# Genghis Khan **Genghis Khan** (c. 1162-1227), born Temujin, unified the Mongol tribes in 1206 and launched the conquests that produced the largest contiguous land empire in history. His campaigns against the Jin, the Tangut Western Xia, and above all the Khwarezmian empire in 1219-1221 destroyed the great trading cities of Central Asia — Bukhara, Samarkand, Merv, Nishapur — with casualty figures that remain disputed but were catastrophic by any estimate. The paradox that defines his place on the Silk Road Trade Route Timeline is that the same conquest which annihilated the route's commercial capital also created, within a generation, the single political authority that made the whole network safe to cross for the first time. His successors' [[Pax Mongolica]] rested on institutions he established: the yam relay-post system, a written legal code, religious tolerance as administrative policy, and the treatment of merchants as a protected class. See [[Mongol Empire]]. > [!note] Stub > Spine stub. Expand: the rise and unification, military organization and the decimal system, the Otrar incident, the succession, and the historiography of the death tolls.