Genghis Khan: Are you good at killing and terrorizing my enemies? Yes? Ok, see those fuckers over there? Conquer them. I don’t care how. Burn it all down. Re-route an entire river. I just want them paying tribute.
Modern Mongolia, perhaps. The Golden Horde of Genghis Khan was not so tolerant!
Yes, they were. Genghis’ Mongols didn’t generally force religious change in the people who they subjugated.
It’s actually a cool belief system from what I’ve read, known as Tengriism; they had their own beliefs but (and I hope I have this right) that whatever religious worldview prevailed locally was considered not just valid as a personal or cultural expression, but actually metaphysically true as well. That seems fantastic, doesn’t it? Patchwork metaphysics.
I’m not an expert but from what I’ve read most ancient world deities were attached to certain geographies (it would be reasonable to sort of leave the boundaries of your gods) so I wonder if this comes from that tradition. The roman catholics sure successfully weaponized monotheism.
Provided you paid your tribute and obeyed the Khan’s laws they were cool with just about everyone. Fail to do either of those things and you’re in for a bad time.
I mean pretty consistent with today’s neoliberal values:
It’s okay to exploit people as long as we don’t discriminate.
Why are they so wonderful?
They were also great environmentalists who did a lot to fight global warming.
China enters the chat
