Genghis Khan Series - Historical Fiction

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Tortfeasor

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I'm through the first of the 5 podcast episodes. It's just 1 dude talking so gets kind of droney, but the info is solid and he keeps it interesting and avoids making it in to some dry recitation of history. And I love the opening point about how historians/people tend to ascribe positive motivations to these great historical conquerors(Alexander etc) that were really unintended side effects of the horrible atrocities they committed. "They're shooting the arrow and then painting a bullseye around where it hits". Genghis wasn't trying to spread freedom of religion and make safe trade routs, he was murdering millions for loot. That other shit just came happened=P
I have not listened to that podcast, but I have a road trip coming up soon and I was planning on listening to it then. Khan, or any of the Asian monarchs weren't just murdering for loot; that would be a little too simplisitic. Asian kingdoms were sacral and the emperors actually thought they were God's avatar if not Gods themselves. They conquered because they were under strict obligation to subdue all who were in violation of God's law. And even if this kind of thing started out as a pretense, it never ended as one; they really thought of themselves as lords of the universe. This is an excerpt from a paper entitledThe Hierocentric Statethat was published in a journal calledWestern Political Quarterly4/2 (1951).

There are other royal claims, but this is the common doctrine of the great conquerors. It is clear and unequivocal in each case: (1) the monarch rules over all men; (2) it is God who has ordered him to do so and, significantly, none claims authority as originating with himself, but even the proudest claims to be but the humble instrument of heaven;63 (3) it is thus his sacred duty and mission in the world to extend his dominion over the whole earth, and all his wars are holy wars; and (4) to resist him is a crime and sacrilege deserving no other fate than extermination. The most obvious corollary of this doctrine is that there can be only one true ruler on earth. "The eternal command of God is this," wrote Mangu Khan to Louis IX, "in heaven there is but one eternal God; on earth, there is no other master than Chingis Khan, the Son of God."64
Here is the entire section of the paper. I also included the footnotes in case anyone felt like doing some research.

The Kingly Calling

But granted that these great assemblies did take place, and that the rites were far too peculiar and elaborate to have been independently invented in a hundred different places, what then? The dominant position of the king in the hierocentric rites suggests the kingly office as the natural point of departure for further examination of the origin and survival of the system.

Within recent years a number of important studies have appeared treating the sacral kingship as a single uniform institution throughout the ancient East.31 The orthodox conceptions of kingship are not legion but only one. This conception is clearly restated by each monarch in his turn.

From the beginning Pharaoh is "ruler of all that which is encircled by the sun,"32 he is "the son of God, none can resist him; all people are subject to him, his bounds are set at the ends of the earth," to him the gods "have promised world dominion."33 In Babylonia where "the earthly was a counterpart of the heavenly monarchy, but distinct,"34 Naramsin called himself "King of the Four Regions" and "King of the Universe." Goetze says that the Weltreich-Idee was first carried out in practice by those Semitic conquerors who made Akkad the Mittelpunkt der Welt (center of the world) at about 2600 B.C. Whether or not this actually was the first world empire, from that time on every state in the East "erstrebt f?r sich theoretisch die Weltmacht" (theoretically aspires to world dominion).35 The Assyrian king duly called himself "King of the four quarters of the world, the sun of all peoples ... conqueror of the faithless . . . whose hand conquered all who refused him submission . . . whose priesthood in the temple and rule over all peoples, Enlil made great from days of old";36 and described his divine calling and mission as that of forcing all the world "from the rising of the sun unto the setting of the same . . . to acknowledge one supremacy."37 The earliest kings of Elam and Susa also described themselves as "King of the four regions," and "exalted messenger and high-commissioner of heaven,"38 even as the later Achaemenids, "lords of all people, from sunrise to sunset," felt obliged to conquer all the world for Ahura Mazda, to whose rule every enemy was invited to submit before being attacked.39 As late as 1739 a Persian shah could stamp upon his money: "O coin, announce to all the earth the reign of Nadir, the King who conquers the world."40

The Roman emperor is, from the first, "virtutum rector" (instructor in virtues) of the world, "salus orbis, Romae decus . . . magnus parens mundi" (the salvation of the world, the glory of Rome . . . the mighty father of the earth),41 and so forth, after the pattern of the old sacral kings.42 The basic doctrine of Hellenistic kings is that every true king is a universal king; the divine urge of kings cannot be satisfied with anything less than the world because Zeus the world-king is the only model for them.43 The Byzantine emperor, bearing the titles and insignia of the Persian kings in conscious imitation, was "by definition the master of the universe." "II a pour devoir . . . de propager la foi orthodoxe ? travers toute la terre habit?e, dont Dieu . . . lui promet la domination" (he has as his duty . . . spreading the orthodox faith throughout the whole inhabited world, whose rule God promises him);44 and he tells his son that God has placed his throne "like the sun before Him. . . . He hath given to thee as worthy His own dominion over all men."45

"Abscondat solem, qui vult abscondere regem" (whoever wishes to hide the king may as well try to hide the sun)! cries a medieval panegyrist of the French king,46 who claimed to be the true successor of the emperor and nothing less than "king of kings and the greatest of princes under heaven."47 The great Attila called himself totius mundi principem (the lord of the whole earth) in the firm conviction that the miraculous finding of the sword of Mars that he bore was a sign from heaven that he should rule the world.48 He was greatly incensed when he learned that a Roman ambassador had declared him to be only a man, whereas Theodosius was a god.49 In the sixth century, the Khagan of the Turks declared that "all the earth from the rising to the setting of the sun is his inheritance, and all who have dared oppose the Turks have been duly enslaved."50 A thousand years before, when Darius demanded that a Scythian king bring him earth and water, the latter replied that as a descendant of God he was the only legitimate ruler.51 The ninth and tenth centuries of our era saw an epidemic of world-kings in higher India, Cambodia, and Java, all of whom "ambitionnaient d'?tre souverains universels" (sought to be lords of the earth), mystically identical with the universal God himself, for whom they sent out their missionaries to win the world.52

When the papal legate Ezzelino announced at the court of the Great Khan that his master was "placed high above all the kings and princes of the world, and . . . is honored by them as their Lord and Father," his Mongol hosts held their sides with laughter; the nonentity in the West was claiming to be exactly what their Khan obviously was in reality.53 "The Sky had ordered me to rule all nations," was the sincere pronouncement of Chingis Khan, Ssuto-Bogdo, the God-sent, "whose word was heaven's will."54 To his successor, he says: "Emirs, Khans, and all persons shall know that I have delivered over to you the whole face of the earth from sunrise to sunset. All who . . . oppose . . . shall be annihilated."55 At the same time the pontiffs of Rome were stating like claims in like words, and when the Pope's messenger told Kuyuk that all princes were subjected to his master, the latter answered: "The might of the Eternal Heaven had given the Khagan all lands from sunrise to sunset, and failure to obey his commands was a crime against God. . . . Any who made the slightest resistance would be annihilated and exterminated." His seal bore the inscription: "God in heaven, and Kuyuk Khan upon earth, the power of God: the seal of the emperor of all men."56

When the Khan's emissaries bore this doctrine to the court of the Caliph (as the pope's legates had to his), the latter countered with the identical doctrine: "You have become in your own eyes the Lord of the Universe, and think that your commands are the decisions of fate. . . . Do you not know that from East to West those who worship God, from kings to beggars, are all slaves of this court?"57 The corollary to this is the doctrine that "war against those who are not Moslems is a solemn obligation to God. . . . It is a duty to attack the infidels, even though they may have committed no act of aggression." All the world must be repeatedly invited to accept Islam, and whoever refuses must be wiped out by all possible means.58 By the end of the tenth century the Caliphs had under Turkish influence and with the aid of the court theologians preempted the tremendous title of the Persian kings and announced that "all the world must follow the guidance of the Commander of the Faithful."59

In China, the Ming emperors after the expulsion of the Mongols "took over the claim to world dominion" and "sent embassies to every country over which Kublai Khan had once held sway, demanding instant submission."60 At the other end of the Mongol world, Tamerlane sought to fulfill the prophecy that he "with the might of his sword, will conquer the whole world, converting all men to Islam."61 Even then the Grand Prince of Muscovy was preparing to assume the might and glory of the Golden Horde and to call himself God's chosen one and "the only orthodox sovereign in the world."62

All these sample claims, it will be noted, are one and the same. There is no variety among them, no nuances or fine distinctions and shadings such as one might expect. There are other royal claims, but this is the common doctrine of the great conquerors. It is clear and unequivocal in each case: (1) the monarch rules over all men; (2) it is God who has ordered him to do so and, significantly, none claims authority as originating with himself, but even the proudest claims to be but the humble instrument of heaven;63 (3) it is thus his sacred duty and mission in the world to extend his dominion over the whole earth, and all his wars are holy wars; and (4) to resist him is a crime and sacrilege deserving no other fate than extermination. The most obvious corollary of this doctrine is that there can be only one true ruler on earth. "The eternal command of God is this," wrote Mangu Khan to Louis IX, "in heaven there is but one eternal God; on earth, there is no other master than Chingis Khan, the Son of God."64

In the great "provincial" cultures of Egypt,65 India,66 China,67 and, as we shall see, of Europe also, this doctrine of kingship appears not as a local invention but clearly as an importation from the steppes of Asia. That is true even of Islam. When, in A.D. 979, the king of the Turks and Deilemites kissed the earth before the feet of a newly elected caliph, a Moslem general standing by cried out in horror: "O King, is that God?" But the new caliph was much pleased by this custom of the plains, and in time this Central Asiatic king-worship became a permanent fixture in Islam as in Byzantium.68

This peculiar but universal conception of kingship may be traced ultimately to Central Asia through, among other things, its close association in theory and practice with the hierocentric point. The universal type of hierocentric shrine bears many marks of its origin.

31. To works cited above, add Cyril J. Gadd, Ideas of Divine Rule in the Ancient East, Schweich Lectures, 1945 (London: Oxford University Press, 1948); and Henri Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religions as the Integration of Society and Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948).
32. Alan H. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar (Oxford: Clarendon, 1927), 74; Alexandre Moret, Histoire de l'Orient, 2 vols. (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1929), 1:213.
33. Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 4 vols. (Jena: Diederich, 1928), 2:72; cf. Kees, ?gypten, 172-85.
34. Gadd, Ideas of Divine Rule, 34.
35. Moret, Histoire de l'Orient, 1:355, 357. Albrecht Goetze, Hethiter, Churriter und Assyrer (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1936), 15-16, 39-40.
36. Daniel D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926), 1
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assim.
37. Ibid., 170, 185.
38. Cl?ment Huart and Louis Delaporte, L'Iran antique: ?lam et Perse et la civilisation iranienne (Paris: Michel, 1943), 115-19.
39. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 4:21-22; Huart and Delaporte, L'Iran antique, 289, 380.
40. Sven Hedin, My Life as an Explorer, tr. Alfhild Huebsch (Garden City: Boni and Liveright, 1925), 85. In A.D. 562, Chosroes called himself "divine, beneficent," "King of Kings," "giant of giants," "whose nature is from the gods," and so forth. Menander, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes, in PG 113:860.
41. Optatianus Porfyrius, Carmina II; cf. Rutilius Namatianus Claudius, De Reditu Suo I, 47-48 and 61-66; Aelius Aristides, Encomium Romae (To Rome) 30, 72, and 77; Propertius, Elegies III, 1; IV, 2 and 6; Claudius Claudianus, Bellum Geticum (The Gothic War) 623-47; Horace, Odes III, 5; IV, 2.
42. Horace, Carmen Saeculare; Vergil, Aeneid VI, 793-800; Vergil, Eclogues IV, 48-49. On the hierocentric idea, "Janus est mundus et mundus quattuor partibus constat" (Janus is the world and the world consists of four quarters), Augustine, De Civitate Dei (The City of God) VII, 8.
43. Dio Chrysostom, Discourses I, 37; II, 75; IV, 4; XIV, 23; XXXVI, 22-23, 36; LVI, 4-5.
44. Charles Diehl and Georges Mar?ais, Le monde oriental de 395 ? 1081 (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1936), 55-56, 487-95.
45. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio, intro., in PG 113:160, with much more to the same effect.
46. Gunter, cited in Du Cange, "Des cours et des festes solenelles des roys de France," in Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, 7:20, unconsciously quoting Esarhaddon: "Where shall a fox go to escape the sun?" Luckenbill, Ancient Records, 2:210, n. 523.
47. Du Cange, "De la pr??minence des rois de France au-dessus des autres rois de la terre," in Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, 7:112-15.
48. Jordanes, Historia Getica Getarum (Gothic History) 35.
49. Priscus Rhetor, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes 3, in PG 113:708, 716.
50. Menander, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes 14, in PG 113:904 (A.D. 575).
51. Herodotus, History IV, 126.
52. Ren? Grousset et al., L'Asie orientale des origines au XVe si?cle (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1941), 351-52, 355-56, 361-62, 364, 367, 369, 406-7.
53. Michael Prawdin, The Mongol Empire: Its Rise and Legacy, tr. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Allen and Unwin, 1940), 283.
54. Boris Vladimirstov, The Life of Chingis-Khan, tr. D. S. Mirsky (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930), 65-66; Prawdin, Mongol Empire, 367.
55. Prawdin, Mongol Empire, 173.
56. Ibid., 282. On the seal, Giovanni P. Carpini, History, 26, in Manuel Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo (New York: Liveright, 1928), 44.
57. Ren? Grousset, Histoire des Croisades (Paris: Plon, 1936), 3:569-70.
58. Ernst F. K. Rosenmueller, Institutiones Iuris Mohammedani circa Bellum contra Eos Qui ab Islamo Sunt Alieni (Leipzig: Barth, 1825), nos. 1, 3, 4, 5.
59. Adam Mez, Die Renaissance des Islams (Heidelberg: Winter, 1922), 132-33, 136, 332.
60. Prawdin, Mongol Empire, 389. "According to Chinese political philosophy there could be in the world only one rightful 'Emperor,' however many kings there might be." Thus William M. McGovern, The Early Empires of Central Asia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1939), 321.
61. Prawdin, Mongol Empire, 414.
62. Ibid., 512-18.
63. August M?ller, Der Islam in Morgen- und Abendland, 2 vols. (Berlin: Grote, 1885-87), 2:268, gives a psychological explanation for this phenomenon.
64. William of Rubruck, Journal 54, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 188.
65. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 2:72, 311.
66. Grousset, L'Asie orientale, 42: "La notion du monarque universel ou tchakravartin . . . provient des vastes dominations de l'Asie Anterieure" (the idea of a universal ruler or tchakravartin originates in the vast realms of Western Asia).
67. McGovern, Early Empires of Central Asia, 224, 245, 255, 268, 288, 294.
68. Mez, Renaissance des Islams, 136; cf. 130-43.
 

Tortfeasor

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Better how? Not that this line of questioning is at all relevant or helpful (history is what it is), but my view is that a calculated deception to kill and plunder is much more blameworthy than killing and plundering because of psychopathic delusions of grandeur.
 

Adam12

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Because at least the "for loot" shit is being completely honest. We have the power to take it, so we do. Better than divine right.

Keep in mind that I'm saying "better" as in a Shit Sandwich is better than a Green Babyshit Sandwich.
 

Grimmlokk

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Of the multiple things I've read/seen/heard since the series got me interested the only time any of them mentioned Genghis conquering for God is one time when he said something to the effect that he was clearly God's chosen one as part of an effort to unite the tribes. Some historians view this cynically as a political strategy and not a religious one. If they were conquering for the one God in heaven why did they allow freedom of religion in general, with thousands of Muslims/Christians/Buddhists in their ranks? Supposedly they were less about one true God and more about having all the religions pray for the success/well being of their rulers. They were very practical about their genocides and what would make them run smoothest. Inciting religious fervor in the people you're attacking was not the way to do this.

Religion was an excuse to slaughter "lesser" people and take their lands/wealth/people. Doesn't mean they didn't believe that bullshit, but these evil fuckers were going to rape and pillage one way or the other. Religion is always a nice screen for this stuff.


edit: Obviously I am not an expert, this is just how I'm taking the various versions I'm seeing. And there's a lot of variation in them.
 

Tortfeasor

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Did you read what I copypasta'd in that spoiler? I didn't take it the whole "chosen by God" thing as an exercise in pragmatism at all. Rather it was all about justifying their empiricism. The Khans, as well as the Muslims Kings, Roman Pontiffs, et.al. didn't give a shit what people's religion was as long as they bowed down and submitted to the king's claims. To them, THAT was the real religion. The only that mattered was being the dude on the throne, not the conquered foes' thoughts on dogma.
 

Grimmlokk

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Yeah the "sacrilege to resist" part was what stuck out to me. But yeah, I kind of veered right off and basically agreed with you in a clumsy way.
 

Zapatta

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This series is pure crack coming out of a faucet, no pauses no lags, just keeps moving.