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His death was kept secret
Return to the Tangut
After conquering the Khwarezm Empire, Genghis Khan came home to a celebration that lasted most of a summer. He distributed wealth and rewarded everyone, including the people who had helped save him from the yoke. The Tangut nation, the first place he had attacked outside Mongolia, had sworn allegiance and then refused to send troops when he went to the Middle East. He had not forgotten, and he marched back to conquer them again.
The Fall and the Secret
Crossing the Gobi, he got distracted hunting khulan, wild asses. He fell from his horse and badly injured his leg, and he declined over the following months. One of his wives ran the camp, and the death was kept secret until the defeat of the Tangut was finished, which is why the exact day is unknown.
The Final Order
The Tangut offered all kinds of things for the Mongols to go away. Genghis Khan told his family to accept nothing and, when the Tangut surrendered, to kill the whole royal family. The Tangut were Buddhists, who believed a person can be reborn into their own family, so killing all of them meant they could not be reborn.
Why do accounts of Genghis Khan's death disagree?
The Secret History says he fell from his horse while hunting wild asses. Persian chroniclers report that he died of an illness. Marco Polo, writing decades later, recorded an account of an arrow wound to the knee. Each source was written long after the event, and the Mongols kept the circumstances secret.
What happened to the Tangut after 1227?
The Tangut kingdom, called Western Xia in Chinese, fell in 1227. The Mongols destroyed its capital and much of its archives. The Tangut had their own script and a Buddhist canon translated into their language. After the conquest the language and script gradually fell out of use, and they were not deciphered until the twentieth century.
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