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The Rise of Temujin From a Nobody to History’s Greatest Conqueror

Khalid Elhassan April 28, 2025 20 min

11. Turning on China

The Mongol conquest of China, initiated by Chinggis and completed by his successors. Wikimedia

After a decisive Mongol victory in which hundreds of thousands of enemy troops were massacred, Chinggis captured and sacked the Jin capital in 1215. The Jin emperor fled and abandoned northern China. Temujin’s victories left him in charge of conquered territories that included tens of millions of Chinese peasants. He did not know what to do with them, so he decided to kill them all, and let their farmlands revert to grasslands that could serve as pasturage for the Mongols’ herds. The Chinese were spared that genocide after Chinggis’ advisors explained the concept of taxation to him. He came to realize that many live peasants working the fields and paying regular taxes would produce great wealth for him. Then his campaigning in China was interrupted by a diplomatic incident that led to far reaching consequences.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.