Descent from Genghis Khan

Chinese texts provide ample evidence of Genghis Khan's descent in East Asia. Across the 14th century, Rashid-al-Din Hamadani and other Muslim historians chronicled his journey through West Asia and Europe. With the development of genealogical DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) testing, a greater and larger group of people have begun to claim Genghis Khan as an ancestor.

Although his paternity is contested, Jochi, Genghis Khan's eldest son, had many more offspring than his siblings Gedei, Chagatai, and Tolui. Conforming to The Secret History of the Mongols, the boy was given to Genghis by Chilger, who had abducted and held hostage his first wife Börte for a year. In one chapter, Chagatai refers to Jochi as a "bastard" (although the true meaning of the Mongol term is obscure). Genghis Khan replies by saying: "How can you make such a snide remark about Jochi? Isn't he the most senior of my heirs? I swore I had never heard such vile remarks again!" Overall, Genghis Khan used the phrase "Jochi is my eldest son" three times. Jochi's dubious parentage, according to modern historians, was the cause of his eventual alienation from his father, as well as the fact that his successors never ascended to the imperial throne. On the other side, Genghis treated Jochi as his first son, and Jochi's early death may explain the Jochid succession failure. Another prime factor to bear in mind is that many of Genghis' descendants intermarried. The Jochids, for example, married women from Persia's Ilkhan dynasty, whose ancestor was Hulagu Khan. As a result, many Jochids are believed to have had additional Genghis Khan sons among their maternal forebears.

The Yuan dynasty of China, the Hulaguids of Persia, the Golden Horde's Jochids, Siberia's Shaybanids, and Central Asia's Astrakhanids were all Asian dynasties descended from Genghis Khan. In Tatar politics, people of Genghisid heritage played a significant role. Mamai (1335–1380), for example, had to exercise his authority through a succession of puppet khans since he lacked Genghisid heritage and could not accept the title of Khan himself. On the other hand, the founder of the Timurid Dynasty, Timur Lenk (1336–1405), claimed ancestry from Genghis Khan. Through marriage, he became linked with Chagatai Khan's family. He never used the title Khan for himself, instead of appointing two Chagatai clan members as official state leaders. The Indian subcontinent's Mughal royal lineage descends from Timur through Babur and Genghis Khan (through his son Chagatai Khan). Through the marriage of King Chungnyeol (reigned 1274–1308) and the daughter of Kublai Khan, the reigning Wang Clan of the Korean Goryeo Dynasty had become descendants of the Genghisids. Through King Gongmin, all succeeding kings of Korea for the following 80 years married Borjigid princesses. The khans of Qazan and Qasim (particularly a Russian tsar, Simeon Bekbulatovich, officially Outstanding Leader of All Rus' from 1575 to 1576, who died 1616) the Giray dynasty, who controlled the Khanate of Crimea until 1783, were later Tatar potentates of Genghisid descent. The countries reigned and ruled by dynasties with descent from Genghis Khan are as follows: Moghulistan, the Northern Yuan dynasty, Kara Del, Khanate of Kazan, Qasim Khanate, the Kazakh Khanate, the Great Horde, the Khanate of Bukhara, the Khanate of Khiva, the Yarkent Khanate, the Arghun dynasty, the Kumul Khanate and the Khanate of Kokand. The Khoshut Khanate's khans were descended from them in a roundabout way. They were descended from Genghis Khan's younger brother, Qasar. As the Russian Empire acquired Turkic polities, Genghizid kings were regularly drafted into the Russian army. Kuchum's successors, for example, were known as the Tsarevichs of Siberia. Princes Valikhanov was the appellation given to descendants of Ablai Khan in Russia. All of these families claimed to be descendants of the Genghis Khan. The House of Giray is the sole surviving family from this group, whose members fled Soviet Russia for the United States and the United Kingdom.

After an anti-Qing uprising in 1675 by Ejei Khan's brother Abunai and Abunai's son Borni against the Qing, one branch of the Borjigids (Ligdan Khan's descendants) was wiped. The Chahar Mongols were, after that, put under the direct control of the Qing Emperors. Qasar, Genghis Khan's younger brother, was also an indirect descendant of the Emperors of the Qing dynasty and the Emperor of Manchukuo. Suleiman, the Magnificent's maternal grandfather, was Khan Meli I Giray of the Crimean Khanate through his daughter Ayşe Hafsa Sultan. The Ottoman dynasty claimed ancestry from Genghis Khan through his son Jochi after that.

Following the Mongol invasion of Rus', the rulers of Russian kingdoms of the Rurik dynasty were keen to marry into the House of Genghis Khan to gain political benefits for themselves and their nations. Yury of Moscow, Alexander's grandson, married a sister of z Beg Khan, but they had no children. Petty Mongol princelings of Genghisid descent, on the other hand, rarely landed in Russia. Berke's nephew, for example, took the Christian name Peter and established St. Peter's Monastery at Rostov, where his ancestors had long been famous as boyars. Three Russian-Mongol marriages may be traced to the present day. One of these was St. Fyodor the Black's marriage to the Mongol ruler Mengu-Timur, who was subsequently made a patron saint of Yaroslavl. Fyodor's relationship with the Khan was idyllic: he spent more time in the Horde (where he was awarded vast lands) than in his capital. All kings of Yaroslavl (from then on) are male-line descendants of Fyodor's marriage to the Tatar Princess, two dozen royal families (such as the Shakhovskoy, Lvov, or Prozorovsky, among others) who transferred Genghis DNA to certain Russian noble houses. Most of these families departed Russia during the 1917 revolution, leaving no one behind. Another Rurikid prince important at the Mongol court was Gleb, Prince of Beloozero, a grandson of Konstantin of Rostov. Gleb married Sartaq Khan's only daughter. This connection gave rise to the House of Belozersk, whose scions include Dmitry Ukhtomsky and the Belosselsky-Belozersky dynasty.

The marriage of Narimantas, Gediminas of Lithuania's second son, to Toqta's daughter is the most difficult. The "Jagiellonian genealogy," produced in the 18th century from Ruthenian records by Joannes Werner, is the earliest source for this union. While the marriage is not implausible (Narimont spent several years in the Horde), Narimont's bride is not mentioned in any existing chronicles. The fact that Narimont's agnatic forebears are the royal families of Golitsyn, Khovansky, and Kurakin adds to the mystery of this highly ambiguous gateway. If the above theory about Narimantas' marriage is accurate, and if Paul I was the son of Saltykov rather than Catherine's husband, and is commonly claimed, then the remaining tsars of Russia (and their descendants, including the current reigning monarchs of Spain, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) are Golitsyns.

Several experts have proposed their ideas concerning Genghis Khan's Y-chromosomal haplogroup (and hence patrilineal heritage). There are other choices, including Haplogroup C-M217, Haplogroup O-M175, Haplogroup R1b, and Haplogroup Q-M242. Zerjal et al. (2003) discovered a Y-chromosomal lineage haplogroup C*(xC3c) in about 8% of men in an Asian region "stretching from northeast China to Uzbekistan" (roughly 0.5 percent of the world total) (roughly 16 million men at the time of publication, if the sample is representative). The authors suggest that male-line descendants of Genghis Khan carried the lineage since it was common among several ethnic groups assumed to be Genghis Khan's forebears. According to research published in the Russian Journal of Genetics, this haplogroup is carried by 24 per cent of Mongolians and is found in low numbers in adjacent Turkic republics (except for Kazakhstan).

Royal et al. (2010), a white paper published by the American Society of Human Genetics Ancestry and Ancestry Testing Task Force, noted the Zerjal et al. hypothesis: Although such a link is far from inconceivable, we presently have no method of determining how much trust to invest in it. However, we highlight that statistical power is typically poor when formal conclusions about population history are made using uniparental systems. As a result, links between certain uniparental lineages and historical individuals or people migrations are purely hypothetical.

The Mongol descendants of Dayan Khan, the Northern Yuan monarch from 1474 to 1517 and a male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, carry the Y chromosome haplogroup C2c1a1a1-M407 discovered geneticists in Mongolia tested them. Because Kazakhs and Hazaras were descended from ordinary Mongol soldiers during the Mongol empire conquests, but not from Genesis himself, this is a different haplogroup from the infamous widespread C2b1a3a1c2-F5481 clade of C2*-ST that is widespread in Central Asia among Kazakhs, Hazaras, and ordinary commoner Mongols. The C3* star-cluster (C2*-ST) Y chromosome is abundant in the Kazakh Kerey clan, as it is among Hazaras, Kazakhs, and Mongols in general. Toghan, Genghis Khan's sixth son, has claimed Y haplogroup C2b1a1b1-F1756 descendants in the Kazakh Tore clan, exactly as Genesis Khan's first son, Jochi. Genghis Khan may have belonged to the R-M343 haplogroup, according to research released in 2016. (R1b). Five remains were discovered in tombs at Tavan Tolgoi, Mongolia, ranging in age from 1130 to 1250. All five bodies anthropologically belong to the East Asian race. They may be members of the Golden Family, according to the writers. They believe Genghis Khan belonged to haplogroup R1b-M343, for the same reasons as Zerjal et al. believe he belonged to the C3 haplogroup: the high prevalence of haplogroup R1b in certain supposed Golden Family male-line descendants, as well as the Tavan Tolgoi corpses themselves. However, the same authors speculated that the bodies were the result of clan marriages between the female lineages of Genghis Khan's Borjigin clan and the male lineages of the Ongud clan, allowing the Mongol queen to consolidate her authority over the conquered Ongud Kingdom. It is still unknown if the remains belong to members of the Golden family or if they are founded as male-line descendants of Genghis Khan or male descent from other Mongolian clans and tribes.

A Chinese study team indicated in 2017 that the Y chromosome C-M217*-Star Cluster likely dates back to ordinary Mongols, not Genghis Khan, and that "a direct connection of haplogroup C-M217 to Genghis Khan has yet to be identified." Authors Chiara Batini and Mark Jobling questioned Zerjal's 2003 notion that Genghis Khan was connected to haplogroup C in a review study published in Human Genetics. A Chinese research team stated in 2019 that Haplogroup C2b1a1b1-F1756 might be the real contender for Genghis Khan's true Y lineage. A genetic study of Northwest China's molecular genealogy reveals that the Lu clan claimed to be descendants of Genghis Khan's sixth son, Khulgen [Wikidata] and that they belong to Y-DNA haplogroup C2b1a1b1 F1756, which is also closely related to the paternal lineage of the Tore clan from Kazakhstan, who claimed to be paternally descendants of Genghis Khan's first son, Jochi. The notion that the Lu clan is a descendent of Khulgen, on the other hand, is debatable and contradicted by numerous other research.

• Mr. Prosser, the highway contractor in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is (unbeknownst to him) a direct patrilineal descendant of Genghis Khan. This expresses itself in a fondness for fur caps, a desire to hang axes above his front door, being somewhat overweight, and images of wailing Mongol hordes.
• Character created in the imagination Shiwan Khan, the only living descendent of Genghis Khan, appears in The Shadow, a series of serialized plays first broadcast on radio in the 1930s. He also appeared in The Shadow, a 1994 film adaption.
• In Marvel Comics, both the Mandarin and his son Temugin both key opponents of the Iron Man, which are descendants of Genghis Khan.
• A crowd member chastises Bill and Ted for bringing Genghis Khan to the future, claiming Genghis Khan slaughtered millions and claimed erroneously that 6 per cent of all Mongolians were his direct descendants due to rape, in a spoof of the 1989 comedy film Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure by the sketch show Robot Chicken.