Genghis Khan: A Half-Brother Killed Over a Fish, the Yassa and the Yam

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Temüjin was born around 1162 on a Mongolian Plateau torn by feuds among Mongols, Tatars, Merkits and Naimans. After Tatars poisoned his father Yesügei, the tribe abandoned his mother Hoelun and her children, who survived on wild garlic and marmots, and Temüjin and his brother killed their older half-brother Behter in a dispute over a fish and a bird. Allied with Toghrul and his sworn brother Jamukha, he rescued his kidnapped bride Börte from the Merkits, then broke with Jamukha over promoting men by merit rather than birth, crushed the Tatars and Naimans, and was proclaimed Genghis Khan at a kurultai near the Onon River in 1206.

He reorganized his people into decimal units from the arban of 10 to the tumen of 10,000, mixing former enemies in the same tent, and issued the Yassa, which banned the kidnapping and sale of women, protected animals in breeding season and exempted clergy from taxes. The yam relay let riders carrying a paiza cover more than 150 miles a day. After his secret burial in 1227, his successors doubled the empire, but the kurultai that pulled commanders home in 1241 and later succession purges split it into the Golden Horde, the Ilkhanate, the Chagatai Khanate and Kublai Khan's Yuan dynasty.

If one man in a ten-man unit deserted in battle, the other nine were executed.
Soldiers wore distinctive haircuts so deserters could not blend into conquered populations.
Captured Jin siege engineers built catapults and trebuchets later turned on Khwarazmian fortresses.
Legend says the funeral escort killed anyone it met and diverted a river over the unmarked grave.
Genetic studies suggest that one in 200 men alive today is his direct descendant.

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