Yelü Chucai (1190-1243), a Khitan noble captured when the Mongols took the Jin capital in 1215, became Chinggis Khan's adviser and rode with his army to Central Asia. His own book, the Si yu lu, is lost except for an abstract kept in a Yuan-era miscellany. Emil Bretschneider translated that abstract with long notes in Mediaeval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources (London, 1888); the corpus holds that book (1888 and 1910 printings), not the web transcription named in the catalogue. The short text runs from the Altai past Bishbalik, Almaliq and Talas to Otrar, Samarkand, Bukhara and Urgench, with hearsay about India and the Kipchak steppe.
How they knew
Part eyewitness
Who “Tartar” means here
Yelü Chucai's abstract never uses 'Tatar'; it speaks of Chinggis's army and of 'Western people'. The word appears only in Bretschneider's notes, where he explains that 'Tartar' in European sources comes from the Tatar tribe's name.
Why read it
A view of the Mongol conquest from inside Chinggis Khan's camp by a highly educated East Asian writer. It shows the great garden cities the Mongols overran, not cities they are said to have built.
Watch out
The text is a later abridgement, and Bretschneider notes that its directions and distances are often wrong. The India and Kipchak sections are hearsay mixed with older Tang-era material. Names are in 19th-century transliteration.
Editorial contextYelü Chucai calls Samarkand 'Sün-sz'-kan', explains that the name means 'fat' because the land is so fertile, and describes gold and copper coins without holes. For miles around the city he saw orchards, flower gardens, aqueducts, springs and pools, melons as big as a horse's head, grape wine, and white cotton clothes, since white was lucky there and black the colour of mourning.
Around the city, to an extent of several tens of li, there are everywhere orchards, groves, flower gardens, aqueducts, running springs, square basins, and round ponds, in uninterrupted succession ; indeed, Sün-sz'-kan is a delicious place ! The water-melons there are as large as a horse's head.
Yelü Chucai's Si yu lu, in a Yuan-era abridgement (translated by E. Bretschneider, 1888)
Editorial contextYelü Chucai names Otrar ('O-ta-la'), ruling more than ten other towns, as the cause of the Mongol invasion of Central Asia. Its governor had Chinggis Khan's envoys and several hundred merchants with them killed and seized their goods. Bretschneider notes that Persian historians tell the same story.
One time the chief of this place ordered several envoys (of Chinghiz), and several hundreds of merchants (who were with them), to be put to death, and seized upon their goods. That was the cause of the army being directed against the Western people.
Yelü Chucai's Si yu lu, in a Yuan-era abridgement (translated by E. Bretschneider, 1888)
Editorial contextIn a footnote to a Russian chronicle's account of the siege of Kiev in 1240, printed in the same volume, Bretschneider explains the names. Russian annals always call the Mongols Tatars, Western chronicles call them Tartars, and so do Carpini, Rubruck and Marco Polo; but the name comes from a real Mongol-era tribe, the Tatar, which is how Muslim and Chinese writers spell it.
The Mongols are invariably termed Tatars in the Russian annals. The Hungarian and other Western chronicles of the thirteenth century call them Tartars. Piano Carpini, Rubruck, M. Polo, also write Tartar. But the original Mongol name of the tribe, from which this appellation is derived, was Tatar. Thus the Mohammedan and the Chinese authors spell the name.
E. Bretschneider, editor's footnote (Mediaeval Researches, 1888)
A plain without cities where the sun rises before a chop is cooked
Editorial contextFar to the north-west lies 'K'o-fu-ch'a', which Bretschneider identifies with the Kipchak steppe north of the Caspian. Yelü Chucai heard that it was endless plain, its people had no cities or towns, bred cattle and horses and made a drink from honey, and that summer nights were so short the sun rose again before a mutton chop could be cooked. Bretschneider shows the short-night detail was copied from a Tang-era account of a Siberian people.
To the north-west of Yin-du (Hindustan) is the realm of K'o fu-ch'a… The people there have no cities or towns. They breed much cattle and horses. They make a fermented beverage from honey. In that country the days (in summer) are long and the nights short. In little more than the time necessary to cook a mutton chop, the sun rises again.
Yelü Chucai's Si yu lu, in a Yuan-era abridgement (translated by E. Bretschneider, 1888)