20 quotes found
"O people, know that you have committed great sins, and that the great ones among you have committed these sins. If you ask me what proof I have for these words, I say it is because I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you."
"Be of one mind and one faith, that you may conquer your enemies and lead long and happy lives."
"In the space of seven years I have succeeded in accomplishing a great work and uniting the whole world in one Empire."
"If one must drink, then let one drink thrice a month, for more is bad. If one gets drunk twice a month, it is better; if one gets drunk once a month, that is better still; and if one doesn't drink at all, that is the best of all."
"My children, I am nearing the end of my life. With the help of Tengri, I leave you such an empire that it is a year's walking distance from its center to its tip. If you want to preserve it, stay united, act together against your enemies, agree to increase the wealth of those who are loyal to you. One of you must sit on the throne. Ögedei will be my successor. Respect this choice after my death."
"Our sons and grandchildren will wear silk clothes, eat delicious and fatty food, ride excellent war horses, hold the most beautiful women and the most charming young girls in their arms, and they will not remember that all of this happened thanks to us."
"God is everywhere, and you can find him everywhere."
"The greatest joy for a man is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all they possess, to see those they love in tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms."
"[What, in all the world, could bring the greatest happiness?]"
"[Militarily] ... he was the equal of Alexander the Great or Napoleon I."
"Genghis Khan is infamous as a merciless and bloodthirsty conqueror - outside Mongolia, where he is a national hero. One of the greatest organizers in history, he forged mutually hostile and disunited tribes into a Mongolian nation that extended its power over an unprecedentedly vast Empire. He patronized learning and founded dynasties that dominated Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Near East for centuries after his death. Although he slaughtered huge numbers of his enemies, he brought peace to lands he ruled and prosperity to his homeland."
"The one name which Muslims hate and fear most is that of Chengiz Khan. He is a spectre which has haunted Muslim historians for centuries. He swept like a tornado over the then most powerful and extensive Islamic empire of Khwarazm. In a short span of five years (1219-1224 CE), he slaughtered millions of Muslims, forced many others including women and children into slavery, and razed to the ground quite a few of the most populous and prosperous cities of the Muslim world at that time. [...] The logic which declares Tengiri to be a satan and denounces Chengiz Khan as an archcriminal but which, in the same breath, proclaims Allah as divine and hails the Ghaznavis, Ghuris, Timurs and Baburs as heroes, is, to the say the least, worse than casuistry..."
"Possessed of great energy, discernment, genius and understanding."
"Thuswise Chingiz Khan made a nation out of dust."
"Although time was running out for horse-borne warriors, they remained formidable in the right circumstances. In the thirteenth century Genghis Khan welded quarrelling Mongol tribes together into a highly centralised state which proved, for a time, to be an unstoppable military force, sweeping away regimes in China and Persia. Mongol warriors were highly mobile and, when they were challenged by forces from more settled empires, withdrew into the vast spaces of Central Asia. One of the secrets of their success may have been another simple piece of technology like the stirrup. Mongol warriors wore silk undershirts, so that if they were hit by an arrow the silk wrapped around its head. It was not only easier to get the arrow out; the risk of infection, until the modern age a greater killer of soldiers than death in battle, was much less. Under Genghis’s successors his warriors stormed westwards through Central Asia and Russia to the shores of the Black Sea, carrying all before them and leaving a trail of death and ruin. No force could stand against them and by 1241 they were probing into Hungary, Poland and present-day Romania and Austria. It looked as though much of what was a weak and divided Europe would become part of their empire – and think what a different history it would have had – when the Mongols suddenly stopped and withdrew in 1242. It may be because word had come that, thousands of miles to the east, the Great Khan had died, but historians have recently speculated that poor weather had turned the ground marshy and ruined the fodder for the Mongol horses."
"I have been avoiding mentioning this event for many years because I consider it too horrible. ... a group of friends urged me to record it since I knew it first-hand. Then I saw that to refrain from it would profit nothing. Therefore, we say: this deed encompasses mention of the greatest event, the most awful catastrophe that has befallen time. It engulfed all beings, particularly the Muslims. Anyone would be right in saying that the world, from the time God created humans until now, has not been stricken by its like. Histories contain nothing that even approaches it."
"... after they had besieged the city for a long time, they took it and put the inhabitants to death. When we were journeying through that land we came across countless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on the ground. ... the Tartars destroyed the whole of Russia."
"Kolya believed that the Mongols’ expansion was pathological. It was a ghastly spiral of positive feedback, born of Genghis Khan’s unquestioned military genius and fueled by easy conquests, a plague of insanity and destruction that had spread across most of the known world."
"Some commentators find it difficult to classify the Mongol killing as genocide, despite its widespread and frequent occurrence. Yet the Mongols often meticulously planned their campaigns against their enemies with the clear goal of eliminating all or part of the targeted population. The Mongols wiped out en masse those groups that resisted them, even to the point of returning to destroyed cities and towns that they had targeted to finish off the survivors. True, no single group or ethnicity was identified by the Mongols for elimination. In fact, no group was exempt, though craftsmen, artisans, merchants, and builders often found a home with the Mongols. Peoples like the Hungarians, the Khwarezmians, and the Chinese were attacked with a genocidal fury that seriously reduced large population groups to fractions of their previous numbers. The attempt was to destroy the groups “as such.” Unlike the Crusaders, the Mongols were not motivated by an ideology that justified destruction. Instead, killing was a method of empire building, a way to expand their territory, terrorize their opponents, and incorporate a wide variety of peoples and cultures into a vast territory stretching at some points from the Mediterranean to the Pacific. Mass killing, in some cases genocide, needed no justification. It was a fact of Mongol power and rule."