Perhaps the most daring of all Chinggis Khan's generals, Jebe's career with Chinggis began in 1201 after the battle of Koyiten, when Chinggis was still called Temujin and Jebe Zurgadai. During the battle he had fought with Temujin's enemy Jamuhka, and shot and killed Temujin's horse with an arrow. After the battle, Zurgadai either turned himself in, or was captured, and told Temujin that he was the one who and shot his horse. Admiring his bravery, Temujin took Zurgadai into his service and gave him a new name, Jebe, meaning 'arrow.' From then on Jebe became one of Chinggis' most loyal generals, taking on far flung missions and spreading the law of the Khan with his sword.
Jebe was one of the most highly skilled cavalry commanders in history, as demonstrated repeatedly during the campaign against the Jin in China, taking heavily fortified cities and passes such as Tung-ching and Juyongguan with numerically inferior, but highly skilled, detachments, luring his foes into false retreats and falling upon them when they entered his trap. When the Mongols went west, it was Jebe who chased Kuchlug out of the former Kara-Khitai Khanate, and when the Mongols attacked the Khwarezmian Empire, it is no surprise that Jebe led the vanguard. With Subutai, Jebe would chase the Khwarezmian Shah Muhammad II to his death in the Caspian Sea, and then in a famous 'expedition' marched through Northwestern Iran, the Caucasus and the southern Russian steppe in 1223.
It was here though, the Jebe's recklessness seems to have gotten the better of him: the Kipchak tribes fled the Mongols to join with some Russian princes, and together they marched on the Mongols. Jebe went on reconnaissance with a small party, but the Kipchak saw them and fell upon him. Poor Jebe was captured and executed, and it was up to Subutai to avenge him at the battle of the Kalka River.
Jebe's fate was for a long time a mystery, but historian Stephen Pow, in his article "The Last Campaign and Death of Jebe Noyan," has shown that it is almost certain that Jebe died before the Kalka River: confusion came as Russian chroniclers were translated the turkic version of Jebe's name, Yama Beg, as Gyama/Hyema Beg, causing us to miss this information. Mongolian sources, out of respect or shame, gave us no detail on Jebe's final fate.
For more on Jebe's campaigns, see my latest video on the Mongol invasion of the Jin Empire in 1211: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RDRG3yGoqc
