Yep. It's great news in the Hun household!

We find out now that all the bad press about this fellow was simply more Soviet disinformation about the folk hero of one of its captive nations - Mongolia!

Here's a painting and the article:

[img]http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0510/csmimg/0510p8a.jpg[/img]

DIPLOMAT NOT MARAUDER? A painting at an art exhibit shows a young Genghis Khan. Mongolia is sponsoring a series of events to honor Khan.

[size=4]Mongolia's marauding son gets a makeover[/size=4]

By Robert Marquand | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

ULAN BATOR, MONGOLIA – Genghis Khan: not someone you'd want to bring home for dinner.
Khan is popularly one of history's bad boys. In school texts, he's a marauding Tatar, an antihero; he's the Mongol who burned and slashed his way through Russia and Poland.
 
During Mongolia's decades long alliance with the Soviets, not only was Khan vilified for 50 years as an enemy of the people; it was a crime to even speak of the native son whose 13th-century empire stretched from present-day Vietnam to the Danube River.

Now, as this isolated nation of nomads struggles to find a post-communist identity and niche in the world, Genghis Khan is back and undergoing a major rehabilitation.

Mongolians, who complain that their history has always been written by biased outsiders – often the Soviets and papa Joseph Stalin – feel that the revision is long overdue. Here, the man known as Chenggis Khan is revered as a combination of King Arthur and Sitting Bull.

Indeed, many scholars agree that Khan is a candidate for better historical treatment – a more complex figure than the violent conqueror who cuts a bloody swath through older narratives. Khan's later legal ideas protected women, they say, and forbade the use of soldiers as slaves. Some argue Khan only turned West after the slaying of several hundred Mongols on a peaceful mission to Persia. At the least, the Mongol leader opened the West to the East – a path traced back by Marco Polo, who befriended Genghis' grandson, Kublai Khan.

[b]On May 3[/b] – Khan's 840th birthday – Mongolia proclaimed a series of celebrations for their greatest hero – speeches, art exhibitions, wrestling matches, and an international conference in August.

That might sound unexceptional – except it is the first time Mongolians have ever done so.

So blanked out of history was Khan in Mongolia, that during glasnost, or openness, in the 1980s, when an obscure cultural journal published a photo of him on the cover, few Mongolians recognized him. Khan consciousness was mostly kept alive underground.

"I've discovered that most of what I read about Genghis Khan as a child was wrong," says Gundalai Lamjav, a member of the Mongolian parliament. "The books influenced by Soviet ideology made Khan just awful. The Russians ... always hated him ... and didn't want us to learn anything else."

See remainder of article at:[url]http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0510/p01s04-woap.html[/url]

I never knew he and I shared a birthdate - May 3!

Eric The(NextArticle-BlackDeathWas[u]Good[/u]ForEurope!)Hun[>]:)]

Like Khan, like Hun. [:p]

I can't believe I had to wait until I was 50 before I learned that little tidbit of news!

You know, I really should get out and rape and pillage more!

But y'all know how it is, you get so easily sidetracked into doing something else.

Eric The(ButTheKettle'sOnTheBoil,AndI'mSoEasilyCalledAway,UncleAlbert)Hun[>]:)]

Where did they find a [b]photograph[/b] of Genghis Khan? [>:/]

Being a lawyer is much crueler.

I'm almost afraid to ask this Eric but are you related to [i]Attila[/i]?

Post from ECS -

Gulp. I knew this day would come and how I have dreaded it, but, yes, I am distantly related to Attila.

I always like to think of g-g-g-g-g-g-grandad Attila as being the Father of Urban Renewal
Programs.

We know for certain that many cities were rebuilt after he and his hoards passed through.

Eric The(Dreaded)Hun[>]:)]

Dude, everybody with European ancestry is distantly related to Attila, Kaiser Wilhelm, Queen Liz, Karl V. (Charlemagne) etc

Some lady in Washington or Oregon with too much time on her hands has our family tree clear back to 1265, and the reason it doesn't go back further is that this is about the time when family names have been adopted to start with. So, if you look at population numbers and do the math, it would be impossible NOT to be related to any number of ancient European "celebrities".

PS A village close to my hometown is called Etzelbach (Attila's Creek).

Edited to add: What I mean is, look at the number of people living in Europe when Attila and other miscelleaneous "mongolian hordes" came through, take in account that Europe's population was decimated a couple of times or so by the bubonic plague, syphilis (brought back from the New World, we gave them cholera, they gave us syphilis, fair trade) and the 30 years War of 1618-1648) The genetic spectrum of the European race (and all other races) used to be quite narrow until fairly recently, when intercontinental travel became an affordable convenience.

You are correct, [b]Kar98[/b].

Back in the 1950s, a British geneologist wrote that a child born in England in 1950 is related to 90% of the people who lived in England in 1600.

This is why anyone who has their English ancestry researched is [u]invaribly[/u] related to someone of historical note such as Sir Francis Drake or Sir Walter Raleigh.

It's a geneologists' heaven.

I gave up on trying to do my German geneology.

I posted a couple of threads in some local Surname Boards and after two years, have yet to come up with anything!

Eric The(Stymied)Hun[>]:)]

BWAHAHAHAHA! Now That's funny!

I have to admit....he does look like Attila. [:D]

I think it can be safely said that Attila the Hun founded the city of Venice!

It was his invasion in 452 AD that drove the people to seek shelter in the Venetian Islands and which led to the founding of the city!

[url]http://www.boglewood.com/timeline/hunrefugees.html[/url]

See, Huns aren't all bad.[>]:)]

There's a lesson in all this...

Attila's and Ghenghis's critical mistake was in NOT having a good PR guy on staff.

Take Clinton....

Without all his PR guys, he'd have gone down in history as William Jefferson Khan.

And we'd be associating the phrase "I feel your pain" with Eric's namesake.

And "I cause you pain" with Wild Bill.

[:D]

Their family trees don't branch much, do they? [BD]

Everybody go get "Hun" mugs and T's....
[url]http://www.formerlywornby.com/attila.htm[/url]
[:D]

Actually, for the survivors, the Black Death [i]was[/i] good.  The lack of labor from the horrendous loss of life actually gave power to the lower classes and has been credited with, if not creating then accelerating the growth of the middle class.  

It also is credited with breaking the hold of the Church on the populace.  Remember, the plagues began in the mid 1300's.

I think the same can be said for Alabama....[BD][BD][BD]

This is the new Genghis Khan from Ulysse Nardin.

[img]http://www.ulysse-nardin.com/images/watches/genghiskan/large/gk_watch_lrg.jpg[/img]