Or Psychological Warfare Was Not His
Only Legacy
 “Mongolia
Sees Genghis Khan's Good Side”
– An Article from the New York Times
 By Jehangir S. Pocha
 Published: Tuesday, May 10, 2005
“Genghis Khan wasn't really a bad guy,"
Elbegdorj Tsahkia, the Mongolian prime
minister, said with a grin. "He just had bad
press."
 Mongolia
emerged from the Soviet Union's
shadow in the early 1990s
 Since the 1990s, the lore and myth
surrounding the khan have captured the
imagination of the country
 Genghis Khan is seen as the founder of the
Mongolian state
 Under the communists, Mongolians were
forced to adopt the ways and views of
Western civilization with an emphasis on
communist theory
 Today’s
veneration is partly
traditional in Mongolia, where most
revere their ancestors and where
Genghis Khan is considered the
father of the nation
 But it is also a backlash
 During the seven decades the Soviet
Union ran Mongolia, Moscow feared
the deification of Genghis Khan
would incite Mongolian nationalism
 So even mentioning his name was
forbidden
 People
were banned from visiting the home
of Genghis Khan in Khentii in the northeast
 In fact, a Soviet tank base sat on the sole
road connecting Khentii to the rest of the
country
 Now,
as Mongolia is reinventing itself as a
free-market democracy, it is searching for its
past to help define itself
 And the Mongol named Temujin, who took
the title of Genghis Khan, or Universal Ruler,
forged the world’s largest contiguous land
empire in the early 1200s
 Evidence
of a renewed romance with Genghis
Khan is everywhere
 Children, streets, hotels, vodka, cigarettes,
banks, candy bars, beer, products and
businesses of almost every type carry his
name
 His face is on Mongolian money, stamps, and
official buildings, and it is spray-painted on
street corners
 Genghis
Khan’s comeback over 700 years
after his death (1227) is especially popular
with young people
 One of the country’s top bands, Black Rose,
sings his praises in anthems that combine
raspy rock vocals with traditional Mongolian
throat singing
-Throat singing is a guttural style of singing
or chanting and it is one of the oldest forms
of music
 Historians
in the West and in China, India,
and Iran and other nations that fell to
Genghis Khan’s horsemen in the early 1200s
tend to only see the Mongol onslaught
 But to Mongolians, one of history’s greatest
tyrants has been the greatest hero
 Differing
assessments of conquerors can roil
emotions in Asia, where passions over history
run high
 But since Genghis Khan’s legacy is free of
living memory, it is proving easier to revise
 In fact, nations wanting to curry favor with
resource-rich Mongolia are supporting
attempts to resurrect its past
 Since
Mongolians worship their dead and the
location of Genghis Khan’s grave remains
unknown, both Beijing and Tokyo are trying
to outdo each other in sanctifying his
memory
 China
is spending about $20 million to
renovate a mausoleum it built to Genghis
Khan in 1954 at Ejin Horo Banner on the
Ordos Highlands in its province of Inner
Mongolia
 In October a Japanese-financed research
team searching for the tomb said it had
found it at Avraga, about 250 kilometers, or
155 miles, east of this capital
 Many
people in this pristine, beautiful
country see such global support for the
rehabilitation of their god-king as fulfillment
of a longtime quest for international dignity
 But the Persian texts of the day and age of
the Mongols warned the ancient cities of
Bukhara and Samarkand: “All men who
surrender will be spared; whoever does not
surrender but opposes with struggle and
dissension, shall be annihilated
 Many
Mongolians feel that the savage image
of Genghis Khan endures only because “his
history was written by his enemies”
 The Mongols were not scribes
 The only comprehensive chronicle of his
times, “The Secret History of the Mongols”
(a13th-century account of Genghis Khan’s
life) was lost for centuries
 Even
when it was rediscovered in the 1880s
by a Russian diplomat in China, its
dissemination was tightly controlled
 So most of the material on Genghis Khan
comes from the people he conquered
 The historians present the picture of a
brilliant but tempestuous and cruel man
 Genghis Khan was said to have been so hottempered that he slew his half-brother in an
argument
 But
a slow reconsideration of this fearsome
figure has been taking place since 1982,
when Francis Woodman Cleaves produced the
first authoritative modern version of "The
Secret History of the Mongols”
 Some newly found details, such as Genghis
Khan's apparent fear of dogs, make him seem
more human; historians are also reassessing
the nature of Mongol society and rule
 The
new books say his empire gave citizens
religious freedom, banned the slave trade,
expanded a global economy and introduced
several important international concepts,
such as diplomatic immunity
 The
extent of Genghis Khan’s empire also led
to greater contact between East and West,
and these exchanges were carried further by
his grandson, Kublai Khan
 Though
it is estimated that Genghis Khan
killed about 40 million people across Asia and
Europe, some researchers cite evidence that
Genghis Khan might have exaggerated his
massacres
 Researchers
at the Genghis Khan University
in Ulan Bator even say that toward the end
of this life he was trying to turn his empire
into a civil state, based on a code of laws
called the Great Yassa, which granted equal
and defined legal rights for all citizens,
including women
 But
Genghis Khan's most astounding effect
remains on the world's demography. In
February 2003, the study "The Genetic
Legacy of the Mongols," published by the
American Journal of Human Genetics,
estimated that Genghis Khan has more than
17 million direct descendants living today:
One in every 200 people is related to him