25. The Steppe’s Greatest Conqueror
Until the late twelfth century, the Mongols were a collection of obscure nomadic tribes that roamed the Eurasian Steppe north of China and spent much of their time fighting each other, as they had done for ages. By the early thirteenth century, they were united under the leadership of a charismatic and capable leader named Temujin. He conquered the region’s nomads, absorbed them into a polity that he headed, and formed them into a Mongol nation. He then adopted the title Genghis Khan, or Universal Ruler, and set out to conquer the world.
By the time they ran out of steam, the Mongols had conquered history’s biggest contiguous land empire. It stretched from Korea and the Sea of Japan to the east, all the way to Hungary and the borders of Germany in the west, and from the frozen wastes of the Siberian tundra in the north, to the steaming jungles of Indochina in the south. During their conquests, the Mongols terrorized Eurasia and the known world to an unprecedented extent, unmatched before or since, and visited unprecedented slaughter upon those in their path. Who was the man who caused all that turmoil?
