Genghis Khan

I imagine that most of you have heard of this guy - Genghis Khan - right? I had but I've never read much about him. Recently I read two books by Conn Iggulden: Genghis Birth of an Empire and Genghis Lords of the Bow. These are the first two of a, I think, three-part fictional series on Genghis Khan. Unfortunately the third one won't be out in the US until March 2009 (if I were in England I could be reading it now)! These were very good stories and now I want to read more about him. You are wondering why I'm bothering to tell you this, right? Well, someone has to post on this blog!!

Actually I thought it was very interesting reading about him. The map shows the extent of his conquests. He conquered more contiguous territory than anyone else in history. He created a huge empire out of disparate mongol tribes and held them together through the force of his personality (and a little bit of killing). What is fascinating to me is that he actually did create an empire. When he was nine years old his father was poisoned and he, his mother and brothers were cast out of their tribe and left to die. That he survived this and went on to become the ruler of an empire is really amazing.

Most of what we know about Genghis Khan comes from The Secret History of the Mongols which was written shortly after his death in 1227. It is the next book on my reading list (although I'm getting it from the library not Amazon, you'll see why if you click the link)! The portrait to the right is from the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. Actually no one knows what he really looked like. Personally this portrait doesn't support my vision - it doesn't look very menacing!


Robin, the lonely blog mistress