Genghis Khan and the Quest for God by Jack Weatherford

But rather than just throw out a dry recitation of facts, Weatherford provides a gripping narrative and places it in broader human and sociological contexts. The entire Mongol tribe was no more than one million people, with perhaps one hundred thousand warriors. The majority of people today live in countries conquered by the Mongols on the modern map Genghis Khan’s conquests include thirty countries with well over 3 billion people. At its zenith, the empire covered between 11 and 12 million contiguous square miles, an area about the size of the African continent and considerably larger than North America.

Genghis Khan conquered more than twice as much as any other man in history. Genghis Khan, together with his sons and grandsons, conquered the most densely populated civilization of the thirteenth century. In twenty-five years, the Mongol army subjugated more lands and people than the Romans had conquered in four hundred years. How important is Genghis Khan to our study of history? Here’s an idea: Weatherford artfully guides us through a period of history which is too often a blur to the unfamiliar Western reader. This follows our prior study of his best-selling 2005 book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Genghis Khan and the Quest for God is a masterpiece of erudition and insight, his most personal and resonant work.As part of my amazing Wesley Advocates study group, we’ve embarked on a study of Jack Weatherford’s 2017 book Genghis Khan and the Quest for God: How the World’s Greatest Conqueror Gave Us Religious Freedom.

He pored through archives and found groundbreaking evidence of Genghis’s influence on the founding fathers and his essential impact on Thomas Jefferson.

Genghis lived in the 13th century, but he struggled with many of the same problems we face today: How should one balance religious freedom with the need to reign in fanatics? Can one compel rival religions – driven by deep seated hatred–to live together in peace?Ī celebrated anthropologist whose bestselling Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World radically transformed our understanding of the Mongols and their legacy, Jack Weatherford has spent eighteen years exploring areas of Mongolia closed until the fall of the Soviet Union and researching The Secret History of the Mongols, an astonishing document written in code that was only recently discovered. And so, unlike the Christian, Taoist and Muslim conquerors who came before him, he gave his subjects freedom of religion. Genghis Khan and the Quest for God: How the World’s Greatest Conqueror Gave Us Religious Freedom (PDF)

Genghis Khan and the Quest for God by Jack Weatherford