Genghis Khan – Psychopath or Passionate leader?

Genghis Khan was definitely a man of multiple personalities. He proved himself quite capable of creating a massive land empire, but at the same time, made people question whether or not he was mentally stable. On one hand, it is clear to see the compassionate side of Khan during certain situations throughout his lifetime. For example, whoever deemed that Genghis was a sociopath was definitely delusional because claiming he was antisocial is completely false. First of all, he was able to maintain a very tight relationship with his best friend, Jamuka. Also, when his wife went missing, Khan was so depressed and distraught that he sent out thousands of men in a desperate search for his wife. A man of zero emotion would not have gone to that extent to uncover where his wife had disappeared to if he, in fact, did not care. He did show affection towards women and their children…for the most part lol. And plus, at the end of the day, most rulers that we have studied in history share one common interest; conquest and expansion of their empires. Any leader will be relentless and ruthless when it comes to how they achieve that, as long as they are able to sustain control and conquer neighboring territories as effectively as possible. In addition to this, some of Genghis’s behavior is justified by his childhood, seeing as how his father died when he was very young, and he had to cope with his half-brothers/sisters, which was clearly at time difficult because the family had to fend for itself. He kinda grew up in an environment which taught “every man for himself” ethics.

                On the flip side, he ended up ordering the execution of his “best friend” Jamuka…guess that friendship definitely experienced some roadbumps. He also killed his half-brother for stealing his fish when he was younger…clearly he was a killer in the making. He showed no real limits when it came to killing everything and everyone that got in the way of his goal to expand his territory and reign, but I guess that was beneficial in some ways too. Overall, I don’t think Genghis khan was a psychopath, but he most definitely was materialistic and had an obscene amount of avarice for conquest.