What they had thought was “King David,” grandson of Prester John and savior of the Christian west, was in fact Genghis Khan (or as many scholars now prefer, Chinggis Qan), a down-and-out nomad boy from the steppe of Mongolia who had risen to become the most successful conqueror of his age. In two decades, Genghis had created a merciless and apparently invincible Mongolian war machine, then set it loose on the world around him, from Korea to Mesopotamia. In doing so he had torn up the political structures of central Asia and the Middle East, bringing about the demise of two of the eastern
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