Genghis Khan and the Quest for God: How the World's Greatest Conqueror Gave Us Religious Freedom

With this latest work, Weatherford (Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World) exhaustively explores the nontraditional philosophy of Genghis Khan (1162–1227). Instead of instituting a more traditional ruler-sanctioned model, Khan allowed his conquered subjects (nomadic tribes in Central Asia and the Caucasus) the freedom to continue practicing their own religion. This is a truly distinct worldview, as Weatherford asserts, given the religious fervidness of the Middle Ages. The author then suggests a link between Khan's ideas and those in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which pertains to freedom of religion. Weatherford uses the discovery of books about Khan in Thomas Jefferson's personal library as a launching point to suggest that Jefferson was directly influenced by Khan's thinking while he drafted the U.S. Constitution. Perhaps, as Weatherford suggests, we can learn a lot from this ancient despot.