Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire

The man, then the empire. From a herding boy left for dead on the steppe to the largest land empire the world has ever seen.

Two manuscripts in one book:

• Genghis Khan: An Enthralling Guide to the Conquests, Empire, and Enduring Legacy of the Mongol Horde
• The Mongol Empire: An Enthralling Guide to the Unprecedented Expansion, Cultural Exchange, and Legacy of the Mongol Conquests

From a boy left for dead on the steppe to the most feared name in the medieval world.

Part One: Genghis Khan

The definitive story of a man who rose from the windswept steppes of Mongolia to command the largest contiguous empire in history - the battles, and the personal struggles that forged a legend.

In the first part of this book, you will explore:

• The Betrayals and Near-Death Escapes: The captivity, hunger, and treachery that could have ended Temüjin's life before his rise ever began
• The Kidnapping of Borte: The dramatic abduction of his wife by the Merkits, the rescue that followed, and how it hardened his resolve
• The Alliances That Built an Army: The blood-brother bond with Jamukha, the patronage of Toghrul, and the surprising friendships and rivalries that forged an unstoppable force
• The Making of a Universal Ruler: How a fractured set of steppe tribes became a single nation under one man at the kurultai of 1206
• The Fate of His Successors: Ogedei, Tolui, Jochi, and Chagatai - the heirs who tried to hold a continent-spanning empire together after the great Khan was gone

Part Two: The Mongol Empire

Inside the felt tents of the steppe. Inside the burning libraries of Baghdad. Inside the saddle of a Mongol bowman who could shoot accurately at full gallop from either side of his horse.

In the second part of this book, you will discover:

• The Rise of Genghis Khan: Temüjin's early years of captivity and exile, the kidnapping of Borte, the Baljuna Covenant, and the path that ended with a tribal boy becoming universal ruler in 1206
• The Mongol Way of War: Composite bows, decimal army units, feigned retreats, siege engineers absorbed from China, and the terror tactics that brought down walls before the first arrow flew
• The Destruction of Khwarazm and the Conquest of China: How Mongol armies erased empires that had stood for centuries - Khwarazm, Western Xia, the Jin dynasty - in a single generation
• The Invasion of Europe: The campaigns of Batu and Subutai across the Volga, the sack of Kiev, Legnica in Poland, the Battle of Mohi in Hungary, and the death of Ogedei Khan in 1241 that may have saved the rest of Europe
• The Conquest of the Middle East: Hulagu's army of 120,000 men, the fall of the Assassins, and the siege and sack of Baghdad in 1258 that ended five hundred years of the Abbasid Caliphate
• The Pax Mongolica: Why the bloodiest century in medieval history was also the century that made the Silk Road safe - and how plague, paper money, gunpowder, and ideas all rode the same roads
• Kublai Khan and the Yuan Dynasty: How Genghis's grandson conquered Song China, moved the capital to Dadu (modern Beijing), and drew the Italian traveler Marco Polo
• The Decline and Fall: The Golden Horde, the Ilkhanate, the Chagatai Khanate, and the Yuan - four successor states the Mongols left behind, and the slow unraveling that followed