In recent years the advances made in the study of nomad history have done much to dispel the popular misconception of Chinghiz Khan. Carried away by the great conqueror's feats of arms, writers have frequently treated him as a political phenomenon, unique and apart from the current of history to which he properly belongs. In reality his career constitutes the most outstanding chapter in the history of the nomads of Northern Asia. Surpassing the most famous of his predecessors, he outstripped the greatest of the Hsiung-nu and Turkish rulers and left behind a name that is a household word from China to the Danube. Of all his exploits, none has impressed the Occident so much as his invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire. This, with its tremendous consequences for the world of Islam and Eastern Europe, has tended to draw attention away from his wars in China. Also it is only since the labours of M. Pelliot and other distinguished Sinologists that many valuable Chinese documents on Chinghiz Khan have become known.

Grenard has said, “it is largely because of human nature's delight in superlatives, that the world's famous captains have always been given perfectly fabulous hosts. Great generals must have huge armies. The names of Genghis Khan (Chinghiz Khan), Timur, Alexander, and Xerxes mount like wine to the brain of the historian. His figures become figures of speech: ‘one hundred thousand’ becomes his minimum. He soon leaps to ‘one million’. He does this with a sense of relish but also because he knows that his reader will tremble with pleasurable awe at the passing of a conqueror who leads countless warriors.”

There can be few events in history so little known as Chinghiz Khan's wars with Hsi Hsia. Even in works dealing with the conqueror's life, one finds hardly more than a brief sketch of his conquest of this state. Doubtless this is due to the principal records extant on Hsi Hsia being written in Chinese. Many of these must include material originally drawn from Hsi Hsian documents, but to-day the latter are very rare, and until recently there was no one who could read them. Hence most of what has come down to us is from the pens of enemies, and even this is little known to students of Chinese or Mongol history. Yet in its day Hsi Hsia ranked among the great powers of Asia, and next to the empires of Chin and Khwarizm, was the strongest state overthrown by Chinghiz Khan.