Mongolian History :: essays research papers

MongoliaRISE OF GHENGIS (Chinggis) caravan innAfter the migration of the Jurchen, the Borjigin Mongols had emerged in central Mongolia as the leading clan of a loose federation. The principal Borjigin Mongol leader, Kabul Khan, began a series of raids into Jin in 1135. In 1162 (some historians say 1167), Temujin, the outgrowth son of Mongol fountainheadtain Yesugei, and grandson of Kabul, was born. Yesugei, who was chief of the Kiyat subclan of the Borjigin Mongols, was killed by neighboring Tatars in 1175, when Temujin was only twelve years old. The Kiyat rejected the boy as their leader and chose one of his kin instead. Temujin and his immediate family were decrepit and apparently left to die in a semi-desert, mountainous region. Temujin did non die, however. In a dramatic struggle described in The mystic History of the Mongols, Temujin, by the age of twenty, had die the leader of the Kiyat subclan and by 1196, the undisputed chief of the Borjigin Mongols. Sixteen years of climb uply constant warfare followed as Temujin consolidated his power north of the Gobi. Much of his early success was because of his first each(prenominal)iance, with the neighboring Kereit clan, and because of subsidies that he and the Kereit received from the Jin emperor in payment for punitive operations against Tatars and other tribes that threatened the northern frontiers of Jin. Jin by this time had become absorbed into the Chinese cultural system and was politicall(a)y weak and more and more subject to harassment by Western Xia, the Chinese, and finally the Mongols. Later Temujin stony-broke with the Kereit, and, in a series of major campaigns, he defeated all the Mongol and Tatar tribes in the region from the Altai Mountains to Manchuria. In time Temujin emerged as the strongest chieftain among a number of contending leaders in a alignment of clan lineages. His principal opponents in this struggle had been the Naiman Mongols, and he selected Karakorum (west-southwest of modern Ulaanbaatar, near modern Har Horin), their capital, as the seat of his new empire. In 1206 Temujins leadership of all Mongols and other peoples they had conquered between the Altai Mountains and the Da Hinggan (Greater Khingan) Range was acknowledged formally by a council of chieftains as their khan. Temujin took the honorific chinggis, meaning supreme or striking (also romanized as genghis or jenghiz), creating the title Chinggis Khan, in an effort to signify the extraordinary scope of his power.