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given birth to the imperial race, and the latter has been extended by accident or error over the spacious wilderness of the north.

The code of laws which Zingis dictated to his subjects was adapted to the preservation of domestic peace and the exercise of His laws. foreign hostility. The punishment of death was inflicted on the crimes of adultery, murder, perjury, and the capital thefts of an horse or ox; and the fiercest of men were mild and just in their intercourse with each other. The future election of the great khan was vested in the princes of his family and the heads of the tribes; and the regulations of the chase were essential to the pleasures and plenty of a Tartar camp. The victorious nation was held sacred from all servile labours, which were abandoned to slaves and strangers; and every labour was servile except the profession of arms. The service and discipline of the troops, who were armed with bows, scimitars, and iron maces, and divided by hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands, were the institutions of a veteran commander. Each officer and soldier was made responsible, under pain of death, for the safety and honour of his companions; and the spirit of conquest breathed in the law that peace should never be granted unless to a vanquished and suppliant enemy. But it is the religion of Zingis that best deserves our wonder and applause." The Catholic inquisitors of Europe, who defended nonsense by cruelty, might have been confounded by the example of a barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of philosophy, and established by his laws a system of pure

A singular conformity may be found between the religious laws of Zingis Khan and of Mr. Locke (Constitutions of Carolina, in his works, vol. iv. p. 535, 4to. edition, 1777).

the Mahometan writers, who, from religious zeal, endeavoured to connect the traditions of the nomads of central Asia with those of the Old Testament, as preserved in the Koran. There is no trace of it in the Chinese writers. Tabl. de l'Asie, p. 156.-M.

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Before his armies entered Thibet he an embassy to Bogdosott-namDsimmo, a Lama high priest, with a letter to this effect:-"I have chosen thee as "high priest for myself and my empire. "" Repair then to me, and promote the "present and future happiness of man: I "will be thy supporter and protector: let "us establish a system of religion, and "unite it with the monarchy," &c. The high priest accepted the invitation; and the Mongol history literally terms this step the period of the first respect for religion; because the monarch, by his public profession, made it the religion of the atate. Klaproth, Travels in Caucasus,' ch, vii. Eng. Trans. p. 92. Neither Zingis

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nor his son and successor Oegodah had, on account of their continual wars, much leisure for the propagation of the religion of the Lama. By religion they understand a distinct, independent, sacred moral code, which has but one origin, one source, and one object. This notion they universally propagate, and even believe that the brutes, and all created beings, have a religion adapted to their sphere of action. The different forms of the various religions they ascribe to the difference of individuals, nations, and legislators. Never do you hear of their inveighing against any creed, even against the obviously absurd Schaman paganism, or of their persecuting others on that account. They themselves, on the other hand, endure every hardship, and even persecutions, with perfect resignation, and indulgently excuse the follies of others, nay, consider them as a motive for increased ardour in prayer. Ch. ix. p. 109, -X.

theism and perfect toleration. His first ana only article of faith was the existence of one God, the Author of all good, who fills by his presence the heavens and earth, which he has created by his power. The Tartars and Moguls were addicted to the idols of their peculiar tribes; and many of them had been converted by the foreign missionaries to the religions of Moses, of Mahomet, and of Christ. These various systems in freedom and concord were taught and practised within the precincts of the same camp; and the Bonze, the Imam, the Rabbi, the Nestorian, and the Latin priest, enjoyed the same honourable exemption from service and tribute: in the mosque of Bochara the insolent victor might trample the Koran under his horse's feet, but the calm legislator respected the prophets and pontiffs of the most hostile sects. The reason of Zingis was not informed by books: the khan could neither read nor write; and, except the tribe of the Igours, the greatest part of the Moguls and Tartars were as illiterate as their sovereign. The memory of their exploits was preserved by tradition: sixty-eight years after the death of Zingis these traditions were collected and transcribed; the brevity of their domestic annals may be supplied by the Chinese, Persians,"

8

7 In the year 1294, by the command of Caran, khan of Persia, the fourth in descent from Zingis. From these traditions his vizir Fadlallah composed a Mogul history in the Persian language, which has been used by Petit de la Croix (Hist. de Genghizcan, p. 537-539). The Histoire Généalogique des Tatars (à Leyde, 1726, in 12mo. 2 tomes) was translated by the Swedish prisoners in Siberia from the Mogul MS. of Abulgasi Bahadur Khan, a descendant of Zingis, who reigned over the Usbeks of Charasm, or Carizme (A.D. 1644-1663). He is of most value and credit for the names, pedigrees, and manners of his nation. Of his nine parts, the ist descends from Adam to Mogul Khan; the iid, from Mogul to Zingis; the iiid is the life of Zingis; the ivth, vth, vith, and viith, the general history of his four sons and their posterity; the viiith and ixth, the particular history of the descendants of Sheibani Khan, who reigned in Maurenahar and Charasm.

• Histoire de Gentchiscan, et de toute la Dinastie des Mongous ses Successeurs, Conquérans de la Chine; tirée de l'Histoire de la Chine par le R. P. Gaubil, de la Société de Jésus, Missionaire à Peking; à Paris, 1739, in 4to. This translation is stamped with the Chinese character of domestic accuracy and foreign ignorance.

See the Histoire du Grand Genghizcan, premier Empereur des Moguls et Tartares, par M. Petit de la Croix, à Paris, 1710, in 12mo.: a work of ten years' labour, chiefly drawn from the Persian writers, among whom Nisavi, the secretary of sultan Gelaleddin, has the merit and prejudices of a contemporary. A slight air of romance is the fault of the originals, or the compiler. See likewise the articles of Genghizcan, Mohammed, Gelaleddin, &c., in the Bibliothèque Orientale of D'Herbelot.b

The Igour, more correctly called Ouigours, were Turks and not Mongols. Respecting their language and alphabet see Editor's note, vol. iii. p. 307, 308. -S.

See the notice on Tha-tha-toung-o, the Ouigour minister of Zingis, in Abel Rémusat's 2nd series of Recherch. Asiat. vol. ii. p. 61. He taught the son of Zingis to write: "He was the instructor "of the Moguls in writing, of which they

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were before ignorant;" and hence the application of the Ouigour characters to the Mogul language cannot be placed earlier than the year 1204 or 1205, nor so late as the time of Pâ-sse-pa, who lived under Khubilai. A new alphabet, approaching to that of Thibet, was introduced under Khubilai.-M.

The preface to D'Ohsson, Itist, čes Mongols, gives a catalogue of the Arie and Persian authorities.-M.

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Armenians, Syrians," Arabians, 12 Greeks, 13 Russians," Poles," Hungarians, and Latins; 17 and each nation will deserve credit in the relation of their own disasters and defeats.18

The arms of Zingis and his lieutenants successively reduced the hordes of the desert, who pitched their tents between the wall of

10 Haithonus, or Aithonus, an Armenian prince, and afterwards a monk of Premontré (Fabric. Biblioth. Lat. medii Ævi, tom. i. p. 34), dictated in the French language his book de Tartaris, his old fellow-soldiers. It was immediately translated into Latin, and is inserted in the Novus Orbis of Simon Grynæus (Basil, 1555, in folio)."

Zingis Khan, and his first successors, occupy the conclusion of the ixth Dynasty of Abulpharagius vers. Pocock, Oxon. 1663, in 4to.); and his xth Dynasty is that of the Moguls of Persia. Assemannus (Biblioth. Orient. tom. ii.) has extracted some facts from his Syriac writings, and the lives of the Jacobite maphrians, or primates of the East.

12 Among the Arabians, in language and religion, we may distinguish Abulfeda, sultan of Hamah in Syria, who fought in person, under the Mameluke standard, against the Moguls.

13 Nicephorus Gregoras (1. ii. c. 5, 6) has felt the necessity of connecting the Scythian and Byzantine histories. He describes with truth and elegance the settlement and manners of the Moguls of Persia, but he is ignorant of their origin, and corrupts the names of Zingis and his sons.

14 M. Levesque (Histoire de Russie, tom. ii.) has described the conquest of Russia by the Tartars, from the patriarch Nicon and the old chronicles.

15 For Poland I am content with the Sarmatia Asiatica et Europea of Matthew à Michou, or De Michoviâ, a canon and physician of Cracow (A.D. 1506), inserted in the Novus Orbis of Grynæus. Fabric. Biblioth. Latin. mediæ et infimæ Ætatis, tom. v. p. 56.

18 I should quote Thuroczius, the oldest general historian (pars ii. c. 74, p. 150), in the 1st volume of the Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum, did not the same volume contain the original narrative of a contemporary, an eye-witness, and a sufferer (M. Rogerii, Hungari, Varadiensis Capituli Canonici, Carmen miserabile, seu Historia super Destructione Regni Hungariæ Temporibus Belæ IV. Regis per Tartaros facta, p. 292-321); the best picture that I have ever seen of all the circumstances of a barbaric invasion.

17 Matthew Paris has represented, from authentic documents, the danger and distress of Europe (consult the word Tartari in his copious Index). From motives of zeal and curiosity, the court of the great khan in the xiiith century was visited by two friars, John de Plano Carpini, and William Rubruquis, and by Marco Polo, a Venetian gentleman. The Latin relations of the two former are inserted in the 1st volume of Hakluyt; the Italian original or version of the third (Fabric. Biblioth. Latin. medii Ævi, tom. ii. p. 198, tom. v. p. 25) may be found in the second tome of Ramusio.

18 In his great History of the Zingis Khan and his successors.

Huns M. de Guignes has most amply treated of See tom. iii. 1. xv.-xix. and in the collateral articles of the Seljukians of Roum, tom. ii. 1. xi.; the Carizmians, 1. xiv.; and the Mamelukes, tom. iv. 1. xxi.: consult likewise the tables of the 1st volume. He is ever learned and accurate; yet I am only indebted to him for a general view, and some passages of Abulfeda, which are still latent in the Arabic text.b

A précis at the end of the new edition of Le Beau, Hist. des Empereurs, vol. xvii., by M. Brosset, gives large extracts from the accounts of the Armenian historians relating to the Mongul conquests. -M.

To this catalogue of the historians of the Moguls may be added D'Ohsson, Histoire des Mongols, from Arabic and Peraian authorities; and Schmidt, Geschichte

der Ost-Mongolen, St. Petersburg, 1829. This curious work, by Ssanang Ssetsen Chungtaidschi, published in the original Mongol, was written after the conversion of the nation to Buddhism: it is enriched with very valuable notes by the editor and translator; but, unfortunately, is very barren of information about the European, and even the western Asiatic conquests of the Mongols.-M.

of China,

A.D.

China and the Volga; and the Mogul emperor became the monarch of the pastoral world, the lord of many millions His invasion of shepherds and soldiers, who felt their united strength, and were impatient to rush on the mild and wealthy 1210-1214; climates of the south. His ancestors had been the tributaries of the Chinese emperors; and Temugin himself had been disgraced by a title of honour and servitude. The court of Pekin was astonished by an embassy from its former vassal, who, in the tone of the king of nations, exacted the tribute and obedience which he had paid, and who affected to treat the son of heaven as the most contemptible of mankind. An haughty answer disguised their secret apprehensions; and their fears were soon justified by the march of innumerable squadrons, who pierced on all sides the feeble rampart of the great wall. Ninety cities were stormed, or starved, by the Moguls; ten only escaped; and Zingis, from a knowledge of the filial piety of the Chinese, covered his vanguard with their captive parents; an unworthy, and by degrees a fruitless, abuse of the virtue of his enemies. His invasion was supported by the revolt of an hundred thousand Khitans, who guarded the frontier: yet he listened to a treaty; and a princess of China, three thousand horses, five hundred youths and as many virgins, and a tribute of gold and silk, were the price of his retreat. In his second expedition he compelled the Chinese emperor to retire beyond the Yellow River to a more southern residence. The siege of Pekin 19 was long and laborious: the inhabitants were reduced by famine to decimate and devour their fellow-citizens; when their ammunition was spent, they discharged ingots of gold and silver from their engines; but the Moguls introduced a mine to the centre of the capital; and the conflagration of the palace burnt above thirty days. China was desolated by Tartar war and domestic faction; and the five northern provinces were added to the empire of Zingis.

of Carizme,

In the West he touched the dominions of Mohammed sultan of Carizme, who reigned from the Persian Gulf to the borders of India and Turkestan; and who, in the proud imitation Transoxiana, of Alexander the Great, forgot the servitude and ingratitude of his fathers to the house of Seljuk. It was the wish of Zingis to establish a friendly and commercial intercourse with the

and Persia, A.D.

1218-1224,

19 More properly Yen-king, an ancient city, whose ruins still appear some furlongs to the south-east of the modern Pekin, which was built by Cublai Khan (Gaubil, p. 146). Pe-king and Nan-king are vague titles, the courts of the north and of the south. The identity and change of names perplex the most skilful readers of the Chinese geography (p. 177).

• And likewise in Chinese history. See Rémusat, Mélanges Asiat, 2nd ser. tom. ii. p. 5.—M.

8 INVASION OF CARIZME, TRANSOXIANA, AND PERSIA, CHAP. LXIV.

most powerful of the Moslem princes; nor could he be tempted by the secret solicitations of the caliph of Bagdad, who sacrificed to his personal wrongs the safety of the church and state. A rash and inhuman deed provoked and justified the Tartar arms in the invasion of the southern Asia. A caravan of three ambassadors and one hundred and fifty merchants was arrested and murdered at Otrar, by the command of Mohammed; nor was it till after a demand and denial of justice, till he had prayed and fasted three nights on a mountain, that the Mogul emperor appealed to the judgment of God and his sword. Our European battles, says a philosophic writer,20 are petty skirmishes, if compared to the numbers that have fought and fallen in the fields of Asia. Seven hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars are said to have marched under the standard of Zingis and his four sons. In the vast plains that extend to the north of the Sihon or Jaxartes they were encountered by four hundred thousand soldiers of the sultan; and in the first battle, which was suspended by the night, one hundred and sixty thousand Carizmians were slain. Mohammed was astonished by the multitude and valour of his enemies; he withdrew from the scene of danger, and distributed his troops in the frontier towns; trusting that the barbarians, invincible in the field, would be repulsed by the length and difficulty of so many regular sieges. But the prudence of Zingis had formed a body of Chinese engineers, skilled in the mechanic arts; informed perhaps of the secret of gunpowder, and capable, under his discipline, of attacking a foreign country with more vigour and success than they had defended their own. The Persian historians will relate the sieges and reduction of Otrar, Cogende, Bochara, Samarcand, Carizme, Herat, Merou, Nisabour, Balch, and Candahar; and the conquest of the rich and populous countries of Transoxiana, Carizme, and Chorazan.b The destructive hostilities of Attila and the Huns have long since been elucidated by the example of Zingis and the Moguls; and in this more proper place I shall be content to observe, that, from the Caspian to the Indus, they ruined a tract of many hundred miles, which was adorned with the habitations and labours of mankind, and that five centuries have not been sufficient to repair the ravages of four years. The Mogul emperor encouraged or indulged the fury of his troops: the hope of future possession was

20 M. de Voltaire, Essai sur l'Histoire Générale, tom. iii. c. 60, p. 8. His account of Zingis and the Moguls contains, as usual, much general sense and truth, with some particular errors.

* See the particular account of this transaction from the Kholaussut el Akbaur, in Price vol. ii. p. 402.-M.

⚫ Everywhere they massacred all classes, except the artisans, whom they made slaves. Hist des Mongols.-M.

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