The origins of Činggis Qa’an: At the beginning there was a blue-grey wolf, born with his destiny ordained by Heaven Above. His wife was a fallow doe. They came crossing the Tenggis [sea]. After they had settled at the source of the Onan River on Mount Burqan Qaldun, Batačiqan was born to them. ~ The Secret History of the Mongols, de Rachewiltz translation
So begins The Secret History of the Mongols, a medieval Mongolian-language history dedicated to the rise of Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan). The Mongol Empire is not typically known for its literary pieces, but despite this reputation a substantial body of written works survives from it. Indeed, such a vast body of material comes from both within the Mongol Empire and from people who traveled through it that we have a much better understanding of its functions than we do of preceding or succeeding nomadic states.
Many of these works were created on the orders of the khans in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, such as the mammoth Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh (c. 1314), an immense Persian-language “universal history,” or the Veritable Record of Chinggis Khan (Taizu Shilu 太祖實錄) (c. 1287) and the Conquests of Chinggis Khan (Shengwu Qinzheng lu 聖武親征錄) (c. 1320). But none is as famous as the Secret History of the Mongols, utterly unique in style and form; while these others were created within existing Chinese and Persian historical genres, the Secret History is wholly distinct, representing how the medieval Mongols, at the height of their empire, viewed their own history, in their own words.
The Origin of Chinggis Khan
Chinggis in a 14th-century Yuan era album; now located in the National Palace Museum, Taipei
The Secret History of the Mongols, according to the most uncontroversial explanation, was a history produced for the Mongolian royal family sometime after the death of Chinggis Khan in 1227. It was not intended for circulation. Reflecting this, the later Chinese translators dubbed it a “secret history,” a moniker that has stuck ever since. The original Mongolian title, if it had one, is unknown. Some variation of Chinggis Qa’an-nu huja’ur, “The Origin of Chinggis Khan,” based on the very first line, is a common suggestion.
It consists of twelve chapters (a later division not present in the original work; some recensions have fifteen) which detail the ancestry and life of Chinggis Khan, a summary of his campaigns in China and Central Asia, his death, and a brief epilogue with the reign of his son Ögedei (r. 1229–1241). It consists of lengthy poetic sections, genealogies, officer lists (listing the 95 commanders Chinggis Khan would appoint in 1206), and events both mystical (where Heaven’s intervention protects the young Chinggis) and personal (the trauma of his youth, the capture of his wife Börte, and the uncertain paternity of their eldest son Jochi).
Throughout the text, the importance of preserving the Mongolian way of life is emphasized, and little attention is given to events that occur outside of the Mongolian plateau. Unity of family, and mothers acting as guides to their sons, are themes that appear repeatedly. Much of the work is very intimate: some of the most evocative, poetic sections are dedicated to Chinggis’ mother, Ö’elün, abandoned to raise her young sons on the steppes, or the defense of Börte, where Chinggis’ sons are admonished to stop fighting for the sake of their mother.
Certain sections seem to have been compiled from earlier documents (such as the so-called “Indictment of Ong Khan,” which uses more Turkic terminology than other parts of the text). Sometimes it refers rather obliquely to events, leaving the modern reader to try to infer the intended meaning, a frustrating task. Still, the work is coherent, its point of view consistent throughout and without precedent: it stands as a proud work of nomadic society, a clue to the oral tales rarely recorded by Chinese, Persian, or European intermediaries.
Origins of the Text
The Secret History of the Mongols was first written in Middle Mongolian, originally in the Uighur script. This was a vertical script distantly descended from Aramaic, having spread across Central Asia until adopted by the Uighurs around the eighth to ninth century. By 1204, Chinggis Khan saw its utility for census, tax, and recording, especially for his promulgations and laws. Several accounts of Mongol courts, such as that of the Daoist master Qiu Chuji’s journey to Chinggis Khan, indicate that scribes (bitikchi) were always present to write down the khan’s words and sayings. While the Uighur-script original of the Secret History does not survive, there are some extant monuments, inscriptions, imperial seals, paiza/gerege (“passports,” tablets of authority granted to officials and merchants), government documents, and letters of submission.
There is a vast body of literature on the anachronisms, biases, language, dating, composition, and transmission of the Secret History of the Mongols. The colophon of the work simply states it was produced during an assembly in northern Mongolia in a “Year of the Mouse,” but does not specify which one. A multi-stage composition (1228 and 1240 as starting points) is a common theory, but Dr. Christopher Atwood and others have made the convincing case that it was produced in 1252, on the orders of Great Khan Möngke (r. 1251–1259), a grandson of Chinggis. As Möngke came to power after a coup and violent purge of much of the imperial family, it is suggested that the Secret History was therefore written to justify it, insinuating Möngke’s future succession.
Notably, while Chinggis’ sons and grandsons receive critique in the work, Möngke’s father Tolui, and Möngke himself, appear flawless (with Tolui sacrificing himself to save Ögedei, while his death in other sources is indicated to be a result of alcoholism). This is coupled with anachronisms that would be strange for an earlier or later text, together with a notable nativist bias: the work is interested in Mongols in Mongolia. Events in China or Central Asia are of secondary importance and dealt with confusingly, and the many Chinese officials and bureaucrats of the empire go utterly unmentioned. Meanwhile, the Islamic Central Asian officials who worked for Möngke have their status improved. If the 1252 date is accurate, it is, then, no “unbiased” look at the early Mongol Empire, but a very partisan, very politicized document.
“Long-Lost Manuscript”?
But how does a Secret History survive to the present? Many modern discussions make it seem as if the Secret History was only suddenly “discovered” in a Chinese library by the Russian Archimandrite Palladius in the nineteenth century. We should see such a discovery only in the sense of Columbus “discovering” the American continents; at best it can be said that he brought it to European attention, but he was not the first. Like the Vikings in Newfoundland centuries before Columbus, in 1824 the German scholar Julius Klaproth was the first European to take notice of it, some 40 years before Palladius, though his report went unnoticed.
Moreover, the Secret History had never disappeared. It remained known to Chinese scholars through the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and in the seventeenth century it was used again by the Mongols. In 1829, when Isaac Jacob Schmidt published his German translation of one of these works, the Erdeni-yin Tobchi, he was unknowingly introducing the first sections of the Secret History to a European audience. Before and after Palladius made his translations in the 1860s and 1870s, the Chinese continued to copy manuscripts and produce commentaries on it. It remained rare and never in great circulation, but never lost.
The Secret History of the Yuan Dynasty. Ten volumes. Two additional volumes. Collated by Ye Dehui. The publication of Ye’s Guan Gutang in the 34th year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty (1908)
The focus on Palladius as the discoverer of this “long-lost manuscript” has led to claims that the Secret History of the Mongols is actually some recent Russian or Chinese forgery, or that every scholar today is only working off of some poor Russian translation. All these statements are baseless. Palladius did not pull it from thin air.
The Chinese form of the Secret History is a complicated tripartite work. When the Chinese Ming Dynasty expelled the Mongol Yuan Dynasty from China and took their capital of Dadu (modern Beijing), they captured the Yuan Imperial Libraries and began translating documents from Mongolian into Chinese. From these, they wrote an official account of the Yuan Dynasty, the Yuan shi (元史), but also made materials to help Ming border officials learn Mongolian. Thus, the Secret History, under the name Yuanchao mishi 元朝秘史, appears in the 1380s for such a purpose. It was divided (rather arbitrarily) into 282 sections and in two distinct traditions of fifteen chapters. Most modern translations keep the twelve-chapter and 282-section structure.
It features the original Middle Mongolian, written in the phonetic vernacular of fourteenth-century northern China, accompanied by a Chinese translation, with explanations on pronunciation (even for where to place the tongue). As the intention was to help Ming officials learn to speak Mongolian (for envoys who dealt with the Mongols on the Ming’s northern frontier, as allies, tributaries, or foes) and not to read it, there was little reason to maintain the Uighur form. As the importance of the document was as a linguistic tool, and not a historical one (later Ming and Qing scholars generally had a low opinion of it as a historical piece, and thought the language rather vulgar), it allowed the original Mongolian (via Chinese characters) to survive quite well.
The Uighur-script form was partially revived in seventeenth-century Mongolia, when the Secret History was rediscovered and incorporated into the new, Buddhist-influenced Mongolian histories – such chronicles as the Altan Tobchi of Lubsandanzin, the Erdeni-yin Tobchi of Sagang Sechen, the anonymous Altan Tobchi, and the Asaraghi neretü-yin teüke of Byamba. The Secret History itself, though, is a distinctly thirteenth-century Mongolian viewpoint. No trace of Buddhist or Chinese influence can be found within it (one need only read the Erdeni-yin Tobchi for how a Buddhist-influenced Mongol history would appear, where Chinggis Khan transforms into animals and the sky in order to defeat the Tangut king).
Non-nomadic cultures are dealt with disdainfully: the Rus’ principalities are simply listed as one amongst many peoples conquered in the west. The campaigns in North China are dealt with in a very chronologically and geographically confused way: what mattered to the author was the fact of Mongol victory. When defeated, the troops of the Jin Dynasty were heaped like rotten logs and almost gleefully the Secret History writes of the destruction Chinggis wreaked upon the Tangut in his final campaign: “maimed and tamed, they are no more.”
These seventeenth-century Mongol chronicles, together with the more recent Chinese SHM manuscripts and a 1933 discovery of 41 leaves of a 1404 copy of the manuscript, have allowed for the reconstruction of the original language and thorough study of all aspects of the documents. It has been translated several times into English, and into dozens of other languages. Today it is celebrated in Mongolia as the first work of Mongolian literature and a key tool in the study of the early Mongol Empire.
Jack Wilson completed his MA thesis at Central European University, where he offered a reassessment of the life and career of Nogai and his role in the late thirteenth-century Golden Horde. He is currently a Doctoral Candidate at CEU, focusing on the Golden Horde in the late thirteenth century. You can visit the educational videos he creates about the Mongol Empire on Youtube at The Jackmeister: Mongol History.
By Jack R. Wilson
The origins of Činggis Qa’an: At the beginning there was a blue-grey wolf, born with his destiny ordained by Heaven Above. His wife was a fallow doe. They came crossing the Tenggis [sea]. After they had settled at the source of the Onan River on Mount Burqan Qaldun, Batačiqan was born to them. ~ The Secret History of the Mongols, de Rachewiltz translation
So begins The Secret History of the Mongols, a medieval Mongolian-language history dedicated to the rise of Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan). The Mongol Empire is not typically known for its literary pieces, but despite this reputation a substantial body of written works survives from it. Indeed, such a vast body of material comes from both within the Mongol Empire and from people who traveled through it that we have a much better understanding of its functions than we do of preceding or succeeding nomadic states.
Many of these works were created on the orders of the khans in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, such as the mammoth Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh (c. 1314), an immense Persian-language “universal history,” or the Veritable Record of Chinggis Khan (Taizu Shilu 太祖實錄) (c. 1287) and the Conquests of Chinggis Khan (Shengwu Qinzheng lu 聖武親征錄) (c. 1320). But none is as famous as the Secret History of the Mongols, utterly unique in style and form; while these others were created within existing Chinese and Persian historical genres, the Secret History is wholly distinct, representing how the medieval Mongols, at the height of their empire, viewed their own history, in their own words.
The Origin of Chinggis Khan
The Secret History of the Mongols, according to the most uncontroversial explanation, was a history produced for the Mongolian royal family sometime after the death of Chinggis Khan in 1227. It was not intended for circulation. Reflecting this, the later Chinese translators dubbed it a “secret history,” a moniker that has stuck ever since. The original Mongolian title, if it had one, is unknown. Some variation of Chinggis Qa’an-nu huja’ur, “The Origin of Chinggis Khan,” based on the very first line, is a common suggestion.
It consists of twelve chapters (a later division not present in the original work; some recensions have fifteen) which detail the ancestry and life of Chinggis Khan, a summary of his campaigns in China and Central Asia, his death, and a brief epilogue with the reign of his son Ögedei (r. 1229–1241). It consists of lengthy poetic sections, genealogies, officer lists (listing the 95 commanders Chinggis Khan would appoint in 1206), and events both mystical (where Heaven’s intervention protects the young Chinggis) and personal (the trauma of his youth, the capture of his wife Börte, and the uncertain paternity of their eldest son Jochi).
Throughout the text, the importance of preserving the Mongolian way of life is emphasized, and little attention is given to events that occur outside of the Mongolian plateau. Unity of family, and mothers acting as guides to their sons, are themes that appear repeatedly. Much of the work is very intimate: some of the most evocative, poetic sections are dedicated to Chinggis’ mother, Ö’elün, abandoned to raise her young sons on the steppes, or the defense of Börte, where Chinggis’ sons are admonished to stop fighting for the sake of their mother.
Certain sections seem to have been compiled from earlier documents (such as the so-called “Indictment of Ong Khan,” which uses more Turkic terminology than other parts of the text). Sometimes it refers rather obliquely to events, leaving the modern reader to try to infer the intended meaning, a frustrating task. Still, the work is coherent, its point of view consistent throughout and without precedent: it stands as a proud work of nomadic society, a clue to the oral tales rarely recorded by Chinese, Persian, or European intermediaries.
Origins of the Text
The Secret History of the Mongols was first written in Middle Mongolian, originally in the Uighur script. This was a vertical script distantly descended from Aramaic, having spread across Central Asia until adopted by the Uighurs around the eighth to ninth century. By 1204, Chinggis Khan saw its utility for census, tax, and recording, especially for his promulgations and laws. Several accounts of Mongol courts, such as that of the Daoist master Qiu Chuji’s journey to Chinggis Khan, indicate that scribes (bitikchi) were always present to write down the khan’s words and sayings. While the Uighur-script original of the Secret History does not survive, there are some extant monuments, inscriptions, imperial seals, paiza/gerege (“passports,” tablets of authority granted to officials and merchants), government documents, and letters of submission.
There is a vast body of literature on the anachronisms, biases, language, dating, composition, and transmission of the Secret History of the Mongols. The colophon of the work simply states it was produced during an assembly in northern Mongolia in a “Year of the Mouse,” but does not specify which one. A multi-stage composition (1228 and 1240 as starting points) is a common theory, but Dr. Christopher Atwood and others have made the convincing case that it was produced in 1252, on the orders of Great Khan Möngke (r. 1251–1259), a grandson of Chinggis. As Möngke came to power after a coup and violent purge of much of the imperial family, it is suggested that the Secret History was therefore written to justify it, insinuating Möngke’s future succession.
Notably, while Chinggis’ sons and grandsons receive critique in the work, Möngke’s father Tolui, and Möngke himself, appear flawless (with Tolui sacrificing himself to save Ögedei, while his death in other sources is indicated to be a result of alcoholism). This is coupled with anachronisms that would be strange for an earlier or later text, together with a notable nativist bias: the work is interested in Mongols in Mongolia. Events in China or Central Asia are of secondary importance and dealt with confusingly, and the many Chinese officials and bureaucrats of the empire go utterly unmentioned. Meanwhile, the Islamic Central Asian officials who worked for Möngke have their status improved. If the 1252 date is accurate, it is, then, no “unbiased” look at the early Mongol Empire, but a very partisan, very politicized document.
“Long-Lost Manuscript”?
But how does a Secret History survive to the present? Many modern discussions make it seem as if the Secret History was only suddenly “discovered” in a Chinese library by the Russian Archimandrite Palladius in the nineteenth century. We should see such a discovery only in the sense of Columbus “discovering” the American continents; at best it can be said that he brought it to European attention, but he was not the first. Like the Vikings in Newfoundland centuries before Columbus, in 1824 the German scholar Julius Klaproth was the first European to take notice of it, some 40 years before Palladius, though his report went unnoticed.
Moreover, the Secret History had never disappeared. It remained known to Chinese scholars through the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and in the seventeenth century it was used again by the Mongols. In 1829, when Isaac Jacob Schmidt published his German translation of one of these works, the Erdeni-yin Tobchi, he was unknowingly introducing the first sections of the Secret History to a European audience. Before and after Palladius made his translations in the 1860s and 1870s, the Chinese continued to copy manuscripts and produce commentaries on it. It remained rare and never in great circulation, but never lost.
The focus on Palladius as the discoverer of this “long-lost manuscript” has led to claims that the Secret History of the Mongols is actually some recent Russian or Chinese forgery, or that every scholar today is only working off of some poor Russian translation. All these statements are baseless. Palladius did not pull it from thin air.
The Chinese form of the Secret History is a complicated tripartite work. When the Chinese Ming Dynasty expelled the Mongol Yuan Dynasty from China and took their capital of Dadu (modern Beijing), they captured the Yuan Imperial Libraries and began translating documents from Mongolian into Chinese. From these, they wrote an official account of the Yuan Dynasty, the Yuan shi (元史), but also made materials to help Ming border officials learn Mongolian. Thus, the Secret History, under the name Yuanchao mishi 元朝秘史, appears in the 1380s for such a purpose. It was divided (rather arbitrarily) into 282 sections and in two distinct traditions of fifteen chapters. Most modern translations keep the twelve-chapter and 282-section structure.
It features the original Middle Mongolian, written in the phonetic vernacular of fourteenth-century northern China, accompanied by a Chinese translation, with explanations on pronunciation (even for where to place the tongue). As the intention was to help Ming officials learn to speak Mongolian (for envoys who dealt with the Mongols on the Ming’s northern frontier, as allies, tributaries, or foes) and not to read it, there was little reason to maintain the Uighur form. As the importance of the document was as a linguistic tool, and not a historical one (later Ming and Qing scholars generally had a low opinion of it as a historical piece, and thought the language rather vulgar), it allowed the original Mongolian (via Chinese characters) to survive quite well.
The Uighur-script form was partially revived in seventeenth-century Mongolia, when the Secret History was rediscovered and incorporated into the new, Buddhist-influenced Mongolian histories – such chronicles as the Altan Tobchi of Lubsandanzin, the Erdeni-yin Tobchi of Sagang Sechen, the anonymous Altan Tobchi, and the Asaraghi neretü-yin teüke of Byamba. The Secret History itself, though, is a distinctly thirteenth-century Mongolian viewpoint. No trace of Buddhist or Chinese influence can be found within it (one need only read the Erdeni-yin Tobchi for how a Buddhist-influenced Mongol history would appear, where Chinggis Khan transforms into animals and the sky in order to defeat the Tangut king).
Non-nomadic cultures are dealt with disdainfully: the Rus’ principalities are simply listed as one amongst many peoples conquered in the west. The campaigns in North China are dealt with in a very chronologically and geographically confused way: what mattered to the author was the fact of Mongol victory. When defeated, the troops of the Jin Dynasty were heaped like rotten logs and almost gleefully the Secret History writes of the destruction Chinggis wreaked upon the Tangut in his final campaign: “maimed and tamed, they are no more.”
These seventeenth-century Mongol chronicles, together with the more recent Chinese SHM manuscripts and a 1933 discovery of 41 leaves of a 1404 copy of the manuscript, have allowed for the reconstruction of the original language and thorough study of all aspects of the documents. It has been translated several times into English, and into dozens of other languages. Today it is celebrated in Mongolia as the first work of Mongolian literature and a key tool in the study of the early Mongol Empire.
Jack Wilson completed his MA thesis at Central European University, where he offered a reassessment of the life and career of Nogai and his role in the late thirteenth-century Golden Horde. He is currently a Doctoral Candidate at CEU, focusing on the Golden Horde in the late thirteenth century. You can visit the educational videos he creates about the Mongol Empire on Youtube at The Jackmeister: Mongol History.
Click here to read more from Jack Wilson
Further Readings:
De Rachewiltz, Igor, translator. The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century. Volume I. Brill, 2004.
Atwood, Christopher P. “Informants and Sources for the ‘Secret History of the Mongols‘.” Mongolian Studies, vol. 29, 2007, pp. 27–39.
Atwood, Christopher P. “The Date of the ‘Secret History of the Mongols’ Reconsidered.” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies, vol. 37, 2007, pp. 1–48.
Top Image: Photo by Gereltuv Dashdoorov / Wikimedia Commons
Subscribe to Medievalverse
Related Posts