150 DESTINY DISRUPTED
ASSAULT FROM THE EAST
The Mongols originated in the steppes of Central Asia, a vast treeless grass-
land with hard soil and few rivers. The landscape precluded agriculture but
it was perfect for herding sheep and grazing horses, so the Mongols lived on
mutton, milk, and cheese, burned dung for fuel, got drunk on fermented
mare's milk, and used oxen to pull their carts. They had no cities or perma-
nent encampments but lived on the move, sleeping in felt huts called gers
(known elsewhere as yurts), which they could easily dismantle and transport.
The Mongols were closely related to the Turks ethnically, linguistically,
and culturally, and historians often group them together as the Turko-
Mongol tribes. To the extent that they can be considered separately, how-
ever, the Turks generally lived further west and the Mongols further east.
Where they overlapped, they intermingled somewhat.
Over the centuries a number of nomadic empires had formed and dis-
solved on the steppes, tribal confederacies that had no core principle of
uniry to hold them together. In the days of the Roman republic, a group
ofTurko-Mongol tribes called the Hsiung-nu congealed into a force so
fearsome that the first emperor of a united China put about a million men
to work building the Great Wall to keep them out. Once they couldn't raid
eastward, the Hsiung-nu turned west and by the time they got to Europe
these steppe nomads were known as the Huns. Under Attila they swept all
the way to Rome before they dissolved.
In the early days of Islam, a series of ill-defined Turkish confederacies
dominated the steppes, but once they moved south they morphed into
Muslim dynasties, such as the Ghaznavids and the Seljuks.
The Mongols had raided the Chinese world for many centuries, and a
succession of Chinese dynasties had kept them in check by giving them
subsidies to stay away, by pitting Mongol chieftains against one another,
and by funding upstarts against established chieftains. In this way they had
kept the Mongols divided, although truth to tell, the Mongols, like tribal
nomads generally, didn't need much outside help to stay divided.
Then around 560 AH (1165 CE) the brilliant and charismatic Temu-
jin was born. History knows him as Chengez Khan (in the West, Genghis
Khan), which means "universal ruler," a title he did not take on until he
was about forry years old.