CHAPTER XXI

CHINGIZ KHAN

IT is not within the scope of the present work to trace in any detail the meteor-like path of Chingiz; for we are concerned with it only in so far as it affected the internal affairs of Central Asia. His career has exercised a peculiar fascination for students of Oriental history, though by no means all the available evidence has yet been marshalled in elucidation of the controversies which still rage round that mighty name.1

1 The name of this famous conqueror has been spelled in many different ways,-e.g., Genghiz (De Guignes), Gengis (Voltaire, in his tragedy of that name), Zingis (Gibbon), Tchinguiz (d'Ohsson), etc. We have adopted the one which most nearly approaches the Turkish and Persian pronunciation of the name. For authorities we would refer the reader to Sir H. Howorth's History of the Mongols, part i. (1876); R. K. Douglas, Life of Jinghiz Khăn (1877); an article by same author in the Encyclopædia Britannica; Erdmann's Temudschin der Unerschütterliche (1862); and d'Ohsson and De Guignes (vol. iv.). The principal original sources for the history of Chingiz Khan are: (1) the Chinese account of a contemporary named Men-Hun, which has been translated into Russian by Professor Vassilief, and published in his History and Antiquities of the Eastern Part of Central Asia (see Transactions of Oriental Section of the Russian Archæological Society, vol. iv.); and (2) the Tabakāt-i-Nāsiri of Juzjānī, translated by Major Raverty. This important work comprises a collection of the accounts of Chingiz Khan written by his Mohammedan contemporaries. Other Chinese and Persian sources might be mentioned, but the above are the most important.

One very important authority for the Mongol period is the compilation, from Chinese sources, by Father Hyacinth, entitled History of the first four Khans of the House of Chingiz, St. Petersburg, 1829. This Russian work is

"All that can safely be said about the early history of the Mongols," writes Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole, "is that they were a clan among clans, a member of a great confederacy that ranged the country north of the desert of Gobi in search of water and pasture; who spent their lives in hunting and the breeding of cattle, lived on flesh and sour milk (kumis), and made their profit by bartering hides and beasts with their kinsmen the Khitans, or with the Turks and Chinese, to whom they owed allegiance. The name Mughal was not known until the tenth century, and probably came to be applied to the whole group of clans only when the chief of a particular clan bearing that name acquired an ascendency over the rest of the confederacy, and gave to the greater the name of the less.3 Yissugay, the father of Chingiz Khan, if not the founder of his clan, was a notable maintainer of it, and it was probably he who first asserted the independence of the Mongols from Chinese comparatively little known outside Russia. Both Erdmann and d'Ohsson often lay it under contribution. It may be added that Sir Henry Howorth, in his first volume on the Mongols (published in 1876), gives a complete bibliography of all the available sources for the history of Chingiz and his

successors.

1 M. Barthold, of the St. Petersburg University, has devoted much time to the study of the Mongol period in Central Asia, the fruits of which he has not yet published on an extended scale, though some shorter articles of great value have appeared in Baron Rosen's Zapiski. The expeditions of Chingiz Khan and Tamerlane were admirably treated by M. M. I. Ivanin in a work published after his death, entitled On the Military Art and Conquests of the Mongol-Tatars under Chingiz Khan and Tamerlane, St. Petersburg.

2 Since the discovery and decipherment of the Orkon inscriptions it may be regarded as certain that the form Khitan, or Kidan, is but the Chinese transcription of the word Kitai, which is the name of a people, most probably of Manchurian origin, who, as is well known, ruled over Northern China during the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. It was borrowed by some of the tribes inhabiting those parts. Cf. note on p. 106 of vol. x. of Baron Rosen's Zapiski, article by M. Barthold.

3 Precisely the same thing occurred in the case of the Yué-Chi and the Kushans.

rule. In spite, however, of conquest and annexation, the people who owned the sovereignty of Yissugay numbered only 40,000 tents. Yet it was upon this foundation that his son, Chingiz Khān, built up in twenty years the widest empire the world has ever seen.'

"1

Temuchin, known to history as Chingiz Khan, was born most probably in 1162,3 and was therefore thirteen years of age at the time of his father's death, in 1175.

the

The Mongolian, or, as they called themselves at that period, the Tatar people, were divided into a number of tribes, among which the Chinese distinguished three groups, according to the degree of their civilisation, white, the black, and the savage Tatars. The first, who dwelt in Southern Mongolia, near the Chinese Wall, were under the influence of Chinese civilisation. The black Tatars, who occupied the greater part of what we now call Mongolia, remained unaffected by their uninterrupted contact with more advanced races whose representatives entered their country only in the quality of merchants. The trade of barter and exchange with the nomads was in the hands of men of Turkestan, Urghūrs, and Musulmans, who in such matters were far more enterprising than the Chinese. These Uighurs and Musulmans, moreover, kept in their own hands the commerce between Mongolia and China; that is to say, they bought goods in China and sold them to the nomads.

1 This admirable summary is taken from S. Lane-Poole's Catalogue of Oriental Coins in the British Museum, vol. vi. (also reprinted in his Mohammedan Dynasties, pp. 201, 202). It is a condensation of what may be read in great detail in Howorth's Mongols, vol. i. pp. 27-50. Cf. also De Guignes, vol. iv. p. 1 et seq.; and d'Ohsson, vol. i. chaps. i. and ii.

2 For information with regard to this name, cf. d'Ohsson, op. cit. vol. i. pp. 36, 37, note.

3 Thus according to the Chinese authorities. The Mohammedan historians give the date of his birth as A. H. 550 (1155).