IV.14.G. “Mongolia Sees Genghis Khan's Good Side,” The New York Times

IV.14.G. “Mongolia Sees Genghis Khan's Good Side,” The New York Times

He was only half joking. Ever since Mongolia emerged from the Soviet Union's shadow in the early 1990s, the lore and myth surrounding the khan, the original bad boy of history, have captured the imagination of the country.

A popular and official movement to reassess Genghis Khan's marauding image is being marshaled by admirers who say he was a truly great, if irascible, ruler.

"He is like a god to us," said Bat-Erdene Batbayar, who also goes by the name Baabar, a historian and adviser to Elbegdorj. "He is the founder of our state, the root of our history. The communists very brutally cut us off from our traditions and history and got us to adopt the ways and views of Western civilization—with a red color of course, but still Western. Now we are becoming Mongols again."

This veneration of Genghis Khan is partly traditional in Mongolia, where most revere their ancestors and where he is considered the father of the nation.

But it is also a backlash. During the seven decades the Soviet Union ran Mongolia, Moscow feared the deification of Genghis Khan would incite Mongolian nationalism, so even mentioning his name was forbidden. People were banned from visiting his home province of Khentii in the northeast; a Soviet tank base sat on the sole road connecting Khentii to the rest of the country.

Now, as Mongolia is reinventing itself as a free-market democracy, it is also searching its past for the means to define itself. And no one looms larger in its history than Temujin, who took the title Genghis Khan, or Universal Ruler, after forging the world's largest land empire in the early 1200s.

"Understanding how Mongolians view Genghis Khan throws light on how Mongolians view their own heritage and, to a certain extent, themselves," Ts. Tsetsenbileg, a scholar at the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with the Harvard Asia Pacific Review. "Within this rapidly changing world, Genghis Khan, if we acknowledge him without bias, can serve as a moral anchor. He can be Mongolia's root, its source of certainty at a time when many things are uncertain."

Evidence of a renewed romance with Genghis Khan is everywhere. Children, streets, hotels, vodka, cigarettes, banks, candy bars, beer, products and businesses of almost every type all carry his name; his face is on Mongolian money, stamps and official buildings, and is spray-painted on street corners.

Genghis Khan's comeback 778 years after his death is especially popular with young people. One of the country's top bands, Black Rose, sings his praises in anthems that combine raspy rock vocals with traditional Mongolian throat singing.

"I want people to feel pride in their past and remember the one Mongolian who left a mark on history," said Amraa Mandakh, the group's lead singer. "Earlier this was a society that had no national pride, and people asked me why I liked Genghis. Now they come and embrace me when I say his name."

Historians in the West and in China, India, Iran and other nations that fell to Genghis Khan's horsemen in the early 1200s see the onslaught of the Mongol hordes as an apocalyptic event that threatened to end their ancient civilizations forever.

But to the Mongolians, one of history's greatest tyrants has always been the greatest hero. "When we were young people, our parents used to tell us stories of Genghis, of how he was good and strong and kind," said Naramtsetseg Dolgormaa, 27, who teaches the Japanese language. "I'll never forget that."

Differing assessments of conquerors can roil emotions in Asia, where passions over history run high. But since Genghis Khan's legacy is free ofliving memory, it is proving easier to revise.

In fact, nations wanting to curry favor with resource-rich Mongolia are supporting its attempts to resurrect its past. Since Mongolians worship their dead and the location of Genghis Khan's grave remains unknown, both Beijing and Tokyo are trying to outdo each another in sanctifying his memory.

China is spending about $20 million to renovate a mausoleum it built to Genghis Khan in 1954 at Ejin Horo Banner on the Ordos Highlands in its province of Inner Mongolia. In October a Japanese-financed research team searching for the tomb said it had found it at Avraga, about 250 kilometers, or 155 miles, east of this capital.

Many people in this pristine, beautiful country see such global support for the rehabilitation of their god-king as fulfillment of a longtime quest for international dignity.

"People should see Genghis Khan is great, not evil," said Uchral, 20, a painter who sells his watercolors of Mongolia's endless steppes, its exotic animals and, of course, its warrior-king, to tourists outside the gray Soviet-era Ulan Bator Hotel. "To us he is noble, strong. No one could touch us when he was there."

Uchral reached into his rolls of paintings and pulled out a portrait of Genghis. It depicted him as an imposing but contemplative man, quite unlike the bloodthirsty marauder Persian texts tell us warned the ancient cities of Bukhara and Samarkand: "All who surrender will be spared; whoever does not surrender but opposes with struggle and dissension, shall be annihilated."

Baabar said the savage image of Genghis Khan endures only because "his history was written by his enemies." The Mongols were not scribes, and the only comprehensive chronicle of his times, "The Secret History of the Mongols" (a 13th-century account of Genghis Khan's life), was lost for centuries.

Even when it was rediscovered in the early 1800s by a Russian diplomat in China, its dissemination was tightly controlled, so most of the material on Genghis Khan comes from people he conquered. The historians present the picture of a brilliant but tempestuous and cruel man. He is said to have been so hot-tempered that he slew his half-brother in an argument.

But a slow reconsideration of this fearsome figure has been taking place since 1982, when Francis Woodman Cleaves produced the first authoritative modern version of "The Secret History of the Mongols."

Some newly found details, such as Genghis Khan's apparent fear of dogs, make him seem more human; historians are also reassessing the nature of Mongol society and rule. New books say his empire gave citizens religious freedom, banned the slave trade, expanded a global economy and introduced several important international concepts, such as diplomatic immunity. The extent of Genghis empire also led to greater contact between East and West, and these exchanges were carried further by his grandson, Kublai Khan.

Though it is estimated that Genghis Khan killed about 40 million people across Asia and Europe, some researchers cite evidence that Genghis Khan might have exaggerated his massacres.

Researchers at the Genghis Khan University in Ulan Bator even say that toward the end of this life he was trying to turn his empire into a civil state, based on a code of laws called the Great Yassa, which granted equal and defined legal rights for all citizens, including women.

But Genghis Khan's most astounding effect remains on the world's demography. In February 2003, the study "The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols;" published by the American Journal of Human Genetics, estimated that Genghis Khan has more than 17 million direct descendants living today: One in every 200 people is related to him.