Among the personalities that history never ceases to remember is a world conqueror the likes of which mankind had not seen before and is not likely to see again. Genghis was forty eight years old when he finally succeeded in bringing the warring factions of Mongolia under his command, unifying the nation. His quest to conquer the world began when he was more than fifty years of age. In many cultures, this would have been considered the last chapter in a man’s life, yet, for Genghis, this was a mission ordained by the Eternal Blue Sky, a deity he worshipped.

At the time of his death in 1227, when he was 69 years old, Genghis had succeeded in conquering Central Asia from Siberia to the Caspian Sea. With a heart of steel and an unbending determination, fortified through years of living in the wilderness, he subjugated great civilizations of his time.

Harold Lamb describes Genghis’s conquests as “the greatest military feats in all history,” and considers him a more significant conqueror than Alexander, the Caesars or Napoleon. There is a saying in Mongolia that Genghis Khan was the offspring of a blue wolf and a beautiful doe. His legacy remains deeply etched in the memory of those who admire him as a victor as well as those who despise him as a warmonger. Recent discoveries have shown that more than 16 million people across the globe carry Genghis Khan’s DNA. Whether seen as a superhuman personality, worshipped as some deity, or seen as an evil warmonger, there is no doubt that Genghis left a permanent mark on human history.

When looking through the lens of twenty-first century, Genghis Khan can be seen as both a fierce warrior and as an emancipator. After all, he broke down barriers between formerly warring regions, opened the floodgates of communication between different cultures and religions, and expanded scientific exchanges as well as economic interactions throughout the world. The result was initial destruction but ultimately the setting of the stage for the formation of the modern world as advocated by Jack Weatherford.

Genghis was of the belief that the Eternal Blue Sky had ordained him to rule the earth, and his progeny inherited that ambition. As I have mentioned in my novel titled, The Sky Worshipers, after his death, Genghis’s children and grandchildren “like the child of the practitioner of medicine who strives to be like his father or the offspring of a sailor who grows up dreaming of becoming the captain of a ship,” continued to follow his footsteps. Within a period of half a century, they were able to rule over the largest contiguous stretch of the earth that was ever conquered by any victor.

Although for centuries Mongols remained on the world stage, their greatest defeat was in the hands of Egyptian Special Forces known as the Mamluk who dealt the Mongol Cavalry a heavy blow during the battle of Ayn Jalut (Eye of the Goliath). The second blow that broke the Mongol will to fight came from Mother Nature when the Mongol armada was engaged militarily with Japan. The outbreak of a tsunami killed a third of Mongol forces and destroyed their navy vessels.

Genghis and his progeny succeeded in uniting China by bringing the three warring dynasties in that region under one rule. They ended the independent rule of different principalities in Russia and set the stage for a united country in that region. In Persia, Hulagu established the greatest observatory of its time and brought scientists from across the globe to exchange ideas and interact with one another in the City of Maragheh. Communications between Muslim and Christian prisoners, formerly engaged in endless wars, began in Mongol prisons as the first instances of inter-religious dialog. Europe broke out of the dark ages and enlightenment followed, not necessarily as a result of Mongol invasion but certainly subsequent to it. Thus, another chapter in human history opened and closed, changing the shape of our world.