Description
Book SynopsisRise of the Mongols offers readers a selection of five important works that detail the rise of the Mongol Empire through Chinese eyes. Three of these works were written by officials of South China's Southern Song dynasty and two are from officials from North China writing in the service of the Mongol rulers. Together, these accounts offer a view of the early Mongol Empire very different not just from those of Muslim and Christian travelers and chroniclers, but also from the Mongol tradition embodied in
The Secret History of Mongols.
The five Chinese source texts (in English translation, each with their own preface):
- Selections from Random Notes from Court and Country since the Jianyan Years, vol.2, by Li Xinchuan
- "A Memorandum on the Mong-Tatars," by Zhao Gong
- "A Sketch of the Black Tatars," by Peng Daya and Xu Ting
- "Spirit-Path Stele for His Honor Yelü, Director of the Secretariat," by Song Zizhen
- "Notes on a Journey," by Zhang Dehui
Also included are an introduction, index, bibliography, and appendices covering notes on the texts, tables and charts, and a glossary of Chinese and transcribed terms.
Trade Review"Our modern fascination with the Mongol empire only increases with each passing year. One global myth even claims that Chinggis Khan’s DNA can be found among most of the races of the world today—a story of genetic seeding that surely testifies to the obsessive awe with which the rulers of the largest empire in the history of the world are still held.
The Rise of the Mongols: Five Chinese Sources, is thus a timely, important, and welcome addition to the limited sources on the Mongols currently available to us in English translation. Unlike the
Yuanshi—the Chinese history of the Mongol dynasty that is retroactively written—Christopher Atwood’s and Lynn Struve’s five Chinese sources recount the important early days of the Mongol ascension to power through contemporary and even eyewitness accounts situated in both southern and northern China. Whether you're teaching Marco Polo, or
The Secret History of the Mongols, or courses in early globalism, you’ll find this invaluable collection of newly-translated Chinese sources indispensable."
—Geraldine Heng, author of
The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, and Founder and Director of the Global Middle Ages Project
