"I'm no Solomon, more like Genghis Khan."
:)
Genghis Khan (Temujin, Chenggis Khan to the Chinese) has been 'mis-underestimated' by a lot of historians.
Not just a tactical genius, he was actually far more 'enlightened' in his warfare and governance policies then most of his contemporaries in the West and East.
For example: as a Mongol leader, typically when his forces encircled a city he offered the inhabitants a chance to surrender. If they accepted his rule then free exercise of religion was guaranteed (practically unheard of in the ancient world), and trade relationships and business were not disrupted, and the city was not sacked... he encouraged trade and science after taking control.
Some of his later legal ideas protected women, and forbade the use of soldiers as slaves. He introduced the idea of diplomatic immunity, and opened the West to the East, a path later traced back by Marco Polo, who befriended Genghis' grandson, Kublai Khan.
Genghis Khan declared the rule of law as supreme over any individual, and made it clear that the Great Law applied as strictly to rulers as to anyone else, placing the power of law above his own power. He created public schools, abolished torture, ordered the introduction of a writing system, and developed a postal system, using fast riders.
(Still, he did demand unconditional surrender of the leadership when he attacked a city, and also that large numbers of the city's young women be provided to him... today his genes are spread from Europe to China, and his descendants number in the millions.)
...If enemies did not accept his surrender offer, often the ensuing sack became a massive slaughter as an object lesson.
There is some speculation that he might have been baptized a Christian on the steps of Central Asia by Nestorian Christian missionaries (his wife was a Christian, and many of his immediate family were baptized, including his children). |
