traded with to say that era
is over. We're no longer attacking
anybody. We're changing from conquest to
commerce.
>> We want to trade with you. Come to
China. Bring your goods. We're going to
trade with you. He instituted it was
short unfortunately it didn't last
forever. I wish I could have but it was
a great era of the exchange of all kinds
of things going back and forth all the
way actually all the way to Africa
because from Hormuz they had connection
to Somali land and some people say Kenya
already at that time I'm not sure but
very wide very wide
>> so technically he ruled over the the the
largest size the Mongol Empire ever had
>> yes but although actually the golden
horde of Russia. They were quite
independent by now and he let them be
independent but they were loyal to him
and they were still exchanging back and
forth all kinds of things. So there were
Oettiian soldiers in China.
>> They had a whole contingent of Oetian
soldiers there and from Russia from the
caucus areas of Russia.
>> And how do they communicate? Are they
using like the postal service? think you
have to like
>> you have to literally deliver the
letters. So over time those groups
started intermaring with they were
allowed to intermar the Chinese were not
but they were intermaring with Mongols
and they were switching to Mongolian
language slowly. Okay
>> at first I don't know it's it's not
clear but again Kublakhan thinking in
this internationalist way said okay we
need a new alphabet for the world.
Everybody in the world writes with one
alphabet. Chinese, Mongolian, Russian,
Arabic, everything. It didn't work, but
he tried it for a while and some
inscriptions are still there to this
day.
>> And we should maybe uh briefly mention
Marco Polo that you've talked about. So,
he is this now famous explorer that
traversed
the continent, the Silk Road, and then
stayed with Kubla for a while. And I
guess one is one of the primary
documenters of everything that's been
going on. Uh is there something else
interesting to say about about Marco
Polo and about their his interaction
with Kuban?
>> I like Marco Polo. I use
>> I use his work a lot.
>> I find him very reliable. In the areas
where he's not reliable, you can kind of
tell because he didn't he wasn't there.
But the places he was, he reported a lot
of stuff. And so I'm very much indebted
to him for a lot of things because with
something like the princess Hukin and
also another fighting princess from
Central Asia named Hutalum, he wrote
about that. But I also needed other
sources. So I found if I could find
Chinese sources or Arab sources or
something else or Persian to support it,
then I really felt a lot of confidence
with him over time. But pieces were
romanticized and you have to always
discount it but is very good. However,
I believe the best work written about
Marco Polo aside from his own book which
was actually written by Rustachello
dictated in prison in Genua. You know,
in the 20th century, Eugene O'Neal wrote
a play that became a comedy on Broadway
called Marco Millions.
That was both a a play on what he was
called El Million, the million one
because he had talked about cities of
millions of people and about uh money in
the millions and things that people in
Europe just couldn't believe could
happen. He then published his whole play
as a book to show people what he really
meant. And it was an ironic look at
capitalism because this is 20th century
already
versus the idea of like a philosopher
king which he saw in Kublacon.
And so Marco Polo becomes a symbol of
capitalism not at its worst but at its
most
basic
>> and that is like the princess in the
story. This is not in real life but this
is in the play written by Eugene O'Neal
but I think it captures a lot. The
princess Hooken says Marco is an
excellent judge of quantity
and there are things like that.
And then in the play Bayon the great
general
he talks with Kubla Khan and he said
look these people are dangerous from the
west we should go conquer them now while
we can. Kublakhan tells Bayan again in
the play this is fiction but he tells
Bayan they are not worth conquering and
if we conquer them we will become like
them. And he said Marco Polo has been in
our land. He has seen everything. He has
learned nothing.
He has seen everything. He understands
nothing.
For me, this was such an important
moment in the history of the world
symbolically
with Marco Polo and Kubla Khan. The
coming together of two worlds.
It could have gone a different way. It
could have gone a different way. And I
am, it's not that I'm anti- capitalist.
I'm pro- capitalist. But the way so many
things worked out,
it was a misstep in history. Maybe we
took the wrong step at that moment and
we could have learned more from
cooperation.
>> They didn't quite integrate
successfully.
>> No. But today
we've returned to that. I think the East
and the West are confronting each other
again on more equal terms. For a long
time, the west was so dominant and the
east was so downtrodden by colonialism
and other things and internal rot and
other things. But today there's not
necessarily equality, but there's more
of a balance. And which way will we go?
>> And again, there's uh a lot of room and
a lot of energy for division, for
misunderstanding.
uh so versus integration like uh the the
east is demonized
in the west and
one one of the great regrets I have that
I hope to alleviate is just how little I
like understand
China in the east
>> like just sort of not not just from kind
of economics politics
you know reading a few books but like
the way you've understood and felt the
Mongolian step
>> like understand the Chinese people in
that way because it does feel like from
that understanding there could be
integration of ideas.
>> You know my work is often classified as
Chinese history which I think is ironic
because for me it's always a Mongolian
history but for the last book I wrote
which dealt a lot more with China
because it's was about Kubla Khan than
in that book I deliberately did not go
to China. I'd been there numerous times
before. I deliberately did not. I'm an
outsider. I do not speak Chinese. I'm
not a Chinese scholar. I never even had
a course in Chinese art or calligraphy
or anything. And I wanted to be very
clear. Mine is an outside perspective.
>> But I think it's possible as an outsider
to still have respect
for that culture. Even if I disagree
that they appoint this one as a hero and
that one as the villain, I disagree and
they'll say, "Oh, I'm wrong. I don't
understand their history." And they're
probably right. That's quite possible.
But
there's an outside view that is
different and tries to be respectful of
what happens in that part of the world.
Just as I'm respectful towards Chinghan
and the Mongol Empire, I respect China
very much. I'm an American. I love the
ideals of my country. I love so many
aspects of our culture and there are
many aspects I don't of course because
it's impossible to love everything even
about the members of your own family you
know and
>> I do hope
that through understanding one another
or just making the effort to understand
even if we understand wrongly and we're
incorrect in it just to make the effort
to understand will help us a lot and the
west has had a long
couple of centuries of extreme arrogance
that they are there to teach the world
and I
sometimes dismayed I meet these young
people all over the world who have come
to help. They're an NGO and they're
going to teach the people how to take
care of the environment. They're going
to teach the women how to exercise their
rights. They're going to bring in micro
financing to help liberate people.
We are arrogant beyond words.
And we need to be a little bit more
humble and try to put ourselves on an
equal basis with some of these people,
not a superior basis.
Beautifully put.
How did the Mongol Empire come to an
end? How did it fall?
Despite the fact that Timuro Jetuhan had
united the empire at least symbolically
all of it and they had the trade going
on the Mongols never adapted well to
China and they began having problems in
different areas. So in some areas of the
world they became more like the local
people. So in central Asia they became
Muslim and they got more absorbed into
that world and broke away from the
Mongol examples from before. Russia
lingered on longer under Mongol
domination but it got weaker and weaker
over time and it was based around the
Vular River but they weakened to the
point that they just became a tributary
people minority within a Russian empire.
But the Mongols had left kind of the
framework for empire for Russia. That's
something the Russians don't want to
hear anymore than they want to hear me
criticize the end of the Song dynasty.
But it is true that even yam yam is the
word that was used for this postal
system and that's the ministries today
and in Russia and there many many other
things in Russia. Just even malic malin
is a herder.
mouth is a p is an animal and chin is a
person person who takes care of animals
you know it's all kinds of influences in
Russia that some people want to deny but
there's always a great powerful uh
strand of of uh research and scholarship
in Russia that supports this
understanding of the Mongols and I
depend on them tremendously it's not
just Gumlof is one of the famous ones
but he was a little bit too romantic
with his ideas and all but I depend upon
on a lot of the research
done by Russian scholars and by early
German scholars in the 19th century
under sponsorship of the Tar.
>> So I I depend on that work. So you had a
great influence there but it was
weakening. So bit by bit 1368
the Mongols had become so weak within
China that they were overthrown. But
they weren't absorbed into China.
The Mongols have been there since 1215
to 1368.
They packed up, went back to Mongolia.
It was just another seasonal migration.
>> Yeah.
>> You know, it it was just amazing. And
they said, "Okay, we're still the Yuan
dynasty. We're not giving you the seals.
We're not acknowledging the Ming." And
they never did throughout the whole of
the Ming. In fact, they went down one
time and captured the Ming Emperor. took
him back to Mongolia and then they tried
to ransen him and the Chinese said, "No,
we're going to appoint another emperor."
So the Mongols decided, "Okay,
the worst thing we can do to the Chinese
is give them back the old emperor." So
you had two emperors, you know, back.
Okay, let them work it out, you know,
and the empire
just weakened from internal reasons for
the Mongols, but some external things
from nature. And I think that was the
great plague.
You know, everything in history,
everything that's good comes with
something underneath it that's bad. And
everything that's bad seems to have
something underneath that's sometimes
works out good in a way. But, uh, this
great system that united, it's called
the yam or or to or to that it united
everything. People could move back and
forth quickly that it could also take
the plague out of southern China into
all parts of the world. And I do think
that's what happened. And uh the plague
destroyed the Mongol system. And if all
of these people are ruled by Mongols
because they're benefiting so much from
this system and now the system
collapses.
>> Yeah.
>> You don't need the empire anymore.
>> Yeah.
>> So it just fell apart after 1368. The
empire just fell apart. And most of them
stay stayed in uh
Persia and Iran and uh Afghanistan. The
Hazara people are still descended from
the army there.
And then in Russia, some of them stayed.
But then finally in the time of
Katherine the Great, a lot of them
returned a little bit. They had been
there for hundreds of years and then
they returned to Mongolia
uh in the 1700s.
And so many Mongols came home. They were
still Mongols despite hundreds of years
of exposure to other cultures. They came
back to their tent and squatting around
the fire and drinking fermented milk and
eating dried curds.
>> It's interesting that the the the
Mongolian spirit is so strong that it uh
persists.
>> Yes.
>> Through centuries.
>> Yes. and they just return right back on
the horse riding in the open step.
>> Yeah. Well, was it was actually very
difficult because they were a little bit
lazy and they weren't so good with doing
the task and so uh it it became
difficult actually to support so many
people coming home uh and eating up all
the animals. The Mongols in China had
been used to just eating. They hadn't
been producing much for 150 years.
So just to return to Djangghaskhan
and we talked about Dan Carlin and Dan
Carlin said that
Djangis Khan's army was the greatest
military force in history. And many
other historians agree that before
rifles came into popular use, Jenghask
Khan would basically beat every single
army, including Napoleon. And you
mentioned the samurai, the whole formal
setup. Same with Napoleon. There's just
there's a whole, you know, like, you
know, several hours to set up the chess
pieces on the military board. I mean,
you can just imagine what Jenis Khan and
the the the dynamism,
>> the the speed of everything, what that
would do to Napoleon. So
uh I guess the question is where uh do
you agree with that uh notion that
Jenghaskhan's army is the greatest
military force in history?
>> Short answer is yes. Absolutely. No
other power in the history of the world
has conquered Russia and China and
Persia and Central Asia and Turkey and
Korea.
No power in the world has done that. Not
Alexander, not the Romans. Nobody will
ever do it again. Nobody's going to
conquer China and Russia again and rule
both countries. It's just not going to
happen.
>> What lessons I mean can you take from
that's applicable to modern warfare?
>> Oh, I think there's a very good lesson.
And the Mongols took Iraq, they took
Baghdad, they held it. The Americans,
we followed the exact opposite strategy
of the Mongols.
Mongol strategy is first you take the
countryside. They're country people.
They think in terms of countryside. You
take the countryside, you occupy the
countryside, and you cut off the city.
It cannot live without the countryside.
And that's how they did it. every time
they would come in as I say in some
cases two two years in advance to clear
people out so they would have room for
their horses and have pasture for their
horses and all and you take the small
towns and then the small cities and then
the last one is the big city Americans
they said no we're going to take Baghdad
we're going to bomb Baghdad we're going
to have this shock and awe we're going
to mo go in we conquer the country from
Baghdad so they go in they get trapped
in their little tiny green zone they
never conquer Iraq
the strongest army in the world. You
know, this is something that worked in
Europe. World War II, yes, we bombed the
cities and we took the city because that
was the city, the center of production
for the modern era. But the countryside
is the place that produces the food. The
Mongols were very aware of that and
supplies the water. You cut off the
water from the city, you cut off the
food from the city, what's the city
going to do? They're going to surrender.
The Americans were applying something
that worked in Western Europe to conquer
Germany.
It did not work to conquer Iraq or
Vietnam or even Northern Korea or
Cambodia or Laos or Syria or God know it
worked only in Grenada. I think that's
the only in my lifetime that's the only
successful war we had. Lasted a couple
of hours we went in conquered the little
tiny island.
Otherwise, we've been chased out of
every country. We've lost it. Tail
between our legs.
We dropped more bombs on Cambodia than
we dropped on Germany.
That's hard to believe. Hard to believe.
We dropped more bombs on Cambodia than
on Germany. We did nothing. Because
Germany, you destroy the cities, the
people surrender. Don's gone. Frankfurt,
Footsburg, Berlin. Uh, in Cambodia, you
can bomb the countryside forever.
You can kill the people, and they did.
You can use chemical warfare, and they
did.
And you could still go into the eastern
part of Cambodia, and
you could go to large areas where you
don't hear birds singing because of the
chemical warfare and of American bombs.
So, we still do it, but we don't want to
admit it, and we don't want to go in to
win. In World War II, the Americans did
have unconditional surrender. Well, I
mean, you can support the war, not
support the war. We did it right. We did
it wrong. These are all issues that
people can argue, but we had a clear
policy. We go into Afghanistan, we're
fighting terror.
>> We're going to bring democracy and we're
going to free the women.
What? I was absolute sheer insanity the
things that we did. And we killed
people. Not only did we use chemical
warfare and kill a lot of people in
Vietnam and Laos and and Cambodia. We
killed American soldiers. We killed
American soldiers. And my father was
one. He died from Agent Orange disease.
Oh, but that doesn't count.
He didn't die on the battlefield and we
didn't mean to kill him. It doesn't
count. Modern warfare is brutal
and we just paper over it sometimes, you
know.
>> Can you explain Agent Orange?
>> It was designed to kill all vegetation.
This is going to be a humane way. We're
going to kill all the vegetation in the
jungle and that way they can stop moving
the army through the jungle and they can
stop the supplies from coming. That was
American strategy.
Yeah, Henry Kissinger, Nobel Prize
winner. He is now resting in hell is
exactly where he belongs for what he did
to Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The
bombing was just absolutely horrendous.
So, Agent Orange comes in, they
defoliated, which means they wiped out
the crops. So, people are starving,
literally in the case of Cambodia,
starving to death. The animals are being
killed and deformed children are being
born to this day. And American soldiers
died by the thousands. Not immediately,
not on the not on the battlefield, not
right there. They go home, they have the
disease, they linger, they take the
whole family down with them in an
emotional trauma of becoming slowly
paralyzed and dying.
We did that to our own people. So yeah,
warfare
I don't think we're any more humane with
it any better today than in the past.
It's just we can hide parts of it more
easily and deny it more easily.
If you're killed by a Mongol, it's very
clear you're killed by a Mongol. You're
killed by friendly fire in America and
war, it's a different matter. It seems
that um
what people mean when they say that war
is hell that in some deep sense
everybody loses no matter the narrative
you put on top of it.
>> Yes. Yes.
I'm not a pacifist again but I I think
war is acceptable in some situations but
the more controlled it is the better.
And my
my effort is not to
do away with all the things that
happened under Chingis Han with the
brutality and all like that, but it's to
measure it against what goes on today in
the world today. And we have different
images. There are two images of Chingis
Han. One is our image. He's a barbarian
on a horseback killing people and raping
women all the time. The other image is
the Mongolian image. And when they
finally built an official statue of him
in the in this century for the uh 800th
anniversary of his founding of Mongolia,
they had to think about how to present
him to the world and to themselves. And
they chose the Lincoln Memorial as the
model. He was the late great log river
of the Mongol nation. And so he's seated
there in front of the Mongolian
Parliament.
There's another statue that's better
known, but it was a private enterprise
that created him on horseback, but not
with a weapon, but he's on horseback out
in the countryside. But the official one
from the government is Chingis Han
seated like Abraham Lincoln. And they
issued stamps to show that he is the
great lawgiver
>> and uh the truth is somewhere in
between.
>> I suppose.
>> Yeah. or depending on where you are and
how you want to see it, you know.
>> Yeah,
>> there are many things that happened that
were terrible and horrible. And for
people who lose a war, it's going to
always be terrible and horrible.
>> Yeah. Uh let's return back to
Jenghaskhan's life and the end of it.
How and where did he die?
After conquering the Hanism Empire in
Central Asia, Chinghan returned and then
they had a great what they called Nadam,
a great celebration that went on for a
whole summer just about and they had so
much wealth to distribute to everybody
and everybody is being given all kinds
of things, you know, for uh what they
have done and including the people who
helped saved him when he was in the in
the kank in the in the ox yoke. Uh they
were rewarded with everybody was
rewarded. It was a great time. But the
first place he had attacked outside was
the Tangut nation. And they had sworn
allegiance to him. And then when he went
off to the Middle East, they refused to
send troops.
He didn't forget that he's going back to
the Tangut nation and he's going to
conquer them again. As he was crossing
the Gobi, which takes a a while, and
you're crossing the Gobi, he's was
distracted a little bit by hunting the
Hulan, which is the wild. We say the
wild ass or I used to say wild horse. It
sounds a little better. But uh the hulan
to say hulan of the goi. He was off
hunting hoolan. He fell from his horse
and he injured his leg very badly and he
seemed to decline from that point and it
took some number of months
before August of 1227. He was very much
near the end of life. Uh you can read
online the exact date and it's all very
specific but the truth is we don't know
exactly which day he died in that time
because his one of his wives was running
the camp and they were keeping it secret
until the defeat of the Tangut was
completed and the Tangut offered all
kinds of things to for the Mongols to go
away again the second time and Chinghan
had told his family no except nothing
and then when they surrender you kill
the royal family, kill them all. So that
the idea they were they were Buddhist
people and the Tanguts were Buddhist and
uh the idea was usually you can be
reborn into your own family but he said
no you kill off the whole family so they
can't be reborn.
So he died there.
>> How was his successor chosen? Oh, the
succession issue was always difficult.
He did not have the right to appoint a
successor that was not the Mongol way.
He could nominate somebody.
So before he set off for the Middle
Eastern campaign,
one of his wives said to him, you know,
even the biggest tree falls.
Uh you've got to make a plan and talk to
your sons about the future. So he did he
called the sons together. So this is Zut
the oldest boy who was born while the
father was allied with his and Jamuk and
he was named visitor Zut.
And then uh the next one was Chagadai
and the next one was
and uh the next one was Tur the father
of of Kublakhan but he was still alive
at this point. Uh so all four of them
came. So Chingaskhan explained to them
he wanted to talk about the succession
and to get some consensus from them
about the succession. And so he said the
Mongols always call on people to speak
by order of age. They also serve tea or
food, anything by order of age. It's
always done that way from then until
now. So he called first on Zut and he
said what do you say Zuch? Chinghan
favored Zut. This is the one who is
questionable paternity but he always
favored him.
>> You know the youngest Tulu was too
hotheaded. A good day was a heavy
drinker. Chagade was very rigid about
the law of the Mongols and all you know
but he thought he seemed to favor Zut as
a more reasonable good warrior but
reasonable person. But he called on Zut
my son speak
the second one who believed in Mongol
law supposedly. He jumped up and he said
this is when he accused his father of
all kinds of he said how can you call on
this Mongol this merket bastard if you
call on him first that means you want
him to be the great Khan he should not
be the great Khan of the Mongol Empire
is his Mongol Empire now on and you know
you can imagine kind of scene well
Chasan is the greatest ruler in the
world he's sitting there being lectured
by his second son.
And this is when he gave that impassion
speech to his now in the actually the
way the secret history it makes it look
like it was his assistant speaker who
said it because very often the great
power doesn't say the words directly.
They let somebody else say them for him.
They have a spokesperson. But anyway, I
I think it was his words and I think he
said them on that day. That's what I
think of this business of you do not
know. You were not there. You know the
stars were moving in the sky. The head
was heaven was turning around. The earth
was turning over. You do not know who
loved whom. You do not know who your
mother loved. You do not know what your
mother did. And if I say he is my son,
who are you to say he is not my son?
by the way, pretty just
really high integrity, really
respectable to do that to have that
respect and honor his uh wife in this
way.
>> Yes.
>> And his son in this way is really
powerful.
>> I believe that I don't know if she was
alive at this point or not. We do not
have the death recorded. Mongols are not
good at recording death. They don't they
usually just say somebody finished their
age or they have some euphemism for it.
But he made that impassion speech and
Sagade had to submit. And he said, "Yes,
you are our father and we accept what
you say, but a deer shot with words
cannot be loaded on a horse. A deer shot
with words cannot be eaten."
So,
Singer Han knew.
So, he said to the boys, the boys, I
mean, these are middle-aged men. They're
not boys, but he said to the men, "What
do you want to do? What do you want to
do?" And he he said, "I don't favor
Tagade
because
of his attitude and the situation."
and Talo is still hotheaded and he he
actually ended up being drunk and dying
early. So, but the other guys they said,
"Well, a good day." They chose him
because he was the most uh the most
generous and the bonvant and he was for
every party and drinking every time and
yeah, one time Shiki Hutuk, the great
judge who wrote The Secret History,
Shugi Hutuk was sleeping in a cart one
time uh for whatever reason. I don't
know what I think he also had passed out
drunk perhaps but a goody came out drunk
and grabbed him up and pulled him back
into the party and a good was a party
guy and uh so he was chosen as the next
great han of the Mongol Empire but
fortunately
there was sort of a p plan B and that
Chingas Khan had set up very powerful
women his daughters but also he had
chosen wives for each of his son very
very capable wives and forg uh he had a
wife who wasn't even his first wife. The
first wife would usually be somebody
closer by certain clan or something but
he had a very intelligent woman named
Dorin and then uh she was more or less
ruling in his last few years and then
after he died she ruled empire uh in her
own name. She was the ruler of the
greatest empire in world ever ruled by a
woman.
>> It's incredible. The genius of Jen is to
set it up that way.
>> Yes.
>> And to not, you know, there's probably u
very widespread discrimination of women
at that time and to have not care about
any of that and just making the right
decision.
>> Yes.
>> For like what it will keep the empire
together. And Dorjin was actually there
was peace. She stopped all campaigns.
There was peace during her time. And the
women like such as Dorin and others were
extremely into economics and trade and
running these they had these private
corporations called Ortook. She was
running her orto and everything. So she
became much more interested in the
economics of the trade and running the
empire. And it was a time of peace and
she recognized that peace was better for
trade. It was better. And so it was a
peaceful time. But like all of us, you
know, we we have our weak points. And
she favored a worthless son
to become the successor. And
none of the sons actually were great,
but a good they had favored another. But
anyway, she favored Gok her son. And uh
so she arranged to have him made the
great emperor while she was still alive.
And she had a her primary minister was
also a woman named Fatima from the
Middle East. And unfortunately they go
organized a purge of her court.
>> Mhm.
>> And killed off a lot of these people who
had been supporting her and a lot of
them were Muslims and he killed off a
lot. And then he was going to march
against the Golden Horde because they
weren't supporting him.
So he set off and he died. He was only
in office for 18 months.
and uh he was gone and then his wife
took over. Okamish.
Unfortunately, she was not capable as
her mother-in-law at origin. Okameish
was a bit greedy and uh she didn't start
any new wars, but she just kind of
messed up things and she didn't rule for
too long. And this is why Kublakhan's
mother, Sakani,
was able to have a revolution. She
united with the Golden Horde. She was on
one end on China. She had northern
China. The Golden Horde had Russia. The
two of them united against the center
and they overthrew
Ogul Hamish and she put her son Monk
Khan in who was succeeded by Hublhan.
>> And we should say probably that you know
this whole succession by Kin probably
goes against the initial spirit of of
what Jangghaskhan stood for.
>> Yes. Yes. In the end, he was a father
and he favored his sons even knowing
they were not so capable. And he had
lost a grandson that he loved.
But but he organized it though as what
we call today almost a corporation. All
lands belong to everybody in the family.
Everybody. So Kubla Khan, that's why he
had had soldiers. There were Christian
soldiers. uh Oetian soldiers and Kipchek
soldiers. He had 10,000 of each come in
and then they owned the Russians would
own silk factories in China. The
Ilcanate would own silk factories and
jade mines in China. The people in uh
China, the Mongols, they would own
villages in Persia and in Iraq. So he
organized it all his everything was
owned by the entire clan. Mhm.
>> It didn't last too long.
I like that because of the divisions
that developed. So the great Han was
primarily in charge of conquering and
expanding the land. So they had more
lands to own. That was going to be the
job.
And Kublakhan fulfilled it. Monkhan to
some extent fulfilled it. Oh, good. They
did. Greek did not.
>> His family ruling the land, all the
different territories.
>> Yeah. And they weakened with every
generation.
>> Yeah,
>> every generation.
>> But that reminds me of a a very popular
idea about
Jangghaskhan um
articulated in a 2003 paper titled the
genetic legacy of the Mongols. So that
paper has a finding that estimates that
0.5%
of the world's male population is
descendant direct descendants of Jenghis
Khan. I've heard you kind of be a little
bit skeptical of this paper, but I
actually really like its findings. I
talked to a good friend of mine, Manolas
Kellis, who's a biologist, computational
biologist and geneticist, and he he
likes the paper as well. I I find it
really convincing. Um, but I think your
skepticism has to do not necessarily
with the paper's contents, but more the
implication that it speaks to like the
thing that maybe the people who think of
Jenghaskhan as a brutal barbarian
uh assume that the reason is.5% of the
population is because of some
institutionalized mass rape conducted by
Jangaskhan. But to me, and we actually
spoke about this You can't get those
kinds of numbers with w with with with
rape. Um, if you want for the empire
uh to propagate the gene, if you if you
were a person that want to propagate the
genes, you would make sure that all the
lands you conquer are stable,
flourishing, and happy. And so actually
what this is this is much better
explained in the paper indicates this um
is better explained by it was of high
value like social status value to be
associated with the lineage of Jangghis
Khan. And so that means that for many
generations people loved the great Khan
the Jangghaskhan. And so in that sense
given how vast the land was all the
transformational effects it has on on
trade on culture and so on uh it makes
total sense and in fact the 0.5% just so
people understand
is just male descendants. the the way it
works
that means if this paper is at all
correct in its estimate that the number
of people descendant not direct male
descendants but you know the way trees
work is like there's women on each step
so there the the number of descendants
could be much larger than that
>> so I I think that's pretty interesting
and I think there's singular figures
like this in history but
none like Jenis It's interesting. It's
fun. Where did they get the DNA from
Jingus Khan?
>> Oh, yes. So, one of the criticism you
have is like, well,
>> they don't have one shred of scientific.
They're supposed to be scientific. No,
they found that the bunch of people are
connected.
>> Yes.
>> And then they
>> No, no, no, no. To one person. To one
person.
>> Yes. But they choose Chingis Khan,
>> right?
>> There's no evidence that it was from
him. No evidence.
>> It's from that time. It's one person.
But from that time or 200 years before?
>> It could be 200 years before.
>> Yes. Yes. See, I mean actually I I would
like for it to be true in a certain way.
I would. And I do think there is a truth
there.
>> I think that by attaching it to the name
of Jingus Khan, they've done a
disservice to themselves, but it gets a
lot of publicity, a lot more funding,
and it's exciting and so on. But I think
it's to that Mongol experience. But
Chingis Han's descendants were almost
everyone categorized and and recorded. I
mean, he's the largest conqueror in the
world. You do not have just children
popping up all over the place. He had
four wives all the time. He had children
with two of them. Just not a lot of
descendants. We know mostly who they are
for many generations.
His brother Hasser had many more
children than he did. Many more. And
they caused a lot of problems later on
for the empire too by by rivaling the
power. So it could be that one of these
other people boden chart could have been
the origin of this. Uh it could have
been back well before Chingghaskhan. I I
just don't believe in and in Mongolia
today
we have nobody who claims to ching.
>> Well claims is a different thing than
biology. Right. So this this so the
reason I say this is
>> this methodology is pretty solid.
>> Oh he's I believe that they found some
connection of people.
>> Yeah. But it's
>> but they have no evidence that it's
really connected to Chingis Khan. I
think it may be tangentially connected
to him.
>> Yeah. But it's somebody from the
Mongolia region.
>> Yeah. I think that's quite possible.
But we've already had the Hans come
through. We've had all the Turks. Every
one of the Turk nations is descended
from Mongolia. They all came out of
Mongolia.
>> You're I mean, you're right. You're
right.
>> On the other hand, I wish they could get
some proof. I mean, I wish it could be
true.
>> Yeah.
>> I just can't believe it the way it is.
We have no DNA.
>> Nobody knows where he went.
>> They don't. So, they don't know where
he's buried.
>> Okay. Jenghaskhan said, "Let my body go.
let my nation live. And he chose to be
buried in an unmarked grave. And the
Mongols believe very strongly it should
always be that way. Most of the cons who
followed him were also buried in a
similar way. The Chinese emperors, you
know, were buried in very elaborate
tombs, but not the Yuan dynasty.
>> No. And so Kubla Khan was buried back
with his grandfather in an anonymous
grave. And um not everyone like Gig died
when he was on campaign towards Russia.
He was died out there. I mean he was
buried out there. I think his uh I think
his father Goodday was also buried out
there. That was more their homeland. But
uh many of them were buried with him.
And uh
it's known and not
known at the same time. You know, it's
uh officially you you should not know
it. You cannot know it. Uh it should
never be disturbed. He should never be
disturbed. We're not going to have a
tour group coming in.
>> But you're saying like the people of
Mongolia, they have a sense.
>> They believe he's in a certain place.
Yes. They believe they know where the
place is, but they it's sacred. You can
do nothing. Nothing.
>> Just leave it as it is. That's
no no no roads, no buildings, no killing
of animals, no chopping of trees.
Nothing can be done. It's a holy land
dedicated to him and his family.
>> It's pretty amazing. Unmarked grave.
>> Yes.
>> For the the greatest conqueror in the
history of humanity.
>> Uh for good and for bad, the most
impactful one of the most impactful
humans in history.
>> Yes. I believe in his thing about let my
nation live, let my body be eliminated.
And then and I say to people what they
ask you what did he look like? And I say
well the portrait was painted 50 years
later by somebody who never saw him.
>> And actually if you look at the portrait
of Kubla Khan and Jenghask Khan they
look alike except one's old and one's
younger. And I think that's because
Kubla was trying to establish he wanted
to establish his legitimacy as a real
Mongol that they looked alike but his
grandfather said he didn't. And then
Dehan and Dehan and Monkhan looked
different. They looked different. So
there was nothing. But I say if you want
to see the face of Jingus Khan, walk in
any gear in Mongolia. The first child
you see that's the face of
Chingghaskhan. It's his nation. He
created that nation. That's his face.
Does that make you sad that he
that there's no,
you know, from his time capturing of his
image that he really
made himself sort of disappear into the
land? Does that make you sad?
>> No, not at all. No, because he's
everywhere. you know, when you have
these clans that are still operating in
Afghanistan and the Russians are still
using the Yam system,
uh, there are many aspects of him that
are out there in the world. And I think
there I I find personally inspiration
the same way that Thomas Jefferson did.
>> He found so much inspiration in the life
of Chingis Han and the books of
Chingghis that you can still read. He
gave cop he bought so many copies and
gave like to the library of congress to
the library of Virginia un
to his granddaughter.
You know these ideas live on and we
still have not fulfilled them. We do not
have religious freedom. We do not have
the protections for women. We do not
have the protections for envoys and
ambassadors. Uh the ideas live on and
the rulers do not live as the common
people. to eat the same food, wear the
same clothes, sleep in the same not a
bed in that his case, but sleep in the
same uh situation and simple home. No,
>> I have tremendous respect for leaders
that live
just as the people who they lead.
>> Yes,
>> it's yeah, mostly not done. Um but when
it is I have just infinite respect for
that and that is the way. Uh what
lessons can you can we learn from
Jenghask Khan that apply to the modern
world? You've already said religious
freedom some of these ideas.
>> Well I think those his policy ideas I
think are important. We can still learn
from that about protection of diplomats
uh not buying and selling women, not
kidnapping women and uh having religious
freedom of individuals.
But also he had interesting things. He
had tax-free status for all religions,
all physicians and all teachers. They
didn't pay taxes in his empire. Uh, as a
former teacher, I I embrace that idea
out of pure greed and self-interest. But
it's it's not to me the idea of saving
the money. It's the idea of focusing on
that as something important for the
society.
>> He didn't say tax-free for any other
category of people as I recall, but just
for those. And that's he's highlighting
the health of the people, the education
of the people and the spirit of the
people, their spiritual that's very
important. That's a a profound approach
to life. And so these are policies. And
I'm not advocating so much to policies,
but I think some of the general
principles of
being willing to learn from our
mistakes. Admit your mistake to
yourself,
correct it, and go on with your life.
in all of us say it's important but we
don't do it for the most part we don't
learn from our failures as much as we
think the other idea of promoting people
on ability
I think that's certainly an idea that is
very valuable not in the simple way of
meritocracy that we've done it with oh
if you pass the exam with this score you
get this or that but really evaluating
people and their ability I think it's a
very good thing not the only thing but I
think it's very important and even
though he failed in the end in his own
life and he turned power over to his
sons and his family it's a principle
that he lived by most of his life and we
can learn from that principle
the other thing I think is just his
global
feel for the world his global
understanding here was a man who had had
no education any formal sense and he had
this sense that the world should be
united. We should have things that unite
all people. Everybody should have their
own law, but there should be a higher
law of heaven that governs people. You
know, and this later was translated,
everybody should have their own
language, but they all write the same
alphabet by Kublan. It didn't work. Or
his idea, he tried to impose the use of
paper currency in Iran, the Persian
ilcarnate, uh, Chinese paper money. It
didn't work. the people there weren't
used to do. So there but all this
international spirit of their empire. I
think that we need today we talk about
oh globalization we're all connected is
just incredible and we're more
provincial than ever. We are just so
provincial and and sometimes we use all
this technology to help preserve our
provincialism and we can't think in
global terms. We can't think about the
world. It's just amazing to me
how narrow-minded we are.
>> I also uh saw the Mongol pro proverb of
if you're afraid don't do it. If you do
it, don't be afraid. Yes.
>> That you uh
>> especially celebrate. I mean there is
something to that. This uh in many ways
Jenis Khan is a representation of a
of a person like of a self-made man.
That person from nothing.
>> Yes.
>> Willed an entire empire into existence.
>> Yes. And everything against him that you
can think of. Your own family deserting
you, your father
dying at an early age, all these things
like that. But as Jamoka said, he had a
good mother and he had a good wife.
And there were many crucial points at
which it was either his mother or his
wife
who made the deciding point. His wife
Bura was the one who caused the first
break with uh Jamoka to go away. Later
on when the shamans had become too
powerful and they had humiliated his
younger brother, she was the one who
said he had to clamp down on the shamans
who were exercising too much power and
uh she guided him a lot.
>> It cannot be understated how important
and critical women are in the story of
the Mongol Empire.
>> It's fascinating. And sometimes
we can say they're not behind the scenes
because they're always out front. In the
Mongol court, they always sat up front.
They were always out front. And this
this horrified the Chinese who are very
good confusion. It horrified the
Muslims.
>> It horrified the Christians who they
didn't know what to say. The women even
drink in public.
>> Okay. Yeah. They drink in public,
>> you know.
>> Uh they they do what? So sometimes it
was like that. But other times with as
with Dorjin she's actually the ruler or
or the case of his daughters such as um
Alak who ruled over a part of northern
China called the Angut people and the
other daughters who ruled over different
they ruled in their own names and he's
he's very ex this is something about the
secret history that upset me. I get to
chapter the all the sections are
numbered. I get to chapter or number
section 215
and there's only half a sentence left.
In 214 he's just awarded a girl he calls
his daughter so she's probably a clan
daughter but she lives with his mother
at this point
his youngest son to is only four years
old. Atar comes and mother Erlun gives
him food because you food everybody. He
realized this is the mother of Chinghan
and that's the child of Chinghan. He
grabs him up and kidnaps him and runs
out and he's holding the child in one
hand and he's pulling out a knife with
another hand. Alani raced out and she
grabbed his arm and held it down. And
two men uh Jeb and Jen, they were back
behind the gear slaughtering an ax with
an axe cuz that's you have to do it in
the shade behind a gear. That's you
don't do it in the light. And so they
were back there doing that. So they
raced out with ax and they killed the
man. And so then Chigas Hanu is
rewarding everybody for all their great
deeds. And gentlemen and Jeb, they want
to be rewarded for saving the life of
Tal.
He said, "No, you killed the Tatar.
Alani saved his life because she held a
hand that had the the knife until you
got there to kill him. She saved it and
now we reward her." So he's finished
that story in 214. We get to 215. He
says, "Now let us reward our daughters."
It's actually only a phrase of that's I
said it's a complete sentence, but it's
not quite complete.
The rest is gone,
cut out.
It's missing.
And I I was just so and I looked at all
these different translations of how the
different language and most often they
translated as, "And now let us marry our
daughters.
Oh no. Oh no. He was very clear in his
wedding speeches to his daughters. I
give these people to you to rule.
You have three husbands.
You have your honor.
You have your nation. And you have the
man that I give to you. But the man I
give to you goes in the army with me
>> and brings his soldiers. You stay here
and rule the people.
>> Brilliant.
The Chinese when they arrived in the
court of Altani, they didn't know what
to think. There she is ruling this area
of the Ongood people and they said,
"Well, she can read and write and she's
a supreme judge and she doesn't allow
any death sentence without her
permission." And uh
but they didn't say which languages she
could read and write. That has really
puzzled me a lot. So you're saying the
secret history as we have gotten access
to has been
edited to to remove the significance of
women even though they're still there
>> in that case I mean other cases with his
mother they did not and all but I think
in that case because what happened is
most of these women had few offsprings
because their husband was gone to war
and Alani of course she married several
times sometimes
the sons of the last one, you know, but
they were going off to war and they
weren't reproducing very only one,
Tetika, who was ruling in Siberia,
uh she was the one who had a whole bunch
of daughters, they wouldn't be going off
to war. And so they actually spread out
through the empire and did a lot of had
a lot of power later. What happened was
the area for for Alaka
for example was then taken over by
Kublakhan
and then the areas all the Turkey areas
one by one were taken over by
their nephews as they died out not in
their own lifetime they didn't kill the
women off but as they they died out the
men uh took it over and so then they
just wanted to kind of erase it it's
like no northern China even though it's
ruled by Sakani
uh it always was Mongol. She was ruling
because her husband was Mongol and her
sons were Mongol. Therefore, they had
the right to rule it. So they cut out
the women for those reasons. I think
anytime it threatened the power of a
particular man. Then there were other
little things that are added in there.
Sometimes you can find a phrase and you
say
>> this phrase was not in the original.
>> Yeah. In studying human history, what
have you learned about human nature and
just the trajectory of humanity
throughout the past several millennia?
>> I tend to have a certain love for
individuals and persons, but not a love
for people in general and especially not
for institutions. I have I tend to have
a great sus suspicion about almost
everything and mistrust in institutions
over and over and I think that's my own
prejudice and then I find reasons to
support that and Chinghan was very good
at destroying a lot of uh institutions
or bringing them to heal within his
empire. So then I like that and I stress
that and I I see those things.
I think that's one thing. But other
things that I learned from the Mongol
people in general, not just about their
history and all, but how it's possible
to live for thousands of years in a
place that for many people is not the
most beautiful in the world. It's
austere. You have a band of mountains
and with some trees and then big band of
step and then a big band of sand, gravel
desert, the goi and for many people it
wouldn't it's not appealing. It's just
open. There's too much space. It's like
we need to build something over here.
Boy, you could have a condo right there.
We could have a building and we could
sell them off and but I, you know, they
haven't given in to that.
>> Mhm.
>> They really value their country. They
protect their country. Even now only 1%
is privately owned. They keep it down.
And in the Mongolian records, farm and
city count as one category. It's just
because it's settled people. It doesn't
matter. You settle on a farm, you settle
in a city, settle people, one category.
And
they lived there in this land
that Chingis Han would return to in
love.
If he returned to the capital city, he
would not know where he was. He would
have no idea. And all the people would
say, "Oh, be Mongol. I'm Mongolia. Yeah,
I'm Mongol. I have the hat. I have the
bell buckle. I have the all the tail
that's all embroidered, you know. Yeah,
I'm Mongol." and uh J say where's your
horse? Oh, I keep it in the countryside,
you know. But
he wouldn't recognize the city, but it's
still his country, his people. They
worship him in a literal sense, not the
way we would worship God asking for
favors, but in the sense of worshiping
him with praise. They have so many songs
to praise him. And about half of the hip
hop in the country is in praise of Jenis
Khan. You know, it's something we can't
understand because when we pray, we're
usually saying, you know, oh, thank you,
God, for this and that and the other and
you're so wonderful and I love you so
would you please give me and would you
please do this and would you please stop
this pain in my knee? We're asking for
things all over the place. But thing is,
Han, no. No, no one ever asks for
anything. They just honor him. They just
praise him and honor him.
If I wanted to visit Mongolia, what what
would you recommend? What's what's the
right way?
>> Well, start with my home. Let's start
there. You come over there.
It's a nice valley. I'm in a I have a
nice valley there. And uh it
I think almost any direction you go
outside of the city is going to be
interesting.
>> Uh it kind of depends a little bit on on
your purpose. Most people go south to
the Gobi and they do a loop to the Gobi
and around to Karakorum Hakor in the old
capital from Aguhan, but it was
abandoned by Kublakhan. And then they
circle back to the city and they may
stop off to see the what we call
Presolski, the the wild horse, but they
talk Kaki
to see the Taki or they may go up uh to
Huffskull Lake, a big beautiful lake,
somewhat like Ball, but much smaller. So
that's a beautiful trip. If you want to
see the more Turk area where they hunt
with eagles, the far west is where the
Kazak people live. And the mountains are
absolutely incredibly beautiful. Most
mountains in Mongolia are are gentle.
Beautiful but gentle. The farther west
you go, the more dramatic they become.
The more pointed and peaked and snow
covered. Then if you go to the eastern
Mongolia, it's tend to be very flat.
There are massive massive flocks of
cranes that come in every year. Millions
and millions of cranes. There are also
tundra swans that come in and the golden
ducks and all kinds of beautiful birds
out there. And so each area has
something special. If you want
particularly the history of Chinghan,
uh the Mongolians love him. They worship
him, but they don't do too much to
capitalize on his home area. the Hinti.
You can go to the Hinti. There areas you
cannot go to. Large large areas. It's
forbidden. But you can go. But they
don't capitalize like this is the place.
No, they they go there themselves out of
respect.
But the only
one place they built this statue of him
which is the largest equestrian statue
in the world. But it's the place where
they say he found his whip
which is when he was coming back from
being at the camp of asking Oralhan
or or Togalhan or or Bangghan to support
him. and he's coming back to his family
and on the way he supposedly found a
whip there which it's just a small stick
with a couple of strands of rawhide at
the end of it that's used but for the
Mongolians it's a symbolic thing because
obviously it's used for a horse but for
the Mongols your destiny your your self
your real is your heor
that lives inside of you windor that
guides you and gives you opportunities,
but it's up to you
to ride that wind horse. It's up to you
to use the windhorse, not to just go
wild with the windhorse. And so I think
it's at that crucial moment, he's on his
way back home and to go with Jamoka and
the other soldiers to the market to
rescue Burst. And so symbolically, he
found a whip there. But I think it it
means that he found the way to control
his destiny, his fate. That's very
important. Very important.
>> And that he did. That was the beginning
of everything.
>> Yes. And it's symbolized in that statue.
Some people think that he's holding this
stick that it's a baton or something
like that, but no, it's that what they
call the whip or tush.
>> We've talked a lot about the past. If we
look out into the future, what gives you
hope
for human civilization, for us humans?
>> Well, almost every day I'm totally
dissatisfied with everything on Earth,
you know? It's just that kind of old man
blah blah blah blah blah blah. What are
they talking about? My grandchildren are
talking to me. I don't understand a word
they say. What are they what and who are
they talking about? I never heard of
this. You know, it's kind of like that.
and who's running for office. Oh my god.
Oh my god. You know, it's everything
like that. But then almost every day I
meet somebody
just one person, you know, who gives you
some kind of hope. You just see somebody
doing something nice and or or they do
something nice for you. And I do find in
Asia that happens a lot.
>> You know that people just do nice things
for old people every day. And
so then my dissatisfaction with all the
big things in the world and the the way
my grandchildren talk and the way young
people are. And then I see something
like that. And often it's something with
the young people, something that the
young people do. And uh in Asia,
they're always bringing me things. They
bring me dried curds. They bring me
strawberries that they picked in the
forest in the summer or or or they bring
the uh pine nuts that they found or they
bring me the the milk in various forms
or yogurt. Oh yeah. Everybody thinks you
got to eat the yogurt. This is from my
grandmother and all the other yogurt in
the world is not good. But my
grandmother, she knows how to make the
best yogurt ever,
>> you know. And so over and over and over,
I find despite my all intentions to be
in a bad mood, you know, somebody spoils
it with these little nice acts that are
really very touching. Very touching.
>> Yeah. And it reminds you that there's
that little flame of goodness that burns
in everybody. I I believe that that
>> on the whole will
keep humanity flourishing and keep keep
you know evolving and changing towards
something better with every generation.
>> Yes.
You know I've the people in Mongolia
take such good care of me all the time.
All the time. And I think my wife had
MS. I've talked about this before
sometimes. She had MS and slowly
declined for many years becoming
paralyzed, not able to speak, not able
to control her movements or anything.
And we lived half the year still in
Mongolia. Part of it was because the
climate, the altitude were better for
her situation. Uh it was very helpful
for her, but also the people. There was
a poor country. The sidewalks are
broken. Everything's not working. But I
would go out with her in a wheelchair
alone. And I knew that every bump
some arm would pick her up. I mean, pick
up the wheelchair and lift her over that
and not make me do it. We could go to
the opera and you had to go up this
magnificent set of Soviet stairs to get
to the opera. You know, we would go and
I had no worries. I knew two guys would
come from one side, two guys from the
other side. They would carry and they do
not say, "Excuse me, may I help you?"
They do not wait for you to say thank
you. Nothing. They just do it and they
walk away. They have such respect.
Singers would come there all the time to
sing to warm up the house for my wife
and they even dancers would come
sometimes to dance or play the horsehead
fiddle mur to to play that to warm up
the house for her to see how they
treated a totally disabled person, you
know. And if I was feeding my wife and
somebody anyone anybody saw it, they
would come and immediately take over and
start feeding her in their place.
Children would come up to her. In
America, they're often afraid that she's
somebody in a wheelchair. You know, they
just kind of look, they don't know what
to do. But over there, the children
would always come to her. Always. They
were very it you just learn something
about the people. And living there in a
country where you out in the
countryside, you come to a gear, you
never ask for permission to go in. You
certainly don't knock on the door frame.
That's no that's hugely offensive. And
you ask, it's like insulting the people
like, "What? You're not good, hospitable
people. I have to ask you for
something." No, you walk in and you sit
down and they fix food for you.
It's an incredible thing. And these are
the things that give me hope. It's no
institution in the world. No, not the
big things and not the pop culture and
not all the platitudes. Oh my God, save
us from the platitudes of modern life,
you know.
>> Yeah.
>> It's true.
>> It's the family that will fix tea for
you at 2 in the morning because there
was a flash flood and you got stuck and
now you're cold and wet and they build a
fire and take care of you. or you just
show up and you make camp somewhere if
you have your own tent and I swear
within one hour some child is going to
be there with water and milk and you
think where did you come from but the
mother sends them over oh there's
somebody over there in the forest they
believe that they're obligated to take
care of one another anybody in your area
you take care of them and things like
that individuals do give me hope
people one by one or a few at a time,
even though I'm lost in the modern
world.
>> Uh, well, I'm I'm glad you find your
way. You mentioned
that your wife is no longer with us.
What's a favorite memory you have with
her?
Well, I could say a favorite picture is
a lake we used to go to called um Ugur
in the middle and somebody a very nice
friend uh took a picture of us towards
the end. We're just sitting there
watching the sunset over the lake that
we've been to many many times in life.
And you know she's holding she we're
holding hands. She's in the chair
paralyzed and we're just sitting there
staring off in the distance, you know,
and that's one of my favorites. But
with my wife, I was just blessed with a
good wife that
was exciting. She was the most beautiful
woman I had ever met in my whole life.
She was smart. She would talk to people
about anything. She talk about jazz or
physics or art. I mean I my life is so
small and narrow but my wife she she's
the one who gave me a life. She
the truth is a very odd people don't
believe sometime I failed English in
college I barely got in college nobody
in my family I grown up with my
grandparents mostly countryside and they
had third grade education my father had
seventh grade I went to live with him uh
after the grandparents died and and my
mother there was no big education there
in the family but I somehow got to
college my father told me to go he
didn't want me to go to the war in
Vietnam so he volunteered appeared to go
because there was the the rule that they
they couldn't send two people from one
family against their will. That was
mainly designed to protect brothers, but
he could go as the father and then I
could go to college, you know. So, I got
to college and I can't say, "Oh, I was
drinking and having a party and not
serious." No, I was trying like hell to
pass that course. I failed English. I
failed it. And this was just a huge
shame to me. In fact, after one year, I
was put on probation to be kicked out of
the school. My grades were so low
overall, you know, and then so it took
me a long time to confess this to my
wife after we met, you know, I met her.
I briefly had known her in high school,
but just not well or anything. But
anyway, we met later and and I told her
and she just looked at me and she said,
"What does a professor know? It's just a
professor. You could write anything you
want." Yeah. And she had the power to
make me believe everything she said. I
don't care what she said, I would
believe it. And I would say, "Yeah,
that's right. That's just a professor."
Yeah. What? You know, and
she inspired me, but she also she
supported me all the way through
graduate school. She was taking some
courses of her own and she was doing
graduate work, but but she inspired me.
But she told me,
I said, "I want to write for more people
than just for other scholars. I've done
this dissertation, a PhD, and it's just
dry as that's a goi desert, you know,
and and I didn't know what to do. And
she said, "Just tell the story to me,
but I can't see you while you tell it.
You're on the radio and I'm listening in
my car driving somewhere. Just tell the
story to me." And to this day, almost
every word I write has always just tell
the story to her the way that she would
like it. And I always read the books to
her
even she couldn't comprehend too much,
you know, but she just loved hearing the
book.
>> Mhm.
>> Because it was mine. And you know, in
the last years of our life, I gave up
the teaching and we we went back to our
original home in South Carolina. And I
said, "Okay, we're just going to live
here and watch the ocean and do things
like that and just be worthless
teenagers."
And my wife used to have episodes of
clarity.
I I have no idea what what cost. I mean,
it might be two hours, it might be seven
or eight hours. And what And we would
talk a lot
And so one time she said to me, she
said,
"This disease is going to take my life,
but it's taking your life." She said,
"You gave up teaching and you gave up
writing." And she said, "How do you
expect me to die in peace if I know that
you gave up everything to this disease?"
She said, "You should write."
And so every single day we sat together
by the water o I mean by the window. I
moved it into the dining room
overlooking the water and we sat there
at the desk and she sat in her
wheelchair next to me and sometimes we
would play a little soft music in the
background a little bit and for the most
part she couldn't talk but she liked to
just sit there beside me working and she
knew that she was inspiration.
She knew. She was the battery that kept
me going. You know, I How on earth
I ever had a wife like that, I don't
know.
>> That's beautiful, Jack. That's really
beautiful.
>> You know, I I just hit the jackpot with
her. And I see so many people that get
by and they even like each other or
they're friends or something. But in my
life, there was one person. I love my
children. I still do. I love my
grandchildren. I don't understand them.
But
>> yeah,
>> but there's one person in my life and
that was my wife for 44 years
and her funeral was on our anniversary.
I That's just the way life works out,
you know. But I was very lucky. Very
lucky.
If uh the two of you lived and met a few
centuries ago, I might be reading a
history book about you conquering.
>> No, no, no.
>> And if she said, you know, you should uh
you should do this.
Maybe you would.
>> If she said it, I probably would have
believed it. But
>> Exactly. Exactly.
>> She was too busy enjoying the world, you
know. And you know in her final
I I could not ask her questions and I
would not say oh you remember that. No I
never would say that cuz I knew she
couldn't remember. But at when she was
being restless or something in the night
or I used to reite scenes from our life
and just give the scene without saying
do you remember? But the last night, I
certainly didn't know that she was
going, but it was a rough night. And
we went back to
the first night that we had in Moscow.
We came in December in the winter and
the snow was so beautiful and white and
the yellow lights shining on it.
And then the most beautiful night, we
went to the Baloy
and she had this elegant blue wool coat
from her grandmother from the 1920s with
a huge It's so ironic. It was a a blue
wolf, but it's gray blue like the Mongol
hands gray blue collar. This huge
collar. She just looked like a movie
star from the 20s or something. And we
went to see Maya Placets Skaya.
>> Yeah.
>> And it was one of the most beautiful
nights. But
her last night,
I told her that story again, you know,
of all the details. I'd gone through it
many times, but her coat from her
grandmother whom she loved very much and
the snow and the yellow lights. And we
arrived at night because of course the
flight was late. And um uh then the next
night going to the Bolshoy and all those
beautiful things from Russia.
So that was it.
>> She was an inspiration. I have many many
nights or many days of great memories.
You know,
>> you're going to make me cry, Jack.
>> Oh, no.
>> That was beautiful. You're a beautiful
human being. Um it's uh it's really an
honor to talk to you. This was such a
fascinating journey through human
history about one of the most impactful
humans in human history.
>> Well, I I thank you very much and the
amount of research when I realized how
much research you had done, I felt like
you're going to know things I don't know
and you're going to trick me and pull
something out and I'm going to be shamed
in front of the whole world.
>> There's only one piece of research left
is me going to Mongolia and and and
riding there on the step. That would be
uh that would be incredible. So,
>> come come.
>> I will. Thank you so much for talking
today, Jack.
>> Thank you.
>> Thanks for listening to this
conversation with Jack Weatherford. To
support this podcast, please check out
our sponsors in the description and
consider subscribing to this channel.
And now, let me answer some questions
and try to articulate some things I've
been thinking about. If you would like
to submit questions, including in audio
and video form, go to
lexfreedman.com/amma.
Or if you want to contact me for other
reasons, go to lexfreedman.com/cont.
And now, allow me to make a few comments
on the ever evolving moral landscape of
human civilization throughout our
10,000year history. I was listening to
Dan Carlin's excellent eye-opening 5 and
a half hour episode of Hardcore History
titled Human Resources. It covered the
topic of slavery, the Atlantic slave
trade to be exact. One of the lessons I
took from this episode is that the long
arc of history is full of atrocities as
we modern-day humans understand them
with the wisdom of time and moral
progress. But during each period of
history, as Dan documents, it was
difficult for the majority of people to
see just where the line between good and
evil is. We humans, after all, forever
like to weave a story in which we are
the good guys.
Listening to Dan discuss and later
myself reading firsthand accounts of
slaves, of torture, of rape, of
separation of families is
incomprehensibly heartbreaking. By the
way, on this topic, firsthand accounts
of slavery can be read in slave
narratives, a folk history of slavery in
the United States from interviews with
former slaves. I can recommend the book
that I've been reading, which is Voices
from Slavery, 100 Authentic Slave
Narratives. It all seems deeply and
obviously wrong by today's standards,
but slavery was seen as normal through
most of human history.
Thomas Jefferson, the man who wrote,
"All men are created equal," which I
think is one of the most powerful lines
in all of human history. He himself was
a slave owner, making him a fascinating
case study of contradictions.
In fact, there's evidence that Thomas
Jefferson drew from Jenis Khan's ideas
about the importance of religious
freedom,
pulling, as he did, foundational ideas
of human freedom from the jaws of deep
history.
And Dan in his episode documents these
contradictions and complexities quite
well. The full range of human psychology
involved, including how violations of
basic human rights breed generational
hatred. This, I think, is an important
lesson to understand. The consequences
of our moral failings can reverberate
through decades, even centuries. And
that is perhaps one of the values of
studying history. It is laden with
atrocities, but it also contains people
who, while flawed, dare to rise in some
way above the moral decrepitude of the
day to try to build a foundation of a
slightly better future world. As MLK Jr.
put it, the ark of moral universe is
long, but it bends towards justice.
And now, please allow me to say a few
words about Gaza, Israel, and Palestine.
I'm not sure I'm eloquent enough or know
quite the right words to express what
I'm feeling, but let me try.
I think what is happening in Gaza is an
atrocity.
And I think that the Israeli government
is directly responsible for it. And to
the degree the US government is
assisting the Israeli government in
this, which I believe it currently is,
it needs to stop immediately.
for me as an American makes me sick to
know that my government has any role in
this atrocity.
This needs to stop.
Yes, there's geopolitical and military
complexity, nuance, and historical
context that I'm told by some so-called
experts that one must understand.
And perhaps they are smarter than me.
But like mentioned before, unlike the
moral complexity of deep history that
I've often spoken about, from the Roman
Empire to the Atlantic slave trade, this
is the 21st century. This is today. In
this the 21st century, I see things
quite simply and clearly.
To me, the death of a child is a
tragedy.
It doesn't matter what their skin color
is, what their religion is, or what plot
of land they call home.
In my view, they are all equal.
And the death of each child is a
tragedy.
Hamas did a definitively evil act on
October 7th, brutally murdering over
1,000 civilians.
But now, the acts of war conducted by
the Israeli government have led to the
death of over 60,000 people in Gaza,
likely over 80,000 people, of which at
least 17,000 are children.
17,000.
I'm not smart enough to know the path to
peace and flourishing of all the peoples
in the region. But I do know that what
has been happening in Gaza cannot be the
way.
Suffering at this kind of scale breeds
generational hate that leads to more
evil in the world, not less, to more
destruction,
to more suffering.
This has to stop.
Two years ago, I spoke with many
Palestinians in the West Bank on camera
and off. There's a video of it up if you
want to hear their voices for
yourselves.
It was a deeply moving experience for me
and I'm grateful for it. In the future,
I hope to find a way to talk to people
in Gaza.
I still think it's valuable to talk to
leaders, historians, soldiers, activists
from all perspectives, but the most
powerful and moving conversations for me
on mic and off have always been with
everyday people. This always felt like
where the truth is, the deeper truth of
life, of pain, fear, of hope.
And I still have hope. I believe we
humans are good at the core. and I know
we'll find our way. Thank you for
listening. I love you all.