Jack Weatherford, The Virtues of Mongols during GENGHIS KHAN's era.

So, I'm delighted to know and thank you for coming to hear me, especially when I'm a foreigner talking to you about your history. And many in this audience, I'm sure, know much more about the history than I do, but I come at it from my own perspective in anthropology. But anthropology and history, I feel like, should be twins. But history depends mostly upon written documents. And then anthropology depends mostly upon going out into — we used to say the field, going out and talking to people. And so for me, it was very simple. I decided that the core of my work here would be the written part would be the Secret History of the Mongols. But I would travel with that book, with that text all around this country to talk to people who lived in the areas where the action happened. And to see that place and just to smell the air, just to feel the soil. Is it strong? Is it weak? Is it sandy? Is it wet? Is it dry? Just to feel the place where the events of Genghis Khan's life happened. In this way, I felt like anthropology and history come together. So for me, it was very important to be able to use anthropology and to be able to learn from the people today. The book itself or the text itself is 800 years old, but the people today still have a kind of memory. They know the land. That was so important for me. They know the land and they know in what season can you ride to here and where can you get to the next valley. They know everything about the land. It was very important for me.

Yes, I was doing work on the tribes of the Americas, both North America and South America. But the truth is my first interest was Mongolia. Even as an undergraduate student in the 1960s, I wrote to Mongolia and asked about the possibility of a come, but of course at that time it was not possible and I never received an answer. Then when I was in graduate school, I thought, 'Well, I'll try one more time.' And so, I wrote one more time. This time not to a university but to the writers' union. And again, there was no answer. So, it wasn't possible to come and I'm young, so you put that aside and you go to something else. And my studies then mostly dealt with the native people of America. But what impressed me so much was that the native people of America, North America and South America, they had a great culture, great civilization, especially in South America and Mexico. They had a civilization, but everything was crushed by the Europeans who came in. All the tribes were defeated. And with something that attracted me to Mongolia is here is a tribal people that 800 years ago conquered the largest land empire in the history of the world. To me the contrast was very interesting and yet the similarities were very interesting. Then when I came here, I saw that in many ways history had done to Mongolia what it had also done to American Indians. That they had taken a lot of wealth, a lot of things had been taken out of this country. And the country had been oppressed for some time. But I came at the time when Mongolia was free. Once again, Mongolia was free and it was free to go back to its own history. It was free to talk about Genghis Khan. It was free to do many things that had not been possible. So for me, I see both similarities with the Native Americans, but also I see greater hope for the future here because the native civilizations of America were unfortunately crushed. And even though there the people are still there in many ways, they don't have the opportunity that the Mongolian people have today.

Okay. Okay, thank you, Mr. Ganzorig. This is a question we can discuss, but I cannot answer. I can only give some ideas and some thoughts, but I cannot truly answer it. What made Genghis Khan Genghis Khan? What made — no, let's not say Genghis Khan, Temüjin. A boy from Khentii Aimag. Just a boy like so many others. How is it that this boy became the greatest conqueror in the history of the world and not just that, but one of the greatest lawgivers in the history of the world? How is it that he had the idea and he was able to do it? He had the strategy and he was able to do it. How? Obviously, I have been thinking about that a lot and yet I still cannot give you the real answer because what happened with him only happened one time in the history of the world. So, we don't have another comparison. If you think about someone like Alexander the Great, well, he was a prince. That's a good start in life, you know, and then his teacher was Aristotle, one of the greatest philosophers of Greece. Well, that's a pretty good teacher to have. And yet his empire died the day he died. It did not last. It was never really an empire. He just went conquering around the world from Egypt to India and never created an empire. Or you look at someone like Julius Caesar, came from an already powerful family and he rose up. Even Napoleon, who's often cited as coming from a poor family or just a normal family, but he moved into the military and the army already existed. France already had a written language. France already had a government. France already had everything that it needed. He just needed to rise up in the army. Genghis Khan, he had none of those things. None of those things. He did not inherit a government. He did not inherit a nation. He did not inherit a written language. He did not inherit an army. He had to create everything himself. His law, his organization, he did it. How? How does this boy, this boy Temüjin, do it?

Well, I think part of it is we have to just look at the circumstances of a boy's life. Can we not think about him as a great conqueror, lawgiver, but just look at him as a boy. And he lived in a harsh world. You know yourself the climate and the conditions of this country in the countryside and what the herders and nomads live. But he lived an exceptionally difficult life because his mother and her children were, as you know, they were put out of the clan by his own relatives through his father. So, the chances of their living was very, very small. They would probably die on the steppe in the first winter. But this woman, Mother Höelün, this incredible woman, she saved the life of every child she had. And in the words of the Secret History, she pulled her black hat down on her head and she took her stick up and down this river and dug up roots to feed her children. So, he had an exceptional woman to guide him and lead him. She made some hard choices at times that really hurt him greatly, such as when she left Börte behind during the kidnapping and saved her own children. That was very hard for him. Other times he did things that were very hard for her, such as in the killing of his half-brother Bekhter. So, it was a family dynamic that was very complicated, but I do believe that she was the first great teacher in his life. And I think the ancient sayings of the people, he learned those from his mother. And you remember she wasn't really a part of his father's family. So, she didn't know all the things from his father's family to teach him about his own heritage at that point.

The other thing I think that's very important in the childhood of Temüjin that's not mentioned very much in the Secret History, and it puzzles me, because as you probably know, the Secret History was edited and doctored at some time in China, perhaps during the Yuan Dynasty for some reasons, and then other changes were made in the Ming Dynasty. A few things were inserted, not too much, I think, but a lot of things were cut out. And so, I think it's very interesting that there's this character who appears in his life, the first person who comes to visit after his birth. It's not his father. His father is off fighting the Tatars. His father's on a mission. The first person to come is Jelme, Ujin Udai, a Uriankhai man. Well, not much is mentioned in the Secret History about him, but he shows up at all the most important points in the life of Genghis Khan. He came with his drum. Now, many of the Western sources, in particular, and the Chinese sources, they take away the drum, and they don't mention that, and they just mention that he is a blacksmith. Well, there's no evidence at all that Zur Ungadai was a blacksmith, but that's the way they wanted to interpret it. But I think that because the drum is mentioned, he had a strong spiritual power. He was obviously coming for some special reason. So, he showed up in the Secret History at the birth of Genghis Khan, but actually, that's not even recorded at the time of the birth in the Secret History. It comes in much later. You find out looking back that, 'Oh, he was the first person to come.' The second time he came, Genghis Khan or Temüjin was about 16 or 17 years old, and Börte had just been kidnapped, and he was the first person who came again. And this time, he came with his three sons, or some people would say nephews. It's not clear about it. Of course, with Jebe and with Subutai, the greatest general in the history of the world. He would turn out to be an even greater strategist and general on the battlefield than Genghis Khan. But he came, and then one other, Kachiun also came. So, three people were given to him by this, I would say, shaman, I would think. I can't say 100% certain, but he shows up at certain times. I think that, in fact, he was there more often. The third time he shows up was he's supposed to have delivered food at Baljuna at the very crucial moment in the life of Genghis Khan. By this time he was already beginning to be Genghis Khan. So, I think great parts were left out because I don't believe that they did not meet for 16 years. They're living in the same area. If this old man was the first to come and then he comes 16 years later — no, I believe that he also helped to train Genghis Khan. And I think this was very important because I think it was the real spiritual basis for the life of the future Genghis Khan. He was learning about it from a man of the mountains, a man of the forest. And sometimes a little bit different than the knowledge of the steppe. But it was a very important part of his education.

So, then what did he do that was so different? You probably know all the things that he found the best friends in the world. He cultivated the relationship. And often Genghis Khan wasn't the greatest mind or the greatest warrior or the greatest strategist, but he knew how to always choose the best person for the job. That was an amazing quality that he had. He knew how to choose that person. And none of those people turned against him. Well, you know, there was a different case with Jamukha. That whole story is quite different. But all these early people who came to him like Subutai and Jebe and all of them, they stood by him. Bo'orchu. He knew that he needed other people. When the horses were stolen, the eight yellow horses were stolen by the Naiman Shira, he needed help to go get them and he found the right person. He found the right person. And it's very interesting to me that even though these are young boys, that they stayed together for life. Everyone who came into his life stayed with him for life, with the one big exception we mentioned. So there was something about his ability to attract people, to hold people, and to judge people. To judge them not by their kinship to him, not by the status of how they were born, not even by their formal education, because none of these people had a formal education with teachers. No, he judged them by their ability to get things done. Their ability to do it. So this is something that I think sets him apart from many of the leaders in the history of the world. This ability. And throughout almost all of his life, he valued ability over kinship. Now we also know that as a father at the end of his life, he valued kinship, his own children, his sons. And he perhaps awarded them too much in some ways. And they were not as capable certainly as he had been. But this ability to attract the right people and to know how to get the job done was very important for him.

Also his loyalty. His loyalty to everyone around him. I think because he had experienced so much disloyalty when his father's own family turned against him and his mother, he knew what it was like to be betrayed. And in his early days when he would conquer people, he would win over another tribe, and they would agree to all kinds of terms with him. 'Yes, we will be a part of your following. Yes, we will be friendly. Yes.' Invariably, the elite turned against him. He learned very early that it's the elite that you cannot trust from the people that you conquer. He learned that on the steppe of Mongolia, and he kept that with him throughout his whole life. So, he has these special characteristics of choosing people for their loyalty, especially people from the same level of life that he came from, and not according to their birth. But also he had an extreme form of humility to live a simple life. A simple life. He made it clear. He ate the food that his soldiers eat. He slept in the gear. He wore the clothes that his soldiers wear. You think about that. For the greatest conqueror, even little petty conquerors, they love to dress themselves up in gold and silver and silks and have monuments to them. He'll have nothing. Nothing. No monument, no picture in his lifetime. Nothing. He was a Mongol. He knew that he was a Mongol, and the rest of the world, he wasn't worried about making himself famous to them. He made himself famous through his actions, not through propaganda. Not through propaganda. So, he was a very modest person. So, I think these are some of the virtues that Genghis Khan had that helped him to get ahead in life, to conquer the largest empire in the world. It really wasn't just the effort of one man. He was the one man who organized it. He was the one who put it together. But in choosing the right soldiers, the right generals, he had the best army in the world. But also he knew the value of every single Mongol. And that meant also of the women of his nation, starting with his mother, with his wives. The women were also extremely important for him. So, then in the system that he had, the men would be off fighting and then the women would be running the country. At first, of course, the nomadic wife, she runs the ger and she owns the ger and she manages everything. The husband may be away for months or in the case of Genghis Khan for years, she's managing that. And he also said that the person who can manage a house can manage a nation. And so, he would go away and all of Mongolia was left under the control of women from his family. And when he made the first marriages for his daughter, they were all along the Silk Road. And if you read the translations, which I don't always recommend since you read Mongolian, just read the Mongolian. But the translations often say, and sometimes under influence of other countries, the wording was changed even in the Mongolian language. But they sometimes say he gave his daughters in marriage. There's no such sentence in the Secret History. He did not give his daughters in marriage. He made it very clear in the wedding speeches, but these are recorded elsewhere, not so much in the Secret History. He made it very clear: 'I give you this nation to rule. And your first husband is your honor.' He made it very clear. And not only was it clear in words, but then usually the husband would go off with Genghis Khan to serve in the army, and she was left there in charge of the string of smaller nations along the Silk Road. So, he knew that he only had 1 million people. Mongolia was small even then, 1 million people, and he had to use everyone, everyone to help in running the empire. So, this was Genghis Khan's ability to organize and to think. It does not answer the question because I think the question has to be answered in another domain of life, in the spiritual domain of life. It's not just a matter of organizing, of thinking, of putting things together. But what was his spiritual power that he had? I have some thoughts about that, but you probably also have some thoughts about that.

Yes, I think that's looking at the story, I think at a very crucial point when he's trying to unite them all. But I think if we go back to Temüjin rather than Genghis Khan, you know, with Temüjin, his life in public service or in war started from love. From the love of one woman, Börte. This was the one who motivated him. And when she was kidnapped, it would have been so easy for a lesser man to try to find a new wife or to just move to a new area or to do many other things. He was just a boy still. He's a teenager, 16, 17 maybe by now, 17 years old. Just a young person. But I think he just decided life would not be worth living without her. He would rather die trying to get her back than to lose her. And so this began the whole movement of his life. And it's at that moment that Ertuğrul came with his three sons or nephews to help him in this great effort. So I think that first he was not trying to get involved in steppe politics. He was not trying to conquer anyone. He wanted the love of his life back. And in that moment under the moonlight when he reunited with her, I think that was the happiest moment of his life. And it's almost as though he could retire now and just go off and live with her and herd some animals and have a good life. But he was trapped now because he had allegiance to Wang Khan, Toghrul Khan. He owed him service. He had the relationship with Jamukha. He owed certain things to him and Jamukha was a more prosperous or richer person at that time. He was suddenly trapped and of course he had the Merkit enemies now who he had offended by attacking. So he was forced into this system and at first he would seem content just to help Toghrul Khan, Wang Khan, to work towards his goal fighting other people such as the Tatars. But gradually he began to see, I think it was a certain kind of, we would say today in modern terms, class resentment. When Toghrul Khan would not allow marriage between his family and Genghis Khan's family because they were only Mongols. When the Naiman Khan's queen mother, when she talked about the Mongols as being so much lower than everyone else. Slowly he began to see that the people for whom he was fighting, the people whom he was making rich and great and powerful, those people were betraying him. And so then he wanted to start uniting tribes around him in a better, more just system. I think each step of his life is a widening of his own vision and his own ambition and his own hope. And where we end up, of course, his final dream is we have to unite the whole world in one peaceful country. One peaceful law under heaven. Every nation can have its own law, but we have one law from heaven. All people must abide by that. So it was an expanding vision over his lifetime that grew from that of a boy in love to a young man, a warrior defending his lord, and then to becoming the bearer of justice for the poorer people and the old, more oppressed members of the tribes. And then finally to war against the great civilizations that were taking advantage of tribal people.

So, we move into a different level of analysis that starts to look at the whole culture and what is it that's making it possible not just for this person to happen, but why this culture. Not only why was it Genghis Khan, but why was it a Mongol who did this. And I think that if we look at the history, the way history is written in most texts in most countries of the world, it's about places. It's about great cities of London or Paris or Rome or Athens or in modern terms Beijing. And it's about buildings. It's about great forts that are built. It's about palaces that are built. Or it's about the Taj Mahal in India or about the pyramids in Egypt, about the Great Wall of China. It's about things and places. That's the whole essence of settled, sedentary civilization, the place. We think about Mongolian history and the places are everywhere. Every part of the history of Genghis Khan is in this country of Mongolia. You can go almost anywhere and something happened there because Mongolian history isn't just about a place. It's certainly not about a building or anything that's made by humans. Mongolian history is about movement. The culture is based upon movement, movement, connection for ideas, for people, for commerce, for goods. It's always movement. That's the essence of the nomadic civilization. So, it was a great difference between the times in which he lived, in which everyone from China, the Middle East, Russia, they were all still based around places. Whereas the Mongols come along and it's about communication. We have to be able to have a message go from here to Hungary in 6 weeks. That was just phenomenal, just absolutely phenomenal. So, I think this fundamental difference between sedentary civilization and Mongol civilization is very important. Not just because it understands movement itself, but it's a whole different way of thinking. If we look at the life of say a farmer, a peasant anywhere in the world, in China, in Europe, or in America, they wake up in the morning, they step outside, they have to look at the weather because of their crops. They know what's to be done. Their crops are growing, and so they know when it's time to plow the earth, when it's time to plant the seeds, when it's time to water the plants if necessary. They know all of these things. It's a routine of steps that's repeated every year. And it varies a little bit with the weather. And if there's too much rain, you dig a canal to take away the water. If there's too little water, you dig a canal to bring in water. They have to think, but it's maybe say 10 variables that they have to consider in a day.

Compare that to the gear. Mongol nomad steps out of the gear. They also look at the sky, that's the first thing. They need to think about the weather for that day. But they don't have rows of plants that are identically the same. They have animals. And even though horses may all look the same to some people, or sheep look, the herder knows every single animal. So if you have 100, 200, you have to know every one. Okay, this one has a hurt foot. This one's been having trouble eating. This one is pregnant. This one just had a new foal, and maybe is having trouble nursing the foal. Every animal, you have to know about that animal. You also have to know not just the weather right here, but you have to go in the mountain and look about the next valley to see, well, what's the grass going to be like there? Or you know from past experience, when it's dry here, there's more grass over there. Or you have to know about the grass and all the plants for a long distance away. You have to know about the weather and you have to know about predators. There could be wolves. There could be other people trying to steal the animals coming. So, if we can say that maybe the farmer has 10, and I'm just using that number, from say 10 things to think about, the Mongol herder every day has 100 things to think about, or maybe 200, or maybe they have variables in their head going all the time. This is a, I think, I mean, I'm not a psychologist or something, but I really think that that makes a big difference in the way Mongolian people thought and to some extent today think. The way that they thought and think compared to the way that the sedentary people think. And so thus, the sedentary people, they want to accumulate wealth and they protect it. So, they build a wall around it or they build a vault to hold everything or they do something to hold it there. Genghis Khan? No. He didn't build any walls. He didn't build any buildings to hold all of his treasure. No, he's a man of movement. So, what does he do? Does he keep gathering this money together? I mean, I have sometimes said that in some way he was the richest man in the history of the world because he controlled the most wealth. But, remember, he's a simple humble man. He's not wearing all that silk and gold and everything. Simple, simple life. So, what does he do? It's a land of movement. He makes the wealth move. And so every soldier who fights for him is going to have wealth to take home. And if that soldier doesn't come home, Genghis Khan made sure that his mother had wealth. If the husband did not come home, Genghis Khan made sure that the wife had money. If the father did not come home, Genghis Khan made sure the children shared the wealth. He made the wealth move. If you build a giant fortress to hold all your wealth, it just sits there doing nothing. As they once said to the caliph when Hulagu conquered, you know, you can't eat gold. You can't eat it. It just sits there doing nothing. But with the Mongol way, it's moving all the time. And it's moving, it's giving a little benefit to every person who gets it. One person buys this and buys that and sells this and sells this. And everybody is benefiting a little bit. And then as his son said, Ogedei Khan, when he was the Great Khan, he said he was being criticized for giving away too much like his father, giving away. He was criticized for that and he said, 'Where's it going to go? Where's it going to go? This is my empire. It comes back. It comes back. It comes back. And you give it again.' So, this mobility, it not only applies to moving the animals back and forth with the seasons across the land, it's a whole different way of thinking about everything. And this is why I say that Genghis Khan is in the making of the modern world, the modern world. Because nobody was thinking like that at that time. Nobody. He was the one who was thinking about things. You can look, first of all, how is he a modern man? Well, he outlawed the kidnapping of women, he granted religious freedom to everyone, he outlawed the harming of diplomats. He promoted trade. We know all those things. But, that's not the only way that he was modern, just in the law that he made. He was modern in the way that he was thinking about the movement. This applied to his army moving around conquering the world. It applied to the economy that he was creating by getting the wealth in motion. And much of the wealth in China, in Persia, in Iran, Iraq, and all of these areas, it was stagnant wealth. It just sat there in the hands of the rich elite. But, the rich elite was growing weaker and degenerate and not paying the army often because they wanted to keep doing things like that. Genghis Khan, he knew the secret of wealth was not in the king, not in the emperor, not in the elite. The secret of wealth was in the people. His people, his nation. So, this is how I think that the nomadic Mongol mindset of mobility, he carried it to a new level. He acquired this as a child, but he also acquired a lot of hunting instincts, I think, and hunting skills because he was living in the mountains. So, he had this combination and together he carried it up to a higher level of civilization.