In the 13th century, the Mongols burst forth from their remote steppes, forging one of history’s most formidable empires. While they’re often remembered as fierce horse‑archers, the ruling clan amassed unimaginable wealth and power, moving from humble felt tents to the grand capital of Karakorum. Beneath the glittering façade lay a trove of unsettling practices – the very 10 dark secrets that scarred their legacy.
10 Dark Secrets Of The Mongol Empire
10 Murder
Genghis Khan’s first act of killing came at the tender age of fourteen. The near‑contemporary chronicle known as The Secret History of the Mongols recounts that young Temujin was repeatedly tormented by his half‑brother Begter. When Begter pilfered food, Temujin and his younger sibling Qasar slipped through the tall grass, ambushed Begter, and riddled him with arrows.
That early episode set a chilling pattern: Genghis treated murder as a convenient problem‑solver. Numerous opponents met sudden, mysterious ends. One especially petty case involved the celebrated wrestler Buri, who had dared to humiliate Genghis’s brother Belgutei in a match before the Khan’s rise.
According to The Secret History, after Temujin became Genghis Khan, he summoned Buri for a rematch. Scared of the Khan’s power, Buri opted for the “safe” route, allowing Belgutei to throw and pin him. Yet, at Genghis’s silent signal, Belgutei drove his knee into Buri’s back and yanked his collarbone, snapping the wrestler’s spine. The crippled Buri was dragged outside and left to die, likely pondering the folly of challenging a ruler who despised cowardice.
9 Executions
Even though Genghis Khan limited torture, the Mongols still employed brutally graphic execution methods. When Guyuk Khan suspected the influential courtier Fatima of poisoning his brother, he ordered her to be sewn shut at both upper and lower orifices, wrapped in felt, and hurled into a river.
The Mongol tradition tabooed shedding the blood of royalty, prompting a preference for crushing. The Abbasid Caliph al‑Musta’sim was bound in a carpet and trampled by stampeding horses. After the Battle of the Kalka River, captured Russian princes were shoved beneath floorboards, then crushed while Mongols feasted atop the victims.
Genghis himself commanded a captured Tangut ruler to be renamed Shidurqu (“Loyal”) before crushing him, ensuring his spirit would serve the Mongols in the afterlife. By contrast, a Persian noble was covered in sheep fat, wrapped in felt, and left to bake in the scorching sun, meeting a far harsher fate.
8 Intrigue
Contrary to the stereotype of blunt, uncomplicated warriors, the Mongol court was a veritable snake pit of scheming factions. One of the earliest, most serious incidents involved the shaman Teb Tengri, who tried to supplant the Khan’s brothers as the dominant power.
Teb Tengri first targeted the Khan’s brother Qasar, claiming a prophetic vision that Qasar intended to seize power. Genghis ordered Qasar’s arrest, seemingly preparing a death sentence.
The day was rescued by Genghis’s mother, Hoelun. Upon hearing of Qasar’s detention, she raced to the Khan’s tent, tore off her coat, and demanded that her sons recognize the breasts that had fed them. She berated Genghis until he, ashamed, released his brother. Teb Tengri waited until Hoelun’s death, then stole the inheritance meant for her youngest son, Temuge. When Temuge protested, Teb’s brothers beat him and forced him to kneel, begging for his life.
Later, Genghis’s wife Borte intervened, warning that the shaman might someday move against the Khan. In response, Genghis staged a wrestling match in which Teb Tengri’s back was broken, leaving the paralyzed shaman outside to die.
7 Sex Slavery
Although many Mongol women rose to positions of power, the empire was far from feminist. Women captured during campaigns were either married off to Mongol men or consigned to concubinage. The Mongols also routinely demanded young maidens as tribute from subjugated peoples.
A notable example involves the Siberian queen Botohui‑tarhun (“Big And Fierce”), who once outwitted a Mongol army by luring General … into an ambush. After a later expedition defeated the Siberians, Botohui‑tarhun was captured, married to a Mongol soldier, and vanished from the historical record.
Some noblewomen turned tragedy into influence. When Genghis conquered the Merkids, he gave their princess Toregene to his son Ogedei. She soon eclipsed Ogedei’s other wives, ruling the empire for five years after his death.
6 Alcoholism
Originally pastoral herders, the early Mongols had limited access to intoxicants, mostly drinking mildly alcoholic fermented mare’s milk, which was seasonal. After Genghis’s conquests flooded the steppes with wealth, many Mongols found themselves living in leisure, with unlimited access to wine and distilled spirits.
By the time of Genghis’s death, alcoholism was already a massive problem. Even his own family wasn’t immune: two of his sons, Tolui and Ogedei, drank themselves to death. His brother Chagatai had to enforce strict limits, allowing only a few cups a day.
Ogedei, who succeeded Genghis, was especially dependent on wine; Persian historian Ata‑Malek Juvayni reports that he often made critical decisions while heavily intoxicated. His minister, Yelu Chucai, repeatedly urged the Khan to curb his drinking, but Ogedei’s wife Toregene encouraged his bingeing so she could seize power.
The problem persisted beyond Genghis’s sons. European monk William of Rubruck, visiting his grandson Mongke’s court, described a pervasive drinking culture, including a silver tree that dispensed wine, rice wine, mead, and fermented mare’s milk through four pipes.
5 The Kidnapping That Helped Create And Destroy The Empire
Around 1178, newly‑wed Borte was seized by Merkid tribesmen. Her furious husband, Temujin, quickly rallied a modest coalition, stormed the Merkid camp, rescued Borte, and cemented his reputation as a fierce warrior. This episode arguably set him on the path to becoming Genghis Khan.
Paradoxically, the same kidnapping sowed seeds of destruction. By the time Borte was rescued, she was months pregnant, and rumors swirled about whether the child’s father was her husband or one of her captors. Genghis accepted the child as his, yet whispers lingered.
Years later, an aging Genghis convened his sons to name a successor. The obvious heir was his eldest, Jochi, but his second son, Chagatai, argued that a “bastard son of a Merkid” should not inherit. The meeting devolved into a chaotic brawl. Despite Genghis’s pleas, the brothers refused reconciliation, forcing a compromise: the throne passed to the third son, the alcoholic Ogedei. This decision set the stage for prolonged infighting that eventually fractured the empire.
4 The Purge
Genghis ensured his son Ogedei would ascend without opposition. Trouble erupted after Ogedei died in 1241, his alcoholism leaving a power vacuum that spiraled into a ruthless purge targeting the descendants of two of Genghis’s four sons.
Initially, Ogedei’s wife Toregene seized power, ruling for five years while scheming to have her wasteful son Guyuk elected Khan. She succeeded after a series of intrigues, including the execution of Genghis’s surviving brother Temuge. Yet Guyuk turned on her once she tried to retain authority; her advisers were executed, and the queen died under mysterious circumstances.
Guyuk’s abrupt death two years later plunged the empire back into chaos. Jochi’s and Tolui’s descendants allied to elevate Tolui’s son Mongke. Opposed by the Chagataids and Ogedeids—who allegedly plotted to assassinate Mongke—Mongke responded with a massive purge.
He ordered the roundup and execution of Ogedei’s and Guyuk’s ministers. An army formation swept across Mongolia, hunting down Ogedeid princes for execution. Special tribunals, called jarghus, traveled the empire conducting show trials of Ogedeid loyalists. The Ogedeids and Chagataids required years to recover, while the Toluids solidified their grip.
3 Civil War
The first Mongol civil war nearly ignited during Guyuk’s brief reign. At a Russian banquet, Guyuk engaged in a foolish quarrel with Jochi’s son Batu, ending with Guyuk shouting that Batu “was just an old woman.” The rivalry intensified, and Batu refused to travel to Mongolia to pay homage.
In retaliation, Guyuk marched his army toward Batu’s Russian territories. Fortune intervened: Guyuk died en route, averting outright war.
Later, after Mongke’s death, his brothers Kublai Khan and Ariq Boke ripped the empire apart in a massive civil war to decide succession. The turmoil allowed the Ogedei and Chagatai clans to rebound, while the Jochi and Hulagu branches broke away, forming the independent Golden Horde and Ilkhanate. The once‑unified Mongol Empire never fully reassembled.
2 Religious Fanaticism
Although famed for religious tolerance, the Mongol ruling elite fervently believed they were on a divine mission that justified ruthless conquest. In 1218, Genghis ascended a mosque pulpit in Bukhara and warned citizens: “You have committed great sins. If you had not, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”
Years later, his grandson Guyuk wrote to Pope Innocent IV, proclaiming: “By the power of eternal Heaven, all lands have been given to us from sunrise to sunset. If you defy Heaven’s commands, we shall know you are our foe.”
Another grandson, Mongke Khan, boasted to King Louis of France: “In Heaven there is only one eternal God, and on Earth there is only one lord, Genghis Khan. When, by the virtue of the eternal God, the world enjoys universal joy and peace, our destiny will be manifest.”
Hulagu Khan summed it up in a letter: “God spoke to our grandfather through Teb Tengri, saying ‘I have set thee over the nations to build, to plant, to destroy. Those who do not believe will later learn punishment.’”
1 The Plan To Exterminate The Chinese
The Mongols felt most at home on open steppes, where endless grass fed their horses. Before launching a campaign, they often dispatched small detachments to torch farms, orchards, and villages, allowing the land to revert to pasture by the time the main army arrived.
Frustrated by the difficulty of subduing the densely populated Chinese heartland, Ogedei Khan contemplated a terrifying expansion of this scorched‑earth method: the wholesale slaughter of northern Chinese peasants and conversion of the former Jin dynasty’s territory into a massive pasture.
This genocidal scheme was averted largely thanks to Ogedei’s Chinese adviser, Yelu Chucai. He argued that a taxation system would yield a steady revenue stream to fund Mongol conquests, a far more sustainable approach. Ogedei listened, and the plan to ethnically cleanse northern China never materialized.