Facts About Ghengis Khan- The World Conqueror and Founder of The Mongol Empire (Part One)

• In 1201, Genghis Khan was shot in the neck during a battle, and asked the defeated army who had shot “his horse”, trying to downplay the injury. The archer voluntarily confessed that he shot Genghis Khan himself and not his horse. He refused to beg for mercy saying if Genghis Khan desired to kill him, it was his choice, but if he would let him live, he would serve Genghis Khan loyally. Genghis Khan spared him, turning him into a great general.
• When Genghis Khan sent a trade caravan to the Khwarezmid Empire, the governor of one of the city seized it and killed the traders. Genghis Khan retaliated by invading the empire with 100,000 men and killing the governor by pouring molten silver down his eyes and mouth. Genghis Khan even went so far as to divert a river through the Khwarezmid emperor’s birthplace, erasing it from the map.
• Genghis Khan killed an estimated 40 million people, resulting in a man-made climate change. The Mongol invasions effectively cooled the planet, scrubbing around 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere.
• Genghis Khan’s chief adviser was a captured scholar named Yelu Chucai. His contribution to the Mongol Empire was to suggest that the Mongols not kill everyone, but tax them instead.
• Genghis Khan would marry off a daughter to the king of an allied nation, dismissing his other wives. Then he would assign his new son-in-law to military duty in the Mongol wars, while the daughter took over the rule. Most of his sons-in-laws died in combat, giving him shield around the Mongol lands.
• There’s a place in Mongolia called Ikh Khorig that was declared sacred by Genghis Khan. The only people allowed to enter were the Mongol Royal Family and a tribe of elite warriors, the darkhat, whose job was to guard it, punishment for entering being death. They carried out their task for 697 years, until 1924.
• Legends abound regarding the cause of Genghis Khan’s death, ranges from a fall from his horse while hunting, to an arrow to the knee, to an assassination plot executed by a captured princess.
• Genghis Khan exempted the poor and clergy from taxes, encouraged literacy, and established free religion, leading many people to join his empire before they were even conquered.
• Shah Jahan, the emperor who built the Taj Mahal was a direct descendent of Genghis Khan.
• The Mongols celebrated a victory over the Russians by laying survivors on the ground, dropping a heavy wooden gate on them, and then having a victory banquet on top of it while the victims suffocated and were crushed to death.

To be continued...

culled from kickassfacts.com