The Conquerors

Every so often over the course of history, an exceptional leader blindingly outshines his fellow men and undertakes a course of action that leaves a permanent imprint upon the future. Two such men that will never be forgotten are Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan themselves. The men, swaths of land, and resources these men trampled underfoot and held in the palm of their hand have very few if any times been matched. Both conquerors and their empires exemplified similar levels of brutality and tolerance, and though both failed to last, they both exemplified some of the greatest single-handed conquests and birthings of empires in history.

Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan come from very different backgrounds. Being born to King Philip of Macedon, Alexander had a somewhat better start to his empire. As Alexander rode over Persia and Asia, not only did he allow local populaces to retain their culture and religion, he even adopted practices of the people he encountered, much to the chagrin of his own. Similarly, Genghis Khan was relatively tolerant of any culture that his conquest encountered, his people even adopting and integrating into their own other cultures’ practices as they spread across Asia. Both Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan’s empires ruled firmly but made plenty of allowances for the original values of the cultures they subjugated.

While both empires displayed relative tolerance in certain cases, when met with resistance, neither regime faltered when it came to responding with far greater murderous ferocity than their enemy. Alexander the Great himself, during the siege of the Phoenician city of Tyre, he reportedly crucified more than 2,000 survivors on the beach and selling 30,000 more into slavery, not to mention the 6,000 battle casualties.

Though Alexander was brutal, brutality cannot be matched when it comes to the inhumanity of the Mongols. A rare survivor, Ibn al-Althir describes in great detail the atrocities the infamous Mongol hordes committed while on rampage across the entirety of Asia. The Mongols “spared none, slaying women and men and children, ripping open pregnant women and killing unborn babes.”¹ From the perspective of the conquered, the Mongols appeared to have no morals, “and regard nothing as unlawful, for they eat all beasts…, nor do they recognize the marriage-tie,”² furthering their countenance as other-worldly. When it comes to sheer atrocity, both conquerors vie for a strong case, but the Mongol hordes beat out Alexander the Great’s army every time.

As if history repeats itself, we constantly see certain individuals in history transcend their fellows and become a driving force behind a cause that is perpetuated by their followers. Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan both exemplify such an individual with their charisma and pure leadership capability. In terms of the characteristics of the empires, both offered relative independence for those who acknowledged their superiority, but when met with intransigence, the consequences for the perpetrators were bore from extreme obduracy, mercilessness, and pure barbarism. Such men above the rest must be acknowledged and learned from.

—Gregory Mathias
Word Count: 506

^{1, 2}Al-Althir, Ibn. The Perfect History. 1225