During the seven decades of Communist rule in Mongolia, Genghis Khan's name could scarcely be spoken in his own homeland, because the government then saw an interest in the Mongol past as a threat to its power. In Mongolia today, vodka, cigarettes, and a chocolate bar carry his name, and the two most popular brands of beer are Genghis and Khan. Genghis's portrait adorns Mongolian postage stamps, paper money, and World Wide Web sites. Young people on horseback sing songs about him; Mongolia's best rock band bears his name.

Yet Genghis Khan is still a missing person in Mongolian history. Only now is the study of Mongol history and culture emerging, after the democratic revolution of 1990 and the subsequent withdrawal of Soviet troops.

Through the auspices of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences and the newly formed Genghis Khan Institute, I am working with a team of Mongolian scholars to search for information about Genghis's life. My primary collaborator is the archaeologist Lhagva, who is a descendant of one of Genghis Khan's bodyguards and who, like most Mongolians, uses only one name. Combining the perspectives of several disciplines, our team is comparing documents about Genghis written in many Asian and European languages, and conducting fieldwork at the sites associated with his life eight centuries ago. We hope to reconstruct the history of the Mongol Empire and to assess its continuing influence -- not only on Mongolia, but also on the surrounding countries.

Arguably the most famous Asian of the last 2,000 years, Genghis Khan created an empire that was more than twice the size of any other conqueror's in history, and that endured for more than a century and a half after his death. Almost everything we know about him came from the descendants of people he conquered, and they have seen him as merely one of many bloodthirsty savages -- such as Attila the Hun and Tamerlane -- who periodically erupted from the steppes like some evil force of nature to ravage the superior civilizations around them.

In fact, as our research shows, he left behind much more than ruined buildings and bleached bones. He changed the course of history, leaving an indelible mark on China, Russia, India, the Middle East -- in fact, all of the countries from Vietnam to Hungary, and from the Sea of Japan to the Sea of Galilee.

The image of Genghis Khan and the Mongols has been shaped by myth and popular culture, rather than by research and scholarship. Most people outside of Mongolia think of him as one of history's great villains, about whom little more needs to be known.

It is not surprising that the Mongolian view of him is quite different. "Genghis Khan is our God," one man confided to me. "He was more powerful than Buddha. Genghis Khan defeated China, but Buddha did not."

The only Mongolian version of Genghis's life, The Secret History of the Mongols, was lost for centuries until, in the early 1800's, a Russian diplomat in China found a Chinese-Mongolian manuscript of the work. Until recently, its publication and dissemination within Mongolia have been tightly controlled by the authorities, who feared that it might lead to excessive nationalism or antigovernment movements. An authoritative version of The Secret History was not available in English until 1982, when Harvard University Press published Francis Woodman Cleaves's edition of it.

In Asia, the image of Genghis Khan has been shaped less by popular culture than by political struggles and international conflicts. The Manchus, who ruled China from 1644 to 1912, built a mausoleum to him in Inner Mongolia as a way of controlling his worship and making themselves heirs to his glory. The Chinese Communists sought the same control over his image and built a new mausoleum to him in the 1950's. During the Sino-Soviet border skirmishes of the 1960's, Genghis Khan became the symbol of what the two countries were fighting over. The Soviets referred to him as a great barbarian, and the Chinese responded that it was fortunate for the Russians that Genghis had conquered them, thereby bringing some traces of civilization to their backward nation.

Our team's attempt to do a scholarly assessment of Genghis Khan is not the first one. The 1961 admission of Mongolia to the United Nations came almost 800 years after Genghis's birth, in 1162. Tumurochir, then the second-highest-ranking official in the Communist government of Mongolia, sponsored a national scholarly symposium on Genghis Khan. To commemorate the occasion, he appropriated cement to allow people to build a historical marker at Genghis's birthplace.

For the crime of promoting the study of Genghis Khan and thus promoting Mongol nationalism, the Communists removed Tumurochir from office and had him chopped to death with an ax.

The Communists' wrath also descended on Mongolian scholars of Genghis Khan, many of whom were killed or jailed. Perlee, a respected archaeologist, was imprisoned in extremely harsh conditions merely for having been Tumurochir's teacher. Even the relatives of scholars lost their jobs, were expelled from their homes in the harsh Mongolian climate, or were sent into exile. The purge destroyed a whole generation of linguists, historians, archaeologists, and any other scholars who specialized in topics even remotely connected to Genghis or the Mongol Empire.

During the Communist period, Genghis Khan's home province of Khentii, in the mountainous northeastern part of Mongolia, remained closed not only to foreigners, including those from other socialist republics, but also to Mongolians, except for the few-thousand families permitted to live there. A large Soviet tank base straddled the only bridge into the province. Although roughly the size of Austria, Khentii has only 75,000 inhabitants today, and they are scattered across a harsh landscape with no roads or cities.

Our team is crisscrossing Khentii and other parts of Mongolia associated with the Mongol Empire. We use The Secret History as a map, trying to match its topographic descriptions -- which are often quite specific -- with the modern landscape. When we talk with the herders who graze their animals in these places now, we not only hear fanciful stories about Genghis Khan, but we also learn about the places themselves. And by understanding how people and animals move through the area today, we hope to understand the strategy and movements of Genghis and his army.

Although we are only three years into our project, the scholars on our team already have a new image of the Mongols. Our research has convinced us that their culture owed as much to the practices of nearby Siberian hunting bands as to the pastoral tribes of the steppe, whose influence other scholars have overemphasized.

That new perspective helps explain some small puzzles, such as why Genghis Khan was so afraid of herding dogs. Genghis came from a wooded area, where wolves -- which closely resembled the dogs -- were a great threat to human life.

Our collaborative research also helps us to understand larger issues, such as how Mongol women living in China during the reign of the Manchus managed to avoid having to bind their feet, and how other Mongol women in Muslim lands over the centuries have been able to go without the veil. Many Mongol women, including Genghis's mother, held positions of leadership. In fact, Genghis fought one band led by a woman, and he often had to contend with his wife's and mother's public opposition to his plans and actions.

By 2006, when Mongolians celebrate the 800th anniversary of the founding of their nation by Genghis Khan in 1206, we hope to have a clearer picture of the creation of their country, and what it means in world history.

Despite some setbacks -- such as the brutal murder in 1998 of Zorig, a prominent politician who favored research on Genghis Khan -- our work has widespread support in Mongolia. Wherever we go, word of our arrival travels ahead of us, and people come to help us. They bring us food, snuff, or silk scarves; they show us prized family heirlooms. They tell us stories of their relatives who were killed for talking about Genghis Khan, or of people who were visited by his spirit in the mountains.

Groups of young and old people accompany us on horseback, offering us guidance, recommendations, and commentary as we travel through their country. Those who grew up under the Communists bring their grandchildren to ride with us, wanting the younger ones to learn the history of their ancestors. People ask us detailed questions about our findings, and study our maps and look through our foreign books. They invite us to picnics by the lakes that dot the steppe, and sing for us.

Sometimes our trips seem more like pilgrimages than scholarly expeditions. The Mongolians recognize what a fragile link they have to their history, and they want desperately to recover the facts about Genghis.

We may not be able to answer all their questions. But through our research, we hope to offer the world a fuller account of Genghis Khan's life, and of the role of the Mongols in world history.

More pictures of Professor Weatherford in Mongolia

Photo credit:  © Axel Odelberg
email:  axel.odelberg@telia.com