Genghis Khan: Essential Biographies E-Book

James Chambers

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Genghis Khan, the thirteenth century emperor, was infamous for his bloodthirsty, ruthless campaigns, but he was also one of the great commanders of history. Though a master of terror – his campaigns in northern China and Iran were accompanied by a level of slaughter that was not seen again until the twentieth century – he was just and generous to his subjects and often magnanimous in victory. His broad, ambitious strategies and elusive tactics were so far ahead of their time that they were acknowledged models for some of the most successful tank commanders of the Second World War. At the beginning of the thirteenth century Genghis Khan united the nomad tribes of Mongolia, turned them into a formidable army and led them to rule over the largest empire ever conquered by a single commander. By the time he died, in 1227, his dominions stretched eastward from the Caspian Sea to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

Leseprobe

Genghis Khan

Series Editor C.S. Nicholls

Highly readable brief lives of those who have played a significant part in history, and whose contributions still influence contemporary culture.

Genghis Khan

JAMES CHAMBERS

First published in 1999

This edition published in 2009

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2012

All rights reserved

© James Chambers 1999, 2009, 2012

The right of James Chambers to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 8663 5

MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 8662 8

Original typesetting by The History Press

CONTENTS

A Note on Transliteration

Acknowledgements

Chronology

1 The Sons of the Grey Wolf

2 The Pauper Prince

3 The War of the Brothers

4 The Invincible Army

5 The War with the Golden Emperors

6 The Road to Samarkand

7 The Last Campaign

Notes

Bibliography

A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

The vast Mongol Empire, which encompassed many different nations and cultures, presents historians with two so-far insuperable difficulties. First of all, the earliest records were written in such a broad diversity of languages that nobody has yet been able to read all of them in the original. Second, as Dr David Morgan wrote in the introduction to by far the best general work on the subject, ‘there is no satisfactory solution to the problem of transliteration when one is dealing with words from so many languages and scripts’.1

The consequence of the first difficulty is that some books on the Mongols are inevitably biased towards the author’s speciality; and the consequence of the second is that they all contain a variety of justifiable spellings for the names of the same people and places. With some languages the differences are due simply to the development of new systems. Today, for example, most books use Beijing to represent the Chinese name for the city that other books called Peking. But at the other end of the scale there has never been a universally accepted system of transliteration into English from Mongolian. Even the specialists still differ in their spelling of Mongol names.

The best anyone can do is aim at consistency, and even then there are likely to be compromises. Although the founder of the Mongol Empire is most accurately represented as Chingiz Khān, I have used Genghis Khan because this is the spelling by which he is best known to English speakers. Similarly, like many recent authors, I have used Kh or K rather than Q throughout, partly because it represents famous names in the form by which they are best known. For example, Genghis Khan’s most famous grandson is better known as Khubilai rather than Qubilai, just as the holy book of Islam is still better known as the Koran rather than the Qur’ān. For the sake of simplicity, I have also omitted the symbols for umlauts and accents.