Benevolent?? Total horse poop!! He decimated the area of Iran among other areas in the West, and at one point decided to massacre 30,000,000 Chinese to return the land to pasture. I guess he was worried about global warming.
The area that is now Iraq was densely populated and among the most prosperous and politically important areas in the world continuously for something like four or five thousand years. Under Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Parthians, Persians (again), intermittently Romans and Byzantines, and Arab and Turkish Moslems.
Hundreds of wars were fought back and forth across this land over this period. Canals were destroyed, but always rebuilt by the peasantry, reviving the prosperity.
700 years ago the Mongols rolled thru and not only destroyed the canals but killed the peasants. Nobody left to rebuild. The area has never recovered its former prosperity.
You realize of course you’re wasting your breath — the only other advocacy group for a former bloodthirsty mass-murdering despot that comes close to the devotion of the fans of GK are those who prefer the (benevolent, peaceful) Persians over the Greeks. Asking for tokens of submission? That was just symbolic. Moving a couple of hundred thousand troops across a pontoon bridge was just a peace parade.
He lived in a brutal era as his own youth demonstrates. He was, indeed, benevolent by the standards of his time, and he and his decedents did a lot to open up trade routes from east to west...and kept them safe for travel which was a situation never experienced up until then. Unfortunately it was these trade routes that allowed the black plague to find it’s way to Europe. I think it was more Kublai that had the dealings with the Chinese.