Talk:Genghis Khan/Archive 7

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WHERE'S KHAN'S PICTURE? THERE'S A PICTURE OF HIS WIFE, HIS GRANDSON(S), BUT NOT HIM. KHAN'S PICTURE SHOULD BE THE LAST TO BE DELETED. ---srry for the caps, just wanted attention. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MrZhuKeeper (talk • contribs) 00:48, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

death

I think there are various explanations on how chinggis died in the different sources. Some say he fell from a horse, others allege a connection to a XiXia princess, one(?) goes into detail and sais that this princess severed the small Genghis. I think incorporating this into the article would be better than leaving it at the current "unknown reasons". I'll try to find the exact citations until tomorrow. Heissig's Ein Volk sucht seine Geschichte should be OK, I assume? Yaan (talk) 15:28, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Spelling of name

The article says:

"Genghis" as popularly spelled and pronounced in Western media and text is supposedly derived from the original Persian reports of an invading army, led by a man in 1219 against the Khwarezmid Empire. The Persian people pronounced the man's name "Genghis", as there was no "ch" sound in the Persian tongue. Henceforth, the Persian version of the name of the leader of the Mongol Empire became known and widespread in the Western hemisphere as "Genghis".[citation needed]

This is absolute nonsense. There is a "ch" sound in Persian (e.g. chahar, four). The spelling "Genghis" is more likely to have come from Marco Polo attempting to render the sound of Chinese. It might be worth pointing out that, in that case, the initial G should be pronounced j or zh, and not like "get" as so many people do. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 12:24, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Do we have a source either way? If not, then this kind of speculation is Original Research, and needs to be removed (that's why there is a [citation needed] there in the first place). --Latebird (talk) 16:42, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I've found a review that attributes the Genghis/Persian theory to Weatherford, and also refutes it based on historical documents. Therefore I've fixed the text in the article to explain that disagreement and pointing to the relevant source. --Latebird (talk) 13:02, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Genghis is not Western but the English, French and Spanish spelling, note it's written and pronounced with a "ch" [ʧ] in Russian (Ч), Mongolian (Ч), Tartar (Ç) and also German (Dsch-). The English spelling should follow the Russian, Mongolian and Tartar for this word, IMO. --Atitarev (talk) 22:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

German pronounciation is actually more like Jingis, with J as in Jungle. Yaan (talk) 09:40, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

The English name is and remains Genghis. It is not up to Wikipedia to decide whether it "should" be or follow anything different. --Latebird (talk) 13:04, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Above statement is wrong. Genghis is almost never used in newly published (scholarly) books and articles in English these days. Most common spelling is Chingiz. Chingis also used. Genghis is now reserved for childrens' books and journalists, Wikipedia should change to reflect this.

I have never seen anyone use Chingiz. Chinggis, Činggis etc. yes, but not Chingiz. Yaan (talk) 23:55, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Looked at some sources and I was wrong above - Chinggis is most common, followed by Chingis and Chingiz in roughly equal second place. No matter how commonly Genghis is used in English, there's no escaping that it's wrong. 212.135.195.50 (talk) 11:57, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Just repeating such a statement doesn't make it true. What are you verifiable published sources to support such a claim? --Latebird (talk) 18:16, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Here is one verifiable published source: CIA World Factbook: Mongolia.G8briel (talk) 20:11, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

So the CIA makes a statement about which spelling is most commonly "used in newly published (scholarly) books and articles in English these days"? Because that would be necessary to support the statements made above. If it's just a random example, then it doesn't help much on its own (and by experience, the World fact book does use rather random spellings for most names). --Latebird (talk) 04:17, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Short of finding a literature review that addresses which spelling is more commonly used (unlikely), I think we'll have to rely on zeitgeist here. I am not an expert in the field of Mongolian studies, but I have been working in it lately and almost all recent scholarly work I've read prefers Chinggis. I think that there is increasing shift this way because the Romanization is just a little too far off, kind of like the way Beijing used to be spelled Peking. I will say though that Google turns up many more hits for Genghis over Chinggis, but this may be in part due to Mongolian BBQs and video games. —Preceding unsigned comment added by G8briel (talk • contribs) --Latebird (talk) 22:11, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

The CIA write Chinggis. But they also seem to indicate (by writing "Khan" in all-caps) that he should be referred to as Mr. Khan, which is just wrong. It not only does not help much, it also seems to have it wrong. Yaan (talk) 13:42, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Although Germans spell "Dschngis Khan", it's pronounced as [ʧ], as if it were spelled Tschingis Khan. --Atitarev (talk) 22:16, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Image of Genghis Khan

The image of Genghis Khan in this article is a later Chinese interpretation of what he may have looked like.

The preponderance of evidence actually suggests he looked more central asian(like a pashtun) than east asian. A more accurate picture should be put up in it's place.--Ironzealot (talk) 01:01, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

There are no accurate pictures preserved (if any ever existed). Every image you'll ever see is based on pure speculation. Btw: The image you uploaded is a clear copyright violation, and the Public Domain tag you added is incorrect. The photograph is obviously less than hundred years old, and most likely still enjoys full copyright protection. The age of the statue doesn't matter in this context. --Latebird (talk) 04:06, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Morgan probably said that Khiyad borjigons were a vassal of Khereids. In fact, they were allies. See the secret history of mongols. --Enerelt 11:28, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Please he didn't look like Pashtun of all people. Get some reality. He was Asian. 71.237.70.49 (talk) 18:14, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Pashtun??? Are you serious? Mongolians are NOT Middle Eastern. (In fact, Ghenghis Khan destroyed most of the Middle East). How ridiculous.

Do some research on Mongolian People. They are clearly of an East Asian origin.

Also, why has the picture changed? The old one was better. Xyclos (talk) 05:36, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

wrong image

File:Cheboer.jpg

The image on the right does not show Borte Ujin, but Chabi, a wife of Khubilai Khan. For comparison, see Image:YuanEmpressAlbumChabi.jpg with a caption in the upper right corner. The caption says that the portrait is of a wife of Khubilai (chinese 世祖 Shizu), and with some imagination one can also read her name as 徹伯爾 (cheboer), which does sound as if it could be a chinese version of Chabi, but hardly a chinese version of Börte. Lest anyone claims this is original research, the description given in the source (Dschingis Khan und seine Erben (exhibition catalogue), München 2005, p. 308) also makes this woman Chabi, wife of Shizu, not Borte, wife of Taizu. Yaan (talk) 15:25, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Date of death

Some sources say he died on 18 August 1227. Are these accurate? -- JackofOz (talk) 23:36, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I think Weiers in Geschichte der Mongolen, Stuttgart (?) 2004 says something like "probably in the second half of August" (can look for exact quote and page number if you want). I would say Weiers is generally reliable, more so when he is not dealing with Mongolia's modern history. He does not give a source for his date of death, let alone a source for the very precise "August 18th". The Secret History of the Mongols mentions almost nothing on Genghis' death. Yaan (talk) 09:40, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. So, at this stage, it's just a conjectural date, not a confirmed date. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:10, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Movie about Great Khan

I added the sentence:The descendant of Gray wolf, japanese-mongolian blockbuster, released in 2007. Do not remove it, please! --Enerelt (talk) 10:47, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I think the section is overcrowded. We now have movies where Genghis Khan plays only a rather minor role (Heir to Genghis Khan a.k.a. Storm Over Asia, and probably that movie about the Mongol invasions of Japan as well), as well as TV documentaries, of which one could probably find dozens if one looked hard enough. Few of these movies seem to be very notable in the context of GK, and I would like to narrow the list down to maybe The Conqueror, plus the most recent movies (Mongol and the one added by Enerelt). any opinions? Yaan (talk) 13:49, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of such lists in general, but this one is truly ridiculous. If we can't get rid of it entirely, I'd suggest to implement the following restrictions: List only items that have their own article (which makes them notable), and only those where Genghis is portrayed as a central character (which makes them relevant). All other entries are just cruft. --Latebird (talk) 18:58, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the list is a big deal. It's easy to skip past a list if you're not interested. I say keep the list and the entry mentioned here. --MiguelMunoz (talk) 16:04, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't "Genghis Khan" be used instead of "Temujin" in the article?

Just wondering... --221.220.22.226 (talk) 14:05, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Temüjin before 1206, Genghis Khan afterwards. Cf. Pope John Paul II. Yaan (talk) 14:15, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

The Taoist Monk

Contrary to what the article stated, Genghis did not lose interest in Qiu Chuji, the Taoist monk he summoned. Besides saying that there are no elixirs for immortality, Qiu also gave Genghis additional advices that seemed to have a positive impact on Genghis. As a result Qiu gained tremendous favor from Genghis. According to Isabelle Robinet's book "Taoism: Growth of a Religion," he used Genghis' favor to save the lives of millions of Chinese. I don't have time right now, but I'll try to edit the article to reflect this later. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MengTzu622 (talk • contribs) 00:09, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Since Genghis never actually got very far into China (for various reasons unrelated to religion), it may be that your source overstates the influence of that monk a bit. Is that really a reliable source about history? Or does it just try to promote taoism? --Latebird (talk) 07:39, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Is this the famous "dead people don't pay taxes" stuff? I always thought it woulld be due to Yelü Chucai, but I may be wrong. Yaan (talk) 15:57, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

There is a text called "Xuan Feng Qing Hui Lu" that reports the meeting between Genghis and Qiu. According to the article for Qiu Chuji in the Chinese version of the Wiki, Genghis ordered Yelu Chucai to make the record (the link to the article is http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%98%E5%A4%84%E6%9C%BA). The record doens't seem to report how many people Qiu saved, however. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MengTzu622 (talk • contribs) 17:54, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Before you try to add any of this, please make sure that you have historically reliable sources available, and not just some popular legends. I'm not ruling anything out, but let's avoid the rumour mills. --Latebird (talk) 22:10, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm adding this to the article: "However, the Yuan Shi (the official historical record of the Mongolian Yuan dynasty) paints a very different picutre, portraying Genghis as favoring the Taoist monk and being interested in his teachings. The Yuan Shi states that the Taoist monk Chang Chun advised Genghis to honor the Heaven, treat the people with compassion, and have a pure heart free from desire. In response, Genghis stated that the Heaven had sent him an immortal to strengthen his will. He ordered his officials to write down the monk's advices to teach his children. Chang Chun also advised Genghis to guide the people in the way of filial piety, and Genghis agreed. After Qiu returned home, he ordered his students to seek out the survivors of war, such that twenty to thirty thousands were freed from slavery or recovered from near death. Genghis ordered monastery where Chang Chun resided to be renamed Chang Chun. Genghis sent a message to the monk, stating that he always kept him in mind, and asked him to always keep him in mind." I also wonder if the statement about Genghis' lack of interest should be removed since it does not have a citation now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MengTzu622 (talk • contribs) 18:38, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

With this addition, you entirely rely on a primary source, which you interpret yourself. This is considered Original Resesarch, and entirely unacceptable. You will need to find a scholarly secondary source presenting such interpretation, and then just report on their findings. Among other things, such a secondary source should explain how reliable this "yuan shi" can be relating to Genghis, given that it was written several generations after his death. Until then, your addition will have to be removed again. I don't care about the other statement (about losing interest). Since there are conflicting views, we can just leave it away as well for the sake of neutrality. --Latebird (talk) 21:16, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

May I present the text of Yuan Shi with a translation that I've already made? (I can send you this translation if you like) In addition, can you explain why an assertion regarding a historical event with no citation at all is allowed because it is a viewpoint, but an interpretation of a primary source regarding the same event is not permitted? The paragraph I posted is my summary of the relevant portions of the text. Even if one considers all summaries to be interpretative, you stated that we should avoid the rumor mills, and it seems that allowing an assertion without citation is more detrimental to achieving that goal than an interpretative summary of a primary source is. In addition, the Bible is cited in some wiki articles, and the Bible is certainly a primary source. I'm not trying to challenge your authority on this matter. I simply wish to contribute to wiki and present helpful information. I understand that there are guidelines to follow, and I'm more than happy to comply.

I've changed the whole section now, to give a more balanced view overall. The fact that Ghengis was interested (and highly tolerant about) all other religions is well known. But I have yet to see a source that confirms a special affinity with taoism beyond that. As long as that is the case, expanding on Qiu Chuji here more than by mentioning his name would mean to give him undue weight. --Latebird (talk) 07:01, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Good call. I think that's a brilliant decision. I never intended to argue that Genghis favored Taoism in particular. His respect for Qiu was probably more due to his admiration for Qiu as a cultivated and spiritual Taoist than for Taoism itself. My only concern in seeking to edit the article was only that it previously portrayed the relationship between Genghis and Qiu in a way that is contrary to official historical records and has no support whatsoever. Whether official historical records is accurate is a different issue; it's simply illogical to assert something without any evidence when there is clear and contrary evidence. Again, good call, and thanks for the edit. One suggestion, though: you wrote that Genghis consulted with Christian missionaries, Muslim merchants, OR the Taoist monk Qiu Chuji. I think you meant to say Christian missionaries, Muslim merchants, AND the taoist monk Qiu Chuji, as I think you meant to say that he consulted with all of them.

I must admit I'm a bit unclear about the and/or distinction here. I thought when listing examples, the two were mostly equivalent. But then, that may just be my German language background shining through... --Latebird (talk) 09:42, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

If you want to say that he consulted with all of them, then "and" is appropriate. "And" may be used when listing examples.

Could you clarify what you mean by "Genghis never actually got very far into China"? Genghis Khan personally led the conquest of Jin Dynasty and crossed the Yellow River. The Taoist monk mentioned here is Qiu Chuji, who was based at a Taoist monastery at present day Beijing. The monk's area of activity was well within Genghis' domain during his lifetime. Snowybeagle (talk) 16:32, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

If you look at the relevant map, then you'll see that the Jin Dynasty only covered about the northern third of "China" (not even counting the western territories of the modern country). The Yellow River and what later became Beijing were proportionally located just next to the Mongolian border. Genghis didn't get much farther south than that himself. The remaining ~80% of the territory were later conquered by his sons and grandsons. --Latebird (talk) 20:37, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

But that still shows Qiu Chuji's home base to be well within Temujin's area of personal activity, so Temujin not personally going further south would not be at odds with the suggestion that if Temujin heeded Qiu's advice, many lives were spared. To call them as Chinese lives might be anachronistic since there was no nation known as China then, but much of the region we're looking at - the territories of the Jin and Xi Xia, are part of present day PRC. Snowybeagle (talk) 14:34, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Another thing is that Genghis did not need to have conquered much of China to have heard of Qiu. Fame can often spread beyond boundaries, and there is all the more reason to believe that Genghis had heard of and was impressed with Qiu's reputation as a wise religious leader. It's possible that Genghis' advisor Yelu Chucai, who was a pracitioner of Taoism according to the wiki article about Yelu Chucai, told Genghis about Qiu. It's also possible that the information about Qiu was brought to Genghis by someone from China, possibly one of his officers who had been on a campaign in China. Since Genghis summoned Qiu to visit him at a place outside of China, it does not matter whether Genghis was in China or not.—Preceding unsigned comment added by MengTzu622 (talk • contribs) 16:18, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Nobody disputes that the two guys met and talked. The question is just how much weight to give the details in this article here. If there are scholarly secondary sources confirming the tales from the Yuan Shi, then the article Qiu Chuji might be a better place to expand on the topic. --Latebird (talk) 22:41, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

There are many sources agreeing with the Yuan Shi. They include same details about the event that are included in the Yuan Shi. If you're satisfying with these, then I have some questions about copyright laws and whether referencing them would violate copyright laws. Also, Yuan Shi states the event in plain language, so there is little need to interpret it, and I believe that is certainly very weighty evidence, since Yuan Shi is an official record for Chinese dynastic history and is often relied on by historians of Chinese history. I'm not suggesting, however, that we simply believe the Yuan Shi without a critical study of its claims. It is, nonetheless, a respected source. Further, I cited it as it is strong evidence against the unsupported claim previously included in the article. In response to your question how much weight we can give to it: even without looking at secondary researches, it is certainly far more weighty than an unsupported claim, such that if an unsupported claim is allowed as a viewpoint, then including the Yuan Shi's description is far, far more justified and reasonable. (I know the article is now fixed so that the unsupported claim that contradicts the Yuan Shi is not removed; I'm just explaining why I decided to cite the Yuan Shi). Another thing to keep in mind is that the Yuan Shi is not saying that Genghis favored Taoism over other religions. It appears that he consulted Qiu the same way political leaders consult respected wise men.—Preceding unsigned comment added by MengTzu622 (talk • contribs) 06:32, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Referencing information from sources is not a copyright issue. You just can't copy text verbatim (except for very short citations). The need of interpretation has little to do with plain vs. unclear language. But you already seem to understand that the claims of the Yuan Shi need to be verified by modern scholars, so we probably already agree about this. --Latebird (talk) 08:48, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

If I have time, I'll start adding this information in the Qiu Chuji article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MengTzu622 (talk • contribs) 16:56, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Did Genghis speak Turkic?

"In addition to Mongolian, Temüjin also spoke Turkish, possibly as part of his effort to consolidate Turkic tribes within the confederation." So says the article, with a footnote (12). However, this appears in Harold Lamb, Genghis Khan (1927) pp. 232-233. In the reign of Genghis' third son and successor Ogotai, a Buddhist told Ogotai that Genghis Khan had appeared to him in a dream and commanded the extermination of all Muslims.

Ogotai meditated for a while.
"Did Genghis Khan address thee by the words of an interpreter?" he asked at length.
"Nay -- O my Khan, he himself spoke."
"And thou knowest the Mongol speech?" persisted Ogotai.
It was an evident fact that the man honored by the vision spoke nothing but Turki.
"Then thou hast lied to me," retorted the Khan, "for Genghis Khan spoke only Mongol." And he ordered the antagonist of the Muhammadans to be put to death.

Since the story probably comes from one of the primary sources, the question calls for research. The footnoted source (Spuler, Bertold (1985) Die Mongolen in Iran, 491) may be incorrect. 216.113.219.67 (talk) 06:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Some further research reveals this. The reference of footnote 12 is to Bertold Spuler (1911-1990), Die Mongolen in Iran: Politik, Verwaltung und Kultur der Ilchanzeit 1250-1350 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985), 494 pages. Consulting that edition at books.google.com, one finds that page 491 is in the index (which runs from page 461 to page 494) and consists of index entries from "Raqaba" to "Seelenmess". The specific citation in the footnote is therefore false.

The Encarta[1] article on Genghis Khan makes the bald statement, without documentation, "Genghis Khan knew no language but Mongolian". 216.113.219.12 (talk) 23:34, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

The original edition of Spuler's Mongolen im Iran was in 1939. Another edition (marked "3rd") came out in 1968. Might the p.494 reference refer to a different edition than the 1985 one? Yaan (talk) 10:11, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Genghis Khan didn't speak Turkic nor Chinese. He spoke Mongolian only. Anyone who says Genghis Khan identified himself as Turkic and spoke Turkic is lying. 71.237.70.49 (talk) 15:40, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Hero or monster?

I don't really understand ,why he's named hero? He ruined all those great civilizations, the most valuable libraries and cities, etc. and then you call him hero? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.229.241.187 (talk) 11:52, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Who said he is a hero? 71.237.70.49 (talk) 04:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

hes a hero to the mongols, a monster to everyone else —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.155.152.86 (talk) 23:24, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Editor's (or readers') opinions on the matter are of no relevance. If reliable published sources state he is seen as a hero by some people, then we mention that. End of discussion. --Latebird (talk) 08:37, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Gengis khan promoted literacy,made roads,made hospitals,librays,and the so called 'fact' that hes a 'monster' is something that only ignorant fools say,not my words the words of others Luke12345abcd (talk) 00:42, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Genghis Khan was vilified in Europe for centuries, starting around the time of the French Revolution. (Voltaire used him to stand in for the French king, who he could not write about openly.) Prior to that, he was often portrayed more positively, notably by Chaucer. Most powerful rulers are revered by some and vilified by others. (The same could be said of Ronald Reagan and Vlad the impaler.) I say the word "Hero" should stay. --MiguelMunoz (talk) 16:22, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Short?

i heard somewhere that i dontrecall saying that he was shorter than 5 foot does anyone have any sources for this? Luke12345abcd (talk) 00:44, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Questions of the form "does anyone have a source for this rumour I heard" rarely provide any useful insight on article talk pages. If any interested editors did have such sources, then they surely would have already added the pertinent information to the article, wouldn't they?

Other than that, 5 ft may not even have been exceptionally short for a Mongolian of the time. On average, Mongolians are still significantly shorter than Europeans today, and it's unlikely they were any taller back then. So, in contrast to eg. Napoleon, who was very short relative to his environment, the question may even be misleading in the given context. --Latebird (talk) 18:30, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Take my word for it, I heard a lot that he was a very big individual. He was very big and well built. He was not below 5 foot at all, maybe taller than 6'1 to 6'4 or something like that i guess. Mongolians are not that very short compared with Japanese and some Chinese. They are like Koreans and mostly bony and quite tall and well built. Look at some "Mongolian wrestlers," Google their pictures. 71.237.70.49 (talk) 07:41, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Pronunciation

I understand the controversy about whether to spell his name Genghis or Chinggis or something else, but it makes no sense to spell it Genghis and then give the pronunciation for Chinggis, as the article does now. Also, the pronunciation of Khan given isn't English, with a fricative at the start and "ng" sound at the end. Whatever name is chosen for the article, the pronunciation given needs to match it. —KCinDC (talk) 05:47, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

The audio was already linked from the Mongolian spelling. I've moved the IPA spelling there as well to eliminate any confusion about what it describes. Anyone willing to add audio and IPA for the English spelling is of course very welcome to do so. --Latebird (talk) 20:40, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I added the English pronunciation. The article start is pretty cluttered, though. —KCinDC (talk) 21:44, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

It makes perfect sense to spell it Genghis and give the pronunciation for Chinggis. We all know him as Genghis, and we don't need a pronunciation guide for that version of his name. The article should give the pronunciation that we're not familiar with.

Also, the start isn't too cluttered for me. It's trivial to skip past all the linguistic info to the English text. --MiguelMunoz (talk) 06:16, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

It makes sense to give the pronunciation for Chinggis after the name Chinggis. It made no sense to give it after the name Genghis, since that's not how Genghis is pronounced. And there are plenty of people who don't know how to pronounce Genghis — certainly more than are unaware of the pronunciations given in many other articles (Washington, D.C., for example). So I think the current version is good, assuming people agree that the first sentence isn't too cluttered (the parentheses need to be fixed, though). —KCinDC (talk) 15:14, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Paranoia?

"Many modern scholars doubt that all of the conspiracies existed and suggest that Genghis Khan was probably inclined towards paranoia as a result of his experiences.[citation needed]"

Do we have a reference for this claim? I'm inclined to view claims like this skeptically. Somebody who can build a great empire would have to be able to see the world and the people around him pretty clearly. Without a reference, I think this should be removed. --MiguelMunoz (talk) 16:09, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Nosebleed

I reverted this edit about speculation about his death. If it's not vandalism, I think the person may be confusing Genghis Khan with Attila the Hun. —KCinDC (talk) 22:00, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

What set Temüjin apart?

I've always felt this article has a big problem. It accurately presents important incidents throughout his life, but it rarely gives us a feel for what it was about Temüjin and his actions that set him apart from previous Mongol warlords. It's not enough to say he conquered one tribe after another, without telling us why he was able to do what nobody else had done. I made an effort to address this in my addition to the section "Uniting the Confederations," but more is needed. (To see this edit, look for "Temüjin broke with Mongol tradition..." and read to the end of the paragraph.)—MiguelMunoz (talk) 19:41, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

The problem with trying to answer this type of question is that they often lead directly into the original research trap. Fortunately, your contribution avoided that and mentions only well known and documented factors. But I can't off the top of my head think of much more into that direction without resorting to subjective interpretation (I do have a few theories of my own, but those don't belong in Wikipedia). --Latebird (talk) 19:55, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

rem. "in publcations" section

I removed the section because it seemed not very relevant to the subject of the article. Genghis Khan was what he was, no matter whether some American magazine some 800 years later writes about him or not, or how he fares in this ranking or that one. In short, that section looked a bit trivia-like. I guess some info could be used in the intro or in the more general parts of the section about "Perceptions", though. Yaan (talk) 12:41, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Dschingis Khan (song/band)

I also removed this band from the article. This time it is more of a stomach feeling, and the poor shape of the contribution that added them. As winners of the Eurovision song contest and a band that is still well-known in both their home country of Germany and in Mongolia, they probably could be mentioned in this article. One should, however, make clear that they were producing everything but a serious depiction of Genghis Khan or his times. Yaan (talk) 17:29, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Relativism

I find this article disturbing, in that in portrays a man the equal of hitler and stalin in such a positive light, making no account the millions he brutally butchered, it disturbs me more so that so many people seem fond of him. I worry because i fear that one day the likes of hitler and stalin may get similar treatment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.27.171.61 (talk) 23:05, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I think you can find lots and lots of very academic sources that portray him in a very ambigous way, neither completely negative nor uncritically positive. If you think the article lets Genghis come away too lightly, maybe you should add some balancing facts. Hitler and Stalin are from a very different time, and very different societies. Judging by modern standards, Alexander the Great would probably be a bad war criminal, too. Yaan (talk) 11:37, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I understand your concern, but if you look at the destruction under the Mongol Empire article you can see that that article is all negative. Negatives are discussed in that article. If people are not dumb, it is totally understandable that he killed millions. No one disputes that. Even if you read hitler, alexander the great, napoleon articles, all of them are regarded as brutal murders like genghis khan, but those articles are all glamorizing article, especially alexander the great. You can also read Julius Caesar. I thought Caesar is evil, but he is glamorous to the greeks. Negatives are discussed. This is not 100% positive article. I was amazed to read the alexander the great was such a great man after reading that article. he is known as a genocidal murderer among persians. 71.237.70.49 (talk) 07:11, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, every article should be balanced, and that the Mongol campaigns were very brutal (or, at the very least, perceived as very brutal) should, IMHO, be mentioned very early also in this article. Clearly the way it is done in the Hitler article seems wrong. Hitler is not remembered for being a politician and chancellor, but for being a murderer and warmonger, maybe in some quarters also for being a dictator.

Caesar was Roman, I think he is generally well-regarded all over Europe, probably even in France. He did, after all, inspire a tradition of emperors that lasted for centuries.

Are you persian? I heard people in Persia (or maybe in Turkey, not entirely sure) used to call Alexander something like "Alexander with the two horns". I used to assume that this is because he was so devilish, but then I read this is related to some geographic features. Do you happen to know which one is true? Yaan (talk) 08:52, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Administrators, please protect this page. It has become one of the favorite targets for vandals.

This page should be semi-protected. It has become one of the favorite targets for vandals. The problem is getting worse day by day. --GenuineMongol (talk) 17:24, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

The page has been half-protected (only editable by registered users) several times already. Unfortunately, the occasionally somewhat reduced vandalism (eg. during school holidays) has kept it from getting protected permanently. With the majority of all edits being vandalism by random IPs, I still think permanent protection would be justified. Btw.: The right place to request such things is here, based on the Wikipedia:Protection policy. --Latebird (talk) 12:32, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

*No Title

{{editsemiprotected}} Under "Early life and family" 3rd paragraph, there is an error:

Reads:

Soon after Börte's marriage to Temüjin, she was kidnapped by the Tartars

Should Read:

Soon after Börte's marriage to Temüjin, she was kidnapped by the Merkits —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.5.140.24 (talk) 05:35, December 20, 2008

 Not done per no citation. Leujohn ^(talk) 05:07, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

 Done, this is mentioned consitently in pretty much every source on the topic. --Latebird (talk) 19:35, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

quote

Er... whats with the quote? I've personally never heard it --Chinneeb_{my talk} 09:55, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

I think it's actually a pretty well-known supposed quote. Or at least I have heard it. But without a mention who first attributed that uote to Genghis, I don't think the quote is very relevant here. Yaan (talk) 10:32, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Ambiguous phrase in opening sentence is confusing.

The opening sentence describes Genghis Khan as the "Mongol founder, Khan, ...". But it's clear from the Lineage section that a Mongol confederation existed earlier, and, obviously, Mongols as an ethnic group already existed. I think the sentence was intended to be read as "founder, Khan, and ... emperor of the Mongol Empire." The wordiness causes the sentence to be read as a sequence of independent noun phrases, and not as a sequence of nouns collectively modified by the "of the Mongol Empire" phrase.

I suggest rewording it simply as "...was the founder, Khan (ruler) and Khagen (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous empire in history." The point about the title of Khagen being posthumous doesn't need to be made in the opening paragraph. Alternatively, it might read "was the founder of the Mongol empire, the largest .... He held the title of Khan (ruler) and was posthumously declared Khagen (emperor)."

24.34.15.213 (talk) 13:26, 5 January 2009 (UTC) Gary F.

Maybe someone tried to make a point about his ethnicity, but I agree it made the sentence look strange. Hopefully fixed. Yaan (talk) 13:32, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Central Asia or Asia?

We have in the opening section, "During his life, the Mongol Empire eventually occupied a substantial portion of Central Asia" - am I right in thinking that "a substantial portion of Asia" would closer to the truth?--Annielogue (talk) 22:21, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

"Rampart of Genghis Khan"

Can anyone find any information about this? It's in the latest Times World Atlas in northern Mongolia, but google has no hits for it? Does anyone know anything about it? -mattbuck (Talk) 13:44, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

whither the mongols?

Nowhere does this explain why the mongols needed to invade everywhere else. My understanding is that this was because the had desertified there lands by chopping down the trees and over grazing?

What trees? The steppes are relatively treeless. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.111.223.153 (talk) 21:42, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Arslan?

There was not a notable general named Arslan. In Conn Igguldon's fictional novels he gives that name to the father of Jelme, but Jelme's fathers name was Jarchi'udai and he wa snot a noted general as well...

I think people need to seperate fiction from fact in this article —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.86.145.42 (talk) 16:02, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Please help with Mongol/Tatar invasions articles

Can you please discuss/help, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mongol_Empire#Excellent_article_and_general_mongol_invasion_conquest_articles 97.118.116.250 (talk) 12:22, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

---

Found some vandalism:

"Later Mongol chronicles connect Genghis' death with a Tangut princess taken as war booty. One chronicle from the early 17th century even relates that the princess hid a small pair of pliers inside her vagina, and hurt the Great Khan so badly that he died."

It's not vandalism. Look it up in the source. Yaan (talk) 12:04, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Ha! That's awesome..... Flash man999 talk Not logged in 203.189.4.118 (talk) 02:01, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Martha Stewart had her dog by the name of Genghis Khan blown up by a freak propane/ dogkennel accident on Tuesday, March 10th 2009 in Pennsylvannia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.251.185.178 (talk) 21:20, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Činggis Qaγan

what is this? An attempt at reconstructing the Middle Mongolian form? A transliteration from the Mongolian script, amounting to the mvf form of the term? Do we have any source for it? --dab (𒁳) 12:02, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

It is a transcription from the Mongolian script. The original words are shown in the infobox. I think the language code should be mon, not mvf. Yaan (talk) 12:11, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Origins/Etymology of the name Temujin

There should be a note that the origin/meaning of the name is unclear, and is not definitively linked to the root temür. This is mentioned by Man (2004) p68 (indeed he believes it is unlikely that the name has any relation to this root) and Weatherford (2004) p15 suggests it comes from the Mongolian verb Temul. Both authors (and others) do agree however that Temujin was the name of a recently defeated rival chieftain (possibly taken captive by Yesugei). As a side note, it would be nice to standardize the spelling of "Yesugei". This article has "Yesükhei", with a link to "Yesugay" that redirects to "Yesugui". I have no grounds to prefer one spelling over another, but consistency would be nice. Bclare (talk) 05:45, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Ogg playback?

The computer I am currently on, a school one, does not have an Ogg Vorbis codec. Would it be possible for Ogg playback function built into Wikipedia to be available on every page? Clicking on the 'listen' link just lets you download the .ogg file, which isn't what 'listen' generally means. Flash man999 Sorry, I'm not logged in... 203.189.4.118 (talk) 01:56, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

My edit on perceptions section

Some of the sentences in that section is embarrasingly glamorous. I neutralized the section little bit and some of the sentences were duplicate or had no source. I just neutralized some embarrasing glamor from that section. Trueshow111 (talk) 21:09, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Another thing is the extremely long and (gramatically) incorrect sentance written about the large mongolian population in outer Mongolia. I don't know who wrote it, so no offence to whoever did, but I'd like someone to rewrite it. Plus I don't see any reference there to any information about statues or mongolian populations. Erufailon42 (talk) 11:47, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Which sentence exactly do yo mean? I think the whole section could be shorter - the main points should be: positive perceptions discouraged during MPR (so much that a general secretary lost his job over it), nowadays very popular with money bills, statues, stuff being renamed and whatnot. I don't really see the source problem. Info on Mongolia's demography can be found in the Mongolia article, the statues mentioned, except the one from 1962, have pictures and you can't really miss or avoid them if you are visiting Mongolia. Yaan (talk) 12:41, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Typos - please fix

Hi, I"m sorry if I don't do this correctly - but I saw two typos in the third paragraph: "militay" and "scipt" which should be "military" and "script" respectively. {Beyond his great militay accomplishments, Genghis Khan also advanced the Mongol Empire in other ways. He decreed the adoption of the Uyghur scipt

genghis khan used terror a lot in his times of killing people and he always asked them if they wanted to surrender and if they didnt then he would kill them and take them as slaves he has a very famous catch phrase you would say " surrender or forever hold your peace" another catch phrase that he had was " surrender or be killed" he always asked to surrender. thankyou —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.177.159.5 (talk) 20:00, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think either of these phrases can be found in the Secret History of the Mongols. Where is it from? Yaan (talk) 12:42, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

DOB

Under "Birth" it says "Temüjin was born in 1162". The footnote indicates that there is doubt about this (as do plenty of other sources). In this case, the phrasing is too definite. The sentence needs changing to read something like "Temüjin was born around 1162", or, better still, let's give a plausible date range. The presence of a footnote that readers may or may not bother to read is not sufficient in itself. If the date of birth is not exactly known then the main text needs to be clear about that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.140.131.153 (talk) 21:55, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

There is not really a date range, only three possible birth years. I think the word "probably" is the most appropriate one to use here. Yaan (talk) 16:13, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Name and spelling variations

This section needs some cleanup and formatting, beyond that can you add Temüjin spelling in Turkic languages as "Temuçin" (this is actually turkish, other turkic languages my have other variations too) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.165.176.130 (talk) 14:42, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

apparently khan was a nordic working for the mongols towards enslaving caucasians

khan was a nordic to loved to enslave caucasians to serve the asians both sexually and in manual labor - he established the largest system of " white " slavery the world has ever known.

(title shortened by Yaan (talk) 15:56, 8 June 2010 (UTC))

Apparently Khan loved to enslave " white " people to serve the unrelenting appetite that these small eyed asians had for blonde women ... simultaneously while enslaving their blonde men for slave labor ..... bet you convict degenerates didn't consider this when you wished for khan to be " white " did you - degenerate dumbass filth. Even if Khan was " white " , I would personally choose not to believe it - a " white " man systematically enslaving " white " people to service the asian is an infinitely horrific scenario compared to that of an asian one enslaving " white " people for the same purpose.

A lot of Aldin Rasid's work was forged , not to mention the fact that he painted this - khan as an asiatic

http://www.mongolianculture.com/Genghis%20son.html

observe all of the paintings by rasid aldin within this whole article about khan , there are three , and all of them depict him as an asiatic.

even the sourced link within this wikipedia article - which is supposed to support the notion of a nordic khan - asserts that the claim of khan as a red headed man , amongst other attributes , is unlikely ...

The author who added the Rasid content needs to find better sources , something other then Rasid to support his notions ... Wernergerman (talk) 01:12, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

That the pictures are from some Rasid ad-Din manuscript does not yet mean they were painted by himself (although, should they be from his original manuscript, it might be a different matter). The section you deleted dealt not with Chinggis himself, but with one of his more legendary ancestors. And since there is nothing inherently impossible about Mongolians having blond or brownish hair, I guess reddish hair might be possible too.

In any case, 'khan' is just his title. Referring to Chinggis as 'khan' is just like referring to Henry VIII as 'king' rather than 'the king'. Yaan (talk) 09:40, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

---

it was from his original manuscript and it was a book that he authored , my point here concerns aldin's percpetions on khans' ( or if you prefer , chinggis' ) appearance ... and by his paintings in his book , which he intended to be factual , we know that he had perceived khan to have been asiatic ... my edits are based on facts and actual sources on those facts , the motivation behind your edits are merely to suggest a fantasy

- the content concerning aldin's supposed statements about khan's appearnace are , at the time , sourced to an external link which actually discredits the referenced statement by aldin ... which was most likely forged anyways and if not forged it sounds as if he were high on something , the description that was made by aldin to describe the ancestors of temujin is comparable in manner to the way in which legendary folklores are recited e.g. the " glittering " and the overflowing amount of praise.

- those paintings were in aldin's original book and since teh author's intent for writing that book was to provide an actual factual depiction and account of the mongols , those paintings directly reflect aldin's perceptions of chinggis' appearance.

your edits are degrading to wikipedia based on two successive points

1) you're suggesting fantasies , we don't write about fantasies here , this article is factual ...

2) your sources are in contradiction with these fantasies as , even they , seek to discredit them .....

and by these two arguments your contributions to this article are currently WORTHLESS ...

i've added the aldin's name to the captions on those paintings ... why did you delete them?

Germanican (talk) 13:48, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Wernergerman, the sources assume Genghis Khan was asiatic without any interpretation. There are no reliable sources that state outright that Genghis Khan was white. To interpret those sources is original research, which Wikipedia does not accept. Also, do you have any sources that state that those paintings were done by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani? Also, the lines from "No accurate portraits..." to "...not inherited his red hair." has a source, so don't delete it. If you have a source that counters that one, you may present it. Ian.thomson (talk) 14:35, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Yaan, a source is needed for the legend after that source. I've restored it with a citation needed tag.

Germanican, are you a second account for Wernergerman? Just curious, you're editing his talk page comments and signing your name after his comments. Ian.thomson (talk) 14:35, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

The source for the legend about the glittering man is the Secret History. The paragraph is a bit messed up currently, basically this man is the visitor that is talked about on the preceding sentence (the father of ancestor of the Borjigin clan). Yaan (talk) 10:44, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

" the lines from "No accurate portraits..." to "...not inherited his red hair." has a source , "

HOWEVER teh content of that source discredits rather then supports the notion of khan having red hair ...

" There are no reliable sources that state outright that Genghis Khan was white. To interpret those sources is original research, which Wikipedia does not accept. "

right ... then why are you supporting the inclusion of yaan's fantasies into this article ?

" Also, do you have any sources that state that those paintings were done by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani? "

it's well known that those are paintings by rashid aldin , however if you're not familiar with this just click on the paintings and read the official descriptions designated to establish them within wikipedia's database .... better yet , just open up aldin's book.

yaan's contributions aren't based on RELIABLE SOURCES and again yaan's contributions are mere suggestive fantasies ... they do not belong in this article ... i'm going to delete them should i find them there.

to answer your other question --> Wernergerman (talk) 14:49, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

The wikipedia file descriptions say that they come from Jami' al-tawarikh, by Rashid al-Din. They do not say that the paintings themselves were by Rashid al-Din, but that they are in a book by Rashid al-Din. A section of the paragraph you are deleting has a source. You have concisely present evidence that the source is either unreliable, or is not being used properly, before removing it. Is Germanican another account you are using? You edit his comments just as he has editted yours. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:03, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Rashid ad-Din is one of the most important sources on the early Mongol state. Period. That he may be not be 100% correct does not mean we cannot mention what he writes on wikipedia. We have an article about Adam and Eve, for god's sake. Paul Ratchnevsky is a rather well-respected historian, I think, and the section in question seems to be on p. 14 of his Genghis Khan: his life and legacy. Yaan (talk) 10:44, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

P.S. the images Werner mentioned seem to be from here and here. According to the Bibliothèque nationale de France, this manuscript was made around 1430, i.e. more than 100 years after the tragic death of Rashid al-Din. Yaan (talk) 15:56, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

how many times do i need to repeat myself ... READ THE CONTENTS OF THE SOURCE .... yaan obviously added the link to the source so that he could layout his fantasies of khan having red hair however the author of that source actually seeks to discredit it ...

btw are you yaan ? you just made the same argument as yaan by this statement

" They do not say that the paintings themselves were by Rashid al-Din, but that they are in a book by Rashid al-Din. "

am i conversing with yaan here ? even if not , it's obvious that you're disregarding my statements and are not reading them ... simply put , those paintings are in rasid's original book which was written as a historical text on account of factual information .... in that sense rasid's intent is absolutely clear ...

i'm going to simplify it for you once again , because i sense that you're not really comprehending the extent of what's happening here

1) yaan's contributions are based on fantasies ... yaan's contributions are based on unreliable sources

2) those are rasid's paintings , he either directed its creation or he painted it himself - if you want to argue this point you're insane - ... rasid was a polymath btw so it's most likely that he painted it himself , there are plenty of sources that directly connect the paintings as the work of rasid aldin

you're being real slow on the uptake here ... yes , i'm germanican and germanican is me , did i not make that clear on the previous posting? again read my posts.

random nonsense shouldn't be included in this article even if it is sourced ,

judging by the conduct of your arguments , the evidence that you're not fully comprehending what's going on here , and the dearth of any complexity in your posts i'm going to assume that you're in the 4th grade for the moment. you're naive intentions to bastardize this articles are clear as of now. Wernergerman (talk) 16:40, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Both of you need to calm down before someone blocks you both for edit warring. Homework2 ^TalkWhat I do! 16:31, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

What exactly is the contention here? From the edit history it just looks like we have a very nicely written paragraph describing what little is know about Genghis Khan's appearance and how it is known that is simply being deleted for inscrutable (to me) reasons. This is an article about a man who lived some 8-9 hundred years ago who rose out of obscurity in a pre-literate culture to become very important; obviously we know next to nothing for certain about his genetic or ethnic heritage, and it's right to explain that. The current version seems to do that rather well. siafu (talk) 18:15, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

No, I believe that based on the written sources left by the Mongols themselves, it is quite clear that they more or less were the same people as they are now. Yaan (talk) 10:47, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you are talking to someone else? I said nothing about the Mongols being different people than they are now. siafu (talk) 15:15, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

You wrote "obviously we know next to nothing for certain about his genetic or ethnic heritage", which I think is not true. I assumed that it is uncontroversial that his people back then were called Mongols, so the only thing left uncertain about his ethnic heritage would have been the identity of 13th century Mongols. And this uncertainty may be alleviated if one looks at the written evidence they have left. Maybe I have just read to much strange stuff about those 13th century Mongols actually being Turks or Russians. Yaan (talk) 15:32, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I was merely stating that we lack any sort of detailed genealogical records for Mongol personages from the 12th century. He was most certainly a "Mongol", but this didn't have the same meaning as it does now. I meant to note that there were many groups in the area: Mongols incl. Naimans (often labelled "Turkic"), Merkits, etc., and also nearby tribal groups like the Evenks, that could in theory have contributed to Temujin's ethnic heritage. I'm not suggesting any of the modern nationalist fictions, like the idea that Genghis Khan was Russian, German, Turkish, or Japanese, just restating that beyond the very general "He was a Mongol" very little is known for certain. siafu (talk) 16:50, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Stop all this nonsense. People are starting to claim that Genghis Khan was a "German" is what people are trying to say. He was "Germanic" lol. Get grip of reality and stop all this nonsense. His appearance is stated in the article, but I think some people are for Genghis Khan was a nordic with blue eyes and yellow hair and was born in Norway and he just happened to be in Mongolia. lol. It is stated that he had red hair and green eyes, because some person in history said that and that is included in there. Even if he had green eyes and red hair he was among Asians. I'm pretty sure he considered himself an Asian and was with the Asians fighting against other Asians. If he was white, he wouldn't have been born in Mongolia. There are some light skinned people in Central Asia, but happen to look like Asian/white hybrid. It is is same as claiming that whites in Europe who have brown eyes and brown/black hair as "Asians." It is just absurd argument. I honestly believe if he was white, he would be with the whites, doing something with the whites. Mongols on the other hand are pretty much an Asian people, google "Mongolians." in the images and decide whether they are whites or asians. Certain people on the western Mongolia can have lighter features like Kazakhs, Tatars, but they are undoubtly light/dark mixed, but it is hard to claim that they are "white" or "Asian" distinctly. It is just what they look like. There are great tendency for whites/Europeans to make everything white and "Germanic" starting with the Sythians and claim that Germanics were everywhere in the world and Asians came in later. Last I remember, the Germans themselves don't even considered the Slavic people whites in WW2. In European view, if an Asian has a single yellow hair, he is white and Germanic. They are even starting to claim that the Xiongnu spoke East Germanic language in that article. Even if Genghis Khan was white, Mongols consider themselves Asians without a doubt. They don't consider themselves white. They even have a race identified as Mongoloid after them. 174.16.145.31 (talk) 08:34, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Actually, no one here claimed that Genghis was Germanic. Quite on the contrary, actually. Maybe some parts of Werner's prose are a bit difficult to understand. I am a bit curious how you know so much about what white people think, or who exactly argued that the Xiongnu spoke a Germanic language.

Btw. I don't think the Nazis had much against Slovaks (except maybe post-1944) and Croats, and in any case their theories are not representative of what passes for mainstream scholarly opinion nowadays. I also don't think that Mongolians had a race identified. It was probably identified by whites, whether any Mongolian liked it or not. Yaan (talk) 10:45, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Germans considered Slavic peoples subhumans. They were exterminating Slavs (Generalplan ost). Whites like to claim every good thing came from Germanics. They are so obsessed with the term "German" and "Germanics." That is a fact. Stop inserting pro-European bias into every single article. Mongoloid is an European term because they thought that the Mongols including Genghis Khan looked like the prototypical Asians. Mongolians are dark people, without a doubt. It came out because of a reason and that reason was that the attacking Mongolians looked like dark Asians. If they looked like whites, I don't think there would be a "Mongoloid" term named after them. There is no problem with the term Mongoloid named after Mongols because it is actually positive thing. Only 10 million people having a whole race identified after them. I don't think there is a race called "Germanoid," but Caucasoid that comes from multiple peoples. "Mongoloid" is basically a badge of honor because it implies that Mongols are influential for good or worse. 174.16.145.31 (talk) 22:30, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to end this discussion because it is off-topic anyway, but I think regarding Nazi attitudes towards Slavs you are really generalizing too much. Ever heard of German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact or Military history of Bulgaria during World War II? Not to mention Jozef Tiso or the Ustaše, already mentioned above. The truth is that the Nazis were quite whimsical (or, more probably, opportunistic) in deciding who was Aryan and who was not. I guess that is why they murdered Mongol-looking POWs (not sure about numbers, but this did happen) during the early years of the war and had Kalmyks fight for them in the later years. P.S. a clarification: The Nazis did not consider Kalmyks Aryans [which is one reason why they fought in the Wehrmacht, not the Waffen-SS], they just considered them worthy enough to fight for them. Yaan (talk) 09:28, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

You'd also be wrong if you'd assume (not sure if you do, I somehow got this impression) that the Nazis wanted Genghis Khan to be Germanic. In one of their more revealing pamphlets, a brochure named "Der Untermensch", he is basically the epitome of subhumanness. Yaan (talk) 10:45, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Proposed improvement

I kind of agree that the current reference in the paragraph in question is not a very good one, and the section is written in a somewhat confusing manner (just for the record, contrary to what Werner claims I don't think this section was written by me). I propose the following:

Replace

Persian historian Rashid-al-Din recorded in his "Chronicles" that the legendary "glittering" ancestor of Genghis was tall, long-bearded, red-haired, and green-eyed. Rashid al-Din also described the first meeting of Genghis and Kublai Khan, when Genghis was shocked to find that Kublai had not inherited his red hair. Also according to al-Din Genghis's Borjigid clan, had a legend involving their origins: it began as the result of an affair between Alan-ko and a stranger to her land, a glittering man who happened to have red hair and bluish-green eyes. Modern historian Paul Ratchnevsky has suggested in his Genghis biography that the "glittering man" may have been from the Kyrgyz people, who historically displayed these same characteristics.

with

Persian historian Rashid-al-Din recorded in his "Chronicles" that the father of the ancestor of Genghis' Borjigin clan, the legendary "glittering" visitor to Alan Goa, was tall, long-bearded, red-haired, and green-eyed. Modern historian Paul Ratchnevsky has suggested that this "glittering man" may have been from the Kyrgyz people, who historically displayed these same characteristics. Rashid al-Din also described the first meeting of Genghis and Kublai Khan, when Genghis was shocked to find that Kublai had not inherited his red hair.

Yaan (talk) 10:59, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Any objections? Yaan (talk) 15:45, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I like the improvement. It is clearer. Homework2 ^TalkWhat I do! 16:08, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I can't object to the "improved" version really, but we could keep both references if this is indeed such a contentious issue. siafu (talk) 16:55, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

The republicanchina reference is, for the most part, just repeating what Ratchnevsky said (you should be able to check this on google books). I don't think he has read Rashid al-Din himself, and even if he did I think Ratchnevsky alone should be reliable enough. If this republicanchina source was a well-known specialist (in a related field) rather than just some random guy on the internet, I'd agree we should keep both sources, but this does not seem to be the case.

If you want to raise doubts about Rashid al Din's reliability, it might be better to point out that Rashid al Din was only born twenty years after Genghis' death, never went to Mongolia, and IIRC did not even have direct access to the chronicles the Mongols in Bagdad kept. Or maybe it is possible to find some scholarly source that deals with whether Rashid al Din is very accurate or not. Yaan (talk) 17:42, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm more concerned about over-use of Ratchnevsky as a source more than anything else. His book is excellent reading, and extremely useful, but we should maintain some diversity in sourcing at least by doubling up when and where possible, as it is here. siafu (talk) 18:00, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

In that case it would probably be better to go directly to the primary source. Unfortunately I am not sure how accessible Rashid al Din's work is. Yaan (talk) 18:05, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, maybe. Citing primary sources is frowned upon because it opens up the door for OR, though. As I said in the beginning, I can't really object; keeping the other source was just a comment, and not a point I will press if ignored. Just go with Ratchnevsky. siafu (talk) 18:24, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Or maybe it is better to rearrange the material somewhat more radically. What his legendary ancestor 10 generations back looked like may be more fitting into the "lineage" section, and I think if we want to talk about Genghis' appearance it might be more relevant to mention what Juvaini had to say about him (like in http://www.mongoliatoday.com/issue/2/true_face.html, but maybe with a better reference). Yaan (talk) 13:19, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't care whether it lists genghis had red hair, green eyes. If that is stated in the article state that in the article. The article is fine as it is, but it would be interesting if the article claimed that: "Genghis Khan was descended from German conquerors who came to Mongolia 200,000 years ago with his nordic wife, sons and soldiers from Norway where he was born in a small nordic village. He was all white, yellow and blue and were shocked to find his Mongolian subjects being all Asian and dark. His Germanic blood ran deep. He is the superior race and among us. Mongolia was founded by Germans and clearly spoke an East Germanic language when those Mongols/Asians started pushing out the master race out of Mongolia from their homeland." I think Germans and Europeans have more mixed races with Asians than Asians having European gene. Remember Xiongnu and Huns those are Mongols.

---

ANOTHER PROPOSED IMPROVEMENT

we need to credit the paintings that are found in this article to rashid aldin hamadani , however , there are some here ... those same people that support the quote regarding khan's ancestors (note that the article is actually about genghis khan , for i am absolutely dumbfounded on why there are random quotes describing the physical appearance of his ancestors) that don't want it there. i've posted further details on a section below. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.41.255.10 (talk) 14:00, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

"German," "Germanic" obsession

This whole thing with trying to identify the white race as being everywhere in the world including africa and Beijing and suddenly all the whites unequally being pushed out of their rightful "homeland" by the dark people needs to slow down. Non-whites don't have that much obsession with Germans, Scythians, Indo-Europeans, Germanic languages issue amongst themselves. It is an issue that involves nothing to do with them. It is a far away and different thing. The role of Nazi, who they regarded positively and negatively means nothing to Asians. It is a different far away problem with people that are totally different and far away. Because of the rise of Hitler, people start obsessing over anything "German" because Hitler scared the shit out of whites, rightfully so. But among Asians, Hitler means nothing to them. He is someone who is different, and had totally different problem far away. Germanic problem is with the whites themselves, and people need to calm down. Before Hitler, Germanics were barbarians and low-life, and after him, everyone wants to be Germans and scared shitless. It is just the truth. Among Asians, European problem means nothing. 174.16.145.31 (talk) 22:42, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Seriously, what are you talking about? siafu (talk) 02:49, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Maybe he is connected to these clowns? But then he should at least know that Genghis Khan never visited Alan Goa. Yaan (talk) 13:25, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

No I'm not connected with them. I'm just confused over this nordics, enslavement, asians stuff happening here. 174.16.145.31 (talk) 00:13, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, well, my question was not really in line with a healthy debate anyway. Yaan (talk) 10:15, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

should we credit the paintings of the chronicles that are found within this article to aldin?

My account is currently disabled as Wernergerman , this is currently my ip address , administrators if there is a problem with this then please warn me ...

I've recently conversed with a professor specializing on Persian studies , it seems that while Aldin painted some of the stuff within the book Chronicles , he had illustrators paint most of the stuff for him ... I'll need to further collaborate on this ... it was commissioned by one of the Khan's and thus they probably had some influence on what the book portrays , nevertheless the paintings within the book chronicles that depict khan as asiatic are essentially those of aldin's ,

that is all of the paintings were original and were created soley to be an essential part of the book chronicles ... which is entirely credited to Aldin. thus those paintings are aldin's.

so why do some people here have problems with me designating Aldin's name to the three paintings that are displayed in this article all the while adding quotes of him that aren't even relevent to khan directly but rather to legends about his ancestors? i plan to do more research on that quote because i believe that its essential context has been perverted.

I stated it before and I'll state it again , having a Nordic man serving asiatics by enslaving " whites " from all over europe does not constitute raising the status of a Nordic nor Germanic in any way , in fact , pay attention to the essential details of exactly what happened ... didn't the asiatics treat the Nordics and Germanics as if they were animals ? so why doesn't anyone here understand the irony of stating khan as a nordic - that the asians followed and admired him - when all along these same exact asians were actually butchering and enslaving these same Nordics and Germanics and treating them as if they were subhuman ?

anyone here ever heard of the " Mongol Yoke " ... the slavic russians as well as the hungarians and czechs along with the polish .... were essentially deemed as equivalent to the status of cows. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.41.255.10 (talk) 13:40, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Still not making any sense, but for the last time "Khan" is not a name, and it makes you look foolish when you keep referring to Genghis Khan that way. siafu (talk) 15:56, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I have already pointed out above that the library that holds these illustrations, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, thinks that they were made more than 100 years after Rashid al-Din's death, and apparently not in what is today Iran. Yaan (talk) 10:09, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

What the hell is all this "nordics" "enslavement" "slavs" "asians" have to do with Genghis Khan article. This is not an article on Germany in WW2. How is Nordics and Genghis Khan connected with each other. Don't get carried away. My main point was stop making Genghis Khan a "white" person and he looked like a nordic without source. Leave the article as it is. I'm totally fine if he had red hair and green eyes. This is a past problem. Leave the article alone. I'm not here to argue over Genghis Khan's hair color and eye colors. The article is fine as it is. It says he had red hair and green eyes, and other pictures show him as being typical Asian. Both sides are covered. 174.16.145.31 (talk) 00:17, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

once again , this is wernergerman ,

the fact that even a small portion of you guys out there support the inclusion of this seeminly irrelevant quote into this article absolutely blows my mind - it has nothing to do with chingis directly , it describes his ancestors , and it ignores the fact that there are excessive amounts of paintings and accounts of chingis that state the seemingly obvious fact that chingis was asiatic.

yaan , ALL of the paintings that depict chingis within chronicles has him as an asiatic , in fact , almost all of the other paintings and accounts of him that exist as of this day have him as an mongoloid asiatic ... this article is misleading in the sense that it leads people to believe that this singular mythically toned statement - of which i have yet to still check the validity of - by aldin's is prevalent over all of the other accounts ... this article emphasizes these statements which was supposedly made by aldin over all of his other accounts within the chronicles and even more so ... over all of the other records and accounts that are out there for chingis' appearance.

did any of you know that there is a handful of german professors out there that believe that people who descended from deutschland are part mongolic (asiatic)? they even support it with genetic tests that they performed on volunteers , and found that germans are over 5 % part mongol ... the point is this .... there are crazy people out there that reinforce unnecessary and crazy notions , why are we including such crazy notions within a wikipedia article ... should i include the above idea into the wikipedia article about the german people...? would this make ANY sense? i personally wouldn't do it btw because i actually have some german ancestry.

the legends of chingis' ancestors is apparently arbitrary since the specifics of who it was and when it was is not defined , in fact , the tone is mythical and rather detached from describing chingis in a historically accurate fashion - we need more sources that deal directly with chingis' appearance and not those of his " glittering " ancestors . these statements about chingis' mythical ancestors does not deserve the amount of emphasis that it's currently getting , if the original author of this content wants to make a case about it then we'll just have to create a whole new gigantic section about this matter ... with all of the other sources that are out there.

are there any of you out there in support of a section devoted directly to genghis khan's appearance...? 12.41.255.10 (talk) 18:22, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Honestly Werner, I can't even tell what your arguing in support of. I don't think anyone is trying to claim that Temujin was anything other than a Mongol ("asiatic" in your terms), so what exactly is it that is bothering you about the article? siafu (talk) 19:11, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Werner, the images in this article (except the one in the infobox) are all not particularly reliable, in fact I'd say they are just as fancyful as European images of Kublai Khan or Toghrul in illustrations to Marco Polo's travels. Or as fanciful as illustrations of the Hedwig legend. I am curious about what other sources you have about Genghis Khan's appearance. My impression is that there just are not that many sources that deal with this.

Re. your result of genetic tests, if you can find a reliable source (rather than just making stuff up, like the "these images are from Rashid al-Din himself" and "much of Rashid al-Din's work is forged anyway" above) and convince the authors there that this is important enough, there is no problem at all with putting it into the article.

Whether the accounts of Genghis Khan's ancestry are legendary or not is not important here. What matters is that the Mongols themselves - and by extension, the sources they left - obviously found and find them important. Yaan (talk) 09:10, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Wenger, I think your point is to remove that sentence that says he had red hair and green eyes. You want that sentence gone as I understood it. It is fine for me to remove that sentence, but historically a pretty reputable source stated that he had red hair and green eyes. I also heard among Mongolians, that he had green eyes, basically green-eyed Asian. These things are out there and basically removing them is not really NPOV in my opinion. If you see Attila the Hun article there is a quote that states that he looked like dark Asian and that quote is included in there. I'm pretty sure all Europeans want Attila to be a blue eyes person, but there is a statement from history that basically described his appearance. Just because Attila was Asian we should remove it and assume happily that he was white is just not the whole truth. Sometimes the truth is what we may like or not like. Just lay it out there and make people read what everyone said. Genghis was Asian, that is pretty much everyone knows and assumes, because he has done so many Asiatic things in his life. Just because he was red and green as according to some person said it, makes him a white is pretty silly. Even if he was red and green, I'm pretty sure whites won't consider him white because of all he had done against whites, asians and others. I truely believe that if he was 100% white, the Chinese that have numerous historical texts would've pointed that out easily by saying Genghis looked white, but they don't. At best, he was mixed. If you saw Genghis walking the street, you wouldn't think he was totally white, but at best an Eurasian. I think there is too much emphasis on race of Genghis Khan and everyone should move on. Race is not that important. There are brown eyed whites, and green blue eyed Asians. If a historian stated that he was green and red, state it, but I don't think any white wants to claim that Genghis as one of their own because he was the most destructive barbarian to ever come out of anywhere in their point of view. All of these peoples are mixed like peoples of central Asia. If you go from Japan to Moscow walking you can't tell when the asian race ends and white race starts. There are historical info about a person who went from Europe to Asia and didn't mention a race at all because it gradually changes. 174.16.145.154 (talk) 22:45, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Just for the record, I sometimes identify myself as European and I don't care one bit whether Attila had blue eyes or not. Plus I think most Europeans hold a similar opinion. Yaan (talk) 09:10, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

werngergerman here... i've stated my points throughouly , my points concern several things

- either delete that statement or include a section that is devoted to the appearance of chingis... the source is unreliable and yet still it's getting undue emphasis over the prevalent notion of chingis appearance.

- i find the mythically toned statement , which was supposedly by Aldin , to be completely irrelevant to chingis... it's a description of his ancestors .... and even Aldin is rather detached from specifying exactly who his ancestors were except that they were " glittering " e.g. exact names and of when and where , and even he admits that they are legends. the source is unreliable... it should be deleted

- yaan , you've claimed that all fo the paintings were made a hundred years after the book was made , then why are there sources out there that claim that the paintings were commissioned by the khans and that rashid directed its paintings by illustrators at the Rab' i-Rashidi ...

http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/HD/khan8/hd_khan8.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid-al-Din_Hamadani

we really need to get some thigns straight here

1) the validity of rashid's statement about chingis' acnestors having colored hair

2) the timing of the statement and the paintings

because now you're saying that the paintings have nothing to do with rashid and the khans. 12.41.255.10 (talk) 14:04, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Just as a belated sidenote: One of the most successful recent books from Mongolia (so successful that I have one copy at home) is about a green-eyed Mongolian, and everybody finds this completely normal. I guess this is verifiable enough to show that Juvaini's claim is not completely outlandish. Yaan (talk) 15:54, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Just browsed through the Chronicles by Rashid Al-din

As some of the people here have pointed out, all of the individuals within the paintings of the Chronicles are Mongoloid. It doesn't matter whether they were supposed to be Caucasian or of any other races. The irony of the situation here with all of the current discussion going on about how some Jewish man made out Temujin's ancestors (it's really important to note here that he wasn't really talking about Temujin) to have resembled a Caucasian man is that the Mongols apparently had the same self-centered egocentric tendency to believe that every race on the face of this earth was Mongolic. The book Chronicles was commissioned by a Mongolian. They directed its production.

Rashid Al-din's book gives us a glimpse of a period in time when every other race had to deal with Mongolic supremacy. It's interesting that they had the same tendency that these hillbillies have in that they believe that all of the other races are somehow related to theirs. Now doesn't this really open up your mind? Everyone here should just chill. History has a way of repeating itself. We're dealing with it right now, it's just that none of you are aware of it, the issue that started all of this controversy is within the Chronicles and so is its resolution. Just open up and broaden your minds and scope. Read the whole book and not just one statement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.252.128.244 (talk) 02:08, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

The truth is that back then, people just did not have much exposure to people from other parts of the world. So people that lived in Europe just imagined everyone else (and everthing else, i.e. houses, landscapes and the like) to look like in Europe. People in Afghanistan probably assumed that everybody looked Afghan etc. If you look at images like this one of the siege of Baghdad, then the attackers really do not look very different from the defenders.

And once, again, the images from the chronicles on this page are not from the manuscript that was made during the lifetime of Rashid al-Din. They were only made 100 years later, and at a different place. Yaan (talk) 09:22, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

contradiction here ...

regarding the intentions to united all races under mongols and time of the illustrations

http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/HD/khan8/hd_khan8.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid-al-Din_Hamadani

we really need to get some thigns straight here

1) the validity of rashid's statement about chingis' acnestors having colored hair

2) the timing of the statement and the paintings

because now you're saying that the paintings have nothing to do with rashid and the khans. 12.41.255.10 (talk) 14:04, 11 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.41.255.10 (talk)

Yaan, are you saying that all of the paintings in the book is authored by someone who painted it 100 years after the invention of the book itself? And by this are you making the claim that those paintings of Genghis Khan did not exist within the original manuscript? The source below mentions the authors of the paintings and even notes the dates of them as shortly after 1300, like 1305 or something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jami_al-Tawarikh#Contemporary_manuscripts_of_the_Jami_al-tawarikh

So are you saying that there are no mongoloid Genghis Khan paintings within the original manuscript? Are there any illustrations of Genghis Khan within the original work and if so do any of them depicted him as a mongoloid? I noted that all of the illustrations of Genghis Khan within this article have notations that claim that it was from a 15th century version of the manuscript but how do you really know whether those exact pictures are from the 15th century version or whether they are from the original manuscript? Are you saying that none of those pictures or versions of them were in the original manuscript?

The section above it says that the book may have even had multiple authors, as there are numerous other people that claim to have wrote it. Do you still consider the quote that is at the center of all of this dispute as being credible? There seems to be multiple parts of it that has been injected with paintings and writing that was not in the original manuscript.

Can you give me a source that supports the claim that those Genghis Khan paintings originated 100 years after the creation of the book?

98.252.128.244 (talk) 22:34, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Seriously; why does this matter? What is the point of this endless contention? The authorship of the paintings in al-Din's books seems utterly irrelevant to this article. siafu (talk) 22:39, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Hey, my questions are about the validity of the book itself. In this case, it is the sections about Genghis Khan that are in question by people such as Yaan and myself. There are at least three paintings of Genghis Khan that are within this article and that originate from the book.

98.252.128.244 (talk) 22:59, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

You can find those images if you go to http://mandragore.bnf.fr/jsp/rechercheExperte.jsp and search for "Supplément persan 1113". What they will tell you is that the work is from about 1430 and from Afghanistan. You can also scroll through all the images, but apparently the URL that your browser will show is non-permanent (unfortunately). However, I think I have given the folio number in those images whose source description I changed. Yaan (talk) 11:50, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Daughters

In light of The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire, which claims that Ghengis Khan's empire was divided amongst his sons and daughters, and spends considerable time on identifying his daughters, the statement that information about his daughters is "nonexistent" seems odd. Even if Weatherford's research is not credible, it seems that the issue ought to at least be addressed. AMG41 (talk) 05:21, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

We could address, if we had a credible source. Weatherford is not such a source-- so if you can find another one, then go ahead, but it might be better placed at Mongol Empire or the individual articles for the successor khanates, since it isn't really about Genghis Khan per se, but about the effect his daughters had on the empire after his death. siafu (talk) 18:01, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Understood that a broad discussion of his daughters should go elsewhere, although I lack the time or expertise to do so. I was thinking more that either the sentence saying there is no information about his daughters should be changed, or there should be a note added to explain that although Weatherford wrote an entire book on the topic, he is wrong because of X. Is there some reason Weatherford in particular is not considered credible, or is there a general problem with citing books? I'm not familiar enough with the subtleties of the sourcing policy or Genghis to understand why you say he's not credible.AMG41 (talk) 03:16, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

It's not an issue about books, but about Weatherford in particular. His book, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World is full of errors both major and minor, and he himself is an anthropologist and not a historian (see the article on it for a more thorough discussion). If there is a credible thesis buried in his new book, then there will surely be other sources discussing it that we can reference. siafu (talk) 20:31, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Wifes

Genghis Khan has 40 wifes, belonging to 4 Wo'erduo. A list in Chinese Wikipedia exist. Could anybody restore the original Mongolian, Jurchen and Tangut name of them (some of them are ethnically Jurchen and Tangut)? 222.35.84.110 (talk) 05:35, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Genghis Khan

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Genghis Khan's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Morgan":

• From Mongol invasion of Khwarezmia: Morgan, David The Mongols
• From Subutai: Morgan, David (1990) The Mongols. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-17563-6.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 23:29, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Claims on the dates of the following paintings must be sourced. The current sourced links do not work.

Can different reproductions of the same piece of art have different colour saturation/ colour balance etc? Are image databases like bridgemanart reliable sources for dating a piece of art, esp. when they happen to disagree with the institution that holds said artwork? Yaan (talk) 09:14, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Well , the thing is that we really don't know if they are indeed from the " same piece of art " as yaan claims it to be , he really has no proof that they are indeed from the same piece of art... we need the sourced websites of the pictures that are within genghis khan to actually contain the same exact picture that's in question .... the current situation is that the pictures that are within genghis khan such as this one aren't the same with the one that's displayed within the sourced website ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Genghis_Khan%27s_enthronement_in_1206.jpg

seems to be the restored version when compared to the picture's current source (below) e.g. everything that's yellowish-orange in the above is bright red in the source ...

http://mandragore.bnf.fr/jsp/rechercheExperte.jsp (type " Supplément persan 1113 " for manuscript and " 44v " for images )

the source website that's attributed to the pictures on genghis khan must contain the actual picture .... or else we simply do not know whether they are indeed different pictures taken of the same painting as yaan is hoping for or whether they were taken from different versions of the paintings e.g. earlier versus restored.

editors - perhaps we could replace the current paintings with ones that can actually be directly sourced to a reliable site that's online , that is the source can be pulled up simply by the click of a mouse and in addition it contains the exact image that's on the wikipedia page for genghis khan ... such as this one

http://digitool.haifa.ac.il/R/JR9NV156CTXYYD6ERV2RJPRHIP8F75F85M7KHFHABKAFTJXVH3-03623?func=search-simple-go&local_base=GEN01&find_code=WTI&request=Illuminated%20page%20from%20the%20jami%20al-Tawarikh%20(1306)%20%5Bdigital%20image%5D

it actually states the time and place in an explicit fashion e.g. " painted in Tabriz, 1306 " .

Wernergerman (talk) 14:44, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Someone has made the claim that the following three paintings are from the 15th century version of Rashid Al-din's manuscript. Please provide sourced material that supports the date on these exact paintings. Take note that the source must contain the exact versions of the paintings. In other words, the BIBLIOTHEQUE NATIONALE may hold the 15th century copies of the paintings since it possesses the 15th century version of the manuscript itself, however the paintings that they post on their website may or may not be the same version as those that are displayed within Genghis Khan.

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Djengiz_Kh%C3%A2n_et_Toghril_Ong_Khan.jpeg

Edit: ok I found this one.

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Genghis_Khan%27s_enthronement_in_1206.jpg

First link does not work and the second link leads to a completely different picture.

this source says that the painting is 14th century not the 15th - http://www.superstock.com/imagepreview/463-7368

3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Genghis_Khan_and_three_of_his_four_sons.jpg

The source links to a completely different picture.

4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bagdad1258.jpg

The source links to a completely different picture.

98.252.128.244 (talk) 01:45, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Apparently the uploader got confused by the way how the BnF uses links and frames. But you could have easily found (and corrected) the links yourself with a few clicks. I've fixed them now:

1. File:Djengiz Khân et Toghril Ong Khan.jpeg -> BnF.
2. File:Genghis Khan's enthronement in 1206.jpg -> BnF
3. File:Genghis Khan and three of his four sons.jpg -> BnF.
4. File:Bagdad1258.jpg -> BnF

--Latebird (talk) 10:26, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi Latebird none of the links work, thanks for your interest in helping me out though. By the way I found a site that says that one of the paintings is actually 14th century not the 15th

http://www.superstock.com/imagepreview/463-7368

98.252.128.244 (talk) 22:12, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

The following site has similar paintings however they are dated as 14th century

http://www.bridgemanart.com/search.aspx?key=Genghis%20Khan

98.252.128.244 (talk) 23:30, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Can you please tell us why those websites should be considered more reliable than the French National Library? Or how the images from the French National Library are not exactly the same as on wikipedia, except that the French National Library has less mistaken colourings? Yaan (talk) 11:54, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

You can find those images if you go to http://mandragore.bnf.fr/jsp/rechercheExperte.jsp and search for "Supplément persan 1113" and the folio numbers I gave in the image descriptions (and click on "Images" in the result page). I can't find stable URL's to the images, but the folio numbers are:

1. File:Djengiz Khân et Toghril Ong Khan.jpeg -> folio 105.
2. File:Genghis Khan's enthronement in 1206.jpg -> folio 44v
3. File:Genghis Khan and three of his four sons.jpg -> folio 44
4. File:Bagdad1258.jpg -> folio 180v-181 (i.e. you need to enter "180v-181" into the form).

Yaan (talk) 12:22, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Hello all ... i - wernergerman - have returned , from the discussion that I have witnessed so far since the last time I was here it seems that this book by the ethnically jewish historian rashid aldin hamadani is a messy compilation of bastardized literary (not factual) content that have been tampered with by numerous different people on numerous different occasions , people other then rashid have inserted contents into it ... To be honest with you , the book itself reads like the bible , it even has the history of adam and eve for christ sakes.

So some of you still want to include the statement about the " glittering " ancestors of genghis ... even though it has nothing to do with genghis

yeah , that's real factual information right there .... genghis' ancestors were glittering.

btw I observed the versions of

1. File:Genghis Khan's enthronement in 1206.jpg -> folio 44v

I found the yaan's source to be 1430 as he had claimed however it's not the same version as the one above , the one above seems to be a newer version ... note the guy on the upper left , one of the versions has him wearing orange the other is distinctly red ....

http://mandragore.bnf.fr/jsp/rechercheExperte.jsp

the one that's found on this website - http://www.bridgemanart.com/search.aspx?key=Genghis%20Khan - is indeed an different version , note that it seems older , the green on the tent for instance doesn't really seem green. it's 14th century.

the newer the painting the better the quality it seems ,

btw yaan , we were conversing earlier on how the book itself contains paintings of genghis khan as a mongoloid despite the statement by al-din regarding his ancestors having red hair. i really don't think that you can argue for the case that the original work didn't have him as a mongoloid .... all of the pictures of genghis khan in the book Chronicles - whether it's 13th , 14th , or 15th century or older - HAVE GENGHIS KHAN AS A MONGOLOID. Thus , I return to the argument that Al-din's statement isn't credible since his book if filled with contradictions.

in the meanwhile , I'm going to get back to reading about Kievan Rus , yeah the region of Russia was once filled with populations of different ethnicities of Nordic Scandanavian people , well now they're gone and Russia is a Slavic state. Apparently what happened was that Genghis buried the Nordic princes alive and setup a victory dinner table above where they were buried , he invited his mongolic " brothers " onto the table and they celebrated with great rejoicing while the princes were disappearing into oblivion below them . Yeah , this nordic was infinitely insane.

Now I dare you , any of you that are my caucasian brothers , to tell me this guy was even 0.01 % Nordic. Wernergerman (talk) 19:26, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

On your race-related questions, I guess I have given an answer somewhere above. You still seem to be hunting a straw man.

Re. the glittering guy: there was only one, and my impression is that he is only glittering in the Secret History, not in the Collected Chronicles. Whether you like the Collected Chronicles or not, AFAIK they are one of only two fairly reliable and detailed sources about Genghis' life, the other one being the Secret History. So whatever they say seems notable enough for this article, especially if modern-day academic specialists propagate their information. Yaan (talk) 14:30, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

so now you're saying that the statement itself doesn't represent rashid's book , so what's on this book that's actually the work of rashid aldin's ... do you get to pick and choose on what parts are and what parts aren't that of rashid's?

- you're saying that this book is reliable when even the statement itself isn't reliable.

- you're also saying that some of the paintings have been created in the future and inserted into future versions of the book. are you sure that those paintings weren't there in the original work in the first place and then simply renewed at a later date?

i find your comments and opinions to be extraordinary. not to mention controversial ... that website in france doesn't prove anything about whether a version of that image was there in the original work.

you seem to contradict yourself , this book is not reliable , nothing can be trusted , not even the statements. it has just as much credibility as the bible itself. ironically both have been devised up by jews.

Wernergerman (talk) 14:58, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Please comment only on the facts relevant to the sourcing of those images, and skip the racial slurs. Thank you. --Latebird (talk) 08:39, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

First, the word "Mongoloid" isn't used in English in the way you think it is; it's a term used in the past to describe a particular form of birth defect, now deprecated due to being considered racist. "Mongol" is good enough; "asian" may be better.

Second, I can't find anywhere on this talk page or anyone who is suggesting that Genghis Khan is anything other than a Mongol. Having red hair is not exclusionary to that, though rare.

Third, al-Din's statement is still notable, and, since it's al-Din's statement, we can properly attribute it and mention the fact that he never met Genghis Khan himself-- that doesn't change the fact that he is one of the most notable historical sources on Genghis Khan.

Lastly, the racializing argument is getting us nowhere at all. Please desist. siafu (talk) 19:45, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Yaan, by "less mistaken colourings" what exactly do you mean? Some aspects of the paintings have completely different colors. It seems that your source is different then the one that's posted here along with http://www.bridgemanart.com/image/Islamic-School-14th-century/Genghis-Khan-in-his-tent-by-Rashid-al-Din-1247-1318/bdb3009807ee4e41b17f07148d5f2bd2?key=Genghis%20Khan&thumb=x150&num=15&page=5 being different from both of them.

I never noticed it before, but this one seems the oldest. Anyways I think that you need to find the actual source of those paintings and assign them with the proper dates.

98.252.128.244 (talk) 22:26, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd say they are all reproductions of one and the same image. Look at the scratches, e.g. around the table. If you own a digital camera, maybe you have noticed that images of the same object may show different colours, depending on lighting (e.g. sun, cloudy weather, light bulbs, flashlight) and your camera's setting. If you add some post-processing, the colours can look even more different. Yaan (talk) 14:10, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Yaan,

MEGA META-SEARCH

http://www.pacasearch.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/PACASearch.woa/wa/search?query=genghis+khan

All of the results of this mega meta-search claim that the Chinggis images are 14th century. One of them is even 13th century. Note that they are from different sites. Are you suggesting that they are ALL wrong? Would you not agree that the following is simply an older version?

http://www.bridgemanart.com/image/Islamic-School-14th-century/Genghis-Khan-in-his-tent-by-Rashid-al-Din-1247-1318/bdb3009807ee4e41b17f07148d5f2bd2?key=Genghis%20Khan&thumb=x150&num=15&page=5

The lines are less defined and the colors are less vibrant. I really don't think that any camera is that bad. It's the painting itself. Again we need to reassign the dates on those paintings.

98.252.128.244 (talk) 01:50, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually, they pretty much all say date unknown, c. 14th century. Still wondering why on Earth this matters. siafu (talk) 02:00, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to be contacting the Bridgeman Art Institute in order to see how they got the dates on those paintings as 14th century. They are a reliable source and they even have their own research division. And no,

http://www.pacasearch.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/PACASearch.woa/wa/search?query=genghis+khan

they do not say date unknown rather most of them say 14th century.

http://www.bridgemanart.com/image/Islamic-School-14th-century/Genghis-Khan-in-his-tent-by-Rashid-al-Din-1247-1318/bdb3009807ee4e41b17f07148d5f2bd2?key=Genghis%20Khan&thumb=x150&num=15&page=5

If you really need it I can find more for you.

Why does it matter? Well, do you want the wrong dates to be assigned to those paintings? Is that what we do here at Wikipedia? That is, do we simply assign whatever dates we want to the images? How could you even ask me such a question?

98.252.128.244 (talk) 02:25, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Because if we don't have the exact dates, we write "circa 14th century", which, btw, is exactly what is meant by "C14th" in the link you posted. "circa" means "around", as in, "some time around the 14th century". siafu (talk) 02:38, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I think the real problem is that these search engine results are completely unsystematic. For example, most results seem to be for completely different depictions of Genghis Khan (example). I'd also like to counter the claim that most of the images found this way are (claimed to be) from the 14th century. For instance, this one from Getty Images (which, btw, looks a lot like supplément persan 1113, fol. 159v, save for the colors), supposedly is from 1754. Yaan (talk) 16:07, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

The photograph at bridgemanart has exactly the same defects at the lower and upper right corners as the one on the website at the French National Library, except that bridgemanart has clipped the image a bit. Can you tell me why this is so, if they are not photographs of one and the same original?

Would you say this painting is not the same as this one? These mountains are not the same as these (colors less vibrant in the first image, lines less well-defined in the second)?

If you have doubts about the dates given by the French National Library (which probably should know best), there seems to be a discussion of this in a volume named L'Iran face a la domination mongole (Bibliotheque Iranienne 45), edited by Denise Aigle, Tehran, Institut Francais de Recherche en Iran, 1997 (sorry for missing accents and the like). The relevant article seems to be by Francis Richard. I have only read a review here (probably requires subscription), but the review cites Francis Richard as having "demonstrated" that the manuscript was made at the court of a Timurid prince named Baysunqur. If you are interested in what the evidence for the ca. 1430 date by the French National Library is, I suggest you consult said article by Francis Richard rather than some search engine. Yaan (talk) 09:23, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

While I am at it, this man also seems to have published on some related fields. Apparently not on the manuscript itself, but, for example, on book production under Baysunqur. Might also be worth checking out. Yaan (talk) 09:50, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

siafu , now you're just making things up ... again observe the date on the following , it's 14th century pure and simple not circa 14th ..... why is it that you keep distorting things , give the man his due for christ sakes.

http://www.bridgemanart.com/image/Islamic-School-14th-century/Genghis-Khan-in-his-tent-by-Rashid-al-Din-1247-1318/bdb3009807ee4e41b17f07148d5f2bd2?key=Genghis%20Khan&thumb=x150&num=15&page=5

the bridgeman art institute and library seems to be a pretty reliable source to me , along with all of the other sites out their that proclaim these paintings to be 14th century ... their source ? well , the library of france of course. and no , yaan , those comparison between those paintings you mentioned are not as distinct as the ones we're dealing with here ... which is

library of france's website

http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Mandragore&O=07817139&E=1&I=87842&M=imageseule

wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Genghis_Khan%27s_enthronement_in_1206.jpg

someone here mentioned that the guy in the upper left has on a bright red t-shirt in the wikipedia picture and while the color is distinctly orange on the france website. the colors are different , plain and simple. Wernergerman (talk) 14:11, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I have to go with Yaan here; imaging and color are quite variable depending on other factors. Also, you have been blocked before for tendentious editting, and are skirting the edge of personal attacks-- you should step down from the aggressive tone if you want to accomplish anything at all. This matter seems quite settled, and the truth is that if the exact dates are not known, we can just not show them and be done with it. siafu (talk) 15:00, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

then simply erase the current date that's on there. this matter - regarding the paintings - will be settled if we are able to agree to that. those colors aren't the same and there is no way that a camera managed to do that. yellowish orange to bright vibrant red.

Wernergerman (talk) 15:12, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

You can erase it just as easily as anyone else. Also, it's absolutely possible for cameras to produce such effects quite easily-- not just the camera itself, but the film type and quality, the lighting, and the camera settings all conspire to create different images of the same subject. siafu (talk) 15:41, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I think I have pointed out above that the French National Library says that the images are from 1430. This IMHO makes everyone who gives the National Library as source for an earlier date look pretty unreliable IMHO. Plus unless you can come up with some more details it really looks like the French National Library did not just make the date up.

Or are you just saying that the French National Library holds two nearly identical copies, with the whole difference being somewhat different colours? In that case maybe you can give an inventory number or a name or, even better, a link to that supposed other manuscript.

Have you seen that the mountains in one of the photographs I linked to above are "distinctly orange", while those in the other photograph are distinctly grey?

More on topic, would you agree that

1. the third guy in the lower left corner of this image, as well as the woman in the upper right corner, are wearing relatively bright red clothes
2. the same clothes on what the French Library supposes to be the same image of the same book (Supp. Pers. 1113 fol.203v) are quite orange?

Furthermore, would you agree that what bridgeman refers to as Supp. Pers. 113 f.44v should, per the French National Library, actually be called Supp. Pers. 1113 f.126v, and also has quite different colours?

Another one: would you at least agree that bridgeman's date for "Sup. Pers. 113 f.66v" is at odds with their date for "Supp. Pers. 113 f.44v" linked to above?

Yaan (talk) 15:47, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

why is it so inconceivable to you that they (french) may have made improvements to the original copy of the book (which , i admit , is actually a later version of the original work) - could'nt it be that the book was initially in bad condition and that they sensed that it was necessary to improve upon the quality and clarity of the paintings  ? the title itself and imagery ... Supp. Pers. 1113 fol.203v for example .... does it serve to indicate that there are other versions of rashid aldin's book out there? no , but we know that there are numerous different versions of this same book that are out there ... the title indicates nothing about the origins of the imagery .... now i'm convinced that when the french got this book initially that they worked to improve upon its quality ... again , the captions on those paintings found within bridgeman do not indicate that they are all from the same exact version of the same book. the only thing we know from those captions is that they got it from the french. and the french , as i said , probably made improvements to the book that they received since the condition of it was probably tattered.

i think we really need an expert here , perhaps someone could call up bridgeman , because you really don't seem to want to acknowledge these paintings with earlier dates. you seem to want to believe that all of these portraits about genghis khan were injected at a later date. which is absolutely absurd and delusional.

Wernergerman (talk) 18:33, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Shifts in color due to the imaging circumstances are entirely common. There is no reason to suppose that the French National Library altered this book in any fashion-- we already have a very plausible explanation for the color differences-- especially considering that this is in direct contravention of academic principles and claiming that they had done so is a quite grave accusation. siafu (talk) 18:39, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

siafu , you need to actually read my posts , i had stated the possibility that the french may have revamped - not " altered " - the paintings after they had initially received the book , the version that they have is of a later date however the book was most likely in fairly bad condition when they received it and unacceptable for display ... being that it's hundreds of years old. so you need to get this straight , below is an example of a scenario of what could have happened.

- the french received the original version probably at a much earlier time , but when the technology became available they took pictures of it , and called it 13th century or 14th century , for example

"Sup. Pers. 113 f.66v"

- then they or someone else had made some improvements , perhaps to a copy of the book , art institutes do make improvements to some of their paintings to polish them up for display ... i had never said that they " altered " the paintings ... read my posts and in addition stop trying to accuse me of things that i really didn't say.

http://mandragore.bnf.fr/jsp/rechercheExperte.jsp search the folio for the respective bridgeman painting

yaan , the pictures that you sourced to the above website is technically not the same as the one in wikipedia. the truth of the matter is that we simply don't know where the images on genghis khan came from , the exact images themselves aren't present on the following website

http://mandragore.bnf.fr/jsp/rechercheExperte.jsp

you're saying that they are from the same page on the same book and were taken with different cameras , however you have no real proof of this ... i personally don't believe it to be possible but it really doesn't matter anymore ...

please erase the dates on those pictures . we currently do not have any proof on where those paintings - on genghis khan - are from ... we need a source that displays the same exact pictures , until then , we need to delete the current date.

Wernergerman (talk) 14:00, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

You are presenting nothing more than rampant speculation. Again, we have no reason to suppose that anyone altered the manuscript after receiving it beyond your refusal to accept some basic notions about imaging. How can you not believe it's possible to take multiple pictures of a manuscript with different cameras but instead believe that an institution would alter a historical manuscript? Moreover, it's not at all necessary to even use different cameras-- different lighting or camera settings can accomplish the same effect, and what's more, due to the nature of digital imaging, it's just as likely that only one physical photograph was taken, and it has been represented differently in digital form in its history.

Again, you are just as capable as anyone else of erasing the dates in the article, despite the fact that we seem to have settled very clearly their authenticity. siafu (talk) 17:04, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

actually it's you who is doing all of the speculating here ... listen , if you or yaan or whoever else out there wants a date attributed to those paintings within genghis khan then it is you who is going to have to provide adequate proof - not in the form of an argument about fancy camera phenomena but as a referenced source that contains the actual picture .

how can you even say that " we seem to have settled very clearly their authenticity " ? your speculations and vague arguments that they are indeed different pictures but taken from the same painting is inadequate as proof. again , we have no way of really knowing where those pictures within genghis khan are from , however , there are sources out there that do contain those exact pictures ... you simply need to find them.

and again , you're being really hardheaded here , i never said anything about the french altering the paintings , i merely suggested that they may have restored it or made copies of it and revamped the pictures. you're bordering on defamation here. stop saying that i said things that i really did not say.

again , you need to provide proof , and no proof currently exists ... this matter is settled , i really don't need to explain myself further. you can argue all day about camera angles and how much you believe them to be based on the same painting , but the fact of the matter is that they are different pictures and indeed may not be from the same painting.

Wernergerman (talk) 18:08, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Your claim is that because some of the images appear to have slightly different colors when seen on a computer monitor that they cannot be taken to be images of the same paintings, despite the clear attribution by reliable sources that they are. Your explanation is that this is likely because of restoration or alteration of the original images-- I quote: " they (french) may have made improvements to the original copy of the book" (you DID suggest they altered the paintings, contrary to your assertion that you did not)-- rather than the much more plausible explanation that they just look different in the form we're seeing them-- digital representations of photographs viewed on a computer monitor.

The French National Library, which holds the manuscript, lists it as being from the 14th century. Frankly, this is all the sourcing that is required for the dates. The burden is on you to PROVE that this is not true, not on us to prove that it is, since they fall quite squarely in the domain of reliable sources. You would also have to PROVE that the images you're referencing are from different pictures-- they are all attributed to the same manuscript, so this will be difficult; again, the burden is not on us to do so. The fact that the colors appear slightly different in one representation vs. another does not require anything fancy at all, which was the whole point of the discussion of cameras. The same photograph will appear different on different screens or when saved as a different file format (TIFF vs. JPG, for example), and the same subject will appear different in photographic form when photographed with different cameras, or with the same camera with different conditions (lenses, lighting, settings, etc.). It is, in fact, virtually impossible to take identical photographs of the same subject-- there is no reason whatsoever to expect that they would appear that way several levels down the processing line when it pops up on your screen.

I do agree, however, that you do not need to explain yourself further. These paintings are clearly sourced to a WP:RS, and as I've noted, specifically dating them was not exactly crucial to article in any way to begin with, so your continued insistence on debating this point, and insistence on arguing with a non-existent racializing position, do not need to continue.

Lastly, I have, again contrary to your assertion, avoided engaging in defamatory comments or speech, but you are verging on that yourself. Aside from claiming that I am simply "making things up", comments like " you're being really hardheaded here" are not helpful and border on personal attacks. These are not tolerated on wikipedia at all, by anyone, so I suggest again that you step down from your aggressive tone if your actual intention is, in fact, to improve the article. siafu (talk) 18:27, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

you said

" :Your claim is that because some of the images appear to have slightly different colors when seen on a computer monitor that they cannot be taken to be images of the same paintings, "

not slightly different colors , but plain and simply put ... different colors , as in yellow-orange to bright red and orange to green ... didn't i make this clear ? anyways , it really doesn't matter what my beliefs are or your beliefs are here ...

you can make the case that they are different pictures based on the same painting and support it with the most full proof scientific arguments , however , at the end of the day even the most advanced science will merely provide us with a strong possibility that the two are based on the same painting but we will not be able to affirmatively claim that they are , indeed in actuality , from the same painting. get my point ? we need to know what actually happened , where were those images within genghis khan taken from ?

" despite the clear attribution by reliable sources that they are. "

you're completely disregarding my main point here. even if such drastic changes of colors occur with the particular manner of upload , we really do not know on whether the change in color isn't a result of something else e.g. perhaps it's a different painting ... you need to prove that this isn't possible , which you're not going to be able to do . in addition to this , there are too many pictures out there that claim earlier dates and the difference in those paintings with the one currently on display on genghis khan are essentially differences in colors.

i think that my request is legitimate. i , as a contributing member of wikipedia , am making a formal request that pictures of Jami al-Tawarikh within genghis khan are properly sourced . the source needs to contain the actual content , it should not be supplemented by arguments nor opinions that aren't full proof .

who originally uploaded the picture? what site did he or she get it from ? that's all i'm asking for. enough said ... Wernergerman (talk) 14:26, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Your claim that they are not sourced is simply incorrect. They are sourced to the Bibliotheque Francaise, and if you click on the images in the article, it will take you to a page containing that sourcing information (if the direct links don't work, do a search on the Bibliotheque webpage), and the upload history for each article (including a link to the userpage of the user who uploaded it). Yes, you do have to do your own legwork sometimes, rather than shouting loudly at us to do it.

Since there is no further productive discussion to be had here, and this has gone way beyong anything reasonable, I'm going to have to ignore your comments from here on. siafu (talk) 14:51, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

I think what wernergerman is trying to say is that the picture itself links to the Bibliotheque Francaise website however the two pictures are actually different. I also agree that one can make a case for them being different just as the ones within Bridgeman are different in color and also have different dates on them. As we've witnessed one of them even has a date of 13th century and is yet sourced to the Bibliotheque Francaise which has the date at 1430 but the two seem different because one is all worn and the other is nice and vibrant. Thus they must be from different versions of the paintings. One of them must have been the restored copy. This certainly seems plausible to me. There are people out there that obviously have an issue with this so if some of us can search the upload history and find that website then that would hopefully resolve the tantrum. For all we know the actual date may even be newer such as the 16th century. I know that wernergerman wants them to be dated earlier for one reason or another but he should at least know by now that there are 13th century pictures of Chinggis but they most likely won't replace the ones that we have since the newer ones are better in quality.

Cheers

98.252.128.244 (talk) 22:09, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Of course there are 13th century paintings of Genghis Khan, for example this one. Both you and wernergerman seem to fail to understand that photographs of the same physical objects do not always have identical colours, despite the example with the Tre Cime di Lavaredo given above. Would you say that this guy and the person sitting on the left in this photograph are one and the same?

Maybe you have realized that bridgemanart claims this image to be one of folio 203v of our 15th century album, not one of some hypothetical other album that the French National Library allegedly holds. Are the colours different or are they not? Yaan (talk) 09:07, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

PS: I guess it is time for an RfC. Yaan (talk) 09:09, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

i've contacted bridgeman regarding the discrepancy in dates on those paintings. again , yaan , i'm not here to rule out your explanations pertaining to camera phenomenon , although they seem unlikely and wishful distortions on your part, your explanations by itself is not a valid substitute for an adequate source ...

the source that's attributed to the pictures on wikipedia shall contain the actual picture .... or else we simply do not know whether they are indeed different pictures taken of the same painting as you suggested or whether they were taken from different versions of the paintings.

editors - perhaps we could replace the current paintings with ones that can actually be directly sourced to a reliable site that's online , that is the source can be pulled up simply by the click of a mouse and in addition it contains the exact image that's on the wikipedia page for genghis khan ... such as this one

http://digitool.haifa.ac.il/R/JR9NV156CTXYYD6ERV2RJPRHIP8F75F85M7KHFHABKAFTJXVH3-03623?func=search-simple-go&local_base=GEN01&find_code=WTI&request=Illuminated%20page%20from%20the%20jami%20al-Tawarikh%20(1306)%20%5Bdigital%20image%5D

it actually states explicitly the dates that they were painted on as well as the place.

Wernergerman (talk) 13:30, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I kind of agree it would be better to use images that come directly from the website of the French National Library, although mainly because all those other pictures seem inferior in quality. On the other hand, being able to find the image via one mouse click or via an online formular makes no difference re. verifiability as far as wikipedia is concerned, and I still believe that anyone with eyes to see can confirm that the images currently used on the page are from Supplement Persan 1113. So it's something that would be very nice to have, but not something that must be done immediatly.

If you can find good reproductions from the Edinburgh manuscript that are relevant to the topic of this article, feel free to add them, too. Everything I have found so far seems to be related to the life of Mohammed. Yaan (talk) 16:03, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

btw , the picture of genghis khan that currently represents this article has a description on it that claims that it actually displays his grandson kublai khan... did you put this on there? you're the one who submitted it and then had it locked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:YuanEmperorAlbumGenghisPortrait.jpg Wernergerman (talk) 15:25, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I did not add that sentence about Khubilai, and I did not have the image locked. But it seems I uploaded the image and wrote the English-language description. If you look at File:YuanEmperorAlbumGenghisFull.jpg, the image actually seems to have Genghis' Mongolian name attached to it, in the second column (from the right), second to fifth character. I am a bit too lazy to translate and read the whole thing now, but all sources I have ever seen say this is an image of Genghis. An image of Khubilai can be found here. Yaan (talk) 15:47, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Iranian pronounciation

Jack Weatherford claim about the pronunciation of Genghis in English language is accurate because even at this time some Iranians call him Ghengiss. Amir —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.93.58.58 (talk) 21:07, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Can you please provide reliable published sources for this claim? Otherwise it is original research and not acceptable in Wikipedia. Thanks! --Latebird (talk) 07:47, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Rashid / Jewish

I removed the comment noting that Rashid al-Din Hamadani was "ethnically Jewish" since it's completely irrelevant to this article. Another thing to note from this is that wikipedia articles can't be used as sources in the references list, i.e. with ref tags. Rashid-al-Din Hamadani is already wikilinked, and interested readers can learn about his ethnic background on his own article. siafu (talk) 15:44, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

we had this same issue in the actual article about rashid al-din hamadani where someone kept deleting one or the either terms - jewish or persian ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Rashid-al-Din_Hamadani

the simple fact is that he is a persian physician of jewish origin who wrote about the history of the world as commisioned by the mongols - not persia. both persian and jewish should be included.

this issue has already been resolved for the wikipedia article on rashid al-din hamadani , don't bring it up here again , i'll be adding the reference to his jewish origins along with the proper reference this time ... by the end of today or tommorrow , the statement will go something like the one found within the rashid al-din hamadani article

" was a Persian historian of Jewish origin " ...

DON'T DELETE MY EDITS IF THEY ARE SUPPORTED BY CREDIBLE SOURCES. discuss it the matter here first if you want to delete it. Wernergerman (talk) 13:43, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

The fact that it is sourced does not change the fact that it's not relevant. Those wishing to know about Rashid can read about him at his own article; this article is about Genghis Khan, not Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, and does not need to be cluttered up with facts about him, even if they are true. siafu (talk) 16:18, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

which is more relevant , the fact that he's persian or the fact that he's jewish ? which is more accurate , him being " persian historian " or a " jewish historian " ... explain.

" persian historian " is misleading without reference to his true ethnicity . Wernergerman (talk) 16:24, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

You're overblowing this issue; the more relevant part is being Persian since that establishes more of the details relevant to history and historiography (e.g., which language he wrote in, which literary tradition he was part of, which polity he belonged to, &c.). His actual ethnicity is not very important to this article. siafu (talk) 16:30, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

no i'm not ... i really don't think that it's too much of an issue to have an additional reference to his jewish ethnicity to clear up the fact that he wasn't really muslim by birth. i'm not asking for much here. and in addition to this i have the edit supported by a credible and reliable source. as a member of wikipedia i want this information on there . the issue of controversy you're making this out to be is insufficient to dictate me from making my share of contribution to this article , one that's backed by a credible source.

again , i'm not asking for much here , i want the reference him being of jewish origin on there because i personally find that it clears up ambiguities about his ethnicity ...

i want

- " persian historian " changed to

- " persian historian of jewish origin "

that's all , i want it on there and it's backed by a credible source ... anyone else here think that this is too much and that it constitutes an outcry ? please ... do tell.

i want the to make this contribution , it's really just the addition of two words , not the " cluttering up of facts " that you're making it out to be . Wernergerman (talk) 20:39, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I know you don't think so; you've made it abundantly clear. Two words can indeed be a cluttering up of facts, as it were, but it doesn't matter. It does nothing to inform the reader about Genghis Khan or the historiography of the subject to inform them of Rashid's birth religion or ethnicity, so it should not be included. Whether or not it clears up some supposed ambiguity about Rashid's ethnicity is also irrelevant-- readers who think that his ethnicity is important can read it about it very easily at the relevant page, so there's no need to clear anything up at all. This is not a helpful contribution; you should just let it go. siafu (talk) 21:23, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

In the context of this article, the ethnicity/religion of this historian is entirely irrelevant, and there is no good reason to mention it. How exactly would it improve the reader's understanding of Genghis Khan? --Latebird (talk) 07:28, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

we need to get more users interested in this article - siafu and yaan and one other user whose name escapes me ... pretty much the only users that frequent this article besides myself , all seem to have a common objective and agenda , one that's narrow in scope. there's way too much policing going on here by these three and ganging up over what or what to not input into this article all the while inserting biased , irrelevant , and non-reliable information of their own.

If we can mention rashid al-din hamadani within the article with the notation that he's persian then it doesn't matter one bit on whether we include the short extensive information that he was jewish. why are you guys raising hell over this? it's really beyond me. as mentioned before , i personally would like to get the " persian " aspect cleared up , i believe that it's misleading , and i don't think that it's too much trouble to have an extra jewish factoid right next to it to clear things up.

and once again , as a separate issue, i find it repugnant that someone here , probably yaan , has included the random information about genghis' " glittering " ancestors right under the births section of this article. this information is followed by another slew of splattered ethereal claims that paint an image of genghis' ancestors as some kind of a mongrel. All of this messy and disorganized patchwork of claims is based on a book where every character , including muhammed , is painted as a mongol. what's the point of patching up this notion of a mongrelized genghis and how does it contribute towards devising a credible and reliable historical article about one of history's most significant figures ... someone please inform me.

Wernergerman (talk) 17:47, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

We're not actually raising hell over anything, just pointing out the obvious; note, for example, that none of us have engaged in any name-calling or personal attacks, and have managed to limit our responses to a length appropriate to trivial nature of the discussion. You are continuing to argue over issues that all other editors present consider to be settled and done with, and perhaps the "policing" you're talking about is more an example of a single tendentious editor unwilling to accept the consensus. siafu (talk) 20:31, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

you're absolutely right , the issue has been " settled and done with " ... as it noted here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Rashid-al-Din_Hamadani

so , again , why are you raising hell over this same issue over again ?

" consensus " ? what consensus , it's just you yaan and some other frenchman that have turned this article into the ridiculous travesty of mumbled jumbled statements about genghis' " glittering " ancestors that it is rather than detailing his actual ancestry with relevant facts such as those that are found on this page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_tree_of_Genghis_Khan

and on this page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan

I wish that more people would join in the discussion ... even contacted some administrators but none of them seem interested in the topic. better start making some friends here myself , i've discovered that wikipedia is a very faction oriented site .... so until then history is yours to alter and genghis khan is a dubious mongrel of some sort who enjoyed mongoloid rape porn where mongols enslave and rape caucasoids. have fun bastardizing and making up the sacred ancestries of cultures that are at the other side of the world. i'm sure that if you had spent half the time looking into your own ancestry you would have gained so much more. again, no one seems to give a hoot regarding what's on this article. thus it's just here for anyone to fabricate as they please. it's become a stagnant cesspool of irrelevant statements and patchworked / suggestive information. it's going to remain in the utter mess of a state that it is now unless more people become interested in cleaning it up . i'll visit every once in a while.

Wernergerman (talk) 17:15, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

The problem with your arguments for including the word "jewish" in describing Hamadani is that they are irrelevant. No one has argued, or is likely going to argue, that Rashid was not Jewish, merely that this article is not about him at all, but about Genghis Khan, and therefore should contain as little unnecessary and extraneous information as possible. The fact that Rashid was of Jewish descent is exactly the sort of superfluity that the article does not need; including it provides no further information or insight into Genghis Khan, and the fact that it provides insight into the history of Rashid al-Din Hamadani is a great argument for including it in the article about him-- and it is included there, so there's no problem. You are the one raising hell-- the only commentor who thinks that this single word should be included, and apparently you believe it so strongly that you're willing to write pages worth of arguments laced with vulgarity and attacks on the subject. This issue was settled before you brought it up, nothing you have presented has even addressed the counterargument at all, and until you do it will likely continue to be settled. I say "likely" as this, like all other issues, is not simply up to me, but up to the consensus among editors. Anyone who cares to chime in in support of your claim is welcome to do so, but so far no one has chosen to and I don't have any reason to suppose that anyone will.

As for your continued issues with "ancestry", I still fail to see a single editor commenting or positing that Genghis Khan was anything other than a Mongol. No "rape porn", no bastardization, no alteration of history; what is it you are arguing against exactly, except for the bugbears of your imagination? You'll notice from the history at Family tree of Genghis Khan that both Yaan and I have been quite involved in that article as well-- if you find that article to be correct, why would you suppose that the two of us are in opposition to any view of yours?

As for visiting every once in awhile, do as you please, but I do hope that you will, in the future, attempt to work with other editors instead of continually attacking them. Yaan, myself, and the "other frenchman" ("other" is odd, since neither Yaan nor myself claim to be French) are simply trying to discuss the matter with you plainly, but this is getting nowhere. We all "give a hoot" what's in this article; I have in the past done a large amount of research in support of it, and Yaan has made significant contributions as well. If no one gave a hoot, I think it would be quite easy for you to jump in and refactor it in whatever way you pleased. It's fortunate that we have so many interested editors so that no single person (you, myself, or anyone else) is able to do that, in fact.

I think you will find that in situations like these, where you find yourself opposed to the general consensus, that crying foul on the part of your interlocutors and ignoring the arguments presented will also likely gain you little traction. "Contacting administrators" is also not a tactic that is likely to get anywhere. If you want other users to join in this discussion, I recommend RfC. Administrators on wikipedia are not bosses, police, or managers, but more analogous to janitors performing the necessary maintenance tasks, and threatening to call them in in any fashion merely makes it appear that you are not familiar with policy or the standards of this community. siafu (talk) 18:50, 3 September 2010 (UTC)