The death of Genghis Khan: How and where did he die? | Jack Weatherford and Lex Fridman

After conquering the Khwarezmian Empire in Central Asia, Chinggis returned, and then they had a great what they call Naadam, a great celebration that went on for a whole summer just about. And they had so much wealth to distribute to everybody, and everybody was being given all kinds of things, you know, for what they have done, including the people who helped save him when he was in the Kank and in the ox yoke. They were rewarded; everybody was rewarded. It was a great time. But the first place he had attacked outside was the Tangut nation, and they had sworn allegiance to him. And then when he went off to the Middle East, they refused to send troops.

He didn't forget that he's going back to the Tangut nation and he's going to conquer them again. As he was crossing the Gobi, which takes a while, and you're crossing the Gobi, he was distracted a little bit by hunting the hulan, which is the wild — we say the wild ass, or I used to say wild horse. It sounds a little better. But the hulan, to say hulan of the goi. He was off hunting hulan. He fell from his horse and he injured his leg very badly, and he seemed to decline from that point. And it took some number of months before August of 1227. He was very much near the end of life. You can read online the exact date, and it's all very specific, but the truth is we don't know exactly which day he died in that time because one of his wives was running the camp and they were keeping it secret until the defeat of the Tangut was completed.

And the Tangut offered all kinds of things for the Mongols to go away again the second time, and Chinggis had told his family, no, accept nothing. And then when they surrender, you kill the royal family, kill them all. So that the idea — they were Buddhist people, and the Tanguts were Buddhists, and the idea was usually you can be reborn into your own family, but he said no, you kill off the whole family so they can't be reborn.

So he died there.

Oh, the succession issue was always difficult. He did not have the right to appoint a successor; that was not the Mongol way. He could nominate somebody. So before he set off for the Middle Eastern campaign, one of his wives said to him, you know, even the biggest tree falls. You've got to make a plan and talk to your sons about the future. So he did. He called the sons together. So this is Jochi, the oldest boy, who was born while the father was allied with his and Jamukha, and he was named visitor Jochi. And then the next one was Chagadai, and the next one was — and the next one was Tolui, the father of Kublai Khan, but he was still alive at this point. So all four of them came. So Chinggis Khan explained to them he wanted to talk about the succession and to get some consensus from them about the succession. And so he said the Mongols always call on people to speak by order of age. They also serve tea or food, anything by order of age. It's always done that way from then till now. So he called first on Jochi and he said, 'What do you say, Jochi?' Chinggis favored Jochi. This is the one who is questionable paternity, but he always favored him. You know, the youngest, Tolui, was too hotheaded. Ogodei was a heavy drinker. Chagadai was very rigid about the law of the Mongols and all, you know, but he thought he seemed to favor Jochi as a more reasonable, good warrior but reasonable person. But he called on Jochi, 'My son, speak.'

The second one, who believes in Mongol law supposedly, he jumped up and he said — this is when he accused his father of all kinds. He said, 'How can you call on this Mongol, this Merkit bastard? If you call on him first, that means you want him to be the great Khan. He should not be the great Khan of the Mongol Empire. Is this his Mongol Empire now?' And you know, you can imagine kind of scene. Well, Chinggis Khan is the greatest ruler in the world. He's sitting there being lectured by his second son, and this is when he gave that impassioned speech to his — now, in actually the way the Secret History, it makes it look like it was his assistant speaker who said it, because very often the great power doesn't say the words directly; they let somebody else say them for him. They have a spokesperson. But anyway, I think it was his words, and I think he said them on that day. That's what I think on this business of 'You do not know, you were not there.' You know, the stars were moving in the sky. The head of heaven was turning around. The earth was turning over. You do not know who loved whom. You do not know who your mother loved. You do not know what your mother did. And if I say he is my son, who are you to say he is not my son?'

Yes.

I believe that — I don't know if she was alive at this point or not. We do not have the death recorded. Mongols are not good at recording death. They don't — they usually just say somebody finished their age, or they have some euphemism for it. But he made that impassioned speech, and Chagadai had to submit. And he said, 'Yes, you are our father, and we accept what you say, but a deer shot with words cannot be loaded on a horse. A deer shot with words cannot be eaten.'

So, Jochi knew. So he said to the boys — the boys, I mean, these are middle-aged men, they're not boys — but he said to the men, 'What do you want to do? What do you want to do?' And he said, 'I don't favor Chagadai because of his attitude and the situation. And Tolui is still hotheaded,' and he actually ended up being drunk and dying early. So, but the other guys, they said, 'Well, Ogodei.' They chose him because he was the most generous and the bon vivant, and he was for every party and drinking every time. And yeah, one time Shigi Khutukhu, the great judge who wrote The Secret History, Shigi Khutukhu was sleeping in a cart one time for whatever reason. I don't know what — I think he also had passed out drunk, perhaps. But Ogodei came out drunk and grabbed him up and pulled him back into the party, and Ogodei was a party guy. And so he was chosen as the next great Khan of the Mongol Empire. But fortunately, there was sort of a plan B, and that Chinggis Khan had set up very powerful women, his daughters, but also he had chosen wives for each of his sons, very, very capable wives. And for Ogodei, he had a wife who wasn't even his first wife. The first wife would usually be somebody closer by, certain clan or something, but he had a very intelligent woman named Dorjin, and then she was more or less ruling in his last few years. And then after he died, she ruled the empire in her own name. She was the ruler of the greatest empire in the world ever ruled by a woman.

Yes.

Yes.