Genghis Khan
The Yuan-dynasty album portrait of Genghis Khan, painted in China decades after his death in 1227.
No likeness was made in his lifetime, so this image is a Chinese court painter's version of a Mongol founder who by then had become the ancestor of an imperial dynasty. Temüjin united the steppe tribes in 1206 by breaking the clan structure that had always divided them, reorganising followers into decimal military units that cut across kinship. The conquests that followed were built on that administrative decision. Read the full story in our article on How Genghis Khan Unified the Mongol Tribes by 1206.
Public domain — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
