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Khutulun – The Wrestling Princess
The family of Genghis Khan was fearsome. His sons and grandsons ruled large swaths of Asia, but his fearsome genes didn’t stop with just the men. Enter Khutulun. Her name meant “shining moon” or “moonlight”, but she was not all sweetness and light. Born about 1260 to Kaidu Khan, who ruled the Chagatai Khaganate, which stretched from western Mongolia to the Amu Dayra river in the west and from central Siberia in the north to India in the south. Kaidu preferred the old ways of a nomadic life along the Steppes, so Khutulun could ride and shoot with the best of them. She was given a traditional Mongol education alongside…
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The Lost Roman Legion of Crassus
Marcus Licinius Crassus was one of the richest men in the Roman World and part of the First Triumvirate with notables such as Pompeius Magnus and Julius Caesar. He had made his money through picking up the property of those killed in Sulla’s proscriptions at firesale prices. Indeed, he was accused of adding the name of a particularly rich man just so he could pick up his property at bargain basement prices. Combine that through slave trafficking and silver mines, gave Crassus a fortune estimated by Pliny at 200 million sestertii, or about 8.5 billion in today’s dollars. If his name sounds familiar, you may have heard in the old…
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Babur
There was the blood of conquerors in his veins. On his mother’s side, he was descended from the great Genghis Khan. On his father’s side, the man who took on the Mongols and founded his own empire, Timurlane. It made sense that this young man would found an empire of his own. However, he was born far from it. Zahir al-Din Muhammad was born February 15, 1483 in the principality of Fergana, what is now Uzbekistan. Umar Shaykh Mīrzā,his father, was the ruler of Fergana, but died early when his young son was only eleven. His death was reported as happening “”while tending pigeons in an ill-constructed dovecote that toppled…
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Timurlane
After the death of Genghis Khan, the Mongol Empire had fragmented into separate khanates as his descendants squabbled amongst themselves. The empire he built was too big for any of them to rule, so it was split into pieces and divided between them. The northwestern portion was called Golden Horde, and by 1336 the majority of it was ruled by Sultan Mohammed Oz Beg. His domain ran from Moscow to the Aral Sea and his capital was Sarai. Also in 1336, a son was born to a Turco-Mongol tribal leader of the Barlas in Transoxiana. Transoxiana is located at the edge of the mountains just south of the beautiful city…
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Genghis Khan in Khwarizm- The Flail of God
By 1218, Genghis Khan had united the Mongols and together they had conquered northern China. The had expanded westward as well by conquering Kara-Khitai and were collecting tribute from Korea. They first encountered the Empire of Khorezm, which extended from the Aral Sea to the Persian Gulf in one direction and from Iraq to India in the other. The Empire was led by the Shah Ala ad-Din Mohammed II. He also had designs of China, and was miffed the Mongols had gotten their first. As the way of things, envoys met and exchanged expensive gifts. The Mongols sent jade, ivory, gold, cloaks of rare white camel wool to Samarkand, the…
