Chinggis, Genghis, Dschingis, Чингисm, 成吉思汗, チンギス... However you spell it, unless you're historically clueless or have never played a Civilization game in your life, you know who Chinggis Khan is. And if I were to ask you who he was, you'd probably answer somewhere along the lines, "The Mongolian dude who created a huge-ass empire and killed a bunch of people." Sadly, very few know any more than that. It's rather unfortunate that for a guy so important in world history, people don't seem to know anything about him other than the extent of land that he and his Mongols conquered, and the number of inhabitants of those very lands they killed.
In fact, when you take a look at the image above showing the Mongolian Empire at the deaths of Chinggis Khan and his grandson, Khubilai Khan, you'll realize that the bulk of the Empire was actually expanded by his successors. By dwarfing all empires before it, the Mongolian Empire seems to have paradoxically dwarfed the true story of Chinggis Khan. His rise from poverty to become the supreme khan of the Mongolian steppe.
This is why Happyscans and I bring you the first of five volumes in Mitsuteru Yokoyama's biographical manga of Chinggis Khan. Not only is it mostly faithful to the account as given by The Secret History of the Mongols, but 4 of its 5 volumes are dedicated to his struggle to become the Khan. So if you're looking for a story about how the Mongols terrorized the world, then you're out of luck. This is the timeless account of a man fighting against the circumstances he was born under, to achieve more than world ever expected him to.
P.S. Progress will be one volume per month, so it should be done by the end of the year. If you're looking for actual books to read on the subject, as I mentioned in the translator's foreword, I recommend Ratchnevsky's "Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy" and Onon's translation of "The Secret History of the Mongols." You can find an online copy of the latter here.
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Pretty neat. Looking forward to the rest of it.
ReplyDeleteThis is great. I finished Dan Carlin's podcasts on the mongols a little while ago and was looking for something more. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteYeah, his podcasts were nice but I was rather disappointed that he didn't really talk much about Temuchin's life.
DeleteVery nice, thanks
ReplyDeleteThat is awesome, I Really like the Genghis Khan history, Thanks based Hox.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. New chapter of Historie soon?
ReplyDeleteSounds interesting, thank you so much!
ReplyDeleteThanks Hox/HS :3c
ReplyDeleteThis looks interesting, thanks Hox.
ReplyDeleteI started reading Historie and I noticed on page 198 of Volume 5 it seems the word kind was used instead of king in the first word bubble.
Chinngis Khan is really big figure in history books for kids in Russia. There was a time when this ruler bent whole Russian empire to his knees, and all of the Russian Knyaz's and Lords went to pay respects to him. Grim time for my homeland, but for some reason I always liked reading about how fearsome his rule was. Definetly going to check this out, thanks, Hox!
ReplyDeleteJust read this --- really good! Looking forward to the upcoming volumes. Thanks a lot, as always.
ReplyDeleteWow , I've bought one translated years ago in my language. Nice to finally have one in digitalized version
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