Big Tent

Big Tent for The Khan

It’s safe to say that Genghis Khan and his Mongol Horde were not the nicest of people. Then again if you’d had to grow up on the inhospitable steppes of Mongolia you’d be a bit annoyed when you finally got to China, Persia (now Iran) and Russia and Eastern Europe and saw how easy they had it. It’s not as if they’d had to drink fermented yak milk and eat nothing but potatoes, gritty bread, and gruel. It certainly made the Mongol Warriors hardy and like nothing that the armies of other countries had ever faced before; that lifestyle certainly giving them a bit more zeal as you can learn here.  After the battle Genghis liked nothing better than to relax in his fancy Yurt, living pretty much as he had always done but with a few extras.

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First, it was on wheels. This is unusual for a Yurt as they are generally designed to be taken down quickly and put up again anywhere. As Genghis’s was filled with his spoils of war he wanted a little bit of comfort after a hard day marching and slaughtering. It meant also that he could host some swinging victory parties. Similar in fact to Kent Marquee Hire or anywhere else in Britain. If you’d like to have a go at a Genghis’s party under canvas, then try http://www.2intents.co.uk/. You won’t get the plushness of the Great Khans tent though as it was filled with all the plunder of his empire but there is a very good reason for that. Considering that extended from China to Poland and amounted to the 2nd biggest land Empire ever you would be pretty pushed to get all that in. Not bad for people who basically came from nothing.  Genghis melded these different tribes together and turned them into an awesome force.

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Genghis had a pretty complicated personal life too. Whilst he only married officially once his bride was kidnapped and he had to go off and rescue her. Good start. She gave him 4 sons, though the first one was debatable due to the kidnapping, he obviously loved her as she was to be his lifelong companion. However, and there is no way this Yurt (or any other tent for that matter) can accommodate this little fact. He had over 500 other wives and can be nicely termed as “consorts”. One imagines this kept him busy. He had children with these ladies, but the offspring were not considered to be rightful heirs which were probably a good thing as it would have made life very complicated. Certainly, for the Yaks having to pull that a lot around along with the other stuff in the yurt. Genghis did rather take a shine to a Tartar girl, who they’d been fighting against for years. She gave him 6 daughters, nice to have some of each, are were useful to be married off. No documents list the consort’s kids probably because it would have taken up so much time!

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