Isn't it likely that just about everyone on the planet is descended from Jenghiz Khan? Do the math! Wasn't there an article somewhere about this a few years back?
> For instance, these rather illustrious "Russian" names
> are actually Mongol in origin:
>
> Bukharin
> Kutuzov
> Akhmatova
> Rakhmaninov
> Rhimsky-Khorsakov
Well, no "race" is ever "pure." How many "English" names are Latinate, derived from the Normans? "Irish" names that are in fact English? There are probably all kinds of names all over western and central Europe that are German in origin even if the country doesn't speak a Germanic language, since the ruling houses and even lesser nobility of Europe where heavily German. (Didn't the House of Saxe-Goteburg change its name to the House of Windsor as recently as World War I?)
Anyway, I definitely agree with Chris that the Mongols were bad dudes. They had a reputation on both ends of Eurasia as fierce conquerors, and many places in between (cf. Tamerlane), and they really were the ruling class in many places for generations thereafter. Since "race" didn't exist in the time of Jenghiz, it's not racist to point this out; in fact many Europeans (as well as Chinese, etc.) were the oppressed peoples of their day in relation to Mongol or Tartar overlords. (Though to make an educated guess about one example under discussion, I would bet that the national legends of Iran probably more often cast Arabs as the conquering villains instead of Mongols.)
At the same time I can see where Charles is coming from in that the construction of Mongol warriors as the baddest of the bad guys assumes problematic connotations in light of subsequent history. While the Mongols were indeed ruthless conquerors, there's a tendency to read racist notions of "Asiatic" cruelty, barbarism, and sensuous "luxury" into what they did. The same goes for other ancient conquerors. Why, for example -- when the Germans of the last century were ravaging the world -- were they contemptuously referred to as "the Hun"? The Huns were only one group of marauding bands who eventually melded together to form the German people, but they were physiologically the most "Asiatic" (look at most visual representations of Attila and you will see this); why not refer to them by the name of some other notorious ancient German tribe, the Alemanii or Teutons for example? Why "the Hun"? I think the answer's kind of obvious.
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