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. The tribes section gives the Kereyit of Ong Khan and his brother Jaqa Gambu, the Naiman of Tayang and Buyiruq, the Merkit, the Tatars, the Onggud who kept the Jin frontier wall, the Oirat, the Kyrgyz, the Tangut and the Uyghurs, with their rulers and grazing lands. The Chinggis Khan section dates the campaigns of 1195 to 1203 by Turkic animal years: the Merkit and Naiman campaigns with Ong Khan, the Tayichi'ut war around 1200, the Qatagin and Salji'ut coalition, and the breach with Jamuqa. It is the best control on the Secret History's order of events, though it is court history and flatters the house of Chinggis.
About this source
- Title
- Jami al-tawarikh (جامع التواريخ): the tribes section and the history of Chinggis Khan
- Author
- Rashid al-Din Hamadani
- Author's dates
- about 1247 to 1318
- Written
- about 1300 to 1311, in the Ilkhanate
- Language
- Persian
- Covers
- the tribes section describes the steppe peoples as they were before and under Chinggis Khan; the history of Chinggis Khan runs from his ancestors to 1227
- Kind
- History
Thackston's English translation is under copyright and not freely online; the Russian translation (Khetagurov, Smirnova, Verkhovsky, 1946 to 1960) is free on vostlit.info. Another entry in this library covers the Jami al-tawarikh for Persia; this one is limited to the steppe. The tribes section describes the situation across the thirteenth century, so a given detail is not always true of 1200 exactly.
Where to read it
Translations
- Rashid-ad-Din, Sbornik letopisei, vol. 1, book 1, section 3 (the Kereyit, Naiman, Onggud, Tangut and Uyghur tribes), Russian translation (Moscow and Leningrad, 1952), at Vostochnaya Literatura
- Rashid-ad-Din, Sbornik letopisei, vol. 1, book 2 (the history of Chinggis Khan; the pages for about 1195 to 1203, Ong Khan, the Merkit, Naiman and Tayichi'ut campaigns), Russian translation, at Vostochnaya Literatura
- W. M. Thackston, Rashiduddin Fazlullah, Jami'u't-tawarikh: Compendium of Chronicles, 3 vols (Harvard, 1998 to 1999), English (not freely online)
About the source
Realms this source covers in 1200
- Temujin's Mongols
- The Kereyit of Toghrul, Ong Khan
- The Naiman of Tayang and Buyiruq
- The Merkit of Toqto'a Beki
- The Tayichi'ut of Tarqutai
- Jamuqa's following
- The other Mongol clans
- The Tatars
- The Onggirat
- The Ongud, wardens of the Jin march
- The Oirat of Qutuqa Beki
- The Yenisei Kyrgyz
- Great Xia, the Tangut empire
- The Uyghur kingdom of Qocho and Beshbaliq
- The Qarluq and the nomads of the Ili, the Zhetysu and Dzungaria
- The Jin empire of Zhangzong
- The Khitan and Xi under the Jin
- The Qara Khitai: the gurkhan's own lands