Who Was Genghis Khan?

Who Was
Genghis Khan?

The year was 1179. A teenager named Temujin slept soundly in his felt-walled tent alongside his wife, Borte.

The round tent, called a ger, stood alone at the edge of the steppe—a region of vast, flat grasslands in Mongolia. Temujin and Borte shared this ger with family and friends. Together, they formed a small clan of thirteen people.

Most clans lived close together, forming communities of thousands called tribes. But Temujin’s clan lived alone and isolated.

An old woman was awakened by vibrations in the ground.

Hoofbeats. Coming closer.

She screamed for everyone to wake up. Someone was coming!

Three hundred men on horseback from the Merkid tribe raced toward Temujin’s ger. Eighteen years earlier, Temujin’s father—a man named Yesugei—had kidnapped his mother from her Merkid husband. Now Temujin was grown, with a wife of his own. The Merkid wanted revenge.