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; 10 the brevity of their domestic annals may be supplied by the Chinese,11 Persians, 12 Armenians, 13 Syrians, 14 Arabians, 15 Greeks, 16

[When Chingiz conquered the Naiman Turks of the Altai regions, c. 1203-4, the vizir of the Naiman king passed into his service and became his chancellor. This minister was an Uigur and had Uigur successors. Through these Uigurs, the Uigur alphabet (derived from the Syriac) was adopted by the Mongols, and the old Turkish script (of the Orchon incriptions, see above, vol. iv. p. 575) became obsolete. On the Uigurs see Vámbéry's Uigurische Sprachmonumente und das Kudatku Bilik, 1870.]

10 In the year 1294, by the command of [Mahmūd Ghāzān] Cazan, khan of Persia, the fourth [fifth] in descent from Zingis. From these traditions, his vizir, Fadlallah [Rashid ad-Din], composed a Mogul history in the Persian language, which has been used by Petit de la Croix (Hist. de Genghizcan, p. 537-539) [see D'Ohsson, Hist. des Mongols, i. 627 sqq. For Rashid's Jami al-Tawarikh see Appendix 1]. 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 1st 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. [The work of Abulghazi has been edited and translated by Des Maisons (St. Petersburg, 1870). For Jūzjāni and Juvaini see Appendix 1.]

11 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 Pekin; à Paris, 1739, in 4to. This translation is stamped with the Chinese character of domestic accuracy and foreign ignorance. [It has been superseded by the Russian work of the Père Hyacinth, on the first four Khans of the house of Chingiz, 1829. A contemporary Chinese work by Men-Hun has been translated by Vasil'ev in the ivth vol. of the Transactions of the Russian Arch. Soc., Oriental Sect.]

12 See the Histoire du Grand Genghizcan, premier Empereur des Mogols et Tartares, par M. Petit de la Croix, à Paris, 1710, in 12mo [it has been translated into English]: 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. [Several histories of the Mongols have appeared in the 19th century: D'Ohsson, Histoire des Mongols, 1852; Wolff, Geschichte der Mongolen oder Tataren, 1872; Quatremère, Histoire des Mongoles de la Perse, 1836; Howorth, History of the Mongols, Part 1, 1876, Part 2 (in 2 vols.), 1880 (on the "Tartars" of Russia and Central Asia); Part 3, 1888 (on Mongols of Persia); Cahun, Introduction à l'Histoire de l'Asie, 1896. For later Mongols of Central Asia, see the Tarikh-i-Rashidi of Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlāt, transl. by E. D. Ross, ed. by N. Elias, 1895; for which, and for Schmidt, Geschichte der Ost-Mongolen, cp. App. 1. For Chingiz Khan: Erdmann, Temudschin der Unerschütterliche, 1862; R. K. Douglas, Life of Jinghiz Khan, 1877; Howorth, op. cit. Pt. 1. Gibbon does not mention: Pallas, Sammlungen historischer

Russians," Poles, 18 Hungarians 19 and Latins; 20 and each nation

Nachrichten über die Mongolischen Völkerschaften, which appeared at St. Petersburg in 1776, 2 vols.]

13 Haithonus, or Aithonus, an Armenian prince, and afterwards a monk of Premontré (Fabric. Bibliot. Lat. medii Evi, 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). [See above, vol. vi. p. 553. For Haithon I. see Appendix 1.]

14 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 (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii.) has extracted some facts from his Syriac writings, and the lives of the Jacobite maphrians or primates of the East.

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

16 Nicephorus Gregoras (1. ii. c. 5, 6) has felt the necessity of connecting the Soythian 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.

17 M. Levesque (Histoire de Russie, tom. ii.) has described the conquest of Russia by the Tartars, from the patriarch Nicon and the old chronicles. [See Soloviev, Istoriia Rossii, vol. iii. cap. ii. p. 820 sqq.]

18 For Poland, I am content with the Sarmatia Asiatica et Europaea of Matthew à Michou, or de Michoviâ, a canon and physician of Cracow (A.D. 1506), inserted in the Novus Orbis of Grynæus. Fabric. Bibliot. Latin. mediæ et infimæ Etatis, tom. v. p. 56. [The most important Polish source is the Historia Polonica of Johannes Dlugossius (who lived in the 15th century and died 1480). His works have been edited in 14 vols. by Alexander Przezdziecki (1867-87) and the Hist. Pol. occupies vols. x.-xiv. Roepell's Geschichte Polens, vol. i. (1840). Only one contemporary Polish chronicle has survived: the Annals of the Cracow Chapter, Mon. Germ. Hist. Scr., xix. 582 sqq.]

19 I should quote Thuroczius, the oldest general historian (pars ii. c. 74, p. 150), in the first 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 factâ, p. 292-321) [it will be found in Endlicher, Rer. Hung. Monum. Arpadiana, p. 255 sqq.]; the best picture that I have ever seen of all the circumstances of a barbaric invasion. [Gibbon omits to mention another contemporary account (of great importance) of the invasion of Hungary, by Thomas Archdeacon of Spalato, in his Historia Salonitana, published in Schwandtner's Scriptores Hung., vol. iii.]

20 Matthew Paris has represented, from authentic documents, the danger and distress of Europe (consult the word Tartari in his copious Index). [It has been conjectured that among the documents used by Matthew were anti-Semitic fly-leaves, accusing the Jews of inviting and helping the Mongols, Strakosch-Grassmann, Der Einfall der Mongolen, p. 116.] 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 first volume of Hackluyt: the Italian original, or version, of the third (Fabric. Bibliot. Latin. medii Ævi, tom. ii. p. 198; tom. v. p. 25) may be found in the second tome of Ramusio. [Colonel H. Yule's English translation, The Book of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian, in 2 vols., 1875, with plans and illustrations, and most valuable elucidations and bibliography, has been re-edited (3rd ed.) by H. Cordier, 1903, and is indispensable to the study of the traveller. A new edition of Rubruquis along with John de Plano Carpini, by R. Beazley, appeared in 1903. The account of a journey among the Mongols by

will deserve credit in the relation of their own disasters and defeats.21

sion of

1210-1214

The arms of Zingis and his lieutenants successively reduced His invathe hordes of the desert, who pitched their tents between the China, A.D. wall of China and the Volga; and the Mogul emperor became the monarch of the pastoral world, the lord of many millions of shepherds and soldiers, who felt their united strength, and were impatient to rush on the mild and wealthy 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.22 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 virtues of his enemies. His

another traveller, Ascellinus, is printed in Fejér, Codex diplomaticus Hungariæ, iv. 1, 428 sqq.]

21 In his great History of the Huns, M. de Guignes has most amply treated of Zingis Khan and his successors. 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 Mamalukes, 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.

22[The people who ruled over Northern China at this time were the Niu-Chi or Man-Chu. (They called themselves Aisin, " golden," which the Chinese translated by Kin, and hence they are generally called the Kin dynasty.) They had conquered Northern China in 1120 from the Kara-Khitay Turks who had held it since 1004. Chingiz, who was always punctilious in matters of form, chose his moment when the Emperor Chang-Tsong, to whom he had taken a feudal oath, was dead (1208); then he openly refused allegiance to the successor. He had prepared the way for the overthrow of the Niu-Chi by the conquest of the land of the Hia (north of Tibet, and west of the great bend of the Hoang Ho: the country of the Tanguts), which was then a republic of brigands, who (with their capital at Ning-Hia on the Hoang Ho), commanding the routes to the west, were a pest both to the southern and the northern Chinese empires. Cahun, Intr. à l'histoire de l'Asie, p. 248. Chingiz in conquering the His thus appeared as a public benefactor, but really seized a key position both in regard to China and in regard to the routes to the west through Dzungaria and through Cashgaria. On the Kin empire see the Histoire de l'empire de Kin ou empire d'or, Aisin Gurun-i Suduri Bithe, transl. by C. de Harlez, 1887.]

[Treaty A.D. 1215]

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 [Kai-fong to a more southern residence. The siege of Pekin 23 was long =PianKing] and laborious: the inhabitants were reduced by famine to deci[A.D. 1216] mate and devour their fellow-citizens; when their ammuni

of Carizme, Trans

and Persia,

1224

tion 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.

In the West, he touched the dominions of Mohammed, sultan oxiana, of Carizme, who reigned from the Persian Gulf to the borders A.D. 1218 of India and Turkestan; and who, in the proud imitation of Alexander the Great, forgot the servitude and ingratitude of his fathers to the house of Seljuk.24 It was the wish of Zingis to establish a friendly and commercial intercourse with the 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. 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

A

23 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). [When the Kara-Khitay Turks (under their chiefs the Ye-Lu family) conquered Northern China in 1004, they took Yen as their capital; it is now called Pe-king, "capital of the north". "Khitan" is the Chinese form of Khitay.]

24 [In the last quarter of the 11th cent., Anushtigīn a Turkish slave was appointed governor of Carizme (Khwarizm) by the Sultan Malik Shah. His son took the title of Carizme Shah, and his grandson Atsiz made himself independent of the Seljuk sultans in the second quarter of the 12th cent. Ală ad-Din Mohammad (A.D. 1199-1220) made this principality of Carizme (which Atsiz and Tukush (1172-1199) had already extended as far as Jand in the north and Ispahan in the west) into a great realm, subduing Persia and Transoxiana, overthrowing the Ghōrid dynasty of Afghanistan, and invading Eastern Turkestan (the kingdom of the Kara-Khitay).]

and murdered at Otrar,25 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,26 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. 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

The

25 [On the middle Jaxartes. It was the capital of the Gur-Khans of the Turkish kingdom of Karā-Khitay. Gibbon omits to mention the conquest of this kingdom (the south-western provinces of the modern empire of China) by Chingiz, before he came face to face with the Carizmian empire.]

26 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.

[The strategical ability displayed in the campaigns of Chingiz and his successors has been well brought out by Cahun. It is wholly an error to regard the Mongol conquests as achieved merely by numbers and intrepid physical bravery. The campaigns were carefully planned out-not by Chingiz himself, he only considered, and approved or rejected, the plans submitted to him by his military advisers. He knew how to choose able generals (Samuka and Subutai were two of the most illustrious), but he did not interfere with them in their work. The invasion of the Carizmian empire was carried out thus: a Mongol army which had just conquered the land of Cashgar advanced over the great southern pass into Fergana and descended upon Khojend. The main army advanced by the great northern gate, through Dzungaria and the Ili regions, to Otrar on the Jaxartes. Half the army spread up the river to take or mask the Carizmian fortresses and join hands at Khojend with the corps from Cashgar. The other half, under Chingiz himself, marched straight across the Red Sand Desert upon Bochara. Cahun, op. cit., p. 285. Success was rendered easy by the strategical mistakes of Mohammad.]