Genghis Khan

Probably the biggest thing to come out of Mongolia is Genghis Khan - most have heard about him and I'd always pictured him as a super bad, scary, war hungry man. However, this is the man that Mongolians are very proud of - hundreds of years later, they still praise him so I figured I needed to learn more about him. Fortunately, the Irving Arts Center has a Genghis Khan exhibition so my dad and I trekked over there this past weekend.

 

While his war tactics were many times very brutal, they were quite brilliant, however there is so much more to this guy than conquering more territory than Rome had in about 1/4 the time it took the Romans! Once conquered, the people would be given freedom of religion, access to trade and literacy just to name a few big things.  I won't go into a full report (you can Google him for more info) but I've listed several of the things that he is credited with inventing:

• Passports
• International Postal Systems
• Ground beef for burgers
• PANTS!
• Diplomatic Immunity
• No taxes for clergy, political figures, etc.
• Cannons
• National parks

Pretty amazing for a man who started out with absolutely nothing. A few more interesting facts - he never allowed anyone to paint or sculpt his image - no one even dared do this until after he'd been dead for nearly 50 years. How he died is a mystery as well as where he is buried as he had 3,000 soldiers dig his grave and once they came back, were all slaughtered so that no one would ever tell anyone where his resting place was. Miles and miles of land were then declared sacred so no one would go looking for it.

I believe this exhibit is going on through September and highly recommend seeing it! Tickets were about $10-$12.