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2,915 words · no email, no account
No. 194 · Power & Politics · History
The Burkhan Khaldun
a biography of Temüjin (Genghis Khan)
What the book is
August 1227, the Liupan Mountains of what is now Ningxia, China. Temüjin, around sixty, the Mongol khan who has spent the past twenty-one years building the largest contiguous land empire in human history, dies on campaign against the Western Xia. The cause is unclear: a fall from a horse the previous winter, an infected arrow wound from the Tangut siege, malaria, or — in the more sensational sources — the knife of a Tangut princess he had taken as a concubine. His body is returned to the Burkhan Khaldun mountain in northeastern Mongolia for burial in a secret tomb that has never been found.
Edward Forrester's biography opens earlier — at the Onon River, where Temüjin was born around 1162, the eldest son of the Borjigin chief Yesügei — and follows the arc through the poisoning of Yesügei when Temüjin was eight, the long flight with his widowed mother Hoelun and his brothers Khasar and Begter, the killing of Begter, the early years of vassalage and the long Jamukha-anda blood-brotherhood and breach, the 1206 kurultai at which Temüjin was given the title Chinggis Khan, the long Western Xia and Jin and Khwarazmian campaigns, the 1219-1222 Khwarazmian destruction, the 1227 Western Xia second campaign, and the Yelü-trained-administration that survived him through the Yuan dynasty.
What emerges is a portrait of the founder of the largest contiguous empire in human history — and the historiographical debates the Mongol-conquest scholarship has spent eight hundred years working out how to write.
At a glance
- Subject
- Temüjin (Genghis Khan)
- Shelf
- Power & Politics · History
- Written by
- Edward Forrester
- Chapters
- 18 across 225 pages
- Narrated by
- Theo Brackett
- Editions
- Paperback · EPUB · Audiobook
- Authorisation
- Unauthorised — no subject, estate or label had approval over the text.
- Content notes
- mass violence · sexual violence
Contents · 18 chapters
- 01Burkhan Khaldun, c. 1162Read free
- 02The Poisoning2,849 words
- 03The Killing of Begter2,124 words
- 04Börte2,944 words
- 05Toghrul and Jamukha3,981 words
- 06The Tangut Beginning3,130 words
- 07The Jin Invasion3,671 words
- 08The Khwarezmian Provocation3,722 words
- 09Bukhara and Samarkand4,154 words
- 10Urgench, Merv, Nishapur, Herat4,250 words
- 11The Reconnaissance West and the Kalka River3,226 words
- 12Yelü Chucai and the Administrative Innovation3,081 words
- 13The Mongol Women2,902 words
- 14The Succession Question4,520 words
- 15The Final Tangut Campaign3,571 words
- 16August 12273,628 words
- 17Ögedei and the Continuation3,487 words
- 18The Four Khanates and the Genetic Legacy4,340 words
The opening chapter is published in full — read it here.
Editions
- Paperback · $19.99
- 6 × 9 in · 225 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback
- EPUB · $3.99
- EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books
ISBN 979-8-90623-141-3 - Audiobook · $5.99
- Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Theo Brackett
ISBN 979-8-90623-240-3
The printed edition has no ISBN registered yet. It affects library and retail listing, not your order.
Questions
01Who is The Burkhan Khaldun about?
Temüjin (Genghis Khan). The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Burkhan Khaldun — and the name goes on the line underneath.
02Is this an authorised biography?
No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented.
03Can I read some of it before buying?
Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 2,915 words of the book.
04How long is it?
About 64,000 words, 18 chapters, 225 pages in the paperback.
05What is the printed book like?
6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf.
06Does this book carry content warnings?
Yes: mass violence; sexual violence. They are listed before you buy rather than discovered afterwards. The material is handled as evidence, not as spectacle.
The writer
This book deals with
- mass violence
- sexual violence
Listed before you buy, not after.
