Middle Ages

Genghis Khan Biography


Born c. 1162

Died 1227

Mongolian chieftain and conqueror

"A man's greatest work is to break his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all the things that have been theirs." Portrait.

No empire in history has ever been as large as that conquered in the 1200s by the Mongols, who began their conquests as a simple nation of shepherds and nomads in Central Asia. What welded them into a mighty fighting force was not a religion, or a political belief, or even a shared need for land or food; it was a man, a severe but shrewd warlord known to history as Genghis Khan.

The son of a chieftain

Today Mongolia is a quiet, underpopulated, and underdeveloped land to the north of China. For centuries, it had been home to a hardy nomadic people who had no written language...

(The entire page is 2235 words.)

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