Temujin Is Born and Left for Dead on the Steppe
A childhood of abandonment and hardship shapes the future Genghis Khan
Quick facts
- Father
- Yesugei, Borjigin clan chief
- Mother
- Hoelun
- Birth year
- c. 1162 (some scholars favor 1167)
- Early ally
- Toghril, chief of the Kerait
What happened
Temujin, the future Genghis Khan, was born to Yesugei and Hoelun on the steppe. His exact birth year is disputed among scholars, with some favoring 1162 and others 1167. When Temujin was around nine to twelve years old, his father was poisoned by a rival tribe, the Tatars. Too young to hold his father's followers together, Temujin could not maintain his father's authority, and he and his mother were abandoned by their own clan and left on the steppe to die. The family survived by foraging and living off the land. According to the World History Encyclopedia, Temujin may later have killed one of his own older half-brothers, Bekter, in a dispute likely rooted in rivalry over their father's legacy, after which he fled with his remaining followers and allied himself with Toghril, chief of the Kerait tribe, a group his father had once helped.
Why it matters
This early exile forced Temujin to build power from nothing rather than inherit it, which shaped the ruthless, alliance-based method of consolidation he later used across the whole steppe. His early alliance with Toghril gave him a patron and a template for the diplomacy-and-force combination he would use for the rest of his life.
How we know
The main source is the Secret History of the Mongols, a near-contemporary Mongolian chronicle whose account of Temujin's early hardships is treated by historians as broadly reliable even where exact dates and some details remain debated.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Genghis Khan · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Mongol Empire · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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