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Hey y'all, Dr. Joy here.
I invite you to join me every Wednesday on the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly chat about mental health and personal development.
Where my expert guests and I discuss the unique challenges and triumphs faced by black women through the lens of self-care, pop culture, and building the best version of you.
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Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's Selective, chosen our really great episode on Ginghis Khan from back in June of 2018.
He's maybe one of the more misunderstood characters in all of history.
He's certainly one of the most significant.
I mean how many individuals can you trace a portion of the global population to?
Not many, I can assure you.
Anyway, I hope you like this episode.
Enjoy! Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and sitting across from me is Charles, W.
Shuckus, Chinkus, Brian.
And sitting to your right is Ghost Producer.
Casper. Nobody. It was Ramsay, guest producer Ramsay.
We've got like all these new guest producers coming on, hot and heavy.
We had to leave today and I think everyone's busy.
So someone came in. There's also a distinct lack of interest I've picked up last.
Boy, I remember the days when people used to jump at a chance to sit in here.
Oh yeah, now they're like, I've got to mail something.
I know. You used to be like, oh my gosh.
Jerry's gone. Let me do it.
Let me do it. Yeah. Then they grew up.
Yeah, and then they grew up and now we have our little dunking bird to peck the key.
Yeah. The R record button.
Yeah. Just going back and forth thinking about where its life went wrong.
Just us. Just us, Shuck.
And a guy named Gingus. Dingus, Khan.
Do you pronounce it dingus or gingus or chingus?
Are you being serious? I know it's not dingus.
But I've also seen it spelled in a way that would suggest you.
Is Gingus you dingus? You pronounce it chingus.
Oh really? I think I have heard that.
But we're going to go with the general gingus pronunciation, okay?
Right. Although what was his birth name, Timu Jin?
Doesn't even, Gingus Khan isn't even his real name everybody.
So calm down. It's Timu Jin or Timu Jin.
Man, did you see that statue?
I've seen it before, yes.
It's enormous. Have you seen it in person?
No. I've not yet been to Mongolia.
That's something else, man.
I will one day though. Yeah, I know.
It's the world's biggest equestrian statue.
And with good reason, it's like 40 meters or 130 feet tall.
Yeah. That's an enormous statue.
It's pretty impressive.
Whether you're on a horse or not, that's a big old statue, right?
Sure. I almost didn't say old.
And I think it's made of like 250 tons of stainless steel, which means it rents as clean really well.
And it looks like I saw the wide shot.
It doesn't look like one of those that's surrounded by burger kings.
Oh, good. Looks like there's a lot of land around it.
Well, Mongolia has a lot of land, a lot of undeveloped land from what I understand.
Yeah, this was an interesting one because depending on what kind of historian you are, he is either a revered mastermind or a scorned butcher.
Yeah. I know. He's actually, you think both.
Well, of course he was both, but sure.
But yeah, there are definite camps for sure.
Like a lot of people, I've seen them called the pro-gangist camp.
The pro-ji. Yeah. Yeah.
They're all about like all the cultural transmission that happened under his rule.
Yeah. Or all of the new innovative laws, religious tolerance was another one.
And yes, you, like all that stuff happened.
It's not in dispute. Like, there were a lot of things that we'll talk about that were really positive.
But he's also directly responsible for the deaths of about 35 million people.
Yeah. The anti-G. Over 25 million, 25-year period.
That's a ridiculous amount of death of people who had gingas con, not been born and decided to lead a conquest, would probably otherwise not have died violently.
That's a big mark in his favor or against him.
My morality just switched off there for a second.
So you got the pro-ji, the anti-G, and the alley-ji.
Right. This is the third camp.
Yeah. The Buya Kasha. I miss that.
Oh, it's good stuff. It is.
But they tried to bring a back remember, and it was like, is there a part two, or a two point?
No. That's the problem.
They didn't do new stuff.
It was just him introducing old stuff.
And it was like, we want more new stuff.
We've all seen this stuff a bunch.
Oh, remember that. It was like for a month on FX.
But they shot new hosting segments?
Yes, there were like 15 seconds long.
So basically, they said, hey, Sasha Barrett coming.
How'd you like to make another X amount of dollars?
Right. By showing up for a day.
How would you like to do the alley-ji version of S.Y.S.K.
Selects? Ooh. Yeah. All right.
I'm not going to examine that one too closely.
All right. So we're talking about alley-ji.
I mean, Ginghis Khan, right?
Yeah. And just some large statistics right off the bat as far as his influence.
Well, not as influenced, but his rule and sheer numbers.
Yeah. This is the reason we're still talking about him.
Not just because he killed so many people.
Yeah. Agreed. By the time, you know, of course everyone knows he was a great conqueror who just kept branching out further and further.
Right. And this is how far he reached eventually in modern day terms.
He would reach Austria.
Austria. He banged on the door of Austria.
His son did. Just get out of world map and look at where Mongolia is.
So Austria, Finland, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Vietnam, Burma, Japan, and Indonesia.
12 million contiguous square miles.
Which is the size of? Africa.
Again. Amazing. Yeah. And then to put that in context, you know, the great Roman Empire.
That was about half the size of the United States.
Yeah. The Roman Empire was half the size of the United States.
Yeah. It took them 400 years to amass that.
Yeah. In 25 years, Ginghis Khan had an empire, the size of Africa.
Yeah. And then at the time, the population of the world was about seven billion people.
And the Mongolian Empire was about three billion of that.
So it's just astounding.
It is astounding. And to put it in like true cultural or true historic context.
At the time, and say like the early, early 13th century, the Mongols were the Mongols.
A bunch of nomadic tribes on the steps of Mongolia.
China was well established and fairly advanced patchwork of dynasties.
Yeah. You had like Europe growing in the, they were in the Middle Ages, but they were like the Renaissance is coming not too long.
Yeah. You had the Native Americans over in America doing their thing.
Sure. So there's all these different things going on in the world.
And then all of a sudden out of nowhere, this tiny little bunch of people who aren't even in the agriculture, take over Eurasia in 25 years, out of nowhere and kill 35 million people.
Yeah. Out of nowhere, it'd be like if, if Polynesia suddenly rose up and took over the Americas in 25 years.
They just assembled and said we're taken over.
And they were just so ferocious that America just didn't even know what to do and was overrun by them.
Yeah. And their rule was not long lasting for a lot of the reasons that there's a lot of ironies.
You know, a lot of the reasons that they were able to spread so fast ended up being there undoing.
But this is all just set up, fodder.
Yeah. We haven't even gotten into it.
Yeah. So let's do start.
Okay. Okay. Sure. Back in people think the best guess is probably I think 1185 I saw.
There was a kid named Temujin, 1162.
I'm sorry. And he was born in a place called, well along the Onan River, near Ula-Bataar, which is a great name, but that's the capital of Mongolia.
There's five A's in that.
That's a lot of A's. That's a lot of A's.
And this kid, this Temujin who would grow up to be Ginghis Khan, was not Ginghis Khan material from the outset.
No. Well, he was a middle brother and apparently both younger and older brother outshown him.
Yeah. He was very much the jam Brady of his family.
He was because apparently little brother was a much better athlete and a better, you know, arrow shooter or I guess you would call them archers.
Kind of better at everything and then his older brother picked on him.
He was not, he was illiterate.
He wasn't like formally schooled or super smart.
Right, right. But I mean in his defense neither were most of the people he knew or lived on the steps.
Yeah, it's not like his two brothers like got their doctorates.
They're PhDs in kicking butt.
Wow, that's true. But he was, I mean reading, I wish I knew more about this whole era because it sounds like it was just a crazy time, especially over there where people would be like, if I want something, I'm just going to go take it.
Yeah. If I want that tribe gone and going to go kill them, if I want those ladies and their children and a kidnap them.
And that was just sort of how the land was ruled.
Yeah. It was kind of not chaos, but just brute force.
A lawless. Yeah, pretty lawless.
And you were loyal to your tribe or your clan and your tribe or clan was nomadic and you lived by the horse and yeah, there was a lot of war between these tribes on the steps.
Yeah, tiny wars. Like you said kidnapping.
Like you would kidnap your wife.
That's how you got your wife was you go kidnap her from another tribe and be like, you're my wife now.
That's how his mother came about, right?
Yes, that's how he came about was his father kidnapped his mother.
His father was the chief of his tribe.
Oh, what's his father's name?
Yes, Sugey. Nice. And yes, Sugey kidnapped a whole loon who loon.
Yeah, there's a lot of umlats in there.
I don't know how the umlout represents Mongolian dialect.
Well, we're going to do a German style.
So her name is Huluun. Is that pretty German?
Mertly crew. So she was kidnapped and this is the thing like I have no context to put this in.
If this was a common thing, was she like, I'm being kidnapped okay?
Like I guess I'm 18 now or something.
Like this is just a normal course of events for us.
So it didn't impact her.
I don't know. Or is that just a ridiculous thing to even think and like, yes, if you were kidnapped and taken from your tribe and made to be some dude's wife unwillingly, it doesn't matter where it happened or when it happened.
It was a horrific experience.
I think it was, I mean, I think it was that and just sort of the way it was.
Women were just had no recourse or say and anything at the time.
So it was both. But like, I think I know what you're saying though, like, you know, she had these children and they were quote, family.
But what does, you know, what does that mean in that context?
Yeah, is it a family of moms like looking for an escape route or the whole life?
Yeah. Either way, it was not like people recording one another back then.
Right. So yes, Sugey, right?
That's what we decided on.
Yes. Yes, Sugey was the chief, like I said, of the clan of the tribe.
A very powerful dude. And he was poisoned actually.
He died by poisoning when Temujin was nine.
And that was bad news for Temujin, his mom and his two brothers.
Yeah, they were just sort of kicked out of this new tribe.
And I'm not sure why, I guess because he was the son of, of, yeah.
They didn't want anybody being like, oh, by the way, I'm the rightful heir.
Right. I should really be the chief of this tribe.
I'm very surprised that he didn't just kill all of them.
Yeah, because that's kind of the way it usually went.
Yeah. So yeah, they were kicked out.
They were not, they had to scavenge for food.
I reckon it toughened them up a little bit.
But as our article points out that he kind of gave him a will to, and probably ticked him off.
So he had anger and will, vengeance, all rolled up into one, which says a lot about like the man that he would become, I think.
For sure. So he and his family make it, not all of his family.
There's, there's a story called the secret history of the Mongols.
And it was written in about 1240.
So shortly after Ginghis Khan's death, we don't know who the author was.
But that's the primary source for most of the autobiography of Ginghis Khan.
They know a lot. A lot because somebody sat down and wrote this.
And we'll see eventually why.
But the, that's where we're getting all of this information, which is also why if you listen to the history of Ginghis Khan.
A lot of it sounds like a string of fables and tails wrapped together.
But historians tend to think that there's some, some kernel of truth or just outright truth to most of it.
Should we take a break? Yeah.
All right, we'll take a break and we'll talk about what young Timur Ging was like.
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Let's go. Music All right.
So we said that he was a bit of a crybaby, got picked on, wasn't very athletic or strong.
But he had charm, he had Hutzpah, he had charisma, and a little bit of moxie.
And definitely you got to throw in some moxie.
And apparently he was able through his charisma to talk people into helping him out.
And that became sort of a trait through his life.
Right. And they give a couple of examples.
One time he was going after a horse thief, and he just ran upon a stranger and kind of convinced the guy to not only give him a horse, but to help him out.
Yeah, he really attracted people into his orbit from what I understand.
Yeah, he was like... Like Gilbert Gottfried.
It's funny, because I knew I was trying to think of someone legitimately, and I knew that you were headed down the different path.
Did you know the opposite of that?
What else? There was another time that he had a bride to be, or maybe I think he was married.
Yeah, I think that's the case.
And she was kidnapped, because that's how it went.
And so he went to the leader of another tribe and said, hey, take this sableskin, it was one of my wedding gifts.
And he goes, oh, no. Yeah, he was pretty impressed, apparently, because he helped him rescue the wife and then pledged his allegiance to him as an ally for life.
Yeah, he said, not only am I going to help you get your wife, you're going to go on to do great things, and I want to be there with you.
Love me. So there's just tons of stories like that, like early stories where he was kidnapped himself and he was watching him with the wooden collar that he had fastened around his neck.
There's just tons of stories like that.
If you put it together, you can kind of see this guy develop over time, right?
Sure. But eventually, you probably hit the weights eventually.
Right, yeah. As he grows up and develops, and more and more people kind of come into his orbit and want to help him out, he starts putting that charisma and that vengeance to, I guess, productive use.
And he assembles like his own tribe and other tribes.
He starts allying with other tribes.
And the tribes that don't go along with it, he slaughters in war.
And he was known for having like an eye for other talent, which would aid him tremendously throughout his years as a conqueror.
But for example, if you were a good enemy soldier and he noted that in battle, there was a good chance that you were going to end up a field commander on his side after the battle was over and he beat your guys.
And there's actually a story where his horse was shot out from under him.
And after his group won the battle, the Mongols won the battle, he wanted to know who shot that arrow.
And the guy on the other side stood up and said, it was me and he said, your name is Jebe now, which means arrow.
And you're going to become a field commander for me.
And you're going to be one of the best he ever had.
And the guy was like, is he messing with me?
And you might have killed me.
But that was pretty par for the course with him.
And so through these actions, he started assembling like an army and became a leader of the steps.
Yeah. And people, like you said, if they challenged him, they were squashed.
He had a surrender or die policy, which apparently if you literally did not fight and you were just like, okay, we're all yours.
Apparently he was okay to you.
He wasn't known for torturing people.
I don't know if he, you know, I don't know what I want to say.
He was kind to them. But I think he kind of wanted his subjects to be happy and productive.
Right. So if they didn't fight him, he was like, all right, you're part of the big extended con family.
Come here. Come here you.
Thank you for your kingdom.
Although he isn't con at this point still.
No, that didn't take place until I believe 1206.
Yeah, that's when the Mongol tribes all got together.
They had a great assembly called Curali.
And they said, you know what?
You're the man. You're Ginghis Khan now.
We are all on your team because quite frankly, we're scared of you.
Right. We're scared. So scared.
So he was like, hey, that's fun.
Yeah. So Ginghis Khan, they think Khan means ruler.
Yeah. Indusputably. Ginghis, they're not 100% sure what they meant by it because it can mean ocean or just.
So they think they were saying like supreme, like the leader all the way to the ocean.
Sure. And then you run into Triton.
You don't want to mess with him.
Right. But up to Triton's area, this guy is the leader.
So that's what they meant by it like ocean leader.
He wasn't Aquaman. No. So they're unified now.
And he said, I have to, like, I have to assemble a nation here.
I've got all these tribes.
I want a unified people.
Yeah, that was a big move.
It was. And it was a smart move.
And all these old clans got together.
People that were enemies, joined forces.
I don't know if they became, you know, best buds or anything.
Well, one of the things they did is they were announced these old rivalries.
Yeah. They, they stopped warring with each other.
They stopped robbing one another.
Yeah. And they started identifying not as these individual clans, but as Mongols.
Yeah. And like strengthen numbers.
I think they realized this could benefit us all if we're one big powerful group.
Right. But numbers is relative though, man.
Sure. From what I saw at its peak, the army of Genghis Khan had about 100,000 men.
Yeah. Which is peanuts.
It is peanuts. So why were they, should we get into why they were successful?
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So why were they successful?
Well, a few reasons. Probably the one of the biggest is, is these dudes could ride horses and shoot arrows like nobody's business.
Yeah. They were incredible, they had an incredible Calvary.
He was one of the first that, whoever wrote that article, you sent, that one historian, he was great.
Yeah. So he pointed out that he realized that the Calvary didn't need to be followed by an infantry, which was a huge advantage, I guess, in battle.
You needed far fewer guys.
Yeah. And just get everyone up on a horse.
Yeah. They were incredible archers.
They could, their accuracy was unmatched.
They could fire an arrow.
Apparently like over 300 yards accurately.
Mm-hmm. These horses were awesome.
They were grass fed. They could live off the land.
They had this armor that was really lightweight and flexible.
So, you know, at the time, they were fighting people and much heavily armored apparel.
So they, they were, they could move around better.
Right. On their horses, they were firing arrows, and they had these little short swords, and they had this thing called a hooked lance.
They're like a lance is all right.
It's cool. I guess to poke someone off a horse.
But what if you can poke him or grab him?
Mm-hmm. So they added a hook to the lance, a very simple feature.
Right. And it really changed things.
It was like a modern evolution and weaponry.
Right. So these are just a few of the reasons.
One of, one of the others is tactics and strategy.
Yeah. He would scout out before battles for weeks sometimes.
He wouldn't just go as like as brutish as they were.
They would spend a lot of time doing research and spying.
Yeah. And really kind of figuring out a game plan.
Like, like if they were going to sack a city, like they knew where the trade lot or the supply lines were.
Sure. Escape routes. You know, all that kind of stuff.
All the stuff you need to know to sack a city.
Yeah. One of the other things.
So, so part one, I saw it called the Quantum Leap and Military Strategy and Technology.
Yeah. Okay. That was the first thing.
The other thing is something you touched on earlier.
There's surrender or die policy.
Yeah. Right. So their military prowess combined with their tactics.
And their policy of if you don't just say yes, that's fine.
We don't want to fight. We're going to kill everybody.
Just about everybody. They were actually pretty smart about it too.
They'd find like the skilled craftsmen in some cities and be like, we're going to spare your life because you're now a Mongol.
Yeah. You got to move to Mongolia by the way.
But they would just kill so many people that a lot of historians have tried to figure out why were they so ferocious?
And there've actually been a number of theories that have been put up.
One is so apparently so, Genghis Khan was a he was into shamanism.
That was his religion. Yeah.
And there was like a great god of the sky who I think is analogous to Vishnu maybe in Hinduism.
And this god supposedly gave him a vision that he should become conquer of the world.
Yeah. And so some people have said, well, if you opposed him, you were opposing his god.
And so there was no room for that.
And that's what made him so ferocious.
Probably the best explanation though is that if some, like one of their 100,000 horsemen died, that was a big deal.
Right? Yeah. So to save their numbers, they were better off not fighting.
So by slaughtering an entire city, that word about that gets around the area.
So when those guys show up to your city, there's a pretty good chance that if they say surrender or die, you're going to surrender.
And so the Mongols didn't have to sacrifice a single person.
Yeah, and also get the idea.
I mean, we're going to talk about his major seizures.
But he also had a lot of smaller skirmishes with just kind of regional tribes, I think.
And I got the idea that he wouldn't send all his dudes in there.
He would send in a small amount of people as possible.
Right. Because they were so fierce and good at what they did, he didn't need to.
And then that also reduced the chances of loss of life, I guess.
And then so the smallest units, those 100,000 man army, boiled down to units as small as 10 people.
Yeah. That was the individual unit, was a 10 person cavalry group.
Yeah. And yeah, you could just say send five groups in or a thousand groups in or whatever.
Yeah. There you go. And he would also, as he went, he would pick up whatever weaponry and tactics that other armies used and use those.
Because one thing that was pretty clear in reading this, Ginghis Khan did not like walls in the old city's.
I saw that too. It ticked him off, especially for some reason.
Why would you do that? No.
So he, you know, he got catapults and things like that.
And he would do some awful things like with ladders and catapults.
He would fling diseased animals like that wasn't, I don't know, he wasn't the only one to do that.
But some of this seems like lore, though, the thing with the cats and the birds.
Yeah. He told one city that he'd spare them if they gave them a thousand cats and 10,000 birds.
And they gathered up there, 10,000 birds, which I guess they had in the thousand cats and gave them to them.
And then he set the cats and the birds on fire and flung them over the walls to start fires in the city.
Well, supposedly, Codd cotton.
Oh, got you to them and set them on fire.
Oh, well, that's much better.
But I'm sure the fire spreads.
It does seem apocryphal.
Yeah, I don't know if I believe that.
Apocryphal, by the way, I just learned in like the last year or so, means...
That word? Made up. You didn't know that you never heard the word or...
No, I've heard it many times.
I just didn't realize. I always assumed it meant like biblical and end of time.
Oh, interesting. Because that's resemblance to apocolips.
I've got one more for you.
What's that? I just this week learned what kudegra actually means.
I thought it meant like the cream of the crop, the ultimate.
It's the death blow. Like there's nothing after it, not because it's the best.
Right. Because you just had your head cut off.
Yeah, the kudegra. Yeah.
Yeah, the final blow. Just learned that this week.
Yeah, I think I knew that.
You know what, word A you always get wrong was...
dubious. I was just thinking about pot.
I don't know. Yeah. Can you score me some dubious?
Did you ever listen to funk dubious?
They were like this rap group from the 90s.
Yeah. I remember funk dubious.
They were great. They were...
All they wanted to do was have fun.
In the midst of like the whole gangster rap thing.
funk dubious. I totally remember that.
Yeah. Boy, they just went away.
I haven't heard that name.
I think they had like one album and that was it.
What was their big hit? Oh, I don't even remember, but I had to do with pot.
Probably so. All right.
So he's got Mongolia pretty well taken care of at this point.
What did you think dubious meant?
I mean, joking instead of letting your answer.
No, I don't remember what I thought it meant, but I think I just used to get it wrong.
We'll go back to funk dubious.
So he's got Mongolia pretty well in the control.
And he is insatiable though.
Gingas Khan is. He starts looking around and he's like China is big.
You look pretty pretty pretty.
And I think even though they are wealthy and tough and have a lot of dudes to fight, I think I can take them because I'm Gingas Khan.
Which is a nuts-o-thing to say at that time.
Sure. Especially depending on which of the dynasties in China you were talking about because I think there were at least three major ones.
Well, he's like all of them.
Let's just go one at a time.
Yeah. That's what he did.
Yeah, that's exactly what he did.
He started with the... I'm sorry, everybody.
I'm having trouble keeping up with all of the names.
But the tanguts? Yeah, the kingdom of Xi-jia is how I would probably pronounce it.
Is that right? Dixia Chang.
No. Yeah, I think it's about that.
Xi-jia. Yeah, Xi-jia and the tanguts.
And I think this was sort of a test...
His biggest test militarily at the time.
Yeah, he'd been fighting other tribes on the steps to consolidate them and killing off the resistors.
They didn't have cities.
The tanguts were the first ones that he encountered that had like cities with walls that were fortified that he needed to figure out how to lay siege to.
Yeah, and he did to the point where the king finally said, All right, you were my master, here are my troops, and here's the Princess Bride as well.
Right. Because I've heard you get around.
Yeah. And Ginghis Khan said, as you wish.
That's right. And that would be said.
I think so. Okay. So the next he said, All right, how about this other region, the chin kingdom, and he faced a 70,000 man army, and it said, virtually wiped it out in this article.
So he's working his way up here now.
Yeah. So he actually hit the chin twice from what I understand.
And this House of Works article says it happened in 2013.
So I'll bet the chin's were quite surprised to see Ginghis Khan show up five years ago.
Yeah, I wonder why he, I mean, it says that he came back and got a bunch of silk and gold and got a bunch of engineers.
I wonder if that was the purpose of that mission.
Maybe. It was like, hey, I don't think we properly rated them.
Yeah, because this was two years after the first one.
I guess that's all it was that he wanted some more silk and gold.
And again, appropriating weapons like crossbows, catapults, and because it's China, early versions of explosives.
Right. And so he's using all this stuff.
He's not married to just the hook pole and just the saber.
He'll try out anything he sees works, right?
Yeah. So he's knocked out the first two dynasties.
He's brought them under his control.
He now controls a significant portion of China.
All of the steps around Mongolia.
Yeah. And he's got his sets, his sights set on the biggest one of the three, the gin dynasty.
Yes. And he actually got in contact with them or else they got in contact with him first.
But the emperor of the gin dynasty.
This is an advanced civilization at this point.
Very wealthy. Maybe the most advanced and wealthy civilization on the planet at the time.
Maybe. Ginghis Khan is a backwards redneck horse rider who just happened to get lucky a couple of times.
The other two dynasties slip in.
Well, sure. That's what the emperor of the gin dynasty is thinking.
Yeah. He's thinking you're going to be my slave.
Yeah. He's like, you done pretty good, kid.
I'll tell you what. I'll let you look over my land in the south.
You'll be my vassal. And here's a princess bride.
I hear you like him. Yeah.
But it did not work out that way.
No, it didn't. He actually successfully defeated the most advanced wealthiest society on the planet at the time, the gins.
Yep. It's a lot of thousands and thousands of people.
Well, that's how you do it, I guess.
And these three campaigns, these are huge enormous campaigns.
China was extremely popular at the time.
And the number of people who died, most of the people who died under Ginghis Khan's rule through war and conquest have been during these three China campaigns.
Yeah. About 30, about 30 million people died.
And this is over, I mean, 10 years, I think, less than 10 years.
Yeah, I think so. It's nuts, ma'am.
Yeah. So he wanted to continue going, I guess, west.
In 1219, he made his way through modern day Central Asia, like Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Iran.
And the Shah Muhammad there said, he killed an ambassador that they had sent forward from a trading caravan.
And he had a big walled city and he's like, I'm going to be fine.
I'm not sweating this guy.
Right. And he burned the city down, Ginghis Khan did.
And including a thousand of the soldiers who were in a mosque hiding out, killed about a hundred thousand people.
But of course, like he said earlier, he spared the skilled craftsmen and workers.
Right. And this is the, the Quarism.
Quarism. And I even practice this one.
The Quarism. Quarism. I think so.
Empire, which it's capital city that he's sacked is now in Uzbekistan.
But I've seen it called mostly like Afghanistan, Iran.
For the most part, this is the area it covered.
Iran is what I see it mostly compared to these days.
Yeah. And things are starting to get a little out of hand at this point.
And it's basically sort of due to the fact that he, he went too far.
There were too many people, too much land.
When you control your, I think the guy who wrote that article you sent said that they weren't producers of anything.
The Mongols. Yeah. Right.
And they were tradesmen.
They were conquerors. That's it.
Yeah. And that's not like you got to diversify.
From what I understand, they didn't have a written language.
They didn't do any...
