The Greatest Happiness Is To Vanquish

This saying is most often sourced to Juvaynī's History of the World Conqueror and is sometimes attributed to Rashid al-Dīn's Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh (early 14th century), though neither attribution has been confirmed in a specific verified passage. Genghis Khan's words were not recorded by contemporaries in the modern sense; the surviving accounts were written by Persian court historians decades after his death in 1227. Historians note the quote is likely a later literary formulation of attitudes the Mongol campaigns actually demonstrated — terror used as a deliberate strategic instrument, as documented across multiple independent chronicles.