Dog, thanks for the video on Temujin. I had the great blessing of meeting and of being befriended by a man who was raised in a Sufi- Dervish monestary overseen by his grandfather in Kasakcstan. He would come to my house with herb filled dried meat rolls and plum wine. We would eat and drink all night. He would tell me his family stories, such as how they took Bejing with only 7000 hosemen. How to make a calcium and protien rich food that would keep without refrigeration to use on long journeys. How, when having only enough usable weapons to outfit 1/3 of his army for an upcoming battle, Temujin had his men build a giant mud furnace to melt down and re-forge broken and damage swords. There being no fuel on the steppes, 1/3 of his men marched steadily into the furnace to fuel the forge. With the smaller, yet fully equiped army, he prevailed.
His eldest son settled on the River Volga south of Moscow.(The Golden Hoard) My friend is(was) the eldest son of the eldest son 14 times over.
So many stories. Curiously, I have no memory of our first meeting.
One night when he came to visit....always un announced,,,my girlfriend was cleaning up the dishes after we had all eated together. I guess she made too much noise (that old school, women out of sight and silent thing) clanking dishes. He suddenly jumped up and declared that if he had had his sword he would have sliced her head off!!! So, I skillfully calmed and nudged him out the door and suggested he come back when he could apologize for scaring the daylights out of my girlfriend. Well, he returned the next day. Stated that he would not apologize but he had a Kabota tractor catalog in his hand and told me to pick the one I liked and he would have it delivered post haste. I declined. I never saw him again.
He changed my understanding of life and history.