But you know yourself:
senseless rabble
Changeable, rebellious, superstitious, An easily empty hope betrayed
Obedient to instant suggestion, To the truth is deaf and indifferent, And she feeds on fables.
A. Pushkin, "Boris Godunov"
Contemporaries about the Mongols. Needless to say, our great Alexander Sergeevich did not have a very high opinion of most of his contemporaries, for it is clear that with his "Boris Godunov" he first of all turned to them. A lot of time has passed, a radio, a telephone, a general secondary education have appeared, the Internet is available to the mass citizen. But the "food on fables" is still thriving and popular enough. Well, there were no Mongols, there were no Tatars, and there was no Mongol conquest either, and if somewhere someone fought with someone there, then it was the Tartars-Rus who fought with the Rus-Slavs. The chronicles were all rewritten by order of Peter the Great, Catherine the Second, or someone from Nikolaev, Rubruk, the papal agent invented everything, Marco Polo is a jester of peas … In a word, there are no sources confirming the very existence of the Mongol state and its conquest. Not so long ago, one "expert" here, on "VO", so bluntly said that why Genghis Khan went to the West, and did not pay attention to China. And, apparently, he wrote this out of ignorance, in a hurry, since it was China that the Mongols conquered in the first place.
Learning is light, and the ignorant is darkness
And here we need to think about the following, namely: if we do not know something, it does not mean that this does not exist in nature at all. There is, but not everyone knows about it, and they are often content with information from available, but dubious sources. After all, let's say, water is water in a puddle, and in a crystal decanter. Moreover, in order to get drunk from a puddle, you just need to bend over, and a decanter … Well, firstly, you need to have it, and secondly, fill it, and not from a puddle, but you should have such water!
However, the lack of information for many is not their fault, but the misfortune of their vain life and a consequence of their lack of systematic professional education in this area. That is why in several successive publications we will try to fill this gap. And we will try to acquaint the readers of "VO" first of all with the primary, not secondary sources on the history of the Mongols …
Here, for the first article on this topic, for the sake of it, it should be emphasized that one can learn the history of non-literate peoples, firstly, through archaeological excavations, and secondly, by reading about them what is written by those who possessed writing. Thus, if the people lived quietly, peacefully, then they practically disappeared from the written language of world history. But if he pestered the neighbors, then everyone and sundry wrote about him. We do not know the writing of the Scythians, Huns, Alans, Avars … But after all, both the Greeks and the Romans left us their written testimonies about all of them, and we consider their reports to be reliable sources. As for the Mongols, they just had their own writing. Since the 13th century, the Mongolian peoples have used about 10 writing systems to write their languages. One of the legends says that when Genghis Khan defeated the Naimans in 1204, the Uyghur scribe Tatatunga was captured by him, who, on his order, adapted the Uyghur alphabet for recording Mongol speech. There are other legends, but it is important that in this case we have two streams of information at once - the internal one, which is what the Mongols themselves wrote about themselves, and the external one, containing what literate representatives of other peoples wrote about them, which very often these same Mongols conquered by the power of the sword.
Ilkhanat - the state of the Mongols in the land of Persia
Ancient Persia was one of the states of the East that fell under the blows of the Mongols. We will not talk here about the actual Mongol campaign of Khan Hulagu (1256-1260) - this is a topic for a separate article. Another thing is important, namely, that the result of this conquest was the state of the Hulaguids, and their advance to the West was stopped only by the Egyptian Mamluks in the battle of Ain Jalut. The state of the Hulaguids (and the ilkhanat in Western historiography). This state existed until 1335, and this was largely helped by the assistance of his ruler Gazan Khan from his vizier Rashid ad-Din. But Rashid ad-Din was also a very educated person of his time and decided to write a voluminous historical work dedicated to world history and the history of the Mongols, in particular. And Gazan Khan approved it! Yes, this "story" was written for the winners, but that is precisely why it is valuable. The winners do not need to flatter and embellish their deeds, because they are the winners, it means everything that they did excellently and simply does not need embellishment. They embellish the scriptures for the vanquished in order to sweeten them the bitterness of defeat, and the rulers of such a great power as the Hulaguids simply did not need this, because they were from the Chingizid family, their ancestor was the great Genghis himself!
Through the labors of Gazan Khan and his vizier …
By the way, Gazan Khan himself knew the history of his own people well, but still he could not help but understand that he simply could not bring together all the available information on his history - after all, he is the ruler of the kingdom, and not a historian and time for this. it simply does not exist. But on the other hand, he has power and loyal servants, and among them was Rashid ad-Din, to whom he in 1300/1301. ordered to collect all information related to the history of the Mongols. So first the work "Ta'rikh-i Gazani" ("Chronicle of Gazan") appeared, which in 1307 was presented to Oljeyt-khan, and the entire work on this work, which received the name "Jami at-tavarih" or "Collection of chronicles" was completed only in 1310/1311.
Naturally, not only Rashid ad-Din worked on this handwritten tome. He had two secretaries: the historian Abdallah Kashani, famous for having written The History of Oljeitu Khan, and Ahmed Bukhari, who composed the main text. A certain Bolad also took part in this work, who in 1286 came to Persia from China and was attracted to work, since he was considered an expert on the history and customs of the Mongols. Rashid ad-Din and Bolad worked together like teacher and student. In any case, this is how a contemporary describes their work: one told, and the other wrote down. Gazan Khan and other Mongols also supplemented the narrative, telling about who knew what. Information on the history of India was given by the Buddhist monk Kamalashri, on China - by two Chinese scientists, but there were also Europeans among Rashid's informants, or rather one European - a Franciscan monk. After all, he also wrote about Europe.
For its time, a very worthy source base
In addition to the information received from history connoisseurs by word of mouth, for writing "Jami 'at-tavarikh", written sources already available at that time were also involved: "Divan-i lugat at-Turk" ("Collection of Turkic dialects") by Mahmud Kashgari, the famous Turkic encyclopedist of the 11th century; “Tarikh-i-djehangusha” (“History of the World Conqueror”) by the Persian historian Juweini, who also served the Ilkhans; and of course "Altan Debter" ("Golden Book"), that is, the official history of Genghis Khan, all his ancestors and successors, written in the Mongolian language and kept in the archives of the Ilkhan.
Later, when Rashid ad-Din fell into disgrace and was executed (and favors from the rulers are very short-lived!), His secretary Abdallah Kashani presented the rights of authorship to "Ta'rikh-i Gazani". But a comparison of the style of "The History of Oljeitu Khan" shows that it does not resemble the style of Rashid ad-Din, who wrote very simply, avoiding the famous Persian eloquence in every possible way.
The first written expression of tolerance?
There were two main parts in the annals of Rashid ad-Din. The first described the actual history of the Mongols, including Hulaguid Iran. The second part was devoted to world history. And first there was the history of the Caliphate and other Muslim states before the Mongol conquest - the Ghaznavids, Seljukids, the state of the Khorezmshahs, Gurids, Ismailis of Alamut; then followed the history of China, ancient Jews, "Franks", popes, "Roman" (that is, Germanic) emperors and India, in accordance with the level of knowledge about these countries. And the fact that all this is exactly so is very important, since it allows one to compare certain historical facts set forth in this work and thus establish their authenticity, checking with other sources.
Civil strife. Illustration from the manuscript "Jami at-tavarikh", XIV century. (State Library, Berlin)
It is interesting that in "Jami 'at-tavarih" it was directly stated that, although many peoples do not profess Islam, they still deserve to have their history written down, for it points to the boundless wisdom of Allah, who allowed them to exist, and for the faithful to convert them with their works into the true faith, but there is the idea of "comparison" of different cultures was already understood by the historians of that time.
The third part, a natural-geographical plan, was also conceived for writing, in which all trade routes of the Mongol Empire were also to be described. But Rashid ad-Din either did not have time to write it, or she died after his execution in 1318 when he looted the library that belonged to him in Tabriz.
The novelty of the work was the attempt to write a truly world history. Before that, such a task had not even been posed by any of the Persian historians. Moreover, the entire pre-Islamic history of Muslim peoples was considered by them only as the prehistory of Islam and nothing more, and the history of non-Muslim peoples was considered completely undeserving of any attention. It was Rashid ad-Din who understood that the history of both the Persians and the Arabs is nothing more than one of the many rivers that flow into the sea of world history.
There is also a translation into Russian
The work of Rashid ad-Din and his assistants was translated into Russian as early as 1858-1888. Russian orientalist IP Berezin, though not entirely, but partially. His work was called like this: “Rashid-Eddin. Collection of Chronicles. History of the Mongols. Composition of Rashid-Eddin. Introduction: About Turkish and Mongolian tribes / Per. from Persian, with an introduction and notes by I. P. Berezin // Zapiski imperial. Archeol. society. 1858, vol. 14; For Persian text, Russian translation and notes, see: Proceedings of the Eastern Branch of the Russian Archaeological Society. 1858 T. V; 1861 T. VII; 1868. T. VIII; 1888. Vol. XV. In the USSR, in 1936, the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR prepared a complete edition of this work in four volumes. But the work was delayed by the war, and besides, it was so complex that the last two volumes appeared only in 1952 and 1960.
120 pages for 850 thousand pounds
Interestingly, in 1980, a 120-page fragment of one of the illustrated manuscripts "Jami 'at-tavarih", written in Arabic, was sold at Sotheby's, where it was handed over by the British Royal Asiatic Society. It was bought by a person who wished to remain anonymous for … 850 thousand pounds sterling. This amount was first paid for an Arabic manuscript.
That is, what do we have in the end? An excellent source on the history of the Mongols, and it correlates with many other sources in other languages. And there is a good translation of it into Russian, so that today any literate person can take and read it.
Literature:
1. Rashid ad-Din. Collection of chronicles / Per. from Persian L. A. Khetagurov, edition and notes by prof. A. A. Semenova. - M. - L.: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1952.-- T. 1, 2, 3.
2. Ata-Melik Juvaini. Genghis Khan. The history of the world conqueror (Genghis Khan: the history of the world conqueror) / Translated from the text of Mirza Muhammad Qazvini into English by J. E. Boyle, with a preface and bibliography by D. O. Morgan. Translation of the text from English into Russian by E. E. Kharitonova. - M.: "Publishing house Magistr-press", 2004.
3. Stephen Turnbull. Genghis Khan & the Mongol Conquests 1190-1400 (ESSENTIAL HISTORIES 57), Osprey, 2003; Stephen Turnbull. Mongol Warrior 1200-1350 (WARRIOR 84), Osprey, 2003; Stephen Turnbull. The Mongol Invasions of Japan 1274 and 1281 (CAMPAIGN 217), Osprey, 2010; Stephen Turnbull. The Great Wall of China 221 BC – AD 1644 (FORTRESS 57), Osprey, 2007.
