Officers: prévôtés, bailiwicks, seneschals · The Naiman of Tayang and Buyiruq · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Tata-tonga

Tata-tonga is the scribe who gives the Naiman their state.

A Uyghur, he keeps Tayang's seal and the revenue; Naiman officials carry seal-stamped papers to collect taxes, which implies a regular levy in kind on subjects, and he tutors the khan or his household. When Chinggis crushes the Naiman in 1204 he is caught carrying the seal and, asked what he is doing with it, says it is his duty to die with it; Chinggis keeps him, orders that the seal be used on all state documents, and has him teach the Uyghur script to the princes (the origin of the Mongol script). The brief asks whether the chancery 'falls before 1 January 1200': it may; the sources do not date his office or the Naiman use of the script (Medievalists.net says some suggest the tenth century).

We place the chancery in the khan's household in 1200 as probable, not certain.

Who he is

Name
Tata-tonga (Tatar-tonga, Ta-ta Tonga, Chinese Tata Tong'a)
Title
Uyghur scribe, tutor (fu) of Tayang Khan, keeper of the golden seal and of the revenue (Yuanshi biography 124)
Since
Not pinned: he is attested in office only at the fall of the Naiman in 1204; whether he held the seal on 1 January 1200 is not known
Born
not known
Family
A Uyghur; some sources say Naiman. Not otherwise known.
Confidence
medium for the office, nothing for 1200

Yuanshi biography 124 and the Secret History (as summarised by Li Tang, the Medievalists.net article and the Dergipark abstract); not opened in the original.

Overlord

Tayang Khan.

What it holds

  • The khan's golden seal
  • The revenue records (money and grain, the Yuanshi says), written in Uyghur script
  • A circle of Uyghur clerks (thin)

How it was acquired

Appointed by Tayang or by Inanch Bilge before him: not known.

Allies and rivals

Serves Tayang; after 1204 Chinggis. Teacher of the princes, among them Shigi Qutuqu (later).

How things stand that morning

Probably in the khan's household as scribe and seal-keeper; not pinned.

Threats

  • The collapse of the Naiman in 1204

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

  1. 1204Taken with the seal after the Naiman defeat; made keeper of Chinggis's seals; the Uyghur script is adopted for Mongol documents.Depends on: The Naiman war. Stopped by: A Naiman victory.

Where the sources disagree

  • Some sources call him a Naiman, others a Uyghur (Dergipark abstract). The Yuanshi calls him a Uyghur. The title 'chancellor' of the brief is a modern gloss.

Evidence: One Yuanshi biography and one passage of the Secret History; nothing dates his office to before 1204.

On the map: No map part.

Primary sources for The Naiman

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

  • Record of the Personal Campaigns of the Holy Warrior (Chinggis Khan) (presented to Khubilai in 1288, finished in Mongolian in 1290; the surviving Chinese version dates from 1369). A year-by-year Chinese account of Temujin's wars, drawn from the lost Altan Debter (the same source behind the Yuan shi's first chapter and Rashid al-Din). Read online
  • The Secret History of the Mongols (1228 or 1240 (the colophon's Year of the Rat is disputed), with later additions; the surviving Chinese transcription and gloss were made under the Ming in the 1380s). The only Mongol account of Temujin's rise, written within living memory. Read online
  • Compendium of Chronicles, Rashid al-Din Fadl Allah Hamadani (1300 to 1311, at Tabriz). The official Ilkhanid history, compiled from Mongol oral tradition and the lost Altan Debter. Read online
  • Compendium of Chronicles: the Turkic and Mongol tribes and the life of Chinggis Khan, Rashid al-Din Hamadani (about 1300 to 1311, in the Ilkhanate). The fullest description of who held what on the steppe around 1200, written a century later from Mongol court records (the Altan Debter) and from informants such as Bolad Chingsang. Read online
  • History of the Yuan, Song Lian (宋濂) and the Ming history office (1369 to 1370). Juan 1, the annals of Taizu (Chinggis Khan), gives a dated outline of Temujin's early wars drawn from the same lost Altan Debter as the Shengwu qinzheng lu: the Tatar war with the Jin in 1196, the Merkit and Naiman campaigns, the Tayichi'ut war, Jamuqa's coalition of 1201 and the Tatar and Kereyit wars of 1202 and 1203. Read online
  • History of the World Conqueror: the Qara Khitai (Gur Khans) and the Uyghurs of Beshbaliq, Ala al-Din Ata-Malik Juvayni (begun about 1252 to 1253, ends with 1260). Juvayni's chapters on the Uyghur kingdom (its origin legend, Beshbaliq and Qocho, and the idiqut Barchuq's murder of the Qara Khitai resident before his submission to Chinggis Khan in 1209) and on the Gur Khans of the Qara Khitai are the fullest Muslim account of the Tarim and Zhetysu around 1200: the gurkhan Zhilugu's court at Balasagun, his tax collectors in the oasis towns and in Samarkand, his relations with the Khwarazmshah Tekish and then Muhammad, and the arrival of the Naiman prince Kuchlug in 1208. Read online
  • Journey to the West of the Perfected Changchun (Qiu Chuji), Li Zhichang (李志常) (about 1228, from the journey of 1220 to 1224). A dated eyewitness itinerary across the steppe and the Tarim twenty years after 1200: the Kereyit country and the Ongud frontier, the Naiman mountains, the Uyghur towns of Beshbaliq and the Tarim with their Buddhist and Christian communities, Almaliq of the Qarluq, and Samarkand. Read online

Sources and studies

  1. Dilber Usul, on the ethnic origin of Ta-ta Tonga (Dergipark, 2023, abstract)
  2. 'Tata-tonga, scribe of Genghis Khan, 1204' (abclegaldocs.com)
  3. Medievalists.net, 'Writing and the Mongol Empire' (2022), on Tata-tonga and the Naiman chancery
  4. Li Tang, 'Medieval sources on the Naiman Christians and on their prince Kuchlug Khan' (2009), on academia.edu
  5. The Secret History of the Mongols, the same translation (sections 177-202), read at anyflip

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.