Genghis Kahn: A Semantic Analysis

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Sergi Bodrov’s Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Kahn can just be seen as a movie that shows gory battle scenes and a journey of a man; however, Bodrovs movie also shows elements of how the Mongols created the largest empire in the premodern world and kept it going for a century. Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Kahn particularly reflects the harshness of the people and of the conditions they lived in, the divine power and their mission from God, their value of knowledge, and the fairness they had towards their people.
The Mongols lived in the steppes of China where the terrain was rough and the environment was harsh. The terrain consisted of barren flat lands and the air was blustery. The harshness of the terrain in Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Kahn
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The Mongols had their own skills in certain areas such as warfare but they also had their weaknesses like literacy and skilled craftsmanship. We know that most of the Mongols were illiterate when Temudgin is asked to save the monastery but he says “I can’t read” (Bodrov, Mongol, 2008), so why should they save the monastery? The Mongol empire made sure that many of the skilled workers were saved when they were conquering cities. The Mongols admired the skills of the workers and it is shown in “Genghis Kahn and the Mongol Empire”. This quote says “The conquerors had not carefully spared the lives of so many artisans during the plunder of cities only to let them sit idle, and so the artisans continued to work even as fighting continued” (Roux, 2003, 74). The Mongols also valued the scholars of China and it is shown when the monk asks Temudgin to spare the monastery because it has many sacred books inside (Bodrov, Mongol, 2008). In the end of the movie it does say that the monastery survived and the Mongols kept the sacred books. The value of other people’s knowledge that the Mongols had was different from other dynasties because usually the new dynasties wanted to make their own records and scholarly works rather than save someone else’s. The Mongols also treated their people fairly unlike other

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