In 1220, Genghis was fifty-eight but had not lost the exhilaration of conquest. Once, feasting with his marshals, he asked: ‘What’s the greatest joy for a man?’ The generals chose different pleasures – drinking, hunting, feasting – until Genghis said, ‘The greatest pleasure for a man is to crush a rebel and defeat an enemy, destroy him, taking everything he possesses, seize his married women and make them weep, ride his fine beautiful horses and fornicate with his beautiful wives and daughters – and possess them completely.’ This ‘possession’ was literal: nomads regarded their conquests as total – treasures, cities, livestock, humans were now theirs to share or kill. Sexual warfare was regarded as a right of conquest and a pleasure of life. DNA evidence shows that millions of people are descended from a single ancestor who travelled across Asia at this time. It is most likely that this was Genghis Khan himself, who, after centuries in which his descendants have multiplied, is literally the father of Asia.
While in Afghanistan, Genghis summoned a revered Taoist philosopher Qiu Chuji, recommended to him in China: ‘Master, have you brought me an elixir of immortality?’
‘I can protect life but no elixir will extend it,’ replied the Master, who recommended the curbing of appetites for girls, hunting, fighting and boozing.
‘Heaven sent this Holy Immortal to teach us these things,’ the khagan told his courtiers. ‘Engrave them on your hearts,’ though ‘unfortunately we Mongols are raised to shoot arrows and ride – habits hard to give up’. But by his orders Taoism was encouraged across China, and Buddhism fell out of favour.
Success had not spoiled Genghis, who like all autocrats enjoyed talking about himself: ‘Heaven disapproves of the luxury of China,’ he reflected. ‘I cleave to the simplicity of the steppe. I wear the same clothes, eat the same food, as cowherds and grooms do, and I treat soldiers as my brothers; in a hundred battles I was at the forefront of the fray. In seven years, I’ve performed great deeds; in six directions, everything is subject to a single rule.’
As Genghis held court, he was in contact via his pony mail with the
The Arrow and Subotai rode north into Russia and Ukraine, where they defeated a coalition of steppe peoples. Now they faced the Russians ruled by House Rurik. The Mongols were outnumbered: 30,000 Russians led by Prince Mstislav Mstislavich the Daring of Galich and the princes of Kyiv, Chernigov, and Smolensk met them at Kalka close to the Sea of Azov. The Mongols routed them. Mstislav Romanovich, grand prince of Kyiv, submitted – providing there was no bloodshed. Jebe and Subotai slyly honoured the promise, feasting on a wooden platform that gradually crushed the Russian princes.
The Rurikovichi had not lost their biggest army, that of Grand Duke Yuri of Vladimir-Suzdal. As Jebe and Subotai swerved homewards, summoned by Genghis, the Europeans now learned about the Mongols.
If Genghis was the khagan of the east, the khagan of the west was the most extraordinary of the Hautevilles. Emperor Frederick II, who gloried in the nickname Stupor Mundi – Wonder of the World – prepared to defend Christendom.
* Khabul was not the first of the family to create a kingdom: around 900, his great-grandfather Butunchar Munkhag had ruled the Mongols.
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* Nestorius was the Byzantine archbishop who had argued that Christ had two simultaneous natures, divine and human. He was deposed and exiled in 431, but his views became popular in the east.
