Politics, Ethnicity and Ideology

Genghis Khan and modern Mongolian identity | Genghis Khan's Mausoleum | Anti-Genghis

Genghis Khan and modern Mongolian identity

Mongolia's marauding son gets a makeover by Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor (May 10, 2002). Article details modern Mongolia's "rediscovery" of Ghengis Khan, and efforts to make him a cohesive symbol of Mongolian identity. Includes a recent painting of a young, and peaceful, Genghis Khan.

Mongolia's cult of the great Khan by Rupert Wingfield-Hayes BBC, Mongolia. This is an article about how Mongolia has embraced the tradition of Genghis Khan now that the laws and freedom have permitted it.

Genghis Khan's Mausoleum

See also Genghis Khan's Tomb. The Mausoleum was built in 1956 by the Chinese government and stocked with traditional items of veneration in order to coopt Mongol national and religious feeling.

"The Eight White Ordon, the Offering Ceremonies of Genghis Khan and the Mausoleum of Genghis Khan" by Oyunbilig, 1997. This is a positive ocean of details about Genghis Khan's death and subsequent veneration—more more detail than anywhere else on the web, and by a Mongolian who clearly knows his stuff. At the same time, it's rather dense and not perfectly organized. Includes some negative comments on Kravitz' expedition in its early stages.

Travel China Guide. Some photographs, brief text.

Photographs of a doll-house sized reproduction of the Mausoleum of Genghis Khan. What's going on here is complicated, but here's my best effort to explain.

1. There is a theme park in Kissimmee, Florida, called "Florida Splendid China." [sic]
2. The theme park specializes in tiny reproductions of monuments found in China.
3. The website of Florida Splendid China doesn't have any pictures of the mausoleum.
4. The pictures above are provided by Citizens Against Communist Chinese Propaganda, who oppose the theme park for its sponsorship by the People's Republic of China, and for the park (and China's) attempt to downplay and coöpt non-Chinese ethnic identities and histories.

China publishes Genghis Khan's sacrificial files for first time. Article on People's Daily, (April 17, 2001). This article is about China's release of three books on memorial files and documents of the legendary Genghis Khan for the first time.

ChinaTravel.com. Minimal.

Anti-Genghis

Iranian criticism of the art exhibition "The Legacy of Genghis Khan", with to-and-fro between Ahmad Kamron Jabbari, of Mazda Publishers, and Linda Komaroff, currator of the LACMA. Jabbari writes,

"Given that the Genghis invasion disrupted all kinds of production for nearly three decades and that the art that followed was wholly that of the Iranian phoenix rising from the ashes (rather than the contributions of its brutal nomadic invaders), we find the title of this exhibition least appropriate and troubling. An analogy that may best explain the displeasure of the Iranian community with this title would be to name Jewish art following Hitler's atrocities as 'The Legacy of Hitler.'"