Did Genghis Khan really kill 1,748,000 people in one hour?

Genghis Khan has more death attributed to him than any other person in history. Learn about Genghis Kahn and the siege Genghis Khan conducted on Nishapur.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gipson, joined today by Josh Curious like
a cat Quark. How's it going, Josh, it's going well,
and thanks for having my curious self on your show. Candidate, Well,

(00:23):
you know it's curious guy around. Actually, let me tell
you what I'm curious about this time. You're ready. Gengis Khan.
Genghis Khan. You know much about this guy, you're gonna
be able to help me. I do. He was. He
was pretty brutal. He was quite a warrior and quite
a lover. He was very prolific lover. Half of a
percent of the global population or direct descendants of this guy,
so he got around, indeed. But he was also a really,

(00:44):
really well established ruler. He introduced the concept of religious
tolerance to the lands that he conquered. Equal treatment of women. Yeah,
they said that his rule of law was so strong that, uh,
a virgin actually could walk across Mongolia with a basket
of gold on her head from one end to the
other completely unmolested. So apparently it was pretty safe under

(01:06):
CON's rule. But he was also a vicious, brutal killer.
I mean, this guy killed a lot of people. If
you weren't one of the subjects, you weren't really safe
pretty much. Yeah, Well, if you oppose him, he had
a he had a rule of thumb that if you
gave up, you surrendered, he let you live. If you
resisted him, you were dead as a door nail. And actually,

(01:27):
when I was a younger man, I first got into
con by reading in Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, which I
really used to be into UM, that con actually killed
one million, seven hundred and forty eight thousand people in
one hour, which is nuts, right, So, I mean, you
know about con is that is that even possible? Is
that fact? Or is that fiction? Afread? Even conn? I

(01:52):
know I can resist um to kill one million, seven
hundred forty eight thousand people in a single hour a
k A. Sixty minutes. That means twenty nine thousand, one
thirty three people would have had to die every minute
under his hands. Well, but couldn't you run around in
a circle just murdering person after person. I don't really
think it would have worked so well, not with you know,

(02:12):
a bayonet or an ax. It takes time, you know,
to to do it right. Essentially, what it all boiled
down to was one million, seven hundred forty thousand is
the population of a town called Nishipper, and Connaist people
were there, and it just so happened that his favorite
son in law was killed, and his daughter was pretty
ticked off about it, and so she made a play

(02:34):
for her father to murder everyone to make up for
this one guy's death, and her father agreed, and so
over the course of about ten days, the entire town
was wiped out, men, women, children, infants, dogs, cats, dogs
and cats. I know, pretty rough. But she still wasn't
satisfied that vengeance had been achieved, so she asked her

(02:57):
dad to order everyone beheaded, even all the corpse, and
so all their heads were cut off and their their
skulls were stacked in pyramids, and it made for a
pretty dramatic scene and a pretty dramatic story too. Pretty gruesome. Yeah,
so I'm kind of glad you didn't read about that
in Uncle John's at the Tender Age of twelve. You
might have had nine yares that night. So well, thanks
for clearing that up. You are so welcome, and if

(03:19):
you want to learn more, read did Genghis Khan really
kill one million, seven dty eight thousand people in one hour?
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