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One imagines a homogenous horde, a group of identical warriors whose fearsome attack was unstoppable.
The truth however is much more complex, and the feat that Genghis Khan wrought in being able to unit all of these fractious tribes is all the more impressive when you learn about how divided they were before his advent.
There were three major tribes at the time, each a confederacy of small tribes and clans, and these were the Kereyids, Naimans and Tatars.
They were large in size, of differing religions, and abutted the Chinese lands from which they derived much of their wealth and status.
However, the Mongols at the time were a broken group of tribes that followed no one leader, forced to survive under incredible hardship as they were on the edge of the forests and thus had little grazing land for their animals, surviving instead as hunters and raiders.
The Mongol tribes were composed of a collection of larger groups and then a host of smaller clans that were based on lineage.
The Tayichiud, the Merkid and the Jadaran were some of the larger tribes, numbering in the hundreds, while the smaller family clans would be several dozen individuals living in perhaps five or six hide tents, moving constantly to find food and owing allegiance to the larger tribes.
These smaller Mongol tribes were often recruited by force by the Kereyid, Naiman and Tatar forces, who were constantly at war with each other, their allegiances shifting from year to year as the Chinese played them against each other in order to keep them weak and disorganized.
When one of the three began to become too powerful, the Chinese would instigate an alliance between the other two who would turn upon the more powerful tribe and tear them down.
This was the world that Genghis Khan was born into, and his ability to unite these fractious tribes was a testament to his leadership.
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