Rude barbarian, oriental despot, eaten by exorbitant ambition and obsessed with a disastrous political project? A sophisticated statesman whose end justifies the means? A wise conqueror who firmly decided to provide the Mongol peoples with a place under the sun? The portrait of the man who founded the largest empire in human history may take on a wide variety of features, but it will never be finally completed. On the basis of ancient manuscripts, including those belonging to the pen of contemporaries of the great khan, the author talks in detail and impartially about the life path of the creator of the Mongol Empire.